Loomis Chaffee Magazine Winter 2021

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Winter 2021 VOLUME 84 |

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A MAT TER OF ART The Black Lives Matter Self-Portraiture Project displayed images and personal statements of dozens of community members in public spaces around campus, including this collection of panels in the Richmond Art Center.

Photo: Cassandra Hamer

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ON COVER: Loomis Chaffee students, alumni, faculty, and staff pictured in this photo collage contributed to the Black Lives Matter Self- Portraiture Project, an exhibit displayed around campus and online.

Collage design: Cassandra Hamer

Contents Wi n t e r 2 0 21

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Volum e 84

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No. 1 EDITORIAL & DESIGN TEAM

F E AT U R E S

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Lynn A. Petrillo ’86

Black Lives Matter Self-Portraiture Project

Director of Strategic Communications & Marketing

Becky Purdy Managing Editor

Student leaders collaborated with the Visual Arts Department and 46 Black members of the Loomis Chaffee community to create a moving exhibit.

Cassandra Hamer Graphic Designer

Makhala Huggins Class Notes Editor

Christine Coyle

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Reflecting on Turmoil

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Happy Feet

Obituaries Editor

Read a selection of student essays and poems reflecting on the uncertainty and upheaval of the historic spring and summer of 2020.

As a co-founder of Bombas, Andrew Heath ’99 has helped to shape the sock brand’s business model and continuing success, with giving back as its reason for being.

CONTRIBUTORS

Christine Coyle Heidi E.V. McCann ’93 Julie Field Kenneth Green Anna Hess Barresi ’97 Stacy-Ann Rowe ’97 Makhala Huggins John Cunningham Deidre Swords SUBMISSIONS/STORIES & NEWS

Alumni may contribute items of interest to: Loomis Chaffee Editors The Loomis Chaffee School 4 Batchelder Road Windsor, CT 06095 860.687.6811 magazine@loomis.org

D E PA R T M E N T S

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From the Head Island News Faculty & Staff News Object Lesson

52 Class Notes 56 Obituaries 62 Reflections

WEB EXTRAS Look for this notation throughout the magazine for links to online extras, from podcasts and videos to photo galleries and expanded news coverage.

facebook-square facebook.com/loomischaffee twitter-square twitter.com/loomischaffee instagram instagram.com/loomischaffee

Visit Loomis Chaffee online at www.loomischaffee.org for the latest school news, sports scores, and galleries of recent photos. You also will find direct links to all of our social networking communities.

For an online version of the magazine, go to www.loomischaffee.org/magazine.

Printed at Lane Press, Burlington, VT Printed on 70# Sterling Matte, an SFI Sheet, Sustainable Forestry Initiative

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Fr om t he Head

Vocabulary of 2020

By Sheila Culbert

Environmental concerns, the divisive political climate, the fight for equity and social justice, and, of course, the pandemic figured prominently in the life of the school in 2020.

To read the mid-year progress report on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, visit www.loomischaffee. org/magazine.

The Oxford English Dictionary, unable to settle for just one word of the year for 2020, instead provided a list for “an unprecedented year.” Their words included “bushfire,” “impeachment,” “acquittal,” “coronavirus,” “COVID19,” “lockdown,” “social distancing,” “reopening,” “Black Lives Matter,” “cancel culture,” “BIPOC,” “mail-in,” and “superspreader.” Reading the list had me reliving so much of the past year. We have all learned a new vocabulary as we have responded to the divisive political climate, the fight for social justice, and the coronavirus.

No, we did not have any bushfires on campus! But as indications of the climate emergency, the Australian conflagration, followed by the wildfires in the western United States, certainly animated our faculty and students. Environmental science is very much part and parcel of a Loomis Chaffee education these days— and is one of the areas of most concern and interest for our students. Certainly, the impeachment, political divisiveness, and election also took up considerable space this year.

But, of course, it has been the fight for racial justice and the pandemic that have dominated the country and the campus.

The fight for social justice not surprisingly spread from broader community concerns to the treatment of Black and Brown or, one of our new words, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) students, faculty, and staff at the school. The

discussion generated a great deal of introspection and suggestions for change. By the time this column is in print, a report will be available on the school’s website on actions taken through the first part of this academic year. Most notable are the creation of a Trustee Committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and the development of a Black alumni mentoring network that matches interested Black alumni with our Black students. I look forward to further discussions and action as we seek to make the school fully inclusive.

While I expect that the discussions about diversity and social justice will have a deep long-term impact on the school, the pandemic has had an immediate impact on our day-to-day operations.

We went online for spring term 2020 with students learning from home; ran a virtual summer program; provided a hybrid mix of online and in-person classes with no boarding for the first five weeks of the fall term and approximately half of our students online and half in person; invited back boarders for the second half of the fall term, although about 100 students remained online; and now the first half of the winter term will be online. We know all too well the expressions “COVID-19” and “coronavirus” and “social-distancing” and “reopening” and “superspreaders.” We have become adept at talking about protocols, viral loads, contact tracing, quarantine requirements, and rapid PCR tests.

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Photo: Jessica Ravenelle

IS LA N D NE WS

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Head of School Sheila Culbert speaks at the ground-breaking ceremony in November. Photo: Cassandra Hamer

Construction Begins on Expanded Home for Theater and Dance The building will be named for lead donors John D. Nichols ’49 and his wife, Alexandra, and will include a renovated Norris Ely Orchard Theater.

The school has broken ground for a new center for theater and dance at Loomis Chaffee that will feature a renovated Norris Ely Orchard Theater, a black-box theater, and a large dance studio as well as much-needed backstage and production spaces, all encompassed in one building.

The John D. and Alexandra C. Nichols Center for Theater and Dance, to be named for the project’s lead donors, John D. Nichols ’49 and his wife, Alexandra, is slated for completion by January 2022. The couple’s gift of $7.5 million provides more than half of the funding for the project, which will significantly upgrade and expand performance facilities for theater and dance productions while retaining the integrity of the NEO’s familiar and muchloved façade.

“The performing arts have always been a huge part of our program on campus. It’s so exciting to have a new home … with state-of-

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the-art equipment that will allow students to take their talents to the next level and for all the community to embrace the performing arts even more,” Susan Chrzanowski, head of the Performing Arts Department, said during a small, outdoor, socially-distanced event convened in November to acknowledge the groundbreaking.

Robert A.M. Stern Architects of New York was retained by the school to design the new center. According to the plans, the project will expand the NEO’s seating capacity to 200 and enlarge its stage and will add a 1,200-squarefoot black-box theater, a 1,400-square-foot dance studio, a scene shop and tool room, multiple dressing rooms, a state-of-the-art control booth, and a spacious lobby.

The overall project will cost an estimated $14 million, and the school is engaged in additional fundraising to reach that total.

“We thank John and Alexandra Nichols, especially, for their leadership and remarkable generosity,” Sheila said at the November gathering. Also in attendance were Associate Head for External Relations Nathan Follansbee; the Nicholses’ granddaughter, freshman Mandarin Wallace; and several other students and faculty members who are involved in the performing arts. Although John and Alexandra could not

attend the ceremony, the students expressed their gratitude in a short video that was shared with the couple.

A devoted alumnus, John served as a member of the Board of Trustees from 1985 to 1997 and as a volunteer for the school’s Annual Fund. He is the retired vice chairman and chief executive officer of the Marmon Holdings Inc., now part of Berkshire Hathaway, and the

Theater and dance students help to break ground for the new building. Photo: Cassandra Hamer

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former chairman and chief executive officer of Illinois Tool Works Inc. John and Alexandra have hosted admission and alumni receptions in Chicago for the school. Their children, Kendra Nichols Wallace ’91 and John D. Nichols III ’94, are also active members of the school community. Over the years, gifts from the Nichols family have contributed to previous NEO renovations and to endowing the Frances D. Nichols Instructorship in Art in honor of John’s late mother.

“Alexandra and I have strong feelings for theater, dance, and Loomis Chaffee,” John said last year in conjunction with the family’s latest commitment. “We believe that these performance arts inspire young people and instill in

them confidence and a sense for collaboration, paralleling perfectly the school’s mission of developing in each student a commitment to their best self while working on behalf of a common good.”

Loomis Chaffee’s theater program includes instruction in acting for stage and camera, improvisation, stage combat, technical theater, playwriting, and directing. The department stages three major performances each year — a fall play, a winter musical, and a collection of plays in the spring that are written, directed, produced, and performed by students. A Stage II production was introduced last winter. The school’s dance program includes classes in ballet, jazz, and hip-hop, as well as choreogra-

phy and composition. Beginning and advanced dance companies perform throughout the year with a culminating performance in the spring term. Many of the performing arts offerings have continued, in modified format, during the COVID-19 pandemic, with several outdoor performances this fall and online rehearsals during periods of remote learning at the school.

To find out more about the Nichols Center plans, visit www.loomischaffee.org/ magazine.

Artist's rendering of the planned John D. and Alexandra C. Nichols Center for Theater and Dance.

Illustration: Robert A.M. Stern Architects

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Campus Adjusts to the Pandemic The school provided a mix of in-person and online classes and kept dormitories closed for the first five weeks of the fall then resumed boarding for the rest of the term although about 100 students continued with online learning.

The pandemic continues to alter the familiar rhythms of the school year at Loomis Chaffee, but with a community-wide commitment to masking, social distancing, testing, contact tracing, and compliance to other safety measures, the campus once again bustled with (albeit modified) activity this fall after five months of empty classrooms, dorms, quads, and fields.

Fortunately, the school managed to avoid a COVID-19 outbreak on campus during the fall as pre-screening, regular testing, and other precautions helped to quickly identify and isolate a small number of students and employees who tested positive for the virus during the first three months of the school year. With COVID-19 infection rates sharply on the rise across the United States beginning in the late fall, however, classes at Loomis for at least the first half of the winter term are being conducted entirely online.

Sophomore Turner Brode and junior Emily Collins cross Rockefeller Quad. Photo: Cassandra Hamer

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Seniors Pedro Arellano and Andrey Cao catch up with each other during lunch in the dining hall. To enable safe meal-time conversations, the school installed acrylic dividers on the dining hall tables this fall. Photo: Cassandra Hamer

The school hopes to return to on-campus learning as early as February 1, but those plans remain flexible.

The fall term began on September 1 as the campus opened for in-person learning to day students and any boarding students who could commute while students who could not or chose not to come to campus engaged in online learning. Dorms remained closed, and students left campus every day by 6 p.m.

The student body split about evenly between in-person (363 students) and online (353 students) instruction as many boarding students commuted from home or lived with classmates, host families, or residences that their families rented in the Windsor area.

After a summer of extensive preparation, with guidance from the school’s expanded Kravis Center for Excellence in Teaching, faculty members taught with a combination of synchronous and asynchronous classes, both in person and online. Modified approaches to sports, performing and visual arts, and extracurricular activities enabled those pursuits to resume as well.

Dormitories opened in mid-October, and most students returned to campus for the second half of the fall term. The opportunity to reunite with friends and classmates in person sent a surge of excitement through the school community. Despite mask requirements, restriction of dorm interactions, clear acrylic dividers in the dining hall, carefully arranged classrooms with all desks separated by six feet and facing forwards, and many other changes, students and faculty welcomed the resumption of campus life. As Head of School Sheila Culbert noted in a letter to the school community on November 20, “While we missed those students who could not make it back to

the Island …, we had over 600 students on campus, and it was magical. We certainly had our challenges, but there also have been so many good memories made.”

Looking ahead, school administrators have adjusted the school calendar for the remainder of the academic year, eliminating March Break to reduce the amount of precautionary quarantine time and to end the year on May 20 instead of early June.

Senior John Howley picks up his lunch in the dining hall food court. Photo: Cassandra Hamer

For the most up-to-date information and answers to frequently asked questions about the 2020–21 school year, visit www.loomischaffee.org/magazine.

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Historian Jelani Cobb Fields Questions About Race, Justice, and Voting As the presidential election approached this fall, advanced history students interviewed author and historian Jelani Cobb for a video convocation covering a range of topics, from the dilemma of discussing history when people disagree about the facts to the future of justice in law enforcement in the United States.

Mr. Cobb writes about race, politics, history, and culture for The New Yorker, and he is the author of the book The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Promise, published in 2010. He was the lead correspondent on the documentary “Whose Vote Counts?” broadcast in October on PBS’s Frontline. He is the Ira A. Lipman Professor of Journalism at Columbia University.

Mr. Cobb previously visited the Island in 2015 and was invited to return to speak at an all-school convocation because his writing draws people’s attention away from chaos and confusion and directs it toward “themes of justice and possibility,” says history teacher Eric LaForest, the Keller Family Director of the Norton Family Center for the Common Good.

As an assignment, Loomis students in College-Level U.S. History read Mr. Cobb’s recent New Yorker articles related to the history of racial injustice in America and its effect on voting and elections, and they submitted questions about the readings. Nine students were selected to pose their questions to Mr. Cobb for the convocation. The 30-minute video exchange included questions about the difference between investigative reporting and editorializing in journalism, the impact of social media and technological development on this year’s election, the future of voting rights for Black Americans, and proposals to amend or rewrite the U.S. Constitution to reject principles originally set for the country during the time of slavery, among other topics.

Mr. Cobb responded based on his scholarly and journalistic expertise as well as his lived experience as a Black man in America. He said he hoped to “use history as a way to navigate [the questions] so we can confront them as a means of establishing some sort of common basis for what we mean when we use the word ‘America.’” He also suggested books, documentaries, and other ways for students to explore and engage further on the topics of racial injustice and voting in America.

“One thing we can take some assurance in is that we have idealistic, smart, and thoughtful young people like you who will eventually be leading the country,” he said, thanking the students and urging them to continue working hard.

After watching the convocation, students met in advisory groups to discuss the issues raised. The convocation was part of the Hubbard Speakers Series, made possible by a gift from Robert P. Hubbard ’47, and was one of several convocations addressing issues of democracy and citizenship this election season.

To learn more about Mr. Cobb, visit www.loomischaffee.org/magazine.

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Students Interview Host of S.E.Cupp Unfiltered The conservative writer and commentator discussed political polarization in the United States and ways that people with opposing ideals can engage in productive conversation.

Editors of The Log interviewed S.E. Cupp, a conservative political writer, commentator, and CNN host, for a video convocation in October as the U.S. presidential election neared.

Ms. Cupp discussed politics, the election, intellectual diversity, and her formative and professional experiences. Both Ms. Cupp and the editors said they hoped the question-and-answer session would encourage students to voice their opinions in thoughtful and intentional ways and engage in civil political dialogue.

During the 30-minute conversation, eight Log editors posed questions to Ms. Cupp, the host of CNN’s S.E. Cupp Unfiltered. Their queries included: When and how did you come to identify as conservative, and what was it like to be among the ideological minority at Cornell University? What can schools do to create an inclusive atmosphere for conservative-leaning individuals on campus? How do you feel about the Republican party under President Trump’s leadership? What has been your experience interacting with the public — especially on social media — as a journalist and conservative political commentator? What can students do to be informed? And what’s next after the election in November?

Noting the difficulty in maintaining relationships between people who hold opposing fundamental ideals, a challenge with which she contends

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personally and professionally, Ms. Cupp suggested focusing on common interests — such as activism and civil engagement — and coming together for discussion from each person’s individual perspective. Also important, she said, was to engage in the conversation with the intention of gaining a better understanding of the other person’s perspective. Too often, she said, “we want to identify heretics instead of looking for converts.”

In political dialogues between people whose opinions differ, Ms. Cupp explained, intent matters in determining whether the discussion will be productive. There need to be two willing participants in the interaction who share the goal of learning and understanding. One should not seek to agitate, and the goal shouldn’t be to win.

Ms. Cupp said that a school community like Loomis Chaffee is a great place for ideas to be challenged in a productive and respectful way, and she added that it is incumbent on the ideological majority to create those opportunities so that everyone is heard and respected.

The ill effects of polarization and tribalism in society are the result of politics replacing the central organizing values in our lives — community, faith, family, and work, Ms. Cupp said. She is concerned that a person’s political beliefs, which used to be just about governing, have become a comprehensive identifying value — determining where we live, who our

friends are, who we trust, how we get our news, and what we think about science, among other things.

To address the problem of polarization, she said, it is not enough to foster understanding and agreement from each side. Politics have to become less all-encompassing, she said.

After watching the question-and-answer session, one of several convocations addressing issues of democracy and citizenship this fall, freshmen and sophomores discussed the convocation in advisory groups.

Ms. Cupp’s visit was part of the Hubbard Speakers Series, made possible by a gift from Robert P. Hubbard ’47.

For a link to Ms. Cupp’s website and more information about her political commentary, background, writing, and broadcast career, visit www. loomischaffee.org/magazine.

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Author Discusses Democracy and Rise of Populism Political scientist Yascha Mounk engaged with Head of School Sheila Culbert in a conversation about threats to democracies and the rise of populism around the world for a video convocation in October.

Mr. Mounk is an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University and a contributing writer for The Atlantic. His book The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is In Danger and How to Save It was published in 2018.

Observations Mr. Mounk makes in the book can serve as conversation starters about the American ideal of democracy, Sheila said and asked the author to illuminate some of these ideas.

Mr. Mounk’s scholarship has pointed to the rise in power of populist leaders in places like the United States and other established democracies, and he expressed concern that these populist movements could lead to a decline in the self-determination and individual freedoms that people living in democratic systems believe will never erode. When he was in graduate school, the prevailing view was that democracies in affluent, long-established countries like the United States were stable and not at risk for collapse, he said. He tested this assumption in his subsequent study of democratic governments and populist movements. “[What] strikes me about democratic values is that when you have them, they are easy to take for granted, but when you lose them, they become really appealing,” he said.

Mr. Mounk drew a distinction between democracy and what he terms “liberal democracy.” While democracy, narrowly defined, means majority rule through voting and elections, liberal democracy is a system of self-governance and self-determination by and for the population and includes the protection of certain individual freedoms, he explained. In a liberal democracy, for instance, the majority does not decide where, how, or even whether people must observe a religion, he said.

If even stable democracies are threatened around the world, why, Sheila asked, are they worth saving?

Mr. Mounk replied that liberal democracies, including the United States, have many problems and injustices, but compared to other political systems though history and in existence now, liberal democracies have the best record for treating people with dignity and tolerance, affording them a degree of prosperity, and allowing them to think and say what they want. People from every part of the world with every skin color and from every religion can relate to these democratic ideals, he added.

During the discussion Mr. Mounk pointed to several contributing factors in the decline of democratic political systems that have created fertile ground for populist movements, fueling their ability to reach broad audiences and gain influence. In the United States, among the factors he cited were a growing mistrust of institutions; young people’s lack of opportunity, sense of powerlessness, and limited ability to achieve a better standard of living than previous generations; a declining population of people who have lived under communist or fascist regimes; and many people’s sense that they are losing ground socio-economically, a trend that began in the mid-1980s. Populist movements can exploit people’s

anger and frustration quickly, inexpensively, and broadly through social media and digital communications, he noted.

Even if populist movements recede from power, Mr. Mounk said, people should continue to work to preserve democracy and make needed reforms in the United States. Re-establishing a sense of respect for the legitimacy of opposing political groups will enable people once again to robustly disagree and to employ democracy’s ability to arbitrate.

The dialogue was one of several convocations addressing issues of democracy and citizenship this election season. After watching the dialogue between Mr. Mounk and Sheila, juniors and seniors met in advisory groups to discuss the issues raised.

Mr. Mounk’s visit was part of the Hubbard Speakers Series, made possible by a gift from Robert P. Hubbard ’47.

Even if populist movements recede from power, Mr. Mounk said, people should continue to work to preserve democracy and make needed reforms in the United States.

For a link to Mr. Mounk’s professional website, visit www.loomischaffee.org/magazine.

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Antigonick

IN THE OPEN AIR With an outdoor staging of a reimagined classic, the challenges of 2020 met an interpretation of a tragedy written two millennia ago.

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The courtyard of the Richmond Art Center is transformed into a stage for Antigonick. At front are ensemble members sophomore Arthur Beaugeard and junior Grace Thompson.

Photos: Cassandra Hamer

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The ancient story of Antigone unfolded in the firelit Ratté Quadrangle in November during a three-night run of the play Antigonick by Anne Carson, performed and produced by the Loomis Chaffee Performing Arts Department.

Facing the many challenges of creating live theater safely during a pandemic, the 33-member student cast and crew took advantage of the unusual circumstances to immerse the audience in the play’s dark mood. The outdoor stage and seating in flickering torch-light, the layering of theatrical masks atop cloth masks, and an ensemble that surrounded the audience as menacing guards enhanced Ms. Carson’s interpretation of the Sophocles tragedy from 441 B.C., a gruesome tale of mortal power and divine comeuppance.

The show was directed by theater faculty member David McCamish and assistant directed by English Department faculty member David Edgar and senior Aidan Gillies. The double cast, with actors alternating their roles across the four shows, included seniors Anna Rebello and Simone Moales as Antigone and senior John Howley and junior Aidan Cooper as Kreon, the king of Thebes.

The entire production team created a unique and memorable show, remarks Susan Chrzanowski, head of the Performing Arts Department. “I am so impressed with what they have been able to accomplish just to get here,” she said on opening night, noting that many of the rehearsals were conducted partially via Zoom video conference during the first half of the fall, when the Loomis campus was open only to day students.

While only students and faculty were able to attend the performances on campus, two of the shows were livestreamed for family and friends who could not attend in person.

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4 Sisters Ismene (senior Eva Evans) and Antigone (senior

Simone Moales) debate the morality of defying their father's decree and burying their fallen brother Polyneices.

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5 Ensemble member freshman Jessica Luo conveys the heightened tension of the drama.

1 Haemon (senior Baihan "Tom" Zhang) reacts to a harangue by his father, Kreon, king of Thebes (senior John Howley).

2 A masked courtier helps to narrate the play.

3 Antigone (senior Anna Rebello) stands defiantly for her beliefs.

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Gay Sudarsky ’39 Scholarship Honors Dynamic Alumna The scholarship supports a talented student whose family qualifies for financial aid, with preference given to a female day student from the Hartford area.

Gay Sudarsky ’39

In September of 1935, Edith “Gay” Gaberman Sudarsky ’39 traveled to the Chaffee campus from her home on North Main Street in Hartford, Connecticut, for the first time. For the next four years, she lovingly endured this hour-long commute that entailed taking a bus from North Main Street into downtown, boarding a train that took her to the Loomis campus in Windsor, and then walking about a mile down Palisado Avenue to the Sellers building on the Chaffee campus. One may wonder if, during those many hours, she ever imagined the role that The Loomis Chaffee School would play in her life and in the lives of her future family and that 85 years later her children would create The Gay Sudarsky ’39 Scholarship at Loomis Chaffee in her memory.

Gay was always up for an adventure, family and friends recall, and she viewed her commute to Chaffee as a grand expedition. Gay enjoyed her class days with her Chaffee classmates, and she especially loved English class and acting in the dramatic productions. After Chaffee, Gay attended Connecticut College, where she was the first daughter of a graduate to graduate. From childhood and throughout her life, Gay loved reading, and as an English major in college, she honed her skills as a reader. Gay’s daughter Betty Sudarsky Bradley ’69 fondly remembers that in addition to the three newspapers that Gay read daily, she also habitually worked through a stack of library books, which she replenished weekly. “Always carry a book with you,” Gay counseled Betty. “That way if you have to wait, you can read a few pages.” In addition to consuming books at a lightning pace, Gay also figured out how to record her soap operas as soon as the VCR was invented so as never to miss an episode.

Before her marriage to Joseph Sudarsky in 1945, Gay worked at Pratt and Whitney in support of the World War II effort and then at The Hartford Courant. An activist and a champion for causes in which she believed, Gay spent many hours as a social worker and volunteered her time at Hartford’s Children and Family Services; she participated in a grass-roots effort to establish Brandeis University; she volunteered her time at the Children’s Museum in West Hartford, at the Institute for Living, and for her husband’s political campaigns; and she worked for Lowell Weicker’s campaign for Connecticut governor and later accepted a job in the statehouse.

In 1965, Gay was elected to the Board of Trustees of Loomis Chaffee and served ultimately as vice chair of the board and Trustee

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Emeritus. Among her credits as a Trustee were the squiring of Chaffee back to the Loomis campus and the hiring of John Ratté, a head of school for 20 years. Both Gay and Joseph led a Loomis Chaffee parents’ committee in the late 1960s. In addition, Gay was a trustee at the Bushnell in Hartford and a trustee and trustee emeritus at Connecticut College, where she received the college medal for her service. Gay was also one of two women to serve on the Tumble Brook Country Club building committee.

At the age of 59, Gay earned her master’s degree in public health from UConn and was appointed the head of the Greater Hartford Cancer Society, where, in addition to her numerous organizational duties, she led support groups. Gay was a force, an optimist, and an enthusiast. She was bright, articulate, and curious, and she had boundless energy: She took art classes in sculpture and drawing, studied geology, was a devotee of the theater, played golf (and was head of the women’s golf committee at Tumble Brook for years), played bridge, started investment groups, and still managed to raise and support three children who revered her dynamic personality. Gay, who passed away in 2015, noticed the details in any setting and loved the ocean and the beach.

She and Joseph were married for 70 years.

Gay and Joseph’s legacy to their children included encouraging them to participate, support causes about which they cared and that needed them, and try to make a difference — and always to take care of family. In 2019, Gay’s children, Betty Sudarsky Bradley ’69, Lewis R. Sudarsky ’66, and Deborah Sudarsky ’74, established The Gay Sudarsky ’39 Scholarship at Loomis Chaffee in memory of their mother.

The scholarship supports a talented student whose family qualifies for need-based financial aid, with preference given to a female day student from the Hartford area. As Gay’s children wrote, “Our mom would be thrilled to know a student will benefit from a Loomis Chaffee scholarship in her honor. We are so happy that a Loomis Chaffee student will know our mom, in memoriam, and benefit from her generous spirit.”

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Students Assist Yale Study on Contact Tracing Students in Loomis Chaffee’s Problem-Solving for the Common Good classes are helping Yale University researchers determine the usefulness of an innovative technology designed to facilitate fast, accurate, COVID-19 contact tracing.

Engineers at Yale’s School of Public Health have developed a personal signaling and tracking device, or “dongle,” that is worn by individuals in a setting such as a school, hospital, or other work or living space. Using signals, the dongles recognize and track when other devices are within six feet for 15 minutes or more. If an individual among the dongle-wearers tests positive for COVID-19, the person’s device can swiftly and comprehensively identify other dongles with which it had close contact, aiding in the rapid isolation and testing of people at risk for exposure and thus helping contain community spread.

Sten Vermund, dean of Yale’s School of Public Health, met via video conference with the fall Problem-Solving for the Common Good class in September to discuss the technology and describe the project. He also identified some of the multipronged challenges that need to be addressed for Loomis to consider taking part in the initiative. For the project to succeed, a large percentage of individuals must commit to the community effort and make the small behavioral changes that are needed for participation.

Dr. Vermund, a pediatrician and infectious disease epidemiologist, has advised Loomis on community health and safety measures related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Unlike smartphone apps that can access personal data, no personal data of the dongle-wearer is collected or recorded, Dr. Vermund said. Yale experts used sophisticated cyber-security methods in developing the dongle’s technology because they understood that protecting individual privacy would make people more likely to agree to wear the device. He said the dongle is simple to use, requiring only that people remember to wear it every day and charge it every two or three days.

“Welcome to human research,” Dr. Vermund said.

Establishing protocols for scientific study that people are willing to take part in is an important aspect of his line of work.

After meeting with Dr. Vermund, students in the class said they thought other students might be willing to take part if it would help ensure that on-campus activities could continue. The 14 students in the class,

taught by Director of Innovation Scott MacClintic ’82, used a design-thinking approach to consider the Loomis community’s possible involvement in the Yale project. The students shared their findings with the Loomis administration as the school assessed whether to participate in the program.

This winter, the next Problem-Solving class will pick up were the fall class left off, considering the logistics of distribution of the dongles, training, and fitting their use into daily routines. Representatives from Yale have delivered 30 dongles to Loomis for a two-week feasibility study, which will be conducted without collection of contact-tracing information, Scott said.

Students in the Pearse Hub for Innovation brainstorm with online classmates in the Problem-Solving for the Common Good course this fall.

Photo: Scott MacClintic '82

For the project to succeed, a large percentage of individuals must commit to the community effort and make the small behavioral changes that are needed for participation.

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Courtney Ackeifi ’06 speaks with students via video conference.

Photo: Christine Coyle

Science Students Learn About Biomedicine Careers

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oomis Chaffee Trustee Courtney Ackeifi ’06 gave a presentation to Loomis students in November about her education and career in the biomedical sector and her experience discovering and delivering new medical therapies to market.

More than 30 students and faculty members joined the videoconference of Courtney’s presentation, “From Discovery to Drugstore.”

The event was organized by Science Department Head Neil Chaudhary ’05, who was a contemporary of Courtney’s at Loomis.

“My interest has been to use science as a tool to improve human life,” Courtney said. That interest led her to advanced study of disease pathophysiology and a career in drug therapy research and development.

When she was a student at Loomis, Courtney took science classes in microbiology and molecu-

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lar biology, a choice she made based on Neil’s recommendation. “I loved the hands-on nature of the class and how we got to DO science,” she said, adding that she foresaw herself working in that field some day.

After Loomis, Courtney earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and music from Wellesley College, where she conducted scientific research in endocrinology. From there, she studied neurodegenerative diseases as a research assistant at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, worked at the biotechnology company Biogen, studied human models of diabetes and analyzed intellectual property in pursuit of her doctorate at Mt. Sinai Hospital’s Icahn School of Medicine, and now works on post-market strategies for pharmaceutical and biotech companies as associate director of medical and scientific affairs at Synapse, a medical marketing agency. She works and

lives in New York City.

To illustrate her scientific research, Courtney presented a timeline of the long, expensive phases required for new drug development, from the initial research stage — often riddled with failure along the way, she said — to approval as well as the necessary safety surveillance phase after a drug’s use in human populations has begun.

She spoke about her experience researching neurogenerative disease at Harvard and explained why stem cells, which can be transformed into other types of cells, are especially useful in the study of medical therapies for humans. In addition, Courtney touched on what she learned at Harvard about partnerships for scientific progress.

Courtney also shared the findings from her doctoral thesis, which focused on diabetes and obesity, in Mt. Sinai’s biophysics and systems pharmacology program.

Courtney said her work in academic labs and different types of companies and institutions has influenced how she thinks about solving scientific problems. Her study and training in science helps her apply basic biological principles to medical areas not directly related to her research and has taught her how to organize and think critically about all sorts of data, she said.

After her presentation, Courtney answered students’ questions about stem cell research, her work in diabetes research, the courses she most enjoyed at Loomis, and her thoughts about a COVID-19 vaccine.

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All-Gender Housing Option Opens in Flagg Hall

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ine students moved into the school’s first all-gender housing on the third floor of Flagg Hall in October when the campus opened for boarding.

In keeping with the school’s commitment to an inclusive and supportive on-campus experience for all students, Loomis Chaffee offered the all-gender residential space this year in response to the changing needs of students and their families and after thoughtful discussion and planning by the school’s faculty and administration.

Any boarding student, regardless of gender expression or gender identity, could request the all-gender housing option for the 2020–21 year.

Science teacher Emily Garvin, who lives on the floor and is the coordinator of all-gender housing at Loomis, says the floor, a place for students of any gender, provides the same nurturing community found in traditionally boys and girls dorms.

Despite the challenges of residential life amid COVID-19 safety restrictions, the spirit of camaraderie on the all-gender floor — and the rest of Flagg Hall — has helped make the experience better for everyone, report seniors Baihan "Tom" Zhang and Olivia Zoga, who reside on the third floor as resident assistants.

“We often find ourselves … spontaneously and social-distantly gathered in the hallway discussing how the electoral college works, sharing each other’s feelings on the election, and helping someone out [with] their college [application.] It has been a great experience for me, and I believe it has been for others as well,” Tom says.

“Overall, the experience is a little different than traditional boarding life, but in a year where weird restrictions follow students everywhere, … Flagg has been a great community,” says Olivia, who worked with students and faculty to create an informational video for the school community about life on the all-gender floor.

Junior Class Dean Elliott Dial, who is the Flagg dorm head, welcomed the opportunity to include all-gender housing in Flagg. He says it was important to include the all-gender hall in a larger dorm family, rather than isolating it as a separate dorm. The inclusive approach helps build understanding and community spirit, he says.

The all-gender residence option may suit students who identify as LGBTQIA+ or non-binary (not exclusively masculine or feminine), but the choice is theirs, Elliott says. No one is required to live in all-gender

housing, and there are no gender-related requirements — such as using gender-neutral pronouns — for living on the floor.

The decision to offer an all-gender boarding option is consistent with the school’s mission to provide a residential learning environment where all individuals are respected, supported, and valued, according to Courtney Jackson, assistant dean of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

She says sorting students into only male or female dorms leaves out students who may feel more comfortable living where there is no gender specification and no one is excluded.

“I want to make sure that students have a place where they feel comfortable,” Elliott says. “I think all of our students deserve that.”

Flagg Hall head Elliott Dial and dorm mascot Sachem display the colorful dorm banner.

Photo: Molly Giorgio ’06

To watch the informational video created by senior Olivia Zoga, visit www. loomischaffee.org/magazine.

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Isl and Ne w s Vocabulary of 2020 Continued from page 4 Three words that I would add for this unprecedented year include “flexibility,” “isolation,” and “anxiety.” As we at the school have reacted to the pandemic, we have had to remain flexible—changing our schedule and toggling back and forth between online and in-person learning depending on the local state of the pandemic, public health requirements, and our own ability to react to the situation. So much was outside of our control. For example, when we started this academic year, we did not initially have a rapid test machine—we now do, and it has provided a level of assurance that was critical to our ability to open the school for our boarding population. Flexibility also requires that we live with a level of uncertainty. We don’t know exactly how we will teach or learn in a particular term until the term is just about upon us; we don’t know if our children’s schools will be open, if we will be able to travel or visit family. This uncertainty in turn leaves us feeling anxious and discombobulated.

The pandemic and the need for social distancing and online learning also have increased feelings of isolation for many of our community members. We have not been able to visit family or friends; we have had to restrict our social circles, our travel, and our other activities—and all of this has taken its own toll. When we were able to bring our boarders back for the second half of the fall term, what I heard over and over again was how much people had missed seeing one another, had missed the serendipitous interactions that happen over the course of a day.

It is not surprising then that we have also seen ever-increasing levels of anxiety—not just among our students, but also among our faculty and staff. We have increased our programming and support services for our community, and mental health is a major focus. We can begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Vaccines were starting to be administered to front-line workers and high-risk populations in December, and we hope that we will be able to return to some semblance of normality by academic year 2021–22—but it will take some time for us to address the deeper, more emotional toll that this pandemic had wrought on us all.

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A Problem-Solving Approach to Managing Anxiety Life's stressors cannot be avoided or denied out of existence, says Lynn Lyons, a specialist in the treatment of anxiety disorders, but worries don't have to rule people's lives either.

Lynn Lyons, a specialist in anxiety, is working in a consulting role with the school this year.

A specialist in the treatment of anxiety disorders spoke with students, parents, and faculty in separate sessions this fall about anxiety and depression in adolescents, an especially timely topic in the midst of the pandemic and a host of other uncertainties in the United States and the world.

The school invited Lynn Lyons, a respected psychotherapist who works with individuals, families, schools, and mental health professionals worldwide, to discuss and facilitate conversations about the causes of student anxiety and depression and to offer coping strategies.

“Loomis is deeply invested in the health and well-being of our students and feels that it is just as important to educate and equip our students to be able to manage the day-to-day stresses and life challenges that arise as it is to educate and equip them in the classroom,” Loomis Director of Counseling Julie Field said

in her introduction of Ms. Lyons during a webinar for parents on September 9.

In all three of her presentations, each tailored to her audience, Ms. Lyons emphasized the importance of problem-solving and positive actions in response to anxiety, rather than avoidance of the anxiety-causing situations or, in the case of parents, trying to protect their children from the stressors of daily life.

Although the pandemic is a new source of worry for people, Ms. Lyons noted that the mental health challenges themselves predate the coronavirus. “Teen anxiety and depression were rising before COVID-19,” she said.

During each session, Ms. Lyons welcomed questions and offered helpful resources. Her work with the school has been coordinated by Julie, Dean of Student Life Jessica Matzkin, and Lena Sadowitz, director of Learning Access & Student Achievement, and was made possible by a grant from the Shenandoah Foundation.

For more information and resources and a link to Ms. Lyons’s professional website, visit www. loomischaffee.org/magazine.

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FOR TEENAGERS (and the rest of us) Top 10 Tips for Managing Stress During the Pandemic From the Loomis Chaffee Counseling Department

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Create and maintain a daily routine. Having structure to our day helps us to maintain motivation and focus and helps provide us with a sense of security.

Be intentional about staying connected with those you care about. Positive relationships are beneficial in many ways. They can help reduce anxiety, illness, and feelings of loneliness while improving a person’s mood. Calling someone on the phone, cuddling with a pet, playing with young children, and sending someone a handwritten note are all ways to stay connected.

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Self-care, self-care, self-care. Get consistent sleep, eat healthy meals and snacks, engage in physical activity every day, brush your teeth and shower, and get outside.

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Carve out time for yourself every day to do something you enjoy or find meaningful — and help you relax. Try getting lost in a good book, spending time outside in nature, involving yourself in absorbing work, looking through photographs of friends and family, listening to music, or engaging in arts and crafts.

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Take periodic breaks from social media and the news.

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Limit caffeine intake. Too much caffeine can increase anxiety and inhibit your ability to relax.

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Be kind to yourself and have compassion for others.

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Have gratitude and appreciation for the things that matter to you.

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Try to find moments of humor, watch a funny video or movie, read corny jokes out loud, or spend time with someone who can make you laugh.

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Reach out for support if you are struggling, or if you are worried about someone else.

Never worry alone!

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Mentoring Program Connects Black Alumni and Students From practical advice to moral support, Black alumni mentors will help guide interested Black students through their Loomis Chaffee years and beyond.

Sophomore Inari Barrett meets with her alumni mentor, Shanelle Jones ’17, via video conference in Gilchrist Auditorium.

Photo: Elizabeth Parada

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Twenty-two Black alumni mentors are providing one-on-one guidance and support to current Black students at Loomis Chaffee through a new initiative that launched in November.

The Black Alumni Mentoring Program, which sprung from a groundswell of alumni enthusiasm, aims to pair interested students with trained alumni mentors who will help them through their journey at Loomis Chaffee and beyond.

“Our Black alumni are very successful individuals who know other very successful individuals and would love to give Black students the opportunity to network and advance,” explains Assistant Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Stacy-Ann “Ro” Rowe ’97, who helped develop the program. “Not everyone is born with privilege, but we are attempting to help make the playing field a bit more equitable.”

The program supplements the school’s advising system. Participating students, like all Loomis students, have faculty advisors who oversee their academic program, help them create positive academic

Loomis Chaffee Magazine Winter 2021

and social experiences on campus, and serve as contacts with their families. Through the new mentoring program, the alumni volunteers are available to help Black students navigate other aspects of independent school life. Ro says queries for the mentors may be as simple as “Where in this area can I find skincare products that are best for my skin type?” or as far-reaching as “I am interested in a particular field for my career. Do you know someone in that field who could offer advice?”

Participating students will meet with their alumni mentors several times during the school year although the pairs may choose to meet more frequently. For now, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the meetings are virtual.

The idea for the mentoring program emerged last spring when a group of Black alumni expressed a strong desire to guide and support the school’s current Black students. The alumni recalled that, as students, they often had wished for someone who looked like them to talk to and to share their experiences.

Excited by this interest and recognizing the benefits of such connections, Head of School Sheila Culbert added the creation of a Black alumni mentoring program to the school’s diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives announced in June 2020. Ro then worked with Black alumni over the next several months to develop the program, arrange training, and coordinate the pairings. The students submitted their top three choices for mentors based on common interests, hometowns, cultural backgrounds, career paths, activities in which they participated at Loomis, and other factors. Ro says she was able to match all of the students with mentors they had ranked in their top three, and excitement swirled around Gilchrist Auditorium during the first group meeting of students and their paired mentors in November.

For more about diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at Loomis, visit www.loomischaffee. org/magazine.

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Recent Alumni Bolster Faculty

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ine alumni rejoined the Island community as interns this fall to help support faculty with the additional demands of providing a boarding school learning experience amidst the pandemic.

As teaching faculty delivered Loomis Chaffee’s academic curriculum on campus and online, synchronously and asynchronously, the interns helped with non-teaching supervisory duties, many of which related to COVID-19 safety.

Grace Denny ’13, Taylor Douglas ’19, John Fiallo ’18, Shelley Fickett ’19, Isaac Guzman ’17, Jason Liu ’17, Mike Matteo ’18, Aidan Murphy ’18, and Will Thramann ’18 took on the faculty intern roles this fall. Elaney Ortiz, a Scripps College senior who is not a Loomis alumna, also joined the intern cadre.

The interns said they enjoyed reconnecting with Loomis and seeing the school from a new perspective. Most were available for the temporary jobs because they were living at home during the pandemic and could commute to the Island while attending their colleges and graduate schools remotely.

“Some things have changed drastically since I was a student — the SNUG is not underground anymore — but others have not,” commented Jason, who is completing his bachelor’s degree online at Dartmouth College. “It’s great to see some familiar faces and sights — the Quad, the Meadows, Mr. [Edward] Pond’s yellow Crocs — but more importantly, it’s reassuring to be among Pelicans once more. I feel like I’m back home with close friends and family, and this reminiscent sensation of belonging is something that I’m cherishing as a Loomis intern."

Grace’s law school program is remote this year, and she says she was glad to help on campus during a challenging moment for the school. “I love working in the dorm once a week. It’s a nice distraction from my schoolwork, and spending time with the girls is so much fun,” she says. “I also really enjoy being a part of the team in the dorm. The rest of the dorm faculty are incredible to work with.”

The faculty interns were on duty for up to 20 hours per week in various roles. They supervised public areas around campus during the day, helped with weekend activities, proctored study spaces in Katharine Brush Library and Gilchrist Auditorium, assisted with athletics and wellness programs, and lent a hand with a variety of residential life needs.

Director of the Loomis Chaffee Summer Program Jim O’Donnell, who works extensively with interns during the summer, oversaw this fall’s interns. He says the cohort brought much-needed support to teachers and students during trying times and contributed to the community spirit on campus.

Virtual Visiting Artist Works with Film and Video Students

Sandra Bouguerch

Interdisciplinary artist Sandra Bouguerch spent the week of October 26–30 with the Loomis Chaffee community presenting, creating, and exhibiting her artwork in the Richmond Art Center as the school’s first virtual Visiting Artist.

During her residency, Ms. Bouguerch collaborated with students in Visual Arts teacher Christian Ryan’s Filmmaking and Video class on a project that addressed creativity in a time of global restrictions.

According to her website, Ms. Bouguerch, based out of northwest England, “incorporates an array of media, such as video, installation, photography, sound, performance, and text,” into her studio practice. She creates her artwork around the “exploration of self,” focusing on what it means to be “human through concept and multimedia, including performance and collaborations.”

Her photography, video, and experimental performance pieces were exhibited in the new Contemporary Media Gallery within the Richmond Art Center.

For a link to Ms. Bouguerch’s work, visit www. loomischaffee.org/magazine.

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Norton Fellow Engages Hometown Peers in Summer Course Senior creates SAT prep class that includes tutoring, practice exams, essay-writing workshops, and social activities.

Norton Fellow Kennedy Anderson

Senior Kennedy Anderson last summer led a six-week tutoring and mentoring program for high school students living near her hometown of Detroit, Michigan, as part of her Norton Fellowship, a community engagement program administered by Loomis Chaffee’s Norton Family Center for the Common Good.

Recognizing her own privilege in having access to college entrance test preparation inspired Kennedy to create the free tutoring program for young people in her hometown who otherwise might not have been able to afford such a program.

Kennedy reached out to Math 4 Success, a Detroit-based small business that offers low-cost tutoring in math and STEM (science, technology engineering, and mathematics) topics to prepare underserved students for academic and professional success. With administrative assistance from Math 4 Success, Kennedy enrolled two dozen students in her SAT Test Prep course during July and August. Due to COVID-19 safety restrictions, all the classes were conducted via Zoom video conference. The program included a math class and an English class every week, four practice SAT exams, and two college essay-writing workshops. Kennedy enlisted the help of Jed Stuart, her college counselor at Loomis, for the college essay workshops.

Before the start of her project, Kennedy says, she worried she would have difficulty generating and sustaining student interest in her program because of COVID-19. Many colleges announced last spring that they would not require applicants to take entrance exams this year due to the pandemic, and as a result, many students were choosing not to study for the tests. “Students could … increase their chances at admission if they earned a score either within or above that college’s median, [so I] used this in my marketing strategy,” Kennedy notes.

In the end, not every student completed all of the practice tests, but Kennedy was pleased that those who did saw marked increases in their scores. “To see a student’s score go from the 1000s to the 1300s was remarkable for me. I remember thinking to myself, ‘It’s working!’ and feeling assured that my project was actually having an impact in my students’ lives,” she says.

Beyond improving their scores, Kennedy’s plan aimed to help

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her students connect with their hometown peers — something she felt was important as pandemic safety restrictions had limited social interaction since early spring. The social activities Kennedy organized included group online games and a pizza party.

“A really popular pizza chain in my community has an online order option, so I chose a location that was closest to the students and ordered the pizza for them to pick up right before the pizza party.

We played Kahoot [an online quiz game] and a really interesting and heated game of Zoom Mafia! It was a lot of fun,” she recalls.

Math 4 Success officials praise Kennedy’s maturity, self-confidence, and commitment to helping her peers achieve their goals. They say the students responded positively to her energy and enthusiasm.

“Kennedy came to us with her own vision and a plan for action, which she executed in a very professional manner,” says Leron Lightfoot, the company’s founder and chief executive officer. Along with the lessons, he notes, the opportunities for social interaction that Kennedy created were especially welcome given the isolation the students experienced from the pandemic.

Chief Operations Officer Kelly S. Harris said Math 4 Success plans to incorporate some of Kennedy’s ideas and practices into its existing SAT prep curriculum, including encouraging social connections among the students and offering opportunities to take practice exams.

With her summer project completed, Kennedy is working with Heather Henderson, Loomis director of community engagement, to include the test prep program in the school’s tutoring outreach activities. One of the objectives of the Norton Fellowships is for the fellows to adapt their projects into initiatives back on the Island.

“Kennedy demonstrated through this project that she is a true leader,” said Keller Family Director of the Norton Center Eric LaForest. “She found that perfect intersection of her ability and an authentic need.”

To find out more about the Norton Fellowships and Math 4 Success, visit www.loomischaffee.org/magazine.

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THAT’S ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT! EMERGING ARTISTS AND WRITERS The Emerging Artists and Emerging Writers exhibits this fall featured the independent summer explorations of six student artists and 33 student writers. Their work was displayed in the Richmond Art Center and online. A record number of students participated this year in the Emerging Writers program, which invites student writers to submit proposals for independent development during the summer.

Their exhibited portfolios represented a range of styles and genres. Similarly, the Emerging Artists program encourages student visual artists to pursue a project over the summer and submit the completed work for the showcase.

To view the online exhibits, visit www.loomischaffee.org/magazine.

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT The school’s community engagement program, formerly referred to as the community service program, is focusing this school year on supporting organizations that serve people experiencing homelessness and food insecurity. The student-led Pelican Service Organization kicked off these efforts in September by inviting the school community to participate in Foodshare’s virtual Walk For Hunger in support of the Windsor Food & Fuel Bank. A cohort of on-campus Pelicans walked two laps of the Loop Road during a community free period, and other students joined the kick-off walk virtually, generating donations toward the team’s fundraising goal. Foodshare, a regional foodbank serving Greater Hartford, has hosted the Walk Against Hunger annually for 37 years. The event took place virtually this year because of pandemic safety precautions.

RENAISSANCE ENSEMBLE Seniors Andrew Wu and Baihan “Tom” Zhang organized and led a group of music and visual arts students from six New England prep

schools last summer in the making of a virtual concert featuring musical performances and original art. The group, comprising students from Loomis Chaffee, Choate, Deerfield, Exeter, Hotchkiss, and Kingswood Oxford, called itself Renaissance Ensemble, and the first concert, “The Key to Change,” was presented on YouTube on August 30 and raised money to benefit the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's Legal Defense Fund. Vocal and instrumental musicians from each school performed popular showtunes, and student artists created graphics for the video and the group’s website.

Andy and Tom, who have performed together as members of Loomis' Chamber Singers and Concert Choir, came up with the idea as a way to safely perform music during the pandemic, share the experience with students in peer schools, and engage with the greater community. In addition to Tom and Andy, 13 other Loomis student performers and artists participated in the multi-school event.

To view the concert and find out more about the Renaissance Ensemble, visit www.loomischaffee.org/magazine.

EARTH-FRIENDLY INITIATIVES Declaring “HALFy bEARTHday” on October 22, students in the school’s environmental sustainability programs marked the halfway point between Earth Days, which take place every year on April 22, by highlighting Earth-friendly initiatives on campus. As the dormitories reopened and Pelicans arrived back on the Island for the second part of the fall term, student environmental leaders encouraged the community to recommit to efforts, such as dining hall composting, to reduce the school’s carbon footprint. The comprehensive composting program, begun in January 2020, was temporarily set aside last spring while the school attended to safety concerns related to the coronavirus pandemic. The program restarted in October as local business partner

Blue Earth Composting once again began food waste collection in the dining hall. Pelican diners put food waste, cardboard plates and containers, drink cups, and napkins into Blue Earth bins upon exiting the dining hall, and the waste is converted into an organic plant fertilizer rather than being transported to landfills.

While composting raw food waste has been a part of Loomis’ on-campus agricultural program for several years, cooked or processed food, especially meats, dairy, and oils, require professional handling.

MILES FOR VITTY The girls lacrosse and field hockey teams took part in a virtual five-kilometer run, Miles for Vitty, in October to help raise money and awareness for an alumna who was severely injured in an accident in August. Diane Vitkus ’12, who played lacrosse at Loomis Chaffee and Brown University, broke her C6 vertebra in a fall from a ladder and was recovering and working to regain mobility and strength at Spaulding Rehabilitation in Boston, Massachusetts. Thirty members of the field hockey and girls lacrosse teams ran 3.4 miles (a bit more than a 5K) around the Loop Road on campus. Participants and others made donations based on the number of miles run.

To learn more and to follow Diane’s recovery journey online and on social media, visit www.loomischaffee.org/magazine.

SUSTAINABLE SUMMIT Four Loomis Chaffee seniors joined a group of more than 200 of their peers from around the world for the 2020 Student Sustainable Development Goals Summit, a student-directed online activism forum in November. The summit was inspired by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a plan of action for people, planet, and prosperity, that was adopted by all United Nations member states in 2015. Hosted by Envoys, a global education organization, the summit brought together

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young people and global policy leaders, allowing the students to take an active role in achieving sustainability goals as global citizens. Summit attendees heard from several international experts and educators and worked in groups to come up with actionable, creative projects for tackling global issues such as hunger, poverty, environmental degradation, and limited access to health care. The four Loomis participants, Annah Clyner, Biani Ebie, Loren Jones, and Charlie Morrison, are working toward Global and Environmental Studies Certificates, conferred by the Alvord Center for Global & Environmental Studies at Commencement.

They say the experience was inspiring and correlated with the take-action approach to citizenship that they explore through the certificate program.

AL FRESCO MUSIC AND DANCE Students in Loomis Chaffee’s music and dance programs presented open-air sampler performances in the Rockefeller Quadrangle on October 8. Musicians in the Jazz Improvisation Ensemble presented their rendition of “Straight Life,” composed

by Freddie Hubbard. Featured performers for the midday recital included seniors Cal McCandless on drums and Nicole Ramenda on trumpet. Students in Loomis’ dance ensembles performed choreographed compositions that they had been developing this fall.

To watch a video highlighting the performances, visit www.loomischaffee. org/magazine.

LOBBYING FOR CLIMATE ACTION Members of the Loomis Chaffee Climate Action group and environmental proctors led an online workshop attended by 40 school community members in October about lobbying for climate action and pursuing environmental sustainability. Hosted by the Alvord Center for Global & Environmental Studies and the Norton Family Center for the Common Good, the workshop was designed to inform community members who were alarmed about the climate crisis

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but were unsure about what action to take. The student leaders discussed their involvement in various projects on and off campus, shared information about current climate emergencies, outlined proposed legislation that would create incentives for using renewable energy resources, and offered an overview of lobbying as a means of influencing political action. During smaller breakout sessions, participants created a photo petition and wrote letters demanding climate action from government representatives. Lobbying conferences and other activities are planned for later in the school year.

RETURN OF THE ELMS Students and faculty this fall helped scientists from the Nature Conservancy to plant disease-resistant American elm trees on campus near the river’s edge and on an island just beyond the Meadows as part of a research project related to preserving the ecosystems of the Connecticut River floodplain. Students also will help to collect data and monitor the health of the nine saplings planted on campus as the Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit environmental protection organization, works to re-introduce elms to the floodplain. Dutch elm disease decimated native tree populations over the last century, disrupting the ecosystems they helped to sustain.

RUN ACROSS AMERICA Without interscholastic meets this fall because of the pandemic, the girls cross country team took on the challenge of running across the United States, virtually.

Over the course of the nine-week season, the team’s 25 members ran more than 2,951 collective miles, tracking their progress on a route from the sycamore tree on campus where they met for practice every day to Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon, home of the University of Oregon track and field program and many legendary national and international races. The girls reached their “destination” on the last day of the season, November 7.

F ACULTY & STA FF NEWS Nine longtime faculty and staff members retired over the summer, prompted in some cases by the school’s offer of an early retirement package during the pandemic. Retiring faculty included English teacher Jane “Berrie” Moos with 28 years of service, English teacher Phyllis Grinspan with 23 years of service, philosophy and religious studies teacher Dennis Robbins with 20 years of service, and theater teacher and Head of the Theater and Dance Department Candice Chirgotis with 16 years of service.

(Longtime faculty members Fred Seebeck and Ruth Duell retired at the end of the 2019–20 school year and were featured in the Summer 2020 issue of Loomis Chaffee Magazine.) Retiring staff members included Lorna Giannuzzi, administrative assistant to the Information Technology Department, with 25 years of service; engineer Bob Hansen and groundskeeper Gary Lenard, both with the Physical Plant Department and both with 18 years of service; Dale Hubbard, administrative assistant to the Health Center, with 16 years of service; and Marie Tanuis, of accounts receivable in the Business Office, with 14 years of service.

Languages teacher Ludmila Zamah has been appointed dean of Al-Wāḥa, the Arabic Language Village, part of the Concordia Language Villages program of Concordia College in Minnesota. Al-Wāḥa offers immersion in Arabic language and culture in a lakeside summer camp setting, with programs for children from ages 6 to 18. Ludmila has been a Concordia Language Villages staff member for many years, having worked at both Al-Wāḥa and Lac du Bois, the French Language Village. Luckily for Loomis Chaffee, Ludmila will continue to teach Arabic and French and live on the Island with her husband, faculty member Kasumu Usman, and their two sons during the school year.

A haiku written by faculty member Stanford Forrester was selected for inclusion in the college textbook Understanding Poetry: An Introduction, published by Cognella Academic Publishing. Stan is the editor of the journal bottle rockets: a collection of short verse, which is celebrating its 21st year in print.

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English teachers Matthew Johnson, Fiona Mills, and Miles Morgan have joined the expanded faculty of the school’s Henry R. Kravis ’63 Center for Excellence in Teaching. Matt is academic technology coordinator, and Fiona and Miles are assistant directors for diversity, equity, and inclusion curriculum development.

Dean of Students Michael Donegan completed a master’s degree in applied positive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania this summer. Mike also has master’s degrees in social work and in leadership. He plans on applying what he learned about the scientific study of the strengths that enable humans and organizations to flourish to many areas of the Loomis Chaffee community.

Ceramics and sculpture artist Jennifer McCandless, head of the Visual Arts Department and director of the Mercy Gallery, teamed up with multimedia artist Nanette Vonnegut for Seeing Red, Feeling Blue, a collaborative art exhibition presented in the late fall by A.P.E. Ltd. Gallery in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Ms. Vonnegut was a visiting artist at Loomis in 2017, and she exhibited her work in the Mercy Gallery in January 2019.

The school welcomed new teachers and administrators to the school community for the 2020–21 school year. They include language teachers Jesus Cobo and Richard Karrat; math teacher Griffin Cunningham; history and English teacher David Edgar; English teachers Sang-yeop Kim, Petagay Rowe ’95, and Chiara White-Mink; physics and math teacher Jen Legendre; Head of the Mathematics Department Lauren Riva; psychology and biology teacher Laura Stoughton; and history teacher Rick Taylor, who returned to the Island after teaching for several years near Boston.

Faculty member Megan Stoecklin and her husband welcomed their baby daughter, Maren Margaret-Claire Stoecklin, on September 5.

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CLA S S NO T E S

Photo: Jessica Ravenelle

SELF-PORTRAITURE PROJECT

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Isl and Ne w s

“I am a human being — worthy of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

These are the opening words of an art exhibit created last summer with contributions from dozens of Black members of the Loomis Chaffee community. As people from across the United States and the world took to the streets and online platforms to insist that Black lives matter and to demand reform of systems that perpetuate violence and injustice, student leaders collaborated with Loomis Chaffee’s Visual Arts Department to bring about the Black Lives Matter Self-Portraiture exhibit.

School community members who identify as Black, including students, staff, faculty, alumni, Trustees, and members of the Head’s Council, were invited to contribute images of themselves and personal statements, and the collective art exhibit debuted in the fall. The 46 individual submissions are displayed in public spaces across campus and in an online gallery on the school website.

“We’re using the example of portraiture as a way to humanize Black lives and to bring awareness to the Black Lives Matter movement so that we will all be engaged in this discussion and continue to focus our actions and efforts towards creating a more anti-racist community,” commented senior Simone Moales, one of four student project leaders.

A selection of the images and moving stories from the exhibit are collected in these pages.

For a link to the complete online exhibit, visit www.loomischaffee.org/magazine.

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Photo: Jessica Ravenelle

CLA S S NO T E S

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Isl and Ne w s

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Photo: Jessica Ravenelle

CLA S S NO T E S

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Isl and Ne w s

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Photo: Jessica Ravenelle

CLA S S NO T E S

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Isl and Ne w s

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Loomis Chaffee Magazine Winter 2020

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REFLECTING ON TURMOIL For an all-school writing assignment, students considered the upheaval of 2020 and its effects on their lives, perceptions, beliefs, and relationships with the world around them.

In the head-spinning summer of 2020, when the collision of the COVID-19 pandemic, racial injustice, civil unrest, and divisive political rhetoric created a cauldron of uncertainty, loss, anger, and fear in the United States and beyond, Loomis Chaffee encouraged its students to reflect on and express their personal experiences of the turmoil. In addition to reading about a range of these topics over the summer, the school asked students and faculty to engage in an all-school write or other creative expression.

“In challenging times, writers often turn to narrative writing to express themselves, their concerns, and their core beliefs,” said Kate Saxton, Loomis’ director of writing initiatives.

Kate and Dean of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Elizabeth Parada encouraged community members to process and then communicate their thoughts and feelings about events of the spring and summer of 2020 through the all-school write. In a description of the assignment, they said they hoped the assignment would help students “to share what has been unique about your individual experience and to connect with others over what is universal about living through these historic months. What can your voice add to the conversation? Where does your personal story intersect with the story of our times?”

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Students expressed themselves and their reflections in many creative forms: letters, personal essays, poetry, interviews, songs, and artwork in a variety of media. In September, students shared their reflections in their advisory groups and were invited to submit their expressions for a wider audience of community members. From nearly 70 submissions, a committee chose 24 pieces for publication on the school website.

According to Kate, the All-School Read and Write has exceeded its original objective, not only inspiring learning and creative expression in the school community, but also helping to solidify and maintain school community bonds at a time when it is vital to do so. In addition, student explorations from the assignment added context to dialogues and other cross-discipline projects, lessons, and activities on campus this fall.

Here we share several of the written student submissions.

To read, view, and listen to all of the submissions selected for publication on the website, visit www. loomischaffee.org/magazine

#InsertBlackPersonHere Senior Kennedy Anderson

ESSAY

On Monday, May 25th, 2020, Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on George Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, while officers J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane, and Tou Thao watched. For 8 minutes and 46 seconds, George Floyd, face pressed against the asphalt, pleaded through burdened, labored breaths, “Please, I can’t breathe. … I’m about to die,” his strength weakening, as the rise and fall of his chest slowed to a stop. After 8 minutes and 46 seconds, I, along with the rest of the world, charged Derek Chauvin with murder, despite knowing the charges would never stick.

In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, as I turned to social media to pour my own anguish into 280-character tweets, I came upon a Twitter thread asking Black people to name the police brutality story that broke them. As I began to read the replies, my mind became flooded with repressed memories of news articles and broadcasts of men and women whose hashtags had, too, become the topic of public outrage at one point in time. Some people recalled the news of Sandra Bland’s death, and I remembered my parents and grandparents being glued to TV screens, wondering how a 28-year-old woman, who was stopped for a minor traffic violation, could be found hanged in a prison cell. Others remembered Trayvon Martin, and I thought back to the countless times I passed his mural while visiting my grandmother on Detroit’s east side, Dr. King’s words, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” ringing in my ears for the entirety of the visit. Many recalled the death of Eric Garner, who only six years prior muttered the same ghastly words as George Floyd: “I can’t breathe.” I kept scrolling, past faces that looked like strangers and names I only half-recognized, until I reached Philando Castile.

Philando was a 32-year-old man in Minnesota who, in 2016, was shot seven times while assuring an officer that he was reaching for his I.D after disclosing, out of fear for his life, that he was carrying a licensed weapon. His girlfriend and then 4-year-old daughter were in the car to bear witness. Their shrieks of pain and horror could be heard on the body camera of the officer, an officer who, like all of the others, was later acquitted.

Some of Philando’s heartbreaking last words were, “Why did you shoot me?” The officer responded, “I don’t know,” while still pointing his gun at this bleeding man, instead of rendering aid.

Philando Castile’s death broke me.

Seeing a Black man die in front of his daughter all for exercising his Second Amendment right, a right that white people in America fight so hard to defend, broke me. Listening to his daughter, who at too young of an age already had such an acute understanding of racism in America, beg her mom to “stop saying cusses and screaming” because she didn’t want her “to get shooted too,” broke me. From that moment on, I understood more than ever that in America, no matter my age or gender, my brown skin was a death sentence.

But years passed, and the various hashtags and protests continued to pass with them. I could only begin mourning the death of Breonna Taylor, I could only begin saying the name of the 26-year-old woman whose life was taken solely because the police had the wrong house, when George Floyd’s murder flashed across my phone screen. When I saw this man, the fourth hashtag in this month alone, lying lifeless in the streets of Minneapolis, I was tired. I was tired of signing petitions, tired of being outraged, tired of wagging my finger at anyone who didn’t share my indignation. I was tired of being the token, outspoken Black girl in the room, tired of seeing black squares and other performative social media trends disguise themselves as activism, tired of tone-deaf phrases like, “violence isn’t the answer,” or “not all cops are bad.” I was tired of #BlackLivesMatter only trending for a week before all the hype died down, tired of waiting for the next hashtag, tired of being so desensitized to the murders of Black men and women across America that I don’t even flinch anymore. Between all of the hurting, the raging, the crying, I was tired. My energy was consumed.

So to the white people and non-Black people of color who ask me how you can be better allies, I know you mean well, I really do. But I am simply too tired to teach you.

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That which has gone...

Freshman Michael Hoffman

POEM

In the midst of summer the sun shines bright.

The eye of heaven parts the cloudy sky, Emboldening nature within its sight, And draping all the world in colored dye.

Yet I take no notice of its wonder, My world is made all up of whites and grays.

The tempting world outside torn asunder, As to the screen I now return my gaze.

Although I long to be out there with friends, I try to reach out to them through the screen.

And yet each time I try it always ends.

With me wishing things were as they had been.

And yet to that computer I log on, Trying in vain to capture what has gone.

It was but a couple short years ago, Time that passed within the blink of an eye, When optimistic hope had yet to go; But now it seems that all our hope has died.

Each new year brought signs of a coming storm, The Keeper of the dead was calling roll; But our nation refused to change its norms, And the Keeper comes to collect Their toll.

180 thousand souls have died, To a barely visible affliction.

While our leaders have argued, stalled, and lied, For the sake of naught but their ambition.

But to the future we desperately gaze, Hoping for light at the end of these days.

There’s a Treadmill in the Garage Sophomore Kirsten Lees

POEM

If I go for this run Will I make it back Will a bullet pierce my skull, body go numb Head cracked on the cement Will I make it home Gun pressed against my dome, one pull of the finger My mouth a volcanic eruption Of blood, desperation, and white foam Will they even tell my mother Or will she sit on the porch Expecting to see my face again But the next time she sees me The same reason I was gone That my eyes were stuck open yet sight had been lost Was drained from my body Skin now grey, decayed And at my funeral what will they say “Here lies the dearly beloved, a daughter, a sister” But maybe if she didn’t resist him But maybe if she would’ve listened But maybe if she hadn’t whispered 6 feet under, still, bleak Or 6 more days to live I’ll go for that run next week

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Une Nation Senior Calvin Pan

POEM

In modern America, you’re either From a red state or a blue state, From amber waves of grain or towering skyscrapers of steel, From bluegrass guitar or the blues, From Johnny Cash or Aretha Franklin, From hot dogs or enchiladas, From ancestors aboard the Mayflower or boat people, From true Americana or from a shoddy new knockoff of it, ‘us’ or ‘them’; American or not, Native or foreign, Normal or strange, Belonging or out of place, Republican or Democrat, White or Black, ‘us’ or ‘them’; A person or a malevolent bot; Right or plain wrong; Fanatical or fantastical; Proudly patriotic or an agent of the ‘enemy’; Paragon of virtue or demagogue of evil; Possessor of a heart or lacker of a soul, ‘us’ or ‘them’; But if all those divisions separate who’s ‘us’ from who’s ‘them’, then isn’t everyone part of ‘them’ and no-one part of ‘us’?

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Unexpected Outcomes Sophomore Jill Rinaldi

ESSAY My grandmother has looked out of the same nursing-home window for the past two years, but for her it’s only been a few months. She still asks after my grandfather (“What did you bring him for lunch?”), not remembering his funeral last fall and forgetting that my mother sold their house soon afterward. When we went through their old clothes, bedazzled pins and crates of hand-crocheted blankets, I took an old sweatshirt of hers just to breathe in the scent of cigars and cat hair that I associate so fondly with my grandparents. Today it smells of deodorant and laundry detergent.

My grandma, often confused and forgetful, nonetheless remains one of the silliest people I know. While the most recent events are hazy at best, she always remembers to criticize my mom’s pump-heeled boots, and when ice cream is mentioned, she can suddenly sit up in bed and hold a spoon on her own, smiling her widest gap-toothed grin.

She reminds me of a little kid: perpetual bedhead, witty quips and complaints.

When COVID-19 first became apparent in the U.S., nursing homes were quick to shut down. No visitors; no contact. A month and a half later, despite procedure being followed, a resident at Grandma’s nursing home caught the virus, and it didn’t take much time for Grandma and her then-roommate, Antoinette, to become infected.

When my mom got that phone call, I watched the hope she had for Grandma’s well-being crumble away. She appeared calm, but her voice fell to a breaking note; COVID already had manifested itself in our minds as a death sentence for the elderly.

In the first few days, we had no way to contact Grandma; the nursing home was in chaos. The first floor became the COVID

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Ward, and when my grandmother was moved there, her shoes, stuffed animals, and flowerpots were packed away, and her prized photo albums, carrying beloved memories and long lost loved ones, were unceremoniously thrown into a plastic bin.

My mom has always made it her job to care for Grandma. Despite being the youngest of four siblings, she took legal responsibility of her mom and managed my grandfather’s final will and finances; she cleared out and sold the house. When we would visit Grandma, my sisters and I would stay behind to joke with her while Mom brought the staff cupcakes or donuts and then meticulously questioned them on every aspect of Grandma’s caretaking. The anxiety set in quickly for her.

A week after Grandma was diagnosed, we were able to visit through her room’s window.

She no longer had the bedside window she was used to, and even she and Antoinette were separated by a curtain. She lived inside a tiny, isolated box; no pictures, no ice cream. PPE worn by weary staff made them unrecognizable. Phil and Amber, once known and adored by Grandma, became alien-like in appearance and movement.

Scrubs, facemasks, face shields, gloves and goggles. Voices muffled, smiles hidden away.

When we visited Grandma then, we always saw Antoinette first. She was a wisp under her sheets. Before the move to the first floor, she would always fall asleep when we visited, sinking into her chair after accepting an offer of hard candy or some other goody we brought with us. Her hands always shook when she twisted open a wrapper.

My family stood at the window while Grandma was handed a phone, and then

we called and talked to her one by one. She couldn’t understand the correlation between us shadowy window-figures and her family’s voices on the phone, but when she forgot either side of the equation, she gave a weak smile. Most of the time, though, she was distraught and blubbering, collapsed into herself and shaking uncontrollably.

The majority of the residents and a large number of staff got COVID. Thirteen died within those three stories, wispy Antoinette included.

I can’t imagine how the essential workers at the nursing home felt during those weeks.

The dead were friends they had cared for for years like their own kids or parents. I can talk forever about Grandma’s situation, but nothing will impress me more than the responsibility held by these people every day, even without a global pandemic on their hands.

Today my mom can see Grandma through FaceTime or layers of facemasks, six feet apart outside; they can’t hear each other either way. I don’t meet the age requirement to visit, but hopefully I’ll be able to see her soon.

In the meantime, Phil found some photo albums and ice cream.

Untitled Sophomore Makai Tarjamo

ESSAY

Everyone has a voice no matter how big or small you may think you are. Over the summer there have been numerous cases of hate crimes and racism being blatantly shown across the country, and with all these cases, everyone must come together for a change. My voice just so happened to be heard this past month in August when I was selected by the USA national hockey team’s director of personnel, Rod Braceful, to compete alongside 19 other Black and Hispanic players in the first all-minority hockey team in America called Nextgen AAA. When I got the news that I had been selected, I was honored, knowing that I would be playing for something so much bigger than just a game of hockey and that I would be one of the 20 faces of Black hockey in the world. The team was picked from players all over the world with players from Mexico, Canada, England, and America all being flown out, all expenses paid for by the NHL and Pure Hockey.

When I arrived in Boston and stepped off of my flight, I couldn’t help but smile as I saw one Hispanic and 17 Black hockey players who would soon be my teammates all coming together for the same reason: Change. Over the next four days we would go on to beat three all-white teams with scores of 4-1, 7-1, and 5-2, which put us as the number 1 seed, qualifying us for the championship game on Tuesday. As Tuesday came and we all arrived at the rink, you could feel the vibes all throughout the locker room that screamed we’re not just here for a hockey game; we’re here for all of the times someone called us the N word; we’re here for all of the kids out there who were told hockey is a white sport; we’re here for all of the times we were looked down upon just because of the color of our skin; and most importantly we’re here for every person in the world who is doubting us so we can show them that hockey is for everyone.

As we took the ice for the first shift, we were all playing our hearts out to try to get the first goal and score early. That unfortunately didn’t happen, and they went up early 1-0. This score lasted a while, and the first period ended 1-0.

As we went into the locker room for intermission, our coaches regrouped us, gave us a new game plan, and told us what we should be doing better so that we could make a comeback and win this game. The horn sounded and we left the locker room and headed onto the ice for the final period of play. We scored first with a nice goal by my line to tie it 1-1. Later in the game, however, there was a bad bounce, and it resulted in the opposing team going up 2-1. The score was 2-1 up until the last 5 minutes when our defenseman rushed the puck up and scored an electric goal, giving us momentum and a tie game, 2-2. Later in the period with roughly 3 minutes to go, we had a good zone entry, and it resulted in a snipe by our forward, giving us our first lead of the game, 3-2. With one minute left in the game, the opposing team pulled their goalie to get an extra player on the ice and try to get a quick goal to tie the game. It ended up working in our favor with us scoring an empty-net goal to secure us the win, 4-2.

That was by far the most fun I’ve ever had playing sports and by far the most meaningful game I’ve ever played in. It just goes to show that if you have the skill to play, then you have the right to be on the ice, no matter what you look like or where you’re from. Our voices may be loud or they may be quiet, but the most important sound is our unified voices chanting that we are here, see us, respect us and acknowledge us. That is the sound we let the whole world hear with that win.

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Two Words Junior Justin Wu

ESSAY

“China Virus.” Not COVID-19, but “China Virus.”

Not coronavirus, but “China Virus.” And there was something sinister about the way he muttered those words — it would have been a different story if he was just referring to the virus as something that originated in China. But no, that simply wouldn’t be dramatic enough.

An unmistakable tone of condescension seeped through the two words that came out of his mouth — two words that changed the way that the United States of America viewed the Asian-American community.

If you’re white, you may have turned a blind eye to those words; if you’re Black, your hate for the president may have further intensified. But if you’ve lost a loved one to this national atrocity, the plague of the 21st century, your wounded soul is now provided with a yellow scapegoat.

You probably mutter a horrific, “he does have a point,” as you proceed to turn off the TV. You shake your head as you come across a picture of your late grandmother. Grandma — the innocent woman who recited nursery rhymes in your infancy, who packed your PB&J as you trotted toward the school bus, who always made sure you were on top of your work — is now gone forever.

It doesn’t even feel like an act of pure intent; rather, it is a bodily reaction, an instantaneous response to his words. You leap to your feet, curse, swear, but it isn’t enough. There is no action that could mediate the hatred churning within your empty soul. You then remember what he said, two distinctive words that unmistakably explained the cause of Grandma’s passing. Hood over your face, you dash through the streets of Brooklyn, looking for an explanation, looking for a way to seek justice for Grandma.

You briskly walk through the streets of Brooklyn, as that walk quickly turns into a dash, as that dash quickly turns into a sprint. Clutching a bucket of acid, you hurl the corrosive liquid in the direction of your Chinese neighbor. An agonizing scream echoes across the sidewalk.

But all you can think of is Grandma.

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“Brooklyn Woman Burned Outside Home in Possible Acid Attack.” Those were the words that were printed in The New York Post on April 6, 2020. A pang of guilt hits you on the side like a locomotive train as you stare at your own two hands, inadvertent enforcers of xenophobia and fear.

As an Asian American, I know that this blatant display of racism wasn’t the only occurrence of anti-Asian sentiment during the COVID-19 crisis. I remember, in the New York City subway, a Chinese woman wearing a face mask being punched and kicked as the perpetrator called her “diseased.” Or March 19th, when an Asian woman was robbed of her cellphone by a man who called her “dirty.” Or March 28th, when a Chinese woman in the Bronx, harassed with racial slurs, was hospitalized with four stitches on her head. It amazes me, an Asian-American citizen, how two words can so negatively impact an entire racial group. It amazes me, an Asian-American citizen, how these xenophobic hate crimes can be overlooked by the general public.

And most of all, it amazes me that America’s long-standing history of racism has yet to end.

The Chinese Exclusion Act, prohibiting the immigration of Chinese laborers on May 6, 1882, was the first and only law that prevented all members of a specific national group from immigrating to the U.S.A. To think that anti-Asian sentiment still exists to this day, 140 years later, is a sign that this country has yet to learn from its mistakes. It is a sign that we have not learned to acknowledge everybody as equals, that we have not learned to respect the cultures of our fellow American citizens.

Diversity is what makes the United States of America so special. The culmination of talents, of backgrounds, of tradition, is what makes this country the greatest in the world. And to see it being all torn down, to see the most powerful man in the country fan the flames of xenophobic hate — that is truly heartbreaking.

Untitled Senior Olivia Zoga

ESSAY

It took most people about a month of quarantine to declare they were “going crazy.” Stir crazy. Crazy as a bedbug. Crazy about counting down the minutes until the world reopened, watching the clock on your laptop like it held some sort of answer. Hysteria crazy. Buying out all of the toilet paper in your local Walmart.

Trauma crazy. Running out of breath when you turn on the news, praying it’s a symptom of your brain giving out, not your lungs. Crazy.

Crazy. The world was crazy and it was starting to weigh on us all.

I started the pandemic crazy. I started my crazy in January, when I didn’t sleep for a week.

Every night I would close my eyes and start to shake. The world shook without me, in time, and everything was buzzing like I had a hidden massage chair under my stiff, cold, small, twinsized mattress. I couldn’t breathe before it was trendy. Coronavirus isn’t scary when you’ve already lost two friends to the common cold this year. Life comes without warnings. Texts from your parents asking if you are okay, if you know anything about who died. A semicircle in your safe space, watching everyone crumble, paper in a fireplace, for three hours straight.

That drives you crazy.

So what is it like to be crazy when the world is going mad? Oddly, it didn’t make anything worse. I did not get crazier. The panic attacks at night stayed the same, and I cried for the people I missed, those a state away and those in a different state of existence. Having an enemy tucked in the folds of your brain feels like slowly choking, drowning on the saliva you yourself bring into your lungs. The virus meant nothing to me because I already knew there were enemies in my home. The dust, the sniffles. Any of it could take me down. I was crazy. Crazy.

People look to hope in these times, you know.

They sing songs and clap and cheer for the things that aren’t terrible yet. There is hope, and it is soft and thin and long and warm like yellow yarn strung between every house.

A week ago a man returned to New York City to see his brother. The man was from small-

town Texas, but he had come to get a medical degree. Fourth-year radiology resident. He was there, and then he left, and then he came back, and he heard the 7 p.m. bells, the cheers and whistles and loud, loud hope. The hope, the gratitude, the noise of a people used to living in the worst. The noise that people make when they cannot sob another time. The yells that we convince ourselves are happy. We have to, you see, or else it just feels like another breakdown.

He heard the cheers, and it broke him. He snapped. No sleep, not for that night, not for tonight. He’s manic. On edge. Crazy. Crazy enough to dodge calls, to look down when his friends smile.

Crazy.

Everything is crazy. Everyone is crazy, my mother tells me, but she has always said that. They’re stir crazy, my dad says as we make excuses for the thirtieth person shot in Philly this week.

They’re all too crazy for guns, he repeats. People are shot at crazy parties in the streets or the woods by my house, and they pull their masks down, and the neighbor’s kids are taking shots in apartments owned or abandoned. A boy fell two stories out a window. His friends said he was acting crazy.

The world melts around me sometimes. I’m sure I can touch things, but maybe I can’t, because feeling them and knowing they’re there are two separate emotions. A person in a screen is the mirage of our techno-hazy present. With my mask on, I can only feel the damp swamp of my huff trapped around my cheeks, and I do not know that the world beyond my clothing has air.

These are crazy times we live in. The mailman is the enemy. The police walk the streets wearing Nazi tattoos, not their masks. Schools open and close in days as the effects of dismissing science catch up with them. It is what it is. But I don’t want it to be this. I don’t want people to forget this. Because my battle is against my brain, but we all have to fight the crazy outside our doors.

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HAPPY FEET Andrew Heath ’99, co-founder CLA S S NO T E S

of Bombas Socks

Photo: Jessica Ravenelle

By Becky Purdy

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Andrew Heath ’99.

Photo: Courtesy Bombas

The most requested donation item at homeless shelters is socks. New, durable socks.

And socks are what Bombas, a company co-founded by Andrew Heath ’99, does best. Launched in 2013, Bombas makes premium socks in fetching styles, designed for foot-pleasing comfort and customer-pleasing durability, at prices that beat high-end sock competitors.

With a business model built around giving back and with annual sales approaching $250 million in 2020, the company’s success has helped to clothe people in need. For every pair of socks Bombas sells, the company gives a new pair to the homeless community. To date, Bombas has donated more than 43 million pairs of its socks to shelters and other organizations serving homeless people around the United States.

Andrew, an entrepreneur with a knack for streamlining operations, has served as chief operating officer for the company since its founding, and for the first five years, he also was the chief financial officer. He and his younger brother, David, the chief executive officer and a company co-founder, are the perfect entrepreneurial complements to each other.

“It’s very yin and yang. There’s a commonality. We have a very strong business sense and business morals and ethics, but he’s on the marketing, sales, business development, and passion-about-the-product, customer side, and I’m all numbers, logic, operations, figuring all that stuff out. It’s funny, in high school I said, ‘It’d be really interesting to work with you in the future.’ We still weren’t quite seeing eye to eye. We still had our rough edges around each other, but now it’s actually an amazing relationship.”

At Bombas, Andrew manages operations directly, including logistics, fulfillment, transportation, sourcing, legal, planning, and what the company calls “customer happiness.” People are central to this work. A large portion of Andrew’s day-to-day involves coaching and mentoring the people who report to him, including coaching them on coaching others.

Coaching, he points out, is different than directing or micromanaging. Rather than trying to convince employees to make decisions that he wants, he coaches them to arrive at good decisions that they want. “That’s ultimately how great leaders are made, I believe,” he says, and he has watched many of the people who report to him emerge as strong, effective leaders.

The distinction between coaching and directing is important — and empowering. And this management approach is one of the reasons that Bombas is known for its positive workplace culture. Transparency and trust are pillars of that culture, according to Andrew. And mistakes, he says, are teaching moments. “I don’t want people to be afraid to admit that they’ve made a mistake. I want people to have a sense of understanding that we’re all human,” he says. “When people do make mistakes, I just talk to them about it. It’s not a slap on the wrist. … I think you learn most from your mistakes, so if you’re always fearing making mistakes, then you’re not taking any risk and you’re not trying to expand or extend your own skill set.”

Andrew’s Loomis Chaffee coaches were among his own earliest mentors. Faculty members Fred Seebeck and Edward Pond coached him in water polo, a sport in which Andrew excelled, and he looked up to both of them and the way they viewed winning, losing, and putting one’s best effort on the line. Jeffrey Scanlon ’79, Andrew’s dorm head in Batchelder Hall, also had a strong influence.

Andrew first heard about Loomis from Fred, who worked at the summer camp in New Hampshire that Andrew attended.

The idea of going to a school that was like an academic sleepaway camp appealed to 14-year-old Andrew, and after considering several boarding schools, he ultimately decided he liked the atmosphere at Loomis, arriving as a freshman from Armonk, New York, in 1995. Andrew fared well academically and athletically at Loomis, playing varsity water polo and performing with the Jazz Band and Concert Band as well as learning the fundamentals of band conducting. He went on to Occidental College in California, where he majored in economics for business and management and played water polo, graduating in 2004.

Immediately after college, Andrew worked in finance. He took a temporary job at UBS Securities, worked hard, and soon was moved to full-time status as an investment banking analyst.

He continued at UBS until joining a startup finance firm in 2007.

That venture was cut short by the 2008 financial crisis.

Andrew caught his breath from the long hours and hard-driving pace of the first few years of his career and eventually joined a small company, where he quickly discovered his interest in and talent for operations. His ability to problem-solve and to consolidate processes — he streamlined one week-long

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process into a four-hour report — helped the company operate much more efficiently.

“I had been in finance prior, so I had never really experienced the business side of the work,” he says. “Once I started working with people and understanding what they did, my brain took it over as a [problem] that needed solving. How could I make people and their tasks more meaningful and efficient?”

He started simply, by showing his coworkers the power of spreadsheets. Creating a set of training workshops in the advanced features of Microsoft Excel, he showed his colleagues ways that using formulas and macro functions could streamline tasks that previously took hours of drudgery. “I had become quite proficient at automating processes for my own use,” he recounts. “I quickly realized that if other people could do the same, they would be doing less data entry and copying and pasting and [could] focus on other tasks.”

With growing interest in the operations side of the business world, Andrew enrolled in Babson College’s F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business, a school focused on entrepreneurship, where he earned a master’s degree in business administration in 2012.

While Andrew was still in graduate school, his brother David asked him for help building a business plan for a startup.

David laid out his idea for Andrew. “I said, ‘You’re nuts. You want to start a sock company?’” Andrew recalls. Yes, his brother replied, he wanted to start a sock company, one that sold its products only online and directly to consumers and that donated a pair of socks for every pair the company sold. After two years of research and product development, David, Andrew, and two other founders, Randy Goldberg and Aaron Wolk, launched Bombas in 2013.

The company’s mission from the beginning was to help clothe people affected by homelessness. “We were building this business

Andrew’s brother David laid out his business idea. “I said, ‘You’re nuts. You want to start a sock company?’”

Andrew recalls.

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to solve the problem,” Andrew says. “Let’s create the best sock we can possibly create, and if we create the best sock, people will want the best sock, and therefore we’ll be able to donate another sock.” If the company just broke even, that was OK, he says.

In 2014, David Heath and Randy Goldberg pitched the Bombas business idea on Shark Tank, the ABC television show in which a panel of experienced investors considers the pitches of entrepreneurs, who hope to convince the experts to invest in their ventures.

David and Randy’s pitch had two key elements: a neglected need and a compelling product that could help address the need. People experiencing homelessness needed good, durable socks, they explained, and Bombas’s extensively researched and developed socks, boasting high-quality materials and construction as well as fun colors and designs, would appeal to consumers, who also could feel good about the sock donations that their purchases triggered.

It was a win-win.

One of the Shark Tank stars, FUBU founder Daymond John, loved their idea and invested $200,000 for a 17 percent stake in the company. (FUBU, which stands for “for us, by us,” is an American hip-hop apparel company.) In interviews, Mr. John still cites Bombas as a shining example of a great brand that started from scratch.

Sales at Bombas, already strong, rocketed after the show aired, and Bombas became the highest-grossing deal in Shark Tank's 11-year history, according to the show’s producers. The company had $1.8 million in revenue in 2014, its first full year in business, and the sock brand’s momentum has continued to build. In 2019, the company reported $171 million in revenue, and as of late 2020, Bombas was on track to reach sales of between $240 million and $250 million for the year, Andrew says.

Bombas’s founders chose a market position with room for growth. At the low-cost end of the sock market are tube socks sold at big-box stores, and at the high end are companies like Nike and Under Armour that sell specialized athletic socks at $18 or more per pair. Through years of research and development, Bombas came up with a high-quality sock that was more affordable than the big names and more durable, better performing, and more comfortable than tube socks, Andrew says.

Bombas socks cost between $12 and $20 a pair, depending on style, height, and materials. “We do understand that not everyone can afford socks for $12 a pair,” Andrew says. To improve affordability, the company sells packs of socks at a discounted price per pair and offers carefully timed sales, such as a 20 percent discount on all purchases during the most recent holiday season. While these

Giving also is baked into the workplace at Bombas. All employees are expected to volunteer for a certain number of hours every month.

Bombas also holds volunteer events, such as a twice-monthly breakfast event at a foodbank in New York, where Andrew, David, and other Bombas employees cooked omelets and egg sandwiches to order for foodbank clients. During the pandemic, the company’s head of giving has organized donations of personal protective equipment (PPEs) and other items to front-line efforts. Andrew says the company considered switching its manufacturing from socks to PPEs during the crisis but decided it should remain focused on what it does best, and the economic devastation wreaked by the pandemic has only increased the needs of the homeless community.

Because Bombas sells its products entirely online and directly to customers and because almost every aspect of the business can be run remotely, COVID-19 has not had a drastic impact on the company’s bottom line. Bombas had just opened a new headquarters in New York City when the pandemic swept in last spring, but the company told its employees they could go wherever they needed to be, even if that meant moving across the country to live with family on the West Coast. Since then the new office space has been mostly shuttered, and Andrew says the headquarters won’t reopen until March 2021 at the earliest. And while Bombas eventually will want to reconvene its team of employees at the office, they will not be required to move back to New York immediately.

Of the many lessons he learned at Loomis, Andrew says, the most profound was the importance of finding balance in one’s life. From the yin/yang of his partnership with his brother to the giving-back model of Bombas’s success and the emphasis on the people of the company’s workplace, the importance of balance continues to resonate in Andrew’s life.

prices won’t undercut the mega-packs of socks from wholesale stores, Andrew says a seven-pack of Bombas socks, one for every day of the week, will outlast a 16-pack of socks from Costco and feel great on your feet.

“I don’t think people realize how great our socks are until they’ve tried them,” Andrew says. Made with high-quality natural fibers, each pair of Bombas socks features a heel cup, arch support, and no-rub toe seams, and the company reports that its socks last three times longer than regular socks.

Customers also like the way the socks look, and with dress socks in single colors and patterns, casual socks in both subtle and festive designs, and athletic socks in a variety of heights, colors, and activity-specific offerings, Bombas designs socks for a range of needs and sartorial tastes. Bombas also sells fetching and fun socks for babies, toddlers, and older children.

Bombas stands by a satisfaction guarantee. “If your dog ate your sock, we’ll replace it. If your laundry ate your sock, we’ll replace it.

If you get a hole in your sock in two years, we’ll replace it,” Andrew says. And he knows all about dogs’ affection for socks. Not long ago, his parents found 10 socks that their dog had buried in the yard.

As Bombas’s sales have grown, so have its donations to homeless shelters. From its initial partnership with one organization, Hannah’s Socks, for distribution of donated socks, Bombas now has more than 3,500 donation partners in all 50 states.

Initially, the company made two pairs of every sock it sold, one pair for the customer and an identical pair for donation. But homeless shelters identified special qualities their clientele needed in socks: extra durability and the capacity to be worn more than once between washes. Based on the feedback from the homeless community, which Bombas sees as an important customer for its products, the company developed a black sock with reinforced toe seams and an anti-microbial treatment as the standard donation sock. Eventually the company added some other colors for the donation socks, especially in kids’ sizes.

Of the many lessons he learned at Loomis, Andrew says, the most profound was the importance of finding balance in one’s life.

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O bject Le sson

An Unlikely Sportswriter With a World Series Flair

By Karen Parsons

Loomis Chaffee History Teacher & School Archivist

Writer Katharine Brush, the namesake of Loomis Chaffee’s library, covered the 1925 World Series for a midwestern newspaper syndicate, an unusual assignment for Brush. Her editor advised her to “forget about the baseball. Just ignore it,” and Brush happily agreed, being neither a student nor a fan of the game. She later recalled in her mostly autobiographical book, This Is On Me, that the assignment and its nine articles provided material for future novels, details plied into character studies as insightful as they were entertaining.

With afternoons spent at either Forbes Field in Pittsburgh or Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C., each evening Brush worked at the designated hotel press headquarters typing out her stories and wiring them back to the newspaper syndicate. It was there, on the first night, that she realized, “among some three or four hundred real sports-writers, male,” that she was the only woman. This in no way daunted Brush, and these fellow writers became the source of encouragement during late nights in the press room.

Rain postponed two of the games between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Washington Senators, and game seven was played in what James Harrison of The New York Times described as a “great day for water polo.” Brush captured Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis’s reluctance to call any game for rain with her headline “Writer’s Hat Emphasized Fact That It Was Raining: Landis Wasted Half Hour Deciding If Skies Wept When Headpiece Quickly Chronicled News.” Indeed, Landis became one of the more colorful characters in her articles. She described him as “a fierce-looking old gentleman of medium height, with a red face and a bumper crop of snow-white hair, wearing a collar almost as high as his middle name so that he appeared to be carrying part of a cardboard bandbox on his shoulders.”

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Brush’s ear for a good story went beyond vivid description. She wrote in her October 12 article, “I have an insatiable curiosity about ball players at ball games. Let any one of them get into any predicament or achieve any conspicuous glory, and I am so obsessed with wondering what’s going on in their minds that I often miss the next few plays entirely.” Interviews with players, their families, umpires, and taxi cab drivers appear in her articles. Sometimes they read more like society news about off-season vacation plans and fashion trends worn by players’ wives and, other times, more like the work of a seasoned sports writer. “I begged [pitcher Remy] Kremer to tell how he felt during that crucial moment in the ninth inning when Pittsburgh’s one-run lead was threatened by the appearance at the plate of Messrs. Goslin, Joe Harris, and Judge in rapid succession.

Goslin and Joe Harris, as all’s the world knows, have made three home runs each during this series. Judge has made one. You’ll have to agree the combination looked extremely formidable and perilous and might have frightened a less doughty moundsman almost out of his spiked shoes.

But Kremer says he was not frightened. Not until later.”

Brush also met President Calvin Coolidge while covering the series.

Famously taciturn, Coolidge was not an interviewee but the host of a brief afternoon reception about which Brush wrote in the article “M’Kechnie’s Pirates and Girl Scribe are White House Visitors.” In a more private writing — a letter home to family — Brush told of the group being escorted out to the White House lawn for a photo. She added, “What this picture is going to be like I have no idea — but watch for it, my darlings. It really ought to be Something. The baseball writers and the Pittsburgh Pirates and the President and me — a motley crew if ever you saw one.”

O bject Le sson

The “motley crew” of Katharine Brush and the 1925 Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team visited President Calvin Coolidge (standing, third from left), at the White House during the World Series.

Photograph: Loomis Chaffee Archives

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Photo: Jessica Photo: JessicaRavenelle Ravenelle

CLA S S NO T E S

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Cl ass Not e s

1948 Elmer Dahl and his wife, Hazel, have been enjoying their lives as residents of Covenant Living, a retirement community in Cromwell, Conn. They are glad to be living halfway between their son in Westbrook and their daughter in Simsbury. Their other two sons live in Virginia and Illinois. The couple are also proud to have 10 grandchildren. Both lifelong music fans, Elmer and Hazel sing in the CLC chorus, and Elmer has served as assistant treasurer of Resident Council, where he signed staff appreciation checks.

1957 Elected to the Town Council of Amherst, Mass., in 2018, Dorothy Smith Pam spends many hours at Zoom meetings of the council and the Finance and Town Services committees. Now that her role as a teacher at Holyoke Community College has become remote, she is working on improving her technical skills for classes in theater, speech, and English. She writes that her husband, Bob Pam, a trustee and treasurer of the Jones Library, joins her in babysitting their grandchildren, Lily and Oliver. Despite her master’s degree and doctorate in theater, Dorothy shares that she draws most on her Chaffee education in teaching her grandchildren Dickens and Latin.

Her daughter, Caroline, and her son-in-law, Tim, are busy with their successful Kitchen Garden Farm and the Sunderland Farm

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Collaborative, which delivers boxes of gourmet local organic foods.

Her son, Jeremy, is the director of business and finance law at George Washington University.

work on behalf of victims and survivors of human trafficking. North County Lifeline is a community-based human services organization that serves low-income and underserved populations in San Diego County.

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1985

Don Massey and former spouse Pam Waite ’71 welcomed their first grandchild, Margaret “Maggie” Ruth Magrann, on July 4, 2020. Don writes that “she is beautiful and looks, unlike most babies, nothing like Winston Churchill.” Maggie’s parents, Bailey and Dillon, live in Los Angeles, Calif., where Bailey works from home, reading scripts for Creative Artists. Bailey’s brother, Andrew, is engaged to be married and is pursuing his dream of playwriting in Brooklyn, N.Y. Don wishes “love to all.”

In a ground-breaking year for research at the University of Louisville, Executive Vice President for Research and Innovation Kevin Gardner reports that the university’s investment value of nearly $170 million is especially apparent in its work over the past year to combat the COVID-19 pandemic through research that illuminates the virus’s spread, possible treatments, and impacts on everyday life. A UofL news article quotes Kevin as saying, “The research we do here at UofL has impact — huge impact — and can improve dramatically the way we live and work.”

1975 Charles S. Bissell III’s first book, I’ll Have What She’s Having: A Love Affair With Food, was published in November 2019

by Bowker. This cookbook was inspired by a collection of recipes passed down by Charles’s French mother, as well as many that he and his wife have created.

1986

1981

Jessica Thurrott Haxhi was elected president of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. She will preside over the council’s national conference in San Diego in November 2021.

Mary-Ellen Barrett Evans, a deputy district attorney for the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office, recently received the Client Advocate of the Year Award from North County Lifeline for her

Michael Bronfin Brovner announces that he was appointed chief of the Hate Crimes Bureau at the Queens District Attorney’s Office by newly elected District

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Attorney Melinda Katz. The office is one of the first in the United States to have a bureau that is exclusively devoted to hate crime prosecution. Michael writes that he is responsible for community outreach, law enforcement training, development of alternative sentencing programs, supervision of other assistant district attorneys, and prosecution of the office’s challenging and important cases.

1988 Elizabeth Brown Willis has much good news to report, including her marriage to a “wonderful man” named Geoff in December 2014, a marriage that came with three step-children. After more than 25 years with the state of Maryland’s Division of Parole and Probation, she began her retirement on June 1, 2019. Now Elizabeth and her husband spend their days working around their house and enjoying their 2-year-old boxer mix, Poppy.

She also has researched her family heritage 12 generations back, which has given her the opportunity to meet family members she never knew existed. “If anyone is around the Gettysburg area, I’m close by, so give me a shout,” she writes.

1994 Jason H. Karp, founder and chief executive officer of HumanCo, is excited to announce that HumanCo and CAVU Venture Partners have come together to create HumanCo Acquisition Corporation,

Left: Dorothy Smith Pam attends to her Amherst Town Council responsibilities.

Middle: A new cookbook by Charles S. Bissell III Right: News of Jason H. Karp and his business associates gets top billing on Wall Street’s Nasdaq Building.

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SAVE THE DATE

Philanthropy Day Challenge 2021 THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25

An Invitation to Join the John Metcalf Taylor Society

Every February members of the Loomis Chaffee community come together to make an impact on the lives of our students and faculty by participating in Philanthropy Day. Save the date to join alumni, parents, and friends to make this year’s Philanthropy Day a success.

To volunteer remotely for Philanthropy Day, please contact Director of the Annual Fund Deidre Swords at deidre_swords@loomis.org. Thank you! www.loomischaffee.org/giving

We invite you to join the John Metcalf Taylor Society if you have made, or plan to make, a commitment to support Loomis Chaffee through a gift in your will or other planned gift.

Please join us in welcoming the newest members of the John Metcalf Taylor Society, which honors alumni, parents, and friends who have remembered Loomis Chaffee in their estate plans through charitable bequests, trusts, or other provisions.

Loomis Chaffee’s alumni JOIN LC Connect engagement platform

You!

LC Connect is an online community and resource for alumni that makes it easier than ever for Pelicans to stay connected to each other and with the school.

LC Connect is an opt-in networking platform, powered by Graduway, that enables alumni to:

Rowland G. ’31 and Delma S. Skinner Thomas J. Kimmell ’70 Frederic C. Hood Jr. ’71 James A. Rich ’79 Anonymous ’80 Alex D. ’81 and Patty H. Funderburg Anonymous ’86 William J. Heron III ’00 Anonymous ’00 Charles Margolis (Friend) Emery Reeves (Friend)

Find and re-engage with fellow alumni through the online directory and groups Expand professional connections through mentorship opportunities and a job board Stay up to date with Loomis Chaffee news and activities through an alumni events board and the school’s social media channels Have on-the-go access through the LC Connect mobile app

Register at www.loomischaffeealumni.org LC Connect replaces Loomis Chaffee's Evertrue app and Career Network, upgrading the alumni experience by providing several resources in one platform.

STAY IN TOUCH CONNECT WITH US ON SOCIAL MEDIA For more information about planned gifts and the John Metcalf Taylor Society, please contact Associate Director of Development Heidi E.V. McCann ’93, P’23 at 860.687.6273 or heidi_mccann@loomis.org. www.loomischaffee.giftplans.org

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facebook-square twitter-square linkedin

Page name: Loomis Chaffee Alumni Tweet to and follow @LC_AlumniNet Go to LinkedIn and search for “Loomis Chaffee alumni.”

Cl ass Not e s a mission-driven special purpose acquisition company focused on health and wellness. On December 9, 2020, Nasdaq took HumanCo Acquistion Corporation public under initial ticker HMCO.

1996 Trace Peterson received a Ph.D. in English from the Graduate Center at the City University of New York on September 30, 2020.

While at the Graduate Center, Trace was awarded the Robert E. Gilleece Fellowship, the Writing Across the Curriculum Fellowship, and a Certificate in American Studies.

2003 Chris Vola’s sixth book, I is for Illuminati: An A-Z Guide to Our Paranoid Times, a fully illustrated primer on the world’s biggest conspiracy theories, was published in October 2020 by William Morrow/HarperCollins. Chris writes that he is at work on a follow-up to his previous book, Pour One Out: Cocktail Odes to TV ’s Most Dearly Departed (published

by HarperCollins in October 2019), in which he pays homage to beloved deceased television characters by pairing them with classic drinks.

2004 Nikki Meo King and her partner, Michael King, welcomed Miles Arthur King on Thanksgiving Day 2019. They have relocated back to Connecticut and now live in Madison, where they enjoy the shoreline in the summer. Nikki writes that it has been wonderful being close to family and friends again.

2005 Douglas W. Graham Jr. and Lisabeth McRae Fish were married on April 25, 2020, in a socially-distanced, private backyard ceremony in Birmingham,

Ala., featuring their dog, Loomis.

The couple recently bought their first home together in historic Avondale, a small community on the edge of downtown Birmingham. Douglas is a financial analyst in corporate finance for BBVA, a regional bank. Lisabeth is a clerk for U.S. District Judge Corey L. Maze in the Northern District of Alabama.

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2007 Claire Galiette and Harold “Billy” William Strunk were married on September 12, 2020, at the Country Club in Pepper Pike, Ohio. Shiner, their miniAustralian labradoodle, walked down the aisle with members of the wedding party. The story of how Claire and Harold met was featured in the “Mini-Vows” section of The New York Times.

Trace Peterson recently earned a doctorate in English.

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Lisabeth McRae Fish and Douglas W. Graham Jr. with their pup, Loomis, on their wedding day.

’08

2008 Michael Petroni is proud to announce the publication, by IOPscience, of his research study linking chronic air pollution exposure to COVID-19 mortality.

He is a doctoral candidate at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, where he earned a master’s degree in environmental science. He also has a master’s degree in public policy from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University.

Amanda Harris Shapiro and Rob Shapiro welcomed their son — and future Pelican — Reid Harris Shapiro on June 3, 2020.

2016 Habiba Hopson recently received a National Fulbright Fellowship to teach and research art history in Spanish in Colombia for 2021.

She graduated magna cum laude from Occidental College in Los Angeles, Calif., where she was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Society.

Newlyweds Billy Strunk and Claire Galiette share the spotlight with Shiner, their mini-Australian labradoodle.

Reid Harris Shapiro nestles between his proud parents, Amanda Harris Shapiro and Rob Shapiro.

SUBMIT A CLASS NOTE

Send your news to us!

Email the Class Notes editor at magazine@ loomis.org to share news with classmates and friends. High-resolution photographs are welcome; please clearly identify all people.

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Photo: Jessica Ravenelle

Obit ua r ies

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1935 Arthur Schoenfuss, on April 10, 2020, in Florida. A two-year student from Hartford, Conn., Arthur was active in the Radio Club, rifle team and Allyn senior soccer. He earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Tufts University in 1939 and was the former president of Pelican Engineering Group in Naples, Fla. Arthur was preceded in death by his sister, Dorothy Schoenfuss Howell ’43, and was survived by his sister, Emily Schoenfuss Smith ’40.

1937 Quentin B. Deming, on January 21, 2019, at his home in Hanover, N.H. A four-year student from New York City, Chip, as he was known, was involved in the Darwin Club, the Dramatic Club, the French Club, the Sophomore Reception Committee, and Junto.

He was on the gym team and was active in soccer, tennis, and fencing. Chip earned a bachelor’s degree with summa cum laude distinction from Dartmouth College in 1941. In 1942, he earned a medical degree from Dartmouth Medical School and completed his medical training at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. Following service as a medical doctor in the U.S. Navy during World War II, he received a three-year medical fellowship at Stanford University. He conducted research and served on the faculty of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine for decades. According to the family obituary, Chip was admired by his colleagues and appreciated by his patients for his adherence to the highest ethical standards of the medical profession and for his calming and reassuring presence for those in his care. Chip greatly enjoyed living in New Hampshire and is remembered for being a good listener as well as for his kindness to others, his devotion to his family, and his enduring curiosity. Predeceased in 2015 by his wife of 65 years, Vida Ginsberg Deming, Chip was

ence included arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court in support of abortion rights and arguing against the death penalty in Alabama. Additionally, he was active in the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Lawyers’ Committee on Civil Rights. For nearly 60 years Jack enjoyed spending time at his residence in Northeast Harbor where, according to the family obituary, he was “locally famous for taking, and reading, The New York Times on picnics and for his endless work on his house, where he spent decades dapping and painting in a vain attempt to thwart the east wind.” He enjoyed golfing and was a longtime member of the Northeast Harbor Golf Club, where he was a board member, served as club president, and worked to preserve and protect the club’s open outdoor spaces.

Jack was survived by his wife of 55 years, Edith Nalle Schafer; his three children, Alison, John, and Nancy Schafer; and his five grandchildren. A memorial service was planned for August.

survived by his brother, Angus Deming ’54; his two daughters, Lilith Deming and Maeve Guesdon; his three grandchildren, his great-grandson; and extended family and friends.

1940 John Bolton Collins, on March 25, 2020, in New York City, from COVID-19. A two-year student from Old Greenwich, Conn., Bo, as he was known, was involved in the Debating Club and Nautical Club, and he was active in football, hockey, and track. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University in 1944. Bo served in the U.S. Armed Forces in the Pacific Theater during World War II. There he earned military decorations for extraordinary achievement during aerial flight, including a Distinguished Flying Cross medal. Bo worked in advertising for more than 40 years — the last 18 of those years at the McCaffrey & McCall agency, where he enjoyed his role as senior vice president. Bo was survived by his wife, Elaine; his two children by a previous marriage, Susan Vick and Peter Collins, and their spouses; his three grandchildren; and his three great-grandchildren.

1947 William J. Robinson, on July 29, 2020, in Tucson, Ariz. A two-year student from Erie, Pa., Bill was involved in the Stagehands Union, the Handbook Board, and Student Federalists. He served in the U.S. Army in both the United States and Germany between 1951 and 1953. His 30-year career as a professor at University of Arizona’s Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research included serving as director of the laboratory until he retired in 1993.

Bill was preceded in death by his wife, Priscilla, after 56 years of marriage. He was survived by his two children, Peter M. Robinson and Elizabeth E. “Betsey” Robinson; and his four grandchildren.

1944 John Henry Schafer III, on January 19, 2020, in Northeast Harbor, Maine. A two-year student from New York, N.Y., Jack, as he was known, was involved in the Entertainment Committee, Ping Pong Club, Jazz Club, and Student Council. He served on the Editorial Review Board of The Log, as secretary/treasurer of the Bridge Club, and as chairman of the Dormitory Committee. Jack was active in football and baseball and earned a varsity letter in basketball. After Loomis, Jack earned a bachelor’s degree from Williams College and a law degree from University of Virginia. As a partner at Covington & Burlington in Washington, D.C., he enjoyed a successful legal career and took on many pro bono cases. His professional experi-

1948 Patricia Alvord Bryant, on August 2, 2020, on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. A Chaffee School student from Windsor, Conn., Patricia was a reporter for Chiel and served as yearbook art editor. She

earned a bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College and a master’s degree in special education from Boston University. Patricia taught in the Aphasic Department of the Boston School for the Deaf for 13 years and then became the school’s curriculum coordinator. While she was a student at Chaffee, Patricia met John Bryant ’48, and the two married in 1952. The family lived in Needham, Hingham, and South Easton, Mass., before moving to East Sandwich on Cape Cod in 1978. They lived there for 30 years until purchasing a home in the Southport community of Mashpee, also on Cape Cod. Patricia’s community connections included membership in the Thornton W. Burgess Society – Green Briar Nature Center, where she led seashore, woods, and marshland tours for schoolchildren. She enjoyed tennis, golf, quilting, and crafting and donated her work regularly for charitable fundraising activities.

Patricia remained connected to Loomis Chaffee through the years and served as a Reunion fundraising volunteer. Preceded in death by her daughter Cynthia, Patricia was survived by her husband, John; her children Barbara and Stephen; and her cousin, Chester “Bill” Cooke ’53. A service was held on August 6 at Chapman, Cole & Gleason Funeral Home in Mashpee.

John Braid Ten Eyck, on September 12, 2020, in Beaverton, Ore., due to complications from dementia and COVID-19. A three-year student from Riverside, Conn., John was involved in the Athletic Council, L Club, and Glee Club, and he served on the Founders Committee, as president of the Stamp Club, and as vice president of the Rifle Club. He played football and baseball, ran track, and was captain of the varsity rifle team. While studying architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, John interrupted his education to enlist in the U.S. Air Force. He served as a pilot with the 58th fighter bomber group and flew the F-84 Thunderjet during the Korean War. He completed his bachelor’s degree at MIT in 1954. John married Frances Raap loomischaffee.org

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O bi tuar i e s

in 1952, and the family moved with the Air Force for a few years before settling in Colorado Springs, Colo. There, John enjoyed a 55-year design and construction career that began with the firm Lusk and Wallace. As part of his military service, John was a flight instructor at the Air Force’s Colorado Springs base for 10 years. He served his community as a member of numerous civic organizations throughout his life.

For several years, he owned The Beefeaters restaurant in Colorado Springs. John and Frances raised three daughters and attended their children’s many sporting, musical, and equestrian events. In 1991, the couple relocated to Astoria, Ore., to be closer to family. Predeceased

by Frances in 2003, John was survived by his daughters, Julia Ten Eyck, Elizabeth Ten Eyck Knutsen, and Katherine Ten Eyck; his four grandchildren; and his two great-grandsons. A private memorial was planned for a later date.

1954 John Merrill Catlin, on June 30, 2020, peacefully, with his family by his side. A three-year student from Longmeadow, Mass., John was involved in the Political Club, Bridge Club, and Sports and Reception Committee. He was active in football and wrestling and earned a varsity letter on the track team. He earned a bachelor’s degree at Trinity College in 1958 and received a medical degree at New York Medical College in 1962. After completing a family practice residency at Santa Cruz County Hospital in California, John and his colleagues established the Scotts Valley Medical Clinic.

In his more than 54 years as a physician in family practice, John delivered more than 400 babies and provided compassionate care to countless individuals. One of the highlights of his medical career was serving as chief of staff at Community Memorial Hospi-

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tal. From an early age, John was passionate about flying: He flew solo at the age of 14 and earned a pilot’s license before his driver’s license. John served in the U.S. Navy as a flight surgeon. After completing a one-year internship at Camp Pendleton in 1963, he was stationed in Guam for the remainder of his service career.

After retiring from medical practice, John continued as a Federal Aviation Administration medical examiner, where he certified commercial and private pilots’ licenses with his wife, Coty, as his nurse.

John’s many hobbies included golf, gardening, antique cars, global travel, and music. He played 10 different musical instruments, and he and Coty performed at public and private venues in Santa Cruz and Calaveras counties throughout his retirement years. According to the family obituary, John was “a doting husband and father [who] felt that being a devoted spouse was his primary occupation, one in which he succeeded with distinction.” John was survived by Coty Catlin, his wife of 40 years; his six daughters, Elizabeth Chase, Laura Jean Catlin, Cori Holt, Chantel Casey, Robyn Egan, and Tawny Catlin, and their spouses; his nine grandchildren; and many extended family members. A private burial service with full military honors was held on July 15, 2020, at Oakwood Memorial Park in Santa Cruz, Calif. A public memorial service and celebration of life was to take place at a future date in Aptos, Calif.

Jon H. Rieger, on July 16, 2020, of natural causes, in his Louisville, Ky., home. A three-year student from Dayton, Ohio, Jon was involved in the Rifle Club, Political Club, Scholarship Committee, and High Fidelity Club, and he served as president of the German Club.

He was active in football, track, and the rifle team. Jon attended or earned advanced degrees from Middlebury College, Miami

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University of Ohio, and Michigan State University. A U.S. Navy veteran, Jon completed ROTC at Miami University then served for two years of active duty aboard the U.S.S. Platte (AO-24) as the ship’s navigator and gunnery officer. In his 24 years of active reserve duty, Jon served as commanding officer and chief staff officer of several naval reserve units, among other assignments. He retired from the U.S. Naval Reserves with the rank of captain. Jon distinguished himself as a university professor and a pioneering scholar in the area of sociology. His career in higher education began at Michigan State University and continued at the University of Louisville, where he taught courses on sociology, social change, and graduate-level research methods and authored many publications during his tenure of more than 50 years.

Jon’s major scholarly contribution — a 60-year research study photographing social change in Ontonagon County, Mich., which he began in 1960 — was pioneering in the field of visual sociology.

He was a founding member of the International Visual Sociology Association, and his trailblazing articles and methods seeded a new approach to the field. During his field research, Jon became connected to the Ontonagon community. He made significant contributions to the Ontonagon County Historical Society and the Ontonagon Theater of Performing Arts and became a friend to many in the local region. Jon’s passions included sailing, camping, classical and contemporary music, ballet, bodybuilding, photography, trap shooting, and civil rights. A longtime patron of cultural pursuits, he advised the Louisville Orchestra, the Louisville Agriculture Club, and the University of Louisville Weightlifting Club; authored the Official Physique Manual for the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States; and served as a judge for the Grawemeyer Music Composition Awards for many years. Though he never married

or had children of his own, Jon formed many meaningful relationships from his professional, cultural, and community connections, which he referred to affectionately as “families.” According to Ben Sollee, a member of one of Jon’s close-knit friend groups, “Jon built a family around his love of the arts, that he affectionately coined the Tin Ear Society. This expansive family of dancers, musicians, composers, photographers, writers, visual artists, and creatives were all connected by his mentorship, patronage, and radically honest critiques of our work. He helped us make better and more meaningful art.” Jon's brother David Rieger commented, “Jon had an unusual talent for drawing people out in an extended conversation, and then putting them on the spot in a positive way. This authentic reflection became motivation to do one’s very best. He took the time to do this for his friends, and many of their lives improved dramatically.” Jon was survived by his two brothers, Nelson and David; several nieces and nephews; and many devoted friends. Interment took place in a private ceremony, and an online memorial service took place on August 7, 2020.

1955 Julia Bartholomew Munn, on July 18, 2020, peacefully in her home at The Commons in Lincoln, Mass. Originally from West Hartford, Conn., Judy, as she was known at Chaffee, was involved in the Glee Club, Chaffers, and Political Club, and she was secretary of the Athletics Association and art editor of Epilogue. She was active in basketball and field hockey.

Judy attended Vassar College for three years before marrying and finishing her bachelor’s degree at University of California-Berkeley in 1958. She and her husband, Dick Munn, lived in a number of places while raising their family of three children, but mainly in Wellesley, Mass. Judy’s favorite

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pastimes included singing, hiking, appreciating fine art, playing tennis, traveling, and participating in other cultural events.

She enjoyed bringing family and friends together for good times in the places most special to her, including Three Mile Island in New Hampshire; the “ski house” in Campton Hollow, N.H.; and a generational family home in rural Connecticut. Judy enjoyed social activities, including singing, playing tennis, and volunteering with her many longstanding groups of friends, for whom she was a source of kindness and strength.

In more serious pursuits, Judy was committed to the environmental preservation of Three Mile Island and served on organizational committees dedicated to its protection. She was a significant contributor to the Currier Gallery in Manchester, N.H., where she was a docent, and led tours at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Zimmerman House. Judy subscribed to The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, and The New Yorker to sharpen her mind and remain informed on important issues.

According to the family obituary, Judy remains an inspiration, and her life was “colored by a joy in engaging socially, intellectually, physically and culturally in many, many things.” In her advancing age, Judy remained an active, lively member of her senior living community and continued to engage in all of her favorite things. She had two life partners to whom she was devoted: Dick, her former husband of 25 years, and Ralph Wood, who predeceased her in 2007, after 23 years together. Ralph’s three adult children, Betsy Brooks, Jim Wood, and Lynn Hayden, and his seven grandchildren became very special to her. Judy was also predeceased by her elder sister, Anne Munn Hansen, and was survived by her younger sister, Linda B. Thompson. She also was survived by her three children, Tracy Munn, Dave Munn, and Julie Munn Hale ’81, and their

spouses; and her five grandchildren. Celebrations of Judy’s life were planned for a future date.

1962 Lee R. Nolan, on August 5, 2020, in Madisonville, Tenn. A four-year student from Windsor, Conn., Lee was involved in the Biology Club, French Club, Library Committee, and Senior Scholarship Committee, and he was a reporter for The Log. He was active in football, basketball, hockey, and the rifle team, and he was a Merit Scholarship Finalist.

After Loomis, Lee earned a bachelor’s degree from Trinity College in 1966 then served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War as a first lieutenant.

Afterwards, Lee became a senior network engineer for Traveler’s Insurance Company, from which he retired in 2007 after 41 years at the company. He was a founding member of Windsor Volunteer Ambulance and enjoyed travel and sports shooting.

He was survived by Barbara, his wife of 20 years; his son Christopher Nolan and daughter-in-law Laura Pekala; his four stepchildren, Kevin Schofield, Raymond McKee, Brian McKee, and Michele Bordonaro, and their spouses; his six grandchildren; his step-grandchild; his former wife, Jean Nolan; and many extended family members and friends. Lee was predeceased by his son Todd Nolan. A private burial with military honors was to take place at Windsor Veterans Memorial Cemetery. A memorial service was held at The Lodge in Windsor.

1970 William B. Stevenson, on June 14, 2020, in Greenwood Village, Colo. Originally from Titusville, Pa., Bill was active on the Social Committee and in basketball and remained closely connected

to Loomis Chaffee as a Reunion fundraising volunteer and as a member of the Common Good Society. In 2006, Bill and his siblings created the Stevenson Family Scholarship Fund at Loomis Chaffee in honor of his parents, William DeVore Stevenson ’34 and Martha Fleming Stevenson. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and a law degree from University of Pittsburgh, where he met his wife, Molly Cannon.

He and Molly moved to Denver, Colo., in the 1980s and settled in the Greenwood Village community, where they raised their three children. Bill spent the better part of his professional career practicing law as general counsel for Farmers Union Insurance, where he eventually became director of cooperative development. He later shifted his focus toward humanitarian concerns and earned a master’s degree in divinity from the Iliff School of Theology in 2019. According to the family obituary, Bill was an exceptionally kind and loving family man whose “life's purpose was to uplift local communities and create a more just society and healthier planet for everyone.” Bill enjoyed reading in bed and spent a great deal of time outdoors in Colorado’s abundant sunshine playing golf or running in Cherry Creek State Park, where he often trained for the 13 marathons he completed. His ubiquitous presence led to his being referred to fondly as “the mayor of Greenwood Village.” Bill’s commitment to the community was reflected in his longtime association with local youth sports, his leadership roles in several cultural and philanthropic organizations, and his sincere desire to form lasting and meaningful relationships with his neighbors and friends. A devoted husband and father, Bill doted on his youngest child, Sophia, who was adopted from China in 2003.

When his wife, Molly, was diagnosed with cancer in the summer of 2018, Bill remained by her side

for the short time that remained until her passing. Bill will be long remembered for his spirituality, humility, kindness, generosity, and warm smile. Preceded in death by his parents; his brother, E.J. Stevenson; and Molly, his wife of 41 years, Bill was survived by his children, Will, Mamie, and Sophia, and their spouses; his two sisters, Anne and Marcie Stevenson; and many friends.

1985 Jeffrey W. Moore, on August 12, 2020, unexpectedly of a heart attack. Originally from Hartford, Conn., Jeff was active in wrestling, lacrosse, and track.

In 1989, Jeff earned a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from Boston University, where he developed lasting friendships with his classmates and his teammates on the men’s rowing team. Jeff worked for the Bose Corporation in Framingham, Mass., for more than 17 years, and most recently managed engineering teams devoted to aviation and military headsets.

He enjoyed his career at the company and was proud of his teams and their accomplishments. An avid sportsman who loved many snow and water activities, Jeff was involved in competitive sailing and winter sporting activities in his youth and was happy to share his love of the mountains and sea with his family and friends in the Kingston and Duxbury, Mass., area. According to the family obituary, “Jeff was an extremely devoted father and loved sharing stories about his blended family. …[His] life ended too soon, but he touched the hearts of so many while he was with us.” He was survived by his brother, Gregory Moore ’86; his two children, Jackson and Spencer Moore; his former fiancé, Paula Bissanti, and her two children, Tom and Lauren Bissanti; and his former wife, Christine Hamori, with whom he remained close. A celebration of

Jeff ’s life took place on September 10, 2020, at the MacDonald Funeral Home in Marshfield, Mass.

1986 Peter Y. Hsing, on July 17, 2020, unexpectedly from cardiac arrest at Stanford Hospital in California, with his family at his side. A student from Windsor, Conn., Peter was involved in an Asian student affinity organization and was on the photography staff of The Confluence. An exceptional student, Peter went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering at Columbia University in 1990 and an M.B.A. in finance from University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business in 1997. He enjoyed a successful career in the finance and technology sectors, upon which he capitalized as an entrepreneur in software engineering. Peter was a technology investment banker at J.P. Morgan in Hong Kong for two years and a management consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers for five years, and he worked part time while at Columbia as a marketing intern at IBM for three years. He moved to Seattle for a role at Microsoft, where he led a team that was responsible for identifying and evaluating new growth opportunities as managing director of the Corporate Strategy Group. In November 2007, Peter co-founded Merus Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, Calif., that invests in entrepreneurs who address real-world problems through software solutions. Peter was a mentor to students and young entrepreneurs as an alumni ambassador for Loomis Chaffee and Columbia University at various reunions, receptions, and other alumni mentoring and networking activities. He enjoyed running and cycling and completed several competitive races, including the New York City Marathon in 2009.

Peter is remembered for his sharp business acumen as well as his energy, collegiality, and friendship.

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In a letter to the school, the family wrote, “There was never a second Peter was not selfless, and he shall continue his legacy through others’ lives after his passing. His everlasting generosity and kindness will continue as an organ donor, sharing everything he can to save the lives of others.” Peter was survived by his parents, Fred and Fei Hsing; his brother, Andrew Hsing ’90; his two children, Nichole and Brandon Hsing, and their mother, Debbie Hsing, who is Peter’s former wife. In consideration of everyone’s safety during the COVID-19 pandemic, the family asks that all those who knew and loved Peter support one another in thought and prayer until it is safe to hold an in-person celebration of his life.

1992 John Anthony Hechavarria, on May 31, 2020, at home in Savannah, Ga. Originally from Stratford, Conn., John served in the Georgia National Guard after graduation and studied at the Savannah College of Art and Design. He was employed as a real estate agent and enjoyed cooking. He was survived by his parents, John and Patricia Cullen Hechavarria; his sister, Colleen Jackewicz, and her husband; and many loving extended family members. A Christian funeral service was held at his graveside on June 4, 2020, at the Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah.

2011 McDonald Tjirare, on July 11, 2020, in an automobile accident in Namibia. A three-year student from Namibia, Mac was involved in the International Student Association, Fishing Club, and Flagg Film Festival, and he was active in football, soccer, and track and field. A talented artist, Mac’s drawings were displayed in the Richmond Art Center as part of Emerging Artists and Advanced

Loomis Chaffee Magazine Winter 2021

Placement Art exhibits. He was the recipient of the Senior Art Award in 2011. He graduated from the University of Namibia and was employed by the Oruue Group of Companies. Marilyn and Joel Davidson, friends of Mac’s who are alumni parents, sent the following message to Loomis Chaffee art teacher Mark Zunino, who affectionately called his former student “MACelangelo”: “He had a son born in the fall. He was so happy to be a father. You were his favorite teacher and he was so proud to be honored with the Art Award his senior year. He left his drawings with us when he went home to Namibia. We will cherish them forever.”

Former Faculty William J. Hoppe, on September 23, 2020, peacefully at his Monticello, Va., home. Originally from New Britain, Conn., Bill served as a U.S. Army paratrooper in the 11th Airborne Division, part of General McArthur’s Eighth Army during the occupation of Japan in 1946-47. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Hartford and was the business manager of private independent schools for 35 years before he retired in 1993. He was business manager at Loomis Chaffee from 1958 to 1973 and served for a time as president of the New England Association of Private, Independent Secondary Schools. Bill also coached basketball and golf at independent schools. In retirement, Bill volunteered at Martha Jefferson Hospital and for Habitat for Humanity and was a member of Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Palmyra, Va. Bill and his wife, Margaret, enjoyed extensive travel, family gatherings, and playing golf as members of the Monticello Gray Foxes golf club. Bill was survived by Marge, his wife of 68 years; his five children, Kristin A. Gerlach ’72, Louise C. Green, Jon A. Hoppe, Neil S. Hoppe, and Steven J. Hoppe ’75, and their spouses; his

eight grandchildren; and his three great-grandchildren. A memorial service was held on October 13, 2020, at Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Palmyra.

Former Staff

Lillian B. Prior, on January 26, 2020, at Touchpoints at Chestnut in East Windsor, Conn. Born in Chicopee, Mass., Lillian grew up in Longmeadow, Mass. She graduated from Commerce High School in Springfield. Mass., and moved to Enfield, Conn., where she resided for the rest of her life. She worked for more than 20 years as a secretary at Loomis Chaffee before her retirement. She was a longtime member of the Enfield Congregational Church.

Preceded in death by her husband, Normand H. Prior, and her sister, Sadie Chouinard, Lillian was survived by her two sons, Jay Murray Prior and Keith Prior, and their spouses; her three grandchildren; her great-grandson; and several extended family members.

A graveside service took place in Enfield Street Cemetery, Enfield, Conn., on February 1, 2020.

More News The school has learned of the passing of Bruce Eliot Bidwell ’46 on November 9, 2020; Robert H. Wilson ’47 on November 14, 2020; James Henry McGrath III ’50 on October 23, 2020; David Malcolm Raup ’50 on July 9, 2015; William Dixon Carr Jr. ’51 on November 24, 2018; Owen Sims Garner ’51 on October 12, 2020; Thomas M. Reed ’53 on November 11, 2020; William Calvin Bates ’59 on October 29, 2020; Vincent P. Dole III ’62 on October 25, 2020; John Freeman Boldt ’67 on August 28, 2019; Stephen Charles Kerman ’67 on April 24, 2020; and Alexander Fordyce ’90 on September 26, 2020. More information, as available, will be printed in future issues.

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Former Chairman of the Board of Trustees James Fairfield English Jr. ’44 Served 1964–78, Chairman 1971–75

James Fairfield English Jr. ’44 passed away on June 2, 2020, at his home in Noank, Conn. Dedicated to Loomis Chaffee through the years, Jim served on the Board of Trustees for 14 years, including as chairman from 1971–1975, and as a Reunion volunteer. He was honored with the school’s Distinguished Service Award in 1975. Former Headmaster John Ratté collaborated closely with Jim and described him as a long-time champion for the school. In John’s words, Jim was “Handsome. Elegant. Courtly. Witty. Imperturbable. A scholar. Bank president, college president, member of every board of every Greater Hartford institution dedicated to the public good. And unfailingly modest.”

John further reflected, “When I came to the Island [in 1976], I asked Jim, ‘What do I do now?’ When he moved from treasurer of Trinity College to president [in 1981], he asked me …, ‘What do I do now?’ As if he didn't know. And yet he meant it.

Always willing to learn. Simply put — a good and great man.” As a four-year student from West Hartford, Jim earned Honor Roll every year, and he received the Commencement Prize for Highest Scholarship of the Senior Class in 1944. He was active in the French Club, Rifle Club, Stamp Club, Band, and Senior Scholarship Committee, and he was cast in theatrical productions of The Pirates of Penzance and Arsenic and Old Lace. He was active in football, tennis, basketball, and track. After graduating, Jim enlisted in the U.S. Army and was assigned to a Japanese language learning program. Upon its completion, he served in the 441st Counterintelligence Detachment in the occupation of Japan.

After his military service, Jim earned a bachelor’s degree from Yale in 1949, a master’s degree from Cambridge University in England in 1951, and, in 1956, a Juris Doctorate from University of Connecticut Law School, where he was also a part-time faculty member for several years. Jim took a position at the Connecticut Bank and Trust Company in 1951. There, his sound judgement and commitment to ethical standards led to his being named bank president, chairman, and chief executive officer, and launched him on a long and successful career in organizational leadership roles. After retiring from active management of the bank in 1977, Jim joined the administration of Trinity College and served as the school’s president from 1981 to 1989. In demand for his collaborative management style and aptitude for business, Jim served on the boards of a number of organizations, including the Connecticut Bank and Trust and its successors, CIGNA, Emhart Corporation, Heublein Inc., the Connecticut Natural Gas Company, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

Committed to serving his community, Jim lent his leadership skills to many charitable and philanthropic organizations, including Hartford Hospital, the Wadsworth Atheneum, Connecticut College, the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, the Community Foundation of Eastern Connecticut, the Connecticut Commission on Higher Education, the Connecticut Health and Education Facilities Authority, and the Mystic Seaport Museum. Jim and his wife, Isabelle Spotswood Cox English, spent many years living and raising a family in West Hartford and, later, spent more time at their home in the coastal village of Noank, Conn., before making it their sole residence in 2009. Jim will be remembered for the kindness and hospitality he and Isabelle showed others on their sunny deck overlooking Fisher’s Island Sound as well as for the delight he took in his family, his large and diverse circle of friends, and his whippets. Jim’s favorite pastimes included sailing on his small sailboat, woodworking, and reading about culture, politics, and history. According to the family obituary, he “considered himself very fortunate to have had such a wonderful wife and family and so interesting and varied a life.” Jim was survived by his wife, Isabelle; his children James Fairfield English III ’76, Margaret Stuart English Unsworth, and William Berkeley English ’78; his 10 grandchildren, including Lars Johansson ’01 and Emily Johansson ’02; and his eight great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his daughter Alice Bradford English Johansson in 2015 and his sister, Janet English Dorman, in 2019. A memorial service was planned for a later date.

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R ef l ect ions

Dumb Fun To add some levity to the winter term and help stave off the cold-weather doldrums, organizations across campus introduced the Dumb Fun Contest in December. For each round of the contest, students are invited to submit pictures that fit a weekly theme. Winners earn a spot on the Loomis Chaffee Instagram page, gift cards, and points toward a catered class meeting.

Here are some of the submissions for the first round of Dumb Fun, with the theme “Funny Holiday.”

1 Cat self-adorned in a tree skirt, submitted by sophomore Kaitlin Flynn

6 Teddy bear wanna-be, encountered by senior Christopher Avallone

2 Snowflake-spinning gnome, caught in the act by freshman Cameron Rogers

7 Hide-and-seek kitty, submitted by senior Halle Zweibel

3 Fashionable, festive pup, submitted by junior Nicholas Guenther

8 “Santa Paws,” spotted by sophomore Serena Kiml

4 Sophomores Sofia Preuss, Mattie Wright, and Samantha Tishler celebrating the holidays on Halloween

9 Festive window display, submitted by Dean of Students Jessica Matzkin

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5 Table-top Salvation Army singers and their crooning puppy, submitted by senior Aidan Gillies

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An unusual mid-winter flood carried the icy waters of the Connecticut River over its banks and onto the Meadows in late 2020, creating a scene similar to that pictured in this file photo from January 2010.

Although floods are more common in the spring, the combination of a major New England snowstorm followed by upstream melt and torrential rain caused this winter’s rising waters.

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Loomis Chaffee Magazine Winter 2021

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The Loomis Chaffee School 4 Batchelder Road Windsor, Connecticut 06095 CHANGE SERVICE REQUESTED

The Pelican brought all the necessary supplies for a fishing outing at a local pond this fall. Lawn chair? Check. Fishing pole? Check. Flippers and goggles? Check. … Wait, what? The Pelican had a few things to learn. To watch a short "documentary" on the adventure, visit www. loomischaffee.org/magazine.

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Photo: Cassandra Hamer Loomis

Chaffee Magazine Winter 2021

Nonprofit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Loomis Chaffee School