Mercersburg Magazine - Spring 2017

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www.mercersburg.edu / reunionweekend

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JUNE 8-11, 2017

R E U NIONS FOR CLASS YEARS E N D IN G IN 2 AN D 7

REUNION WEEKEND

Mercersburg A magazine for Mercersburg Academy family and friends

VOLUME 43

Performance Space Burgin Center for the Arts Celebrates 10 Years PAGE 10

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Thomas L. Thomas, March 5, 2016. (Marshall, Keil, Glee Club, choir) Tom served in the Air Force and attended Ohio Northern University and Ball State University. He worked for IBM and also in education for many years, and lived in Coldwater, Ohio. Survivors include his wife, Mary Lee; two daughters and a son; nine grandchildren and five great-grandchildren; and a sister.

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Stuart W. Caldwell, August 3, 2016. (Marshall, Radio Club) Stu worked for Radio Parts Company in Pittsburgh and the Gateway Middle School District in Monroeville, Pennsylvania. He lived in Largo, Florida. Survivors include his wife, Roberta.

Stephen H. Falk, October 4, 2015. (Main, Marshall, swimming) Steve is survived by his wife, Rita; three children and four grandchildren; and two siblings.

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Richard M. Robbins, November 24, 2016. (Keil, Irving, golf, tennis, track & field) Richard graduated from Rollins College (where he was on the crew team) and the Stetson University College of Law. He worked for the public defender’s office in Pinellas County, Florida, for 32 years, mainly in the Juvenile Division. He was a member of the Florida State Bar for more than four decades until he retired in 2008. Survivors include three daughters and four grandchildren.

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J. Richard Mattern II, September 30, 2016. (South Cottage, Irving vice president, Senate, Student Council, Class Day Committee, Varsity Club, Marshal of the Field, football, wrestling, track & field, YMCA, Electronics Club, El Circulo Español) Rick was an Eagle Scout and captained the wrestling teams at both Mercersburg and Colgate University. He earned a law degree from the Dickinson School of Law. He established a private legal practice and spent much of his career in public service, having worked as the mental-health review officer and domestic-relations solicitor in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania. He also served on the Clearfield County Planning Committee and as chairman of the Lawrence Township Planning Committee. Survivors include his wife, Deborah; two sons and two daughters; five grandchildren; and two sisters and a brother.

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T. Bruce Carpenter Jr., November 13, 2016. (Keil, Marshall, Student Council, Laticlavii, Gun Club, Varsity Club, football co-captain, wrestling) Bruce, who was the son of the late T. Bruce Carpenter ’34, graduated from Washington & Jefferson College with a degree in English literature and served in the Army as a second lieutenant. He worked as an industrial engineer for CF&I Steel before completing a master’s degree in Medieval English from Indiana University. He taught and served as an advisor to the student newspaper at Southeast Community College in Cumberland, Kentucky, and eventually made a career in book design and composition (as well as farming; he and his wife, Inta, lived on 21 acres near Bloomington, Indiana).

In addition to his wife, survivors include a son and a daughter and four grandchildren.

Philip H. Varner Jr., August 28, 2016. (Main, Marshall, Student Council, Orientation Committee, YMCA, Chapel Usher, Class Day Committee, Rauchrunde, Varsity Club, football, basketball, tennis) Philip graduated from American University and the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, and had practiced medicine since 1975. A longtime member of the American College of Physicians, he practiced in Mount Holly, New Jersey. Survivors include his wife, Betty; two daughters and three sons; six grandchildren; a brother, Conrad ’61; and a nephew, Christopher ’88.

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Grant E. Atwell II, December 7, 2016. (’Eighty-eight, Marshall, Chemistry Club, Football Band, Blue and White Melodians, Concert Band) The grandson of Harry B. Snider (1900), Grant graduated from Bucknell University and the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. He maintained an active family practice of medicine in Salisbury, Pennsylvania, retiring in 1990. He was a member of the board of directors of the Meyersdale Area School District and the Somerset County Hospital Authority. Survivors include a sister, a niece, a nephew, two great-nieces, and a great-nephew.

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R. Paul Burton Jr., July 25, 2012. (Marshall, dorm prefect, The Fifteen, Religious Discussion Group, News, cross country) Paul graduated from Trinity College, the University of Maine, and Kent State University. He taught English at Grand River Academy in Austinburg, Ohio, and later worked for the Star Beacon of Ashtabula, Ohio, as a technical writer for RMI, and for the Ashtabula County Medical Center, from which he retired in 2011. Survivors include his wife, Gene; a daughter and a son; four granddaughters; and a sister.

John B. Tonkin Jr., September 6, 2016. (Irving, football, baseball) John was the son of the late John B. Tonkin ’38 and graduated from West Virginia Wesleyan College. He worked for Consolidated Natural Gas Company and other gas companies as an independent oil and gas landman for his entire career. John was married to Brenda Romeo and had a son, John Stuart “Jeb” Tonkin. Other survivors include a brother and a sister.

Former faculty/staff/friends David L. Emory, former faculty member (1955–1972), October 16, 2016. David, the father of Dave Emory ’72 (also a former faculty member) and Michael D. Emory ’75, taught biology, chemistry, and algebra, and coached cross country and track & field.

Arnold R. “Arny” Meredith Jr., former staff painter (1992–2011), October 3, 2016.

Warren Reeder, father of Jeff Reeder, father-in-law of former director of development and former Board of Regents member Gail Reeder, and grandfather of Adam Reeder ’97 and Anne Reeder Bertram ’00, October 10, 2016.

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Performance Space

A magazine for Mercersburg Academy family and friends

Mercersburg Burgin Center Marks 10th Anniversary Learn how the Burgin Center for the Arts became part of campus, what its connection is to September 11, 2001, and how the arts have grown at Mercersburg over the past decade. Page 10

Under One Roof

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The Hale Field House, the largest indoor field house in the MidAtlantic Prep League, is now officially open. Page 18

Mercersburg’s Dearly Departed Buildings

Old Main Hall. The Cage. ’Eighty-eight Dormitory. Take a look back at structures that once graced our campus but are no longer standing today. Page 20

Peak Performers

Read the stories of alumni who are pushing the boundaries of what it means to hone their craft—whether they were students before, during, or after the creation of the Burgin Center for the Arts. Page 22

You Should Know Aaron Grant ’17 sails through the air in the long jump competition at Mercersburg’s first home indoor track & field meet in the school’s 124-year history. Grant placed first in the event, which took place in January in the newly constructed Hale Field House. Photo by Teak Romtrairut ’19 Photo credits: p. 2-4 Jillian Wilkerson; p. 5 Mercersburg Academy Archives; p. 6 (Madden/ Phan/Tatone) Stacey Talbot Grasa; p. 7 (Spain/Schaap) Wilkerson; p. 8-9 Teak Romtrairut ’19; p. 10-11 Paul Rutherford; p. 12 Wilkerson; p. 13 Electa Willander ’18; p. 14-15 Wilkerson; p. 16 Ryan Smith; p. 17 Bob Stoler; p. 18 Smith; p. 19 (track) Wilkerson, (boys running) Smith; p. 20-21 Mercersburg Academy Archives; p. 23 Courtesy of Sam Rodgers; p 24 Bill Green; p. 25 Martha Stewart; p. 26 Chris Crisman; p. 27 Rutherford; p. 28 Wilkerson; p.

29 Wilkerson; p. 30 Courtesy of Sam Miller; p. 33-35 Smith; p. 38-39 Courtesy of Chantel Yague; p. 41 Courtesy of William Clutz p. 44 Rodney Cool; p. 45 Smith; p. 46 (Chorale/ Strings) Wilkerson, (Magalia/Jazz Band) Stoler; p. 47 (Band) Wilkerson, (Octet) Stoler; p.

48-49 Rutherford; p. 50 (soccer) Rutherford, (volleyball) Ashley Palmer.

Cover Illustration: Aldo Crusher

From the Head of School 2 3 Via Mercersburg Arts 44 Athletics 48 Class Notes 51 Mercersburg magazine is published by the Office of Strategic Marketing and Communications.

Mercersburg Academy 300 East Seminary Street Mercersburg, Pennsylvania 17236 Magazine correspondence: Megan_Mallory@mercersburg.edu Class Notes correspondence: classnotes@mercersburg.edu Alumni correspondence/ change of address: alumni@mercersburg.edu 800-588-2550 Read us online: www.mercersburg.edu/magazine

Editor: Megan Mallory Class Notes Editor: Tyler Miller Contributors: Sam Miller ’03, Tyler Miller, Lee Owen, Chip Patterson, Zally Price, Michele Poacelli, Matteo Scammell ’07, Douglas Smith, Katie Vickers ’06, Wallace Whitworth, Jillian Wilkerson, Chantel Yague ’14 Design: Aldrich Design Head of School: Katherine M. Titus Senior Director of Strategic Marketing and Communications: Wallace Whitworth Director of News and Content: Lee Owen Assistant Head for Enrollment: Quentin McDowell Assistant Head for Advancement: Brian Hargrove

© Copyright 2016 Mercersburg Academy. All rights reserved. No content from this publication may be reproduced or reprinted in any form without the express written consent of Mercersburg Academy.

Mercersburg Academy abides by both the spirit and the letter of the law in all its employment and admission policies. The school does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, or national or ethnic origin.

From the Head of School

A Mighty Task A few weeks ago, we began an unexpected adventure on a quiet winter morning in Traylor Hall. Our school archivist and head of admissions appeared in my office and asked to look through the head’s collection of the KARUX, our school yearbook, to search for a quote from our founder, Dr. William Mann Irvine.

Their inquiry piqued my interest, and I quickly found myself engaged in their pursuit. We rediscovered the following quote from the 1918 KARUX on the occasion of Dr. Irvine’s 25th anniversary as headmaster: “Lofty ideals, great faith, noble integrity, and a ceaseless devotion to a mighty task—these are among the things which account for the meaning of Mercersburg.”

Words offered by Dr. Irvine’s students to describe their leader’s vision for Mercersburg resonate with me powerfully.

They capture the values of our school and offer us a guide as we seek to be our best collective self.

You may not be surprised to learn that in my first year at Mercersburg, I have been asked many times about my vision for the school. I recognize this as a totally legitimate question, and it is one that I am eager to begin to explore with the community. Yet, I believe it far more important to first seek to understand our great school and the values that define us.

In an effort to understand those values, I have spent this year playing the role of anthropologist and student: observing, exploring, and listening in order to enrich my understanding of Mercersburg and its people. With each day, my respect, admiration, and love for this incredible community grow. I am struck by the loyalty and devotion of our students, employees, alumni, and parents.

The egalitarian and democratic spirit of Mercersburg anchors us. It is rare among independent schools, and we must honor this spirit in all that we do. Yet, I am convinced that we must also be willing to promote the unique excellence of our school.

So, as we cultivate personal humility in our students, we must celebrate our deep collective pride and the important role our school plays in shaping the men and women who will serve in communities around the world for generations to come. This is the same pride instilled by our founder and

fostered by generations of students, faculty, staff, alumni, and parents of Mercersburg Academy.

Perhaps it’s my training as an athlete and my many years serving as a member of a team, but I see this next season in the life of Mercersburg as an exciting one that calls for a collective vision. What will that look like? The Academy will launch its next strategic planning process in the fall. This endeavor will provide us with an opportunity to set the course for the future of our great school. The real challenge will be ensuring that as we contemplate and plan for the next few years, we remain true to our core values—those founding elements that set us apart and root us to our mission.

As we lift our eyes to the horizon and imagine a vision for Mercersburg Academy, may we always—collectively—honor our history by embracing “lofty ideals, great faith, noble integrity, and a ceaseless devotion to a mighty task.”

Katherine M. Titus Head of School

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D a t es t o Rem em b er

Mercersburg A roundup of what’s news, what’s new, and what Mercersburg people are talking about.

Apr 3

Jacobs Residency, Chef Bryant Terry on “Food and Justice” 7 p.m., Simon Theatre, Burgin Center for the Arts

May 21

RoboCup Junior USA Horace Mann School, New York City

May 26

Baccalaureate 7 p.m., Irvine Memorial Chapel

May 27

Commencement 10:30 a.m.

June 8–11 Reunion Weekend Schedule subject to change; for a full and updated schedule of events, visit www.mercersburg.edu

Last in a Legacy: Groundskeeper Joe Yeager Retires After 32 ½ Years

By Megan Mallory Next time you walk by the grounds in front of Ford and Irvine Halls, take a minute to appreciate the work of Richard “Joe” Yeager, who tended that area of Mercersburg’s campus. At the end of October, Yeager retired from his position on the Buildings and Grounds crew after 32 and a half years.

“I love the work, and I love my job,” Yeager says. “I love this kind of work.”

He explains that he only left this past fall because his brothers were encouraging the change. At age 76, Yeager says, “They’re afraid I’ll fall over.”

The Yeager Family Legacy Born and raised in Lemasters, Pa., just four miles from Mercersburg, Yeager is one of eight members of his family to work at Mercersburg, and he is the fifth to retire from the school. His father, John, served on the Buildings and Grounds crew from 1956 until 1964. Both Yeager’s wife, Helen, and sister, Eleanora, worked in housekeeping—Helen from 1998 until she retired in 2014 and Eleanora from 1984 until her retirement in 2003. His brother, Gene, ran the school store from 1964 until retiring in 2015, and his brother, Dave, ran the Ford Hall post office from 1967 until retirement in 2002. Dave continued to

fill in when needed at the post office until June 2007, and he became the first staff member to ever receive the Alumni Council Service Award in 2003. “[The Yeagers] are definitely a legacy and they are definitely an institution, but it’s not because their name is Yeager,” says Ron Simar, who is now faculty emeritus and came to Mercersburg in 1988 as athletic director and also served as a head of Mercersburg’s physicaleducation department. “It’s because each individual gives so much to the school. It doesn’t have so much to do with their being in the Yeager family, but it has to do with what they each individually bring to the place.” Simar says the Yeagers are an example of the kind of quality people who work at Mercersburg behind the scenes to make everything run smoothly.

Fellow staff members remember both Gene and Dave stepping in and covering each other’s duties if either of them was sick or away.

Shirley Zeger, who has worked at Mercersburg since 1970 and has served as administrative assistant to the head of school since 1983, describes all the Yeager brothers as “very humble guys who didn’t like the spotlight. They just went about their jobs and did them very well.”

Joe Yeager credits his brother Gene with bringing him on board at Mercersburg back in 1984. More recently, the next generation continued on page 4

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L-R: Joe, Dave, and Gene Yeager at Joe’s retirement party

“[The Yeagers] are definitely a legacy and they are definitely an institution, but it’s not because their name is Yeager. It’s because each individual gives so much to the school.”

—RON SIMAR, FACULTY EMERITUS

of Yeagers can also count itself as part of Mercersburg’s history.

Gene’s granddaughter, Toshia Fries ’10, worked at Mercersburg as a Summer Programs counselor in 2011 and 2012. Dave’s son, Kevin Yeager, taught history in 2000-2001, and his daughter, Karen Yeager Lumidao ’93, is an alumna. In total, the Yeager family has dedicated more than 150 years of service to Mercersburg Academy.

Simar is quick to point out that Mercersburg fosters this kind of environment where multiple members of a family enjoy working together at the school. Simar says, “I am one who feels strongly that it’s important for the school, for alums, for people who are here now to recognize what families like the Yeagers have given to the school and what the school has given to them.” Currently, 61 employees—almost a quarter of all Mercersburg employees— have a family member employed at the school or have had a family member employed at Mercersburg in the past.

More than 32 Years The desire to work hard, brighten someone’s day, and ask for nothing in return is a Yeager family trait that Joe Yeager demonstrated at Mercersburg for more than 32 years. “Joe is one of those guys who gets along with everybody,” says Avery Cook, head of the grounds crew and a staff member since 1985. “He’s a good worker and devoted to the school. He has a generous spirit, and he’d help anybody.”

If you’ve ever received a lollipop from Yeager, you’ve experienced this humble kindness firsthand. Both Simar and Will

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I’d say, ‘Joe, I’m working as hard as I Dupuis, Mercersburg’s network can to get you better help,’ meaning systems administrator, say better help than Bill Hege. Then it Yeager would sometimes flag expanded to, ‘I just met with Doug them down when they would Hale.’ And then recently, ‘I just met pass on campus and offer them with Katie Titus, and don’t give up.

Tootsie Pops. According to I’m working as hard as I can to get Cook, Yeager had a reputation you better help,’ and Joe would just for handing out lots of sugary sit there and grin.” treats and copious amounts of According to his co-workers, peanuts among the grounds Yeager has a good sense of humor. crew.

Cook says, “Everybody likes Joe. Almost as soon as Yeager They kind of pick on him, but he joined the staff in 1984, he dishes back.” This friendly relabecame fast friends with Bill Gene Yeager (left) ran the school store from 1964–2015. His tionship speaks to a stronger bond Hege, who joined Buildings and brother Dave (right) ran the school post office from 1967–2002. between Yeager, his co-workers, Grounds just a few days before and the school—one that has supported Yeager in both good times him. “I’ve enjoyed working with Bill Hege,” Yeager says. “We’d and bad. come in on Saturdays, work any hours of the day or night. Bill It was Hege and Mercersburg who helped Yeager out in 1990 and I always worked overtime.” when his house burned down. “Walter Burgin ’53 [Mercersburg’s “It’s been a very nice 32 and a half years,” Hege says. “I started headmaster at the time] took care of me, and let me use the equipon a Monday, and [Joe] started on a Thursday. Same year, same ment,” Yeager says. “Bill Hege operated the equipment. He operweek, and all. When Joe and I started here, we didn’t have any ated the tractor, and I operated the dump truck.” Hege and Yeager power tools. We raked leaves by hand. Now you sit on a lawncleaned up the debris from the fire, and with the help and support mower, and what took us a whole day, you can do in less than of his friend and the school community, Yeager got back on his feet. two hours.” “[The fire] was like sticking me with a knife,” Yeager says. “But Yeager remembers salting the roads in the winter. Hege would I didn’t give up. The school helped out, and Bill Hege helped drive the tractor, and Yeager would sit in the back and put cinders me clean everything up. We got back on our feet, so I have no down in the hopper to spread on the road. Even today, snow is complaints.” still a huge challenge to clear from the campus’s many sideAs he embarks on retirement, Yeager says he plans to take care walks and roadways. “Snow is a four-letter word: work,” Yeager of the home and the land he built back up from the fire, and he says. “As the years went by, [Mercersburg] kept adding steps. will also care for his sister in her retirement.

More steps to shovel.” He doesn’t mind sitting out on the snow As the last in a long line of family members to work at and retire removal this winter. from Mercersburg, Yeager leaves a void that will be felt. Cook says, In addition to raking leaves and managing snow, Yeager and “We’re going to miss you, Joe. It’s the camaraderie in the workplace Hege were responsible for grooming the athletic fields in the that just won’t be the same.”

1980s. “When I came as athletics director in 1988, Joe and Bill Hege agrees: “The next person I work with I hope is as good as Hege worked together on the grounds crew, and they were in Joe. Joe and I work together really well.” charge of the athletic fields: setting up the goals, taking them Thinking back on his more than three decades at the school, down, lining the fields, grooming the baseball field, and so on.

Yeager says his retirement is bittersweet: “I love the work, and I So, I worked very closely with them,” Simar says. love to be here. I love all the people here.” He says he misses everySimar, Yeager, and Hege developed a good-humored relathing about his job but, on second thought, maybe not the snow tionship that exists to this day. Simar says, “Bill Hege is a great removal. worker, but for the past eight years or so, anytime I saw those two,

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Patrick Madden ’18

Monk Phan ’16

Veronica Tatone ’16

Blue Review 2016 Wins Gold Medal, Two Students Receive Honors for Cover Design The 2016 edition of Blue Review, Mercersburg’s annual journal of juried student creative writing and fine art, has received a Gold Medal from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association. The publication received an overall score of 958 in its annual critique; publications scoring between 800 and 1,000 points earn a Gold Medal and will continue in the competition for Gold Crown and Silver Crown awards. In addition, Blue Review staff members Patrick Madden ’18 and Monk Phan ’16 earned a second-place Gold Circle Award in the CSPA’s category of cover design for literary or literary/art for magazine publications.

Phan and Veronica Tatone ’16 served as co-editors of Blue Review in 2016. Phan is in his first year at Parsons School of Design, while Tatone is attending Hampshire College. Madden is a member of Mercersburg’s 11th-grade class. Faculty members Kristen Pixler and Michele Poacelli are the advisers to the student staff—which included more than 20 students working on the literary, art, and digital sections of the publication. (The staff prepared a digital companion to the printed piece for the first time in 2016.)

“This is a true testament to the hard work and dedication of our staff,” Pixler says. “I’m thankful for our students and for the support we receive from everyone at Mercersburg.”

Student leaders of this year’s Blue Review staff include Lauren Ingram ’18 (literary section), Christy Zhang ’17 and Barbara Fitzsimmons ’17 (arts section), Elizabeth Im ’18 (poetry), Julia Mitchell ’18 (prose), and Chloe Yang ’17 and Katie Brennan ’19 (digital section).

The Columbia Scholastic Press Association is affiliated with Columbia University in New York City.

Burg’s Eye View

CAMPUS NOTES

Fall speakers in Mercersburg’s 2016–2017 Monday Evening Lecture Series included Mirenka Cechová, who performed a dance piece accompanied by Nancy Jo Snider on cello to serve as the Ammerman Family Lecture in September, and Jeremy Schaap, who delivered the Schaff Lecture on Ethics and Morals in December.

Cechová, a Czech director, choreographer, performer, and scholar, performed her acclaimed work The Voice of Anne Frank in the Burgin Center for the Arts’ Simon Theatre. Cechová presented the U.S. premiere of The Voice of Anne Frank at Mercersburg in 2010, and later performed at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. The event marked her third visit to Mercersburg (she also completed a residency on campus in 2013). She holds a Ph.D. in physical theatre direction and mime from the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (AMU), and is a past recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship for lecturing and research at American University in Washington.

Snider, who accompanied Cechová on cello, is a member of the Opera Lafayette Orchestra and performs regularly in a variety of chamber and period instrument ensembles in a range of venues, including the Kennedy Center, Rose Theatre Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, and L’Opera Royal de Versailles in France—in addition to experimental stages and living rooms. She is director of the music program at American University, where she is a senior professorial lecturer and a past recipient of the school’s Outstanding Teacher of the Year award.

MERCERSBURG MAGAZINE SPRING 2017

SPAIN TO MERCERSBURG

Schaap, a preeminent and decorated sports journalist who has received numerous honors for excellence in reporting, delivered his talk, “Sports Ethics and Journalism in Modern Society,” in the Irvine Memorial Chapel. Schaap has been affiliated with ESPN since 1994. As a senior news correspondent and host for the network, he contributes to E:60, SportsCenter, Outside the Lines, NFL Countdown, and College GameDay. Schaap has hosted E:60 Reports with Jeremy Schaap, a one-hour offshoot of E:60 focusing on a single topic that debuted in 2015 with a widely lauded show on FIFA and its then-president Sepp Blatter.

In addition, Schaap is the host of the award-winning weekly radio show and podcast The Sporting Life, and anchors ESPN’s coverage at the Olympics.

In 2015, Schaap won the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Award, a first for ESPN. The RFK Center honored Schaap for his story exposing the plight of migrant laborers in Qatar, who live and work in inhumane conditions. It’s been projected that thousands will die as the tiny gulf emirate, by some measures the richest country on earth, prepares to play host to the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Schaap is a graduate of Cornell University; he lives in New York City with his wife and three children.

The next event in the lecture series spotlights Bryant Terry, an eco-chef, food justice activist, and author, who will give the Jacobs Residency Lecture on April 3.

Mirenka Cechova

Nancy Jo Snider

Jeremy Schaap

Mercersburg welcomed six students and two faculty members from Colegio de Nuestra Señora de Lourdes in Valladolid, Spain, for a two-week exchange in November and December. It marked the first official exchange visit for a student contingent from the Spanish school, which is a day and boarding school like Mercersburg. Groups of Mercersburg students have previously visited and taken part in classes at Colegio de Nuestra Señora de Lourdes several times, including during June and July 2016, when eight students accompanied faculty member and veteran Spanish teacher Wendy Valenteen to Valladolid for a month-long stay. Colegio de Nuestra Señora de Lourdes is one of four international schools visiting Mercersburg this year. The others include Gauss Gymnasium in Worms, Germany; Colegio Alemán de San Felipe in San Felipe, Chile; and Collège-Lycée Saint-Joseph in Thônes, France.

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1,046 Words

This snapshot, submitted by Teak Romtrairut ’19, highlights the beauty of Lenfest Hall and the Irvine Memorial Chapel as seen at night. Romtrairut was a first-place winner in this year’s Beat the Pros student photo and video contest. To see all the winning entries, visit www.mercersburg.edu/beatthepros2016.

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Burgin Center Marks a Decade as the Arts Hub on Campus

By Megan Mallory

MERCERSBURG MAGAZINE SPRING 2017

“T

he new Burgin Center for the Arts was in such high demand last fall that it couldn’t wait for a grand-opening celebration to open its doors. But alumni, friends, and invited guests nonetheless traveled from far and wide (and all corners of the world) to witness the dedication of the building and the festivities surrounding it November 3–4 in Mercersburg.” –Mercersburg magazine, Spring 2007 In the fall of 2006, Mercersburg Academy unveiled a new performing-arts building. During the official dedication weekend, Academy Award-winning actor Benicio Del Toro ’85 came to campus and hosted afternoon student workshops. A ribbon-cutting and dedication ceremony honored former headmaster Walter H. Burgin Jr. ’53, for whom the building is named, and world-renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman and New York City Ballet principal dancers Yvonne Borree and Nikolaj Hübbe performed an evening concert in the beautiful new space for the school and community.

Favorite Memories & Highlights from Wells

“How we use the space—

Gray

a lot of times we go out of the classroom, out of the studio and use the building for what it offers outside and inside. We’ll use the hill outside.

We’ll break out of the classroom, using the gallery more and having critiques in the gallery.”

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Favorite Memories & Highlights from Debbie

Rutherford

“The very first thing we did when the building opened in 2006, that August we invited everyone who lives between the campus and Main Street to a neighborhood picnic. Before school opened, we invited everyone up to a big barbecue on the porch, and I remember looking at the windows and seeing the mountains reflected in those windows all around like it’s just part of the landscape.

It’s chilling to look at that and see how the building really does reflect the landscape when you are outside.”

In the decade since the Burgin Center opened, it has become a nerve center, a hub of activity and community gatherings, and a central home for the arts and more on Mercersburg’s campus. Thinking back over a decade with the Burgin Center, Douglas Hale, head of school at the time of the Burgin Center’s creation, says, “Oh my goodness, has it been 10 years? That seems impossible, but then on the other hand, I can hardly remember the school before the Burgin Center because it’s so much a part of the school right now. It’s been a great space where form and function have come together.”

WHERE THE BURGIN CENTER FITS IN MERCERSBURG’S HISTORY

Even before the Burgin Center, the arts had a significant history at Mercersburg, and that history was already more than a century old when the school broke ground for the new performing-arts building. A glee club first performed in 1894, and Stony Batter premiered its first dramatic productions in 1899.

However, the arts weren’t always as visible as they are today. As Jim Applebaum wrote in his 2007 Mercersburg magazine article about the Burgin Center’s opening, “The arts played second fiddle to athletics at the all-male Mercersburg (as at many similar boarding schools) until coeducation raised the ante. Walter Burgin brought an interest in the arts that furthered an institution seeking to attract women as well as men.” Burgin, who served as headmaster from 1972–1997, introduced studio arts into the curriculum, and this helped plant the seeds for future growth as the school determined where to focus energy and money.

“We are obviously a campus that is blessed with amazing grounds, facilities, and programs, and program always drives building,” says Debbie Rutherford, associate head of school and a member of the Mercersburg faculty since 1977. “Before you build anything, you have to establish the need for it. So, when we did our master planning in the 1980s, we identified several improvements that we needed to make to our facilities. We knew we wanted to

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renovate our academic spaces because they were getting pretty long in the tooth. We knew we wanted to upgrade and renovate our residential spaces, and we knew we would really like to have an arts space that would serve our growing program better.

“The first major initiative was academics. We focused on building a new library, and then we renovated Irvine Hall and made Rutledge Hall the home of the English department.”

Students, faculty, and staff on campus at that time might remember the Lenfest Shuffle in the early 1990s. “We did the Lenfest Shuffle where we moved everything out of the old library, which was over in the Edwards Room,” says Rutherford. The whole school pitched in to help with the move, and everyone got Lenfest Shuffle T-shirts.

Burgin Center photo by Electa Willander ’18

Favorite Memories & Highlights from Matteo

Scammell ’07

“I got to witness and experience my friends’ artwork in that building...

I got to perform in that building. It was a haven and a home for me to make art in, and it was a place of discovery.

Wonder and discovery—that’s what art is for me, and the building sort of typifies that.

We’re all sharing in something that we are building together.”

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Then, the next phase was residential, and Mercersburg renovated all the dormitories over a period of about 10 years. In the midst of this growth and change, Burgin retired and Mercersburg welcomed Hale as the new head of school in 1997. He was just the person to bring attention to the arts, grow the program, and take Mercersburg’s strength in the arts to the next level.

“The arts were not as central as they are now,” Hale remembers. “They were well subscribed to and they were taught well and they were done well, but it was not as comprehensive, and Mercersburg really didn’t have a facility that delivered the program in the same way that the chemistry department did or the library did or the other spaces on campus did.”

Prior to Hale’s arrival, dance was not offered at Mercersburg, and other activities such as theatre and music existed mainly as extracurricular activities. In 1998, Mercersburg’s first academic courses in theatre became part of the curriculum when Laurie Mufson joined the faculty as the Academy’s first full-time theatre director. The music department offerings broadened during this time, and dance became a school offering.

“The arts were lively in their own ways, but we were all dispersed,” Mufson recalls of her first years at Mercersburg.

“Visual Arts took place up in the fourth floor of Irvine, and I was by myself almost all the time in the basement of Boone Hall. During music periods, there would be Band and Chorale, but otherwise, it was just me and two people who comprised the communications office staff in this cavernous building.”

Boone Hall—named after Vice Admiral Joel T. Boone (1909), who earned the Medal of Honor for his service in World War I—sat where the Burgin Center of the Arts sits now. Boone was essentially a large auditorium with a stage and a basement. That basement served many different purposes during the life of the building, including a spot for prom at one point. It was converted into the science department while Irvine Hall underwent renovations in the early 1990s, and the space was sectioned off for theatre, dance, and music when Hale came to Mercersburg. Mufson remembers teaching theatre in her area of the Boone Hall basement and hearing singing coming through the ducts from another area of the basement.

Denise Dalton, director of dance and a faculty member since 2002, remembers the dance studio in that building.

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“My first year [on the faculty] was in Boone, and the dance studio was a platform that dropped off on the end,” Dalton says. “The mirror only went halfway down the wall, and you couldn’t see your feet in the mirror. It was dangerous because it was a stage with a ledge, so it was not ideal.”

To answer the challenge of a growing program outgrowing its space on campus, Hale went to work, fundraising and gathering support for building a central hub for the arts at Mercersburg. “This was heavy lifting to get this thing done—the heaviest lifting probably of all the buildings that happened during my time there,” Hale says, “but there’s no point in dwelling on that because you have heavy lifting every now and then. Getting this done was long and hard, but getting it done was really, really worth it.”

A NATIONAL TRAGEDY AND A NEW BEGINNING

Once Hale secured the necessary support to move forward with building a fine-arts center, it was time to bring in an architectural firm to help choose a location and design a structure to meet the growing needs of the program.

Polshek Partnership Architects, a New York-based firm, won the contract, and a date was set for the architects to travel to Mercersburg for an initial planning meeting: September 11, 2001. “[The architects] flew from New York to Reagan National Airport [near Washington, D.C.] on the morning of September 11,” Rutherford remembers. “They got their rental car and drove to campus. They didn’t have the radio on or anything, and they walked into Traylor Hall, and Susan Simar [admission receptionist and staff member since 1988] met them and said, ‘Did you hear that planes crashed into the World Trade Center?’ It was at that point in time when nobody quite knew what it meant. We were all just learning about it, and the towers hadn’t collapsed yet.”

The architects immediately drove back to New York to be with their families, and Mercersburg turned its attention to the needs of the students and school community.

Planning for the Burgin Center halted temporarily as the world took in the tragedy.

“That was potentially a less-than-auspicious beginning,” Rutherford says. “But what’s really interesting is things like that can really draw you together, too, and I remember Tim Hartung [one of the lead architects] called me on September 11 the next year, and for several years after that, we would call each other on that day. He also ended up falling in love with Mercersburg as a school.”

Hartung enrolled his son Zander ’05 at Mercersburg part of the way through Zander’s high-school career, and

Zander’s younger sister Arcadia ’09 came to Mercersburg beginning in the ninth grade.

“It’s a building that, for me, is important for all kinds of reasons. Every building on campus is important,” says Hale, “but it feels like on that awful day in 2001 where there was so much destruction and things being torn down, we started the process of building that building. It has been an interesting kind of footnote to that building, and we have just gotten so many things out of that building.”

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ith the passage of 10 years, it might be hard to picture Mercersburg and the Quad without the Burgin Center, but back in 2001, a big question loomed: Where should the Burgin Center go? “There were several different site possibilities. One of them was across from Tippetts Beach,” says Rutherford. “Or do we put it between Rutledge and Ford Hall in the heart of campus? Do we put it where Boone is? Do we knock Boone down or do we renovate Boone? All of those things were in play.”

After much conversation, deliberation, and study, the Quad emerged as the best spot. “If you took [the arts] out of the Quad and tried to turn Boone Hall into something else, it would diminish the central nature of the arts,” says Mufson. “But by having it be one of the corner posts of the Quad, it also underscores its centrality, and it also brought us all under one roof.”

The new building would need to be a performance hall, a place for community gatherings and meetings, and home to all of the arts on campus. Hale remembers various scenarios where the architects tried to fit all of these needs into the blueprint of Boone Hall. “We tried every way in the world we could to see if Boone Hall could be retrofitted, renovated, and redone to support the program that we wanted to have in a fine-arts center,” Hale says. “At every turn, we came up with the answer to that being that it was impossible. The architects basically came back to us and said, ‘Unless we do these draconian things, it’s not going to work. And even then, it’s going to look and feel awkward and clumsy.’”

A new building had to be built, and Wells Gray, current head of the fine-arts department and a member of the faculty since 1999, remembers part of the planning process: “All the educators at the time had a voice in their teaching studios. Upstairs in painting, they asked for natural light coming in, for example. So, we were given specificity to have a voice in the process. We sat down with the architects and told them what our needs were.”

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Favorite Memories & Highlights from Denise

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Dalton

“I get to walk into a beautiful facility that validates what I do and what I love on a daily basis. I get to share that joy with my students, and ultimately, whether they go on to be artists or not, they will value the arts, and they will become patrons of the arts. That’s my life, and it’s a daily highlight.

It’s all about the students.

That’s why the building was built—to truly give them everything.”

The outcome is now a st aple of the Quad: a 65,000-square-foot building with a 600-seat theatre (the Simon Theatre), a 120-seat black box theatre (the Hale Studio Theatre), two recital halls, a digital art lab and digital music lab, two dance studios, four art studios, an acting studio and a general arts classroom, practice rooms, and faculty offices.

“The building itself is a statement. We wanted to bring the outside in and the inside out,” says Gray. “It’s a huge pulse once you’re in here. The music rooms are designed for music to be played in them, and it is also to be heard when you are in the building even though the doors are closed. When you come in the building, you know dance is going on, or you know the Chorale is singing, or you know the Band is playing. There’s this pulse and life. The outside is coming in. It’s not just a building sitting with walls.”

It’s also designed to fit into the landscape. “We didn’t want the building to turn its back on the town,” says Hale.

“That’s why it’s designed the way that it is with all glass. It’s kind of a modern-day Parthenon. It has no backside. The back is just as beautiful as the front. It feels accessible and open all around it. It’s very democratic.”

10 YEARS LATER: THE BURGIN CENTER TODAY

Almost four years after his graduation from Mercersburg in 2005, Zander Hartung, now a professional photographer and videographer, returned to the school to do a presentation on the Simon Theatre stage in January 2009. “He was on stage, giving this program, and I had a moment where I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, your dad built this building where you are,’” Rutherford remembers. “Talk about coming full circle.”

A feeling of awe is a regular occurrence for people in the Burgin Center, and it extends to faculty, too—even after 10 years. “We are all very appreciative, and we know we’re fortunate,” Gray says. “We don’t talk about it all the time,

Favorite Memories & Highlights from Melanie Jiang

’17

“The week leading up to a dance concert, even though it’s a stressful time, that’s definitely one of the highlights for me.

Seeing all your work come to fruition and supporting people—either by cheering in the wings or seeing how happy they are after they’ve performed something they’ve worked so hard on.”

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History within the Burgin’s Walls: Connecting the Past and the Present “Two years ago, fall of ’04, the upper-middler class arrived on campus as lowly juniors, the seniors returned for their lower-middler year, and the now alumni witnessed the destruction of Boone Hall, the school auditorium. Boone was a fixture on Mercersburg’s campus for over 40 years and although the beloved building held many memories (and ghosts), a new arts building was desperately needed.”

—Taylor Hoffman ’08, The Mercersburg News, September 2006 As the events within the Burgin Center for the Arts continue to forge new paths into Mercersburg’s future, Mercersburg’s past remains close at hand. The “memories (and ghosts),” as Hoffman says, have their own spots in the Burgin Center today. The Boone Hall Memory Wall, for instance, a piece of art on an interior south-facing wall of the Burgin Center, pays homage to the history that once stood on that space.

The Boone Hall Memory Wall

“That piece of art almost looks like a giant bird from afar. It’s a collage that we commissioned from Mark Flowers and Kristy Higby, the art teachers at the time,” says Hale. “It sort of represents the history of Boone to show all the great things that had happened in Boone because we wanted to pull the rest of the alums who had been a part of Boone into the [new space in the Burgin]. Our dreams made manifest.”

The artwork spans 20 feet and includes a variety of materials (copper, parchment paper, paintbrushes, glass, remnants of Boone Hall, brass printing plates from old yearbooks, and more). Built into the artwork are wooden boxes that open to reveal laminated books of photos that chronicle Mercersburg’s history in theatre, visual arts, music, and dance.

One of those boxes shows off an image of the Second Story Wheat student group.

“Second Story Wheat was basically a coffeehouse-type, jam, activist, awareness club, and

it met on the second story of Boone Hall,” says Matteo Scammell ’07, an alumnus who experienced the transformation from Boone Hall to the Burgin Center. “The room had couches and it was dimly lit, and people would play acoustic guitar. That’s my memory of Boone.” Second Story Wheat has come and gone over the years, depending on students’ interest to revive it. It originated in the 1970s, and then reappeared in the 1990s into the early 2000s.

Elsewhere in the building, visitors can find a beam signed by the whole school. As the school broke ground for the Burgin Center, “a crane laid that beam in front of the Chapel, and the architect spoke to the school [at a school meeting] about the building process,” Rutherford says. “After the Chapel program, everybody came out and we had a big signing party.” That beam can now be seen across the back of the catwalks in the Simon Theatre.

Finally, a school theatre tradition in Boone Hall included actors signing an Autograph Wall following performances of the various plays in that space. “These buildings have history, and I remember the Signature Wall in Boone. It was huge. It was epic,” Scammell says. Scammell had a dual role, playing both Mr. Collins and Mr. Gardiner in the first production of Pride and Prejudice in the Burgin Center.

To carry on the tradition, the Burgin Center has an Autograph Wall behind the Simon Theatre stage and one behind the Hale Studio Theatre stage. “The Pride and Prejudice cast was the first to autograph the wall in the Burgin,” says Scammell. “It was ritualistic.

It was like we were breaking the ice officially [in the Burgin]. We’re the first ones, and that always feels sort of daunting, and you want to make your mark count.”

The Burgin Center also has an Alumni Wall for Mercersburg alumni to sign behind the Simon Theatre stage, connecting past with present and allowing all generations of Mercersburg students to continue to make their mark count.

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Favorite Memories & Highlights from Doug

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Hale

“I was able to sit in the Simon Theatre—that fabulous theatre— and announce in that theatre to the school community that Deborah Simon ’74, the person who had given the theatre, had also given the school $100 million.

That was a highlight. And just to be able to see all the great plays and all the great music and hear the great speakers. I mean, the speakers who have been there have been just amazing.

They are all highlights in my opinion.”

but it comes back for me as department head, when [finearts faculty] come back from the summer and talk about what we did with our summer, there’s always a story there about how fortunate we are and how supported we are.”

While the 10-year anniversary will not include another visit from Benicio Del Toro or Itzhak Perlman, Mercersburg has identified a few special ways to mark the occasion.

Mufson chose Pride and Prejudice as the fall 2016 theatre production for the main stage because that is the first student play ever to be performed in the Simon Theatre.

Additionally, as this issue of Mercersburg magazine goes to print, students are performing Fiddler on the Roof, a show last performed in Boone Hall in 2003.

“We talked about [anniversary celebrations], but do we really need to spend money to bring someone famous in here? We don’t,” says Mufson. “It’s about honoring the work that our kids do. This building was built for our students to have this space to work in.”

The Burgin Center for the Arts demonstrates the school’s dedication to the arts, but it doesn’t transform the school into an “arts school.” Instead, as so many faculty, staff, and students are quick to point out, one doesn’t have to be a patron of the fine arts to appreciate the Burgin Center.

“We have tale after tale of football players who were in the musical, soccer players who were in the dance concert,” says Quentin McDowell, assistant head of school for enrollment, who joined Mercersburg’s faculty in 2007.

“This has become common place here, and I think one of the great things about the Burgin Center and the programs that inhabit it is that it actually encourages students who otherwise never would have explored that part of their lives—joined a theatre class or taken a dance class—to be exposed to that and to be excited by those opportunities and eventually to try them and become much more wellrounded, diverse kids.”

Melanie Jiang ’17 agrees. She’s seen many friends from all walks of life get hooked on the arts from just one class in the Burgin Center. “I have a friend who is a senior and only just started taking art classes this year,” she says. “My friend took painting, and now I can never find her on a Sunday afternoon because she is always in the painting studio.” Jiang herself is a four-year dancer, and she’s spent countless hours in the Burgin Center working on The Mercersburg News and the KARUX yearbook.

“I think the Burgin is the place on campus that most unites people in several different ways,” Jiang says. “For instance, the student center is definitely a social playground, and Irvine is definitely for intellectual discourse.

I feel like in the Burgin, you can make friends and socialize, but you can also have that artistic element of working on ceramics or teaching someone else how to build a pot or how to paint or how to create a dance piece, and it also involves a lot of intellectual thinking. It is a nice melting pot of all the different aspects that the campus has to offer.”

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Under One Roof Presenting the Hale Field House, a true multipurpose athletic facility

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by lee owen

ith the opening of the Hale Field House, Mercersburg’s winter track & field program—which has been in existence since the early 1900s—is now finally able to experience home field advantage (as well as home track advantage) for the first time. The building is the largest indoor field house in the Mid-Atlantic Prep League and home to one of only two competition-size tracks in the MAPL. Yet the 62,000-square-foot building, with a total project cost of approximately $12 million and its 200meter Reeder Track with six turn lanes and eight sprint lanes, is much more than just a venue for track & field.

On a Sunday afternoon just after the field house opened to the school community in January, boys’ and girls’ lacrosse players utilized a special wall in the building (with a 6-degree slope) to practice throwing and catching, basketball players played a pickup game on one of the four courts inside the track (which can host basketball practices and even tennis competition should inclement weather push matches indoors), and students and faculty trained and exercised by running and walking laps around the oval.

The facility also includes a drop-down tunnel cage with netting that can host batting practice for baseball or softball, or swing practice for golf. And everything in the field house takes place in front of a large video board (22 feet wide by 14 feet high) on the east wall, which includes a state-of-the-art Lynx Fully Automatic Timing System for meets.

“The Hale Field House is a much-needed space for the athletic program we run,” says Rick Hendrickson, Mercersburg’s director of athletics. “It’s a multifunctional facility. It’s a gorgeous facility, and it’s extremely diverse in terms of what we can do with it.”

The field house—which joins the facility at Lawrenceville School in New Jersey as the lone competition-size indoor track in the MAPL—sports a BSS 1000 Hobart Surface, which was installed by Beynon Company of Hunt Valley, Maryland, and is the premiere surface of its kind. Conewago Enterprises of Hanover,

Pennsylvania, was the general contractor for the project.

Bowie Gridley Architects of Washington, D.C., designed the field house, which occupies land that previously held two parking lots (and before that, the Funkhouser Tennis Courts, which transitioned to parking space when the Smoyer Tennis Center was completed in 2001). A brand-new parking lot located across McFarland Road from the field house provides space Douglas Hale for campus events (including those taking place inside the Hale Field House and Nolde Gymnasium).

The building is named in honor of Douglas Hale, Mercersburg’s head of school from 1997 to 2016. The field house was a key priority of Mercersburg’s recently completed Daring to Lead Campaign, which raised more than $300 million.

Students and athletic teams began using the space in early January after returning to campus from winter vacation. The first meet held in the field house was the Mercersburg Invitational on January 27, which featured Blue Storm athletes competing against a mix of their counterparts from area public and private schools. It was a successful debut; Mercersburg athletes broke three school records and tied a fourth mark at the event.

“We’ve been used to running and practicing outside,” says Finley Stewart ’17, a member of Mercersburg’s indoor (and outdoor) track & field team. “On the first day of practice [inside the field house], I dressed the same way I usually do for practice outdoors, with an overcoat, sweatshirt, long-sleeve shirt, and leggings. By the middle of practice, I was sweating, which was an amazing feeling. Being warm is a big part of track & field—it helps stretch out your muscles and reduces the chance of injury. I haven’t felt that good at a track practice since last May.” The field house is connected to the north side of the school’s existing athletic center, and includes a new lobby

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The Reeder Track inside the Hale Field House

Alex Solganik ’17 competes in the boys’ 800m dash during Mercersburg’s first home indoor track & field meet on January 27. Solganik placed first with a time of 2:10.75.

and mezzanine level. Inside the track is space for the aforementioned basketball/tennis courts as well as field events (including two jumping pits for the long jump and triple jump, and space to contest high jump, pole vault, and shot put competitions).

“No longer will we have to worry about the weather to plan our workouts,” says David Grady, Mercersburg’s head indoor track & field coach. “We’ll be able to do all the workouts we need to do whenever we need to do them. We can practice full flights of hurdles and complete jumps, so this is really going to benefit our athletes in lots of different ways.”

On February 18, Mercersburg hosted the MAPL Indoor Track & Field Championships for the first time in school history. Earlier the same week, the school held a formal dedication ceremony for the building, which featured Hale and his wife, Peggy.

Design and development are also underway for the school’s planned new aquatic center, which will be located to the east of the field house and athletic center. A timeline for construction is slated to be finalized by this summer.

For coverage of the Hale Field House dedication ceremony (which took place as this issue of Mercersburg magazine was going to press), visit www.mercersburg.edu or look for the summer 2017 issue of Mercersburg.

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A Look Back at Mercersburg’s Dearly Departed Buildings

BY DOUGLAS SMITH, SCHOOL ARCHIVIST

The Samuel Thomas Athletic Cage

When constructing a new building at Mercersburg Academy, one has to take into consideration that what we build will be here for the next century of students. Architectural styles change, building techniques evolve, and people come and go, but through it all, the school remains. As Mercersburg celebrates the 10-year anniversary of the Burgin Center for the Arts and unveils the new Hale Field House, it’s a perfect moment to pay homage to the buildings that have graced our campus over the years but are no longer standing. The reason behind the removal of each of these old edifices varies greatly, but each building has a story to tell. ’Eighty-eight Dormitory

THE SAMUEL THOMAS ATHLETIC CAGE

Old Main Hall

OLD MAIN HALL

1837–1927 Old Main Hall was the first of the original three buildings on campus. In 1896, Dr. William Mann Irvine, Mercersburg’s founding headmaster, embarked on his first piece of campus construction: adding a wing to Main Hall to allow the building to house the Chapel, dormitory, library, recitation hall, and literary society halls. This new wing came to be known as the Annex. Old Main Hall (along with the Annex) was the first and only Mercersburg building to meet

its demise in an unplanned way: on a cold January night in 1927, a fire broke out on the fourth floor and consumed the entire building. The fire started in the trunk room of the “Buzzard’s Roost,” the top floor of Old Main Hall, and quickly spread. Legend has it that one of the boys rolled a piano out of the building and played music. The snow began to fall, and the great Old Main Hall burned through the night, leaving only the building’s skeleton by morning.

1899–1912 The Cage, which served as the school’s original gymnasium, was the first freestanding building built during Dr. Irvine’s tenure. Irvine deeply believed in developing the entire person, as evidenced by the school’s original three basic principles: “Hard Work, Fair Play, Clean Life.”

Physical exercise was a priority for him, and the Cage served as a testament to the importance with which Irvine viewed athletics. That being said, the Cage was never long for the campus because the headmaster always had designs on a much nicer, state-of-the-art fitness center. In 1912, just 13 years after the creation of the first gymnasium, Nolde Gymnasium replaced the Cage. ’EIGHTY-EIGHT DORMITORY

1904–1972 Beloved ’Eighty-eight was a fixture on campus for more than 60 years. It was named in honor of the Princeton University Class of 1888, whose members helped raise the funds to build it. Joseph M. Huston, an old friend of Dr. Irvine’s from his Princeton days, was called upon to design a gor-

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The Shacks

Laucks Hall

geous Tudor Gothic dormitory. Huston had worked previously with Mercersburg as the lead designer of the ornate interior of our present-day Edwards Room. Woodrow Wilson, then president of Princeton University and later the 28th President of the United States, broke ground on this dormitory.

When the time came for the venerable old building to receive a major overhaul of the interior, it was deemed unsound. The entire structure needed to be replaced from the basement to the roof, and the only parts that could be saved were the foundation and the exterior walls. The cost to remodel the existing building was substantial, so the school made the decision to demolish ’Eighty-eight. As the story goes, the old dorm put up quite a fight. It required several wrecking balls and many hours of labor, but eventually, the building succumbed to the pummeling. One of the wrecking balls is still with us in the archives. To this day, many alumni lament the loss of their beloved dorm.

LAUCKS HALL

1906–1963 Theophilus Chandler Jr., a noted architect and founder of the department of architec-

Boone Hall

ture at the University of Pennsylvania, was hired to design this new dormitory. Named for prominent donor Israel Laucks of the York Safe Company, the dorm housed the chess room, the hobby shop, the bookstore, and other clubs and meeting rooms. Laucks was originally home to the Academy’s underclassmen, but due in large part to Fred Kuhn (affectionately known as “Kuhnie”), Mercersburg’s legendary wrestling coach and Laucks Hall dorm dean for 25 years, the dorm’s popularity grew with upper middlers and seniors.

THE SHACKS

1927–1950 In response to the Old Main Hall fire, the school set up emergency classrooms on campus. Located on the Quad near where present-day Irvine Hall stands, these classrooms lasted for 23 years until the completion of Irvine Hall in 1950. The Shacks were functional but not ideal. These classrooms overstayed their welcome, but with the Great Depression and World War II, the school wasn’t in a position to build a new building. The fundraising for new classroom space began in 1939, and it took an entire decade to raise the funds to construct Irvine Hall.

BOONE HALL

1962–2005 Boone Hall was named for Vice Admiral Joel T. Boone (1909), the most highly decorated naval officer of World War I. He also served as physician to U.S. presidents Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Completed in 1962, Boone Hall remained in use until 2005, when construction began on the Burgin Center for the Arts. Boone Hall served a variety of purposes, but was most prominently used as an assembly hall and a theatre. Equipped with all the latest advancements for its time, this building was instrumental in developing Mercersburg’s arts, theatre, and music programs into what we have today.

As the Academy finishes one of its most prolific campus development periods, it’s important to remember that each improvement and addition is driven by student needs.

From the Annex to the Hale Field House, the Academy has the students’ experience in mind. The stunning and historic campus we see today is a tribute to the work and dedication of more than a century of faculty, students, administrators, and alumni, and we all owe a debt of gratitude to those who have made Mercersburg Academy such a special place.

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PEAK

PERFORMERS Whether they were students before, during, or after the creation of the Burgin Center for the Arts, Mercersburg Academy alumni are pushing the boundaries of what it means to hone their craft.

They’ve contributed to shows like Desperate Housewives, they’ve performed in dance halls around the globe, and they’ve chased whitewater rafts full of teenagers, trying to capture the perfect picture. They practice their passion—whether that passion includes writing, painting, theatre, dance, athletics, photography, or a myriad of other areas, across the country and throughout the world. The profiles on the following pages offer just a snapshot into the immense talent that exists within Mercersburg’s alumni family—which also includes luminaries like Class of 1985 classmates Benicio Del Toro (Oscar-winning actor), Michael Davies (Emmy-winning producer and soccer commentator), and Luke Ebbin (music producer who has worked with the likes of Bon Jovi), as well as NBC Sports anchor Rebecca Lowe ’99 and the late actors Jimmy Stewart ’28 (It’s a Wonderful Life, The Philadelphia Story) and John Payne ’32 (Miracle on 34th Street).

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Sam Rodgers ’11, all-american

By Lee Owen

WHEN SAM RODGERS ’11 spoke at his college graduation, it wasn’t live.

As his Syracuse University graduating class was participating in its commencement exercises, Rodgers—who was chosen as a class marshal by his fellow graduates in the David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics—was 150 miles west in Orchard Park, New York, working out for the Buffalo Bills of the National Football League.

How could Rodgers “be” in two places at once? Chalk it up to the magic of video— and the power of time management and relationships.

“The Bills called me on a Wednesday before I was about to graduate on Saturday,” says Rodgers, whose Syracuse football teammates voted him a team co-captain—even as he played one of the least-heralded positions on the roster (long snapper). “I had agreed to speak at graduation, so I went to the administrators of the college to explain my situation. They were really supportive, and since I had become friends with the guys on the football-operations staff, I asked our video guy to film me delivering the speech. So it played on the screen at the ceremony while I was at the Bills’ minicamp.”

Rodgers was a three-sport standout at Mercersburg (football, wrestling, baseball), but he figured out early that his best chance at a college scholarship was long-snapping (for the less-gridiron savvy among us, a long snapper hikes the ball back to the holder or punter on field goals, extra points, and punts). He first tried the position in eighth grade, and after going to a long-snapping camp in Las Vegas, he started receiving mail from the likes of Alabama, Penn State, and several Ivy League schools. (He even spent an entire academic term at Mercersburg after classes working exclusively on his snapping technique.)

Ohio State was interested in Rodgers as a walk-on player at first, but when Syracuse offered a full scholarship (and

Sam Rodgers (center) as long snapper for the Syracuse Orange

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Rodgers declaiming in 2010

after some advice over the phone from then-Ohio State head coach Jim Tressel), Rodgers ultimately chose the Orange. He went on to appear in 50 games for Syracuse from 2011–2014, and was named to the Capital One Academic All-America Team and the American Football Coaches Association’s Good Works Team (for which just 22 Division I players are chosen each year).

Rodgers credits much of his success to his time at Mercersburg.

“I found out there what it takes to work hard academically, how rewarding it can be, and how I could be more efficient at doing the things I needed to do,” he says. “So when I got to college and I was on the football team, I could get my work done and also do a lot of extra stuff.”

The “extra stuff” is an impressive list for any young person, much less a major-college football player. Rodgers spent two years as president of the Syracuse contingent of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, went to Haiti twice on mission trips, and helped found a chapter of Uplifting Athletes, an organization that raises money to benefit research for the fight against rare diseases. (In Syracuse’s case, the target is anaplastic astrocytoma, a form of brain cancer that struck former punter Rob Long, who, thankfully, made a full recovery and now works for the organization.)

“When you’re a college football player, you look around and see that people care about the things you’re doing,” says Rodgers, whose father (John ’79), aunt (Joy Rodgers-Mernin ’78), and two uncles (James ’81 and David ’83) are fellow Mercersburg alumni.

“People want to talk about you and write newspaper articles about you. If you can set an example of service, maybe you can inspire people to do good things.”

The window of opportunity for prospective NFL long snappers is extremely limited: each of the 32 NFL teams has room for just one on its roster. Since his first tryout with the Bills, Rodgers has also worked out for the Green Bay Packers, Denver Broncos, Arizona Cardinals, and most recently, the Atlanta Falcons. He enrolled at the Syracuse College of Law in the fall, but with a wide-open outlook on the future—whether or not it ultimately involves an NFL team.

“Honestly, I’m excited about the broad range of opportunities that are out there,” Rodgers says. “Public service is something I’m interested in. If you work in government or in politics, you can hopefully inspire the people you represent. I’ve seen firsthand the things people can do for their communities when they have a platform.”

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BLUE NOTES BRYAN MORGAN ’07 BRINGS HIS BLEND OF SWEET MUSIC BACK TO CAMPUS The story is part of Morgan family lore.

The toddler sits in the backseat. His mother has the radio on, listening to Boyz II Men’s “End of the Road.” Joneice Morgan is a doctor by trade, but a singer at heart. And apparently her child is too (at least the second part).

From the back of the car comes a squeal, in perfect pitch with the song playing through the speakers. It was one of the first performances in the young life of Bryan Morgan ’07, but it certainly wouldn’t be the only one.

Today, a decade after he graduated from Mercersburg, Morgan is back on campus as a faculty member in the fine-arts department, directing the Jazz Band and Chorale, serving as an assistant football coach, working with athletic development, and living in Tippetts Hall.

“I’m honored to be back here,” Morgan says. “You really get to know the students here.

The sense of community really attracted me, as well as the opportunity to know and love not just the kids but everybody else here. When I got the call [offering me a position at Mercersburg], it was a no-brainer. I did ask [then-Head of School] Doug Hale to give me a night to think it over, even though I knew the answer already.”

As a postgraduate student at Mercersburg, Morgan was a member of the Octet and Concert Band and played multiple roles in Stony Batter Players’ production of the musical Grease—in addition to another important activity in his life before, during, and after Mercersburg: the aforementioned sport of football.

In Hoover, Alabama, where Morgan grew up and attended Hoover High School (the largest high school in the state and a bonafide athletic powerhouse), football is king. Hoover won the Alabama Class 6A state championship in all four of Morgan’s years there. So it’s not surprising that when MTV decided to focus on a highschool football program for its reality-show documentary Two-A-Days, it chose the Buccaneers.

Morgan got some screen time on the show, but not quite as much as he earned in his four years of college at Duke University, where he was a co-captain of the football team and started at center for three seasons. The 6-foot-3, 260-pound Morgan appeared in 47 games for

By Lee Owen

Bryan Morgan (left) and Pat Morgan ’08 with their cardboard stand-ins for an Octet performance during the 2006–2007 school year

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the Blue Devils, earning All-Atlantic Coast Conference freshman honors his first year and a spot on the Allstate Good Works Team as a senior (as well as a University Scholar Athlete Award from the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame).

All the while, he majored in music, was the first-chair clarinetist in the Duke Wind Symphony, composed several symphonic and band pieces, and eventually earned a master’s in music education from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

It was a long way from the fourth-gradeversion of Morgan, who came home from a concert at his elementary school dead-set on joining the band. The start of his official musical career was rocky, to say the least.

“The first days, I had no idea how to read music,” he remembers. “We’d be playing a piece of music and I’d be watching other people’s fingers, and just holding every note and not paying any attention to the rhythm.”

Luckily, Morgan’s father, Isom, came to the rescue; he also played the clarinet (as did an aunt, whose Bundy plastic student clarinet became Bryan Morgan’s first instrument). “Having my dad sit down with me and work with me was a huge help in understanding what was going on,” he says. “My band teacher said he’d never seen anyone learn as quickly as I did. When I got to middle school, most of the other kids were just starting out with band, so I had a whole year ahead of them.”

Morgan played organized basketball as a child but didn’t take up football until seventh grade. “I was a fish out of water when I started,” he says. “I just did the best I could. My seventh-grade year actually went better than my eighth-grade year—so much that I was contemplating not playing anymore. But I went on with it, and when I got to high school, it just clicked.”

After his first season on the freshman team, Morgan was moved up to practice

Morgan in a 2007 Mercersburg admission brochure for prospective students

with the Hoover varsity as it steamrolled through the Alabama state playoffs. The next season, as a sophomore, he made the varsity and burst onto the college-football recruiting scene; letters arrived in his mailbox from places like Alabama and Auburn as well as North Carolina and Duke (Morgan’s first official offer, later in high school, was actually from Oregon).

On his official recruiting visit to Duke, Morgan decided that’s where he wanted to go, but there was one big problem— the Blue Devils had no scholarships left for the Class of 2006. “They were straight with me,” he says. “They said, ‘We know you really want to come here, and we want you here, so here’s an option: if you go to a prep school for a year, we’ll hold a scholarship for you in the next class, and you’ll be our top offensive-line prospect.’

“But my first question was, ‘What’s a prep school?’”

Upon returning home to Alabama, Morgan started getting calls from prospective institutions. “The first calls were from military schools—Hargrave Military Academy and Fork Union Milit ary Academy in Virginia,” he remembers. “My parents said, ‘We know you don’t want to go to a military school.’ Those were the closest prep schools [to home]. Next there was a call from Salisbury School in Connecticut; they were good in sports, and I noticed they wore uniforms during the class day, which wasn’t a big deal to me. But I was a 17-yearold boy, and I looked at the brochures and the website, and I wondered where all the girls were. I know that’s kind of shallow, but I thought I’d be happier at a coed school.

“Then Coach [Dan] Walker called from Mercersburg. We looked at Mercersburg online, and to me, it looked like Duke if Duke was one-fourth the size. It wasn’t as far away as Salisbury. So I thought we should look at it.”

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Morgan with Parker Hancock ’18 after a Mercersburg football victory

Morgan flew up for a visit in April 2006, and met his tour guide—who just so happened to have the same last name. Patrick Morgan ’08 (no relation) showed him around campus. (The Morgans went on to sing together in the Octet, and Pat played the lead role of Danny in Grease when Bryan was cast as Teen Angel and Johnny Casino. Their friendship outlasted their Mercersburg days; Pat went to Davidson College in North Carolina the year after Bryan left for Duke, and the two connected during college as their schedules allowed.)

“I remember there were people around campus saying hello to me by name,” Bryan Morgan says. “I was floored. I remember seeing the dorms, the dining hall, Lower Ford Hall. Then we get back to Traylor Hall, and I notice a drawing on an easel of this modern-looking building. I asked what it was, and they said, ‘It’s the Burgin Center for the Arts, and it’s being built now.’ My ears perked up. A brand-new arts center? I was sold.”

Morgan also visited Walker in Nolde Gymnasium and ran into Vincent Rey ’06, another standout football player and postgraduate who just so happened to be headed to… Duke. Rey (who just completed his seventh year as a linebacker for the National Football League’s Cincinnati Bengals) eventually played alongside Morgan at Duke for three years, and Morgan had three other teammates at Duke who were also Mercersburg alumni: Evalio Harrell ’04, Cameron Jones ’07, and Colin Jones ’07.

“Coach Walker has been a massive influence on me,” Morgan says. “I was really blessed to be able to come here.”

Inside the brand-new Burgin Center, Morgan decided to audition for the Octet. During the tryout, director Richard Rotz pulled Morgan and a fellow auditionee, Aaron Porter ’10, into a classroom to sing to a random female student.

“Mr. Rotz has a way of fishing out who really has what it takes,” Morgan says. (Like Morgan, Porter also went on to sing in the

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Octet.) “I learned pretty quickly that he was going to throw me into the fire. He saw a lot of musical potential in me that I didn’t see in myself.”

Morgan even got to conduct the pit orchestra for a few songs during performances of Grease, and wrote a composition he titled the “Mercersburg Suite” for his senior project.

“Being at a high school with these kinds of resources almost didn’t seem like real life,” he says. “I was so thankful that God led me this way. I always wanted to do my best for the people here, because they did their best for me.”

Still, coming back to Mercersburg to teach never crossed Morgan’s mind, until he received a call from his Mercersburg adviser (faculty member Jo Wrzesinsky) that a position was about to open in the Academy’s fine-arts department with the impending retirement of Jack Hawbaker.

“I had been back in Alabama for four years, and I was in the process of applying for jobs in the Southeast,” he says. “If she had called me the previous summer, I couldn’t have applied, because I was still getting my master’s. But the day before Jo called, my summer independent-study classes had been approved, and that’s

Morgan rehearsing with the Mercersburg Chorale

all I had left to finish. I refuse to believe in coincidence—I believe we all have a path we’re put on.”

Morgan had been working with the band at Chilton County High School in Clanton, Alabama (about 55 miles south of Birmingham), where his good friend Matt Martindale was the band director. Within a week, he was back at Mercersburg for a formal interview. It was his first time back on campus since graduation.

“I saw so many people who were still at Mercersburg from when I was a student here,” says Morgan, who is teaching a new class in Mixing Music this year in addition to his work with the Chorale and Jazz Band. “That spoke really highly about this place, and the resources that are available to everyone here.

“The kids here are not only motivated—they’re generally awesome kids, and they’re so much fun. Here you get the chance to live alongside the kids. You laugh with them, and you’re there for them if they need to talk about something that’s troubling them.

Obviously, as a music teacher, I want them to make the best music possible and sound the best, sing the best, and play the best that they can, but the most important thing for them is to know that they’re loved and appreciated.”

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IN HER OWN WORDS:

Katie Vickers ’06 DANCING WAS A HUGE PART of my experience at Mercersburg. I was always a dancer, but when I came to Mercersburg, I took it a bit more seriously. I stopped playing lacrosse after my freshman year, and I danced full time for the rest of my three years. I also attended Mercersburg at a time when there was a lot of transformation. [Dance instructor] Denise Dalton’s first year at Mercersburg was my freshman year, and the dance department was really small. We were dancing in Boone Hall up until my senior year when they demolished that building to build the Burgin Center. During construction, I remember dancing all over campus: the wrestling room, the Edwards Room, the gallery space in Irvine Hall, and even outside. We were finding every tiny space we could inhabit on campus to practice dance, and it was actually really fun.

While I was at Mercersburg, Denise Dalton really pushed me to go to dance programs in the summer and to go to college for dance, and I’m immensely grateful. It became clear to me at a young age that dance was what I wanted to do as a profession and as a lifestyle. After Mercersburg, I went to Ohio State University, where I got a BFA in dance and a minor in integrative health and wellness.

Following college, I immediately moved to Brussels, Belgium, where I went to a conservatory called P.A.R.T.S. (Performing Arts Research and Training Studios) under the direction of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and her company Rosas, one of the best dance schools in the world. I did a four-

year program there, and I’ve been living in Brussels ever since. I’m choreographing and making my own work, and I’m dancing for Daniel Linehan and the Cullberg Ballet, which is in Stockholm. I’m also building summer programs. I direct the summer program at Mercersburg for dance and theater for young kids, and I’m starting a new summer program at Ohio State where I’m bringing European artists over to the United States.

For my husband [Albert Quesada] and me, it’s important to have a nice dialogue between the two art communities of Europe and the U.S. Recently, my husband received his green card, so we’re planning to move to Philadelphia to hopefully start a cultural center there and then live between Philadelphia and Brussels.

I honestly think that if I hadn’t attended Mercersburg, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing. I think it was clear from the beginning that Mercersburg was a school and a space that allowed me to investigate and explore dance outside of its form. It’s really a way of thinking and a way of living and being in the world. I also remember teaching dance—hip-hop and salsa—to other students during what used to be the music period, a free period right after lunch for artists and musicians to practice their craft. It was a highlight to learn that this art form that I know and love can touch so many people, and I think that’s something amazing about Mercersburg. You can do what you love there and also see how it expands beyond your own interest.

Katie Vickers speaks at a Mercersburg school meeting in January 2016

Editor’s Note: Vickers began working with Mercersburg Summer Programs in 2011, and she and her husband are now co-directors for the Performing Arts Intensive, a two-week camp combining both theatre and dance courses. To learn more, visit www.mercersburgsummer.com.

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IN HIS OWN WORDS:

Sam Miller ’03 I HAD ALWAYS DREAMED about becoming a screenwriter, but it’s something I really started exploring at Mercersburg. Now I’ve been fortunate to work in Hollywood for 10 years. I went to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, where an alumnus helped me secure a job at ABC following college. After several years there, I started working on shows, including Desperate Housewives. My proudest moment was the time I delivered lunch with the fries still hot.

While a writers’ assistant on the CBS show Mom, I pitched some jokes the producers liked, and they promoted me to staff writer mid-season. Then I went to write on a YouTube Red series, Single by 30. The studio behind it liked an idea based on the competitive air guitar career of my cousin and three-year Mercersburg roommate, Kolb Ettenger ’03. I’m finishing up postproduction on that short film now for the studio to get financiers interested in making the concept as a movie.

I only hope our actor is half as good as Kolb.

When you’re a writer, it’s important to have many different experiences, and I’m very thankful Mercersburg is the kind of school that could give me lots of them.

I was an editor at the newspaper, just like my brother [Andrew Miller ’00] and father [Douglas Miller ’68] were. I was part of the football team and the Octet. I performed in a musical and learned taekwondo. I studied art history and computer science.

Ultimately, everything gets used in some script, though my agent chides me for working taekwondo into everything.

Among my favorite experiences, I went to Russia on a spring break trip with Laurie Mufson [director of theatre] and Jim Applebaum [faculty emeritus]. I remember we were on a train in Russia, and Ms. Mufson was reading this massive book. I asked her what it was, and she told me it was the complete works of Shakespeare and that she reread it every couple of years. Ever since then, I’ve had it as my goal to study the complete works of Shakespeare as well. I’m about halfway through now. I’m hoping it will be easier the next time through.

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Q & A WITH One of the most important lessons I learned about writing came from a coach.

During my lower-middler year, the wrestling team needed a heavyweight and Rick Hendrickson recruited me for the position.

He took sprints, which for a heavyweight can seem like torture, and it became this life lesson. “How fast can you go today? How much faster and better can you go tomorrow?” That mentality has been incredibly helpful for writing. Often you don’t like what you are writing or you’re not sure it’s working, but you think, “If I can do this today, I can come back and make it better tomorrow. If I’m getting better every day and the project is getting better every day, I can keep going.” That’s certainly a lesson that I’ve carried with me. However, I still hate running sprints.

Every so often I’ll look on my computer and try to find some of my older material.

One of my oldest scripts is a short film that I wrote at Mercersburg about three students trying to get one up on Mr. [Tom] Rahauser [’74], the dean of students. I’m very, very glad he never saw that script.

I’m currently working on a project that’s set at a boarding school like Mercersburg.

It also happens to be an adaptation of Shakespeare. It all comes to life, though, when my former classmates start influencing the characters. There’s a lot to be said about the community of people you meet at a place like Mercersburg. Not only have they inspired me, they’ve supported me since the very beginning.

Editor’s Note: Miller is a screenwriter and producer, living and working in Los Angeles, California. Including his aforementioned father, brother and cousin, Miller is one of 13 members of his family to attend Mercersburg.

Eddie Kang ’99 Eddie Kang is an artist living and working in Seoul, South Korea. Mercersburg magazine recently caught up with him to ask about his Mercersburg experience and what he’s doing now.

Mercersburg magazine: What are your fondest memories of Mercersburg?

EK: I always enjoyed all of my art classes with [emeriti faculty] Mr. [Mark] Flowers and Ms. [Kristy] Higby. Even back then, I was quite focused on pursuing my dream to become a professional artist, so I used to spend most of my extra time at studios until security guards asked (or forced) me to leave.

MM: Where has life taken you since Mercersburg?

EK: After Mercersburg, I graduated from Rhode Island School of Design. Then, after completing military service, which is mandatory in my home country of Korea, I began my career as a full-time artist.

Since then, I’ve had many shows around the world. Out of all those, one of the most memorable moments was when Mr. Flowers and Ms. Higby showed up at my very first group show in New York City in 2013.

Also, I shared some special moments with Ugonna Onyekwe ’99 and Ravi Jolly ’00 when they came to see my solo show in New York City last July.

MM: What or who has shaped your experiences the most as an artist?

EK: If I had to come up with certain artists or teachers who influenced me the most in learning to become an artist, even after four years at the Rhode Island School of Design, I would have to say Mr. Flowers, Ms. Higby, and my own mother Hyo-Jung Kim, who is also an artist.

MM: What advice do you have for aspiring artists?

EK: Don’t forget the magic!

Eddie Kang (right) with classmate Ugonna Onyekwe ’99 at Kang’s solo art show in New York City last July

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getting familiar with

The Hello Strangers LARISSA CHACE SMITH ’97 AND BRECHYN CHACE ’03 CONNECT IN HARMONY

By Michele Poacelli

Rascal Flatts. Camper Van Beethoven. Alabama Shakes. There are band names that get your attention even before the first strum of guitar.

The Hello Strangers fits that bill. Sisters Larissa Chace Smith ’97 and Brechyn Chace ’03 started the band in 2006. The catchy moniker was inspired by the traditional tune “Arkansas Traveler,” sung by Jerry Garcia and David Grisman on their 1993 album “Not For Kids Only.” In the song Garcia and Grisman pause between playful acoustic guitar riffs to exchange the greeting, “Well, hello stranger.” The name is also a nod to the Carter Family classic, “Hello Stranger.”

Larissa, the older of the two Chace sisters by six years, liked the folksy feeling of the greeting that, with a few tweaks, eventually became the group’s name. A folksy feeling seems just right for The Hello Strangers’ unique blend of east-meets-west, PennsylvaniaAppalachia-meets-Texas-country-honky-tonk music.

If you know anything about the history and genetic make-up of the band, “The Hello Familiars” could be the B-side title. In the dining room of a cozy farmhouse in their hometown of Mercersburg, the Chace sisters compose songs at a table made from recycled wood purchased from the Habitat for Humanity ReStore. The table was handmade by a friend and gifted to Larissa and her husband, Ryan, for their wedding. Larissa and Brechyn come to the table with their musical ideas. Sometimes their ideas are fully formed and sometimes they’re half-hatched—fragments of lyrics or strains of a melody. The girls bring the songs to fruition together. On guitar, Larissa lays down the track and Brechyn adds texture and color with the accordion, harmonica, and percussion instruments. They both sing vocals, and when they connect in harmony, there’s no denying their chemistry.

Despite a shared family history, most of the songs Larissa and Brechyn have penned are not autobiographical. Rather, for inspiration, they draw from American musical traditions such as the murder ballad of Frankie and Johnny, and they tap into universal themes.

When they compose, they don’t force creativity; they yield to it. They let their muses speak when their muses are good and ready.

When Larissa and Brechyn were growing up in Mercersburg, the Chace family set a regular place at the table for the muses. Joel Chace, their father, was a longtime English faculty member at Mercersburg and a practicing musician. He filled the house with books and music. Faculty children enjoy special access to Mercersburg’s campus, so long before the Chace girls enrolled as students at the Academy, they made themselves at home in

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Brechyn Chace and Larissa Chace Smith

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“ We’ve done things the way we’ve always wanted to do them. We’ve stuck to our guns and our roots, inspired by the environment and landscape of Mercersburg.”

—LARISSA CHACE SMITH

Boone Hall, predecessor of the Burgin Center for the Arts. Larissa took guitar lessons in Boone, and Brechyn had her first taste of the stage in bit roles for kids in the musical productions of Carousel, The Music Man, and Annie.

As a student at Mercersburg, Larissa began studying the guitar more earnestly, learning popular music by ear and trying her hand at composing. By the time she was a senior, she had teamed up with classmate Emily Peterson Karottki ’97 and formed a band they coined Viola Hayle (no name origin story here; the duo just liked the ring of it). With the help of beloved faculty member Jim Smith, they recorded a tape of original and cover songs in

the Irvine Memorial Chapel. At Baccalaureate, they performed Stevie Nicks’ “Landslide” introduced by Simon & Garfunkel’s song “Bookends.” There wasn’t a dry eye in the Chapel. By the end of her Mercersburg education, Larissa knew she loved music enough to dedicate her life to it. In the fall of 1997, she began attending Berklee College of Music in Boston.

While Larissa was studying music in college, Brechyn was taking her first steps into the limelight. She experienced her inaugural band performance with her father’s blues group, Blue Chair, comprised of Joel Chace and current Mercersburg faculty members Paul Galey, Tom Rahauser ’74, and Dave Holzwarth ’78. In a smoky tavern that is now Flannery’s on the Square, Brechyn sang a few songs with the avuncular band members who had watched her grow up.

“I was nervous as hell,” remembers Brechyn, “but I loved it.”

Jump ahead to 2006. After a series of life twists and turns, the Chace sisters reunited in Austin, Texas, where the music scene was, well, jumping. Many considered Austin the live-music capital of the world, but the scene was also overcrowded and intensely competitive. Larissa and Brechyn began thinking seriously about forming a band and coming back to Mercersburg to do it. By 2008, they had relocated to the area and were performing in a vibrant, live-music community where they could stretch their legs and meet and learn from other talented musicians.

The Hello Strangers in the recording studio

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Austin was an important influence, but Mercersburg is where The Hello Strangers came into their own. Larissa recounts, “It was a boon to move back. We left the livemusic capital of the world, but we had more success as live musicians being based in our small hometown. We’ve done things the way we’ve always wanted to do them.

We’ve stuck to our guns and our roots, inspired by the environment and landscape of Mercersburg.”

Brechyn shares the sentiment. She enjoys seeing the familiar faces of family and old

friends in the audience at shows. “They’re a support system, and you know they’re proud of you,” she says. “Mercersburg is a lasting community of good people.”

In 2012, The Hello Strangers got the break musicians dream of. Larissa and Brechyn captured AirPlay Direct’s “Win An Americana Record Deal” contest. This resulted in the production of their fulllength, self-titled 2014 album produced

by IMI records in Nashville, Tennessee. It features 11 original tracks and two cover songs. The album met with both critical

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and popular acclaim.

The Hello Strangers spent the years before and after the album’s release touring the country and performing for a wide range of audiences—from boot-clad, two-stepping cowboys and cowgirls to Converse-clad, toetapping Mercersburg students. In 2010 they returned to their alma mater to play for an enthusiastic audience at a school meeting in the Simon Theatre where Boone Hall once stood. For Larissa and Brechyn, it must have felt strangely familiar.

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IN HIS OWN WORDS:

Matteo Scammell ’07 I REMEMBER BENICIO DEL TORO came to Mercersburg my senior year and saw our acting class. We were doing monologues, and he said I was good and gave me some pointers. At a dinner later that day, he told my sister, Olivia, while pointing to me, “I’m going to look for him in the future.” Looking back, he was probably just being nice, but at the time, it meant a lot to have Benicio Del Toro say, ‘This kid is one for the future.’ It was something I held onto for a long time.

For me personally, I didn’t really start to get involved in the arts until my junior or senior year at Mercersburg. I actually did a big switch because I played sports my first few years. I played soccer, I played lacrosse, and my 11th-grade year I basically quit doing that and started doing plays.

I came from an artistic background. I danced when I was a kid, and I played guitar. I was a musician, and there was always plenty of singing and music and dance in my family. I think what motivated me toward the arts was the environment of Mercersburg. I needed an outlet, and I was probably feeling stuck in a number of ways. I like to make people laugh, but of course, being a class clown is not the way to do that. When I could be on stage and make people laugh, that felt really cool. There was a diverse group of people who did theatre, and that’s kind of the cool thing about Mercersburg. People don’t judge you for what you do. If you are interested in something, everyone is supportive.

I also have groundbreaking memories of doing monologue work with [director of theatre] Laurie Mufson. The physical work that she does, her technique of combining the physical with the imaginary, is foundational. I don’t think I’d be the actor I am today if it

At left: Matteo Scammell (left) as Mr. Collins and Alex Gekas ’07 as Elizabeth Bennett in the 2007 Mercersburg production of Pride and Prejudice.

hadn’t been for that early breakthrough. I remember her working on a piece with me, and she would have me push against a hard object, and she would have me dance the words and then beat the words with my body. Activating the body and the mind has been a crucial thing for me ever since.

These days I’m a guest lecturer at places like Temple University and the University of the Arts, and I’ve taught high-school students around the Philadelphia area. My gig is acting, and I do music, too.

I’m in a cabaret funk band called Red 40 and the Last Groovement.

We’ve had some wonderful residencies in several artistic institutions in Philadelphia, including FringeArts.

When I talk to students in college, they want to know what makes me want to do acting because it is a very doubtful career.

They ask, “When did you decide?” I tell them it’s a constant decision to do it. I decide everyday.

This thing happens when you’re on stage sometimes. You don’t see the audience. You feel them, but you don’t see them. You sort of lose your sense of self and gain your sense of self at the same time.

Editor’s Note: Scammell is a professional actor, living and working in Philadelphia. He was nominated for a 2016 Barrymore Award for Excellence in Theatre for his role in the play Smoke by Kim Davies, and he won the 2015 Philadelphia Theater Critic’s Award for Best Actor in a Lead Role for his role in The Hairy Ape by Eugene O’Neil.

His father (Charles Scammell ’71) and grandfather (Scott Scammell ’37) are also Mercersburg alumni.

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IN HER OWN WORDS:

Chantel Yague ’14 I WAS THE GIRL AT MERCERSBURG who brought her acoustic guitar to every campfire and got everybody to sing along to cheesy pop hits like Justin Bieber. I was a three-season athlete and played field hockey, basketball, and softball, and I ran a hip-hop club with a group of friends, teaching amateur breakdance choreography. Aside from that, I was generally quiet and always kept myself busy.

When my first adviser, Pete Gunkelman, told me about a 3D Design program in the works that would be part of the new Springboard capstone course for seniors, I was immediately on board. As the course began, I remember thinking how rare an opportunity it was in high school to work with comprehensive 3D animation software used in the industry today. I challenged myself to come into the Burgin Center for the Arts’ computer lab every evening to play with the software and absorb as much as possible. I was in there so much that the faculty in the Burgin joked about bringing me a pillow since I practically lived there.

I learned how to draw, make 3D computergenerated models, make sculptures, and apply math to all of this, which I never imagined doing. Toward the end of the program, we had to present what we’d created, and I was one of two selected to present my work to the Mercersburg Board of Regents, which was daunting at first but worthwhile in the end.

As part of the class, we also went on a field trip to Blue Sky Studios in Connecticut. We toured the studio that created films like Ice Age, Robots, and Rio, and we got a firsthand look at every stage of the process from clay modeling to computer animation. I knew right then and there that this was the right environment for me, and I wanted to continue my education in this industry.

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To stand out as a visual artist, you have to push the boundaries and look for new, creative approaches all the time. My time at Mercersburg has taught me how to be collaborative, independent, and self motivated.

Most importantly, I learned that daring to be different is way more interesting than trying to be like everyone else. My goal for the future is to create content that motivates and inspires people the way people have inspired me.

Editor’s Note: Yague is a junior at Montclair State University in her home state of New Jersey. She’s studying film and animation, and her latest work is available to view at livetocreate.myportfolio.com. She is also the lead videographer and media team director for Mercersburg Summer Programs. As she says, “A typical outdoor shoot for me involves riding my mountain bike along a river while chasing 20 campers on a whitewater-rafting trip, jumping out on rocks to capture all the fun moments. The most satisfying part is getting feedback from the parents about how much they love the photos and videos of their kids.”

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“ Station” by William Clutz, gift of the artist to Mercersburg Academy in memory of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Danaher of Mercersburg, July 2015

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Putting in the PREPARATION

By Chip Patterson

WILLIAM CLUTZ ’51 LOOKS BACK ON MORE THAN SIX DECADES IN THE ART WORLD One minute you were in, the next minute you were out—that was the New York art world, according to William “Bill” Clutz ’51.

Art dealers came and went. Your paintings might sell as soon as they were shown; then in a few months, nobody cared. It was practically impossible for anyone—even the critics—to predict which artists would succeed and which would never amount to anything.

“It was very much like the theatre, or fashion,” Clutz says. In the 1960s and ’70s, an artist’s work typically could be in demand at a given time and then abruptly go out of vogue.

“I had a dealer and the dealer would go out of business for one reason or another.

This was happening a fair amount of the time, and it’s something you live with.”

But “something always opened up,” he says. He saw the setbacks as temporary and focused on creating.

Despite an incredibly fickle environment, Clutz became a successful artist, with pieces ending up in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., and dozens of galleries, museums and corporate collections throughout the United States.

He taught painting at the University of Minnesota, the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, and for 22 years at the Parsons School of Design in New York City. Clutz’s career materials are housed in the Archives of American Art within the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. He retired in 2008 and lives in Rhinebeck, New York.

When Clutz attended Mercersburg in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Academy did not offer art classes, but Clutz studied privately with Mercersburg resident Thomas Danaher (whose wife, Ellen, was the daughter of legendary Mercersburg faculty member and track & field coach Jimmy Curran; as an aside, the Danahers’ son, Tom ’62, attended Mercersburg and died in 2015).

After graduating from the University of Iowa in 1955, Clutz began to display his work at local shows, and not long afterward, he moved to New York City. For new artists especially, the center of the art world was unpredictable and unreliable. “At one point I went with a very good dealer, who developed people like Alex Katz [the internationally known painter and sculptor], and he was publishing [Katz’s] editions,” says Clutz. “This was the 1960s, and the dealer told me I needed to become better known, and he wanted me to do prints for him. So I did.”

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Clutz realized that, unlike many aspiring artists of the day, he had developed a loyal following “to some extent.” His work was attracting attention, and it was selling.

Any artist or painter was subject to being reviewed. Good reviews, naturally, nurtured one’s popularity in a rather erratic arena. By the same token, poor reviews could put a quick damper on one’s career.

“You were always aware that your work constantly had to be as good, or better—you always had to appear to be growing,” Clutz says. “Artists would be told: ‘You mustn’t change your style,’ or ‘You have to do something else.’ You always had market forces out there, reviews, the dealers, the public.”

The 83-year-old describes a willy-nilly art scene in which he managed to not only survive, but to thrive for six decades.

“In those [early] days, you were supposed to find your style,” he remembers. “That stopped very soon; it became a dead end. For example, in the late ’60s, I went abstract.”

The street scenes and charcoal drawings for which he had become famous were recognized as original by gallery owners, and collectors were prompted to buy them.

None of this happened by accident.

“I talked to my students at Parsons about the value of sports and languages, because those things require tremendous preparation,” Clutz says. “You do the preparation, and then the ease is built in.”

Any type of art requires discipline, hard work, and most of all, preparation, he says.

“Ideas come from always working. Always keep your instrument in tune. The street was my subject matter, so I was always out there.”

Clutz watched, studied scenes, and took notes. He paid close attention to detail, which became a significant part of his

“ Ideas come from always working.

Always keep your instrument in tune. The street was my subject matter, so I was always out there.”

process. “You would see a situation and you could create that out of your [memory of it] or go to that place and draw reality, facts,” he says. “Then you could choreograph the people, choreograph the situation.”

Clutz worked consistently because without steady effort, his motivation suffered, and he couldn’t produce. For example, he says, “a dancer is supposed to smile,” showing the enjoyment of performing expertly, without hinting at the intense preparation that is required of such pursuits. “You can afford to take chances when you build on this background [of preparation]. But you needn’t show it.”

Painters are known for working compulsively, habitually, driven to produce work for the sake of sheer volume. “[But] I never worked that way,” Clutz says. “I always worked alone and to make a living as well.

I worked essentially when I had ideas.”

And for him, “there were always ideas on the backburner.” Touring around the city on a bicycle, he became a purposeful observer, a witness to ordinary urban scenes that provoked and inspired him to want to identify and then capture the “wow” aspect of those scenes.

As such, the exacting preparation he used in the creation of each piece of art became Clutz’s method, his chain. “You would use your past experience,” he says.

—WILLIAM CLUTZ

“You would know the body types [of people in the street], certain quirky things. Where are the places that are important [to draw]?

For example, the side of the head.”

His art depicts the human form using seemingly opposing techniques, ranging from wide, heavy strokes to subtle, ethereal shapes and lines. The faces typically lack detail. And yet facial expressions are there.

His use of lighting is distinctive, often dramatic. People in the park or crossing the street are in motion.

“You can describe pants just by an edge that shows the movement of the pants,” Clutz says.

And what if one particular painting didn’t meet his expectations, or he found it lacking in some way? “If it didn’t happen to come up to what I wanted to do, there are several things to consider,” he says.

“Maybe it’s because I didn’t do the homework, or maybe I didn’t do the analysis of something and I overlooked something I should have done.”

After surmising the shortcomings of a specific piece, Clutz would tackle the problem by doing another version.

Whatever the case, he never discarded an earlier edition. “Sometimes with a second look, a month or two later or sometimes a year later, you say, ‘You know, that first version is OK.’” And sometimes “there are

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lucky accidents.”

He advises artists not to throw any creation in the trash. “Always put away [and save] because there could be a kernel of something there that could be fixed,” says Clutz, who admits to being “over-critical” of his own efforts at times. “The piece could function.”

Even today, Clutz is as passionate as ever about his craft and a career spanning six decades. “I had dealers in L.A., Minneapolis, New York,” he says. “The gallery in L.A. would say, ‘This one sold instantly,’ so then you would do additional versions.”

But New York remained the art mecca, where artists and trends were made and broken. “This was so long ago,” he continues. “It was such a different world.

Nowadays kids are so involved with constantly seeing images on their phones. In those days, everything was outside. You became very aware, acutely, and you would see things and say, ‘Wow, I want to get that across.’ “[But today] artists are working everywhere, on landscapes and portraits, but that will never get them into an art magazine.

There is a great deal of social stuff, political stuff [as subject matter] that we’ve gotten away from.”

His advice to young artists is for them to embrace the hard work that the profession requires—work dictated by forces in the art world. You can’t merely “do what you want to do.”

Clutz’s charcoal works in particular—with his signature “accordion-style” strokes—exude a startling duality of simplicity and depth. The focused preparation and the work ethic are not evident to the untrained eye. That’s as it should be, he says.

“ Touching The Edge” by William Clutz, gift of the artist to Mercersburg Academy in honor of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Burgin, July 2015

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Da te s t o Rememb er

Apr 1

Spring Pops Concert 8 p.m., Simon Theatre, Burgin Center for the Arts

Apr 22 Spring Music Concert

8 p.m., Simon Theatre, Burgin Center for the Arts

Apr 29 Stony Batter Players: “Shakespeare Scenes”

7 p.m., Boys’ Garden May 6 Spring Dance Concert

8 p.m., Simon Theatre, Burgin Center for the Arts

Schedule subject to change; for a full and updated schedule of events, visit www.mercersburg.edu

Stony Batter Players Joe Beauregard ’18 and John Leiner ’17 in Proof

Pride and Prejudice near right: Fiona Flanagan ’17 and Zach McDonald ’17 far right: Ava Paul ’18, John Leiner ’17, and Fiona Flanagan ’17 below: Grace Bennett ’19, Carol Tang ’17, John Leiner ’17, Tommy Sliskovich ’18, and Fiona Flanagan ’17

directors: Laurie Mufson, Matt Maurer, Steve Crick, Kelly Dowling John Leiner ’17, Katherine Reber ’17, Joe Beauregard ’18 and Julia Mitchell ’18 in Proof

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Dance

director: Denise Dalton Mira Vance ’18, Ella Everke ’19, Cherie Sio ’19, Yuna Yamamoto ’17, Chelsea Miao ’17, and Emily Bell ’18

Yuna Yamamoto ’17 and Chelsea Miao ’17

Ella Everke ’19, Cherie Sio ’19, Mira Vance ’18, and Michaela Wotorson ’18

Yuna Yamamoto ’17, Summer Zhang ’18, and Kamryn Bacchus-Larode ’19

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Music directors: Richard Rotz, Jim Brinson, Bryan Morgan, Michael Cameron

Chorale

Magalia

Jazz Band

String Ensemble

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Band

Octet

Visual Art faculty: Wells Gray, Sydney Caretti, Kristen Pixler

Corwin Mowen ’20

Addie Dumm ’18

Cindy Zhang ’18

Ipek Celikoyar ’19

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Athletics Dat es t o Rememb e r

MAPL Boys’ and Girls’ Outdoor Track & Field Championships May 13

(at Curran Track, Mercersburg) May 19–25 PAISAA State Softball Tournament May 23–27

PAISAA State Baseball Tournament

Schedule subject to change; for a full and updated schedule of events, visit www.mercersburg.edu

Fall 2016 Varsity Athletics Roundup Boys’ Cross Country Captain: Adam Cromwell ’17 James D. Fallon Jr. Award (most outstanding contributions): Cromwell Most Improved Athlete Award: Alexander Wood ’19 Head coach: David Grady (10th season) IPSL/MAPL/state finish: 1st/4th/12th Highlights: Chris Doyle ’17 was a four-year letterwinner; he and Cromwell both earned All-Independent-Parochial School League honors for the second consecutive year… the Blue Storm placed six runners in the top 10 to capture its fourth straight IPSL crown: Cromwell (2nd), Doyle (4th), Diego Garza Gutierrez ’20 (5th), Ray Xiao ’18 (7th), Wood (9th), and Xavier Dreux ’18 (10th)… Garza Gutierrez and Xiao were also All-IPSL… Cromwell was the team’s top finisher at the Mid-Atlantic Prep League and Pennsylvania Independent Schools Championships (8th and 15th, respectively)… the team captured the first point of the multisport Centennial Cup event with Kiski with a head-to-head win over the Cougars… Xiao was the squad’s Academic All-MAPL representative.

Girls’ Cross Country Captains: Ryan Geitner ’17, Emma Claire Geitner ’17, Finley Stewart ’17, Jane Kistler ’17, Elizabeth Smilek ’17 Most Outstanding Contributions Award: Ryan Geitner Most Improved Athlete Award: Campbell Drennan ’18 Head coach: Betsy Cunningham (14th season) IPSL/MAPL finish: 1st/2nd Highlights: At the IPSL Championships, Sophia Divone ’19 broke the course record by more than a minute at Hagerstown’s Black Rock Park to lead a pack of four Blue Storm runners who placed in the top seven to earn All-IPSL

honors: Ryan Geitner (4th), Katie Hofman ’17 (5th), and Drennan (7th)… the team notched an impressive second-place finish at the MAPL Championships, with Divone taking second for All-MAPL honors and Geitner placing ninth; the Storm was 19 points ahead of third-place Hill, with only Lawrenceville ahead… Divone was an Academic All-MAPL selection.

Field Hockey Captains: Alyssa Magazine ’17, Haruka Toda ’17 Rebecca “Becki” Peace ’75 Award (most inspirational player): Toda

Carol Anderson Field Hockey Coach’s Award (most outstanding player): Lauren Jones ’18 Beck Field Hockey Award (most improved player): Antonia Kempe ’18 Head coach: Alicia Hawk (7th season) Record: 4–13 (0–5 MAPL) Highlights: Jones earned All-MAPL honors for the third time in her three seasons at Mercersburg… she and Addie Dumm ’18 tied for the team lead in goals with seven apiece, while Magazine had five goals… Annaliesse Cantera ’20 led the Blue Storm in assists with four and also had four goals on the season…

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Kate Frimet ’18 recorded two shutouts in goal (in the Storm’s victories over Madeira and Huntingdon) and made 232 saves… the team’s other wins came against St. James and Southern Huntingdon… Frimet and Magazine were Academic All-MAPL selections.

Football Captains: game captains selected Most Outstanding Contributions Award: Parker Hancock ’18 Most Improved Athlete Award: Nick Miller ’17 Head coach: Dan Walker (14th season) Record: 2–6 (0–5 MAPL) Highlights: The Blue Storm opened its season in thrilling fashion with two straight victories, including an emotional 35–19 win over local rival St. James in a night home game played at nearby James Buchanan High School… the following week, Mercersburg knocked off Potomac...

Jordan Misher ’17 was the team’s leading rusher with 392 yards and also its leading tackler on defense (49.5 total stops); T.J. Harris ’18 rushed for 327 yards and posted a team-high seven rushing touchdowns…

Aaron Grant ’17 caught 31 passes for 398 yards and five touchdowns (all tops on the squad)… other top defenders included Brandon Thomas ’17 (43 tackles) and Noah Litzinger ’19 (team leader in sacks)… Tom Cremins ’17 and Sam Goldman ’17 earned Academic All-MAPL honors.

Golf Most Outstanding Contributions Award: Joseph Bucci ’18 Most Improved Athlete Award: Ward Castelli ’17 Head coach: Doug Smith (4th season) Head-to-head match record: 6–1 IPSL finish: champion Highlights: The Blue Storm’s IPSL crown was its sixth in the six-year history of the league… Bucci took second place (38) and Samir Tamer Simon ’19 was third (39) at the league event; both earned All-IPSL honors… Mercersburg avenged a loss against Kiski (which was its first in head-tohead play since the 2014 season) by edging the Cougars for second place at the season-ending Keystone Cup… Bucci, Tamer, and Shayan Ghodsi ’18 all earned medalist honors as the low scorer in different matches throughout the season…

Maya Tetali ’17 was named Academic All-MAPL.

Boys’ Soccer Captains: Gnim Bazim ’17, Lance Lysiak ’17 Most Outstanding Contributions Award: Lysiak Most Improved Athlete Award: Felix Eckert ’17 Schweizer Soccer Cup (hard work/ determination): Bazim Head coach: Carl Stensland (1st season) Record: 12–6–1 (3–2 MAPL) Highlights: The team defeated Hill for the first time since 2010... Bazim, Lysiak, and Andrew Gregory ’17 were named All-MAPL, while Bazim and Lysiak were joined by Mikale Williams ’18 as All-IPSL selections… Folarin Adewunmi ’17 posted a team-high 12 goals, while Bass Diakhoumpa ’17 tallied six goals

and Gregory and Sam Morgan ’19 added five goals apiece… Diakhoumpa and Christian Recker ’17 contributed four assists each, and Gregory, Morgan, and Daniel Ogoro ’19 all had three assists… Lysiak, the team’s regular goalkeeper, helped the Storm post six shutouts…

Mercersburg captured the IPSL title with a 6–0 blanking of St. John’s Catholic Prep… Jinmook Kang ’17 and Alex Nanos ’17 earned Academic All-MAPL honors.

Girls’ Soccer Captains: Yulia Lee ’17, Maddie Surmacz ’17, Electa Willander ’18 Mary Curtis ’86/John VerStandig ’66 Award (most outstanding contributions): Surmacz Most Improved Athlete Award: Ava Mancini ’18 Hendrickson-Hoffman Coaches’ Award (spirit): Grace Jackson ’18 Head coach: Kristen Pixler (1st season) Record: 1–14 (0–5 MAPL) Highlights: Surmacz was chosen for the AllMAPL team, while Annie Klaff ’20 was named All-IPSL… the Storm fielded an extremely youthful squad, with seven ninth graders earning varsity letters… Pixler’s first win as a varsity head coach came on the strength of a goal by Klaff and a shutout by goalkeeper Megan List ’20 that resulted in a 1–0 victory over Bishop Walsh… Klaff, Surmacz, and Grace Lewis ’20 were the team’s leading scorers… List and Alex Coenjaerts ’20 combined to average 25 saves in goal… Surmacz and Lee were the team’s representatives on the Academic AllMAPL squad.

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earned All-Academic recognition, was tops on the team with 175 digs… Steiner led the team in assists and also recorded 82 digs…

McGloin collected a team-high 59 total blocks, including 10 in a win over MAPL foe Blair; though the MAPL does not sponsor volleyball, the Storm and Buccaneers have met in each of the past three seasons, with Mercersburg winning all three contests…

Li posted 33 digs in a win over St. John’s Catholic Prep… the team won its final three contests of the season.

Girls’ Tennis Captain: Molly Widdoes ’17 Most Outstanding Contributions Award: Widdoes Most Improved Athlete Award: Eliza Smith ’18 Head coach: Mike Sweeney (13th season) Record: 7–2 (2–2 MAPL) MAPL finish: 2nd Highlights: Ale Escalante Barcelo ’19 earned All-MAPL honors in both singles and doubles, while Widdoes also garnered All-MAPL honors in doubles after teaming with Escalante to post a 5–1 mark at the No. 1 spot… Widdoes captured the No. 4 flight at the MAPL Championships, handing Lawrenceville its lone defeat of the day; only the Big Red edged the Blue Storm for the MAPL crown… Escalante posted an 8–6 mark at No. 1 singles; other top singles records were turned in by Alexandra Zhukova ’18 (11–2), Emma Hicks ’19 (8–4), and Smith (8–1)… Hicks was named Academic All-MAPL.

Volleyball Captains: Rebecca Li ’17, Morgan Steiner ’17 Erin Carey ’91 Memorial Volleyball Award (most outstanding player): Hannah Hassoun ’17 Most Improved Athlete Award: Patrice McGloin ’19 Head coach: Katy Brake (1st season) Record: 5–9 (3–2 IPSL) Highlights: Hassoun was an All-IPSL selection after leading the team in kills (97) and service aces (30); she also tallied 100 digs… Li, who

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Class Notes

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Submit class notes via email to classnotes@mercersburg.edu or by contacting your class agent. Submission does not guarantee publication; notes may appear online or in print.

Mercersburg reserves the right to edit submissions for space or content, and is not responsible for more than reasonable editing or fact-checking.

When submitting a photo, please provide the highest-quality version possible, and include the names of all persons pictured and their Mercersburg class years.

Due to size and quality considerations, some images may not be suitable for print.

Class notes are also available online at www.mercersburg.edu/classnotes.

Barry Dubbs ’59 (left) visited classmate Al Douglass in Colorado to play in the annual Desperado golf tournament at Cordillera. “No prize this time, but the great weather and festivities made up for that,” says Barry.

’43

Doris Newman, wife of William Newman and stepmother of John Newman ’71, passed away June 9, 2016.

’46

Hamp Shuford is still working and staying active as a volunteer with day care centers, singing with senior citizen choruses, playing French horn in a senior city band and a brass ensemble at Corinth Reformed Church in Hickory, North Carolina, helping to usher at Hickory Community Theater, and traveling as often as he can, mainly on Princess cruise ships. “Still vertical, thank God,” he quips, “but slowing down.”

Pictured are Rob Bertrand ’88 and his wife, Colleen, with their children, Miles, Nina, and James. Rob’s father, Lou ’61, shared the photo, adding that he and his wife, Sharon, have three other grandchildren: 2-year-old J.J. Forro, 4-year-old Louie Forro, and U.S. Army Specialist Andrew Nixon, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment.

H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest received the Poynter Institute’s 2016 Distinguished Service to Journalism Award in recognition of his commitment to independent journalism and public-interest reporting through innovative funding channels.

’50

’48

Edward Charron and his wife, Joyce, celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary June 16, 2016. “We were married in the University of Maryland Chapel and had our honeymoon in Cuba,” Ed says. “We returned to visit Cuba this past June.”

’49

Archaeologist Vic Fisher continues his work at Towson University, where he has been employed as a full-time faculty member since 1961.

Frank Laimbeer lives in Warrenton, Virginia, and shares that he is enjoying watching his six grandchildren—ages 11 to 26—grow up.

Stephen Black has been married for 52 years and has four children, five grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. He has been retired since 1994 and recently moved from Park Cities to Preston Hollow in Dallas.

“I am in pretty good health for age 85,” he says. “Just finished a 16-year term as a volunteer at Texas Health Resources and have been a docent at the Bush library in Dallas for almost three years. Have traveled all over the world, so much of our leisure time is spent with family in Dallas and Nashville.” Stephen adds that he would love to hear from his classmates.

’51 ’60

Evon Barvinchack retired in fall 2016 after 51 years as a chiropractor in Greencastle, Pennsylvania.

’64

Steve Guttman has been named Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, the French government’s highest

honor awarded to French nationals or foreigners.

Established by Napoleon Bonaparte, the Legion of Honor was presented to Steve by the Ambassador of France to the United States in recognition of his work as chairman of The Centre Pompidou Foundation, a nonprofit organization that acquires American artwork for the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

’66

Betsy Uphouse Haight, mother of Woody Uphouse and widow of Harry Uphouse ’37, passed away September 14, 2016.

’72

Jeffrey Frankel shares that he and his wife, Dara, welcomed a granddaughter, Madison Sloane, who was born to their son and daughter-in-law in August.

’74

Steve Flanagan visited with emeritus faculty member Mark Flowers last summer in upstate New York while Mark was in the area for a four-week residency at Golden Artist Colors.

Pictured are classmates Amy Hoober Ahrensdorf ’75 and Karen Burton McDaniel ’75 in Sedona, Arizona.

Karen lives in Durham, North Carolina, and traveled to spend a week with Amy at her home in Flagstaff.

“It has been 41 years since we graduated from the ’Burg, but we were able to pick up right where we left off so many years ago,” says Karen.

Mike McGinn ’88 coached his son Henrik’s U9 all-star soccer team to the championship of the Fairfax (Virginia) Police Youth Club soccer tournament in June.

’77

Suzy Plaster Miller retired in June after 31 years of teaching elementary school for Hanover County (Virginia) Public Schools. She continues to work at Saint Bridget School as an instructional assistant.

’80

Steven Lynch relocated in August from Orlando, Florida, to Odessa, Texas, to accept a position as a librarian and to provide library and literacy instruction for 600 students at Pease Elementary School.

’81

J.D. Koch shares that his retirement lasted all of one year: “I am returning to government service!” he says.

“I have accepted a Department of Defense civilian position designing scenarios for military exercises at the 7th Army Training Command’s Simulation Center in Germany. So it’s back to Bavaria for three years… but keeping our place in Budapest for the future (and vacations) in the meantime.”

’82

Clement Alpert, father of Andy Alpert and grandfather of Zoe Alpert ’14, passed away August 18, 2016.

Jack Arky has released his first solo album in 20 years under the band name Mulberry & Grand. Learn more at mulberrygrand.bandcamp.com.

Raymond Liddy retired as a colonel from the United States Marine Corps Reserves in August after 30 years that included active and combat duty as well as reserve service.

’90

Marina Harss is a freelance culture writer specializing in dance. She writes for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Playbill, Dance, Pointe, DanceTabs, and The Nation, and appears regularly on WNYC to speak about dance. She also continues to do literary translations and enjoys traveling to see her husband, operatic baritone Marco Nistico, perform across the country. “I’m currently working on a book proposal; hopefully, that project will keep me occupied for the foreseeable future,” Marina says.

Siblings Brad Burbank ’76, Charlotte Burbank Fiorentino ’80, Doug Burbank ’81, Tim Burbank ’83, Amy Burbank Kelaher ’89, and Sarah Burbank Brenes ’95 met for a Dead & Company concert last summer at Fenway Park in Boston. “Not only did all six Burbanks go, but we met Ruth Quinn ’79 and Judi Quinn Sullivan ’80!” shares Charlotte. “We Burbanks are all over the globe, so it was a very special reunion, especially to see the Dead & Company with John Mayer. Best weekend ever!”

’97

Katie O’Neil was named Hospitalist of the Year for the state of Maryland by the Society of Hospital Medicine.

Katie is a mental health therapist at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.

’98

Elizabeth Hills has completed the University of Wyoming Family Medicine Residency Program at Casper and is practicing in Rawlins, Wyoming.

’00

Michael Galey was elected in November to the borough council in West Chester, Pennsylvania, where he and his family live. Michael is a partner with the law firm of Fisher Phillips.

’01

Michael Best is engaged to Christine Talleda, the lead keeper for the bird department at the Atlanta Zoo. He

also began a six-month deployment to Afghanistan last October as an anesthesiologist with the U.S. Air Force.

Nigel Sussman lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife, Yasemin, and son, Luka. Nigel is an illustrator and muralist and recently published Alphabet Compendium: An Illustrated A-Z of Things.

’02

Peter Baker’s article “The Tragic, Forgotten History of Black Military Veterans” appeared in the November 27, 2016, issue of The New Yorker.

Bethany Galey graduated with honors from Walden University in June 2016 with a master of science degree in mental health counseling. She is a therapist at The Renovo Center in Kearneysville, West Virginia; Bethany and her family live in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.

’03

Jess Malone, daughter of faculty members Sue and Jim Malone, visited campus in October to give a

Marriages

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The wedding of Travis Youngs ’06 and Carla Horning, October 22, 2016, in Fleetwood, Pennsylvania.

L–R: Kyle Fox ’05 (best man), Colin Cubit ’06, faculty and staff members Mark and Sandie Cubit, faculty member Frank Rutherford ’70, Vanessa Youngs ’03, Travis, Lauren Dobish ’08, Paul Rutherford ’06, and Clarence Youngs ’68. (Travis and Carla live in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.)

Brandt Rataezyk ’08 married Allison Schoening November 13, 2016.

Births/Adoptions 1

4

2

3

1. Owen James-Lee Reid, son of Taylor Miller Reid ’05 and her husband, Ryan ’05, born August 25, 2016.

2. Penelope June, daughter of Nichole Barbuzanes Komninos ’02 and her husband, Dimitri, born October 11, 2016.

3. Elle Mackenzye, daughter of staff member Jacquelyn Ross Grace ’07 and her husband, J.J., born October 13, 2016.

4. Geoff Moorhead ’90 and his wife, Christina, welcomed a daughter, Sara Parke, November 10, 2016.

5

5. Finley Saga, son of Lauren McCartney Hottle ’02 and her husband, Charles, born July 1, 2016.

To Larissa Chace Smith ’97 and her husband, Ryan: a daughter, Ruby Helen, October 4, 2016.

To Aaron Chiu ’99 and his wife, Kai: a daughter, Alina, August 9, 2016.

To Nick Ventresca ’05 and his wife, Christianna, a son, James Dawson, May 11, 2016.

To faculty member Greg Lynch and his wife, Kim: a son, Michael Sebastian, November 18, 2016.

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During her trip to Asia in November, Associate Director of Admission Anna Crouch visited with Tony Kim ’03 (pictured) in Seoul, Korea, and also met up with Jane Choi ’06 in Singapore.

Vanessa Youngs ’03, center, visited with Kensuke Kusaka ’04 and Mika White ’04 while traveling in Japan in 2016.

brown bag lunch talk with students about careers in geology and environmental consulting. Jess lives in Denver, Colorado.

’04

Austin Mort is an assistant state public defender in Milwaukee. He has worked for the Wisconsin State Public Defender’s Office since graduating from the University of Wisconsin Law School in December 2012.

’06

Faculty member Peter Kempe (center) ran into Sam Goldsmith ’07, Leonard Langenscheidt ’07, Johannes Schlemmer ’07, and Raphael Langenscheidt ’05 over the summer in Reykjavik, Iceland, while visiting the country thanks to the Lord Family Endowed Faculty Travel Fund. Sam lives in New York City and Leonard, Johannes, and Raphael live in Munich, Germany.

David Smooke was featured in the TEDx Talk “Horizontal Storytelling” in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Watch a video of the talk at www.horizontalstorytelling.com.

’07

Ben Goetz completed a Ph.D. in cancer research from the University of Nebraska Medical Center. His dissertation was titled “Role of CBL-family Ubiquitin Ligases as Critical Negative Regulators of T Cell Activation and Functions.”

’08

Brandt Rataezyk married Allison Schoening on November 13, 2016, in Tacoma, Washington. “We both attended the University of Puget Sound, where we first met,” Brandt says. “We ended up reconnecting about three years later when I moved back to Washington.”

Liz Rohrbach Andrews’ father, Lewis, passed away January 2, 2016.

’09

Anika Kempe is a contributor to the food blog www.penandknife.com.

’11

Collin Greene moved from Houston to the D.C. area in 2016 and is working for Politico. “My current role is in business development for their premium subscription, Politico Pro, which serves thousands of policy professionals with exclusive insights and key developments in federal U.S. policy,” he says.

’12

Max Strauss is working as a media monitoring and communications specialist for the Atlanta Hawks of the NBA.

Liza Rizzo ’11, Ryan Ma ’11, and Matt Cook ’11 met for dinner in San Francisco last fall. “Though I couldn’t make it back to Reunion Weekend, it was great to connect with them and hear all the fun stories from June,” Ryan says.

Chris Weller and his Branch Technology co-founder R. Pratt Boyd IV were awarded the 2016 Design Innovation Award in September in Los Angeles.

’13

Ashley Frederick graduated in December 2016 from Stetson University and is moving home to Latrobe, Pennsylvania, to work for her family business, Unity Printing. While at Stetson, Ashley was inducted into the Phi Eta Sigma, Rho Lambda, Omicron Delta Kappa, Panhellenic, and Sigma Tau Delta academic and honor societies. She was also selected as a member of the Order of Omega, which is awarded to the top 3 percent of Greek students.

’14

Caldwell Butler is majoring in filmmaking with a concentration in directing at Columbia College Chicago.

He is writing and directing a neo-noir crime film called Last Call as a capstone project for his degree program.

Over the summer, Caitlin Cremins performed with the College Light Opera Company in A Little Night Music at Highfield Theatre in Falmouth, Massachusetts.

Gabby Cuzzola’s father, Christopher, passed away December 1, 2016.

Elizabeth Stern-Green was a member of the University of Virginia field hockey team that won its first-ever Atlantic Coast Conference championship last fall.

’15

Ugo Okolie made the All-Centennial Conference men’s soccer first team as a sophomore at Franklin & Marshall College. He led the Diplomats with nine assists and helped F&M win three games in the NCAA Division III Soccer Championship to reach the tournament’s round-of-8.

MERCERSBURG MAGAZINE SPRING 2017

Obituaries ’39

Henry H. Minor Jr., September 30, 2016. (Keil, Marshall, Glee Club, wrestling, basketball, baseball, football, soccer) Bud graduated from Rollins College with a bachelor’s degree in business. He enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II, and flew the famous P-51 Mustang fighter. Bud was a successful businessman, having rescued the family orthopedic shoe business, P.W. Minor & Son, from bankruptcy in the 1950s. He served as the company’s chief executive officer and then chairman of the board until its sale in 2014. He was preceded in death by his first wife, Kathy. Survivors include his wife, Caryl, as well as a daughter and a son, two granddaughters, and a great-grandson.

’40

Howard C. Stewart, August 13, 2016. (Irving, wrestling, Gun Club) Howard graduated from West Virginia University and served in the Army. After the war, he worked in the family loan business in Fairmont, West Virginia, and later became assistant director of the West Virginia Department of Mental Health and worked in the building and commercial roofing industries. He was a commander of various Army Reserve units in West Virginia and Ohio, retiring as a lieutenant colonel. Howard was preceded in death by his wife, Barbara, and a son. Survivors include a son and a daughter; three grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

’41

J. Robert Waltman, September 8, 2016. (Marshall, Glee Club) Bob entered Princeton University before enlisting in the Army, serving in France, Germany, and the Philippines, and rising to the rank of first lieutenant. He returned to Princeton following the war to complete a bachelor’s degree in engineering. Bob spent almost 40 years with the United States Gypsum Company, retiring as a national accounts executive in 1987. Survivors include his wife, Diana; three daughters and a son; and eight grandchildren.

’42

Richard P. Baribault, October 19, 2016. (Marshall, swimming, Marshal of the Field) Dick was a fighter pilot in the Air Force during World

War II and graduated from Yale University. He worked for Alcoa for 40 years in engineering and management, including a stint as president of Alcoa of Great Britain. He retired from the company in 1988 as vice president of procurement. Richard was preceded in death by his first wife, Jule. Survivors include his wife, Freddi; four children; two stepchildren; 11 grandchildren; two great-grandchildren; and a brother.

G. William Butz III, September 25, 2016. (South Cottage, Marshall, Radio Club, Rauchrunde, football, track, wrestling, Class Day Committee) Bill attended Princeton University before his studies were interrupted by World War II, when he served in the Pacific Theater.

He was president of Butz Lumber Company. Survivors include his wife, Jeanne; three sons (including Chip ’74 and Bill IV ’76); and four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, as well as a nephew, William T. “Butch” White ’65. Bill’s cousin, the late Joseph Harrington ’39, also attended Mercersburg.

’43

Kendall A. Gustafson, September 8, 2016. (Marshall, swimming) “Gus” joined the Navy and served as a pilot during and after World War II. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Alabama, which would later recognize him as a distinguished engineering alumnus. Gus joined Chance Vought (LTV) in 1951 to work on missiles and spacecraft, and retired more than three decades later as deputy director of the company’s anti-satellite program. Survivors include five children, 13 grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.

’45

William C. Hagel, November 5, 2016. (South Cottage, Cum Laude, Irving, Chemistry Club, Rauchrunde, The Fifteen, Stony Batter, Chapel Usher, Press Club, President, Senate, Blue and White Melodians, cross country, track & field, football, Class Day Committee, Marshall & Irving Alliance) Bill served in the Navy during World War II. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and a doctorate from the Carnegie Institute of Technology. He worked as a metallurgist at General Electric and as a professor at the University of Denver before he went into management for General Electric,

55

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Kelsey-Hayes, and Climax Molybdenum. He was a consultant for his corporation, Arbormet, until retirement. Survivors include his wife, Mary Ellen; three daughters; and four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Dixie/American Can and the James River Corporation, retiring as a government-contracts administrator. He was preceded in death by his wife, Althea. Survivors include three sons; six grandchildren and a great-grandchild; a brother; and his companion, Joan Nersinger.

Edwin W. Perrott III, November 28, 2016. (’Eighty-eight, Irving) Edwin attended the University of Colorado and the University of Denver. He was the owner of Seven Seas Travel for many years and enjoyed traveling the world. He was preceded in death by two children and a stepdaughter. Survivors include his wife, Virginia, as well as a stepdaughter, four grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.

Leonard Sargeant III, September 17, 2016. (Main, Marshall, News Board, KARUX Board, photographer) Leonard graduated from Lehigh University and served in the Army Corps of Engineers. He worked for Pocahontas Fuel Company as a mining engineer in the coalfields of southwestern Virginia and southern West Virginia. He then graduated from the Washington and Lee University School of Law and then became a corporate attorney with the Charleston Group Companies of the Columbia Gas System. He retired as a senior attorney at Columbia Gas in 1986, but continued as a consultant in private practice, and maintained his membership in the Virginia State Bar until his death. Survivors include his wife, the former Alice Lee Carter; a son (L. Carter Sargeant ’83) and a daughter; and three grandchildren.

’47

Richard M. Hindman, August 13, 2016. (Marshall, Concert Band) Dick served in the Air Force. He spent 31 years with Pennzoil, retiring in 1990. He lived in New Port Richey, Florida. Survivors include a daughter.

’48

Thomas N. Diehl, August 29, 2016. (Irving, baseball, wrestling, football manager, Stamp Club) Tom attended the University of Nevada and served in the Air Force. He retired from United Airlines and lived in Reno, Nevada. He is survived by two daughters, including Diana ’75.

’49

Martin L. Bowers Jr., October 23, 2016. (Irving, Blue and White Melodians, Football Band) Marty graduated from Bucknell University and served as an engineering officer in the Navy aboard the USS Graffias during the Korean War. He worked in the family lumber business in Frederick, Maryland, before becoming a lumber broker for Lawrence R. McCoy & Company, from which he retired as a marketing vice president in 1999. He was preceded in death by a brother (Grayson ’49) and a sister. Survivors include his wife, Natalie; a son and a daughter; and five grandchildren.

Alan W. Whiting, August 12, 2016. (Marshall, Gun Club) Alan worked in the hardware industry and later was a manufacturers’ representative for Moulton, Stevens & Nelan Sales Associates and Malay, Gillen, and Yearly, as well as principal, part-owner, and office manager of Hays, Necciai, & Whiting. He lived in Crofton, Maryland, for 50 years. Alan was preceded in death by his wife, Janet.

Survivors include a son and a daughter; two grandchildren; and a sister.

’50

Ronald Shapiro, May 21, 2016. (Marshall, Chess Club) Ron attended Cornell University and was founder and chief executive officer of Permalin Products, a specialty paper company with offices in New York City and Holyoke, Massachusetts. He retired in 1996. Survivors include his wife, Evelyn; three children; eight grandchildren; and a brother.

’51

Thad P. Collum, November 23, 2016. (South Cottage, Marshall, golf, Stamp Club) Thad attended Cornell University before and after service in the Navy during the Korean War. He worked for Collum Acoustical Co. and Henderson Johnson Co., two interior systems contracting companies which merged in the mid-1970s. He served as president of the Ceilings and Interior Systems Contractors Association, a global trade association, from which he received the highest award for contributions to the industry. He was also past president of the Syracuse District Golf Association. Thad was preceded in death by a brother, Ed ’45. Survivors include his wife, Barbara; four children; and seven grandchildren.

Hilary Lipsitz, August 4, 2016. (South Cottage, Irving declaimer, football) Hilary graduated from Princeton University. He was president of Sunday Productions (originally Golden Bough Productions), which he founded in 1974. His first job was at BBD&O, where he became a vice president. During that time he produced plays off-Broadway, including one featuring a then-unknown young actor named Peter Falk. Sunday Productions worked with numerous iconic brands, including AT&T, Campbell’s Soup, Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi, and GE. He and his wife, Ethel, were longtime members of the Advisory Council of the American Museum of Natural History. In addition to his wife, survivors include three children, three grandchildren, a sister, and a cousin, Steve ’54.

Goodwyn K. Goodhart, September 20, 2016. (’Eighty-eight, Marshall, football, track & field, YMCA) Wyn led Mercersburg’s football team to an undefeated season in 1948 before enrolling at Ohio State University, where he starred in track & field and was president of the Varsity “O” Club. He served in the Air Force after graduating from Ohio State, primarily as a Strategic Air Command aerialtanker pilot. He spent 32 years in sales and administration with

Thomas H. Reynolds II, August 27, 2016. (South Cottage, Marshall) Tom served in the Navy during the Korean War and graduated from the College of Wooster. He worked in the sales field. Tom was preceded in death by his wife, Wanda. Survivors include a son and a daughter, four stepchildren, eight grandchildren, seven greatgrandchildren, and a sister.

MERCERSBURG MAGAZINE SPRING 2017

’52

Thomas L. Thomas, March 5, 2016. (Marshall, Keil, Glee Club, choir) Tom served in the Air Force and attended Ohio Northern University and Ball State University. He worked for IBM and also in education for many years, and lived in Coldwater, Ohio. Survivors include his wife, Mary Lee; two daughters and a son; nine grandchildren and five great-grandchildren; and a sister.

’53

Stuart W. Caldwell, August 3, 2016. (Marshall, Radio Club) Stu worked for Radio Parts Company in Pittsburgh and the Gateway Middle School District in Monroeville, Pennsylvania. He lived in Largo, Florida. Survivors include his wife, Roberta.

Stephen H. Falk, October 4, 2015. (Main, Marshall, swimming) Steve is survived by his wife, Rita; three children and four grandchildren; and two siblings.

’57

Richard M. Robbins, November 24, 2016. (Keil, Irving, golf, tennis, track & field) Richard graduated from Rollins College (where he was on the crew team) and the Stetson University College of Law. He worked for the public defender’s office in Pinellas County, Florida, for 32 years, mainly in the Juvenile Division. He was a member of the Florida State Bar for more than four decades until he retired in 2008. Survivors include three daughters and four grandchildren.

’58

J. Richard Mattern II, September 30, 2016. (South Cottage, Irving vice president, Senate, Student Council, Class Day Committee, Varsity Club, Marshal of the Field, football, wrestling, track & field, YMCA, Electronics Club, El Circulo Español) Rick was an Eagle Scout and captained the wrestling teams at both Mercersburg and Colgate University. He earned a law degree from the Dickinson School of Law. He established a private legal practice and spent much of his career in public service, having worked as the mental-health review officer and domestic-relations solicitor in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania. He also served on the Clearfield County Planning Committee and as chairman of the Lawrence Township Planning Committee. Survivors include his wife, Deborah; two sons and two daughters; five grandchildren; and two sisters and a brother.

’60

T. Bruce Carpenter Jr., November 13, 2016. (Keil, Marshall, Student Council, Laticlavii, Gun Club, Varsity Club, football co-captain, wrestling) Bruce, who was the son of the late T. Bruce Carpenter ’34, graduated from Washington & Jefferson College with a degree in English literature and served in the Army as a second lieutenant. He worked as an industrial engineer for CF&I Steel before completing a master’s degree in Medieval English from Indiana University. He taught and served as an advisor to the student newspaper at Southeast Community College in Cumberland, Kentucky, and eventually made a career in book design and composition (as well as farming; he and his wife, Inta, lived on 21 acres near Bloomington, Indiana).

In addition to his wife, survivors include a son and a daughter and four grandchildren.

Philip H. Varner Jr., August 28, 2016. (Main, Marshall, Student Council, Orientation Committee, YMCA, Chapel Usher, Class Day Committee, Rauchrunde, Varsity Club, football, basketball, tennis) Philip graduated from American University and the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, and had practiced medicine since 1975. A longtime member of the American College of Physicians, he practiced in Mount Holly, New Jersey. Survivors include his wife, Betty; two daughters and three sons; six grandchildren; a brother, Conrad ’61; and a nephew, Christopher ’88.

’63

Grant E. Atwell II, December 7, 2016. (’Eighty-eight, Marshall, Chemistry Club, Football Band, Blue and White Melodians, Concert Band) The grandson of Harry B. Snider (1900), Grant graduated from Bucknell University and the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. He maintained an active family practice of medicine in Salisbury, Pennsylvania, retiring in 1990. He was a member of the board of directors of the Meyersdale Area School District and the Somerset County Hospital Authority. Survivors include a sister, a niece, a nephew, two great-nieces, and a great-nephew.

’67

R. Paul Burton Jr., July 25, 2012. (Marshall, dorm prefect, The Fifteen, Religious Discussion Group, News, cross country) Paul graduated from Trinity College, the University of Maine, and Kent State University. He taught English at Grand River Academy in Austinburg, Ohio, and later worked for the Star Beacon of Ashtabula, Ohio, as a technical writer for RMI, and for the Ashtabula County Medical Center, from which he retired in 2011. Survivors include his wife, Gene; a daughter and a son; four granddaughters; and a sister.

John B. Tonkin Jr., September 6, 2016. (Irving, football, baseball) John was the son of the late John B. Tonkin ’38 and graduated from West Virginia Wesleyan College. He worked for Consolidated Natural Gas Company and other gas companies as an independent oil and gas landman for his entire career. John was married to Brenda Romeo and had a son, John Stuart “Jeb” Tonkin. Other survivors include a brother and a sister.

Former faculty/staff/friends David L. Emory, former faculty member (1955–1972), October 16, 2016. David, the father of Dave Emory ’72 (also a former faculty member) and Michael D. Emory ’75, taught biology, chemistry, and algebra, and coached cross country and track & field.

Arnold R. “Arny” Meredith Jr., former staff painter (1992–2011), October 3, 2016.

Warren Reeder, father of Jeff Reeder, father-in-law of former director of development and former Board of Regents member Gail Reeder, and grandfather of Adam Reeder ’97 and Anne Reeder Bertram ’00, October 10, 2016.

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JUNE 8-11, 2017

R E U NIONS FOR CLASS YEARS E N D IN G IN 2 AN D 7

REUNION WEEKEND

Mercersburg A magazine for Mercersburg Academy family and friends

VOLUME 43

Performance Space Burgin Center for the Arts Celebrates 10 Years PAGE 10

NO. 1

S P R I N G 2 0 17