Mercersburg Magazine - Winter 2009-2010

Mercersburg A magazine for Mercersburg Academy family and friends

The

VOLUME 36 NO. 3 wi nter 2009–2010

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VOLUME 36

NO. 3

winter 2009–2010

Food

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A magazine for Mercersburg Academy family and friends

Mercersburg 1,036 Words

Serenity now. Page 8

Food + Family = Community

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Pull up a seat at the Mercersburg dinner table, and come hungry for knowledge and nourishment. Page 12

Mercersburg Profiles

Find some food for thought in these stories of alumni restaurateurs, entrepreneurs, and cholesterol fighters.

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My Say

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You Should Know

Nick Thomson ’10 represented his home country of Bermuda in three events at the FINA World Swimming Championships in Rome this summer. Thomson swam the 100-meter freestyle in 52.47 seconds, breaking the Bermudan national age-group record previously held by former Olympian Geri Mewett ’92. Athletes from 185 countries participated in the World Championships; 14-time Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps was among the competitors. Photo courtesy Steve Thomson.

Photo credits: p. 2 Chris Crisman; p. 3 Mercersburg Academy Archives; p. 4 (top left) courtesy Hagerstown Suns, (top right) Bill Green, (bottom right) Renee Hicks; p. 5 Stacey Talbot Grasa; p. 6 (Sancho) Green; p. 7 Grasa; p. 10 (top) Lee Owen, (bottom) John Hutchins; p. 11 (top) Dave Keeseman, (bottom) Ranee Cheung ’09; p. 14 Hicks; p. 16 Hicks; p. 18–19 courtesy Rip Esselstyn; p. 20–21 courtesy Biaggi’s Ristorante Italiano; p. 22 courtesy Amy Ahrensdorf; p. 24 courtesy Michelle Jenkins; p. 26–27 Hicks; p. 28 (left) courtesy Peggy Raley, (right) courtesy Dick Seibert; p. 30 courtesy Todd Hershey; p. 35 Natasha Brown; p. 41 (top) courtesy Alisa Springman, (headshot) Grasa; back cover (sign) Green.

Illustrations: cover, p. 12: Susy Pilgrim Waters

Meet Alisa Springman: dorm dean, teacher, coach, and conqueror of the world’s toughest footrace. Page 41

From the Head of School Via Mercersburg Athletics Alumni Notes

Mercersburg magazine is published three times annually by the Office of Strategic Marketing and Communications.

Mercersburg Academy 300 East Seminary Street Mercersburg, Pennsylvania 17236

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Editor: Lee Owen Alumni Notes Editor: Natasha Brown Contributors: Shelton Clark, Tom Coccagna, Susan Pasternack, Jay Quinn, Alisa Springman, Lindsay Tanton, Wallace Whitworth

Magazine correspondence: Lee_Owen@mercersburg.edu

Art Direction: Aldrich Design

Alumni Notes correspondence: NewsNotes@mercersburg.edu

Director of Strategic Marketing and Communications: Wallace Whitworth

Alumni correspondence/ change of address: Leslie_Miller@mercersburg.edu

Assistant Head for External Affairs: Mary Carrasco

www.mercersburg.edu

Head of School: Douglas Hale

Assistant Head for Enrollment: Tommy Adams

From the Head of School

Soup’s On!

O

ne sure thing I’ve learned from nearly four decades of life in the prep school world and from dealing with many different kinds of people and many different kinds of situations is that there is nearly always more going on in any given circumstance than initially meets the eye.

Case in point: earlier this week I went to dinner in Ford Hall where the menu posted in the lobby read: Spicy Cajun Fish Roasted Potatoes Mixed Vegetables Vegetarian: Salad Bar Pasta Bar with Assorted Sauces and Toppings Mushroom Quiche Cherry Crisp If you had walked into the dining hall with me but had never experienced a Mercersburg meal before, you likely would have scanned the dining hall and quickly surmised it was chow time. And you would have been correct. But if you had experienced a Mercersburg meal before, then you would have known that, yes, indeed, it was chow time, BUT there was much more to the story.

It would have been incredibly easy at some point over the last 30 years for Mercersburg to follow the general trend among boarding schools to dispense with community meals, assigned tables, and family-style dining in favor of buffet lines and a sit-where-you-likewith-whom-you-like-as-often-as-you-like format. But Mercersburg has wisely not followed that path, because dining here has always been about more than simply satisfying hunger pangs.

One of the school’s salient values is experiencing and appreciating community, and there is not much hope of doing that well while dining with the same people at the same table at nearly every meal. That’s not why students and faculty come to Mercersburg. Our politely coercive and completely democratic computerized system

of assigning students to specific tables for two-week stints guarantees that the ninth-grader from Beijing, China, gets to sit across the table from the 12th-grader from Round Rock, Texas. During the course of the year, the madness behind our method expands exponentially, and every student usually secures at least a couple of new friends in the process.

But students can never count on merely sitting at the table waiting to be served, because it may be their night to “sing for supper.” This requirement is another way to help students learn about two other core Mercersburg values: service to others and composure in the face of rather complicated tasks. The daily rotating assignments of students who get the food, go back to the kitchen for seconds, deliver dessert, take the dirty dishes back to the kitchen, etc., are all official tasks impartially assigned by a student proctor. Everyone at the table is equal; everyone takes turns performing these tasks; everyone learns what it is like to serve fellow students, and what it is like to be served by them.

When the entire school gathers at our tables in Ford Hall, the fullness of Mercersburg’s community and our amazing diversity is in complete display and bubbling over the pot’s brim. Buffet lines and open seating may be easier, quicker, and somewhat more economical, but nearly every boarding school I know that has thrown out family-style meals yearns to be able to engineer a return: they know what they gained, but they also know what they lost, and that loss is substantial.

In October the school’s chief graphics designer was here on assignment. She has worked with many different schools and visited many different campuses, but she could not get over the dynamic between students at Mercersburg: they laugh, they embrace each other, their mood is cheerful, they sing “Happy Birthday” to each other, and they seem happy and comfortable with who they are and where they are. How did she come by these observations? She had just finished her first lunch in Ford Hall.

For sure, there is more to this story, but it will have to wait. Soup’s on!

Douglas Hale Head of School

D at es to Rem em b er

Feb 12–14

Stony Batter Players present Pippin Simon Theatre, 8 p.m. Feb 12–13/ 2 p.m. Feb 14

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

Feb 26–Mar 4 Mar 5–22 Apr 12

Irving-Marshall Week Spring Vacation

Schaff Lecture on Ethics and Morals:

Jonah Lehrer Simon Theatre, 7 p.m.

Jun 5 Jun 10–13

Commencement, 11 a.m.

Reunion Anniversary Weekend (for classes ending in 0 and 5)

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

Remembering a True Music Man James Winston Smith Mercersburg organist, choirmaster, and carillonneur emeritus May 11, 1939–August 20, 2009 My friend and colleague, Jim Smith, came to Mercersburg in 1965. He was one of the last members of the faculty “Old Guard” who refer to themselves as “Bill Fowle’s Boys.”

Jim came to Mercersburg largely because of the school’s Chapel and its organ; he received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey.

The introduction of girls to our student body in 1969 meant the possibility for Jim to form the Women’s Ensemble and the Chorale, as well as the opportunity to add women’s voices to the Chapel Choir. Also, the award-winning mixed-voices group, Madrigal Singers, was at his incentive. In addition to directing these student groups, he broadened the school’s music curriculum as a teacher of music theory and as the designer of a computerized music-composition course. He also provided individual instruction for students desirous of pursuing piano and organ studies. He was past chair of the fine arts department.

In 1966, Jim replaced the retiring George Hamer as choirmaster and organist, and in 1981, he succeeded Bryan Barker, Mercersburg’s carillonneur for 53 years. For nearly three decades, Jim gave frequent concerts on Mercersburg’s Swoope Carillon as well as recitals on many East Coast carillons.

During the summer of 1998, he performed recitals throughout Australia. Suffice it to say,

Left, Smith at the piano in 1984; right, Smith in the bell tower in 2005

during his years on the faculty, he provided hundreds of students—perhaps thousands— with a music experience that they remember to this day.

Many remember the great and powerful music Jim coaxed out of the Chapel organ and the music of the bells. They remember his own tradition of giving the bells the opportunity to play “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” on the first day of baseball every spring, or “Yankee Doodle Dandy” on the Fourth of July—followed by a John Philip Sousa march or two. Occasionally, he would play “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic” hidden away in the notes of some maestro’s major work on the Chapel organ.

On May 2, 2009, a two-ton bell named for and dedicated to Jim was hoisted more than 100 feet into the carillon’s Barker Tower. It is the third-largest bell in the carillon—and the final addition to the 50-bell tower.

Some persons see only limitations to life in a small town. Jim was inclined to support and advocate the probity of life in the town of Mercersburg, our small town. In that regard, he was generous with his time and his energy. He was a past secretary of the town’s Chamber of Commerce, served on the Borough Council for 20 years, and was Council President from 1982 to 1993.

Jim’s affection and affinity for the people of the school will not be replaced. His sense of stewardship, of being just a pause in the Mercersburg continuum impelled him to add something of his own. He will not soon be forgotten.

Jim is survived by his wife, Carol; son, Ted Smith ’83; daughters, Hannah Smith Kudrik ’91 and Sarah Smith ’93; and four grandchildren.

—Jay L. Quinn Friend and colleague

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M e r ce r sb u r g ma g a z i ne w i nte r 2 0 0 9 – 2 0 1 0

Having a Ball

On With the Show

Young and Willing, a play by Francis Swann that tells the story of six young actors trying to make it on Broadway in the 1940s, was the opening production in Stony Batter Players’ 2009–2010 season. Sitting (L–R): Aimee Chase ’10, John Henry Reilly ’10, Eliza MacDonald ’10, Maggie Goff ’10. Standing: Susan Durnford ’10, Tally Diaz ’10, Aaron Porter ’10, Zach Olivos ’10. Laurie Mufson directed the production.

In August,

longtime faculty member Jim Malone (above) was honored by the Hagerstown Suns minor-league baseball team. Malone was chosen as “Hagerstown Sun for a Day” for his impact in the community, which includes work for the Franklin County Shelter for the Homeless and an event in which he rescued a man from a burning car following an accident on Pennsylvania Route 16 near Mercersburg. Malone, a former head of Mercersburg’s science department, coaches football and basketball and is an adviser in Main Hall.

Saying Hello (and Hello Again) Mercersburg announces the appointment of new faculty members Nick Wilbur (left) and Will Waldron (right), while welcoming Tammy McBeth ’05 (center) back to campus as a new staff member. Wilbur is an assistant director of admission and financial aid, Waldron is director of annual giving and volunteer relations, and McBeth is an assistant director of annual giving and volunteer relations.

CORRECTION In our summer 2009 issue, a student receiving his diploma in a photo at the bottom of page 13 was incorrectly listed as Mike Weinstein ’09; the student was Lars Arnesen ’09. Mercersburg regrets the error.

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Higher

Ground A Mercersburg runner’s ultimate training experience

Nebiyu Osman ’10, a standout distance runner for Mercersburg’s track and cross country teams, left no stone unturned in his pursuit of an elite training opportunity this summer.

“The way I saw it, I could go to a weeklong cross country camp somewhere in the U.S. and spend $600 for it,” says Osman, the 2009 Mid-Atlantic Prep League individual cross country champion. “Or, for $150, I could train in Ethiopia with some of the greatest runners in the world, and have the benefit of training at a high altitude.”

Osman, who was born in Washington, D.C., and now lives in Russellville, Alabama, is the son of Ethiopian and Kenyan parents.

But he had never visited Ethiopia until July, when he traveled with his mother, Meseret, and a family friend to the capital city of Addis Ababa for three weeks in a program called Running Across Borders.

Simply put, Ethiopia is a running mecca.

The last four Olympic gold medalists in the men’s 10,000 meters (the longest standard track & field event contested internationally) hail from the country, while two of the last three Olympic champions in the 5,000 meters on the men’s side and the two mostrecent winners in the women’s competition are Ethiopian.

One of the main reasons for Ethiopia’s success on the biggest stages in international competition has been the advantage of a high-altitude home training ground for its athletes. The elevation of Addis Ababa itself climbs from 7,600 feet above sea level to more than 9,000 feet at various points.

“The altitude is unbelievable and really taxing,” Osman says. “The first day I was there, I ran two miles a little faster than I should and got sick—and I was running a minute per mile slower than I do here.

Osman

Every day, I needed a two-hour nap on top of eight to 10 hours of sleep a night, and I ate so much more there than in the U.S.” After returning to America, Osman was eager to see if he’d notice a difference at sea level after training at such a high elevation. “They say that it takes two months to fully adjust to the high altitude, and two weeks after returning is when you really have your optimal performances,” he says. “Even though I was only there for three weeks, I definitely saw a lot of gains from it. I can tell now that I’m definitely stronger than at this point last year. My fitness is better. Some of it may be that I’m a year older, but the training really helped me.”

Osman rubbed shoulders with worldclass athletes in Addis Ababa. In addition to training with a nearly entirely Ethiopian fleet of fellow runners, he met track icons

The Osman File

• 2009 Mid-Atlantic Prep League individual cross country champion (2008 runner-up) • 2009 Pennsylvania Independent Schools 3,200-meter champion • Finished second at 2008 MidAtlantic Prep League Cross Country Championships • Academic All-MAPL selection • Also played varsity soccer before focusing exclusively on track/cross country • Distance from Mercersburg to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: 7,185 miles

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Kenenisa Bekele (who swept the 5,000 and 10,000 meters at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and is the world-record holder in both events and a three-time Olympic champion overall), and Haile Gebrselassie (a two-time Olympic gold medalist in the 10,000 meters and the current world-record holder in the marathon)—essentially, distance-running’s version of Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.

“It was almost surreal,” Osman says of his encounters with the superstars. “I had gone to the track to see if I could train there, and I ended up with an invitation to watch [Bekele] work out. They even said I could try to work out with him, but that I might not be able to keep up,” he smiles.

Osman was inspired by the heart-wrenching stories of several Ethiopian runners he met; he was especially struck by the experiences of a training partner named Gudisa, whose parents were killed in a car accident two years ago when Gudisa was 15 years old.

Gudisa lived in a four-foot-square shack with a tin roof along with another runner from the Running Across Borders program. “He realized that his friend, who was older, had a better chance to become a pro athlete, so Gudisa told him, ‘You worry about training and doing what you need to do, and I’ll work while you train so we can have food.’

He would give his friend most of the food they had and eat only what he needed to survive.”

Osman hopes to organize a race either in Mercersburg or his hometown of Russellville as a benefit for Gudisa and others like him.

As for Osman’s post-Mercersburg future, he would love to run in a college program but is keeping his options open. “[Running] doesn’t have to be the center of what I’m doing,” he says. “If it can help me get into a school somewhere, then great. I know I want to be a healthy person, so running will be something I do in my life no matter what.

All I know is I enjoy running now, and we’ll see where it takes me.”

—Lee Owen

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M e r ce r sb u r g ma g a z i ne w i nte r 2 0 0 9 – 2 0 1 0

mountain Views

In late July, Board of Regents President Emeritus Edgar Masinter ’48 and his wife, Margery, hosted an event with Head of School Douglas Hale and his wife, Peggy, for alumni, parents, faculty, and friends of Mercersburg at the Masinters’ summer home in Wilson, Wyoming. Attendees enjoyed remarks by Mercersburg Outdoor Education (MOE) faculty members Derry Mason (director), Pete Gunkelman (assistant director), Sue and Jim Malone, Jennifer Miller Smith ’97, and Jeff Shamp.

The remarks included highlights from a preliminary plan for a Jackson Hole summer outdoor-education program for Mercersburg students (and possibly alumni and parents) beginning in 2010.

Pictured in Grand Teton National Park (L–R): Charles Moore ’47, Peggy Hale, Judith Moore, Carol Prentiss, Doug Hale, John Prentiss ’65, Margery Masinter, Edgar Masinter ’48.

’Burg’s EYE VIEW

CAMPUS NOTES

Mercersburg’s 117th academic year began September 8 with the school’s annual Opening Convocation in the Irvine Memorial Chapel. Academic Dean Eugenio Sancho was the featured speaker; Head of School Douglas Hale and Student Council President Lorraine Simonis ’10 also offered remarks. The Michelet Prize was awarded to Simonis, of Philadelphia, while the Culbertson Prize was awarded to Harrison Helm ’12, of Salem, Virginia.

The 2009–2010 Sancho student body is composed of approximately 430 students representing 32 states, the District of Columbia, and a record 34 countries.

This summer, 34 Mercersburg alumni and students and 12 current faculty or staff members worked as counselors, teachers, coaches, instructors, or in other roles for Mercersburg Summer Programs.

“We are really excited to have so many people with Mercersburg connections choos-

ing to spend their summers working with us,” says Quentin McDowell, director of summer and extended programs. “It is not only impressive to have such a long list of alumni, faculty, and staff involved in our programs, but it also enriches the Mercersburg experience for all our summer participants.”

Six members of the current student body—Anne Carrasco ’11, Kip Hawbaker ’10, Jordan Krutek ’10, Ellis Mays ’10, Andrea Metz ’10, and Lorraine Simonis ’10—served as counselors and teachers for various activities. More than 20 different programs are offered at Mercersburg during the summer, from swimming and basketball to robotics, theatre, ESL (English as a second language), and adventure camps for children and teens.

Robert Sapolsky, a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University, gave the Ammerman Family Lecture October 5 in the Simon Theatre. His talk, titled “The Biology and Psychology of Depression,” served as the opening event in Mercersburg’s 2009–2010 Monday Evening Lecture Series.

Sapolsky has received numerous honors, including a MacArthur Fellowship (commonly known as a “Genius Grant”) and the John P. McGovern Award for Behavioral S ci e n c e f r o m t h e Sapolsky American Association for the Advancement of Science; among his books are A Primate’s Memoir and Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers.

Four students and faculty member Alysia Oakley spent three weeks in August at Colegio Alemán de San Felipe, Mercersburg’s sister school in central Chile. The trip marked the second year in a row that an Academy group visited the school as part of an exchange program; several Chilean students will make a return visit to Mercersburg this January.

Additionally, seven students and two faculty members from the Gauss Gymnasium in Germany (another of Mercersburg’s sister schools) traveled to Mercersburg for a month in the fall.

M e r ce r sb u r g ma g a z i ne w i nte r 2 0 0 9 – 2 0 1 0

Hicks, Maurer Earn New Appointments

Hicks

Also this summer, Mercersburg students Armine Garcia Barker ’10 and Maureen Murray ’10 studied in France courtesy of the John H. Montgomery Award, a summerimmersion program.

Plans call for Mercersburg to offer several international and domestic trips for study and enrichment during spring break and summer 2010. Subject to availability, trips are planned to China, France, India, Ireland, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast (a community-service trip) in the spring, and for Chile, France/Switzerland, Germany, Spain, and a Mercersburg Outdoor Education excursion to Wyoming in the summer. Financial aid is available.

The 2009 edition of the Blue Review, Mercersburg’s annual literary-arts journal, earned a Gold Medal in the student-magazine critique of the Columbia Scholastic Press Association, scoring 930 of a possible 1,000 points for organization, content, and design. The publication will compete for CSPA’s Crown Award this spring. Editors-inchief were Lorraine Simonis ’10 and Laura Graham ’09, with cover design by Arcadia Hartung ’09.

Maurer

Head of School Douglas Hale announced the creation of two new part-time administrative positions designed to enable the school to focus more closely and clearly on students’ needs in both the classrooms and the dorms.

Eric Hicks is the school’s first director of dormitories; he also teaches biology, is head coach of the boys’ tennis team, and serves as Mercersburg’s registrar. Dr. Julia Stojak Maurer ’90, who teaches robotics, serves as co-chair of the school’s Program Review Committee, and until recently chaired the mathematics department, has agreed to become the school’s first associate academic dean.

“Students’ needs evolve constantly,” Hale says. “It stands to reason, therefore, that we should carefully and prudently evolve our administration in ways that enable us to address these evolving student needs responsibly, effectively, and efficiently. In their respective new roles, Julie and Eric will lighten the considerable demands now shouldered by Dr. Gene Sancho, our academic dean, and Debbie Rutherford, our associate head of school, respectively.

“In the end, however, holding to our long-standing studentcentered philosophy, the ultimate beneficiary of these new positions will be the student body, because the positions are designed to address issues that will directly impact all students in many positive and helpful ways.”

Hicks and his wife, Renee, lived in Fowle Hall on campus for several years—“and we really enjoyed it,” Hicks says. “It was probably the most important part of my education as a faculty member.

Dorm life is what makes a boarding school a boarding school, and the director of dormitories position will help Mercersburg continue to keep dorm life fun, fresh, and rewarding for everyone.”

Maurer expresses similar enthusiasm. “This is kind of a dream come true in many ways,” she says. “The position offers a vantage point that allows me to draw upon my experience as a former student here and my perspective as a current teacher. In addition, it presents an opportunity for intellectual growth, strategic vision, and academic innovation that comes along only very rarely.”

In related news, Chip Patterson has been named the school’s assistant dean of students; he succeeds Ray Larson, who begins a term as head of the science department. Mike Sweeney has been appointed the new head of the math department.

In our next issue Look for coverage of Fall Alumni Weekend 2009, fall arts productions and athletic events, the Jacobs Residency Lecture featuring Hooman Majd, and more.

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M e r ce r sb u r g ma g a z i ne s u mme r 2 0 0 9

1,036 Words

In a serene back-campus spot not far from the bustle of Mercersburg life, the trees begin to show their true colors on an early fall day. Interspersed with the foliage are two works of public art. Photo by Eric Poggenpohl.

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Athletics D ate s to Re me mb e r

Feb 12–14 Feb 19–20

Feb 20

Feb 26–27 Feb 27

Boys’/girls’ basketball at MAPL Tournament (at Peddie) Pennsylvania Independent Schools State Wrestling Tournament (at Westtown School) MAPL Winter Track & Field Championships (at Lawrenceville) Eastern Interscholastic Swimming & Diving Championships (at La Salle University, Philadelphia) 33rd Annual Burbank Squash Invitational (Davenport Squash Center)

Spring Varsity Athletics Roundup Baseball

Captain: Tom Timoney ’09 Baseball Award (most outstanding player): Timoney Brent Gift Baseball Award (most improved player): Dillon French ’09 Swoope Baseball Trophy (sportsmanship/good fellowship): Trevor Smith ’09 Head coach: Karl Reisner (18th season) Record: 18–4 (9–1 MAPL) Highlights: Team won the MAPL championship for the fifth time since joining the league for the 2001 season; the league title was Reisner’s eighth…

Timoney (a four-year letterwinner), Smith, and Cesar Wong ’10 were named All-MAPL; Timoney and Wong garnered first-team All-Area recognition from the [Chambersburg] Public Opinion, while Smith earned a place on the second team and Matt Timoney ’11 earned honorable-mention honors… Wong, who led the area in hitting (.577), hit safely in all 18 games he played in; Tom Timoney was second in the area with a .522 average… the team swept doubleheaders from Lawrenceville, Hill, Peddie, and Hun before splitting the final MAPL twin-bill with Blair (after it had clinched the league crown)… Matt Timoney and Sam Rodgers ’11 were named Academic All-MAPL.

Golf

Golf Award (most outstanding player): Caroline Lovette ’09 Coaches’ Award (most improved player): Harrison Brink ’11 Head coach: Paul Galey (10th season) MAPL finish (boys’ team): 5th Highlights: Lovette shot 33 (two-under-par) over nine holes to win her second-straight MAPL girls’ golf crown; she finished eight strokes ahead of the runner-up… it marked the fourth-consecutive year that a Mercersburg golfer took the title (Ana Nevarez ’07 won in 2006 and 2007)… Brink and Peter Jones ’09 teamed to shoot 75 at the MAPL Tournament, good for fourth place… Kevin

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

Yeung ’10 garnered Academic All-MAPL honors…

Lovette, one of four senior starters on the team, will play at Richmond this spring.

Boys’ Lacrosse

Captains: Cam Banta ’09 Men’s Lacrosse Award (most outstanding player): John Richey ’09 Lacrosse Alumni Award (most improved player): Peter Flanagan ’11 Nelson T. Shields ’70 Lacrosse Award (spirit/ teamwork/sportsmanship): Banta Head coach: Todd McGuire (2nd season) Record: 2–10 (1–4 MAPL) Highlights: Banta and Mark Destro ’09 earned honorable-mention All-MAPL honors… the team defeated Blair for the second-straight season and also knocked off St. John’s Catholic Prep… Forrest Allen ’11 represented Mercersburg on the Academic All-MAPL team… Richey and Bill Flanagan ’10 were the team’s leading scorers… Banta averaged more than five takeaways per game… Destro, who will play at Jacksonville this spring, made 20 or more saves in a game twice, and saved 75 percent (or better) of shots faced in five different contests.

Girls’ Lacrosse

Captain: Jenn Brallier ’09 Women’s Lacrosse Award (most outstanding player): Stephanie Seibert ’09 Coaches’ Award (most improved player): Laura Rahauser ’12 Head coach: Sarah Mason (1st season) Record: 3–9 (1–4 MAPL) Highlights: Brallier and Coralie Thomas ’09 garnered first-team All-MAPL honors; Seibert and Anika Kempe ’09 were named honorable mention… the team scored in double figures in each of its three victories and in five of nine losses… Brallier, Seibert, Thomas, and Annie Birney ’09 earned varsity letters all four years; Brallier joined a select club of Mercersburg athletes to collect 12 varsity letters in a career… Seibert, Thomas, Alicia Furnary ’09, and Ashley Irving ’09 played in the Central PA Girls’ Lacrosse Association Senior All-Star Game… Brallier led the team in scoring (42 goals)…

Kempe and Thomas represented the team on the Academic All-MAPL squad.

Softball

Captains: Leigh Saner ’10, Sarah Duda ’10 Softball Award (most outstanding player): Sara Erlichman ’10 Coaches’ Award (most improved player): Ana Kelly ’11 Head coach: Nikki Walker (3rd season) Record: 6–11 (3–7 MAPL) Highlights: Saner and Duda were both named honorable-mention All-MAPL; Erlichman and Julie Garlick ’11 earned honorable-mention All-Star honors from the Public Opinion… Duda and Garlick were named to the Academic All-MAPL team… the Storm swept a doubleheader from Hill, outscoring

the Blues 24–0 during the two games… other wins came against MAPL foe Blair and local rivals St. James, McConnellsburg, and St. Maria Goretti… the team posted double-digit run totals in four games (and was 4–0 in those contests)… Kate Vary ’10 led the team in batting average (.455), Duda scored a team-high 20 runs, Garlick posted a team-high 11 stolen bases, and Erlichman posted a team-best 2.30 earned-run average and 61 strikeouts in 58.0 innings on the mound.

Boys’ Tennis

Men’s Tennis Award (most outstanding player): Cristobal Ramirez ’11 Coaches’ Award (most improved player): David Liu ’09 Head coach: Eric Hicks (15th season) Dual match record: 2–5 (2–1 MAPL) MAPL finish: 3rd Highlights: The team finished third at the MAPL Championships, ahead of Blair, Hill, and Hun; Mercersburg’s top four singles players (Ramirez, Julian Eisner ’11, Napat Waikwamdee ’09, and Chris Jaffe ’11) all reached the semifinals of their respective singles brackets… Ramirez earned AllMAPL honors in both singles and doubles; Eisner was named All-MAPL in doubles… Chris Shie ’10 was an Academic All-MAPL selection… in head-to-head matches, the Storm went 2–1 against MAPL foes, defeating Hun and Hill and falling to Lawrenceville… rain washed out several matches and wreaked havoc with the schedule… Waikwamdee captured the annual Teigelack Tiebreaker Tennis Tournament (TTTT).

Boys’ Track & Field

Captains: Mark Herring ’09, Derek Osei-Bonsu ’09, Neb Osman ’10 Men’s Track & Field Award (most outstanding athlete): Simeon Daniels ’10 Edward J. Powers ’37 Award (most improved athlete): Michael Lorentsen ’10 Robert Fager Black ’07/’45 Trophy (sportsmanship/ loyalty): Ellis Mays ’10 Head coach: Skip Sydnor (2nd season) MAPL/state finish: 4th/4th Highlights: Osman (3200-meter run) and Bubba Harris ’09 (discus) won individual titles at the Pennsylvania Independent Schools Invitational; Mays (2nd/800m), Harris (2nd/shot put), Daniels (3rd/high jump, 4th/200m), Lorensten (5th/ pole vault), Troy Harrison ’10 (5th/100m), and the 4x100m relay team of Daniels, Harrison, Osei-Bonsu, and Carlos Garcia ’10 all placed in the top five at the meet… Daniels (400m) and Lorentsen (pole vault) each placed third in their events at the MAPL Championships… Osman was named a secondteam All-Area selection by the Public Opinion…

Herring joined a select club of Mercersburg athletes to earn 12 varsity letters during their careers; he earned letters in wrestling, cross country, indoor track, and outdoor track... Lorentsen and Osman earned Academic All-MAPL honors.

Girls’ Track & Field

Captains: Paige Summers ’11, Lena Finucane ’09 Women’s Track & Field Award (most outstanding athlete): Finucane Edward J. Powers ’37 Award (most improved athlete): Kearsten Cubit ’10 Robert Fager Black ’07/’45 Trophy (sportsmanship/ loyalty): Sarah Kolanowski ’10 Head coach: Betsy Willis (8th season) MAPL/state finish: 2nd/7th Highlights: The team’s second-place MAPL finish tied for its highest ever… four athletes won individual MAPL titles: Finucane (1600m), Summers (discus), Asia Walker ’09 (long jump), and Abby Colby ’12 (3200m – part of a sweep of the top three places that included Mackenzie Riford ’11 and Fincuane)… other top MAPL performances included Cubit in the 400m (2nd), Finucane in the 800m (3rd), Walker in the 100m (3rd), Kolanowski in the 100m hurdles (3rd), and Kayleigh Kiser ’11 in the 400m (3rd)… Finucane and Walker were both named to the Public Opinion’s All-Area second team… Theresa Kirch ’10 represented the Storm on the Academic All-MAPL squad… the team swept a quad meet against MAPL rivals Blair, Hill, and Peddie… among eight placewinners at the Pennsylvania Independent Schools invitational were second-place finishers Cubit (400m), Summers (discus), and Walker (long jump).

Food+Family=Community Dining Together at Mercersburg

By L e e Ow e n

its floor-to-ceiling windows offering expansive views of mountain scenery, two levels of food preparation behind the scenes, and rows of tables with place settings for 10, Ford Hall on the Mercersburg campus may not look exactly like the traditional family dinner table.

But for the more than 600 members of the school community (students, faculty, st aff, and family members) that dine together on a typical day, it’s the next best thing.

Instead of Mom or Dad passing the pasta, peas, or salad around the table, your science teacher, lacrosse coach, or dormitory dean may be the one handing you a plate of food. The young preschooler (a faculty child) sitting beside you may not be your little sister, but it might feel that way after you enjoy several meals together.

“We’re in a very college-like environment here, but obviously our students aren’t college-age kids,” says Debbie Rutherford, Mercersburg’s associate head of school. “There’s so much research out there that says that kids who sit down and eat dinner in a family setting on a regular basis are more successful in many ways.

We certainly aren’t replacing the family here, but we are family-like in a lot of ways.”

During the school year, the entire Mercersburg student body and faculty, plus faculty spouses and children, eat several meals together each week in a family-style setting in Ford Hall. Students are randomly assigned to a different table every two weeks; each table

has at least one faculty member who dines with the students. Opposite the faculty member sits a member of the senior class designated as a proctor to ensure that everything at the table runs as smoothly as possible.

“Since you rotate tables as a student, you’re able to become friends with people that you otherwise might not meet,” says Brookke Mahaffey ’10, one of nearly 60 members of the senior class serving as table proctors this year. “And by eating with faculty members who are associated with a dorm other than yours or teach classes you may not be taking, you’re able to get to know them on a more personal level.”

All students take turns serving as waiters for their table during the two-week period; these duties are known in Mercersburg parlance as “white coat” and “blue coat.”

The white coat brings a tray of food (usually consisting of a main course, side dishes, and a vegetarian entrée) from the kitchen. Before dessert, the blue coat assists the white coat in clearing the table of dishes, glasses, and silverware, as well as returning serving plates and bowls to the kitchen. The white coat then brings a dessert to each table; at the conclusion of the meal, the white coat, blue coat, and table proctor make sure the dining area is clean and all dishes are returned to the kitchen.

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“There’s truly a sense of community. It’s not something

I’ve ever really sensed on any other campuses I’ve been to. It’s an important part of how people approach the rest of their day—knowing that they’ve had a common, shared experience that otherwise is hard to reproduce.” —Jim Butler, food service director, on family-style meals

Mercersbu rg magazi n e Wi nter 2009–2010

A self-service soup and salad bar is available at lunch and dinner, and a deli bar is offered at lunch. A variety of hot and cold beverages are served at all meals; soft drinks are not available and all fruit drinks are free of corn syrup.

Lunch is served family-style on all regular class days, as are dinners on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday evenings. The aforementioned meals are required for students, though each student receives a handful of meal cuts to use during the school year, and day students are not required to attend evening meals unless they are on campus. (Breakfasts, Wednesdaynight dinners, and all weekend meals are served buffet-style and are not required.)

“The routine that we have in place here enables our kids to eat properly, and having meals prepared by the dining hall that are so diverse gives the students a chance to eat from all different food groups,” says faculty member Mark Cubit, the school’s head boys’ basketball coach, a dormitory dean in Fowle Hall, and the parent of two current Mercersburg students. “When they’re growing, this is such an important issue. Kids at this age might not always make the right food choices on their own if left to their own resources.”

On the menu If preparing dinner for eight guests—or 600—is more difficult than making dinner for four, then imagine the challenges facing an operation serving three meals a day, seven days a week, to an entire school all at once (unlike many schools, Mercersburg does not offer multiple lunch or dinner periods). Jim Butler, the school’s food service director, and his staff are charged with this Herculean task.

“Our goal is to be certain we provide a range of options for every meal period,” Butler says. “We want people to have the opportunity to eat balanced and to eat well at every meal—and this includes things like

fresh fruits, white or brown rice as an alternative, and a salad bar. The produce consumption here [among the students and faculty] is incredible. We try to offer an array of reasonable and healthy options each week.”

Butler is in his second stint at Mercersburg; he first worked at the school during the 2004–2005 academic year, and returned in 2008 as the campus representative for SAGE Dining Services, the school’s current foodservice provider. SAGE, which is based in Towson, Maryland, serves more than 150 independent schools nationwide (more than any other company).

“I’ve had the good fortune to work at several school campuses; what I hope people appreciate here, particularly at family-style lunches, is that there’s truly a sense of community,” he says. “Everyone knows everyone else is here at a certain time and place.

It’s not something I’ve ever really sensed on any other campuses I’ve been to. It’s a little amorphous and hard to put your finger on, but it definitely exists and it’s an important part of how people approach the rest of their day—knowing that they’ve had a common, shared experience that otherwise is hard to reproduce.”

In order to have such a large quantity of food ready to serve, preparation for each meal almost always begins the day before.

“We have 30 employees and nine food-preparation people on our staff that routinely work to keep a day ahead in their preparation,” Butler says.

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As one can imagine, an operation this enormous requires meticulous record keeping and forecasting for each ingredient in every meal so that the correct amount of food is ordered from suppliers and prepared with as little excess waste as possible.

“We use a mix of vendors—some local and some national,” Butler says. “Our pricing is addressed primarily through our corporate office; it negotiates regional and national contracts to get us the best pricing available.

If we’re buying 600 pounds of meat, a variation of 40 cents a pound is a big difference. A good example is a new produce vendor we’ve been working with because it has more local products available, and its prices in general are better.

“We try to make as much of our food on-site as possible. Take chicken fingers, for example; we start with plain chicken and seasoned flour and make them from scratch, so we only partially fry them and finish the cooking process in the oven. This means we end up with a product far healthier than if we just went into the market and bought a pre-made product.”

Each recipe used is analyzed and approved by a registered dietitian. SAGE maintains a recipe database the Mercersburg staff can utilize in preparing a menu, but the staff is also able to originate recipes on its own (including ideas from students or faculty) and have nutritional analysis performed on each one.

By the Numbers

What does it take to feed a school? During the 2008–2009 school year, Mercersburg students, faculty, families, and staff consumed the following quantities of food during meals together:

23,088 bagels 21,600 chicken breasts 11,040 hamburgers 237,000 ounces of orange juice 41,600 chicken fingers

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School Spirit During Irving-Marshall Week each year, members of the Irving Society and Marshall Society sit on different sides of the dining hall, and IrvingMarshall cupcakes (red and white or blue and gold) are served. And in October, each table received its own birthday cake for dessert in celebration of the 144th birthday of the Academy’s founder, Dr. William Mann Irvine.

“We can take suggestions, submit them for approval, and get them into our menu cycle,” Butler says. “We try to hit an appropriate mix of local, regional, and international flavors.” Given that members of the school community represent 32 American states and 34 nations, that’s no small feat.

Local Mid-Atlantic favorites like gnocchi, pierogies, chicken Chesapeake, and whoopie pies (in addition to the ultimate Mercersburg delicacy, pretzel pie) are frequently served in addition to traditional staples.

The staff is always on the lookout for creative alternatives to keep the Mercersburg dining experience fresh, ranging from picnics and theme nights to special campus locations for meals, such as a Friday night this fall when dinner was served at Regents’ Field (the Academy’s new synthetic-turf

The (Almost) Dairy Queen Franklin County, which includes Mercersburg, produces the secondlargest amount of dairy products in Pennsylvania, a state that ranks second (behind only Wisconsin) in the number of dairy farms located within its borders.

Source: Franklin County Visitors Bureau, Pennsylvania Center for Dairy Excellence

athletic surface) before an evening field hockey game. The change in locale led to a larger crowd for the game and helped build school spirit in the process. “I’m lucky to work with an enthusiastic and professional staff that is always willing to do something special,” Butler says.

Continuing education Not surprisingly, at schools like Mercersburg, the classroom is far from the only place where learning happens. Family-style meals provide opportunities for discussions about manners, courtesy, or anything else that might come up around the dinner table with a large group of people from different places and backgrounds.

“Some of the strongest parts of our residential curriculum are those lessons that are delivered in a natural way,” Rutherford says. “Instead of a faculty member saying, ‘Tonight, we’re going to learn how to serve from the dishes,’ those natural things just happen. At home, you don’t have a book that Mom and Dad take out every night to teach you how to put your napkin on your lap; it just happens. The dining-hall structure allows for those serendipitous but important lessons to be taught. Kids, in effect, live at different tables for two weeks, and will learn a lot of different lessons and hear stories of how people eat together.”

Adults at the table can make sure students are getting the right amount and balance of

nutrition at meals and beyond. “I try to tell the kids to think of a car engine and needing gasoline,” says Marilyn Houck, the school’s head athletic trainer. “Your body needs good hydration and good nutrition to run efficiently and effectively. We encourage kids to get a water bottle and carry it around all day. Adults don’t always do a good job of that either. Sometimes it’s as simple as having water available.”

From a logistical standpoint, having the entire school in the same place at the same time is also valuable for announcements and other housekeeping matters. “There’s definitely a community aspect to it,” Rutherford says. “The nice thing about the size of our school is that we all fit [in the dining hall at the same time]. It wouldn’t be as powerful if we had to have three different dining halls.

And it’s actually pretty efficient; we come in, eat together, have announcements, and we’re out in 30 or 45 minutes.

“I always find that when parents are looking at sending their children to school here, they feel very comforted by the fact that we see the kids every day at lunch and dinner, and make sure they’re here and notice what they’re eating. And as a parent, what I like about it for the kids is the interaction with everybody in the community.”

Mercersburg Profiles

At its most basic level , food is about sustenance and nourishment.

It’s also about bringing people together for everything from a family dinner to a night on the town. ¶ From in-home kitchens to restaurants, corporate offices, and even 30,000 feet above the Earth, Mercersburg alumni are creating and contributing to a variety of culinary delights as broad as every palate imaginable. ¶ One runs a restaurant company recently honored by Consumer Reports as the top Italian restaurant chain in the nation. Another uses her experience as a corporate chef and her passion for the healing arts to help families grow closer together.

Still others run award-winning wineries, beloved area eateries, and websites that can turn formerly frazzled supermarket trips into fantastic home-cooked meals.¶ Enjoy the following profiles—and you might even find a recipe or other fresh ideas mixed in. ¶ (Bon appétit.)

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Mightier

Than the Fork

By Shelton Clark

Firefighter-turned-author promotes a plant-based diet

Having moved through life at a sprinter’s pace—from All-American swimmer to professional triathlete to firefighter—Rip Esselstyn ’82 added “best-selling author” to his extensive résumé with 2009’s The Engine 2 Diet.

Esselstyn, whose father, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, is a world-renowned expert on preventing and reversing heart disease, crafted the Engine 2 Diet in 2003 specifically for James Rae, a fellow firefighter in Austin, Texas, whose cholesterol level had become dangerously high. After three weeks of a plant-based diet, Rae’s cholesterol count went from 344 mg/dL (a level considered “high risk” for coronary heart disease) to 196. Buoyed by those results, Esselstyn’s whole Engine 2 shift went “plant-strong”— “I never use the terms ‘vegan’ or ‘vegetarian,’” Esselstyn says—and remains that way even now.

“The medicine of the future is going to be nutrition,” Esselstyn says. “It’s all about prevention, and prevention starts with what you have at the end of your fork and your spoon.

Seventy-five percent of America’s $2.3 trillion health-care bill comes from five chronic Western diseases—heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, obesity, prostate cancer, and breast cancer—all of which are either preventable or reversible through proper nutrition.

That’s the tragedy that’s going on right now in America. It’s like everybody’s falling over this cliff, and we’re putting ambulances at the bottom of the cliff instead of just putting a fence up at the top.

“We are, as a country, probably in the worst shape we’ve ever been in, and what

we’ve been doing for the last 50 years is not working,” Esselstyn adds. “It’s time for a paradigm shift. We need a game-changer. This is it. Eating a plant-based diet has so many advantages outside of just yourself.”

Esselstyn’s Mercersburg career started when a friend prepared to enroll for a postgraduate year. “Somehow, he got the bug in my ear that it might be interesting to go to Mercersburg,” Esselstyn says. “I was a pretty good swimmer at the time, but not necessarily fantastic. And Mercersburg had what was considered to be one of the best swimming programs in the country for high school.

“The next thing I knew,” he says, “I was driving to Mercersburg with my mom, and we interviewed with the academic counselors. I met John ‘J.T.’ Trembley, the swim coach, and I was hooked. And the campus is absolutely gorgeous, so it just made sense on a lot of levels for me to leave where I was and go to Mercersburg for my last two years.”

In addition to swimming, Esselstyn played water polo and tennis. “I loved being part of the best high-school swimming program in the nation, I loved water polo, and it was a nice breather to get out of the water and air out by hitting some tennis balls around.”

Swimming led Esselstyn to a scholarship at the University of Texas, one of the NCAA’s top swimming programs. “J.T. Trembley is still one of the most inspiring, motivating coaches I’ve ever had in my life, and I will always be thankful for the time I had with him,” he says.

During Esselstyn’s four years with the Longhorns, Texas finished second (twice) and third (twice) at the NCAA men’s swimming championships. Trembley, who coached at Mercersburg from 1980 to 1988, is now the head men’s swimming coach at the University of Tennessee.

“I have nothing but wonderful and really fond memories of Mercersburg,” Esselstyn adds, “not only academically, athletically, and socially, but there’s just something about being a high schooler living in a dorm with

other kids your age away from home. I treasure the wonderful friendships that developed and the bonds that occurred when you’re not only going to school with these people, but also living with them.”

Esselstyn was a three-time All-America swimmer at Texas, so he had no reason to question his eating habits. “I ate on the athletic training table with all the scholarship football players, basketball players, baseball players, and looking back on it, it was an absolute abomination what we ate,” Esselstyn says. “It was steak, it was hamburgers, it was cheese pizza, it was ice cream—it was all of the bad, none of the good.”

Within a year of his graduation, Esselstyn had become a professional triathlete, and nutrition was as important a part of his training as running shoes or a high-tech bicycle.

Inspired by his father’s work, Esselstyn went “plant-strong” in 1987, despite the carnivorous leanings of the traditional training table.

“If you’re talking about football, basketball, baseball, or some of these kinds of maybe older traditional sports, athletes think that they need their meat and potatoes and all that stuff to fuel them,” Esselstyn says.

“But when you get into sports like running, triathlon, and other sports that require more of an individualized mentality, you’re forced to look at everything you need to do as an athlete so you can be your best. Individual athletes are much more willing and receptive to hear, ‘Oh, so a plant-based diet will give me an edge. You’re saying this is the best way I can fuel my body’; then, they’re going to listen.”

Esselstyn brought the credibility from a decade-plus triathlon career to his job as a firefighter, so even a group of Texas firefighters bought into Esselstyn’s nutritional plan.

“We had this health scare with J.R.’s cholesterol, and it was a unifying factor for us, really, to save his life,” he says. “So in an act of solidarity, as a group of guys and brothers in a family, we set about eating all plantbased pretty much by the next shift.”

As his researcher-father might have done, Esselstyn sought a study to see if his nutritional plan would hold up to the scrutiny of formal research. Following two stringent studies and dozens of volunteers whose overall health improved as they changed their eating habits, the word about the Engine 2 Diet spread like, well, wildfire.

After Esselstyn’s book came out, he appeared on numerous national TV shows (including NBC’s Today). In October, Esselstyn partnered with Whole Foods Market; the national chain will offer a line of Engine 2 food products, and Esselstyn is helping Whole Foods roll out a healthy-eating initiative. Each Whole Foods store will have Engine 2 “lifestyle teams” and offer cooking classes based around the Engine 2 Diet.

“I’ve had a number of people tell me, ‘If a bunch of guys from a firehouse in Austin, Texas, can do this, any house in America should be able to do this,” Esselstyn says.

“What people need to realize is that you start eating this way, and you realize you are not depriving yourself one iota—you’re empowering yourself, and it’s with tasty foods that make you feel great and fill you up. These guys weren’t going to do it if it didn’t meet all those criteria, and it did to the nines, and everybody’s health thrives. There’s really no downside; it’s all upside.”

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Todd Hovenden’s restaurants have a bigcity feel and smallertown roots

By Lee Owen

Cooked to Order

Bloomington, Illinois, is an average-size city planted firmly in the middle of middle America. It serves as home base for State Farm Insurance, Beer Nuts, and Biaggi’s Ristorante Italiano, an award-winning, upscale-casual Italian restaurant chain founded and run by Todd Hovenden ’84.

Biaggi’s has 21 locations in 12 states stretching from New York to Utah. Most are in midsize markets like Fort Wayne, Indiana; West Des Moines, Iowa; or Colorado Springs.

The chain’s roots and strategy are more Madison, Wisconsin (where it opened a store in 2000), than Madison Avenue—and that’s on purpose.

“We’ve had what I call a ‘hit ’em where they ain’t’ strategy,” says Hovenden, a former Mercersburg swimmer and Taco Bell executive who opened the first Biaggi’s in Bloomington in 1999. “Look at Wal-Mart, the biggest retailer in the world. When WalMart started, J.C. Penney and Sears and Kmart were already in existence—but they said they weren’t going to touch the small towns. We’re obviously not modeled after Wal-Mart, but we had a similar strategy.

“I had some successful restaurateurs tell me, ‘Todd, those folks down there don’t want a Biaggi’s; they’ve already got Olive Garden and T.G.I. Friday’s and Bennigan’s.’ These are big-city people, and they kind of saw people in some of these smaller towns as hicks. Lucky for us, nobody in any of the big cities wanted to drive through the corn and bean fields to get to a pretty cool little town like Bloomington.”

Having lived in places like Bloomington and smaller—he came to Mercersburg

from Grinnell, Iowa (population 8,000)—Hovenden knew there were plenty of doctors, insurance agents, and business owners in smaller markets to support quality, moderately priced restaurants. “We’re talking about closet chefs: men and women that like to cook and watch the Food Network and read Bon Appétit,” he says. “When they go to Chicago or New York, they plan weeks ahead of time what restaurants they’re going to. They’re foodies. I said, ‘There’s a market for us in these towns.’”

In July 2009, Consumer Reports named Biaggi’s (www.biaggis.com) the top Italian chain restaurant in America—ahead of the likes of Maggiano’s Little Italy, Romano’s Macaroni Grill, and Olive Garden.

On the road The path to the top for Hovenden stretches from a small steakhouse named Rube’s in tiny Montour, Iowa—where Hovenden says he fell in love with the idea of running a restaurant during his 14th-birthday dinner— to Mercersburg, two Big Ten universities (the University of Iowa and Northwestern University), five years at PepsiCo (Taco Bell’s parent company) that included a stint in newly capitalist Russia developing Taco Bell properties there, and finally a return to the Midwest, from where he launched Biaggi’s.

Todd Hovenden ’84 and his wife, Claudia Bayona Hovenden ’84

Hovenden came to Mercersburg as a oneyear senior and joined what he describes as “maybe the best U.S. high school swim team ever assembled—and certainly not because of me.” Under the direction of legendary coach John Trembley, the Blue Devil swimmers placed first at the Eastern Interscholastic Swimming Championships in 1984. “It seemed like we had the fastest person in America in almost every single event,” says Hovenden, who was an All-American in the 100-yard freestyle but wasn’t among the top four swimmers at Mercersburg in the event—and thus wasn’t part of the school’s 400-yard freestyle relay team.

Still, Mercersburg was the site of a memorable victory of sorts for Hovenden; he met his future wife, Claudia Bayona Hovenden ’84, on campus. “We went to Romeo’s [page 26] for pizza on November 11, 1983, and we still go out for pizza every November 11 to this day,” he says.

Hovenden went on to swim at Iowa, although a peek into his campus mailbox offered a preview of a future away from the pool. “I wasn’t subscribing to Sports Illustrated or anything like that; instead, I read all the restaurant trade magazines,” he says. “I was always trying to study the industry. Even at Pepsi, I was working in finance

Mercersbu rg magazi n e

and accounting and different corporate functions, but I was always trying to get into the field to work on different projects.”

Opportunity knocked in 1994, when Hovenden was one of two Americans tapped to help Taco Bell establish a presence in Moscow. The capital of the former Soviet Union clamored for previously unavailable Western goods and services, including a softshell taco product called a “chilito” which flew out of the seven Taco Bell kiosks located in the Moscow Metro train system.

The kiosks were a huge success, even if post-communist Russia was a little like the Wild West. “Since about 1917, everything there had been owned by the state— everything from the diamond mines to the oil wells, gas reserves, or the city blocks,” Hovenden explains. “Now all of a sudden, everything is going to be owned by people.

Think about a piñata at a 5-year-old’s birth-

The CEO recommends…

Hovenden jokes that his favorite dish at Biaggi’s is anything that sells really well— but he’s partial to the chicken parmesan and the black fettuccini with lobster cream sauce.

A Biaggi’s restaurant in Ridgeland, Mississippi

day party; when it breaks, who gets the most candy? The biggest, toughest 5-year-olds.

When you throw everything up in the air [in Russia], guess who gets most of it? The biggest, meanest, toughest guys.

“I was only there for a year, and I saw three or four people dead in the street. The guy who came over there before us and opened the Radisson where we stayed was murdered. One of our employees decided to terminate a deal with a bottler who made the 2-liter bottles for Pepsi products; he had to have four bodyguards with him 24 hours a day. We’d go out to dinner and it would be me, my wife, this guy, one of his people, and the next table would have four armed bodyguards.”

Back in the U.S.A. From a business standpoint, the Russian experience was invaluable; Hovenden says it helped him understand a lot of what he didn’t know about business. He returned to the U.S., enrolled in Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, and began writing what became the business plan for Biaggi’s— not for a class or a thesis, but in his spare time.

winter 2009–2010

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Hovenden credits a piece of advice he picked up along the way from Rich Melman, who runs the Chicago-based restaurant company Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, as crucial: “I told Rich I wanted to go work for him for a couple years and learn everything about the restaurant business,” Hovenden says. “Rich said, ‘Know enough to know what you don’t know. What you’d never learn in 10 years is how to really run the restaurants.

Focus on running a restaurant company, and surround yourself with people that can run restaurants.’”

So Hovenden put together a team beginning with John McDonnell, whose stops include the legendary steakhouse chain Morton’s of Chicago. “When it comes to a Wednesday night, for example, how many hostesses do I have on in Evansville, Indiana?” Hovenden says. “I don’t know, but John does. Now, who’s my bank president and when’s my next debt payment? I know that. John runs operations and I run the company, and it works pretty well.”

The company secured investors, lined up a real-estate deal, started building, and the first Biaggi’s opened in Bloomington on continued on page 22

Who’s “Biaggi”?

Ever wonder how a restaurant gets named?

“I was searching feverishly for a name as I was writing the business plan,” Hovenden says.

“I wanted a short name that was fairly easy to pronounce. I had a map of Italy, and I was going through every lake and every road trying to find something. I had an Italian-English dictionary and I was all the way through the S’s. I offered the Northwestern linguistics department a $1,000 gift certificate if they could come up with something I could use.

“One night at 2 a.m., I was half-asleep on the couch with an ESPN show on about motorbikes.

They were interviewing this guy over in Europe who was a seven-time world champion, and his name was Biaggi. I thought, ‘Hey, that’s not too bad.’ And the guy’s first name was Max, and my son had just been born and his name was Max. So there it was.

“Plus, the letters on the outside of your building are really expensive, so the shorter the name, the better.”

Mercersbu rg magazi n e wi nter 2009–2010

March 8, 1999. Biaggi’s broke ground on its second location (just down Interstate 74 in the college town of Champaign) the same day. By the end of 2001, the company also had locations in Iowa, Wisconsin, Indiana, Nebraska, and the Minneapolis suburb of Eden Prairie—representing the chain’s first expansion into a major metropolitan area.

“We were really aggressive in terms of expansion; there were years when we opened three or four restaurants a year,” Hovenden says.

The Biaggi’s menu features an extensive selection of pastas, steaks, seafood, pizzas, and desserts, and is teamed with an extensive wine list that, depending on the restaurant’s location, can approach 140 different choices.

“We sell a lot of the things you would expect us to sell—stuffed mushrooms, fried calamari, chicken parmesan, lasagna—but the nice thing is that we have a lot of other types of dishes that do well,” Hovenden says.

“We make our own focaccia breads in our restaurants. We make 12 different salad dressings and nine different pasta sauces from scratch every day.

“We made a strategic decision to open an Italian concept. What’s beautiful about Italian is that everyone understands the cuisine; you wouldn’t come to a town the size of Bloomington and open a Norwegian sandwich shop. There’s probably not much in our kitchen that you don’t have in your kitchen.”

Biaggi’s did $70 million in sales last year.

But despite that success, the chain has pulled back from its aggressive expansion strategy—partly due to economic instabilities hammering industries (like restaurants) that rely heavily on disposable income, and partly because it was a natural time for the company to slow down anyway.

“I used to spend 200 nights a year on the road looking at real estate,” Hovenden says.

“I haven’t gone and looked at a restaurant deal in 18 months. We do a lot of open-air malls, for example, and no one is building a lot of those right now. I think we’ll get back on that one of these days, but right now we’re in no hurry.”

All in the Family

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Using the dinner table to bring people together

By Tom Coccagna

We’ve all been there

— late for the game, stomach growling, no time to eat a relaxing meal. So, as Amy Hoober Ahrensdorf ’75 says, “You rip through the drive-through, throw some food at your kids, and hurry to the soccer field.”

It’s not a compelling picture.

Yet it is a typical snapshot in the life of many people in today’s rusharound-the-clock world.

It is an image Ahrensdorf would like to see families delete, and she spends much of her time teaching them how to do exactly that.

Ahrensdorf owns Love at First Bite, an enterprise that specializes in culinary consulting; through that business, she also works as a consultant for SunWest Appliance Distributing in Tempe, Arizona, where she had previously served as the company’s corporate chef.

Her true passion, however, is “Kitchen Philosophy: Cooking Up a Connected Family,” a course she initiated in February 2008. The course, her biography says, “is more than a cooking class. [It] is a transformative life-coaching workshop addressing attitudes, motivations, and behaviors pertaining to planning, preparing, and enjoying family dinners.”

The paradox, of course, is that in order to progress, the most important step is often one taken backward. The back-to-basics philosophy, so frequently successful in business and sports, is instrumental to Ahrensdorf’s program.

The most sacred place in any home, she feels, is the dinner table. At one time, families took time to sit together at dinner, eat a prepared meal, and talk about their pains and joys.

“It’s all in the sharing,” Ahrensdorf insists. “Healing happens when people share authentically.”

But nowadays, the family dinner table has gone the way of the black-andwhite TV and transistor radio. Fast-faster-fastest has become the American ritual. Rush here, hurry there, cram a burger into your mouth, steer with one hand and eat with the other—those things may save a few minutes, but they don’t do much for the family fabric.

“I think the Europeans have it right,” she says. “They sit down to long, social get-togethers, all revolving around food.”

Reviving the dinner-table ritual would benefit family bonding and stability, she believes. But she also says it would have wide-ranging societal benefits. Studies from such schools as the University of Minnesota, Columbia

University, Harvard University, and Rutgers University suggest a link between shared family meals and better adolescent behavior, including a lower incidence of drug and alcohol abuse.

“Research shows that in families that eat together, there is better communication and children are less susceptible to peer pressure,” Ahrensdorf maintains. “It also shows a trend that students do better scholastically.”

The physical toll also can yield staggering statistics. She finds that the average American is 23 pounds overweight, that twothirds of the American workforce is overweight or obese, and that there has been a 50 percent increase in the diagnosis of diabetes since 1997.

Ahrensdorf’s course helps families see they can make healthy choices effectively and conveniently.

“Chef Amy’s Kitchen Philosophy program is based on a simple but powerful concept of bringing the family together for a meal on a consistent basis,” says Kelly Wood, a public-

“I’ve seen a transformation in a number of people. One mother of four told me this has actually reconnected her family for life.”

—Amy Hoober Ahrensdorf ’75

relations strategist who counts Ahrensdorf among her clients at KWPR Group. “Her program has helped me to create time and space with my family that nourishes us all on every level.”

Astonishingly, it all started pretty much by accident. After Ahrensdorf, her husband, Robert, and two sons moved from New Jersey to Phoenix, a mother in her children’s preschool whose husband had suffered a heart attack approached her.

“She asked me, ‘Do you have any interest in cooking for my family? I just can’t get it right,’” Ahrensdorf recalls. “Word got out, and pretty soon I was cooking for three or four families.”

Ahrensdorf (whose brother, Tom Hoober ’62, and father, Richard Hoober ’40, also attended Mercersburg, along with two uncles and two cousins) went to culinary school, formed Love at First Bite in 1998, and graduated with honors from the culinary arts program at the Art Institute of Phoenix in 2000.

As time went on, she became more interested in natural healing and studied reflexology at the Southwest Institute of the Healing Arts. She figured food and the healing arts were connected, and she wanted to make an impact.

Out of her many ideas grew the Kitchen Philosophy course, which she calls not so much a cooking school but a life-coaching class in which students are encouraged to shed their misconceptions about food and make a commitment to a better lifestyle.

Arizona State University has expressed interest in the course; at press time, the school was putting together a grant proposal that would allow it to fund the course as a research project in its College of Nursing and Health Innovation.

“We go through all the blockages and barriers—schedule, we can’t cook, we hate cleanup, we can’t get to the store,” she points out. “When we get past those and get to the point where people think, ‘Maybe we can do this,’ it’s amazing what happens.”

Habits, of course, are difficult to change, but the rewards are enormous.

“I’ve seen a transformation in a number of people,” she says. “One mother of four told me this has actually reconnected her family for life.”

Yet Ahrensdorf realizes change will not occur overnight, and sometimes it will be frustratingly slow. So the woman who has been called a “food evangelist” goes on preaching her gospel of a better life with food at the center.

“It took 30 years [for society] to finally get to the point that smoking was actually bad for you,” she says. “Those of us who think outside the box can’t be attached to an immediate outcome. We just have to set the example.”

A Partial Menu In addition to those profiled in this issue, the following Mercersburg alumni also own or operate restaurants and related establishments across the country. (Note that this is not intended to serve as a complete list; to tell us about yourself or a classmate, email NewsNotes@mercersburg.edu.)

Marty Sweeney ’63 chef, Whitney’s Inn Jackson, New Hampshire Gary Wein ’67 president/head chef, Savory Fare Catering/ Brightleaf 905 Durham, North Carolina Gregory Marlovits ’81 partner, Brighton Hot Dog Shoppes Sewickley, Pennsylvania Chris Williams ’85 owner, Teocalli Tamale Herndon, Virginia Margie McKaughn Rapp ’86 owner, Café Gouda Hickory, North Carolina Jennifer Friedman ’92 owner, Feast of Reason Chestertown, Maryland David Danziger ’95 manager, Moby Dick’s Restaurant Wellfleet, Massachusetts John Russell ’95 owner, J. Russell Catering/The Fork at Agate Bay Bellingham, Washington Ryan Chodnicki ’98 executive chef, Mancini’s Brick Oven Pizzeria Fenwick Island, Delaware Trevor Budny ’99 executive chef, El Vez Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Kenji Hirai ’99 manager, House of Kobe Hagerstown, Maryland Greg Rohman ’99 manager, Scossa Restaurant & Lounge Easton, Maryland

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Home Cooking A weekly email service: your kitchen’s new best friend? By Lee Owen Like all busy moms (and dads), Michelle Carey Jenkins ’89 is intimately familiar with the question uttered daily in every American household: what’s for dinner?

The difference is that Jenkins always has the answer. She’s an expert, after all.

Jenkins and her Wellesley College classmate Susan Aprahamian run You’ve Got Supper (www.youvegotsupper.com), a free weekly recipe email service and blog that knocks monotony off the dinner table and replaces it with fresh ideas.

“All of us, whether we work or stay at home, have the same issue; we’re tired of spaghetti every night,” says Jenkins, who lives in Richmond, Virginia. “We’re not chefs or gourmet cooks; we’re just moms coming up

with good things to eat for dinner.”

Each Thursday, Jenkins and Aprahamian send members an email message with recipes for five entrees and a couple of side dishes.

Recipients can create a personalized grocery list with the ingredients for each dish, plus others from the site’s large recipe database of entrees, side dishes, soups, breakfast items, desserts, and kid-friendly and adult-friendly beverages. The site organizes the required ingredients by supermarket section, so members can print off the list and save time at the grocery store.

While some of the recipes are tried-andtrue family favorites and others come from members themselves, each dish has to pass a taste test by Jenkins’ or Aprahamian’s family.

from You’ve Got Supper:

Roasted Chicken Breasts with Sweet Potatoes INGREDIENTS • 2 large sweet potatoes • 4 chicken breasts, bone in, skin on • 2 tbsp olive oil • 1 tsp cumin • 1 tsp cinnamon

Servings: 4 Prep time: 5 minutes Cook time: 40 minutes

DIRECTIONS 1. Cut the sweet potatoes (keeping on the skin and all the nutrients) into two-inch chunks.

2. Line two baking pans with foil. Place the chicken breasts in one pan and the cut sweet potatoes in the other. (Or, try to squeeze the potatoes and chicken in one pan for easier cleanup.)

3. Drizzle the olive oil over both the chicken and the potatoes. Sprinkle both with the cumin and cinnamon.

4. Bake at 425 degrees for 35 to 40 minutes. Remove from oven. Season with some kosher salt and pepper. Serve.

Suggested side: Steamed snow peas with a squirt of lime juice

“They love the job,” Jenkins says of her husband, Brian, and the couple’s two children, ages 8 and 7. “Every week I try to make at least two new things for them to try. They love it, but they’re pretty tough critics, too.

We try to make it, for the most part, meals that are mainstream and pretty quick and simple.”

The site has more than 15,000 members; roughly 30 percent are from the Greater Richmond area. With economic pressures squeezing budgets and leading families to dine at home more often, You’ve Got Supper has experienced a membership surge.

“We’ve gotten some press locally as a result [of the economy], because everybody knows that eating at home saves a ridiculous amount of money compared to dining out or takeout,” Jenkins says. “We’ve also started working with a nutritionist, and at least one recipe on our site each week meets the Mayo Clinic’s heart-healthy guidelines.

We’ve started promoting this to companies that use our site to work with employees to help them live healthier.”

Jenkins and Aprahamian manage the site’s content and work with a freelance designer for coding and web-design issues. New this year is an iPhone app for the site that allows users to utilize the spinner to find an ingredient, shake the phone, and find different recipes with that ingredient. “Every day we come up with new ideas; it’s just a matter of us executing it with a limited coding background,” Jenkins says.

Revenue for the site comes from banner advertising; while the site initially started as a subscription-based service, Jenkins and Aprahamian decided to eliminate the $1 weekly membership fee in hopes of growing the subscriber base—which proved successful. “Right now we’re focusing our energy more on growth rather than revenue, and we’re trying to get a lot more interactive,” Jenkins says. “We’ve had a lot of recipes sug-

gested, and we want people to comment on them. We’re trying to establish a sense of community. A lot of big online sites are just huge recipe databases, and we want to be different.”

Jenkins says the site’s most-downloaded recipe is the Jacques Torres chocolate-chip cookie; “it’s fabulous,” she says. Tex-Mex recipes are also popular. “Now that the seasons are changing,” she continues, “some of our most-requested recipes are slow-cooker meals—things people can throw in a crock pot.”

Jenkins

mercersburg BRIEFS Robert Weis ’37 is chairman of Weis Markets, a grocery chain that operates 165 stores in Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and West Virginia. The company employs 18,000 workers, and is one of the largest purchasers of Pennsylvania produce and dairy products. Weis’ father, Harry, and uncle, Sigmund, opened their first store in 1912 in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, where the company is still based. A graduate of Yale University and a World War II veteran, Weis received the 2002 Alumni Council Achievement Award for his professional accomplishments and outstanding public service.

Amanda Crawford ’00 is the lead specialist and assistant vice president in the wine department of Christie’s, the world’s leading auction house. She previously worked as a wine director for ’inoteca, an award-winning Manhattan restaurant, and as a retail wine buyer. She has worked the harvest in Italy and Croatia and has traveled to winemaking regions in several countries.

Crawford also teaches wine appreciation and writes about food and wine for publications in

the New York area. She graduated from Wellesley College and holds an advanced certificate from the Wine & Spirit Education Trust in London.

Ann Shabb Warner ’76 is owner and president of Howard’s Pub, a popular restaurant, bar, and gathering spot on Ocracoke Island, North Carolina. Her daughter, Anmargaret ’10, and son, Blackburn ’11, are current Mercersburg students, and her nephew, Robert Shabb ’09, graduated last May. The restaurant, located off of North Carolina Highway 12 in the village of Ocracoke, has a second-story deck overlooking the Atlantic Ocean—the place even remains open during hurricanes, which occasionally move through the Outer Banks. Younger patrons can enjoy kid’s meals served on take-home Frisbees; adults may choose from an expansive menu that includes local seafood and more than 200 different frosty beverages.

Jim Dresher ’67 is chief executive officer of Skye Hospitality, which operates several properties in the Baltimore area in the Marriott and Hilton hotel families (including Residence Inn by Marriott, Fairfield Inn by Marriott, Hampton Inn, and Hilton Garden Inn). Before starting the company, Dresher was

a successful McDonald’s and Golden Corral franchisee in the greater Baltimore region, earning the coveted Golden Arch Award from McDonald’s as one of the company’s top five franchise owners nationwide. That success has transferred to the hospitality world; Skye Hospitality received Hilton Hotels’ Deal of the Year Award in 2003 in recognition of the Hampton Inn & Suites/Arundel Mills, a property it operates in Hanover, Maryland.

A former member of Mercersburg’s Alumni Council and past president of the Essex-Middle River Chamber of Commerce, Dresher serves as a board member for several organizations, including Johns Hopkins Hospital, the Greater Baltimore Committee, and the Maryland Horse Breeders Association.

Jim Perdue ’69 is chairman of Perdue Farms, one of the nation’s largest poultry-processing companies. He and his late father, Frank Perdue, are familiar faces to generations of American consumers thanks to the company’s television commercials.

Perdue Farms, which today employs more than 20,000 people and is based in Salisbury, Maryland,

was started in 1920 by Arthur Perdue (grandfather of Jim and father of Frank).

A graduate of Wake Forest University and the University of Washington, Perdue also earned an MBA from the Franklin P. Perdue School of Business at Salisbury University (named for his father; fellow Mercersburg alumnus Frank Shipper ’63 teaches at the school). He is a member of the National Chicken Council’s executive committee and a passionate advocate for the health of the nearby Chesapeake Bay. Alex Skotedis ’02 helps run two of his family’s restaurants, Skeeter’s Pit BBQ and Tedd’s Landing, which are located next to one another overlooking the Susquehanna River in Shamokin Dam, Pennsylvania, near the intersection of U.S. Highways 11 and 15.

Skotedis is a fourth-generation restaurateur—his father, John, is CEO of the company; his grandfather, Tedd, originally purchased what became Tedd’s Landing in 1962; and his great-grandfather, Victor, operated a restaurant in Batavia, New York. The restaurant group also includes Tedd’s on the Hill, a banquet facility that opened in 1987 (Skeeter’s opened its doors in 2005).

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Local Flavor

Mercersburg grads keep two of the area’s culinary landmarks going strong As Mercersburg students, Harry McCullough ’91 and Lori Ruohomaki ’91 would go together to Romeo’s, a neighborhood hangout just off campus, and order what they loved. “Lori’s favorite was the hot provolone sub; I liked the pizza steak, and we always split an order of fries with blue cheese dressing,” McCullough says.

Fast-forward almost two decades: McCullough and Ruohomaki, now married with three children, own and manage Romeo’s (www.romeosofmercersburg.com), which has been a popular eatery in Mercersburg since 1980. “I guess you could say it was fate,” McCullough says.

McCullough has worked in restaurant

kitchens since age 12, when he started washing dishes at a place called Dante’s in Bethany Beach, Delaware, where his family had a summer home. McCullough was hooked at an early age; he learned the basics of Italian cooking and returned every summer to take on more responsibility.

Brett Penrod, who owned Romeo’s while McCullough attended Mercersburg, worked out a deal with McCullough that allowed the young novice to make his own pizza for a discounted rate. “I felt a certain comfort level with Brett, and as a boarding student, it felt good to come to Romeo’s and do what I did all summer,” McCullough says. “It eased any homesickness I might have been feeling.”

Paul Giannaris ’88

By Lindsay Tanton

McCullough remembers Romeo’s as being far enough away from campus that he felt removed and could decompress while having fun with friends. “It was worth any amount of guard I got to hang out at Romeo’s,” he says with a wry smile. (Speaking of guard, McCullough says his favorite teacher was Tim Rockwell, who also served as the dean of students.)

McCullough credits Carlo Lima, an Italian chef with whom he worked while living in Colorado after college, as a mentor; “he taught me that simple is best,” says McCullough, who returned to Mercersburg to work in catering special events for the school. He later became general manager

popularity

contest

at romeo’s: Students give high marks to the zepolis (fresh doughnuts sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar); alumni love the “hot

provo”

at nick’s: Giannaris’ favorite dish on the menu is the ahi tuna; customers perennially rave about the crab cakes of the Mercersburg Inn. Shortly thereafter, Penrod asked McCullough if he had any interest in buying Romeo’s; the McCulloughs began their tenure running the restaurant in 2006.

Twenty years after his first bite at Romeo’s, McCullough’s favorite is still a pizza steak, while his wife still prefers a hot provolone sub (better known as a “hot provo”). “I like the casualness of Romeo’s and I like that I can continue the tradition of giving the students a great place to hang out off campus, ” McCullough says. He admits that he’s never been a planner and that he jumped into this experience not knowing what to expect, but it has “definitely paid off in spades.”

The “Inn” Crowd

Approximately 15 miles south of Romeo’s in Hagerstown, Maryland, is Nick’s Airport Inn (www.nicksairportinn.com), another celebrated area restaurant, owned by head chef Paul Giannaris ’88 and his brother, Dean ’90. Nick’s has had a relationship with the Academy since at least 1961, when

Harry ’91 and Lori Ruohomaki McCullough ’91

Giannaris’ parents, Nick and Tina, purchased the restaurant.

“When I was 10 years old bussing tables and working in the kitchen, I’d see Academy students, parents, and teachers come in for dinner,” Paul Giannaris remembers. “I’d say to my dad, ‘I want to go to Mercersburg.’”

Historically, Mercersburg parents and students have dined at Nick’s to commemorate a special occasion or simply enjoy a great meal. Every year, the entire senior class takes over the restaurant the night of Baccalaureate; Nick’s is also a popular gathering spot for Mercersburg class reunions (Giannaris hosted his 20th reunion dinner there this summer).

Former Headmaster Walter Burgin ’53 and his wife, Barbara, as well as John Trembley, Giannaris’ former adviser and the school’s legendary former swimming coach, usually stop in for a meal when they are in town. “We’ve always been part of the Academy,” he says. Giannaris, who is Greek Orthodox, recalls discovering that his favorite Mercersburg teacher, Paul Suerken, had a passion for Greek food. “When my

mother found out, she’d send me back to school after a weekend at home with trays of homemade Greek food—Suerk was in heaven,” he says.

While serving as president of the senior class at Mercersburg, Giannaris had a unique opportunity to flex his culinary muscle.

Every Friday, he prepared lunch at North Cottage for Burgin and his classmate and friend Bill Su ’88, who was student-council president. “The three of us would have lively discussions about the school, pressing issues, various committees, and news in general—it was a lot of fun,” Giannaris says.

Clearly, a passion for food and restaurants runs in the family; “I always knew this is what I would do,” he says. His culinary inspirations include both his father and a French chef, Francis Verdier, who worked at Nick’s for 23 years and still comes in once a week. The best parts of running a family business, Giannaris says, are two things. “I get to work with my family members, and our employees and loyal customers become extended family,” he says. “These are relationships that span decades.”

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grape

expectations

When Dick Seibert ’69 answered his phone, he was doing something he never would have envisioned two decades ago: hauling three tons of grapes from his vineyard for processing.

When Peggy Raley ’85 answered her phone, she was doing something she has grown quite comfortable with over the past two decades: giving customers a taste of her vineyard.

The two are a few hundred miles apart— Raley in the coastal town of Lewes, Delaware; Seibert in Clear Spring, Maryland—yet they are undeniably linked by something that began as a curiosity but has grown into a livelihood.

Raley owns Nassau Valley Vineyards (www.nassauvalley.com), touted on its website as Delaware’s “first and only awardwinning winery.” She and her father, Bob, began growing grapes on a family farm in 1987 and opened Nassau Valley Vineyards in 1993.

Some 14 years later, Seibert and his wife, Mary Beth, embarked on a similar journey, planting vines on Knob Hall Farm, which has been in the Seibert family for generations. This past fall, Knob Hall Winery (www.knobhallwinery.com) began bottling its own product.

After graduating from Mercersburg, Raley attended American University, where she studied drama and Spanish literature.

She went to work for the world’s oldest wine-education organization, Les Amis du Vin, and its sister publication, The Friends of Wine, and spent several years traveling through Europe as a correspondent.

The more she traveled, the thirstier she became for winemaking and its history.

Two alumni are bottling the fruits of their labor

By Tom Coccagna

Peggy Raley ’85 (left) with her sister, Suzette Raley Hopkins ’81

Dick Seibert ’69 and his wife, Mary Beth

“I fell in love with this business because I was blessed to have incredible people show me this business,” she says.

But like many trips in life, this one had an ironic twist: “I had grown up in a farming family and thought I never wanted to see anything grow again,” Raley says. “I fell into the wine business and have never wanted to stop seeing things grow.”

Her visits to famous wineries in Europe cast winemaking in a new light. She became more familiar with history, learning, for instance, how vintners had hidden their wines from the Germans in caves in Spain during World War II. While in Europe, Raley discovered “the great lesson that wine is not only liquid geography and a liquid weather report, but more importantly, it is truly time captured in a bottle,” she says. “It is history given to you in a way nothing else offers.”

Raley became so passionate about what she discovered that when she returned to Delaware, she was ready to carve her own piece in history. Wanting to do more than

grow grapes to be shipped elsewhere, the Raleys decided to take the next logical step.

They found some legislative roadblocks.

Delaware law prohibited farm wineries (farms that produce and sell wine on site), but Raley lobbied the Delaware General Assembly to pass legislation overturning the law in 1991.

Two years later, Nassau Valley Vineyards opened as a grapes-to-wine facility, and since then, the winery has earned more than 50 medals in international competitions.

“Every time we bring one home,” she points out, “it is an affirmation that my wines have stood side by side with wines from all over the world and shown themselves to be worthy. It means we’re doing something right.”

Seibert, meanwhile, hopes for similar success, even though his background is much different from Raley’s. He worked for the federal government and spent 20 years with the National Association of Manufacturers, and founded the Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy, a nonprofit organization that conducts studies in environmental issues.

Mercersbu rg magazi n e

But now, Seibert works the family farm near Hagerstown.

“The farm has been in the family for well over 100 years, and possibly 200 years,” he says. “My father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and maybe even great-great-grandfather were born there.”

Instead of taking the expedient route and selling the farm to a developer, the Seiberts decided to cultivate the land. He asked experts what crop would be most profitable.

“They said soybeans,” Seibert recalls, “so I said, ‘Great, we’re planting soybeans.’ Then they told me that in a really good year, you might make $100 an acre planting soybeans.

I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’”

So he explored grapes and found they could be extremely profitable, despite some rather high initial costs. “From an economic standpoint, grapes made the most sense,” he says.

In 2007, he planted eight acres of grapes, then eight additional acres in 2008 and four more in 2009. He says the farm can probably accommodate 60 acres of grapes on its 175 acres.

Even though he enjoys farming, Seibert realized his limitations when it came to knowledge of grapes—so he hired a vintner, John Levenberg, who has worked in wineries in New Zealand, France, and California’s Napa Valley. Levenberg has given Knob Hall’s harvest his stamp of approval.

“The most rewarding thing was our first year’s harvest,” Seibert says. “We didn’t know what to expect, but we were hoping.

[Levenberg] said he was impressed with our grapes and our product. That’s when we knew we were on the right track.”

Seibert and Raley have other things in common. Both direct multi-use facilities: Nassau Valley hosts weddings, corporate events, and other special occasions, and Knob Hall has similar plans (it has already hosted a couple of Mercersburg class-reunion events).

Both are also proud of their Mercersburg ties: Raley’s sister, Suzette Raley Hopkins ’81,

is a partner in the winery, and Suzette’s daughter, Nat alie ’09, graduated from Mercersburg in the spring. Last New Year’s Eve, Raley (who is also an accomplished jazz vocalist) gave a tour of the winery and its museum to Lawrence Jones, the Academy’s school minister, and his family. She relished the chance to offer a tour to a former teacher.

“I just wanted him to see that I really was

winter 2009–2010

29

paying attention in European history class,” she says.

The Seiberts maintain close kinship with Mercersburg as well. Daughter Stephanie ’09 graduated from Mercersburg last spring and now attends Washington College, while her younger sister, Paige ’11, is an upper-middler at the Academy.

Here’s the Beef

Father and son build a successful Arby’s franchise By Shelton Clark

In the highly corporate (some might say “impersonal”) business climate of the 21st century, it might seem anachronistic to expect a parent to pass a business down to a child. Likewise, stories abound of family businesses in which the succeeding generation does not replicate the prosperity that its elders built, or family tensions arise that make a working business relationship impossible.

Yet Tom Hershey ’61 and his son, Todd ’88, have thrived; Todd took over leadership of Delmarby Inc. (which operates three Arby’s restaurants in Salisbury, Maryland) from his father after the two worked together for a number of years.

Each man calls his Mercersburg years crucial to the development of his work ethic. “Mercersburg was not easy for me,” Tom says. “I struggled to get through, but I learned to work hard.”

During one of his years on campus, Todd lived in Main Hall next door to his future brother-in-law (Glenn Houck ’85, who later married Todd’s sister, Mindy ’85). Todd points to teachers Tom Rahauser ’74 and Brent Gift as key influences. “Having to really work hard to achieve my goals at Mercersburg has helped me understand what it’s like to work hard in business,” he says.

Tom went straight from college into the newspaper business before entering the real-estate field. After several years, Tom decided to focus his full energy on an Arby’s franchise; his business partner, Lowell Hoprich, had been his mentor in the newspaper business. “We were expanding, and he was really good in operations, and my experience and background was in business,” Tom says.

“What attracted me to Arby’s originally was that I thought it had a rather simple business plan, and that we didn’t buy any product from the franchisor. continued on page 30

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Todd Hershey ’88 (center, holding sons Jackson and Henry) with his parents, Beth and Tom Hershey ’61.

In a lot of franchise organizations, you have to buy the product from the franchisor; with Arby’s, franchisors set specifications, but you could buy the product in the open market.

So I liked the idea of being able to shop where I got the product.”

Tom and Hoprich dubbed their company Delmarby, a play on the names of Arby’s and the Delmarva Peninsula, on which Salisbury sits. “At one point, when we came up with the name, we had some big ideas on how big we were going to be,” Tom explains. “The typical business plan the franchisor has for you is if you’re successful, grow as fast as you can grow; leverage yourself, borrow money, rent the land, and build more stores. As partners, we decided that wasn’t what we wanted to do. We wanted to try to figure out a way to remain profitable without growing the business exponentially, and that’s hard to do. But I’ll tell you what: in today’s market, I’m sure glad I did it.”

“To be honest, I never thought I would be in the Arby’s business,” says Todd, who worked for a community with a beach club, golf and country club, and a marina and yacht club. “I worked my way up through the ranks—eight or nine years into that, I was running all three. I did wedding receptions, special events, and big anniversaries; some days I would have three weddings going on, all at the same time. I loved working with the people, planning the event, running the party. But after doing that for a number of years, you realize that’s all you’re doing. I was working crazy hours; it was nothing to work a hundred hours a week. And you just can’t sustain that and have a life and a family.”

After Hoprich’s death, Tom initially ran Delmarby by himself. “I told Todd that very few father-son operations work together, but there’s an opportunity,” Tom recalls. “I said, ‘If you want to try it, I’m willing to give it a try to work together with you.’ I’d never worked with Todd. I said, ‘I’m interested in you knowing how to own a business and operate as an owner so that you are appreciated, understood, and respected. We have

people here that are good in operations, but you really need to have the ability to be the owner of the business and represent yourself well so that they know you and respect you.’

I told him early on, ‘If it doesn’t work out, the time will come when I will sell the business. If it works out, the potential is there for you to take over the business.’

“We worked together five or six years, and it worked out very well. I never would have dreamed that we could have worked together, and I’m not sure he did either. I think a lot of that had to with the fact that I have a lot of respect for Todd, and he in turn has a lot of respect for me. If anything, it built the bond between father and son. Our relationship became much, much stronger doing that than it would have if he had done something else, or if I had sold the business and gone on and done something else.”

Tom has, according to Todd, “an incredible ability to see the big picture.”

“We worked together for a number of years,” Todd says, “and he gradually backed out. But I think what has helped me run the company the best that I can is that he did step back, he did not micromanage, and he allowed me to make some mistakes. I know a lot of times in family businesses, sometimes the dad can’t handle backing out; he still wants to be involved, and that can be problematic. The transition in our family went as smoothly as you would want it to go.”

Delmarby adapted and continues to thrive, even in today’s economy. “The challenges [of the restaurant business] have changed,” Todd says. “Four or five years ago, our biggest challenge by far was finding qualified workers that were trainable. We put, on average, probably $500 into an employee before the first customer even saw him in training. When it didn’t work out—and there was a lot of turnover—it was very difficult for us. In our company, we emphasize training and new employees working alongside someone until they can do it on their own.

Our turnover used to be a lot lower than the industry standard, but it was still pretty high.

Now our turnover is basically nonexistent. So I’d say that getting qualified people is not as difficult now as it was when the economy was much better.”

With three small boys (ages 5, 3, and 1), Todd has less time to pursue his passions of deep-sea fishing and duck hunting. “Living on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, I am fortunate to have both in my back yard,” Todd says. “My dad and I spend a lot of time [hunting and fishing] together—not as much as I wish with three little kids, but that’s okay.

This year, we only got to go fishing one time, and instead of getting upset about it, we looked at each other and said, ‘The fish’ll be here next year.’”

Mercersbu rg magazi n e

T

he list of places Doug Bressler ’68 has called home reads like an airline route map.

Berwick, Pennsylvania, followed by four years at Mercersburg and college at the University of Denver. Then Phoenix, Portland, El Paso, St. Louis, New York, Honolulu, Los Angeles, back to Denver, Houston, Miami, Atlanta, back to Miami, Minneapolis, Moscow, back to Minneapolis, back to Miami, Chicago, back to Los Angeles, back to Chicago, back to Los Angeles—and finally, the Pacific island of Guam.

(And you thought moving could be a hassle.)

Given the above itinerary, it’s not surprising that Bressler makes his living in the airline and hospitality industries. Bressler, the director of food service operations in the Asia/Pacific region for Continental Airlines, is responsible for overseeing the cuisine on Continental flights from Tel Aviv to Honolulu and all points in between.

“When I interviewed with Sky Chefs in college, I thought I’d be able to do what I wanted in the food business and be able to see the world,” Bressler says. “I’ve enjoyed that part of it.” (Sky Chefs, now LSG Sky Chefs, was Bressler’s first employer in the field.)

Approximately 100 flights each day, most of which are of the long-haul variety and involve passengers and cuisines from different cultures, are under Bressler’s watch.

This includes 50 daily flights operated by Continental Micronesia from a hub on Guam, a U.S. territory an eight-hour flight west from Hawaii and just under four hours by air from Tokyo. Continental Micronesia, known as “Air Mike” in the language of pilots and air-traffic controllers, is a subsidiary of Continental.

winter 2009–2010

31

FOOD (to g0) Making in-flight dining something special in the air

By Lee Owen Continent al’s base of operations at Guam’s Antonio B. Won Pat International Airport is its only hub located outside the U.S. mainland, and one of just four in the airline’s system alongside Houston, Cleveland, and Newark. Guam, of course, was a crucial piece of territory during World War II; it is home to a large U.S. naval base to this day and an important nerve center for the world’s fifth-largest airline, with its strong presence in Asia.

The challenges of running a food-service operation stretching across much of the world from a small island are numerous; most of the food products are shipped in from somewhere else either by air or sea vans (containers transported over water on large cargo ships). “The food [for “Air Mike” flights] is all prepared in Guam,” says Bressler, who is in his second stint with Continental and has worked on what he calls “both sides of the road” as a caterer and food-service director.

“I’m here to ensure that Continental Airlines standards are followed. When someone gets on a Continental Micronesia aircraft, they can expect the same thing as what we do out of Houston, Newark, or Europe.”

Bressler credits Mercersburg, which he attended for four years with his twin brother, Bob ’68, for introducing a smalltown Pennsylvania kid to people and ideas from everywhere. “I enjoyed meeting and dealing with people from all walks of life; to be successful in this business, you really need to understand different cultures and different people throughout the world,” he says.

After Mercersburg, Bressler chose Denver because he was unable to secure admission to Cornell University’s prestigious School of Hotel Administration; since he had not initially applied to Denver, a well-placed phone call by Dean of Students William “Soapy” Howard helped his cause there. “If I had

it do over again, I’d still go out to Denver,” Bressler says. “I really enjoy the West.”

When Bressler joined Sky Chefs following his college graduation, the company was a subsidiary of American Airlines. He worked in catering, as a food-service representative, and eventually in the general office before leaving to join Continental. After that airline filed for bankruptcy in the early 1980s, Bressler joined Marriott’s food-service division; it was that position that took him to Russia to work on a joint venture there. He returned to Continental in 1996; one of his more recent responsibilities before moving to Guam was serving as general manager of the airline’s Los Angeles flight kitchen.

Continental is the lone American carrier to continue to operate its own flight kitchens; most other airlines use a contract foodservice provider. Continental is also the only major U.S. airline still serving free meals in coach on most flights longer than two hours.

“Since we run our own kitchens, we have a little more of an ability to do that,” Bressler says. “If you have a contract kitchen, you’re faced with markups and other cost issues.”

When it comes time to select the cuisine (and the ethnic flavor of said cuisine) on flights between Newark and Delhi or Tokyo and Guam, there’s a specific plan in place.

“We look at the demographic market to see what our [passenger] mix is going to be,” Bressler says. “For instance, out of India we’ll use Indian food, but in other places there will be a Western touch. We bring in marketing people to assist, and when we do a menu presentation it’s not just food-service people telling everyone, ‘Here’s what it’s going to be.’

We have a group of people that make sure we’re serving our guests properly.

“Really, to be successful in any business, you have to give your guests or passengers what they want—not what you like.”

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Alumni Notes Submit alumni notes and photographs online by visiting the Alumni Community at www.mercersburg.edu/alumni, or by email to NewsNotes@ mercersburg.edu or your class agent. Submissions 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.

Class-agent contact information is printed for classes with submitted notes, as well as for anniversary reunion classes (those ending in 4, 5, 9, and 0).

’28 Academy Award-winning actor Jimmy

Stewart was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio.

Jimmy, who died in 1997, was a private pilot before enlisting in the U.S. Army Air Corps (which became the U.S. Air Force) in 1941. He flew B-24s over Germany during World War II and served in the Air Force Reserve until 1968.

u Bob Johnson 203-248-7834

u Bill Alexander 740-282-5810

u Ed Hager edward.t.hager1@adelphia.net

’52

Fred Heinz’s wife, Marlene, passed away September 27, 2008.

u Jack Connolly jackconnolly@cfmr.com

u Richard Zirkle 703-502-6996

’40 ’44

Webster McCormack’s wife, Delores, passed away August 7, 2009. She was the mother of Patricia McCormack Dodd ’73, grandmother of Andrew Reynolds ’09, and sister-in-law of Jim McCormack ’46.

u Lew Scott lpsmd@aol.com

’45

’50

Jim Craig writes, “I will miss living in my former home in Greencastle, Pennsylvania, once a filling station and then a dental office. Greencastle Rescue Hose Company will raze the building to construct a district justice office for Franklin County. Judge Duane Cunningham will move into leased quarters to serve the residents of the borough and Antrim Township.”

’35

Gary Rosenau’s wife, Anita, a wellknown playwright, died April 20, 2008.

’49

u Dave Ulsh ducu1960@comcast.net

’54 ’55 ’56

Frank Keefe, Yale’s head swimming coach, received the Collegiate and Scholastic Trophy from the College Swimming Coaches Association of America in May. The award is given for contribution in an outstanding way to swimming as a competitive sport and a healthful recreational activity at schools and colleges. Frank has coached the men’s team at Yale since 1978 and the women’s team since 1980; he will retire from coaching at the end of the 2009–2010 season.

Dan Wilson ’61 (left) and Development Director Emeritus Don Hill at Flannery’s Tavern on the Square in Mercersburg in June.

’57

u Alex Burgin burgin-enterprises@sbcglobal.net u Bob Walton waltonrr@comcast.net

Bob Walton had the good fortune to attend a Mercersburg function at Salisbury University and meet several alums and parents of alums who, like him, reside between Ocean City and the Chesapeake Bay. “It’s always great to meet and have conversations with people who share a strong common bond—a love and respect for Mercersburg,” he says.

u Guy Anderson guykanderson@att.net u Red Erb 610-566-6653 u George Kistler gwkistler@aol.com u Steve Kozloff riokoz@cox.net u Ross Lenhart rlenhart@sc.rr.com u Jim Starkey starkyj1@universalleaf.com u Bill Vose wovose@kaballero.com u Alan Wein alan.wein@uphs.upenn.edu

u Jon Dubbs grlygail@aol.com u Jack Reilly jackreillysr@verizon.net James Blackmer and his wife, Connie, live in New Mexico, where they hike at least four miles a day. Jim bicycles 15–20 miles per day and co-owns a Grumman Tiger airplane; he has been a licensed pilot since 1978.

Jack Reilly, Jon Dubbs, and Tom Hoober are planning a mini-reunion for the Class of ’62 in Cape May, New Jersey, for fall 2010.

’58

’64

u Mike Radbill mradbill1@comcast.net

Richard Palmer’s father, Richard Sr., died April 14, 2009.

u Jere Keefer jsklrk@embarqmail.com

Jim Starkey has been elected chair of the Board of Trustees for the Science Museum of Virginia.

u Clem Geitner hkyleather@aol.com

’62

’59

u Allan Rose byrose@superior.net u Ed Russell martnwod@bellsouth.net

’65 ’67

Jack Lamond writes, “I’m living in Tampa, Florida, with my wife, Lynn. We have four grown daughters. I’m working

Mercersbu rg magazi n e wi nter 2009–2010

The three-page article includes photos of his own sloop, Jacqueline B., which his family keeps in the Abaco Cays of the Bahamas, as well as photos of his sailing adventure with his son, Noah.

Randall served on the Mercersburg faculty from 1973 to 1978.

’68

Brian Joscelyne ’65 and his wife, Trish, celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary in York, England.

Jim Stockdale ’68 (inset) and Liz Stockdale ’02, son and granddaughter of Vice Admiral James Bond Stockdale, participated in ceremonies celebrating the commissioning and adoption of the USS Stockdale in April 2009 at Naval Base Ventura County in California. Liz was the ship’s Matron of Honor. Admiral Stockdale was one of the most decorated officers in the history of the U.S. Navy.

Jim’s son and Liz’s brother, Bond ’09, graduated from Mercersburg in June.

Bruce Kemmler writes, “My wife, Bonnie, and I moved to North Carolina from Pennsylvania 12 years ago. We live in Mooresville, a booming town 20 miles north of Charlotte. In my business, we have continued to develop the markets for my polyurethane elastomer, SHOCKtec. Bonnie has worked for Wachovia since 2002 and withstood the recent Wells Fargo takeover. Please give me a call if you’re visiting our area.

I have had many calls and emails from classmates and friends during the 40th reunion year, and I look forward to hearing from many more of you.”

u Harry Apfelbaum hlavmd@dejazzd.com u Rick Fleck aspnrick@aol.com u Dick Seibert rseibert@knobhall.com

’69

u Molly Froehlich mollfro@aol.com u Greg Morris mormgt@aol.com u Jim Umbdenstock j.umbdenstock@att.net

u Ann Shabb Warner ann@howardspub.com

u David Dupont ddupont007@yahoo.com

’73 u Joe Lee jos.lee@comcast.net

Kevin Williamson ’80 (left), dean of students for the upper school at The Harker School in San Jose, California, and Lawrence Jones (right), Mercersburg’s school minister, attended the Adult Ethics Institute in July in Whidbey Island, Washington.

Dan Heischman (center), who spoke to the Mercersburg community during a chapel program in May, led the event.

as a national account representative for Arrow Truck Sales, owned by Volvo Trucks of North America. Lynn is teaching her 30th year of elementary school. I’m playing a lot of golf and working. It’s great reading the Alumni Notes.”

In August, Tom Motheral swam in the United States Masters Swimming National Championships. Tom raced for the Ohio Masters team in the 60–64 age group and set a national

record (4:16.06) as a member of the 400-meter freestyle relay team; he was also part of the 400m medley relay-winning team. As an individual, he placed in the top 12 in five events, highlighted by a fifth-place finish in the 50m butterfly (31.95).

Randall Peffer published an account of his recent Bahamian epic sailing adventures in the January 2009 issue of Sail Magazine (www.sailmagazine.com).

Thomas Puhl writes, “We are having (despite a bit more rain than we actually need) a wonderfully busy summer. Just returned from a wonderful performance of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler; my daughter, Carolin ’07, played Thea Elvsted. My son, Andreas ’02, took a sixweek trip to India, Burma, and Thailand after his graduation from law school, and we are preparing for the wedding of daughter Christina ’00 in the fall.

Hope you enjoyed your summer, too!

Take care.”

’74 u Kevin Longenecker kklong@epix.net

’76

Page Lansdale is a senior vice president with B.F. Saul Company in Bethesda, Maryland.

’70 Steve Dunkle’s father, William, died August 14, 2008, and his mother, Joyce, passed away October 11, 2008.

’75

Diana Diehl writes that her Mercersburg roommate, Kay Howe Cowan, lives in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania; Diana’s last visit was in 2004. “This year has been a struggle with my husband’s diagnosis of prostate cancer,” Diana says. “So far, so good, and blood work will verify positive results in November.

My father, Thomas ’48, is doing well in Reno. We email regularly. Otherwise, I work toward the retirement date; the latest possible date is 12/13/14.”

u Carol Furnary Casparian furnaryc@mercersburg.edu

u Paul Mellott pmellott@mellotts.com

33

u Dave Wagner wags1262@sbcglobal.net u Greg Zinn greg@zinn.com

’79 ’80 ’81

John Koch recently accepted a position as chief of the knowledge management directorate for U.S. Army Africa.

While it took a crowbar to get John out of Germany, he is looking forward to his new assignment “south of the Alps,” and continued service in the Army. He is also completing a master’s degree in education with special emphasis in curriculum design and instruction.

Newly single (again), John will reside in Vicenza, Italy.

’84

u Tom Hornbaker thornbaker@gibsondunn.com u Betsy Rider-Williams brider-williams@goberkscounty.com

Births/Adoptions At left: Oscar Cleland-Bogle, son of Danielle Dahlstrom ’93 and her husband, Ryan Cleland-Bogle, born January 10, 2009.

To C.C. Gachet ’85 and her husband, Peter Ouellette: a son, Joshua David Ouellette, March 18, 2009.

To Meredith Glah Coors ’95 and her husband, Pete: a son, James Patrick, March 17, 2009.

To Jesse Zimmerman ’96 and Jon Anderson: a daughter, Isabel Anderson, July 14, 2009.

To Benjamin Clousher ’97 and his wife, Angela: a daughter, Madison Blair, April 10, 2009.

u Susan Corwin Moreau moreau.s@att.net

To Bethany Hartman Van Schoick ’99 and her husband, Tim: a daughter, Jenna May, March 26, 2009.

To Luke Swetland ’99 and his wife, Jennifer: a son, Mark Christopher, May 31, 2009.

Faculty To Matt Geeza and his wife, Emily: a daughter, Astrid Alice Phillips, July 8, 2009.

To Will Waldron and his wife, Mary: a daughter, Lilly Marie, and son, Thomas Augustine, September 10, 2009.

’85

’87 Alison Garner Louie ’84 with her daughter, Peyton (3), and son, Cameron (16 months).

u Danielle Dahlstrom dlld93@hotmail.com

’91

’93

Alexis Kemmler Simpson and her husband, Tom, live in Exeter, New Hampshire, where they are teaching at Phillips Exeter Academy and raising their children, Blake and Will.

’94

’95

Rebekah Mullaney finished writing and illustrating her first children’s book, Azuki Loves Green Tea, which is now available on Amazon.com. The fullcolor book is about a cat (Azuki) who works at a green tea shop in Kyoto, and teaches children about the three main types of green tea and the process farmers use to grow and produce green tea in Japan.

u Lori Esposit Miller lori_esposit@msn.com u Geraldine Gardner geraldide@hotmail.com u Nate Jacklin jacklinn@mercersburg.edu

’89

’90

Renee Sparrow Berkoben’s husband, Todd, died August 14, 2008.

u David Danziger ddanzige@earthlink.net

Kirsten Dryfoos Thompson’s master’s thesis has been accepted, and she has graduated from New York University with honors.

u Zania Pearson zmp2work@verizon.net u Ames Prentiss aprentiss@intownvet.com

u Helen Barfield Prichett helenprichett@yahoo.com u Laura Linderman Barker laura.linderman@t-mobile.com

u Tim Gocke tim.gocke@gmail.com u Rob Jefferson rmcjefferson@gmail.com

In July, Benicio del Toro received the Tomás Gutiérrez Alea International Film Prize from the Cuban Union of Artists and Writers. Benicio stars in the upcoming release of The Wolfman, which is now slated to premiere in February 2010.

u Kirsten Dryfoos Thompson kirsten.e.thompson@gmail.com u Louis Najera louis@davincicomm.com

u Treva Ghattas tghattas@osimd.com u Kim Lloyd kim_lloyd@sbcglobal.net

’96

Charles “Bo” Kemmler is finishing his Ph.D. in immunology at the University of Colorado at Denver. After completing his degree, he plans to attend medical school.

Paul Moody ’89 with his wife, Jill, and their children, Paul and Heidi.

Andrew Hall, son of Anthony Hall ’89 and his wife, Monica.

u Emily Peterson emilyadairpeterson@gmail.com u Chris Senker chris.senker@cookmedical.com

’97

Mercersbu rg magazi n e wi nter 2009–2010

35

New on the

Alumni Council

Eric P. Reif ’60, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Eric and his wife, Donna, have two grown sons, Roger and Brian. Eric earned bachelor’s and J.D. degrees from the University of Michigan, and is a partner specializing in litigation with the law firm of Pietragallo Gordon Alfano Bosick & Raspanti. Eric’s father, the late Ernest C. Reif ’26, also graduated from the Academy. During his four years at Mercersburg, Eric served as class president for three years and was president of the Senate and Student Council, a member of The Fifteen, head chapel usher, and a varsity swimmer. He also received the Robert Michelet Prize and the Mercersburg Gold Chain at graduation. Eric is a Torchbearer with more than 40 consecutive years of giving, and has served Mercersburg as a class agent and reunion volunteer. He previously served on the Alumni Council from 1972 to 1975, and now serves on the Alumni Council’s Alumni Leadership Development Task Group.

Alexander S. Graham ’71, Gibson Island, Maryland Alec and his wife, Laurie, are the parents of two Mercersburg graduates, Andrew ’07 and Laura ’09. Alec is an investment advisor and president at Baltimore Capital Management. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Babson College and an MBA from Loyola College. While at Mercersburg, Alec was a member of the Ski Club, and played soccer, squash, and tennis. Alec serves as an admission volunteer and has also served as reunion volunteer. He is a Torchbearer with 24 consecutive years of giving and is a member of the William Mann Irvine Society. Alec is serving on the Alumni Leadership Development Task Group.

Nancy Gallagher Jones ’86, West Chester, Pennsylvania Nancy and her husband, David, have four children. Her uncle, the late Thomas Cottom ’48, was a Mercersburg alumnus.

While at Mercersburg, Nancy was in the Ski Club and played field hockey, softball, and basketball. She received a B.S. and a B.L.A. from the University of Maryland.

Nancy has worked as a senior product

representative for Apple Computers, and has served as a council member for the City of College Park. Today, Nancy is an accounts manager for the Scott Group in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.

Nancy is an avid golfer and past champion of the Women’s District of Columbia Golf Association. She has been very involved in the fundraising efforts at her children’s cooperative preschool for the past seven years, helping to raise funds through the school’s annual auction. Nancy is a Torchbearer with more than 23 consecutive years of giving. She served on both the 2003 Reunion Committee and the Mightily Onward Campaign’s Philadelphia Region Committee, and is a member of the Alumni Council’s Alumni-Student Programs Task Group.

Adam Reeder ’97, Washington, D.C. Adam works in information technology for Blackboard. The son of Gail Reeder (Mercersburg’s director of principal gifts), and her husband, Jeffrey, Adam attended his 5th and 10th class reunions, has served as a class agent, and spoke at the New York Region Campaign Kick-Off Event for the Mightily Onward Campaign. He is a Torchbearer and Associate of the William Mann Irvine Society.

While at Mercersburg, he was a member of the Ski Club, Chorale, and the Marshall Society. He played soccer and was manager for the field hockey team in his senior year. His sister, Anne ’00, is a fellow Mercersburg graduate. Adam serves on the Alumni-Student Programs Task Group.

H. Dean Hosgood ’98, Rockville, Maryland A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University and Yale University, Dean is an environmental and molecular epidemiologist for the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics of the National Cancer Institute.

Dean is a Torchbearer and consistently attends reunions. He serves as a reunion volunteer, class agent, and phonathon volunteer. While at Mercersburg, he was a member of Cum Laude, Student Council, the Irving Society, Ski Club, and Social/Environmental Clubs, and played tennis and soccer. Dean was also the recipient of the Behavioral Sciences Excellence in Study Award. His sister, Emily Weiss ’08, is a fellow Mercersburg graduate; his brother, Connor Weiss ’13, is a current student. Dean is a member of the Alumni Leadership Development Task Group.

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Mercersbu rg magazi n e wi nter 2009–2010

Larissa Chace Smith and her husband, Ryan, spent 26 days this summer on a 7,414-mile, cross-country road trip that took them to 16 states. They spent most of their time in Idaho (where Larissa and Ryan lived several years ago) and Oregon, as well as Washington, Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming. On their way out west, they visited with Emily Peterson in Chicago. Read more about the trip and see photos and videos from it at usplayingwork.blogspot.com.

Laura Bushong Weiss writes that she and her husband, Stu, are expecting their second child (a boy) in December 2009.

In June, Dom Schrader climbed Bobotov Kuk (elevation 8,274 feet) in the southeastern European country of Montenegro as part of a 14-member team from the World AIDS Awareness Expedition [Mercersburg, winter 2008–2009]. Dom organized the climb and coordinated all promotional and media coverage of the event. Team members battled a week of rain, fog, and snow before reaching the peak, where they placed a banner adorned with the Montenegrin flag and the number of AIDS deaths in the country. For more on the World AIDS Awareness Expedition (which continues through December 2010), visit www.waae.de.

Taylor Phillips ’98 heading out for a nine-day trip in the Florida Everglades.

Benjamin Clousher is working as a financial planner/stockbroker for a Charlotte firm. He and his wife, Angela, are the proud parents of a new baby girl, Madison Blair.

Dan Gaylinn earned a master’s in 2005 and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology in 2009 from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. He is pursuing licensure in the state of California.

Rachel Gray is pursuing her master’s and certification to teach secondaryschool biology.

u Liz Curry ecurry@tigglobal.com u Dean Hosgood dean.hosgood@gmail.com u Beth Pniewski Bell bethannbell@gmail.com

’98

u Ann Marie Bliley abliley@gmail.com

Mike Best is a third-year medical student at the University of Pittsburgh.

Mike was elected to serve as a delegate to the American Medical Association, representing approximately 2,000 medical students from Pennsylvania and surrounding states.

Luke Swetland ’99 with son, Paul; wife, Jennifer; and newborn son, Mark.

Wesley “Buddy” Harden is an intelligence analyst at BAE Systems. “Everything has been great for me lately,” he writes. “After spending a few years with the U.S. Army, I recently became a civilian defense contractor. My job carries me all over, but I am mainly based out of Sterling, Virginia. I frequent both the Pentagon and the Defense Intelligence Analysis Center.” He is also pursuing a master’s degree in intelligence analysis from Johns Hopkins University.

Elizabeth Hills is attending the DeBusk College of Osteopathic Medicine at Lincoln Memorial University.

Walter “Jay” Lee’s father, W. James Lee III, passed away July 26, 2009.

Taylor Phillips completed bachelor’s degrees in environmental studies and environmental philosophy from Eckerd College. He then set out to pursue a few of his dreams, starting with a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail, the 2,175-mile trek from Georgia to Maine, with classmate Ryan Chodnicki. On his next adventure, Taylor organized a 2,000-mile kayak expedition with three friends down the Yukon River through Alaska to the Bering Sea. In May

Amy Clippinger ’99 graduated from the Drexel University College of Medicine in May with a Ph.D. in molecular and cellular biology and genetics, and received the Amadeo Bondi Ph.D. Endowed Graduate Award. She began her postdoctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania in July.

’01

Dom Schrader ’00 (center, to left of Mercersburg banner) atop Bobotov Kuk in Montenegro during the World AIDS Awareness Expedition.

2008, he started Eco-Tour Adventures (jhecotouradventures.com), a national park and wildlife tour company in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Taylor guides tours in Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks.

Jenn Flanagan married Tom Bradley August 1, 2009, at Grouse Ridge Kennels (her family farm) in Oxford, New York. Among the guests were 15 members of the Flanagan family who are also Mercersburg alumni.

Sang-Yong “Paul” Yun earned a master’s degree in international relations from Sogang University’s Graduate School of International Studies. He works in the overseas sales department at Korea Aerospace Industries in Sacheon, Korea.

Matt Kranchick and his wife, Jeannine, live in Columbus, Ohio. Matt has retired from the NFL (he played for the Pittsburgh Steelers, New York Giants, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and New England Patriots over his four-year pro career) and is a sales representative for Smith & Nephew.

u Jenn Flanagan Bradley bradleyj@mercersburg.edu u Jess Malarik jmalarik@gmail.com

’99 u Kevin Glah kevglah@gmail.com u Taylor Horst taylorhorst@gmail.com u Andrew Miller amiller@pioneeringprojects.org

’00

Colin Marsh, the second vice president of Mercersburg’s Alumni Council, is engaged to Becca Murfin; the couple planned an October 2009 wedding in Kansas. Becca was on campus with Colin for the graduation of his brother, Robby ’09, in June.

Pamela Scorza, who is working toward her doctorate at Harvard, spent the summer living at a Partners in Health Facility in Rwanda through Harvard’s Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights. She is working with the Research Program on Children and Global Adversity.

u Noelle Bassi noelle.bassi@gmail.com u Bryan Stiffler bryan.stiffler@gmail.com u Liz Stockdale lstockdale@foxcroft.org u Ian Thompson ianmthompson@gmail.com

’02

Marriages

The wedding of Kit Larson ’97 and Angie Emerson, August 29, 2009, in Gig Harbor, Washington. (L–R): Nick ’97, Alison, and Eva Williams, Beth and Phil Adams, Angie and Kit, Dave and Jan Williams, Jessie Tippen ’06, Frank Rutherford ’70, Greg Larson ’06, Brian Adams ’97, Ray Larson.

Jessica Malarik ’99, Nicole Johns ’99, and Emily Kenzik Matthias ’99 at Nicole’s wedding to Brady Johnson, May 30, 2009, in St. Paul, Minnesota.

The wedding of Gray McDermid ’01 and Elizabeth LaGow, May 30, 2009, in Williamsburg, Virginia. (L–R): Jason Wilford ’01, Immy Byrd ’97 and Harry Byrd ’91 (Gray’s cousins), Andrew Fazekas ’01, Gray and Elizabeth.

Nicole Johns Johnson ’99, Emily Kenzik ’99, and Carol Powers ’99 at the wedding of Emily to Colin Matthias, November 15, 2008, in Boston.

Mercersbu rg magazi n e wi nter 2009–2010

37

The wedding of Jenn Flanagan ’99 and Tom Bradley, August 1, 2009, in Oxford, New York. Front row (L–R): Tom and Jenn, Tim Flanagan ’69, Tom Flanagan ’10. Second row: Catherine Wahl Bove ’99, Larissa Chace Smith ’97, Colleen Corcoran Yates ’99, Jenn Barr Weiss ’99, Tom Flanagan ’68, Bill Flanagan ’76, Pat Flanagan ’84, Pete Flanagan ’70. Third row: Mike Flanagan ’01, Tom Dugan ’99, Leah Rockwell ’97, Matt Flanagan ’04, Dave Flanagan ’81, Steve Flanagan ’74. Back row: Chris Corcoran ’82, Chas Rahauser ’06, Chuck Rahauser ’70, Bill Flanagan ’10, Paul Eaton ’75. (Not pictured: Tom Flanagan ’38, Esther Flanagan ’84, and Nick Coyne ’50.)

Matt Kranchick ’99 and his wife, Jeannine, on their wedding day, May 9, 2009, in Pittsburgh.

The wedding of Kevin Walsh ’02 and Sarah Marano ’02, June 6, 2009, in Farmington, Pennsylvania. Front row (L–R): Seth Greenberg ’02, David Dworsky ’02, Alison Llewelyn ’02, Kevin and Sarah, Denah Marano D’Annunzio ’99, AnnaMarie D’Annunzio ’12, Andrea Marano King ’95, Alyson Marano Ward ’93. Back row: Matthew Walsh ’05, Anne Curry ’02, Katie Morgan ’02, Peter Banzhaf ’02, Will Lee ’02, Ryan Gocke ’95, Christian Gocke ’97.

Nate Fochtman ’03 and Gina D’Aquila on their wedding day, July 4, 2009, in Mercersburg. Also pictured are Gina’s parents, Joe and Andrea D’Aquila (far left), and Nate’s parents, Tammy and Ed Fochtman (far right).

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Mercersbu rg magazi n e wi nter 2009–2010

Sarah Marano and Kevin Walsh were married in June and live in Morgantown, West Virginia, where Kevin is finishing his fourth year of medical school and Sarah works as an oncology clinical specialist for Genentech.

Lauren McCartney graduated from Oxford Brookes University in November 2008 with a master’s degree in child development and learning. She lives in London and works as a research assistant in the psychology department at Oxford Brookes.

u Katie Keller kkeller@alum.bucknell.edu u Nick Mellott nhmellott@gmail.com

’04

Douglas Hummel-Price spent six weeks in Nantucket performing in Nantucket Dreamland’s Sound of Music and Princess and the Pea.

u Carl Gray carlhgray@gmail.com u Zander Hartung zanderhartung@gmail.com u Alexis Imler alexis.imler@gmail.com u Tammy McBeth tammy.mcbeth@gmail.com u Nick Ventresca

ventresca.nick@gmail.com

’05

Josh Dillon led the Washington, D.C., protest against California’s Proposition 8,

and appeared in the February 2009 issue of The Advocate.

Derek Husar graduated from Susquehanna University; he and Casey Oliver ’06 were named to the dean’s list at the school for the spring 2009 semester.

Kimberly Junmookda was awarded a Fulbright research fellowship for study in Morocco. A graduate of the University of Redlands, she is fluent in Thai, French, and English and is studying Arabic; she will focus on the influence of foreign trade on Morocco’s languageeducation policies. Kimberly will attend the Harvard Graduate School of Education after completing her fellowship.

u Joy Thomas jatho2@wm.edu u J.T. Wilde jt.wilde@furman.edu

’06

Three key members of Mercersburg’s 2005–2006 men’s basketball team, which went 25–3, are playing college hoops within 150 miles of one another in New York state: Eduardo Archibold Brown (Le Moyne), Colin Cubit (Rochester), and Alex Tyler (Cornell). Eduardo played on Panama’s national team at this summer’s FIBA Americas Championships in Puerto Rico, Colin is a threetime all-conference academic team member, and Alex has helped Cornell to consecutive Ivy League championships and NCAA Tournament appearances.

Both Colin and Alex have been named co-captains for their respective teams for the 2009–2010 season.

Travel with Mercersburg Germany/Switzerland: From Munich to Zermatt July 1–11, 2010 An Alpine adventure led by faculty members Larry and Cindy Jones.

The trip includes visits to Munich, the Bernina and Pennine Alps, and the famed Oberammergau Passion Play.

Chase Vokrot Poffenberger ’84, executive vice president of Academic Travel Abroad, is arranging the trip. For more information, contact De-Enda Rotz at 717-328-6178 or rotzd@mercersburg.edu.

Andrew Sowers ’07, Chris Marston ’07, Andrew “Panda” Gordon ’07, and John Marshall ’08 enjoying hard-shell crabs at Chris’s house in Springfield, Virginia.

Stephanie Turner graduated in May from Pitzer College with a double major in psychology and English literature.

u Xanthe Hilton xanthe89@gmail.com u Chuck Roberts galway989@yahoo.com

’07

Lizz Harvey, a catcher/third baseman for Wentworth Institute of Technology’s softball team, led the Leopards in batting average (.367), runs (25), home runs (six), and runs batted in (24) this spring. Lizz is majoring in architecture.

Xanthe Hilton is a history, society, and culture major at Colby-Sawyer College.

Last semester, she was featured on the college’s website, discussing a new course called “Revelations, Revolutions and Reconstruction,” which uses literature to focus on the nature of change in individuals, family, and community.

Xanthe is an active citizen of the ColbySawyer community and serves as vice president of the Class of 2011. She is also a Student Government Association senator for her class, president of the Colby-Sawyer College Student Democrats, president of Students Achieving Gender Equality, treasurer of the History, Society & Culture Club, and is a resident assistant.

During the summer, Bryan Morgan was featured on the syndicated television show Football Saturdays In The South.

Bryan, the starting center on Duke’s football team, was named to the preseason Watch List for the Rimington Trophy, an award presented annually to the top center in the nation. In addition to his athletic pursuits, Bryan plays the clarinet and piano and has been composing music since age 10.

u Annie Birney annieb14@aol.com u Kiersten Bell 09bellk@earthlink.net u J.B. Crawford crawfordj304@gmail.com

’09

u Alicia Furnary afurnary@colby.edu u Becca Galey rebecca.galey@gmail.com u Ariel Imler animler@edisto.cofc.edu u Robby Marsh Kurtz robert.kmarsh@gmail.com u Rachael Porter rmp413@lehigh.edu u Andrew Reynolds reynola@purdue.edu u Molly Serpi serpim@comcast.net u Bond Stockdale stockdaleb7@gmail.com u Coralie Thomas coraliemlthomas@gmail.com Coralie Thomas has decided to take a gap year before heading to the University of Richmond in fall 2010. “I am taking this year as an amazing opportunity and time to be able to travel, see the world, and volunteer, all at the same time,” she says.

Faculty/ Former Faculty Middletown Borough, the second book

by David Ira Kagan (a faculty member from 1981 to 1990), was published in July by Arcadia Publishing. The book is part of the “Images of America” series, and contains a history of Middletown, Pennsylvania, and 235 captioned photographs primarily covering the 1880s through the 1950s. “I am a fourth-great-grandson of the founder of Middletown, George Fisher,” David says. “Co-author Edward Sunbery (who grew up as my next-door neighbor on East High Street in Middletown) and I gathered the photographs from the Middletown Historical Society’s archival collection, the Middletown Library, the Press and Journal’s archives, and from the private collections of local residents. The book is available online through Amazon.com, Borders, and Barnes & Noble, or at outlets in the Harrisburg, Middletown, and Lancaster areas.”

Mercersbu rg magazi n e wi nter 2009–2010

Obituaries

Obituaries ’28

James T. Squires, January 27, 2009. (South Cottage, Irving president, Choir, Laticlavii, Stamp Club, Glee Club president, Concert Band president, Class Ode Committee, track) Jim graduated from Colgate University. After serving in the Air Force in World War II, he was a confectionery manufacturer in Port Washington, New York. In 1950, he was called back into military service and flew many missions in Korea.

His postwar career was spent as a sales representative for American Airlines and later for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.

’29

Daniel S. Whiteman Jr., July 28, 2009. Dan attended Temple University and was a pilot in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II. He was the retired president of Reilly-Whitman-Walton Company in Conoshohocken, Pennsylvania. Preceded in death by his wife, Dorothy Ritterbush Whiteman, he is survived by three sons, including Dan III ’71 and Dave ’75; a daughter; and seven grandchildren.

Alexander A. Marks, June 9, 2009. (Laucks, Irving declaimer, The Fifteen, Stony Batter, YMCA Cabinet, Memorial Committee) Alex graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School. He served in the Army Air Corps during World War II and was elected judge of the Montgomery County [Alabama] Court of Common Pleas in 1948. He served in that position until his retirement in 1976. His first wife, Frances, second wife, Jean, and brother, Laurence ’29, preceded him in death. Survivors include two daughters, five grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.

Richard L. Barner, October 14, 2008. (Irving)

Henry C. Beerits, July 25, 2009. (Keil, Marshall, The Fifteen, Stony Batter) After graduating from Princeton University, Henry spent a year in Washington, D.C., as a research assistant to Chief Justice of the United States Charles Evans Hughes. Henry earned a degree from Harvard Law School, was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1939, and pursued an active legal and civic career for more than 40 years. He was significantly active in the Religious Society of Friends. Survivors include his wife of 66 years, Janet Robinson Beerits; two sons and a daughter; five grandchildren; and a great-grandchild.

’36

Herbert M. West, August 2, 2009. (Irving, Chemistry Club, Gun Club) Herb earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering from Princeton University. He was president of the William H. Morris Company; in addition, his business career spanned 41 years with Union Carbide Corporation, where he did pioneering work in the field of plastics. He was predeceased by his wife, Annette Todd Thayer West, and is survived by two sons, two daughters, eight grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Herb was a descendant of Lord de la Warr (Thomas West), the namesake of the state of Delaware.

Robert B. Woodbury, February 14, 2009. (Marshall, wrestling, baseball) Bob was a U.S. Army veteran of World War II. He attended Cornell University and Lafayette College, and was a purchasing agent for Atlantic Metal Products before retiring in 1982. Survivors include his wife of 64 years, Katherine; a son and daughter; and five grandchildren.

’41

William F. Herr, July 4, 2009. (Irving, swimming, Camera Club) Bill was a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was a U.S. Navy veteran of World War II, having served as communications officer aboard the USS LST-590 in the South Pacific. He was past chairman of the board and president of Serta Mattress Company. He is survived by two sons, two daughters and eight grandchildren; he was predeceased by his father, John (1904), and brothers, John Jr. ’29 and Dick ’30.

Bruce H. Mayer, November 27, 2007. (Marshall, tennis) Bruce graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and served in the U.S. Navy during World War II as a communications officer aboard the USS Block Island. He retired as president of the Delva Equipment Corporation in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. Survivors include his wife of 61 years, Eleanor, two sons, and five grandchildren.

’42

’46

William C. Mallonee, March 24, 2009. (South Cottage, Marshall, Chemistry Club, El Circulo Español, Caducean Club, Chapel Usher, Dance Committee, Glee Club, football, swimming, baseball) Bill graduated from the University of Virginia and received a master’s degree from the University of Kansas. He was a researcher in Research Triangle Park in North Carolina in the 1960s and was the inventor of numerous patent processes in the 1970s that led to the discovery of indoor/outdoor carpet and AstroTurf. He was preceded in death by his wife, Mary Alice Newman Mallonee. Survivors include two sons, a daughter, and four grandchildren.

’48

John F. Mitchell, February 13, 2009. (South Cottage, Marshall, News, Stony Batter, Caducean Club president, football, baseball, track, Class Day Committee) Jack graduated from Allegheny College. In 1955, he joined the Beaver County Times as a reporter and retired as editor after 40 years of service. He was a member and past president of the Pennsylvania Society of Newspaper Editors and the United Press International Editors of Pennsylvania. He was predeceased by his wife of 56 years, Jane S. Mitchell; survivors include two sons, three grandchildren, and two brothers, David ’51 and Robert ’60.

’49

John M. Faulks, December 12, 2008. (Marshall) In 1972, Jack moved from Media, Pennsylvania, to Naples, Florida, where he was in business as a licensed general contractor, real estate and mortgage broker, and residential appraiser. He is survived by Margaret, his wife of 54 years.

Richard E. Kramer, March 11, 2009. (Main, Irving declaimer, Choir, Glee Club, Caducean Club, soccer, track) Richard served in the U.S. Air Force from 1951 to 1955. He graduated from Washington University in St. Louis, and was an investment banker and security underwriter for a number of brokerage firms. In 1982, with his wife, Elizabeth, he started Richard E. Kramer & Associates, an event-management firm nationally known for the annual Heart of Country Antiques Show in Nashville, Tennessee. He was preceded in death by his wife; survivors include two daughters, a son, and four grandchildren.

39

40

Mercersbu rg magazi n e wi nter 2009–2010

’51

Robert J. Thieblot, April 16, 2009. (South Cottage, Irving, KARUX Board, Laticlavii, Chemistry Club, Stony Batter, Caducean Club, Paideia, soccer) A graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, Bob was a founding partner of the Baltimore law firm Allen Thieblot (later Thieblot and Ryan). He was president of the Mount Royal Improvement Association and active in the Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation, the Kiwanis Club of Baltimore City, and the Baltimore Bar Library, as well as a supporter of the Boys Home Society. He served on the Baltimore City school board in the early 1970s. Survivors include his wife, Suzanna Cohoes Thieblot, and a daughter; a brother, Armand ’57; and a nephew, A.J. ’98.

’54

Thomas F. Gilchrist, March 22, 2009. (Marshall declaimer, Stony Batter, football, The Fifteen, Cum Laude, salutatorian) Tom earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Northwestern University and a medical degree from Tulane University. He completed both his internship and pathology residency at Charity Hospital in New Orleans, and later completed a forensic pathology residency at the Dallas County Institute of Forensic Sciences. From 1967 to 1970, he served in the U.S. Army at the 406th Med Lab at Camp Zama, Japan, attaining the rank of major. Tom spent 13 years as associate medical examiner in Farmington, Connecticut, before his retirement. During his career, he also practiced in New Orleans, Dallas, and Montgomery, Alabama. He was a member of a number of medical societies.

Survivors include his wife of 43 years, Gail K. Gilchrist; two sons and a daughter; and four grandchildren.

Charles H. Schulze, April 25, 2009. (Marshall, football) Charlie was a graduate of American University and Washington College of Law. He was an assistant District of Columbia corporate counsel before turning to personal injury law. In 1970, he formed the partnership of Schulze and Pederson. Charlie died from his efforts to save two young boys caught up in a rip current in the surf at Pompano Beach, Florida, where he had a vacation home. Survivors include three sons, a daughter, and five grandchildren.

’57

W. Frederick Cooper, February 23, 2008. (Marshall) He was predeceased by his grandfather, Ray Heslop ’15; survivors include his wife, Nancy, and brother, Andrew ’58.

’67

Daniel W. Muehlman, October 3, 2004. Survivors include his brothers, Ray ’65 and Jim ’66.

’71

Robert S. Fulbright, June 1, 2009. (Marshall, Stony Batter, Camera Club, Film Club, KARUX, Lit, News, squash, Ski Club) Bob graduated from Southern Methodist University and had a successful career for many years as director of creative services for WAVE-TV in Louisville, Kentucky. Survivors include a daughter, Kate, and a son, Mack, as well as two brothers and numerous nieces, nephews, and cousins.

’74

Orlando B. Holness, October 6, 2007. (Marshall vice president, Disciplinary Committee, Chapel Choir, Octet, Chorale, Latin Club, soccer, basketball, track, salutatorian) Orlando earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Cornell University. During his career working with young people, he was a house parent in a group home

for problem teenagers. He worked for the New York State Division of Youth at the Lansing Residential Center for delinquent teenage girls, where he was a secondary science and horticulture teacher. He was a freelance writer whose work was frequently published in the Ithaca Times. Survivors include his wife, Wilberlee Range, and two children.

Raimo K. Morefield, October 31, 2008. (Irving, Caducean Club, Student Activity Committee, Blue Key, KARUX, soccer) Raimo earned a bachelor’s degree from Franklin and Marshall College and an MBA from Columbia University. He lived in Finland and was the coordinator for staffing overseas projects for Payko, a large Finnish construction firm. Survivors include his wife, Anne, and daughter, Noora ’05; a brother, Hans ’88, and sister, Julie; and his parents, Betty and Fred Morefield ’53.

’76

Eric R. Cash, April 27, 2009. (KARUX co-editor, Spokes & Sprockets, Film Club, Gun Club, football band, squash, golf, News, Blue Key, French Club, Varsity Club, Camera Club) Rick attended Virginia Wesleyan College. He and his mother, Anne, owned Mutchley Antiques, a successful business recognized for its outstanding assortment of decorative arts and estate jewelry. He was highly regarded as an appraiser of antique silver and jewelry. He was predeceased by his mother; survivors include his father, sister, and stepbrothers, as well as his companion, Sharon Leach, and her three sons.

’80

John F. White, March 18, 2009. (Chorale, Octet, library proctor, basketball manager, Blob marching band, school farm, Film Club) He graduated from the West Virginia University Institute of Technology with a degree in business management, worked at the Mt. Olive Correctional Center, and was a member of the Upper Kanawha Valley Chamber of Commerce. Survivors include his father, a brother, and two sisters.

’85

Thomas M. Wolfe, March 25, 2009. (Main, Marshall, senior class president, swimming captain, Chorale, Octet) Tom was an All-American swimmer at both Mercersburg and the University of Tennessee and swam at the 1988 U.S. Olympic Trials. He earned an MBA from Purdue University and worked in product-marketing management for Maptek in Denver, Colorado.

Former faculty/staff/friends James E. “Jim” Houck, husband of athletic trainer Marilyn Houck and uncle of Mandy Houck Stotler ’01, July 24, 2009.

Homer D. Jones Jr., father of School Minister Lawrence Jones and fatherin-law of faculty member Cindy Jones, September 13, 2009.

Barbara J. Plantz, wife of faculty emeritus Leonard A. Plantz, July 7, 2009.

In addition to her husband of 66 years, she is survived by six children, including Leonard Plantz Jr. ’69; eight grandchildren, including Sara Plantz Brennen ’88, Josh Plantz ’94, and Noah Plantz ’00; and eight great-grandchildren.

Melvin Simon, chairman emeritus of the board of Simon Property Group, co-owner of the NBA’s Indiana Pacers and WNBA’s Indiana Fever, and father of Mercersburg Regent Deborah Simon ’74, September 16, 2009.

James W. Smith, faculty emeritus and Mercersburg’s school carillonneur, August 20, 2009. [page 3]

M y Say

“It never always gets worse.” I’m trying to remember this as I’m lying on

the side of the road in Death Valley, having ejected the contents of my stomach after running 65 miles in 125-degree heat. It would be easy to surrender; I have a support crew, an air-conditioned van waiting less than a mile away, and access to medical staff and an IV that would almost certainly make me feel better. However, to give up at this point would be to miss the best part of an ultramarathon.

By Alisa Springman As difficult as they are, the toughest moments of each ultramarathon are what I love—and what keep me coming back again and again. My love affair with races longer than 26.2 miles started innocently enough; while running “birthday laps” around the track with faculty member Sue Malone, I learned of her ultramarathon career and of a 50-mile race nearby. Following a successful finish in that race, I immediately wondered what else my body was capable of. 100-mile races came next, and after a win at the Desert R.A.T.S. 150-mile stage race, I fell in love with racing in the desert.

California’s Badwater 135 Ultramarathon pits athlete against environment like no other race; you have 60 hours to complete 135 miles from Death Valley (282 feet below sea level; temperatures hover above 120 degrees) and across three mountain ranges to the portals of Mount Whitney, the highest point in the continental U.S. As I stagger on the side of the road with my energy and spirits failing, all the doubts I’ve ever harbored about myself come to the forefront of my mind. I am 65 miles into the world’s toughest footrace and I don’t think I can go another 70 steps—let alone 70 miles. I’ve spent thousands of hours and thousands of dollars to get here with all these incredible athletes—what could I have been thinking? I think, “If I quit now, who would blame me? I’ve traveled farther on foot in one day than most do in a month. What am I trying to prove?”

My mind uses every trick it knows to get me to stop, but a faint light still glows in my eyes—a spark of strength and the memory of all the gifts I’ve received. I can overlook the bitterness, I can embrace the pain, and I can put one foot in front of the other.

This feeling is what I’ve come for: to be pulled apart and given the opportunity to know my soul and to choose the person I want to be. All the miles and months of training cannot prepare you for this moment. By taking away the multitude of modern life’s distractions and demands, surrounded by the natural world where my only task is forward motion, I can see what is most valuable and important in life.

Badwater was one of the most profound experiences of my life; I still have difficulty putting it into words. I crave the solitude found in the desert, and while I experienced this solitude at Badwater, I also experienced, in equal measure, the love and support of my incredible friends that comprised my crew. Never have I been blessed with such generosity as I received from Sue, David, Will, and Bobby. They were responsible for many incredible highs during the race—a surprise Sponge Bob happy

hour, a geology lesson from Will in the mountains, lessons on how to tough it out like a Marine from David, loads of tough love from Bobby, and a 13-mile hike up Mount Whitney with Sue, my favorite pacer.

Crossing the finish line hand in hand with them was an exhilarating moment that is indelibly etched into my mind. All my doubts were silenced; I surrendered my heart and soul to the race, and realized that I am strong and capable of achieving anything.

This realization is a gift. I run because it teaches me that to make forward progress, you can only rely on yourself. No one else can pick up your feet and move you forward. I run because it teaches me that when that forward motion gets tough, it is the support of those around you that makes the task easier. I run because it helps me know who I am. I run to know the divine in the world. I run to know that true joy and true gratitude are always within my reach. I run because every race is a celebration.

Alisa Springman completed the 2009 Badwater Ultramarathon in 35 hours, 42 minutes, and 35 seconds (good for 25th overall and seventh in the women’s division). A Mercersburg faculty member since 2000, Springman teaches mathematics, coaches cross country and swimming, and serves as dorm dean of Keil Hall.

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