Mercersburg Magazine - Winter 2007/2008 by Mercersburg Academy

MERCERSBURG MAGAZIN E WINTER 2007 – 2008

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Global

Citizenship page 16

VOLUME 34 NO. 3 WI NTER 2007 – 2008

MECERSBURG MAGAZINE SPRING 2007

MERCERSBURG MAGAZINE WINTER 2007 –2008

M y Sa y

The students pulled themselves through the window behind me. Those who wore shoes left them along the wall. But most were without, their feet powdered ochre from the dry earth outside. BY

M AT T H E W C A R E T T I

We would begin our lesson shortly, but for

to teach my final lesson and to bid the stu-

now rainwater and other debris had to be

dents, teachers, and community goodbye.

swept from the floor. A glimpse into the next

After the kicks, punches, blocks, and ripostes

room revealed that vandals had again set

of our last taekwondo training, we con-

about shredding the yellowed copies of the li-

cluded with a brief meditation—kneeling

brary’s stacks.

with hands folded on lap and a focus on

This was the community center at

the process of breath. As always, there were

Shatale, a rural South African township at

giggles from some, snoring sounds from oth-

the base of the highveld escarpment. It was

ers. And much as the years here had passed,

a place of stark beauty, arid bushlands un-

the antics moved me in turns from frustra-

dulating westward to the dramatic rise of the

tion to joy. But today I concluded quickly

northern Drakensberg Range and falling

and laughed along with them.

away toward Kruger National Park and

As the last student climbed out through

Mozambique to the east. Just as its landscape

the twisted bars, I paused before following.

was both lovely and forbidding, the divide

The sun had just set above the forested es-

carried to the people settled there. While

carpment, striping the room in bursts of yel-

Indians and white Afrikaners continued to dominate the sparse

low light and swathes of deepening shadow. Outside in the dusty

economy, a more historical rift set the rivalry between the Sotho-

yard, students split again into groups—young and old, Sepulana and

speaking Sepulanas and the Tsonga-speaking Shangaanis. Upon

Shangaani, boys and girls. But while we were inside the deterio-

these divisions one must also heap the conflicted provincial bound-

rating building, we had formed one body. Perhaps that was why I

ary between the Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces, and the dis-

did not want to leave. I feared for the divisions that would hinder

sonant political maneuvering of the local African National Congress

a successful approach to the trials of a new democracy, a growing

branch. The latter, in fact, is what had led the students and I to en-

AIDS pandemic, and a continued polarization of the country’s

ter the community center via a broken-out window.

wealth. I also felt a great apprehension about my own sudden and

Our lesson began, as it always did, with a deep bow. While the high school students did this with much respect, there were often

deliberate separation from this cause. But Prince, a long-faithful student, called from outside, “Chaile, Matteu.”

giggles from the younger students and the even younger onlookers

Indeed, it was time to call it a day. We had all done our best

gathered at the open windows. Indeed, I couldn’t help but to smirk

in the time that was allotted us. Yet we knew Shatale remained

along with them. The wonderful absurdity of it all often struck me

unfinished.

at this time—a white American teaching black South Africans a Korean martial art. While most of the instruction was in English (a

Mercersburg faculty member Matthew

third language for most of the students), we counted and named the

Caretti served as a Peace Corps volunteer in

particular moves using Korean. But in a land of 11 national lan-

South Africa from 2003 to 2005. He has re-

guages and countless other dialects, this provided little difficulty for

turned to the Academy to teach English

the students. South Africa remains, after all, a country that celebrates

and coach football and track; he was pre-

diversity in all of its forms.

viously on the faculty from 1998 to 2003.

After two years in Shatale, I felt an outsider no more. I was a firm thread within the fabric of the community. But it was by then time

VOLUME 34

N O. 3

WINTER 2007 –2008

A magazine for Mercersburg Academy family and friends

Mercersburg

Global Citizenship

1,054 Words

Bright lights, big city. Page 10

Around the World in 80 Ways

With camera in tow, Peter Maxwell Banzhaf ’02 spent four months traveling across Asia and Africa by land, air, and sea. Page 12

Wanted: World Citizens

16 26

Mercersburg strives to produce students with a passion for global awareness and understanding. Page 16

Mercersburg Profiles Visit alumni on six continents, and read about their careers and exploits in international diplomacy, medicine, aviation, and broadcasting. Page 26

My Say

65 You Should Know Snow in the summertime? You bet—if it’s Peru in June, and miles above sea level. Six Mercersburg students and three faculty members spent 18 days in the South American country in summer 2007. In addition to climbing two peaks above 17,000 feet, group members practiced (or in some cases, began to learn) Spanish, executed a large cleanup of a base camp used by international climbing expeditions, sampled guinea pig (a local delicacy), and visited ruins that pre-date Machu Picchu (1200 B.C.). Photo by Derry Mason. Photo credits: p. 2 Chris Crisman; p. 3 Martha Stewart; p. 4 Crisman; p. 5 (top) Renee Hicks, (bottom) Bill Green; p. 7 (Cooper) © Paramount Pictures; p. 8 (top) Green, (Gray) Michael Dwyer; p. 9 (left) Ed Van Pelt, (Williams) Stacey Grassa; p. 10–15 (all photos) Peter Banzhaf; p. 18 (top right) Dwyer; p. 19 (bottom right) Green; p. 20 Crisman; p. 21–22 (all photos) Dwyer; p. 23 (Eadie) Crisman; p. 24 Stewart; p. 25 (Oman) Bettina Pressl, (Willis) Green, (Stephens/Pierce) Dwyer; p. 28 courtesy Sam McGredy; p. 29 (headshot) Stephany Escudero; p. 33 courtesy John Rowlinson; p. 35 David Rubinger; p. 36 (all photos) courtesy Kimball Prentiss; p. 38 (Grynkewich) Green, (billboard) Prentiss; p. 40–41 courtesy Stefan Falk; p. 42–46 (all photos) Green; p. 47 courtesy Deirdre Heine; p. 48 (baseball) Hicks, (golf) Fred Kosak, (tennis) Sandie Cubit; p. 49 (softball/lacrosse) Hicks, (track) Cubit; p. 65 (bottom right) Green; back cover (top) Ryan Smith. Illustrations: cover, p. 16 Marcelo Cipis; p. 29 Ruben Acoca (photo by Joel Chang)

Helping children build community through martial arts in South Africa. Page 65

From the Head of School Via Mercersburg Alumni Weekend 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 Magazine correspondence: Lee_Owen@mercersburg.edu Alumni Notes correspondence: Jenn_Flanagan@mercersburg.edu

2 3 42 47 50 Editor: Lee Owen Alumni Notes Editor: Jenn Flanagan ’99 Contributors: Jim Applebaum, Peter Banzhaf ’02, Matthew Caretti, Shelton Clark, Tom Coccagna, Denise Dupre ’76, Sarah Eadie ’08, Phil Kantaros, Matthew Kearney, Peter Kempe, Susan Pasternack, Kimball Prentiss ’92, Jay Quinn, Tim Rockwell, Lindsay Tanton Alumni Notes Assistants: Jessica Glass, Carol Swinehart Art Direction: Aldrich Design

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

Head of School: Douglas Hale

www.mercersburg.edu

Assistant Head for External Affairs: Mary Carrasco

Director of Strategic Marketing and Communications: Heather Sullivan

From the Head of School

Global Education At

opening convocation, I welcomed everyone to the 115th beginning of school, including students from 28 states, the District of Columbia, and 28 nations of the world. Contrary to public perception, excellent boarding schools are among the most diverse educational institutions imaginable. Observing those bright, hopeful faces in the audience, I considered the admission event when they first visited school and how some of their parents had asked about possible ways to respond to friends and neighbors who made them feel guilty about sending their children to boarding school. I counseled parents to consider saying words to this effect: “We believe we are giving our children the greatest gift possible. In addition to a first-rate education, we’re giving them the gift of independence and some literal “We’re also giving them the gift of distance from us at a time in life when they are naturally seeking such distance; we’re also giving them the gift of the the amazing geographical, cultural, geographical, cultural, religious, and socioreligious, and socioeconomic diversity amazing economic diversity present at Mercersburg.” present at Mercersburg.” A stroll across this campus on any given day easily reveals that diversity is one of the school’s salient features; it is also a characteristic we celebrate in multiple ways. Students’ lives are, undoubtedly, enriched and their views broadened when they share classrooms and living spaces with people from another state or continent, whose skin color may be different from their own, whose primary language does not sound remotely familiar, and whose religious and cultural traditions are at first unrecognizable. With respect, the school displays the flags of every nation represented in the community; with delight, we periodically dine on the foods of other regions and lands; with pride, we regularly offer five different languages in the curriculum; with curiosity, we listen to students speak at “brown-bag lunches” about their homelands. While diversity is one of our greatest resources, it can also be one of our greatest challenges. With such broad geographical representation, the codifying of common community values becomes one of Mercersburg’s most important challenges. Ironically, I find that our diversity is a help rather than a hindrance in shaping those shared values. People understand intuitively that such differences require establishing common ground and that the ethos of any particular place is largely shaped by its geographical location—in our case, a heartland community in south-central Pennsylvania. Modest yet confident, with an open, democratic spirit and a sharply defined work ethic are some of the values I ascribe to this place. With my 11th Mercersburg convocation completed, I remain grateful for the gift of this diverse school and those common values in all our lives.

Douglas Hale Head of School

MERCERSBURG MAGAZIN E SPRI NG 2007

Dates to Remember

Dec 10

Jacobs Residency Lecture: Kwame Anthony Appiah

Dec 15–16

Loyalty Club Christmas Candlelight Service Weekend (Dec 16: Christmas Candlelight Service, 4/7:30 p.m.)

Dec 19–Jan 7

Winter vacation for students

Jan 12

Alumni Council winter meeting

Jan 25–26

Board of Regents winter meetings Palm Beach Gardens, Florida

Feb 8–10

Stony Batter Winter Musical: Into the Woods

Feb 29–Mar 6

Irving-Marshall Week

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

A Decade of Doug Hale at Mercersburg Some people are the perfect fit for what they do. Doug Hale is one of those people. In his first decade at Mercersburg, Doug (who became head of school in 1997) has accomplished so much, and with tremendous passion for his work. He has managed to simultaneously revive and strengthen traditions at the school, while adding innovation and progressive thinking to the school’s program. Mercersburg’s alma mater has long been sung. It continues to be sung today, and impressively, the students really do know all the words to all the verses. You may not recognize the delivery of “...with full hearts and loud swelling cheers” at the end of the song. It is literally shouted in crescendo—the signature note of today’s generation of students.

Doug’s leadership has helped engender that pride and enthusiasm. It is joyful to watch, and to hear. You will hear Doug’s booming voice as part of the chorus, but he also goes about his work in a quiet way. He tends to the individual needs of students, families, and faculty with compassion. Doug once said that one of the hardest parts of being a head of a school is the need to always be prepared to answer the door in the same way, as if that one time might be a critical juncture in the life of a young person. Doug is always ready, and he always answers his door. Most often it is left ajar. Doug genuinely delights in working with teenagers, buoyed by their willingness to try new things and take risks. He gets caught up in the spirit of the place. He revels in the

Marshall-Irving competition, as the unbridled student energy reminds him why he does what he does. (Of course, he can’t lose; he is equally able to celebrate the victory of either society.) We can’t lose either, Doug: it is our collective good fortune to have had your presence for the last decade at Mercersburg. Leaders of your integrity and caliber are rare—but so are truly great prep schools. One deserves the other. —Denise Dupre ’76, president of Mercersburg’s Board of Regents

Pictured below (L–R): Doug, Lauren, Douglas, and Peggy Hale

MERCERSBURG MAGAZI N E WI NTER 2007 – 2008

Carrasco Assumes Alumni and Development Leadership Post Mary K. Carrasco, a Mercersburg faculty member since 1999, has been appointed assistant head of school for external affairs. In her new role, she will oversee all alumni and development efforts. She replaces Donald D. Hill, who retired in November following 37 years at Mercersburg as a teacher, coach, and administrator. “During the last eight years, it has been my privilege to work with Don Hill and many alumni, parents, and friends on programs that make it possible for Mercersburg to be one of the very best boarding schools in the nation,” Carrasco says. “I am looking forward to new opportunities to develop the volunteer networks that are necessary for Mercersburg to remain a leader in boarding education. “The strength of our school’s community of support is directly related to the opportunities that are available to students, and to the faculty who provide those exceptional opportunities.” Carrasco came to Mercersburg in 1999 as director of capital programs to manage the Mightily Onward campaign, and was named the Academy’s director of external affairs in July 2002. She has held positions at Georgetown University, Aiglon College Switzerland, The Kingsbury Center, The Maret School, and Virginia Tech, and is also a newly elected member of the board of trustees for the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). Carrasco will serve a three-year term as a trustee-at-large. She has been a frequent speaker on topics of international fundraising and relationship-building at events sponsored by CASE, the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), and The Association of Boarding Schools (TABS). Carrasco and her husband, Phil, are the parents of Sam ’06 and Anne ’11.

MERCERSBURG MAGAZI N E WI NTER 2007 – 2008

INSIDE MERCERSBURG

Rise of the Machines Mercersburg competes at the “Olympics of Robotics” For five days in July, Jeff Chung ’08 and faculty member and mathematics department head Julia Stojak Maurer ’90 competed in RoboCup 2007, a world-renowned research robotics competition. More than 2,000 students and faculty from prominent universities, high schools, and middle schools from 39 countries converged on the Georgia Tech campus in Atlanta to participate in events including soccer, dance, and search-andrescue missions using robots ranging in stature from the size of a fingernail to lifesize humanoids. “This event is the Olympics of robotics,” says Maurer, a Mercersburg graduate who holds three degrees (including a doctorate) from the University of Dayton. Chung advanced to the international level of competition after qualifying at the U.S. regionals in May at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Additional Mercersburg students placed in the categories of search-and-rescue (Ben Enders ’07, Ben Hayes ’07, Allan Lutz ’07, and Bobby Wolford ’07) and soccer (Aidan Crofton ’07, Scott Nehrbas ’07, Alex Appleman ’07, John Marshall ’08, Bobby Tokar ’07, Chris Kerry ’07, and Andrew Graham ’07). Chung competed as a team of one in Atlanta, and was one of just three U.S. teams at the event. He worked with fellow robotics champions from Brazil, Portugal, China, India, and Mexico, and engaged in six superteam missions over four days. Despite the language barriers and the intense, 12hour days, Chung finished first for the U.S. in the search-and-rescue category. “The robots are programmed to face whatever situation they encounter—it’s all very complex,” Maurer says. “They can detect color and obstacles, while navigating through the ‘disaster scene,’ maneuvering around sharp turns and climbing steep ramps.” Placing first in search-and-rescue for the United States is an honor for Chung. “Jeff

Julia Stojak Maurer ’90 and Jeff Chung ’08 represented Mercersburg at RoboCup 2007.

put his heart and soul into this every day that we were there,” Maurer says. “I think it was incredible for him to see the best kids in the world doing the exact same thing, competing at an international level.” Maurer looks forward to the 2008 national competition at MIT, and hopes to take a team to RoboCup 2008 in Suzhou, China—which coincides with the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing.

Lead-off Man Faculty member Karl Reisner was the featured speaker at Mercersburg’s 115th Convocation in September. Reisner, a 36-year veteran of the faculty, teaches history and coaches baseball and football. Awards presented during the ceremony included the Culbertson Prize (to Emily Bays ’10) and the Michelet Prize (to James Finucane ’08).

RoboCup is an international joint project to promote artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and related fields. The event fosters AI and intelligent robotics research by presenting a standard problem in which a range of technologies can be integrated and examined. A major application of RoboCup technologies is search-and-rescue in largescale disaster situations. —Lindsay Tanton

MERCERSBURG MAGAZI N E WI NTER 2007 – 2008

Pierce Lord ’98 in New Zealand, his “favorite place in the world.”

MM: Why did you choose to focus on faculty when making your gift? PL: Doug and I came up with the idea. It adds to the compensation base for faculty, but it also affects the future—getting new talent on the faculty and retaining people. Faculty might be able to do these trips on their own, but this allows you to do something random, something that you might not do when you have a family or other priorities. This [traveling abroad] is the only thing you can do with this money.

Gift Enables Faculty Journeys In spring 2007, Head of School Douglas Hale dined with Pierce Lord ’98, of New York-based Lord Asset Management Company. An extraordinary idea emerged: Lord, who began doing finance at Mercersburg, would give four faculty members $7,500 apiece to travel wherever they chose outside the United States. The only string attached to the annual lottery? Share the experience with the community upon return to the ’Burg. In the following excerpts from an interview with Mercersburg, Lord shares the wherefore of his gift. MM: What was the “A-ha!” moment? When did you recognize that travel was vital? PL: When I went to London my junior year at Colgate. I spent a semester there and thought, “Wow, there’s a lot to see out there.” London School of Economics professors taught my program. And we had Fridays off, so we’d jump on the train or take a long weekend in Paris or Greece. MM: You recently spent a half year traveling. Where did you wander? PL: I went to New Zealand, Australia, Fiji, India, Thailand, Malaysia, and Egypt. I rode an elephant in India (it was stinky—and a little bizarre). It was my second trip to New

Zealand; the first time was after college. I finished at Colgate in three and a half years, and I was traveling by myself—and I had no game plan whatsoever. I was flying by the seat of the seat of my pants. MM: What’s your response to the adage “Wherever you go, there you are”? PL: I disagree with it; I came back different. I was more laid back, less stressed, and more open to new ideas. I was less ignorant and more understanding of different cultures. I realized that each of us is a small piece of a big world—but we can, as individuals, do amazing things. MM: What words do you live by? PL: When I was traveling, I came up with my own adage: “Make it easier for good things to happen.” You don’t always have full control of life… if you’re looking for a new job, you’re increasing your chances of having something good happen by talking to people, asking for their ideas and their help. If you sit in your apartment, you can pretty much count on failure. By being open [and taking some risks], you can make it easier for good things to happen.

MM: What do you expect will be the net effect of your gift on Mercersburg? PL: Excitement for people to go outside the Mercersburg bubble and return to share their experience with everyone else, and get them excited. Traveling changes you as an individual, but it’s also what’s best for the world. Most conflicts are created by misunderstandings between cultures, and traveling is an easy way of simply making the world a better place. You begin to understand and respect each other. PL: I met one student on campus last year who told me he wouldn’t have been able to go on a spring-break trip abroad—except that Mercersburg helped him. Now he wants to travel more. These experiences will give him a running start once he gets onto a college campus. He’ll be a better student, he’ll have Mercersburg’s great values, and he’ll be more attractive to employers when he graduates. And we can do this relatively easily; we can add enormous value. It’s a no-brainer. —Heather Sullivan [Editor’s note: For an expanded Q&A with Pierce Lord and information about the inaugural faculty recipients and their journeys, visit www.mercersburg.edu/magazine.]

MERCERSBURG MAGAZIN E WINTER 2007 – 2008

Left, the real-life White; right, Gary Cooper as “Cadet White” in 1927’s Wings.

BACK IN TIME

The Real Story of a Mercersburg War Hero This much is true, and undisputed: Wilbert W. White Jr., a member of Mercersburg’s Class of 1907, was a decorated World War I air ace. White received the Distinguished Service Cross with an additional Oak Leaf Cluster, as well as the Croix de Guerre, for bravery and heroic action as a second lieutenant in the United States Army Air Service (the precursor to the U.S. Air Force). He was posthumously recommended for the Medal of Honor. What is not true—at least at this moment —is eight decades of reporting that White actually received the Medal of Honor. White was killed in action after ramming a German plane to save a fellow American pilot in

France on October 10, 1918; the famed Eddie Rickenbacker described White’s actions that day as the bravest act he ever witnessed. White was a member of the 147th Pursuit Squadron with eight victories. White was mistakenly described as a Medal of Honor recipient at the unveiling of his official Academy portrait during commencement week 1923. Around the same time, Mercersburg’s Alumni Quarterly referred to White as a Medal of Honor recipient, and since then, the school had listed White as one of four winners of the country’s highest military honor—joining Joel T. Boone (1909), Ralph Talbot ’16, and Eugene Fluckey ’30. Fluckey died in June at age 93 (obituary, page 61).

White’s nomination was likely derailed by a power struggle inside the military, as debate raged at the time over aviation’s place in the armed forces. Tim Rockwell, former dean of students and an emeriti faculty member, has engaged in significant research in support of reviving White’s candidacy for the medal, and White’s original Academy portrait has been restored for display. According to Archivist Jay Quinn, White lives on in the on-screen persona of Gary Cooper, who played a character loosely based on White in the 1927 silent movie Wings. The film won the first-ever Academy Award for Best Picture. —Lee Owen

Letter Guidelines We welcome letters to the editor on topics relevant to the Academy, whether from the pages of Mercersburg or otherwise. Letters to the editor should typically address a single issue and be no more than 150 words. Please include your name (and class year, if applicable), address, telephone number, and email address for verification. We reserve the right to edit submissions for content or clarity.

Send letters to: Lee Owen, editor Mercersburg magazine 300 East Seminary Street Mercersburg, Pennsylvania 17236 Lee_Owen@mercersburg.edu

MERCERSBURG MAGAZI N E WI NTER 2007 – 2008

New Faculty Faces Fourteen new faculty members have been appointed for the 2007–2008 academic year. First row (L-R): Monique Liddell (math), Laura Burgess (admission), Cindy Jones (fine arts), Alysia Oakley (English). Second row: Quentin McDowell (history), Franklin Bell (science), Jack Sweeney (admission), John David Bennett (English), John McAfee (fine arts). Back row: Matthew Caretti (English), Lee Owen (communications), Todd McGuire (science), Marshall Carroll (library). Not pictured: Michael Cameron (fine arts).

C A M P U S N OT E S

In Case You Missed It Mercersburg’s endowment has surpassed the $200 million mark. According to boardingschoolreview.com, the figure ranks Mercersburg in the top 10 of American boarding schools; the number is even more impressive when considering the average boarding-school endowment is in the neighborhood of $15 million. Mercersburg’s ranking surges even higher in the endowment-per-pupil category. “Reaching this milestone is a testament to the strength of Mercersburg’s community of support and the leadership of the Board of Regents,” says Mary Carrasco, assistant head of school for external affairs. “The impact of the strength of the endowment is best seen in the caliber of students who have the opportunity to create their own Mercersburg experience, and the excellence of the faculty who craft the experience for them.” Approximately 44 percent of current students receive some form of financial aid. Over the summer, nine members of the Mercersburg faculty scattered across the country to help read, assess, and grade Advanced Placement (AP) examinations as College Board consultants. Participants included Wells Gray (art history), Peter Kempe (German), Karl Muller (Latin), Heather Prescott (French), Karl Reisner (history), Frank Wells Gray Rutherford ’70 (science), Allison Stephens (history), and Tom Thorne (Latin), as well as incoming faculty member Franklin Bell (science).

“It is unusual for a school our size to have such a high number of faculty involved,” says Kempe, who completed his 13th year as a grader and his first as a question leader (the highest position available to a high school teacher). Gray, who joined Bell and Rutherford as a table leader this year, will be a question leader in summer 2008. (Question leaders oversee table leaders; table leaders, in turn, supervise readers.) “You take away the satisfaction of serving students, as well as making friends, sharing ideas, and comparing teaching styles with colleagues from all over the world,” says Kempe of the professionaldevelopment opportunity. Summers are typically quiet, lazy, and uneventful on many school campuses. But with more than 1,900 participants and staff taking part in 32 different sessions administered by Mercersburg Summer and Extended Programs, there wasn’t much time during the summer months for anything other than fun. Participants and staff represented 34 states and 21 countries, and Summer Programs employed 38 current or former Academy students this year. Programs included everything from sports camps (the Champion’s Edge field hockey camp, at 214 participants, was the largest) to robotics, fine arts, and the popular Teen Adventures and Mercersburg Adventure Camps. Fifty-five of the 72 participants in Essentials for Excellence, an orientation program for new students, were incoming members of the Class of 2011.

MERCERSBURG MAGAZIN E WINTER 2007 – 2008

The Hot List How to have yourself a merry little Christmas now Jim Brinson is Mercersburg’s organist and has been a music faculty member since 2003. He shares three of his favorite holiday recordings with us here:

©iStockphoto.com/Shaun Lowe

Ralph Vaughn Williams: “Fantasia on Christmas Carols” and “Hodie,” Label: EMI Classics. Available at www.bn.com

“Our Dancing Day,” The Memphis Boychoir & Chamber Choir Label: Pro Organo. Available at www.proorgano.com

“This large-scale work tells the Christmas story through biblical narration and the poetry of John Milton, Miles Coverdale, and others. The more I listen to it and ponder its text, the deeper the appreciation I have for its profound message.”

“This is a collection of Christmas carols performed by an ensemble with which I was connected for many years while living in Memphis; in fact, I am one of the singers on this CD.”

“Since Mercersburg Academy has a splendid carillon, this is a natural favorite for me. It features beautiful settings of Christmas carols played on the large carillon at Bok Tower Gardens. When my wife, Doree, and I lived in Florida, we would visit for Sunday afternoon recitals.”

“Christmas Carillon from Bok Tower Gardens,” Milford Myhre, carillonneur Label: Musical Heritage Society. Available by calling 863-678-1159

C A M P U S N OT E S CO N T I N U E D

20th year at Mercersburg. His teams have won four Eastern Interscholastic Swimming Championships and broken several national prep-school records. “The greatest compliment a person can receive is being recognized by one’s peers,” says Director of Athletics Ron Simar. “Pete is that rare individual who has the respect of everyone he has contact with.”

The programs generated more than $1.15 million in revenue for the school, with 81 percent of that total coming from internal programming. Pete Williams, Mercersburg’s head swimming and diving coach and a faculty member since 1988, is a 2007 winner of the National Interscholastic Swimming Coaches Association’s Outstanding Service Award. Williams, a member of the 1968 U.S. Olympic Team, 11-time NCAA All-American at Michigan State University, and former AAU national champion in the 400-meter individual medley, is in his

Pete Williams

Among the many campus groups in which Mercersburg students can become involved is Voices 4 Justice (V4J), a new social-justice organization founded by Marielle Collins ’09 and Maggie Goff ’10. The group is dedicated to raising student awareness of global issues and crises, and plans fundraisers and other events toward that goal. V4J maintains a website at www.voices4justice.org. A gift from the recently graduated Class of 2007 resulted in several improvements to Mercersburg’s athletic training facilities. New rehabilitation equipment and software to track athletic injuries are among the additions. The result, according to athletic trainer Marilyn Houck, is an improvement in the quality of care and a decrease in the amount of time lost due to injury, allowing Mercersburg athletes to return to a safe level of play in a more timely fashion.

1,054 Words

As part of a four-month, 40,000-mile odyssey across much of the other side of the world, Peter Maxwell Banzhaf â&#x20AC;&#x2122;02 snapped this breathtaking image of downtown Hong Kong from above. Turn the page to see much more of his Asian and African expedition, and to read a brief account of last winterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s trip.

China

Around the

World in

80 Ways

For Peter Maxwell Banzhaf ’02,

the experience of a collegiate road trip led to a journey without a road. Literally. On a cross-country expedition to watch the University of Denver men’s hockey team win the 2005 NCAA championship in Columbus, Ohio, Banzhaf and college classmate Jeremy Neil made a pact to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania after they graduated. “But flights to Africa were very expensive—almost as much as an around-theworld ticket,” Banzhaf says. “And I wanted to see as much as I could before starting my career, so we decided to book the around-the-world tickets.” After 14 vaccination shots, 10 visas, extensive research, and approximately 18 months of saving for the excursion, Banzhaf and Neil boarded a plane for Beijing. For four months, they traveled across Asia and Africa—reaching 19,340 feet above sea level at the summit of Kilimanjaro, traveling the sea between Thailand and Laos in a canoe equipped with a Toyota car motor, and experiencing countless places in between. They visited 17 countries, logged approximately 40,000 miles by air, bus, car, train, boat, foot, and other means, and returned home with a lifetime worth of pictures, words, and memories. Following are a few images from the trip, with Banzhaf’s commentary along the way.

BEIJING, CHINA

SHANGHAI, CHINA The pollution was so bad in Shanghai that we couldn’t see more than 100 yards. It was like a huge cloud in the city.

Laos MEKONG RIVER, LAOS Laos is an amazing country. It is a place where time has stood still, and I wish I had stayed longer there.

MERCERSBURG MAGAZIN E WINTER 2007 – 2008

XI’AN, CHINA It’s incredible to think that each of the famed Terracotta Warriors is unique in design.

HONG KONG

Cambodia

Thailand SIMIAN ISLANDS, THAILAND I obtained an open-water scuba certification off the coast here— and ran into David Kimball ’01 at a Muay Thai boxing bout.

LAOS

Singapore My good friend Jan Rebenich ’02 (right) was attending business school at Singapore University; I spent my birthday with him there.

India

The trip through Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Rajasthan province took 13 days in an extremely small subcompact car with only two CDs of trendy Hindi music. I can still recite the lyrics of those songs, verbatim...

Egypt

MERCERSBURG MAGAZIN E WINTER 2007 – 2008

Tanzania

MOUNT KILIMANJARO, TANZANIA At the start of the climb, you experience subtropical jungle; at the top, the air is so thin that it takes three breaths to move one step. But reaching the summit above the clouds and seeing that little wooden sign is life-changing.

Zimbabwe Zimbabwe was by far the most dangerous place we went. There is 80 percent unemployment; around 40 percent of the population has AIDS; inflation rose 700 percent in the course of a week; and the government has closed all the banks and ATMs, and issued a mandate to shoot anyone who walks within 100 meters of President Mugabe’s residence. Why go to such a place? Victoria Falls.

South Africa

CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA I spent three weeks in South Africa and could not have chosen a better place to cap off the trip. Cape Town’s topography and vegetation is similar to that of San Francisco, and it is completely surrounded by Table Mountain. It’s a beautiful city.

Matt Von Lunen ’07 arrived at Mercersburg having never left the Eastern Time Zone. By the time he graduated, Von Lunen had visited Europe and Asia as part of Academy-sponsored travel experiences, and returned with much more than a stamped passport and jet lag. “In Switzerland, I met two high-school-age brothers who didn’t speak a single word of English,” says Von Lunen, a third-generation Mercersburg graduate who grew up in Davidsville, Pennsylvania (a place even smaller than the borough of Mercersburg). “My proudest moment from that trip was that I was able to hold a two-hour conversation with them— entirely in German.”

Wanted: WORLD CITIZENS Mercersburg strives to produce students with a passion and desire for global awareness and understanding BY

LEE OWEN

MERCERSBURG MAGAZI N E WI NTER 2007 – 2008

From left: Students and faculty enjoying London; Xiomara Villagomez ’10 and Spanish teacher Gretchan Frederick working in the language lab. Facing page, from top: a Mercersburg contingent in Germany during the annual exchange with the Gauss Gymnasium; flags representing students' home countries enter the Chapel as part of Baccalaureate.

At Mercersburg, where the student body comprises citizens representing a record 28 countries this academic year, one might not necessarily need to leave campus to have an international experience. Yet 77 percent of the school’s U.S. citizens held passports in 2006–07, and more than a hundred students (regardless of citizenship or background) participate in a school-sponsored travel program, study abroad, or both during their time at the Academy. “I doubt such a high number of [U.S. citizens] would have had passports 10 or 20 years ago,” says Will Willis, Mercersburg’s director of international programs. “International travel has become much more accessible. The fascinating thing about that number is that we’re a school where almost 45 percent of students receive some sort of financial aid, so this reaches across socioeco-

nomic lines in a way that’s really impressive. And I think this points to a lot more opportunities being available for young people to go abroad, and having programs and money in place to do that.” Mercersburg’s Strategic Plan, which was ratified by the Board of Regents in 2006, commits the Academy to “expand and integrate experiential travel opportunities. . . [because] the world has become a smaller yet more complicated place, characterized by enormous political and economic interdependence and opportunity.” With this in mind, “global citizenship” is one of four objective areas (along with leadership, critical-thinking skills, and environmental stewardship) in which the school is measuring student performance during the next several years. “We’re seeing more global perspective in the classroom,” Willis says. “It’s obviously

always been in the languages and history, but global themes are increasing more throughout our courses.” “In many ways, we are moving in the right direction,” says Eugenio Sancho, Mercersburg’s academic dean and a former teacher of Spanish and chair of the history department. “The goal of being able to function in a global community is central. “We have had many conversations about the interdisciplinary nature of courses; a course such as Advanced Placement U.S. government and comparative politics offers a wonderful window of opportunity into not only how our government functions, but how the political systems of five other nations work. We have a course in robotics that has international implications in terms of how industry is working today. And we added Mandarin Chinese [in 2005–06] as an important language program.”

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“Whether it is

one of the student clubs, a brown-bag lunch, an international dinner, or a trip abroad, American and other world cultures constantly mix here. . . In addition to being citizens of our respective countries, we are becoming citizens of the world, prepared for life wherever we are going after the adventure called Mercersburg ends.”

—Magdalena Kala ’09, Przystajn, Poland

illis, who has been Mercersburg’s director of international programs since the position was created in 2005, knows the value of an international experience. As a high-school exchange student visiting Germany, Willis was asked by a teacher to speak to a class of fifth- and sixth-graders about America. On a hunch, he asked the students about stereotypes they held of Americans. “They said they thought Americans were fat, lazy, and did drugs, and I told them the stereotypes of Germans over here—that everyone wore lederhosen and drank beer,” Willis remembers. “The kids flipped out. But it made me realize, as a teenager, how strong perceptions are, and when you’re the one hearing them, how off they can be.”

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The experience pushed Willis to immerse himself in the culture, led him to choose German as one of his college majors, and, later, to win a Fulbright scholarship, which allowed him to spend a year teaching English and American culture in a school in Schoenebeck am Elbe, Germany. “I was in Germany for the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the O. J. Simpson trial, which were really interesting to watch through a different set of eyes,” Willis says. “The other side of it was bringing [American] culture to people who might not have learned about it otherwise. This was the former East Germany, less than 10 years after the Berlin Wall came down. I was the first American many of my neighbors and students had met. While there were some kids who had been to the United States, in a community with 40 percent unemployment, I was often the first contact for a people who were curious about and had relatively little firsthand experience with our culture.” Matthew Caretti taught English and German at Mercersburg, served as a Peace Corps volunteer in South Africa, and taught in Korea before returning to the Academy as a faculty member this fall. An experience in an unfamiliar environment—a foreign country, for example—allows for important and beneficial self-examination, he says. “You can learn Spanish or French or German and visit and experience the culture, but as an American, it allows you to take an objective look at your own culture,” Caretti says. “We can prepare our students for the culture they’re going to visit, but we can also prepare them to be exposed to different views in their home countries. We can prepare them to ask themselves, ‘Why do I think the way I think?’ “If we go to Spain, we may think we’re just going to experience Spain—but there’s more to it than that. I found that I didn’t really know anything about English grammar, for instance, until I studied German.” Formally, international students at Mercersburg can share their culture and history with classmates through presentations and discussions of their home countries over a brown-bag lunch. Students from places as diverse as Thailand, Slovakia, and Costa

“In many ways, we are moving in the right direction.The goal of being able to function in a global community is central.”

—Eugenio Sancho, academic dean

Rica have educated attendees about the history, language, music, architecture, politics, teen culture, and other facets of their homelands in a fun and often humorous atmosphere. Usually, the dining hall staff serves meals the night before featuring cuisine from the country to be presented at the next day’s brown-bag lunch, allowing all students to sample each country’s unique tastes. “It gives [international students] a chance to showcase their culture for their fellow students, be they from America or anywhere else,” Willis says. “It’s an educational element.”

nternational students comprise approximately 14.4 percent of the current Mercersburg student body. “Ideally, the right number of international students allows us to feel like an American school with this wonderful international element to it,” Willis says. “And similarly, our international students want there to be enough diversity that it’s an international-type of environment while providing an authentic American experience.”

Some schools might have a 15 percent international-student population—but with a single country overwhelmingly represented, and other schools might want to have

Spanning the Globe Members of the 2007–08 Mercersburg student body are citizens of a schoolrecord 28 countries: Austria Bermuda Brazil Canada Ecuador El Salvador Finland Germany Hong Kong India Jamaica Japan Korea Mexico

People’s Republic of China Philippines Poland Russia Swaziland Sweden Switzerland Taiwan Thailand Togo United Kingdom United States of America Vietnam Zimbabwe

MERCERSBURG MAGAZIN E WINTER 2007 – 2008

40 percent international students, says Christopher Tompkins, assistant head of school for enrollment. None of these scenarios is the case at Mercersburg. “I firmly believe this school has been much more open to international students for a longer period of time,” says Tompkins, who came to Mercersburg in 2000. “It is now ‘hip’ for schools to be international. But we’ve always been willing to have a higher percentage of international students than some of the other boarding schools we compete with—although they are changing and are more open to it now.” H. M. J. Klein wrote in his 1936 book, A Century of Education at Mercersburg, that in the first 20 years of the Academy’s current incarnation (during the administration of Dr. William Mann Irvine), the school welcomed students from no fewer than 15 foreign countries, including Mexico, Cuba, Sweden, India, Syria, China, and Japan. In 1998, the school began displaying flags representing the home countries of current students in the back of the Irvine Memorial Chapel; less than a decade later, approximately 70 different national flags have held watch over gatherings in that space. This year, the flags of Austria, Togo, and Vietnam are among those making their first appearance.

Fred Kosak’s Mandarin Chinese class

If history is any indication, additional flags will continue to appear. In the past 12 months—in addition to canvassing all corners of the United States and places abroad that traditionally produce strong numbers of Mercersburg students, like Saudi Arabia—admission officers have visited Turkey and India for the first time. “Asia and Europe are important markets for the school,” says Tompkins, who has represented Mercersburg in more than 20 countries. “Especially as our strategic plan calls for a more internationalist experience, the realities of those trips are important for us. And I love the fact that we’ve been doing things in Costa Rica and Ecuador; I think we have to look south [Central and South America] and west [Asia] as much as we look east [Europe]. “I hope someday we’ll send a group of students and faculty to Korea. As countries go, Korea is one of the least-visited and leastknown countries by Americans, but at the same time it’s the single-largest [international] group at this school. And frankly, it’s one of my favorite countries to visit.” In 2006–07, Mercersburg students and faculty took part in travel programs to China, Costa Rica, France, Great Britain, Italy, and Peru; additionally, a pair of students participated in the School Year Abroad (SYA) program in China and Spain. This year, five students are studying abroad with SYA in China, France, Italy, and Spain, and 11 travel programs are tentatively scheduled. Destinations include several of the above countries, as well as South Africa, Chile, Ecuador, and a groundbreaking trip to Oman and Israel as part of a symposium organized by the National Association of Independent Schools (sidebar, page 24). “I think students are much more open to learning more about the world today,” says Tompkins, who has studied abroad or lived in Ireland, Kenya, Germany, and Ecuador, and sits on the board of directors of the Cloud Forest School in Costa Rica. “I think our students who have gone abroad have really represented the school and the United States well. I’m pretty amazed that we’re one of the few schools that supports the idea of

giving access to everybody [for travel programs], not just those who can afford it.” Mercersburg’s Office of Alumni & Development raised more than $100,000 last year for need-based financial aid for international travel programs, and each program last year included at least one student that received financial aid to cover trip costs—up to $3,550. (The John H. Montgomery Award, for example, enables students enrolled in a post-AP French class to conduct field study in France during spring break as part of their curriculum.) “You can learn the history of a different country in class, but when you actually go there, you can see it embodied,” Von Lunen says. “You get a better understanding of the country, of why people there believe one way or another. “And you also learn a lot of language [when traveling abroad]. My German got amazingly better because I was forced to use it. Anytime you have to apply what you’ve learned in class, you get so much better.”

he planet is no smaller than it was 10, 20, or 50 years ago; it only feels that way thanks to technology, increased availability of world travel, the global business climate, and a growing desire on the part of citizens of all ages to know and experience the world around them. “Certainly, in the working world, students will be expected to have a global competence,” Willis says. “But even in applying for college, if global awareness is not an expectation [of students], it’s certainly an advantage. “When you look at the workforce and the way business is done today in a global sense, you can’t survive if you don’t have global competence, and even if you go into education, service, or the nonprofit world, a cultural understanding is important. So often, issues that are considered ‘domestic’ issues— the environment, poverty, medicine—are global ones as well. Having a global underpinning is critical for success.”

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Building a Global

COMMUNITY BY PETER KEMPE

ake a look at this long list of countries: Germany, Poland, Sweden, Norway, Austria, Latvia, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Pakistan, India, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Namibia, Bulgaria, Spain, Switzerland, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, France, England, the People’s Republic of China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Australia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Ecuador, El Salvador, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and Russia. What do they all have in common? One answer is that nearly all are members of the United Nations, and that they represent some of the world’s most powerful economies. You might even conclude that all of these nations are recognized by FIFA (soccer’s world governing body)—and that between Brazil (five), Germany (three), and England and France (one apiece), nine of the 18 World Cup championships can be accounted for. The answer, however, is much simpler. These countries represent the homes of Mercersburg alumni who—during my 13 years here as a teacher and coach—have taken German, played men’s soccer, or done both. Obviously, Mercersburg alumni have come from many countries, but why is that so significant? Mercersburg has had a proud tradition of enrolling young men and women from all over the world for many years. In fact, Head of School Douglas Hale opens the school year in the Irvine Memorial Chapel by reading the names of the many countries represented by students and

faculty. On your next visit to the Chapel, take a look in the back, where the flags of each country are proudly displayed. The significance lies embedded in the opening sentence of our mission statement: “Mercersburg Academy prepares young men and women from diverse backgrounds for college and for life in a global community.” That sentence is reflected in everything we do in all areas of the school. Our students come from diverse backgrounds and they learn together, compete together, live together, and, just as importantly, share their stories, their cultures, and their languages. There is nothing inherently special or unusual about that, but it is special and it is significant because learning and living together—regardless of one’s ethnic, religious, political, or social background—is at the heart of a Mercersburg education. During our Accreditation for Growth (AFG) process, Mercersburg students, faculty, administrators, alumni, and the Board of Regents have been engaged in examining what a Mercersburg education should and must include. Strategic planning, articulating objectives, forming action plans, and lots of discussions have taken place. One of the four objectives that emerged from AFG is to increase and intensify school “global awareness.” The world is widely using buzzwords such as “international perspective” and “community,” “cosmopolitan worldview,” “world citizens,” and “global scholars.” What these words stand for and what they mean is certainly nothing that we have not been aware of as teachers, coaches, parents, or

students. We have always been globally aware and internationally connected, and we have celebrated and appreciated the many cultures and countries our students represent. The “global awareness” objective simply focuses on a more deliberate approach and commitment to global education. Some of the action plans include adding geography to the curriculum; stressing the importance of proficiency in at least one foreign language; providing more opportunities for our students to study, travel, and live abroad; and creating more exchange programs like the one we have with our friends from the Gauss Gymnasium in Worms, Germany. We are also enriching our academic and residential life curricula with projects, activities, and festivities on national and international issues. As teachers, coaches, and residential faculty (and, for some of us, as parents), Mercersburg has been our home and workplace for many years. Mercersburg is also a place where students and faculty from all over the world learn and live together harmoniously. The world can learn from us, and we need to learn about the world. We need to think critically and creatively, we need to be good stewards, we need to be good leaders, and we need to prepare our students for the global community we live in. Peter Kempe, a faculty member since 1994, teaches German and coaches Mercersburg’s men’s soccer team. He is a graduate of the University of Hannover in Germany and Wayne State University in Detroit, and the father of Anika Kempe ’09.

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One of Asia’s largest cities is this senior’s classroom

’Burg to Beijing BY SARAH EADIE ’08

boarded my first flight out of the country when I was a sophomore at Mercersburg. With no training in Chinese other than what I had been able to absorb from materials provided by my teacher, Mr. Fred Kosak, I reached my seat. As I buckled my seat belt, my nervous brain began nagging, “Are you sure this is what you want to do?” But after 14 days traveling mainland China, I would have no doubts. In fact, the trip became a cornerstone of who I am and who I aspire to be. My first excursion to Beijing, Xi’an, Guilin, and Shanghai exposed me to a wide array of people and lifestyles. By observing my Chinese teacher and his students, I became convinced of one thing: in order to truly understand a people or a culture, you must address them on their own terms, in their own language. And so it began. My eagerness quickly turned into an obsession as I started to examine what a colossal task I had set out to accomplish. Mandarin Chinese is a hard language. In my room, I would read lessons

enthusiastically from my Chinese textbook. In the shower, I would compose ridiculous songs in Mandarin—“Do you have a business card? Oh, yes, I have a business card!” With the help of Skype, I was able to chat with native speakers, who would politely correct a misplaced “zai” or “le.” When the time came to apply for the School Year Abroad program (SYA) in Beijing, I was sure enough in my passion to pick up an application. My parents were a bit taken aback by how I presented the news. One weekend, I tossed the application onto the kitchen table and said bluntly, “I’m spending my senior year in China.” My second trip to China took place while I was awaiting word from SYA. As I walked along the streets while people celebrated the Lantern Festival, I began to evaluate my role in the global community. To me, this was a spring-break leisure trip. I would sample all the visitor hot spots, sleep in a hotel bed, and be sold more pirated DVDs than anyone could possibly have time to watch. While this routine satisfied me at first, I longed to

get to know the people of Beijing. With any luck, my wish will be granted as I spend this, my senior year, living with a Chinese family in Beijing. That’s what becoming a global citizen is about. These days, with a little time and money, one is able to travel almost anywhere. Just seeing is no longer enough; you must go out of your way to immerse yourself in the culture. For the shy traveler, that may mean visiting a local noodle joint instead of the hotel’s American-style breakfast bar. For the more courageous, it means taking a crash course in the language and attempting to find your way around. Either way, that conscious effort to break down language and culture barriers is enriching and incredibly rewarding. Sarah Eadie, of Greencastle, Pennsylvania, is one of five Mercersburg seniors studying abroad during the 2007–08 academic year. Read Eadie’s blog at 12hourflight.blogspot.com.

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In Germany,

Wanderlust

and What It Brings to Mercersburg

Finding Peace, and the Middle East

Lenny ’07, Florian, and Raphael ’05 Langenscheidt

his December, as many

The Mercersburg group will visit Oman, a

Mercersburg has what marketers call “a brand.” Focus, one of Germany’s most widely read news magazines, featured Mercersburg prominently in a spring 2007 international education story. Faculty member and former admission director Chip Vink ’73 began building the school’s relationship with Germany during his tenure in admission. Assistant Head of School for Enrollment Christopher Tompkins also remembers a cup of tea with thenprospective parent Florian Langenscheidt and son Raphael ’05 on the front porch of the home of Peter Kempe, a native German and longtime Mercersburg language teacher. The Langenscheidts, of Munich, decided during that gathering to send Raphael to the Academy; his brother, Lenny ’07, followed two years later, and Florian joined the Board of Regents in 2005. One of the Academy’s early German students, Thomas Puhl ’73, came to Mercersburg through the American Secondary Schools for International Students and Teachers (ASSIST), which selects leading

international programs, who will join fellow

American high schoolers

country on the southeast corner of the Arabian

faculty Allison Stephens and Jeff Pierce on

are doing their holiday

Peninsula, for a symposium on the same topic.

the trip.

shopping (or putting it

The hope is that students from Oman will, in

off), six Mercersburg

turn, visit Mercersburg for a symposium during

Jerusalem to meet Mercersburg Regent James

the 2008–09 school year.

Snyder ’69, the director of the Israel Museum

student ambassadors and three faculty members will travel to the Middle East

The program is based on Jean-François

The journey begins with a visit to

(story, page 34). Through Snyder, the students

for discussions and firsthand investiga-

Rischard’s 2003 book, High Noon: 20 Global

are scheduled to tour the museum and the

tion of three global issues with the

Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them. A school in the

holy city of Jerusalem, and meet with high-

potential to touch every one of the

United States teams with another school some-

school students and public figures from Israel

world’s six billion people.

where in the world to examine one of the 20

and Palestine before continuing to Oman for

global problems in Rischard’s book, and formu-

the symposium.

As part of the NAIS (National Association of Independent Schools) Chal-

lates tangible, local solutions to the problem.

“There’s no better place to get a true feel

lenge 20/20 program, Mercersburg is

All six of the Mercersburg student ambassa-

for issues in peacekeeping than in a place like

partnering with the American British

dors are lower-middlers; they have worked with

Jerusalem,” Willis says. “It’ll be a great oppor-

Academy (an independent school in

additional numbers of classmates who will not

tunity for the students to dig in to the topic

Muscat, Oman) to examine a theme of

travel, but have played a large part in research-

material where it is so relevant and real, and

“peacekeeping, conflict prevention, and

ing and examining the problems.

combating terrorism.”

“This is a really great leadership opportunity for lower-middlers,” says Will Willis, director of

to then juxtapose that with all they learn in Oman.” —Lee Owen

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students from 15 countries and places them in one-year exchanges at American independent schools (www.assist-inc.org). Puhl and his wife, Susanne, sent their four children to Mercersburg and established a nonprofit organization to allow German citizens to make financial contributions to the Academy. Twelve Germans are Mercersburg students this academic year, and the Office of Admission and Financial Aid travels to Cologne, Hamburg, Frankfurt, and Munich to sustain the Mercersburg presence there— and the presence of German students on campus. An exchange between the Gauss Gymnasium in Worms, Germany, and Mercersburg is another aspect of the school’s cultural exchange and strong ties with Germany. Of course, 56 other international students are part of the community this year; 28 countries, including the United States, are represented here—nearly as many countries as

states (29, if one includes the District of Columbia). The school is building relationships with other countries through personal connections, consultants, and school fairs. Important emerging markets include India; Turkey, as a geographic and cultural bridge; and the People’s Republic of China. By developing a relationship with the U.S. Commercial Service, Tompkins says, Mercersburg became one of the first—if not the first—American boarding schools with a strong presence in China and helped organize other schools’ entry into that market. Why do students come from abroad to study in the United States? The common denominators often include learning English; preparing for American higher education and benefiting from strong college counseling; finding a supportive learning environment with fewer students—and, of course, exercising a little wanderlust.

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”—ST. AUGUSTINE

Tompkins says that his office is deliberate in sharing the Mercersburg story “on the road” (admission-speak for traveling to boarding school information fairs, presenting to colleagues and consultants, and interviewing students and their families off campus). Yet the diversity of the school—in international, racial, and other terms—has simply become a fortuitous byproduct of choosing bright and motivated students who will add to the texture and strength of the school community and abide by the school’s deeply held egalitarian values. “Around the globe, demand for American education remains high,” Tompkins says. “We have fantastic athletics, arts, and specialinterest clubs—as well as academics—and many schools in the sending countries don’t have that intensity and range of choice as part of the school offerings. “Education is considered one of our country’s top exports. For us, it’s a chance to build a community of students who are seeking opportunities to define themselves.” Mercersburg students from the U.S. also gain much in these exchanges. “I don’t know if I was expecting to be exposed to people from all over the world—Saudi Arabia, Japan, Germany—and it’s been really cool for me to live on such a global campus,” says Sarah Eadie ’08, of Greencastle, Pennsylvania. “I love walking into breakfast and hearing a conversation in French or Korean and having those different cultures on campus and in the classroom.” In September, Eadie (story, page 23) traveled to Beijing to live and study through Mercersburg’s affiliation with School Year Abroad. In a blog this fall at www.mercersburg.edu, Magdalena Kala ’09, of Przystajn, Poland, wrote, “Living in a global society brings responsibilities—for the world as a whole, for fellow citizens, for peace, and for the environment. “It shall be one of the tasks of a school to promote knowledge and understanding, to prepare the students to live responsibly in the global society.” —Heather Sullivan

Top to bottom: Will Willis, Allison Stephens, Jeff Pierce

Mercersburg Profiles

People often consult a map to find out where they’re going. ¶This map is no different; let it be your guide through the next several pages, on which you will find stories of Mercersburg alumni and their international experiences. ¶One is fluent in three

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languages and has served his country on five continents. Still another ensures that television broadcasts of the world’s most-storied tennis tournament are beamed from the shadow of Big Ben to Baltimore, Buenos Aires, Beijing, and Bangkok; coincidentally, the latter city is where to find an Academy graduate working as a top executive for an international airline. ¶A doctor from Boston has worked to ease the suffering of those living with HIV and AIDS in Lesotho; another oversees a national museum containing the Dead Sea Scrolls. ¶They and others like them came to a school in the Pennsylvania countryside from locales as disparate as Thailand, Germany, Northern Ireland, and West Virginia. The map shows where they’ve PAGE

landed, and where they’ve turned the globe into their offices, classrooms, greenhouses, and playgrounds. ¶No passport is required, and no bags need to be packed to experience these journeys. Read on, and don’t even worry about buckling your seat belt (unless you’re in a vehicle, of course).

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Germany

Romania

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Turkey

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30 Iraq

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i n

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Thailand

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Sam McGredy’s world of roses stretches across oceans and continents BY MATTHEW KEARNEY

Searching for the ultimate rose in terms of vigor and variation, Sam McGredy ’49 has rounded the globe, moving from his native Portadown, Northern Ireland, to New Zealand—and he has gained numerous friends on nearly every continent in his travels. The renowned rose aficionado has rendered himself a global citizen as consummately as he has cultivated some of the most beautiful and distinct roses in the world. His first sustained trip abroad arrived when he became a student at Mercersburg as part of the English-Speaking Union (ESU) scholarship program. “I was a boarder at Portora Royal School in Enniskillen,” McGredy explains. “A notice appeared on the bulletin board about a scholarship run by the English

Speaking Union. The interviews for the scholarship were in London, and I had never been there.” So from a desire for a trip to London came a trip to Mercersburg; upon graduation from the Academy, he attended Reading University in Great Britain. As the fourth Sam McGredy to breed roses in Northern Ireland—the first having started the business in 1880—McGredy took up the family business there until 1972, when he left because life had become “very unpleasant and dangerous.” He then moved to New Zealand, where he continued to cultivate roses as one of the world’s foremost rose horticulturalists. As breeding roses is, in McGredy’s words, “a fashion business,” it requires him to be, as

McGredy and wife, Jillian

Painting it

Red

most people who want to be successful in fashion, one who engenders fashion. That, in turn, has required him to know the world of fashion in terms of roses, which means he has had to travel extensively to know roses. It is quite evident in the introduction to his book, Favourite Roses, that his capacity to cultivate worldwide friendships matches his horticultural skills. In 1994, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II named McGredy Commander of the Most Honorable Order of the British Empire for his services to horticulture. In 1999, he was honored as one of four winners of Mercersburg’s Class of ’32 Plaque. Fellow recipients included classmates Stanley Fulton ’49, Alan Kennedy ’49, and Gerry Lenfest ’49. Moreover, McGredy has also been awarded with the cosmopolitan sensibility of fine global citizenship and, subsequently, many friends from around the world. “Northern Ireland and Mercersburg taught me tolerance,” he says, denoting traits that define a good global citizen. “I am completely openminded on the subjects of politics, religion, and color… I just like people—all kinds of people!” The McGredy crest proffers a single rose bloom surrounded by shamrocks—the icon of beauty engulfed by icons of luck, and though he has worked with the sacrifice of leaving his native Northern Ireland, his story seems to be one of luck and beauty. The luck stems from, as it typically does, courage and hard work. The beauty has been the product.

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Art

the

OF SUCCESS Both vocation and avocation bring Ruben Acoca happiness BY TOM COCCAGNA Ruben Acoca, Gift (acrylic on canvas)

hen the business and art worlds collide, the effects are often far from positive. Ruben Acoca ’90, however, has melded those seemingly incompatible disciplines and has created a realm in which business and art can not only coexist, but also thrive. Acoca, who lives in his native Panama, is a successful businessman and a productive, talented artist. Acoca has worked for Overseas Management Company as marketing manager since October of last year. OMC is a global player, specializing in company formation for wealth management, inheritance, and investment purposes, with its home base in Panama and offices in such diverse locations as Miami, London, and Hong Kong. Acoca’s duties include restructuring the marketing department and, as he has written, “developing strategy for growth through market intelligence.” It is a high-pressure, big-payoff environment. But the art world retains his passion, and with his success in business, he doesn’t have to starve in order to pursue it. “Art,” he says, “is mostly an escape from my regular day-to-day business life. I have been able to find the right balance, and I see the benefits of having a regular job as a marketing manager that lets me disconnect myself from the business side of art. I can

enjoy the process and invest my time working with art without the financial pressure.” Acoca’s success is no surprise to Lawrence Jones, the campus minister who Acoca said served as a father figure to him during his four years at Mercersburg. “Ruben just had a good sense of himself and a good sense of his place in the world,” Jones recalls. “He is achieving success in the right sort of way. He has not just made himself wealthy; he’s done it with class.” Acoca recalls dabbling in art during his childhood, but his first drawing of a still life in a class at Mercersburg kindled the flame that continues to burn today. Painting, molding clay, and taking photographs became his distinctive forms of expression. Clay, he says, is his favorite, because “it is very dynamic and has so many aspects and stages.” The painting and photography bugs also bite frequently. “I enjoy my time with clay—then I feel attracted to paint and I disconnect from clay,” Acoca says. “Both of them give me something that is missing in photography, which is the ability to actively make marks, either by pressing and shaping the clay or by marking the canvas. You might say the sense of creation is missing in photography, which has to do more with capturing a moment, something relevant to your surroundings or showing a different view. Yet at times I am very much

drawn to taking pictures.” He was influenced in photography by Wirt Winebrenner ’54, who t au gh t En glis h at Mercersburg for 40 years. Acoca says that Winebrenner’s enthusiasm for photography nurtured his own. “He was a wonderful kid,” Winebrenner says. “He was energetic and eager. I was always impressed with his gameness and his willingness to work.” Those traits have served Acoca well. Since leaving Mercersburg and graduating from Connecticut College in 1994 with a bachelor’s degree in economics, he has put his brushstrokes on six companies, the last three in management positions. He has traveled all over the world, many times connecting with Mercersburg alumni during his journeys. His art, meanwhile, has softened the difficulty of navigating the business world. “Being an artist helps me in business because it helps me as a person,” he points out. “Expression through art is a wonderful means for self-exploration and growth. The better you know yourself, and I feel I have grown and gotten to know myself better through art, the more ready you are to face life and business.”

MERCERSBURG MAGAZI N E WI NTER 2007 – 2008

Speaking T HE

Language Worldwide experiences lead Patrick Williams into a new challenge B Y L E E

hen the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, the world changed for millions. As the most famous of Cold War structures melted away, the European continent’s figurative Iron Curtain dissolved in mostly peaceful fashion, leading to democracy and freedom where communism had once ruled with an iron fist. An ocean away, Patrick Williams ’80 watched on CNN as jubilant Germans from both sides of the wall celebrated together, and had one thought above all others: “The world needs fewer soldiers and more diplomats.” Quite a statement, considering that Williams was then Capt. Patrick Williams, a member of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, and stationed in Panama to support what would become Operation Just Cause, the removal of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega from power. Williams spent eight years in the military (including five years with the Army’s famed 82nd Airborne), and was stationed in Central America for three years. He served as a

“My wife speaks Russian, so I’m used to different symbols and sounds, but Arabic is different [for English speakers] in every way.”

company commander for U.S. Army South (USARSO) operations, which were simultaneously deployed in 17 nations in Central and South America. Since 1994, Williams has worked for the U.S. Department of State at posts worldwide, and this September became one of the State Department’s three general services officers in Saudi Arabia. He is fluent in Arabic (and Spanish; he picked up the latter language at Mercersburg). Williams, who grew up in Charleston, West Virginia, came to Mercersburg at the same time as his sister, Linda ’77. He spent three years at the Academy, competing in football, water polo, track, skiing, and swimming, and worked with campus radio station WMER. “Mercersburg was one of the defining moments of my early adulthood, and something that sticks with me to this day,” Williams says. “I had some challenges there—learning to live alone and be on my own, and at the end of the day, those are exactly the types of challenges that helped make me a stronger person.” During his senior year, a decade before Williams saw history on CNN—indeed, before CNN even existed—a significant international event captured on television would begin his course for a career in international affairs. Militant Iranian students seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took 66 hostages, including Honorary Regent L. Bruce Laingen, the embassy’s chargé

OWEN

d’affaires, whose sons Bill ’78 and Chip ’79 had been classmates of Williams at Mercersburg. (A third son, Jim, graduated in 1984.) Also among the hostages was Col. Tom Schaefer ’49. “What happened [in Tehran] precisely impacted my ideas,” Williams says. “Knowing members of the embassy community, we felt for them and followed the events closely.” Following graduation from HampdenSydney College, Williams became a commissioned officer in the Signal Corps, the group charged with establishing and maintaining communications between military units. He served in Central and South America and in Egypt with a multinational force on the Sinai Peninsula. “With USARSO, we did everything from building a large communications satellite terminal in Bolivia to establishing a temporary community center after an earthquake in Panama,” he says. “We worked on outreach to Americans in the country, and assisted where we could with the neighboring community.” When Williams first joined the Signal Corps, he and his colleagues carried cellular phones on their backs (they were that large). Computer systems used by the Signal Corps were installed on the backs of trucks. “Today, our laptop computers probably have more power than those systems did,” he says. Williams retired from the military in 1992 and joined the Foreign Service as an information management specialist in 1994. He

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was four months into his first assignment (at restricted to U.S. personnel. Most live in to do the people’s business. We worked with the U.S. embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan) housing owned by the American governlocal governments in economic developwhen gunmen murdered two American ment, but security is always a significant ment and civil affairs.” diplomats and wounded a third in Karachi. consideration; Williams’ close friend and Williams has spent the past year in inten“Sure, I had been in the military, but to fellow Foreign Service employee David Foy sive training in Arabic and government see this happen at the beginning of my diplo- was killed in a suicide bombing in Pakistan acquisitions at the Foreign Service Institute matic career was pretty traumatic,” says last year. in Arlington, Virginia. (Not surprisingly, the Williams, who was asked to assume the duties “Security is critical,” Williams says. “The Foreign Service today is seeking as many of one of the deceased. “But I think I was obvious examples are [the 1998 embassy potential Arabic speakers as possible.) He selected precisely because I had been in the bombings linked to Al-Qaeda in] Dar-esdescribes the process of learning a new military.” He spent the next several months Salaam [Tanzania] and Nairobi [Kenya]— tongue as “five hours of intense classroom based in Karachi and traveling frequently to but American diplomats have been work, plus another five hours of homework American consulates in the Pakistani cities kidnapped and shot in Paris and Rome. You each night—and it’s fair to say you have a of Lahore and Peshawar. always receive a security briefing, and every lot of homework on the weekends as well. In 1997, Williams assumed a post in Riga, post has different levels of security. You’re “My wife speaks Russian, so I’m used to Latvia, the growing capital city of a newly briefed before you go, and measures are different symbols and sounds, but Arabic is independent former Soviet republic. “At that always taken to make sure you’re following different [for English speakers] in every way. point, Latvia was just beginning to obtain the the protocol.” For me, the most difficult thing is finding wealth necessary for ways to take ideas and express them.” capital improvements to its infrastructure—they were building shopping malls and things like that —PATRICK WILLIAMS ’80, AFTER WATCHING THE BERLIN WALL FALL IN 1989 for the first time,” he says. “It was interesting to watch their society grow and become more westWhile working as a consular officer, ernized. Once the economy stabilized, it Williams left his wife and young son behind really turned into a nice little city on the edge in Santiago, Chile, to serve as a management of the Baltic Sea.” officer for nine months of 2006 in Al-Hillah, One day, as Williams was showing his Iraq. He managed more than 700 people visiting father around the city, the two wound and oversaw efforts to establish provincial Williams is based at the U.S. embassy in up lost. By chance, Williams’ father asked reconstruction teams (PRTs) from the camp, Riyadh, with regional responsibilities in the directions from a woman named Tatijana, located 60 miles southwest of Baghdad cities of Jeddah and Dhahran. He helps the manager of a restaurant the younger and a stone’s throw from the ancient ruins oversee the day-to-day functions of the Williams often frequented for lunch. The of Babylon. embassy—“the nuts and bolts stuff that impromptu tour turned out to be his first “We took indirect fire [mortars and makes it run,” as he calls it. outing with his future wife; the couple rockets] on a pretty regular basis—day, night, “The world is smaller today, and intermarried in 1999. it didn’t matter,” he says. “Like everywhere actions with our neighbors are much more Williams has served in eight countries as in Iraq, there were movement problems. important,” he says. “I suspect this will part of the Foreign Service, and including Men going out on a project would hit a roadcontinue. In the future, knowing two his military service, has spent at least three side bomb, and things like that happened languages will be standard in the U.S.; nights working in nearly every country in quite frequently, unfortunately. Spanish and maybe French and German Central and South America (Brazil, Mexico, “We’d do the best we could to build will be taught at the elementary-school level. and Nicaragua are the only exceptions). relationships and try to get along with the A worldview is important.” In most cases, State Department employ- neighbors. We’d lease property when we ees abroad are not housed in secure areas could instead of occupying it, and we’d try

“The world needs fewer soldiers and more diplomats.”

NetWork

he All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club is one of the world’s iconic sports venues, steeped in more than a century of tradition. Its annual fortnight of grass-court tennis, formally called “the Championships,” is more commonly known by the name of the London neighborhood the club calls home: Wimbledon. While you’re not likely to find him on the receiving end of a Roger Federer serve or preparing Wimbledon’s famous strawberriesand-cream, this is where John Rowlinson ’67 works. He spent more than a quarter-century

Young A

Hope AMBASSADOR OF

Pamela Scorza embodies global awareness BY JIM APPLEBAUM

swanlike grace and soulful countenance envelops Pamela Scorza ’01, newly returned home to Shepherdstown, West Virginia, to report on her year in Ghana as a young public-health student-practitioner. This fall, she continued a career dedicated to service with a new posi t i on at th e Boston -based AEDSATELLIFE Center for Health Information and Technology. By listening to her vivid stories of life among the inhabitants of the Third World, and glimpsing the many photos of her embrace of tribal women and children, one

B Y S H E LT O N C L A R K

with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) before becoming the All England Club’s director of television in 2002. “People think I only work two weeks of the year,” he says, “but I try to dissuade them of that.” The club is building a retractable roof over its storied Centre Court, to be completed by the 2009 Championships, so that, Rowlinson says, “we can guarantee that the final will start at 2 p.m.—or 9 a.m. on Sunday morning in New York, and not at quarter to four or whenever it stops raining.

experiences renewed faith that the spirit and power of succor for those less fortunate is alive and well in the generation of young Americans now coming of age. As a one-year senior at Mercersburg, Scorza quickly won the attention and admiration of the school community as a spirited and elegant dancer. “Mercersburg was a pivotal time for me,” she says. “It opened a new world and gave me a chance to blossom. I was exposed to a whole range of interesting ideas and experiences and was encouraged by people who saw things in me.” Her entry into the usually charged atmosphere of New York University in September 2001 was deeply punctuated by the up-close witnessing of the World Trade Center catastrophe, a profound orientation to what would be an accomplished undergraduate experience as an anthropology major. As an NYU undergraduate, she volunteered with the city’s Public Interest Law Center and completed an internship with the Urban Justice Center’s Homelessness Outreach and Prevention Project. During her junior year, she participated in the International Partnership for Service Learning in Quito, Ecuador, and studied with the Ceiba Foundation for Tropical Conservation at El Pahuma Orchid Reserve and Tiputini Biodiversity Station (also in Ecuador). For her final semester at NYU, she traveled to Ghana, where she volunteered at an

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John Rowlinson’s office is home to the most famous grass in tennis “On the run-up to the Championships, I work very closely with the BBC, my former employer, because they are the host broadcaster. I liaison with them as to how we’re going to cover the Championships, what new things we’re going to do, how the interviews are going to work, and all the things that you associate with a big TV event.” Rowlinson spends the lion’s share of his year (“after the circus has left town,” he says) dealing with the approximately 40 different broadcasters from around the globe that televise the world’s premier tennis tourna-

HIV/AIDS clinic and studied documentary filmmaking. Her interest in medical anthropology—she hopes eventually to earn a doctorate in the specialty—solidified during that period. After graduating cum laude and as an NYU Founder’s Day scholar, Scorza won a Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholarship for 2006–07. The scholarship supported her work toward a master’s degree in public health at the University of Ghana in West Africa. Her postgraduate program there consisted of two semesters of coursework, three months of fieldwork, and a dissertation. It was her fieldwork experience that became the content of regular feature articles she crafted for her hometown newspaper, the Shepherdstown Chronicle, as well as a blog of photos and journals. Her writing is deft and informative. In a November 2006 piece for the newspaper, she wrote: “Studying public health in Ghana is eye-opening and somewhat surreal. Last week, a small segment on the local morning news on TV described the lack of space in the maternity wards of hospitals in a nearby region. It showed graphic images of women who had just given birth sitting with their babies on dirty cement floors in the stifling heat in hospital hallways. This wasn’t in some far-off country; it was here in what is my home for the next year.” Further down, she wrote: “On an

emotional level it is difficult for me to understand how a person’s life can be dealt with so differently in two different countries [the United States and Ghana]. It brings to mind a book I came across while studying in Ecuador, Death without Weeping by Nancy Scheper-Hughes. An ethnography of infant mortality in a Brazilian shantytown, it depicts how mothers don’t mourn the deaths of their babies when they die within the first year of life because infant mortality is so high. “It is my first reaction to be appalled at the inhumanity in this and in the lack of medical care in Ghana. But I realize that throughout human history never before have we been in such a position as we are now in the developed world, technologically and economically, to be able to protect and value human life and health as we do.” Asked about the legacy of her love of dance and music, Scorza says: “It affects you and the ways you see things, certainly.” In the next stage of her career in public health at AED-SATELLIFE, she will further her skills and interests in bringing the fruits of First World public health knowledge to the yawning needs of Third World populations. Hers is a capital example of a global perspective in practice.

ment. Less than two months after the 2007 event, Rowlinson was negotiating contracts with NBC and ESPN and, further into the future, working on the logistics of the 2012 London Olympics; not surprisingly, Wimbledon will host the Games’ tennis events. “The one thing I don’t usually see is much tennis,” he says, “because I’m running around looking after other broadcasters or rushing around talking to the referee about the schedule for the next day—things like that.” Rowlinson has observed plenty, though: he mentions Andre Agassi’s final match in 2006 and the grand entrance of former champions Bjorn Borg, Jimmy Connors, and John McEnroe on Centre Court in 2007 among his favorite Wimbledon moments of recent vintage. A native of Shrewsbury, England, Rowlinson came to Mercersburg on an English-Speaking Union (ESU) scholarship. Finishing his studies at Shrewsbury in July 1966, he spent the fall of that year preparing for university entrance exams to Cambridge before coming to the Academy. “My main memory, first of all, was that I came on the Greyhound bus from New York to Baltimore,” Rowlinson says of his arrival in January. Following a transatlantic flight with a bus ride in a blizzard might not have seemed like an ideal start. “It was snowing like hell, but I was amazed that the headmaster [William C. Fowle] would take the trouble to come and meet me. That was the first great impression I had of Mercersburg. The second one was that they roomed me with Lou Prevost ’67, who became a great friend. “I remember the dorm master [in ’Eightyeight] was a man called Robert Rankin, who taught history,” says Rowlinson. “And Lou’s father, John ’29, who was a general practitioner in Pennsylvania, became the school doctor for a time and lived on the campus. But at that time, he was practicing on his own. The Doc, as he was called, was a huge man with a very deep, gravelly voice. Lou had a small armchair in the room, and when Continued on page 34

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Continued from page 33 the Doc sat down in it, it looked like the Lincoln Memorial.” An avid soccer player in his youth, Rowlinson found that one of his few regrets was missing Mercersburg’s soccer season (a fall sport). “I played some after the Christmas break, but there weren’t any school matches at that time,” he says. “So I felt bad, because I thought I could have made a big contribution on the soccer field. “We actually played a little bit of rugby at Mercersburg, but the Americans weren’t quite sure of the rules. We seemed to get a lot of injuries. I think we got banned in the end. See, what we were trying to do is play American football without any padding or helmet. [The school] didn’t want to risk having their star [football] players on the rugby field with no protection.” After his graduation, he and a fellow Englishman, a recent Loomis Chaffee graduate, took a cross-country car trip in a 1959 Chevrolet station wagon. “I can’t say we saw everything,” Rowlinson says, “but we saw a lot.” After his return to England—via the old Queen Mary oceanliner—he did in fact earn his degree at Cambridge. He followed that with a year and a half working in the newspaper industry. “Then in 1973, I joined the BBC on the sport side, as a sort of researcherrunner-dogsbody, on a year’s contract,” Rowlinson says. “I stayed there 26 years; I was lucky enough to cover a number of Olympics for the BBC. My main memory was probably Los Angeles in 1984, and I was in charge of all the content there. The British—and, indeed, the Americans— did very well, and it was a fantastic Games.” Though Rowlinson regrets that he has not visited Mercersburg in the 40 years since his graduation, he may return in the near future. “In those days, we didn’t have girls at Mercersburg,” he says. “And now I have a couple of daughters. I wouldn’t mind seeing if I could get one of them to the school, because I’m sure they’d love it as much as I did.”

Holding HISTORY

BY TOM COCCAGNA

As James Snyder ’69 fixes his gaze on the breathtaking setting of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, he sees more than just buildings that house a variety of soulstirring galleries. He looks upon a cultural crossroads where East meets West, ancient meets modern, and tradition meets progress. Since 1997, Snyder has been director of the Israel Museum, a remarkable treasury that includes more than 500,000 objects of art and archaeology ranging from the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern Jewish art. “It is one of the few places where you can see ancient to contemporary culture in a meaningful way,” Snyder says. “Jerusalem, with its location between the Eastern and Western world, has a special potential for realizing the impact culture can have.” The museum is rich with artifacts from all stages of Jewish history and culture. A glance at the major exhibits reveals the museum’s diversity: the Shrine of the Book, containing the Dead Sea Scrolls; the Archaeology Wing, with 8,000 objects; the Judaica and Jewish Ethnography Wing, with items that represent Jewish material culture; the Fine Art Wing, with approximately 150,000 works; and the Art Garden, with its many sculptures. The museum would cause anyone even remotely interested in art to get excited. Imagine, then, what someone with Snyder’s background felt when the opportunity to direct a museum with these assets came about. Snyder had been intrigued by art and museums since his boyhood, when his

mother would take him on a 40-mile trip from their home in western Pennsylvania’s Monongahela Valley to the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. After graduating from Harvard in 1973, “I might have been on the road to becoming an academic in literature and art history,” Snyder recalls. “But I had an epiphany.” That moment of insight immersed him in the field of visual culture that was the best of both worlds. He could keep one foot in an academic environment and the other in the business side of museums. He began as an intern at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1974, moved up through various jobs as an assistant and deputy director, and, at 44, was offered the position as director of the Israel Museum. “I had been at MoMA for 22 years—half of my life,” he says. “I had been trained as a modernist, and as a modernist, I was in the best possible place I could be. But I always felt I would have to go outside the U.S. as an American to do something culturally significant. It has been a really positive experience for me as an American.” It was also an enriching adventure for his family. Despite the disquietude that naturally accompanies an international move, his wife, Tina, and children, Lily and Daniel ’05, have benefited from living in a culture different from the one they had grown accustomed to in New York. “If we had thought about how challenging it would be, I don’t know if we would have done it,” Snyder reflects. But in moving, he says, “We wound up doing a great service for our children.”

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One of the world’s definitive collections is in James Snyder’s hands

Along with his family, Snyder took tremendous organizational skills to Jerusalem. “He is very resourceful as a planner, especially with long-range planning,” says Don Hill, Mercersburg’s development director emeritus. Hill has known Snyder, who has served on the Board of Regents since 1983, for 35 years. “He brings savvy and leadership to our board.” In 1997, William Rubin, a director at the Museum of Modern Art, told Art News this about Snyder: “He’s not easily ruffled. He was able to [work with] difficult mentalities.” Those are qualities he will no doubt need as he oversees an $80 million refurbishing of the Israel Museum.

“I don’t like the word ‘renovation,’” Snyder notes. “It’s more of a transforming renewal. We’re keeping the modernist appearance, but we’re reorganizing the entrance and visitor areas, and we’re redoing all our collection galleries.” One of the drawbacks of the current layout involves the entrance area, which includes an uphill walkway nearly three football fields in length to the actual exhibits. It is also difficult for visitors to get from collection to collection. The renewal will fix all that, making the museum visitor friendly. “The museum is in a magnificent setting,” Snyder says. “The architecture is a great example of international modernism.

It is in a Mediterranean landscape on a hilltop in Jerusalem.” Landscaping does not escape Snyder’s notice. He sees it as vital to experiencing the full effect of a museum—or any place, for that matter. Mercersburg helped foster his aesthetic sense of landscaping. “My appreciation for the power of landscape as a meaningful experience on the quality of one’s life came from my experience at Mercersburg,” he explains. But the captivating beauty of the campus was not the only positive outcome he drew from his time as a student. “I do feel the adult I grew up to be was formed in large part because of Mercersburg. Mercersburg has the unique capacity to develop character. And sending our son there and seeing how his experiences paralleled my own validates everything for me.” Not only has Snyder served on the Board of Regents, but he also was the commencement speaker in 2005, no doubt a memorable experience because his son was part of the graduating class. “I am very devoted to Mercersburg,” he makes clear. Snyder wants to continue to repay the school for the value it has added to his life. This winter, six Mercersburg students and three faculty members will travel to the Middle Eastern country of Oman for a symposium examining peacekeeping, conflict prevention, and preventing terrorism (story, page 24). The group will stop in Israel beforehand to visit the Israel Museum, see Jerusalem, and—at Snyder’s arrangement—discuss issues in the region with Israeli and Palestinian high-schoolers and dignitaries. “James has been hoping to do something with Mercersburg people internationally forever,” says Will Willis, Mercersburg’s director of international programs. “He was more than generous in offering to assist us. He is one of the kindest and most gracious people you will ever meet.”

MERCERSBURG MAGAZI N E WI NTER 2007 – 2008

A PEDIATRICIAN RETURNS HOME HAVING LEFT HER HEART IN LESOTHO EDITOR’S NOTE: Kimball

Prentiss, a

fourth-generation Mercersburg graduate, is a Boston-based pediatrician and is completing a fellowship in pediatric emergency medicine. Earlier this year, she worked as a medical volunteer in the southern African country of Lesotho; her firstperson account follows.

The

Buoyancy BY KIMBALL PRENTISS ’92

have just returned home from Lesotho, and my internal clock apparently missed our connecting flight from Senegal to the Eastern Time Zone, as it is 3:13 a.m. and I am wide awake in bed. My body is heavy and motionless with fatigue, effectively lost somewhere between two distant time zones. My mind and heart are also heavy, yet anything but still. Instead, they feel overwhelmed, overworked, and stretched thin, straddling to stay in touch with two worlds that rest thousands of miles apart by the standards of any map—except my own. It seems that on the globe that rests within my own skull, Lesotho and Boston have defied continental drift and now lay intimately entangled, simultaneously suffocating and liberating each other as they work to define their new boundaries and smooth their overlapping borders. Lesotho is a small country about the size of Maryland, separated on each point of its 360-degree border with South Africa by mountainous cliffs: large and flat enough to support a nation of two million people, steep and high enough to allow for the successful defense of its independence. It is governed by a constitutional monarch and inhabited by extremely proud Basotho people, rich in culture, sparsely sustained by agriculture,

of Hope

and disproportionately plagued by HIV and AIDS. The documented prevalence rate is just above 30 percent, but is believed in reality to be much closer to 50 percent. Stop for one second and say it out loud— 50 percent—and then just try to imagine what the math really means. Nearly one out of every two people is infected, with 100 percent of the population affected in some sharp way. These statistics are almost impossible to comprehend, but they are very real, I assure you. I have seen the disease burden with my own eyes. I have touched it, been grabbed by it, and now I am awakened, haunted, re-inspired, and motivated by it. This epidemic has faces that you would fall in love with—I promise you. Let me help you visualize two. Meet Ntelo. He is one year old, but you would never know by looking at him sitting atop his stained crib mattress, which droops in the middle from its own age and sheds paint from the cyclic wear and tear of daily heat alternating with cool moisture of highaltitude nights in Lesotho. He has plump cheeks that beg to be kissed, and a round bulging belly that you can’t help but squeeze, but his ankles are thin and his height only climbs as tall as an average four-month-old in the United States.

You would only guess his age if you had some knowledge of development and could watch him as he starts to walk across the hospital floor. In a blaze of glory he sets out on the worn linoleum, proudly showcasing his new wobbly wide-based gait, occasionally reaching up to grab for the stability of whichever finger you might have most immediately available. In the moment before his uneven weight gives way to gravity and falls backward onto his rag-cloth-diapered bottom, his eyes, wide with impending doom, dart over his shoulder to find his mother. You follow them and watch as they meet the security of her presence, and then as they are reassured and returned to a state of narrowed calm. His playful and newly confident smile follows, large and forceful enough to make his head lean to one side. Almost reflexively, your heart swells with newfound love, doubling in size, and causing your chest to bend imperceptibly to the left from the burden of its new weight. His mother, Tatsi, sits on a wooden bench near the corner of the pediatric ward. The afternoon sun highlights her image as it floods through the window and blinds you, necessitating a pause and squint to accommodate and refocus. You first notice her eyes, large with love, dark with truth, appearing even

greater in size due to her severe temporal wasting. Her dress, thinned from repeated use, hangs unevenly and unfairly off of her tiny frame, making it too easy to count the ribs that fall below her protruding collarbone and sharply frame her frail chest. Ntelo breaks your stare as he reverts to his safest mode of transport and crawls to her, reaching her in no time. He climbs onto her lap, which promises safety, and nestles peacefully into her left breast for his next meal. All the while, he seems to expend an added effort to maintain eye contact with you, straining his gaze to the left as his throat works in overdrive to repeatedly swallow her milk, and her disease burden, effectively sucking you deeper into the reality of his world. In front of you now rests a sacred image of mother and son, bonded by the most primitive and precious of life experiences: vaginal birth and breastfeeding, and now, as a result, HIV and AIDS. This is the reality of Ntelo’s world, and his story is not unique. He is not healthy, despite being adorable and adventurous and successfully stealing your heart in three seconds. How did this happen? Did Tatsi not know her HIV status at the time of his birth? Did she not want to be tested and be forced to give up her denial? Did she not have the energy to walk four miles to the hospital to deliver him by C-section and to swallow the added safety of two doses of peripartum antiretroviral therapy? Did she not have the money to pay for her fee-for-service health care? Did she not have the education to understand the gravity of her decisions? Did she even care? Of course she did. Just look up again and watch her as she gazes at him, as lovingly as any mother ever witnessed. Two days ago, Tatsi was forced to leave denial behind and make the desperate trek to the hospital, with Ntelo snuggled into her bony back and secured by a blanket tied around her tiny waist and chest. She intended to apply for a job, but literally collapsed when she arrived. Too weak to return home, she and Ntelo became boarders in our pediatric ward. Incapable of working and unlikely to have much longer to live, she uses all of her precious calories to sustain and feed him the only way she can. Through a translator I learn that there is no other family left to care for

him, and so, all too soon, he will be an orphan. I breathe in deeply, for a moment expanding the limits of my body, and attempt to swallow this truth, one that is all too common. My eyes swell and my jaw muscles tighten and I quickly turn away so that I may let my impending tears fall out of their line of vision. I left Boston questioning where the momentum of my life had taken me and hoping to find a new perspective and a new direction. My life’s path has been on autopilot for nearly 15 years now since leaving Mercersburg, characterized by one predictable and prescribed step after the other: college, medical school, residency, and now further fellowship training. All the while, it was gaining more mass, and consequently more momentum. Yet paradoxically, I felt myself losing my internal drive and spark. I had worked so hard to reach an endpoint, and now, almost there, I found myself feeling disillusioned and disenchanted with the realities of the practice of medicine, and less inspired to go to work each day. I felt like I was contained in a glass that had been repeatedly swirled and stirred, leaving its contents to cling to and climb its sides as they circle around and around in one continuous motion. My challenge had become trying to avoid the product of my own momentum—the enlarging funnel in the center of my glass. After spending a month working in Lesotho, I feel as though my glass has been emptied, filled, and then shaken rather vigorously, successfully breaking the lazy swirl that had previously threatened to swallow an important part of me. My head and heart feel uneasy and heavy, powerless and humbled, yet simultaneously empowered and invigorated—and without a doubt, forever changed. I don’t yet know how to meaningfully incorporate my new experiences into my “old” life and just how the pieces will settle, or if they ever will, but I suspect in time that a proper order will be achieved. I hope this image of mother and child causes you to reconsider any preconceived notions about HIV/AIDS that you may have Continued on page 38

CATC H I NG U P WITH... U.S. Ambassador to Romania Nicholas Taubman ’53 was sworn into office by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in November 2005. Taubman is the retired chief executive officer, chairman, and director of Advance Auto Parts, the nation’s second largest autoparts chain. He has also served as president of Mozart Investments of Roanoke, Virginia, and director of Shenandoah Life Insurance Company. Taubman was a member of Mercersburg’s Board of Regents from 1984–97, and its president from 1990–94; he remains an Honorary Regent, and is a charter member of the Academy’s McDowell Society. León Febres Cordero ’49 served as president of Ecuador (1984–88) and as mayor of Guayaquil, the country’s largest city (1992 to 2000). At the time of his inauguration, he was Ecuador’s first democratically elected president in 24 years. He led Ecuador through a 1987 earthquake that measured 7.3 on the Richter scale and destroyed the country’s largest oil pipeline, and survived a kidnapping that same year. At the end of his presidency, Cordero’s public-approval ratings were greater than 90 percent. The 1986 winner of the Academy’s Class of ’32 Plaque, he was the first of three brothers to graduate from Mercersburg (Nicolas ’51 and Agustin ’62); his family includes several additional alumni, including nieces Maria Nevarez ’01 and Ana Nevarez ’07.

CATC H I NG U P WITH...

Continued from page 37

Alan Brody ’64 spent 22 years with UNICEF (the United Nations Children’s Fund) as a representative in Nigeria, Turkey, Afghanistan, China, and Swaziland before his retirement in 2006. After graduating from Yale University, he volunteered with the Peace Corps for nearly a decade before returning to school to study international development and communication, and earned a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. As a UNICEF representative, Brody worked to improve education and childsurvival strategies around the world, and received Mercersburg’s Distinguished Alumni Service Award in 1999. He also delivered the 2001 Schaff Lecture on Ethics and Morals, and is the father of Isaac ’99 and brother of Steve ’62.

carried, perhaps even unknowingly. But it is important that this not be the only image of Lesotho with which I leave you. Just begin to imagine the sweet sights and sounds that rise from the blessed dry earth to counter the sadness and pain. The landscape, unlike any I have seen, is not defined by its structures or by the beautiful topography itself, but is instead created by its people, and particularly its children, who stay inside long enough only to sleep, spending the remainder of the day outdoors painting a panorama with their mere presence. They play delightedly for hours on makeshift balance beams ingeniously created from sticks that reach across a ditch, or with one warped and flattened ball that bounces just enough to stir up the dirt. They believe they have hit the jackpot when they find a tennis racket that has been plucked of half its strings, or a pair of eyeglasses that are broken in two places, leaving them to rest contortedly on the bridge of their young discoverer’s nose, further mutated in position by the volume of the smile that lights up his face… and yours. In the absence of televisions and Game Boys (and often, parental supervision), the children are impressively creative at safely entertaining themselves from sunrise to sunset. They have laughs that are loud and pure and spread delightfully across the open valleys, a sound perhaps even more uplifting than any that I have ever heard escape from the depths of my own precious niece and nephew. They sing and dance spontaneously and with thanks, when by our standards they have nothing for which they should be thankful. They hold hands and run together across fields of maize, or expansive rock formations smoothed from lifetimes of stress. They dress in school uniforms and walk or skip to school, often miles, sometimes alone, or, if lucky, with a friend, but rarely with a parent. Their nighttime sky is endlessly filled with stars, more brilliant and numerous than any

Rolando Cruz ’60 represented Puerto Rico as a pole vaulter in three Summer Olympic Games (1956 in Melbourne, 1960 in Rome, and 1964 in Tokyo). He finished fourth in the event in 1960 while becoming the first Puerto Rican athlete to clear 16 feet. Cruz also earned a bronze at the 1959 Pan American Games and two gold medals at the Ibero American Games (1960, 1962). He is a retired attorney and former president of Medical One Inc. in Puerto Rico. Serge Grynkewich II ’66 is president of the Philippines operation of International SOS, the world’s largest medical and security assistance company. International SOS has a presence in 70 countries worldwide, and operates in many places where medical care of an international standard is unavailable. A native of Lehighton, Pennsylvania, he has called the Philippines home since 1973, and has also lived in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Grynkewich was the 2006 recipient of Mercersburg’s Alumni Council Achievement Award, and is the brother of Gary ’67.

I have ever seen, such that they create a confusingly detailed roadmap that could only successfully lead you to a place already known by heart. I admired the power of the African sky in the daylight as it revealed a rainbow in the welcome aftermath of a storm—at first taking my breath away, and then magically dulling some of the horrors of illness I had witnessed, helplessly. It lightened me with the buoyancy of hope, just when I needed it most, so that I could continue, hoping to make some small difference, even if only for one more child. My ultimate hope is to motivate you, not necessarily to travel to a Third World country with a dream of changing the world, but to seek an opportunity that allows you to experience the world in some new meaningful way—and then, to let the world change you. Be open to seeing the solitary flower in the middle of the cracked earth, and the rainbow that surprises, stuns, and leaves you to wonder as it colors and lifts the heaviest of dark skies. Make yourself the minority for a while by stepping into someone else’s world, breathing in its simultaneous stench and sweetness, and letting it become part of you in some significant way. Search for the indefinable point at which black and white, lucky and unlucky, and healthy and sick lose contrast and fade into each other, poignantly blending from two distinct worlds into your one. Allow yourself to be frustrated by that which feels too overwhelming and impossible to change—and then, in your next breath, figure out how to change it by leaving your positive mark on at least one other human being who desperately needs the attention of your heart, your mind, your hands, your time… your anything. Think deeply about where the momentum of your life is leading you and question if it feels right to you, and if not, dare to reroute its force. Lastly, order your drink shaken, not stirred. And, by all means, drink up.

MERCERSBURG MAGAZIN E WINTER 2007 – 2008

Raj Tanta-Nanta helps keep one of Asia’s largest airlines sailing smoothly

aj Tanta-Nanta ’88 was already a seasoned world traveler by the time he got to Mercersburg, so perhaps it is fitting that he ended up as an executive for a major international airline. The Bangkok-based Tanta-Nanta is the vice president of investor relations for Thai Airways International, a state-run airline whose shares are publicly traded on the Stock Exchange of Thailand. Before coming to Mercersburg, TantaNanta had studied in Saudi Arabia. “Because they did not allow international schools to have grades above 10, all students had to seek education abroad,” he says. “The school counselor introduced me to Mercersburg. The pictures of the school and the environment attracted me, but I think the key considerations were the quality of education and the variety of sports available.” Indeed, TantaNanta captained the varsity tennis and squash teams and the junior-varsity soccer team. “Believe me, I will always cherish the memories,” Tanta-Nanta says. “The teachers were very warm, friendly, and supportive—Mr. [Bo] Burbank, my math teacher, tennis coach, and squash coach; Mr. [Jack] Hawbaker, my dorm dean; Mr. [Tom] Rahauser ’74, my soccer coach; the Burgins; and many friends and teammates. I remember spending four to five hours on Sundays in the spring playing tennis with friends.” After graduating from Mercersburg, Tanta-Nanta earned a bachelor’s degree in finance and international management at Boston University and followed that up with a graduate degree in finance from American University. He then returned to Thailand to work as an equity analyst for a local broker, which assigned him to launch a branch in

the Philippines, where he spent a year and a half, and next was chosen by Thailand’s fifth-largest bank to head its investor relations department. “Three years into my job at the bank, out of the blue, a headhunter company called me up and asked me whether I would be interested to interview for the top investorrelations job at a state enterprise,” he says. “I only found out that it would be the airline three days prior to the actual interview with the president, CFO, and vice president of corporate finance.” Tanta-Nanta sees challenges in today’s ever-changing global economy, which is complicated by the peaceful coup staged by the Thai military in late 2006. “The airline industry is undergoing interesting times with the heightened competition from not only traditional airlines but also from the new low-cost phenomenon,” he says. “Adding to the excitement is the dramatic push by the Middle East airlines to put themselves at the forefront of the travel industry with their oil money.” Dramatic swings in exchange rates and fuel cost, terrorism, health issues, and, last but not least, emerging technology development to be used in the new generation of aircraft continue to have powerful effects on the airline industry, he adds. “I do miss the seasons at Mercersburg,” says Tanta-Nanta, whose brother, Vichu ’91, is also an alumnus (and now lives in Boston). “I love the fall when the maple leaves turn yellow and red; the winter snow; and the spring, when everything turns back to life again. You won’t find that here in Thailand; it’s just hot and hotter all year round.”

High F LYING B Y S H E LT O N C L A R K

MERCERSBURG MAGAZI N E WI NTER 2007 – 2008

“I am a strong believer in a system that requires a second opinion ... I would not like to fly in an airplane with just one pilot.”

UNDER T H E

Microscope AN INNOVATIVE APPROACH TO MEDICAL DIAGNOSIS IN EUROPE BY LEE OWEN

f two heads are better than one, then the collective wisdom of several trained professionals is critical when a problem must be solved. Especially when the problem is a potentially life-threatening illness. Stephan Falk ’75 and his team of pathologists at Pathology Associates Frankfurt in Germany have implemented a strict and comprehensive quality-assurance program to assure correct and credible diagnosis of the most critical cases. The protocol developed by Falk and his team—considered innovative in Europe— requires independent diagnosis of all malignant tumors by at least two different pathologists, of all cases “in which,” as Falk says, “there is a mere shadow of a doubt about the diagnosis,” and of all cases where a discrepancy exists between clinical and pathological diagnosis by all seven members of the practice. “I am a strong believer in a system that requires a second opinion in every medical problem of consequence to the patient,” Falk says. “I would not like to fly in an airplane with just one pilot. “Critical review of medical information by an unbiased second observer optimizes diagnosis and treatment decisions in a significant percentage of patients. It identifies oversights, errors, and mistakes that are more common in medicine than is desirable. An institutionalized review process is unneces-

sary for a patient with a banal flu, but should be routine for every patient with cancer or another life-threatening illness.” Falk came to Mercersburg in 1974 on a one-year scholarship underwritten by ASSIST (American Secondary Schools for International Students and Teachers). “I remember the friendliness and openness of the people I met, and I felt overwhelmed by the welcome extended to me,” he says. “To me, Mercersburg was literally a mind-opener, and broadened my intellectual horizon immensely. At that time, I was the only German at Mercersburg, and with nobody around to ask advice, I had to adapt to the American way of life on my own—often by trial and error. “When I returned to Germany, I had the notion that I had become a little more experienced in the ways of the world than my German classmates.” Before his year at Mercersburg, Falk’s experience with American culture consisted entirely of interactions with the children of U.S. Army members stationed in Frankfurt, the American Public Library there, radio shows on the Armed Forces Network, and dubbed American TV series shown on West German television. “My views were torn between the idealistic perception of Americans as saviors from the Nazi regime and the communist threat (the Iron Curtain was only 100 miles east of

Frankfurt), and the growing disagreement with U.S. involvement in Vietnam and the irritation about the violence shown in the TV series,” he says. “One of the reasons I applied for the scholarship was to see what the States and the people there were like for myself. “Of course, Mercersburg did not represent the ‘normal’ American way of life either, but daily life there, as well as some travelling, effaced the unreal images from the

news broadcasts and the TV series from my mind.” He returned home to a surprise; a problem transferring his academic work from Mercersburg meant Falk would have to attend two additional years of high school in Germany. His father’s diabetes—“and the complications from it, which could have filled a textbook”—inspired Falk to earn the grades necessary for admittance to medical school. “And I could build on the strong foundation of AP chemistry and biology courses I had taken at Mercersburg,” he says. Falk studied medicine in both Germany and Great Britain, and in an elective during his third year of medical school, developed an admiration for pathology—“the hidden science behind most diagnoses,” he says. “It requires deep insights into the mechanisms and the morphological changes, and also

intimate knowledge of the clinical features of diseases and their treatments.” Following pathology training at Frankfurt University Medical School and a research fellowship at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, Falk opened Pathology Associates Frankfurt in 1992. He was named a fellow of the International Academy of Cytology in 1999, and the success of his practice’s quality-assurance program has made Falk a sought-after speaker at medical conferences across the continent. More than 30 laboratories in Europe have adopted a similar independent review process, and many more are expected to follow suit. A key project in the works from Falk’s practice is the implementation of a webbased, anonymous critical incident reporting system for all pathologists in Germany,

allowing for rapid publication of relevant medical errors and their causes. “Our task is to make a quick and reliable diagnosis from tissue and cell specimens that are, in the age of patient-friendly minimally invasive diagnostic procedures, ever decreasing in size and ever increasing in complexity,” he says. “That is quite a challenge, even more so because pathologists are involved and must stay current in almost all fields of medicine. “This job is never boring or tedious. It is also rewarding visually—since our work heavily relies on pattern recognition and analysis of multicolored stained tissue sections and cell specimens, it is closely related to the visual arts, which I cherish. And time and again, I am impressed by the cruel beauty of a malignant tumor under my microscope.”

Back to School:

Alumni Weekend 2007

More than 500 alumni, family, and friends returned to campus October 11–14 to reconnect and enjoy Alumni Weekend 2007. In addition to class parties and reunions, attendees enjoyed: • A kick-off event honoring Donald D. Hill for 37 years of service to Mercersburg as a teacher, coach, administrator, and friend (see page 43 for tributes) • The traditional Steps Songs • Presentations by Rob Hanawalt ’67 and Kris Pigman ’72 • The Alumni Remembrance and Recognition ceremony • Athletic contests, including on-campus wins over rival Hill by the varsity football and varsity/junior-varsity women’s soccer teams • An all-class dance party with live entertainment • Music from carillonneur James W. Smith • Chapel with the Rev. Richard T. Schellhase ’42

Above, clockwise: Faculty member Allison Stephens and Susie Lyles-Reed ’88; Heidi Anderes ’01, Laura Dupre Rizzo ’77, Patti Weston ’77, Linda and Kent McGlincy ’99, Jenn Flanagan ’99; the beat goes on; Magalia performs; Steps Songs.

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Saluting Don Hill

Top to bottom: Tim Grumbacher ’57, Douglas Hale, Don Serfass ’57; Blue Storm 35, Hill 21; Board of Regents President Denise Dupre ’76 and past-president Bill Zimmerman ’67 dissect the athletic contests; Alexis Murray-Forbes ’97, Cornelious Robinson, Perrin and SaKeithia Rogers ’97, Mia Burwell-Suite ’97.

Executives retiring from corporations are often fêted for tripling revenues and quintupling earnings. There is no worthy formula to calculate the value of the contributions Don has amassed for the benefit of Mercersburg. It occurs to me that it can be found in the solid and growing loyalty and commitment of its alumni. Don was able to engage anyone, important or not so, large donor or small, and make them feel valued and important to him and thus to the ’Burg. That’s because Don doesn’t think in terms of dollars and cents, but in establishing personal relationships. He is extremely good at it. —LARRY LATTOMUS ’51, Marana, Arizona I know the students and faculty could write and speak volumes of the tangibles, and—more importantly—the intangibles associated with Don. His contributions and that devotion are forever part of his lasting legacy and in the annals at Traylor. Although I’ve only known Don personally for some 12 years, I cannot imagine the Academy without him. He represents everything that’s good about those “high towers above us, her pillars, in majesty crowning the hill.” —DANIEL M. WILSON II ’61, Cleveland, Ohio I’m truly grateful that Don and others appreciated me as a growing young person first, and a student second. I don’t know what Mercersburg is like these days, but I can only hope that it is blessed with one mentor like Don for every three students. —CHIP NUTTALL ’92, Nashville, Tennessee

The Hill family: middle row, Linda and Don with granddaughter Linley; top row, sons Dean ’84 (far left) and D.J. ’86 (far right) with wives Sarah and Sabrina ’86, respectively; front row, grandchildren Hannah, Alexander, Carter, and Cameron.

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Beverley Powell ’32

(L-R): Bob Walton ’57, Rob Hanawalt ’67, Head of School Douglas Hale, Tim Grumbacher ’57

ALUMNI COUNCIL SERVICE AWARD

Robert R. Walton Sr. ’57 A former president of the Alumni Council and a longtime class agent, Walton has served as reunion chairman for his classmates on numerous occasions—including this year’s 50th reunion. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the College of New Jersey, he is a former superintendent of the Women’s Maximum Security Prison in New Jersey and the retired advertising and marketing manager for the Easton Express-Times. Today, he works as a Smith Barney stockbroker and lives in Quantico, Maryland, with his wife, Mary Ann. At Mercersburg, Walton played baseball, served as a Marshal of the Field, was an Irving member, and participated in Student Council, Stony Batter, and the Jurisprudence Society. He served on the Alumni Council from 1976 to 1983 (and as its president from 1982–83), and is a member of the Loyalty Club Committee. He and his wife are the parents of three Mercersburg graduates: Leigh Walton Wood ’82, Paige Walton Diskin ’86, and Robert Walton Jr. ’89. First presented in 1958, the award was established to honor an individual for outstanding service to the Academy. ALUMNI COUNCIL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

Lt. Gen. Beverley E. Powell ’32 Robert C. Hanawalt Jr. ’67 Powell is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. His 35 years as a commissioned U.S. Army officer included postings to the Pentagon with the NATO Standing Group, as director of Army operations, and as military adviser to the U.S. Ambassador to NATO. Included among his many citations and decorations are the Distinguished Service Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Silver Star, the Legion of Merit with Oak Leaf Cluster, and more than a dozen additional awards, medals, and citations for valor, merit, service, and commendation. At Mercersburg, he was a member of Marshall, the Glee Club, and the wrestling team, and delivered the Higbee Oration at Commencement. Today, Powell (who was unable to attend the ceremony) lives in San Antonio, Texas.

Hanawalt, who is UNICEF’s chief of operations in Angola, has served as a Peace Corps country director in Mauritania, Cameroon, and Gabon, and has lived and worked in Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Uganda. He holds a bachelor’s degree from American University and did graduate work at Michigan State University’s International Extension in Kabul, and speaks two languages fluently and is conversational in five. As a student at the Academy, Hanawalt sang in the Glee Club and Chapel Choir, ran cross country, and was a member of Marshall, Paideia, the Classics Club, and Stony Batter. Established in 1997, the award recognizes Mercersburg alumni who have distinguished themselves not just in their professions, but also have outstanding records of service to their communities and others. CLASS OF ’32 PLAQUE

M. Thomas “Tim” Grumbacher ’57 The son of the late Max Grumbacher ’31, Tim graduated from Dartmouth College and joined The Bon-Ton Stores Inc. (a family business) in 1961. After two years of service in the U.S. Army, he rejoined the company and eventually served as its general manager, CEO, president, and chairman. During his tenure, the company grew from seven stores in two states to 278 stores in 23 states. In addition to serving on Mercersburg’s Board of Regents, he has been a board member for York College, Strand-Capitol, WITF, the York Foundation, and the York Jewish Community Center. As a student at Mercersburg, he was sergeant-at-arms for Irving, a member of the Senate and the Student Council, co-captained the swimming team, and was involved with the Class Day, Elections, and Orientation committees. Grumbacher and his wife, Nancy, live in York, Pennsylvania. They have three grown children, including Matthew ’96, and two grandchildren. The Class of 1932 established the award at its graduation to recognize former students who have distinguished themselves regionally, nationally, or internationally through their character, service, or achievement.

MERCERSBURG MAGAZI N E WI NTER 2007 – 2008

LOYALTY CLUB Front row (L-R): Edward Bou ’48, Mark Tome ’47, Jack Tanger ’48, Charles Moore ’47, Ed Schmidt ’49, Jack Harris ’49, Dick Stanier ’47, George Resh ’47, Edwin Saeger ’47. Row 2: Ned Hermann ’38, Bill Thompson ’52, Ed Hager ’50, Blair LeRoy ’50, Martin Myers ’36, Bob Brush ’47, Joe Silverman ’51. Row 3: Bill Schildecker ’37, Ed Powers ’37, Bob Smith ’37, Richard Schellhase ’42, Tom Massey ’43, Harry McAlpine ’47, Joe Strode ’47, Dale Williams ’54, John Hornbaker ’55. Row 4: Bill Cook ’51, Walter Burgin ’53, Chuck Hatch ’54, George Jocher ’55, John Linderman ’55, Dick Schmidt ’55.

CLASS OF 1937

(L-R): Ed Powers, Bill Schildecker, Bob Smith.

CLASS OF 1947 (L-R): Charles Moore, Harry McAlpine, Mark Tome, Dick Stanier, George Resh, Edwin Saeger, Joe Strode, Bob Brush. CLASS OF 1957

Front row (L-R): Bob Walton, Joe Weaver, Andy Anderson, John Allen, Barney Guttman, John Shields. Row 2: Ron Smith, Jef Evans, Dave Gichner, Tom Heefner, Tim Grumbacher, Jim Howard. Row 3: Harry Gerber, Bill Maurer, Stewart Sander, Alex Burgin, Denny Byrne, Philip Shepard. Row 4: Armand Thieblot, Jon Peterson, Tom Moore, Bill Garwood, John Tyson, Jim Keller.

CLASS OF 1962

Front row (L-R): Dave Lorentz, Tom Hoober, Jon Dubbs, Kelly Clarke, Roger Budny. Row 2: Jack Reilly, David Gilmer, Stoner Lichty, Willie McNickle, Jack Young, Geoff Crego. Row 3: Ken Kopf, Ralph Linn, Ross Dicker, Neil Juppenlatz, Thomas Danaher, Buck Stultz.

CLASS OF 1967 Front row (L-R): Alan Vail, Fred Cooke, Ed Rossmoore, Daniel Minick, Chris Kenah. Row 2: Pete Seaman, Richard Nadler, Jim Hendrickson, Burley Grimes, Andy Crago, Michael Hanna, Tom Motheral, Beau Vinton. Row 3: Rob Hanawalt, Bill Kemper, Ed Pearson, Ken Berents, Ed Russell, Allan Rose, Bill Zimmerman. Row 4: Bill Matchneer, Randy Peffer, Tony Trenga, Siggy Signorile, Jim Dresher, Jerry Michael, Ron Guy, Bill Brumbaugh.

CLASS OF 1972 Front row (L-R): Jim Garofalo, Eric Scoblionko, Kris Pigman, Priscilla Bechter-Kneisley. Row 2: Rich Haskell, Gary Ferguson, Jeffrey Frankel, Mike McGee.

CLASS OF 1982

Front row (L-R): John Ryland, Steve Ricks, Jose Espino, Parker Ward, Phil Hoffman, Tonio Bahner, Brian Mitchell. Row 2: Michael Decker, Todd Wells, Betsy Bernhard Hummel, Lynn Putnam Hearn, Ann Marks, Leigh Walton Wood. Row 3: Jack Arky, Charlie McCullough, Andy Alpert, Bob Silverman, John Hornbaker. Row 4: Mike Harshfield, David Donaldson, John Saucer.

CLASS OF 1992

Front row (L-R): Pia Catton, Samantha Patt Ocelus, Jeanie Williams McGaughy, Emily Gilmer Caldwell. Row 2: Mike Lloyd, Zasha Robles, Mike Kidd, Jennifer Farrow Szyluk.

CLASS OF 2002

CLASS OF 1977

Front row (L-R): Laura Dupre Rizzo, Lindley Peterson Fleury, Nancy Moore Banta, Sue Hobbs Nelson, Barb Magee, Patti Weston. Row 2: Wayne Skilton, Bruce Leighty, Harold Goodemote. Row 3: Jim Jones, John Nelson, Brad Baumgardner.

CLASS OF 1987

Front row (L-R): David Ferris, Lucy Harrington Floyd, Meg Trinnaman Hanson, Jennifer Litton Ross, Julie Gilmer Schaner, Allison Wielobob. Row 2: Louis Najera, Laura Donley Wallace, Laura Morsman Thorsen, Angela Chandler Robertson. Row 3: Adam Viener, Kathy DeanBradley, Audrey Webber Esposito, Tom Mendham, Maggie Trimbur Schaffer, Rob Porcarelli. Row 4: Mark Hatfield, Mark Gannon, Marc Wexler, Andy Tyson, Kirsten Dryfoos Thompson, Catherine Webb, Susan Gottlieb.

CLASS OF 1997

Front row (L-R): Carla L贸pez, Emily Peterson, Larissa Chace Smith, Pete Watkins, Andrew Bramhall, Hillary Morgan, Chris Senker, Gina Rendina, SaKeithia Rogers, Mia Burwell-Suite. Row 2: Kirsten Goerl Becker, Clint Lawler, Josh Leland, Amanda Reisner, John Newby, Seth Brewer, Alexis Murray-Forbes. Row 3: Chris Gonzales, Gene Kang, Angie Pomella Garnsey, Leah Rockwell, Immy Bryd, Nick Jenkins, John Martinko, Nick Modha, Gabe Hammond. Row 4: Bob Snyder, Leah Long, Cat Supernavage, Jordan Blackman, Aaron Cohen, Kevin Koch, Seth Lando.

Front row (L-R): Kristin Burkhart, Laurel Kalp, Jessica Nonemaker, Sarah Thompson, Noelle Bassi, Peter Banzhaf, Seth Greenberg, Jan Rebenich. Row 2: Gerrit Moyer, Sean Doherty, Jac Ullman, Nancy Franke, Liz Stockdale. Row 3: Bryan Stiffler, Ian Thompson, Bill Schindler, Mark Ries.

Athletics Dates to Remember

Jan 4–5

Wrestling: Jefferson Invitational Tournament Shenandoah Junction, West Virginia

Feb 23

32nd Annual Burbank Squash Invitational Davenport Squash Center

Feb 23–24

Eastern Intercollegiate Swimming Championships LaSalle University, Philadelphia For updated athletic schedules and results, visit www.mercersburg.edu

Diamond Dynasty It’s two state titles in three years for Mercersburg baseball By Phil Kantaros

“The coach writes the lineup card. The kids win games.” So opines Karl Reisner, Mercersburg’s longtime head baseball coach. But with more than 50 years of hardball coaching experience shared between Reisner and Assistant Coach Brent Gift, it’s fair to assume that they’re doing a lot more than writing lineup cards. After all, Mercersburg’s varsity baseball team has captured two Pennsylvania Independent School state titles in the past three years (and four titles in a 10-year span) and was crowned Mid-Atlantic Prep League champion in 2005 and 2006. Expectations ran high for the 2007 squad. The starting lineup showcased seven seniors, including two four-year varsity players—local sensation Zach Hart ’07 and Reading’s Ryan Colby ’07—and the seasoned “Saudi connection,” comprising Cord Heine ’07, Drew Crofton ’07, Dusty French ’07, and Tom

Timoney ’08. So the team and its ardent fans were a bit surprised when Lawrenceville scored 25 runs to sweep a doubleheader, leaving the Blue Storm winless after the first three games. “Everything we did, we did wrong,” Reisner says. “We hit seven foul balls out of the park that day.” Anyone who plays for Reisner and Gift quickly learns that attitude is an essential ingredient for success. “It sounds trite,” Reisner says, “but I think it’s all about hard work and a sense of family. We have a very simple motto on the baseball team: ‘Respect everyone and fear no one.’” And this team embodied that attitude. After the Lawrenceville debacle, the team surged back to beat Musselman and Bullis, swept a doubleheader from Good Counsel, split a pair of games against Hill, knocked off high-ranked Martinsburg, and pulled off another doubleheader sweep—this time,

against MAPL opponent Peddie. Many games remained to be played, but by the third week of April, anyone tracking the Storm could clearly see that it was heading in the right direction. Each year, Mercersburg faces a challenging schedule. The MAPL is a traditionally strong baseball league, and the team also plays top-ranked schools from West Virginia, Maryland, and the Washington area. “We’re going to play the best teams we can find,” Reisner says, “so we can be 12–10 and still have a great team.” That has tended to affect the Storm’s seeding for the Pennsylvania Independent School State Championship playoffs; Mercersburg entered the tournament as the No. 7 seed. In a first-round game against Shipley May 20, Colby threw his fifth shutout of the season while a strong Storm offense scored in double digits for a convincing 10–0 win. Next up was defending state champion and No. 2-seeded Malvern Prep. With great pitching from Colby, Crofton, and Dave O’Brien ’08, and an offensive surge led by French, Heine (a second-team All-American after smacking a school-record 13 home runs), Colby, Timoney, and Kenny Burns ’07, the Storm eliminated Malvern, 9–4. The following day, the team pounded out 20 hits in a 12–9 victory over third-seeded Germantown Academy. After a 90-minute rest, Mercersburg faced top-seeded Chestnut Hill Academy for the state title. Crofton allowed just five hits while the Storm’s bats propelled Mercersburg to a 12–2 win and another state championship. When asked about the 2008 squad, Reisner simply noted that he hadn’t yet completed the lineup card.

has coached teams in Washington state and New Jersey, has been named head coach for the 2008 season.

Women’s Lacrosse

Spring Varsity Athletics Roundup

compiled by Lee Owen

Baseball

Men’s Lacrosse

Captains: Ryan Colby ’07, Dan Gottlieb ’07 Baseball Award (most outstanding player): Cord Heine ’07 Brent Gift Most Improved Award: Dusty French ’07 Swoope Baseball Trophy (sportsmanship/ good fellowship): Colby Head coach: Karl Reisner (16th season) Record: 18–11, 5–5 MAPL Highlights: See page 47 for more on the team’s run to its fourth state championship since 1999… Colby and Zach Hart ’07 were four-year letterwinners… colleges adding Blue Storm players to their rosters in 2008 include Amherst (Colby), BirminghamSouthern (Drew Crofton ’07), Coastal Carolina (Hart), Elon (French), Massachusetts (Heine), and Rhode Island (Kenny Burns ’07).

Captain: Aidan Crofton ’07 Men’s Lacrosse Award (most outstanding player): Adam Ryan ’07 Men’s Lacrosse Alumni Award (most improved player): Alex Krill ’07 Nelson T. Shields ’70 Award (spirit/teamwork/ sportsmanship): David Chakola ’10 Record: 2–12, 0–5 MAPL Head coach: Lee Harter (5th season) Highlights: Leading goal scorers included Andrew Reichardt ’08 (17 goals), Ryan (13) and Scott Nehrbas ’07 (12)… assist leaders were Ryan (13), Myles Dowling ’07 (nine), and Reichardt and Ben Axelrod ’08 (six apiece)… Ryan (Drexel) and John Ashley ’07 (Sewanee) will continue their lacrosse careers at the collegiate level… Todd McGuire, who

Golf Captains: Chris Kerry ’07, Ana Nevarez ’07 Most outstanding player: Ben Hayes ’07 Most improved player: Kerry Head Coach’s Award: Nevarez Dual record: 5–5 Head coach: Paul Galey (9th season) Highlights: Nevarez won the women’s MAPL championship by seven strokes when she carded a one-under par 35 over nine holes… Hayes and Kyle Roy ’07 each posted low scores a team-high three times… Kerry was a four-year letterwinner… the team competed against fellow MAPL schools in the spring season for the first time since joining the league.

Captain: Gwen Buss ’07 Women’s Lacrosse Award (most outstanding player): Buss Coaches’ Award (most improved player): Stephanie Seibert ’09 Record: 12–3, 2–3 MAPL Head coach: Susan Hutchins (1st season) Highlights: The [Hagerstown] Herald-Mail named Buss its Player of the Year and Hutchins its Coach of the Year; Addie Crawford ’07, Jenn Dillon ’09, Mary Lancaster ’08, and Jenelle Paolini ’07 joined Buss on the paper’s All-Area team… Buss was the female winner of the Athletic Director’s Award, which is given to the athlete that demonstrates the most dedication to improvement… she also earned firstteam All-MAPL recognition, and Crawford and Paolini garnered honorable-mention honors… Tiffany Tseng ’07 was honored as a US Lacrosse Academic All-American… Paolini will play at Syracuse next spring… the team beat Hill for the first time since joining the MAPL, outscored its opponents 192–89, and averaged 13 goals per contest.

Softball Captains: Lizz Harvey ’07, Kristina Trudeau ’07 Coaches’ Award (most outstanding player): Cree Riley ’08 Softball Award (most improved player): Cortney Heaps ’07 Record: 12–9, 4–6 MAPL Head coach: Nikki Walker (1st season) Highlights: Trudeau became a four-year letterwinner… Harvey (Wentworth Institute of Technology) and Jacquee Ross ’07 (Penn State

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Altoona) will play collegiately… Kate Vary ’10 earned varsity letters in softball, soccer, and basketball, and was the only member of the Class of 2010 to collect three letters during the year.

Men’s Tennis Men’s Tennis Award (most outstanding player): Ross Anstaett ’07 Coach’s Award (most improved player): Pat Galey ’07 Dual match record: 6–5, 3–2 MAPL Head coach: Eric Hicks (12th season) Highlights: Anstaett and Leo Watanabe ’07 earned first-team All-MAPL recognition… Watanabe and Tim Rahauser ’07 were four-year letterwinners… top singles records included Anstaett’s 5–2 mark at No. 1, and Napat Waikwamdee’s ’08 8–3 tally (mostly at No. 4)… Anstaett and Watanabe formed the most successful doubles tandem (6–1 at No. 1).

Men’s Track Captains: Jin Ho Baek ’07, Tyler Small ’07 Men’s Track Award (most outstanding): Jordon Exeter ’07 Coaches’ Award (most improved): Brad Williams ’07 Robert Fager Black ’07/’45 Trophy (sportsmanship/loyalty): Baek, Small MAPL/state finish: 2nd/2nd Head coach: Betsy Willis (6th season) Highlights: Exeter, Baek, and James Finucane ’08 earned first-team All-MAPL honors… honorablemention all-conference recognition went to Small, Evan Castrianni ’10, Tyler Chambers ’08, Mark Herring ’09, Patrick Holmes ’08, Michael Lorensten ’10, Ellis Mays ’10, Bryan Morgan ’07, Nebiyu Osman ’10, Johannes Schlemmer ’07, Robert Shabb ’09, David Strider ’08, Brad Williams ’07, Trent Woodham ’08, and Kevin Yeung ’10… Baek was the male winner of the Athletic Director’s Award.

Women’s Track Captain: Madi McConnell ’07 Women’s Track Award (most outstanding): Lena Finucane ’09 Coaches’ Award (most improved): Tamari Farquharson ’07 Robert Fager Black ’07/’45 Trophy (sportsmanship/loyalty): Madi McConnell ’07 MAPL/state finish: 3rd/4th Head coach: Betsy Willis (6th season) Highlights: McConnell became just the 13th Mercersburg athlete to earn 12 varsity letters in a four-year career… new school records were set in

the 100m (Whitney Matthew ’08), 800m (Finucane), javelin (Katie Sabri ’07), and 4x100m relay (Farquharson, Matthew, Kearsten Cubit ’10, Asia Walker ’08)… Finucane and Sabri garnered firstteam All-MAPL honors… honorable-mention all-league selections included Cubit, Matthew, McConnell, Walker, Lara Brandfass ’08, Tracey Bruce ’07, Erin Cummings ’09, Laura Diller ’08, Rebecca Galey ’09, Paige Harry ’10, Vita Kalnina ’07, Michelle Karbach ’08, Nicole Ongor ’08, Ashton Price ’07, Shaniqua Reeves ’08, Anne Spencer ’08, and Emily Weiss ’08.

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Alumni Notes ’24

’40

’44

A biography of the late Harvey Butchart has been published by Puma Press of Flagstaff, Arizona. Grand Obsession: Harvey Butchart and the Exploration of the Grand Canyon was written by Elias Butler and Tom Myers. Edward Abbey once said that Butchart “has walked over more of the Grand Canyon than any other alive or dead.” In 42 years of exploration, Butchart spent 1,025 days below the canyon’s rim and covered 12,000 miles.

Jim Ammon has visited 66 countries and island groups worldwide, “mostly for pleasure,” he says. Jim retired 35 years ago as Baxter International’s vice president and chief financial officer, and has visited 27 countries/island groups in Europe; 13 in Asia and the Middle East; 11 in North America, Central America, and the Caribbean; eight in South America; and seven in Africa. The list includes everywhere from France, Japan, and Israel to Nepal, Tanzania, and Luxembourg. Jim, a native of West Reading, Pennsylvania, is a former national prep-school swimming champion whose school records stood at Mercersburg for decades. He graduated from Amherst College and Harvard Business School, and lives in Wilmette, Illinois.

Don Jones and his wife, Mary, celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary April 26, 2007.

Whoops In the summer 2007 issue, incorrect information was provided in an obituary for Katherine Tippetts Steiger (daughter of the late Headmaster Charles S. Tippetts ’12, wife of Tom Steiger Sr. ’35, sister of Sandy Tippetts ’43, mother of Tom Steiger Jr. ’66 and Susan Klann ’71, and grandmother of Thomas Steiger III ’11). Mercersburg regrets the error.

Submit alumni notes and photographs online or by email to Jenn_Flanagan@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.

Robert E. “Bob” Johnson 203-248-7834

’35

Jim Smith, Mercersburg's carillonneur and former director of music, arranged a "Connecticut Song" of music and words written by Bob Johnson and his late son, Gregory. It is to be presented to Connecticut Governor M. Jodi Rell.

Ed Powers edjp1117@yahoo.com Bob Smith BaldBobSmith1@cs.com

Harry McAlpine 703-893-3893

’47

Joe Strode’s granddaughter, Carly, graduated from Guilford College, and another granddaughter, Kallie, is going to the Hill School (sorry, Mercersburg). Joe met Gerry Lenfest ’49 in Florida recently, and said that he looked forward to celebrating his 60th reunion this fall.

Hugh Miller hcmfaia@comcast.net

’48

’37

John A. Hull completed three years as chairman of Chamber Music Corvallis (www.violins.org). His daughter, Katherine ’80, is hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, which runs from Mexico to Canada.

’39

Bill Alexander 740-282-5810

Henry “Bud” Minor married Caryl MacLean of Vero Beach, Florida, December 9, 2006, at their new home in Grand Harbor. Among the guests was Bud’s best friend and Mercersburg classmate, Dick Klopp, also of Vero Beach. Bud and Dick attended the 2004 reunion, and Caryl will be with them when they return for their 70th in 2009.

’49

In 2004, Albert Allen delivered a paper on Richard Harding Davis at the John Burroughs Conference at SUNY Oneonta. He also taught a course on Richard Harding Davis at Bard College for the Lifetime Learning Institute.

Jim Ammon ’40 on the road.

’42 Roger Rowe is enjoying a peaceful and comfortable retirement at the Marshes of Skidaway Island near Savannah, Georgia. He is sorry to hear of Don Hill’s retirement, as “Don was a real asset to the Academy.”

Ed Hager Edward.t.hager1@adelphia.net

’50

Shortly after celebrating their 54th wedding anniversary in February 2007, William Clinton and his wife, Ginger, drove to New Haven, Connecticut, for

MERCERSBURG MAGAZINE WINTER 2007 –2008

the 50th reunion of Yale’s Class of 1957. “It was an outstanding celebration of yet another milestone in our lives together,” William said. “We have been blessed and I am looking forward to my 60th Mercersburg reunion in 2010, God willing.” On the way home from his annual trip to Philadelphia as a track official at the Penn Relays, D. Gordon Follett visited with fellow official Lee Yoder (one of Mercersburg’s Olympians) for three days at Lee’s retirement home on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Bill Shugars III and his wife, Leah, celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 2004. Their daughter, Amy, gave birth to a son, Owen, August 6, 2006. He is the couple’s sixth grandchild.

Jose Suarez Jr. shares that son Jose III ’87 is a managing director at Investor Growth Capital in Menlo Park, California, while son Francesco ’89 is vice-president of IMG World and lives in Hong Kong. Harry Ward’s granddaughter, Takara, plays basketball and lacrosse at Burlington High School in Vermont.

Jack Connolly jackconnolly@cfmr.com

Jack Barrett writes, “Graduation must be over. Hard to imagine that 55 years ago I was standing there scared to death I’d forget something of my fiveminute, memorized Schaff Oration (“The Unjustified Optimism of the American People”—yes, been getting it wrong all my life, but I think it’s coming closer to the truth these days) and equally scared to death someone would ask me or Dick Clutz (also lined up to speak) why he was sporting a dozen or so stitches on his head.” Jack also reports that his daughters, Anne ’86 and Hannah ’84, are very talented. Anne is a residential architect and works with her husband (www.30Edesign.com); Hannah is an artist (www.howard yezerskigallery.com).

’54

Stuart Williams published Wingshooting Argentina, a super-deluxe coffee-table book about an extraordinary country.

’52 As president of Focus Communications, John Kusik is a small-business expert and a sought-after mentor for business owners. He has co-authored Your Emerging Business… Survival, which has sold well in the U.S. and abroad.

Raz Zirkle dzirkle@nimdinc.com

Bill Heintz ’58 with his granddaughters, Hannah and Rebecca, at the closing of Mercersburg Summer Programs’ Teen Adventures 2006. The girls returned in 2007, and were joined by Bill’s grandson, John. Bill and his wife, Susan, have nine grandchildren.

’55

Jose Enrique Arraras is commissioner of LAI, an athletic league composed of 20 universities in the Caribbean. He also serves as president of the Olympic Committee for Public Relations, and members of his family founded Banco Popular. Chuck Hill and Fred Robins ’58 met on a cruise to South America and Antarctica. Old memories and friendships were renewed because Fred wore his Mercersburg T-shirt in the fitness center. Robert W. Tull, a senior agent with Northwestern Mutual Life, has taken over as state executive director for the New Mexico office of the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors. Bill Turpin is pleased to report that the four stents emplaced in his heart in 1999 continue to do their job nicely. He is growing old gratefully and most happily married to his best friend, Ann Clarkson Cooper Turpin, who has expanded and extended his interest in the world’s great music.

Allen Lowrie of Picayune, Mississippi, is a geologist with 40 years of geologic and geophysical exploration worldwide. He trained at Columbia University, and has taught at Tulane and the University of Southern Mississippi. He worked in basic research at Columbia, applied research at the Naval Research Labs at the Stennis Space Center, and in operational and production geology for Mobil Oil. He is the author of 80 publications about the evolution of continental margins. Robert K. Park II is retired and lives in Belleair, Florida. He plays tennis, travels in his motor home, and takes cruises and alumni journeys. Robert and his wife, Mary Beth, took their oldest granddaughter, Tori, to San Francisco for her 16th birthday this summer.

Bob Buchanan is as retired now as he probably will ever be. He serves a small number of tax clients, which keeps him off the street and out of the bars from January through April 15. After that, his workload drops to almost nothing, and he heads for the mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania, where he built a vacation home on Lake Wallenpaupack.

[and maybe Australia] to train a core group to use the simulation as a major component of their school improvement initiatives. In June, Pete Crow sold his Oklahoma newspapers, web printing operations, specialty magazines, and Internet sites to the media division of Macquarie Bank in Sydney, Australia. Pete has served as chairman of the Celebration (Florida) Community Development District, and his wife, Carol Anne, is an officer of the Celebration Foundation along with her other civic involvements. Their children are in Charlottesville and Fairfax, Virginia, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana—a veterinarian, a city planner, and one in medical school. Pete continues his business interests in Los Angeles.

Tim Grumbacher has retired from The Bon-Ton Stores. During his tenure, the company grew from seven stores in two states to 278 stores—including seven furniture galleries—in 23 states, and annual volume grew from $6 million to $3.5 billion. Tim lives in York, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Nancy; they have three grown children and two grandchildren. Tim is an avid competitor in triathlons.

’57

Alex Burgin burgin-enterprises@sbcglobal.net Bob Walton waltonrr@comcast.net Raymond “Jerry” Novatney ’52 says, “Can’t believe it’s been 55 years! Sure miss the ‘M.’ ”

’60 Bill Cass wfcass@verizon.net Earlier this spring, Dave Crandall finished a project for England's Department for Education and Skills that resulted in a computer-based simulation to help primary-school leaders develop networks of schools focused on serious learning. In January, Dave and a colleague will visit New Zealand

Pete Crow ’60 at the final space shuttle launch he covered for his newspapers, in February at the Kennedy Space Center. (The first was Apollo 17 in December 1972—the last time man landed on the moon.)

MERCERSBURG MAGAZINE WINTER 2007 –2008

Stan Westbrook fswgolf2@verizon.net

’66

Serge Grynkewich took a sabbatical this summer and completed a six-and-ahalf-week intensive Arabic language program at the American University of Beirut’s Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies.

Allan Rose byrose@superior.net Sandy Soars hmsoars@snet.net

’67

Rob Hanawalt received the Alumni Council Achievement Award during Alumni Weekend 2007. He is on assignment with UNICEF in Angola. Sam Stites became a grandfather in May, when his daughter-in-law, Jessica, and son, William, welcomed daughter Saskia Warner into the world. Mercersburg Regent Dave Frantz ’60 chats with former President Bill Clinton at The Ohio State University's commencement in June. Clinton spoke at the ceremony; Frantz serves as secretary of Ohio State's Board of Trustees.

Bill Thompson thomp132@mc.duke.edu

’61

Henry Cochran co-founded a company with a Chinese partner in 2000 to deliver electronic component supplychain management services in China. He moved to China in May 2005 to take over as CEO of SinoHub and drive the growth of the company. SinoHub has a strong position in SCM, and Henry has two subsidiary companies, GenNext Technology (www.gennextvoip.com) and B2B Chips (www.b2bchips.com). GenNext manufactures and sells advanced network and VoIP equipment for the SoHo and branch office/restaurant/store markets. B2B Chips trades electronic components (primarily integrated circuits). Henry thinks he has learned more in his two years in China than he did in the 10 years before he moved there. He writes, “It has been a huge challenge, but the rewards are equally huge.” In Shenzhen, where he lives, the economy has grown 15 percent each year for many years. He and his wife, Linda, are there with their grandson, Dusty, who attends a local international school; Linda is an occupational therapist, works part-time at the school, and plans to start an OT clinic there next year. “Only four more years until our 50th reunion,” Henry writes. “I will make a special effort to attend even if I have to travel 12,000 miles to do so.”

John Reilly jackreilly@comcast.net Jon Dubbs jdubbs@dubbs.com

’62

After a 33-year legal career (14 years as a state and U.S. prosecutor, and 19 years as a district judge in New Mexico), The Honorable James Blackmer has retired. As district judge, he received the statewide Outstanding Judicial Service Award, and presided over many highprofile cases, including the live, nationally televised trial of Gordon House (accused of a Christmas Eve DWI crash that killed a mother and three small children). Jim now bicycles 20-plus miles a day, kayaks, and hikes with Connie, his wife of 23 years. He also flies an airplane, plans to teach judges at the National Judicial College, and hopes to become more computer literate. He can be reached at blackmerjc@gmail.com.

Gene Homicki ukey@spiders.com David Millstein sponte@aol.com Paul Sommerville psommerville@hargray.com

’63

After nearly 40 years as a reporter and editor at The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio, David Molyneaux moved his travel column from newsprint to the Internet at www.TravelMavens.net. David

invites all to his blog, TravelMaven. typepad.com, which focuses on travel tips, cruising, golfing, and exploring the world. He and his wife, Judi Dash, a freelance travel writer, have two granddaughters who live near their home in Beachwood, Ohio. In April, Richard Ornitz joined DLA Piper in New York City as a partner in the finance practice group. In 1997 and 2003, Euromoney identified him as a leader in privatization and project finance. Richard’s concentrations are on international, privatization, private equity, and cross-border finance matters.

Mike Radbill meradbill@comcast.net

’70

’64

Andy Schnebly reports that his health is fine, and that he is still running. He won his age group (60–64) at the Salt Lake Deseret News Marathon and the St. George Marathon.

Jere Keefer jsklrk@earthlink.net

Ivan Sag ’67 is a professor of linguistics, director of the Program in Symbolic Systems, and a senior researcher at the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University.

’65

E. Ford Menard married Lynne White of Atlanta June 11, 2007, in Brevard, North Carolina. They divide their time between Brevard and Ormond Beach, Florida.

Steve Crawshaw’s oldest son, Eric, is a junior at Georgia Tech, and his younger son, Mark, started at Auburn University this fall.

Joe Rendina jjrendina@comcast.net

’71

Edwin C. Lair’s daughter, Courtney, teaches second grade in South Carolina and has a master’s in elementary education from Furman University. His daughter, Chelsea, graduated from the College of William & Mary, and had a generous graduate assistantship to remain and pursue an advanced degree in psychology.

A L U M N I TO DAY

Robert Druckenmiller: Social Marketer Par Excellence

Bob Druckenmiller ’60 and wife, Benne; right, with his grandson, Aidan.

The 1960s were an extraordinary time on Madison Avenue. Grey flannel-suited marketing and advertising professionals, accustomed to their well-ordered reports of Nielsen market shares and multimillion dollar campaigns for the American housewife’s purse strings, began to take note of a different drummer. One such advertising executive was Bob Druckenmiller ’60, fresh from an initial stint at the Los Angeles office of giant ad agency J. Walter Thompson, and newly installed at the firm’s New York headquarters. The Allentown, Pennsylvania, native came to advertising with an MBA in marketing from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor’s degree in economics from Colgate. He plunged into the competitive world of promoting consumer goods marketed by national brand clients Scott Paper, Coca-Cola, and Lever Brothers. At the same time, the context of marketing was undergoing a sea change. Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt published his paradigm-shifting Marketing Myopia, which stared down traditional views of selling goods and services to consumers. Social scientists like Everett Rogers diagrammed patterns of how innovations are diffused and adopted. The concept of “social marketing”— applying the disciplines and skills of commercial marketing to public service—began to win forward-thinkers. Druckenmiller, who “always tended to fight for the underdog,” was drawn to the new social marketing venue by one of its true visionaries, William Novelli (today the chief executive officer of AARP). “He said to me,” Druckenmiller remembers, “‘How would you like to sell good health care by increasing awareness of the risk of high blood pressure, instead of fighting for another tenth of a share point for Rinso Blue detergent?’” Druckenmiller’s first assignment in Washington was as advertising manager for the umbrella government agency that directed the Peace Corps and ACTION. In two years, he and Novelli successfully reversed a decline in recruiting volunteers. With that success in hand, they helped establish the nation’s preeminent marketing communications agency dedicated to the social (nonprofit) sector.

“We started with health care, built awareness about high blood pressure and cholesterol, worked on smoking cessation, cancer, weight-reduction and fitness issues,” Druckenmiller says with pride. “In addition, I worked on national awareness and education programs involving mental retardation, mental health, seat belt use, obesity, and swimming and diving safety.” By the mid-1980s, Porter Novelli had won international respect for its work on behalf of government agencies and nonprofit associations, and for its brilliant synthesis of research and marketing skills. In 1988, the partners sold the firm to Omnicom, a major international holding company of advertising and public relations firms. Druckenmiller became CEO of Porter Novelli under the new association. “Their leadership and creativity was outstanding,” he says. “I was able to buy many good companies and build a top PR firm, yet they also provided the most advanced education program in business and placed a lot of emphasis on building best practices, networking with other Omnicom agencies, and hiring terrific experts from leading business schools to conduct strenuous advanced-management courses. It was the best academic experience I had since Mercersburg.” In his 10 years as CEO, the company went from a $17 million national firm to a $200 million global agency. Druckenmiller has clear and positive memories of his Mercersburg experience: “I was scared to death of the academic challenge and studied very hard my first year (10th grade),” he says. “I ranked in the top 10 at one time, but in my junior year I discovered varsity sports and it was straight downhill from there academically.” He was on the football, basketball, and track teams, and has particularly fond memories of his basketball coach, Leonard Plantz: “He was like a good father in addition to being a knowledgeable coach and a good history teacher… he was a great role model for me. “I never worked as hard as I did at Mercersburg; Colgate and Wharton were a breeze compared to Mercersburg. Good work habits are instilled as a result of having to achieve high standards. Writing and expressing yourself was emphasized when I was at Mercersburg; I think that that holds you in good stead regardless of your career.” Today, Druckenmiller enjoys retirement in New Canaan, Connecticut, with Benne, his wife of 38 years, who is a hospice and home-care nurse. He tutors inner-city children, takes courses in art, philosophy, and religion, is active in his church, and appreciates the proximity of his two grown children and two grandchildren. —Jim Applebaum

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Tom Hadzor T.Hadzor@Duke.edu Eric Scoblionko wekdirscobes@aol.com

’72

’74 Stephen Flanagan smpf55@earthlink.net

Rich Haskell planned to attend his 35th reunion in the fall. Margaret, his oldest daughter, has lived in New York City for more than a year and works for Special Ops Media, an online marketing company. Gillian, his second daughter, graduated from the University of Vermont in May with a bachelor’s degree in nutrition, and had a job lined up this summer as a physical therapy technician. She plans on going back to school to get her physical therapy doctorate next fall. Rich’s son, Jack, graduated in May from Suffield Academy, and will attend St. Michael's College in Colchester, Vermont.

Col. Robert Naething is stationed at Fort Knox, Kentucky, as 16th Cavalry Regiment commander. His son, Richard ’01, is working on a doctorate at the University of Texas.

Heidi Krutek ’78, Dave Holzwarth ’78, and Allison Stephens, Jordan Krutek ’10, and Wynn Holzwarth ’10.

For the past 16 years, Dr. Peter M. Johns has served as the medical director of Groton School. In July, on board the USNS Henry J. Kaiser, Capt. L. Hart Sebring Jr. was relieved as Commander of the Sealift Logistics Command Pacific Center. Less than a month later, he became commanding officer of the Naval Academy Preparatory School at Naval Station Newport, Rhode Island. Patrick Shay was elected to a second term in 2004 as Chatham County [Georgia] commissioner. Two years later, he opened a second architectural office in Charleston, South Carolina, and published his first book, Ensemble Architecture.

Stephen Flanagan’s ’74 artwork was featured in a June exhibition, Playing for Keeps: Toys and Their Side Effects.

Jane White Yocum jane.yocum@hmrmlaw.com

’76

Judy Rakowsky left the Boston Globe to work as a freelance journalist and author. She had a feature article in the May 4 edition of People magazine.

Don Hill, Chris Marston ’07, Karen ’79 and Rob Marston ’79, Elizabeth Marston Hoisington ’84, and Steve Hummel ’79.

’73 William T. Fleming’s son, Brad, is a specialist in the 82nd Airborne and is stationed in Baghdad, Iraq. He is on his second tour of duty and was in the first wave of the “surge.” His daughter, Kelsey, will be entering Susquehanna University this fall. William is enjoying life and still single.

Jim Jones jonesgolf@comcast.net Lindley Peterson Fleury lindley285@yahoo.com

An episode of the PBS series Nova that aired November 13 re-created the highly publicized 2005 court case concerning a school-board policy in Dover, Pennsylvania, that would have required science teachers to give evolution and intelligent design theories equal time. Judge John E. Jones III (Mercersburg, spring 2006) presided over the trial.

R. Wayne Skilton completes his 20th year at ARKEMA in March 2008. Since January 2006, he has been the elected captain of the 6th Pennsylvania Regiment of the Living History Association, of which he and his wife have been members since 1988. He served as adjutant for the 20th anniversary celebration of the Continental Line, which was held at Mount Vernon in September. For more information, visit www.6pa.org.

’77

Wayne Skilton ’77 of the 6th Pennsylvania Regiment.

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’79

sophomore in high school. Paul and Maria look forward to the 30th reunion.

Carol Furnary Casparian continues her work as chair of the Cold Spring Comprehensive Plan/Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan Special Board. She is active in her church as a cantor, singing for weddings and funerals, and also has a small baking business that provides reduced-sugar breads and desserts to private customers, and regular desserts and breads for a local Italian restaurant. Carol lives in Cold Spring, New York (on the Hudson River directly across from West Point), with Michael, her husband of 21 years, and four children. She looks forward to seeing all of her classmates at the 30th reunion.

Richard Little lives in Falls Church, Virginia, with his husband of 11 years, Jim Emlet. He opened Aspen Jewelry Designs in 1993 and is proud to say that business has never been better. He and Jim are preparing to leave for a 12–16-month sail on their 41-foot catamaran. They will start in Tortola and sail south down the Windward Islands to Trinidad. From there, they will head across the top of South America, through the Panama Canal, and to the Galapagos Islands. If all goes well, they will turn around and head back by way of the east coast of Central America. Both are avid scuba divers and learned to sail in order to have more opportunities to dive. Richard hopes to make it to his 30th reunion.

Carol Furnary Casparian furnaryc@mercersburg.edu

Richard Little ’79 and husband Jim Emlet.

’78 Heidi Kaul Krutek hkrutek@bellsouth.net

John McAvoy earned a master’s degree in strategic studies from the U.S. Army War College in July.

Paul Feldman is vice-president of medical chemistry for metabolic diseases at GlaxoSmithKline in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Paul and his wife, Maria, have three children. Crystal (the oldest) graduated from Georgetown University in May; Ben is a rising sophomore at Denison University; and Camden is a rising

Capt. Robert P. Marston, the U.S. Navy’s chief of staff for the Global Maritime and Aviation Intelligence Integration in the Office of the Director for National Intelligence, retired from the Navy in June, and received the Legion of Merit.

Gretchen Decker Pierce earned certification as a senior professional in human resources. She is director of human resources at Cross Keys Village-The Brethren Home Community in New Oxford, Pennsylvania; her daughter, Ellen ’09, is an uppermiddler.

’81

Dave Flanagan flans@nycapp.rr.com Dave Wagner david.g.wagner@owenscorning.com Greg Zinn greg@zinn.com

John Koch was accepted by the George C. Marshall Center for European and Security Studies, a U.S.-German security and defense educational institution, for its flagship program in advanced security studies (PASS) in Garmisch, Germany. PASS is a rigorous 12-week course for civilian government officials, military officers, and government academics. J.D. continues work at Grafenwoehr as

Marriages The wedding of Rachel Kagan ’00 and Michael Galey ’00, December 29, 2006. (L-R): Dave and Beth Kagan, Jack and Karen Hawbaker, Tom Rahauser ’74, Suzanne and Taylor Camerer, Larissa Chace Smith ’97, Dave Holzwarth ’78, Emily Camerer, Joel Chace, Tristan Chace, Allison Stephens, Sarah Kagan ’04, Candy Chace, Susan Rahauser, Marcia and Paul Galey, Bethany Galey ’02, Tom Dugan ’99, Brechyn Chace ’03, Kristy Fasano ’02, Heather Reichhart Dugan, Logan Chace ’01, Taylor Horst ’00, Gretchan Frederick, Anne Reeder ’00, Michelle Glah ’00, Jeff and Gail Reeder, and Stephanie and Karl Reisner.

At the wedding of Kirsten Goerl ’97 and John Becker, April 14, 2007. (L-R): Elizabeth Goerl, Beth Rawley ’97, Kirsten, Alexandra Goerl Rickeman ’99.

Henry “Bud” Minor Jr. ’39 to Caryl MacLean, December 9, 2006. E. Ford Menard ’65 to Lynne White, June 11, 2007. Gretchyn Genrich ’94 to Andre Duval, October 1, 2005. Beth Ann Pniewski ’98 to John Arner Bell V, August 18, 2007. Tom Dugan ’99 to Heather Reichhart, July 21, 2007. Natalie Wingrove ’00 to David M. Scott, October 7, 2006.

The wedding of Rebecca Lowe ’99 and Stefano Bozzi, July 28, 2007.

Births

James Victor, born May 17, 2007, son of Mark Bistline ’76 and his wife, Susan.

Emma Ross, born October 20, 2005, daughter of Ann Marks ’82 and Ross DiLalla ’81.

Ray Liddy ’82 and wife Courtney.

Devin Coyne, born July 9, 2006, daughter of Patrick Flanagan ’84 and wife, Erinn.

To Brent P. Copenhaver ’79 and his wife, Jacqueline: a daughter, Norah Ruth, July 13, 2006. To Sara Plantz Brennen ’88 and her husband, Michael: a son, Sean Michael, October 1, 2006.

the director of operations for the Joint Multinational Simulations Center (its fourth name change in as many years), and recently returned from vacation in Novalja, Croatia.

Dr. John Lafferty created the Dragon Drug Gun, a new patent-pending medical device. It utilizes preformatted, disposable drug cartridges to save lives, time, medication, and syringes, while reducing human error.

’82

Lawrence “Harv” Weisman enjoys life in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, with his wife, Erin, and daughter, Claudia. He looks forward to his 25th reunion.

Duncan White duncan.m.white@accenture.com Todd Wells twells1@twcny.rr.com

Lt. Col. Ray Liddy received a master's in strategic studies in July from the U.S. Army War College, which is the Army's postgraduate school.

To Mistie McElroy Witt ’88 and her husband, Tom: a son, Thomas McElroy, January 24, 2007. To Lt. Cmdr. Malcolm Mark ’89 and his wife, Ilene: a son, Duncan, May 29, 2007. To Ben Tutt ’89 and his wife, Adeliz: a son, William Thayer, August 6, 2007. To Maremi Hooff Andreozzi ’90 and her husband, Phil: a son, Quinton Nicholas, April 24, 2007. To Pete Howland ’90 and his wife, Margaret: a son, Benjamin Peterson, October 29, 2006.

’83

Mark Pyper mark.e.pyper@smithbarney.com Bruce Ricciuti jbr@birchrea.com

In June, Tim Burbank’s entire family celebrated Bo and Ellie Burbank’s 50th wedding anniversary in Manomet, Massachusetts. Some family members traveled from Costa Rica and Tucson, Arizona, for the occasion.

Susan Corwin Moreau moreau.s@att.net

’85

Michael Hatfield, his wife, Susie, and daughters, Morgan and Emilee, moved from Jakarta, Indonesia, to Darwin, Australia. Michael is Darwin area manager for ConocoPhillips, and is responsible for the company’s offshore oil and gas producing platforms, an onshore LNG gas plant, and all associated support services. After four years in Jakarta, Michael reports that this new posting is like a breath of fresh air, with clear skies and about 15 million fewer people in Darwin than Jakarta. “If you find yourself in the Top End of Australia, please look me up,” he writes.

MERCERSBURG MAGAZINE WINTER 2007 –2008

Chipper Lichtenstein represented Florida at the National Bridge Championship in Nashville this summer. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida; he and Keith Lutman met in Orlando and went to some of the theme parks together.

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

’89

Todd Powers coaches lacrosse at McDowell High School in Erie, Pennsylvania. Jeffrey Hearle jeff.hearle@verizon.net Margaret O’Brien mobrie12@nycap.rr.com

’86

Margaret O'Brien helped the Clifton Park Arctic Foxes capture first place in the Stick It To Brain Tumors Women's [Ice] Hockey Tournament, held in March at Union College in Schenectady, New York.

Laura Thorsen lthorsen1@cox.net Tom Mendham mendham67@gmail.com Rob Porcarelli rporcare@starbucks.com

’87

Ivonne Bayona Skrbich of Houston, Texas, is in the process of moving to Indonesia. Her husband, Mike, works for Schlumberger, an oil and gas service company. They look forward to this new adventure and amazing opportunity for their children, Isabella (8) and Nicolas (5).

Travel

with Mercersburg Alumni and Faculty

Two tentative trips for June 2008: • An outdoor adventure in Wyoming • A cultural visit to Israel For more information, contact De-Enda Rotz, director of alumni & parent programs, at rotzd@mercersburg.edu or 717-328-6178.

Shani O’Neil Calhoun ’91 and her son, Jacob.

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

’90

Ann Kaguyutan and sister Janice ’87 are both living in Washington. Ann is director of disaster fundraising at the American Red Cross, and Janice is senior counsel to Sen. Edward Kennedy. Both have hectic schedules, but always find time to reminisce about Mercersburg. Pete Howland announces the birth of his second son, Benjamin Peterson Howland, born October 29, 2005. Ben joins his older brother, Tim (4). Peter lives in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and spends as much time as possible on Keuka Lake in New York during the summer.

’91

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

Shani O'Neil Calhoun is a certified financial planner, and was promoted to investments representative with Fidelity Investments. She lives in Las Vegas and just celebrated her 10th wedding anniversary. Her son, Jacob, is finishing first grade and spends much more time in Mercersburg (visiting his grandparents) than she can.

Emily Gilmer Caldwell gilmercaldwell@yahoo.com

’92

Julie Nelson Ingoglia and her husband, Chuck, welcomed Giovanna Leigh Ingoglia on January 12, 2007. She joins big brother Matthew, who was born in August 2005.

Danielle Dahlstrom dlld93@hotmail.com

’93

Allison Foster Fortmann and her husband, Gabe, announce the birth of a baby girl, Olivia Foster, October 23, 2006. Olivia is the baby sister of Alexa Grace Fortmann, age 3.

(L-R) Bower Himes '91 holding his daughter, Ella (born May 4, 2007); Ashley Himes Kranich '89 with her twin daughters, Alexandra and Caroline (age 5); and Mac Himes '94.

Crystal Hatfield Miller and her sister, Liberty Mason, own a metaphysical retail store (The Crystal Ray) and a networking website, www.miraclecircles.com. She also owns a finish carpentry company with her husband, Brett, and they have eight children—Josh, Jules, Ciana, Audesi, Zachary, Keira, Ketty, and their newest addition, baby boy Torin Arthur (born October 23, 2006).

Alexia Morgan is finishing a doctorate in fisheries management at the University of Florida, and plans to do her dissertation in Maine. She and her beau, Chris Corson, hope to relocate to New England permanently— but aren't sure if it will be Belfast, Portland, Boston, or somewhere else.

Robert Jefferson rmjefferson@venable.com

’94

Bower Himes married his wife, Johanna, in February 2004. They live in Waltham, Massachusetts; he works as a project manager at Akamai in Boston.

Gretchyn Genrich married Andre Duval October 1, 2005; they live in Troutdale, Oregon (near Portland). Gretchyn earned an MBA in 2002, and is a sales manager for Ikon Legal Document Services.

Jay Sternberg and Stacey Kaltman will marry in May 2008 in Washington. Jay is senior manager of marketing operations for Blackboard; Stacey is a psychologist and an assistant professor at Georgetown University Medical School.

Mac Himes lives in State College, Pennsylvania. Since earning his master's in music composition from Penn State University in 2005, he has been an instructor in Penn State's Department of Music.

In August, Jamie Wollrab ’95 directed The Mistakes Madeline Made at the Dairy Center for the Arts in Boulder, Colorado.

Births Christopher Oscar Kiesley, born August 9, 2007, son of Mark Gannon '87 and his wife, Julie.

Sydney Parker, born April 10, 2007, daughter of Harry Byrd ’91 and his wife, Ashley.

Now on display at Mercersburg: an American flag and memorabilia from Lt. Gill Tatman-Tyree ’95. Gill is stationed in Iraq.

Max Merrill maximilianatlas@yahoo.com

Children of Julie Nelson Ingoglia ’92 and her husband, Chuck: Giovanna Leigh (born January 12, 2007) with big brother Matthew. To Bower Himes ’91 and his wife, Johanna: a daughter, Ella, May 4, 2007. To Meghan Myers Labot ’92 and her husband, Rich: a son, Emmett James, May 15, 2007. To Allison Foster Fortmann ’93 and her husband, Gabe: a daughter, Olivia Foster, October 23, 2006. To Crystal Hatfield Miller ’94 and her husband, Brett: a son, Torin Arthur, October 23, 2006.

’95

Lt. Gill Tatman-Tyree, who is stationed in Iraq, presented the Academy with an American flag flown by a U.S. Army RC12N aircraft during a January 2007 combat reconnaissance mission over Iraq. The flag accompanied the 224th Military Intelligence Battalion, and was flown in honor of the Mercersburg Class of 1995.

’97

Beth Pniewski Bell bethpniewski@hotmail.com Liz Curry ecurry@tigglobal.com Dean Hosgood dean.hosgood@gmail.com

Julie Hasson left Cannondale Associates to enroll in the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. She traveled Europe with her sister, Jill ’00, for most of July, and visited Madrid, Barcelona, Prague, Cologne, St. Petersburg, and Moscow. Julie welcomes visitors to the Chicago area.

Emily Peterson emilyadairpeterson@gmail.com Chris Senker chrissenker@hotmail.com

FACULTY To Leah Rockwell ’97 and her husband, Pete Gunkelman: a daughter, Louisa Gray, August 11, 2007. To David Grady and his wife, Hope: a daughter, Mary Faustina, August 26, 2007. FORMER FACULTY To Beth and Brad Pethel: a daughter, Brenna Caleigh, December 24, 2006.

Kirsten Goerl Becker married John Becker April 14, 2007, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; they live in West Palm Beach. Beth Rawley, Alexandra Goerl Rickeman ’99, and T. Jay Gerber ’05 celebrated with Kirsten and John on a beautiful beach day.

’98

Molly Lavelle ’98 and Timothy Edmonds ’98 are engaged, and will be married May 10, 2008, at Edgeworth Farm in Orlean, Virginia.

MERCERSBURG MAGAZINE WINTER 2007 –2008

Tom Dugan dugant@mercersburg.edu Jenn Flanagan flanaganj@mercersburg.edu Jess Malarik jmalarik@gmail.com

’99

Rebecca Lowe married Stefano Bozzi July 28, 2007. They met while working at BBC Sport; both now work at commercial-TV rival Setanta Sports, where Stefano is a senior soccer producer and Rebecca presents and reports on soccer. The wedding took place in West London with the reception at Lord's Cricket Ground (the home of English cricket). A honeymoon followed in Ischia. The past few years have been crazy for Liz Merz. She moved to France in December 2005 to finish her master’s, and hasn’t been back to the U.S. since. She never planned on moving to Germany, but an internship offer she received while studying in Toulouse was too good to pass up. In August, she moved to Zurich to take over a permanent position on the HP Software EMEA marketing team. She’s been able to travel all over Europe and experience the World Cup in Germany, Christmas with her French boyfriend's family, and the absolutely amazing French clothing sales. Liz misses the U.S. sometimes—she’s a huge football fan, and says it was painful to watch the Steelers win the Super Bowl and her alma mater, the University of Florida, win the national championship in football and basketball (twice) while being abroad. She also misses some American food, like Campbell's Soup. Catherine Wahl graduated from law school in May and was scheduled to take the bar exam in July. She and her fiancée planned a move to London as she heads back to school for an LLM. She wrote that she hoped to see several classmates at her wedding in November. Jasen Wright ran in the Need for Speed Relay against Domestic Violence as part of a team whose goal was to raise funds to help end the cycle of abuse. His team, Bovine Intervention, was among hundreds of teams that ran a 60-mile, point-topoint relay race from Bear Mountain State Park, through Westchester County, and finished in downtown New Rochelle near the Long Island Sound.

Taylor Horst taylorhorst@gmail.com Andrew Miller amiller@arescorporation.com Anne Reeder annereeder@sbcglobal.net

’00

Jeremy Berry works in environmental remediation for ARCADIS of New York Inc., an international consulting and engineering firm, and now lives in Hoboken, New Jersey. He coaches a youth wrestling team (ages 5–14), and can be reached at prestonjeremyberry@gmail.com. Rachel Kagan married Michael Galey December 29, 2006, in the Irvine Memorial Chapel with Michael’s father, the Rev. Paul W. Galey, officiating. In May 2007, Michael earned a Juris Doctor degree from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

Vanessa Youngs ’03 (right) meeting with Geraldine Gardner ‘96 in Washington.

Heidi Anderes handeres@gmail.com Ann Bliley abliley@gmail.com Brian Schreiber brianpschreiber@gmail.com

’01

James Hazelrig is engaged to Kirsten Bogue; the wedding is planned for June 14, 2008. James can be reached at hazelrig@gmail.com.

Michael Galey ’00 graduating from Loyola Law School.

Natalie Wingrove married David M. Scott October 7, 2006, at Grace United Methodist Church in her hometown of Indiana, Pennsylvania. Sarah Gdula and Jonathan Palmer ’99 were in attendance. David is a radio frequency engineer for Sprint, and Natalie is a personal trainer/lifestyle and weight-management consultant, and is still singing. They visited Mercersburg for the Grease reunion in March, and live in Pittsburgh with their two Pomeranian dogs. Natalie can be reached at NatalieWingroveScott@gmail.com.

In June, faculty member Emory Mort placed 22nd in the 3000-meter steeplechase at the USA Track & Field Outdoor Championships in Indianapolis. He finished with a time of 8:52.95 in the event, which is the nationalchampionship meet for track & field in the United States. Emory now sets his sights on the 2008 U.S. Olympic Trials, scheduled for July 3, 2008.

’02 Noelle Bassi noelle.bassi@gmail.com Liz Stockdale lstockdale@foxcroft.org Ian Thompson ianmthompson@gmail.com Noelle Bassi graduated from Harvard University in June, and is working as an educational consultant in Dallas. Anne Curry graduated from Lehigh University in May 2006 with a B.S. in finance. After backpacking through Europe for five weeks, she moved to Washington, and is an associate for KPMG’s economic and valuation services practice.

Dave Dworsky lives in the Washington area, and started law school this fall at Georgetown University. Lauren McCartney began graduate school in September at Oxford Brookes University in England, and is pursuing an MSC in child development and learning. Sadly, she was not able to attend the reunion, but wishes her classmates the best. Bill Schindler co-hosts an afternoon sports-talk show, “The Sportsphone,” on ESPN550 KMVI in Maui, Hawaii. He also produces “Talk of Maui,” a morning show on KNUI Fox News Radio 900. This summer, he had the opportunity to interview Dean Taylor ’69, the assistant general manager of the Kansas City Royals. “It has been a great start, and I certainly owe a lot to the ‘Burg for helping me get to where I am,” Bill says.

Nate Fochtman fochtman@drexel.edu Vanessa Youngs youngsv@lafayette.edu

’03

After graduating from Dickinson College in May with a degree in sociology and environmental studies, Katie Fox is working as a field organizer for the U.S. Public Interest Research Groups. She spent the summer in Concord, New Hampshire, organizing a campaign to get renewable-energy legislation passed in Congress. In June, Colleen Crampton Booth graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, with high honors in American studies and political science. While at Eckerd, she

MERCERSBURG MAGAZINE WINTER 2007 –2008

studied in London, interned for a member of Parliament, and was elected to the Omicron Delta Kappa Leadership Honorary. She attends law school in California and would love to hear from classmates at ccbooth@houston.rr.com. Colleen is the daughter of Kenneth C. Booth ’63. Shelby Lee Keefer graduated from Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business with a bachelor in business administration and a double major in finance and accounting. Throughout her Georgetown career, Shelby worked an internship at the Georgetown Alumni and Student Federal Credit Union, and served as chief financial officer and co-chairman of the board of directors, controller, summer associate, assistant controller, accountant, and teller. The organization is the largest entirely student-run financial institution in the country, with peak assets of more than $12 million. Shelby also served as president of Georgetown’s Financial Management Association. In July, she joined Goldman Sachs in New York (where she had interned in summer 2006) as a Natural Resources Group investment-banking analyst. Zak Zielezinski is making headlines all over. He co-authored an article, “The Highs and Lows of Entrepreneurship,” that was published in Young Money magazine (www.youngmoney.com). He was featured in an article in the career section of the Boston Globe and over 100 syndications, and was also on the front page of the business section in the Worcester Telegram and Gazette for a November 2006 article entitled “Boundless Enterprise.”

Jordan Magaro, Zander Hartung ’05, Nick Ventresca ’05, Nate Fochtman ’03, and Catherine Schulteis ’03. Jordan worked at Mercersburg Adventure Camp for the past four years.

The Mooney family: Tyann, Donika ’06, John IV ’03, and John III.

Katherine Keller kkeller@bucknell.edu Nick Mellott mellottn@bu.edu

’04

Sarah Olwell is spending the fall semester at University College Cork in Cork, Ireland, and will study next spring in Rome. She can be reached at solwell@student.umass.edu. Court Shreiner will graduate in May from the Pennsylvania College of Technology with a B.S. in construction management and a minor in business. Court plays on the PCT baseball team, which won the PSUAC championship in 2006 and finished sixth at the ABC National Convention in March.

Carl Gray II carlhgray@gmail.com Zander Hartung zanderhartung@gmail.com Alexis Imler imlera@duq.edu Tammy McBeth mcbeta01@gettysburg.edu Nick Ventresca ventresca.r@neu.edu

’05

Carl Gray interned with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in Washington for the summer, and worked in advance and scheduling. He had the opportunity to meet and personally escort the senator from her campaign headquarters after debate preparation, and she struck him as extremely genuine and cordial; “Unfortunately, most Americans do not realize or accept this characteristic,” Carl says. Though he wished he could stay and be active in the campaign, Carl is studying at Oxford for eight weeks this fall with a good group of friends from Sewanee. “And if reality reflects current polls,” he said before leaving, “the senator will be the nominee and I will take a more influential role in the campaign next summer—only in a perfect and hypothetical world!” Next year, Ali Moats will be co-editor of the yearbook at Bridgewater College and will spend a semester abroad in Ireland.

Sam Carrasco sc3050@ship.edu Margaret Hartz margaret.hartz@hws.edu Greg Larson u0489384@umail.utah.edu Joy Thomas jatho2@wm.edu Stephanie Turner Stephanie_Turner@pitzer.edu Jonathan Wilde jt.wilde@furman.edu Stephanie Yeatman syeatman@stetson.edu

’06

In July, Griffin Burns finished second in the 5K Run at the East Berlin [Pennsylvania] Area Community Center. Griffin’s time of 16:32 was behind only Olympic runner Steve Spence. Susquehanna University named Casey Oliver a University Scholar for achieving a cumulative grade-point average above 3.75 during the 2006–2007 academic year. Jan Weber is an intern at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, and works in the conservation and science division of the zoo’s Davee Center for Epidemiology and Endocrinology. He monitors stress levels in the zoo's captive big cats and tracks reproductive cycles in primates.

Dusty French dusty_french54@hotmail.com Dan Gottlieb dgottlie@tulane.edu Xanthe Hilton xanthe89@gmail.com Bada Kang badakang@gmail.com Mallory Polak polakmm@gmail.com Chuck Roberts galway989@yahoo.com Kristina Trudeau kristitrudeau@hotmail.com Katelyn Wiley 304-594-2113

’07

Xanthe Hilton writes, “After working at the ‘Burg this summer, I spent a week in New Hampshire getting to know my classmates from Colby-Sawyer (including a female soccer player from Grier School). At the end of the week, we climbed Mount Washington.”

Bryan Morgan and the Duke University football team shared lunch and football tips with children from the Rescue Mission’s Good Samaritan Inn in Durham, North Carolina. Bryan, an offensive lineman, started his first college game for the Blue Devils against the University of Connecticut in September. He and classmates Cameron Jones and Colin Jones join fellow alumni Evalio Harrell ’04 and Vincent Rey ’06 on the Duke roster.

Faculty/ Former Faculty “The Last Set of Tests,” a poem by English Department Head Matthew Kearney, was published in the August 2007 volume of The Saranac Review. At exactly 2 p.m., July 4, Mercersburg joined schools, colleges, and governmental installations across the nation, as well as commissioned ships of the U.S. Navy, for the 10th year in the National Bell Ringing Ceremony, sponsored by Sons of the Revolution in Philadelphia. James W. Smith, the Academy's resident carillonneur and former director of music, played a medley of patriotic songs on the school's 49-bell Henry Bucher Swoope Carillon from the Bryan Barker Tower, much to the enjoyment of listeners from the local area and nearby Hagerstown, Maryland. The event was coordinated in part by Henry A. Kittredge, a former Mercersburg history teacher and current library assistant, who is a member of the Sons. Smith played several other carillon concerts this summer; venues included Princeton University’s Cleveland Tower, the Netherlands Carillon at Arlington National Cemetery, and Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.

MERCERSBURG MAGAZINE WINTER 2007 –2008

Obituaries ’30 Rear Admiral Eugene B. Fluckey, June 28, 2007. (Irving, Stony Batter, assistant manager of the News, swimming) Admiral Fluckey was a pioneer of submarine warfare and among the most highly decorated World War II veterans from any of the military branches. A 1935 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, he joined the submarine corps in 1938 and served in the Pacific aboard the submarine USS Bonita. He was in command of the USS Barb from April 1944 through August 1945; in that time, he and his 80-man crew were credited with sinking 29 ships, including an aircraft carrier and a cruiser, and more gross tonnage than any other submarine commander. Admiral Fluckey received the Medal of

Rear Admiral Eugene B. Fluckey

Honor, the nation’s highest award for valor. In addition to the Medal of Honor, he was awarded four Navy Crosses (an award second only to the Medal of Honor), the Distinguished Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, and a host of lesser decorations. For all his exploits, Fluckey maintained he was

operations, and was promoted to rear

experiences in the Pacific, won the

proudest of one fact: “No one who ever

admiral in 1960. He commanded American

Samuel Eliot Morison prize for

served under my command was

submarine forces in the Pacific and was

naval history.

awarded the Purple Heart for being

director of naval intelligence in the 1960s.

wounded or killed, and all of us

He retired from the Navy in 1972 and

by his wife, Marjorie, in 1979. He is

brought our Barb back safe and sound.”

moved to Lisbon, Portugal, where he was

survived by his second wife, Margaret;

the naval attaché to NATO; he returned to

a daughter; four grandchildren; and

as personal aide to Fleet Admiral

Annapolis in 1979. In 1992, his book,

four great-grandchildren.

Chester W. Nimitz, the chief of naval

Thunder Below!, a dramatic account of his

Following World War II, he served

Admiral Fluckey was predeceased

MERCERSBURG MAGAZINE WINTER 2007 –2008

’32

’37

W. Curtis Wagner, June 28, 2002. (Marshall, Stony Batter, The Fif-

Howard R. Schoenbaum, May 7, 2007. (Marshall, baseball, football)

teen, KARUX, class historian, soccer, orchestra)

He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, and served in the Navy until 1949, when he moved to Columbus, Ohio, to work for Southern Bowling and Billiard Supply Company. He was also very active

’34 Robert F. Conrad, April 4, 2007. (wrestling, soccer, baseball, track)

in the Jewish community. He is survived by his wife, Mickey; three daughters; and four grandsons.

After serving in the Naval Reserve during World War II, he became

’38

a patent lawyer and co-founded a company that produced fabric used in leisure suits. Survivors include a brother, four daughters, and three grandchildren.

James S. Funk, May 28, 2006. (Irving) James graduated from St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. He was an operations specialist for the Department of Defense in Washington, and

’35 Dorsey R. Buttram, September 15, 2006. (Irving, Les Copains, Radio

retired to Virginia nearly 25 years ago. His wife, Barbara Anne, preceded him in death; survivors include a daughter, two sons, and three grandchildren.

Club, Glee Club, swimming) Dorsey obtained his degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University. During World War II, he

C. William Matten, February 1, 2004. (Keil, Marshall, German

was a flight instructor and test pilot, and flew B-17s, C-54s, and

Club, soccer) “Church” was a graduate of Cornell University and

C-47s. After the war, he assumed management of family cattle

a U.S. Army veteran of World War II. He was an electrical

ranches in Oklahoma and Mississippi, helped develop the family

consulting engineer.

citrus groves in the Rio Grande Valley, and was involved with his family’s oil business, Buttram Energies; he became its president in 1964. He made many trips to Washington to convey to the Con-

’39

gress and government departments the necessity of maintaining a healthy domestic oil industry. Survivors include Phyllis, his wife of

Frank F. Macklin, April 21, 2007. (’Eighty-eight, Marshall, Glee Club,

63 years; two sons; and two granddaughters.

Les Copains, football, baseball) Frank’s business career was in industrial sales management. He is survived by his wife of 64 years, Grace Flavell; four daughters; 11 grandchildren; and

’36 David M. Gerber, February 4, 2005. (Marshall, wrestling, football, band, orchestra, Class Day Committee) A U.S. Navy veteran of World War II, he graduated from Yale University and Cornell Medical School, and received his postgraduate training at SloanKettering Hospital in New York City. He retired in 1988 after a 35-year career specializing in cancer treatment. Survivors include his wife, Page; two daughters; three sons; two stepdaughters; three grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. Walter A. Jones, December 15, 2006. (Marshall, Gun Club, wrestling, track) He earned a degree in chemical engineering from Penn State University. Survivors include his wife, Sonja; five daughters; two sons; 11 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

11 great-grandchildren. Peter G. Sykora, September 2, 2006. (Marshall, football, Band, Concert Orchestra, swimming) Survivors include three daughters, a son, a stepdaughter, a stepson, and 10 grandchildren. Robert Z. Torrance, May 5, 2007. (Main, Irving, Chapel Choir) A graduate of Penn State University, he served in the Navy as commander of the USS LST 48 during the Normandy invasion, the invasion of southern France, and at Okinawa. He retired in 1985 from agricultural sales with DuPont. Survivors include his wife of nearly 60 years, Jane G. Smedley Torrance; two daughters; a son; four grandchildren; and a great-grandson.

MERCERSBURG MAGAZINE WINTER 2007 –2008

’40

’43

Robert D. Mussina, May 10, 2007. (Irving, Rauchrunde, Chapel

John Francis King Sr., July 4, 2007. (Marshall, Chapel Choir, swim-

Choir, Glee Club) He graduated from Lehigh University with a

ming) He served as a signalman in the Navy in the Atlantic, and

degree in business administration. During World War II, he flew

later earned a bachelor’s degree from Dickinson College and a law

26 missions over Japan with the 20th Air Force as a navigator, for

degree from Georgetown University. He worked for Anderson, Coe

which he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. He

& King as a Baltimore medical malpractice defense lawyer.

founded Mussina Placement Inc. and National Personnel Associ-

Survivors include his wife, Linda; a son and two daughters; and

ates, an association of 130 recruiting agencies in the United

six grandchildren.

States. He was a trailblazer in the temporary employment field with the opening of Kelly Girl Services in Erie in 1952. He was pre-

’44

ceded in death by his wife, Carolyn Fischer; survivors include a son and a daughter.

Daniel B. Enion, July 30, 2006. (Marshall)

’41

William M. Story, December 11, 2006. (South Cottage, Marshall, choir, Glee Club, El Circulo Español, tennis, football, wrestling) He

Paul F. Cover, January 29, 2007. (Main, Marshall, News Board, Glee

attended Yale University and graduated from Hobart College. A

Club, choir, Blue and White Melodians, Les Copains, swimming) He

Navy veteran of World War II, he was a retired general contractor

graduated from Dartmouth College and received a master’s from

who taught history, journalism, mathematics, and science for

the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration in 1948. He

several years at a junior-high school in Tampa, Florida. He is

served in the U.S. Army from 1943–46, spending three years in

survived by his wife, Stella; two daughters; and two grandchildren.

India with the Signal Intelligence Service. Paul retired as president and board chairman of the United Products Co. in 1988. He was

’45

preceded in death by his wife, Betty Battenfeld Cover, in 1984. Survivors include his wife, Ruth; a son and daughter; three step-

Donald E. Withers, March 20, 2007. (Keil, Irving, Caducean Club, The

daughters; and five grandchildren.

Fifteen, Football Band) He was a graduate of Duke University and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. During

’42 David M. Blumberg, February 26, 2007. (Main, Irving, Stamp Club,

World War II, he was a lieutenant J.G. in the U.S. Navy. He maintained a family practice of medicine for 40 years. Survivors include his wife, June; a daughter and two sons; and eight grandchildren.

Camera Club, Chemistry Club, Gun Club, tennis, track) He graduated from Lafayette College after serving in the Army Air Corps in

’46

World War II. At his retirement, he was president of Princess Royal Knitting Mills and Wedgewood Knitting Mills in Reading. He was

Thomas A. Baldwin, February 22, 2007. (South Cottage, Irving treas-

preceded in death by a daughter. Survivors include his wife,

urer, Senate, Les Copains, News Board, football, baseball) Tom grad-

Shirley; two children; seven grandchildren, including Peter

uated from the University of Bridgeport and the Wharton School

Watkins ’97; and a great-grandchild.

of Finance. A World War II veteran, he served in the Berlin Airlift and the Korean War. He spent most of his career in sales manage-

Charles N. Flanagan, May 8, 2007. (Marshall, swimming)

ment and executive positions with the Bridgeport Brass Company. He was preceded in death by his wife, Grayce Deviney, in 2001; he

Edward LeRoy McIntosh, December 9, 2006. (’Eighty-eight,

remarried, and is survived by his wife, RoseAnne Borchetta. Other

Marshall, Stony Batter, track, Press Club, KARUX Board) Survivors

survivors include two daughters, a son, two brothers (including

include a brother, Rob ’42, and a nephew, Mac ’70.

Harry ’43), two grandchildren, 18 step-grandchildren, three greatgrandchildren, five step-great-grandchildren, and many nieces and nephews. Edward S. McAlevy, April 11, 2007. (South Cottage, Marshall, swimming, track) He was active in the oil industry in Oil City, Pennsylvania. Survivors include his wife, Kathryn, and two daughters.

MERCERSBURG MAGAZINE WINTER 2007 –2008

’48

’57

Frank A. Ledgerwood, April 30, 2007. (South Cottage, Irving,

H.M. “Monty” Davis, June 1, 2007. (Irving, Chapel Choir, soccer, The

Concert Band, Blue and White Melodians, Chapel Choir, swim-

Fifteen, Stony Batter)

ming, baseball) He graduated from Rollins College with a bachelor’s degree in physics, and earned a master’s at the Colorado

’64

School of Mines. His career included stops at the U.S. Navy Underwater Sound Laboratory in Connecticut, the U.S. Navy Mine Defense Laboratory in Florida, and the U.S. Navy Electronics Laboratory in California.

John W. Bowman, May 7, 2007. (Keil, Marshall, Laticlavii, Chemistry Club, Electronics Club, Engineering Club, KARUX, News Board, Press Club, choir, track) He earned a degree in metallurgical engineering from Lehigh University, and was employed by Car Tech as a metal-

’49 William L. Adams, June 21, 2007. (Marshall, Les Copains) He served in the Air Force during the Korean War. He was predeceased by his brothers, Robert ’44 and Glen ’53. Survivors

lurgist in the research lab for 28 years until his retirement. John was a former member of the Alumni Council. Survivors include his wife, Karen; son, Jeffrey ’94; daughter, Laura ’96; two stepsons; and three grandchildren.

include his wife of 53 years, Patricia Witwer Adams; two

’72

daughters and two sons; and three grandchildren.

Stephen T. Records, May 29, 2006. (Marshall, Lit, Explorers Club, Ski

’52

Group, Film Club)

George W. Feltyberger, December 6, 2006. (Marshall, News, Press Club, Gun Club, track) George had lived in Sarasota, Florida, since 1959. He graduated from the General Motors

Former faculty/staff/friends

Institute in Michigan and Bethany College in West Virginia, and was the proprietor of G. W. Marine Engineering. Survivors in-

Harold S. Cook, assistant business manager (1950–1987),

clude his wife, Charlotte Cooper; four daughters; six grandchil-

June 27, 2007

dren; and a great-grandson. John F. Crossen, faculty (2004–2006), September 12, 2006

’53 Glen T. Adams, October 8, 2001.

and grandmother of Jesse Zimmerman ’96, May 7, 2007

’54 Maurice S. Fox, June 23, 2007. (track)

’55 Richard W. Gordon, April 19, 2007. (Marshall, El Circulo Español, basketball) Richard attended the University of Michigan for two years before obtaining a bachelor’s degree from the University of Delaware. He was a U.S. Army veteran, worked for E. I. DuPont Company in Wilmington for more than 30 years, and was human resources manager at the time of his retirement. He was also president of the Delaware SPCA for 11 years. Survivors include two daughters and a son.

Kathryn W. Zimmerman, mother of Jane E. Zimmerman-Ruffin ’75 and Board of Regents past-president William B. Zimmerman ’67,