Milton Magazine, Fall 2007 by Milton Academy

Milton Magazine Milton Academy Communications Ofﬁce Milton, Massachusetts 02186 Change Service Requested

Non-Proﬁt Organization U.S. Postage PAID Boston, MA Permit No. 58423

Milton Magazine

Fall 2007

The City This issue of Milton Magazine is devoted to alumni stimulated and inspired in their life’s work by cities: cities as drivers of ideas, needs, challenges, opinions, styles or reﬂections.

Milton_cover_07.indd 1

10/24/07 5:02:54 PM

Contents

New Media Artist, Mark Tribe ’85, Stages Work in Three Major U.S. Cities

Features: The City Front Cover: Did Centre Street change, recently? Or did Straus Library move to Fifth Avenue? Photographic collage by Greg White Back Cover: Illustration by Jenny Lee ’07

3 Great Expectations Dan Tangherlini ’85 plotted the impact of expectations when he studied macroeconomics. Now, the power of expectations helps him explain how Washington, D.C. has changed, where it’s headed, and why. Cathleen Everett

6 Music in The Second City Behind the piano, sparking the creativity, is the head of Second City’s music program, Mike Descoteaux ’98. Erin Hoodlet

8 New Orleans: Choosing Responsibility and Optimism David Mushatt’s (’78) commitment to New Orleans now involves more risk and opportunity, more courage, than ever. Cathleen Everett

11 At the End of the Ambulance Ride In Philadelphia, many ambulances bring their patients to the Pennsylvania Hospital where Zachary Meisel ’89 helps patients who arrive get the care they need, as quickly as possible. Cathleen Everett

Milton_cover_07.indd 2

14 Architectural Solutions that Change the Human Landscape Anne Torney ’83, principal and director of housing at WRT/Solomon E.T.C., approaches design as a continuum, embracing the full scale, from buildings to neighborhoods. Erin Hoodlet

17 Urban Landscapes In her landscape design, Nina Brown ’67 balances the excitement of city living with access to the great outdoors. Erin Hoodlet

20 San Francisco Living Rudy Reyes ’90 finds what he needs in the city. Rod Skinner ’72

22 Writing Center for the Greater Capital Region Lori Cullen ’87 founded an organization that pairs children with the Times Union to build skills and enthusiasm in Schenectady. Erin Hoodlet

24 A Brand-New City John B. Hynes III ’76 is a mega-city developer guiding the creation of New Songdo City.

his summer, Mark Tribe ’85 —artist and curator—combined his interests in art, technology and politics to stage the second and third installments of a yearlong endeavor called The Port Huron Project. Mark is an assistant professor of Modern Culture and Media Studies at Brown University, where he teaches courses on digital art, curating, open-source culture, radical media and surveillance. His recent project is named for the Port Huron Statement, a historic document drafted by Tom Hayden for the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1962. The project is a series of three performance and media events that reenact protest speeches from the New Left movements of the 1960s and ’70s. Each event takes place at the site of the original speech, where a performer delivers the speech to an audience of invited guests and passersby. Videos, audio recordings and photographs of these performances are then presented in various venues and distributed online and on DVD as open-source media.

In this renowned oration, Potter offers a critique of our government’s use of the rhetoric of freedom to justify war, and he calls for citizens of the United States to create a massive social movement in which communities collectively build a “democratic and humane society in which Vietnams are unthinkable.”

The first event in the series, Port Huron Project 1: Until the Last Gun Is Silent, took place on September 16, 2006, and was based on a speech given by Coretta Scott King at a peace march in Central Park in 1968, three weeks after her husband’s assassination. The speech— based on notes found in the late Dr. King’s pockets—addresses the war in Vietnam, domestic poverty, and the power of women to effect social change. Mark and his production team recently staged the second and third installments. Port Huron Project 2: The Problem Is Civil Obedience took place on July 14 in the northwest corner of the Boston Common. This event was based on a speech originally delivered at an anti-war rally in 1971, by Howard Zinn, a wellknown author and activist. In it, Zinn argues for the necessity of civil disobedience to protest the war in Vietnam and calls on Congress to impeach the president and vice president of the United States for the “high crime” of waging war on the people of Southeast Asia. In Zinn’s words, “Those who have the power decide the meaning of the words that we use. And so

we’re taught that if one person kills another person, that is murder, but if a government kills a hundred thousand persons, that is patriotism.” Part three took place July 26 in Washington, D.C., on the National Mall near the Washington Monument. Port Huron Project 3: We Must Name the System presents the views of Paul Potter, who was then the director of the SDS and originally delivered this speech at the March on Washington in 1965.

Mark Tribe is the co-author of New Media Art. His work has been exhibited at the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany, the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria, and Gigantic Art Space in New York City. He has organized curatorial projects for celebrated museums across the country and in 1996 founded Rhizome.org, an online resource for new media artists. He now chairs Rhizome’s board of directors. Upon graduating from Milton, Mark earned his bachelor’s in visual art from Brown University and an M.F.A. from the University of California, San Diego. Information adapted from www.porthuronproject.net.

10/24/07 5:03:09 PM

Departments At Milton 29 The Emergence of Urban America Issues of the 21st century are not unlike those of the 19th century. Cathleen Everett

32 Chinatown Academic, service, research and social connections with Boston’s Chinatown Erin Hoodlet

37 Commencement and Prizes, 2007 41 A 90th Birthday Celebration Milton celebrates Francis D. Millett’s 90th birthday and 65 years of teaching.

44 Graduates’ Weekend, 2007 50 Robin Robertson Milton Academy Head of School, 1999–2007

52 Rick G. Hardy Interim Head of School

34 Classroom Milton Generations: A World War II Oral History Project

35 Faculty Perspective The Art March: Three Days, One City, Three Scenes Larry Pollans

36 Post Script The Risks of Being an Urban Planner Lily Pollans ’97

48 In•Sight 54 On Centre News and notes from the campus and beyond

64 Sports Medal Winners, 2007: The Priscilla Bailey Award The Robert Saltonstall Medal Greg White

65 Class Notes

Editor Cathleen Everett Associate Editor Erin Hoodlet Photography Chris Barnes, Winona Barton Ballentine, Meghan Boudreau, Michael Dwyer, Erin Hoodlet, Brody Lee, Charles Mayer, Nicki Pardo, Steve Rosenthal, Tiffany Shi ’07, JD Sloan, Martha Stewart, Greg White Design Moore & Associates Milton Magazine is published twice a year by Milton Academy. Editorial and business offices are located at Milton Academy where change-of-address notifications should be sent. As an institution committed to diversity, Milton Academy welcomes the opportunity to admit academically qualified students of any gender, race, color, handicapped status, sexual orientation, religion, national or ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs and activities generally available to its students. It does not discriminate on the basis of gender, race, color, handicapped status, sexual orientation, religion, national or ethnic origin in the administration of its educational policies, admission policies, scholarship programs, and athletic or other schooladministered activities. Printed on Recycled Paper

Cities Rapid urbanization is a global fact and speculation about consequences are wide-ranging. Confidence—about new opportunities, progress, and stimulating, diverse environments— contrasts with fears—about endemic poverty, poor health and environmental challenges. Debates about these varied prospects are similar to debates about cities that raged in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when industrialization drove urbanization in the West. According to un-habitat 2006 Annual Report, sometime in the middle of 2007 the majority of people worldwide will be living in towns or cities for the first time in history. Apart from migration because of economic reasons, however, some people are inexorably drawn to the city. This issue of Milton Magazine is devoted to alumni stimulated and inspired in their life’s work by cities: cities as drivers of ideas, needs, challenges, opinions, styles or reflections. Graduates at work in many fields connect with aspects of contemporary urban reality in the United States. Cathleen Everett

h 2

Milton Magazine

Civic Leadership Dan Tangherlini ’85 City Administrator, Washington, D.C.

xpectations: Dan Tangherlini plotted their impact when he studied macroeconomics. Now, the power of expectations helps him explain how Washington, D.C. has changed, where it’s headed, and why.

authority,’ Fenty said. ‘Dan is an ideas man. He knows the city government, and he will challenge the bureaucracy and the old ways of doing things.’” Mayor Fenty and City Administrator Tangherlini lost no time implementing their management ideas—operating the city more like a business, leaving behind the proverbial entrenched bureaucracy and setting up processes that focus relentlessly on four themes: responsibility, accountability, transparency and efficiency.

Expectations for visiting the nation’s capital city, or for living and working there, have flipped from negative to positive, which is “pretty cool,” Dan confides. That process has occurred in the last eight to 10 years at the hands of talented and committed leaders throughout the city’s civic structure. Dan has played key roles—as the chief financial officer for the Metropolitan Police Department; as the director of the District’s Department of Transportation; and, most recently, as the general manager of the Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (or METRO system). Today, Dan Tangherlini is the city administrator of Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty (37) tapped Dan last October, after Fenty had won the Democratic primary, but before the November 7 general election. According to the Washington Post, Adrian Fenty “introduced [Dan] Tangherlini as the man who would help him run the District government. After talking about their common visions, enthusiasm and energy, the two disappeared into city hall to discuss transition plans.…‘He will be involved with every agency, every decision under my direct

Dan Tangherlini ’85

Streamlining the city organization, the mayor eliminated three deputy mayors, retaining only the city administrator and deputy for planning and economic development. In this flattened structure, Dan says he is “the mayor’s air traffic controller;” all city agencies report to the mayor through Dan. With their team, the two work in a bullpen city office, in the Michael Bloomberg–New York City style, where, Dan explains, there’s light and air, a strong sense of teamwork, and constant, efficient access

to one another. BlackBerries are critical; email, Web-based discussion forums and outreach tools connect the administration with the city’s people—their concerns, their ideas, their experiences. Each week, a rotating schedule of city agencies meets with Dan and the mayor to make a formal presentation of data that responds to the agency’s projects. “There’s a great deal of discipline about deadlines,” Dan says. “These meetings allow us to ‘stress test’ issues that the officials raise, give policy direction, figure out what metrics should be used to measure outcomes, and, most importantly, provide face-toface accountability for achieving what we agreed should get done.” How does an issue become a project? “Sometimes it happens in these meetings, depending on how the insight emerges about the priority problems,” Dan says. “For example, if we are discussing the broader issue of homelessness, we might decide that tackling chronic homelessness is a priority. ‘Give me a plan in 90 days for how we should deal with chronic homelessness,’ we would charge the agency head. That’s a liberating challenge. We’ve given that agency head the message, ‘You’re my expert.’ He or she understands that ‘I’m the person’ they’re counting on to come up with a workable plan, a plan that needs to be implemented successfully.” The distinction of being “the District” complicates the urban challenges that Washington faces. One of Washington’s crippling legacies is rooted in the city’s political birth. The establishment of Washington as the nation’s capital was the result of a hard-fought and bitter compro-

Great Expectations “City planning is a constant dialogue around what goals are right, now: What is the right thing? We have to use each transaction, each opinion, each dialogue to further a shared philosophy that points to outcomes.”

Milton Magazine

Washington, D.C., City Administrator and Deputy Mayor Dan Tangherlini and Mayor Adrian Fenty

mise between the Republicans and the Federalists. Constant criticism of the site as an undeveloped, unpleasant backwater persisted over time. Washington was a hardship assignment for members of Congress; they had to go back home for good food, rest and relaxation.

black. In 1996 Dan was “on loan” from the U.S. Department of Transportation to Tony Williams. Dan was appointed deputy chief financial officer for the Metropolitan Police Department and ultimately served as chief financial officer when Tony Williams succeeded Marion Barry as mayor.

“Combine that history with the core challenges of the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, and it was easy for any of the ‘feds’ to get a cheap shot off. Having us as a national model of what’s wrong was more useful than a model of what’s right. People were more interested in seeing the city as a failure than as a success,” Dan says.

The sheer visibility of the District—the U.S. capital city—is perhaps the most underappreciated challenge. Every media group and every nation of the world has an outpost here; anything that happens is seen, recorded, replayed. In contrast, before Katrina, only readers of The TimesPicayune knew the dimensions of New Orleans’ problems. The Washington Post alone, apart from the thousands of other media sources, has a huge international readership that follows what goes on in Washington. The media visibility exacerbates the realities here.

Many of the city’s recent problems, Dan believes, are the problems of divestiture. As Congress divested of the politics of the District, it divested of committing time, effort and money on the life of the city. “It was my good fortune to work with Tony Williams in the mid-’90s,” Dan says, the District’s chief financial officer, who brought the city budget back into the

Milton Magazine

Generating and managing resources, the juggernaut for all U.S. cities, are challenges complicated by the District-federal relationship. In 1995, with a fiscal crisis

looming at the close of an era of mismanagement, the federal government appointed a financial control board. The agreement struck at that time held the federal government responsible for the District’s pension liability and Medicare costs but the District responsible for all the “broken things,” as Dan describes them, and civic leaders have only limited home rule to execute solutions. In 2001, after four years of balanced budgets, the District regained budgetary control, but Congress must still approve the District’s budget and all local legislation (“a number of federal elected officials frequently use the District as an opportunity for grandstanding,” Dan adds). “There are plenty of myths out there about federal funding for the District,” says Dan. District residents pay local taxes as well as federal taxes; they now have a congressional representative, but do not have a vote. Much of the property is exempt from property taxes, since it is federally owned,

and yet the city must support national rituals, celebrations, political activism of all kinds. Washington is “bi-modally distributed in terms of education and economic capacity; it’s like two cities,” Dan explains. “Our budget relies on the very top income residents of the city. Still, it is the nation’s capital; there can be nothing but the best. “Milton helped me appreciate the complexity of the city,” Dan reflects. “Boston represented two things: the book stores, coffee shops, college atmosphere of Cambridge; and then politics. Milton is less about politics than about daring to be true. What do you believe in? You get this amazing education at just the right time. You get important skills, too, and power, and the question: How are you going to use those things to make a difference? To be an idealist is to be frustrated often. Among my Milton friends I see a widespread sense of dissatisfaction, because they see that things could be so much better. What are we missing? It seems so simple.

“It was important to be so challenged. All around us was an intense level of expectation. Milton is what you create—what students and faculty create, together. Sort of through constant repetition you internalize the sense that there’s something great happening here; then you begin to make it so. “There’s a sense of accomplishment here in Washington now. It’s the team idea: one success, then two successes, and then, it’s a streak. As I learned from Jaime Lerner, former mayor of Curitiba and governor of Paraná in Brazil, an urban planner and political innovator, ‘When you’re poor, you have the freedom to experiment.’ Regarding change in a city, Jaime said, ‘You have to start before you finish planning.’ “City planning is a constant dialogue around what goals are right, now: What is the right thing? We have to use each transaction, each opinion, each dialogue to further a shared philosophy that points to outcomes. We are about to take back responsibility and jurisdiction for the schools, with the city’s energy, and drive to

meet expectations. We’re developing ideas for what that will mean in terms of tactical plans and legislation. The District’s plan for education reform is taking on the fiscal and operating weaknesses, getting broad strategic analysis and review—and reaching out to the community: with meetings throughout the District (earlier in the year, such meetings helped the Fenty administration develop priorities), interactive Web forums, and invitations to school staff for their input. “It’s impossible to be here for a while and not fall in love with this city,” Dan says. “A massive transformation has happened in Washington over the last nine years. It’s all about the e-factor: expectations.” Cathleen Everett

Dan Tangherlini holds a B.A. and M.P.P. from the University of Chicago. In addition, he holds an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Milton Magazine

Theatre Arts Mike Descoteaux ’98 Head of the Music Program, The Second City

Music in The Second City T

he house lights go down and the music goes up. The audience becomes quiet. The actors in the wings plan to make things up as they go along, and the director couldn’t be happier. This is a typical production at Chicago’s worldrenowned improvisational comedy mecca, The Second City—the training and performance center that is alma mater to hundreds of comedic greats. Behind the piano, sparking the creativity, is the head of Second City’s music program, Mike Descoteaux ’98. His role is a hybrid. He sings, writes music, and plays a host of instruments, but won’t call himself a musician. “If I were a musician,” he laughs, “I’d have to practice a lot more.” As a teacher, a director and a collaborator, he says, “spreading the gospel of improv is the best part of what I do.”

neous creation and speedy reactions. Mike explains, “Using improvisation we can respond to things that are happening right now—to what’s going on in the headlines.” Successful improvisers have a sharp intellect and know exactly what they’re satirizing, what’s fresh and up-to-the-minute. At the same time, they can’t take themselves, or their subjects, too seriously. Mike studied theatre, music composition and voice at Northwestern University, and spent much of his senior year working professionally. He traveled the country with Child’s Play Touring Theater and shortly after that signed on with Second City, recruiting and training music directors and presenting improvisation workshops worldwide.

The Second City was founded in Chicago in 1959, its name a self-mocking nod to the idea of New York as the country’s first city and Chicago as the nation’s underdog, the second city. “This organization is aligned with the city politically and socially,” Mike says. “Chicago is a sophisticated, worldly place, but it also has the laid-back feel of the Midwest. It’s casual and open, but with smart, metropolitan ideas and a keen knowledge of what’s going on in the world.” Keeping up with current events and popular culture is fundamental to improvisational comedy, which relies on sponta-

Milton Magazine

Mike Descoteaux ’98

“We conduct workshops with four-yearolds, autistic children, CEOs from major corporations,” Mike smiles, “and the workshops aren’t that different. Basic improv skills are essential for our globalized world where we’re all connected, and where many jobs can easily be outsourced. You need to be able to offer skills that no one else can. In that context, the ability to communicate effectively, to think outside the box, and to say yes to others’ ideas keeps you in the front of your field. [Improv] has become a transferable and valuable skill.” Mike and other Second City staffers do residencies in schools, since many schools can’t afford full-time, in-house art, music or theatre teachers. “Working with teachers in all kinds of curricula is so gratifying. The mandatory testing brought on by the No Child Left Behind Act has forced teachers to teach to the tests—cramming numbers and facts without much attention on the learning process. We can’t just be learning facts—we have to be flexible. We have to have imaginations. Our work on improv facilitates all of that.” Last February, Mike and Erica Elam, a fellow Second City collaborator, spent a week at Milton teaching master classes, conducting improv “jams” with students, and connecting with faculty members. Active in the performing arts during his Milton years, Mike credits Milton’s faculty with giving him carte blanche to explore his interests and talents. “Milton was all about the process,” Mike says. “It wasn’t about

‘What box can I put you in to make you succeed career-wise?’ For my senior project I wrote and produced a musical called The Fundamental Skip, and it was amazing how [the School] facilitated it. [The department] made the theatre available, Debbie [Simon] directed it, the orchestra played the music, we had a recording session with Mr. Whalen on bass, and Dar [Anastas] hung the lights. The School bent over backward to make it happen. Milton primed me for this field—it wasn’t a stretch for me.” The improv community has grown exponentially over the last 15 years, but it is still relatively new. The field is growing and affecting the way television shows, sitcoms, films and other performances are created. A typical Broadway musical takes six years to stage—from the time it’s written, work-shopped, and finally performed. An improvised musical, Mike explains, can be in front of an audience within six

weeks. “The goal is to get a younger, more vibrant audience into the theatre, and you can’t do that if you’re talking about something outdated. We want to respond to what’s going on now, creating a musical with a vibrant, breathing, socially conscious audience in the seats.” Mega-Mega Land, an original Second City musical revue, is a recent satirical treatment of “big box” stores and their effect on the economy and different social groups. The show was what Mike describes as scripted improv. “People think that ‘scripted’ and ‘improvised’ are contradictory terms, but when you’re at your desk writing, the moment those words come out of your pen, that’s improvised. What we do is kill the filter. We kill the ability to erase. If there’s a mistake, we commit to it and turn it into a gift. Often that becomes the best part of the show.”

As part of his work at Second City, Mike writes about two songs per day, which is enough to create a musical a week. Outside his full-time work, he writes music, directs shows and performs with Baby Wants Candy, an award-winning improv music group. Chosen by the Johnny Mercer Foundation and the American Music Theater Project as one of the top 12 upand-coming songwriters in the country, Mike recently spent a week collaborating with some of the country’s best young artists and professionals. This work is his career, he says, but it’s also his passion and guiding philosophy. “Improv has so many applications—not just in business or entertainment, but in how to live your life. Great improvisers listen, accept, agree, help. Therefore, they’re not only the funniest people you know, they’re some of the best people you know.” Erin Hoodlet

Mike Descoteaux with a cast of Second City players

Milton Magazine

Medicine David Mushatt ’78 Chief of Infectious Diseases, Tulane University Medical Center

New Orleans: Choosing Responsibility and Optimism “F

or the first two years, I really didn’t like New Orleans; it felt like a banana republic,” said David Mushatt, about coming to the city in 1989 as a fellow in infectious diseases at Tulane. Founder of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke was campaigning, after all; he ultimately won a seat in the Louisiana state legislature. The city grew on David, however—its European, old-world feeling, its Cajuns and Creoles and old jazz. He married, had a family, and “if you stay here long enough,” he alleges, “it grows on you like Spanish moss and you can’t leave.” David’s commitment to the city now involves more risk and opportunity, more courage, than ever. The post-Katrina health care environment in New Orleans is chaotic and fluid; the future is unfocused. A researcher and clinician, David is the chief investigator for clinical trials testing different strategies for managing long-term treatment of HIV/AIDS. His patients are coming back to the city in disproportionate numbers. Most are poor; some had never left their own neighborhoods before Katrina; they are uncomfortable where they sought refuge and are steadily coming back. David’s career, with its focus on hands-on clinical care, teaching and research at an academic center, grew out of an exploratory childhood in a scientific family; David’s father tried to interest him in microbiology. “But I like infectious disease because, basically, you are a medical detective,” says David. “There are no invasive procedures. Chaos in the French Quarter after Hurricane Katrina

Milton Magazine

It’s all cognitive. You can’t rely on one test to determine a diagnosis; rather, you have to take a thorough history, perform a thorough clinical exam, find some clues, look at laboratory results and come to a conclusion.” He also found it exciting to work with people and their diseases in other cultures, and spent time during medical school both in Haiti and in Africa. “You learn how to relate to diverse people and their cultures, and at the same time hone your clinical skills in places without the typical resources to support diagnosis.” David was looking at infectious diseases fellowship programs when “the second wave of HIV was just beginning to hit. I saw plenty of HIV at the Brigham [Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston], but Tulane had just been awarded a National Institutes of Health grant to be one of 15 units in the United States conducting clinical trials on AIDS treatment. I could get involved in that research, and in tropical medicine, and follow up my fellowship with a Master of Public Health, so I came to Tulane. I’m still involved in tropical medicine, malaria research, for instance, but my focus has been AIDS research since that time.” David is involved with several studies that are looking at the efficacy of treatment over time—whether, for instance, cycling Interleukin-2, which can increase T cells, into the antiretroviral regimens will have significant clinical benefit for patients. All research investigators struggle with the ethical issues involved in clinical stud-

ies. Studies like David’s are dependent on large numbers of participants to generate scientifically solid findings. Many of David’s patients are African American. It’s important but difficult to get minority patients into clinical research, according to David. “African Americans are understandably wary of research; everyone is aware of the manipulation of black men in the Tuskegee syphilis study.” Louisiana has excellent AIDS drug-assistance programs; drugs are available to those who need them. “Adherence is the number-one problem for people who fail HIV treatments,” David says. “People who are dealing with the multiple problems of poverty need multidisciplinary support to adhere to the treatment regimens.” The best multidisciplinary team for New Orleanians with HIV was and is the clinic at New Orleans’ Charity Hospital. “It works off a Ryan White Grant, and provides many crucial ancillary services,” David says. “At my private clinic at Tulane Hospital, I refer my patients to the NO/AIDS Task Force where the staff help the patients with housing, legal help, nutrition, counseling, substance abuse issues, etc.” Charity Hospital, “basically provided all the medical care—emergency, acute and basic—for the city’s poor, and served as a training ground for generations of doctors,” as Leslie Eaton writing for the New York Times put it in a recent article connecting New Orleans’ slow recovery and the wreckage of the health care systems there. Tulane doctors trained at Charity, along with residents from other programs, Milton Magazine

David Mushatt ’78

but Louisiana State University, which ran the hospital, closed it permanently because of extensive flood damage. “Only one of the city’s seven general hospitals is operating at its pre-hurricane level; two more are partially open, and four remain closed,” according to Eaton. “The number of hospital beds in New Orleans has dropped by two-thirds,” she writes. Charity Hospital has reopened its University Hospital campus (pre-Katrina there were two campuses: the old building, which housed as many as 2,000 patients in the 1970s, and the newer University Hospital), but there are fewer beds overall and a dire shortage of psychiatric beds—some patients must be transported five to six hours to northern Louisiana for mental health treatment. Tulane University School of Medicine and its Hospital & Clinic suffered along with all the city’s medical institutions. Immediately after the storm in August 2005, the medical school relocated its operations to Houston (thanks to the largesse of Baylor and other Texas academic centers), and the main hospital was closed for over five months. According to David, the vast majority of medical staff came back—99 percent—when the hospital reopened. “However, in February 2006, the university president laid off one-third of all the medical school faculty: M.D.’s, Ph.D.’s, fully tenured professors—150 people,” he says. “Does the university have the legal right to terminate contracts in the face of

fiscal disaster? That’s a question some are asking. Staff morale is suffering; animosity is high. Since June 2006 the hospital has slowly hired back for some mission-critical positions, but the president reviews every position.” As to patients, fewer are insured. Ten percent of patients were uninsured at the Tulane hospital; now 20–30 percent are uninsured. New Orleans’ suburban hospitals are experiencing the same situation. Patients are sicker, and the few clinics that have opened up in the Mid-City are overwhelmed. Fixing the city’s health care system is crucial to New Orleans’ recovery from every point of view. According to the New York Times, “except for tourism and retailing, health care was the city’s biggest private employer, and it paid much higher wages than hotels or stores. There are 16,800 fewer medical jobs than before the storm, down 27 percent, in part because nurses and other workers are in short supply.” New Orleans is stuck in a Catch-22: attracting population is difficult if health care isn’t solid, and doctors and hospitals are reluctant to commit if patients aren’t there. Federal and state officials and civic leaders are proposing aggressive, far-sighted and optimistic plans, but reaching agreement, committing resources and implementing the ideas are distant prospects.

The destiny of the big, old Charity Hospital is a big question. David notes, “Charity and the hospitals like it across the country provide powerful learning opportunities for young doctors. They are able to see more of the natural history of numerous diseases played out, they see examples of rare medical occurrences, and they learn some of the noble aspects of caring for people: excellent training, in other words.” David is quick to acknowledge, however, that “rebuilding the Charity of the past would overtly affirm a two-tier hospital system.” While the public institutions entertain public debate about future configurations, Tulane has engaged Bain & Company to do a full-scale strategic plan. “They’re camped out on campus,” David says, “and I’m impressed with their thoroughness. They’re getting into the trenches, doing their homework, helping the hospital and medical school define direction and service, so that decisions from this point forward fit into an overarching strategic vision. “I feel that it’s my responsibility to salvage what can be salvaged, to rebuild, to make things better. It’s an incredible opportunity, and those who get involved can only make things better; we can really make a mark, at this point. There’s something good about being on the edge—if I believe in it and work at it.” CDE

Milton Magazine

Medicine Zachary Meisel ’89 Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine

At the End of the Ambulance

Ride

n ambulance—jarring pitch and relentless pulse—threads through a busy street. The scene is universally emblematic of a city. In Philadelphia, many ambulances bring their patients to the Pennsylvania Hospital, part of the University of Pennsylvania Health System, where Zachary Meisel ’89, assistant professor of

Milton Magazine

emergency medicine, helps patients who arrive get the care they need, as quickly as possible.

of individuals with certain illnesses. “One of the draws for me was that this specialty had tremendous opportunity for growth.”

Zach is interested in ambulances. He is both a clinician and a researcher, and his research has focused on the quality of care during those transitions that patients experience—for instance as they move from home, to ambulance, to hospital. You may have read one of his essays in Slate. com. His research indicates that relatively simple changes standardizing certain systems would reduce errors that may happen in ambulances; and he wants to make sure that valuable information and observations that EMTs or paramedics have gathered moves expeditiously to the decision-making team in the hospital.

Zach went to medical school at Johns Hopkins and participated there in medical situations coming out of a true crosssection of urban life. “The field is very dynamic: experience is so informative and you can make a difference quickly. I was also interested in academics and the young nature of the specialty made it ripe for new entries.

Apart from the drama that unfolds weekly on ER, what would drive someone in medical training to specialize in emergency medicine? Zach’s wife (a gynecologist) teases him by pointing to the Neilson ratings for ER: they were peaking when Zach made his choice. Not a factor, says Zach, but at that time emergency medicine was gaining widespread recognition as a bona fide specialty. “The first training directed exclusively to this field happened in the late ’60s and ’70s, but the major East Coast hospitals didn’t buy in until the ’80s and ’90s,” Zach says. The specialty is based on the idea that time-sensitive care is essential to the overall well-being

“Academic medicine runs the risk of becoming very ivory tower-esque, but I enjoyed seeing patients, being in the trenches; emergency medicine is a neat fusion and a true antidote to the ivory tower phenomenon. I’m constantly exposed to real life, and I’m afraid otherwise that I wouldn’t be able to envision how to make health care better for people. We’re the front door. “Specializing in emergency medicine means looking at the time-sensitive, acute issues that develop in many different illnesses. The variety we see is both compelling and intimidating. I am always seeing something that I’ve never seen—or at least haven’t seen recently.” The idea that emergency departments are full of people who have either waited too long to respond to their symptoms, or who are inappropriately looking for care, is more myth than reality. The majority are

Zachary Meisel ’89 12

Milton Magazine

sick and need care. “Yes, many have illnesses that could be better managed than they are—mental illness, drug and alcohol addiction, diseases associated with poverty—but the numbers that inappropriately seek emergency care are quite low.” The irony that many who need care quickly wait six to 12 hours for the completion of their emergency department visit, is not lost. “That’s a tough nut to crack,” Zach says, “and it may be harder for the practitioner than for the patient.” To a certain extent, “we are the victims of our own success,” Zach notes. The crowding in emergency departments happens partly because so many people rely on that system—the medical safety net that will reliably give patients what they need. Many of the crowding problems relate, however, to what Zach calls “throughput issues,” locating in-house beds and nursing staff. The mandate of an emergency department is to take care of everyone with medical need. The hospital, however, has “incentive issues”: hospitals like to admit insured patients. The emergency department is a hospital’s main intake source and is therefore critical to the hospital’s bottom line. The upshot is that elective orthopedic or surgical patients are always going to be more desirable for available beds, with the bottom line in mind, than a homeless man with diabetes.

Issues about absorbing the cost of uninsured patients relate to major national policy questions. People are talking about them in many forums, as evidenced by national polls and Democratic and Republican presidential campaign policy engines. The cost-of-care questions relate, as well, to Zach’s research, which is focused on fewer mistakes, increased efficiency, and reliable quality of emergency care for sick people during medical transition time, or pre-hospital care. This research grew out of Zach’s experience with a group of injury-control scientists at Johns Hopkins. They pioneered concepts in preventing injury by focusing on the weakest links in a web, or network, of factors related to an injury. Focusing on the weak links that were causal, they found that dollars spent on passive system changes (things like guard rails on roadways, air bags, required seat belts) were far more efficient in preventing injuries than dollars spent in changing practices, e.g., required drivers’ education. During the pre-hospital stage of emergency care, opportunities exist to design systems and standardize procedures that could have a major impact with respect to both communication and treatment. Zach explains, “We’re developing a program, for instance, in cooperation with other Philadelphia emergency departments, to identify in the field what sort of resources will be needed, case by case, when the patient gets to the medical center. Based on observations and a few quick questions, the EMTs can know enough to be able to assess which hospital (at that moment in time) would be best able to provide the right resources. We aim to nuance the treatment by collecting information early. This helps with overcrowding and it more efficiently connects the right medical center with each patient.”

Compiling data on what happens before a patient gets to the hospital is difficult: information from EMTs, paramedics and emergency department staff is anecdotal, retrospective, and avoids naming mistakes. “We have to use creative communication to destigmatize mistakes, to get at how important improving things is,” says Zach. In the face of how difficult it is to collect relevant data, the fact that responses from lay readers of Zach’s writing for Slate magazine have been extremely informative is ironic. EMTs, paramedics and others who don’t read medical specialty journals write on this topic to Zach, sharing experience and insight that may not come through formal channels. Zach has written periodically for Slate over three years. Does he see himself among the new, widely read medical writers like Atul Gawandi and Jerome Groopman, opening up the field to general readers? “There’s no question that so much medical reporting is superficial, politically driven and even wrong,” Zach says. As a history major in college he wrote his thesis on “how the polio epidemic was popularized, used, abused, and disseminated to the public.” “Medical articles often don’t say what you want them to say—things that would truly be helpful,” Zach says. “In addition, the emergency doctor is frequently the victim of problematic reporting. During meningitis scares, for instance, we get three or four times the number of people complaining of that complex of symptoms. I do look forward, in the future, to thinking about ways to bridge my true calling, which is taking care of patients, with my interest in writing, in communication.” Taking care of Philadelphia’s acutely sick patients is Zach’s primary focus. The commitment includes an awareness of the barriers to good care in our society and a willingness to direct research and collaborative action toward improving care. The crowding in emergency departments is a well-known challenge, as is the number of languages among today’s patient population. Appropriate follow-up to the emergency care, so that patients are better

able to manage their underlying chronic conditions (and perhaps avoid future emergency visits) is difficult. “You can do everything within your power to assure the best follow-up, but you can’t control what happens. You can steer the patient in the direction of the resources he needs, but he may not take the next steps. Or people can do all the right things but then not be able to stick with the plan: a specialist visit might involve three weeks of waiting, for instance. Persisting becomes even more problematic for the underinsured, or underhoused. These issues become part of the emergency physician’s decision making with regard to admitting a patient or not. If you know that his condition would be improved by a workup that included an MRI or a stress test, and that admitting him would mean he’d likely get those tests, that becomes a major consideration.” Overcoming a community perception of emergency departments as repositories of people who take advantage of the system is crucial, Zach feels. “The idea of inappropriate care is often spun as ‘people who are poor use emergency rooms because they get good free care.’ Our departments are valuable to a community; we are the safety net. As the front door to care, we have a great opportunity to identify people at risk and to bring diverse resources to bear so that their ability to negotiate life improves, and that those with lifetime diseases don’t become even more complicated problems to the system later.” Lack of resources to accomplish that effectively, lack of a longterm view to a better plan, is—as always— the elephant in the room. CDE

Starting next July, Zach will be a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at Penn— taking a short-term break from heavy clinical duties to shore up some of his skills, the better to pursue the questions that interest him.

Milton Magazine

Architecture Anne Torney ’83 Principal and Director of Housing, WRT/Solomon E.T.C.

Architectural solutions that change the human landscape

nne Torney ’83, principal and director of housing at WRT/Solomon E.T.C., met the company’s founder, Daniel Solomon, when she enrolled in his urban design class at the University of California, Berkeley. Having earned her undergraduate degree in architecture at Princeton, Anne was interested in the way that design “combined theory with drawing and had the potential for a real humanistic scope.” Beyond architecture, she was compelled by the idea that design involved so much more than form and aesthetics—that it could be a tool for economic and social change, for individuals and for entire neighborhoods. Daniel Solomon is a founder of ‘new urbanism,’ an architectural and design movement that promotes walkable, transit-oriented, mixed-income and mixed-use communities as an alternative to sprawl. Motivated and inspired by Solomon’s work, Anne joined his firm which, in 2002, merged with Wallace Roberts and Todd, a Philadelphia-based, multi-disciplinary

Milton Magazine

Anne Torney, architectural director of housing at WRT/Solomon E.T.C., Berkeley, California

firm that shares Solomon E.T.C.’s strong urbanistic and environmental focus. The firm approaches design as a continuum, embracing the full scale, from buildings to neighborhoods. Many of their clients are non-profit developers, providing much-needed housing for low-income families, for the working poor, and for San Francisco’s homeless. “We use design as a tool for social equity,” Anne says, “creating homes and neighborhoods that are economically and environmentally healthy. There is nothing like the sense of pride and respect people get from living in a welldesigned, well cared for home.” Anne’s projects span the West Coast, from Seattle to South Central Los Angeles, and include high-end and mixed-use projects. However, affordable housing in the San Francisco Bay Area is the heart of her work. One of Anne’s current projects is a supportive housing development for formerly homeless senior citizens. She explains that the supportive housing model is based on “the realization that it’s

more humane and more economically sensible to provide permanent housing with on-site social services, which allows the residents to stabilize their lives and stay housed, rather than to provide temporary housing that the homeless cycle through continuously.” The buildings are designed to blend with the area they’re built for—in this case a traditional, Victorian San Francisco neighborhood.

often better designed and better maintained than many market-rate buildings. They see that these buildings are contextual, beautiful, something that they would be proud to have in their neighborhood. Good design is an incredibly powerful tool for social and economic integration. When you walk by on the street, you shouldn’t be able to tell what’s affordable housing and what isn’t.

Anne’s team starts every affordable housing project with thoughtful and focused community outreach, giving local residents confidence in the project and alleviating apprehensions about their new neighbors. “Community resistance to affordable housing is always a challenge,” she explains. “Project opponents that we call NIMBYs (not in my back yard) typically express their fear of lower-income neighbors as objections to density or insufficient parking, so as to not sound politically incorrect. To address this fear head-on, we take the neighbors on a tour of San Francisco’s affordable housing, which is

“We recently took a van full of project opponents from San Francisco’s North Beach, which is an affluent area, to an affordable housing project in the Tenderloin, a very rough neighborhood. When they got out of the van, they literally had to step over a man passed out on the sidewalk. But when they looked through the lobby of the new housing, they saw two young girls skipping rope in a sunny courtyard. They finally ‘got it,’ that these children need a stable, safe and dignified place to grow up. That completely changed their tune. They started asking questions like, ‘Will the kids have a safe route to walk Milton Magazine

Vermont Village Plaza, South Central Los Angeles, CA. This project is the competition-winning mixed-use prototype for a part of South Central Los Angeles ravaged by years of disinvestment and by the civil unrest of 1992. It provides subsidized ownership townhouses, retail, community facilities and controlled open space. It provides comfortable pedestrian environments along Vermont Avenue and internally, while simultaneously accommodating very high Los Angeles parking needs without resorting to an expensive concrete parking podium. Winner of the 1999 HUD Secretary’s Award for Excellence, Platinum Award.

from the bus stop?’ They went from opponents of having affordable housing in their neighborhood to concerned supporters.”

ship housing.” The designers believe that the economic and physical integration of the community are key to its revitalization.

Part of Anne’s work is creating new buildings; another equally important part is repairing existing neighborhoods with the same objectives in mind. One such project is Hunter’s View, redevelopment of 22 acres of public housing near the city’s Candlestick Park. The perfunctory concrete apartment buildings, constructed in the 1940s for war workers, resemble army barracks and are completely isolated from the network of streets, public stairs and Victorians of the surrounding San Francisco urban fabric. “[Hunters View] has a high crime rate and it’s a nightmare to raise children there. We’re reconfiguring the neighborhood to be connected, walkable and safe and increasing the density to create a mix of public housing and owner-

“People think of design as aesthetics, but it’s much more than that,” Anne explains. “It’s solving problems. We figure out how to break isolation and design public spaces of the buildings and neighborhoods to actively support community. For instance, would a formerly homeless resident feel comfortable leaving his or her room to sit in the garden with other residents? From the laundry room, can they casually check out what activities are going on in the community room and not feel self-conscious about joining in? How can we locate and design a new park at Hunters View so that it will be inviting to everyone in San Francisco, regardless of income or background?” Anne’s work combines these objectives with attention to sustainability, energy efficiency and environmentally safe materials, creating a healthy area for all residents.

Milton Magazine

An unexpected requirement of Anne’s otherwise design-driven work, she says, is reading people, learning what they are about and what they need. She credits her father and former Milton faculty member, Johnston Torney ’37, with instilling in her a sense of social justice: “My dad reached out to everyone. He was as warm and kind to the janitors as he was to the headmaster. I grew up privileged, but I didn’t realize it until I left Milton. He helped me to know that everyone deserves fair treatment and an equal shot. Most cities are composed of a mix of people and economic situations. We have to learn to be humble, to not presume anything. In urban areas the range of issues is so vast, and the problems are so complex, that you really have to listen.” Anne listens and her work clearly responds, creating safe communities and beautiful homes for over 2,500 West Coast families in the last 20 years. EEH

Architecture Nina Brown ’67 Landscape Architect, Brown, Richardson & Rowe, Inc.

f you have recently biked along Memorial Drive in Cambridge, or taken the ferry to Spectacle Island in Boston Harbor, or boarded the “T” at the Charles Street/Massachusetts General Hospital station, you already know the sophisticated designs of Brown, Richardson and Rowe (BR&R), Inc. Injecting beauty into the cities and towns of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Hampshire, the firm is responsible for creating some of the green space that, as Nina Brown ’67 says, “balances the excitement of city living with access to the great outdoors.” One of the firm’s two founders, Nina grew up in Milton near several hundred acres of unused farmland; she feared the day the land would be developed. As a college student, Nina visited many of Boston’s public schools and recalls, “I was appalled by the city’s school yards. They were asphalt and

nothing else. I wanted to do something to improve [these] public spaces.” Along with partners Clarissa Rowe and Alison Richardson, Nina’s business has been urban landscape architecture and land reclamation for over 25 years. “I like thinking about how green space contributes to the economic development of a neighborhood and to the rehabilitation and overall health of a city,” Nina says. “The best part of our work is that we get to turn parking lots and dumps into parks.” A recent example is Spectacle Island. The 105-acre island in Boston Harbor was once a horse-rendering plant and a dump. Now part of the 34-island national recreation area, only a 20-minute boat ride from South Boston, the site is a quiet, green refuge from Boston’s lively downtown.

While her firm’s designs for Spectacle Island and Memorial Drive are aesthetic and recreational, sustainability and thoughtful transportation planning are often essential objectives. “Part of the challenge of cities is balancing the needs of pedestrians, bicyclists and motorists so that they can coexist peacefully. People want to be able to walk and bike to work.” Harmonizing the travel of all types of commuters is an important challenge in the firm’s upcoming Providence project. BR&R just won a national competition to design eight acres of Providence, Rhode Island’s downtown river park system. The new land along the river became available when the city decided to move Route 195 out of the downtown area. “Transportation projects are often ways to make big changes in cities, to repair mistakes and to open up space,” Nina

Urban Landscapes Milton Magazine

Nina Brown ’67 at her design ﬁrm, Brown, Richardson and Rowe, in Boston

explains. “By moving the highway, Providence is gaining many choice plots of developable land and is able to reestablish old streets leading to the river that were discontinued when 195 was built. Now we can improve Providence as a walking city. We looked at the potential for new shaded sidewalks…and the opportunity to create tree-lined parkways for pleasure driving and biking along the river. Rhode Island School of Design is near the park, so there’s a great interest in modernism. There is also a well-loved Beaux Arts architectural tradition in Providence. We’re trying to find the right stylistic balance between old and new.” A cardinal tenet for the firm’s work is embracing the character of the neighborhood. The community itself is a primary source of inspiration. In meetings with neighbors and activists, Nina shares drawings and gathers feedback. For instance, the 41 acres forming Bremen Street and Memorial Parks—a recently completed buffer between Logan Airport and East Boston neighborhoods—reflect the area’s maritime history. “The father of the clipper ship lived and built his ships in East Boston,” Nina explains, “so in the park there’s now an eight-foot-high head of

Milton Magazine

Donald McKay!” The thematic focus on ocean navigation led to large granite waves framing the park entryways and a buttonactivated spray pool, which parkgoers can fill for model boat races. In addition to functional and ornamental details, community members want safety and economic sustainability. A new venture in Roxbury will incorporate a youth and family center, a rain garden, play equipment, retail and housing next to the Jackson Square MBTA Station—all able to be LEED certified. Local teenagers are participating in the design review. “[The adolescents] told us that a 13-year-old girl had been murdered there and they explained where they do and don’t feel safe,” Nina says. “Part of the issue is that there are vacant lots with no lights. At night, no one is around. We’re trying to change the way the area is used so it won’t be dangerous.” One boy told designers that he and his friends didn’t want any major chain stores introduced. “They want small stores that people in their neighborhood could rent for their businesses,” Nina adds. Beyond her business day, Nina serves on the board of the Trustees of Reservations, which has recently affiliated with the Boston Natural Areas Network in an effort

to establish a Boston presence. She also sits on the board of the Arboretum Park Conservancy, with which she has helped to create a pedestrian connection between the city’s Forest Hills “T” station on the Orange Line and the Arnold Arboretum, allowing for mass transit access to the nature preserve. “This whole urban wild initiative is very exciting—every undeveloped parcel in Boston has been mapped. Many acres of open space in the city are still not protected and are opportunities for the future. Sustainable design and reducing the heat island effect—resulting from parking lots and roads—have become popular topics as of late, increasing interest in the work we do.” Understating her focus and impact in numerous New England cities, Nina adds with a smile, “In some ways, all that means is planting as many shade trees as possible.” EEH

Nina lives in Brookline Village with her husband, Henry Warren ’68, and her two sons, Joe and Charlie.

Charles Mayer

Steve Rosenthal

Shipyard Park, Charlestown Navy Yard, Boston, Masschusetts, for the Boston Redevelopment Authority, 1990. The park preserves water-dependent uses and artifacts of Boston’s maritime history.

Spectacle Island, Boston Harbor, Massachusetts, for the Central Artery Tunnel Project, with Century/Weston & Sampson, JV, 2000. Tunnel ﬁll was transformed into a planting environment.

100 Cambridge Street, Boston, Massachusetts, for MassDevelopment, with Elkus/Manfredi Architects, 2004. The fountain screens a public plaza from adjacent vents.

Charles Street / MGH “T” Station, Boston, Massachusetts, for MBTA, with Elkus Manfredi and HDR, JV, 2005. Designed safe barrier-free access to station and platforms.

Charles Mayer

Rendering by Neoscape

Chris Barnes

Boarding House Park, National Historical Park, Lowell, Massachusetts. The park commemorates the mill girls. The performance pavilion won a Federal Design Achievement Award in 1995.

Manchester Riverfront Park System, Amoskeag Millyard, Manchester, New Hampshire, 1986. Transformation of Amoskeag Millyard into Gateway Park, William Loeb Park, Arms Park Promenade, and Merrimack River Park. Milton Magazine

Urban Lifestyle Rudy Reyes ’90 Regulatory Policy Lawyer, Verizon, Inc.

San Francisco Living Rudy Reyes ’90 ﬁnds what he needs in the city

is friend and classmate, Adam Wolff ’90, lived in San Francisco and loved it. That must have been enough for Rudy Reyes ’90. His move there after law school, in 1998, was also his first view of San Francisco. The last nine years have repaid him for that leap of faith, over and over again.

Brody Lee

For one thing, life in San Francisco reconnected Rudy with “an old joy in [his] life, singing.” As “a scholarship kid from Texas” entering in Class II, Rudy found Milton a big culture shock. “I had never really been away from home,” he says. During those early disorienting weeks, Rudy found his way to Scott Tucker and the Chamber Singers, auditioned, and made the group. That year the Chamber Singers toured Africa, and singing for Rudy became an enduring passion. He carried that passion to Harvard, where he sang baritone for the Collegium Musicum under Jim Marvin, eventually serving as secretary of the group in his sophomore year and president in his junior and senior years. Also interested in choral conducting, Rudy then returned to Milton for a year, as a teaching intern, thanks to a DeWitt Wallace grant. He taught under the mentorship of Scott Tucker. (Scott, says Rudy, “was truly inspirational, one of the brightest spots in my life.” The two remain close to this day.) At the outset of law school the next year, Rudy told himself he didn’t have time for singing and dropped it.

Milton Magazine

But that changed when Rudy joined Verizon, where he now serves as west region assistant general counsel. Verizon strongly encourages employees to find balance in their lives, so Rudy joined the San Francisco City Chorus, one of the country’s preeminent community choruses. Today, Rudy serves on the board and also sings for Vox Delecti, a select chamber group within the Chorus. Vox Delecti performs some of what Rudy characterizes as the more challenging, technical stuff: Monteverdi, Palestrina, Bach motets, modern, more atonal works. Last year’s concert was entitled “Motets to Madrigals,” this year’s “Romancing the Romantics.” This fall the City Chorus will perform Mendelssohn’s Elijah.

border of what real estate agents are wont to call transitional neighborhoods, but there is a strong effort in Potrero to resist the oncoming, wholesale gentrification that term implies. “There are real efforts to make this a more mixed neighborhood. Here we all try to understand the challenges and reach out. Planners are looking at ways to maintain project development that helps people grow out of their poverty. It’s never us versus them.” Right now Rudy and Brody are very involved in the traffic-calming project to stop the speeding down the four-block stretch where their house is. They have made it an issue of safety, of community, one that the city is considering making a part of its larger Potrero plan.

Singing is important, but Rudy’s connection to San Francisco extends beyond the City Chorus. “I’m always in San Francisco. I live and breathe it every day.” He and his partner, Brody Lee, live in Potrero Hill, a community that lies a little south of Candlestick Park in one of the warm microclimates of San Francisco (Rudy says that the city is really a cluster of micro climates); “it never gets foggy in my area.” According to Rudy, Potrero is a friendly, down-to-earth community. There are neighborhood groups and a neighborhood watch. The community sits on the

At the same time that Rudy is savoring his intensely urban experience, San Francisco also brings him closer to nature than he would have imagined. Many cities limit their residents to the green of city parks and the physical exertions of city blocks and athletic clubs; this is “emphatically not true for San Francisco,” says Rudy. Recently transitioning from basketball to mountain-biking, he has started a mountain-biking club with Adam Wolff. They have thoroughly explored the Bay Area. “There are so many trails. Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay Bridge to Oakland, you could never exhaust the possibilities.” San Francisco connects Rudy with the proverbial best of both worlds.

Rudy also loves his work with Verizon. Although the company has some 238,000 employees operating across the country, Rudy’s office is a small shop of five charged with “regulatory policy work, sophisticated policy advocacy. The work I do has meaning and consequence for customers and for communications in general. It’s not just lawsuits; it’s bigger. There’s flexibility; there’s range. I’ve even had to recall some of my college economics courses.” Equally appealing, as big as the work is, Rudy’s office is quite collegial. “There’s a family-style office dynamic,” he says. “It’s the best job I have ever had.” The more he describes his life in San Francisco, the more it seems that he has been able to re-create some of what he describes as the special chemistry that happens at Milton—in the communities of City Chorus, Potrero Hill, and Verizon. Even the city/open space balance of the Bay Area echoes, in some measure, the leafy suburban and urban mix of Milton. That his old Milton friend Adam Wolff is nearby in San Francisco would seem to cinch the deal. Rod Skinner ’72

Milton Magazine

Education Lori Cullen ’87 Founder, The Writing Center for the Greater Capital Region

Writing Center

for the Greater Capital Region Tri-city children pair with Times Union to build skills and enthusiasm in Schenectady

hree years ago, Schenectady resident Lori Cullen ’87 was teaching English at the State University of New York, Albany and at the same time home schooling her son, Justin. “Children from the neighborhood would drop by the house and, out of curiosity, open Justin’s texts to see what he was up to,” Lori explains. These occasional visits stepped up in regularity; the children started making it their weekly—sometimes daily—routine to solicit help from “Justin’s mom” with their writing and grammar. Lori not only embraced the opportunity, but encouraged it to grow.

As the children’s enthusiasm for these ad hoc sessions mounted, Lori realized their interest was more than casual. She organized a field trip to the Times Union, the Capital Region’s chief newspaper. “The students were invited to a news meeting,” she says, “and the people at the Times were so impressed, they asked the children to do some writing for the paper—and they were serious.”

its partnership with the Times Union, it gives its members a taste of real-world journalism in a way that classroom lessons cannot. A mentor from the Times works with each child in the program; the boys and girls attend editors’ meetings where they’ll discuss the news of the day and brainstorm story ideas. Charged with their assignments, students return to The Writing Center to research, interview and write. The children meet with their mentors throughout the process to discuss and revise their work. In addition, a writer from the Times’ features department leads workshops once a week on topics like descriptive writing, interviewing skills and journalism ethics.

Lori founded The Writing Center for the Greater Capital Region, and since 2004 the Center has served children in grades six through 12 from Schenectady and surrounding areas. The Center not only strengthens writing skills, but through

Lori Cullen ’87 22

Milton Magazine

“The fact that their mentors [ from the Times] write for a living drives the students’ interest in the field,” Lori says. “The experience is real-world in time and in application. The children realize that professionals must revise their work many times, which helps them understand they have to do the same. They see that the Times writers apply standards to their work, and learn the importance of adhering to the same standards. “[The Center] is open to anyone, and we recruit aggressively in urban districts. I came to America from England with my family, and we lived in a disadvantaged neighborhood for a while. My writing was what singled me out in school—it’s what allowed me to leave that neighborhood. My writing led me to A Better Chance, the program that eventually led to Milton. In starting the program at The Writing Center, I wanted to reach out to children who are in challenging situations—dealing with difficult home lives or struggling in school. So often these children will gravitate towards basketball or music, but I try to let them know that they can use their words, which cost them nothing, and that those words could help change their lives.

Mentors from the Times Union work with Tri-City writers

“Many children come into The Writing Center thinking they don’t have much to say, or that their stories aren’t important. They don’t have confidence in what they’re doing. The best part of my work is watching them discover their voices and gain a sense of their own power. Even though they’re young, they’re working in a professional environment. They’re taken seriously, and in turn they take their work seriously. They become comfortable interviewing the president of a company over the phone because they’ve gained credibility through their work.”

mean to be American?” Identified in their bylines as special contributors, students answer that question in this year’s July 4 issue of the Times Union. Molly Shapiro writes about comfort food and culture; Sammie Oluyede connects her American and Kenyan roots; Allegra Cullen reconciles her biracial heritage, using the texture and “attitudes” of her hair as a metaphor.

“Youth is always represented by other people, by older voices,” Lori says. “Here, at the Center and at the Times, we’re establishing a core of young, urban writers embedded as part of the paper—as a constant voice that helps fortify a sense of diversity. These young voices are important, as important for us to hear as for them to speak.” EEH

Students enjoy writing about the things that interest them—like Earth Day, music bands, their city’s lack of skate parks, and “kids and money.” A recent project addressed what it means to be American. As Lori explains, many of the students at the Center are from immigrant families. In a discussion about culture, the children talked about what they think it means to be Jamaican or African or Haitian in America. One finally asked, “Then what does it

Milton Magazine

Real Estate Development John Hynes ’76 President & CEO, Gale International, LLC

A Brand-New City J

ohn B. Hynes III ’76 is a mega-city developer; he is guiding the creation of New Songdo City—“a brand-new city, built from the ground up, in the perfect setting.” As populations around the globe migrate to urban centers, as Asian countries increase their impact on the global economy, as commerce continues to stimulate global roots, the feasibility of master planning brand-new cities, mega-cities, is real. John, as CEO and managing partner of the real estate development and investment firm Gale International, is well along the path of developing a new city at the “Gateway to Northeast Asia,” as Songdo’s Web site proclaims. New Songdo City, now known as the Songdo International Business District (IBD), has been called the “Hong Kong of the 21st century” and “the Venice of Northeast Asia” by media outlets around the globe. The project partners, guided by Gale International’s mission to put people first in innovative community developments, describe in detail a “fully integrated, synergistic, mixed-use environment” master-

planned city to meet the needs of the people who work and live there. …As true visionary thinkers we are committed to utilizing the latest ideas, resources and technological advancements to achieve settings of the future, today.” “The progress of the project is moving at a speed that is unimaginable in the West,” says John. “By the end of this year, nearly $10 billion worth of development will be under way, including the Northeast Asia Trade Tower, which will be Songdo’s signature building and upon completion will be the tallest building in Korea; the Convention Center; hotels; several commercial skyscrapers; the International School; Central Park; the start of over ten million square feet of retail; the Jack Nicklaus Golf Club Korea; and several residential projects. The infrastructure implemented by the government of Korea includes a spectacular 7.4-mile bridge that will connect Songdo to Incheon International Airport, a new highway connecting Songdo to Seoul, and a new subway line. The pieces to this vast puzzle are now really coming together.

ground up. Our goals might seem lofty, but I really think they are attainable—to build one of the greenest, most sustainable, most ubiquitous cities in the world, with an unmatched quality of life. It is really important for us to have as partners the “best in class” for every component. The International School is a great example—with Milton Academy as a partner, International School Services providing the curriculum, an advisory board comprised of some of the world’s leading educators, and private advisory services from researchers based at Harvard University, the International School will set the standard for college preparatory schools not only in Asia, but around the globe. Songdo truly values quality of life above bricks and mortar.” From the Songdo Web site, http://www. songdo.com, we draw a profile of this ambitious venture, now in its fifth year of implementation and, according to Gale International, right on track.

“It is awe-inspiring to know that we are doing something that has never really been done before—designing, developing and building an entire city from the

Milton Magazine

New Songdo City Size • 1,376-acre (built on reclaimed land “about the size of midtown Manhattan”) • 500,000 people

Location • South Korea, 40 miles southwest of Seoul

Cost • $25 billion

Timeline • Joint venture agreement: July 2001 • Completion date: 2014 • So far: Many Phase I projects under way including an international preparatory school, Convention Center, hotels, Central Park, Northeast Asia Trade Tower and several other commercial skyscrapers.

Rationale • Designed and planned as an international business district—a financial and logistics hub “The South Korean Ministry of Trade and Finance expects the GDP of Northeast Asia—a region that includes northern China, eastern Russia, the Koreas, and Japan—to account for 30 percent of global GDP by 2020. The development team hopes to create a premier location for multinational firms to headquarter their northeast Asian operations.”

Milton Magazine

• The city will be a ‘Free Economic Zone,’ with tax incentives, low-interest loans, and friendly permitting processes. • Korea: —Fourth-largest economy in Asia —Eleventh-largest economy in the world —Center of trade: United States, Europe, Asia

The Master Plan • “A city in perfect balance” • Collects ideas from all the cities of the world • 50 million square feet of office space; 30 million square feet of residential space, 10 million square feet of retail, 5 million square feet of hotel space and 10 million square feet of green space • Residential Life: —More than 9,000 new “homes” (apartments, condominiums) —Easy access for every resident to schools, health care, cultural activities, athletic venues • One of the first international real-estate joint ventures in the history of South Korea • Partners —Gale International: real estate developer working on plans in Korea, China, Boston, New York and California —POSCO E&C: POSCO Engineering and Construction Company, subsidiary of POSCO Steel —City of Incheon, South Korea

Structural Highlights • 65-story Northeast Asia Trade Tower —first landmark building in the commercial hub • Convention Center • Central Park • Incheon Second Airport Bridge (completion planned for 2009) linking Songdo to Incheon International Airport • Cultural Center: opera house and concert hall • Golf Course: Jack Nicklaus Golf Club Korea • Songdo International Hospital • New Songdo City International School developed in partnership with Milton Academy • Retail malls and stores, designed by Taubman Centers for international shoppers • Central Park —100+ acres —footbridges, walking paths, sculpture —seawater canal and water taxi —Songdo International Museum —Songdo Ecotarium: aquarium, fresh water and marine jabotats

Innovations • Advanced technology: All major information systems (residential, medical, business, governmental, etc.) will share data, and computers will be built into homes, streets and office

proximity to transit, environmental preservation, mixed housing type, and pedestrian-friendly design. Songdo IBD is unusual in that it is seeking LEED-ND certification for an entire city. By its very design—the result of a ground-up, master plan based on sustainability principles—Songdo will be an environmental standout not only in Asia, where many urban areas are in a state of environmental crisis, but in the world. Songdo is one of only three LEED-ND projects in Asia (two much smaller projects are in China), and one of only five outside the United States and Canada. Indeed, Songdo IBD is by far the largest project outside North America to be included in the 18-month pilot program. buildings. The city’s infrastructure will be a test bed for new technologies. A resident’s smart-card house key…can be used to get on the subway, pay a parking meter, see a movie, borrow a free public bicycle and so on. “Smart cards will be anonymous, won’t be linked to your identity, and if lost you can quickly cancel the card and reset your door locks,” according to John Kim who leads the Ucity planning. • Sustainability Principles: New Songdo City International Business District (IBD) in South Korea, being developed by New York’s Gale

International, has been accepted as a pilot project and partner by the U.S. Green Building Council for its LEED for Neighborhood Development (LEED-ND) certification, the first national standard for neighborhood design. The LEED-ND rating system for green urbanism will be a tool to help planners and developers create communities that not only protect the environment, but also address important public health issues. Songdo International Business District will play a pioneering role in helping to set this standard for sustainable urban planning and smart growth based on criteria such as density,

• A “Synergy City” New Songdo City [is] defined as an urban center where the widest range of activities would take place. While as a hub city it reaches out to attract participants from abroad, it also aims at internal self-sufficiency. This is defined as a “Synergy City.” City residents will be able to live in a variety of settings, such as garden apartments or more dense urban areas. They will be able to educate their children in local public schools or in international curriculum academies. An advanced research hospital is close by.

Milton Magazine

Visitors and residents alike will be able to engage in commerce, both international and local, and be able to attend conventions and trade shows. There will be ample shopping in department stores and local markets. The Central Park Museum and Ecotarium provide for cultural and recreational activities, along with golf, tennis and sailing.

â&#x20AC;˘ Songdo International School (NSCIS) NSCIS broke ground on March 8, 2006. It will be a 40,000-square-meter stateof-the-art private preparatory school. The curriculum will be run by International School Services (ISS), the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s leader in providing a comprehensive range of quality educational services for schools, educators, families and corporations.

Songdo is designed as an organic whole. Except for industry and agriculture, which are typically found outside of cities, it completes a picture of modern life. This stands in contrast to most newly built planned urban centers, which are constructed for more specific purposes. The variety of its use will allow Songdo to adapt over time to future economic and cultural influences and to harbor new uses which cannot be accurately predicted at the time of its creation.

Milton Academy signed an agreement with NSCIS in October 2005, forging an International School Partnership. NSCIS has also contracted advisory services from researchers based at Harvard University to further enhance the design of the program. The NSCIS completion date is estimated at June 2008.

Milton Magazine

At Milton

The Emergence of

Urban America Issues of the 21st century are not unlike those of the 19th century

“C

harity and Skills Justify It All” proclaims the headline of the New York Times article on the attitudes of today’s “richest of the rich” chief executives and entrepreneurs (New York Times, July 15, 2007). The Times’ lead article compared today’s concentration of wealth among a relatively few “titans” with the similar situation during the Gilded Age. At the end of the 19th century and during the years preceding World War I, barons of business “ushered in the industrialization of the United States.” They took risks with new technologies, speculated on growth and predicted social and economic patterns. Their domain included railroads, oil, coal, manufacturing, retail sales and finance. Today’s wealthy elite plumb the possibilities of new and different transformative technologies—personal computing and the world of the Internet. In the Times story, we hear the titans of our century declare the enormous impact and potential of their philanthropy. Roughly a century from the era of their gilded peers, their stories of remarkable and growing wealth share a backdrop: momentous social and intellectual change as well as complex social problems. The public debate today echoes the one that raged at the turn of the 19th and early 20th century. Students at Milton start reading, thinking about and discussing the age of industrialization in the United States during the third semester of the two-year course:

The United States and the Modern World. Whether we are talking, today, about the pace of scientific developments or the impact of enterprise consolidation, about global competition or the migration of peoples, whether we see cities as centers of intellectual and artistic life or of festering inequalities, we are raising issues that opinion leaders during the era of industrialization thought to be central to humanity’s destiny. Students begin by reading Edward Bellamy’s utopian novel, Looking Backward: 2000–1887, written in 1888. Bellamy was concerned about the destiny of individual freedom and the values of democracy when the overwhelming drive of industry, led by the few, had seemingly oppressed the many. Material gains seemed to go hand in hand with inequity, chaos and strife. Bellamy’s protagonist, Julian West, went to sleep in 1887 and awoke in 2000, when a new social order had taken hold. In the ideal world of 2000, injustices—poverty and hunger—and social disruption have been overcome. The economy was based on public capital; revenues were distributed equally; a college education and the right to choose a fulfilling career were available to all. Bellamy’s book represented a strand of 1880s thought: that good people have been corrupted by industrialization, and they will act to change the nature of their society.

At issue for Bellamy and for today’s thinkers is whether the accumulation of wealth in such a concentrated way is natural or right for individuals; whether it causes or exacerbates problems; and how the riches that flow from commerce and industry are best applied for the advancement of the country and the world. “Society should place an initial emphasis on abundance,” the Times quotes billionaire investor Warren Buffett, but “then should continuously strive” to redistribute the abundance more equitably. Students, according to history faculty members Carly Wade and David Ball, are somewhat skeptical of the 19th-century socialist ideas Bellamy asserts. They are equally skeptical of some of the most ardent defenders of industrial capitalism. One such defender whom they read is the late-19th-century Yale sociologist William Graham Sumner, who believed that calls for reform and resistance were a brand of ignorance. Sumner viewed the social and economic processes at work in the United States from a Darwinian perspective.1 He saw growth in the “industrial organization” as inevitable and irreversible: a package of benefits with necessary tradeoffs. The phenomenon of the industrial organization, he wrote, “controls us all because we are all in it. It creates the conditions of our existence, sets the limits of our social activity, regulates the bonds of our social relations, determines our conceptions of

Milton Magazine

Joshua Emmott, teaching The United States in the Modern World

good and evil, suggests our life-philosophy, molds our inherited political institutions and reforms the oldest and toughest customs, like marriage and property.” Cities seemed to embody both the benefits and harms of industrial capitalism. Students read Josiah Strong, a prominent Congregationalist minister from Ohio, who wrote in 1885, “The city has become a serious menace to our civilization.”2 The city had “a particular attraction for the immigrant,” Strong said, “It is the city where wealth is massed…the congestion of wealth is severest...Not only does the proportion of the poor increase with the growth of the city, but their condition becomes more wretched. Socialism not only centers in the city, but is almost confined to it…here gather foreigners and wage-workers; here skepticism and irreligion abound.” Other writers affirmed Strong’s worry about aliens—described variously as Romans [Roman Catholics], socialists, and immigrants. Adna Ferrin Weber, writing in 1889 countered Strong’s view; she asserted that enumerating the advantages of the city would take too much space, but they would include educational and artistic preeminence, a higher standard of living, cultivated associations (“cities are the center of intellect as well as wealth”).3 [City life] has brought thinkers into touch with

Milton Magazine

one another. “As the seat of political power, as the nursery of the arts and sciences, as the center of industry and commerce, the city represents the highest achievements of political, intellectual and industrial life.” Students read what reformers such as Jane Addams called the effort to “add the social function to democracy.” She opened and staffed Hull House to serve urban immigrants in Chicago acting on the theory that “the dependence of the classes on each other is reciprocal.” They read excerpts from Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, about life in the meatpacking district of Chicago in 1906 and witness the photography of Jacob Riis, who provided new visual documentation of New York’s destitute wage earners. Students read pleas expressed in letters written by black men and women trying to leave the South, seeking jobs and a taste of that freedom and equality that had been promised them. As students learn about the challenges for blacks in the industrialized age, they encounter the list of political and social demands drafted by W.E.B. Du Bois and other black activists in 1905. Du Bois, for example, called for black suffrage and civil rights and access to higher education. Some writers advocated applying controls, and others recommended resisting controls on the corporations that were rapidly consolidating and monopolizing to maximize opportunity and profit. Congress set

up the Industrial Commission (1901), to study “trusts” and to recommend legislation. Students read the Commission’s explanation of why businesses were consolidating.4 Efficiency of production and management of the labor force, standardization of quality, lowering of marketing costs, more solid financial control (particularly of credit and debt), and reduced shipping charges were among the positive outcomes the Commission names. President Theodore Roosevelt, in response to the problem of trusts, made the case to Congress in 1901 that there were good and bad trusts—that the character of business leaders affected that status.5 He argued that the United States needed to be in a dominant competitive position, globally, and that the government shouldn’t compromise that goal. Corporate transactions and accounting should be transparent and truthful. Federal supervision and regulation should be applied to those organizations doing interstate business (framers of the Constitution could not have imagined businesses that would be inadequately regulated through state action). “Great corporations,” Roosevelt argued, “exist only because they are created and safeguarded by our institutions; and it is therefore our right and our duty to see that they work in harmony with these institutions.”

David Ball ’88 and Carly Wade in class

Cities, industrialization, the growth of corporate giants forced people to rethink their understanding of what America was. At the same time, 19th-century historian Frederick Jackson Turner proposed that the defining element of America, and of Americans as distinguished from Europeans, was the experience of the American frontier. The experience of taming the wilderness shaped what was exceptional about Americans, rather than the inventiveness and drive of urbanization. Are urban areas where America reinvents itself? Or where America could reinvent itself? What do students think? This two-year course considers the United States in dynamic relationship with the world; cities figure as factors in numerous historical developments prior to this point in the course. In this section of the course, however, Milton students are looking at the growth of the industrial city, once a Western phenomenon, that has since spread around the world. “Our students are primarily from metropolitan areas,” Carly says. “For them, the notion that our country, until 1920, was more rural and agricultural than urban is challenging to their imaginations. They would need to work harder to imagine living on the plains of North Dakota than living in crowded conditions in New York. They tend to take the notion of the city for

granted. They derive their ideas from their view of their own experience: that could be shopping for the right labels in one of the world’s fashion centers or negotiating public transportation to get to an inner-city public school. The increasing diversity of our students’ backgrounds, the different worldviews they bring, markedly affects the quality of the conversation while we’re studying. It’s eye-opening.”

1. William Graham Sumner, “The Absurd Effort to Make the World Over” (1883), War and Other Essays (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1911), pp. 195–210.

“High school students start out with a certain blindness to aspects of the city, even people who are in the city all the time,” says David Ball. “It’s amazing that you can look past so many interesting things. One of the great advantages of Milton is that we’re near Boston; we have the opportunity to get people to see new things, to ask good questions. Students learn a lot, at Milton, about what they should be asking.”

4. U.S. Congress, Report of the United States Industrial Commission (Washington, D.C., 1901), 13:v–vii.

2. Josiah Strong, Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis (New York: The American Home Missionary Society, 1885), pp. 128–43. 3. Adna Ferrin Weber, The Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth Century: A Study in Statistics (New York: Macmillan, 1889), pp. 218–22, 439–42, 444–45.

5. “First Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1901,” in The Works of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926), 15:87–93.

When they begin in our classes, David and Carly explain, students are not yet capable of social or intellectual criticism of real depth, comments beyond the critiques that surround them in their families’ conversations. What Milton does, on this issue and on others throughout the curriculum, is begin to build the inclination and the ability to think critically. We ask them to read, observe, listen, think, express themselves, and, above all, question. CDE

Milton Magazine

At Milton

Chinatown Academic, service, research and social connections with Boston’s Chinatown

oston’s Chinatown has historical roots beginning in the mid- to late-1800s, when the city’s population was changing. Located adjacent to the hub’s Back Bay area, Chinatown is built on what was once ocean and beach front property. Approximately 8,000 people live in Chinatown; nearly 10,000 people, in any given weekend, spend time in this area of the city—dining or shopping, enjoying entertainment or enlarging their cultural world. Before coming to Milton, history department chair Vivian WuWong worked with the Asian American Resource Workshop, located on the corner of Harrison Avenue

Milton Magazine

h and Beach Street—the heart of Boston’s Chinatown district. Founded nearly 30 years ago, the Resource Workshop gives tours of the neighborhood for school groups, tourists and other organizations, sharing the community’s history and current day experience. Vivian teaches Milton’s History of Civil Rights course and advises the Asian Society. She is a resource for all kinds of Chinatown connections for students—for their research assignments, senior projects, history term papers, urban experiences or even a taste of home.

Students in Vivian’s History of Civil Rights course go to Chinatown to experience an urban, ethnic community dealing with today’s civil rights concerns. Students devote two months to identifying and researching a contemporary civil rights issue. After an extensive literature search, students often call Mayor Menino or Governor Patrick’s office to identify some of the key players—political leaders, activists, social service agencies—at work on a given issue. Students ask these leaders what changes they are trying to make; how successful they have been; and what hopes they have for the future.

Students connect with the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center and the Chinese Progressive Association. Historically, Chinatown has not been well represented politically. That has changed in recent years with the election of Sam Yoon to the Boston City Council. Students approach issues such as political inequality, anti-Asian violence and housing disparities as focal points for their research.

h Many students develop independent study projects around this area of the city. Tiffany Shi ’07 created a photojournalistic documentary of the life of Boston’s Chinatown district. Her senior project was to understand the role, socially and culturally, that Chinatown plays in the Greater Boston area for Chinese and non-Chinese Americans alike. She spoke with business owners, community leaders and residents. Her photographs chronicle the streets, structures, restaurants, grocery stores, schools, churches and medicine shops that define a culture and shape many lives. Ross Bloom, Jess Yu and Kathy Han, all Class of 2006, focused their senior project on the Chinese Progressive Association’s work in Chinatown. They interviewed community members, gained an appreciation for the importance of oral history, and learned what it means to craft a community story. Their finished product

was a 30-minute video titled “Activism in Chinatown,” which highlighted the Association’s community work and addressed the struggles that residents and workers face today.

h For Milton’s students from Asia—China, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand—moving from their homeland to a Massachusetts suburb can be challenging. At Asian Society meetings, international students can gather with one another and get to know American stu-

dents interested in Asian culture. Frequent trips to Chinatown provide students the opportunity to eat authentic dim sum; to buy familiar candies, snacks and music that they share with housemates; and to be surrounded by sights, sounds and smells that remind them of home. Through Milton’s Asian Society, Prudence Tsang ’98 initiated a tutoring program nearly 10 years ago that is popular and still growing. Students help elderly Asian immigrants in Chinatown and Quincy— which has a growing Asian population— who are preparing to take their United States Immigration Test. These men and women enroll in English classes to better prepare themselves for the test. However, the waiting time to take the test—and even to enroll in the English classes—is often as long as two years. Milton students fill the gap: they help the immigrants to practice English in a collegial, non-threatening setting, and they also foster relationships. The students learn as much from their elderly companions as the immigrants learn from their young friends. For many students, Boston’s Chinatown provides a hands-on education that is interdisciplinary, fascinating and flavorful. Building their awareness and curiosity outside of campus, students experience things pleasantly familiar and thrillingly new. EEH Photographs by Tiffany Shi ’07

Milton Magazine

Classroom Milton Generations: A World War II Oral History Project Alums from the World War II era connect with students

rts Night—an annual favorite— showcases Milton artists of all types and levels of experience in venues all over campus. This year’s audiences saw a unique event: a distillation of interviews between 33 Milton alumni and 10 students in the Advanced Oral Interpretation class. Alumni answered students’ questions with their stories about Milton during the World War II years. “Milton Generations: A World War II Oral History Project” took place on April 20, in King Theatre. David Ball of the history department (and academic dean) had been harboring the idea of an oral history project with WWIIera alums. Peter Parisi of the performing arts department was planning to teach Advanced Oral Interpretation. The two collaborated to develop the course that culminated in this performance, and that

Rob White ’48 and John Bassett ’42

Milton Magazine

drew students into experiences they could hardly have predicted in September. The alumni relations staff served as the bridge between the idea and the people, locating individuals from classes beginning with the Class of 1934 who lived close enough to be accessible, explaining the project to the alumni, and ultimately helping to drive students to the interviews. Students prepared for the course by reading Studs Terkel’s The Good War. Peter Parisi and David Ball helped students learn about the people they would interview through trips to the Milton archives; and two local alumni—Brad Richardson ’48 and Paul Robinson ’52—welcomed the task of giving practice interviews.

interviews, students transcribed the conversations and the resulting 700-page œuvre became the source for discerning what Peter labeled the “performative” sections. Students found recurring themes, like service, boy-girl relationships, and teachers, and the themes suggested the shape of the performance. A final question for the faculty members involved framing the challenge for student performers: Should they try to become the persona whose face lit up as he told his story? Peter agreed with David, who expressed his central hope that the students would attempt to express the youth, vitality and emotion of the people who lived these stories.

Interviews began with questions about the graduates’ personal experiences at Milton and moved to questions about what Milton was like during the war years. After many

Rio Cleaver ’07 and classmates take the stage in King Theatre.

Faculty Perspective The Art March: Three Days, One City, Three Scenes Larry Pollans and art history students on the streets

e are not limited to magenta slides in Art History classes anymore. Reams of images are available for us to use, but two significant limitations still exist. As Clement Greenberg would point out, the reproductions are weak facsimiles of the originals, which in some ways deny the essences of the originals. The second limitation is our own imagination. Showing my students the real thing is the only option. I help them push the doors of the classroom open and venture onto the street through what is colloquially known as the “art march”: three days in New York. We arrive by noon Friday and start our tour in Chelsea. Chelsea sits between Greenwich Village and Hell’s Kitchen on Manhattan’s West Side. Over 350 galleries squeeze in between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues and between 20th Street and 29th Street. A newish architectural façade is the signal; you know you are in front of one of these galleries. It could be a start-up operation like Lohin Geduld, where Anne Neeley (Milton art faculty) has shown her work recently, or it could be a Chelsea satellite of a seasoned international gallery, like Gagosian or Marlborough, where our own Michael Gitlitz ’87 is a partner. Upstarts or old starts, their doors are all open. They are in business. They all have elegant reception desks with attendants in front of sumptuous and expensive looking spaces. If you inquire about the price of a displayed work, a sales representative appears from some interior office to take your measure even as you grapple with the ever-escalating prices of art. Taking the measure of Chelsea is no easy matter. While Chelsea is ten years behind SoHo in terms of the gentility of the street with cafés and boutiques, it is light years ahead in terms of art marketing prowess. The harder-edged, close-to-the-Hudson

Chelsea exudes the rawness of graffiti on the street. Construction everywhere, garbage trucks from the sanitation depot on the river, auto repair shops cheek by jowl with high-brow galleries noisily swirl together. The galleries sit in the midst of this yeasty, gritty atmosphere. That may enhance sales and, of course, sales are the bottom line. With modern advertising finesse, with Ph.D. art historians authenticating provenance, with Williams College– trained curators defining postmodern and post-postmodernisms, even the seasoned gallery visitor is bedazzled by the meaning of it all, let alone seniors at Milton. With all due respect to Janson, his text doesn’t get at the smells of history. Scuffing your heels down 22nd Street and looking in on a few dozen galleries allow you to feel the pulse. It’s not a tidy affair. In fact, it’s multicultural mayhem, with one gallery exhibiting traditional landscapes and the next exhibiting a ton of sand on the floor. Saturday morning we gather at Pace/ Wildenstein on 57th Street to see how the established galleries understand the game. Students observe the polish of Midtown competing with the brashness of Chelsea. This year Pace was showing Robert Ryman with a new round of his all-white canvases. Ryman has been making these all-white canvases for 40 years, selling to all the major international museums. Those expecting or hoping to see “traditional” painting will be disappointed even in Midtown. More likely they will find allwhite or all-black paintings, paintings with no canvas not made on easels, paintings with broken crockery glued to the surface, or paintings with cow dung glued to the surface. With the Frick, the Whitney, the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan and the Modern stacked from 54th Street to 83rd Street, Manhattan really struts its

stuff with a vast repository of world art. Obviously, the museums function differently than the galleries, although the cross-over becomes increasingly confusing as living artists can now sell work directly to museums for phenomenal prices. We are all following the sale of English artist Damien Hurst’s diamond-studded platinum skull, which might go for $100 million. As my students noticed, meaning and presentation often became confused in Midtown and Chelsea. On Sunday, we finish the tour with a few hours at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. By afternoon, exhausted, we drop down into our seats on the bus a bit shellshocked. Having poured into and out of the galleries, we find the street often as interesting as the work in the galleries. Here’s the conceptual problem: The more informal the work inside, the harder it is to distinguish art from life. With this in mind, New York is our most sensational art statement. Each year, I take my students to experience this phenomenon and make of it what they will. Larry Pollans, History Department

Larry Pollans, History Department Milton Magazine

Post Script Post Script is a department that opens windows into the lives and experiences of your fellow Milton alumni. Graduates may author the pieces, or they may react to our interview questions. Opinions, memories, explorations, reactions to political or educational issues are all fair game. We believe you will find your Milton peers informative, provocative and entertaining. Please email us with your reactions and your ideas at cathy_everett@milton.edu.

The Risks of Being an Urban Planner

s a young urban planner, the hardest thing I have had to do in my career is figure out how I want to contribute to the improvement of cities. I attribute this difficulty to the fact that the residue of bad planning is everywhere, providing lesson after crystal-clear lesson on what not to do. By the time I emerged from graduate school, I was plagued by the insecurity that in my attempts to make cities better, I might inadvertently participate in the next West End. The West End of Boston, where a workingclass immigrant community thrived, was leveled in the 1950s to make room for luxury high-rises. To take advantage of federal urban renewal funding, Boston’s planners classified the neighborhood as a slum and replaced housing for over 2,000 workingclass families with 500 apartments designed for middle- and upper-class tenants. At a time when people with money were fleeing for the suburbs, the planners saw this as an opportunity to bring wealthy residents back into the city and stabilize the city’s tax rolls. Almost immediately, this project was viewed as a great loss, both for the community that had lived there, and for the city as a whole. My first professional planning job was with the town of Framingham, Massachusetts. My office was in the basement of Framingham’s slowly disintegrating Town Hall, right in the center of downtown. To my eyes, downtown Framingham was a small treasure hidden

behind the glowing, big-box pantheon of Route 9. It is home to possibly the best coffee in MetroWest, and if you haven’t eaten Brazilian cheese rolls, then you haven’t really lived. In this opinion, I was decidedly in the minority. Most of the citizens who participated in planning activities in Framingham felt that downtown was dangerous, unwelcoming, or simply ugly. As with the West End scenario, the people planning for the downtown were not its residents or merchants, but rather a cast of characters with divergent ideas of what downtown means to the town, and what it should become in the future. In the two years that I have worked as a planner, I can’t say that I have entirely figured out how to balance my ideas (downtown Framingham should be an urban utopia, a diverse metropolis with thousands of residents who take the train to work and eat Brazilian pastries) with the competing visions of the various politicians and residents (downtown is fine, don’t waste your time on it, or downtown is a disaster, get rid of the immigrants and get a Starbucks) who ultimately make the decisions. But, after two years of watching, listening, and smelling downtown Framingham, I finally began to understand some of the dynamics that make it tick—the needs of the Brazilian business community, for instance, or the constraints that keep Town Hall from solving downtown’s perennial traffic problems.

I just recently left Framingham to begin a new job. By the end of my time there, I found that my ideas were beginning to have stronger traction in my own mind and that the various people I worked with were starting to take me seriously. I have come to believe that my role as a planner in the management and improvement of cities is quite different from that of a politician or a resident. While like them, I have ideas about change, my responsibility is to understand the place broadly, including the needs of the people who are not actively involved in the planning process. Cultivating this understanding provides both professional credibility and insurance. This is what the West End planners failed to do, and as I leave Framingham I am no longer so worried that I will make the same mistakes. Lily Pollans ’97

Lily Pollans ’97 36

Milton Magazine

Commencement 2007 Sarah Sze ’87 Delivers Commencement Address This year’s graduation speaker was internationally-known sculptor and installation artist Sarah Sze ’87. Sarah creates permanent sculptures for celebrated museums, landmarks and universities around the world out of everyday materials such as cereal, paper, ladders and cotton swabs.

In her address, she implored students to listen carefully to the words of dancer/choreographer Martha Graham: “You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. It is not your business to determine how good your work is or how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. There is in you a vitality, a life force, a

quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it.” Sarah, who teaches visual arts at Columbia’s School of the Arts, was named a MacArthur “Genius” Fellow in 2003 for her work. Graduation speaker Sarah Sze ’87

Milton Academy 2007 Awards and Prizes Cum Laude Class I Lauren Elizabeth Alliegro Kevalin Athayu Priscilla MacKenzie Bok Susannah Derby Burrage Natalie Cohen Chapman Margaret Frances Cochran Michael Gregory Cohen Cecelia Socorro Woodworth Cortes Ellen Harrison Davis Alicia Anne Driscoll Jocelyn Anne Greene Lauren Baird Hawkins Emily Wheeler Kemper Eleanor Curtis Kenyon Jessica Phillips Kingsdale Sophia Scarlatti Kortchmar Ivan Kozyryev Christopher Jung Lamont Anna White LaVigne* Sojung Cerelia Lee Kate Elizabeth Lovely Brandon Tyler Nunn Sarah Keller Paige Charles David Posner Hannah Wentworth Pulit Meredith Lombard Ruhl* Steven Robert Sando Molly Serventi-Gleeson Frank Arthur Smith IV Nathaniel Mercer Stetson

* Elected to Cum Laude in 2006

Benjamin Vosburgh Stone Yelena Leonidovna Tsilker Tara Deviki Venkatraman Timothy John Walsh Amanda Pfaltzgraff Appell Warren Alyse Elizabeth Wheelock Stephanie Bryning Wye Chaeyeong Yoo

The Korean War Memorial Scholarship Award

Class II Elizabeth Regard Stark

The Head of School Award The Head of School Award is presented each year to honor and celebrate certain members of Class I for their demonstrated spirit of self-sacrifice, community concern, leadership, integrity, fairness, kindliness, and respect for others. Jocelyn Anne Greene Kate Elizabeth Lovely Trevor Wilson Prophet Steven Robert Sando John Robert Shepard Jee-Ahn Suh

The James S. Willis Memorial Award To the Headmonitors. Aditya Warrier Basheer Samantha Kuewon Yu

Principal Rick Hardy

William Bacon Lovering Award To a boy and a girl, chosen by their classmates, who have helped most by their sense of duty to perpetuate the memory of a gallant gentleman and officer. Steven Robert Sando Samantha Kuewon Yu

The Louis Andrews Memorial Scholarship Award To a student in Class II who has best fulfilled his or her potential in the areas of intelligence, self-discipline, physical ability, concern for others and integrity.

Created in 1956 in memory of Frederick Sprague Barbour ’46, Thomas Amory Hubbard ’47, George Cabot Lee, Jr. ’47, and Sherrod Emerson Skinner, Jr. ’47, who gave their lives for their country and the United Nations. Awarded to a boy or girl from a developing region to further his or her education at Milton Academy, while enriching the school by their presence. Ivan Kozyryev (Ukraine)

The Leo Maza Award Awarded to a student or students in Classes I–IV, who, in working within one of the culture or identity groups at the school, has made an outstanding contribution to the community by promoting the appreciation of that group throughout the rest of the school. Kate Elizabeth Lovely Tara Deviki Venkatraman

Danielle Theresa Leahy Milton Magazine

Robin Robertson, Head of School, and Fritz Hobbs â&#x20AC;&#x2122;65, President of the Board

Student speakers Jane Suh and Kabeer Parwani

The H. Adams Carter Prize

The George Sloan Oldberg Memorial Prize

The Wales Prize

The A.O. Smith Prize

Awarded to the student or students who, in their years at Milton, have shown a dedication to the pursuit of outdoor skills, demonstrated strong leadership, and reached high levels of personal achievement in one or more outdoor activities.

Awarded in memory of George Oldberg â&#x20AC;&#x2122;54 to members of the School who have been a unique influence in the field of music.

Awarded in honor of Donald Wales, who taught Class IV science for more than 36 years. It recognizes students in Class IV who have consistently demonstrated interest and excitement in science.

Awarded by the English Department to students who display unusual talent in expository writing.

Amanda Pfaltzgraff Appell Warren

The Science Prize

The A. Howard Abell Prize Established by Dr. and Mrs. Eric Oldberg for students deemed exceptionally proficient or talented in instrumental or vocal music or in composition. Christopher Daniel Chang Kelsey Elizabeth Hudson Nina Louise Monfredo

Harrison Otis Apthorp Music Prize Awarded in recognition of helpful activity in furthering in the school an interest and joy in music. Steven Robert Sando Jee-Ahn Suh Elizabeth Wang Whitman

Milton Magazine

Jung Yoon Choi Hanna Tonegawa Alyse Elizabeth Wheelock

Awarded to students who have demonstrated genuine enthusiasm, as well as outstanding scientific ability in physics, chemistry and biology. Priscilla MacKenzie Bok Austin Kcon Cheng Michael Gregory Cohen Anna White LaVigne Steven Robert Sando Nathaniel Mercer Stetson

Timothy James BarryHeffernan Sophia Catherine Bechek Eric John Paul Fishman Nicholas Bricout Jacob Aneesha Mehta Ethan Kelly Schneider

Tina Thanh Nguyen

The Markham And Pierpont Stackpole Prize Awarded in honor of two English teachers, father and son, to authors of unusual talent in creative writing. Sophia Scarlatti Kortchmar

The Robert Saltonstall Medal

The Dorothy J. Sullivan Award

For pre-eminence in physical efficiency and observance of the code of the true sportsman.

To senior girls who have demonstrated good sportsmanship, leadership, dedication and commitment to athletics at Milton. Through their spirit, selflessness and concern for the team, they served as an incentive and a model for others.

Michael John Matczak

Jacqueline Michelle Macdonald

The Donald Cameron Duncan Prize For Mathematics Awarded to students in Class I who have achieved excellence in the study of mathematics while demonstrating the kind of love of the subject and joy in promoting its understanding which will be the lasting legacy of Donald Duncanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s extraordinary contributions to the teaching of mathematics at Milton. Yoona Kim Ivan Kozyryev Timothy John Walsh

The Performing Arts Award Presented by the Performing Arts Department for outstanding contributions in production work, acting, speech, audiovisuals, and dance throughout his or her Milton career. Priscilla MacKenzie Bok Jessica Phillips Kingsdale Hanna Tonegawa Samantha Kuewon Yu

The Kiki Rice-Gray Prize Awarded for outstanding contributions to Milton Performing Arts throughout his or her career in both performance and production. Lindsey Miller Dono Kabeer Parwani

The Priscilla Bailey Award To a senior girl who has been a most valuable asset to Milton Academy athletics and to the Milton Academy Communityâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; an athlete who has demonstrated exceptional individual skills and teamwork, as well as true sportsmanship. Teresa Christine Curtis

Milton Magazine

The Henry Warder Carey Prize

The Benjamin Fosdick Harding Latin Prizes

To members of the First Class, who, in Public Speaking and Oral Interpretation, have shown consistent effort, thoroughness of preparation, and concern for others.

Awarded on the basis of a separate test at each prize level.

Jacob Gitlin Hentoff Lauren Elizabeth Palmer Marcos Sastre III Frank Arthur Smith IV

The Robert L. Daley Prize Created by his students of 1984 in his memory and honor, this prize in Classics is awarded to the student from Latin 4 or beyond who best exemplifies Mr. Daleyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s love of languages. Yue Pan

The Richard Lawrence Derby Memorial Award

Level 5: Elizabeth Regard Stark Nathaniel Mercer Stetson Level 4: Charles Codman Cabot Level 3: Anna Barbara Lau

The Modern Languages Prizes Awarded to those students who, in the opinion of the Department, most exhibit the qualities of academic excellence, enthusiastic participation, and support of fellow students, both in and out of class.

To an outstanding student of the Second Class in Mathematics, Astronomy, or Physics.

Lauren Baird Hawkins Lillian Dawson Kaiser Emily Wheeler Kemper Kate Elizabeth Lovely Tiffany Shi Huang Shi

Sanghoon Ouh Elizabeth Regard Stark

The Milton Academy Art Prizes

The Alfred Elliott Memorial Trophy

Awarded for imagination and technical excellence in his or her art and for independent and creative spirit of endeavor.

For self-sacrifice and devotion to the best interests of his teams, regardless of skill. Trevor Wilson Prophet

The Gorham Palfrey Faucon Prize Established in 1911 and awarded to members of Class I for demonstrated interest and outstanding achievement in history and social science. Priscilla MacKenzie Bok Susannah Derby Burrage Julia Marie Nissi Tiffany Shi Huang Shi Tara Deviki Venkatraman

Milton Magazine

Alice Mary Bator Gray Dabney Davidson Emilia Sayre Rinaldini Veronika Sykorova

A 90th Birthday Celebration F

rancis D. Millet, who has been teaching at Milton for 65 years (and is still teaching), celebrated his 90th birthday on Saturday, June 16, with more than 500 of his former students on campus during Reunion Weekend. Mr. Millet, who started the squash program at Milton in 1964 and continues as the Academy’s varsity boys’ squash coach, is also a Latin teacher and admission officer. Mr. Millet joined the faculty in 1942. He graduated from Harvard University in 1940.

He has been a teacher, advisor, coach, house parent, director of admissions, and advisor to headmasters over the course of his Milton years. Known for his wit, as well as his kindness and wisdom, Mr. Millet is revered among generations of Milton alumni and among students today.

1. The man of the hour, Mr. Frank Millet 2. FDM: A passion for orange and blue for 65 years 3. J.B. Pritzker ’82 4. Tania Lingos, Andrew Webb, FDM, Luke Harris ’03 5. Ed Fredie, headmaster from 1991 to 1999 6. Jerry Pieh, headmaster from 1973 to 1991

Milton Magazine

1. Fritz Hobbs ’65, president of the Board of Trustees

2. Former faculty member Tom Cleveland 3. Former faculty member Ed Foley Reunion Weekend 2007 Saturday, June 16

Dare to Be True Luncheon Celebrating the 90th Birthday of

Francis D. Millet Welcome Rick Hardy Interim Head of School Master of Ceremonies Fritz Hobbs ’65 President, Board of Trustees Invocation William B. Palardy, S.J. ’78 Buffet Luncheon

4. Carly Wade, member of the history department since 1983 5. A word of wisdom for incoming student Ben Hawkins ’11, joined by his father, Richard Hawkins ’74 6. Henrik Brun ’91 and his wife, Bita 7. Over 500 graduates, friends and colleagues came to the celebration 8. Interim Head of School Rick Hardy 2

Recollections J. B. Pritzker ’82 Observations Carly Wade Chair, History Department Toasts and Birthday Cake Jerry Pieh and Ed Fredie Former Headmasters Conversation Frank Millet

Milton Magazine

1. A birthday song 2. Mr. Millet receives visitors at the head table, flanked by Dr. Edward O. Brown and Charles E. Koch, two students from his first teaching job in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1941. 3. Former faculty member Chuck Duncan

4. Margo Johnson, former head of the Girls’ School

5. A man of few, yet poignant, words 6. Peter Toulmin ’45 7. Dr. Edward O. Brown and Henry Heyburn, Jr. ’75

Milton Magazine

Graduates’ Weekend 2007 44

Milton Magazine

1. Sherry ’47 and Mary Houston 2. Brad Richardson ’48

3. Tom Ruggles ’46 and the Barbershop Quartet 4. Sunshine and cotton candy: A good day 5. Class of 1987 members Lex Matthews, Chris Austen, Penny Austen and Rob Azeke 6. Steve Anderson ’57 and Kenneth Gregg ’57 7. Chris Dusseault ’87 and his son

1. Lisa Graves Wardlaw ’57 2. Gathered in Thacher for the Glee Club Sing

3. Sam Robinson ’82 4. Darrell Kirton ’87 with his children 5. Jon Rubenstein ’87 and Rob Azeke ’87 6. Interim Head of School Rick Hardy shares a laugh with members of the Class of 1987 7. Class of 1982 members Linda Mutschler, Joanne Brewster and Danelle Daley

Milton Magazine

1. Max Kempner ’47 and Ned Handy ’47

2. Diana Manchester Barrett ’82 and Karl Austen ’82 3. Peter Toulmin ’45, Sunny Toulmin and Sue Handy 4. Jim Fitzgibbons ’52 and Ned Felton ’52 5. Sandy Cochran ’57 and Toni Stackpole Russin ’57 6. Paloma Herman ’02 7. Joan Morse ’82 and Diana Manchester Barrett ’82

Milton Magazine

1. A room with a view: the Schwarz Student Center overlooking the Quad 2. Nick Kojucharov, Maile Carter, Justin Coleman, Brittany Beale, Jacquie Stoneâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;all Class of 2002 3. All aboard! Bryan Cheney, visual arts faculty member, leads the campus trolley tour 4. Miltonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s batting line-up 5. All smiles at the 10-year Reunion cocktail party 6. You never outgrow loving a funny hat

Milton Magazine

Inâ&#x20AC;˘Sight

Milton Magazine

Robin Robertson Milton Academy Head of School, 1999–2007

Dr.

Robin Robertson, Milton’s 11th head of school, who led the School since 1999, resigned as of July 1, 2007. “Robin’s accomplishments during her eight years at Milton are significant in number, scope and importance to this School,” said Franklin Hobbs, president of the board of trustees. “Robin has measurably strengthened Milton’s facilities, administrative leadership, academic and extracurricular programs, and fund raising during her tenure.”

To provide teaching spaces that would facilitate the work of the Milton faculty, Robin spearheaded the renovation of two

Milton Magazine

major classroom buildings, Warren and Wigglesworth Halls. Her vision brought the Schwarz Student Center to reality, a crucial

space that integrates the daily lives of boarding and day students and locates student activities at the heart of the campus.

Robin strengthened a fine boarding program and enriched the quality of campus life for all students. Two new dormitories, Norris and Centre Houses, opened in September 2004. She restored the historical balance of boarding and day students;

they are now roughly at parity. Under her direction, the admission office reorganized to recruit more geographically diverse students, boarding and day. Milton enrolls students in the Upper School whose academic and personal achievements are outstanding.

Robin led the successful development of a distinct Middle School centered on the intellectual and developmental needs of preadolescents. She launched an administrator-faculty committee to research and implement a K–8 division, effective in the fall of

2008, which aims to preserve the strengths of Milton’s two smaller divisions while applying best practices to the K–8 continuum, and achieve optimal effectiveness and efficiency.

Robin established a trustee-led committee to focus Milton’s science program on leadership in the field. Milton has implemented a new curriculum design, and today faculty are using the most advanced teaching strategies in interim facilities, testing the concepts that underlie the space planning for a new science building, now in a redesign phase. In other areas of program, Robin launched the planning to centralize the art program in new space;

that building is also in the design phase. In addition, she established a trustee-led study of the athletics program and recruited a new, highly experienced and widely recognized director of athletics, Bill Whitmore.

Robin enjoyed highlighting Milton’s history and traditions, getting to know and appreciate Milton’s former leaders, Herbert “Stoky” Stokinger, Margaret Johnson and Frank Millet. She traveled and celebrated with alumni from around the country and the world. Thanks to the generosity of Milton alumni, parents, and friends, fund raising thrived during Robin’s administration. The Annual Fund increased from $2 million

to over $3 million over the last decade ($3.4 million in 2006– 2007). Gifts to Milton totaled almost $104 million during that time, and the endowment has grown from $120 million in 2003 to $195 million today.

Milton Magazine

Rick G. Hardy Interim Head of School Writing Program. He is a runner, reader, and writer, and enjoys spending time with his wife, Adele Gagne, and his children, Aidan ’06 and Owen ’10. Rick’s long experience as a teacher, his leadership of the department, and his service as principal have prepared him well to lead Milton. He is immersed in the life of the School and the flow of initiatives under way at Milton today. We are fortunate to have someone who understands Milton as well as Rick does as our interim head.

Rick Hardy at graduation, 2007

hen Rick Hardy assumed the position of interim head of school on July 1, 2007, he began his 25th year of commitment to the unique culture of learning and living that distinguishes Milton Academy. Rick’s understanding of Milton’s mission has evolved through his participation in numerous roles and leadership positions since his arrival in 1983. Over the last two years, Rick was Upper School principal. He chaired the English department for five years, interrupting that tenure to serve for a year as interim principal, in 2000–2001. He and his family have lived on campus during his Milton years; Rick served as co-head of Faulkner House and as a house parent in Goodwin House. He coached softball, baseball and boys’ soccer, and was the advisor to the Milton Paper. Rick

Milton Magazine

chaired search committees that last year recruited Milton’s athletic director, Bill Whitmore, and this year our dean of students, Bridget Johnson. His participation in ad hoc committees over his many years of teaching provided direct experience with issues crucial to sustaining the quality of the educational experience at Milton: from the Schedule Review Committee and the Curriculum Committee to the New England Association of Secondary Schools and Colleges (NEASC) Committee on professional staff. He has been involved in the recent renovations of Warren and Wigglesworth Halls, as well as the integration of the Schwarz Student Center into campus life. Rick graduated magna cum laude from the University of New Hampshire and earned his master’s degree from Brown University, where he was awarded one of four annual teaching fellowships in the

A teacher at heart, Rick opened School this year with a convocation message (“A Teacher’s Welcome”) that highlighted three educators who affected his destiny, who “stirred my imagination and continue to remind me that life is about connecting with others and learning to give what has been given to you,” as he said. In closing, he connected his appreciation for those teachers with his hopes for the year ahead: “I am grateful for those three lessons: to find work that you love, to commit yourself to doing your very best, and, perhaps most importantly, to connect, to think freely, to make sense of the world we live in, and to build lasting ties with each other in the process. When we do so, we take a step toward becoming our best selves, people working together toward something bigger than ourselves. “That’s my wish for this year: that we engage fully in the freedom that school life affords us—thinking, studying, learning, and connecting—and that we fill this community with all that we are, all that we are striving to be.

Rick teaching, spring 1997

Search The Search Committee for Milton’s 12th head of school is well into the process that it will conduct over the coming year. Co-chaired by trustees Vicky Graham ’81 and Jack Reardon ’56, the committee’s first major task has been to gather information and opinions from the greater Milton community: faculty, students, parents and alumni. The ideas that emerge from those who are interested in and committed to Milton’s future will help shape the statement that outlines the ideal experience and crucial capabilities that the position requires. Milton represents a unique learning environment with superb teachers, excellent students, and high-quality scholarship; its culture and profile (K–12, metropolitan, national, and international) set it apart from its peers. Milton engages faculty and students in intense and challeng-

ing preparation for college and for life, in an environment that stimulates and supports extraordinary intellectual and personal growth. The head of school at Milton must be an educational and administrative leader with the energy, vision and intellect to further Milton’s historic pursuit of excellence across the full spectrum of School life. Six trustees, three faculty members and one administrator join Jack and Vicky on the Search Committee. Brad Bloom, Antonia Grumbach ’61, Warren McFarlan ’55, Carol Miller, Fred Sykes ’65, and Jide Zeitlin ’81 will serve from the board. From Milton, the following individuals join the Committee: Michael Lou, who has taught Chinese at Milton, is a member of the history department, and was a member of the house staff in Forbes

House for five years; Jim Ryan, who chairs the modern language department and has served during all his Milton years as a house parent in Robbins House; Laurel Starks, who is a Middle School social studies teacher, taught in the Upper School and served as head of Forbes House for eight years; and Mark Stanek, Middle School principal, who developed our strong Middle School over the last several years and is leading the development of a K–8 division.

Check the Search Site Position and candidate specification, dates of information-gathering events, summaries of progress to date, contact information for the consultant, and the opportunity for everyone who wishes to express thoughts and ideas, is available at Milton’s Web site, www.milton.edu. Choose “Head of School Search” under the “About” section.

Milton Magazine

OnCentre Boston’s Proximity Opens Doors for Milton Students Boston is known as “America’s college town,” to Milton’s great advantage. Students and faculty enjoy easy access to Boston’s academic engines, cultural institutions and entertainment. Over the course of an academic year, faculty seize opportunities that surface, such as visiting the newly-opened Institute of Contemporary Art to attend the Supervision exhibit, or attending sessions hosted by Boston University, Harvard, Tufts and MIT. In addition, Milton has long-standing connections with music institutions in the city, such as the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras and the New England Conservatory (NEC). Science faculty member Jim Kernohan teaches astronomy and cosmology to Classes II and I; as part of the curriculum, he takes students on a monthly basis to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CFA) where they hear, from professional scientists, real world applications

of concepts they discussed in the classroom. “When the Probe was first sent to Venus,” Jim says, “I took my class into the CFA and we saw photos that were taken earlier that day—they hadn’t even hit the news circuit yet.” Allan Jean-Baptiste ’08 has played the viola several times a week for years as a member of the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras (BYSO). He has been a member of Milton’s Chamber Orchestra since eighth grade, and has played on the stages of NEC’s Jordan Hall, Harvard’s Sanders Theatre and Symphony Hall. “At my age, having played at all these halls has been an amazing experience. In an upcoming concert we’ll be playing with Yo-Yo Ma, and on our international tour this summer we’re invited to play at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig [Germany]. That stage has so much history; some of the world’s most accomplished composers have played there.”

A Fourth Gold Medal for Milton Magazine Milton’s alumni and parent publication, Milton Magazine, earned its fourth gold medal this summer in the CASE Circle of Excellence Awards. Each year, these awards represent a nationwide search for excellence in college, university and independent school publications. Milton Magazine’s gold recognition is in the category of independent school magazines. 54

Milton Magazine

The Magazine’s most recent issues focused on trends in the college admission process; and on alumni, students and faculty at work in realms of public problem solving. CASE, the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, is the international association for education professionals in alumni relations, communications and development.

Students attended a talk on applied mathematics by Ingrid Daubechies (far left) with Milton math faculty member Keith Hilles-Pilant (second from left) and French exchange math teacher from the Lycee Duby in Aix-en-Provence, Fabrice Jules (far right).

Mathematics faculty member Keith Hilles-Pilant is the founder of the Clay Mathematics Research Academy, associated with the Clay Mathematics Institute in Cambridge, “dedicated to increasing and disseminating mathematical knowledge.” The Institute hosts public lectures at Harvard and MIT, and Keith regularly takes students interested in math to listen and to meet mathematicians. Last April, Ingrid Daubechies of Princeton’s mathematics department delivered a presentation on wavelets; it was the Institute’s public lecture on applied mathematics at MIT’s Stata Center.

“[Ms. Daubechies] is regarded as one of the greatest living applied mathematicians, so this is the math equivalent of meeting Mick Jagger,” Keith says, admitting to showing his age. “When we can supplement our classroom work with opportunities to hear from professionals who are so knowledgeable, so passionate about their work, our students realize things from a different point of view,” Jim says. “They learn about new research and see how people go on to be successful in their fields. That,” he laughs, “and they know I’m not lying to them.”

Alumni Authors Recently Published Works

Some Common Weaknesses Illustrated By Carson Cistulli ’98 The book cover of Carson Cistulli’s new collection of poetry, Some Common Weaknesses Illustrated, features a full-body pose of the author himself, his squash goggles thickening his dazed (or perhaps sickly or petrified) stare at us, his racket gripped in front, shot-ready. “THINK DEFENSE” his shirt reads, with the word “defense” repeated, multicolored and growing in size and strength with each utterance, as if still warming up to the idea of its own meaning. The image is its own contradiction, very funny and very disturbing at once—a daring self-exposure. Cistulli’s poems that follow are bizarrely captured by this illustration, caught somewhere between self-exposure and selfdefense. They trod the familiar spaces of grocery store aisles, post-game analysis, insurance estimates and 1-800 numbers, but they are trapped in the heads of their narrators (nearly all first-person), who are dreaming, disoriented, even disembodied, and who seem both emboldened and victimized by their willingness to follow the winding trails where language leads them. In “COMPOSITE SKETCH OF MY ILLNESS,” the narrative voice says, “I’m separate from the author. Like a moth, I have fur on my back. Like a lawyer, I’m the product of two quick scams. I can’t see beyond the poem in which I’m trapped.” In his poem “I WAS AN EXPLORER, ETC,” the narrator explores an “imagined territory,” keeping a journal “to record

events of some significance,/ or of none whatsoever.” On “Day 468—said the word ‘finger’ until it no longer made sense. Now, looking at my fingers I have no idea what they are,/ except they’re wildly useful/ for writing letters to my earliest ancestors.” Throughout this collection, we experience Cistulli’s process of dislodging language from its typical meanings and reconstructing it in unfamiliar ways; to enjoy his poetry is to surrender to this process—is, in fact, to enter his narrators’ disorientation. His inventions are often thrilling: a narrator “circumspect[s] a girl in a tight shirt”; “a bluebird land[s] on a Caesar salad without public recourse”; “Juan is close to discovering the sun’s mouth”; “the waves outside [are] like tasteless suppers.” The poems meander into strange rooms,

one “festooned with the entrails of other failed/ poems: this one about the patron saint of internet browsing,/ another one to the government official in charge of two thumbs/ up.” His poems read like lists of a consciousness’ regurgitation, like life’s etceteras detailed. The achievement of Cistulli’s poems is in how, in spite of their self-referentiality, they create real intimacy with their reader. Early on, we no longer feel like their voyeur but rather like their strange companion. Just when the poems seem too disorienting, we discover familiarity in them. His narrators’ confessions, fears, self-deprecation, silliness, bluster are approximately our own. Our own brains track erratically, even perversely. We,

too, hide behind various, numerous poses and can’t shed our own self-absorption (one narrator finds himself in a room with a mirror, which “in the midst of a deep religious anxiety” is “capable only of self-reflection”). And despite our self-absorption, we, too, long for tenderness, for substantial human connection. In “I REMEMBER WHEN THEY OPENED, ETC,” the narrator compares players and coaches to robots, programmed to win, then says, “But those are the robots I like….[R]obots are just like us,/ maybe not in how they look or talk, but that they’ve got needs, too,/ like processors that won’t freeze up/ and like dramatically wider sidewalks/ along all these city streets/ so there’s room to walk two-by-two/ with their larger robot bodies.” This intimacy we discover reminds us of the importance of re-seeing the world that we thought we knew so well. “EXCUSE MY PURE PRAYER,” the last poem in the collection, ends, “I read a book not to find its meaning, but to find my/ happiness. I’m an ascetic now, tell mom./ I write a book On Mystery. In it, I finally learned:/ it’s okay to drink Italian sodas quickly./ There are more Italian sodas on the/ horizon. What else is like that, I wonder?” In a day and age when we are quick to consume the rigid definitions of relationships fed to us by those who wield power, Cistulli tutors us in language’s malleability; a new comparison, an unexpected verb in a familiar phrase can force an entirely new perspective—and perhaps one more curious and more generous. Lisa Baker English Department

Milton Magazine

Noted Figures of Our Time Bring Salient Ideas to Milton

Heyburn Speaker, Taylor Branch, exhorts Milton students to use the lessons of the civil rights movement to create change Taylor Branch, the prize-winning historian and chronicler of the United States civil rights movement and the Martin Luther King years, told students that he wrote history by telling stories. He began thinking about race when the topic represented both the unknown and the fearsome for his family and community in Atlanta, Georgia. Questions about race were “radioactive and dangerous,” he said. He resisted thinking about them but was at the same time intrigued. The event that broke through the emotional distance he had sought to maintain occurred in May 1963, when the nation watched as police turned dogs and fire hoses on black children in Birmingham, Alabama. Children were the fulcrum of widespread and deep change, and the magnet that drew Taylor Branch to study, think, interview, and write his stories. As this year’s Henry R. Heyburn ’39 Speaker in History, Mr. Branch proposed to Milton students that the lessons from that nonviolent movement, the powerful engine for change that it became, go

Milton Magazine

beyond buses or race to citizenship today. Lessons from the movement, he argued, are vital to our future, to regaining health in our “out of joint” times. “Rather than being imprisoned in our myths,” he suggests, “I recommend study of the movement, and its success as something vital to your future because it speaks to—does not abandon— your values. The greatest miracle of all is the fact that the movement was led by people who had never experienced freedom and yet had the unconditional grace to lift an entire country toward the meaning of its true values.”

many writers were sent to jail for their writing and their points of view. My family’s idea of being a writer had a very dangerous connotation associated with it.” Ms. Danticat says that her first real exposure to writing was in hearing stories told—through oral tradition. The title Krik? Krak! comes from the phrase that would begin any story-telling in her native country: the speaker would ask “Krik?” to which the audience would respond “Krak!” and that, as she explains, “was how you knew the story was beginning.” Having attended Barnard College in New York, Ms. Danticat’s formal writing training began with her enrolling “hesitantly” in a few creative writing classes where she worked with fiction and personal narrative. While visiting Milton, Ms. Danticat worked with students in several creative writing classes and held discussions with students in Straus Library. Her recent book, Brother, I’m Dying, was published earlier this fall.

Bingham Visiting Artist, Edwidge Danticat, shares her views on the craft of writing Edwidge Danticat, award-winning author of several collections of stories and novels, visited campus on February 28 as the 2007 Bingham Visiting Artist. Ms. Danticat read two short stories from her collection entitled Krik? Krak! and answered students’ questions in the Athletic and Convocation Center. Ms. Danticat’s writing often reflects her experiences as a Haitian immigrant growing up in Brooklyn, New York. As she explained to students, “In Haiti, where my family and I were living during the dictatorship,

Marie Wilson visits campus as this year’s Margaret A. Johnson Speaker Marie Wilson, founder and president of the White House Project, visited Milton on January 31 as this year’s Margaret A. Johnson Speaker, which brings noted female leaders to campus each

year. Former president of the Ms. Foundation for Women, and now working on major education initiatives through the White House Project, Ms. Wilson has had a hand in several well-known programs that highlight the importance of women’s roles in leadership positions in our country and around the world. Ms. Wilson is the cocreator of Take Our Daughters to Work Day, which she told students “is the largest public education campaign in the history of the nation.” She also, in conjunction with Mattel in 2002, introduced President Barbie to the world. “I know you’re thinking, ‘International security and President Barbie—an interesting combination,’” she laughed, “but we have noticed the connection between pop culture and what goes into the development of leadership. It’s interesting to go into popular culture and take into account the things that people touch, watch and hear. There is a real strategy in a doll.” The White House Project, which Ms. Wilson founded in 1998, has performed innovative research and established numerous initiatives in the past nine years, highlights of which include the convening of women CEOs and executives for two national leadership summits, a conference of international women leaders, a partnership with the Girl Scouts of America to launch the Ms. President patch, and innovative research centering on influencing popular culture. Having held several ground-breaking leadership roles, Ms. Wilson is also the co-author of the critically acclaimed Mother Daughter Revolution and author of Closing the Leadership Gap: Why Women Can and Must Help Run the World.

David Lindsay-Abaire ’88 Wins the Pulitzer Prize for Drama

Artist, choreographer and dancer Samuel Pott ’94, rehearses his work with students Alumnus Samuel Pott brought his talents back to Milton in January for two weekend-long rehearsals with students in Kelli Edwards’ dance program. Sam, most recently known for his work as lead dancer with New Jersey’s American Repertory Ballet and his company, Nimbus Dance Works, is the choreographer for Bloodlines 1944, a performance that was included in Milton’s annual Winter Dance Concert in March. “[Rehearsing here] was a fantastic process— the Milton students look good and it was great to see how far they came over the course of the two weeks,” said Sam. “It’s interesting to work with high school students because they are really passionate and willing to give their all to a project.” Sam as a choreographer, both independently and with his com-

pany, has been focused on the intersection between high-level concert dance performances and the involvement of communities and audiences. Originally from New York City, Sam began his dance training at the University of California, Berkeley, and completed his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1999. Sam has performed as a lead dancer with New Jersey’s American Repertory Ballet, the Oakland Ballet, Savage Jazz Dance Company and San Francisco’s Kunst-Stoff, among others. In 2005, Sam founded Nimbus Dance Works, a company dedicated to building meaningful connections between concert dance and community. His choreography has been shown in New York City and throughout New Jersey and California. He was awarded the Coca-Cola Scholarship for Artistic Excellence by the Martha Graham Center for Contemporary Dance in 2000.

David Lindsay-Abaire, Milton Academy Class of 1988, won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for drama, for his play Rabbit Hole. The Pulitzer announcement notes that Rabbit Hole is David’s fourth play produced in New York by the Manhattan Theatre Club. In an interview several years ago with the Milton Magazine, David talked about beginning to develop his strength in playwriting at Milton. “I did a number of different kinds of writing, starting at Milton—in creative writing class, in English class. After we did a Fourth Class play, a classmate said, ‘You know, we should do a Third Class Play,…You’re the funny one; you write it.’ Not knowing any better, I did. And that’s how I became a playwright: Amy Stevens ’88 said ‘Go be one.’”

The Pulitzer Award statement chronicles David’s trajectory as a playwright beginning in 1999 with his first play produced by the Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC), Fuddy Meers. This play “has since received more than 300 productions around the country and abroad, including on London’s West End. Wonder of the World was produced at MTC after premiering at Washington, D.C.’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre, where it was nominated for a Helen Hayes Award as Outstanding New Play of the Year. Kimberly Akimbo was commissioned and premiered by South Coast Rep and received the L.A. Drama Critics Circle Award for Playwriting, three Garland Awards, and the Kesselring Prize before it opened at MTC in 2003. David is also currently working on the Broadway-bound musicals High Fidelity and Shrek. In addition to his work in theatre, David is writing the screen adaptation of the novel Inkheart by Cornelia Funke for Newline Features, as well as a screen adaptation of his Kimberly Akimbo for Dreamworks. David returned to Milton to give the address at the graduation of the Class of 2000; he has stayed close to faculty members who were part of his Milton career, and has hosted students in New York at productions of his work. David is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and the Juilliard School, as well as a proud member of New Dramatists, the Dramatists Guild and the Writers Guild of America.

Visiting Artist, Samuel Pott ’94, rehearses with Dylan Tedaldi ’09. Milton Magazine

Generation@ Teaching Technologically Intuitive Children in the Lower School Fifteen years ago, Bridget Sitkoff’s job did not exist. Advances over the last decade have since made her role as technology specialist vital. In the Lower School, Bridget helps teachers’ and students’ facility with computers and also integrates emerging programs and learning tools into the curriculum work of the School. Working directly with students in grades two through five, Bridget incorporates what the students are learning in their academic classes—social studies or science, for instance—with computer programs such as LOGO or PowerPoint™ to enhance what they’re studying and make them familiar with tools they’ll need in the Middle and Upper Schools. The ability to use computers intuitively, quickly and accurately has become a birthright for this generation of children; they have never known a world without email. With an already technology-savvy audience, Bridget has a step-up when introducing Flash animation, Internet research or digital photography. “Most of our children come in very comfortable using the Internet—they know how to get on and search for information. What we can’t forget is that they—especially the younger children—want to trust

Bridget Sitkoff 58

Milton Magazine

whatever they read. Access to the Internet is very different from access to a library. It’s a good thing that all of the information is out there, but it is also a lot more information to sift through than that in an encyclopedia set.” Bridget collaborates with Joan Eisenberg, the Lower School librarian, to teach the children how to use, rate and corroborate online sources. “We make sure we’re not teaching computer skills for their own sake,” Bridget explains. By meeting with the Lower School’s other specialists each week, teachers create lessons in drama, music, art, library and technology that enhance the main curriculum. “In the fourth grade we do a PowerPoint™ project on Ancient Egypt. The students, pointer in hand, give presentations to crowds in Thacher, working with the drama teacher learning the basics of public speaking. The academic portion is in their social studies class, the librarian is teaching them about researching their topic, so in the end they’ve learned these technical and developmental skills while learning about Egypt.” Touch-typing is on the thirdgrade agenda and, as Bridget explains, having that skill set makes a difference, since in the

Middle School students are doing all of their work on a laptop. “[When the students reach the Middle School] they’re comfortable with Word, they’ve created PowerPoint™ presentations, they’ve written and published Web sites using table-based layout, learning HTML coding. We’re careful not to teach the students, ‘This is the program language you’re going to go on to write in,’ because by the time our students are in the Upper School, or five years past that, there might be a newer language, or a newer program. Our goal is to give them the critical thinking skills they can apply, asking, ‘How is this like what I already know? How do I find out how this works?’ Even if the language changes or the program changes, the concepts they’ll use are the same. They’ll know what the possibilities are. “There are students who have a strong interest in this direction—robotics, engineering, Web design. It’s not always the children who are strong in other academic areas either. It’s a different skill set, so those who do enjoy it and have a talent for it really find a place to shine.” This is Bridget’s fourth year at Milton, where she says she has the best of both worlds: “I get to use my people skills and teach, but I can also stay current on what’s happening and what’s changing in technology and programming.” What she enjoys most about her work is the opportunity to see students using their imaginations to find their “a-ha!” moments. “I love to see the children doing open -ended things,” Bridget says. “Although skill-and-drill software has its place, the most impressive results come from [the children] using these programs creatively, as a kind of pen with a blank piece of paper.” EEH

Media Savvy: Insight and Sophistication in the Middle School Media and current communication technology deluge students and their parents with conflicting messages and harmful stereotypes. Deciphering what is important and valued in our society is difficult for our students. Sorting out accurate resources on the Internet, along with understanding how young people are targeted and influenced by marketing and advertising campaigns, is critical information for students. Dr. Catherine Steiner-Adair, a Milton parent and expert in gender stereotypes, was the keynote speaker at the Middle School Media Awareness Focus Day on April 11, 2007. Students participated in workshops aimed at helping them to think critically about the media and to develop tools to spot how the media shapes their self-identity and self-esteem. Workshop topics included brand loyalty, mascots and racism, media “spin,” body image and advertising, stereotypes, the evolution of pop culture, and bias in the news. Students spoke about highlights of the day and what they learned. Henry Green ’12 “We compared newspaper articles and stories from different sources that were on the same subject, and it was interesting how sources twist things different ways. We suspected [news sources] do that, but to have them all laid out in front of us showed us how many different ways you can pose the same thing. Facts between articles varied, some articles included details that others didn’t. Omitting details is a major way that newspapers can paint their own picture of things. Milton teaches us to use multiple sources, especially online, and to make sure the ones that we’re using are reliable.” Nick Alves ’11 “In the hip hop workshop we talked about how hip hop culture can send bad messages, messages that are derogatory toward women, for example. But

John Fitzgibbons ’87 Joins the Board of Trustees

his chair, while the mother bear is taking care of the kids, running around and making dinner.”

Dr. Catherine Steiner-Adair

it also showed us some of the good aspects; we watched two montage clips about how artists try to change their lyrics, creating more positive messages. We saw the progression of the music and images over the years. Compared to hip hop and rap in the late ’80s and early ’90s, today’s songs and videos have much more about drugs, money and violence. At the end we wrote our own raps that expressed positive messages. The workshop was really interesting because we could relate to it.” Nicole Baker Greene ’12 “Looking through magazines, we cut out ads and then categorized them. There were so many that objectified women, showing certain body parts up close, or showing women as victims in bad situations. There was one ad that had a man kidnapping a woman, but the ad was for gloves and scarves, which doesn’t even make sense.” Emma City ’13 “The speaker was very interesting and had a lot of fun facts that highlighted her message. She showed us what a Ken doll used to look like—skinny and preppy in a V-neck sweater—and what he looks like today, dressed in army fatigues with big muscles. She also showed us innocent things that have really obvious stereotypes, like the Berenstain Bear books. Little kids read those and [the books] seem so innocent, but in them the father bear is always lazy and sitting in

Anika Wasserman ’11 “There was a lot of variety in the day and in what we learned, and all of it related to our lives. [The workshops] opened our eyes to things we see everyday, but it taught us to take a deeper look and not be affected by the images that the media throws at us. So many of the images around us want us to believe that women have to be skinny and guys have to be tough and hide their emotions. People aren’t all like that in real life.” Keynote Speaker, Catherine Steiner-Adair Catherine Steiner-Adair is a clinical psychologist, school consultant, author, and teacher whose professional life is devoted to working with kids, parents and schools. Her clinical work and research in the areas of girls’ development and understanding, treating, and preventing eating disorders is internationally recognized. She has worked in the fields of education and psychology for over 25 years, and she has consulted to over 250 independent and public schools, working with directors, faculty, parents and students. Her areas of expertise also include boys’ development, the impact of culture on gender identity, social relationships, character development and leadership training, school practices, and parenting strategies. Dr. Steiner-Adair is an associate psychologist at McLean Hospital and clinical instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She has a private psychotherapy practice in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, where she works with adolescents, adults, couples and families. Source for Catherine SteinerAdair’s biographical profile: http://www.jwa.org/feminism/ _html/JWA068.htm

John B. Fitzgibbons ’87 was elected to the Milton Academy Board of Trustees in January 2007. John had been an active member of the Head of School’s Council, a group that advises the head of school in matters of institutional development and issues of importance in secondary education. He had also hosted dinners for graduates to discuss Milton’s future and direction with the head of school. The Fitzgibbons family has helped shape the modern history of the School, through leadership, volunteerism and philanthropy. John’s father, James Fitzgibbons ’52, served on the board for 20 years—10 years as board president—and now serves as trustee emeritus. The Fitzgibbons Convocation Center is named in honor of Angeleine and Harold Fitzgibbons, by their children— Ned ’40, Ann ’41 and Jim ’52 and Harry ’53. John’s brothers, Peter and Michael, graduated in the classes of 1990 and 1993 respectively.

John names the faculty, endowment and financial aid, and the physical plant as some priority interests for the School. Last June, he joined several hundred Milton alumni on campus for Reunion Weekend. He participated as a panelist in the Ruth King Theatre with Rick Hardy, interim head of school, and fellow trustee F. Warren McFarlan ’55 to discuss Milton’s strengths and opportunities with graduates from all years. In 2005, John founded Brookline Partners LLC, an investment firm with private equity holdings in energy, technology and media industries. He also serves as chairman and CEO of Integra Group, a fast-growing oilfield service company active in Russia. He is a graduate of Harvard University, where he is a member of the Committee on Student Excellence and Opportunity. John and his wife, Christine, are supporters of the Cancer Research Institute. They live in Bronxville, New York, with their four children.

John Fitzgibbons ’87 Milton Magazine

Bridget Johnson New Dean of Students

William T. Burgin ’61 Milton Academy Board of Trustees, 1999–2007

This summer, Milton welcomed Bridget Johnson as its new dean of students. A graduate of Georgetown University, Bridget comes to Milton from the Episcopal School in Alexandria, Virginia, where she worked for eight years, the last six as associate dean of admissions. “As the search committee saw for themselves and heard from many of you,” Rick Hardy said at the time of her appointment, “Ms. Johnson is energetic, well-grounded, articulate, and

“A strong young man of great integrity, firm will and strong motivation,” Cap Hall said, describing in 1961 the trustee who has flown from Taos or driven from Vermont to join us at board meetings for the last eight years. In jeans and a fleece vest, buttressed by a large coffee and his newspaper, Bill Burgin steadfastly showed his strong motivation to preserve Milton’s academic and financial strength as he pondered the initiatives the board undertook during his tenure—rebalancing the boarding and day populations; opening the Student Center and renovating Wigg and Warren Halls; building new dormitories; revamping the admission operation to attract and enroll the most talented boarding and day students.

enthusiastic about working with adolescents.” She has been very active with the National Association of Independent Schools, serving as part of a delegation for diversity to both India and South Africa, participating in the Equity and Justice Call to Action Committee, and presenting at the People of Color Conference. She also contributes to the Georgetown University Alumni Admissions Program.

When he left for Harvard in 1961, Bill’s entire education until that point had been at Milton. With generosity and focus, he has demonstrated his sense of responsibility for preserving the Milton experience that helped shape his life. When he felt it necessary, Bill asked tough and direct questions, and applied the kind of healthy skepticism that often makes a board more thorough and careful in its planning. His worldwide travels, as well as his investment focus on communications technology, have just sharpened his focus on the need for students at Milton to participate in the highest-quality and most well-rounded education as a foundation for leadership of all kinds in today’s world.

Bridget Johnson

Milton Magazine

Bill participated on the external relations, student life, academic affairs and investment committees, overseeing areas that were particularly active during the last eight years. On the investment committee, Bill has worked with a highly disciplined group that took on new and aggressive goals

Bill Burgin

for the School’s endowment. He was an active figure in the deliberations that resulted in diversifying our investments to include alternative real assets, private equity and hedge funds; and he was particularly interested in Milton’s prudent participation in international and emerging markets. Since 2003, Milton’s endowment has grown from $120 million to $195 million, and we are grateful for Bill’s attention to the work of the committee engaged in maximizing Milton’s capitalization. We will miss Bill’s point of view, and the honesty with which he shared it, his stories of world travel and life in the great outdoors. We hope he follows our work and helps Milton succeed in the future, and we would only slightly amend Mr. Hall’s statement of 46 years ago: “Bill is much-respected by the School— students, faculty [and trustees] alike.”

Christine Savini Milton Academy Administration, 1980–2007 In 1992, while teaching at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, I presented a workshop about Asian American immigration history at an independent school teachers’ conference. Sitting in the audience, unknown to me, was Christine Savini, Director of Diversity Planning at Milton Academy. After my talk, Christine complimented my presentation and asked if I would be interested in applying for a teaching position at Milton Academy. Even though I was flattered by her suggestion, I was quite happy with my current life and did not take it seriously. But those who know Christine know that she is persistent, and a few days later, she invited me to visit Milton. Two weeks later, I became the first Asian American teacher at Milton Academy. Over the years, Christine has brought many faculty of color to Milton, some who have completed long tenures at the school, some who are still with us, and some who joined us this fall. Christine came to Milton in 1980 with an M.A. in American Racial and Ethnic Studies from Boston College to serve as associate director of Publications and Public Relations for five years. When she became the director of this office, Christine edited the Milton Magazine and other publications, and began to make sure that those materials featured the people of color in the Milton community. While she worked on publications, Christine also coordinated student publications and served as faculty advisor to the Milton Measure, during which time it was awarded the Columbia Scholastic Press Association Silver Crown Award. She also taught photography electives to Middle and Lower School students.

For the past 17 years, Christine has been our director of diversity planning and this is when her heart really soared, for in this position she could make the most of her graduate training and demonstrated passion for diversity. When Christine first arrived at Milton, the attrition rate for students of color was quite high, and at the behest of admissions officer Neville Lake, she helped to form and chaired our first Cultural Diversity Committee. It was this group and its subsequent incarnations that developed the Host Family Program, Transition Program, a multicultural Assembly Program, Culturefest, the inclusion of Jewish holidays in the school calendar, and the photo exhibit in Ware Hall that honors Milton’s Girls’ School. Christine also chaired the SelfAssessment Committee for our participation in the NAIS Multicultural Assessment Plan, and secured a groundbreaking DeWitt Wallace Grant of $400,000 for Milton’s diversity initiatives in the 1990s. The grant established a five-year program for teaching interns of color, an expanded orientation program for all new students, a five-year diversity training program for the faculty, and

Connie Dodes Milton Academy Faculty, 1981– 2007 provided four students of color full scholarships to the Upper School. In addition, Christine spearheaded the establishment of Common Ground and the Leo Maza Award. She incorporated a diversity track into Seminar Day and led the effort to name the day in honor of Peter Keyes. She secured a long roster of celebrated diversity speakers at Milton from the fields of education, politics and the arts. Most recently, Christine chaired the Focus on Diversity Committee, which over the past year wrote a Definition of Diversity for Milton Academy, a Strategic Plan for the Recruitment and Retention of Faculty of Color, and a proposal for a new Bias Awareness and Diversity Training Program. What I think must be Christine’s crowning achievement is her creation and leadership of the Cultural Diversity Institute for the past 12 years, in which she brought over 600 independent school professionals from over 30 states to realize their commitment to cultural diversity. Christine instills courage and confidence, inspires and guides, while providing participants with practical skills for institutional change. Christine has indeed established Milton’s national reputation in diversity. Thank you, Christine, for dedicating the past 27 years of your life to Milton, for asking the tough questions, for helping us to recruit and retain a diverse faculty and student body, for helping us to institutionalize what we mean by diversity. You have given your heart and soul to this community and we appreciate all that you have done for us. Vivian WuWong History Department Chair

Connie has been helping students find their voices for over 25 years. She has influenced Lower School students graduating from 1990 to 2014, whether in writing or in conflict resolution. An accomplished writer herself, Connie says that writing helps her make sense of her world and sort out her thinking. She strives to enable her students to use writing the same way. Connie arrived in the Lower School in 1981 as a fourth-grade teacher, fresh from The Saturday Course, and quickly discovered her passion for helping young people become accomplished writers. She attended workshops, read books, and immersed herself in the craft of teaching writing. She became the “go to” person for new teachers, helping those with less experience further their teaching craft. Her gift is her ability to help students (and colleagues) leave an accurate accounting of their thoughts and feelings. In 1997, Connie furthered her interest in language arts as the language arts teacher for the entire sixth, and now fifth, grade. In her writing classroom, a hush of intentionality surrounds students as they focus on their pieces. In her literature class, students discuss the finer points of character development and plot, and then apply those ideas to their own literary gems. One student captures what lifelong changes Connie has wrought in the course of a year: “I notice things in books. I used to read books and not think about them after I had finished them, but now there is so much more to books than there ever was. Also, now I can connect reading and writing and see what authors do to make books so great.”

Christine Savini Milton Magazine

Patricia Smith Milton Academy Faculty, 1987–2007 she has been the Lower School voice at alumni events. We will miss her clear thinking and her commitment to elementary-aged children, but her greatest legacy is that of kindness. Connie has helped shape the Lower School community and charged those in her care to keep empathy at the core of their decision making.

Connie Dodes

Described by one of her colleagues as “the conscience of the Lower School,” Connie works with the oldest students in the Lower School to describe their thoughts, their feelings, and their visions. Connie perennially requests that her students write about a moment when they realized how fortunate they are. When six students read their essays at the Thanksgiving assembly, the community laughs, cries, and rejoices as these new voices express themselves. Connie has helped Lower School students assume the leadership roles they crave, teaching, always refocusing them on the question, “What kind of a school do you want this to be?” She has served on countless committees, and

Milton Magazine

Connie will follow her passion and do more of her own writing—keep your eye out for her byline. With her husband, Lance, she hopes to train their dog, Blossom, to be a therapeutic companion dog for older folks. She also plans to spend more time visiting their two sons, Josh and Zach, both Milton Academy graduates. We thank her and wish her well. Dottie Pitt Interim Lower School Principal

Patty Smith came to Milton Academy in September 1987, having taught for 19 years, mostly in her home state of Louisiana. In her application for the position, Patty chose apt adjectives, “reflective, authentic, and happy,” to describe herself. Having known her for seven years, I am not surprised at her clear insight into her own personality; she consistently demonstrates that insight about her students. In his book The Dancing Wu Li Masters, Gary Zukav defines a “master”: “She begins from the center and not from the fringe. She imparts an understanding of the basic principles of the art before going on to the meticulous details…a master teaches essence. When the essence is perceived, she teaches what is necessary to expand the perception. The master does not speak of gravity until the student stands in wonder at the flower petal falling to the ground. She does not speak of laws until the student, of his own, says ‘How strange!’…. In this way the master dances with her student. The master does not teach but the student learns. The master always begins at the center, at the heart of the matter.” Patty Smith is a master at the craft of teaching. So many students have connected with the essence of biology through her skill. Mindful of putting her students first, she creatively expands their perception of the natural world. Patty strives for the best way to teach the students she has, rather than the most efficient approach to cover the material. She does so with meticulous organization and sound structure. Her classroom demonstrates these attributes; she always has a well-orchestrated plan for her students. I walked into her class one day,

probably to borrow something that I was not organized enough to keep from year to year, to find Patty setting two paper clips and a strip of paper in front of each student’s chair. I gave her a quizzical look. She showed me how you could fold the paper just right so that when you pulled the loop it joined the two paper clips together. I was puzzled. She explained that the maneuver showed the catalytic activity of enzymes. For Patty, teaching a concept is more than having students read about it, talk about it, look at pictures: She wants them to feel it, hold it in their hands, have that “How strange!” moment that signals discovery. Patty has gathered countless similar experiences to help students explore biology. Patty makes teaching a healthy and fulfilling way of life. Inspired by Patty, a colleague of hers described distributing pictures and 3-D glasses in her class to allow students to see 3-D images of hemoglobin. The idea suggested how deeply Patty’s thinking affected her colleagues; providing this subtle change of perspective was emblematic of how Patty enables her students to see with fresh eyes. With her curriculum flow and an empha-

Patty Smith

Michael Bentinck-Smith Milton Academy Faculty, 1966–2007 sis on personal health and nutrition, Patty helps students learn about their own wellness, their relationship to the rest of the living world, and the complex interconnected nature of life on our planet. On the walls of Patty’s classroom, nestled between the skeleton of the horse foot, the inflated puffer fish, the image of Planet Earth from space, and another of the gorilla Koko hugging her kitten, are posters with favorite quotes: • “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”—Albert Einstein • “The Universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.” • “People love to wonder and that…is the seed of science.” • “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever does.”—Margaret Mead In addition to Patty’s mastery of teaching and her subject, Patty is a dear person who carries herself with poise and dignity. She never calls attention to herself, but when something is important to her she will dig in and make people pay attention. Milton is saying farewell to an exceptional teacher and someone at the heart of the science department. Her science colleagues will miss her. Patty has made her mark on her students, her colleagues, and the School. I know that she will relish the time to spend with her husband, Shawn, to read, to observe people and life, and to travel. We can’t wait to hear about her life beyond Centre Street.

Michael Bentinck-Smith has dedicated his life to a single institution. Hired in 1966 by Lower School principal Betty Buck, Michael was part-time woodworking teacher in the Lower School and part-time member of the maintenance staff. In June 1977, Betty wrote to Michael, “...You do a super job not only as a woodworking teacher, but as an example for all those children to follow. Your standards of achievement and behavior are the envy and delight of many of your colleagues and your reports are exceptional. We all admire the way you manage those children in a situation which could be dangerous, but thanks to the respect and self-discipline you develop, we know things are in good hands.” Michael has been that good example for 41 years. Among faculty members with the longest tenure at Milton, Michael has given his all to students, from kindergarten through to helping countless Class I students. Many of these seniors he hadn’t taught, but assisted them with senior projects—cars, small engines, welding. Michael has many skills. Michael’s impact on young children is immense. He champions their efforts and expects perseverance, excellence and camaraderie. He demands that children set high personal standards and provides the tools they need to reach their goals. Michael never lets a student give up. In his class, you are only a failure if you fail to try and then follow through. Failure to try is unacceptable, because then you have failed yourself. As one student related, “When my dad

launched his own graduate study. After years of work outside of his Milton commitment, Michael earned a master’s in education from Simmons College. The final chapter is yet to be written; in retirement, Michael will seek a publisher for his book about the lessons children learn from woodworking.

Michael Bentinck-Smith

and I were building our hockey rink, all of my dad’s nails were going in crooked. I told him it was because of three things: he did not start the nails; he was banging way too hard and way too fast. Once he did things the right way, the nails went in like magic. After I showed him the right way, he asked me where I learned that, and I said my woodworking teacher taught me. I attribute [my skills] directly to Mr. Bentinck-Smith, who has taught me to do my best, try my hardest, and help others. Thank you Mr. Bentinck-Smith.” Cooperation, collaboration and commitment are crucial to success in woodworking, and in life. Michael’s ideals, at work every day, capture the soul of the Lower School program.

The tree that Michael planted on the Junior Building playground has grown up with over a thousand children. We are privileged to have grown as his colleagues, students and friends during those years. We wish him well as he pursues his literary career, enjoys his grandchildren, and tinkers under the hood of a Model A Ford. Among the gifts Michael leaves us are his catchy sayings. “Are you ready for another fun-filled day in the Junior Building?” he would say. We thank you for your commitment, your extraordinary skill, and most of all, for your love. Dottie Pitt Interim Lower School Principal

A consummate learner, Michael obtained his bachelor’s degree while employed at Milton Academy. He was cited by wellknown education guru Jonathon Saphier as an outstanding teacher, and was featured in a documentary for young teachers. After that adventure, Michael

Michael Edgar Science Department Chair

Milton Magazine

Sports Medal Winners, 2007 The Priscilla Bailey Award The Robert Saltonstall Medal On Friday, June 8, 2007, Class I lined the platform on the quad outside Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium, with the Apthorp Chapel rising behind them. Facing their family, friends, and the backdrop of a campus they called home for years, two people in particular may have been thinking about the teammates they were leaving. Teresa Curtis and Michael Matczak shared parallel experiences. Teresa, a day student from Hingham, Massachusetts, and Michael, a boarding student from Sewell, New Jersey, excelled in sports, and point to athletics as a crucial part of the Milton whole.

Teresa Curtis Teresa Curtis played field hockey and lacrosse during her four years at Milton, starting on the varsity squads in Class III. By Class I, she captained both teams, earned the title of ISL AllStar in lacrosse, and was twice awarded Honorable Mention in

field hockey. During Milton’s “M Club” Dinner in the spring of 2007, Teresa was presented with the Priscilla Bailey Award. For Teresa, the friendships forged with teammates were paramount. “I came to Milton as a freshman,” Teresa says. “Since I was trying out for field hockey, I was at school a week early for pre-season. For this reason, the first people I met and the first friends I made were my future teammates. “I realized during my Class IV year just how amazing the team camaraderie was. The locker room decorations, the team dinners every Friday night, dress-up days at school on game days, and the constant laughter throughout the season with my teammates made my experience at Milton that much more memorable.” Teresa also credits her coaches and practices as an important ingredient in her growth as a player and as a student. “My coaches always had intense practices planned for both field hockey and lacrosse,” Teresa recalls. “These practices helped me learn the true meaning and result of hard work. From intense conditioning to focused drills, I was always pushed both physically and mentally. Practice also gave me a set schedule. There was no room for procrastination and that gave me a sense of organization, something that I always try to maintain.” Teresa is playing field hockey at Holy Cross this year.

Milton Magazine

Michael Matczak Mike Matczak finished Class I as captain of the varsity hockey team and the varsity baseball squad. Michael earned the title of ISL All-Star for both sports as well as one Honorable Mention in baseball. He was awarded the Colin F. MacDonald III Trophy and the Robert Saltonstall Medal. Like Teresa, Michael’s positive experiences as a Milton Mustang revolved around the solidarity of the team and the unique friendships formed among teammates. “Hockey has always been a passion of mine,” Michael says. “I love the speed of the game. I love the grace of the game. I love the excitement of the game. However, there is more to it than that. There is also what happens

off the ice. These are things that few people get to experience. It is being part of a team, being part of another family, that makes me love the sport so much more. “I looked forward to practice everyday. I enjoyed the camaraderie of the guys. I couldn’t wait to hear the stories that I missed from that day of classes or listen to some new jokes the ‘team clown’ had come up with. The guys on the team were the best friends I had in the world at that moment in time. I knew they were always there for me, on and off the ice.” Mike is playing hockey at Yale this year. Greg White

Class Notes

1940 Ned Handy writes, “Margaret and I are grateful for continuing good health. We’re trying to find time to write two new books (one a collaboration), but continue to be involved with the WWII memoir, published in 2004. This year, the Sandwich High School made it the summer reading assignment for all of its 1,100 students and 100 teachers, and this has generated much involvement for us.” J. Walker Stuart passed away in January. He was predeceased by his wife, Jozefa Malinowska, with whom he shared a long and happy marriage.

1943 Romi Kunhardt Lang reports she has recently moved into an attractive retirement community and is enjoying the bucolic atmosphere.

1945 Congratulations to Rod Nordblom, who was the honoree at the 13th Annual United Way Real Estate and Building Industry breakfast this past December. At the breakfast, Rod made a speech about his relationship with the United Way and received a standing ovation from the crowd of 1,000 people.

1950 Nancy Chase writes, “In late September of the past five years, I have left Hingham, Massachusetts, on a friend’s boat to cruise to Florida via the inland waterway, journey to the Bahamas to enjoy three to four

months cruising there, and then head north again via the waterway. All summer I live aboard my dad’s old Morgan and sail the coast of Maine. Life is good!” Ann Cobb is enjoying life in Cambridge, Massachusetts: “We’ve added a Bichon puppy to the mix—a great pleasure.”

1952 Sarah Garrison and her husband, Lloyd Garrison ’50, are enjoying life in Norfolk, Connecticut. Lloyd has started a monthly newspaper for the town, while Sarah is taking cello lessons and playing lots of chamber music. They have six grandchildren and another on the way. “It’s a great treat to be grandparents,” Sarah says.

1953 Elinor Lamont Hallowell writes, “Most of 2006 was devoted to getting a friend elected to Congress, the first Democrat to represent several southeastern Arizona counties in 22 years. Our reward was a trip to D.C. in early January for Gabrielle Gifford’s inauguration. Last summer, I ‘dusted off’ my singing voice (first ‘found’ at Milton under the guidance of Jean McCawley and Howard Abell), when a friend asked me to join her Boston-based chorus for a European tour. We had five concerts in France, Holland and Belgium. The most moving experience, by far, was singing at the American WWII memorial and cemetery at Omaha Beach, Normandy.”

Members of the Class of 1954 recently gathered for a mini-reunion. Front row (pictured left to right): Sally Sprout Lovett, Louise Hibbard Hays, Kadie Maclaurin Staples, Jean Wothington Childs; Back row: Dick Fremont-Smith, Larry Altman, Jim Perkins, Bill Farnham, David Ehrlich, Kitty Ohl Whitely, Cynthia Hallowell, Liz Biddle Barrett, Gussie Crocker Stewart; Not pictured: Bill Hartmann.

1954 Several members from the Class of 1954 recently gathered to celebrate a mini-reunion. The group included Sally Sprout Lovett, Louie Hibbard Hays, Kadie Maclaurin Staples, Jean Worthington Childs, Dick Fremont-Smith, Larry Altman, Jim Perkins, Bill Farnham, David Ehrlich, Kitty Ohl Whitely, Cynthia Hallowell, Liz Biddle Barrett, Gussie Crocker Stewart, and Bill Hartmann.

Peggy Law reports, “We have just reached the wonderful milestone of becoming great-grandparents. It is quite something to get used to a daughter who is a grandmother!” George Smith writes, “I’m entering my third year as President of the Friends of Manchester (MA) Trees, Inc., and my second year as a working director of the Manchester-Essex Conservation Trust. For retirement income, I’ve become a landlord by renting out the adjoining Booth

Milton alumni gathered for the 90th birthday celebration of Marion Fuller Brown, wife of the late Henry Morrill Fuller ’32. Pictured from left to right: Caleb Hodges Clark ’93, Judith Rivinus Fuller ’64, “Bay” Williams Bigelow ’65, Henry Weld Fuller ’65, Martha Fuller Clark ’60, Emily Fuller Hawkins ’69, Robert G. Fuller ’57 and (kneeling) Alexander Lafcadio Cortesi ’79. Milton Magazine

Class of 1942 (clockwise from upper left corner): David Jeffries, Peter Fuller, Ingersoll (Sandy) Cunningham, Jonathan Cole, Richard Miller, Theodore Madden, John Carey, (center) John Bassett

Class of 1947, row 1 (L to R): James Heigham, Lewis Braverman, Richard (Dick) Barbour, Christopher Grant; row 2 (L to R): Edward (Ned) Handy, Marvin Harris, Margaret Greer, Sherrill Houston; row 3 (L to R): Maximilian Kempner, Donald White; row 4 (L to R): Frederic Eustis, Hugh Campbell

Class of 1957, row 1 (L to R): Arthur Ullian, Anna Luciani, Penelope Hull, Margaret Cooley, Deborah Jaffe Yeomans, Daniel Oliver, Anne Reynolds Skinner, Antoinette Stackpole Russin, Brenda Cangiano Godwin, Lucy Gratwick, Judith Fisher Robbins; row 2 (L to R): Mary Jane Gormley, Barrett Morgan, Robert Fuller, Peter Moore, James Estabrook, James Bowditch, Helen Wilmerding, James Burnham, Lisa Wardlaw, Anne Wyatt-Brown, Ariel MacPhee MacLeod, Lucie Bauer, Patricia Potter Anderson, Anita Hayes Gratwick, Mary Urmy McGuire, Alice Luethi Ritcheson; row 3 (L to R): James Freeman, Stephen Anderson, Martha Damon Marshall, Ludlow Keeney, Keith Brodie, Robert Hubby, Philip Rand, Charles Lutz, Nile Albright, Sally Faxon Houlihan, Henry Fuller, Anne Wheeler Dexter, Benjamin Baker, Edward Hamlin, E Nicholas P Gardiner, Avis Bohlen; row 4 (L to R): Roger Hallowell, Ephron Catlin, Robert Harrison, Paul Byard, John de Neufville, Bliss Eldridge, Frank Yeomans, Duncan Neuhauser, Prentiss Higgins, Kenneth Gregg, Alexander Cochran, Moira Fuller, Henry Cook, William Driver, Gerald Flynn, Christopher Norris, Robert Freeman, Francis Blake, John Reidy â&#x20AC;&#x2122;56, Anthony Pantaleoni 66

Milton Magazine

Class of 1962, row 1 (L to R): Mary Shepard, Susan Sherk, Diana (Dina) Roberts Bray, Polly Abell Jimenez; row 2 (L to R): Pam Watson Sebastian, Nanno Rust Rose, Julie Cheever, Amy Bright Unfried; row 3 (L to R): Bob Rugo, Lee Roussel, Jim Kaplan, Charlie Wyzanski, Harley Laing

Class of 1967, row 1 (L to R): Bill Quinby, John Ballantine, Meredith Davis, Holly Cheever, Bob Armstrong; row 2 (L to R): Tucker Drummond, Wendy Lubin, Anne Pedersen, Jana Porter, Fred Albion, Mimi Drummond, Louise Chase; row 3 (L to R): Ed LeBreton, Max Bleakie, Bob Apthorp, Nora Morgenstern, Reva Seybolt, Annie Hayes, Melody Bryant, Laura Tosi, Lindsay Murphy, Chuck Hewitt, Phoebe Armstrong

Class of 1972, row 1 (L to R): Carol Hanley, PJ Hanley; row 2 (L to R): Oliver Spalding, Jeff Barnes, Richard (Dick) Guest, Betsy Pugh

Class of 1977, row 1 (L to R): Amy Gibbons Taylor, Chris West, Nick Witte, Heather Crocker Faris, Jennifer Evans Lussier, Kathy Shepard Alexander; row 2 (L to R): Grace Hornor Evans, Yoshi Belash, David Giandomenico, Rick Smith, John Young, Joe Merrill, Chris Trakas; row 3 (L to R): Chris Williams, Bill Roslansky, Eddie Miller, Sam Perry, Sara Greer Dent, Becky Greenleaf Clapp, Morris Tyler

Milton Magazine

1962 Last spring, Dina Roberts was named Director of Institutional Advancement for the Urban College of Boston. She says of her work at Urban College, “There is no greater mission to work on in Massachusetts than to help students gain the skills to move upward in our workforce and lead fulfilling, successful lives.”

1964 This past September, Steve White ’61 and his wife, Gina, traveled on a Viking River Cruise with Bill and Kathy Reardon ’63. Here, the group is pictured in Red Square in Moscow. From left to right: Bill Reardon, Kathy Reardon, Steve White and Gina White.

Cottage in the warm weather. With the cottage in sight of—and accessible by grassy path toSinging Beach, renting is easy.”

1955 Daphne Abeel reports that the book she has edited for the Cambridge Historical Society, A City’s Life and Times; Cambridge in the 20th Century, will be published in the fall of 2007. Copies will be available through the Harvard Bookstore and the Cambridge Historical Society. Daphne stays in touch with a few classmates: Bella Halsted, Ba Jones Guetti, her cousin Tedo Francis, and Lewellyn Howland. She continues to work as reporter and assistant editor for the Armenian Mirror-Spectator and to write freelance. Priscilla Baker has been keeping busy by serving on the board of the Salvation Army Women’s Auxiliary of the District of Columbia, on the Women’s Committee of the Washington Ballet, as vice regent of the D.C. Daughters of the American Revolution, and as new president of Chapter III of the Capital Speakers Club, an organization of women who study and practice public-speaking skills. “When do I get to rest?” she asks. Priscilla’s son is currently

Milton Magazine

overseas in Iraq, working for a company that provides logistical support to the military. Our condolences to Betsy Douglas, who lost her husband, Victor L. Douglas II, suddenly on December 21, 2006. He leaves his wife, nine children, 26 grandchildren and 13 greatgrandchildren. Betsy writes, “Many members of the Boy Scouts, old and young, attended his funeral in uniform in tribute to his 65 years of activity in the cause.” Betsy is still at home on the ranch in Victor, Montana. Paul Robinson announces the birth of his first and only grandchild, Jack Favrea Carroll. Jack was born March 20, 2007. He weighed in at 5 pounds, 20 ounces and 18½ inches. He surprised his mother by arriving one month early. Jack resides in New York City with his mother, Samantha Robinson Carroll, and his father, Robert. All are doing exceptionally well. Jack has indicated that he hopes to attend Milton at a future point.

1961 Recently Steve White and his wife, Gina, were able to take a Viking River Cruise with Bill and Kathy Reardon ’63.

Lindley Greenough Thomasset writes, “This year was marked with sorrow by the loss of both my parents, Peter B. Greenough ’35 and Beverly Sills Greenough (who performed at the ’69 Gratwick Concert). I was so lucky to follow my mother’s career early in the Boston area. How I miss them. I’m still working as a speech-language pathologist for a local hospice agency. It’s the most gratifying work I’ve done in 37 years. We’re putting a small addition onto our house so that there’s room for someone to help us in our dotage—how’s that for uplifting news?”

1966 Deborah Saltonstall Twining reports, “Last October, Peter and I left our home in Hamilton, where we’d lived for 35 years, and moved to Great Neck in Ipswich, Massachusetts—just a hop, skip and a jump, but salt water at the end of the front yard. Sally Serrell Young just spent the weekend and we introduced her to the joys of kayaking. I’m still a partner at the Book Shop of Beverly Farms, still singing, and enjoying being “Granny D” to Semma (3), Oscar (1) and Shye (5 months).”

1967 Jana Porter writes, “We checked out of our professional lives early and moved from downtown Boston to Little Compton, Rhode Island, where we live in close proximity to woods, farmland and the ocean. I do some

freelance writing, am involved in land protection for the town, work one shift a week in the general store, and sing in the church choir. Our 2.5 acres keep us busy raking, pruning and planting, and the biking and kayaking here are unbelievable.” John Sussewell writes, “Hoped to attend my 40th Reunion, but personal matters precluded such. The last few months have been full of contacts with classmates, though. Still recording quite a bit, but the ‘live’ scene has dwindled following the disbanding of my group, The Guild of Sound. Other activities involve active ministry (teaching), but not as a pastor any longer. I know that sounds strange, but given that there never should have been a clergy versus laity anyway, it doesn’t matter. We’re not the One who does the calling, but the ones who are called on an equal footing.”

1972 Alida J. Boye is working for Oslo University, Norway, where she is coordinating efforts to preserve the ancient manuscripts of Timbuktu, Mali.

1974 David Moir ran into Anna Waring, Cassandra Perry and Annette Buchanan at Deval Patrick’s gubernatorial inauguration. David writes, “As we were all in the same class as Deval, we thought it would be fun to descend on him ‘en masse.’ Ever our buddy, he was delighted to see us all and could not resist letting one of his staff snap one shot of us all, even though they were trying to limit the photographing to move people along. We are all very proud and happy for Deval.”

1976 Makoto Sawai reports that it has been about two and a half years since he took up his position at an independent asset management company in Japan. He and his wife, Keiko, a graduate

Susie Morrill ’78 had lunch in Harvard Square recently with classmates Betsy Leggat and Frances Marshman.

of the Emma Willard School, frequently have dinner with several Milton alumni, including Shinicki Soyano ’71, Masahito Kanetaka ’73 and Midori Tani Wada ’74. Last year, Makoto saw Tadge Dryja ’00 while he was working at Municipal Urawa High School as an English teacher.

1978 Congratulations to Maggie Jackson, who was recently honored with the Massachusetts Psychological Association’s media award. Congratulations to Tim Marr, who was named a 2006–2007 Fulbright Scholar. Tim is an associate professor of American studies at UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences. He plans to travel to Cyprus in January to help develop American Studies programs at the University of Cyprus and at Eastern Mediterranean University. Susie Morrill recently had lunch in Harvard Square with classmates Betsy Leggat and Frances Marshman. “It’s always wonderful to touch base with old Milties!” she writes.

1979 Anne Jay currently tends to her two daughters, ages seven and eight, in St. Louis, while she pursues an M.F.A. course in creative writing at Queens College in North Carolina. Sasha Nyary reports, “After 18 years in New York City, I’ve moved to Northampton, Massachusetts. It was strictly a lifestyle choice: for lots of reasons we were done with New York, and when my husband’s company closed unexpectedly, we decided now was the time. We’ve been here since Thanksgiving of 2006. I am back in magazines, working as an editor at a fabulous new parenting magazine (I’m aware that ‘fabulous’ and ‘parenting magazine’ don’t usually go together, but in this case it’s really true) called Wondertime. The country is an adjustment after our beloved Brooklyn, but we are very happy and we welcome visitors.”

Congratulations to Laura Ruhe ’82 and her husband, Jeff, who welcomed identical twin girls, Charlotte and Katherine, on January 23, 2007. They join their older sisters Juliet (11) and Christine (9).

outdoors with my husband, Phil. We adopted two more rescue cats this year, so we’re up to four— crazy, but fun! We truly do have to try and ‘herd cats.’” Charles Toulmin reports the big news that he and his wife, Heather, are expecting their first child in late August 2007. “The adventure of parenthood begins,” he says. “Let me know if you’re ever in D.C., Milton friends.”

1981 Matthew Moore is finishing up his second year at Nova Southeastern University’s Law School in South Florida. He was selected as the next editorin-chief of the Nova Law Review and recently won the Student Bar Association’s Award for Academic Excellence. Matthew writes, “One good thing about going back to school at this age: it’s easier to focus on your studies when you’re too old to go out every night.”

1980

1982

Juliet Lamont writes, “Still have my environmental consulting practice out here in Berkeley; lots of good things happening in that field this year! Also great wildlife-watching travels, hiking, kayaking and exploring the

Karl Austen and his wife, Marsha, have two children, Nicole (4) and Jack (2). Karl is an entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles and represents actors, writers and directors in movies and television.

Greg Duncan is still living in Rocky River, Ohio (a suburb of Cleveland), and his children are now entering their middle school and high school years. He enjoys regular trips to play golf with Brien Jacobsen and Neil Hornberg ’83. Ramsay Fairburn reports that her four-year-old daughter is keeping them very busy, as is work. She is sorry that she missed seeing everyone at Reunion. Karen Hawkes is living in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, Graham, son, Oliver (9) and daughter, Madeleine (8). Karen and Graham design and build The Deep Flight winged submersibles, which are used for adventure, science and recreation. Karen writes, “Life is busy, and fun!” Congratulations to Laura Ruhe and her husband, Jeff, who, on January 23 had identical twin girls, Charlotte and Katherine. They join their older sisters Juliet (11) and Christine (9). Laura writes, “I am still working at FactSet Research after a rewarding 15 years. Jeff is now the executive producer of This Old House and spends a fair amount of time in the Boston area. The older girls are enjoying the twins and are a great help. I look forward to the Reunion.” Milton Magazine

Class of 1982, standing (L to R): Paul Lualdi, Tony Jenkens, Steve Georgaklis, Laura Gilman Ruhe, John Sledge, Linda Runyon Mutschler, Jon Davis, Eric Kjellgren, Rob Millar, Danelle Corbett Daley, Matt Huntington, Althea Latady Lindell, Anne Marie Aldous, Phil Robertson, J.B. Pritzker, Michelle Buchanan Villegas, Eric Chase, Karl Austen, John Ohlson, Fred Bisbee, Fred Nangle, Rob Radtke, Amy Grillo Angell, Bart Nourse (former faculty), John DeMatteo, Wally Kemp, Alex Moot, Lili Wright, Isabelle Hunnewell Stafford, John Feldman, Ryutaro Hirose, Toni Chute, Nick Gray; kneeling (from L to R): Ann Taylor-Black, Joan Morse, Margaret (Margie) Talcott, Maura Sullivan, Ted Sears, Jonathan (Jones) Walsh, Dan Norton, Tom Waters, Eric Howard, Joanie Brewster, Fran McLean, Pamela Stewart Holman, Diana Manchester Barrett, Ben Schneider (in front), Ben Jesup, Julia Shepard, Cara Swirbalus Rhodes, Johanna (Joey) Kaufman

Class of 1987, row 1 (with sign): Tony Torres, Jason Peckham; row 2 (L to R): Billy O’Flanagan, Michelle Toll (spouse), Olivia Mathews (spouse), Tom Clayton ’85 (spouse), Cassie Robbins, Kate Zilla-Ba, Melissa Coleman, Alethia Jones, Nancy Joyce, Tom Lowenstein; row 3 (L to R): Dana Street (spouse), Terry McGuire, Marin Street, Sam Robinson, Abby Smith Davis, Jon Rubenstein, Sarah Lapey, Scott Davis (spouse); row 4 (L to R): Court Brower, Tim Batchelder, Tom Tak, Meg Roberston, Sarah Di Troia, Rebecca MacLean Wahl, Jared Eigerman, Nick Schmid, Nick Bacon, Rick Theobald, Rob Azeke; row 5 (L to R): Lex Mathews, Chris Dusseault, Sarah Dusseault (spouse), Mellie Anderson, Catharine MacLaren, Sarah Wolman 70

Milton Magazine

Class of 1992, row 1 (L to R): Kay Perkins Kubicki, Amy Crafts, Noah Messing, Reed Johnstone, Carolyn Mansﬁeld, Laura Tatelbaum Wood; row 2 (L to R): Phoebe Knowles, Jonathan Mitchell, Cristina Courey, Phaedra Saltis Yachimski, Saltis Yachimski, Jennifer Lee Carpenter; row 3 (L to R): Michael Breyer, Grace Ruben, Lamont DuBose, Phil Belfer, Kathleen Lintz Rein, Jon Rein, Eliza Mahony Eukson, Antony Bugg-Levine

Congratulations to George Papageorge ’89 and his wife, Dana, who welcomed their ﬁrst child, Julian William Papageorge, on January 14, 2007.

Congratulations to David Zug and his wife, Megan, who welcomed a son on August 14, 2006. Gavin Brooks Zug was born 7 pounds and 7 ounces. Lara Shapiro, Sarah White and Blair Donovan, all Class of 1987, recently gathered for a mini-reunion. In other news, congratulations to Lara, who welcomed her second child, Cleo R. Shapiro Bonnaire, about two weeks after this photo was taken.

1985 Jennifer White writes, “The Bay area now feels like Milton-west!” Robin Corey, Kate Hutchins, Jenn White and Louise Zonis all live in the area, and their children enjoy playdates and birthday parties together. “What a small, wonderful world!”

1986 Congratulations to Allegra Growdon Richdale and her husband, Jace, who welcomed the arrival of Tessa Whitfield Richdale on July 14, 2006.

1987 Congratulations to Nick Bacon and his wife, Diane, who recently adopted six-month-old Gustavo Adolfo Bacon Hughes from Guatemala. Nick writes, “He has brought boundless joy into our family.” Although they were unable to make it to Reunion in June, Lara Shapiro, Sarah White and Blair

Donovan got together for a minireunion in July. Congratulations to Lara, who also recently welcomed her second child, Cleo R. Shapiro Bonnaire.

1989 Congratulations to George Papageorge and his wife, Dana, who welcomed their first child, Julian William Papageorge, born January 14, 2007.

1991 Ann Barker continues her work with Green Mountain Sangha, the Theravadan Buddhist practice center that she founded in 1991. She also continues to teach English at Middlebury College. Congratulations to Jamus Driscoll. He and his wife, Tara, welcomed a third son on January 14, 2007. Grayson Lane Driscoll joins big brothers Gabe and Ethan.

Anne McManus Hurlbut and her husband, Matthew, welcomed their second child, a daughter named Lila Louise, on May 31, 2007. Big brother William Dawson (3) is smitten. Anne will be on a fellowship from Tabor Academy this coming year, working on an M.F.A. in creative writing, and Matt is teaching history at Duxbury Middle School. The Hurlbuts live on campus at Tabor Academy in Marion, Massachusetts, where Anne teaches and coaches and both she and Matt are houseparents.

1990 John P. Costello and his wife, Kate, are happy to announce the birth of their son, Luke Michael, born May 25, 2007. John and Kate’s first child, Allie (3), is enjoying being a very attentive big sister. John and his family live in Longmeadow, Massachusetts. Andy Wiemeyer has two daughters, Katherine (4) and Sarah (2). He recently moved his dental practice to a new, larger space in Duxbury, Massachusetts.

John P. Costello ’90 and his wife, Kate, recently welcomed a son, Luke Michael, born May 25, 2007.

David Zug ’90 and his wife, Megan, welcomed their son Gavin Brooks, who was born on August 14, 2006.

Milton Magazine

Anne McManus Hurlbut ’91 and her husband, Matthew, welcomed their second child, a daughter named Lila Louise, born on May 31, 2007.

Aloysius Innocence Hamill McDonough, the son of Amy Hamill McDonough and Michael McDonough was born and died on December 28, 2006, in Boston. He was buried in Chatham, Massachusetts, just down the road from the Hamill home and Holy Redeemer Church, where Amy and Michael were married in 2003. Despite his very brief time on this earth, Aloysius brought a true joy and peace to his parents. He will forever inspire them with his grace. Marc Pitman was recently honored as a keynote speaker at the Association of Fundraising Professionals Summer Institute in Charleston, South Carolina. He spoke about teaching nonprofit professionals to communicate more effectively. Marc is a nationally recognized leader in nonprofit fundraising and is the creator of the “Creating Donor Evangelists” program. His free bi-weekly email newsletter, articles and blog posts are available at fundraisingcoach.com.

ment of securities (hedge funds) at Schulte Roth and Zabael, LLP. I’ve been married for five years to Amanda May; we have one daughter, Ella Rose Dundas (2½), and are expecting another child this September.” Patrick reports that he and his family will soon be moving to Pleasantville, New York.

1993 Recently, several members from the Class of ’93 got together for brunch in Brooklyn. Attendees included: Jenny and Juan Fernandez, Emily Reardon, Kem Poston, Graham Goodkin and Sheldon Ison.

1994

Patrick Dundas writes, “After slaving away in the film industry from 1996 to 2001, I finally decided to get a real job. I graduated from Fordham Law School in 2005 and I’m now an attorney specializing in the private place-

Hannah Bekker Diller and her husband, Tim, are living in Austin, Texas, with their three children: Ian (6), Eliza (4) and Caroline (1). She comments, “There is rarely a dull moment at our house.”

Milton Magazine

1995 Nat Kreamer has just returned from serving a year in the U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan and received the Bronze Star from the U.S. Navy. Nat also shares news about several other Miltonites: Spencer Dickinson ’93 and his wife, Jane, welcomed a daughter, Polly, into their family in October 2006. Spencer is an investment banker at Deutsche Bank and Jane works for the corporate executive board. Peter Garran ’94 recently assumed responsibility for East Coast Internet investment bank-

ing at JP Morgan Chase. Peter was the director of strategy for investment banking with the firm. The U.S. Army recalled Phil Dickinson ’96 to active duty supporting the Global War on Terror while he was completing an M.B.A. at the University of Virginia’s Darden School. After working at the Mountain School for two years as their first graduate resident and diversity coordinator, Rossana Rossi will return to Queens, New York, to pursue a career in complementary medicine. She was certified as a holistic health counselor in

Fell Ogden married Charles Gray in September 2007, at her family’s farm in Stonington, Connecticut. Fell and Charles live in New York, where she works in the creative department of an experiential marketing agency and he is an attorney for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

1992

Members of the Class of 1993 recently caught up over brunch. From left: Jenny (Vendetti) Fernandez, Emily Reardon, Kem Poston, Juan Fernandez (with daughter Seyla, 3 months), Graham Goodkin (with daughter Emma, 8 months), and Sheldon Ison.

Jennifer Glick ’96 and Ryan Schaffer were married on May 28, 2006.

Adam Rosenblatt ’96 and his wife, Amanda, recently welcomed their son Leo Bialer, who was born on May 24, 2007.

Kate Cochrane ’98 and Jennifer Koch were married in June of 2006. Several Miltonians were in attendance. Pictured from left to right: Emily Sigman ’98, brides Jennifer Koch and Kate Cochrane, Greg Marsh ’98, Kirsten (Swiniarski) Barron ’98, Charlie Cochrane ’01, Jamie Berk ’99, Hadley Cornell ’97 and Andy Walker ’99. Not pictured, but in attendance: Ali Clark ’03 and Eben Clark ’63.

June and will work toward her naturopathic doctor’s degree very soon. She can be reached at Rossana@warpmail.net.

1996 Congratulations to Jennifer Glick, who married Ryan Schaffer on May 28, 2006. Jennifer is an attorney in the private client department at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr, LLP, and Ryan is an attorney in the corporate department of Ropes & Gray, LLP. They were married at Temple Beth Avodah in Newton, Massachusetts, and they reside in Brookline. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Macy Raymond’s screenplay Playing House was recently purchased by Paramount Vantage. Contra Films, the producer of The Exorcism of Emily Rose, The Guardian and The Number 23, is developing the project. The screenplay is based on Macy’s short story of the same name, which Paramount also purchased. The thriller/horror involves a down-and-out young couple who, after spending one night of wish fulfillment in an

empty Nantucket-esque house, find themselves preyed upon by the house’s owners. Macy’s college comedy, Trivia Nation, was recently purchased by Echo Entertainment and will head into production in 2008. Congratulations to Adam Rosenblatt, who writes, “On May 24, my wife, Amanda Levinson, and I became the proud parents of a little boy, Leo Bialer RoseLevin. He was born in Palo Alto, California, where I continue my graduate studies and teach at Stanford University.”

1997 Lucy Flood reports that she is finishing up her master’s in creative writing at the University of Texas, Austin, and is then moving to Jackson, Wyoming.

1998 Congratulations to Sarah Kahan Abbett and her husband, Jonathan, who recently welcomed a new member of their family. Their son, Avraham Tzvi, was born at Brigham and Women’s Hospital on December 24, 2006.

Congratulations to Ed Friedman ’98 and his wife, Niki, who welcomed Maxwell Pershing Friedman on May 17, 2007.

Congratulations to Kate Cochrane and Jennifer Koch, who were married in June 2006. They were legally married in Ganonoque, Ontario, Canada, before having a large family wedding on June 25, at the home of Doug and Eleanor Cochrane (Kate’s parents) in Hancock, New Hampshire. In attendance were Greg Marsh, Emily Sigman, Kirsten (Swiniarski) Barron, Charlie Cochrane ’01, Jamie Berk ’99, Hadley Cornell ’97, Andy Walker ’99, Ali Clark ’03 and Eben Clark ’63. Jennifer and Kate met at Dartmouth College where they both earned their undergraduate degrees. Kate is practicing employment law as an associate at Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, P.C. in Morristown, New Jersey, and Jennifer is in her second year of medical school at New Jersey Medical School in Newark, New Jersey. Congratulations to Ed Friedman and his wife, Niki, who welcomed Maxwell Pershing Friedman on May 17, 2007. Max was born 7 pounds, 1 ounce. Ed, Niki and Max live in Vienna, Virginia, while Ed studies for his master’s in public policy at George Mason University.

Catie Lee is working at Pricewaterhouse Coopers and will begin study at Harvard Business School next fall. Congratulations to Greg Marsh and his wife, Julie, who were married at Willowbend Country Club on Cape Cod in September 2006. Michael Stanton is finishing his Fulbright grant, researching coping and resilience in Senegalese society. He plans to attend graduate school for clinical psychology in the fall.

1999 Stephen Elliott graduated from Yale in 2003 with a double major in computer science and international relations. He was also a member of the Yale Whiffenpoofs. Congratulations to Sarah Role, who recently won a Fulbright Scholarship to study self-sufficient organic farming in Paraguay.

Milton Magazine

Class of 1997, row 1 (L to R): Michelle Buckley, Alyssa Friedman, Cassim Shepard, Will Hutchinson, Josh Frank, Erica Strang, Meroe Morse, Carmen Rijo; row 2 (R to L): Jim Meeks, Mary Felton, Jeff Cooper, Lisa Balzano Puglisi, Jenny Shoukimas, Emily Brooks, Lauren Wahtera, Annie Moyer, Sam Walcott, John Crafts, Jay Chan, Hadley Cornell, Aisha Woodman; row 3 (L to R): Brian Haley, Dave Rand, Jack Donahue, Alex Muenze, Josh Olken, Patty Murphy, Janet Lin, Sara Shaughnessy, Sarah Case, Laura Ford; row 4 (R to L): Jill Brewer, Tony Panza, Erick Tseng, Kyle Quinn, John Camera, Scott Golding, Hilary Sargent, Todd Friedman (sibling)

Class of 2002, seated (L to R): Rip Hale, Sarah Shea, Andrew Rozas, Elsie White, Fazal Yameen, Wen-Chuan Dai, Judith Sun, Charlie Bisbee; row 1 (L to R): Nora Delay, Meredith Walker, Seth Magaziner, Alex LittleďŹ eld, Stephanie Washington, Alison Quandt, Jacquie Stone, Paloma Herman, Emily Driscoll, Caitlin Flint, Talya Wyzanski, Mona Safabakhsh, Caroline Donovan, James Hays-Wehle, Sophie Monahon; row 2 (L to R): Jim Loftus, Laura Gill, James Gutierrez, Adia Bey, Caroline Curtis, Maile Carter, Audrey Linthorst, Brittany Beale, Emily Cutrell, Jen Ragus, Eben Miller, Ruth Schlitz, Chris Dalton; row 3 (L to R): Whit Harrison, Anne Duggan, Jenny Cohen, Hillary Frankel, Tze Chun, Liz Zembruski, Ian Pegg, Jill Kruskall, Alex Hannibal, Abby Greenup; row 4 (L to R): Julian Madden, Steve Bowler, Sarah Ceglarski, Molly McGuinness, Greg Vernick, Richie Howe; back row: Daniel Harlow, Sam Burke, Nick Morton, David Forbes, Praveen Anchala, Pablo Ros, Evan McNamara 74

Milton Magazine

Congratulations to Greg Marsh ’98 and his wife, Julie, who were married at Willowbend Country Club on Cape Cod in September 2006.

Congratulations to Julia Coquillette MacIntosh ’00, who was recently married to Tim MacIntosh. The couple lives in Derry, New Hampshire, with their two dogs.

Gathered in Toronto on June 9, 2007, for the wedding of Terrence Tsang were (from left to right) DJ WuWong ’13, Jonathan WuWong ’18, Vivian WuWong (history department chair), Prudence Tsang ’98, Tracy Fong ’99, Joycelin Yip ’11, Chris Kwok ’03 (in back) and Teddy Fong ’01.

2000

2004

Deaths

Maggie Lee is a first-year student at Harvard Law School.

Sami Kriegstein attends the University of Southern California, where she is in the Annenberg School of Communications. Sami was also recently inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Society.

1927 1928 1929 1930

Julia Coquillette MacIntosh lives in Derry, New Hampshire, with her husband, Tim, and their two dogs. There were several Milton alumni in attendance at their wedding, including Maggie Turner, Louisa Phinney and Julia’s two sisters (and bridesmaids) Anna Coquillette Caspersen ’88 and Sophie Coquillette Koven ’92. Anna’s children—Westby, Lars, Letitia and Anders Caspersen—and Sophie’s children—Lucy and Annabel Koven—were all in the bridal party. Julia is working as a technology coordinator at The Derryfield School in Manchester, New Hampshire, and will be graduating from Lesley University with her master’s in education this spring.

2005 Sam Stone will be entering his junior year at Vassar College, where he is loving life and every challenge and opportunity that comes with it. Often reminded of his Milton days in Kellner, he spends most of his time in Vassar’s drama and film building, where he works in the tech shop and is majoring in film. He loves his dorm and his friends, and he plans to study abroad in Sydney next spring. He says hello to all at Milton (especially Goodwin House and the Speech Team) and hopes to visit again soon.

George Blackwell Eustis Dearborn Henry C. Thacher Elizabeth Nelson Platt Ferry Julia Kernan Gross Parrish 1931 Elinor Burnett Vaughan 1933 Dorothy Cheney Goodwin William Lawrence 1934 Lucian H. Brown Elizabeth Poole Christopher 1935 Mary de Caradeuc Bartholomew 1936 Rowland G.H. Sturges 1937 Ruth Tucker 1939 Nathalie Bell Brown George Hackett Alice Judson Hayes

1940 Laurence K. Groves James S. Murphy J. Walker Stuart 1942 Donald Albion Elijah K. Swift 1943 Richard L. Rogers Margaret O. Swan 1944 Harriet Hall Provost 1954 George Keith 1955 Robert Crook Ann Rotch Magendantz 1957 Samuel Lord 1961 G. Lamar Crittenden 1963 Robert Faxon 1969 Roswell Brayton, Jr. 1993 LaMonte Sample Friends Donald B. Wales, Sr.

Milton Magazine

Milton Academy Board of Trustees, 2007 Julia W. Bennett ’79 Norwell, Massachusetts

Lisa A. Jones ’84 Newton, Massachusetts

Bradley Bloom Wellesley, Massachusetts

George A. Kellner Vice President New York, New York

James M. Fitzgibbons ’52 Emeritus Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts

F. Warren McFarlan ’55 Belmont, Massachusetts

John B. Fitzgibbons ’87 Bronxville, New York

Carol Smith Miller Boston, Massachusetts

Austan D. Goolsbee ’87 Chicago, Illinois

Tracy Pun Palandjian ’89 Belmont, Massachusetts

Catherine Gordan New York, New York

Richard C. Perry ’73 New York, New York

Victoria Hall Graham ’81 New York, New York

John P. Reardon ’56 Vice President Cohasset, Massachusetts

Margaret Jewett Greer ’47 Emerita Chevy Chase, Maryland

Kevin Reilly, Jr. ’73 Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Antonia Monroe Grumbach ’61 Secretary New York, New York

H. Marshall Schwarz ’54 Emeritus New York, New York

Franklin W. Hobbs IV ’65 President New York, New York

Karan Sheldon ’74 Blue Hills Falls, Maine

Ogden M. Hunnewell ’70 Vice President Brookline, Massachusetts Harold W. Janeway ’54 Emeritus Webster, New Hampshire

The Lee Family Teaching Chair

Frederick G. Sykes ’65 Rye, New York Jide J. Zeitlin ’81 Treasurer New York, New York

“Milton Academy has always been special to me. Several generations of my immediate family have graduated from the School. I spent six years at Milton and received an excellent education from outstanding faculty. I made lots of wonderful, lifelong friends, and memories of those years will never fade. Over 50 years have passed since graduation and I still feel close and involved with Milton.” —Madeline Lee Gregory ’49 Loyal and generous with time and spirit, Madeline has served Milton in many capacities, including as an alumni association trustee and an early volunteer for The Challenge to Lead capital campaign. As a member of the Board of Trustees from 1998 to 2004, Madeline applied her steady hand and sound reasoning to many projects undertaken by the Building and Grounds, Enrollment and External Relations committees. For Madeline, giving to the Annual Fund is a priority; she gives generously and without fail. In addition, she and her husband, Dan, made a gift to Milton through a Charitable Remainder Trust. In 1953, Madeline’s family established a memorial fund to honor her brother, George, who was killed in the Korean War. After Madeline’s mother’s death in 1999, the family converted this memorial fund into an innovative faculty chair designed to strengthen community and foster teaching excellence among the younger, newer faculty. The Lee Family Teaching Chair honors Madeline’s brother and parents while making an important contribution to the life of the School. Past Recipients of the George C. Lee Family Teaching Chair 2007–2008: Will Crissman 2006–2007: Stephen Feldman 2005–2006: Kelly Marshall 2004–2005: Peter Kahn 2003–2004: Heather Sugrue 2002–2003: Diane Gilbert Diamond 2001–2002: Matt Bingham 2000–2001: Terri HerrNeckar

Milton Magazine

Contents

New Media Artist, Mark Tribe ’85, Stages Work in Three Major U.S. Cities

Features: The City Front Cover: Did Centre Street change, recently? Or did Straus Library move to Fifth Avenue? Photographic collage by Greg White Back Cover: Illustration by Jenny Lee ’07

6 Music in The Second City Behind the piano, sparking the creativity, is the head of Second City’s music program, Mike Descoteaux ’98. Erin Hoodlet

8 New Orleans: Choosing Responsibility and Optimism David Mushatt’s (’78) commitment to New Orleans now involves more risk and opportunity, more courage, than ever. Cathleen Everett

Milton_cover_07.indd 2

17 Urban Landscapes In her landscape design, Nina Brown ’67 balances the excitement of city living with access to the great outdoors. Erin Hoodlet

20 San Francisco Living Rudy Reyes ’90 finds what he needs in the city. Rod Skinner ’72

22 Writing Center for the Greater Capital Region Lori Cullen ’87 founded an organization that pairs children with the Times Union to build skills and enthusiasm in Schenectady. Erin Hoodlet

24 A Brand-New City John B. Hynes III ’76 is a mega-city developer guiding the creation of New Songdo City.

10/24/07 5:03:09 PM

Milton Magazine Milton Academy Communications Ofﬁce Milton, Massachusetts 02186 Change Service Requested

Non-Proﬁt Organization U.S. Postage PAID Boston, MA Permit No. 58423

Milton Magazine

Fall 2007

The City This issue of Milton Magazine is devoted to alumni stimulated and inspired in their life’s work by cities: cities as drivers of ideas, needs, challenges, opinions, styles or reﬂections.

Milton_cover_07.indd 1

10/24/07 5:02:54 PM