Milton Magazine, Spring 2013

spring 2013

Creativity takes

Courage

fe atures CR E AT I V I T Y TA K ES COUR AGE

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One Truck, Local Sources, Ingenuity with a Dose of Love

Producing Groundbreaking TV in Afghanistan and Egypt Anna Elliot ’03 inspires young entrepreneurs with reality television competitions that leverage the power of real people to tell real stories.

by Cathleen D. Everett

14 14 The Storyteller and His Color Machine

6 11 Why Would Hotels Go Green?

Tedd Saunders ’79 is a pioneer in the green hotel movement. A third-generation hotelier, in 1989 he sold his family on the idea that they could reduce their environmental footprint, offer four-star service, and still make a profit.

by Tinker Ready

Irene Lee ’08 is the face of a sibling business venture that hit the streets last April and has already won a coveted “Best of Boston” award.

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by Liz Matson

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From the Lab Bench to the Front Line: Reimagining a Science Career

Math Is Strategy: Grade Four Students Make the Decisions

Filmmaker Raafi Rivero ’95 and his business partners craft visual stories for global brands and entertainment powerhouses.

Each production, regardless of client or product, gets at the heart of a human tale.

Althea Grant ’89 brings inventiveness and drive to the CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities.

Getting there took a major career change, ingenuity and determination.

Milton’s fourth graders learn three core tenets of working with numbers: flexibility, efficiency and accuracy. In other words, their teacher Randy Schmidt says, finding the right answer is important, but it’s not quite enough.

by Erin E. Berg

by Tinker Ready

by Erin E. Berg

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25 Making Dances: How to render ideas in space and time Excitement has been building for weeks, and not just among the dancers. Three student choreographers reveal why the Winter Dance Concert may be the biggest draw all year on campus.

by Cathleen D. Everett

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depar tment s 2

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Across the Quad

In•Sight

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Classroom Ian Torney ’82, Painter, Poses Problems

On Centre

Ian Torney, Class of 1982— accomplished oil painter and career teacher—has returned to Milton’s art classrooms. His students learn technique through making and doing.

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by Cathleen D. Everett

One Little Glitch

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News and notes from the campus and beyond

Class Notes

56 Post Script

by Luke White ’99

Head of School On Purposeful Percolating

by Todd B. Bland

36 Sports Team Captains: What’s in their playbook?

by Liz Matson

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38 Faculty Perspective “What do you mean, ‘curriculum renewal’?” with Heather Sugrue, math department chair

Editor Cathleen Everett Associate Editors Erin Berg Liz Matson Photography Erin Berg, Art Durity, Michael Dwyer, John Gillooly, Akintola Hanif, Liz Matson, Alex Vivado ’15, Greg White Design Moore & Associates Front cover by Stoltze Design Milton Magazine is published twice a year by Milton Academy. Editorial and business offices are located at Milton Academy, where change-ofaddress notifications should be sent.

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As an institution committed to diversity, Milton Academy welcomes the oppor­t unity 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 school-administered activities.

Printed on Recycled Paper

across the quad

Sarah Sze ’87 A MacArthur grant-winner at the age of 34, Sarah plays with the tenuous relationship between becoming and disintegrating, the quotidian and the mysterious.

Somehow her work delicately adjusts that maelstrom to suggest the possible, optimistically in what seems like an incidental whirlwind of being. Her installation in Milton’s Schwarz Student

Center continues to provoke, threaten, cajole, encourage and show what ideas, when spatialized, look like in the midst of resolution. Sarah tossed the entire carpenter’s shop, with ladders and levels, into the air and froze them in midflight. In so doing, she jettisoned traditional media and traditional concepts about how to articulate forms in space.

5 daring Perspectives

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he surgeon, the poet, the financial analyst and the artist need visual awareness—awareness gleaned from intense observation of the material world, as well as awareness culled from experimentation in the studio. For Milton students, the chance to build this acuity starts early and includes everyone. Today, all Class IV students encounter a visual arts program that stretches back to the days of Richard Bassett, a famed studio teacher in the ’60s. Also, from tooting the penny whistle to perfecting the French horn, from writing computer code to probing the origins of Islam, from scaling Mount Washington to learning how to wrestle, doors for exploration and adventure surround us here. When I arrived in 1985, Headmaster Jerry Pieh insisted that our students be encouraged to follow their inclinations and dreams: to the lab, the boardroom, or the wood shop.

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Sarah Sze, The Edge of One of Many Circles

Getting absorbed, committing to a process, connecting with others, and meeting the highest standards were the prerequisites.

That attitude permeates Milton culture still; that spirit drives our students. Over the years, particularly daring graduates opted for the arts, where career paths are notoriously circuitous. We highlight five who made major contributions to our cultural conversation.

Larry Pollans, History Department

John Bisbee, Plode

John Bisbee ’84 John, a modern Vulcan, transforms the most pedestrian item in the construction arsenal—the nail—into elegant and stalwart constructions. Iron was, after all, one of the key materials that thrust homo sapiens into the modern world. Nails that bloom?

Nails that snake? Nails that are transformed into mural-length effusions? Out of the Zen-like repetitive welding process (think about how many separate welds were needed to fuse the above piece), John transforms the nails into transcendent events.

Murray Dewart ’66 Apollonian order and grace.

Murray uses refined elements in gate-like constructions. These classical materials suggest a timeless sense of beauty. His work certainly expresses the idealism, nobility and rectitude of those old hymns such as “Jerusalem” (with those chariots of fire) by William Blake that were sung in the Boys’ School during Mac’s Academy days.

over • time

Murray Dewart, Golden Bow

Walter Horak ’66 Walter bends the human figure into a modern ritual dance.

He brings his figures together to form dramatic, larger patterns. Walter’s pieces illustrate his belief that the whole is far greater than the sum of its parts. Well before the circular window so familiar in Gothic churches, the circle symbolized wholeness and continuity. Despite the worldly travail we all witness, Walter continues to find the positive in human engagement.

Walter Horak, Ryland’s Wheel

in this admission season: Nick Edmonds ’55 Nick, the elder statesmen among these sculptors, with his long, successful career of exhibition and teaching, carves and joins wood with ancient Japanese carving technique. In recent work, Nick’s landscape exaggerations are both monumental and gleeful. His sculptural world seems to reflect that juicy, innocent moment of discovery of form, light and volume. He scatters historic, aesthetic and personal visions among the beautifully joined painted-wood superstructures.

Nick Edmonds, Mountain View Spring

From above the fireplace, Headmaster Field’s view of Straus Library then (mid-1950s) and now

1,420 4,458 152 applicants, K–12

inquiries, K–12

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1,639 93

K–8 parent volunteer tour guides

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on-campus tours and interviews, K–12

off-campus interviews with admission staff (who traveled to places like California, Chicago, New York, Maryland and Florida, as well as Hong Kong, Jamaica and the Bahamas)

Orange and Blue Key student tour guides

Skype interviews conducted (including two Aussies)

NY|CA Outside of New England, the two states with the highest number of students applying to Milton Spring 2013 3

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n attribute or a process, a sharply tuned skill set or perhaps a habit of mind—creativity is experiencing a surge of public acclaim. As a prerequisite for problem solving, or the key to successful marketing, or the route to new understanding, creativity is in demand. Writers trying to share what science has to say about creativity find avid readers. Public opinion leaders in diverse fields rank creativity among the essential skills as we try to resolve intractable issues, understand who we are, and learn to live with one another.

While we have much to learn about the mysteries of getting to new ideas, the journey can be tedious and long, frustrating and lonely before it reaches its reward. Milton alumni are known for a particular confidence in themselves and their ideas, as well as for the persistence and adaptability to see a project through to fruition. Their stories in this magazine provide evidence of courage in various shapes and colors.

We explore, also, how today’s Milton intentionally cultivates and celebrates creativity among our faculty and students.

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Creativity takes courage

The City Walk. Photograph by Alex Vivado ’15

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Anna Elliot ’03

Producing Groundbreaking TV in Afghanistan and Egypt Anna Elliot ’03 inspires young entrepreneurs

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n hindsight, Anna Elliot’s reality TV series might seem like a media mogul’s strategy to build market share in developing countries. A reality television competition for aspiring and inspiring entrepreneurs, the first program aired in Afghanistan on the largest national channel and featured 20 entrepreneurs pitching and launching their social ventures.

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What Anna did intend, with her countercultural program, was to leverage the power of real people telling real stories. These stories, she thought, might help hatch others’ latent entrepreneurial spirit. They might loosen the grip of unconscious biases, like those tied to gender or class. If people could find the right skills, resources and, ultimately, confidence, she thought, perhaps they could begin to reshape their lives and rebuild their country.

Like many great ideas, this one surfaced in an offhand comment. “What you really need, Dad, is a reality TV show,” Anna said one day in 2008. She was commiserating with her father, who was frustrated with his work on economic development in Afghanistan. Need and opportunity were both vast in Afghanistan, but barriers of all kinds—political, structural, cultural—seemed to confound progress.

At the time, Anna was involved in bringing an Afghan troupe’s staging of Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost “on the road.” The Kabul production of the play, translated into Dari by a theater director Anna knew, had gained international attention.

Anna’s role in the project was part of culminating work toward her bachelor’s degree. For Anna, college was less a collection of courses aimed at a certain competency, and more a multidisciplinary journey that merged theoretical study and hands-on experiences all over the world (and took almost eight years to complete). An accomplished painter, Anna wrestled relentlessly with a persistent question: How can my artistic skills, and my hunger for the creative process, address social change?

She pursued this question through work in painting, drawing, sculpture, film, video, theater and performance. She also took courses in history, conflict resolution and diverse cultural traditions.

Storytelling—the myths, folk stories and traditions thriving all over the world—finally emerged as the medium that best addressed her insistent question. I was “captivated,” she wrote in a retrospective, “by the tremendous influence and intensity of oral narratives.” The world continues to find connection and healing through stories. Consider truth and reconciliation commissions, for instance. Astonished publics in many countries, including South Africa, Rwanda, Guatemala, have witnessed dramatic personal narratives in forums set up to help individuals and societies recover from mass violence.

Anna’s top-of-mind idea about reality TV grew legs. Why not come up with a program like “Afghan Star,” Afghanistan’s version of “American Idol,” that could relate to real economic need?

With a grant from a development agency, Anna carried through an early prototype of what would become a national program.

This first version was aired by a local station; it linked storytelling with real-time efforts to create small, sustainable businesses. That was groundbreaking, in a country without a word to describe the idea of an entrepreneur. The experience was “pretty wild,” Anna said, and “very experimental.” It was the source of the idea for Bamyan Media, Anna’s production enterprise that produced the national hit “Dream and Achieve” and won the support to move the template to other developing countries.

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“I learned that anything is possible.

That nothing will go as planned, and there is no room for expectations.

One is better off being open to the mystery and potential of each moment.”

To produce the series, Anna partnered with Tolo TV, the top Afghan network; recruited judges from the business, banking and academic sectors; and with a novel outreach program, interviewed hundreds of potential program contestants. Fast Company reports that Anna “ended up driving from village to village for in-person meetings with local leaders and trade organizations. In the process, she gained an intimate understanding of the roadblocks to success: How does a carpet weaver navigate the USAID grant process? What questions do bankers ask a leather maker when he’s taking out a loan? How does microfinance work?”

Anna is not a huge television fan; she doesn’t watch it. “But it has the potential to be an agent for profound social change,” Anna says. “It’s a universal storytelling blaster. No matter how 8 Milton Magazine

poor you are, you probably have a TV in your home. It’s creating the stories of today, the stories that are shaping your world.”

The name Bamyan Media comes from Bamyan Province.

“The first place we started casting,” Anna says, “called into question the typical notions of ‘development,’ the paradigm that drives international economic development agencies.” These typical notions are complicated by the way people live their lives.

“This province is in the central mountains, located on what was the Silk Route. It is home to the Hazara ethnic minority, the underdogs of Afghanistan, who suffer prejudice and have survived a violent past. Yet, they’re one of the most resilient communities. Bamyan has the highest rate of literacy, the greatest number of women in local government, no poppy growth, and a strong tradition of enterprising merchants who continue to rebuild their land time and time again after centuries of conquest.”

After the success of “Dream and Achieve,” Anna earned an Echoing Green Fellowship and a Rainor Arnholds Fellowship for her work. Both foundations honor social change agents. Her awards enabled her to move the format to Egypt, where Bamyan (now including 20 staffers) has been working steadily and sensitively on producing “El Mashroua,” which means “The Project” in Arabic. (There is no direct translation for entrepreneur, let alone social entrepreneur, in Arabic.) In Egypt, “The Project” will be airing on the country’s largest TV channel this spring.

Bamyan has adapted the format to the local context, including episode “challenges” such as setting up a catering or T-shirt

business in 48 hours; or planning a local wedding; or renovating a restaurant for reopening. The three judges weigh in. They consider issues like how well the contestant knows his market; or how viable the business plan is; or what kind of jobs she is trying to create. The final three episodes film the three remaining contestants as they launch their “Mashrouas” (Projects). Television shows need real drama, real action to win audiences, after all.

The goal is to stoke innovation and provoke the attitude change that may become behavior change. Help (how to take out a loan, go to a workshop, find a mentor, register a business) is available directly from the program Web site and from more than 60 civil society partners in the entrepreneurial ecosystem for anyone who wants to take a project from idea to action.

About becoming a social entrepreneur, Anna says, “The first couple of years are about learning, learning, learning—then developing resources, then scaling. Egypt has so many active agendas, deep-rooted systemic problems, profound economic challenges and social disparity. People are desperately looking for a way out of this quagmire, and the West is not really an example. Class segmentation is intense, the economy is largely informal, and gender affects every part of the fabric of society.

Figuring it all out is tough. In the end, all this is embedded in a TV show, which we have to cast and shoot in real time, with contestants (characters) who are both acceptable to social norms and challenge the status quo enough to open some eyes.”

Bringing an idea to life from the ground up calls for skills, passion and courage. Listening is the essential but often missing

“For the series that aired across 13 weeks in 2008, 20 contestants from all over Afghanistan—including a fish farmer, a hotel manager, and an aspiring tailor—were filmed in real time as they worked with seasoned mentors to build their enterprises.”

—from Fast Company’s series called “Innovation Agents,” October 13, 2010

ingredient that Anna highlights. “A dynamic must exist between listener and storyteller in order for the story to come alive. The storyteller has to create space for that listening to happen; the listener has to be open, and access the space, in himself, for that story to take root.

“Our target audience is youth,” Anna explains, “people 14 to 35. Research shows that 13-year-olds are already heavily influenced by screens. We want to get to young people before they go to university. When they come out, they’ll have few realistic options, and they will need to create their own opportunities.”

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When they gathered to accept their fellowships, the Echoing Green fellows introduced themselves by presenting, individually, “Why Do You Do What You Do?” Contradicting the widely known song “The Revolution Won’t Be Televised,” Anna’s sign captured her notion that the inevitable revolution of profound social change “should be televised.” Little did she know that the Arab Spring would occur six months after this photo was taken, and she would find herself working in Egypt.

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Anna will not yield on her resilient question: her measure for this effort, or any that follow, is whether it has major social impact. “Bamyan is the model we’ve come up with thus far,” Anna explains. The model can’t get to the whole picture of what an inclusive, sustainable, diverse economy would look like, but it tries to approach those issues. It has social impact and can work within the parameters of an industry that Anna believes is limited by an outmoded, uninspired paradigm.

Facing intractable problems with innovative, out-of-the-box approaches is not everyone’s idea of a career. Anna foretold her own future, however, when she wrote to the chair of the department at Hampshire College that would grant her bachelor’s degree. Describing her first project in Afghanistan, she said: “My most significant and life-altering education occurred during that short amount of time in which I have never worked so hard nor felt so alive. I learned that anything is possible. That nothing will go as planned, and there is no room for expectations. One is better off being open to the mystery and potential of each moment. Cultivating an endless reserve of determination, courage, and repertoire of jokes, and recognizing that ‘Allah truly is kind.’ Yet it is necessary to organize and respect even the minutest details, defend against the smallest injustices, and pray regularly. Somehow this process contributes to miracles occurring on a daily basis, which they do.”

Cathleen D. Everett

Tedd Saunders ’79

Why would hotels go green?

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edd Saunders ’79 doesn’t like to say that he pioneered the green hotel movement. A third-generation hotelier, in 1989 he sold his family on the idea that they could reduce their environmental footprint, offer four-star service, and still make a profit. He wrote a book about how to do it and launched a consulting firm to spread his eco-friendly business ideas.

Tedd’s hotels were the first in the United States to offer guests, among other things, the option of reusing towels and sheets for more than one night. He was ahead of his time when he came up with the idea of luxury, urban ecotourism in the late 1980s. The notion didn’t strike him in a steamy jungle—the place most people associate with ecotourism. He was in the maze-like basement of the 900-plus-room, million-square-foot Park Plaza Hotel watching huge pallets of products arriving and baled rubbish on the way to the trash.

“I remember thinking that there had to be a better way to run a hotel than creating all this waste and consuming all this material,” he says. “Could we run our hotels in a responsible way that wouldn’t diminish the comfort and luxury of the guest experience?”

Turns out that the Saunders Hotel Group could. Over the past 23 years, Tedd has earned a name for himself spearheading urban ecotourism. He launched the effort by measures such as finding a driver with a tractor-trailer willing to haul the Park Plaza’s 1,500 phone books to the city’s only recycling center.

Today, he can count more than 100 separate, non-toxic, energysaving initiatives at the company’s six hotels, including a new electric-car charging station—the first curbside one in Boston— at the 113-year-old Lenox Hotel in Back Bay. The notion of a responsible company was a good fit, he explained, for a family business that cares about its legacy “not just for the next generation, but for the entire community.”

Still, when he was preparing to pitch the idea to his father, brothers, and the rest of the company’s executive board, he couldn’t find a model to point to of what is now known as “sustainable tourism.”

“The initiative was a giant leap of faith for my family,” Tedd says. “None of us knew how big it would become.”

Tedd has earned a name for himself spearheading urban ecotourism.

He launched the effort by measures such as finding a driver with a tractor-trailer willing to haul the Park Plaza’s 1,500 phone books to the city’s only recycling center.

During a tour of the Lenox, Tedd glances at a well-worn, highlighted checklist. Moving from the elegant lobby, onto the elevator and into one of the spacious eleventh floor rooms, he mentions some of the amenities: superefficient heating and cooling systems; eco-friendly Herman Miller chairs; sustainably harvested paper products; reusable bottles with filtered water; and infrared motion-sensor thermostats. When the hotel couldn’t find energy-saving candelabra light bulbs for the hotel’s antique fixtures, they had them made.

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Photo by Art Durity. Courtesy of Connecticut College.

“It’s very systemic,” he says. “We don’t just say, ‘Let’s do these three things.’ We’re always asking, ‘What are the next big impact things we can do?’”

That thinking led to “Heaven on 11.” While some other hotels offer allergen-free rooms, the Lenox offers an entire floor (and health club). Stepping into room 1108, Tedd describes how these rooms go a few steps further. After an ozone treatment that eliminates all traces of bacteria, mattress and pillows are fitted with dust-mite barriers. The air-conditioning system has an anti-microbial tea tree oil cartridge installed. The cleaning supplies are toxin-free, and the HEPA air purifier ensures the cleanest of air.

At the same time, the Lenox bills itself as “the original boutique hotel.” The LED sign on the roof is a Back Bay landmark.

Famous guests include Anne Hathaway, Duke Ellington and Judy Garland, who stayed for three months. Visitors are promised “elegant design, seamlessly intuitive service and personalized comfort,” and judging from their top Trip Advisor ratings, the hotel delivers that.

“I remember thinking that there had to be a better way to run a hotel than creating all this waste and consuming all this material. Could we run our hotels in a responsible way that wouldn’t diminish the comfort and luxury of the guest experience?”

Low key, with a trim beard, Tedd often skips the tie with his suit. At 51, he’s known as one of the progressives in his politically diverse family, but he is no hippie. He describes himself as of the “post–Woodstock, Kennedy, Martin Luther King generation that is committed to social justice and equality.” After a stint as an advertising executive, he set out to shoot stock photography in Asia with a camera and a backpack. As a member of a hotel family, he would have been welcomed at the region’s top resorts.

Instead, he often stayed in simple hostels and camped amid stunning settings. That’s not too surprising, since his family— father, Roger, and three brothers, including his twin, Todd ’79— often went camping on summer vacations.

“I have wonderful memories of us being together in the outdoors,” he says. “Those were life-changing experiences.”

His parents were important influences. His father, who is 83 and still plays tennis twice a week, helped foster Tedd’s appreciation for life’s blessings, his ceaseless curiosity, and a way of

When he was preparing to pitch the idea to his father, brothers, and the rest of the company’s executive board, he couldn’t find a model to point to of what is now known as “sustainable tourism.” life: “doing well by doing good.” Tedd’s mother, Nina, who died in 1991, was a childhood Holocaust survivor from Poland who taught him to be resourceful and pay attention to the details. In a way, she also helped him meet his wife. One Mother’s Day, after visiting a tree planted in the Public Garden in his mother’s honor (she was on the park’s board), Tedd took a stroll with his dog. He stopped to chat with a woman and her mother, who, like Tedd, were walking a Tibetan terrier. It was love at first sight. Two and a half years later that woman, Ella, became his wife. In 2012 they welcomed twins, Noah and Nina (named after Tedd’s mother and Ella’s grandmother). His Facebook page offers smiling pictures of them all. When a waitress at the hotel’s Boylston Street Irish pub asks him how he’s doing, before taking an order for tea, he says, “Wonderfully.”

The Saunderses live in Back Bay, not far from the family’s flagship Lenox. While he has an easy commute, Tedd has pulled back a bit from the business so that he has more time for the twins. He spends his mornings at home with Ella and the babies.

Another step in that plan: limiting his travel. Tedd’s quest to transform the travel industry has kept him on the road for client presentations, speaking dates and meetings. He recently spoke at an industry roundtable on sustainability at Cornell’s hotel school.

“I was consumed day and night with maximizing the impact I was having on the world with my work,” he says. “I feel like I’m entering a different phase now, especially with our children here.”

He has had an impact: the hotels have a long list of national and international awards, as well as plenty of imitators around the globe.

“What we started back in the late ’80s is now an industry-wide phenomenon,” he says. “It is no longer a short-term trend. I go to the industry meetings, and all the big chains are there, proudly touting what they are doing.”

Not a leap of faith anymore—at least in terms of forward-thinking businesses across this industry and many others—“doing well by doing good has become smart business, a selling point and a money saver,” says Tedd. “The beauty is that we have the facts on our side.”

Tinker Ready Spring 2013 13

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Raafi Rivero ’95

“Some production companies are more avant-garde, or minimalist, or into fashion. For us, nothing moves without a good story—without finding where the burden lies and how it’s alleviated.”

The Storyteller and His Color Machine

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he Color Machine’s office is a Brooklyn artist’s loft: all open concept, complete with floor-to-ceiling windows, polished concrete surfaces and jangling elevator cage. The space is a comfortable blend of well worn and cutting edge—a perfect place from which filmmaker Raafi Rivero ’95 and his business partners to craft visual stories.

Raafi has worked in film and advertising since graduating from film school at Howard University. Prior to that, he studied film at Brown, and he’s been in New York City since. Two years ago, Raafi and Jordan Alport—filmmaker, friend and business partner—put their reels together and shared the collection with potential clients, showing that they were two people bigger than one. Both directors have well-honed filmmaking abilities and have produced their own work, but they were missing the necessary business acumen. Partner Liz Regan, a producer herself, came on to fill that gap. The Color Machine’s collective client list now includes global brands like Coca-Cola, Dior, Skype, McDonald’s and Quicksilver, as well as entertainment powerhouses like HBO, Sony and Discovery. Each production, regardless of client or product, gets at the heart of a human tale.

The company’s site describes the trio as “a gang of makers.”

While directors are assigned to projects according to client need and vision, collaboration is at the heart of their work. Together, they develop scripts, provide constant feedback, and ensure that the videos they release meet the same high-quality standards.

“As a filmmaker, you need sounding boards,” Raafi says.

“You might think a sequence or a cut works well, and someone else will watch it and say, ‘What does that mean?’ Having people you trust—who have a different perspective but great taste—look over your shoulder and share their opinions is essential.”

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RAAFI’S FAVORITES • Film director Quentin Tarantino, known for Pulp Fiction, Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained: “The man combines kitschy ’70’s cinema with Hong Kong gangster flicks and his own sensibilities to create something entirely unique.”

• Acclaimed American jazz musician and trumpeter Miles Davis: “He’s such a technically strong, talented musician—he plays a perfect A-flat—and still he was constantly reinventing himself.”

• London-based disc jockey Gilles Peterson, known for his crate-digging style: “The man goes everywhere in the world.

He’ll find this Tibetan yurt music, and when you hear it, it blows your mind. He has extremely eclectic taste; he’s one of my favorite cultural icons.”

• Blogger John Gruber, Apple-enthusiast and writer: “He writes about Apple the best of anyone I know. His Web site—daringfireball.net—is clean. I appreciate people who are the best at what they do, and he is.”

• Film director and actor Spike Lee, best known for films Malcolm X, Do the Right Thing and Jungle Fever: “Spike Lee is a visionary.

Whether you like his movies or not, they’re fun to watch. He packs so much visual information into his films, and his perspective is so unique.”

• Director and screenwriter Michael Mann, known for The Last of the Mohicans, Collateral and Public Enemies: “He treats the subject of masculinity in a deeper way. He goes past the testosterone of the action and into the drama of the characters. His storytelling is so precise. His films are an education.”

• Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, known for his visually unique and highly stylized work: “Wong Kar-wai makes the most romantic films out there. I could watch In the Mood for Love every day. I’ve read that he often works improvisationally, which can make the actors mad, but what you get in his films is emotional authenticity.”

• Shepard Fairey, graphic designer and illustrator who emerged from the skateboarding scene, best known for creating President Obama’s “Hope” campaign poster: “He started with a simple perspective on street culture, and over the years he’s developed his work into art that is so rich, so thick and sticky. I like when street art rises to the level of high art, and he’s done that.”

Raafi believes in two models of creativity: One he calls the Mozart model, where the boy genius writes the notes in his head because he innately knows how. The second model, and the one to which Raafi subscribes, he calls the Miles Davis model: “These people are still extremely talented, but the magic comes from putting Miles in the same room with John Coltrane, Bill Evans and Cannonball Adderley, and together they come up with Kind of Blue. From that collaboration—of talented people who trust their abilities—greatness bubbles up.”

Some of the creative process is instinctual, Raafi says: following an impulse that’s stronger than any other. However, he also depends upon his voracious appetite for information outside his own world. He purposefully consumes as much as possible each day—from culture, news, photography, technology, architecture, music, and the people in his life. Inspiration and ideas develop from those connections.

“You ultimately have to go back to your cave and tune everything out and say, ‘What do I believe? What ideas resonate?’

You need that spine, or strength of vision, but when you find moments of true collaboration you can be pleasantly surprised by your own work.”

Raafi recalls his early film work, when he was a college student with no money. Depending on limited resources and materials, he was forced to rely on what was abundant.

“When adapting becomes your zone, you begin to break apart every idea, and you often find something truly original,” Raafi says. “Film production is unruly. You’re always planning, scheduling, coordinating, but something inevitably goes wrong. You have to be flexible to solve those problems. You have to adapt to succeed.

“Some of my biggest failures came when I didn’t admit that something wasn’t working. Ultimately, I pushed a piece that wasn’t good. No one wants to fail, but it’s a critical part of the process. It’s how you grow. In film you watch your work a million times—you have to find the right cut, the right moment. You’re always dying a thousand tiny deaths trying to get the footage to live up to the picture in your head.”

Leaving your comfort zone, Raafi says, is also key. “For a long time I was too focused on technique: how something looked,

“People have this notion that creative types can sit in a comfortable chair sipping tea, and inspiration just strikes them. I think the best ideas hit when you’re in the studio working, just showing up. When you put in long days, you have breakthroughs because you’re there and you’re open to it.”

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how to make the highest-quality image,” Raafi says. “I always admired friends or collaborators who start with the idea. I’m trying now to work explicitly in concepts. I used to be concerned with making a slick cut; now I’m much more concerned with what I’m communicating. I think that artists who serve ideas first have more to say, so I’ve been trying to build that into my process earlier. That doesn’t come naturally to me, though.”

One such artist that Raafi admires is Joe Carini, a high-end carpet maker in Tribeca. Joe travels the world collecting the finest materials for his rugs and tapestries, which retail in the tens of thousands of dollars. When Joe turned to Raafi for advertising inspiration, Raafi took him to an unlikely location. The Gowanus “Bat Cave” in Brooklyn is the abandoned central power station of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit. It has since become an illicit hub for inspired graffiti artists and a hideout for homeless of all ages.

Grit, grime, street art and detritus cover the walls and floors. The contrast between the location and Joe’s carpets was alarming.

“Joe was game,” Raafi laughs. “He crawled into the Bat Cave with me and rolled out one of his $20,000 carpets onto the floor, which was covered in God-knows-what. He has the sensibilities of a young man who can find inspiration anywhere. I admire his ability to keep his mind alive. He’s my hero.”

Outside of his work at the Color Machine, Raafi is developing a feature film that he hopes to begin filming this spring. He’s been writing the heist movie, How to Steal, over the last two years. His previous short film, Their Eyes Were Watching Gummy Bears, is a coming-of-age comedy about two young African Americans about to graduate from Princeton. It has played in competition at more than 15 film festivals.

“When you’re used to creating films for ad agencies, your goal is three minutes or less. Working on a feature film, and walking onto the same set five days in a row, you’re able to draw connections between scenes rather than just executing one premise.

Filming day after day is a test of your skills; it means getting past abstract apprehensions and getting elbow-deep in the elements of film itself—the actors, cameras, lighting, location, script—and actually making something.

“Film work combines many creative disciplines—writing, photography, costumes, music—which means compelling conversations with lots of smart, talented people. You have access to all these different fields in one. I don’t know of anything else as dense as filmmaking. That’s why I love it.”

Erin E. Berg From Their Eyes Were Watching Gummy Bears

From Downtown/Connect

From Rockhouse Foundation

From Khoi Vinh

Spring 2013 17

Irene Li ’08

One Truck, Local Sources, Ingenuity with a Dose of Love

T

he Mei Mei Street Kitchen food truck is parked next to the Boston Public Library on a freezing December morning.

Bundled Bostonians rush down the sidewalk intent on destinations. A few know that inside the truck the proprietors are preparing delicious, warm and comforting food that one wouldn’t expect: velvety carrot soup with bits of feta; pork belly with cranberry hoisin sauce on a soft cream biscuit; cheddar and leek bread pudding. Devoted customers begin to line up, shuffling their feet to keep warm, until the window shutter is raised at 11 a.m.

Irene Li ’08 pops in and out of the truck, enthusiastically greeting “guests,” almost all of whom are regulars. She dispenses cheerful hugs as she asks about jobs, children, pets— knowing all of the customers’ names and favorite menu items.

Irene is the face of a sibling business venture that hit the ground last April and has already won a coveted “Best of Boston” award.

“We think of our work as an experiment, and we try to have as much fun as possible,” says Irene. “We make our food with love. We cook from scratch, taking as few shortcuts as we can bear, and we source our food carefully so that everyone in the equation feels good about what we do. Our guests reap the benefits of eating a diverse and seasonal array of fresh and wholesome products while supporting local farms and businesses.”

Irene’s older brother, Andy, spent nearly a decade working in front-of-house management at local fine-dining establishments.

Inspired by the food truck movement in other cities, he decided to get in on Boston’s scene early. He asked his two younger sisters to join him. (“Mei Mei” means little sister in Chinese.) Mei, the older of the two, moved back from London, bringing her family, MBA and entrepreneurial background. Irene was a junior at Cornell at the time, but she was willing to come home. Though her academic focus was women’s studies, she was also exploring food and local farming in the Ithaca area with her friend and now business partner, Max Hull.

“We started cooking together my freshman year and making a habit of going to the farmers’ market,” says Irene. “We ran a few small events, like underground restaurant supper clubs, which seem silly looking back, but that was an important experience for us and an opportunity to prepare a lot of food without spending too much money.”

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“We think of our work as an experiment, and we try to have as much fun as possible.”

Spring 2013 19

The siblings’ return to Brookline, Massachusetts, was also personal. The Lis’ father, a former researcher at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, had suffered a stroke and was now facing early Alzheimer’s. With her three children back home to help, their mother, a physician at M.I.T., became a champion of the fledging business. (Part of her home stores their supplies, and the Mei Mei Street Kitchen crew butchered their first pig on her kitchen counters.)

Moving the food truck from idea to execution involved a never-ending to-do list. After incorporating the business, they had to buy a truck, design the interior, and have it retrofitted with kitchen equipment. They had to build an online presence.

Endless questions, big and small, demanded answers and decision making. What should they call the business? What permits and inspections did they need? What should they paint on the outside of the truck? What kind of food would they serve? Where would the food come from? Irene says other food trucks were an invaluable resource, particularly in helping the team navigate the city’s bureaucracy.

“We cook from scratch…and we source our food carefully so that everyone in the equation feels good about what we do. Our guests reap the benefits of eating a diverse and seasonal array of fresh and wholesome products while supporting local farms and businesses.”

“We did a lot of brainstorming, and our concept changed many times. It’s still changing,” says Irene.

The early menu consisted of a variety of dumplings. Though labor-intensive to make, they’re a popular Asian food, and the team thought that might be their focus. During the first week of business, however, the Kitchen’s crew quickly realized they couldn’t keep up with the demand.

“Chinese food is a major source of inspiration, but so are our ingredients,” says Irene. “We always want to showcase them in the best way possible.” With this approach, they began to adjust the menu.

“In the kitchen, creativity is messy,” says Irene. “Our menu develops in many different ways. Sometimes we find a dish we want to make, and we systematically create it from the top down, using a recipe as guidance and providing our own touches.

Sometimes we invent things because we need a new item on the 20 Milton Magazine

fly, or we play around with food combinations we like to eat when making our staff meals. The Double Awesome, our signature sandwich and bestseller, we invented from the leftovers of three other dishes. We put it together because we ran out of prep time.

It just sort of happened—a lot of our food is like that.”

Their mission to use only locally sourced ingredients also guides the menu. “Our creativity comes out of our limitations, some of which are self-imposed,” says Irene. They make exceptions for a few ingredients, such as garlic, ginger and rice. For acid, they use cranberries or vinegar instead of limes or lemons.

They serve soda from Rhode Island. Tofu and cheese comes from Vermont, and pasture-raised beef and pork comes from local farms.

“The kale salad is really popular, and we toyed with the idea of buying kale from California, since we can’t get it locally in December. In the end we decided against it, so it’s off the menu for now,” says Irene. The risk is turning away customers who expect consistency in the offerings.

The business now has nine employees, four of whom are fulltime. Andy cooks and runs the kitchen in the truck. Mei handles

the business side from home. Irene is on the truck three or four days a week. The other days, she and Max are either in the prep kitchen or driving around picking up ingredients, meeting with farmers and other local vendors.

“We couldn’t do the food sourcing without Irene,” says Max. “Her social skills are amazing. She just has a great way with people.”

This is evident when you watch her interact with customers and with the crew in the truck. Inside are tight, hot quarters. As orders roll in and the pace picks up, the team is focused, but they are also having a good time. Irene’s whimsical, personal touches

are everywhere. A sign over two tip jars asks, “Which is more powerful?” The diners then vote, with their bills and change, between “Love” and “Fear.”

Irene’s social skills carry over to the Internet, where she and her sister maintain a vibrant online outlet for the business using all available avenues: Web site, blog, Facebook and Twitter.

“Twitter is at the center of our business,” says Irene. “It alerts people to our presence. Because we’re a family business, we want our guests to feel like they’re part of our extended family. We want our customers to have some fun and feel connected to the food and the business, so we try to share our personality online.”

Every day they post photos of the chalkboard menu for regulars to check. They post the weekly schedule of where the Mei Mei Street Kitchen will be parked; the truck rotates between three to four spots around the city. In the blog they post favorite recipes and photos from the occasional catering events, such as weddings.

The “Mei Mei” team is already thinking about next steps.

They’re exploring a brick-and-mortar restaurant instead of a second truck. What is clear is that Irene and her siblings have the enthusiasm, business acumen and culinary chops to keep on this path of success.

“We’re lucky, in a way, that we have little experience in professional kitchens. It allows us to think like consumers and farmers instead of like chefs,” Irene says. “That’s been the key to our relationship building.”

Liz Matson www.meimeiboston.com

Spring 2013 21

Althea Grant ’89

From the Lab Bench to the Front Line: Reimagining a Science Career Sickled red blood cell

Welcome Images

Normal red blood cell

22 Milton Magazine

Althea is responsible for bringing sickle cell screening to Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya. She’s working with the World Health Organization and other organizations to add more developing countries to that list.

P

ulling on the signature white coat every morning, ensconced in a Yale genetics lab, Althea Grant ’89 could have congratulated herself: her scientific career was right on track. Yet, she was not happy. More than fifteen years later, Althea wears a khaki Public Health Service uniform to her office at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta. Now, she is right where she wants to be. Soul searching, networking and research helped Althea devise and embark on an unusual, even unlikely career shift from a coveted role in lab science to service leadership in public health. Today she brings that same inventiveness and drive to the CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities. She is acting director of the Division of Blood Disorders, and her particular focus is sickle cell disease.

“The answers to the questions we deal with in public health are not straightforward,” Althea says.

She hasn’t left hard science behind. On her busy Twitter feed (@DrGrantCDC), Althea describes herself: “disease detective, scientist, passionate about public health.” Her first project as head of epidemiology for the Centers’ Division of Blood Disorders: how to collect population data on sickle cell disease (SCD). Characterized by C-shaped red blood cells, sickle cell can lead to chronic pain, strokes and infections. Roughly 100,000 people, primarily African Americans and, to a lesser extent, Latinos and other racial and ethnic groups, are diagnosed with the condition. Beyond that number, however, little data existed on where those who are diagnosed live or how they get services.

Althea’s vision—to establish a new national registry that would collect valuable data—was impossible without new funding. Months of meetings, travel and study helped her craft a program to gather vital information about sickle cell disease.

In 2010, the CDC, along with the National Institutes of Health, launched a pilot program in seven states called RuSH— the Registry and Surveillance System for Hemoglobinopathies— to collect population-based data on people with SCD and thalassemia, another blood disorder.

“I took on that goal and worked it,” Althea says. “Getting funding for a completely new project forced me to be more resourceful than I might have been.”

The daughter of two postal workers, Althea grew up in Newark, New Jersey. She didn’t excel in music or the visual arts. Not quite five feet tall, she wasn’t likely to be a star athlete, either. Math was a strong point, and though she wrote poetry too, Althea gravitated to the sciences. With two generations pushing her to excel—her grandparents lived nearby—Althea found Milton through A Better Chance, a program that connects outstanding students with opportunities beyond those that the challenged schools near home could provide.

“Being at Milton put me on a particular trajectory,” says Althea.

“I was really well-positioned to go anywhere I wanted to go.”

After Milton, Rutgers welcomed her home. The first in her family to earn a college degree, Althea received her bachelor’s in biochemistry. She enjoyed science, and it also felt like a path to a solid career. That was important to her. In hindsight, she thinks she chose science because it felt less risky than writing or studying in the humanities.

“Science seemed more unequivocal,” she says. “You got the answer or you didn’t. There was less room for subjectivity in people’s critiques. It felt like a safe place to go.”

After earning her Ph.D. at Emory University, she pursued a postdoc in biochemistry and came back north to Yale. Her mentors at Yale were great, and her research into yeast, a model for human genetics, was going well. But something was wrong.

“Though professionally, everything was going fine,” Althea says, “I thought I had lost my mind.”

Althea had never questioned her commitment to science, and she had invested years of education in a lab career. Now she was faced with figuring out where she really wanted to be and how to get there. So she started a new research project—into a career change. She began by trying to remember a time when she felt passionate about her work. The feeling of engagement that she had during her public health classes came to mind. After Spring 2013 23

Althea had never questioned her commitment to science, and she had invested years of education in a lab career. Now she was faced with figuring out where she really wanted to be and how to get there.

watching several family members suffer from HIV, she also felt a growing urge to serve.

All of that led Althea back to Atlanta. She wanted to become an epidemiologist, and she set her sights high: the CDC. She was aware that, in major ways, she was starting over. Federal government jobs in the field were notoriously hard to get. Althea was aiming for the most prestigious public-health institution in the country. She relied on her science skills and reputation to get a head start. She targeted and won a fellowship in the Mycotic Diseases Branch, where scientists study fungal diseases like yeast infections.

“I thought, I can convince them that I can do fungus, and I’ll be doing fungus at the CDC,” she says. ”Once at the CDC, I will learn and network and go back to school and do all these things to move into the field I want.”

That was her strategy. Her career path took years and led to several different branches of the agency before she arrived at the Division of Blood Disorders. That division felt like a perfect match. Blood Disorders has a research lab, and the diseases are mostly hereditary, so her genetics background is an advantage.

“Creating an opportunity to come here, to speak the language and to synergize my own skill sets meant figuring out a unique pathway,” she says. “When I finally reached the division, there was no funding for the things that I felt were most important.”

The division was focused on hemophilia, but Althea saw a significant gap in public health action on sickle cell disease. So she started talking to patients, other branches of the CDC, and to the National Institutes of Health to win support for the idea.

She went to every relevant meeting she could think of—from academic research sessions, to staff meetings at the National Institutes of Health, to gatherings of the patients and doctors, to community-based organizations like the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America. She traveled frequently and did much of the networking on her own time. Althea started her family while her eyes were focused on this public health goal. She now has four children, and when they were young she sometimes took them along to meetings.

Not only did she succeed at securing the funding to launch.

Althea is working to expand sickle cell screening in Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya. She’s working with the World Health Organization and other organizations to add more developing countries to that list. The work on sickle cell earned Althea a prestigious Public Health Service Commendation medal, represented by a number of colorful stripes on her uniform.

Last year, widespread federal budget cuts in medical research hit the RuSH program. Its four-year running time was narrowed to two, and the program ended in 2012. Now Althea is concentrating again on figuring out how to make something important happen, against the tide. She’s ready for it. “If I don’t do this, no one will,” she says. “I’m not a placeholder. I need to be a leader and a driver, and that’s a unique opportunity.”

Tinker Ready

24 Milton Magazine

At Milton

making dances : How to render ideas in space and time

E Kelli Edwards teaches dance, advanced dance and choreography courses at Milton.

Every year, Kelli’s advanced class—as a group—creates a dance for the Concert.

xcitement has been building for weeks, and not just among the dancers. Don’t count on talking your way into King Theatre without a ticket. The Winter Dance Concert may be the biggest draw all year on campus. Seats are “soldout” for the three nights’ run.

Some students in the show have been dancing for many years; others made their way to dance tryouts after a football practice last fall. Milton choreographers figure prominently in the program lineup. These students, who earned green lights for their proposals from performing arts faculty last fall, have produced their dances for an audience of peers.

Spring 2013 25

Kelli Edwards teaches dance, advanced dance and choreography courses at Milton.

(Corey Baker ’03 and Kevin Moy ’05 are her teaching colleagues in the department.)

Every year, Kelli’s advanced class—as a group—creates a single dance. “My role,” Kelli says, “is to ask the right questions to help them figure out what to do with their ideas—to act as a creative coordinator.”

Beginning with a broad field of ideas, Kelli’s class eventually narrows the focus: from the violent, physical power of the Mafia, to the power of a group on an individual, for instance. To make progress, her students play music, listen, talk in tandem.

“This is a messy, rambling stage,” Kelli says, “and the students are uncomfortable, not knowing where they’re going.”

Once they’ve settled in, the class needs to conceptualize physical configurations that will represent their idea. “My students

26 Milton Magazine

have an easier time generating thematic ideas—that process is a familiar one.

They have a tougher time visualizing movement.”

Moving them in that direction “is tricky,” Kelli says. “You have to get them out of their heads. You find a seed, the more specific the better, and build that out.

Students need a concrete place to start.”

For this year’s class, the kernel that worked was the thought of a magnet: its power to attract and repel. That provided physical direction for improvisation, which leads to a movement phrase, which—with work— leads to intersecting movement phrases.

From this flow, outside toward inside, then from inside back out, the dance emerges.

The student choreographers that Kelli mentors with the help of Kevin Moy are often interested in telling a story with the dances they create. Milton’s would-be

choreographers submit proposals in October, two weeks before they hold auditions to choose dancers. With their dancers, they work together over second semester, culminating in the March concert.

Why choose choreography as your art form? Having always composed her own combinations of pliés and tendus, Grace Kernohan ’13 discovered in her Class III year that improvising moves—creating artistically interesting movement—was fun. She realized that she wanted to do more.

“For me,” says Isabel Wise ’13, a dancer since she was two years old, “movement is more successful than words in conveying a message. With dance, I can express myself more clearly, more effectively.”

Hayley Fish ’13, also a lifelong dancer, talks about the impetus to create dances

that carry messages through stories.

Hayley had been involved in dances that required high technical proficiency, but she had little choreography experience.

“Here,” Hayley says, “Kelli is totally open to our ideas about everything: movement, costumes, lighting. The stage is our voice.”

The choreographers carry out their plans independently: they set the goals for their dancers; hold tryouts; run rehearsals (eight of them, two hours each); organize the teaching; respond to dancers’ feedback; track the progress; and often, dance a role themselves.

Hayley’s dance this year is intended to be a toy store coming to life. Her dance includes 24 dancers: 12 males (G.I. Joes) and 12 females (Barbie dolls). “I want my dance to draw the audience in, so they feel like they’re experiencing the shopping.”

A family walks through the toy store

(namely, Lisa Baker and Tarim Chung of the English department with their children) talking with one another. Each child walks away with her toy choices.

“I was intentionally not choosing the best technical dancers during tryouts,” Hayley says. “I needed dancers who could be more loose, more open. Seven of my dancers are on the football team. I was looking at their freestyle moves, the emotion on their faces, whether they could have fun with it. In the auditions, I looked for which boy could truly straighten his arm. Doing things in unison is key, and line changes are important. My dance isn’t highly technical but it’s dynamic; moves need to be done in unison.”

Isabel’s dance is more somber. Having experienced the deaths, recently, of two people close to her, Isabel created a tribute to them. The living, Isabel explains,

are mourning. “I present what could be an idea of heaven; angels reach out, but there’s a divide.” As is the case with Hayley’s dance, the idea she wants to convey triggers the movements that she weaves together. “For instance,” Isabel explains, “I visited my grandmother often when she was sick and dying. In my dance, I adopted what my grandmother was doing with her hands when I would see her.”

Grace asserts that her dance, which explores the idea of infection, is intense rather than sad. “Five dancers are in black; four are in white. I’m using ‘tear-away’ costumes, so the white costumes tear away, revealing black beneath and emphasizing the idea of infection.” The costumes are what Grace calls a “draw-in component,” but she wants people to be excited about the dance itself. The dance should tell the story.

The tech crew, eight students, manages sound, light and stage. The 15 dances on the full program this year will showcase 70 student dancers in total. Think of the costume changes happening offstage, in the first-floor rooms of Kellner Performing Arts Center.

Spring 2013 27

Grace Kernohan ’13, Isabel Wise ’13 and Hayley Fish ’13

How do the girls work with their dancers, trained and untrained, to make sure that movement tells the story, independent of costumes, music and lighting?

Last year Hayley’s dance relied on technically advanced dancers. You could show them what an eight count looked like, and they’d do it. This year her troupe is completely new to dance. It was “very eye-opening for me,” Hayley says, “to see that some movements I thought were easy are not, especially for the guys. I have to break down every movement. I teach legs first, then arms, then legs faster, then arms faster, until it comes together.”

Isabel talks about having to find a balance. Instructors at the studio where she has studied are often very direct and severe. That doesn’t work with your peers.

“I have to lean more on the respect side of the fear-and-respect tension,” Isabel says, “and I’m getting better at that.”

Grace uses metaphors to help her dancers “go beyond the movement itself,” she says. “I’ll say, ‘Cut it like a knife,’ or ‘Weed your way all the way up.’

28 Milton Magazine

“Anyone can lift his arm up, but I want him to bring it up with power and emotion. The metaphors help me get my message across to the dancers, as well as to the audience. If the dancers don’t perform with emotion behind their movements, the story will be lost in the dance.” Grace talks with individual dancers after the practice, not in front of the others. That’s a better time, she thinks, to tell a dancer to “flex her hand, rather than keeping it so pretty.”

Creative blocks do occur, before and during the eight-week rehearsal span.

They can be painful, everyone agrees.

Isabel finds inspiration from just watching other highly trained dancers; Grace likes to walk away from the music and then come back to it. Hayley often relies on videos of her older performances for new ideas. Kelli says that she will start with one of a number of physical exercises, hoping that it will generate ideas.

The time comes when the choreographers must rely on a combination of trust and just letting go, whether or not a work is “finished.” “After a certain number of

run-throughs, the dancers need to see what they can do. You leave it to them,” says Hayley.

The dance is “always a mess” the first time dancers perform it onstage, during what’s known as “tech week,” just before the show. “You don’t have the mirror you’re used to, the stage is shaped differently from the studio floor, and you now have an audience,” Grace points out. “That moment of surprise eventually comes, when the dance has been performed, and you say, ‘Wow, I really did all that.’”

As Kelli says about her dancers and choreographers, these are young people trying to figure out the creative process.

“They draw on what they know, and their expectations are based on what they’ve seen. What I’m trying to do is change their expectations of what they are doing, forcing them, and us, to create something fundamentally new.”

Cathleen D. Everett

At Milton

Math Is Strategy Grade Four Students Make the Decisions

M

ilton’s fourth graders learn three core tenets of working with numbers: flexibility, efficiency and accuracy. In other words, their teacher Randy Schmidt says, finding the right answer is important, but it’s not quite enough.

“Students often come in with just the accuracy part,” Randy laughs, “and that leads to the other important work that we do.”

They begin the year reviewing addition and subtraction strategies, as Randy

reexamines or introduces multiple strategies for each operation. “Being open to a new strategy when they already have one down is challenging for some students,” he says. He makes it clear that the technique they know works well, but that it might not be the best choice for every problem.

Approaching a problem with this flexibility can be a struggle at first.

Flexible thinking in math means looking closely and figuring out what the numbers in the problem are actually

telling you to do. Many students learn the traditional “stacking” algorithm early on, but if, for instance, you’re adding 157 and 99, it makes more sense to add 100 and then “adjust” by subtracting one. Learning this strategy of compensation is an “aha!” moment for many students. Once the students own the different strategies, deciding which one works best is up to them.

They also start to make connections: When multiplying 27 times 35 they may use partial products, which is just another way to

Spring 2013 29

represent the traditional algorithm. They learn that while many strategies will work for any given problem, their job is to find the most efficient one.

Moving on to multiplication, Randy relates calculations to real-life applications, using both open and closed arrays, and lots of hands-on projects. One popular unit is Muffles Truffles, about a candy maker with a ditzy assistant who makes lots of mistakes. Randy charges the students with cleaning up the mathematical messes.

Always using accurate mathematical language—factors, products, multiples— students connect their multiplication strategies with division calculations; they learn to relate fractions with decimals, percentages and probability. They tackle twodimensional geometry—why is a square a square? Why is a square always a rhombus, but a rhombus isn’t always a square?

Students experiment with tangrams, paying attention to symmetry and patterns.

Randy, a visual learner himself, brings quilts from home and talks with students about transforming shapes through rotations, translations and reflections. The

Flexible thinking in math means looking closely and figuring out what the numbers in the problem are actually telling you to do. children then dive into three-dimensional geometry—interpreting silhouette views, drawing their own isometric views, and then building those three-dimensional structures.

Working in partnerships, fourth graders create colorful posters representing their work. To close a unit, the students go on a “gallery walk,” checking out their classmates’ creations. When they share feedback, Randy’s method is WWW.EBI— what went well and even better if. “We start with the positive, because something went

well,” he says. “Then, instead of saying, ‘You did this wrong,’ we say, ‘It would be even better if…’”

The children realize quickly that they’re able to find shortcuts. “I want them to get to the shortcuts,” says Randy, “but I don’t present those right away. First, they need to understand why the shortcuts work.”

Equally important is helping students learn how to communicate their thinking.

Saying, “I just know it,” doesn’t cut it, so in class they break things down into smaller components. They walk through problems step by step. Explaining your thought process is an important skill, which students practice through lots of partner and smallgroup work.

“I want my students to understand the math behind the math, so that they are comfortable when they get into algebraic functions.”

“One of the big risks for children is volunteering to share, even when they’re not quite sure of the answer,” says Randy. “We celebrate that. Getting the wrong answer is an example of courage in the classroom, and students need to feel comfortable taking risks. That’s how we learn.”

Randy is glad that in fourth grade math is one of the students’ favorite subjects.

Many appreciate the finality of a definitively correct answer. In Randy’s classroom, however, they learn that they’re in charge, and need to be creative, when it comes to finding that answer.

“I want my students to understand the math behind the math, so that they are comfortable when they get into algebraic functions,” he says. “I hope students leave my class realizing that they’re not just calculators, but problem solvers.”

Erin E. Berg

30 Milton Magazine

cl a ssroom

Ian Torney ’82, Painter, Poses Problems

I

an Torney, Class of 1982—accomplished oil painter and arts educator—has returned to Milton’s art classrooms. Next year he will lead the visual arts department as its chair. The department’s approach to working with students has not changed since his time as a student, and Ian quickly names this underlying asset: “I am inheriting a department with a clear point of view,” he says. “Gordon Chase, Bryan Cheney, Anne Neely, Paul Menneg and Maggie Stark, my former teachers, deserve credit for establishing a contemporary way of teaching art here, a method ahead of its time.”

The department’s faculty believe that students learn skills through wrestling with an idea. The “creative problem” comes first, as does thinking critically about how to solve that problem with the tools at hand. Then comes the focus on particular artistic techniques. In the past, painters, photographers and sculptors studied within their own silos, Ian points out. Today, artists create across boundaries, and technology has become a major integrative agent. “Today, a painter who isn’t comfortable and competent with technology is remiss,” Ian says.

Art classes for Class IV students are a case in point. Class IV should be a year of hands-on experience, exploration and risk taking, the department thinks. One semester, students have a weekly double period

At The Horizon: orange and blue sky. Oil on board, 12x12 inches, 2011. Ian created this painting for his exhibit at the Nesto Gallery last spring.

Find Ian’s paintings at www.iantorneyfineart.com.

Spring 2013 31

32 Milton Magazine

in the visual arts; they address drawing, painting, sculpture and digital imaging.

The same schedule in performing arts applies during the alternate semester.

“Our introduction to sculpture, for instance, is presenting material and a problem. While students work through the making and doing, I talk through design principles and offer relevant context and history,” Ian says. In one session last fall, students’ “materials” were marshmallows and dry spaghetti. Using these, they were to construct the largest sculpture they could that would survive the trip back to dorm or to home, intact. They worked “in the tradition of Buckminster Fuller (Milton Class of 1913) and his geodesic dome,” Ian says. These sculptures served as maquettes for the design challenge in the next class: working as a group, with only two Sunday-newspaper’s worth of newsprint and one roll of masking tape, to build as tall a tower as possible, strong enough to hold the weight of a teddy bear at the top.

“In the Class IV program, we’re not necessarily after a certain finished product— we’re more interested in the process. I put a creative problem before the students. If there are 12 people in the class, I want 12 different responses.”

This approach is pedagogically on target for freshmen, Ian thinks. After this broad exposure, students begin to understand the possibilities of different art disciplines and get excited about focusing on an area for a full-year course. (Milton requires at least one full-year course in the arts.)

In successive courses, Class III and beyond, students narrow their focus and intensively develop certain skills crucial to a particular art discipline. In a typical class that meets several times a week, students and their faculty can be more deliberate and formal about developing extended projects. “Students also see how what they’re doing in art intersects with all the subject areas they’re studying,” Ian points out.

“Working to develop one visual concept over the course of a semester—pushing one big idea as far as it can go—is an important experience for young people, especially when they hit the wall and have to push through it,” Ian says.

Advancing his own work and his technique in oil painting led Ian from what he calls “fairly traditional, realistic landscape painting” to “more abstract, atmospheric works.” His current work, for instance, focuses on the ambiguity found at the horizon. Texture and the relief of the surface is important now. He uses a palette knife almost exclusively to deliver the paint and focuses on how the mark affects the surface of the painting.

Art is always about problem solving, and for Ian the genesis of an idea is often a small plein-air study (12" x 12") that he translates into a much larger composition.

Executing the difference in scale presents many challenges, especially as his technique requires him to work on a wet surface. “The sculptural possibilities inherent in the slow-drying attributes of oil paint are integral to my work,” he says, “and the medium really leads the process.”

Spring 2013 33

Our belief that all students can be artists is actually an idea about personal growth and process. Creative thinking, self-expression, and encountering the challenges of an art form empower students to be creative and confident in all areas of life.

Visual Arts Statement of Philosophy

Visual Arts Courses, 2013–2014 Studio Art Photography 3-D Studio Art Film and Video Production: Moving Image Advanced Art: Drawing Advanced Art: Photography Advanced Art: Sculpture Advanced Art: Painting Advanced Art: Ceramics Advanced Art: Architecture Advanced Moving Image Advanced Independent Art 2-D Advanced Independent Art 3-D Advanced Independent Photography Visual Arts Seminar: Master Projects Ian charged his Class IV students with constructing the largest, most durable sculpture they could, using marshmallows and dry spaghetti, exclusively. Students worked “in the tradition of Buckminster Fuller (Milton Class of 1913) and his geodesic dome,” Ian says.

Ian has plenty of energy and ideas for the visual arts curriculum, including one that will get under way in the coming year—a seminar course titled “Master Projects.” Ian plans to integrate the Nesto Gallery and its exhibiting artists into the academic program vigorously. “Nesto Gallery artists, along with Milton faculty (all practicing artists themselves), will lead students in master projects around the tenets of their distinct practices,” Ian explains. “The artist’s media and method of working will shape the kinds of projects students undertake.” Ian also believes 34 Milton Magazine

that “the Art and Media Center (the old science building) has tremendous possibility. The space naturally lends itself to our discipline; we’ll continue to repurpose the building for visual arts even as we use it.”

Each of the arts is a distinct discipline, but learning about them from an integrative, problem-solving point of view is a powerful teaching method, Ian thinks, framing the department’s point of view.

“Arts can easily take a leading position in learning experiences, in developing technical abilities, understanding historical context, and cultivating critical thinking along

with creativity,” Ian says. “The arts can be more adaptable and nimble—embrace what’s coming, as well as what’s been.

Teachers do not ‘teach to the test,’ the burden in many academic areas.

“Our approach as a department is culturally consistent with this School,” Ian points out. “Milton students are not shy.

They’re creative and curious and ready to engage, and Milton does a terrific job of supporting those attributes in our students.”

Cathleen D. Everett

he ad of school

On Purposeful Percolating

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n article by Carolyn Johnson in the Boston Globe titled “The Joy of Boredom” made its way to my file because of how it highlighted two insightful thinkers. Richard Ralley and Ned Hallowell have written extensively about the danger of modern society’s fear of boredom. They argue that our desire to be stimulated, constantly, threatens our potential for creativity.

Mr. Ralley, a lecturer at Edge Hill University in England, notes that, “The most creative people are known to have the greatest toleration for long periods of uncertainty and boredom.” Dr. Hallowell, psychiatrist and author of the book CrazyBusy, writes, “If you think of boredom as the prelude to creativity and loneliness as the prelude to engagement of the imagination, then they are good things... the doorways to something better.” You have to admire the success of today’s entertainment and media marketing campaigns: they have successfully taught many of us, and certainly many of our young people, to fear boredom, to be wary of quiet. Though vast expanses of idleness are not healthy, I do advocate balance—for ourselves, and for our School.

As we move toward introducing and implementing Milton’s comprehensive Strategic Plan, conversations naturally

focus on how we will accomplish our objectives. Based on extensive discussion and careful analysis, our Strategic Plan does exactly what it should do: articulate clearly our priorities for the next five to ten years, and align the School’s resources to match our goals. I believe that the success of our Strategic Plan will have as much to

do with how we allocate our time as how we allocate our financial resources. Time is a scarce and valuable resource in our hyperactive, high-achieving lives and culture. Appreciating the impact of different ways of spending time and using time well are two crucial skills.

One of the key goals that has emerged from the planning process is becoming more purposeful in making sure every effort furthers Milton’s mission. We must ensure that Milton’s educational experience is not only excellent, but is consistently and predictably excellent for each student. Our plan explicitly commits us to develop children’s cognitive and intellectual skills, and also their self-awareness and responsibility, their empathy and ability to cooperate. Helping students understand the value of time, structured and unstructured, will be central to our success.

As Ralley and Hallowell have said, free time—quiet time, time away from screens, noise, class, even from other people— can be fertile ground. Our minds must be nurtured, cultivated and protected to think creatively, as well as to quantify and analyze.

In my Senior Transitions class this year, I am trying to set aside the last few minutes of class for quiet, reflection and rest.

And when my students astound me, again, with their thoughtful and exciting ideas about how they plan to live their lives after Milton, I will realize that their greatest insights may well have come from simply providing them the moments to be at their best.

Todd B. Bland

Spring 2013 35

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Team Captains: What’s in their playbook?

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n the pool, around the track, across the courts, and on slopes and fields, student athletes strive to perform at their best. While their coaches constantly guide and teach, team captains significantly affect the experiences in an athlete’s season. Elected by peers to lead, team captains are typically seniors who bring their experience from previous seasons. Most teams have two or three captains, and occasionally a well-respected player from Class II or III gets the nod of teammates. Each team has unique needs, but the roles that team captains play are similar, regardless of the sport.

“Having individual goals is important, but the team captain needs to put the team goals ahead of individual goals,” says Samantha Clifford (I), captain of girls’ volleyball and girls’ basketball.

Nick Bland (I) agrees. Nick is a threeseason athlete and a team captain for boys’ football, basketball and lacrosse—the only student in the class serving as captain on three teams.

“A good captain is able to lead a group of individuals to a goal that is greater than themselves,” says Nick. “Captains need to be more than just players on the team, they need to be leaders both on and off the field.”

Captains do recognize that their role extends beyond practices, races and games.

36 Milton Magazine

“It’s important for captains to be leaders not just on the court, but in the Student Center, or even walking around campus.

We need to set a good example,” says Tucker Hamlin (I), a boys’ squash captain for the second year.

Lamar Reddicks, Milton’s athletic director and boys’ basketball coach, instituted a captains’ program at the beginning of the school year to review, or in some cases introduce, the idea of personal leadership to the captains. They attended a session run by Positive Coaching Alliance, a national nonprofit that works with youth and high school athletes. The students also read Elevating Your Game: Becoming a Triple-Impact Competitor by Jim Thompson.

“Giving our captains an idea of what leadership is benefits them, and the School, in so many ways,” says Coach Reddicks. “The students learn skills that they can carry with them throughout their lives.”

Team captains routinely set the tone and rally the athletes, too.

“Captains set the team dynamic at the beginning of the season,” says Jessica Li (I), a girls’ soccer captain. “We want everyone to feel a part of the team, even when we aren’t on the field.”

“Even though practices and meets can be tough, you keep your head up to show

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your teammates that even though things can sometimes be difficult, you still have to try your best,” says Kasia Ifill (I), a track team captain.

Motivating your peers is a difficult skill to master, and many captains say this responsibility is a challenge.

“Getting teammates excited about the season is one of the most important things captains do,” says Kevin MacDonald, coach of the boys’ football team, “whether that means getting the athletes into the weight room or out for runs. They need the skills in organization and motivation. Captains need to be vocal, too—not afraid to speak up when necessary.”

“Players get tired sometimes; some may not want to go to practice after a long day at school,” says Jessica. “But the captain can overcome those things by keeping the enthusiasm up. If you are excited, your teammates will pick up on that.”

“When we are joking around and having fun, the captains have to know when it’s time to step in and say, ‘Let’s focus.’

You don’t want to be the bad guy, but at some point you have to encourage your teammates to shift gears,” says Tucker.

Personality conflicts or strong disagreements between players can arise, and they can be serious.

“As a captain, you deal with situations both on and off the field,” says Nick. “Your

teammates all have different personalities, and sometimes they make decisions that are tough to confront. Being the bigger person and looking at a situation from everyone’s perspective is what you need to do. Then you can decide how best to help them and move forward as a team,” says Nick.

Overall, all the captains relish keeping the atmosphere fun, whether continuing long-held traditions, organizing team dinners, decorating underclassmen’s lockers, or trading inside jokes.

“I like to have fun with the girls,” says Kasia. “We lead the team parties, the cheers, the stretches and warm-ups. In the beginning of the season, we meet to talk about the season’s goals and inform the younger girls about track and how the team can both work hard and have fun.”

Ben Bosworth (I), a seasoned team

captain of boys’ cross country and track, enjoys leading an old cross country tradition: running around campus with a shopping cart and boom box the Friday before a race. As the music plays, the runners perform various musical acts and skits outside of the Student Center. It’s a silly and fun way for the runners to bond.

All of the captains remember how they felt in Class IV. They go out of their way to reach out to the new and younger members of the team. Nick points to the chance to establish relationships with younger students who might not normally interact with upperclassmen on a daily basis.

Ben says, “When I was a freshman, I looked up to the seniors and captains. To me, they were the coolest people around.

I could tell they’d been through so many experiences. Now it’s my turn to create a positive environment; we work hard to

make the youngest runners feel part of the team quickly at the beginning of the season.”

“I like being there for younger students if they have questions or concerns,” says Samantha. “Being looked up to is nice. Overall, my role on the team hasn’t changed too much now that I’m captain.

I’ve always been enthusiastic and loud, cheering on my teammates. The only thing that has changed is that people now come to me with concerns.”

Although they might not connect daily, team captains are also there for each other.

“I like being surrounded by classmates who hold similar positions,” says Nick, “to see how they’re working with their teams and helping each other through difficult situations.”

Liz Matson

Senior captains Samantha Clifford (volleyball, basketball), Jessica Li (soccer), Nick Bland (football, basketball, lacrosse), Kasia Ifill (track), Ben Bosworth (cross country, track) and Tucker Hamlin (squash)

Spring 2013 37

facult y perspec tive

“What do you mean, ‘curriculum renewal’?”

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eather Sugrue, math department chair, along with the faculty in her department, have undertaken a comprehensive review of math at Milton.

Math is taking the lead in a renewal process that every department at Milton will conduct, in sequence and at regular intervals.

“Ongoing, rigorous, curriculum renewal” is a key tenet of the Strategic Plan adopted by the trustees in January 2013. One of the central architects on the Strategic Planning team, Heather co-chaired its Student Life Task Force.

Heather is pioneering the first major example of the process the plan intends. Milton’s priority goal for the academic program is excellence and relevance: the two attributes paired together. Regular evaluations—highlighting what to preserve, what to improve, and what innovation to pursue—will give us the impetus and the information to define curriculum astutely over time.

When did the department begin working on this idea?

Really, we’ve been building on it for at least two years. David Ball (principal) opened school by talking with faculty about refining all of our evaluative processes. He talked with department chairs about how productive and healthy external reviews would be for future growth.

What have you taken on?

The work is really comprehensive: lots of introspection among the faculty about

38 Milton Magazine

what, how, when and why we teach what we do; student and alumni surveys; a weeklong visit by an outside team of educators. Then comes the work of analyzing what we’ve learned.

What do you expect?

We’re looking at the future, and I’m really confident that we’ll have the kind of solid information we need to make the best decisions. Even preparing for the study— looking at student evaluations, getting ready for the visiting team—has been so productive for all of us.

What are the upsides of going first?

We can create the assessment ourselves, and adjust as we go forward. We can also make sure we get information that’s helpful to us. Also, others will follow our lead, improve on the model and adapt it.

Have you found any advice particularly helpful?

Having Jackie Bonenfant (academic dean and former math department chair) so involved is great. Michael Edgar (science department chair), who was involved in a similar process for science some years ago, told me to make sure to ask about the hard issues upfront. That was good advice.

You surveyed alumni about their experience with math at Milton. Did they respond?

Yes, and in big numbers. We sent the survey to everyone who graduated from 2003 to 2012, and 28 percent participated. We have more than 400 responses, and people told us they were very happy to be asked for their thoughts.

How about students?

No surprise, the students were great. We sent the survey to students in Class I and Class II, and 70 percent completed it.

Who’s on the visiting team?

Six educators are coming to campus. The chair of the team educates math educators at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. One is a parent of a Milton grad who is involved in the industry. A third spent many years as the math department chair at a K–12 school and now works in higher education.

Another is a math teacher from a private school known for its exceptional math program. Finally, two on the team will focus on K–8.

How long will they be on campus?

From Monday through Friday—a full week of immersion.

What are some of the side benefits?

Teachers have moved from a little understandable reticence to being excited about what we’re learning and what we could be doing. We’ve uncovered new and important questions that we can discuss with each other, over time, as well. Maybe most importantly, more than half of us have been off campus looking at other programs, and that number will grow by the year’s end.

What do people need to know about this kind of curriculum review?

It takes time, money, focus, help from academic leaders, and a willingness to adjust, tweak and persist. It’s extremely important and very absorbing. And in the meantime, teaching and advising and coaching and dorm parenting goes on.

It’s an absolutely invaluable and transformative effort. It will even more distinctly define teaching and learning at Milton, department by department, over time.

Heather Sugrue, math department chair Spring 2013 39

in • sight Improv Night—part of the actors’ exam—is a campus favorite.

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Spring 2013 41

on centre

Girls’ Cross Country Wins ISL Championship

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ilton’s cross country runners are league champions. The girls brought home the Independent School League Championship Cup this fall, a feat last accomplished by the program in 1983.

“The race was really fast, because the first part of the course was completely flat,” said Maddie Warwick (II). “Many of the girls in the front weren’t giving up. It was harder to pass them, because they stuck with you.”

Maddie earned an early lead in the field of 85 runners and never looked back. Milton’s number-one runner finished the 3.1-mile course in sixth place with a time of 20:34. The Mustangs followed up Maddie’s strong finish with five more runners in the top 20. Emily Bosworth (III) finished 14th; Caroline Ward (IV) placed 16th; Victoria White (II), Lindsay Atkeson (I) and Laura Barkowski (III) followed closely, finishing at 17th, 18th and 20th place, respectively.

“During the race you could feel the energy coming from the fans, the other runners, and yourself. Every runner was giving 100 percent of what she

42 Milton Magazine

could,” said Emily, who clocked a time of 21:09, narrowly beating a St. Paul’s runner in the final straightaway. “You could hear everything from cheers to tears as you were running.”

“We had awesome packs of Milton girls who stuck together throughout the race,” said Mary Ellis (II), who rounded out Milton’s top seven, beating more than half of the ISL field. “I can imagine how intimidating the big pack of orange out in front was for the other teams.”

The championship race was emotionally charged for Milton’s squad. The team had finished second in the 2011 championships. They lost to Nobles in early October; it was the team’s only loss in the 2012 season.

The Mustangs finished the day with 71 points, beating the second-place Nobles team by eight points.

“Being an ISL champion team feels surreal,” said Laura Barkowski, who passed a key Nobles runner in the final stretch of the race. “I decided to join the cross country team on a whim and, honestly, I have never known a more supportive, fun and motivated group of girls.”

Buckminster Fuller Milton Class of 1913

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ne hundred years ago, inventor and engineer Buckminster Fuller graduated from Milton Academy.

Hailed as one of the greatest minds of our time, Buckminster experienced ups and downs in his early adult years. He was expelled from Harvard twice before apprenticing as a machine fitter at a cotton mill machinery company in Boston. During two years of service in the U.S. Navy during World War I, he demonstrated an aptitude for engineering. Following the war, an executive position at a construction firm ended with his firing. But after his fatherin-law, James Monroe Hewlett, developed a new way of manufacturing reinforced concrete buildings, the two patented the invention together, earning the first of Buckminster’s 25 patents.

Buckminster decided to make it his lifelong mission to use technology to revolutionize construction and improve housing.

In 1946, he received a patent for another breakthrough invention: the Dymaxion Map, which

“Buckminster Fuller was and continues to be one of my heroes,” says Gordon Chase (visual arts), who took this photograph during one of Buckminster’s visits to campus in the late 1970s. “He was one of a few people in the 20th century who worked passionately to improve the world and who refused to accept the limitations of politics and cultural divides,” Gordon says. “He influenced the thinking of an amazing number of people around the world and did as much as any goodwill ambassador to get leaders and ordinary people alike to see and to seek the ‘common good.’ He was the supreme optimist. In coining phrases like ‘operating manual for spaceship earth,’ he sought to unite us all beyond differences of religion, class and race.” Justin Aborn ’79 and David Rabkin ’79 show their version of a three-wheeled vehicle to Fuller.

depicted the entire planet on a single flat map without visible distortion of the relative shapes and sizes of the continents. After 1947, the geodesic dome dominated Buckminster’s life and career. Lightweight, cost-effective and easy to assemble, geodesic domes enclose more space without intrusive supporting columns than any other structure, efficiently distribute stress, and withstand extremely harsh conditions. Later in his career, Buckminster was recognized with major architectural, scientific, industrial and design awards, and he received 47 honorary doctoral degrees. Shortly before his death in 1983, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

A 1973 black-and-white photograph of Buckminster hangs in the School’s admission office.

He signed it, “To: Wonderful Milton Academy, where I learned how to organize thought and was urged to ‘Dare to be true’ to what I learned from organized thoughts.”

Alumni Authors: Recently Published Works Rocket Writes a Story

by Tad Hills ’81 Schwartz & Wade Books, July 2012 A New York Times bestseller, Rocket Writes a Story is the irresistible sequel to the New York Times best-selling How Rocket Learned to Read. A starred review from Kirkus calls it “a perfect choice to inspire new readers and writers.”

Tad Hills’s lovable character Rocket loves books and wants to make his own, but he can’t think of a story. Encouraged by the

little yellow bird to look closely at the world around him for inspiration, Rocket sets out on a journey. Along the way he discovers small details that he has never noticed before: a timid baby owl who becomes his friend, and an idea for a story. Declared a best children’s book of the year by Amazon, Barnes & Noble, School Library Journal and Publishers Weekly, this book is sure to appeal to kids, parents, teachers, and librarians.

One review in Publishers Weekly says, “Hills is adept at

showing Rocket’s setbacks and successes while offering excellent tips for children following in the dog’s footsteps… Hills gently demonstrates the power of stories to build bridges.”

Tad Hills is also the author and illustrator of How Rocket Learned to Read, Duck & Goose, and Duck, Duck, Goose, all New York Times bestsellers. His Duck & Goose board books include the ALA Notable Book, What’s Up, Duck?, and the indie bestseller, Duck & Goose Find a Pumpkin.

Spring 2013 43

messages Randall Dunn ’83 Randall Dunn ’83 was the 2013 Martin Luther King Day speaker at the assembly honoring the great civil rights leader. Mr. Dunn is head of school at the Latin School of Chicago, which, like Milton, provides students with a challenging and rewarding educational program in a community that embraces diversity of people, cultures and ideas. As a student at Milton, he participated in community service, was a three-season athlete, and, as a senior, was a head monitor. Mr. Dunn earned a bachelor’s degree from Brown University and a master’s degree in education from Harvard University. He and his wife, Liz ’83, live with their two children in Chicago.

“Suicide is the third leading cause of death among adolescents, yet most schools won’t address it, for fear that it will give students the idea to commit suicide. That’s foolish.

We have to let students know how to recognize symptoms of depression, so they can help themselves and their friends.”

Bishop John Shelby Spong This year, Bishop John Shelby Spong continued the Endowment for Religious Understanding speaker series established by the Class of 1952. Bishop Spong spoke with students about accepting people, regardless of their race, religion, gender or sexual orientation. He explained to students that the Bible is sometimes used to dissuade that acceptance, including in Bishop Spong’s own childhood experience. A retired bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, New Jersey, Bishop Spong is known as a theologian, religious commentator and author. Growing up in the 1930s in North Carolina, Bishop Spong credits the civil rights movement as triggering his lifelong personal journey toward changing the way he thought about people different from himself, without turning away from the Bible, a book that he treasures.

Joe Vulopas

“Not only did Dr. King have the ability to put the well-being of others before his own; he was also a great facilitator. He was possessed by great conviction, and he knew that his focused and courageous work, though difficult, would help others in the future. In the end, the best facilitators allow you to get to a better place.”

44 Milton Magazine

This year’s Talbot Speaker, Joe Vulopas, is the founder and executive director of Aevidum—a depression and suicide education awareness initiative launched at the Pennsylvania high school where Mr. Vulopas teaches English.

Mr. Vulopas’s goal is spreading awareness about depression, suicide and hope. Aevidum involves trained adults in empowering middle and high school students to understand that depression is a treatable illness; to know the warning signs of depression; to use their gifts and talents to spread the message of hope; and to be advocates for their friends—other students—who may need help. Partnered with health and education professionals from University of Pennsylvania, Aevidum also addresses many other issues facing teenagers today.

“With all these misuses of the Bible, why would anyone bother with such a book? The Bible is an evolving story. It’s the story of the rise of human consciousness. I see God as the source of life, so the only way we can worship God is by living fully and by being all that we are capable of being. The more fully I can be myself, the more fully you can be yourself.”

Martín Espada Tapping into his ancestral Puerto Rico and his 1960s Brooklyn childhood, Martín Espada’s poems weave stories of immigrants, family, music, racism and baseball.

As this fall’s Bingham Visiting Reader, he read—with passion and humor—from selected works to students in King Theatre, framing his poems with stories of how they came to be. Mr. Espada has published more than 15 books as a poet, editor, essayist and translator. His latest collection of poems, The Trouble Ball, is the recipient of the Milt Kessler Award, a Massachusetts Book Award and an International Latino Book Award. The Republic of Poetry was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He has received other recognition, such as the American Book Award, the National Hispanic Culture Center Literary Award, and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. A former tenant lawyer, Mr. Espada is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

“Gender is a central, organizing principle of human society. It affects all of us. If you are in a position to speak up in the face of social injustice, then you need to speak up. If you say nothing, what are you saying by your silence?”

Nell Irvin Painter Distinguished historian Nell Irvin Painter spoke to students about her research in her latest book, The History of White People. The book guides readers through more than 2,000 years of Western civilization, illuminating not only the invention of race, but also the frequent praise of “whiteness.” She is the author of several books and countless articles relating to the history of the American South. Her critically acclaimed book, Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol, won the nonfiction prize of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.

A graduate of Harvard University, Painter retired from the Princeton history department in 2005. She met with students this winter as the Henry R. Heyburn Lecturer in History.

Jackson Katz

His one-line poem titled “Advice to Young Poets”: Never pretend to be a unicorn by sticking a plunger on your head. “Another poet said it much better than I did, many years ago: ‘To thine own self be true.’”

Advocating the “bystander approach” commonly used in anti-bullying campaigns, Dr. Jackson Katz spoke with students this fall, encouraging everyone to use their voices against issues of gender violence. Dr. Katz co-founded the Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) program at Northeastern University’s Center for the Study of Sport in Society. The program initially focused on involving college and professional athletes, given the potential there as a positive leadership platform. Today, MVP is the most widely used gender violence prevention program in college and professional athletics, implemented by teams in the NFL, NBA and in Major League Baseball. Dr. Katz earned a master’s from Harvard Graduate School of Education and a doctorate in cultural studies and education from UCLA. An activist, author and filmmaker, he also maintains a blog about masculinity and politics for The Huffington Post.

“Depictions of race turn inevitably toward outward appearance and concepts of beauty. Superior races are deemed beautiful, while inferior races—poor people— are termed ugly. However, because no freestanding definitions of race exist, who is beautiful and who is ugly continues to change over time. When submission and obedience were prized as the ultimate attributes for womanliness, the most beautiful women were slaves.

Later on, the richest people were deemed beautiful.”

Spring 2013 45

Bold Plan Sets a Vision for the Next Decade

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eeting in late January, Milton’s board of trustees enthusiastically endorsed Milton’s Strategic Plan. Based on more than a year’s worth of intense thinking and discussion involving all of Milton’s constituencies—faculty, staff, students, parents and alumni—the plan outlines clear, bold priorities, as well as implementation steps. Head of School Todd Bland, announcing the board’s vote to faculty, noted a key consistency: the priorities that emerged from the broad-based planning process align with his own vision.

“We’ll build the highestquality and strongest faculty, including recruiting a diverse faculty,” Todd said. “We’ll consistently and rigorously renew our curriculum. We’ll continue to enroll diverse, multidimensional students, help them develop their passion for learning, and explicitly cultivate mutual caring, respect and understanding.”

46 Milton Magazine

Once trustees accepted the plan’s central priorities at their October meeting, a team of administrators and faculty met during the fall. They planned the implementation, and pinpointed the resources that will be needed to achieve the plan’s objectives.

When the board convened in January, the trustees discussed a plan distinguished not only by how much it expresses Milton’s character, but also by implementation detail, timeline and financial implications.

Many aspects of Milton’s Strategic Plan differentiate it from similar efforts at other institutions. Led by Strategic Planning chair, trustee Chris McKown, the plan emerged organically from the ideas and perspectives of all those who know and care about Milton, rather than being imposed from the outside. The plan “feels like Milton,” many trustees and faculty have said. It has credibility, authenticity and clear reference to the School we know, many said.

The plan’s priorities are dynamic, symbiotic and integrated. Achieving the plan’s interdependent objectives will create a whole larger than the sum of the parts.

The planning process has already energized the faculty; progress toward realizing many of the priorities is already under way. Faculty have shown their eagerness to look at each of Milton’s programs successively— both our strengths and ways to innovate that would improve relevance and quality. They welcome new opportunities for meaningful professional development and the effort to reach a new level of professional excellence.

Implementation of the plan is mapped out, and it will follow a clear path across all the priority areas simultaneously. Principals David Ball of the Upper School and Marshall Carter of K–8 developed a five-year, stepwise process for implementing the numerous objectives. Executing these steps will, in many but not

all cases, be linked to securing new resources—financial gifts to Milton. While the plan does include particular capital projects necessary to facilitate optimal teaching and learning, Milton’s Strategic Plan focuses on people: students and faculty.

“Our enthusiasm, our readiness, our clearly defined pathway is a real motivator,” Todd Bland said to the faculty. The commitments in this plan will stimulate creativity across the School, and also preserve our core strengths: the excellence of our faculty and the transformative relationships between teachers and students.

The principals are talking with faculty now about the implementation steps that involve them this spring, summer and next fall. At the same time, Milton is preparing the Web site presentation of the plan for readers’ easy access and use.

For more information on the Strategic Plan visit: www.milton. edu/about/planning.

Lisa Winick, Milton’s Chief Advancement Officer

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ilton welcomes Lisa Winick as chief advancement officer.

Lisa moves to campus and officially begins her new role on July 1. “Lisa’s demonstrated success, her diverse skills, and her long-standing commitment to the mission of education makes her the perfect team member at Milton today, as we begin implementing a groundbreaking strategic planning process, mobilize to deepen the strong support for our School, and develop new resources,” Todd Bland says.

“We’re delighted to welcome Lisa to Milton.”

For the past nine years, Lisa has been the director of development at the Peddie School in Hightstown, New Jersey—a boarding and day school for grades 9–12. As chief fundraiser for Peddie, Lisa has served on the senior administrative team; successfully created and implemented strategies and programs in annual and capital giving to support the school; and led relationship-building initiatives

among all of Peddie’s constituencies. Prior to her service at Peddie, Lisa managed diverse advancement programs at Arizona State University, Barnard College and Northwestern Uni­ versity related to major capital gifts, donor relations, volunteer efforts and annual giving.

Among her commitments outside the Peddie School, Lisa serves as a trustee of the Chapin School, a pre-K to Grade 8 independent school in Princeton, New Jersey.

Lisa earned her bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University and graduated from The Seven Hills School. She and her husband have two children in middle school.

Gordon Sewall, who has served Milton as head of development and alumni relations since 1996, hands the baton to Lisa. Gordon will concentrate on securing the lead gifts crucial to Milton’s Strategic Plan, and continue to serve on the senior administrative team as assistant head of school.

Joining the Board of Trustees Peter Kagan ’86 Peter Kagan ’86 is the managing director for energy at Warburg Pincus, LLC. Prior to joining Warburg Pincus, he was with Salomon Brothers in New York and Hong Kong. Peter is a member of the visiting committee of the University of Chicago Law School and a member of the board of directors of Resources for the Future. He earned his bachelor’s degree at Harvard University and received his J.D. and M.B.A. from the University of Chicago.

In his years at Milton, Peter lived in Wolcott House. As an alumnus, he has been involved in connecting the School with constituencies in New York City.

Having participated in the Head of School Council and attended several Ad Council luncheons, Peter is interested in continuing to build Milton’s presence in the city and in sustaining the strength of the School’s residential life program. Peter lives in New York City with his wife, Susannah, and their two children.

Stuart Mathews P’13 Stuart Mathews P’13 is the president of Metapoint Partners, a private investment firm that acquires and grows small to medium-sized manufacturing companies, enhancing their market values. Stuart graduated from Tufts University and is a trustee of the Park School, where he has been a leader in parent fundraising.

Stuart has consistently helped develop and implement fundraising strategies to help set sights for parent participation in supporting Milton. He has been an active Annual Fund volunteer, co-chairing the Parents’ Fund and participating in kickoff

and phone-a-thon events. He is passionate about Milton and has a keen eye for developing the case for support. Stuart lives in Waban, Massachusetts, with his wife, Pamela; daughter, Erica ’13; and sons Christopher and Charlie.

Kimberly Steimle ’92 Kimberly Steimle ’92 is one of five executive leaders at Suffolk Construction, where she is Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and Chief People Officer (CPO). Kim is responsible for the overall management of Suffolk’s branding platform, corporate marketing, business development, and community outreach efforts.

She also serves on the board of overseers for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston and on the executive committee of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce.

In 2008, she received the prestigious Pinnacle Award presented annually by the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce.

She was also recognized as one of The Banker & Tradesman’s “New Leaders” in 2008. In 2006, she was ranked on the Boston Business Journal’s “40 Under 40” list.

Kim has long been connected with Milton; her father Edmund Steimle ’65 and sister Erin Steimle ’95 are alumni, and her mother Michaela Steimle has been an English department faculty member since 1982.

Spring 2013 47

Seven Appointed to Prestigious Faculty Chairs

F

ollowing the board of trustees’ vote to adopt Milton’s Strategic Plan, Head of School Todd Bland announced news of seven faculty members who will hold endowed teaching chairs. Timing of the news was particularly relevant, since the Strategic Plan prioritizes bold new commitments in faculty support and professional development during the coming decade.

With their gifts to the School, donors interested in sustaining the excellence of teaching at Milton established endowed chairs. A chair is an esteemed appointment that includes permanent, stable funding to support the faculty member’s work and that of the department over time. Naming a chair is one of the highest honors the School can confer on a faculty member.

The gifts that establish these endowed chairs generate interest income that supports a leading

educator’s role at a school like Milton in perpetuity.

Established over the course of Milton’s history, endowed chairs celebrate excellence in teaching.

They signal one important way to note, honor and reward outstanding teachers among us.

Lisa Baker of the English department is the new holder of the Thomas S. Lamont Chair.

Established in 1969 by bequest of Thomas S. Lamont, this chair celebrates teaching excellence in the humanities. Most recently, Anne Neely of visual arts held this chair.

Ann Foster of the history and social sciences department will hold the Philip B. Weld Chair.

Established in 1978 by Philip S. Weld ’32, this chair celebrates excellence in the teaching of American history. Bob Gilpin most recently held this chair.

Michael Lou of the history and social sciences department

now holds the Hong Kong Chair in Asian Studies. Established in 1998 by the Hong Kong Bicentennial Committee, this chair honors a teacher who demonstrates excellence and creativity in teaching a course or courses that educate Milton students in various aspects of Asian culture. This was formerly a rotating chair, but is now an appointed chair most recently held by Nancy Fenstemacher, Grade 2.

Lisa Morin, director of counseling, will hold the Ronald Moir Fund for Counseling Chair.

Established in 1983 by the Moir family, this chair supports and ensures professionals at Milton for the full-time counseling program. The previous holder of this chair was Elinor Griffin.

Mary Jo Ramos, who teaches modern languages in the Middle School, holds the Jessie Bancroft Cox Chair in Teaching.

Established by the Cox family to celebrate excellence in teaching, this chair was most recently held

by Ana Colbert of the modern languages department.

David Smith of the English department will hold the Arthur Bliss Perry Chair. Established in 1980 by gifts from the John Moir family and from Mr. Perry’s friends, students and colleagues, this chair celebrates excellence in the teaching of English. John Charles Smith most recently held this chair.

Vivian WuWong holds the Lawrence M. Lombard ’13 Chair.

Established in 1970 by the Lombard family, this chair honors excellence in the teaching of the social sciences. Carly Wade, of the history and social sciences department, most recently held this chair.

Michael Lou of the history department now holds the Hong Kong Chair in Asian Studies. He was one of seven new chairholders named this winter.

48 Milton Magazine

Anne Brewer ’66

Gratitude for What I Know Now

M

ilton instilled in me the idea that the one constant in our future would be change.

Anticipating the questions to ask and the challenges to come would be just as important as knowing the answers.

Milton also sparked our imaginations by working across disciplines. In the art studio with Miss Saltonstall we drew biblical scenes from Old Testament stories that we read in English class. I remember watching in wonder as an older student in Miss Sedgewick’s drama class, writhing on the floor at first, portrayed a butterfly emerging from its cocoon.

What did a good education mean for me then? Who knows? Now I support Milton Academy because, from my vantage point today, I know that Milton gave me a good education.

I came to Milton in the fourth grade, joining two cousins in my class so it felt like joining family. Miss Greenleaf (later Mrs. Buck), the head of the Lower School, had a warm smile.

Unlike the school I had attended previously, classes were small; teachers could focus more attention on each of us.

So many good teachers contributed to my Milton experience that listing them all is impossible. Maybe now, however, when I tutor at a local high school here in New York City, I can try to pass on some of the valuable attention and insight that Milton gave so generously to me.

For information on gift planning, contact: Suzie Hurd Greenup ’75 suzie_greenup@milton.edu 617-898-2376

Spring 2013 49

cl a ss notes 1935 Elizabeth (Betty) Hitchcock Gaillard chats regularly with classmate Rosie Baldwin. Betty’s fondest Milton memories include spending evenings with her housemother, who let the girls sit on the end of her bed, listening to Bing Crosby. She believes that “the pattern of her life was set forth at Milton.” Two experiences made this so: talks students were required to give before the whole school, and her election to president of the Self-Governing Association. After Milton, Betty was involved with the American Red Cross during World War II and with the United Nations during the late-’40s and ’50s.

She served in North Africa and Europe with the Red Cross. With the United Nations she was director of the guide service program and served as a public affairs officer. Betty is “profoundly grateful for the small talent released and encouraged in [her] by Milton.”

1954 Jean Worthington Childs and a “grand gregarious group of MAGUS ’54” gathered for lunch in Wellesley in November, discussing topics including symphony, the Tuaregs in Mali, outside water pipes in England, gardening, book groups, Colonel Barrett’s restored house in Concord, Massachusetts, birding, and Lilla Lyon’s winning a raffle of a “Timber Frame of Thoreau’s Cabin,” built by French artisans. The lunch included Liz Biddle Barrett and Rud, Cynthia Hallowell, Sally Sprout Lovett, Lilla Lyon and her husband Hank Drury, Cynthia Kennedy Sam, Kadie Maclaurin Staples and Chuck, and Jean Worthington Childs and John.

Cynthia Hallowell spends a couple days each month as a docent at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

50 Milton Magazine

Martha Fuller Chatterjee and Jean Cutler Whitham connected at a conference focusing on issues of elections, media, money and religion.

Rosamond Tudor van der Linde recently cruised the Amazon.

Mary Pratt Ardant lives in England and welcomes classmates to visit. She spends summers at Squam Lake in New Hampshire.

Carter Myer Gray spends time in Connecticut, but can most often be found in Wyoming near Jackson Hole.

Sally Chase Flynn visits grandchildren all over the country, and still is active in tennis and golf. She and Kadie visit in Florida regularly.

Ann Feeley Kieffer has cut back on her sculpting, but is still in New Hampshire.

Duffy Royce Schade and her husband, Gerhard, have been active in bike riding around Vermont and parts of Europe.

Jean Worthington Childs and her husband, John, continue volunteering their time and curling in the winter—they hope to ski on perfect days. They had a grand family reunion in Amelia Island, Florida, over New Year’s with Jean’s brother-in-law and his gang.

1955 Harry Gratwick reports that the Class of ’55 Iron Man Award of the Year goes to Ambassador Charles Dunbar for his bicycle ride from Brunswick to Thomaston, Maine, to meet Harry Gratwick, Jim Bowditch ’57 and a friend from Vinalhaven for lunch. After lunch, the intrepid Dunbar mounted his trusty Trek and returned to Brunswick, battling Sunday-afternoon traffic on Route One—a one-day total of 100 miles!

New Orleans and home building in New Mexico, coupled with cultural immersion activities.

Early years included incorporating her artistic talents and initiating a faculty/staff art show.

In Virginia, she is participating in her third art exhibition since April 2012. Her works include linoleum block prints, macramé, painting/collages and needlepoint masks.

1970 Class of 1957 member Bob Fuller’s short story “Flashback Morning” appeared in War Stories, an anthology of military stories, released on Veterans’ Day, 2012. Bob served in the Navy’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps. He collaborated on the story with a former colleague who was a Maine National Guard veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Information on how to download the anthology, available in e-book form only, for $9.99, can be found at www.smashwords.com. Bob’s novel Unnatural Deaths is available at local and online bookstores. His Web site is www. unnaturaldeaths.com.

1957 Ann Wyatt-Brown’s husband of 50 years, Bertram Wyatt-Brown, died November 5, 2012, at Roland Park Place. He had just finished answering questions from the copy editor for his forthcoming book from the University of Virginia Press.

1958 Neilson Abeel announces the birth of his second grandson, Jasper Eliot Abeel Knoop, born August 25, 2012, in New York, to his daughter, Maud, and her fiancé, Stuart Knoop.

1969 Last summer, Janice Peters completed her 20th and final year at National Cathedral School in Washington, D.C., where she has served as admission officer, director of community service, and ethics teacher. She organized student trips for service work in

William C. Corea wants to share Richard Alan Wotiz’s ’77 obituary, which can be found at http://circuitcellar.com/fea-

tured/in-memorium-richardalan-wotiz/. Dick’s brother, Bob, is a member of the Class of 1970.

1985 J.R. Torrico recently completed his schooling to become a physician assistant. He is now practicing in gastroenterology in Fort Myers, Florida.

1994 Andrew Bonney and his young family have moved to Marion, Massachusetts. Andrew is in his sixth year planning route strategy for Cape Air. In September, Andrew accepted a commission as a first lieutenant in the Air National Guard serving at Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod.

1995 Dawn Meehan Pologruto and her husband, Tom, welcomed their second son, Thomas James, on April 24, 2012, in Huntington, New York. “Big brother John loves his little brother!”

1998 Diana Potter Chevignard and her husband, Alban, welcomed Alice Valentine Elisabeth Chevignard on November 1, 2012. Alice’s great-grandmother, Eleanor (Hatch) Chevignard, was a French teacher at the Milton Girls’ School from 1944 to 1946, before returning to France after the war to marry her husband,

Jack, son of Rob Higgins ’99, played captain with his grandfather, Prentiss Higgins ’57.

Jacques, whom she met in 1938 during a study abroad year at Smith College.

Mike Descoteaux was recently named artistic director of ImprovBoston, a nationally recognized nonprofit theater and training center with a 30-year history as a leader in live comedy.

This summer, Bill Hilgendorf, a furniture designer in New York, had a piece of his work installed at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. His company, Uhuru, designed the piece titled “Cyclone Lounger, 2011” from the reclaimed Coney Island Boardwalk and laser-cut powder-coated steel.

Beth Taylor completed her M.F.A. in graphic design in 2011 and is living in Portland, Maine.

She is assistant director of marketing and design at Maine College of Art. Beth recently became engaged to Matt Weyand and says she is “rich in health, love, community, work, and creative satisfaction.”

1999 Memory Myrrh Fletcher and her husband, Hugh, welcomed their son, Taylor Rhys Fletcher, on November 2, 2012. The family lives in Southampton, United Kingdom.

Rob Higgins and his wife, Julie, had a baby boy, John (Jack) Higgins, on June 24, 2012.

Thanks to a blind date set up by friend Kristin Ostrem Donelan, Kara Sweeney married Tom Egan in August in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Fellow Class of ’99ers helping them celebrate were Leanne McManama, Caroline Churchill Page, Joanna Ostrem, Kiran Singh, Kristin Ostrem Donelan, Sarah White, Kelly Sullivan and Beth Pierson.

Mike O’Neill married Anna Harrington on December 15, 2012, at the St. Regis in New York City.

Danny Chow and his wife welcomed son Aiden, born October 16, 2012.

2000 Matthew Cutrell and Eliza Talbot Cutrell ’01 welcomed Charles Talbot Cutrell on July 13, 2012.

Five Milton alumni from the Carey family posed with their mother at a family wedding in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire: Martha Carey Donelan ’70, Joanne Carey Pender ’69, Susie Carey Hatfield ’73, E. Harriet Carey, Peter O. Carey ’75 and Margaret Carey Pfau ’71.

Dr. Shannon Gulliver Caspersen ’00 married Samuel M. W. Caspersen in November in New York City. Helping celebrate were Prudence Hyman ’00, Andrew Konove ’00, Armen Sarkis ’99, Anna Coquillette Caspersen ’88, Sophie Coquillette Koven ’92, Daniel and Judith Coquillette P’88, ’92, ’00, Edward and trustee Caroline Hyman, Catherine Gulliver and Laurence Frank P ’00, Anna Bulbrook ’00, Ashley Carter ’00, Brad Critchell ’91, Michael Douglas ’91, Andrew Lapham ’00, David Malkenson ’00, Joshua Pressman ’00, and Jay Schneider ’00.

Shannon is a psychiatrist in New York City.

2001 K. Danae Pauli is living in New York City after finishing business school at Stanford in June. She is looking forward to connecting with the local Miltonians.

Michael J. Walsh, Jr. and Caitlin Flint Walsh ’02 welcomed their son, Michael Joseph Walsh III, on October 7, 2012.

2002 Sarah Ceglarski lives in Los Angeles and has joined the creative and marketing think tank Omelet as director of business development.

Caroline Curtis and Patrick Hayes were married on June 1, 2012, in Boston. Many Milton friends and family helped them celebrate: Natalie Curtis ’04, Teresa Curtis ’07, Caitlin Walsh, Michael Walsh ’03, Brittany Beale, AnneMarie Evriviades ’01, Madeline Murphy ’16, Victoria Bendetson, Samantha Bendetson ’05, Stephanie Greeley ’03, Molly Gistis, Nora Delay, Emily Driscoll, Sarah Ceglarski, Sarah Shea, Maile Carter, Andrew Dassori ’03, Caroline Hostetter ’04, Kelly Sullivan ’99, Sarah White ’99 and Jack Reardon ’56.

2007 What drew Annie Lavigne to Gansbaai, South Africa, was the sharks, but what has left its mark on her is the community.

Annie lived in Cape Town for a month and a half this winter. In February she began working on a farm before traveling up the coast to Kruger National Park. Follow Annie’s adventures at annieinsouthafrica.wordpress.com.

Spring 2013 51

Mike O’Neill ’99 married Anna Harrington on December 15, 2012, at the St. Regis in New York City. Helping them celebrate were Lauren Jiggets, Patrick Donovan ’99, Scott Rutherford ’99, Nicole Boyar, Andrew Walker ’99, Lauren White, Luke White ’99, Morgan “Duke” Gray ’99, Erin Katzelnick-Wise, former faculty member David Foster, and (kneeling) Jamie Perkins ’99 and Otis Berkin ’99.

Thanks to a blind date set up by friend Kristin Ostrem Donelan ’99, Kara Sweeney ’99 married Tom Egan in August in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Fellow Class of ’99ers helping the couple celebrate included Leanne McManama, Caroline Churchill Page, Joanna Ostrem, Kiran Singh, Kristin Ostrem Donelan, Sarah White, Kelly Sullivan and Beth Pierson.

Page McCarley Donnelly ’96 recently married Patrick Donnelly. Helping them celebrate were Heidi Johnson, Sarah Bray ’95, Diana McCarley ’99, Dina Roberts Bray ’62, Neil Bray ’89, Bob Bray ’56 and Edward Bray.

Milton friends attended the Rodman Ride for Kids 10th Annual Celebration on December 1, 2012: Justin Mcintosh ’04, Jessalyn Gale ’06, Armeen Poor ’04, Stacey Harris ’06, Katherine Marr ’06, Josh Krieger ’04, Ilana Sclar ’04, Alex Rodman ’06 and Jeff Marr ’04.

What drew Annie Lavigne ’07 to Gansbaai, South Africa, was the sharks, but what has left its mark on her is the community. Follow Annie’s adventures at annieinsouthafrica.wordpress.com.

Tim McHugh ’08 was commissioned this fall as a second lieutenant in the United States Army. He participated in the Army ROTC program at Boston University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in history. Helping him celebrate his commissioning were Doriane Ahia ’11, Sarah Lyn ’11, Shannon McHugh ’11 and Samantha Noh ’11.

Also present, but not pictured, were Chris D’India ’07 and Stephen Aborn ’08.

52 Milton Magazine

2008 Rob Woodhouse works at an e-commerce company in Boston, lives in Brighton, and frequents Irene Li’s delicious food truck, Mei Mei Street Kitchen.

Caroline Curtis ’02 and Patrick Hayes were married on June 1, 2012, in Boston.

Matthew Cutrell ’00 and Eliza Talbot Cutrell ’01 welcomed Charles (Charlie) Talbot Cutrell on July 13, 2012.

Danny Chow ’99 and his wife welcomed son Aiden, born October 16, 2012. And yes, he’s wearing his Milton onesie.

Memory Myrrh Fletcher ’99 and her husband, Hugh, welcomed their son, Taylor Rhys Fletcher, on November 2, 2012. The family lives in Southampton, UK.

Deceased 1929

1945

1953

Margaret Osgood

Harvey Thayer

Frank H. Davis, Jr.

1934

1946

1954

Nancy Foss Heath Samuel Payson

Cornelia Abbot Neil Francis Leonard Beverly Benson Seamans

Ted Raymond

Robert Gannett

1947

1939

Rodman Sharp

1957

1935

John Handy, Jr. David Place

1948

1956 James Cahouet Ann Mitchell Deborah Jaffe Yeomans

David B. Gurney H. Warren Knight III

1962

Fritz Kempner

1950

1941

Noel Scullin

1971

1940

Dawn Meehan Pologruto ’95 and her husband, Tom, welcomed their second son, Thomas James, on April 24, 2012, in Huntington, New York. “Big brother John loves his little brother!”

Caitlin (Flint) Walsh ’02 and Michael J. Walsh, Jr. ’01 welcomed Michael Joseph Walsh III on October 7, 2012.

Fran Jenney

1951

1942

John Howson

Kenneth Howes Bessie Smith

1943

1952 Mary Reilly Cavanaugh Stephen Karelitz

David Weir Paula Gasparello Jordan

1992 Jorgen Stensson

1993 David Kettyle

Ellen Fuller Forbes Spring 2013 53

54 Milton Magazine

Milton Academy Board of Trustees, 2012–2013 George Alex Cohasset, Massachusetts

Claire Hughes Johnson ’90 Menlo Park, California

Robert Azeke ’87 New York, New York

Peter Kagan ’86 New York, New York

Bradley Bloom President Wellesley, Massachusetts

Stephen D. Lebovitz Weston, Massachusetts

Bob Cunha ’83 Milton, Massachusetts

Stuart Mathews Waban, Massachusetts

Mark Denneen ’84 Boston, Massachusetts

F. Warren McFarlan ’55 Vice President Belmont, Massachusetts

Elisabeth Donohue ’83 New York, New York

Chris McKown Milton, Massachusetts

James M. Fitzgibbons ’52 Emeritus Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts

Erika Mobley ’86 Brisbane, California

John B. Fitzgibbons ’87 Bronxville, New York Catherine Gordan New York, New York Victoria Hall Graham ’81 Vice President New York, New York Margaret Jewett Greer ’47 Emerita Chevy Chase, Maryland Franklin W. Hobbs IV ’65 Emeritus New York, New York Ogden M. Hunnewell ’70 Vice President Brookline, Massachusetts Caroline Hyman New York, New York Harold W. Janeway ’54 Emeritus Webster, New Hampshire

Wendy Nicholson ’86 New York, New York John P. Reardon ’56 Cohasset, Massachusetts H. Marshall Schwarz ’54 Emeritus New York, New York Kimberly Steimle ’92 Boston, Massachusetts Frederick G. Sykes ’65 Secretary Rye, New York Dune Thorne ’94 Boston, Massachusetts Erick Tseng ’97 San Francisco, California V-Nee Yeh ’77 Hong Kong Jide J. Zeitlin ’81 Treasurer New York, New York

Spring 2013 55

p os t scrip t One Little Glitch

by Luke White ’99

M

y mother, Pam White, retired from Milton in 2002. As a Health Center counselor, head of the peer-counseling program, and longtime leader of Octet, Pam used her vibrant spirit and warmth to touch many at Milton.

Since that time, Pam enjoyed starting a small private practice as a clinical social worker, playing tennis, and becoming a grandmother three times over. As she would put it, “there’s just one little glitch”: in 2009, shortly after her 61st birthday, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

Everyone whose life has been touched by this illness understands the long and humbling journey that lay ahead for all of us. Pam’s diagnosis came at an interesting time: during her 60th year, she announced that she had begun working on The Genius of Marian, a biography of her mother, renowned painter Marian Williams Steele, who died of Alzheimer’s in 2001. Unable to write the book on her own, Pam began working on the project in a video format with my brother Banker White, a documentary filmmaker. What began as a video project to tell my grandmother’s life story and commemorate her art has evolved into a feature-length documentary film.

The Genius of Marian follows our family’s struggle to adapt to the changes that come with Alzheimer’s disease; it is an intimate portrait of a loving family.

I invite everyone associated with Milton to experience this story when it is released in April.

In a way, Pam made her life’s work helping people tell stories.

Her inviting, warm style just gets

56 Milton Magazine

Pam White was a member of Milton’s Health and Counseling Center until her retirement in 2002.

you talking, and talking, and by the end, you feel better about whatever was ailing you. You have a new version of your story, a brighter one that she helped you create. I took this skill for granted growing up in the way only a kid can take his parents completely for granted, but as her son and a proud member of Milton’s thirteen-year club, I had a first hand view of how well liked and valued she was. “Your mom is so cool,” my classmates would tell me, a designation I would imagine not many school counselors enjoy.

“She’s amazing,” they all said.

“She really listens.”

Working with her as a peer-counselor at Milton and having chosen a career in mental health myself, I now understand how well deserved this high esteem was. Pam understands the world through her connection to others, through her capacity for

deep and mutual understanding.

It came as no surprise to me, then, that after retiring from this position she so loved, she wanted to tell someone else’s story. The Genius of Marian captures my grandmother’s unique and pertinacious artistic spirit as much as her painter’s mastery of color and depth. It’s a living tribute that ought to give my mother pride. The real tribute of the film, though, is to Pam: to her indomitable will, to the strength of familial bonds she worked so hard to create, and to the warmth and spirit that remains, even as parts of her are slipping away.

Having lived much of the story it tells, I feel that my brother’s film is true and honest, even as it is uplifting in the face of a devastating illness. Alzheimer’s disease is a heartbreaking process of loss, yet The Genius of Marian is a poignant meditation on remember-

ing, and one that I hope will shed light on the countless lives it has touched. My sister, Devon White Angelini ’94, and I are working to support our family’s project by developing educational content for the film to reach audiences in theaters, medical schools, health-care facilities and beyond.

Through screenings of the film, educational seminars and unique educational short films, we hope to create safe spaces for people to share resources, provide support to one another, and fight stigma through open discussion.

Through helping people who are affected by this disease, their friends and families, we hope to give our mother’s inspiration, to tell her story, another life.

Screen the film: Tribeca Film Festival: April 17–28 (World premier) Independent Film Festival Boston: April 24–30 (Boston premier)

For film information: www.geniusofmarian.com https://www.facebook.com/ TheGeniusOfMarian https://twitter.com/geniusofmarian 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.

Reunion Weekend: It’s Trending Join us: Friday, June 14 and Saturday, June 15, 2013 #MAReunion13

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