Milton Magazine
Bold & Beloved: The Arts at Milton Alumni Artists
Winter 2003
, ‒ Jean B. Angell New York, New York Jessie Bourneuf Treasurer Milton, Massachusetts William T. Burgin ’61 Dover, Massachusetts Jorge Castro ’75 Pasadena, California Margaret Bergan Davis ’76 Evanston, Illinois Edward Dugger, III Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts James M. Fitzgibbons ’52 Emeritus Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts Victoria Hall Graham ’81 Haverford, Pennsylvania Margaret Jewett Greer ’47 Emerita Chevy Chase, Maryland Madeline Lee Gregory ’49 Westwood, Massachusetts Antonia Monroe Grumbach ’61 Secretary New York, New York
Ogden M. Hunnewell ’70 Vice President Brookline, Massachusetts Harold W. Janeway ’54 Emeritus Webster, New Hampshire David B. Jenkins ’49 Duxbury, Massachusetts George A. Kellner Vice President New York, New York F. Warren McFarlan ’55 Belmont, Massachusetts
Carol Smith Miller Wellesley, Massachusetts Tracy Pun Palandjian ’89 Belmont, Massachusetts Richard C. Perry ’73 New York, New York John P. Reardon ’56 Vice President Cohasset, Massachusetts John S. Reidy ’56 New York, New York Kevin P. Reilly Jr. ’73 Baton Rouge, Louisiana
J. Tomilson Hill ’66 New York, New York
H. Marshall Schwarz ’54 Emeritus New York, New York
Barbara Hostetter Boston, Massachusetts
Assistant Editors Shannon Groppi Heather Sullivan Class Notes Editor Annelise Sorensen Photography Josh Bixler ’81, Bryan Cheney, Michael Dwyer, Brad Herzog, Deborah Lopez, Michael Lutch, Ben Premeaux, Stanley Rowin, James Schriebl, Mark Seliger, Robert Sheehan, Christian Steiner, Martha Stewart, Sarah Conrad White ’87, Vaughn Winchell Designer Moore & Associates Printed on Recycled Paper
Helen Lin ’80 Hong Kong
Deborah Weil Harrington ’70 Washington, D.C.
Franklin W. Hobbs ’65 President New York, New York
Editor Cathleen Everett
Frederick G. Sykes ’65 Rye, New York
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. As an institution committed to diversity, Milton Academy welcomes the opportunity to admit academically qualified students of any gender, race, color, handicapped status, sexual orientation, religion, national or ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs and activities generally available to its students. It does not discriminate on the basis of gender, race, color, handicapped status, sexual orientation, religion, national or ethnic origin in the administration of its educational policies, admission policies, scholarship programs, and athletic or other school administered activities.
Jide J. Zeitlin ’81 New York, New York
Front Cover Painting by Marissa Geoffrey ’03 Back Cover Painting by Kathyrn Lenehan ’03
Milton Magazine Features : Cathleen Everett
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An interview with playwright David Lindsay-Abaire ’88 Evan Hughes ’94
Lindsay Haynes ’98, repertory player, on drive-up drama
: , Heather Sullivan
’ The Claremont Trio on tour Shannon Groppi
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Heather Sullivan
Founding my dance company Robert Bettmann ’91
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Departments • Why more boarding students? Why fewer day students? Robin Robertson
Academic Dishonesty: Harder to Discern Today? Hugh Silbaugh
All About Ethics
Remembering Ted Allen J.P. ‘Fipp’ Avlon ’91 Armenia, finding its way in the post-soviet era Daphne Abeel ’55
On Ice: Milton Academy Competes in Elite and Tough ISL League
News and notes from the campus and beyond
Tackling the novel, the arena of big storytellers Cathleen Everett
A father’s complex legacy Cathleen Everett
’ Making the story as visual as possible Heather Sullivan
Sara Sze’s RSVP Exhibit at the MFA explores perspective, time, loss
Robert Freeman ’53 on preparing artists John Charles Smith
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ocusing this Milton Magazine on the arts brought us to rich material: Many talented Milton graduates have found meaning and success throughout the world of arts. We hope the diverse expressions of excellence herein will inspire you in a number of ways. Since we have provided only a sample of the Milton artists at work today, please let us know about other Milton graduates whose bold, creative, and thoughtful work you admire, so that we may include this information on our Web site (www.milton.edu), which grows fuller every day.
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“Well, it’s not just that there are plenty of opportunities and lots going on. What you have here is Olympic-level arts.”
Bold & Beloved: The Arts at Milton “W
ell, it’s not just that there are plenty of opportunities and lots going on,” said one new faculty member. “What you have here is Olympic-level arts.” He spoke up at a professional day focused on the balance between students’ intellectual and personal development. What gave him that impression? This fall, barely had Man of La Mancha closed, a broadly staged musical featuring more than 50 students – acting, singing in solos and choruses, fencing, dancing, managing the lights, sound and technical effects – on an intricate and imaginative set they had built, when Medea opened, with a completely different cast. Medea
was one of two off-main stage productions (1212 Plays as they are called) staged at Milton each year; mounted in less time and with less technical support, these productions allow greater numbers of students to experience a play, and they often take on complex subject matter discussed by the community long after the play’s run. The perennially successful speech team secured the national championship last spring, for the second time in as many years. This fall, 10 “speechies,” as they’re affectionately called, secured second place in a University of Texas Longhorn tournament, losing by a mere nine points to the top place school that brought more than 50 team members.
Ninety students (from Classes IV–I) tried out this winter for the spring dance concert. Bill T. Jones, world-renowned dancer and choreographer, fired up audiences of Milton students recently, as did the Paul Taylor 2 Dancers. The Chamber Orchestra was the only high school orchestra invited to play at the annual convention of the Massachusetts Music Educators Association; a Milton Academy jazz combo played at the White House twice in the last decade, and earned three national awards. The jazz combo has been invited to play at the elite Cambridge jazz spot, the Regattabar, just before they leave for a fourth Milton Academy South Africa tour.
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Theater Facts Theater Productions, 2002–2003 Mainstage Man of La Mancha by Dale Wasserman The Boys Next Door by Tom Griffin Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare Class IV Antigone by Sophocles 1212 Plays Medea by Euripedes Winter Student-Directed: Patient A by Lee Blessing Haiku by Katherine Snodgrass Act III Scene V by Terrence Ortwein Sonny DeRee’s Life Flashes before His Eyes by Bill Bozzone Middle School Play I Never Saw Another Butterfly by Celeste Raspanti The performing arts faculty had so much affection for Room 1212 (Warren Hall) and the 1212 series of plays staged there for over 25 years that they decided to keep the name even though the 1212 plays will ultimately be performed in Wigg Hall. The descending ramp in Man of La Mancha, the fall musical, weighed over 200 pounds and was 14 feet long but balanced perfectly so that it could be moved with a single finger. In the past year, Milton students have produced dramatic or dance performances in 10 different “theaters” on the Milton campus, adapting in the process to the special demands and advantages of each space.
As a result of a relationship with Facing History and Ourselves (an organization that involves students in citizenship education and the study of history), Milton student art has appeared in exhibitions at the De Cordova Museum, at the Boston Public Library, at the 25th anniversary Facing History dinner at the Westin Hotel, and at “All That Jazz” – a conference at Harvard on adolescent development. Among 350 works by students from 20 schools at last year’s “Art with a Social Conscience” exhibit, Milton students won 28 awards. Two Milton seniors won national poetry awards last spring, and two other writers were named ARTS scholars in the nationwide competition of the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. These are fairly typical annual occurrences at Milton. With 660 students in Classes I–IV, Milton is a small school for this level of arts activity. The middle school, Classes V and VI, has its own mighty program developing steam. Besides being a place that Gordon Chase, visual arts department chair, calls “the land of invention and initiative,” how does this happen at Milton, and how does it affect the School? As with any potent mix, the Milton arts world is a product of dynamic forces: a particular educational philosophy in approaching the arts; creative, talented,
and relentless faculty and students; a legacy building upon itself all the time; a nurturing environment; and supportive physical resources. Focused on the gold? The irony is that faculty are not driven by these prizes. They don’t locate the student stars and run with the talent. Their approach is the opposite. “We don’t begin with the assumption that within a class there will be some who are ‘natural’ talents and others who are not,” says Gordon Chase. “We start with the idea that everyone has a possibility of success and of growth. We expect them all to succeed and our expectation lets them know that they can express themselves in art. As a result, great numbers of students succeed; they do work of extraordinary quality, and take that work to higher levels through several years.” “Our performances are at a high level of quality,” says David Peck (performing arts chair), “yet we cast a wide variety of students. We find ways to use students without obvious skill; they find themselves in the lineup, and they come together to do something they’ve never done before.” “In fact,” Peter Parisi (performing arts) notes, “other faculty often recommend students to us who may not appear to be succeeding; they need to experience the thrill of demonstrating a skill, the focus of a sustained commitment, the responsibility of participating in a group with a chal-
“The irony is that faculty are not driven by these prizes. They don’t locate the student stars and run with the talent. Their approach is the opposite.”
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“Mirroring their adult mentors, students value artists in the school community, and their work. Just as the faculty do, they stretch to meet expectations, exceed them, and in the process experience new ground.”
lenging goal. We’ll be auditioning for Antigone soon, and I don’t have a clue who will turn out to be Antigone.” “You are allowed to find the artist in you,” Patrice Jean-Baptiste ’88 (performing arts, speech team) explains. “You don’t have to come ‘finished.’” Intense coaching; exhilarating teamwork The developmental importance of arts participation for young people at Milton is hard to overestimate. Students experience intense individual attention and coaching along with an exhilarating team experience. They spend hours with dedicated adults who use a wide range of teaching or directing skills, who have diverse and respected talents, who set the highest standards for students’ performance, and who honor each student’s contribution. “It takes courage to act on stage,” says Poornima Kirby (Class II), “You must give your character total integrity – you must be who she is. So you run the risk of being taken as your character. You must know who you are, truly, to take on the weaknesses of your character. Performing is a very social action, and as a person who is happy being myself and not very ‘social,’ theater has really helped me grow. Every day at Milton I wake up a new person, a changed person. I’m able to take on more and try something new.”
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Music Facts Number of students in the orchestra: 110 Number of orchestras: 2 Number of singing groups: 9 Glee Club, Chamber Singers Class IV Chorus, Middle School, Chorus, Octet, Miltones, Epic, Middle School a capella, Chapel Choir, Three for Each of Us Countries visited over 10 years by Milton musical groups: 12 France, England, Ireland, China, Hong Kong, Canada, Czech Republic, Austria, Netherlands, South Africa, Romania, Kenya
The sheer size of the program, the seriousness of the work undertaken, forces students to take on roles that in other schools are reserved for adults. “I am proud that everything that was built for Man of La Mancha, everything that was hung (lighting), was done by students,” says David Peck. “Our approach, consistently, has to do with giving them responsibility to problem-solve. We point to the task, ask good questions, set them to it, talk about it, and stand nearby to prod or nudge, if necessary, and the finished product is their own.” “They leave with the ability to lead,” Dar Anastas (performing arts) puts it, simply. In addition to a five-play season directed by faculty, there are, this year, four student-directed plays. Class II speech-team students coach the prize-winning middle school speech team; speechies routinely coach each other, as well. The Arts Board takes on decorating the campus and making sure that visual arts are part of daily campus life. Students organize popular beatnik cafés on the weekend, orchestrating student music performances and poetry readings. Any number of independent a capella groups join the Miltones and Octets at assemblies these days, started by students who just won’t be denied the opportunity to practice and perform for their peers. Arts and commentary publications proliferate; students are the editors, writers, artists, photographers, judges, designers and publishers.
One of the students’ favorite activities, they will tell you, is watching their peers in performance or seeing their work on exhibition. Mirroring their adult mentors, students value artists in the school community, and their work. Just as the faculty do, they stretch to meet expectations, exceed them, and in the process experience new ground. “I’ll set the bar here,” Peter Parisi says, “and they meet and raise it. That makes directing fun.” “I love the realization that I am still an artist, myself,” says Patrice Jean-Baptiste, “even in teaching the art.” Milton’s willingness to say yes to things, faculty members agreed in a discussion, keeps them energized, innovative, and receptive to working with each other’s ideas. They unanimously agree – no surprise – that Milton’s arts requirement, a full year of study, is wise. Many things about arts education at Milton have not changed in decades. Students and faculty feed on each other’s energy. Work they undertake is serious and challenging, rather than familiar. The School not only supports but also celebrates their work, and the artists – students and adults – find synergies between art projects, the subject matter of academic disciplines and today’s current events.
Number of Milton students taking instrument and voice lessons K–12: 237 Performance sites for Milton musicians: The New England Conservatory of Music, Youth Philharmonic, Youth Symphony, Youth Repertory Orchestras, Mass Youth Wind Ensemble, Youth Chorale, Boston University, Greater Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra, Longy Music School, Massachusetts Music Educators Association – District and All-State Music Festivals Competitions entered by Milton musicians: Boston Symphony Orchestra Boston Pops Orchestra Wellesley Symphony Orchestra Waltham Philharmonic Quincy Symphony Orchestra Brockton Symphony Orchestra
Managing growth Many things have changed, however, beginning with the size of the programs. “We now have two orchestras; there was 7 Milton Magazine
1 1,7: Rowan Swanson ’04 2: Julia Kingsdale ’05 3: Kimberly Gordon ’04 4: Scott Chaluff ’04 5: Anna Elliot ’03 6: Kathyrn Lenehan ’03
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one small one when I came,” chronicles Don Dregalla (music department chair). “We have 110 students in the larger orchestra, and I have scheduled 271 students in private lessons this year. On the vocal side, the Glee Club is still the core of the program, as it has been traditionally at Milton, but we’ve added the Chamber Singers, a Class IV chorus and even a middle school chorus. Our jazz groups are strong and growing: Bob Sinicrope (music department) teaches three levels and manages seven or eight jazz combos each year. At this winter’s concert, 250 students played or sang. Our emphasis as a department is on performance; that might seem obvious, as a strategy, but it’s not. The program now builds on itself. Word is out; Milton has a reputation as a place where a student can have a great academic experience, and have his music supported. We send 45 students to the New England Conservatory each weekend for its program. People are practicing in all of Kellner’s practice rooms, all the time.” Older students set the standards The creative writing program is another area of extraordinary growth. Lisa Baker and Jim Connolly (both of the English department) teach five sections of creative writing, beginning and advanced. Students can continue with independent tutorials in creative writing. Commenting on the program’s popularity, Jim notes the
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leadership among upper class students. “The younger students aspire to follow in the steps of the strong juniors and seniors whose writing, and love of writing, permeates the workshops and classroom walls. Our students are young people with a literary sensibility when they come here; some are just waiting for the chance to get the training formally,” he says. Both Lisa and Jim describe the program as rigorous; students learn craft and aesthetics, the artistic principles that underlie the best writing, and ultimately apply to all art forms. In Lisa and Jim’s workshops, where students react to each other’s work, the dialogue in April is light years from that in September. Students apply the principles they newly understand, so that a spring comment from a student might be, “Do you know why I think this story shouldn’t end with an irony?” The students’ growth over time spills into their sophisticated analysis of other art: film, photography and painting, et cetera. Lisa and Jim’s students enter their work (poetry and fiction) in seven national competitions – carefully selected contests based on their quality and stature – and one state competition each year. Milton students are routinely among the winners, and their work is consistently represented in national publications and at conferences.
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“The dance program has tripled in size over the last 10 years, produces one full dance concert each spring, and is planning a second.”
Three faculty members now support the speech team. The team includes 65 Upper School students, and an additional 35 middle school speech-team members who “take their art very seriously,” according to Patrice Jean-Baptiste, who accompanied them to the junior national tournament last spring. The dance program has tripled in size over the last 10 years, produces one full dance concert each spring, and is planning a second. Six faculty members teach drama and technical theater, and direct plays. The department will stage eight plays this year, including Man of La Mancha, Medea, The Boys Next Door, Antigone, Romeo and Juliet and I Never Saw Another Butterfly. Furthermore, the performing arts department is the only department in the Upper School that supports programs from Kindergarten through Class I. From oral interpretation and the sixth-grade play in the Lower School, through the middle school play, speech team and chorus, performing arts is a robust, school-wide program. More than 100 students are now enrolled in advanced visual arts courses, including a new program in digital imaging, developed by Bryan Cheney. The quality of the Nesto Gallery exhibits has deepened; they are often reviewed by the Boston press. And the astounding student art exhibits in the Nesto only punctuate a steady stream of art hung all over the campus, from Forbes Dining Hall to Straus, Kellner and Ware.
Endowed funds spark gratitude among faculty members, and extend the possibilities of what they’re able to attempt and achieve. Faculty across all arts fields point to the inauguration of the Melissa Dilworth Gold Visiting Artist Fund in 1993 as a key development. This fund brings artists of national and even international stature to campus to work with students for one to several days. These visiting artists intensify students’ awareness of outstanding skill, true excellence and the commitment required by the arts. They have provided thrilling interaction for young artists, and awarded great stature to the work of creating art. Faculty comment that the artists themselves are surprised how aware Milton students are, and how prepared they are to engage. Kellner Center fuels new synergies The opening of the Kellner Performing Arts Center in 1992 triggered a profound change in Milton arts history. Spaces in the building are ideal for teaching and performing, and make new initiatives possible. The proximity of arts faculty and students to each other has had a powerful, if predictable, effect on the richness and the quality of the performing arts at Milton. The building is literally bursting at the seams from morning until after dark, with people busy in their respective fields, sharing ideas, appreciating each other, collaborating with each other. The synergy made possible by the building itself is clear on a day-to-day basis. 11 Milton Magazine
“Mostly, the faculty wonders how to do more, enrich, and improve with the same energy, space and time. They have created life-altering, beloved programs for students, and want only to accomplish more.”
Gordon Chase believes his department has been patient and resourceful, and along with the visual arts faculty, he is eager to experience the same lift, drive and opportunity the Kellner Performing Arts Center has given Milton. Gordon is eager to gather the whole department under one roof, a promise of the current master plan for the academic buildings at Milton. Bringing people together will facilitate the department’s enriching of the strong traditional arts curriculum, and its focus on helping students make connections to their culture. His vision is to add to that a strong design theme, developments in the domain where art meets science. “We want our students to use the tools of our times, ranging from the hand to the computer, to solve design problems. We would like to initiate projects that incorporate invention, kinetics, mechanics, and electronics, connecting ‘low tech’ with ‘high tech’ on projects in which something actually has to ‘work.’” Anticipating a visual arts center is both a challenge and an opportunity. It must serve the expansive size and advanced levels of our programs. Moving to high-end technology, for instance, opens doors and sets new expectations, but Bryan Cheney notes that it occasions the consideration of what older processes can be given up without undue loss, such as dark and wet
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photo-processing. As the master plan renovations provide new academic classrooms, Peter Parisi mourns the loss of two intimate venues that – in addition to Kellner – had been used for performance, Room 1212 in Warren and 3203 in Wigg. Dar Anastas states that the demands of our healthy theater program render us “technically stretched.” Mostly, the faculty wonders how to do more, enrich, and improve with the same energy, space and time. They have created life-altering, beloved programs for students, and want only to accomplish more. “I think it’s remarkable,” Debbie Simon (performing arts) says, “when I’m in touch with graduates, that arts experiences come so vividly to mind for them. It’s almost palpable – how much it meant to them, what a difference it made.” Cathleen Everett
The Melissa Dilworth Gold Visiting Artist Fund Established in 1992
Artists at Milton ‒ • Herbert Gold – novelist
‒ • Barry Green – principal bassist of Cincinnati Orchestra
‒ • John Kane – actor, theater arts • Steven Kellogg – author and illustrator of children’s books • Kevin Locke – artist and educator, preeminent flute player and hoop dancer
‒ • Jacques d’Amboise – dancer and dance educator
‒ • Jackie Windsor – sculptor • Pancho Sanchez – Latin jazz musician
‒ • Christopher Wilkins ’74 – conductor of San Antonio Symphony Orchestra • James Hejduk – former faculty, choir director at University of Nebraska
‒ • Sarah Sze ’87 – installation artist • Janis Brennan – dancer, artistic director of Janis Brenner Dancers • Babatunde Olatunji – African drummer • Harry Pickens – pianist • Abdullah Ibrahim – South African jazz pianist
‒ • Galen Rowell – photographer, mountain climber • Linda O’Brien – lighting design specialist
‒ • Aaron Goldberg ’91 – jazz pianist • Bill T. Jones – dancer, choreographer
‒ • Collage New Music – ensemble musical group • Tod Machover – MIT composer • Boston Chamber Music Society members
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Theater
Truthful, Honest–
But Funny
An interview with playwright David Lindsay-Abaire ’88 Evan Hughes ’94
David Lindsay-Abaire’s first New York production, Devil Inside, appeared at the Soho Repertory Company in 1997. While a playwriting fellow at Juilliard, he wrote Fuddy Meers, which was selected for the Eugene O’Neill National Competition and produced by the Manhattan Theater Club (MTC) in 1999, to rave reviews. The following year, Sarah Jessica Parker played the lead role in David’s Wonder of the World, also produced by MTC. His next show, Kimberly Akimbo, opened in February. The New York Times is calling it “haunting and hilarious...at once a shrewd satire, a black comedy and a heartbreaking study of how time wounds everyone.” In addition to finishing his screen adaptation of Fuddy Meers, David recently signed a two-picture deal with Miramax films, and is currently developing a sitcom for ABC starring Kristen Johnson and produced by David Letterman.
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est assured, Class of 1988, David Abaire’s glasses are much, much better than the ones he wore in high school. Fame has brought him at least that far. The frames no longer obscure the better part of his face, as they did in his Milton yearbook pictures. He is also trimmer, though still pleasantly rounded off at the edges, a characteristic befitting a born comic. Actually, he is now David LindsayAbaire, for reasons that will soon become clear. Once David leads me into the spacious living room of his Brooklyn duplex apartment, his young son, Nicholas, runs over my foot with his Fisher-Price lawn mower by way of a greeting. Trailing after Nicholas is his mother, Chris. She is beautiful. In fact, don’t get me wrong David, but she’s a knockout. I am instantly sure he once cast her in a New York play and the sparks flew. It turns out that although she is an actor and did appear in his “early works,” says David, laughing off the phrase as hopelessly pretentious, they actually met as housemates in a domicile straight out of MTV’s “The Real World” – three men, three women – at Bronxville’s Sarah Lawrence College. Now that they are both established, however, “She does her thing and I do mine. It’s
not like David Mamet, casting all his wives. We didn’t want to get anywhere near that.” It sounds like a remarkably sane policy. Also sane (sort of ) is their agreement regarding surnames: they took each other’s and became the LindsayAbaires. As he runs through a recap of his rapid rise in the world of New York theater, the big moment is clear only in retrospect. It occurs when his comedy about a middleaged woman with amnesia, Fuddy Meers, is produced by the Manhattan Theater Club in 1999. “So then Fuddy Meers went up, and that was really, you know…” he says, his voice trailing off for the sake of humility. Before all this happens, I check to make sure my tape recorder is working. He says the reporter from The New York Times did the same thing. Flattery will get you everywhere. The interview begins in earnest when I ask him the first on our list of prearranged questions. EH: Why write plays? DL-A: Oh my god… EH: You were prepared…
DL-A: It’s the hardest one on the list! It’s a good question, though. The easy answer is this: It’s what I do best. What is different about playwriting is that you communicate through the spoken word, and it’s a very alive, living medium. Every night in the theater is different from the night before. There’s a real exchange between the audience and what’s going on onstage. I love showing up and knowing what people think of my work. When you publish a novel, you don’t get to sit behind the reader’s shoulder and see what they like and don’t like. In the theater, you know immediately if your line bombs, and then maybe you rework it. I love it. EH: How did you know this was your strength? DL-A: A lot of trial and error. I did a number of different kinds of writing, starting at Milton. In creative writing classes, in English class. After we did a Fourth Class play, a classmate said, “You know, we should do a Third Class play,” and the reaction from the faculty was like, “Are you mad?” That was unheard of. My classmate, Amy Stevens said, “You’re the funny one; you write it.” Not knowing any better, I did. And that’s how I became a playwright. Amy Stevens said, “Go be one.” Once I did it, I knew that it’s a hard enough role, and I don’t want to be one who writes the play, directs it, and stars in it. It would just be distracting. That said, I went to college primarily as an actor. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do. And I took English and psychology and acting, and essentially took playwriting just to fulfill my theater program requirement. “Oh, I’ll do playwriting; I did that in high school.” EH: What happened to make you settle on writing? DL-A: I wrote a play called Devil Inside, and no, I had never heard of the INXS song, and with that I applied to Juilliard. It was a fellowship, not a degree program, with Christopher Durang and Marsha Norman teaching. So it was free and I could do it while working full time at Dance Theater Workshop in Chelsea. And
David Lindsay-Abaire
while doing all that, I wrote Fuddy Meers. Just when I was finishing at Juilliard, 20th Century Fox got wind of my work and actually offered me this job as a contract writer, and they don’t usually do that now; it’s a setup from the 1930s. We’ll pay you a weekly salary, and you’ll try to write some screenplays and possibly some TV stuff. I didn’t want to write screenplays, though, and I didn’t want to go to Hollywood, and I said, “Are you going to make me go to Hollywood?” No. “Are you going to put me on staff at a TV show? Bouncing jokes off one another?” And they said no. So I said, “Okay.”
EH: What sort of movie did they see you writing? DL-A: They knew what my style was. My voice is kind of off. It’s not mainstream. They said, “We feel like your writing is a lot like Flirting with Disaster, so your first movie will be like that, just till you figure out where the margins are. So I wrote this movie and they loved it and Hugh Grant was suddenly attached to star. They put the producer of Forrest Gump on it, and
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privately I’m thinking, “People complain about making it in Hollywood; it’s so easy!” And then the project…
“You know what? That’s a fine movie, but I’m not the one to write that movie,” so I got out of the Fox contract.
EH: Went into development hell.
EH: So you’re not fundamentally antiHollywood. You don’t think it’s trying to ruin you or something.
DL-A: Exactly, development hell. EH: Meanwhile, though, Fuddy Meers comes out of previews, and kind of explodes. The New York Times dubs me. They say, “You’re a successful playwright.” It’s ridiculous, it’s totally luck. But for whatever reason, the Times says, “It’s good.” Then the new president of Fox comes in and asks, “Why are we paying this guy a weekly salary?” She calls me and says, “We think your script is great, but it’s a little too… Flirting with Disaster” [widespread laughs]. They wanted me to do another Runaway Bride and I said,
DL-A: No, not at all. I love movies. I just think there’s a lot of nonsense that goes with them. If the terms are right, I will sell out. All that I want – and this will make me sell out, if that’s what you want to call it – is control over my product, that’s the big difference, then yeah, I’ll do it. EH: You don’t want to direct? DL-A: Not yet, I don’t know enough about movies. Not theater either, no. I love being in the room, and I’m really great talking with actors and talking through scenes. It’s the other stuff I have
no interest in doing. Design meetings, tech stuff, costumes. I don’t care what color the floor is. I don’t want to go to those production meetings. I just want to write. EH: What about your second play, Wonder of the World? How did that go? DL-A: It didn’t go as well as Fuddy Meers. Second productions usually don’t. There were mixed reviews. A couple really viciously scathing, awful reviews, crazy bad [laughs], and a couple really great, wonderful reviews. They were all over the map. And the dirty secret about that play is that it was written before Fuddy Meers. I knew it wasn’t as good, but I liked it – I really wanted it to have a life. I knew it would take a bit of a beating. It was hard because we had this huge celebrity in it, Sarah Jessica Parker. The hype was like, “Holy cow, what have I done? I don’t think this play’s very good.” I mean, I do think it’s good. I stand by it. It’s just a different play. It was fine. It wasn’t embarrassingly bad. To complain about critics in theater is like saying, “I want to play football, but I don’t want to be tackled.” It’s part of the game, you know? A lot of them are going to say nasty things about you. EH: What do you think of John Simon [veteran drama critic, now writing for New York Magazine]? DL-A: I used to think he was a really nasty person, and he has a thing about picking on fat people, fat actresses in particular, that I think is really mean. But then he went over the moon about Fuddy Meers, and even made a pun on my name: “Call the play errant, aberrant, or Abairant, Lindsay-Abaire proves a bare minimum less funny than Ionesco, whose true heir he is.” Ionesco is my idol. So now I like Simon. Basically I’m a whore is what I’m saying.
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EH: What is the environment for playwrights like now? DL-A: It’s very, very difficult. I’ve been incredibly lucky. I speak to young writers sometimes, at NYU or elsewhere. The story of how Fuddy Meers succeeded, the enormous role that luck played, it just drives them crazy. The fact that Manhattan Theater Club produced it was a miracle. The fact that the director and the actors were great was a miracle. I wouldn’t have a career if all those stars didn’t line up. EH: You seem to write about women a lot. Where do you think that comes from? DL-A: I don’t know. It just so happens that I wrote three plays in a row with women in the lead roles. EH: It just so happens? DL-A: Well, okay, this is not conscious, but my mother is a very strong presence in my life. She’s the performer of the family. She’s hilarious. Of course my plays would have those sorts of women. On the other side, and this is conscious, there are far more male roles than parts for women, so when I start a play, I think “Does it matter if this character is a man or a woman?” If not, I make it a woman by default, to right the balance a bit. EH: Is that part of your artistic mission? DL-A: No. I don’t know that I have an artistic mission. EH: Good answer. DL-A: I just want to write true stories. True in the deeper sense. Truthful, honest – but funny! EH: Do you have any temptation to write something really dark? DL-A: Um, no. I really don’t. I come from a very specific place. For me, it’s not: What’s funny here? Where can I make
jokes? I’m not a joke writer per se. I view the world in a very off, skewed way. People have called it absurdist. I don’t think it’s so ridiculous. In my plays, there are real people, real dilemmas. Yeah, they’re over the top sometimes, because the characters’ needs are so desperate, or their situation is so odd. That’s real life to me. Life just seems ridiculous to me sometimes. I don’t want to write a realistic play set on a back porch, with all due respect to Proof [a Broadway drama by David Auburn about a famous mathematician and his daughter]. I mean, that’s a great play, but again, not my thing. I think theater has an obligation to be theatrical. It’s not real. Don’t pretend it’s real. I’m not a realist. For some, the game is how real can you make it? That’s silly to me. It’s a play.
EH: I’m guessing the team was good. DL-A: We rocked. We were legends. We went to Nationals, all that stuff. EH: What about bitter memories of Milton? Did you ever feel alienated? DL-A: You would think so from my work, which often centers on an outsider. But actually, I think most people found me likable. I was the valedictorian. I was the funny guy. EH: The class clown. DL-A: Well, no, more like the class comedian. I forget who made the distinction. The class clown is the guy who runs across the football field naked, and the class comedian is the guy who talked him into doing it. I was that guy. Still am.
EH: What are your fond memories of Milton? DL-A: I was miserable there. I have no fond memories. EH: Seriously? DL-A: No, I loved it. EH: You bastard. Okay, who are the key players? Amy Stevens must be one. DL-A: Amy, of course. I owe her my career, apparently. I always say John Zilliax, too. Just a great teacher. I took Modern World Drama, where we read two plays a week, starting at Aeschylus, going through August Wilson, then Mamet. It was hardcore. I got exposed to this breadth of theater, this whole range. You had to pick a playwright to emulate in exercises, and I chose Ionesco. Now John Simon says I’m his “true heir.” John Zilliax, thanks for that. Also Kay Herzog, Rey Buono. Speech Team was the focus of my life in theater. Dale DeLetis, Debbie Simon, and Randy McCutcheon led the way there. I loved it: the camaraderie, the whole scene.
Evan Hughes ’94 evanhughes@yahoo.com
EH: What were your categories? DL-A: I did Humorous Interp, mostly. I started doing “Kiddie Lit,” Children’s Literature.
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Theater
Lindsay Haynes ’98, repertory player, on drive-up drama
Postcards from the Road T
he National Players is a group of 12 young actors who tour the country performing two plays for audiences at high schools in rural areas, at community colleges, and in community centers. This season is the company’s 54th year, and we are performing As You Like It and Tartuffe. We perform a 90-minute version and a longer version of each show, depending on the needs of each venue. Everyone acts in the shows, and we also assume all the different technical responsibilities for the company. In addition to playing Filpote in Tartuffe and Rosalind in As You Like It, I am the master electrician and one of four truck drivers. I studied theater, art history and teacher education at Middlebury, and the irony of my being in charge of anything technical is not lost on anyone who knows me well. Luckily, the company trained me (thereby updating my knowledge from Mr. Satterthwaite’s Conceptual Physics in Class IV) and taught me most of what I need to know. The rest I have learned from common sense and asking questions. The work may not be rocket science, but it brings its fair share of headaches as we deal with different (often ancient) electrical systems on the tour.
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Olney, Maryland Olney Theatre Center Opening night – and our first venue, the Olney Theatre Center, the company’s home theater. Although this isn’t my first professional show, it is my first major part in a professional show. The last few days before we opened, we frantically pulled together all the different pieces of the tech and staging. The gel colors in the lights were changing up until half an hour before the show, and the stage smelled suspiciously of wet paint. Oddly, I didn’t feel particularly nervous. The audience was mostly people from the theater and former National Players. We all knew they really wanted us to be great, and the show went off without any major glitches. It was rough in places, but we realized it was only September and that we had eight and a half months to make those sketchy moments clear. Westminster, Maryland McDaniel University “She O.K. to drive that thing?” “Hey, has she got a license to drive that thing?” “Is she O.K. up there?” In a five-minute period, my friend and fellow truck driver, Brian, fielded each of these questions. I was sitting in the cab of the truck, backing it up to the loading dock, and apparently no one had ever seen a woman behind the wheel of the truck, or perhaps
these guys thought they could do a better job than I could by virtue of a few Ychromosomes. Brian, to his credit, politely told off each offender and defended my ability to back the truck up 10 feet as if his life depended on it. St. James, South Carolina St. James School Just a day later… and I was talking to the electrician the school had hired to help us connect to their power supply (technically my job, but some schools are more comfortable bringing in their own person, so often an electrician is waiting when we arrive). He asked me what time he needed to come back tomorrow to disconnect us, and I turned to our company manager, Jon. As Jon walked across the stage to answer my question, I heard the electrician breathe a sigh of relief that he had a man to talk to. As soon as Jon appeared, I no longer existed, and the electrician repeated to Jon information he had told me. I wanted to scream, but it was better, professionally speaking, just to let the moment pass. I had never really encountered anything like this before. With the exception of one professor’s telling me that I “act like a good male actor” (What did that mean?), no one had ever treated me any differently because of my gender. This could be a long year, on this front, at least.
McHenry, Maryland We arrived at this venue at 6:00 a.m., having slept two hours after driving 21 hours from Montgomery, Alabama. The day before, Jesse, Jon and I were interviewed on Mobile’s morning television show at 4:30 a.m. for the live broadcast. This venue was the final push of a long haul. We had been warned that the space was smaller than we usually used, and that we could not connect to their power supply. (We would be using their lights instead of ours.) None of this is a big deal, but everything seems harder at six in the morning. We finally got our set loaded in and our lights hooked up, and, after a hearty vending machine breakfast, prepared to meet the 300 high school students arriving for a playwriting workshop before the show. Tiff and I began with a
futile attempt to get the students to fill in every seat in the auditorium as they sat down. We could do nothing but look at each other and laugh as the students completely defied our every direction. “Can you guys please fill in every seat?” had no meaning. Mary offered one of the teachers a pad of paper, saying cheerfully “We’d love the teachers to participate as well, if you’re willing to.” The teacher waved a Sears catalogue up in her face and said, “No way, I’ve got my Christmas list to write.” Clearly, no adults were going to offer any help with crowd control. Cecil jumped up on stage and, with a display of energy that no one was feeling, launched into warm-ups we use at the start of each workshop. While the students weren’t ready to sign up for next year’s tour by the end of our exercises, most of them were paying attention. One boy, a special needs student, absolutely
glowed when we read his work aloud to the group and praised it. He wrote his autobiography (one of our two-minute exercises) in the form of a simple and elegant poem. I almost hugged him. With the workshop over, we changed into costumes for the performance. The show went off, more or less, without a hitch, technically speaking. The students talked through much of the show. When Celia says, “And I’ll sleep,” as she lies down onstage, someone in the front row clarified what she meant and snored loudly, on and off, through the rest of the performance. At the finish, we were exhausted and frustrated by our lack of energy on stage. Re-entering the stage after the curtain call for our customary Q&A session, we dreaded the customary questions – “Do any of you date?” “When you kiss on stage, do you actually kiss?” “How much
Lindsay Haynes as Rosalind and Jesse Hooker as Orlando in As You Like It
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“Re-entering the stage after the curtain call for our customary Q&A session, we dreaded the customary questions – ‘Do any of you date?’ ‘When you kiss on stage, do you actually kiss?’ ‘How much money do you make?’ – and were greeted with many of them.”
money do you make?” – and were greeted with many of them. There were, however, three girls in the middle section who started asking different questions – “What’s it like on tour?” “When did you first think you wanted to be an actor?” “What kind of school did you guys go to?” “Do you think you need training to act professionally?” The girls came up as everyone was filing out. We hovered around them, needing their questions as badly as they wanted our answers. “This is what I want to do,” one of them said. “I want to act. I want to do what you do. I never knew that I could do it without being in big movies. This was so cool. Thank you.” It sounds saccharine, and it rings false as I type it, but suddenly everything seemed worth it. And, yes, I was still tired, but I didn’t really mind. As we left the theater, we realized that the stuffed cat we use in Tartuffe had been stolen out of the hallway, and the sandbag used to weight it down had been ripped up and thrown in a corner. Amazingly, no one, not even our prop master, lost his or her temper, and we doubled over in hysterics that someone would really try to mess with us by gutting our stuffed animal.
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Lima, Ohio Lima Civic Center What a rush! We performed our 90minute version of As You Like It in the morning for 1,000 screaming high school students. Since our usual audience is about 200 to500, this was quite a different world. And they were so welcoming! The opening music started, and before anyone even entered the stage, they started clapping along in time with it. When Jesse went on to do the opening monologue, a roar went up from the crowd as if Bono had suddenly entered the building. Their enthusiasm had its drawbacks. Mary C. (who plays Celia) and I hug during one of the first scenes, and when we hugged, a whoop went up from the back of the house, and the giggling started and took several minutes to settle down. For the next few scenes, we had an audience convinced Celia and Rosalind were much more than cousins. While I guess this could be one interpretation of the characters’ relationship, it was not a direction we (or our director) had intended. Having to adjust your interaction with another character, mid-scene, to correct an audience’s misinterpretation is a real challenge. If Mary and I had held hands as often as we usually do in that scene, the laughter would only have grown louder, and the experience would have been destroyed for those who were actually listening to the language. In the end, they settled down, and we didn’t have to alter later scenes too much. (Celia’s line, “We still have slept
together, rose at an instant,” long ago evolved into “we still have stayed together” because of loud and distracting reactions early in the tour.) Generally, though, they were good students, full of energy, and, most importantly, paid attention – always a gift. Catonsville, Maryland Catonsville Community College Ninety-minute version of Tartuffe for fewer than 20 college students at 10 a.m. this morning. Arrgh. You’d think with the cost of having us here they would do some publicity beyond offering extra credit to one class of acting students if they came to the show. The last scene rolled around, and, as two characters are in the middle of a passionate exchange we hear…the fated cell phone ringing from the middle of the house. O.K., we all think, as the two characters continue their heated debate, this kind of thing happens. Then, the other shoe drops. We hear, “Hello?” as the student gets up, and walks only the back of the small house to carry out his loud conversation. We could only carry on with the scene for people whose focus was now divided between the exchange between Orgon and Tartuffe and where, exactly, Jerry was meeting his roommate for dinner.
“The last scene rolled around, and, as two characters are in the middle of a passionate exchange we hear…the fated cell phone ringing from the middle of the house.”
St. Meinrad, Indiana St. Meinrad Monastery and Seminary Having heard stories about the monastery and seminary at St. Meinrad’s for nearly a year, I could not wait to see what all the fuss was about. This place was amazing! If every venue were one-tenth as welcoming as the monks and seminary students, I could tour for the rest of my life. We arrived to find a house for us to stay in, a fridge stocked with soda, beer, wine, cheese and salsa, and a bar/grille on their campus where they ran us a tab. They are mostly Benedictine monks and one of the main tenants is hospitality. We were welcomed with open arms. And what a peaceful campus! We were encouraged, though never pressured, to walk around and attend vespers. We performed a full-length As You Like It and Tartuffe the next night. The audiences were the most intelligent we had come across. They laughed at the wit, not at the goofy humor. I could feel they were right there with me every time I opened my mouth. I felt the whole company rise to the occasion – the show had never been so smart. We finished our trip at the bar after the Saturday night performance, singing karaoke with the priests-to-be. I had a fantastic conversation with a student who told me all about his life before he decided to be a priest (a three-year marriage, a high-powered job), and, after we had wound down our philosophical discussion
about creativity and having a calling, he got up to the microphone and did a few rounds of free-style, old-school rap. I love meeting people who surprise me, and this place was full of them. Since I was raised in a not-so-religious family, meeting these men and hearing their opinions was a pleasure. They were also fun to be around. We all would have jumped at the opportunity to stay there a few weeks. Cumberland, Kentucky We met a student here at the community college unlike anyone I have ever met. The technical “go-to” guy at the community college, he is also starting his own production company, performing and writing a series of folktales, and competing on weekend in WWE-style (formerly WWF) wrestling. This guy could talk… and talk… and talk. I never thought I’d discuss the pros and cons of using barbed wire in a wrestling match, but Chris was very open to telling us anything we wanted to know. He seemed genuinely excited to have us around. He took us to the local state park, and we hiked up to the natural amphitheater (What I wouldn’t give to be doing our show there!) on the hillside. He brought us up to the top of Creech Overlook, named after a relative of his, and told us all about the parts of the valley we could see from there. To find the energy to get out of the hotel room and see the areas we’re visiting is often hard, but when we do venture out, I’m really glad for the opportunity.
Snowstorms cancelled our last two performances in the Maryland and Virginia, and we were a bit sorry not to have some closure on the first half of tour. The openness of people who have done National Players before (identified by their tour number, as in “Oh, you’re tour 54? That’s great. I was on 36. Those were the days.”), is impressive. Everyone compares war stories, and wants to hear “how we’re doing out there.” Someone (from tour 39) once described his experience as, “the best year you’ll ever spend in hell.” When I signed on, I thought that was what I was in for. I have been pleasantly surprised. Do I want to tour for the rest of my life? No. Probably not. Having an apartment, a cat, and a regular schedule would have been nice, but I have time for those things in the future. Right now, I am learning more about my country and myself, both as an actor and person, than I could have in any other way. I’m not making millions, and, if I were looking to be “discovered,” I would be sadly disillusioned. The thing is, though, I’ve been on a break for just about a week now, and, as tough as the work sometimes is, I can’t wait to get back to it. Lindsay Haynes ’98 minothay@hotmail.com
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Music The Claremont Trio, on tour
Emily & Julia Bruskin’ W
hen Deborah and Samuel Bruskin heard they were to be the parents of twin daughters, the two amateur musicians, a violinist and a violist, planned to form a family string quartet. With speakers set up next to their cradles, Deborah and Samuel’s daughters, Emily and Julia, spent much of their infancy listening to classical music. At the age of 4, Emily took up the violin and Julia the cello and by the time the girls were 6 the Bruskin family did in fact have a string quartet. Nineteen years later, Emily and Julia tour the country as professional musicians. “As children Julia and I spent Saturday afternoons involved in musical activities and of course we complained about it occasionally, but we really always loved what we were doing,” admits Emily. “We were lucky in that our parents never put pressure on us to become musicians. Our parents are a little surprised we decided to go pro, and they’re excited about and supportive of our success.”
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Successful indeed. Today the Bruskins make up two-thirds of the Claremont Trio: Julia on cello, Emily on violin, completed by Donna Kwong on piano. The trio, formed in 1999 at the Taos School of Music in New Mexico, won first prize in the 2001 Young Concert Artists International Auditions and consequently performed in New York, Boston, Washington D.C., Chicago, Buffalo, Switzerland, British Virgin Islands, Florida, Virginia, South Carolina, Nebraska, Minnesota, Texas, Utah and California, among other sites. In 2002, the Claremont Trio performed in Slovenia and Croatia, as part of a cultural exchange sponsored by the U.S. State Department and Carnegie Hall. Performing an average of 30 concerts per year, the sisters’ demanding schedule includes attending classes while earning master’s degrees at Juilliard. Julia and Emily both enrolled in dual-degree programs at Columbia and Juilliard in 1998. In 2002, Emily earned a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience and Julia a bachelor’s degree in Eastern European history.
“Touring and going to school is challenging,” says Emily. When the academic day ends there are still four hours of practice ahead; study time is often on planes and in airports. “This fall we did four concerts in California and crossed the country three times in four weeks.” Juilliard supports the musicians’ endeavors – they scheduled all of their classes on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday so they could travel and perform on the weekends. While the sisters’ first love is performing, Emily says they also love the educational aspect of touring. Coordinated with their travel schedule, Emily and Julia visit elementary and high schools around the country, teaching students about classical music. “Working with young people is the most fun. They have no preconceptions, no biases about classical music; they hear it and love it; they don’t assume it is any more difficult than any other genre.” The sisters also educate their audiences, who
The Claremont Trio: Donna Kwong, pianist; Julia Bruskin, cellist; Emily Bruskin, violinist
Emily says often know little about classical music. First the audience hears the music and then the trio talks about what is special about it. Their approach is reflected in their mission statement, published on their Web site: “While attending a concert, you notice things: the performers’ clothes, the cold draft on your neck, the speed at which the notes fly by. Sometimes the music is pleasant. Sometimes the musicians look excited. You sit. They play. You clap. You all go home. Many people think classical music is boring. Some people think classical music is relaxing, pretty, even interesting. We think classical music is exhilarating, heart-wrenching, and ultimately lifechanging. Music has often been compared to language. But perhaps a melody is more like a thought than a sentence. It has logic and order to it, but also a visceral, abstract
meaning that communicates more subtly, more purely than words. When our trio rehearses, we play and sing and debate, phrase and rephrase, tell stories, describe emotions, demonstrate, imitate, experiment: make up words, make up sounds, make up meanings. We think about creating expectations, building and releasing tension, balancing unity and diversity, and evoking sensations that are not simply aural, but integrative, evocative, and moving. So, after all of this preparation, we can’t leave people to notice wardrobe, climate control, or merely speed. We want our performances to come alive so that the audience will notice more, feel more, and perhaps even live more.”
“Young Concert Artists has hit the jackpot with The Claremont Trio. The Trio’s members have honed themselves into an exhilarating, polished team, and certainly deserve an honored position among others in the genre. Their styles fuse admirably and their tonal resources blend remarkably well…” —New York Concert Review “The Claremont Trio is a superbly accomplished young group with much intuition among the musicians, backed by splendid training, technique and dash.” —Strings Shannon Groppi
The Bruskin sisters hope to keep doing what they’re doing, attaining a higher level of interpretation and learning more about their music with each performance. According to the reviews, they are on their way.
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Music George Papageorge ’89
Keeps the Jazz Organ Tradition J
azz-blues-funk organist George Papageorge ’89 is devoted to his Hammond B3. “Just seeing a B3 gets me excited,” George says. “Most people would walk right by one and think it was a table.” The organ is hard to miss, weighing in at more than 300 pounds. Originally intended as a church organ, the sound instead found a place in jazz clubs and dimly lit juke joints. Developed by clockmaker Laurens Hammond in the 1930s, the Hammond organ requires electricity and a unique speaker system dubbed “the Leslie” for its inventor, Don Leslie, who also invented 3-D movies and missile guidance systems. The combination of organ and speaker renders the sweet sound that is so familiar in blues music and has also penetrated other musical genres. George, who owns three of the vintage organs, used to move his heavy-weight instrument from walk-up apartment, to van, to gig, more times than he can count. Now, the organs are strategically placed: one in his van, one in his Queens apartment that he shares with wife Dana Troetel and one in his family’s rainbowcolored basement in Canton, Massachusetts, where George played as a teenager.
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“My playing the Hammond is a true expression of my soul,” George says. “I’m comfortable with that. I know myself well. And I know an instrument I love.” George considers the B3 an extension of himself. That connection was achieved through more than a decade of working the blues circuit in the Northeast, playing organ trio gigs and free-lancing with other artists. It was as a college sophomore that George knew he wanted to flee the audience for a place on the stage – that he wanted a career in music. “I saw the jazz trio, The Fringe, in Boston that winter. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to play like them, but that I wanted to be the guy playing.” George returned to the University of Rochester that spring to declare a major in music. But, he says, it was the words of English teacher, James Connolly, that made him believe he would succeed. “He encouraged all students to think about matters of the heart, life and death. These are what count, he told us. It’s ideas about the heart and life and death that I express through my music.” While some remain untouched by these matters, George knew them early: “I was in the eighth grade at Milton, and my dad died suddenly of a heart attack right in front of me. I was 13 and that defined me. It forced me to grow up quickly,” George says.
Alive While at Milton, George studied piano with former Milton instructor, Steve Heck, and jazz improvisation with Bob Sinicrope. (“Sini exposed us to the right stuff at the right age. He put on Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue, which was pretty important,” George says. ) With Milton friends, Justin Campbell ’89, David Harris ’90, Samuel Brigger ’90, Will Carswell ’89, Rebecca Rubel ’89, Leisel Euler ’89, Peter Barrett ’89 and Jay Sullivan ’89, he was part of a U2 cover band, which often consulted with George’s big brother and fellow musician, Chris ’82. “I knew then that I had talent, but I hadn’t yet decided to take it seriously. In high school, I still had a long way to go. I still do.” George spent the ’90s becoming a part of New York’s jazz and blues scene: He has played at New York City’s classic 55 Bar at the Cotton Club in Harlem, once with singer-guitarist George Benson in the audience. He has toured Europe and recorded with soul singer, Mighty Sam McLain. Since the mid-90s, he has toured and recorded with soul-jazz guitar great Melvin Sparks. George has also recorded with the Papageorge Organ Trio, which
features guitarist Randy Johnston, and has co-written several tunes on Mighty Sam’s AudioQuest records. His organ-playing is credited on over a dozen recordings to date, including Susan Tedeschi’s Blue Party CD. “My trio’s regular gig is every Wednesday at a place called Smoke on Broadway between 105th and 106th. Dr. Lonnie Smith and a band called Hotpants also play regularly there.” (Hotpants, members, George explains, give a free CD to audience members wearing – you guessed it – hotpants.)
George has played at San Francisco’s funk festival and the New Orleans JazzFest. In 1998, he played for an audience of 10,000 at a jazz festival in the Netherlands. He has opened for greats such as B.B. King and Aretha Franklin. Of all the musicians George has worked with, it’s Melvin Sparks who has taught him the most: “Melvin played with Little Richard and jazz saxophonist Lou Donaldson. Playing with Melvin is like getting R&B 101. Going on a gig with him is on-the-job training,” George says. Sparks may be George’s mentor, but it’s the late jazz organist Charles Earland, also mentored by Sparks, who is his idol: Earland played a brand of soul-jazz which,
George says, is a little less esoteric than most jazz. “It’s music you can feel a little more easily. His stuff is funky,” says George, who counts Black Talk as his favorite Earland album. George is also working on a ballad for the organ, a Lou Donaldson-inspired piece that showcases the Hammond B3’s foot pedals: “I play bass with my left foot, the chord with my left hand and the melody with my right,” George says. “I want to keep the tradition of playing jazz organ alive and become an important part of that tradition,” George says. “I just want to play.” Heather Sullivan
George Papageorge at home with his Hammond B3
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Dance “Take these broken wings and learn to fly.”
Blackbird Rising Robert Bettmann ’91 Artistic Director, The Blackbird Dance Ensemble
D
ance has become the focus and driving factor of my life. The path, though not a smooth development, was nevertheless insistent, and I moved from being an onlooker to a practitioner. The Spark On Fridays, fourth period, Milton girls studied dance in Ware Hall. Without the wherewithal to be the only guy in that class, I tried dance right away at Oberlin College and loved it immediately. I majored in environmental studies, but minored in dance, taking classes during summers at major dance festivals in Maine and Colorado. After college, to move toward dancing professionally, I attended the American Dance Festival in Durham, North Carolina. The six-week program included daily technique class with Lynn Jackson, rehearsal director for the Alvin Ailey second company, who recommended that I take the scholarship audition at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center in New York. That led to a work-exchange scholarship there that opened my eyes to the commitment necessary for success among pre-professional and professional dancers. I could not
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expect myself to be one of the better dancers there. Having begun my training at 19 and danced mostly as a hobby, I was suddenly with dancers who had trained most of their lives. Outclassed, but having gained skill and experience, I left the school after a year, feeling that I would never make it as a dancer. Two auditions led to work with Suki John’s company and a commitment with Sudden Enlightenment Theater, a Buddhist South-Korean dance company, but I gave up hope of “making it,” sustained a hip injury that made dance painful, and abandoned the idea of dancing professionally. I stopped dancing for a little over two years. Work that followed, in publishing at W.W. Norton, and then in foreign policy consulting in Washington, D.C., was not gratifying and a personal crisis in 2000 prompted a core realization: dancing and choreographing is crucial to my happiness and well-being. I rehabilitated my hip and started training at the Washington Ballet. This was my acceptance of dance as my calling. Starting the company With the support of roommates Jack Bettin, a friend from the Alvin Ailey school, and Jonathan Jordan, a rising star
in the Washington Ballet, and dancer friends Heather Pultz and Nancy Menapace, I decided to found a dance company. Jack and I agreed on the name, The Blackbird Dance Ensemble, recalling the Beatles’ “Blackbird” song lyrics – “take these broken wings and learn to fly” – and a date for the first show, June 2001. Given my experience with mental illness and depression, this company represented my commitment to renewal and regeneration. The company is a contemporary ballet company; we do both ballet and modern dance. Jack’s instrumental role in the development of Blackbird bolstered my confidence. Founding a company is an intense act of will. Odds are long against breaking even – and perhaps one of the important aspects of a young artistic director is to have more guts than brains. Of the 11 dances in the 2001 show, I created four, Jack and I co-choreographed five, and Jack created two. They were successfully performed at the Washington Ballet Studios in D.C. and at The Ark at the American Dance Festival in North Carolina. The resulting video fueled my being awarded a “Young Emerging Artist” grant from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, funded by the
National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The grant, in turn, helped fund the next year’s concert, “Musical Invention,” that started with shows in D.C. and moved on to New York and Boston. “Musical Invention” consisted of 14 pieces, 12 of which I choreographed, including a fivemovement concerto, Arcangelo Corelli’s Concerto Grossi #7, set for seven members of the company. Funding the company To fund the company, I sought a financial sponsor, an established non-profit organization that, in return for a small percentage of the total donations (5 percent), incubates a company and establishes legal standing allowing donors to the company to take a tax deduction. My financial sponsor, Mason/Rhynes Productions, is producer of the D.C. Dance Awards. Gesel Mason and Cheles Rhynes, directors, are established artists in D.C., and their advice, support and example have been invaluable in developing my company. Gathering the company
Bringing together the talent a company needs is an odyssey: dancers, a lighting designer and technical help, a costume designer and fitters, musicians, a videographer, a photographer, and a tour-company manager. I have been uncommonly blessed in having gathered people who produce the work with little or no compensation. Last season I paid the videographer, the lighting designer and the technical assistant for the tour, and provided the company tour manager with a small stipend. Others donated their time. I am working on a future in which I can pay dancers in my company, but I am not there yet. I will not ask female dancers to work on pointe (in toe shoes) unless I can pay them, because of the pain involved in that exercise. Choreography that depends upon pointe work, therefore, will have to wait. Looking to the future Since financially sustaining myself as an artist through my company is some distance into the future, teaching dance helps. A fellowship for a master’s in dance
Rob Bettmann ’91 had given up hope of “making it” in the professional dance world. Now, he choreographs many of the pieces performed by his company, The Blackbird Dance Ensemble.
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at American University involves coursework that improves my teaching and allows me to pursue academic interests. I will present a paper on the body in the romantic ballet at the National Popular Culture Association/American Cultural Association conference in New Orleans in April 2003. I also recently contributed an article to the journal 21st Century Music on the use of new music in choreography. My big project is a book, which I am beginning as my graduate degree thesis, exploring connections between dance and environmental philosophy. Dance allows me the passionate pursuit of diverse interests. Musical invention “Musical Invention,” the title of the company’s most recent performance, is an appropriate moniker. A three-fold pattern guides my choice of music for choreography. Classical music is always included, with an emphasis on the Baroque. J.S. Bach, Christopher Simpson, Jean-Philipe Rameau, Antoine Forqueray and Henry Purcell are some favorites. I also like to compose to contemporary music. With so many young people in the audience, I like to include musical pieces with lyrics and direct meaning, to which they easily relate. Finally, I emphasize new music. Dance as a concert form has, since its inception, been connected to the production of new music. Modern choreographers, such as Twyla Tharp and Merce Cunningham, have taken this to a new level, and I aim to follow in their footsteps. From 1998, when I first presented a piece in New York City at the Judson Church, I have been collaborating with a fellow Oberlin graduate, Andrew Shapiro, on new music. For each of the last two seasons, Andrew and I have worked to develop a group of piano études, which he performed live at the company’s concerts. I also worked with composer Zachariah Hickman, who makes his living gigging
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on the upright bass and playing all of the backup instruments for singer-songwriter, Josh Ritter. Zack wrote a new passacaglia for the last performance which was scored for seven instruments, all of which he played. (It was, of course, pre-recorded.) I have certainly been influenced in my musical tastes by my time at Milton. I was a Miltone and a chamber singer at Milton and Scott Tucker, the music teacher during my time at Milton, was an idol of mine. In chamber singers we sang several of American composer, William Billings’s pieces, including “David’s Lamentation.” I meant to choreograph to Billings ever since then, and on the last concert I finally did, creating a trio to the Lamentation.” My singing career and exposure to music at Milton helped me develop the sensitivity to music which is becoming part of my signature style. Beyond music visualization Initially, I wanted simply to create something beautiful through my work. I have tried to tie the dance to pieces of music which that are particularly engaging and jewel-like. The term “music visualization” in dance theory applies to much of my past work – but the better half of my work reaches further than music visualization, trying to illuminate relationships among the dancers and their feelings. As a choreographer, I have been exacting with my dancers, coming to rehearsals with the pieces largely already formed. Now, I have come to believe in revising this top-down approach. The dancers transmit the vision. To embody the work in a way which that communicates meaning to the audience, they dancers must be truly invested in the work. The dance will be more fulfilling for me, the dancers, and the audience if it allows dancers the space and freedom, so they as a group can communicate. I wish to retain a rigorous approach to the music, but am more concerned now with helping each dancer define what he or she has to say and give to the audience. I work more collaboratively now, providing the dancers with structure while allowing them to help design the movement and working with them to define the piece’s content.
The power of connection Art is about change: captivating, inspiring, and moving an audience to realize and feel new things. When I watch dance, I feel, as a dancer, an empathic connection with the other dancers on the stage. Most people, whether watching theater or dance, feel that empathic connection. The power lies in developing it. The dance must be beautiful, but when it resonates with the soul it can be exponentially more inspiring. I look forward to a lifetime working to strengthen this connection. The piano études written for the Blackbird Dance Ensemble concerts are available on CD from AndrewShapiro.com. The Blackbird Dance Ensemble will be coming to a theater near you soon. For information on booking Robert or the company for master classes, lecture demonstrations or performances, contact Robert_Bettmann@mail.com.
Dance Ralph Robinson ’48
Forgoes Baseball for Ballet R
alph Robinson ’48 was a baseball player, playing the outfield for Harvard, the Navy and the Belfast Merchants, a semipro team in Maine. Today, he doesn’t follow the World Series. In fact, he hasn’t touched a glove in decades. He became, after all, much more attached to his ballet slippers. “It’s the same life,” Ralph says. “Only in ballet, there are girls – and different costumes.” It wasn’t just the pretty girls that attracted Ralph to a less conventional career. Ironically, it was war. The day of his Harvard graduation in 1952, Navy ROTC officer Ralph left Massachusetts to serve his country as a boat commander in the Korean War. “My brother liked war, but I didn’t,” says Ralph. “I saw people being blown up, and it changed my ideas. Life seemed short.” Upon his return from Korea, Ralph found a place in outdoor theater performing in Kermit Hunter’s drama Chucky Jack (1957). That performance required square-dancing. Enamored with performing, Ralph traveled to New York for professional training as a dancer. Ralph’s professional dance career began when the Chicago native joined the Chicago Opera Ballet as a premier danseur in the late 1950s. In 1960, he joined the Ballet of Nice (France) and met his future
wife Jeanne-Marie Aubert, a Swiss ballerina. The couple danced professionally in New York and Lyon, France, until the early 1970s when they “retired” to Bangor, Maine, and founded the Robinson Ballet Company. “It was fun,” says Ralph. “They [Mainers] hadn’t even seen a shoulder lift in 1969. Now they are blasé.”
two months each year at their studio in Lausanne, Switzerland. (Ralph is recovering from a hip replacement, so his traveling is temporarily curtailed.) Does Ralph regret going to the barre rather than taking a bar exam, swinging a baseball bat or becoming, like many of his classmates, a businessman? No. “Only when I pay my bills,” he quips.
Today, Ralph is chronicling his life’s journey, focusing on anecdotes of ballet days in his adopted home state of Maine. The book’s working title is From Baseball to Ballet. “It’s about the Nutcracker in the woods,” Ralph says. Ralph danced the part of the Great Cavalier, as have his nephew Keith Robinson (son of Mary Anne and Keith Robinson ’43) and grandnephew. “I always enjoyed being a character-dancer more than performing classical ballets. “I especially liked being the miller in The Three-Cornered Hat – but I enjoyed all my roles,” Ralph says. “Giselle was my favorite ballet until I danced it. I still love Swan Lake.” About 10 years ago, at over 60, Ralph’s last public performance was in Sleeping Beauty, Tchaikovsky’s first successful ballet. Now, Ralph’s wife Jeanne-Marie works on her quilting rather than dancing and choreographing, and the couple spends
Ralph Robinson and his wife Jeanne-Marie Aubert in Giselle, c. 1975
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Writing
Touré ’ N
onfiction by Touré ’89 has appeared in Rolling Stone magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Playboy, Village Voice, Vibe magazine and Tennis Magazine. An archive of Touré’s articles is available on his Web site, at www.toure.com/library. In the years following Columbia graduate school, Touré’s work appeared in The Best American Essays of 1999 and The Best American Sports Writing of 2001. His first book is a collection of short stories, The Portable Promised Land, published by Little, Brown and he is working on his first novel, Soul City.
Touré
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Touré visited Milton Upper School writing classes last fall – as well as his Lower School teacher Carolyn Damp and her fourth-grade class – talking with students about the work of writing. Touré reflects, below, on aspects of his experience as a writer, in response to our questions. Talk about getting started, moving from nonfiction to writing fiction. I began writing fiction at Columbia’s graduate creative writing school. I was about 25, 26 years old then, and had been working at magazines like Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Magazine. I wanted to get better. I desperately wanted to be a good writer. So I went to grad school. There was a lot of talk, in every class it seemed, about the line between fiction and nonfiction being very thin. That meant that the techniques involved in creating one are shared by the other, so if you know how to write nonfiction you can write fiction. It’s not some magical thing. So I took a class in writing fiction and when we were assigned to write a story I thought, “What can I write about?...What can I write about?...” I had recently read Invisible Man (for probably the third time; Ellison has always been a major influence for me) and somehow I thought, what if you had a black man for whom white people were invisible, as in he alone couldn’t see them. I wrote the story of Sugar Lips Shinehot, who meets the Devil and has the ability to see white people taken from him.
Tackling the novel, the arena of big storytellers After that, learning how to write fiction became the same as reading. I had an idea of how to write fiction and reading others’ sentences, I could see how they’d dealt with the various problems a writer encounters. Every novel I picked up helped me visualize a little better the boundaries of modern fiction, helped me see what the playing field looks like. Years before, in trying to learn how to write nonfiction I learned a tremendous amount from Joan Didion and the smooth shapes of her sentences and paragraphs and the cool pose of her narrative voice. But now, in my mid-20s, doing fiction, I was more moved by the authors who are stylistically bombastic. In much of my nonfiction writing, I feel I should not be so stylish that my style gets in the way of the reader understanding the subject I’m showing him. In fiction, style is critical because the whole exercise is about entertaining the reader by any means necessary. So style becomes a big factor. It’s not enough to have the characters do interesting things, but the story must be told in an interesting way. The writers who have most moved me and helped me find my own voice are Ralph Ellison (his fiction and nonfiction),Vladimir Nabokov, Salman Rushdie, and David Foster Wallace. Those are very different writers, but they all tend to hyper-textesque verbosity and lingual pyrotechnics and self-conscious storytelling. They all have a tremendous confidence that comes through in their work. It’s so important to
Carolyn Damp’s Fourth-Grade Class Talks with Touré “Did you write this incredibly good thing about yourself or did you pay someone to write it for you?” asked a fourth-grader in reference to the author’s biography in the back of The Portable Promised Land. With a smile, Touré answered this question and many others, encouraging students to follow their dreams. He spent a fall morning in Carolyn Damp’s fourth-grade class:
write from a place of confidence. The reader perceives your personality from each choice you make and the under-confident writer is not very inspiring. Are some genres easier, or more challenging, or more suited to the exploration of certain problems that are important to you? I have done work in a number of different forms, but as time goes on I am moving toward writing little but novels. The novel is the heavyweight arena, where all the big thinkers and big dreamers and big storytellers go. The novel is also a troubled arena, demanding a tremendous amount of time and thought on the part of the reader, a commitment which many people aren’t willing to make in our modern microwave era. But if I can write some good novels and remind people of the joy of reading great novels then that’s a worthwhile way to spend your time. I was in high school when I read Invisible Man and Richard Wright’s Native Son, but the writer who first got me excited about reading 300-page stories is Toni Morrison. Her stuff is fun and serious and graceful and soulful and makes you fall in love with her. After going through her oeuvre I started looking around at who else could give me the reading pleasure that she gave me. I’d like to be that kind of writer for other people. There’s little in life that’s as much fun as making your way through a great novel.
Do you get annoyed when you pass in a story you thought was really good and your teacher gives it back with writing all over it? On my fourth-grade evaluation, Mrs. Damp called me a poor writer, and even though I suspect that might have been due to poor judgment on her part, I guess, maybe she was right. But what happened after the fourth grade is that I read and wrote a lot for many years until I became a good writer. Any of you can follow the same path. Whatever dream you have – if you decide I’m going to become whatever and that’s all there is to it and you work at it, then you can get anywhere and become anything. It’s not always going to be easy. It wasn’t easy for me to become a writer and it won’t be easy for you to become whatever you want to be. But when you’re driving with your parents and you run into traffic, do they say, “Honey, there’s too much traffic. Let’s go home.” No. They find a way to get through the traffic. And so will you. Wherever you go in life there will most definitely be traffic along the way, but if you’re determined not to let the world’s worst traffic stop you from getting there, then you can be anywhere. Was Mrs. Damp really your fourthgrade teacher? Yes, Mrs. Damp really was my teacher. What do you like to write about? I like to write about fantastical, magical things. What do you do when you get bored of writing? I never get bored of writing. There is nothing I love more than writing. Building sentences, considering which words to use, shaping characters – these are the greatest joys in life for me. I enjoy
reading great literature and trying to write something that someone may someday consider great literature. It never gets boring. How long does it take you to write a book? My first book took four to five years to complete. My second book took one and a half years to write. When did you decide to be a writer? I thought about writing in college. At Columbia, I became a serious writer. After I left Mrs. Damp’s class I read a lot of books and wrote a lot of papers and very slowly, over many years, I became comfortable expressing myself with words and the impact of all that reading and writing turned me into a good writer. What is it to be a person who can write a story and know people will read it? Well, sometimes when I sit at the computer I feel as though there are 10,000 people sitting around me on the floor with their legs crossed listening closely to the story I’m creating. As I write the story, I try to think how they might respond to this word or that phrase or some sentence. I try to hear where they might laugh or cry or get mad. If I want them to laugh or cry or get mad at that point in the story then, good. If I don’t want them to laugh or cry or get mad at that particular point in the story, then I’ll change it. Are you inspired by other writers? Yes, I like Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison and Salman Rushdie. How many drafts do you write? I write anywhere from 20 to 30 drafts. Do you hire the illustrator for the cover? No, writers don’t usually get to choose the cover.
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Is there a personal discipline that you apply to generate the writing? Not really. Whenever there’s something to get done I get motivated and brainstorm and figure out how I feel about the subject and get some words down. I write early notes, like a painter sketching out the first draft, on a rectangular yellow post-it pad. I prefer newer pads that are still thick. (I buy them in bulk.) When I get to the computer to actually compose the first words I usually need to have a little snack (pretzels, Cheez-Its, something) to get me going and I need to have silence. Once I get focused I usually surprise myself with how quickly the words come. But then I think about a story I once heard about Picasso. Someone asked him to draw a sketch. Picasso pulled out a pen and for 30 seconds drew on a napkin and handed to the man. The man said, “It’s amazing! How much?” Picasso said, “$50,000.” The man was shocked. “Fifty grand? The drawing took you 30 seconds?!” Picasso said, “No. That drawing took me 40 years.” And he’s right. Everything an artist has ever done or seen or thought in his life becomes part of his art. As well, the techniques, mental (and, in his case, physical), that allow you to draw a masterpiece in 30 seconds or to write a great story in 30 minutes, take many years to develop. I never have anything resembling writer’s block because I have good discipline. I’m known for always making my deadlines. That’s the Milton discipline still in me. What are the questions and problems that drive your writing? Are they questions that can be resolved in a work, or in a lifetime of work? The central question of my writing is what interesting thing can I do as a writer today. That’s it. I also enjoy expanding the complexity of the way black people are viewed by both black and white people. But the first challenge is to tell interesting stories in interesting ways. Thus, my novel Soul City introduces you to a world in which people fly at birth, a small group of women can live for hundreds of years
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because they can smell Death coming and avoid him, and one certain individual can travel to Heaven and talk to God and travel to Hell and talk to the Devil. (But he doesn’t go to Hell very often because the Devil always tries to trick him into staying.) Death himself is a character, albeit a small one and a confused one. He doesn’t truly understand why everyone is scared of him. He doesn’t like pain (she’s a real bitch). Death helps lots of people get to Heaven. What’s wrong with that? He considers hiring a PR agent, but he realizes that no one could possibly improve his image. The book comes out in September. I’m very excited. When you’re happy with a piece of work, what is it that makes you happy with it? You know that you’re finished when you look at the piece and you know every word is there for a reason and nothing could be added or subtracted. On another day it might be different, but if all those
words fit together and every word accomplishes something different and there are no clichés, then you’re finished. What role do you see the writer and intellectual playing in the greater society right now? Well, that could be a book. I was beginning to think that serious fiction was on life-support because so few people are reading serious fiction nowadays. But then Jon Franzen had his big splash with The Corrections reminding me that serious writers can have an impact on millions of people. Novelists and serious fiction writers play an important role in society by providing the great stories that entertain us, teach us, help us see society through another’s eyes. Every civilization needs storytellers to feed the imagination of the people. All I want is to be a proud part of that ancient tradition. Cathleen Everett
The following excerpt is by Touré ’89. It was first published in High Plains Literary Review and later appeared in the volume The Best American Essays 1999 (Mariner Books).
“What’s Inside You, Brother?” From outside the circle of spandexed actresses jumping rope, their ponytalis bouncing politely, Body & Soul appears to be a boxing gym rated G. But push trough the circle, past the portly, middle-age lawyers slugging through leg lunges and past the dumpy jewelry designers, wearing rouge, giggling as they slap at the speed bag. Keep pushing into the heart of the circle, inward the sound of taut leather pap-papping against bone, toward the odor of violence, and, as often as not, you’ll find two men sparring, their fists stuffed into blue or red or black Everlast gloves, Tshirts matted down by hot perspiration, heavy breaths shushed through mouthpieces, moving quick and staccato and with tangible tinges of fear as they bob and weave and flick and fake, searching for a taste of another man’s blood. Sometimes Touré will be in the heart of the circle, maybe sparring with Jack, hands up, headgear laced tight, lungs heavy ribs stinging after Jack backs him into a corner and slices a sharp left uppercut through Touré’s elbows into the soft, very top section of his stomach. Then, for Touré time stop. He loses control of his body, feels briefly suspended in air his thoughts seemingly hollered to him from far away. Life is never faster than in the ring, except when you’re reeling from a razing punch. Then, life is never slower. Sometimes Touré will be in the heart of the circle sparring, but I don’t know why: he is not very good. I’ve known Touré a long, long time – you could say we grew up together. He’s just Over five feet ten inches and about
one hundred sixty pounds. That’s one inch taller and a few pounds lighter than the legendary middleweight Marvelous Marvin Hagler. Touré, however, has neither long arms to throw punches from a distance, which minimizes vulnerability, nor massive strength to chop a man down with a few shots. He has the stamina to stay fresh through five and occasionally six rounds, yet after four years of boxing he still lacks the weapons to put a boxer in real danger, and that puts him in danger. Being a lousy fighter is far different from sucking at, say, tennis. So, if he’s not good, why does he continue climbing into the ring? I went to the gym to find out. “Three men walk down the deck of a luxury liner,” says Carlos, the owner of Body & Soul. He is a yellow-skinned Black man and a chiseled Atlas who always gives his clients good boxing advice and a good laugh.… As Carlos’s audience for the joke disperses, he pulls you close to put on your headgear in the same way that your parents once pulled you close to zip up your snowsuit. Your hands stuffed into large gloves in preparation for combat, you are immobilized, unable to do anything for yourself – not hold a cup of water, not scratch your ass – anything but throw punches. Carlos squeezes the thick leather pillow past your temples, down around your ears, and pulls tight the laces under your chin. The padding bites down on your forehead, your temples, your cheeks. You look Iran the mirror. Your bead and face are buried so deeply in padding you can’t tell yourself
apart from another head wrapped up in headgear You can’t recognize your face.… Now, in front of the bag is a true African-American, a cool synthesis, not merely assimilating, not merely rebelling, but blending like jazz, melding what is gorgeous and grotesque about Africa and America. It’s a body English that’s the high-tech version of that spoken by Brer Rabbit, the Negro folktale trickster and blues-trained hero whose liquid mind and body could find a way past any so-called insurmountable farce on any so-rumored impossible mission without the force even knowin he been there and gone. It’s a body English filled with signifying, which means you say bad and mean good or you say bad and mean bad. And either way everyone who’s supposed to know always know and know without anyone having to explain because everyone who’s supposed to know know about signifying even if they don’t know the word. But you know all that, so you fire through the round in constant, unstoppable motion, lighting the entire universe on glorious, ecstatic, religiousfervor fire with your Ali-ese, and of Black, and of beauty. And then, as punches rain from deep within your heat onto the bag, you see that Carlos was right, a Black man can light the world on fire, wake it up, change it up, blacken it up, by something as crude and simple and natural as scratching his ass, that is, simply by being himself.
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Film
Adrift
“Boston filmmaker Tom Curran’s documentary exploration of his emotionally complex upbringing is also deeply personal, resonant and brave.…Ultimately, the picture painted in this ample 56-minute arc is of a flawed man, deeply loved and ultimately forgiven, whose untimely departure left a lot of baggage – though maybe no more than if he’d lived.” —The Boston Globe
A Father’s Complex Legacy
T
om Curran ’81 accompanies his documentary film, Adrift, to showings and film festivals from Denver and Boston to Anchorage and beyond.
The Curran clan: Tom III (top left) is pictured here with his brothers, Desmond and Gavin, driven commercial striped bass fishermen; his sister, Maeve, a competitive bodybuilding champion; and his late father, Tom Curran, Jr.
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Gathering awards and recognition as it profoundly connects with viewers across the country, Adrift explores the scope and impact of Tom’s late father’s legacy, particularly his expectations for Tom, the firstborn. Tom is present, with audiences, as they watch and as they react afterwards, because he wants to reach out and extend the efficacy of a powerful film. Adrift puts in play the difficulty experienced especially by boys and men, in expressing emotions such as fear and grief. In Tom’s case, his “personal battles with fear, risk, success and failure” brought his career to the point of dysfunction. Adrift is one outcome of a painful, cathartic and deeply artistic experience. An Emmy Award-winning cameraman, Tom began work in 1993 on a documentary about the world of striped-bass fishing, working with his two younger brothers in waters off Monomoy Island, Cape Cod. By 1996, as Tom described it, “I had an image system that was building which was not really about fishing.” Five years of work followed, figuring out the questions that pressed in on Tom and seeking their resolution, in art.
Ultimately, the film sensitively builds upon stunning natural photography of Alaska, Cape Cod and Belize and the metaphorical themes embedded within the views. As The Boston Globe, describes Adrift, it weaves “voiceover memories, interviews with [Tom’s] mother and siblings, home videos, artful recreations, and evocative images – a drive along the Alaska coast, a cormorant under a bridge – into a lingering portrait of paternity.” Thomas senior, Tom’s father, was a biggerthan-life, hard-driving character, a charismatic Irishman who passionately loved politics, athletics and his family. His own father had died at 40, and had left him with the challenge to “be number one,” and take care of his mother and siblings. This near-death message from his father was a driving force in his life. To each other, Tom III and his father were the most important figures on earth. Tom sought out any and all opportunities to be with his father, relishing the closeness and the connection. During nearly every
*Unless otherwise noted, the source of quotes in this article, as well as certain background information about the film, are from the Adrift Web site, www.adrift-movie.com. Please visit the Web site to learn about the film makers and advisors, the film’s viewing schedule and outreach efforts.
moment they were together, Tom’s father coached young Tom in hockey, centering in him the importance of being number one and of winning – at all costs. Tom’s father lived only until he was 37, and died after a period of illness and decline tracked by his family. Tom did not cry at his father’s death. Instead, he made a promise to honor his father’s wish by becoming an athlete in “the big leagues.” Tom’s life at Milton and in college was devoted to reaching for what his father wanted of him – after hockey was baseball, and then tennis. When the athletic big leagues proved outside his grasp, Tom brought the same drive to his work as a cameraman, earning an Emmy Award at 28. An extremely challenging assignment with a camera crew in Belize brought Tom to the inescapable point of having to consider the source of his own battles with fear, risk, success and failure. Over time, the grip of his father on Tom’s life emerged, and the effect of sublimating emotional responses to his father’s death.
Adrift began as a documentary film about the world of striped-bass fishing. Tom’s brother Gavin, pictured at right, is a commercial fisherman.
From left to right, Adrift filmmakers: Laura Parker Roerden, educational outreach producer; Jamila Wignot, production assistant; Todd Boekelheide, composer; Tracy Heather Strain, producer; Llewelyn M. Smith ’72, writer; Shondra Burke, editor; Myna Joseph, associate producer; and Tom Curran ’81, director-producercamera.
From 1996, when it was clear that film on the world of bass-fishing (Night Train) was developing into a quite a different story, until 2001, Tom worked to realize Adrift. Several Milton graduates helped Tom fulfill this artistic expression, including Jessica Hallowell Lindley, Jide Zeitlin, Josh Bixler (all ’81), and Llewelyn Smith ’72, a seasoned, accomplished and awardwinning documentary producer, director, and writer helped Tom translate his life story to the film’s narrative. He advised Tom to begin by writing notes – everything he could remember – about his life. Those notes, the subject of raw interviews with Lew, ultimately became the film’s narration. Tom drew his sister Maeve, brothers Gavin ’86 and Desmond ’84, and his mother Mary Jane into the interviews, and all contribute to the drawing of a man whose impact on the family, and on friends, was profound. Tom takes questions from the audience after the film, and often the questioners probe the reactions of Tom’s family members to his attempt to make sense of their father in a film. The film sets up a deep reflective silence among viewers, as well, perhaps because of how easy it is to identify with a story so
striking, so intimate and so painful. Eventually the questions do pour out, and Tom answers – quietly and honestly. With the film’s release, Tom and a number of professionals and interested individuals are developing outreach initiatives tied to local television broadcasts of the film and designed to: • Explore the prevailing messages around manhood that adults and youth have internalized. • Re-cast the role of parents, coaches, and other important adults in facilitating healthy emotional development in boys. • Help boys and men safely express and release profound, though forbidden, feelings of humiliation, fear, anger and grief. • Reframe sports and other activities of connection for youth to be an opportunity for healthy expression of feelings, authenticity, and character building. The film’s powerful message is especially for adults, Tom says, and particularly for fathers. Cathleen Everett
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Film
Film Director
Lara Shapiro ’87 Making the story as visual as possible
D
irector Lara Shapiro ’87 talks from her cell phone in Montreal. She’s on location shooting a commercial, in French and English, for the quit-smoking aid Nicoderm®. “It’s a documentary-style testimonial,” says the one-time frequenter of the smoking room at Milton Academy. “I actually used Nicoderm when I quit a couple years ago,” she adds. Lara nearly quit filmmaking, too, after filming her first short film Crawl while at Columbia University’s film school. “After I shot the film, I had nothing. I had all these fragmented pieces. I thought I was a failure. I remember telling a friend, ‘Well, it’s good that I tried directing, but I guess I’ll have to find something else.’” Lara says. Then she began putting together the bits. “It came together in the editing room, and the pieces fell into place in an amazing way,” Lara says. In 1995, Crawl was selected for screening at the Sundance Film Festival. Her next film, Tipped, followed suit, and both films aired on the Sundance Channel and Channel 4 in the United Kingdom.
“Filmmaking is very much like learning a new language,” Lara says. “I found that there was a steep learning curve. You’re not fluent until you’ve done it a while.” While films are her preferred medium, directing commercials pays the bills – and Lara’s idiosyncratic gift for storytelling is evident there, too. Case in point: Lara developed the concept for and directed a television spot for the Independent Film Channel. The tongue-in-cheek spot pokes fun at the Hollywood machine and features actors Ed Norton and Matt Damon (a little-known actor when Lara pushed to get him cast prior to the release of Academy Award-winning Goodwill Hunting). The commercial shows a little girl – the esteemed director of Boogie, Boogie, Booger, we’re told – looking unimpressed while she holds a lunch meeting with the actors, who work to curry favor with the suddenly-on-the-A-list director. “It’s easy to work with the Ed Nortons of the world,” Lara says, contrasting that to working with unseasoned French-speaking actors in Canada. After September 11, Lara also directed an “I Love New York” television spot featuring singer Mark Antony, who takes viewers on a tour of his New York, going – to
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Lara Shapiro
his feigned disappointment – largely unrecognized as a celebrity, even in his old neighborhood, Spanish Harlem. Lara’s other commercial work includes an environmental spot urging the conservation of drinking water (the concept centers on a toilet) and a TV promo for onhealth.com (in which a nursing home resident cheats and makes racy words in a game of Scrabble®). “Directing is hard,” she says. “You’re constantly being rejected.” For inspiration, she says, she goes to the Writers Room in New York every day that she’s not directing. “It’s a quiet place with a community of writers, poets, novelists and screenwriters. “People need to bounce ideas off each other, I think. Throughout history, most creative thinkers have belonged to some kind of collaborative group. The Writers Room is also a perfect place for people who want to be writers but are afraid to try,” Lara says.
Among Lara’s current projects is a film about foreign correspondents working together out of Nairobi news bureaus. “It’s sort of a United Nations of people there. My main subject is Lara Santoro who works for Newsweek and The Boston Globe. She’s part of a remarkable group of people who spend a lot of time together; you get a cross-pollination of cultures,” says Lara, who hopes that the film will be viewed by high school and college students. The first round of filming was funded by a New York State Council of the Arts grant. With plans to visit the East African location a second time, Lara is also at work on a feature-film version of the story that she describes as an actionadventure film. Balancing projects of high personal priority with commercially rewarding ones is a challenge, Lara says. Hoping to streamline her work life, Lara recently joined New York-based production company Park Pictures, LLC. “I work for the wife of Sam Bisbee. Do you know Mr. Bisbee? I had Sam’s father Mr. Bisbee for math in the eighth grade,” Lara says “He was a great teacher.” Then the Milton stories begin.
“The great thing about Milton was that I was allowed to work very intently on what I loved best at the time: pottery,” Lara says. “I learned to concentrate, to focus on one project.” While at Milton, Lara exercised creativity in the sculpture and ceramics studio rather than the theater. “I was too intimidated then to be involved in theater,” she says. She thanks art teacher Paul Menneg for fueling her desire to test her power to create visually compelling and complex work. “It’s important in filmmaking to make the story as visual as possible. The challenge is how to make characters’ internal struggles come alive. It doesn’t work on film if a protagonist never acts,” Lara says. She admires the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, for example, because director Milos Forman recognized that the novel’s passive, paranoid-schizophrenic patient could not remain the narrator. “My work is always narrative-driven,” Lara says. “I look for the best way to tell a story.” Heather Sullivan
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Visual Arts
The Letting Go Sarah Sze’s Sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Explores Perspective, Time, Loss As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow – First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go – —Emily Dickinson
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half-full glass of water rests on the floor within a circle of dried flowers below a floating piece of white paper. The paper is gently bent with a hole through its center and is suspended by a wire, which ties the lower part of the installation to a collection of delicately connected wooden objects, miniature electric fans and wire two stories above. Every time the west wing entrance of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, opens, an icy December wind sends the suspended paper in circles over the dead flowers. The paper swings like a pendulum, hovers, then quiets. “What is it?” a child asks. It is “RSVP: Sarah Sze” at the MFA, a recently installed site-specific work by rising international star of the contemporary art world Sarah Sze ’87. It is an elaborate sculpture, constructed of wood, metal and string, some of the everyday parts of ordinary life that Sarah elevates to art. Sarah calls the piece “The Letting Go,” echoing a line from an Emily Dickinson poem that speaks of loss, grief, remembering and numbness.
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Anne Neely, who taught Sarah at Milton, remarks on the appropriateness of the title. “It is not by accident that the center of this sculpture has the most delicate, most tenuous connection between two metal strips, with a trembling feather secured to one, seemingly dangling precariously on a thread,” she says. Traditionally, the contemporary art installations of Sarah Sze employ objects of mundane life to create glittering or dizzying or resonant architectural pieces made to make their spaces live: Q-tips, clothes pins, breakfast cereal, ladders, petite mirrors, paper, beads and plastic flowers are among the objects assembled and transformed by her. But if many of Sarah’s raw materials are available at your local dollar store, their effects are not: She has moved the art world with solo exhibitions at most major museums, including the Institute of Contemporary Art, London; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, Paris; and the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco. In her MFA debut in Boston, Sarah works in the high-traffic west wing lobby and takes advantage of the lobby escalator to allow museum-goers to slowly, gradually change their perspective on the installation: People move away from the confettilike circle of flowers toward the top of the sculpture, which winds around a square-
edged pillar. The whir of the tiny fans becomes just audible. The intricacy of the arrangement of twigs, clamps, drawers, wood and wire invites inspection – and introspection. “Many of my pieces function like organisms or absurd life-support systems, incorporating air, water and electricity,” Sarah told Amada Cruz, curator at the Center for Curatorial Studies Museum at Bard College, in a 2001 interview printed in Sarah Sze (Center for Curatorial Studies). A meadow outside Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies in upstate New York is the site of Sarah’s first permanent outdoor sculpture. Completed in 2001, it is a break from her traditional materials and a move to less ephemeral media. The project comprises a series of three craters. The craters appear as if meteors or other objects have fallen from the skies; they look like archeological sites full of brightly colored matter. An exhibition catalogue from Bates’ Center for Curatorial Studies, the most substantial work to date on Sarah’s art, is available from Amazon.com. Art critics have called Sarah’s work quixotic, hypnotic, dynamic, utterly fresh, exuberant, funky, resolved. Without question, it captures the imagination. Her large
Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
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installations reward those with an eye for detail. She examines the meaning of architecture, commodities and waste, consumerism and identity, balance and perception, and expansion and chaos. While her work is often referred to as “installation art,” Sarah says she prefers to think of herself as a sculptor. She also says that her sculptures are often like buildings and concerned with time: “When something has a lifespan, it seems to be more valuable. Creating objects that are tied to a larger process that has a beginning, a middle, and end changes the experience of viewing in that it seems more precious and fragile,” Sarah told Ms. Cruz. Sarah was born in Boston in 1969, the daughter of an architect and a now-retired nursery school teacher. After graduating from Milton Academy, she studied at Yale and the School of Visual Arts in New York. She also lived in Japan for a year and studied ikebana, an intensely exacting from of floral arranging. She began exhibiting in 1996 and has participated in group exhibitions including the 2000 Whitney Biennial and the 1999/2000 Carnegie International Exhibition. “RSVP: Sarah Sze” is at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, through April.
Republished with permission of The Globe Newspaper Company, Inc.
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Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The Magic Occurs in the Looking E
ach time I look at Sarah Sze’s work, I see a story unfold about a place, maybe even a universe. Even though in each of her on-site sculptures she is sensitive to the immediate environment, this physical place provides point of departure for her to describe something that is quite beyond steel and mortar, field and forest. In her 2001 piece at Bard College at Annandale on Hudson, New York, called “Powers of 10,” she uses tubs and bathroom tiles, juxtaposing them with hoses and orange plastic snow-fencing to create subterranean cities. Another world is implied inside each of the two holes dug in front of the Center for Curatorial Studies Museum (the third site is in the nearby woods). These crater-like holes are covered with a string grid through which the viewer observes many layers of architectural forms and other familiar trademarks in Sze’s work such as the use of light, wind and water. Viewers approach these site with curiosity and crouch down low enough to explore the different stratospheres where small fans and electrical lights are hidden next to water-filled hoses running throughout the piece. In all
of her pieces, the viewer needs to be an active participant in order to follow the many paths Sze has set out for him/her to follow. Her materials are simple and range from hardware supplies to bathroom and other household necessities. Viewers have many choices in viewing Sze’s work and can follow by association, form or by color just to name a few. In her recent site sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, she starts with a simple still life both in the downstairs foyer of the museum and upstairs along the wall. These small intimate activities act as a conduit for entering the more expansive guts of the piece that consist of two structures clinging to two large concrete pillars on the second floor of the exhibition area. This piece is called “The Letting Go” and it is not by accident that the center of this sculpture has the most delicate, most tenuous connection between two metal strips, with a trembling feather secured to one, seemingly dangling precariously on a thread. Again lights and fans are situated to create vibrations that make dancing shadows from the sculpted white plastic shapes. Viewers from below look at what is happening above and those above look below. Everyone is engaged magically by this piece and each person, I suspect, makes his own narrative as he focuses on whatever strikes his eye first. One of
Sarah’s unique gifts comes from allowing the viewer so many avenues of interpretation. It is ironic that these familiar objects – bottle caps, clamps, paper – can be transformed and perceived so differently from their normal use, given her fabricated context. Sarah seems to be able to bring to each of her pieces a new role for her familiar objects and what appears to have one role in a piece carries with it a totally different orientation in another. The magic occurs in the looking. One minute, attached to a wall you see a print drawer and another, a blue plane. The formal and the specific are constantly in question and constantly in dialogue. It’s up to you to figure it out.
Anne Neely Art Department
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Education
No Myopia About the Arts Robert Freeman ’53 on preparing artists
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erhaps no one in the Milton community is better positioned to survey the arts in America than Robert Freeman ’53. After 24 years as the director of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and three as director of the New England Conservatory in Boston, Mr. Freeman was asked in 1999 to be dean of fine arts at the University of Texas in Austin, the country’s largest university on a single campus, home to 53,000 students. During his years at Austin, Freeman has become increasingly concerned about the future of the arts in America. His concerns are underscored in a recent report by the Rand Corporation, The Performing Arts in a New Era, which stresses the need to re-think the supply-and-demand relationship in the performing arts. The reasons for the flat rates of participation in live performances come as no surprise to anyone reading the daily newspaper. Advances in technology have greatly improved the quality of recordings, the
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price of tickets for live musical and theatrical performances has skyrocketed, and Americans have become increasingly sedentary and accustomed to sampling the growing variety of arts programming on cable television.1 In addition, the tragic events of September 11, 2001, seem to have intensified the public’s reluctance to join audiences in public spaces. The authors of the report call for a change in the priorities of the arts community from “supporting the production and performance of the arts” to “stimulating public involvement in the arts.”2 Bob’s response to the Rand report is twofold. He believes arts institutions must prepare students to be more than artists, and he feels those institutions must be the driving force in creating the greater demand for the arts in America. Dean Freeman began a conversation with John Charles Smith (English department) recently by reviewing his own education, an experience which made him an early and vocal advocate for artists to complement their training with a comprehensive general education. His mother, who taught music at Milton from 1953 to
1967, instilled this idea in him from an early age. As he notes, “The rule in our household was always, on the one hand, lots of scales and arpeggios, études and sonatas, but you’d better finish your Latin and physics homework before you get to that.” As part of his mother’s belief in a general education and her desire that Bob attend Harvard, the Freemans sent Bob and his brother, Jim. (Underhill Professor of Music at Swarthmore) to Milton. Freeman remembers his years at Milton fondly. “Milton Academy was very good to me,” he says today. “It taught me how to work hard. It was partly the small classes and partly the strength of the faculty because you knew, when you were 13 years old, that you would recite tomorrow. The classes were small enough that the teachers would be down your throat if you weren’t prepared.” At Harvard, which Bob found easy after Milton, he continued to balance his musical training and performing with other studies. Though he
was the principal oboist at the Boston Opera House for his Harvard years, he still graduated summa cum laude. In 1972, Bob Freeman took his belief in a well-rounded education with him to Rochester, where Eastman director Howard Hanson’s 40-year advocacy of general education stood Bob in good stead. Many faculty of the New England Conservatory had a completely different attitude about general education, and Bob faced considerable resistance during his brief stay there. He accepted the offer in 1999 from Texas with great hopes for a more receptive attitude on the part of the faculty and has been extremely happy in Austin. He is responsible for music and also for art and art history, theater and dance, the Blanton Museum, and the performing arts center. As he is quick to point out, the School of Fine Arts at Texas sits squarely in the middle of the campus, and its 2,200 students live in dormitories with others majoring in vastly different fields. Myopia about the arts is well nigh impossible, therefore, and Dean Freeman feels that fact is an important aspect of a student’s training in the fine arts at Texas. As he points out, the School of Fine Arts has produced both the principal trumpet in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Living in Austin has helped Freeman shape a vision of the arts in this century, one he feels would solve many of the problems the Rand report anticipates. He foresees the need for all parts of America to undertake what he calls regional arts planning. Using Texas as an example, he envisions a time in the not-too-distant future when high-speed railroads link Austin with San Antonio, Dallas and Houston. With such easy transportation, those cities could then consider just how many symphonies, art museums, opera companies and children’s museums, for example, the region could support, moving people to facilities, rather than trying to maintain all those institutions in each community. Furthermore, the cities
would have an ability to maximize the quality of these institutions by linking them to the areas’ colleges and universities, which he feels must play vital roles in the future of the performing arts. First, they must make their introductory courses in the arts as attractive as possible, staffing them with gifted faculty whose enthusiasm for their subject matter is obvious. Second, they must train arts teachers of younger children well. He notes, “The arts, if taught early and communicated as part of life to students by teachers who care about such matters, could change the nature of American life.” Third, and here he draws on one of the richest elements of Texas life, colleges and universities must foster competition. In Texas, that competition is a way of life, thanks to the University Inter-Collegiate League (UIL), which sponsors contests among high school students in the arts, and in practically everything else – debating, football kicking, expository writing – bringing students to the Austin campus for the final rounds of competition. He believes, too, in developing further enthusiastic avocational participation in the arts for adults of all ages. Finally, Bob sees enormous potential in the use of technology to create demand for the arts. With Americans living longer and enjoying more leisure time, he believes arts institutions could cultivate interest in the arts with interactive technology, teaching people, for example, how to listen to a piece of music or look at a painting. Bob Freeman holds strong opinions about the ways in which federal, state and local governments can help the arts during the difficult shift from a supply to a demand mentality. He points out that the vast majority of funding for the arts still comes from private sources, so even a small grant from a government agency can help arts organizations raise other funds more effectively. The federal government could play another important role, he says, by refusing to give tax breaks to American philanthropists who support European arts organizations. Those organizations, which also face shrinking government and private support, have vigorously worked American philanthropic circles in recent
years, and the social cachet of being honored at, say, Salzburg or Bayreuth has elicited large sums from wealthy Americans. Bob believes that American funding should go to American arts institutions. He also laments the decline of government interest in the United States Information Agency since the end of the Cold War. This once-vital organization was responsible for spreading news about America to millions of people who now are left with only Hollywood fare on which to base their judgments of our nation. In the post-September 11 world, the USIA could affect world opinion by furthering the spread of American theater, for example. He notes, “For us to ignore theater as a way of telling America’s stories in cities all over the world is really silly.” Fortunately, Bob Freeman can take heart, as can we all, in recent efforts by the Bush administration to use American artists for exactly the purpose Bob proposes. The State Department, which took over the USIA in 1999, plans to distribute a booklet about American pluralism, containing essays by a number of distinguished American authors, in embassies around the world. This project is one of many undertaken by the federal government since September 11. Richard Ford, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer whose work is included in the anthology, echoes Bob’s concerns in a comment in The New York Times. “There is the perception abroad that Americans feel culturally superior and are intellectually indifferent. Those stereotypes need to be burst.”3 In an irony which Bob Freeman would relish, though, the booklet will not be available in one country, the United States, where a 1948 law prohibits domestic access to such material.4 John Charles Smith English Department
1. RAND Research Brief, http://www.rand.org/publications, p.1. 2. RAND Research Brief, http://www.rand.org/publications, p.7. 3. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/07/arts. 4. Ibid.
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In•Sight
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Fall 2002: Clear view reappeared from south side of Centre Street through to Forbes House and Robbins House once the Link had disappeared, making way for the student-faculty center slated for June 2003 completion. Anne Neely (art department) charged her students with reconfiguring the “new” space between Warren and Wigg halls, using Adobe Photoshop®. Their tongue-in-cheek creations, from fantastic to grand, are highlighted here.
Chloe Walters-Wallace ’03
Ilana Klarman ’04
Elizabeth Cummings ’05
Ilana Klarman ’04
Liesl Kenny ’05
Martha Pitt ’05
Rachel Doorly ’05
Randy Ryan ’05
Ross Reilly ’04
Sami Kriegstein ’04
Whitaker Lader ’05
Colleen Leth ’04
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The Head of School Why more boarding students? Why fewer day students?
L
ast winter the board of trustees announced the plan to bring the numbers of boarding students and day students to parity over the next five to seven years. That means adding 70 students to our current total of boarding students (269), and decreasing day students by the same number. Overall school size will stay the same. Why do that? What led the board to that decision, and what does it mean? This decision intends to restore Milton to its historical identity and traditions, rather than bring about a new and unfamiliar School. The trustees want to return to the balance that existed during Milton’s recent past, while at the same time dramatically enriching the quality of the experience for all students. As the trustees stated in their report, “the understanding of Milton Academy as a boarding and day school is an essential component of the Academy’s history and tradition, as well as a key feature of the School’s vibrant and unique culture today.” We also know that Milton’s boarding school status contributes significantly to our established competitive leadership in attracting Boston metropolitan students. To continue Milton Academy’s strength today, we must continue to recruit outstanding boarding students.
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At present we have an excellent boarding program: Talented and competitive students are enrolled, and they are happy. Outside of eastern Massachusetts, however, we are not well enough known as a boarding school of choice. We are known more as a day school. We have recently been “out of balance,” and that sets momentum in a negative direction for families looking for a boarding experience. Certainly, New England boarding schools that compete with Milton for top students have an interest in keeping the notion alive that Milton is predominantly a day school. We must increase awareness among families seeking a top boarding school that Milton is a great choice, or we will not – in the years to come – continue to attract an appropriately deep pool of academically proficient boarding applicants. The image of Milton as simply a day school did not spring out of thin air. With its significant majority of day students, Milton feels right now like a day school to many boarding applicants. Asking a family interested in a boarding school to believe in the centrality, viability and superiority of our boarding program is challenging because Milton doesn’t fit any model of a boarding school that prospective parents carry in their heads. In fact, it’s a school that defies conventional models of all kinds. We celebrate that aspect of Milton, and wouldn’t change it for the world. However, a family thinking about sending a son or daughter off to school has to feel confident and secure. Prospective boarding parents look for a critical mass of boarding students, and an environment that reflects a diverse community of students in residence. To enroll the best students successfully, Milton
must look and feel “true” to what is known and expected about boarding schools. Ultimately, the result is the strongest school for boarding and day students together. Reaching parity of numbers within the student body will reset the balance. It will assure that we shape the life of the School in ways that affirm our excellence as a residential school, while deepening the quality of each student’s experience. For example, the plan to achieve parity between boarding and day student includes: ! Building effective, inviting spaces for boarding and day students to integrate their days and evenings fully, inside and outside of class ! Developing and supporting a faculty that is focused on the fullest development of each student, day and night, unlimited by the confines of class or the school day
Life at Milton centers on the pursuit of excellence. We offer academic rigor in an atmosphere that is warm, supportive, focused on making sure each individual develops his or her personality, skills, competence and confidence to the maximum. The strategic initiatives, such as the effort to add boarding students, the architectural projects that surround us and the projects that are to come, are focused on academic life of the School as well as the active learning all students experience – in and out of class. Our goal is that Milton’s structural and physical reality – our look, feel and operation – promotes our ability to continue as the thriving boarding and day school that we are today. Robin Robertson
! Providing lively, safe and fun weekend social activities that students want to attend ! Increasing efforts to respond to the psychological, emotional and developmental needs of adolescents ! Connecting students who live at home with the ongoing life, traditions and diversity of the Milton dormitories ! Facilitating opportunities for developing those famous relationships among Milton folk – boarding students, day students and faculty – that truly affect change and growth: among athletes, artists, writers, coaches, political thinkers, musicians, historians, scientists, persons from next door or from a different continent. 49 Milton Magazine
Faculty Perspective Academic Honesty:
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e take academics seriously at Milton. One indicator may be that each fall we begin by thinking and talking with students about academic integrity and the ethical questions surrounding their intellectual work at the School. We take time for assemblies on the topic of academic honesty, with the goal of restating and clarifying our expectations. This year, student leaders roleplayed several scenarios portraying students making poor choices about collaboration on homework, in various shades of black, white and gray. Those role plays were followed by discussion in advisor groups, from which we gleaned some useful feedback that has since then shaped discussion among the faculty. Students acknowledged that they mostly know what cheating is and how to avoid it; they tell us that the most common form of cheating is “wandering eyes” on quizzes and tests, followed by unfair collaboration or copying uncited sources on essays. They offered several reasons why it happens anyway, the most important of which is stress: so much expected, plus time pressure, leads to cutting corners. (Faculty think this pressure is mainly due to poor time management.) Some
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acknowledged that new information technologies such as the Internet make cheating difficult to resist. A few blamed teachers who don’t follow the test and paper schedule, and many felt that even though cheating is wrong, they were unlikely to stop their classmates because that would be “snitching” on friends. They feel caught between the School’s standard of upholding integrity and the social expectation that students don’t tell on each other. Students identified what issues are confusing for them, as well. Their most common confusions deal with the appropriate level of collaboration, for example: among partners in the writing of science laboratory reports; among the members of a group working together in class but then writing their own conclusions based on that group work; and among students who share notes or engage in discussion outside of class and then wonder if that discussion should be cited in the essay that follows. Students also expressed confusion about the use of secondary sources to aid in foreign language translations, and about how to distinguish what is common knowledge from specialized knowledge. Finally, they were confused about proofreading and the role of friends and parents. The department heads discussed these questions and confusions this fall, and each department clarified its standards and expectations – an ongoing challenge, of course.
On this last point, we give guidelines to student tutors who help other students in the writing center. In October, I wrote to parents about their part in helping students make good decisions about honest academic work. We consider parents our partners as we develop in our students both academic skills and ethical maturity. Student tutors know these things: It’s fine for a student to show her work to someone else before turning it in, but not fine for her paper to be edited by someone. In other words, it’s okay for a father to say to his daughter, “This passage is unclear,” but not okay to suggest ways she might clarify it. It is okay for a mother to point out a poorly phrased sentence to her son, but not okay to correct it. We expect our tutors and our parents not to take pen in hand during a paper conference, and not to dictate changes or improvements to a paper. Though it’s an inefficient use of time to work this way, we think it’s essential not to leap to giving students easy answers. The goal is to support students in their effort to do good work rather than to do it for them. Milton Academy is a remarkable learning organization, an intellectual community of adults and children who are hungry for ideas and who hold themselves to high standards. We believe in the fundamental
importance of intellectual honesty at Milton, and we work constantly and vigilantly to teach our intellectual standards and uphold them. With new technologies presenting new opportunities and challenges to teachers and students as they seek to do thoughtful and original classroom work, we have our work cut out for us. There are plenty of recent examples of high-profile historians and politicians who have been caught engaging in sloppy scholarship and dishonest use of others’ words and ideas. The faculty at Milton embrace the counter-cultural challenge of teaching students to do their own work. One Class I parent wrote to me in October, after receiving my letter to parents about academic integrity, with this story:
sympathized with her plight. He explained (via email) that sometimes this happens to a writer and he thought she would be able to work her way out of this herself! It would have been so easy to help. L. probably would have gone on to write a great paper. Instead, she is learning how to work her way out of a difficult spot, while in the process of writing the paper herself. I think this lesson is far more valuable than just getting another A on an English paper. I also think it is the harder road to take – for both student and teacher and I feel so thankful that L. has a
teacher like Mr. Smith who is willing to keep raising the bar. Thanks so much for really taking time to teach the the big important things, as well as the Kafka. N.A.
Hugh Silbaugh Upper School Principal Read Hugh’s messages to parents in the online newsletter, Centre Connection. Go to www.milton.edu and click on “Parents.”
Hi Hugh – I'm just writing to say I loved your article in the online newsletter. Your comments about not giving students easy answers were especially relevant in light of something L. just told me. She had been struggling with an English paper about Kafka for Mr. Smith’s class. Half way into the paper she got lost. It wasn’t going well and she thought she’d need to take a different approach. She asked Mr. Smith if he could meet with her in order to get some help finding her way through it. Now, L. is a good writer. She works hard and she usually figures things out on her own. Here is the thing I love – Mr. Smith
Hugh Silbaugh
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The Milton Classroom All About Ethics
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ormer Milton Academy Chaplain Thomas G. Cleveland ’45 built the Academy’s ethics course more than 30 years ago as a way for students to discuss philosophical, religious and ethical issues in the academic atmosphere of the classroom – without the academic consequences of a grade. With Milton involved in a search to fill the chaplain’s position during the 2002–2003 academic year, the Upper School faced a challenge: Without a chaplain, how should Milton build on its legacy and teach ethics effectively to the 15-year-olds in Class III?
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Where do you stand on capital punishment? How do you tell someone you don’t want to be friends? Is starting a war with Iraq just and reasonable? Is affirmative action effective? Is it fair? Is the endangerment of civil liberties a reasonable outcome of the war on terrorism? What action might merit expulsion from Milton Academy? When does an act of war become a war crime? Can the end justify the means? How should Catholics respond to the scandal in the church? Why does corporate America’s greed go largely unpunished? Where do stereotypes come from? Is free speech ever wrong? If the grocer forgets to charge you for the bread, do you tell him? Does a teenage boy’s opinion on abortion matter? Where do you draw the line between provocative discourse and offensive conversation? Should ethics be taught by a chaplain, even if no religion is espoused in class? Is it wrong to recycle your own academic paper written the previous year? Is lying to protect a friend okay – as long as no one gets hurt? Would you have obeyed orders? Is blood thicker than water? Is it safe (or smart) to state your views if they are not politically correct?
“In addition to the practical matter of getting the job done,” says Hugh Silbaugh, Upper School principal and English department faculty member, “we need to be mindful of an increasing sense of urgency about preparing students well to live in a complicated world.”
faculty must address the subject not from a Christian, Jewish, Muslim (or atheist or Hindu or agnostic or Buddhist) position, and not as a philosophical element of Locke or Socrates or Nietsche or Kant, but as a practical matter moving toward a set of personal rules for living.
Thoughtful discourse is, of course, a hallmark of a Milton Academy, as is the likelihood that faculty will rise to meet a challenge. It’s not surprising, then, that a group of veteran teachers volunteered to explore with students an individual’s responsibility relative to a larger group: As none of us lives in isolation, what attitudes and actions do you owe to your family, your friends, your school, your country and your world? Furthermore,
“The idea has never been to teach a particular ethic,” says Hugh. “This interim solution is working because our faculty members are lifelong learners and thoughtful educators.” The team of teachers includes Mark Hilgendorf and Carly Wade of the history department; Geoff Theobald, Louise Gilpin, and Lukie Wells of the deans’
offices; Elaine Apthorp, David Foster, Maria Gerrity and Hugh Silbaugh of the English department; John Banderob of the mathematics department; and Rod Skinner, director of college counseling. “I’m finding it challenging, and I think one reason is because I’m used to leading students in a particular direction,” Hugh says. “In this class, knowing ‘the right direction’ is a challenge for the facilitator of the conversation.” Hugh explains that most faculty members are working from the Tom Cleveland rubric: Present a case with a problem; ask students what they might do (and whether that position might, or should, alter according to a certain role in the predicament), and how they would defend their positions. The teachers draw dilemmas occasionally from the annals of history, though generally look to such barometers of national focus as The New York Times and Newsweek. Cases presented to students include: • Attorney General John D. Ashcroft sends sniper suspects John Lee Malvo and John Allen Muhammad to Virginia rather than Maryland for prosecution, to more assuredly face the death penalty in a state that trails only Texas in the number of people executed in the last 25 years. • The Supreme Court last weighed affirmative action in university admissions a quarter-century ago. Now, the Supreme Court prepares to revisit the issue in “reverse discrimination” cases brought by white students against the University of Michigan, where the undergraduate admissions office awards AfricanAmericans, Latinos and Native Americans 20 extra points on a 150point scale used to rank applicants; and the law school has aimed to have students of color make up at least 12 percent of its first-year class.
• With war on Iraq likely at press time, the need to attack Iraq is still debatable. Concerns are many but include the likelihood of Iraqi civilian deaths, that economic interests rank high on the U.S. agenda, and that U.N.-led action against Iraq might trigger an increase in terror attacks worldwide. In addition, an attack could make the Middle East safer and more secure – or it could severely destabilize the area. President George W. Bush’s Administration said it had agreed to provide U.N. weapons inspectors with information on Iraq’s weapons program to help them find President Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. As an educated world citizen, where do you stand and how do you have a voice?
“That said, on the part of the faculty members, it takes patience, humor, stamina and high ethical standards to help students muddle through and try on different ethical positions. The course is exploratory; it is also rigorous.
How does all this look to 15- and 16year-old hearts, eyes and minds?
English teacher Elaine Apthorp agrees that the development of an ethical stance can be hard to shepherd. “It’s the noise of learning. We can’t see the end of it. We have to endure the beginning of it,” Elaine says.
“They don’t always know what they think. They know what they were brought up to think,” says Carly Wade, chair of the history department. “This is a good time, developmentally, for an ethics class,” Hugh says. “ The students are able to reason abstractly, and they’re not jaded.
“This team approach is a potentially interesting model, but it’s not necessarily where we’re headed,” Hugh says, noting that the new chaplain will examine how to move the course – and its future students – forward. The course can be frustrating to teach. Students have difficulty stepping away from their place of privilege to look at the layers of a situation and how it affects other people. “Sometimes what I hear is not very generous,” says Carly.
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world. —William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act V, Scene 1.
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Post Script Post Script is a department that opens windows into the lives and experiences of your fellow Milton alumni. Graduates may author the pieces, or they may react to our interview questions. Opinions, memories, explorations, reactions to political or educational issues are all fair game. We believe you will find your Milton peers informative, provocative and entertaining. Please email us with your reactions and your ideas – cathy_everett@milton.edu.
. . “ ” ’ From The New York Sun Alumnus Fipp Avlon is a columnist for The New York Sun. On November 27, 2002, he dedicated his column space to honoring late Milton Academy faculty member Ted Allen, who refused to compromise his principles.
The name Ted Allen does not appear on monuments or emblazoned on books sold around the nation. It did not fall to him to die rescuing lives from a towering inferno under terrorist attack. He died 10 years ago in comparative quiet. He was just one of the more than 450,000 people who have died of AIDS in America since the disease was first reported. Our city alone has lost nearly 80,000 fellow citizens to AIDS in that time, well over the number of young Americans killed in the Vietnam War.
T
hanksgiving is about appreciation: appreciation of life, and appreciation for the sacrifices of those who’ve gone before us. The adrenaline, anxiety, and ambition that mixed together makes up life in New York, has – for the past 14 months – been joined by a peculiar burden, a profound awareness of just how much we owe to those who have been taken from us. The 3,000 died as innocents, unexpected soldiers on the front lines of an undeclared war. We live every day in their debt and we know it. The quiet heroes in life are the ones most worth praising; they did not promote themselves and so it falls to us to help them be remembered as the quality of their souls demands they should. I’ve written in these pages many times about the firefighters, police officers, and other res-
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cuers – both civilian and uniformed – we lost on September 11, 2001. They will always be in my thoughts and prayers, especially on a day dedicated to giving thanks. This year there will be another individual in my thoughts, a true gentleman who was also taken from us much too soon. And like the heroes of 9/11, the way he lived his life and the courage with which he met his death deserves remembering. It deserves appreciation.
Ted Allen did not die in battle, but throughout his life he fought his own battles on his own terms. He devoted his alltoo-brief life to education – his own and that of others. He was a Harvard graduate who went to school on a scholarship and then pursued a Ph.D. in literature. He earned his money by teaching English at Milton Academy, outside Boston. He possessed an uncommon intensity that was leavened by good humor. Much of the time he appeared to be either on the verge of recounting a good joke or remembering an old fight.
Ted Allen, English department, 1984–1989
Most of all, he had evident integrity. He was African-American in a community that was mostly white; he was gay in a community that was mostly straight. But he was most passionate on the subject of how individuals transcend their superficial group affiliation, and he taught by example. This was not done in a spirit of denial, but in an insistence upon the essential dignity of every individual. He refused to be categorized; nor would he categorize himself, because that action – that mental acquiescence to prejudice – implied acceptance of limitation. He dedicated himself to expanding equal opportunity on the proposition that each person has a right to be judged first, foremost, and eternally as an individual. In a stance that was strikingly rebellious at the high-water mark of the culture wars in the late 1980s, he refused to accept the concept of mutual incomprehension. If there is a single classic Ted Allen story it is this: When a white colleague on the English faculty expressed concern that he would not be able to teach poems by Langston Hughes,Ted sharply reminded him that teaching Moby Dick seemed to come easily despite little experience in the whaling industry.
For Ted Allen, good stories held the key of true and timeless universality. Two things stand out from the last time I saw him in his hospital room. He’d been watching the movie Casablanca and remarked again and again on what a simply good story it was, elegant and tightly constructed. He also said, almost in passing, that he’d been rereading the works of Emerson and Locke and how if he had to do it over again would like to live as their contemporaries, because it was the last time that a man could actually set out to know everything there was to know in the world.
others.” We must all face our destinies unflinching and try to invest each moment with the possibility of making a positive difference. Thanksgiving is – among other things – an opportunity to reflect on what really matters and rededicate our lives in that direction. Appreciation is the order of the day. J.P. Avlon jpavlon@nysun.com
Ted Allen was a private man, and he was my teacher – so there is no way I can claim to have known 360 degrees of his personality. But in the three years I was privileged to know him, I was able to catch a glimpse at the rare quality of his soul. And I regret that I will not one day be able to tell my children, “Go talk to Ted Allen.” Over time in life we learn to live with loss because there’s nothing else to do. Despite this occasionally hopeless backdrop, the importance of courage becomes more and more clear. It is, as Churchill said, “the essential quality, because it guarantees all
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Post Script , - ’
I
n spring 2002, I knew I would be making a trip to Armenia to report for The Armenian Mirror Spectator, an English language newspaper, published in Watertown, Massachusetts. Friends greeted the news blankly. Some Americans recall the phrase, “starving Armenians,” which alludes to the genocide perpetrated on the Armenians by the Turks in 1915. At that time, the Armenian population that had resided in eastern Turkey was either killed or driven out. While many settled in what is present-day Armenia, a great number were forced to emigrate to other countries, particularly Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Georgia and Iraq. A substantial number of families came to the United States, settling near Los Angeles or in the environs of Boston, particularly Watertown. Today, there are about a million Armenians living in the United States. For Americans, Armenia barely registers on the radar screen. Many mistakenly believe it is a Muslim country. In fact, it was the first nation to adopt Christianity in 301 A.D. It has its own Mother See and head of church, the Catholicos, who resides in Echmiadzin, on the outskirts of the capital, Yerevan. Similarly, few know where the country is located and think that it is somewhere near Afghanistan, rife with civil war and home to terrorists. In fact, it lies between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea and is
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bordered by Georgia, Iran, Turkey and Azerbaijan. The country is not at war, currently, although it has suffered targeted political violence in recent years. It is the smallest of the former Soviet Republics, and is about the size of Maryland. A 1991 census, immediately after its independence from the Soviet Union, put the population at 3.7 million, but it is widely known that the population has decreased, with many Armenians emigrating to Russia or elsewhere in search of work. The unemployment rate is 30 percent, and Armenia ranks 23rd among the world’s poorest nations. Government sources put the wages of Armenians who actually have work at between $20 and $40 per month. I visited two families and in both, neither of the husbands worked, although both were highly educated. One had a doctorate in history, the other was a computer scientist. One wife had a position in the government as a deputy minister of social services. The other wife had founded her own non-governmental organization to study gender and women’s health issues. Her work is funded by grants. One family mentioned casually that a physicist who lived next door repaired washing machines for a living. What I discovered during three weeks of my assignment there in July 2002 is that Armenia is a country in a crisis of transition. Most emblematic of its shifting status are the many abandoned factories
both in and outside of Yerevan. When the Soviets pulled out in 1991, these factories, which may have been poorly managed and produced products that were not necessarily marketable, simply floundered. They had, at least, provided employment. Despite its woeful economy, it is not accurate to describe Armenia as a Third World country. The population is exceptionally well-educated and literacy is close to 100 percent. Yerevan State University comprises many faculties and educates thousands of students in fields as wide ranging as law, philology and computer science. Whether or not Armenia can be described as a “developing country” depends on whether its economy is actually growing, and statistics are contradictory. The annual budget is about $450 million, far less than the budget for most states in this country. Recently, foreign aid from the United States to Armenia has amounted to $90 million, and Armenian-American lobbyists in Washington work hard to see that this amount does not decrease. Additional sources of funding for Armenia include large donations and gifts from Armenian-Americans such as the billionaire, Kirk Kerkorian, whose Lincey Foundation is providing millions for the restoration of museums in Yerevan, the repair of roads and sidewalks, and the rehabilitation and construction of buildings in Gumri, Armenia’s second largest city, badly damaged in a 1988 earthquake.
Republic Square, Yerevan, Armenia
Further, there are countless private groups in the diaspora that raise money to improve Armenia’s infrastructure and to support schools, health programs, reforestation and many social services. Among Armenia’s prominent treasures are its medieval churches and monasteries, many of which have been gloriously restored. They are well worth the often bumpy and lengthy drives up remote mountain passes. The Mother See of Echmiadzin is only a half hour’s drive from downtown Yerevan, while Khor Virap, where St. Gregory the Illuminator, founder of the Armenian church was imprisoned, is also not far from the capital. Khor Virap enjoys a spectacular location, set against the snowy peaks of Mt. Ararat, just across the border with Turkey. However, there are many other examples of exquisite monastic architecture, such as Noravank, perched high on a mountainous promontory, or the trio of churches, Sanahin, Odzun and Hagpat at Alaverdi. The war of the early ’90s between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the area known as Karabagh has been in a ceasefire since 1994, and the area’s final allegiance is still unresolved. I spent a weekend in the former war zone. There are vestiges of the fighting, a few abandoned tanks by the side of the road and bullet holes in the walls of many buildings in Stepanakert, the capital. One village, Agdam, had been razed to the ground by
Monastery at Alaverdi, Armenia
shelling and bombing, literally devastated by the war. Another large town, Shushi, where I was told 50,000 people had lived, now houses only about 3,000 residents in damaged apartment houses. There are still many landmines left in the area, although efforts on the part of the Halo Trust of Britain and a joint program, administered by the U.S. Department of Defense and Armenia’s Ministry of Defense, are working to eliminate them so the land may be reclaimed for agriculture. One curious trace of the war is the long wires hung over valleys. I was told the Armenians had strung them to make it impossible for Azeri planes to fly at a low altitude. Although the Azeris had superior military equipment, the Armenians, miraculously, won the war on the ground, and currently there are no Azeris living in Karabagh. All have fled to Azerbaijan, and concomitantly, there are virtually no Armenians living in Azerbaijan. A sad sight are the Christian-Armenian and Muslim-Azeri cemeteries where the men who were casualties of the war are buried. On Sundays, aging Armenian parents, the women dressed in black, visit their sons’ graves. Armenia’s future lies in the continuing development of its agriculture, its natural resources, which include gold and diamonds, and especially the possibility of attracting and building information tech-
nology services. For years, Armenia has been known for the production of particularly high quality brandy and cognac, and these remain important export products. The food of the countryside is absolutely delicious and savvy visitors will avoid the expensive restaurants in Yerevan which offer their versions of American and West European menus. Sample a fresh peach, homemade yogurt, and home-cooked lamb at the modest roadside stands that are found along the major roads and you will taste something that trumps the quality of our fanciest organic foods. Today, Armenia is a democracy with an elected president and elected parliament. It is engaged in a major struggle to find its way in the post-Soviet era. Time will tell whether it can attract and stabilize a population that still seeks rewards for its skills too often outside the homeland. It is also essential to break the trade blockade imposed by Turkey and Azerbaijan. At present, Iran is Armenia’s only bordering trade partner. Still, hope is evident in the major construction projects, the attractive cafes that have sprung up in Yerevan’s parks, and in the Armenian people themselves, who have survived and triumphed throughout an often tragic history. Daphne Abeel ’55 is a journalist and free-lance writer. dabeel2345@aol.com
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Sports On Ice: Milton Academy Competes in Elite and Tough ISL League
A
n early version of ice hockey was first played at King’s College in Windsor, Nova Scotia, around 1800. It evolved from the off-ice game hurly, which was popular in Ireland. Through the 19th century, the game grew to become the national pastime of Canada. While winters in Milton, Massachusetts, aren’t as brutal as those up north, hockey has become a favorite competitive sport here, too. The Academy’s boys’ team members assumed their hockey sticks around 1900, playing on a rink behind Forbes House. In 1953, the Roberts Rink was constructed. It was replaced in the late ’90s with a state-of-the-art synthetic
rink in the Athletic and Convocation Center, which now hosts the boys’ and girls’ teams. Both teams play in the competitive Independent School League (ISL) and are guided – despite hockey’s reputation as a fierce sport – by the league’s principles of honor, proper conduct and sportsmanship. “The ISL is a fantastic league for Milton to be a part of because it provides great athletic and educational opportunities,” says Mike Kinnealey, athletic director. “For hockey in particular, it give us the finest competition in the region in terms of depth and skill.”
“For me, hockey is about the right combination of working hard and having fun,” says Lisa Stirling, head coach of the girls’ team. “You can be aggressive and maintain control.” Lisa grew up playing hockey with the boys in her neighborhood. “I’m competitive. I’ve also had great coaches,” she says. “I piece together what I’ve learned from them with newer ideas about drills.” At home, she gets great tips, too. Her fatherin-law is head coach of the Bridgeport Sound Tigers and her husband’s business is Puckmasters, a hockey training center in Norwood, Massachusetts. “Our coaches love to win, as do most people. They try to keep it in perspective, though, and like to see our team working hard and loving hockey,” says Liz Keady, captain of the girls’ team. “Our coaches get the best out of each player. It is easy to be a good coach if your players are all very talented. At Milton we have talented players, but the coaches here make them take it to the next level. Everyone improves every season. “Hockey is a fast-paced sport, as well as extremely competitive. There are millions of one-on-one battles in the corner every shift,” Liz says. “It’s important to keep learning,” agrees Lisa. “We’re skating six nights a week. But the girls know that school always comes first. I talk to them about time management,” she says.
1915 Hockey Team
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“We’re in one of the best leagues in the country,” says Paul Marks ’81, who played hockey, football and baseball as a student at Milton. “Players in this league are draft-
ed for the NHL [National Hockey League]. Our program has been very competitive – and we’re working hard to return to our roots in that respect. Coaching at my alma mater is something I’ve always dreamed about.
istry on the team is strong and the team is physically bigger than it has been in the past. Our defensive corps is led by senior co-captain Andrew O’Connor, one of the players called upon to protect senior goalie, David Scardella,” he says.
“My coaching philosophy is pure and simple: It’s the development of players on and off the ice. Developing discipline builds character and confidence and leads students to treat others with respect.
“Coach [Paul] Marks leads a coaching staff that believes in being positive and energetic, values he instills in his players,” Brendan adds. “Our team is close both on and off the ice.”
“Co-captain Brendan Byrnes (Class I) is a great example of how this game can help make students into great athletes and great people. He’s an All-ISL player. He is a great player, leader, student and friend. Whatever he does, he’ll be a great success,” Paul says.
Coach Lisa Stirling surprises the girls’ team occasionally, to lighten what can be a season filled with a schedule of tough games. “I had my team scrimmage against a group of nationals and Olympians,” she says. “My girls lost, but they were in awe.
• George Owen, Jr. coached hockey, baseball and football – and taught math – at Milton Academy from 1953 to 1965. Named to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1973, George played for the Boston Bruins and led that team to its first Stanley Cup victory in 1929.
“Our team is aggressive,” Lisa says. “They have a lot of character. Some are quiet, and some are more vocal players, but they have the same goal – to win.”
• In 1967, the boys’ team won its first ISL title by beating the Andover team captained by future Harvard University All-American Joe Cavanaugh.
Brendan says that the team had been picked to finish eighth out of nine teams in the Independent School League this season, but he is undaunted. “The chem-
Milton Hockey Facts • The Academy’s first hockey team played in 1904. • In winter of 1947–48, 63 inches of snow fell. The team did more shoveling than skating that year, according to player Brad Richardson ’48. At season’s end, team members were awarded silver shovel charms.
• In 1983, Wendy Millet ’86 became the first captain of the girls’ hockey team. She and her teammates collected signatures to win the School administration’s support for the new team. • Marty McInnis ’87 plays for the Boston Bruins and played on the 1992 Olympic hockey team as well. • Timothy B. Taylor ’59 and former hockey coach Richard T. Marr led a committee to support building the new rink in the Athletic and Convocation Center. The rink was completed in 1998. • In 1997 and 1998, the girls’ hockey team captured the ISL title. • Since the NHL’s Boston Bruins began giving the Carleton Award to the best girls’ scholar-hockey player in eastern Massachusetts in 1999, two Mustangs have won: Deanna McDevitt ’99 and Amy McLaughlin ’01. • You can get the latest hockey scores online. Just point your browser to www.milton.edu and click on athletics. For more information on the hockey program or one of Milton’s other athletic teams, contact Athletic Director Mike Kinnealey at Mike_Kinnealey@milton.edu.
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OnCentre
Alden Smith Appointed Director of the Mountain School Milton Academy is pleased to announce that Alden Smith has been appointed director of the Mountain School Program of Milton Academy, in Vershire, Vermont. Alden had been serving as interim director of the Mountain School since the resignation of director Anne Stephens in June 2002. The eight-member search committee, made up of representatives from the Milton Academy administration and faculty and the Mountain School faculty, unanimously and enthusiastically recommended Alden. His
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experience and personal qualities respond directly to the criteria the committee named in its search for the next director. Alden embodies the values of the Mountain School. An inspiring teacher and skilled administrator, Alden has demonstrated his commitment to an educational environment which values learning in the classroom, in a work program and in outdoor experiences. Alden understands with depth and clarity the distinctive features inherent in a small residential school with both an academic and environmental
mission, located in rural Vermont. An experienced naturalist, Alden’s intellectual grounding comes in part from work with scholars such as John Elder at the Middlebury College Bread Loaf graduate program; his practical grounding comes from extensive time in the Vershire woods by himself and with fellow trackers. A 1994 graduate of Davidson College, Alden came to the Mountain School as the assistant director in the fall of 1999, following five years at Choate Rosemary Hall as member of
the English department, coach and mentor. An able intellectual leader of the Mountain School faculty, he provided overall support for Anne Stephens’s leadership. As interim director this year, he has led the Mountain School with skill, overseeing the ambitious barn construction project, and facilitating the preliminary phases of strategic planning, as well as managing, with sensitivity and care, the day-to-day issues that arise in a residential program. The search committee has done outstanding work and Milton Academy is grateful to Nancy Abernathey, Tom Hill, Kathy Hooke, Nat Keohane, Rachel Klein, Jack Kruse, Rachel Stettler, and committee chair John Warren. Alden will build on the exemplary work of his predecessors, David and Nancy Grant and Anne Stephens, in maintaining the Mountain School’s stature as the premier semester-long academic program in the United States, while he also puts his own imprint upon the Mountain School in the coming years.
Carol Smith Miller P ’03, ’05 Joins the Board Carol Smith Miller P ’03, ’05 was elected to the Milton Academy Board of Trustees in October 2002. “Milton is at work on a number of ambitious initiatives that will build appropriately on a great and long tradition,” Carol said. “The tremendous opportunities for further strengthening the position of the School are exciting to me.” Opportunities for the 27-member board include the realization of the Academy’s vision for revitalizing the academic buildings, and enhancing campus life with the student-faculty center due to be completed this June, as well as reaching parity between numbers of boarding and day students at Milton. “What sets Milton apart from similar schools is its focus on the whole child,” Carol said. “At Milton, the faculty are intensely focused on the social and psychological development of students, as well as the intellectual growth. I’m grateful that my children, Alexandra and Matthew, are benefiting from a Milton education.” Carol was a vice president for public finance with Goldman Sachs & Co. in New York. Since Carol and her children joined the Milton community in 2000 she has served as a volunteer for the office of admission, as a writer for the parents’ newsletter, Centre Connection, and is now Class I Gift co-chair with her husband Preston “Jeff ” Miller and Joan Mullen P ’03.
Carol is also a volunteer counselor for the Higher Education Information Center (HEIC), a resource center with print and electronic access to college and financial aid information. “We help students complete applications and get fee waivers if they qualify,” she said. “For so many students, getting financial aid is the only way to get to college.” Carol’s previous volunteer leadership work includes the management of major benefit events for the Brearley School in New York, as well as committee and annual fund leadership roles there. She served Brearley as a trustee from 1996 to 2000. Carol is a graduate of Harvard University. She earned a master’s of business administration from Columbia University. She lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with her husband and their children, Alexandra ’03 and Matthew ’05.
Thinking Critically About What You Believe Writer James Carroll inaugurates the Endowment for Religious Understanding given by the Class of 1952. “I’m Chevy Chase, and you’re not.” James Carroll used this opening line to Chevy Chase’s “Saturday Night Live” program to point out a universal human tendency. Humans define themselves positively in part by defining others negatively. Our fears, James Carroll claims, cause us to seek safety in circles of people like us, and to exclude others. Those outside our circle, we believe, are creatures of a different kind. The fact that human intimacy can sometimes depend upon the dread – even contempt – of others is a condition of humans. That condition helps answer the question of how religion can be a dark force for intolerance. In history, religion – the pursuit of good, the honoring of God – has promoted prejudice, hatred and violence; that reality washed over us anew on September 11, 2001. The acts of that day, James Carroll contends, require every person and every religion, to undertake an examination of conscience, with a self-critical, scholarly fervor. “The single largest factor in determining our future,” Jim purports, “is how we remember our past. I am a deeply religious person, but I must ask how my religion, Catholicism, at the center of the growth of Nazi power, was related to the Holocaust event.” The answer to Jim’s question, fully developed in his book, Constantine’s Sword, tracks the need of the new Christians to distinguish themselves, to cast themselves as “saved” and part of a new spirit. Jim asserts that
in defining themselves by assigning negative connotations to other Jews they sowed the first seeds of anti-Semitism. These seeds would grow through the Christian empire’s pursuit of the crusades, the Inquisition and beyond. The Nazi crime, Jim explains, was unique, but not unprepared for. “The past,” he says, “isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.” “To examine each of our own religious histories in this way is the essence of education,” according to Jim, because the course of world events could have gone another way. The fact that everyone is everyone else’s neighbor is starkly evident in the post-September 11 world, and the very diversity of our lived experience, Jim feels, is a sign of hope. However, “there will be no peace among nations without peace among religions, and no peace among religions without dialogue among religions. Finally, there will be no dialogue without the penetrating examination of basic assumptions. Every religious group and person must do this work, without undermining the religion’s structure and authority. The future of the human race depends upon people thinking critically about what they believe. “God is greater than any religion. God is not recruitable to your church; there are no clubs for God. Self-criticism and a change of basic assumptions is the first step toward rooting out every source of religious intolerance.”
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Writers, Thinkers, Historians, Filmmakers, Dancers and Musicians Convene with Milton Students and Faculty Campus Visitors, Fall/Winter 2002 James Carroll Endowment for Religious Understanding As the inaugural speaker of the Academy’s Endowment for Religious Understanding series, acclaimed author and columnist James Carroll spoke to students about the relevance of religious self-criticism. (See article on page 61.) John Edgar Wideman The Bingham Lecture The Bingham Lecture brought novelist, scholar and professor John Edgar Wideman to Milton as artist-in-residence. Mr. Wideman addressed students in assembly and worked with them in creative writing and English classrooms, and at Common Ground, the student group working to cultivate the diverse School community. John Wideman is the only writer awarded the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction twice – once in 1984 for his novel, Sent for You Yesterday, and again in 1990 for Philadelphia Fire – and is well known for his intricate literary style in novels about the experiences of black men in contemporary urban America. Touré Touré ’89, an accomplished journalist and writer of fiction, visited English classes and Grade 4 in October. Touré was in Boston to read from his collection of short stories, The Portable Promised Land (Little, Brown) at The Boston Globe Book Festival, held at the Boston Public Library. Touré’s work has appeared in Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and The Village Voice, among other magazines. He was among the writ-
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ers published in the Best American Essays 1999 and Best American Sports Writing 2001. (See article, pages 32–35.) John S. Friedman Plank Lecturer John Friedman, an independent film producer, director and writer co-produced and directed, Stealing the Fire, a video documentary about Karl-Heinz Schaab, Saddam Hussein’s top nuclear spy. John Friedman writes on a wide range of cultural and political subjects for The New York Times, The Washington Journalism Review, The Village Voice, Commentary, and Mother Jones. In 1994, Mr. Friedman founded the Documentary Center at Columbia University. Kelley Peters Acclaimed hip-hop dancer Kelly Peters brought his unique hybrid of hip-hop and break dancing to campus this fall to teach a high-energy master dance class. Kelly has been a professional hip-hop and break dancer for 18 years. His résumé includes performances with Herbie Hancock, Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis and an appearance on the “Killing Me Softly” music video with the Fugee’s. Kelly is a street-trained dancer who has been influenced by Michael Jackson, Gene Kelly, Gregory Hines, the Nicolas Brothers and West Side Story. Paul Taylor This fall, Taylor 2, a company of six dancers who bring many of acclaimed choreographer Paul Taylor’s masterworks to smaller venues around the world, taught the “Taylor” style to Milton students. Students involved in intermediate and advanced modern dance worked with the professional dancers.
Collage New Music The Melissa Dilworth ’61 Gold Visiting Artist Over 31 years, Collage New Music (an ensemble) has presented over 80 world premieres and more than 200 Boston premieres of works by the great composers of the 20th century. During their visit to Milton, Collage worked with students in the chamber orchestra and performed two student-composed pieces. Tod Machover The Melissa Dilworth ’61 Gold Visiting Artist Tod Machover’s music is highly regarded for breaking traditional artistic and cultural boundaries. Machover is also noted for inventing new technology for music, especially his hyperinstruments that use smart computers to augment musical expression and creativity. Milton students experienced Tod’s unique sound during a master class and performance of “Toward the Center,” a piece he wrote for acoustical, hyper-electronic instruments and computer-generated sounds. Machover’s music has been performed and commissioned by many of the world’s most prestigious arts institutions, including the San Francisco Symphony, the Centre Pompidou, the London Sinfonietta, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Ensemble InterContemporain (Paris), the Ensemble Modern (Frankfurt) and the Tokyo String Quartet.
Sinikithemba A choir from Durban, South Africa, whose members are all HIV-positive, Sinikithemba performed in a packed Straus Library. Sinikithemba performed throughout the East Coast to raise funds for Church World Services’ HIV/AIDS programs in Africa. The event was made possible by Milton parent Dr. Bruce Walker of Harvard Medical School, and co-sponsored by the Harvard University Medical School Division of AIDS and the international humanitarian aid agency, Church World Service. Professor Frank Wu Hong Kong Speaker A Chinese-American professor of law at Howard University, Frank Wu spoke to Milton students in January about race and identity. In his book, Yellow: Race in America beyond Black and White, Mr. Wu brings to light the stereotypes, discrimination, interethnic conflicts and legislative hurdles that face Asian and Asian-American people in the United States. Professor Wu’s commentary has been distributed by The New York Times Syndicate “New America” News Service and by Knight Ridder Tribune Wire Services “Progressive Media Project;” his op-ed pieces have appeared in papers such as The Washington Post, The L.A. Times, Chronicle of Higher Education, Legal Times and National Law Journal. Professor Wu has testified against legislation that would abolish affirmative action before the United States House of Representatives, Judiciary Committee, Constitution SubCommittee. He also appeared as a witness before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.
Alumni Authors Recently published works A Town Where Quirky Meets Menacing The New York Times Books of The Times January 13, 2003 By Janet Maslin Lewis Robinson [Class of 1989] is the rare fiction writer who has also been employed as a crab slaughterer. Whatever it takes to handle a job like that can also be found in his short stories. “In the far corner, a young woman wearing a T-shirt and rain pants was slapping a small squid against the concrete floor,” he happens to mention in “Seeing the World.” So it goes in Point Allison, Me., a place of reckoning for aquatic and two-legged creatures alike. The 11 tales in Officer Friendly are all set here, in a place that contrasts postcard scenery with dark, mordant quirks. “We tried very hard to be proud of our school,” remarks one of Mr. Robinson’s narrators, even though Point Allison is a place where a moose winds up being executed in the middle of a soccer game. As it establishes the geographical and socioeconomic landscapes of Port Allison (where privileged interlopers and hardscrabble year-round residents make an uneasy mix) “Officer Friendly” defines its psychic turf as well. This is a place where people come to change, to reflect, to test their mettle. Very often, in
Mr. Robinson’s tight, barbed, menacing, yet also humorous tales, they do all three. In “The Toast,” Roger, a bartender from Portland (where the author lives), is invited to a party among Port Allison’s patrician elite, visiting a family into which his flighty mother has married. (“He killed himself because he was too excited,” she confides about Roger’s grandfather. “You and me – we’re that excited, too.”) He finds himself in a house with a lamp made out of a zebra’s leg, attending a birthday party for a venerable three-term governor of Maine. The old man is dressed as an Indian chief, and all the other revelers are also in costume. He celebrates his birthday by hitting a home run in an imaginary baseball game to the accompaniment of actual cheers. Roger discovers that one young woman at the party has mistaken him for somebody else and wants to meet him under the porch. He also learns, after Mr. Robinson has sketched this wild scene with inspired restraint, that he has been asked to this event for a reason. The best of this book’s sly malevolence can be found in “The Toast” and its perfectly realized denouement. Another beauty, one that locates the nascent novelist in this abundantly gifted storyteller, goes by the name of “Puckheads.” In this, the book’s longest and most frankly funny selection, the allure of the Broadway musical comes to North Allison Academy, an otherwise benighted place. “Our library was full of unread books,” explains the story’s young narrator, “and our peprally bonfires were always two
stories tall, loud and blinding, unwieldy and hard to put out. It was broadly suspected that the public school in town offered a far better education.” When a couple of unfrocked hockey players are forced to join the drama club, problems arise. The narrator – nicknamed FH for having the build of a fire hydrant – is so small that he is cast as the title character in “Oliver!” And Christina, the classmate playing Nancy, is not interested in treating Oliver maternally. “Well, this is a story based on a novel by Charles Dickens, for heaven’s sake,” says the exasperated drama teacher, in vain hope of keeping the production on track. “I think it’s safe to assume he didn’t intend for Nancy to have sexual feelings for Oliver.”
As in every one of the tales told here, a straightforward challenge or mission artfully escalates into something more complex. “I was seventeen and strong,” the unlikely Oliver observes about Christina, “but she was leveling me, burning me from the top floor down.” Men in Mr. Robinson’s fiction have a way of assessing their prospects with similarly unflinching clarity, even when sounding wry. “I looked at Dayna – a real beauty, the kind that makes you hurt, makes you want to apologize,” says the character in “Finches” who transports pets for a living, “and I saw my future. Attachment. Pain. Things being thrown at me in a motel at four in the morning.” While it is anything but gloomy, Mr. Robinson’s terrain includes some forbidding places. “The
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Diver,” which gets this book off to a memorable start, finds a young husband named Peter visiting “the western edge of that remote, depressed part of Maine that didn’t get much traffic” while boating, only to have the propeller break. This leaves his confidence shaken and his wife and baby stranded on the water. Peter finds himself at the mercy of the title character, the only person willing to fix a propeller on a Sunday. Soon the diver is borrowing Peter’s sweatsuit, remarking: “Great. Fantastic. If the peasants could only see me now.” A few moments later, the diver is saying: “Let’s make a deal. You stay here, be the town diver. I’ll sail back to Portland, run the restaurant and have your wife.” Observing Peter as he is honed by this sinister showdown is like watching someone sharpen a knife. Whether they intend to try filmmaking (“Seeing the World”) or train for a boxing match (“Fighting at Night”) or even sell llamas (“Ride”), all of Mr. Robinson’s piquant characters are tested and transformed by Port Allison in some way. Collectively, they put the place – and the author – on the map. Copyright © 2003, The New York Times Company. Reprinted with permission.
Hiking Massachusetts Ben Ames ’87 An outdoorsman and journalist, Ben Ames ’87 combined his love of writing and of the outdoors in his new book, Hiking Massachusetts. Published in August 2002, by Falcon Books, Hiking Massachusetts features 40 Massachusetts hiking trails. From the Blue Hill’s Reservation in Milton’s backyard to Western Massachusetts’ Monroe State Forest, Ben carefully researched each trail and shared his detailed and honest account with readers. “Trails were once well-marked with blue paint blazes, but these are fading and peeling off trees, so keep a close eye on your path…the park is known for its aggressive mosquito population, so be sure to bring plenty of bug dope.” Each of Ben’s descriptions is accompanied by detailed route maps, directions and hike specs,
Off Centre A Collection of Recipes from Milton Academy The Milton Academy Parents’ Association proudly presents Off Centre, which features more than 500 favorite recipes – many handed down for generations – from parents, faculty, students and staff representing Kindergarten through Class I. Request your cookbook today! Along with your mailing address and contact
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which include difficulty ratings (easy, difficult, strenuous) and canine compatibility (dogs permitted, leashed dogs permitted). The 240-page book also includes tips on equipment and trip planning, first aid and hiking with children.
information, please send $27 (shipping included) to: Gloria Rawn 70 Buckminster Road Brookline, MA 02445 glrawn@aol.com Please make checks payable to: Milton Academy Parents’ Association. Cookbooks are also available at the new bookstore, located in Warren Hall.
Ben’s love of the outdoors dates back many years. As a Milton Academy student Ben spent a semester at the Mountain School and Sea Education at Woods Hole and summers at Chewonki on the Maine coast.
Investing in China: Legal, Financial and Regulatory Risk William Gamble ’69 Using cases from his own experience and from the Asian press, William Gamble ’69 writes about the challenges of doing business in China in Investing in China: Legal, Financial and Regulatory Risk. An international lawyer and economist, Bill Gamble argues that China, despite its membership in the World Trade Organization, is still a dangerous place for foreign capital. “The size of China’s market and its powerful rate of growth are powerful draw,” he writes. “[But] over the past twenty-five years, the central government has been losing the power to enforce its will.” According to the South China Morning Post, Bill’s book is “particularly strong when countering
optimism that China is finding solutions to its bad loans. Bill argues that China is doing everything but that.” Bill’s book is useful information for those who are contemplating China concept stock or real estate. It sifts through a dearth of information on China’s infrastructure and offers information on pertinent Chinese laws and how they affect the financial and regulatory risk of doing business there. Bill is president of Emerging Market Strategies, a consulting company serving clients entering the frontiers of the global market place. Having invested internationally for 20 years, Bill is at work on a second book, Investing in India.
After the Storm John Rousmaniere After the Storm: True Stories of Disaster and Recovery at Sea by John Rousmaniere is a collection of tales of sea wrecks and their consequences for communities and families. After the Storm reconstructs 10 tales of sea wrecks and near misses from captains’ logs and eyewitness accounts. The author researched parts of the story in the Milton Academy archives, and the sixth story in the collection, “Hamrah and the Ameses,” is an account of the drowning of graduates, Richard G. Ames ’30 and Henry R. Ames ’34. The boys drowned while trying to rescue their father who was swept overboard in the North Atlantic from their ketch, Hamrah, in late-June 1935 during a 3,200-mile race across the Atlantic Ocean to Norway. Rousmaniere cites headlines from the day after the tragedy: Ship’s Arrival Reveals Sea Tragedy; Boston Realtor and 2 Sons Perish; Boys Lose Lives in Efforts to Rescue Father From Death.
The young Ames men were excellent students, athletes and leaders, according to Rousmaniere. “For generations, there will be told this tale of Robert Russell Ames and his sons, Richard Glover and Henry Russell. The story will inspire other young men to live fine lives and dare hard deeds when duty demands. It will be cited in academies and colleges all over the land as an example of what young Americans can be and what they will do.” Believing that “the roots of the storm story reach far back in time, and the consequences ripple outward long after the last wave rolls by,” Rousmaniere tells the story of the Ames family from 1889 to the fateful summer of 1935 and through the subsequent 50 years. Also on board the Hamrah during that fateful excursion in 1935 were two other Milton graduates, Roger Weed ’30 and Sheldon Ware ’34. Rousmaniere also tells the story of Roger and Sheldon – two of the three survivors – and how the storm affected their lives.
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2003 Graduates’ Weekend May 2 – May 4, 2003
Schedule of Events Friday, May 2 8:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. Registration & Hospitality Center Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium Event locations? Registration? Late-breaking details? Classmates? Refreshments? Find them all at the Hospitality Center. 9:15 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. 10:15 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. Classroom Visits Meet in Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium A complete schedule of courses, faculty and locations will be available at registration. 11:00 a.m. Student-Led Tour of Campus Departs Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium Tour dormitories, labs, performing arts facilities and the athletic center. 12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. Dare to Be True Luncheon Tent on the quad Lunch with Head of School Robin Robertson and remarks from Douglas Kinney ’63. Mr. Kinney teaches Crisis Management at The National Foreign Affairs Training Center, runs emergency exercises worldwide, and helps train Marine Expeditionary Units poised off all major littorals should Americans need rescue or evacuation. He will share with us some thoughts on the central role of character in facing and besting the challenges of the 21st-century risk curve.
2:00 p.m. Student-Led Tour of Campus Departs Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium See 11:00 a.m. description. 2:10 p.m. – 2:55 p.m. The Milton Classroom Milton’s faculty lead classes for graduates and friends. Topics include: • Poetry Now: Why Bother? Kay Herzog, Faculty Emerita, English Department • Freedom Fighters? 18th-Century Revolutions in the Atlantic World David Ball ’88, History Department 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. The Milton Classroom • Dare to Take Risks Improvisational Acting Techniques as a Springboard Peter Parisi, Performing Arts Department 3:30 p.m. Interscholastic Athletics A schedule of games will be available at the Registration & Hospitality Center. 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. Nesto Gallery Opening Reception: Markings Bruce Barry ’88 and Thaddeus Beal P ’96, ’00 Evening Class Parties See class events for details.
Saturday, May 3 7:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. Registration & Hospitality Center Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium Event locations? Registration? Late-breaking details? Classmates? Refreshments? Find them all at the Hospitality Center. 8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. Bird Walk Departs Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium Join Lindy Eyster, an avid birder and a Milton science department faculty member, for a leisurely stroll siting birds during spring songbird migration. Please bring binoculars if you have them. 9:00 a.m. – 9:45 a.m. Trolley Tour of Campus Departs Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium Experience a guided tour of the Milton campus by trolley. 10:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. Share the Vision: Repositioning Milton Academy Kellner Performing Arts Center, Ruth King Theatre Learn about the portfolio of initiatives in motion at Milton today, aimed at achieving a new level of excellence and leadership. The vision includes: • Upper School academic, extracurricular and residential facilities unified on a single campus • Renovated academic spaces with ample, state-of-the-art classrooms, revamped science building and centralized visual arts facility
• A student-faculty center facilitating those important Milton relationships • Boarding students, in numbers equal to day students, living on the single, central campus • A unified campus for the Lower School, located in renovated east campus buildings Join Head of School Robin Robertson and members of the board of trustees to learn about this compelling set of ideas and ask your questions. 10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. Children’s Program Stop by the blue star tent to enjoy face painting, arts and crafts, storytelling and animal balloons with Pickles the Clown. A schedule of performances will be available at registration. Children under five must be accompanied by an adult. 12:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. Reunion Luncheon Under the Tent An informal lunch on the quad. Tables will be reserved for each reunion class.
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1:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. Hard Hat Tours: StudentFaculty Center Departs Wigglesworth Hall Tours will leave every half-hour; hard hats will be provided. 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. The Milton Classroom Milton’s faculty lead classes for graduates and friends. Topics include: • Michael Cunningham’s The Hours (novel and film) and Woolf ’s Mrs. Dalloway. Discussion: Connections and Interpretations John Zilliax, Faculty Emeritus, English Department
9:30 a.m. – 10:15 a.m. Annual Memorial Chapel Service Apthorp Chapel Honor classmates whom we have lost. 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. Farewell Brunch Blue Star Tent Put the finishing touch on a fun-filled and memorable weekend at brunch on the quad.
3:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. Roll Your Own Sushi Forbes Dining Hall Learn to roll sushi with student members of the Asian Society. Vegetarian options available. 4:00 p.m. Athletic Tea Athletic and Convocation Center Lobby A post-game gathering for athletes, coaches, alumni and fans. 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. Cocktails and Dinner Tent on the quad Join Milton graduates, faculty and friends for cocktails under the stars and dinner under the
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6:00 p.m. Dinner at the Home of Robbie and Barbara White 1580 Canton Avenue Milton, MA Spouses and guests welcome
Saturday 12:00 p.m. Class Photo Straus Terrace 12:15 p.m. Class Luncheon Straus Library, Terrace Spouses and guests welcome Cost: $20 per person
2:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. Nesto Gallery: Markings Bruce Barry ’88 and Thaddeus Beal P ’96, ’00
3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. Alumni Glee Club Sing Ware Hall, Thacher Room Sing along with Jean McCawley to many of your old favorites.
Friday 3:30 p.m. Class Forum Hallowell House, Common Room
Sunday, May 4
• An Introduction to Stem Cell Research Diane Gilbert-Diamond, Science Department
2:00 p.m. Interscholastic Athletics Schedule of games will be available at the Registration & Hospitality Center.
main tent. Tables will be reserved for reunion classes. Cash bar.
Class Events All events include both the girls’ and the boys’ class unless otherwise noted.
Friday 12:00 p.m. Dare to Be True Luncheon Tent on the quad 1:30 p.m. Class Photo Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium Following Dare to Be True Luncheon
Friday 12:00 p.m. Dare to Be True Luncheon Tent on the quad 1:30 p.m. Class Photo Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium Following Dare to Be True Luncheon
Friday 1:45 p.m. Class Photo Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium Following “Dare to Be True” Luncheon 6:00 p.m. Boys’ School Dinner Straus Library Spouses and guests welcome Cost: $35 per person 6:30 p.m. Girls’ School Dinner At the Home of Nancy Beebe Spindler ’43 10 Longwood Drive, Apt. 125 Westwood, MA
Saturday 11:45 a.m. Class Photo Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium
Friday 8:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. Class Headquarters Straus Library, Trustees Room 10:30 a.m. Tour of Student-Faculty Center Departs Wigglesworth Hall 4:00 p.m. Transitions in Our Lives: Where Are We Now? The first of three discussion sessions led by classmates. Complete details will be available at registration. 6:00 p.m. 1953 Memorial Service Apthorp Chapel Join the class for a service to honor our deceased classmates. 6:30 p.m. Dinner at the Home of Phil and Cecilia Andrews 75 Voses Lane Milton, MA Spouses and guests welcome Cost: $50 per person Saturday 8:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. Class Headquarters Straus Library, Trustees Room 9:00 a.m. Transitions in Our Lives: Our Passions The second of three discussion sessions led by classmates. Complete details will be available at registration.
12:00 p.m. Girls’ School Luncheon Hosted by Betty Hills Le Calypso Hull, MA Transportation will be provided from Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium at 11:30 a.m.
Saturday 2:00 p.m. Girls’ School Gathering Hallowell House, Common Room
4:00 p.m. Transitions in Our Lives: Where Are We Going? The final discussion session led by classmates. Complete details will be available at registration.
5:30 p.m. Class Photo Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium 6:00 p.m. Cocktails at the Home of Head of School Robin Robertson 7:00 p.m. Class Dinner Straus Library Spouses and guests welcome Cost: $45 per person Sunday 9:00 a.m. Tennis Round Robin North Courts
5:45 p.m. Class Photo Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium
Friday 6:30 p.m. Dinner at the Home of John and Jane Bihldorff 107 Elm Street Canton, MA Spouses and guests welcome Cost: $35 per person Saturday 9:30 a.m. Class Photo Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium 12:00 p.m. Girls’ School Brunch Caroline Saltonstall Building, Second Floor Cost: $20 per person
Friday 7:00 p.m. Dinner at the Home of Jon and Michelle Sobin 78 Cutters Ridge Road Carlisle, MA Spouses and guests welcome Cost: $30 per person Saturday 1:30 p.m. Class Photo Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium
Friday 6:30 p.m. Dinner at the Home of Mary and Ted Wendell 187 Randolph Avenue Milton, MA Spouses and guests welcome Cost: $35 per person
Friday 7:00 p.m. Class Dinner Kellner Performing Arts Center, Pieh Commons Spouses and guests welcome Cost: $20 per person Saturday 12:00 p.m. Class Barbecue Ware Hall, Patio Spouses, children and guests welcome Cost: $15 per adult, $5 per child (under 12 years old)
1:45 p.m. Class Photo Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium
Friday 7:00 p.m. Dinner at the Home of Janet and Chris English 193 School Street Milton, MA Spouses and guests welcome Cost: $30 per person Saturday 12:15 p.m. Class Photo Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium 9:30 p.m. Class Gathering at the Home of Dan and Deb Dwight 7 Carberry Lane Milton, MA Spouses and guests welcome Following the on-campus dinner Cost: $10 per person
Friday 6:30 p.m. Class Gathering Sophia’s (roof deck) 1270 Boylston Street (near Fenway Park) Boston, MA Spouses and guests welcome Cost: $30 per person Heavy tapas provided; cash bar Saturday 1:15 p.m. Class Photo Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium
Friday 7:00 p.m. Class Gathering Felt 533 Washington Street Boston, MA Spouses and guests welcome Cost: $40 per person Light fare and unlimited use of pool tables; cash bar
Saturday 12:00 p.m. Class Photo Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium
Friday 7:00 p.m. Class Gathering Black Rhino 21 Broad Street Boston, MA Spouses and guests welcome Cost: $15 per person Light fare and one drink provided Saturday 6:00 p.m. Class Photo Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium
Friday 7:30 p.m. Class Gathering Clery’s 113 Dartmouth Street Boston, MA Spouses and guests welcome Cash bar Saturday 6:00 p.m. Class Photo Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium
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General Information Registration & Hospitality Center Please stop by the Registration & Hospitality Center when you arrive at Milton. We will be located in Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium all weekend, beginning on Friday, May 2, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and Saturday, May 3 from, 7:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. When you register, you will receive an updated schedule for the weekend that includes the locations and times for each event. The hospitality center is the perfect meeting spot for classmates or a place to relax and enjoy some refreshments throughout the weekend. All classes are welcome to use the Registration & Hospitality Center as their reunion headquarters. Parking In the case of rain, satellite sites near the campus will be used. Watch for signs and directions as you approach campus. Thank you in advance for your cooperation. Where can I stay? We have reserved rooms at a number of hotels in the local area. Please visit our Web site, www.milton.edu, or call the alumni relations office at (617) 898-2385 or 2421 for further information. Local bed and breakfast accommodations are also available through Greater Boston Hospitality: A Bed and Breakfast Service at (617) 277-5430 or www.bedandbreakfast.com. Alumni Family & Children Spouses, friends and family members are encouraged to join in the fun throughout the weekend. Child care will be available on Saturday, May 3, beginning at 5:30 p.m. in the Milton Academy Day Care Center, for
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children 3–12 years old. The program will include activities and dinner. Parents are responsible for providing any necessary blankets or bedding for their children. The cost is $25 per child for the evening. Parents must mention any food allergies at the time of registration. Registration is required; space is limited. No walk-ins are allowed. For child care on Friday night, we recommend calling Parents in a Pinch, Inc., a highly reputable company with over 18 years of experience, directly at (617) 739-5437 between Monday and Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (EST). They will provide qualified child-care providers in your home, at a friend’s house or in your hotel room. Bookstore Hours Located inside Warren Hall, the bookstore is the perfect place to pick up a new Milton cap, Tshirt, coffee mug or other memorabilia. The bookstore will be open, Friday and Saturday, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Alcoholics Anonymous An Alcoholics Anonymous meeting is held every Friday night on campus in the multipurpose room in the Junior Building from 7:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Alumni and friends are welcome. Lost and Found Items can be turned in or claimed at the Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium reception area. Messages To reach someone during the weekend, call (617) 898-2337. Alumni relations staff check messages regularly and will post messages at the Registration & Hospitality Center. In case of an emergency, please contact Campus Safety at (617) 8982911.
Class Notes Elizabeth Borden died November 19, 2002, in Falmouth Foreside, Maine. She was a former trustee of Milton Academy.
board in 1975. He was an avid sailor who enjoyed sailing on Buzzards Bay and his membership in the New Bedford Yacht Club.
Polly Gaddis Roosevelt lives in the countryside north of Baltimore, Maryland.
At 87, Gorham Brigham is the oldest employee of Citizens Bank of Massachusetts. Fitzwilliam Sargent Jr. ’33 died on October 18, 2002. His son, Fitzwilliam Sargent III ’65, his daughters, Beatrice Sargent Allen ’58, Susan Sargent Gregg ’61 and Pauline Sargent ’63 and granddaughters, Katherine Rose Sargent ’93 and Hilary Elizabeth Sargent ’97 attended Milton Academy.
Rose Weld Baldwin’s granddaughter, Naja Baldwin ’05, is now a Milton Academy matriculant. Naja’s father, Philip Weld Baldwin ’66, attended Milton. Rose represented Naja’s parents, who live in Paris, at Parents’ Weekend. She was impressed by the students’ class participation and self-assurance. Mary de Caradeuc Bartholomew is now limited in her activities, but her husband, four daughters and their spouses, five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren keep her happy through visits and exchange of email. Eliot Knowles died September 13, 2002. He was the husband of Betty Kirkendall Knowles. Eliot Knowles spent most of his professional life as an employee of the Merchants National Bank, beginning as a summer runner, becoming president of the bank in 1967 and retiring as chairman of the
Molly Howe Lynn is an ACE (American Council on Exercise) certified personal trainer and clinical exercise specialist. She is also a certified Pilates teacher, arthritis water exercise instructor, crosscountry biker and president of Senior Exercise Lifestyle Services, Inc. She has three children, five grandchildren, and one greatgrandson.
Constance Foss Antony lost her husband in an auto accident on November 18, 2001, in Maui, Hawaii. Rebeckah Du Bois Glazebrook enjoys the winter in Osprey, Florida. Last summer she recovered from foot surgery and visited with her grandchildren. Lucie Sewell Marshall moved to The Woods, a senior community in northern California. She enjoys life on the California coast. She writes, works in the library, and enjoys time with friends. Lucie looks forward to visits with her children and grandchildren.
John Murdock is in good shape despite a stay at Sloane Kettering in New York two years ago. John has 10 grandchildren. He hopes to stop by Forbes House soon.
The Mackenzie-Dennison family. From left to right: Malcolm Thayer Dennison ’05, Jane Atkinson Mackenzie ’48, John Francis Dennison ’05, Jane Mackenzie Dennison ’72, Malcolm Stillman Mackenzie ’37.
Phil Suter’s grandson, Charley Suter ’03, has enjoyed his threeyear stay at Milton. Phil looks forward to Charley’s graduation in June.
Byam and Miriam Whitney ’45 are residents of Nashua, New Hampshire, not far from wrestling archrival Exeter. They miss Milton, but are making new friends in Nashua.
After 52 years, four children, ten grandchildren and three greatgrandchildren, Kenneth Howes and his wife, Augusta, left Framingham and moved to Fox Hill Village in Westwood, Massachusetts.
Retirement suits Russell Murray: “Every day is a weekend; commuters fighting traffic bring evil smiles to this former commuter’s face; Tuscan delights completely outweigh airport rigmarole and speculations about the future make me glad that I wasn’t born a whole lot later than 1925.” Although slowed by a car accident and subsequent operation, Anne Rollins Ranhoff and her husband “have the farm and our minds.” Their seven children threw them a 50th wedding party last June.
Jacquetta Burn-Callandler Nisbet presented a lecture, “Contemporary Design from Ethnic Roots,” at the Guala Arts Center in California. For more than 40 years, she has studied the Indian weaving of the Americas and the Tapestry rug weaves of the Navajo. Her husband writes and organizes environmentally supportive efforts for endangered species and natural resources. Jacquetta and Susan Bowditch Badger ’55 are in the local community chorale; they share fond memories of former faculty member Howard Abell.
Lewis Braverman is sorry he missed the 55th reunion, but he was out of the country. He is the chief of endocrinology, diabetes and nutrition at Boston Medical Center and BU School of Medicine.
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Maximilian Kempner helped to prepare the reapportionment plan for the Vermont legislative districts. The legislature resolved its partisan impasse over reapportionment on the final day of legislative session, and adopted most of the plan rather than have the Vermont Supreme Court draw the district lines. William Rotch died in Charlottesville, Virginia, on December 11, 2002. After losing his wife, Joyce, in 1998, Rodman Sharp never expected to marry again. As good fortune would have it, he met Emily in December 2000, and they married in January 2002. Emily is a retired French professor from the University of Hawaii, where she taught for 24 years.
John Belash picked up from Westport, Connecticut, and “washed ashore” on Nantucket Island for year-round life. At the end of July, John had a hip replacement. Anita Kunhardt’s son, David Kunhardt ’68, adopted a child from Kazakhstan in April 2001. Anita’s seven other grandchildren live in California and Santiago, Chile.
John Nash’s three children have produced six grandchildren. John’s youngest son, Jonathan, his wife and their 1-year-old child are settled at “Bill and Marion’s farm.” In all it has eight acres, a 1737 cape farmhouse and barn, the yacht club sixth fairway to the north and the historical society forest to the west. Their son, Tim, lives in Hingham, and their daughter, Emily, lives in Dover.
Grace Knowlton enjoys being a sculptor and a grandmother – “actually, the other way around – a grandmother and a sculptor!” she writes.
John Paul Salsgiver died June 8, 2002, in Scottsdale, Arizona. On a recent trip to Santa Fe, classmate Bill Field provided Andrew Ward with a tour of the city’s newest museum, the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art.
Rosamond van der Linde married James Gilmartin. She is writing a book on the secrets of life. Lilla Lyon retired from medicine and divides her time between Manhattan and New Hampshire. Her book, Hello Mongolia, was published by Ten Pell Books in the spring of 2001 and received the Binghamton University Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award for 2002. At Dexter School’s Prize Day, Tom Rossiter received a standing ovation for 40 years of service to the school.
Daphne Abeel’s recent adventure was a trip to Armenia for The Armenian Mirror Spectator. See Daphne’s reflections on page 56. After 38 years of teaching chemistry and physics and coaching soccer and basketball, Walter Hinchman retired in June 2002 from the Pomfret School in Connecticut. He will remain active with Camp Wabun and will live in Pomfret.
Read Albright completed 35 years of coaching football at the Fenn School in Connecticut. Of the 200 friends who celebrated with him, more than 50 former players returned for the event.
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Of his coaching, Read said, “I thought it was wonderful to be able to teach the lessons of life to our kids through football. I wanted them to enjoy the experience and have fun with the game.” Laura Crocker runs a Siberian husky sled-dog team in Minnesota, Oregon, Colorado and California. She has 19 dogs and lives in a log cabin at 8,000 feet and leaving home requires snowshoeing. Deborah Dunham Gershon commenced a new life at 63 with a second marriage. She takes care of her son, who has Asperger’s Syndrome, and appraises decorative art, film, video and works on paper. Elizabeth Reece Hall assisted at the home birth of her first grandchild, Matilda Elizabeth Allen, on Great Cranberry Island, Maine. Matilda was born in August. Rupert Hitzig produced NASCAR for FOXTV and is going to Italy to write a new movie. He wonders if it is possible to go back to Class IV and do it all over again. “It still remains the best four years of my life (and the rest has been pretty darn good).” After the acquisition of the bank where he was president, Thomas Hoppin took a year off to restore a 38-foot Morgan yawl. With four grandchildren and three of four children in the area, Thomas is very busy. John Reidy retired from Salomon Smith Barney last spring. “All those events with Congress, the SEC and several states’ attorneys general came less than six months after my final Entertainment, Media and Telecom Conference last January in Scottsdale, Arizona. I was joined at the conference by Roger Cheever ’63 and his wife Jane, in a cast of 1,800 clients and corporate representatives.” John moved out of New York City to his house on Mount Vernon Street in Boston and his brand new home in
Wareham, Massachusetts. John plans to spend time in the Greater Boston area with non-profit organizations in the fields of education (Milton as trustee, and as part of the Overseers’ Visiting Committee at Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard Alumni Association and College Fund), environment (the New Bedford-based Coalition for Buzzards Bay) and external affairs (the U.N. Association of Boston headed by Arthur Holcombe ’58 and the Tibet Poverty Alleviation Fund). In January, John went to his first Salomon Smith Barney Entertainment, Media and Telecom Conference as a guest instead of a host. Friend Roger Cheever ’63 and his wife Jane as well as godson John “Jay” Schneider ’00 also attended the event. “Imagine our surprise while on a Sunday excursion up to nearby Joshua Tree National Park to run into Kristin Barry ’88, who runs Crossroads Cafe near the park’s entrance,” John writes. “Jay was wearing a Milton Academy polo shirt, which was the key to our discovery of Kristin and her excellent food. If you are in the area, say hi to Kristin and have a great meal. Through June 2003 Jay is at Jesus College, Cambridge, where I hope he continues to display Milton emblems.” Marian Lapsley Schwarz runs ALMA, the Adult Literary Media Alliance. ALMA produces an Adult Teaching Show for adults without high school diplomas. ALMA won two Emmys. The show, “TV411,” is broadcast on public television nationwide. Marian loves the work. She has two grandchildren with whom she shares a house on the Cape during the summer. Elizabeth Emerson Wormser welcomed her first grandchild, Nigel Gerlin Wormser, on July 20, 2002. Betsy’s partner, Jane, welcomed a new grandson two months after Nigel on September 19, 2002. They enjoy being grandmothers together.
Penelope Doxzon’s daughter, Katie, is in her first year of a master’s program in voice performance at Temple University in Philadelphia. Katie graduated magna cum laude from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Samuel Harding and his wife, Betsy, adopted an orphan in Yarostav, Russia, and founded Friends of Russian Orphans, a public charity. Visit the Web site at www.russian-orphans.org. Lisa Forbes Tripp moved to Sunderland, Massachusetts. She is delighted to be back in Massachusetts after 27 years in Washington, D.C. She hopes to be an adjunct professor at Amherst.
Murray Dewart ’66 and his sculpture, “Merging Water,” on display at the International Sculpture Park in Beijing, China.
Susan Smith Faith is the executive director of Older Alaskans Program Focus. Her granddaughters are ages 7, 5 and 2 (twins).
With both their daughters married, Minturn Chace and his wife, Helen Clay, enjoy their two sons-in-law and four grandchildren (ages 7 to 1 month). He finds time to ski and sail for recreation. Minturn recently spent several weeks in Newfoundland and the coast of Maine.
In August 2002, Henry Rogerson and his wife, Inez, sold their home in Virginia and moved their motor home to Polk City, Florida, to oversee construction of their new home in an “RV Community.” Lisa Graves Wardlaw’s first grandchild, Eleanor Witt Wardlaw, was born in Portland, Oregon, to Ted and Lynne Wardlaw on August 29, 2002. Lisa visited in September and stayed with classmate, Erica Hartmann. Helen Wilmerding Milner is getting a master’s degree in postcolonial writing. She enjoys her classmates, who are in their twenties.
Tom Bolton, Nick Simonds ’95, Sophie Lippincott, Sam Shaw ’95, Peter Brooks ’95 and Jason Bolton ’95 met up at the 2002 Falmouth Road Race. Liz Dominich Cenedella is president of Pen & Brush, Inc., a 110year old women’s art organization. Liz exhibits her quilts and other items throughout the New York area.
John and Bette Baptiste Cooper’s daughter, Alex Cooper ’02, graduated from Milton last June. John and Bette enjoyed the upbeat graduation ceremony held indoors due to rain. “It is good Milton has the facilities to get hundreds of people under cover. We will miss the closeness to the school we experienced over the last four years.” Harry Smith became a grandfather in 2002. On December 10, 2002, Daniel Smith ’91 and his wife, Sarah, welcomed baby girl, Sage Hava McGinley-Smith. Harry is editor-in-chief of The Psychoanalytic Quarterly. He was awarded the 2001 Journal Prize of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association for a paper, “Hearing Voices and the Fate of Analysts’ Identifications.”
Nicholas Hinch is a B-777 standards and checking captain at United Airlines. He flew the inaugural flight of the B-777 from San Francisco to Tapei, Taiwan in April 2002.
Mary Watson Hawley, a portrait artist, is married to Rick Hawley, the headmaster of University School in Cleveland, Ohio. Mary has three daughters: Kate (29) in theater in Chicago; Jessie (27) in theater in New York; and Claire (21), a Middlebury College studio art major. Judith Whiteside teaches ninthand tenth-grade English at Wareham High School. Her daughter, Christina, is away for the semester; her son, Ray, is a freshman in college.
Murray Dewart’s latest piece, “Merging Water,” is on display at the International Sculpture Park in Beijing, China. His piece incorporates bronze, granite and copper and was commissioned by the Beijing government in preparation for the 2008 Olympics. Murray and his wife, Mary, enjoy the Chinese culture.
Gretchen Wagner Feero’s daughter, Eliza, is a senior and her daughter, Amanda, is a junior in high school. Gretchen missed the class reunion to go to Amanda’s crew. She hopes to be on campus next time. Anna Hayes left her farm and marriage of 21 years to work on music. She expects to work in the financial strategic planning side of biotechnology. Meanwhile, she devotes much time to her 10year-old son, and lives in rural Maine. Thomas Howland cannot retire yet with his two oldest children in college and the youngest child in fifth grade. He works at Chubb and Son Insurance, and travels to South America on the company’s behalf.
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of the Lobkowicz Rare Books Library, a collection of over 65,000 volumes of first editions dating back to the 14th century. Ian McCutcheon and his wife, Hilary, have a new son, Felix, born January 7, 2002. James McDermott left the court system and went into private practice at the law firm Williams and Mahoney. James and his wife, Mary Beth, have three sons: Conor, Gavin and Kevin.
Leo and Lee LaPlante’s ’80 twin daughters, Jacqueline and Juliette.
After six years as a school head and twenty years as a clinical social worker, Jana Palfreyman Porter moved with her husband, Bob, to a small town on the Rhode Island coast where they fish, canoe and garden. Jana is an editorial assistant for the local newspaper and works on freelance writing projects.
Quorum Books announces the publication of Investing in China: Legal, Financial and Regulatory Risk by William B. Gamble. The book is an economic analysis of the legal infrastructure of the People’s Republic of China and its impact on risk for both the direct and the indirect investor.
Peter Brown lives and works in Singapore where he designs and makes stained glass windows. He also teaches at his church’s Sunday school, encouraging the children in small theater projects, making masks, costumes and puppets.
Betsey Crow Blake published an article in a national publication of the Depressive Bipolar Support Association, www.ndmda.org. Recently, she worked on publicity
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for the play, Tons of Money, which her husband Bob directed to kick off the 78th season of the local community theater, The Stratton Playhouse. Bob was awarded a lifetime membership to Stratton.
Robert Blake and his wife, Sofia, were assigned to New Delhi. Robert will be the number-two official at the American Embassy. Kym Lew Nelson’s business, the Klew Company, is off the ground. Kym enjoys her home office, her family and her 4-year-old daughter, Sydney.
Elizabeth Burns’s novel, TILT, comes out in March. The title was changed from Year of Meteors. About the opening of the newly constructed Basketball Hall of Fame, Ted Fish, president of Peabody Construction, said “All of us at Peabody Construction share tremendous pride to have built this facility, which is being touted as the world’s most spectacular sports museum.”
William Lobkowicz, his wife Sandra, and son William, visited with First Lady Laura Bush in the Czech Republic in May. Mrs. Bush enjoyed a personalized tour
Lee LaPlante and her husband, Leo, welcomed identical twin daughters, Jacqueline Laura and Juliette Grace, on July 14, 2002. They are thrilled and have so much fun watching them grow. “Being a twin myself, I know how special that bond is,” says Lee. Leo and Lee live in Malibu where he remodels, builds and does high-end finish work, and Lee is a realtor, and serves as vice president of the Malibu Association of Realtors. They recently returned from New York where Lee caught up with Helen Train Klebnikov and her three children. Lee also sees Rebecca Williams Rider in San Diego several times a year. Jonathan Schwartz and Sophie Ziegler are thrilled to announce the birth of their son, Simon Ray Ziegler Schwartz, on October 14, 2002. Simon joins his brother, Reed Eli, who is now 21 months old.
Evan Bliss Eldridge, son of Chris ’81 and Michelle Eldridge
’72. Adrift was screened, among other places, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Woods Hole Film Festival, and in Provincetown at the New Art Cinemas. Michelle and Chris Eldridge announce the birth of their son, Evan Bliss, on June 2, 2002.
At a friend’s home in Louisville, Kentucky, Emily Bingham, her husband and their hosts realized that both wives attended Milton Academy and both husbands attended Phillips Exeter. Marianne Cabot Welch ’78 and Emily enjoyed a laugh over the coincidence. Emily teaches at local colleges and universities while revising her U.S. History dissertation for publication next
Marcy Levine Aldrich is delighted to announce the birth of her second child. Abigail Charlotte Aldrich was born on August 13, 2002, joining big brother, Matthew. The Aldriches moved into a new home in Pinecrest, Florida, a month before Abigail was born. Tom Curran directed the awardwinning movie, Adrift, with the help of Jide Zeitlin, co-executive producer Jessica Hallowell Lindley, and writer Llew Smith
Teddi, daughter of J.B. Pritzker ’82
Chloe Palmer Atkinson, daughter of Tess and Sam Atkinson ’82
year. Mordecai: An Early American Family (Hill & Way, 2003) relates the dramatic story of a 19th century Jewish family’s struggle to achieve success and respectability. Bonnie MacDonald’s husband, Dr. Robert Gould, died suddenly of heart problems while playing tennis on August 26, 2002. He was 42. Robert worked at Massachusetts General Hospital and was an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Rob and Bonnie were married in 1991 and have two daughters: Olivia (8) and Louisa (4). J.B. Pritzker welcomed a new daughter, Teddi Pritzker, to the Pritzker family. Susanna Hodges Salk lives in Roxbury, Connecticut with her husband, Eric Salk, and two sons: Oliver (7) and Winston (2). Her play, The Beacon Hill Book Club, will premiere this September at the Seven Angels Theatre in Waterbury, Connecticut. She is a contributing editor to Elle Décor Magazine. After reunion, Bennett Schneider taught classes at Milton Academy. He was named one of the Grand Marshals for the Los Angeles Gay Pride Parade 2002. Recently, Bennett heard from Cobina Gillitt Asmara ’83, who is off to Indonesia and Germany with her
husband and two children after receiving a doctorate in performance studies from NYU. Bennet attended a barbeque at former faculty member, Peter Phinney’s, Los Angeles home, where he saw Matthew Moore ’81 and Stephan Fopeano ’81.
Cathy Day Carlson is earning a master’s in education to be a parent-child advocate. Cathy is involved in fieldwork in a special needs classroom at a local public elementary school. She says that it can be a challenge balancing her new career with her three children, but her husband, Dave, is supportive and the work is fulfilling.
Ligia Brickus ran into John Bisbee at the opening reception for his New York show. Her sister, Ruta Brickus ’86, and Ruta’s husband, Quinn, welcomed a baby boy, M. Kovas Moore, on October 28, 2002. Ligia saw Michael Gitlitz ’86 and his wife, Rita, at their annual Halloween party and visited Susan Evans Bohan and her family on the West Coast. Susan, John and their two boys just added a baby girl, Nina, to their family. Susan also ran into Katie Andrews ’86 and her new puppy.
Tom Clayton and his wife, Cassie Robbins ’87, announce the birth of their second child, Taylor Brooks Clayton, on July 17, 2002.
Lacey Chylack sends greetings to all at Milton and would like to keep in touch with her classmates. Asher Lipman moved back to New York and recently saw Peter Campbell ’85. Rowena Yeung and her husband Tom welcomed their second son, Alexander, on March 15, 2002. Alexander’s older brother, Christopher, is in second grade. Rowena is taking the next few years off from her business litigation practice to enjoy her family.
James Forbes lives in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with his wife, Alison, and his twoyear-old daughter, Alden. Jennifer Pick married Steve Prether in 2001. Daniel Thompson is an associate professor and was recently named acting assistant chair of the music production and engineering department at Berklee College of Music in Boston. He is also an independent writer/producer and recording engineer. His work was featured on “ER,” “Melrose Place,” “Touched by an Angel” and “Providence” and most recently in the teen thriller, Swim Fan.
Carla Burton Daniels gave birth to a son, Aaron Demetrius Alan Daniels, in November 2002.
Jay Samek is a researcher at the Center for Global Change and Earth Observations at Michigan State University. Jay travels to Southeast Asia to collect satellite data to look at global changes. His wife, Manila, works in a nearby salon and his daughter, Raching, just started seventh grade. Jay looks forward to the 20th reunion in May. Alexander Scott is engaged to Whitney Old. Mark Tompkins moved home to East Hampton, New York; bought a house; and got married on September 22, 2002.
Milton graduates joined Julie Ward Drew ’86 to celebrate her marriage to James Drew in September 2002. From left to right: Charles Cheever, Fay Laing Chen, James Drew, John Marshall, Julie Ward Drew, Farah Pandith, Caroline Walsh Sabin, Robert Ball, Brooke Coldiron Penders.
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Diana Donovan and her husband, Andy, will travel to New Zealand for three months to backpack, take pictures, explore and possibly work on some organic farms. Diana recently worked at Webshots as the communications director; Andy is a general contractor in San Francisco. They hope to pick up their old careers or find new ones when they return. Julie Ward Drew married James Drew on September 21, 2002. Attending the wedding were Charles Cheever, Fay Laing Chen, John Marshall, Farah Pandith, Caroline Walsh Sabin, Robert Ball, Brooke Coldiron Penders and Bill Ward ’00. James and Julie live in Redwood City, California where they often see Wendy Millet-Trice and Erika Mobley. Vanessa Robinson and her husband, David, welcomed their daughter, Cassandra, into their family on June 26, 2002.
Alethia Jones is a doctoral candidate in political science at Yale University. She is a dissertation fellow at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. Tenley Stephenson left Boston and her job as an assistant district attorney in the winter of 2001 to move with her husband to Palo Alto, California. She took the California bar exam and is awaiting the results. Jon Rubenstein moved to the Bay area and the two have reunited. Tenley saw Sarah Sze’s site sculpture at the San Francisco Modern Art Museum.
Kristin Barry lives in Joshua Tree, California. Kristen opened her first business, a restaurant/ coffee house/tavern, in 1999 (www.crossroadscafeandtavern.com). She is in touch with Jenna Moskowitz who lives in
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Manhattan and is excelling in the theatrical world; Mandy Roth who lives near Seattle on an island with her partner and takes a ferry boat every day to work; and Abby Smith Davis, who works for a hospital and is a minister in Minneapolis. Tatiana and Eric Sievers welcomed their daughter, Nadezhda (Nadia) Alexandra Sievers, on November 25, 2002. Lindsay Jewett Sturman and her husband, Dan, live with their daughter, Edie, in Los Angeles. They are expecting another daughter in September.
Ann Diederich teaches French and Spanish in Brooklyn, New York, at the Packer Collegiate Institute. Alexander Rogers lives in Georgia and is completing his fellowship in pediatric emergency medicine at Emory University. Robert Rosenthal and his wife, Malini, welcomed a daughter, Sophie, on June 23, 2002. “I now have the complete suburban complement: wife, child, house, dog, car and grill,” writes Robert.
Louis Berk took a two-month trip to Southeast Asia with Eric Morrissey ’90. Eric spent three years in Kunming, China, and the northern Shan State of Burma/Myanmar. The pair saw Burma, Laos and planned to visit Cambodia, Vietnam and Kunming. After working as a telecom consultant for two years in Beijing, Sage Brennan spent the summer traveling the United States visiting with friends and family. She left in October 2002 for a year in Australia and New Zealand. Sarah Bynum and Dana Jackson were married in Brookline, Massachusetts, on September 15,
Sarah Bynum and Dana Jackson (Class of 1990) were married September 15, 2001. Milton graduates in attendance included (front row, from left to right): Deborah Jackson, Sandy Batchelder ’50, Lily Batchelder ’90, Sarah Bynum ’90, Dana Jackson ’90, Aisha Harris Cofield ’90. Back row: Rebekah Sturges ’90, Jack Harris ’90, Ema Jacobson-Sive ’90, Meika Neblett ’90, Jeff Jackson ’98, Dierdra Reber ’90, Jim Fitzgibbons ’52
2001. In attendance were Rebekah Sturges, Jack Harris, Emma Jacobson-Sive ’92, Meika Neblett, Jeff Jackson ’98, Dierdra Reber, Jim Fitzgibbons ’52, Sandy Batchelder ’50, Lily Batchelder, Aisha Harris Cofield, Jennifer Bodnik, Todd Fry (former faculty), Roxana Alger Geffen, Jenna Glasser, Haven Ley ’96, Rob McCloskey ’91, and Sukari Neblett ’97. Anthony Prud’homme enjoys living in Port Townsend, Washington, with Peter, his partner of seven years. He is an artist and interior designer. He stays in touch with Molly Breckenridge Garza, Chad Kessler and Abby Hartzler.
We reported Kate Brooks Leness’s wedding incorrectly. Her wedding to Tony Leness took place in August 2001.
Tamsen Curoso Brown and her husband, Michael, became parents on January 27, 2002. Their daughter, Dillon Angelina, is doing well. John Corey is renovating a new home at 102 Myrtle Street in Boston. “If you are on Beacon Hill, stop by to see me work!” Deborah Cornwall is a civil rights lawyer in New York at Cochran, Neufeld and Scheck, representing people who spent years in prison for crimes they did not commit and have been exonerated by DNA testing. She lives in Brooklyn. Brad Critchell graduated from Columbia Law School in 2000 and is an investment banker at Credit Suisse First Boston in New York. He will be married in May 2003.
Nathalie ’95 and Graham Goodkin, who he promised to see more often. “Love to hear from the Wolcott boys, the Miltones and ex-Chamber Singers!”
Laura and John Collins moved to Durham, North Carolina, where John is pursuing law and business degrees at Duke University.
Kathleen Lintz Rein ’92 and Jonathan Rein were married on May 4, 2002. Milton friends in attendance included, front row (from left to right): Peter Scobolic ’92, Mauricio Fernholz ’92 and Eliot Merrill ’89. Second Row: Molly Walsh ’92, Clint Murray ’92, Jenna Bertocchi ’92, Kathleen Lintz Rein ‘92, Jonathan Rein ’92, Holly Leitzes Johnson ’92, Anne McManus ’91, Gillian Grossman ’92, Kaki Andrews ’84, Ia Andrews ’88, Cecilia Andrews (former faculty) and Guy Hughes (former faculty). Third Row: Cyrus Frelinghuysen ’92, Caleb Dewart ’92, Merrick Axel ’92, Andreas Lazar ’91, Jenny O’Shea ’86, Michael Douglas ’91, Phil Lintz ’95, Eddie Lintz ’89 and Phil Andrews ’53.
Amer Saab earned a master’s in business administration from Boston University in September 2002 and works in revenue growth division at FleetBoston Financial. Abdol-Ali Soltani works in Oakland for Californians for Justice and was married in May 2002 to Grace Kong, whom he met in college. John Courey, Tyler Graham, Mike Finegold and Adam Berrey ’89 attended the wedding. Angela Wong and her husband, Lawrence, moved to the Midwest where is a pediatrician at St. Louis Children’s Hospital.
Tanya Earls Milner was married to Khari James Milner on June 15, 2002 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Milton friends in attendance included David Leopold, Phil Ravenscroft, Nate Bihldorff, Sophie Koven, Gillian Grossman, Heidi Baer, Jonathan Horwitt, Tim Pappas, Jess Meyer ’95, Caleb Miller, Paul Ghosh-Roy and Dan Ghosh-Roy.
Jonathan Rein and Kathleen Lintz Rein were married in Naples, Florida, on May 4, 2002. Groomsmen included Andreas Lazar ’91, Peter Scoblic, Eddie Lintz ’89 and Phil Lintz ’95. Bridesmaids included Anne McManus ’91, Jenna Bertocchi and Liz O’Shea. The couple lives in London. Jon is a vice president at the mergers, acquisitions and restructuring advisory firm, Gleacher & Co. Kathleen is taking a year off before starting her medical residency in psychiatry. The couple will spend three months in Australia and return to the United States in 2003.
Victoria Davis ’94 sends her congratulations to Nick Burger who is engaged. Sheldon Ison married Jacki Thompson on June 21, 2002, in Clinton, Ohio. Simon Tang lives in New York, and works hard as a product manager at Pfiser, Inc. He recently caught up with Julia Travers at a friend’s wedding and had a great time. He’s also in close touch with
Amanda Cox returned from Amsterdam where she worked on a project for six months converting a post-industrial site into a park-cultural city. She saw Willa Leus, who lives in Paris. She attends Harvard’s Graduate School of Design for landscape architecture. After four years, Sam Drohan left her San Francisco home. Heidi Wiemeyer and Sam were roommates in San Francisco until this fall when Heidi left to pursue a master’s of business administration at Tuck Business School. Sam will stay with Dune Thorne in Cambridge until she figures out her next destination; she looks forward to catching up with classmates in the Boston area.
Doug Chavez in New York City is a financial planner for Sean Jean, a men’s clothing company, as well as a promoter for nightclubs throughout the city. Over the past summer, he attended the weddings of three Milton friends: Rolando Cruz, Sheldon Ison and Tiffany McDonald ’92. Dana Critchell is in her second year at Columbia Medical School and lives in New York.
Milton alumni gathered to celebrate the marriage of Tanya Earls Milner ’92 to Khari James Milner on June 15, 2002, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. From left to right: David Leopold, Phil Ravenscroft, Nate Bihldorff, Sophie Koven, Gillian Grossman, Heidi Baer, Jonathan Horwitt, Tim Pappas, all Class of 1992, and Jess Meyer ’95.
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Sheldon Ison ’93 and Jacki Thompson were wed on June 21, 2002, in Clinton, Ohio. Milton alumni, all class of ’93, in attendance were: Ronnell Wilson, Juan Fernandez, Jenny Vendetti Fernandez, Kem Poston, Al Yu, Rolando Cruz, Jacki Thompson Ison, Sheldon Ison, Julian Cowart, Graham Goodkin and Doug Chavez.
Milton graduates pose for a picture during the wedding of Christine Curley Skiadas ‘95 and Nicholas Skiadas. Front row (from left to right): Katherine Rochlin ’95, Nicholas Skiadas (groom), Colby Hunter-Thomson ’95, Christine Curley Skiadas ’95 (bride) and Kerry Bystrom ’95. Back row: Andre Heard ’93, Greg Hampton ’93, Spencer Dickinson ’93, Edward Fenster ’95 and Peter Garran ’94.
Christine Curley was married on June 15, 2002, to Nicholas Skiadas in Boston. They were joined by several Milton classmates, including: Andre Heard ’93, Greg Hampton ’93, Spencer Dickinson ’93, Peter Garran ’94, Edward Fenster, Katherine Rochlin; bridesmaids included Kerry Bystrom and Colby Hunter-Thomson. Christine and Niko enjoyed a honeymoon on
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the Greek Islands and live in Manhattan. Christine will graduate from Penn Medical in May and will start an ob-gyn residency in July. Niko is a senior associate at Tishman Speyer Properties. Scott Tremaine married Maria Lafuente on July 26 in Guadarama, Spain. Peter Kim attended the wedding. Scott is in the international master of business program at the University of Chicago with Andrew Clayton ’89.
Maggie Ridge works at a public relations firm in New York. She is applying to graduate school and acting and singing as she can. She graduated from Barnard College in February 2001 with a degree in European history and theater. Brian White placed first in his age group and third overall in the Vineman Ironman Triathlon in Northern California. He set a course record in the swim portion of the 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride and 26.2-mile run. Macy Raymond finished the 2002 Boston Marathon in three hours and 57 minutes. She taught
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Introduction to Creative Writing at the University of Pennsylvania last spring. Her short story, “2nd to the Right and Straight on ’til Morning,” won the Phi Beta Kappa Fiction Award in 2002. She will complete a creative writing fellowship in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2003.
Helena Baillie graduated in May 2002 from the Curtis Institute of Music. She attends Yale University. Martina Baillie graduated with honors from Washington University in Saint Louis in August 2001. In August 2002, Martina graduated from the University of Chicago with a master’s in social sciences in American legal history. Eno Sarris finished a master’s degree at Stanford and works as a textbook publisher. He is happy in San Francisco.
Last year, Jamie Scott taught ninth grade in Philadelphia. She spent July touring Europe, stopping in Paris, Cap d’Antibes, Rome, Athens and Venice. In August, she moved to New York to work as an instructional facilitator helping urban high school teachers improve their curricula and reduce drop out rates. Recently, she was accepted into the Grace Church Choral Society. She enjoys seeing fellow New Yorkers, Jay Haverty and Josh Olken.
Contac t Alumn i Relatio ns 617-89 at 8-2 alumni@ 385 or milton.e du.
Six Miltonians took part in the Falmouth Road Race. From left to right: Nick Simonds ’95, Sophie Lippincott, Tom Bolton ’60, Sam Shaw ’95, Peter Brooks ’95 and Jason Bolton ’95.
Zakia Dilday is in Houston, Texas finishing her training with Teach for America. She spoke to Sabrina Harvey ’99 several times but has not “had the good fortune of actually seeing her.” She saw Emma Dogget, also in Houston for training, and speaks with Savitri Bishnath ’99, Erika Symmonds, Abena Asare and Amyntrah Maxwell ’99.
Jennifer Bartlett is a selfdesigned major in urban studies and a minor in architectural studies at Trinity College. She is a member of the varsity swimming team and was named to the All New England Team in 50 Breaststroke during the 2001– 2002 season. Jennifer is an academic mentor to first-year students. She spent the summer semester in Rome.
Sarah Kahan lives in Washington, D.C., where she works for Assistant Surgeon General Blumenthal in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Jorge Ramallo traveled to Costa Rica, Germany and Bolivia. Jorge is applying to medical school this year. He is in touch with Derrick Chan, and would like to be in touch with Grace Chung, and other classmates.
Robert Bentinck-Smith loves Bucknell where he rows crew. Kate Henderson published an article in the August-September 2002 issue of SAIL Magazine. Kate is a sophomore at Brown University and a member of the Brown Sailing Team.
Deaths 1923 1924 1925 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1935 1936 1937
1939
Mary Marvin Patterson Ellerton Pratt Whitney Edward Burling George Warner Gibson John Farlow Stephen Stackpole William Irving Clark Robert Shaw Russell Elizabeth Borden William Carter Quinby Fitzwilliam Sargent Edward Morgan Brooks Eliot Stetson Knowles John Heffron Sisson Steven Bittenbender Malcolm Mackenzie Walter Sprague Robbins James Lawder Gamble William Sprague Hodgson
1940 1941 1942 1943
1946 1947 1948 1950 1952
1958 1959 1963 1966
Frank Lynn Mary Hackett Shaw Junius Beebe Desmond Callan Harriet Lidgerwood John Herbert Ross Mark Ellis Gordon William Rotch Antonia Stone John Paul Salsgiver Gertrude Altemus Vanderveer 1953 Elizabeth “Blue” Faxon Jackson Sloan Joseph Arthur Kinnealey Louisa Page Stetson Elizabeth Wiltsee
1988 Darryl Vance
Thomas Pilla enjoys Dartmouth College. He played in a fall lacrosse tournament at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.
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Mary M.B. Patterson ’23 Dies; Cinematographer Donated Calvert Archaeological Site Mary Marvin Breckinridge Patterson, 97, a former cinematographer, photographer and broadcaster who donated land in Calvert County in 1983 for a park that is Maryland’s richest archaeological site, died Dec. 11, 2002 at her Washington home. She had pneumonia and cerebral vascular disease. Most of the land that makes up the 544-acre Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum, at the point where St. Leonard Creek enters the Patuxent River, was purchased in 1932 by Mrs. Patterson’s husband, a Foreign Service officer who later was ambassador to Uruguay. Excavations have turned up artifacts left by human habitation over 12,000 years and fossils dating back 12 million years. The archaeological remains are so rich that when Maryland Gov. Harry R. Hughes turned a ceremonial shovel of dirt to open the park, he unearthed an Indian pipe stem and a colonial nail. The site, including museum facilities, is operated by the Maryland Historical Trust.
Mary Marvin Breckinridge at Milton Academy in 1922
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Mrs. Patterson also was a benefactor of organizations that included IONA Senior Services, a lead agency for services for the elderly in Washington. The organization’s center at 42nd Street and Albemarle streets NW is named for her mother, tire industry heiress Isabella Goodrich Breckinridge. Her paternal great-grandfather was John Cabell Breckinridge, the U.S. vice president who ran against Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and was the Confederacy’s secretary of war. Mrs. Patterson, known as Marvin, was an intrepid New York debutante who loved to play polo as a young woman. She was one of the first women licensed to fly a plane in the United States. She rode horseback into the Kentucky Mountains in 1930 to make a silent documentary called “The Forgotten Frontier,” about the Frontier Nursing Service, founded by her cousin Mary Breckinridge. Mrs. Patterson had been a courier for the service after graduating from Vassar College in 1927. She was chairman of the nursing service from 1960 to 1975. In “The Forgotten Frontier,” she followed nurse-midwives as they delivered babies, treated gunshot victims and inoculated schoolchildren. The film captured a vanishing way of life and was later shortened to a 25-minute video for public television. The original film is included in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.
Mrs. Patterson returned to Kentucky in 1937 to take photographs that are considered classics and have been shown in exhibitions. When she was 74, photographs she took during a 1932 trip from Capetown to Cairo were published in a book, “Olivia’s African Diary,” based on the journal of Olivia Stokes, a friend she made when she first lived in Washington. Mrs. Patterson also took photographs for Life, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Town & Country and other magazines. Photo assignments in prewar Europe, including a Nazi rally in Nuremburg, Germany, led to a renewal of friendship with CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow. He hired her for the program “News of the World,” and she subsequently made 50 broadcasts from European capitals over seven months. She was one of only a handful of American women in Europe working in radio and was among the first correspondents to use a new shortwave transmitter to broadcast on location. Her work was described in a Library of Congress exhibit that toured the United States in the late 1990s. Called “Women Come to the Front: Journalists, Photographers and Broadcasters During World War II,” it profiled eight women: Therese Bonney, Esther Bubley, May Craig, Janet Flanner, Toni Frissell, Dorothea Lange, Clare Boothe Luce and Mrs. Patterson.
In 1940, she married Foreign Service officer Jefferson Patterson, son of a founder of the National Cash Register Co. They met in Washington and were married in Berlin. She later accompanied him to posts in Peru, Belgium, Egypt, Greece and Uruguay. He died in 1977. Mrs. Patterson began giving away some of her assets, in what she called “decollecting,” after her husband’s death. Her MARPAT foundation made grants to cultural, environmental, historical and social service organizations. She served on the boards of the Textile Museum, National Symphony, Meridian House International and International Student House and committees of the Smithsonian Institution, Corcoran Gallery of Art and Folger Shakespeare Library. Her honors included the Calvert Prize, Maryland’s highest award for historic preservation. She is survived by a daughter, Patricia Marvin Patterson of Kingston, N.H., and a grandson. This obituary originally appeared in The Washington Post on December 17, 2002. © 2002, The Washington Post. Reprinted with permission.
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