Milton Magazine, Fall 2023

AN INNOVATOR IN EDUCATION

MEET MILTON’S 13TH HEAD OF SCHOOL: ALIXE CALLEN ’88

Milton’s New Head of School

“Honest, humble, and openhearted—just the kind of person who should be heading a school that is educating tomorrow’s leaders,” is how photographer Heather McGrath described Alixe Callen ’88. McGrath spent a morning last summer photographing

Milton’s new head of school.

“We shot her in natural light— the perfect setting, I felt, for capturing her inner warmth and authenticity.”

What’s the Big Idea?

The best ideas spring from the minds of people who are unafraid to ask “Why not?” This issue highlights Milton graduates whose ideas are limitless, who challenge outdated assumptions, and who champion new approaches to old problems.

A Teacher First

Alixe Callen ’88 brings a wealth of experience and enthusiasm to her role as Milton’s new head of school.

“If I want to have a role in increasing Asian representation in the media, I need to become part of the solution.”

How to Succeed in Hollywood (While Really Trying)

William Yu ’09 is writing stories for TV and movies. How he came to be doing that is a story in itself.

A Change of Heart

A trip that Tony Dior Gaenslen ’59 took during spring break of his senior year at Milton changed the course of his life. upper

HEAD OF SCHOOL

Alixe Callen

CHIEF COMMUNICATION OFFICER

Eileen Newman

EDITOR

Sarah Abrams

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Marisa Donelan

COPY EDITOR

Martha Spaulding

NYT science writing winner

Leah Li ’26, strength coach Steve Darling honored, Milton Medal for Bland and Bloom, and more

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Elaine McArdle

Steve Nadis

DESIGN

MO.D/Patrick Mitchell

André Mora

CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS

Greg Clarke

Thomas Hedger

Simone Massoni

Heather McGrath

Alex Eben Meyer

Walter Smith

class notes . . ................. 48

in memoriam 60

board of trustees ...........  61

n.k.o.t.q. 63  postscript  ...................  64

Bryce Wymer

Peter Yang

milton magazine is published twice a year by Milton Academy. Editorial and business o ces are located at Milton Academy, where change-of-address noti cations should be sent.

As an institution committed to diversity, Milton Academy welcomes the opportunity to admit academically quali ed students of any gender, race, color, disability status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, religion, or 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, disability status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, religion, or national or ethnic origin in the administration of its educational policies, admission policies, scholarship programs, and athletic or other school-administered activities.

THE VIEW FROM WARREN HALL OVERLOOKING THE QUAD AND FORBES HOUSE

photograph by John Gillooly

A New Era in the World of Education

i often refer to my career as an educator as one of both/and. I’ve worked in both public schools and independent schools (and, indeed, even spent some time at a charter school). I identify both as a teacher and as an administrator. East Coast, West Coast—both! Even as a student, I attended a public elementary and middle school before enrolling at Milton. The opportunity to learn and work in a diversity of environments has helped to shape my identity as an educator, providing me with all sorts of insights and experiences. □ When rst considering applying for Milton’s headship, I hesitated. My family was happy; I was doing good work. Why upset that apple cart? In the end, however, it was Milton’s own embrace of both/ and that brought me back. □ Milton is famously both a boarding school and a day school. We serve both elementary and secondary students. And while we are an independent school in all the best ways, we certainly embrace a larger public purpose. □ My a ection for Milton’s both/and status dates back to the mid-80s. As a middle school student, I had been obsessed with the idea of boarding school for years. With no internet, and thus no websites, I perused the catalogues that arrived at my house nearly daily, comparing and contrasting the various cultures and o erings of an assortment of schools. And although I could see the appeal of the trappings of a more traditional boarding school, it was Milton’s both/and nature that drew me in. Here was a school that was both residential and cosmopolitan. I could go to boarding school and live in a major metropolitan area. □ What I did not realize when I enrolled was how much Milton would impact my sense of agency, my belief in my power to make a di erence in the world. Milton graduates through the ages have absorbed the expectation

WITH A CAREER THAT INCLUDES A WIDE RANGE OF EXPERIENCES, MILTON’S NEW HEAD OF SCHOOL LOOKS FORWARD TO THE CHALLENGES AHEAD.

ALIXE CALLEN ’88 , HEAD OF SCHOOL

that our experience here on Centre Street should be employed for a larger purpose. We are privileged to receive this incredible education and we’d better put it to good use.

For me, putting my education to good use has meant both serving the children and families in my immediate care and striving to create better schools for all. In addition to my direct work in schools, my doctoral research focused on building public support for school reform. I was particularly interested in how we might help more-privileged populations, who have almost always been served well by their schools (public and private), to support reform that enhances strong schools for all.

For many years, I believed my work was best accomplished in the public sector. However, I have come to see the many ways independent schools like Milton can serve as incubators for big ideas. I look forward to grappling with those big ideas in the coming months and years. The world of education is changing more rapidly than we can imagine. Traditional skills and knowledge are increasingly outmoded. With every possible bit of knowledge available via technology, more than ever our students need the ability to think critically, to communicate e ectively, to build connections, and to employ this amazing education in the interests of the larger world.

My embrace of a both/and philosophy has taken a new turn now that I am both an alum of Milton and its head of school. I look forward to using the skills I learned here on Centre Street and those I’ve learned out in the world as I take on this amazing opportunity.

“The world of education is changing more rapidly than we can imagine.”

illustration by Alex Eben Meyer

The Changing Landscape in College Admissions

WITH THE RIGHT APPROACH, THE PROCESS OF APPLYING TO COLLEGE CAN BE A POSITIVE EXPERIENCE, SAYS MILTON’S NEW DEAN OF COLLEGE COUNSELING, LAURÉN CARTER .

laurén carter, a noted author and college-admissions expert, became Milton’s new dean of college counseling in July. Carter, who comes to Milton from the Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., has decades’ worth of experience in independent school college guidance and university admissions. Her book, Mindful Admissions: An Insider’s Guide to Staying Sane, Applying Well, and Getting Accepted to College, provides students and families with practical advice for navigating the complicated admissions process. Carter joined Milton Magazine for a conversation this summer. An abridged Q&A appears below; the full conversation is available at miltonmagazine.org.

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE FACTORS THAT MAKE A PARTICULAR COLLEGE OR UNIVERSITY A GOOD FIT FOR A STUDENT?

When students embark on this journey, it is important to consider a range of factors that encompass both intellectual and emotional aspects, representing a balance between their head and their heart. To simplify the process, I frequently guide students to categorize these factors in three essential areas: academic t, community t, and personal t.

Academic t involves nding institutions that align with a student’s academic interests, goals, and learning style. It involves assessing the academic programs, faculty expertise, resources, and opportunities available at each college or university.

Community t pertains to the social and cultural environment of the institution. It involves considering the campus culture, student organizations, extracurricular activities,

diversity and inclusion e orts, and the overall sense of belonging that students may experience.

Personal t emphasizes the student’s unique needs, values, and aspirations. It includes factors such as location, campus size and facilities, student support services, and opportunities for personal and professional growth.

There is no one-size- ts-all approach. As a college counselor, my role is to guide and support students in navigating these considerations, providing resources and insights to help them make informed decisions. Together, we can explore and assess the available options, ensuring that students nd the best possible t.

WITH ADMISSION TO HIGHLY SELECTIVE COLLEGES BECOMING MORE AND MORE COMPETITIVE EVERY YEAR, HOW DO YOU HELP BOTH STUDENTS AND THEIR FAMILIES SET EXPECTATIONS?

It’s important to focus on what students can control in their college process and to encourage them to strive for a well-balanced list of prospective schools they would be happy to attend.

Gaining admission to a highly selective college is not a measure of a student’s worth or potential for success. Instead, it re ects the competitive nature of the applicant pool and the speci c needs and priorities of each college.

My goal is to help families understand the ever-changing landscape of college admissions, including the evolving nature of selectivity. I also encourage students to re ect on their strengths, passions, and goals and to identify colleges that align with their unique aspirations. This helps them

develop realistic expectations.

The process does require resilience, and it is important to maintain a healthy perspective and realistic expectatons. We need to remind students that success is not de ned solely by admission to a particular college but by their ability to thrive and make meaningful contributions wherever they enroll.

YOUR BOOK TAKES A HOLISTIC APPROACH TO THE ADMISSIONS PROCESS, BEGINNING IN THE FIRST YEAR OF HIGH SCHOOL. WHAT ARE SOME WAYS FAMILIES CAN START TO HAVE THE CONVERSATION ABOUT COLLEGE— AND CONTINUE IT THROUGH THE HIGH SCHOOL YEARS—WITHOUT ADDING UNDUE STRESS?

Having thoughtful conversations with high schoolers about higher education necessitates a sensitive and supportive approach. Parents and guardians can initiate this dialogue by creating an open and encouraging environment where students feel at ease discussing their aspirations, worries, and interests related to their educational future. Encouraging curiosity and exploration, families can facilitate activities that promote a college-going mindset, such as attending cultural events, artistic performances, or sporting events at local universities. This exposure to the transformative aspects of the college experience can help form a positive narrative around higher education without xating on the pressures of admission.

It’s important for parents and guardians to listen actively, validate their teen’s feelings, and o er guidance without exerting pressure. They can help their children focus

Laurén Carter

on personal growth, interests, and values, encouraging them to explore a range of educational and extracurricular options at Milton.

Ultimately, the key is to nurture a positive and supportive atmosphere that focuses on the individual student’s well-being, growth, and happiness. By embracing the college journey as a transformative and exciting experience, families can engage in ongoing conversations about college without placing unnecessary pressure on the student.

WHAT ARE SOME KEY WAYS THE COLLEGE ADMISSIONS LANDSCAPE HAS CHANGED SINCE YOU BEGAN YOUR CAREER?

Over the past 35 years, the college admissions landscape has undergone signi cant transformations, reshaping the entire process for students and families. One notable change is the increased competition. With the ease of applying to multiple colleges and the growing number of applicants, colleges have become more selective, making it more challenging for students to secure acceptance.

Another notable change is the increasing prevalence of early decision and early action plans. These plans enable students to potentially increase their chances of acceptance by applying to colleges that o er these options. By showcasing their sincere interest in attending a speci c institution, students have the opportunity to potentially secure their place at their preferred college and alleviate some of the stress associated with the regular admissions process.

Technology has played a crucial role in this evolution. Students now have access to abundant resources online to research colleges, take vir-

tual tours, read professor reviews, explore social media feeds, and gain insights into the student experience. The application process itself, however, has become more complex. Many colleges require supplemental essays, which give students an opportunity to showcase their unique qualities and t for the school. This requirement adds another layer of preparation and consideration for applicants.

Many colleges are using test-optional approaches, recognizing that standardized tests may not accurately re ect a student’s abilities and po-

tential. This indicates that colleges are considering a broader range of factors in their admissions decisions.

Over the years, colleges have been actively working toward enhancing access and promoting diversity. In response to recent developments, such as the Supreme Court ruling to end race-conscious admissions, colleges and universities have rea rmed their goal to create a more equitable and diverse environment on their campuses, fostering inclusive communities where students from all backgrounds can thrive and contribute to the richness of campus life.

“We need to remind students that success is not de ned solely by admission to a particular college but by their ability to thrive and make meaningful contributions wherever they enroll.”

illustration by Alex Eben Meyer

WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA?

As Robert F. Kennedy ’44 observed, the best ideas—the most daring, and those that make the most profound impact on our world—spring from the minds of people who are unafraid to ask “Why not?” This issue highlights Milton graduates whose ideas are limitless, who challenge outdated assumptions, and who champion new approaches to old problems. On campus, students and teachers celebrate not only thinking but rethinking, and the powerful good that can be achieved when minds are nurtured, compassionate, and free.

illustration by Simone Massoni

ALIXE CALLEN ’88 BRINGS A WEALTH OF EXPERIENCE AND ENTHUSIASM TO HER ROLE AS MILTON’S NEW HEAD OF SCHOOL.

A Teacher First

Story by Sarah Abrams

Photographs by Heather McGrath

“Literally back to kindergarten, I knew that I would spend my life as an educator,” Callen said in an interview shortly after becoming Milton Academy’s 13th head of school. “As my life unfolded, I always knew deep inside that is what I would do.”

Callen arrived at Milton with a career portfolio that reflects a richness of experience and accomplishments. Among them, she helped start a high school in rural Arizona; led a highly ranked public high school of almost 2,000 students; and more recently, as head of school at St. George’s School, restructured academic departments into cross-disciplinary groupings that have resulted in more relevant, creative course design.

It was at Brown University where Callen began preparing for a career that would include leadership roles at public, charter, and independent schools across the country. While earning a b.a. (her major was in American civilization) and an m.a.t. (master of arts in teaching), Callen worked with the education reform advocate Theodore (Ted) Sizer. At Brown, Sizer had founded the Coalition of Essential Schools, a national school-reform organization formed in response to his landmark research, detailed in his book Horace’s Compromise. As a research and teaching assistant to Sizer, Callen worked on campus at Brown and with teachers around the country to further the principles of the coalition. This work continues to inform her vision and leadership.

Callen’s career began in Sedona, Arizona, where she taught English and social studies and helped start

Sedona Red Rock High School. She spent three years designing a school that embraced the Coalition of Essential Schools’ ideals. “It may be the most revolutionary work I’ve done,” she said, “and what I realized through that experience was that while I love teaching, I want the opportunity to shape schools themselves, not just my own classroom.”

Her experience in Arizona led her to spend the next seven years working to earn her doctoral degree at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where her values and priorities took shape. Callen’s doctoral work focused on communities that were undertaking major high school reform, seeking speci cally to understand how upper middleclass families responded to changes that sought to enhance equity in school.

Nine years as a public school administrator came next, rst as assistant principal at Needham High School and, four years later, as principal at Acton-Boxborough Regional High School, a top-ranked public high school of almost 2,000 students in the Boston suburb of Acton.

Callen enjoyed her tenure at Acton-Boxborough, working in a setting that possessed a strong sense of community. But she soon grew frustrated by the lack of opportunities for making substantive programmatic changes. “While working with the students, faculty, and families of Acton and Boxborough was incredibly rewarding, I began to feel hamstrung by the imposition of multiple external demands,” Callen said.

Testing mandates and the entrenched policies emanating from

the state made the chances for implementing sweeping change almost impossible. “After 15 years working in the eld of school reform, I longed for more opportunities to work alongside teachers to implement more far-reaching improvements,” Callen said. “While Milton’s faculty works incredibly hard, we are blessed with time, space, and flexibility to deeply consider our practices in light of ongoing research about how students learn.”

Seeing an opportunity to accelerate greater change than was possible in public schools, Callen next took on roles in private school settings. She spent the following decade in independent school leadership, serving rst as upper-school principal at Lakeside School in Seattle, Washington, and, the past six years, as head of school at St. George’s School in Middletown, Rhode Island, where she instituted a series of important changes—from dismantling traditional academic departments to better reflect interdisciplinary thinking, to formalizing a robust deij strategy, to helping develop a partnership with historically Black colleges and universities (hbcus) that brings hbcu students and teachers to St. George’s to explore independent schools’ practices and teaching.

“Our thought in restructuring the curriculum was, what if we started from the inside and decided that the groups that people meet in are part of a cohesive whole?” Callen said. “So often our work in curriculum design involves tinkering around the edges, creating electives that don’t

ALIXE CALLEN ’88 can’t remember a time when she didn’t want to be a teacher.

Callen’s senior yearbook portrait

require fundamental rethinking of the traditional disciplines. We moved from twelve departments to just ve, ensuring that all educators were grouped into interdisciplinary departments, working together to create a relevant, thoughtful curriculum that will better serve today’s students.”

for now, Callen plans to spend much of her time listening and learning—visiting classes in all three divisions; attending events; getting to know students, parents, and alumni; and building on the legacy of community building that former Head of School Todd Bland leaves behind.

“For me, that’s critical. Some people think that community building is something you do on the side, but I think the most important intellectual work we do is to prepare students to live in and be productive members of communities.

“In our very divisive world, schools should be communities where barriers come down, where people listen to one another, where we talk across backgrounds and experiences. That starts with respect—saying ‘Thank you,’ holding the door, making room at the table. It then extends to watching out for one another, ultimately learning to champion each other. In classrooms, we should be building on each other’s thoughts, creating meaning together, never trying to upstage our peers.

“The leaders create that. If our kids can experience that here, then they can go out and recreate it elsewhere. I’m passionate about that. I feel that’s the most important work we do.”

Callen is excited by the opportunity to lead at a time of great social change—with today’s students facing unprecedented challenges: climate change, arti cial intelligence, mounting polarization, increasing cultural diversity, and a shifting job

Alixe Callen ’88 with family: Husband James “Ace” Bailey, who worked for many years as an admissions o cer at independent schools, and sons, Miles, 21, second from le , and Zander, 24, right, at Miles’s graduation in 2021 from St. George’s School. Miles is in his junior year at the University of Rhode Island and Zander works in nance in New York City.

Callen’s niece, Annabel Gale ’27, the daughter of her sister, Amy Gale, currently attends Milton, as does Clare Mone ’24, the daughter of her cousin, Nika Thayer Mone ’94.

market are just some of the factors facing students.

Milton’s legacy as an institution that instills in its students a strong sense of responsibility for tackling society’s most complex problems is one that Callen is committed to expanding upon. “Milton has always stood for something greater than itself,” she said. “That moral center is key to who we are. You just need to look at our alumni and see all of the incredible things they are doing—the many public servants and thought leaders who are making a di erence in the world.”

Callen also looks forward to building on Milton’s position as an innovator in education—an institution that is continually evaluating best practices: seeking to understand what skills and knowledge our students need to be successful in a changing world, how best to assess those traits, and how to communicate our e orts to the larger world.

“As educators, we should be working to promote the teaching profession in general,” Callen said. “There’s an opportunity to tell our story and talk about the things that we’ve done well, but I also hope that we can learn from others.” Toward that end, Callen has already met with leaders in the Milton public school system in hopes of forging a partnership that will begin an exchange of ideas. “There is so much we can learn from our colleagues in public schools,” she said.

Ever the teacher, Callen also plans to t classroom work into her schedule. At both Lakeside and St. George’s, she taught year-long sec-

tions of junior-year English, sharing her love of language with students. Although she’s holding o on that commitment for now, she is looking forward to opportunities to engage with students in all three divisions, perhaps sharing her deep love of literature and writing.”

in june, just weeks before assuming her role as head of school, Callen returned to Milton to join her classmates in celebrating their 35th reunion, coming full circle to where her intellectual journey began.

She recalls the awakening that took place for her as a 15-year-old, arriving at Milton from the suburban town of Bedford, New York.

“At Milton, I felt there was a level of conversation that had not been present in my school life up until that point,” she said. “It de nitely opened my eyes, and I loved that. I loved the way I was immersed in a di erent intellectual world than I had been previously. I loved what I read, I loved what I studied.

“In my experience, Milton is second to none as a place of thought and intellect. It is the most intellectually curious, dynamic learning environment I have known, and I’m thrilled to be returning to where it all started. I hope that the lessons I bring from all my experience and the respect I have for Milton—what it has given me and how it’s inspired me—will help to inspire and prepare new generations of Milton students.

“I am excited for the challenge.”

Outgoing Head of School Todd Bland and Callen at Reunion in June spoke and answered questions from alumni at the State of the School Address in King Theatre. This year’s reunion marked Callen’s 35th reunion year.

“‘Dare to Be True’ is probably the most memorable motto of any school in the way that it has such staying power. It’s so impressive. It gets cemented into your being and becomes part of who you are.”

HOW TO SUCCEED IN

(WHILE REALLY TRYING)

WILLIAM YU ’09 IS WRITING STORIES FOR TV AND MOVIES. HOW HE CAME TO BE DOING THAT IS A STORY IN ITSELF.

Story by Steve Nadis

Photographs by Peter Yang

THE MILTON YEARS

From top le : Yu’s senior portrait, with Joycelyn Yip ’11 before the prom, at graduation in 2009, and on the boys’ basketball team.

A hashtag really did change my life,” says the Los Angeles-based screenwriter WILLIAM YU ’09.

Yu made some waves in the Twitter world in 2016 when he launched an awareness campaign using the hashtag #StarringJohnCho. “It was a time when a lot of fraught conversations were taking place about Asian representation [or the lack thereof] in the entertainment industry,” he says. The practice of “whitewashing” was still quite prevalent. For example, in the soon-to-be-released Ghost in the Shell, Scarlett Johansson was cast in the role of a Japanese character, Major Motoko Kusanagi. In the 2015 lm Aloha, Emma Stone played a character supposedly of Hawaiian, Chinese, and Swedish descent, and in Dr. Strange (2016), Tilda Swinton portrayed a character who was originally supposed to be Tibetan. The director Aaron Sorkin reportedly claimed that there were no Asian stars in Hollywood. “That was a problem of perception,” Yu says. “It seemed that no one could picture it.”

But Yu, a Korean American who lived in Hong Kong from the age of ve to twelve when his family moved to Massachusetts, could picture it quite clearly, and he wanted others to share his vision. To Yu, the Korean-born actor John Cho—who had already starred in both the Harold and Kumar and Star Trek series, along with many other lms—was an entirely plausible leading man. In his initial Twitter thread, using the hashtag #StarringJohnCho—which was a side project Yu created (at a personal cost of $0) while holding a full-time job in advertising—he inserted Cho’s face into posters for Jurassic World and a range of other hit

“ IT’S FUNNY TO SAY THAT A HASHTAG CHANGED MY LIFE. BUT IT’S TRUE.”

movies at that time. The campaign went viral: It was discussed in the New York Times, and on the bbc and cnn, among other media outlets. Yu became friends with John Cho as a result, and the director Jon M. Chu said that the hashtag inspired him to make the 2018 blockbuster Crazy Rich Asians.

When his campaign debuted on Twitter, Yu was living in Manhattan, going through what he called his “quarter-life crisis.” He’d been working in the advertising business for about two years, since graduating from Tufts University in 2014. His Tufts advisor thought it might be a good eld for him, a ording a chance to cultivate both his creativity and his business savvy. Yet Yu was starting to feel some frustration. He really liked making things, but in many of the projects he was involved in, his efforts were focused on the earlier, strategic stages of the process, which left him a bit removed from the nished product. It occurred to him—at the ripe age of 25—that it might be time for a change. Some people with Hollywood connections had, in fact, reached out to him after the launch of #StarringJohnCho, saying things like “If you’ve written anything, I’d be happy to take a look.”

Back when he was a student at Milton, from 2005 to 2009, Yu had been, by his own admission, rather traditional. His favorite courses were English and History, and he engaged in the usual extracurricular activities: student government, sports, music (clarinet and saxophone), and writing for one of the school newspapers. He considered going into journalism but never thought screenwriting could

be a real career. But after his brief brush with the entertainment world, thanks to his Twitter notoriety, and the encouragement he’d subsequently received from people in the business, he realized, “If I don’t jump in now, I will miss this window. If I want to have a role in increasing Asian representation in the media, I need to become part of the solution.”

He quit his job in 2017 and—because he didn’t have an office and was too broke to a ord a WeWork membership—he resolved to sit in a café every day, reading every book on scriptwriting and every successful script he could get his hands on. The place he chose for this crash course was an establishment on the corner of Amsterdam and 68th called Boule & Cherie. He holed up there, taking advantage of the excellent WiFi reception while sustaining himself on co ee, sandwiches, and quiche.

After nearly a year, he completed his rst feature-length script, Love You, Charlie—a tale of a high school valedictorian who sets out to prove the innocence of a friend accused of murder in a seemingly idyllic New England town that harbors more than its fair share of secrets. The script won the screenplay competition at the 2018 Asian American International Film Festival.

Yu moved to Los Angeles that year to be closer to the movie industry, and he’s been there ever since. He was running out of money after his “Upper West Side Co ee Shop Film School thing,” so he took on another advertising job. However, after being back in the ad game for six months, he quit again—this time for good—deciding that he either had to be “all in on the writing” or

not in at all.

In his next project, he wrote a pilot for a TV series that he called Good Boy , which concerned a young Korean-American man who dreamed of breaking into the fashion business by launching his own streetwear brand while facing pressure from his family to go to medical school. The story is loosely autobiographical: Yu had taken a semester o from Tufts and worked part-time in a hip sneaker shop in Boston called Bodega. His script got him into the Sundance Episodic Makers Lab—a six-day program that enabled him to further develop his pilot with feedback from experienced TV showrunners, producers, and executives.

“This project ended up being my way into the industry,” Yu says “It got me my manager”—at Bellevue Productions, one of the top management companies in Hollywood—“and it got me my agents.”

In fact, he has two agents, one to promote his TV writing ventures and another for feature lms, both

Yu with his family at graduation: mother, Helen Yu; sister, Samantha Yu ’07; and father, Don Yu.

of whom are based at apa , one of the largest talent agencies in the entertainment industry. With their help, he shopped the script around; some production company executives found the story interesting, “but couldn’t quite see it.” So Yu ended up directing a short lm based on the pilot, and he got Young Mazino—an actor who subsequently made a big splash in the Net ix series Beef—to star in it. The 16-minute lm premiered in May on Omeleto, a YouTube channel (with 4 million subscribers) that promotes award-winning shorts.

With this lm in hand, Yu and his agents are again trying to line up a company to produce the series. In March 2020, Yu started writing his second feature lm, It Was You, about a young man who works in his grandfather’s shop in Chinatown, trying to save the neighborhood from a start-up company with expansionist plans. It Was You made the 2021 Black List—an annual list of favorite scripts selected by Hollywood executives. Jon M. Chu has signed on as producer, and his company is now shopping it to studios.

Yu next took on a historical drama centered on Koreagate—a political scandal from the 1970s concerning a Korean businessman charged with in uence peddling in the United States. He nished the script for an hour-long pilot in 2022, and on the strength of that work, he was one of eight people out of 2,100 applicants admitted to the highly prestigious nbc tv Writers Program, which he completed in April 2023. And thanks to the contacts he made during the eight-month-long program, Yu was hired as a writer for a limited-series crime drama on

the Peacock streaming service.

He’s got a few scripts circulating at the moment, with some encouraging signs that a deal, or deals, may soon be made. But meanwhile, Yu has an actual job, writing for a TV show (pending resolution of the Writers Guild of America strike). He’s literally in the business, pursuing a profession that he never contemplated as a teenager at Milton, and he’s glad to see that the business he’s now part of is starting to change in just the ways he hoped it would.

“When I launched #StarringJohnCho, seven years ago,” Yu says, “I never would have dreamed that a Korean-made movie, Parasite, would win numerous Academy Awards—including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay—in 2020.” Nor did he imagine that Michelle Yeoh (from Malaysia) would win the Best Actress award and Ke Huy Quan (from Vietnam) would win the Best Supporting Actor award in 2023 for Everything Everywhere All at Once

“That’s great to see, and it shows that things are moving in a positive direction,” Yu says. “But we are still in the early days of the representation conversation. To me, that’s exciting, because it means there are many more conversations to be had.” And he really hopes that some of the scripts he has worked on already, along with those yet to come, will become part of a conversation that he considers long overdue.

STEVE NADIS IS A FREELANCE SCIENCE WRITER BASED IN CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS. HE’S A CONTRIBUTING EDITOR FOR DISCOVER AND A CONTRIBUTING WRITER FOR QUANTA . HIS ARTICLES HAVE APPEARED IN DOZENS OF OTHER MAGAZINES.

“ WE ARE STILL IN THE EARLY DAYS OF THE REPRESENTATION CONVERSATION. TO ME, THAT’S EXCITING, BECAUSE IT MEANS THERE ARE MANY MORE CONVERSATIONS TO BE HAD.”

a change of

A TRIP THAT TONY DIOR GAENSLEN ’59 TOOK DURING SPRING BREAK OF HIS SENIOR YEAR CHANGED THE COURSE OF HIS LIFE.

Story by Elaine McArdle

Photographs by Walter Smith

TONY DIOR GAENSLEN ’59 entered Milton Academy as a self-described “shy” and “nerdy” kid, the Texas-born son of a politically conservative family. He was so enamored of Robert E. Lee that he wrote his senior history paper describing him as the greatest general of the Civil War and a man of unimpeachable character.

His father was an oilman, his mother a devout Catholic from Normandy, France, whose rst cousin was the iconic fashion designer Christian Dior, and as a teen Gaenslen abhorred labor unions and the Democratic Party. When Arkansas Governor Orval E. Faubus refused to allow Black students to enter Little Rock’s Central High School, in 1957, “I thought it was a mistake on Eisenhower’s part to send federal troops to the South,” says Gaenslen.

But after a profound transformation during his senior year at Milton, Gaenslen has spent his life as a passionate advocate for civil rights. He endured 11 days in a Mississippi jail during the Freedom Summer of 1964 and was part of the March on Washington in 1963 when Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. As a civil rights lawyer, Gaenslen was a close advisor to the labor leader Cesar Chavez, who co-founded the National Farm Workers Association.

Gaenslen and his family held “all sorts of beliefs that I absolutely do not believe now,” he says. “So you can see what I’ve come from.” Or, as he writes in his memoir, A Hard Road to Justice: My Life as a Renegade Lawyer, published in 2020 by Pearl Street Press, “I may not have been the least likely member of Yale’s class of 1963 to plunge into a life of activism, but I was certainly a strong contender.”

Comparing today with the turbulent times of the 1960s, Gaenslen believes there’s much still to be done. “So what do I do with that? I dont know how to give up.”

“i may not have been the least likely member of yale’s class of 1963 to plunge into a life of activism, but i was certainly a strong contender.”

He can pinpoint the precise moment of his personal metamorphosis. During spring break of his senior year at Milton, he and his friend JOE BRADLEY ’59 set o on a bicycle tour of Civil War battle elds in Virginia—a “pilgrimage,” as he puts it—so that Gaenslen could visit the sites of his hero’s greatest victories, including the Battle of Cold Harbor, outside Richmond.

“I had a life-changing experience at Cold Harbor,” Gaenslen recalls. The two teens stopped for lunch at a roadside shack, which had separate service windows for white and Black customers, and the white owner was very friendly to them. But a few minutes later, Gaenslen witnessed her shouting at two Black customers. “She was handing out generous measures of abuse and contempt,” he says. “The image I have is them hanging on to their dignity like they were clinging to a rock during a hurricane. I realized at that moment I was a co-conspirator in a conspiracy to deprive them of their dignity.”

As he writes in his memoir, “The battle of Cold Harbor had just claimed another casualty. Me. It killed o my identi cation with Lee and the Old South. When the Greensboro, North Carolina, sitin movement leaped into national prominence some 10 months later, I knew which side I was on.”

His transformation was rapid and permanent. He was inspired to become a lawyer by his beloved French grandfather, Henri Dior. During the infamous Dreyfus a air of the 1890s, when the Jewish French army o cer Alfred Dreyfus was falsely accused of treason, his grandfather “stood up for Dreyfus and he wanted me to know that when I was about 13

or 14,” Gaenslen says. “He was one of only two people in his bourgeois Catholic family who did.” But the civil rights movement was heating up, and to his parents’ dismay, Gaenslen put his law school plans on hold. “I thought I would plunge into the civil rights movement and spend a year,” he says. Instead, he notes, with a laugh, “I’ve spent my whole life.”

after yale, Gaenslen led a program in Philadelphia that tutored inner-city children, participated in the March on Washington, and became a committed paci st and ultimately a Quaker. In the summer of 1964, he headed with hundreds of other activists to Mississippi to register voters. Working with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (sncc ), he found himself in Greenwood, Mississippi—notorious as the town near where Emmett Till was murdered in 1954—where he lived in a Black neighborhood in a heavily guarded sncc “safe house.” He writes, “The hours I slept behind its locked doors were the few each day that I was not intensely afraid.”

As they registered voters, he and 13 others were arrested on bogus charges and thrown in jail. Gaenslen’s description of the next 11 days is harrowing. The sadistic warden delighted in threatening him and another white activist, and Gaenslen overheard a group of white prisoners plotting to kill them. They were nally rescued with the help of a lawyer from what was then the only racially integrated law rm in the South. Two months later, three young civil rights workers, Andrew

Goodman, James Chaney, and Mickey Schwerner, were murdered in Mississippi. “I had escaped their fate by the narrowest of margins,” Gaenslen writes.

He is proud of his work there, but after he graduated from Cornell University Law School, his arrest in Mississippi, which he included on his résumé, “was a kiss of death,” he says. With help from a Cornell professor, he landed an interview with Arthur Le , chief counsel to the chairman of the National Labor Relations Board (nlrb), in Washington, D.C., who was interested in only two things on Gaenslen’s résumé: his arrest in Mississippi and the fact that he’d played on the second tennis team at Milton, where he was a “decent, but by no means great, tennis player,” he explains. Leff offered Gaenslen a position as an attorney-advisor to the nlrb chairman. “In my wildest dreams I had never dared to hope for such an outcome,” he writes.

Gaenslen—who as a teen had scorned labor unions—enjoyed his tenure as a lawyer for the nlrb and, later, for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. But it was his next role, working with Chavez and the United Farm Workers Union, that marked a high point in his career. Chavez gave him “the opportunity to work on the cutting edge of a labor movement dedicated to bettering conditions for migrant workers, the most exploited and vulnerable labor force in America,” writes Gaenslen. He successfully defended a number of cases in rural California in behalf of migrant workers who were penalized for trying to organize, but the work took him away from his young family, so he moved

Gaenslen published his memoir A Hard Road to Justice: My Life as a Renegade Lawyer, in 2020.

to Ithaca, New York, where he still lives with his second wife, Annie. There, he quickly found himself representing the Cornell Eleven, a group of women faculty who’d been denied tenure. “Nobody would take the case,” he says. “I thought, what kinds of problems could white, middle-class women have?” With a laugh, he adds, “I soon found out.”

For ve years Gaenslen fought his alma mater and its coterie of high-priced defense lawyers before negotiating a settlement. “It was an incredibly wonderful experience,” he says, but he didn’t have the stamina to continue with that level of major litigation, so he transitioned to representing plainti s in Social Security disability and workers’ compensation cases. “I loved the workers and representing them and telling them how to tell their stories on the stand and bring out who they were as human beings,” he recalls. He retired from law practice in 2008.

I had it to do again, I’d say to hell with the people supposed to be listening to me—they’ll nd someone else to talk.” Today Gaenslen enjoys a loving relationship with his two children, and he says, “I am incredibly lucky.”

In his memoir, Gaenslen calls Milton “The Academy.” He arrived as an eighth-grader from Venezuela, where his father was working for a major oil company. “I got a really good education at Milton,” he says. He was particularly inspired by faculty member A.O. Smith, who taught honors English. “A.O. realized I wanted to write, which my parents strenuously objected to,” says Gaenslen, who is proud of applying his writing talent to crafting legal briefs for his underdog clients.

His lifelong dedication to civil rights was not without personal cost. After Gaenslen postponed law school to work with inner-city children, his outraged parents refused to attend his Yale graduation or his wedding. “My idea of what I wanted to do with my life was totally incompatible to the way they were pushing me,” he says. And his long hours working with Chavez led to one of the most wrenching moments of his life, described in his memoir, when his little boy begged him not to leave for a speaking event.

“I lament the fact that when I was ‘saving the world,’ I was not spending time with my kids,” he says. “If

How does he compare today’s turbulent times with the 1960s? “We made a huge difference in many, many ways,” he says, “but we’ve regressed a lot, and we have problems like climate change and Black people being gunned down in the streets in record numbers and white male Christian supremacy being waved around as a virtue. So what do I do with that? Well, I do not know how to give up.

“My whole thing is about being courageous,” he adds. He nds hope in the many young people, including Greta Thunberg, “who have guts. I’m just enormously encouraged by that.”

ELAINE MCARDLE, BASED IN SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY, IS AN AWARD-WINNING JOURNALIST AND BOOK AUTHOR. A GRADUATE OF VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL, SHE WRITES FOR THE HARVARD LAW BULLETIN , NORTHEASTERN LAW MAGAZINE , HARVARD ED. MAGAZINE , AND MANY OTHER PUBLICATIONS.

“my idea of what i wanted to do with my life was totally incompatible to the way [my parents] were pushing me.”

Above: Gaenslen in Egypt with his parents. Opposite page, clockwise from top le : Gaenslen with civil rights activists, Dorothy Cotton on right; Gaenslen, at le , with labor leaders, Gaenslen with Hassan, a Sudanese caretaker; chief counsel to NRLB chair Arthur Le ; infant Gaenslen with his mother; and Gaenslen and Cesar Chavez with Gaenslen’s two children, Max, center, and Elizabeth, right. Center: with Dorothy Cotton, to whom he dedicated his book, who received the 2010 National Freedom Award.

illustration by Thomas Hedger

The Art and Science of Group Work

its mere mention is enough to prompt dread in even the most dedicated students and anxiety dreams for those long out of school. Entire Buzzfeed posts are devoted to bemoaning group assignments, and memes regularly circulate about group members who take on all the work or ride others’ coattails to improve grades. Adults compare collective job tasks to the nightmarish group projects of their academic pasts.

The consensus about group projects is that, well, they stink.

But they don’t have to, says Milton English Department teacher David Nurenberg, who has presented at Milton Faculty Forums about more thoughtful ways to approach group projects. Group work at its most functional can deepen learning, build excitement around a subject area, and prepare students for collaborative work they may encounter in the next stages of education and their careers.

In addition to his position at Milton, where he joined the faculty in 2022, Nurenberg is a professor at Lesley University in Cambridge,

DESPITE ITS REPUTATION, GROUP WORK CAN BE AN EFFECTIVE LEARNING TOOL.  BY MARISA DONELAN

where he works with teachers in training. At Lesley, he taught a course in classroom management that describes classrooms as communities of learners—something Milton’s Harkness table structure supports. Around the Harkness table, students learn to listen to one another, disagree respectfully, and build on one another’s ideas.

“In other words, you have a classroom that’s not 11 students and one teacher, but you’re 12 students and 12 teachers,” he says. “We all have something that we can teach each other. We all have something that we can learn from each other. And that’s very empowering for students, to recognize that they’ve got expertise that I don’t have—and maybe I know a few things that they don’t, and we can learn from each other. This was a big hurdle for me because I hated group work in high school. Most people do.”

It took Nurenberg years to realize that the reason so many people nd group projects so unpleasant is that, in most schools, no one teaches students how to approach them.

“We would never dream of send-

ing a kid onto a soccer pitch with a pair of cleats and a ball and no training, and expect them to win the game,” he says. “There are all kinds of discrete skills: shooting, passing, goalkeeping. And yet we forget that when we tell kids, ‘Go work in groups’ without any training and then wonder why it’s a train wreck.”

There’s a science to teaching people how to work together, and with his students, Nurenberg starts small. They get to know their peers through low-stakes games such as collectively forming a sentence, or performing theater exercises in which they mirror each other’s movements, or they build a tower of cards together.

“On the one hand, it looks like a silly thing,” he says. “Why would you take time away from instruction for that? But it’s where they develop the skills to pay attention to each other, to exchange ideas, to listen to each other, to give feedback, to give constructive criticism, and learn to receive it. You later give them role-playing scenarios that deal with group con ict.”

“It takes a lot of time—I’m not

“We all have something that we can teach each other. We all have something that we can learn from each other.”

David Nurenberg

going to lie about that,” he continues. “But I’ve found that the more I invest in that stage, the more dividends it pays and the less time I lose later on.”

A lot of group work stagnates or fails when groups encounter interpersonal con ict. In building up these skills, students learn to navigate con ict in productive ways.

“Con ict is not a bad thing,” Nurenberg says, “assuming you manage it in a way that’s respectful and you come out with something that’s better than you could’ve individually done. That’s the goal.”

Learning to embrace disagreement is a lifelong skill, says Nurenberg, who notes that there are fewer and fewer examples of it in the adult world. When politicians and other gures in media simply shout soundbites at one another, they demonstrate the failures and gridlock that arise when those skills aren’t valued or practiced. Echo chambers—environments where one’s ideas and biases are ampli ed and reinforced, which are common on social media—also fail to model productive disagreement.

As Nurenberg did research for his doctorate, he studied how people learn and became interested in the works of social psychologist Lev Vygotsky, “who, among others, emphasizes that we’re social creatures,” he says. “We learn, in many respects, through our interactions and through our relationships, and our learning is in uenced by all these factors that make up an interaction.”

Good group work can enhance any subject. Reading and writing are often considered solitary endeavors, but learning about literature doesn’t have to be. Nurenberg

put his freshmen in groups to create and stage a modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet. Discussions and even (respectful) arguments about the project helped the students go deeper into the content, and they all had a delineated role in bringing the projects to fruition. The work they’d done to build collaborative skills helped them divide up jobs according to each member’s strengths. “Ultimately, I want the students to negotiate and define those roles among themselves,” Nurenberg says.

Through negotiation and disagreement, students challenge one another and help one another grasp meaningful concepts. A theme or symbol they missed while reading can surface during discussion, and varied interpretations can help broaden a reader’s understanding and appreciation for literature. In Nurenberg’s section of Perspectives (a sophomore elective), students studied colonialism in Africa through the works of nine authors, which helped illustrate how exposure to varied interpretations contributes to deeper learning.

“I hope they seek out di erent perspectives in their adult lives,” he says. “In some ways, I think that is more valuable than any discrete piece of grammar I teach.”

Research and practice have helped Nurenberg, who feared group projects as a student, embrace what Vygotsky called “the productive disequilibrium” of collaboration—both in his teaching and in work with his fellow faculty members. “There is a kind of discomfort that I think is necessary for learning,” he says. “Group work is not comfortable, but it can produce great learning.”

“Con ict is not a bad thing, assuming you manage it in a way that’s respectful and you come out with something that’s better than you could’ve individually done. That’s the goal.”

David Nurenberg

michael dwyer

On Centre VIEWS

Group work can prepare students for collaborative work they may encounter in the next stages of education and their careers.

The Power of Storytelling

A COLLABORATIVE HUMANITIES PROJECT HELPED MILTON’S SIXTH-GRADERS GAIN A DEEPER APPRECIATION FOR THE POWER OF STORYTELLING.  BY SARAH ABRAMS

on a morning last spring in classrooms throughout Ware Hall, Milton’s sixth-graders elded questions from their classmates about historical gures they had spent the past several months researching and writing about.

Sitting in groups of four before their classmates, teachers, and families, the students took turns delivering their ndings, asserting that the people they had chosen to study possessed strong democratic ideals—from politician and businessman Robert Smalls to scientist and astronaut Sally Ride to mathematician and computer scientist Annie Easley.

A bevy of questions from their classmates followed: “How did your person demonstrate democratic citizenship?” “How did events going on at the time a ect their views?” “How were they perceived?” “What goals did they wish to accomplish?”

Later, students read narratives about events in their own lives, sharing stories of re ection and discovery, from deep connections to their pets to the isolation they felt during the pandemic to moments that re-

vealed unexpected personal courage. All the essays were on display and available by scanning a QR code linked to their stories.

The morning event marked the culmination of a year long collaboration between Rose Bailey’s social studies and Adam Machson-Carter’s English classes examining the power of storytelling—from both an analytical and a narrative perspective. Over the course of the year, the sixth-graders researched and wrote reports on the lives of U.S. historical gures and wrote and read their own personal narratives.

In the social studies portion of the project, the students chose a U.S. historical gure who illustrated the qualities of democratic citizenship described in Amanda Gorman’s iconic poem “The Hill We Climb.” After weeks of organizing and analyzing their research, each student wrote a three-to- ve-page essay making the case for how the individual they had chosen illustrated those qualities.

“The goal from a social-studies-speci c lens,” says Bailey, “is for students to understand what it's

illustration by Bryce Wymer

Social Studies teacher Rose Bailey (le ), and English teacher Adam Machson-Carter

like to be a researcher with expertise who is able to communicate that expertise to others. The panels the students took part in are modeled after a research form they might see later in their academic careers. It required them to think about and explain what democratic citizenship means and, when it was their turn to ask questions, to ask classmates about their research in order to draw connections. It’s about both the process and their gures.”

ISHA SINGH ’29 chose 19th-century writer and activist Matilda Joselyn Gage, whom she found on the Women’s History Museum website, as the historical gure she wanted to know more about. “I was wondering why I hadn’t heard of her before, and furthermore, why she wasn’t spoken about as much as [women’s rights activists] Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton,” Isha says.

In the English portion of the project, the sixth-graders engaged in a deep study of storytelling and the literary techniques writers employ. They started with Humans of New York, a book and collection of Instagram blog posts about people living in New York City, and personal narratives by children’s book writers, including The Proudest Blue: A Story of Hijab and Family, by Ibtihaj Muhammad.

“We looked at these stories together,” Machson-Carter says. “Here’s why an author is doing this. Here’s how an author is exploding a moment—a strategy to spread out a really important moment—and here's how they use that moment to show the reader what they mean. Students then took those lessons to create their own narratives. They got to tell the story they wanted to tell,

but they had a set of techniques that they needed to try to apply.”

Isha Singh’s personal narrative, “Riya and Friends,” described her close ties with her sister, RIYA SINGH ’22, and how their relationship helped her form closer connections with others. “I wanted to show how much family means to me, but because socializing and teamwork are such important aspects of the Milton community, I also wanted to connect it back to Milton,” Isha says. “Before we did this project I didn't really consider how much impact stories had on people.”

Through the year-long process of researching, reading, and writing, Bailey and Machson-Carter believe the students came away with a number of important lessons. They not only learned storytelling skills, but also were asked to consider whose stories are told and by whom. “We read a novel by a Choctaw author about the Trail of Tears and talked about what it means to hear this story from the perspective of someone like Andrew Jackson and someone whose family was part of the Trail of Tears,” Machson-Carter says. “We asked them to think critically about how to make those two sides present themselves.”

“Through this process of writing research papers and personal narratives, they have really solid modeling skills they can take forward as they move through their grades here,” Bailey says. “What we’re always working on in the Middle School— and through this e ort speci cally—is empowering our students to re ect on who they are, know how to use their voices to express their thoughts, and think about how they can use their voices for change.”

“Through this process…they have really solid modeling skills they can take forward as they move through their grades here.”

ROSE BAILEY

courtesy of rose bailey

On Centre VIEWS

Eva Nionakis

’29 welcomes classmates, teachers, and families to the Grade Six Humanities Showcase,a morning-long event of reporting and storytelling. The students wrote reports on the lives of U.S. historical gures and read and wrote their own personal narratives.

AWARDS

Leah Li ’26 Selected as New York Times Science Writing Winner

LEAH LI ’26 was selected as one of the top 10 winners of the New York Times Student STEM Writing Contest this year, and her essay exploring what glass frogs can tell us about human blood clotting was published by the Times last month.

“I’ve always been interested in how nature gives us such a good handbook for dealing with problems, like how the design of bullet trains was inspired by birds because they’re so aerodynamic,” Leah says. “Nature tells us a lot about what we can do. In terms of the glass frogs, their ability to put all their red blood cells into their liver could give us some guidance on how we can prevent blood clots in humans.”

Leah, a boarding student from Texas who lives in Hallowell House, was one of more than 3,000 entrants in the contest. Competitors had to write about a stimulating discovery or topic that they found interesting and cite at least one source from the New York Times, Science News, or its sister site, Science News Explores

In selecting her topic, Leah

read through science articles she found fascinating and learned about glass frogs in Panama. The frog species, as Leah wrote, is “one of the few transparent terrestrial creatures.” As a result, the operation of its circulatory system is visible. Scientists who studied the frogs during di erent activities found that while the frogs slept, almost 90 percent of their red blood cells traveled to their livers, e ectively allowing them to safely be translucent and better protected from predators.

This high concentration of red blood cells in the frogs’ tiny livers surprised the researchers, who questioned how it was possible without the frogs developing blood clots—and whether the discovery could have implications for the treatment of blood clots in humans, where they can be fatal. As Leah wrote, “Through targeted research on the frog’s ability to contain dense concentrations of red blood cells without clotting, researchers hope to replicate the natural success of this amphibian to save the lives of millions.”

■ TANNER BURNETT ‘23 hoped to create a “ uid photo with dynamic movement” with this stroboscopic image featuring MARIANA DOS SANTOS ‘25. The photo, which was on display during Milton’s Arts Night, was an “equal creative collaboration” between Mariana and Tanner, who gave Mariana some general ideas for movement and later edited the image to de ne and solidify the individual frames, resulting in a still photograph of pure movement.

Alum Neha Wadekar ’07 Returns for 44th Persky Awards

Remembering Philanthropist and Milton Supporter John Berylson

A lifelong love of writing and storytelling, stoked by English classes at Milton, propelled NEHA WADEKAR ’07 into a career in freelance journalism, she told students at the 44th Annual Laurence S. Persky Memorial Awards, which honors the best in student-published writing and artwork.

Steve Darling Named Strength Coach of the Year

STEVE DARLING P ’21, ’23, Milton’s director of strength and conditioning, received the Massachusetts State Coach of the Year award from the National High School Strength Coaches Association (NHSSCA). Darling works with Milton student-athletes to help them perform at the highest levels and achieve their goals while keeping their physical and mental well-being a top priority.

Darling has worked at Milton since 2002 and has served the school in many capacities, including as head coach of the

boys’ track team, a throws coach for the boys’ and girls’ track and eld teams, a member of the counseling outreach program, and a faculty member in Hathaway House. As a certi ed athletic trainer, Darling also works with the athletic training sta , and he teaches Health, Project Adventure, and Fitness Concepts through Milton’s physical education program. The NHSSCA award, he says, is one of the highlights of his career. “I am a lucky guy with the best job in the world.”

“I joined Milton in seventh grade, and I remember coming back for my revisit day and Ms. Simon was teaching Pride and Prejudice,” Wadekar recalled at the ceremony. “I was blown away by the level of backand-forth discussion that the students were having about the meaning of the novel and the speci c intentions of certain passages and the construction of particular sentences.”

Today, Wadekar is a multimedia freelance journalist based in Nairobi, where she reports on issues of climate, gender, crisis and con ict, and human rights. Her work has been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, and on PBS “NewsHour,” CNN, and others.

Philanthropist and businessman JOHN BERYLSON P ’04, one of Milton’s most generous supporters, passed away July 4, 2023. Berylson, the father of former Trustee ELIZABETH B. KATZ ’04, along with his wife, Amy, were instrumental in the success of Milton’s recent Dare campaign, providing funding for a new turf eld, Berylson Field; the Berylson Family Faculty and Resource Room in the Pritzker Science Center; and the revitalization of the Berylson Reading Room within Cox Library.

■ Steve Darling, le , with a representative from the NHSSCA.

NEW APPOINTMENTS

Bland and Bloom Awarded Medal

Lower School Principal

Amy Criswell

In July, AMY CRISWELL became Milton’s Lower School principal. Criswell was most recently the early childhood and Lower School director at Elgin Academy, an independent school in suburban Chicago, where she oversaw the school’s pre-K through fourth grade curricula, scope, and sequence. Prior to Elgin Academy, Criswell worked at the Dawson School, an independent school in Lafayette, Colorado, and as a teacher at public and independent elementary schools in Colorado, Maine, and New Hampshire. A native of the greater Boston area, Criswell earned her B.A. in theater (youth drama) and a master’s degree in elementary education from the University of New Hampshire.

Dean of College Counseling

Laurén Carter

LAURÉN CARTER (see page 6 for Q&A) has spent more than three decades in the college admissions and counseling profession—and more than 20 of those years directing independent schools’ college counseling programs. Carter recently served as director of college counseling at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., where she has implemented innovative college counseling programs, workshops, systems, and structures. She has also served as associate director of college counseling at Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia; director of college counseling at the Louisville Collegiate School in Louisville, Kentucky; the Albany Academy for Girls in Albany, New York; and Newark Academy in Newark, New Jersey. She brings higher education experience, as well, having served as director of college admissions at New York University in Manhattan.

Chief Legal Counsel

Susika Wylie

SUSIKA WYLIE, formerly Milton’s counsel and compliance manager, became its chief legal counsel and a member of the Administrative Council on July 1. Wylie has been at Milton since January 2020. She previously worked for approximately 10 years as the deputy general counsel for litigation and program integrity in the Massachusetts Executive O ce of Health and Human Services and as an assistant attorney general and special assistant attorney general in the trial division of the O ce of the Massachusetts Attorney General. She also spent two years at a general practice law rm in Cincinnati, prior to relocating to Massachusetts. Wylie received her bachelor’s degree from Kent State University and her J.D. from the University of Cincinnati College of Law.

In May, Milton’s Board of Trustees bestowed Milton’s highest honor—the Milton Medal—upon Head of School TODD BLAND P ’13 ’14 ’14 and Trustee Emeritus BRADLEY BLOOM P ’06 ’08 for their outstanding service and leadership at Milton. Bland, who led the school for the past 14 years, and Bloom, a member of the Board of Trustees from 2004 to 2015, were recognized for their work advancing the mission and success of Milton Academy and for their impact, which will “last long past their formal terms.”

MILTON MEDAL

Michael Dwyer

“At the end of the day, we’re here to help other people and leave the place better than we found it. It doesn’t need to be much more complicated than that.”

GRADUATION 2023

THE CLASS OF 2023:

• Caroline Adele Albright

• Zola Mia Alcaro

• Amanda Ruby Alegria

• Blake Sterling Ankner

• Ismail Assafi

• Yohana Aweke

• Darius Reines Banaitis

• Omar Tanu Barry

• Alia Bayoumi

• Stefania Bielkina

• Caitlin Alexandra Blanksteen

• William Bailey Bourell

• Cailey Anne Brousseau

• Harrison Paul Brown

• Star Bryan

• Catherine Dolan Buckley

• Tanner Christian Burnett

• Mateo Rafael Ochieng Buyu

• Jade Campbell

• Claire Jolie Candela

• Gavin Michael Carter

• William Ewald Charles

• Mason Connor Chen

• Victor Wenhan Chen

• Aidan William Chiang

• Louis Adams Chiasson

• Aidan Chuang

• Robert Henry Cohen

• Harrison Lewis Coyne

• Jack Thomas Crowley

• Henry La-Hyunju Dallman

• Henry Dennis Darling

• Maximilian Steve Deisboeck

• Lorenzo James de Simone

• Noelle Skylar Devonish

• Benjamin Dorje Dixey

• Annabel Sawyer Dunnington

• Miles Morrison English

• Nika Aryanpour Farokhzad

• Jackson Graydon Faughnan

• Sophia Louise Agnes Fife

• Sophie Merritt Fisher

• Isabelle Grace Fitzgibbon

• Jack Dylan Flowers

• Pia Isabella Franken

• John Yuhan Fu

• Gabriella Rose Gallagher

• William MacEwen Gallagher

• Elizabeth Caroline Gallori

• Kylee Adelle Galva

• Vivian Ann Gao

• Kyra Yuanbin Geyling

• Grace Daggett Grady

• Jack Joseph Graham

• John Donald Greenip

• Mitchell Wayne Swirka Griffin

• Owen Mark GwinnLandry

• Yaman Habip

• Lan Hai

• Madelyn Rose Handly

• Michael Maynard Hanlon

• Emma Ruth Salvage Harris

• Trinity Marjorie Jasoda Hartridge

• Brian Cornelius Hegarty

• Theodora Reiss Heredia

• Connor Fenton Hicks

• Melany Arielle Hirsch

• Caleb Daxe Hirschfeld

• Scarlett Olds Hoffman

• Abigail Therese Holcomb

• Jacob Robert Holtschlag

• Thomas Stephen Hong

• Audrey Mairead Howley

• Seo Jeong Kate Hwang

• Molly Elizabeth Isaac

• Sohaila Omar Hosam Gamaleldin Ismail

• Sydney Morgan Iwaskow

• Samuel Robert Johnson

• Sara Rani Kalra

• Arianna Grace Kamal

• Sarah Simo Kamdem

• Isabella Kanczuk

• Qayson Ali Kara

• Nikhil Pal Kathiresan

• Julian Katsoulis

• Mikka Kelechian

• Brenna Marie Kelley

• Matias Manuel Kemper-Tapia

• Austin Bates Kinnealey

• Hannah Fleur Fuyun Knowlton

• Nathaniel Charles Landau

• Jackson Rye Landy

• Oreofeoluwakitan Oluwatoni Lanre-Phillips

• Brynn Josephine Leahy

• Jessica Harrington Lee

• Elsa Lynden Foote LeStage

• Savanna Ya-Zhi Leung

• Abram Samuel Litvak

• Dennis George Losett

• Brendan Thomas Maher

• Nimco Muxumed Maxamuud

• Dixon McClintock

• Ryan Matthew McGauley

• Ryan Patrick McGurn

• Murphy McLaughlin

• Cori Michelle Miller

• Makena Ann Monahan

• Meredith Catherine Monnich

• Iden Noél Montalvo

• Sophia Elaine Morse

• Isabella Mostofi

• Sofia Renee Mraz

• Jacob Alexander Chernock Mulliken

• Sophie Wren Winslow Myers

• Phúc Gia Ngô

• Rachel Kandel Novick

• Isabelle Jaye Ocko

• Michaela Ocko

• Ronan Colm O’Flaherty

JOHN AVLON ’91

Milton awarded diplomas to 192 seniors during this year’s graduation exercises on June 9, 2023.

• Genevieve Zaragoza O’Marah

• Cameron Michael O’Rourke

• Fernando Benjamin Paiz

• Emma Grace Petherick

• Jacob Irwin Pohl

• Allison Rose Polimeno

• Madden Powers

• Julia Marie Price

• Ailanni Jayne Quander

• Charlie Quinn

• Andrew Kenneth Rappleyea

• Jonah Williams Reay

• Sofia Maria Reid

• Annie Elizabeth Renz

• Jonah Charles Renz

• Isabel Reynoso

• Nicole Eva Rivkin

• Aiden Paolo Rodriguez

• Andrew Burling Rodriguez

• Daniel J. Rosenberg

• Marina Julia Rounds

• Jacqueline Hart Ruggieri

• Adriana Lisette Ruiz

• Ava Radiet Russell

• Hannah Elizabeth Sabio

• Eliza Grace Sadhwani

• Gracie Vikram Sagar

• Jadier Dominic Sanchez

• Henry Michael Schoettle

• Charles L. Sclater-Booth

• Nina Shah

• Jesse Ryan Shue

• Wayne Louis Simon

• Aleisha Esther Sin

• Arhan Singh

• Alden Havemeyer Smith

• Julia Yi Fitzgibbons Smith

• Amelia Murphy Solomon

• Robin Quinn Storey

• Thomas Brewster Strong

Where They’re Headed

Georgetown University, Harvard, and Boston College top the 87 destinations for Milton’s ‘23 grads.

“I want you to think of a time where you and a friend succeeded, or you and a group achieved something you could not have done alone. Understand that those are the experiences that will be hand-printed on your heart. Those are the memories that will carry you through your life.”

ARHAN

• Julie Marie Sullivan

• Laura Frances Sullivan

• Nancy Tao

• Elio Thadhani

• Jaden Elijah Thompson

• Mia Alexa Todd

• Julia Boden Torrey

• John David Truesdale

• Ralph Gardner Vogel

• Rio Voss-Kernan

• Ella Kate Walsmith

• Emma Wang

• Jianyu Wang

• Jue Wang

• Desman Dillon Ward

• Ben William Waterman

• Glenn Fenimore Cooper Weil

• James Birdseye Endicott Weil

• Kiana Allison West

• Thomas Butler Dingman Wideman

• Sarah Davies Wiemeyer

• Natalie Owen Williamson

• Alexandra Murray Wilson

• Julia Reed Winter

• Ted Xunjiang Wu

• Sharon Xie

• Sophia Xie

• Victor Xu

• Anna Yang

• Can Yildirim

• Katrina Yip

• Evan Zhang

• Lucia Eleanor Zinny

“The people who love and care for you will be there for who you are, so don’t modify and mold yourself in fear of others. Show up as you are. Make the choices that allow you to be the most authentic, truest version of yourself.”

GRACIE SAGAR ’23

SINGH ’23

Milton Welcomes Its Newest Trustees

Milton’s Board of Trustees provides essential support to the school, promoting its mission, vision, and goals. Milton is grateful to this year’s retiring Board members: DOUGLAS CROCKER II ’58, ELEANOR “TABI” HALLER-JORDEN ’75 P ’09, ELIZABETH “LIZ” KATZ ’04, SYLVIA P. WESTPHAL P ’18 ’21 ’25 ’27 ’27, and WILLIAM A. KNOWLTON P ’23. We thank them for their service. In September, the Board welcomed the following new members:

RANA EL KALIOUBY P ’21, ‘27 is co-founder and former CEO of A ectiva, a general partner at AI Operators Fund, and an executive fellow at Harvard Business School. She wrote a best selling memoir, Girl Decoded: A Scientist’s Quest to Reclaim Our Humanity by Bringing Emotional Intelligence to Technology, and is a trustee at the Boston Museum of Science and the American University in Cairo, a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization, and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. El Kaliouby has been recognized in Entrepreneur’s 100 Women of In uence, Fortune’s 40 Under 40, Forbes’s Top 50 Women in Tech, and the Boston Globe’s Top 50 Tech Power Players, and selected as an Eisenhower fellow. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and a post doctorate from MIT and is a Milton Academy parent of Jana ’21 and Adam ’27.

MOLLY H. KING served as Greenwich Academy’s head of school from 2004 to 2023 and is a partner at Resource Group 175. Previously, she was director of admission at St. Mark’s School and a member of the senior leadership team at Fay School. She taught and coached at Ta School and Greenwich Country Day School, and was a trustee and board chair for the School Participatory Action Research Collaborative, a board member for the Connecticut Association of Independent Schools, and a member and former president of the Fairchester Heads group. She serves as president general for the Cum Laude Society and was recently elected to the board of Bowdoin College, where she is a member of the Bowdoin Women’s Advisory Group. She received a B.A. in American history from Bowdoin College and an Ed.M. in administration, planning, and social policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

LAMONT A. GORDON ’87 is the executive director at College Visions. Previously, he served as executive director of Leadership Enterprise for a Diverse America and as vice president of programs at the Jackie Robinson Foundation. Gordon also served in senior leadership positions at the Posse Foundation, including as director of Posse Boston and later associate vice president. Prior to joining Posse, he was Brown University’s rst director of education outreach, and he began his career at the Community Preparatory School where he was the school’s rst director of admission, nancial aid, and placement. Gordon is chair of the national board of directors at Higher Achievement. In addition to his bachelor’s degree in urban studies from Brown University, Gordon holds master’s and doctoral degrees from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

DAVE CAPPILLO P ’20 ’24 ’26 is a partner in Goodwin Procter LLP’s Technology Group and cochair of its health care practice. He has been selected for inclusion in Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business, recognized as a National Law Journal Trailblazer for his M&A practice, and included in U.S. News—Best Lawyers for his national corporate, M&A, VC, and emerging company practice. Cappillo is a trustee emeritus for the Meadowbrook School of Weston and was on the founding advisory board of BUILD Boston, a nonpro t helping high school students succeed in school and life. He holds a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law and a B.A. from Colgate University and is a parent of Maddie ’20, Kaitlyn ’24, and Chris ’26.

Rana el Kaliouby

marisa donelan, eileen newman, john gillooly

Dave Cappillo

Molly H. King

Lamont A. Gordon

MILTON PAYS TRIBUTE TO RETIREES

MILTON RECOGNIZES THOSE EMPLOYEES WHO RETIRED IN JUNE FOR THEIR MANY YEARS OF DEDICATED SERVICE

1996-2023

“‘Busy’ does not do Paula’s career at Milton justice, not even close. It is Paula’s unique qualities that have made her a tremendous partner to her colleagues and a champion to Milton. Do you remember all the advice you were given when you were growing up? As I tried to summarize how I see Paula and what she has done for our school, I realized that Paula embodies the values that we—as mentors to young people—try to pass along.”

—HEIDI

Ernie Ostine

FACILITIES SERVICES

1978-2023

“Ernie has o en shared with colleagues that he truly loves Milton Academy and the opportunities it o ers to students. He has always seen the value in what the school provides to everyone who touches it and wanted to be a part of the school’s success.”

—NICK PARNELL, DIRECTOR FACILITIES SERVICES

FACILITIES SERVICES

2011-2023

1996-2023

“One of Kevin’s greatest strengths was building positive and caring relationships with everyone. Many of his former players have shared stories about Kevin’s care, loyalty, and support. He is known for creating an environment that builds con dence within his players, as well as humility; celebrating their successes with positivity; and helping them to learn and grow when mistakes were made.”

—STEVEN C. DARLING HEAD STRENGTH AND CONDITIONING COACH

“As much as Lynn gives to the work itself, she balances it all with fun and great conversation. Lynn is always ready to lend an ear to anyone who needs it, provide perspective that is real and caring at the same time, and share what she hears around campus if she thinks it will help someone.”

—NICK PARNELL, DIRECTOR FACILITIES SERVICES

Chris White

FACILITIES SERVICES

2009-2023

“Despite all the stress that this type of job might cause, Chris has been described as ”probably the easiest going person on campus.” He was always calm and had a smile to share for those who stopped by the mailroom, even for those who slid in the door near 4 p.m. He was friends with adults from all departments, divisions, and ranks.”

—NICK PARNELL, DIRECTOR FACILITIES SERVICES

Paula Bonarrigo CAMPUS SERVICES AND EVENTS, DIRECTOR

VANDERBILT-BROWN CHIEF FINANCIAL & OPERATING OFFICER

Kevin MacDonald ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT

Lynn O’Sullivan

A Cause to Keep Us True

Flexible annual support through the Milton Fund empowers Milton to shape today’s engaged citizens and tomorrow’s leaders through a commitment to Milton’s independent K-12 education.

Each year, gifts to the Milton Fund provide critical resources that sustain the excellence of a Milton education and allow the school to embrace new opportunities by funding core priorities.

The Power of Your Gifts

Robotics equipment for Middle School robotics team

SCHOOL’S GREATEST NEEDS

Faculty conference stipends for the National Association of Independent Schools

FINANCIAL AID

Support for all financial aid recipients taking music lessons

FACULTY SUPPORT

DIVERSITY, EQUITY, INCLUSION, AND JUSTICE

Funding for K-12 Culture Fest

FACILITIES

STUDENT EXPERIENCE

Ware Hall classroom updates

Monthly cost of school van use for weekly volunteers

1948

ROBERT GANNON WHITE SR. passed away in August 2022 in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Bob was raised in Milton with his three siblings Allan ‘44, Donald ‘46, and sister Audree. Bob was devoted to his family and is survived by his sister and four children, Julie Watkins White ‘83, Jennifer White ‘85, Sarah White Bournakel ‘87, and Robert White Jr. He was actively involved with Milton Academy until his passing, serving on reunion committees and participating in events. In the spirit of Milton Academy, he always “Dared to Be True.” His great sense of humor and dry wit is greatly missed.

1951

WALTER CABOT is looking back on a life well lived, both in what he has accomplished and in what he has given back to our community and society. In regards to Milton, Walter would make three observations: First, he took his then-girlfriend, Dorsey, to a rst-class dance, which initiated a glorious marriage for 68 years. Second, he enjoyed a less than competitive formal education relative to what Milton students get today. Third, he learned some very important principles in regards to life. These were best expressed by football coach, Herb “Stokie” Stokinger, who said, “Play hard, aim to win, but play the game straight.” This has been his life’s mantra. He has worked hard, learned the skills of

1956

ELIZABETH “BETSY” (REECE) HALL (second from right) still lives in Boston’s South End and is visited o en by her son, daughter, and granddaughter, who live in Maine, Portland, and Bar Harbor respectively. Last fall, she attended symphony with classmates HANNA (HIGGINS) BARTLETT, EVELYN “LYN” CROCKER, and MARGARETTA “MITZI” (GRAVES) MARSH. She spends her time with friends, reading, and researching her family history; to date she has self-published two books on the subject. She’s hopeful there will be a 70th Reunion in her future, 2026!

leadership, the ability to analyze both sides of the topic, hired good people, and executed e ectively. He has had success and enjoyed the fruits of winning. But most important, Walter learned from Stokie to play life’s game with honesty, integrity, by the rules of fair play and passion, and with a sense of joy and accomplishment. You can’t get a better education than that!

1952

KITTY (BIGELOW) BENTON moved to Laurelmead, a senior co-op in Providence, Rhode Island, where she has a two-bedroom apartment with a full kitchen, a washer dryer, and a balcony overlooking the mighty Seekonk River. She says, “It was a good move, although it is a huge adjustment to leave New York a er having lived there for the better part of the last 70 years.” She has joined a book group, a poetry group, and the committee that curates the art on the walls. There is also a pianist with whom she plays Brahms on Friday mornings. There are interesting speakers, backgammon, duplicate bridge,

a fabulous swimming pool, really nice people, gorgeous grounds, and the food is delicious. It’s only an hour away from the family house in Wareham, which many of you visited and is now a family gathering place.

EMERY (BRADLEY) GOFF is typing this with one hand because she fell at her senior living establishment and broke a shoulder. She also lost her dear husband of 46 years in January of this year. As they all say, “Getting old is certainly not for sissies.”

1953

HUGH MARLOW was excited to attend Reunion and see as many familiar faces as possible.

MICHAEL “MIKE” ROBERTSON came back to campus in June for Reunion and for his class’s 70th Reunion memorial service, conducted by JOHN WEBSTER

The names of 34 boys and 11 girls were read, and Mike and his classmates were able to picture them vividly and fondly. Mike also served as a speaker at the Milton Talks program during Reunion.

1954

MARY (PRATT) ARDANT has been a Londoner for more than 50 years but returns every August to Squam Lake in New Hampshire. She would really love to have news from/of classmates and hopes you all share your news for the spring magazine!!

1955

VICTORIA BARR recently published a book of her artwork.

1956

JOHN BASSETT is still alive in Brookline, Massachusetts. He can’t remember any accomplishments. He says hello to anyone who can remember him.

RUPERT HITZIG says, “What a life I’ve had!” He has had an extensive career in producing and directing, which started in live theater and then included touring. He went on to work in the television and lm industry and worked on projects such as Saturday Night Live and The Squeeze, starring Michael Keaton. Rupert hosted Julia Child’s 80th birthday party for 500 people, and is now going to acting school. He is currently in partnership with the astronaut Buzz Aldrin on a 10-part mini-series (Encounter with Tiber) that takes place on Alpha Centauri, a distant galaxy, in 2065. Through it all, he has been backed up by a

marvelous life partner, Karen, (44 years) and sired two wonderful sons, who are now his heroes for their individuality and strength. He has loved, laughed, cried, danced, had far too many drinks, eaten in the greatest restaurants in the world, and is still singing even when not asked.

Rupert looks forward to more love, laughter, and joy, and backwards at those formative years at Milton with a combination of reverence and amusement. So many friends come from then and there.

1962

PAMELA “PAM” (WATSON) SEBASTIAN has been getting used to life without her husband, John, who died of pancreatic cancer two days a er their 50th anniversary, in November 2021. She still goes to lots of concerts and sees her son’s family every week in her granny-nanny days with young Bear, who’s now six, but she’s really missing her traveling companion. She and classmates

JULIE CHEEVER and JUDITH “JUDY”

(PERRY) GUGGENHIME, all of whom live in San Francisco, get together every once in a while, which is always fun. She meant to send this photo of a lunch when classmate AMY (BRIGHT) UNFRIED was in town last fall, but still hasn’t gured out how to “un-mirror” a sel e.

SUSAN SHERK received the degree of doctor of laws, honoris causa, from Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador for a “lifetime of work in community development and entrepreneurship, and for her uncommon dedication to the Province’s arts and culture sector.” Memorial University, the only university in Newfoundland and Labrador, is a public research institution with a total enrollment of more than 19,000 students from more than 115 countries. Susan also received the Hall of Honour Award on June 23, 2023, from Arts NL, the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council, which “recognizes a person, group, or organization that has made a distinguished lifetime contribution to the cultural life of Newfoundland and Labrador.”

1963

FREDERIC “DERIC” B. JENNINGS, JR. has continued with his writing of essays and academic papers, mostly about what is so wrong with the e ciency case for competition in his eld of economics, based on a view that this system is promoting and maintaining a dangerously myopic culture responsible for many ills, including

1956 PHILIP TYLER RAND traveled in various parts of Australia from the end of December to mid-January, covering the western half of the country, north and south.

widespread ethical and ecological losses. You will nd 14 of his essays here: https://www. resilience.org/resilience-author/frederic-jennings, and you can nd many of his academic publications at this site: https:// independent.academia.edu/ FredericJennings. Owing to his advancing age, he has been scaling down his saltwater yshing guide services here in Ipswich, to his great regret. He is also looking for a willing kidney donor (the maximum age for such donors is 75).

1964

LINDLEY GREENOUGH THOMASSET writes that she is currently in stage 5 of chronic kidney disease. On the transplant list at Mt. Sinai for a kidney, she is grateful to her classmates who have been really supportive in her quest to nd a donor. Lindley writes that Milton has given her many gi s, notably the courage to do public speaking with condence, to sing in a wonderful group, and the Hudson Bells because of Miss McCawley’s musical training in solfège. She notes that Mr. Abell was very in uential in her music education and background. Because of Milton, she was able to be part of the Festival Chorus and even sang in Symphony Hall before her mother, Beverly Sills, did with Mr. Leinsdorf. She is honored by the legacy her mother and father, PETER B. GREENOUGH ’35, le her. “Milton really made a di erence in my life as well as for other

Pamela “Pam” (Watson) Sebastian ’62 (right)

Susan Sherk ’62

Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building

CLAIRE HUGHES JOHNSON ’90 P’24, ‘27 STRIPE PRESS

In 2014, CLAIRE HUGHES JOHNSON ’90 le Google to become chief operating o cer at a much smaller company, Stripe, which at the time had 160 employees and tens of millions of dollars in revenue. Now the company, which focuses on online commerce infrstructure, has more than 7,000 employees and billions in revenue. In her new book, which has appeared on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list, she provides insights “for company builders who value creating a long-term legacy and share a people-oriented viewpoint on the work they’re doing.” Featuring interviews with experts in the eld—including the founders of LinkedIn and Zoom, and practical tools such as worksheets and checklists, the book addresses company operating fundamentals and myriad challenging management situations, ranging from ring employees to telling high performers they won’t be promoted. In its review, the Economist noted that Scaling People has “gone long on tactics and pragmitism, short on gu ” and that “it is unapologetically practical.” She advises her readers to follow four essential operating principles as a basis for success: build self-awareness to build mutual awareness; say the thing you think you cannot say; distinguish between management and leadership; and come back to your operating system. She also outlines how to create and measure progress toward goals, how to hire employees and develop teams, and how to orient a company culture that invites feedback to foster improvement. The book ends with advice to managers on managing their own careers and nding ful llment.

family members, NANCY (GREENOUGH) BLISS ’67, Albert Holden, RAYMOND “HARRY” NORWEB ’66, and EMERY BRADLEY (GOFF) CARTWRIGHT ’52. I wish ALIXE CALLEN ’88 all the success and good wishes for her succession as head of school. I think she has the ‘right stu ’ to do an excellent job, and I congratulate her.”

1970

changed basketball court brought back a ood of memories.

1969

EDWARD PELLEGRINI is nishing a YA novel called Queen Nubya and Topaz.

1972

WILLIAM C. BAKER retired a er running the $30M Chesapeake Bay Foundation for 40 years. He now runs the Clayton Baker Trust, which distributes some $2M annually to social service and environmental organizations. He has just married Whitney Taylor, a recently retired attorney. Together, they travel, sail, and ski.

1973

PETER CLOUTIER and his wife, Pamela, visited the Milton campus in mid-May and were graciously shown around Wolcott House by Sagal Mohamed of the O ce of Development and Alumni Relations and by SERHII MALEVYCH ‘24 (at le ) a student from Ukraine. It was most enjoyable, and Peter was very happy to be able to show Pamela the photos taken of all the Wolcott residents during his four years (1966–1970). Peter was most happy to visit what used to be the only athletic center (thanks to the equipment manager who kindly let us in) and to locate some photos of himself on sports teams. Seeing the un-

JOCELYN “JILL” (SHAW) WOOLWORTH wrote The Waterwheel: Practical Wisdom for 64 Common Concerns as a gi book in 2018. It is a blend of cartoons and counseling.

1975

RICHARD H. BARBOUR III retired from the American Bureau of Shipping in New Orleans last November a er 35 years as a marine electrical engineer. He and his wife, Charlotte, moved to Norwich, Connecticut, in a lovely little home on the Thames River with a

(CONTINUED ON PAGE 55)

Claire Hughes Johnson became president of Milton’s Board of Trustees in 2022.

Reunion Weekend 2023

Over the weekend of June 16–17, 521 graduates and guests returned to campus for Reunion 2023, celebrating classes ending in 3 and 8.

REUNION WEEKEND

JUNE 16-17

Alumni celebrating their reunions (some belatedly) came to campus in June to catch up with old friends and participate in a variety of activities—from choral and art events to student panels and school updates.

“I’m back because this place was so central to who I am and who I’ve become as a human being. Whenever I come back here, I truly feel like this is home. I hope that I can come back ve years from now and ten years from now and meet many more alumni who can talk about why Milton is home for them.”

Athletic Director

LAMAR REDDICKS (center) catching up with former Mustangs during dinner with the Classes of 2013 and 2018. From

le : JORDAN QUIN-

TIN ’13, NICHOLAS

“NICK” PAGLIUCA

’13, Reddicks, and JAMES “JIMMY” HADDAD ’13.

“I come back to Milton because they were the most formative four years of my life. All of my closest friends were made here. Most of the most important things I’ve learned were what I learned here. This school is a formative part of my identity, so I always come back to Reunion.”

—TRUSTEE OSAREMEN OKOLO ’13

—JAMES “RYAN” HARVEY ’98

Members of the Classes of 1953, 1958, 1963, and 1968 enjoying dinner together in Thatcher Auditorium.

DIANA SHAND ’63 and DAPHNE (HUNSAKER) HALL ’63 admiring the modern Milton campus while on a tour.

REUNION EVENTS

● FRIDAY, 12 PM

DARE TO BE TRUE LUNCH

To kick o their 50th Reunion celebration, members of the Class of 1973 were invited to a “Dare to Be True: Lunch and Panel,” where former Head of School Todd B. Bland and current Head of School ALIXE CALLEN ’88 spoke about the evolution of Milton from their time to the present.

BY THE NUMBERS

3 5th through 70th Reunion Gi s: $1,534,491 from 559 donors (to the Milton Fund) 3 Class with highest Reunion Gi participation: 1963, with 55% participation 3 Class with largest Reunion Gi total: 1998, with $360,423 3 Class with the most Reunion Gi donors: 1998, with 70 donors 3 Total attendees: 521 3 Furthest distance traveled: 9,110 miles from New Zealand 3 Countries represented: 9 (Bahamas, Canada, China, Finland, Great Britain, Hong Kong, Italy, New Zealand, St. John (Virgin Islands)) 3 Class with the highest number attending: A tie! 2018 and 1973, with 51 attendees each 3 Oldest class year attending: 1953 3 Classes represented: 24 3 Total Reunion Committee volunteers: 71

3 Bow ties on a stick handed out: 150 3 Glasses of champagne toasted: 120 3 Inches of rain fallen: 3 3 Golf carts giving rides around campus: 6

3 Memories made: Innumerable 3 Number of partnerships with Milton faculty, sta , and administrators: 75 3 Number of students who helped make Reunion special: 10 3 Number of mini-golf holes played during Family Festival: 30

● FRIDAY, 4 PM

INTRODUCTION TO RESTORATIVE JUSTICE

Milton Academy’s Director of Restorative Practices

Suzanne DeBuhr gave alumni an insightful overview of the processes that Milton has adopted to heal wounds, including Circle practice and its history. The audience then engaged in a mini Circle practice, sharing their connections to Milton and the values they established while at Milton. This practice creates a cycle of empowerment to build trust and accountability. Suzanne talked about how restorative frameworks help Milton view wrongdoing through a relational lens that shi s punitive to restorative in order to focus on the needs of those who have been harmed, rather than on punishment of the harmer. Participants were invited to re ect on how this approach compares with the discipline practices while they were students.

Class of 2018 graduates (l-r) TYLER CAMPBELL, SOPHIE CLIVIO, KAILEE SILVER, CAROLINE MAGANN, and GIORGOS GEROUKOS catching up at the All Class Party.

Members of the Class of 1973 gather together to celebrate their 50th reunion at a dinner in Pritzker Science Center.”

“It’s the people. It’s always the people. I’m sure it’s not just my class, but my class just feels like a really special group of people, so getting to be able to come back and reconnect with people, nd out what they’re up to, meet their kids, and getting to do it in spaces that hold a lot of memories is really special.”

—LYDON VONNEGUT ’98

●

SATURDAY, 2:30 PM MILTON TALKS

Director of Alumni and Parent Engagement Molly Herman introduced four alumni, TYLER SIMMONS ’03, MARC SOTO ’83, NIA JACOBS ’98, and MICHAEL ROBERTSON ’53 P ’81 ’81 ’83 ’88 G ’13 ’17, to tell their stories, share some wisdom, and re ect on what “Dare to Be True” means to them. Tyler spoke on “Daring to Leap into the Professional Unknown.” Marc told how he has been “True to Self and Making a Di erence.” Nia o ered some wonderful insight on how “Nothing Can Need a Lie.” And Michael asked attendees whether they had given a hug yet that day and encouraged those who hadn’t to hug those around them and share how they could be “Daring to be Kind.”

“Today, I view the Milton mantra more broadly as a call for introspection and risk taking.… I look forward to many years ahead where I will take more risks, be more introspective, and continue to rede ne what ‘daring to be true’ means to me.”

—TYLER

● SATURDAY, 10:15 AM

STATE OF THE SCHOOL ADDRESS

CLAIRE HUGHES JOHNSON ’90 P ’24 ’27 (below), president of the Board of Trustees, introduced former Head of School Todd Bland to talk about highlights from Milton Academy’s classrooms, stages, and playing elds, along with re ections on his 14-year tenure at the helm of our school. His address was followed by an insightful and engaging discussion between Bland and current Head of School ALIXE CALLEN ‘88 about their thoughts on what’s next for Milton.

“The school that I went to is a di erent school today. It should be. Schools should evolve. The school of 1988 is not the school of 2023.” —HEAD OF SCHOOL ALIXE CALLEN ’88

“I’m here because I love getting back together with my friends from my class. I love reminiscing. I like to come back to inspire other young people to try to apply and attend Milton and to get involved and become activists at the school, as well as after their graduation. I’ve always been active and involved in minority organizations, and I started one at Milton, so it’s a sense of pride to come back to see the great advancement Milton has made when it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusion. This school helped me become the man I am today, and because of that, I come back.”

● SATURDAY, 11:30 AM

STUDENT LIFE PANEL

Upper School Principal Monica Benton-Palmer moderated a panel of four Class I and II students, l-r, SERHII MALEVYCH ’24, BENJAMIN SIEGEL ’24, LILY PARK ’24, and WILLIAM CHARLES ’23. The students discussed their various clubs and activities; their experiences being day, boarding, or international students; how they’ve grown during their time at Milton; and their favorite activities and traditions as Milton students.

“One thing that I’m going to take away from my time at Milton is the importance of nding community. Anything is possible when you have people out there supporting you. I’ve tried so many new things here … and I feel equally supported. I’m thankful there is such a strong community here that has taught me that.” —LILY PARK ’24

● SATURDAY, 12:30 PM

FAMILY FESTIVAL

Reunion attendees and their families braved the storm to pick up delicious food from the food trucks and then made their way inside the ACC for a funlled Family Festival. Guests of all ages enjoyed a variety of family-friendly activities, including face painting, mini golf, and giant Legos.

—MARC SOTO ’83

SIMMONS ’03

Nia Jacobs ’98

dock! He has kept active with a host of home improvements. They are doing ne and loving the New England weather. Richard’s daughter Rachel is an electrical engineer down in North Carolina, and his other daughter, Annie, is an LPN in the Norwood area of Massachusetts.

ELIZABETH “BETSY” BEERS is an executive producer on Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, which is the Bridgerton prequel available on Net ix.

GUY PUGH sang at the Tanglewood music festival this year with Carmina Burana. Guy has been singing with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and the Boston Symphony Orchestra for the past 20 years or so. His love of choral singing was planted by A. Howard Abell and nurtured by former Milton faculty member, Jim Hejduk. Guy joined the Glee Club in 1969 and has not stopped singing since then!

1978

MARGARET “MAGGIE”

JACKSON published her third book in November, Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure. Based on her research across the humanities and sciences and her reporting from AI labs, shelters, operating rooms, and political campaigns, Uncertain shows readers how to confront the unexpected by harnessing not knowing in pursuit of wisdom

and discovery. Maggie’s writings have been translated into multiple languages and won numerous awards. Her second book, Distracted, helped spark a global conversation on the steep costs of fragmenting our attention. She divides her time between New York City and coastal Rhode Island. She hopes to connect with Miltonians in her upcoming book-related travels.

1980

REBECCA WILLIAMS is a psychologist, wellness expert, and award-winning author. She recently published a book The Mindfulness Workbook for Addiction: A Guide to the Grief, Stress, and Anger That Trigger Addictive Behaviors Rebecca’s workbook bridges mindfulness and addiction recovery and is popular with therapists and anyone looking for compassionate support in recovery. Her book has been translated into ve languages.

1981

MATTHEW MOORE recently moved back to Fort Lauderdale a er nearly ve years in Los Angeles. Work had become increasingly centered in South Florida, and the constant ying back and forth became pretty draining. He continues to focus on complex litigation for Berman Law Group in Boca Raton.

1982

JOAN “JOANIE” BREWSTER recently completed training with INELDA as a death doula and is looking for opportunities to practice these important skills while contemplating getting certi ed.

1983

MATTHEW “MATT” FALLON completed an MA in catechetics and evangelization and is continuing work in religious education.

1984

ELISABETH “BETSY” WALCOTT, right, is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of San Diego. She encourages classmates to “please get in touch if you are in the area.” Betsy also writes that she, MELISSA GLEN, and KIM DOULOS all reconnected at their 35th Harvard reunion in June.

1986

SOLEDAD FOX, professor of Spanish and comparative literature at Williams College, is currently on sabbatical spending some time in Madrid with her mother, re-

1988 DAVID LINDSAY-ABAIRE met with Milton’s Grade 8 students during their spring trip to New York City, where the students enjoyed dinner with the playwright and saw his musical, Kimberly Akimbo David, who received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2007 for his play Rabbit Hole, became a Tony Award winner in June, when Kimberly Akimbo won Best Musical and he won Best Book of a Musical.

(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 50)

To Walk It Is to See It: 1 Couple, 98 Days, 1400 Miles on Europe’s GR5

KATHY ELKIND ’79 SHE WRITES PRESS

On “a search for how I want to show up for the last third of my life,” KATHY ELKIND ’79 recounts the adventure of a lifetime: walking with her husband, Jim, on the GR5 (Grand Randonée Cinq) trail that traverses several countries in Europe. A er selling their house and leaving their jobs on the cusp of 60, and with two children launched, she writes, the trip was an opportunity to nd their true selves and discover who they are as a couple. The journey was o to an inauspicious start when she got sick, but a er taking antibiotics and resting, she was able to commence through dandelion elds in Belgium and along the way encountered a church service in the woods in France and statues of Joan of Arc that helped her feel powerful. Interspersed with stories of the trek are re ections on her relationship with her husband and her childhood in the Boston area. When they returned home, she writes that walking the GR5 “has allowed me the distance to see the beauty, shape, and uniqueness of my marriage to Jim.”

Innovating with Impact

TED LADD ’87 & ALESSANDRO LANTERI THE ECONOMIST

People may think that innovation is the special province of geniuses who shout “Eureka!” when they create a ground-breaking product. But, as the authors explain, anyone can be an innovator—and they provide guidance on how to become one, with examples from various companies and products ranging from the rst bicycle to Uber. TED LADD ’87, professor of entrepreneurship at the Hult International Business School, and Alessandro Lanteri, professor of strategy at ESCP Business School, outline each layer of what they describe as an “innovation pyramid” whose foundation is bolstered by an entrepreneurial orientation. Innovative people, they write, demonstrate the ability to generate new ideas, have a sense of independence, take risks, and have a competitive personality. The authors describe the process of innovating, which involves understanding and empathizing with the consumer, designing a prototype, and testing the product. Once developed, innovations can be deployed for maximum impact by determining which audiences to target and how to market to them. “Innovation is not an occasional e ort or a serendipitous event,” they write. “It is a long-term commitment to cultivating the right mindset, developing the right culture, mastering the right tools and methods, and pursuing the right trajectories.”

Knife Drop

Little Monsters

NICK

DIGIOVANNI ’15 DK PUBLISHING

NICK DIGIOVANNI ’15 believes anyone can cook. And he shows how in his rst cookbook, which features a guide to must-have equipment and ingredients for the kitchen along with recipes from breakfast and snacks to dinner and dessert. He includes fundamentals for novice cooks, such as how to make chicken stock and recipes for staples like shrimp scampi, in addition to international fare such as the Thai dish pork belly khao soi. Although knowledge of the rules of cooking is needed for facility in the kitchen, he also advises people to approach cooking with fearlessness. “While a good cook knows the best practices,” he writes, “a great cook actively looks for ways to bend and break those very rules.” The book includes a foreword by Gordon Ramsay; DiGiovanni appeared on Ramsay’s TV show MasterChef and has cooked in several acclaimed restaurants. But DiGiovanni started in the food business long before that: He set up a food stand at the end of his driveway when he was a kid and served hand-churned vanilla ice cream with homemade blueberry coulis—showing that, indeed, anyone can cook.

At rst glance, the individuals in Little Monsters seem to have it all. Wealth, talent, and highly placed social connections are all part of the lives of the book’s central characters: Adam Gardner, an accomplished marine biologist and the family patriarch, and his two adult children, 41-year-old Ken, a successful businessman, and 38-year-old Amy, a gi ed visual artist. But as the family prepares to celebrate Adam’s 70th birthday, decades-old family secrets threaten to undo the picture-perfect facade of the close-knit family. And a mysterious, unexpected visitor could unleash additional chaos and harm. Setting her novel on Cape Cod in the spring and summer of 2016, ADRIENNE BRODEUR ’83 brings to life the haunting beauty and mystery of the Cape, with its teeming marine life and sweeping vistas of sandy beaches, and depicts with remarkable authenticity the complications and challenges—from mental illness to betrayal—hidden within one family’s story.

ADRIENNE BRODEUR ’83 AVID READER PRESS/ SIMON & SCHUSTER

tired Milton Academy teacher of Spanish Marisol Maura. Soledad will also use her time in Spain to travel for research on the work of Federico García Lorca and a new biography that is still under wraps. She is expecting visits from a few Milton classmates later in the year.

1987

ALETHIA JONES joined the faculty of the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies asd distinguished lecturer in labor studies (City University of New York) in January and serves as director of civic engagement and leadership development at the Murphy Institute.

1988

MARC GOODMAN invites all Milton folk to come stay at his family’s hotel in Port Antonio, Jamaica, www.goblinhill.com, at a nice friends-and-family rate. He had a great time seeing some of the 13 Penn alums from his Milton class at their college reunion last year. Among them were ALEX (LANGLOIS) DUBOIS, ALEJANDRO DANOIS, and GEOFFREY “GEOFF” LELAND. Marc recent-

ly spoke to ELENA KORNBLUTH, who is now living in Barcelona. He trades the occasional piece of squash lore with KERMIT WESTERGAARD, and is in regular touch with JOHN PIERCE, who is co-heading international arbitration at a large law rm in New York.

1989

ADAM ROTHMAN was appointed the founding director of Georgetown University’s new Center for the Study of Slavery and Its Legacies.

1990

ALEXIS GREEVES nally made a trip back to New York City in early June and was able to catch up with dear friends NATHANIEL “NAT” PAYNTER and DAVID NILES. “They are just as wonderful in their 50s as they were as Forbes teenagers.”

CLAIRE (HUGHES)

JOHNSON published a book (see pg. 50) on March 7 called Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building.

RUDOLPH “RUDY” REYES, JR. recently celebrated his 25th law school reunion at Harvard. He serves as a regional vice president and deputy general counsel for Verizon, leading state and local government a airs and community engagement in the western and southern U.S. He lives with his husband, Brody, and 12-year-old son, Pablo, in San Francisco, where they recently bought a new house. Rudy enjoys hanging out and practicing hot yoga with classmate ADAM WOLFF, who also lives and works in San Francisco.

EMILY (FRANKLIN) STRAUSS published her new novel, The Lioness of Boston, a ctional account of the story of Isabella Stewart Gardner (see pg. 59).

1992

DR. A. HOLLY JOHNSON received the Career Impact Award at the American Orthopaedic Foot & Ankle Society (AOFAS)’s Orthopaedic Foot & Ankle Foundation 2023 Women’s Leadership Awards.

1993

LYGEIA RICCIARDI is living in Washington, D.C., with her husband, Eric; teen daughters, Leela and Ada; and two Siamese cats. She recently started a wellness company (AdaRose.com) that works with corporate HR managers to make wellness easier for desk-based remote employees with a combination of physical products and digital content. She recently went to her 30th college reunion at Wellesley, and hopes to catch up with (more) Milton alumni soon too!

1989

KAITLIN MAY has been named chief operating o cer of SKKY Partners.

JESSICA (HAYNES) MCDANIEL celebrated 20 years of her photography business, Boston Baby Photos, this past May.

HYUN PARK is the executive pro-

1993 ANGELA “GIGI” SALTONSTALL ’93 was very proud to attend the graduation of her niece, MOLLY ISAAC ’23. (L-r), GEORGIA ISAAC ’25, AMY SALTONSTALL ’90, MOLLY, and GIGI.

Orchestration for the musical New York, New York.

SAMUEL POTT took his dance company Nimbus to Tanglewood this summer to perform with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on July 21. They presented a reinterpretation of Aaron Copland’s classic, “Appalachian Spring.” Samuel opened the Nimbus Arts Center in Jersey City in 2020, the largest dance-based art center in New Jersey, where concert dance, artistic collaboration, and dance education for the community are fostered.

1995

for patients in their journey for better health and life quality through integrative strategies, nutrition, mind-body medicine, and movement. The guidance and mentorship she received at Milton, and the Milton friendships she has maintained over the decades, continue to inspire and challenge her to forge a career path that remains true to her principles and ful lls her desire for lifelong learning. Her greatest joy is her family, and she spends her free time exploring the Texas wildlife with her husband, Jeremy, and her three kids.

1998

MATTHEW “MATT” COUREY got married in Mexico in December 2021. (L-r) JEFFREY “JEFF” COUREY ‘91, CRISTINA “TINA” DUGGAN ‘92, MATT, MERCEDES COUREY, YENG FELIPE BUTLER ‘92, NADIA (BOULOUS) CAMPBELL ‘92. More recently, Matt was promoted to president of AlbaCore Capital, a $10 billion credit fund based in London, where he’s lived for the past 20 years. Last month, he joined the board of Acumen, a nonpro t impact investment organization dedicated to solving the problems of poverty.

1997

ducer on Apple TV+’s Big Door Prize, which was renewed for a second season!

ARYEH STERNBERG has been helping the world break language barriers for the last two and a half years with KUDO, and recently departed to move into the consulting realm, marrying technology, data, AI, and creativity with human-centered service design to help solve human challenges and problems and make the world a better place. Part of the focus is an

exploration of e-commerce with an AI-powered T-shirt and product o ering, with some of the proceeds going to various programs to help sustainability and give back to the world. Have a look at the shop and enjoy some AI artwork: https://www.redbubble.com/people/jdenhaan/shop.

1994

SAMUEL “SAM” DAVIS received a Tony Award nomination for Best

AUTUMN ALLEN’s debut young adult historical novel, All You Have to Do, was released on August 29, 2023. The book follows two Black teens in predominantly white schools during politically charged moments in American history—1968, in the wake of MLK’s assassination, and 1995, during the lead-up to the Million Man March—in alternating points of view. Autumn is teaching children’s literature at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

1997

MEROË B. MORSE recently joined the Section of Integrative Medicine at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. As an internal and integrative medicine physician, her mission is to empower, educate, and advocate

TZE-NGO CHUN recently premiered two television shows for which he served as writer, executive producer, and showrunner. His Gremlins animated prequel, Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai, is currently streaming on Max. Chun produced the show alongside Amblin, Warner Bros Animation, and Steven Spielberg. In June, he also premiered I’m a Virgo on Amazon Prime Video. Both shows premiered to critical acclaim.

1999

MICHAEL “MIKE” O’NEILL and his wife, Anna, and sons, Jack, 5, and Liam, 3, were delighted to welcome to the family twin baby girls, Charlotte Rose Harrington O’Neill and Elizabeth Grace

THE LIONESS OF BOSTON

In the spring of 1990, EMILY FRANKLIN ’90 P ’17, ’22, ’25 was at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum with her Milton AP art history class just 10 days before one of history’s greatest art heists took place. Thirteen pieces of art—including works by Rembrandt, Degas, and Vermeer— were stolen that day.

“I wrote a paper in the Dutch room and was haunted by the fact that the paintings I had written about weren’t there anymore,” Franklin explained in April at the launch of her book The Lioness of Boston. “That was sort of tucked away in my writerly brain.”

It would be years later, while she was conducting research for another book, that the author’s fascination with the Gardner museum and the woman behind it was rekindled. “I would love to write a novel about her,” she thought, and that is how, she explained at the launch, her rst book of historical ction came to be.

Franklin discussed her latest

work with Milton Magazine

WHAT ABOUT ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER INTRIGUED YOU?

I grew up visiting the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The courtyard was magic: The outside was also the inside. I saw Isabella’s vision: not only paintings and sculpture as art, but chairs, pens, desks, letters, a lock of Robert Browning’s hair—everything and anything could be art. Revisiting and seeing the empty frames, I wanted to explore what kind of person demands that everything remain just as she le it.

Isabella Stewart Gardner’s was such a well-lived, huge life, and I wanted to research it and to share it. She was so ahead of her time, so outspoken. She triumphed over personal tragedy. Her intellectual life and the found family she made of her artistic friends saved her. There was so much to write about.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE GARDNER’S LEGACY TO BOSTON?

Gardner’s directive that nothing in Fenway Court could ever be changed or moved, is part of her legacy. Art—paintings, photographs, writing—is another way to be remembered, or to x a particular moment in time. For Gardner, art and objects were also a way of storytelling. Her museum is her legacy. But her individuality and her determination to make art available to the public are also.

YOU’VE WRITTEN MANY NOVELS–AND MOST RECENTLY A BOOK OF POETRY—BUT THIS IS YOUR FIRST BOOK OF HISTORICAL FICTION. WHAT WAS THE PROCESS LIKE FOR YOU?

I considered the timeline of Gardner’s life, adding layers of everything else I might want to include around that. Local and world events of that time. Whether or not Gardner personally interacted with the historical events or people, I needed to be aware of what was happening— if Frederick Douglass was speaking in New Bedford, events concerning su ragist Lucy Stone, and when the Boston Symphony Orchestra rst performed. Gardner was ahead of her time and misunderstood, so I researched other strong women and then had her interact with them. For example,she meets Berthe Morisot at the rst Impressionist Exhibit at Nadar’s studio in Paris. The blessing of depicting Isabella Stewart Gardner is that although she le a museum mansion lled with her

collected objects, she le much less of her personal writing. This a orded me, as a novelist, great freedom in my storytelling. I have written adult ction and short stories, YA novels, non ction essays, and a memoir/ cookbook, screenplays, and poetry. Writing across genres sharpens my cra in all genres. Certainly, the poetry helps tremendously with cadence and word choice and rhythm.

WHAT’S YOUR NEXT PROJECT?

I’m in the middle of my book tour, which is taking up most of my time, but I nished my second poetry collection, so I’m editing that. I can’t wait to have time to dig into my next novel, which is also historical ction, set in Europe in a slightly earlier time frame than The Lioness of Boston, focused on a group of real artists. Sort of Jane Austen dipped in Gothic.

In Memoriam

1940–1949

Edward A. Handy ’40

Nancy Beebe Spindler ’43

H. Bradlee Perry ‘45

Frank E. Harris, Jr. ’46

George L. Hoyt ’47

Robert Gannon White, Sr. ’48

Katharine S. Nash ’49

June Nordblom Robinson* ’49

Je ries Wyman, Jr. ’49

1950–1959

Joan Rice Franklin ’50

Thomas P. Hall ’50

G. Alvin Crowell, Jr. ’51

David L. McKissock ’51

Edward M. Cross ’52

Mary Needham Moore ’52

Jeremiah D. Newbury ’52

David F. Sheehan ’53

Nathan D. Talbot ‘54

Betsy Blair Douglas ’55

Milton P. Higgins III ’56

Jonathan Hufstader ‘56

Christopher H. L.Owen’56

Alexander S. Cochran, Jr. ’57

Gerald Flynn ’57

Mary Jane Gormley ’57

1960–1969

Arthur H. Nash ’62

Edmund B. Beyer ’65

1970–1979

Gertrude Bancro Akers ’74

Brendan P. Glynn ’75

George K. Mazareas ’78

1980-1989

Nathaniel B. Burke ’82

Peter B. Campbell ’85

Catherine O. Condit ‘86

1990-1999

Eli A. Wol ’95

Faculty and Staff

Je rey P. Beedy

Mitchell H. Bronk

Carolyn H. Damp

George H. Fernald

Margaret A. Johnson

Michael J. Niland

Bryan Moynihan

* FORMER TRUSTEE

ALUMNI, FACULTY, AND STAFF WHO PASSED DECEMBER 1, 2022 - JUNE 30, 2023. TO NOTIFY US OF A DEATH, PLEASE CONTACT THE DEVELOPMENT AND ALUMNI RELATIONS OFFICE AT ALUMNI@MILTON.EDU OR 617-898-2447.

MARGARET “MARGO” JOHNSON, who led the Milton Academy Girls’ Upper School from 1950 to 1981, a period of momentous change and growth for Milton, died May 1, 2023 in Hanover, New Hampshire, at the age of 103.

Johnson was the third-ever principal—she is also referred to in historical documents as headmistress—of the girls’ school, appointed when she was 29 years old. During her tenure, enrollment in the girls’ school nearly doubled; more girls completed upper-level math and science courses; more girls graduated from Milton and went on to college and graduate school; and the student population became steadily more diverse. In addition to her role at Milton, Johnson was active in membership matters at the establishment of the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) and was elected vice chair of the NAIS board in 1964.

Johnson’s tenure was a complicated one and graduates’ experiences of her leadership style and approach fall across a broad spectrum. In notifying the community of her death, former Head of School Todd Bland wrote, “As we mark the loss of Ms. Johnson, we will strive to honor the memories and experiences of all of our graduates in addition to her lasting in uence at Milton.”

Harrington O’Neill, on June 21. Charlie was born at 1:15 p.m., weighing 7 lbs, 1 oz. Ella arrived less than a minute later, weighing 6 lbs, 8 oz. Anna and the girls are doing great. Jack and Liam are thrilled to be big brothers to their “cute baby sisters.” Mike is overwhelmed with joy (and sometimes just overwhelmed). The whole gang are looking forward to Mike’s 25th Reunion next year!

2000

KATHERINE “KATE” MACCLUGGAGE played the part of Mrs. Jan Wheeler in the lm Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, which was released earlier this year.

JULIA CIAMPA SHIRVAN published her rst children’s book, Baby, MD: Neurology in the Park, in February 2023 under the pen name Julia Grant. A neurologist and mother, Dr. Shirvan uses popular activities, such as chasing bubbles in the park and swinging at the playground, to demonstrate brain functions and engage

readers. She simpli es medical topics for older readers and highlights fundamental topics, such as numbers, laterality, and friendship, for the youngest readers. Dr. Shirvan hopes caregivers will use the book to create fun teaching moments for their children and inspire a love for reading and learning.

2001

MEGHAN O’TOOLE and her wife, Vanessa Flick, welcomed their daughter, Madeline Kathleen O’Toole-Flick, on April 25, 2023.

2003

ELIZABETH “LIZ” KEADY was named head coach of the 2024 U.S. Under-18 Women’s National Team, according to USA Hockey.

2007

PRISCILLA “KENZIE” BOK was appointed the next administrator

CHANDLER SHERMAN, third from le , married Sam Gross, second from le , in Stanley, Idaho, last June! She was joined in celebration by her mother, MEREDITH DAVIS ’67, and fellow members of the Class of 2007, ELIZABETH WHITMAN, ADIT BASHEER, and STEPHANIE WYE.

2007

Niyati P. (Desai) Jolis ‘09 and Jacob Jolis

The Margaret A. Johnson Lecture Series Fund was established at Milton in 1982 to support bringing noted female speakers to campus each year.

of the Boston Housing Authority (BHA) by Boston Mayor Michelle Wu. BHA provides a ordable housing to more than 62,000 residents.

ALEXANDRA DESAULNIERS earned her masters in International higher education from Boston College while continuing to work full time in the eld.

2008

MICHAEL CHAO has rediscovered the love of woodworking that he originally found in Michael Bentinck-Smith’s Lower School classes. He is currently working on completing a set of side tables that he intends to share with family and friends. His next project will center on the construction of a set of tools for shermen.

2009

NIYATI P. (DESAI) JOLIS and JACOB JOLIS (above) got married at their home in Oakland, California, on July 30, 2022. They are expecting their rst child in June 2023!

Milton Academy Board of Trustees 2023-2024

Claire D. Hughes Johnson ’90 P ’24 ’27 President Milton MA

Yunli Lou ‘87 P ‘24

Luis M. Viceira P ’16 ’19

Edward E. Wendell, Jr. ’58 P ’94 ’98 ’01

Ronnell L. Wilson ’93

Bradley M. Bloom P ’06 ’08

James M. Fitzgibbons ’52 P ’87 ’90 ’93

Franklin W. Hobbs IV ’65 P ’98

David B. Brewster ’90 P ‘25

David Cappillo P’20 ‘24 ‘26

Vice President Shanghai China

Vice President Belmont MA

Vice President Milton MA

Vice President West Orange NJ

Emeritus Wellesley MA

Emeritus Boston MA

Emeritus New York NY

Cambridge MA

Wellesley MA

Jason Dillow ‘97 Greenwich CT

Rana El-Kaliouby P’21 ‘27

Shadi Farokhzad P ’23 ‘25

Yeng Felipe Butler ’92 P ’25 ’33

Milton MA

Chestnut Hill MA

Milton MA

John B. Fitzgibbons ’87 Bronxville NY

Lamont Gordon ‘87 Cranston RI

Peter Kagan ‘86

Treasurer New York NY

Sonu Kalra P ’23 ’26 ’28 Milton MA

Molly King Wellesley MA

Ravi Mallela P ’22 ‘24 Moraga CA

Stuart I. Mathews P ’13 ’17 ’17

John D. McEvoy ’82 P ’19 ’20 ’25

Meika Neblett ‘90

Osaremen Okolo ‘13

Gene Reilly ’79 P ’10 ’12

Hendrick Sin P ‘23 ‘25 ‘27

Gabriel Sunshine P ’22 ’24

Patrick Tsang ’90 P ‘27 ‘27

Secretary Woodstock VT

Milton MA

Lincro NJ

Cambridge MA

Delray Beach FL

Hong Kong

Boston MA

Hong Kong

Justin Walsh ‘99 New York NY

Helen Zhu P’25

Hong Kong

The Metalworkers: Robert Poole, His Ironworks, and Technology in 19th-Century America

STEVEN C. SWETT ’52

By the mid-19th century, iron had become an integral part of the American economy, used in ships, railroads, factory machinery, and tall buildings. A major supplier of that material at the time was Robert Poole, a self-taught machinist-engineer whose company in Maryland provided iron for private industry and the U.S. government, most notably for the columns that surround the dome of the U.S. Capitol Building. Poole was also the great-great-grandfather of STEVEN SWETT ’52, who tells the story of his relative and his enterprise, including the workers and the mechanisms they mastered. He writes that Poole built an e cient work culture that “depended on developing a deep reservoir of knowledge in his men, and a stable society—one where he valued his men for their cra smanship far more than he valued the machinery he put at their disposal.” Poole’s early years were spent on a farm in rural Ireland before he and his widowed mother embarked for America, arriving in the Port of Baltimore in 1824, when he was six. As a teenager, he began his education in ironworks as an apprentice to a blacksmith and later with the B&O Railroad. A er marrying, he launched his own ironworks in the early 1840s—a propitious time, Swett writes, because of rising national demand for the product and a powerful new technology for extracting iron, called hot blast. Supplemented with illustrations by Stephen Marchesi, the book describes the processes workers followed and the tools they used to produce the iron. The workers faced long hours and hazards, as Swett details, with several losing ngers or su ering scalding injuries. He also writes about challenges Poole encountered, including a re, a worker strike, and relocation outside the city to gain more manufacturing space. With the success of his business, Poole became a local benefactor, giving away millions to bene t educational institutions and churches. He died in 1903, a wealthy industrialist, yet “he remained ever the machinist, curious about how things worked and anxious to make them better,” Swett writes.

2011

WILLIAM “REED” PALMER earned his doctorate in statistics from Columbia University, successfully defending his dissertation in May 2023.

2013

SARA PEARCE-PROBST co-founded the technology start-up SiteTrace, which was acquired by BuildCentrix. SiteTrace joins BuildCentrix to modernize construction material procurement by providing so ware to specialty trade contractors that more precisely manages material orders and reduces material waste.

2015

NICHOLAS “NICK” DIGIOVANNI released his debut cookbook, Knife Drop: Creative Recipes Anyone Can Cook (see pg. 56). The foreword is by Gordon Ramsay. Gordon and Nick recently earned the Guinness World Record for “Largest Beef Wellington.”

2017

NATHAN STRAUSS has accepted a position as the voice of the Augusta GreenJackets, a minorleague a liate of the Atlanta Braves. Strauss has been working as a TV and radio broadcaster at the University of Massachusetts

2013 OLIVIA ATWOOD made her O -Broadway debut with her one-woman show, Liv, Live, at the SoHo Playhouse in New York. She told stories about goat attacks, disgusting soup, failed games of soccer, and unfortunate incidents on the Williamsburg Bridge. Many Milton classmates and teachers were in attendance and can con rm that it was “somewhat more fun” than watching Liv perform her speech pieces at 8 a.m. during morning assembly, which feels like a fair assessment. Also, the theater had a bar.

since his graduation and will continue to work for his alma mater at the conclusion of the season.

2019

BALTIMORE MUSEUM OF INDUSTRY

JAMES QUINLIVAN pitched for Northeastern against the Boston Red Sox at JetBlue Park in an exhibition game in February.

MADELEINE (MACMILLAN) WINROW ‘06 and her husband, Scott, shared the happy news of the birth of their son, James Winrow, who arrived on Valentine’s Day 2023. James joins his big sister, Hailey, and the Winrows are enjoying living in Hingham, Massachusetts, as a family of four.

N.K.O.T.Q.*

*New Kids on the Quad ALUMNI FAMILIES & THEIR LATEST ADDITIONS

TREVOR PROPHET ’07 and proud momma, Emily, welcomed Eloise ProphetSeeley on August 9, 2022.

ISABEL (WISE) O’GARA ‘13 and ROBERT “ROB” O’GARA ‘12 welcomed their rst child, Maeve Catherine O’Gara, on May 24, 2023.

HEATHER C. MCGHEE ‘97 and CASSIM SHEPARD’s ‘97 son, Riaz, made his rst visit to campus in June 2022, when his mother was Milton’s commencement speaker. Heather published a young readers’ adaptation of her best-selling book for middle and high school students, called The Sum of Us: How Racism Hurts Everyone. There is also a documentary podcast called The Sum of Us

DANIEL “DAN” WEISMAN ’00 and his wife, Lizzie Zuckerman, are still living in Nashville and welcomed their second child, Boston William Weisman, in February. Their rst child, Harding Samuel Weisman, turned two in May. Dan also became principal/partner at AllianceBernstein, the quickest in the rm’s 55-year history.

Remembering Bucky

AN ARDENT ADMIRER OF BUCKMINSTER FULLER 1913, GORDON CHASE WAS DETERMINED OVER HIS 35 YEARS AS CHAIR OF MILTON’S VISUAL ARTS DEPARTMENT TO KEEP FULLER’S LIGHT BURNING BRIGHT.

i was happy to see Buckminster Fuller highlighted in the latest [spring ’23] Milton Magazine! He was a hero of mine all through college and beyond. He inspired me to move in 1978 from Groton School to become chair of the Visual Arts Department at Milton, where I initiated a seven-year quest to have Bucky design a new arts center for the school.

Bucky spoke twice at the school around 1980, toward the end of his life. I personally escorted him around. In fact, my own art teaching took place in the same room where Bucky had his most influential teacher—Mr. LeSeward—as his physics teacher. Bucky did a synergetics workshop on the second oor of Warren Hall in this very room. Bucky showed me where he grew up, on Columbine Road on the other side of Turner’s Pond, talked about the old ice house, showed me where he raced his Dymaxion vehicle on Ruggles Lane, and reminisced about being the quarterback of the football team where, he said, he acquired his “anticipatory design sense.”

I even traveled to New York to confer with Bucky and his architectural partner Shoji Sadao about designing an arts center for Milton Academy. The Milton trustees at the time saw this as a step too far. A student cartoonist drew a picture of a geodesic dome made of Georgian brick and asked “How will we bend and curve the Greek columns?”

Hal Pratt and I taught an architecture course in the early 1980s. The students, led by the Helms brothers, constructed an impressive three-quarter geodesic dome that sat proudly in the center of the campus until other students rolled it away to “Lake O’Hare”—the pond next to the football eld.

I organized two full- edged exhibitions about Fuller for the Nesto Gallery. There should be a collection of photographs in the school archives, and all his books in the li-

brary, along with Fuller’s résumé, which is literally about one-inch thick and includes all his events and talks around the world in the 1960s and 1970s. He was a true visionary who preached a gospel of people and nations helping each other and using design to transcend and to solve the world’s problems. One of his books was titled I Seem to Be a Verb, which was the truth about the man. He loved Milton Academy and was and still is our most illustrious graduate. p

“He was a true visionary who preached a gospel of people and nations helping each other and using design to transcend and to solve the world’s problems.”

“He loved Milton Academy and was and still is our most illustrious graduate,” wrote Chase recently in the letter to Milton Magazine that follows.

NEXT@MILTON

MARK YOUR CALENDAR AND REGISTER TODAY

Opportunities abound! Explore some of the many ways to engage with the Milton community at upcoming events.

MILTON-NOBLES DAY

Saturday, November 11, 2023

MILTON NIGHT OUT: BOSTON BOWL (2009–2023)

Wednesday, November 22, 2023

GIVING DAY

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

reunion

(CLASSES ENDING IN 4 AND 9)

Friday, June 14, and Saturday, June 15, 2024

To register or see our full events calendar, please visit www.milton.edu/graduates/events-calendar.

“My idea of what I wanted to do with my life was totally incompatible to the way [my parents] were pushing me.”

TONY DIOR GAENSLEN ’59 , FAR LEFT, WITH LABOR LEADERS (SEE

27)