Milton Magazine, Spring 2024

THE COMMUNITY ISSUE

Robb Chavis ’94, TV writer and member of WGA negotiating team.

(SEE PAGE 10)

“When I rst became interested in the question ‘Why mentaldoesillness happen?’ I felt that research studies focused on adults seemed to be an picture.”incomplete

ALEXANDRA RODMAN ’06 SEE

What stood out for ROBB CHAVIS ‘94 (appearing on the cover) about the photo shoot with Peter Yang was their conversation about his somewhat circuitous route from Milton to Hollywood. “My path isn’t a straight line, but telling my story reminded me that I de nitely wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t started there.”

Lasting Connections

What do we owe to one another, our communities, and the world? In this issue we take a look at what “community” means to Milton and the ways in which the school goes beyond the jargon to create genuine, mutually bene cial, lasting connections.

10

The Joys (and Tribulations) of Writing for TV

ROBB CHAVIS ’94 helped negotiate the deal that will bene t more than 11,000 screenwriters—and he’s one of them.

Coming of Age in a Digital World

Using tools from fmri to smartphone data, psychology professor ALEXANDRA RODMAN ’06 is studying the developing brain and associated changes during adolescence —when, research shows, 75 percent of all psychiatric disorders emerge.

Going the Distance

MIK AOKI ’86 began his love for baseball as a young boy in Japan. Over his decades as a coach, he’s come to appreciate the important life lessons his profession has to offer.

HEAD OF SCHOOL

Alixe Callen

CHIEF COMMUNICATION OFFICER

Eileen Newman

EDITOR

Sarah Abrams

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Marisa Donelan

COPY EDITOR

Martha Spaulding

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Steve Nadis

Ken Shulman

DESIGN

MO.D/Patrick Mitchell

André Mora

CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS

Martin Leon Barreto

Fernando Cobelo

John Gillooly

Jimell Greene

Tony Luong

Brian Rea

Klawe Rzeczy

Yeye Weller

Peter Yang

Teng Yu

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

As an institution committed to diversity, Milton Academy welcomes the opportunity to admit academically qualified students of any gender, race, color, 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

activities.

CHASING RAINBOWS

The photographer John Gillooly captured a brief and rare moment behind the Robert Saltonstall  Gymnasium in January.

photograph by John Gillooly

The Essence of Community

a s m ilton students know (because I remind them all the time!), I have a favorite word. “Community.” I have long believed that the most important intellectual work of schools is to teach students how to be productive and contributing members of their communities. To achieve that objective, students need practice—the opportunity to participate in a fully functioning (and functional) community. Our job as adults in schools is to help students cultivate a school community defined by purpose, respect, pride, and joy. □ The good news is that at a school like Milton this work comes easily. Our students, our faculty, and our staff jump in every day, enthusiastically participating in school activities, showing up to cheer one another on, championing one another day in and day out. But thanks to the school’s long-held values, our community goes beyond the rah-rah. □ “Dare to be true” may be the most iconic school motto in the history of school mottos. It was adopted in 1898, and since then, the phrase has received multiple interpretations. Originally part of a line in a poem by the 17th-century English priest and orator George Herbert, “Dare to be true” began as moral guidance (the full line is “Dare to be true. Nothing can need a lie”), and it has proved to grow with us as our school, ever evolving, moves through the decades. In a detailed history of the motto, former Milton faculty member Markham W. Stackpole wrote: “For us, the meaning of those words ‘Dare to be true’ goes beyond truthfulness in intent, speech, and action, vastly important as that is, and includes the three great principles of courage, truthfulness, and loyalty.” □ One of the misconceptions about “Dare to be true” is that it focuses solely on the individual. A quick reading suggests that it’s about autonomy or personal liberty—a reminder to be true to ourselves. But I believe that to effectively embrace “Dare to

DARE TO BE TRUE IS A CALL TO ACTION FOR MAKING THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE. heather

ALIXE CALLEN ’88 , HEAD OF SCHOOL

be true,” we must endeavor to create a world where everybody can dare to be true, where all of us feel comfortable sharing our true selves. That is the essence of community.

I witness members of the Milton community daring to be true every single day. Our students aren’t waiting until they graduate to make a difference: From advocating for youth financial-literacy education in front of the state legislature, to coaching and cheering on Special Olympics athletes, to mentoring peers in younger grades, Milton students are actively building our community, improving it all the time.

Many, many Milton alumni carry this daring spirit throughout their lives. PATRICIA SPENCE ’76 , whose impressive résumé in both the corporate and nonprofit worlds could take her anywhere, is the founding president and CEO of the Urban Farming Institute, which feeds and uplifts residents in Boston’s underserved neighborhoods. PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE ’94 exemplifies daring: As an investigative journalist, he has uncovered truths that powerful people would have preferred to keep hidden, including the roots of our country’s devastating opioid crisis and the international reach of violence in Northern Ireland. CHARLIE ENRIGHT ’02 is one of the best sailors in the world—he captained the first American team to win the prestigious global Ocean Race in 2023. Rather than resting on their laurels, Charlie and his team, 11th Hour Racing, are using their platform to advocate for ocean health and promote sustainability, shining a light on the urgent need for climate action.

I could go on. Stories about our graduates and their positive im -

“My belief in the power of startedcommunity here at Milton.”

pact on the world would fill a library of pages. In this issue, you’ll read about even more Milton people who keep community—teams, workforces, and social dynamics—at the center of their work. They recognize the need for people to connect and collaborate, to learn from one another, and to be part of something bigger than themselves.

At Convocation this year, I told students my truth, which is that my belief in the power of community started here at Milton. I shared some stories about my inauspicious early days as a sophomore in Goodwin House—beginning my Milton soccer career with an ACL tear in my first game, adjusting to a level of academic rigor I’d never experienced before, and being new in a tight-knit dorm—and all the ways

my world opened up and brightened when I let down my guard, when I found my people. The friends who accepted and loved me for who I am and the teachers who championed my growth helped me understand the power of connection and vulnerability. I encouraged students to reach out and share their truths in good times and bad, and to support others in doing the same.

I love that our motto is a directive, that it demands action: To dare is to step outside our comfort zones, to take risks, to live boldly and challenge the status quo. Milton—its students, faculty and staff, and the families who support our school—has the power to show the world what a caring, inclusive, enthusiastic, serious, and joyful community can do.

illustration by Martin Leon Barreto

A Home Away from Home

FOR MILTON’S BOARDING STUDENTS, RESIDENTIAL LIFE FACULTY CREATE A STRONG SENSE OF COMMUNITY.

BY MARISA DONELAN

melissa figueroa laughs when she remembers her daughter standing on a table in Forbes House, demanding payment for the Girl Scout cookies the older kids had ordered from her. The six-year-old was full of confidence.

“When we moved here, my daughter was four and my son was seven, and they loved it because they felt like they had all these brothers who looked out for them and included them,” says Figueroa, who has lived on campus for ten years and led Forbes as house head for seven. “For my daughter especially, it’s given her incredible skills to be able to talk to older kids. I think a lot of their strengths have come from being part of this community.”

Each of Milton’s nine houses— Goodwin, Hathaway, Forbes, Robbins, Wolcott, Norris, Hallowell, Millet, and Academy—has its own personality and traditions and operates a little differently. All of them claim committed house staff, faculty members who supervise the students, plan activities, and build community within these homes away from home. The faculty involved in the boarding program take an “all hands on deck” approach to caring for students—dedicating time to making sure students are supported in their classes, activities, and social development. Many of the faculty live in the dorms with their families; other faculty who live on campus are affiliated with individual dorms.

Half of the Upper School’s more than 700 students live on campus; in 2023, boarders came from 26 states and 31 countries, places as close as Massachusetts and far away as Ko -

rea, Malawi, and Finland. Each student brings something unique to their dorm communities and their affiliation with and affection for their dorms and housemates is often lifelong.

“The kids that are part of Forbes House, no matter their interests around campus or where they come from, have this bond,” says Figueroa. “They feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves because of the community and because they’re part of a legacy that lasts beyond their time at Milton.”

MELVIN JOSEPH ’24 , one of two boarding monitors—student government leaders who represent the boarding community at large— says he loves spending time with the Norris House faculty, their families, and even their pets. “It feels like you’re part of one big family,” he says. The faculty make a dedicated effort to build a sense of belonging within the dorm, he says.

In Norris, house head Mark Goodrich works with the seniors and house council members to plan fun activities. Events like the Norris Games, where the entire dorm is split into teams to compete in everything from soccer to cup-stacking, are fun because everyone gets into the friendly competition, Joseph says.

Activities like dorm dodgeball, sit-down dinners, off-campus trips, trick-or-treating at Halloween, and other holiday traditions help keep continuity of dorm culture at Milton. Most Milton students remain in the same house through their entire stay in the Upper School, which helps to preserve favorite traditions.

The students notice and appre -

ciate moments when the faculty go the extra mile for them, Joseph says. On Family Weekend, for example, when many of the Norris residents left to spend time with visiting family members, the Norris staff had a special barbecue dinner with the students who remained.

“Sharing the meal together was fun, and it was especially nice to see just how much my dorm parents cared about fostering belonging in the dorm, even with most of the students signed out and off campus that weekend,” Joseph says.

“All of the faculty, both residential and not, pay attention to us and how we’re doing, and they make a big effort to remind us of the community we have here,” says MAYA SPEKTOROV ’24, a senior in Hathaway House and boarding monitor with Joseph. “When I was going through a hard time junior year, I came downstairs one night and was surprised with a Harry Potter movie night—my favorite—and tons of snacks. A bunch of the girls were there, as well as the faculty who had noticed that I’d been off for a few days, and we just spent the night having fun.”

One evening this past November in Academy House, boarding students and faculty gathered around the common room table with togo containers from the dining hall. Over chicken tikka masala, they caught up with the highlights of their recent fall break, gently joked with one another, and made plans for an upcoming weekend trip to Coolidge Corner.

“It’s very much like a family,” says house head Tori Lockwood of Milton’s newest dorm. “Everything we do is as a group, and the students

Boarding students enjoy some down time in the Academy House common room.

are all involved in every community decision.”

Academy House, Milton’s all-gender dorm, opened in 2022. The newness of the dorm gives each resident a voice in establishing community norms and traditions, and Lockwood finds that involving each student is empowering.

“I really enjoy the moments where we’re all together, just sitting around and chatting and being goofy,” Lockwood says.

In the Wolcott House common room, a pool table and a large flatscreen television hooked up to a PlayStation 5 are the main gathering spots amid the dark wood paneling and sepia-toned photos of past Wolcott residents. The spirit of togetherness starts at the very beginning of the year, says JOSH JORDAN ’11, Wolcott’s house head.

“In our opening meetings, the kids who are leaders in the house talk about what it was like for them when they were new to Milton,” Jordan says. “Having them be vulnerable in a group setting like that, which is very brave, draws in some of our younger kids who may be feeling homesick or overwhelmed.”

“It’s home and it should feel like home,” he says of the dorm. Wolcott is the largest of Milton’s dorms, with 46 students from all over the world, who are involved in activities across the school. It’s helpful to have a residential staff that is tapped into each student’s interests, academic progress, and social and emotional wellness, Jordan says.

“The students have some autonomy to figure out when they’re hanging out with friends and when they’re studying, and we help them if that balance isn’t quite right,” he

“It’s home, and it should feel like home.”

WOLCOTT HOUSE

HEAD JOSH JORDAN ’11

says. “At the same time, we want them to get into the habit of being able to think for themselves and to make decisions for themselves— healthy decisions, smart decisions. We support them as they grow.”

Presence and quality time from the dorm faculty members is invaluable in creating a welcoming atmosphere, says Anika Walker-Johnson, the school’s director of residential life.

“There’s nothing more special than walking into a house and seeing a house parent playing a game of pool or engaging in conversation with students,” Walker-Johnson says. “It’s in the effort to build those relationships, so that the students know you’re there for them, you see them, and you care about their lives.”

At Milton, Walker-Johnson has observed, care for students extends beyond the official residential faculty members. Staff who interact with boarding students regularly—from dining services to the bookstore to campus safety—get to know them well, learning not just their names but their stories. And they can tell when a student is having a tough time, adding a layer to the safety net already in place for students through the dorm faculty.

“We see the adults caring for the students in the way that parents would, not just in moments of celebration, but at times when the students need to be corrected in some way, or when they’re walking down a path that isn’t healthy,” she says. “If that doesn’t feel like home, I don’t know what does.”

illustration by Martin Leon Barreto

LASTING CONNECTIONS

WHAT DO WE OWE TO ONE ANOTHER, OUR COMMUNITIES, AND THE WORLD? IN THIS ISSUE WE TAKE A LOOK AT WHAT “COMMUNITY” MEANS TO MILTON AND THE WAYS IN WHICH THE SCHOOL GOES BEYOND THE JARGON TO CREATE GENUINE, MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL, LASTING CONNECTIONS.

illustration

ROBB CHAVIS ’94 HELPED NEGOTIATE THE DEAL THAT WILL BENEFIT MORE THAN 11,000 SCREENWRITERS— AND HE’S ONE OF THEM.

Photographs by Peter Yang

Story by Steve Nadis

(and Tribulations)

When you hear ROBB CHAVIS ’94 talk about writing for television, you can tell straight off that this is a guy who loves his job. Like most people, he’d like to advance in his career. But he’s also intent on preserving the profession as a whole. And that is pretty much what he has fought for as a member of the Writers Guild of America West board of directors, as well as a member of the negotiating committee that prevailed over studio heads during the

2023 writers’ strike. Serving in that capacity, Chavis fought to establish conditions that will enable people like him to make a decent living in their business, while creating quality programs that people might actually want to watch.

With an extensive background in both law and entertainment, he brought the right set of skills and lived experience to the negotiating table. Fortunately, Chavis’s side achieved a favorable settlement of the 148-day strike, which means he’s now back at the day job that also happens to be his dream job. Although there’s nothing he’d rather be doing than writing for television, Chavis took a rather circuitous route in getting there. And when he was younger, he never regarded his present occupation as a possible career choice.

When Chavis entered Milton Academy as a 10th grader in 1991, he was—by his own admission—an uninspiring writer. He’d come to Massachusetts from Atlanta public schools that were not of the highest caliber. When the first paper he wrote for English class was returned

courtesy of robb chavis

Top: Robb Chavis ’94, a television writer and member of the negotiating team during the almost five-month-long WGA strike, on the picket line. An agreement was reached with the major Hollywood studios in September. Right: Chavis (back row, center) with fellow writers on the CBS comedy Superior Donuts

to him, the teacher, Walter McCloskey, said, “Please come see me after class”—six words that no student wants to hear.

“My book reports had been written in a dull and very simplistic style,” Chavis notes. His compositions, in fact, could accurately have been called prosaic. “McCloskey taught me to write critically and creatively,” Chavis says. And for the first time, he came to enjoy writing.

But the plan he’d formulated early on was to go into politics or something policy-related. Chavis majored in public policy as an undergraduate at Duke University and followed up on that by going to Harvard Law School, “still intrigued by law, politics, and policy,” as he puts it. After graduating from Harvard Law in 2001, he took a job at an Atlanta law firm, where he worked in the area of intellectual property, engaged in trademark and copyright litigation. He soon switched jobs, becoming in-house counsel at a multicultural ad agency near Detroit.

At the agency, Chavis was surrounded by people who were doing creative things—telling stories,

Chavis with classmate Rahsaan McGlashan-Powell ’94 at Graduation

composing visual imagery, and finding music that would establish just the right mood. That milieu started an itch I couldn’t ignore,” he says. I always liked creative writing, but I never considered the arts a real option. With all my education, I thought I had to do something more serious, like business or law.”

Nevertheless, he began to do some writing on the side—mainly short stories and blog posts. Somehow, in the midst of that, he “discovered the world of tv, recognizing that you could create great characters whose stories might mean something to people. Moreover, I thought I might actually be good at this.” Chavis decided to go all in. In 2011, he quit his job and moved to Los Angeles. So did his wife, who had been working as an attorney at the same ad agency.

“It felt kind of crazy,” Chavis admits, “but we still made that leap.” Once in la , he read books on screenwriting while publishing some stories on the internet. Reginald Hudlin—a well-known screenwriter, director, and producer—came across some of Cha-

vis’s online material and told him it was interesting. Hudlin let Chavis know that he was funny and capable of writing for tv, which provided a great confidence boost.

During his first year in California, Chavis wrote an unsolicited, socalled “spec” script for 30 Rock, a sitcom he really liked. He submitted the script as a writing sample to nbc, the network that produces the show, and it was good enough to get him admitted to a highly competitive nbc program called “Writers on the Verge,” to which just eight people are selected from among roughly 1,600 applicants. The Verge program ran for six months, from the fall of 2012 to the spring of 2013, during which time Chavis gained a lot of practice in writing and revising scripts, getting tons of helpful feedback along the way. He also had a chance to talk with network executives. When the program ended, he assumed he would be “fast-tracked into a job,” but he had to wait a year before being hired by nbc in 2014

as a screenwriter for Bad Judge—a show about a judge whose personal life was a mess.

“I got to use some of my legal background and turn it into comedy,” Chavis says. He really enjoyed the collaborative aspect of the process, meeting with his peers in the writers’ room to work out overall story lines and then breaking that down into individual scenes and beats. “It was a great experience,” he says, “but like many shows, it only lasted one season—13 episodes—and the second it was done, you’re out of work, looking for the next thing.”

The next thing turned out to be the nbc sitcom Truth Be Told, which lasted just 10 episodes in 2015 before the plug was pulled. A year later, Chavis was hired to work on Superior Donuts —a cbs comedy, set largely in a donut shop, that starred Jermaine Fowler and Judd Hirsch. “That was the show that gave my career some traction,” Chavis says. “I started moving up the ladder, eventually becoming an executive story writer, where I learned some of the ins and outs of producing a tv show.”

“That milieu started an itch I couldn’t ignore. I always liked creative writing, but I never considered the arts a real option. With all my education, I thought I had to do something more serious, like business or law.”

“Comedy is not just for laughs. It can be a great way to provoke serious conversations. You can present ideas in nonconfrontational ways that disarm people while still entertaining them.”

That paved the way for what Chavis calls “the best job I’ve ever had in tv ”—a four-year stint with Blackish, which he joined in 2018 for season five. He started as a co-producer and stayed on through season eight, the show’s final season, which wrapped up in April 2022. He and others were nominated for an Emmy in 2021 for Outstanding Comedy Series.

In 2022, Chavis won the Humanitas Prize for his script “If a Black Man Cries in the Woods,” which aired one week before the series finale. That episode explored the issue of Black male vulnerability, Chavis says. “It was about the history of Black men suppressing their emotions and feelings because they thought they had to be tough.” The show’s three main male characters— father, son, and grandfather—go to a cabin in the woods, forging a new kind of bond after finding ways to express themselves honestly.

“Comedy is not just for laughs,” Chavis explains. “It can be a great way to provoke serious conversations. You can present ideas in nonconfrontational ways that dis-

arm people while still entertaining them.”

He was sorry the show had to end, but he was glad that the writers knew in advance and thus had the opportunity “to leave our [fictional] family, the Johnsons, in a place that seemed hopeful.”

About a year later, in March 2023, Chavis and other Writers Guild representatives began to talk with the studios about the general contracts for writers that were set to expire on May 1 of that year. Chavis was selected for this team because of his background in law—and intellectual property in particular—along with his work in business and television.

A major grievance concerned “residuals”—payments related to the reuse of a writer’s work—which were not as generous in streaming models as they were in broadcast television and syndication. At the time, 50 percent of Guild writers were working at the minimum wages established in the previous contract, which was clearly an un-

Robb Chavis ‘94, second from left, with fellow writers, is thrilled that he and other writers are working again. “The thing that makes me happiest about what we accompished is that, for the first time ever, we got something for everyone—things that made every member’s life better.”

tenable situation. When it became apparent on May 1 that a deal could not be made, the Guild negotiators voted to initiate a strike. “We were out on the picket lines the next day,” Chavis says.

“One of the things that made us successful was that almost the entire town, and ultimately most of the nation, was behind us,” he adds. “We felt a lot of public support, and that made us stronger.”

Negotiations resumed in mid-August, and the strike ended on September 27. “The thing that makes me happiest about what we accomplished is that, for the first time ever, we got something for everyone—things that made every member’s life better,” Chavis says. There were provisions, for example, that guaranteed feature film writers the chance to write a second draft after getting feedback. Rules were imposed to keep people in both tv and film from being forced to rely on artificial intelligence (ai) tools.

Chavis is thrilled that he and other writers are working again—this time under much fairer terms. The Frasier reboot that Chavis worked

on before the strike began airing on October 12, 2023, two weeks after the strike was resolved. A second season may be in the offing. Meanwhile, Chavis also has a deal to develop a new half-hour series for cbs—a project he is eagerly pursuing.

“I am happy to have been part of a good fight, but also happy to be part of a network that is moving forward with new projects,” Chavis says. He’s glad to see writers and studios working together again. “Hopefully, everyone now understands the value of writers and the value of making the things that make these companies successful.”

“We are in this together,” he adds. Chavis had uttered those same words about the writers’ strike. The only thing that has changed is the “we.” But the sentiment behind it is the same. And it’s genuine.

courtesy of robb chavis

COMING OF AGE IN A DIGITAL

USING TOOLS FROM f MRI TO SMARTPHONE DATA, PSYCHOLOGY PROFESSOR ALEXANDRA RODMAN ’06 IS STUDYING THE DEVELOPING BRAIN AND ASSOCIATED CHANGES DURING ADOLESCENCE— WHEN, RESEARCH SHOWS, 75 PERCENT OF ALL PSYCHIATRIC DISORDERS EMERGE.

Story by Sarah Abrams Photographs by Tony Luong

DIGITAL WORLD

“TEENS ARE NOTORIOUSLY PREOCCUPIED BY SOCIAL APPROVAL, AND THIS IS BY DESIGN.”

at northeastern University, ALEXANDRA RODMAN ’06 directs a research laboratory that uses social experiences—from experimental tasks to phone usage—as a lens to better understand what makes adolescents unique and why they are at heightened risk for mental health problems, especially depression and anxiety. Greater insight into the neurobiological, psychological, and emotional factors that govern the adolescent social brain, Rodman says, has the potential to inform more-effective interventions for preventing and treating mental health disorders.

“Teens are notoriously preoccupied by social approval, and this is by design,” Rodman says. “Their brains are especially attuned to social information, they’re highly motivated to deepen peer relationships and forge an independent identity, and they’re particularly impacted by social stress. In fact, most mental health disorders during adolescence emerge in the aftermath of an interpersonal stressor, like conflict with a friend or a breakup.”

While adolescence is a time of stress, Rodman asserts, it’s also an important time for learning and rapid brain development—a period of reorganization in the brain that leads to greater “plasticity” and is extremely responsive to input from the environment, she says. “This increase in neural plasticity allows teens to make enormous strides in cognitive abilities.”

“As a child, it’s really your caregivers who are, we joke, your ‘prefrontal cortex,’” Rodman says. “They co-regulate your emotions with you and facilitate how you move through the world, including socially. It’s during adolescence when you learn how to

do that on your own—referred to as a sensitive period of social learning—and it has major implications for your outcomes and well-being as an adult. But this plasticity is also accompanied by greater risk for mental health problems.”

Rodman can trace her interest in mental health back to her time at Milton when she served as a peer liaison between her dorm and Milton’s mental health services. “Even then, I was interested in why people may feel more or less able to handle certain stressors depending on the person, point in time, and context,” she says. Her desire to find the answers led her to major in clinical psychology at Tufts University, where she focused on understanding what is happening in the brain that might put people at particular risk for developing mental health problems.

It was when she learned about adolescence as a period of both tremendous growth and vulnerability that she chose, over the course of her doctoral and postdoctoral studies at Harvard University, to place her focus on the mechanisms underlying mental illness through the lens of development.

“When I first became interested in the question ‘Why does mental illness happen?,’ I felt that research studies focused on adults seemed to be an incomplete picture,” Rodman says. “We’ve missed that window of emergence, so my research takes a developmental perspective focusing on adolescence to capture that arc of transition and onset. In adolescence, we have the potential to have not only a better understand-

Psychology Professor Alexandra Rodman ‘06 can trace her interest in mental health back to her time at Milton when she served as a peer liaison between her dorm and Milton’s mental health services.

As a graduate student, Alexandra Rodman ‘06 decided to focus on the mechanisms underlying mental illness through the lens of development, when there’s the potential to have both “a better understanding of why mental illness happens and a more promising opportunity to intervene.”

courtesy of alexandra rodman

ing of why mental illness happens, but also a more promising opportunity to intervene and ultimately shift trajectories of risk during this more plastic brain state.”

“In order to move the needle,” she says, “we have to focus on what is most important and salient during this time and what factors really tax the system. We know that the social landscape completely changes during adolescence, and on a neurobiological, cognitive, and emotional level, peers take on this whole new meaning, where negative peer experiences are particularly stressful. In my work, I study the interplay of all these things with the hope that it will gain us the most purchase in understanding risk for mental health problems.”

Instead of taking a deficits-based approach, or focusing solely on what’s going wrong during adolescence, Rodman believes it’s also critical to study the strengths that protect adolescents from mental health problems. “These relationships between negative experiences and negative outcomes, they’re not deterministic,” she says. “Some people develop negative outcomes; some people don’t. What is that heterogeneity, and can we push that lever to dial up resilience for the kids who need more protective armor to help them through a difficult time?”

As director of the Social Development and Wellbeing Lab at Northeastern, where she was recently appointed assistant professor in the Department of Psychology and Center for Cognitive and Brain Health, Rodman is launching a three-year study. Funded by the National Insti-

tutes of Health, the study will take a two-pronged approach that involves both “in lab” and “real-world” measurement.

The study will follow 80 adolescents ages 12 to 17 for eight months. It will include computerized tasks during neuroimaging in the lab, and tracking participants’ phone usage. By integrating data from various sources, Rodman says, the study will bridge a gap between the lab and the real-world to “have a more complete picture of the adolescent experience and greater traction for predicting risk for mental health problems.”

In the study’s “in-lab” approach, lab members—who include post-baccalaureate, doctoral, and postdoctoral students, along with a collaborating computer scientist— will run participants through various tasks that tap cognitive, social, and emotional processing, including a task that measures how adolescents manage peer approval and rejection while undergoing fmri neuroimaging. Participants are asked to rate photos of peers and, in turn, receive feedback about how others perceive them. They’re also given information about how favorably the peers rated others in the study—effectively how “nice” or “mean” they are.

“The task actually mirrors some of the things kids do on their phones,” Rodman explains, “which is making a first impression based on someone’s picture and receiving that information as well. As adults, we get to decide how seriously we want to take this type of information based on other contextual factors, like ‘niceness,’ but we don’t know whether teens use these same strategies.” The teens’ responses to the feedback will help researchers understand how teens process, learn

from, and integrate peer feedback into their worldview—and how that may relate to their risk for mental health problems.

In the study’s “real world” approach, researchers will track the participants’ smartphone use over an eight-month period—one of the longest research periods of this kind to date. Tracking will include monitoring the teens’ screen time, phone and text logs, daily routines and social activities, social media and app usage, sleep and physical activity, and time spent around others.

From time to time, researchers will “ping” participants’ phones to ask, “What are you doing? How are you feeling? Who are you with?” A particularly lengthy phone call might elicit a ping inquiring about the nature of the call—who they were talking to and why. Smartwatches will measure their physiological response, such as heart rate, throughout the day.

Rodman describes this segment of the study as “teens in the wild— an unparalleled lens into the social worlds of teens that we rarely get to see.” By acquiring repeated samplings of how teens are doing over time, it will provide an understanding of the “dynamic fluctuations in thoughts and feelings and dayto-day experiences as they move through their world,” she says.

The study will also help yield a more nuanced understanding of the effects of social media on today’s youth, Rodman says. Although socializing through smartphones is a paradigm shift in teen social development, it’s not necessarily all bad, and simple metrics like “screen time” don’t tell the whole story. “Living life out in the world can result in good and bad experiences, and socializing

courtesy of alexandra rodman

online is really just a vehicle through which adolescents now live out their lives,” she says. “That’s why it’s so important that we drill down to a more fine-grained level of understanding and try not to oversimplify this complex behavior,” she says.

Rodman is excited by the possibilities presented by tracking smartphone use. “While experimental tasks in the lab can offer insights into processes happening ‘under the hood’—like cognitive biases and neural functioning,” she says, “it doesn’t necessarily reflect experiences in the real world. Instead, collecting data intensively, over time, allows for greater granularity and personalized modeling. By combining the two complementary approaches, we can link underlying cognitive and neurobiological processes to real-world experiences and behaviors, which will better position us to predict which factors increase vulnerability and which buffer teens from stressors to enhance wellbeing.”

As the study’s results begin to unfold, and when the “hows, whens, and whys” of who is at risk are better understood, the researchers hope to begin using tools familiar to today’s teens—their own smartphones—to deliver “light touch” interventions. “We know they’re at greater risk during adolescence, Rodman says, but all of that is kind of a dead end if we don’t also identify the resilience factors.

“This will not be your typical, one-size-fits-all intervention. We will use a precision approach to behavioral nudging, where the nudge to enhance resilience following a stressor will be tailored to that per-

“At Milton, I was struck by the breadth of opportunities for students to pursue a wide array of interests and experiences,” says Rodman, “and to ultimately forge their own individualized path with depth, authenticity, and confidence. And we celebrated each other along the way.” Top: Rodman, fourth from right, with the Octets, one of Milton’s a capella singing groups. Bottom: Rodman and Jeffrey Marr Jr. ’04 surrounded by Milton friends at their wedding in 2016.

son and fashioned from their actual data. That’s where machine learning comes into play, where we can parse the participants’ data to understand when this person is most at risk and what kind of intervention will be best.”

As points of vulnerability are identified, “we can nudge or prompt them to engage in the type of behavior that has already been shown to mitigate their worsening symptoms,” Rodman says. As these resilience factors are better understood, the findings will offer a more refined approach for preventing and treating depression and anxiety.

“With this approach,” she says, “we may be able to implement more effective, scalable interventions that build resilience based on participants’ own data—whether it’s spending more time outside; spending less time on social media; physical activity; a transportive song, movie, or book; or reaching out and socializing with others.”

These interventions, adds Rodman, who also trained as a clinical psychologist, are especially important because traditional therapy is often difficult to access, costly, and not always tailored to the person or circumstances. Phone-based nudging derives from the individual’s personal data is low burden and accessible to all.

Over the next three years, Rodman expects to begin publishing the findings, making recommendations at both the policy and personal levels. “Providing this more in-depth, nuanced understanding of the adolescent experience will help us all— people making policy decisions, but also families making decisions—just all the way down the line.”

“LIVING LIFE OUT IN THE WORLD CAN RESULT IN GOOD AND BAD EXPERIENCES, AND SOCIALIZING ONLINE IS REALLY JUST A VEHICLE THROUGH WHICH ADOLESCENTS NOW LIVE OUT THEIR LIVES.”

MIK AOKI ’86 BEGAN HIS LOVE FOR BASEBALL AS A YOUNG BOY IN JAPAN. OVER HIS MANY YEARS AS A COACH, HE’S COME TO APPRECIATE THE IMPORTANT LIFE LESSONS HIS PROFESSION HAS TO OFFER.

Going Distancethe

Story by Ken Shulman

Photographs by Jimell Greene

In the fourth decade of his coaching career, Aoki reflects on both the lessons he’s tried to impart and the lessons he’s learned. “In this business it’s all too easy to focus on the outcome . . . . But it’s equally important to win the right way. To understand the journey of trying to be great at something. Because that’s where the real life lessons lie.”

MIK AOKI ’86 has spent a lifetime on the baseball diamond, as a player and as a coach. Yet he rarely spoke about the game with his mother. “For my mother, studies always came first,” says Aoki, who recently took over as head baseball coach at the University of Richmond. “She never discouraged me. But I think she would have been just as happy if I had taken up the tuba.”

Aoki’s Japanese father met his American mother on a blind date while studying in New York City. Aoki was born in Yokohama, Japan, in 1968 and first learned to play baseball in the courtyard of his family’s apartment complex in Tokyo.

“We played wiffle ball at first,” he says. “And then we played with rubber baseballs called kenko balls. I used to throw that kenko ball against the apartment building wall, and then over the balconies, over the fifth floor, sixth floor, seventh floor. Eventually it wouldn’t come back, and I’d have to climb all those stairs to get it.”

Along with how to throw—and how to run stairs—Aoki learned resilience in that Tokyo courtyard. “I was the only non-Japanese kid in the complex,” he recalls. “The other kids picked on me. Sometimes there were fights, and I used to run home to my mother. And every time I showed up, she told me that if I wanted to come inside, I could. But if I did come inside, I’d have to stay inside for the rest of the day. I’d cry for a while outside our apartment and then head back to the courtyard.”

In 1976, when Aoki was just eight years old, his father passed away at the age of 38. The following year the family of three—Aoki,

his mother, and his younger sister NAOMI ’88—moved across the ocean to Plymouth, Massachusetts, where his mother had grown up. At nine years old, starting fourth grade in a new school and a new country, Aoki once again felt like an outsider. “I’d been a gaijin—a foreigner— as a kid in Japan,” he recalls. “And now here I was in Plymouth, this half-Japanese kid everyone was curious about.”

But Aoki wasn’t an outsider for very long. He was bigger and stronger than most of his classmates, and a very good athlete. “Sports definitely helped me fit in,” he said. “I played baseball and basketball, I swam, and I learned how to play soccer and tennis.”

It seemed that Aoki had found a home at his public school. But the Plymouth-Carver school district was facing some tough times, with a shrinking tax base and a new Massachusetts tax law (called Proposition 2½) that further cut already sagging real estate tax revenues. Plymouth-Carver High School, which Aoki was slated to attend the following fall, was holding double sessions. There was even talk of the school’s losing its accreditation.

“This caused a serious migration of students,” Aoki says. “Many of them ended up at nearby private schools. And I ended up at Milton.”

At Milton, sports helped Aoki fit in and make friends, just as it had at his elementary school. He played offensive line on the football team and shortstop—with a few stints as a pitcher—on the baseball team. “I also wrestled, incredibly poorly,

for three years, before going back to basketball my senior year,” he says with a laugh.

At Wolcott House, where he lived for four years, he found a mentor in the house head, Tom Flaherty, who also coached Aoki in football, baseball, and wrestling. “Tom was definitely the most influential person in my life at Milton,” Aoki says. “He was extremely patient, but at the same time he expected you to do your job at the highest level. If you made a mistake during practice or on the field, he didn’t light you up like a Christmas tree. He made that mistake into a learning moment.”

For Flaherty, who retired from Milton in 2008, it was clear that Aoki had the right stuff to succeed in sports and succeed at Milton. “He was a good athlete,” Flaherty remembers. “And he was a leader, the captain of our team, and the head monitor of the dorm. But what most impressed me about Mik was his consistency. He was always the same steady Mik, so sound and approachable, always reaching out to the other kids. And he’s that same person today.”

After four years at Milton, Aoki enrolled at Davidson College in North Carolina, where he majored in English and played four years of varsity baseball. “I think Milton prepared me very well for college,” he says. “If I have any ability to write, and I think I do, that came from Milton. I also learned to think analytically and how to make decisions there.”

Aoki spent his first summer after college playing baseball just outside Amsterdam, in The Netherlands. Then he accepted his first coaching position at a community

A TRUE HERO

Coach Aoki with Pete Frates, center, and Frates’s brother, Andrew, right, at an ALS awareness game at Boston College in 2014. Frates, a former baseball captain at BC where he played for Aoki from 2003 to 2007, was diagnosed with ALS in 2012. He died in 2019. The Ice Bucket Challenge, which Frates and a friend created in 2014, raised over $250 million for ALS. “Pete was the engine behind it because of the type of person he was,” says Aoki, who remains close to the Frates family. Aoki will be holding an ALS awareness game at Richmond in May in honor of Pete and his family. “They’ve done more to move the needle toward a cure for ALS than any family in the history of the human race.”

“People talk about tunnel vision. Mik has something called ‘tunnel emotion’. He’s consistent day in and day out. You always know what you are going to get from him.”

HARRY DARLING , FORMER BOSTON COLLEGE PLAYER

college near Hartford, Connecticut. “I think I made $1,400 for the year,” he laughs. “I needed to work all sorts of side jobs to pay for my coaching habit.”

In 1994, Aoki got what he calls his first “real job”—as assistant baseball coach at Dartmouth College. There he met the woman who would become his wife, Sue Daddona, an assistant coach on the women’s field hockey team and a former field hockey and lacrosse standout at the University of Delaware. The two stayed at Dartmouth until 1998, when Aoki was hired as head baseball coach at Columbia University. They married in 2001 and moved in 2003 from Columbia to Boston College, where they spent seven years.

“I loved our time at Boston College,” Aoki says. “Massachusetts was home. All three of our children were born while we were at bc, and all three were baptized by the same priest there.”

Aoki’s players at Boston College also have fond memories of their time with him. “People talk about tunnel vision,” says Harry Darling, who played for Aoki for four years at BC. “Mik has something called “tunnel emotion.” He’s consistent day in and day out. You always know what you are going to get from him. That makes him easy to trust. So when he gives you a compliment, you know he means it. And when he gets on you for a mistake, you know there’s a reason why.”

From Boston College, the family moved to South Bend, Indiana, in 2010, when the University of Notre Dame hired Aoki as head baseball coach. They stayed there through 2019, when Notre Dame informed him that his contract would not be

renewed. Being let go shook Aoki’s confidence. He even considered leaving coaching. “I thought about other options almost every night,” he remembers. “Had this happened 15 years earlier, I might have reacted differently. But this time I had three kids to think about.”

Fortunately, Aoki was able to stay in coaching. He found a new job at Morehead State University, a Division 1 school in eastern Kentucky. “It was very different from what I’d known at Columbia or Dartmouth or Notre Dame,” he says. “The program and school weren’t resourced at anywhere near the same level. The university is a regional school serving eastern Kentucky, which is not a very affluent area. There were a lot of first-generation college students, and I’d not had much experience with that type of environment. On the team, we had great kids who worked and practiced hard. I learned a lot from them and the experience at Morehead.”

In the spring of 2023, the University of Richmond reached out to Aoki; it had decided to make a coaching change. “I’d visited that campus when I was looking at colleges,” he recalls. “I remembered it as a place that offered a great balance of education and athletics. And besides, the current president is a Red Sox fan. I decided to take the job.”

Now in the fourth decade of his coaching career, Aoki can reflect on his trajectory from Yokohama to Milton to Richmond, on the lessons he’s tried to impart and the lessons he’s learned. “When I first started coaching, it was mainly that I want-

ed to stay connected to the game,” he says. “It wasn’t until much later that I realized what a tremendous impact you can have as a coach.”

Aoki wants to help his players learn to win and to excel both on and off the field. “It’s not just me teaching them to hit a slider,” he explains. “There’s preparation—how you eat, how you sleep, how you compartmentalize your life on campus so you can be a student and an athlete. And how do you react when things go sideways, which they will always do. In this business it’s all too easy to focus on the outcome. And outcomes are important—even for me. If I don’t win enough games, I might be fired. But it’s equally important to win the right way. To understand the journey of trying to be great at something. Because that’s where the real life lessons lie.”

KEN SHULMAN HAS WRITTEN ABOUT SPORTS FOR NEWSWEEK , THE NEW YORK TIMES , THE INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE , AND NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO.

Aoki coached baseball for Boston College from 2003 to 2010. “I loved our time at Boston College,” he says. “Massachusetts was home. All three of our children were born while we were at BC, and all three were baptized by the same priest there.”

right: courtesy of mik aoki

On Centre

Student Life at Milton

illustration

A Digital Opportunity for a Timeless Concept

“We were thinking of how we can shift the paradigm of social media so it’s more about exploring and getting outside.”

BENJAMIN SIEGEL ’24

MARISA DONELAN

BEN RHODES-KROPF ’24 has a message from his father. In order to receive it, he’ll have to travel to Spain.

That’s because his dad left the message through Trace, an app Rhodes-Kropf and classmate BENJAMIN SIEGEL ‘24 developed throughout their junior and senior years at Milton. The location-based service combines the functions of a messaging app with the thrill of an in-person treasure hunt, allowing users to “leave a Trace” wherever they are in the world. Messages for other Trace users (or their future selves) are delivered only when the recipient is physically close to the location where the message—in video form—was recorded.

Frustrated by the passive nature of existing social media, which users can idly scroll through for hours on end, Siegel and Rhodes-Kropf set out to create a different kind of messaging service that would foster more-meaningful connections and inspire users to travel near and far.

“You can scroll indefinitely without interacting with the world. It’s not a very healthy relationship that

people have with existing social media,” says Siegel. “We were thinking of how we can shift the paradigm of social media so it’s more about exploring and getting outside.”

Trace, which the students are continuing to develop, gives users an opportunity to connect with others while they’re out in the world, and the ability to make a mark— digitally—on places and in communities. It’s an innovative delivery system for an ancient human desire: to leave one’s impression in a meaningful location. Think rock cairns to denote burial sites or assist in wayfinding; messages in bottles; initials carved into tree trunks; postcards from faraway trips; spray-painted tags on city walls. Trace is a way for a user to say “I was here” or “I was here and I thought of you” with no impact on the environment.

Currently, Trace users can leave messages for others anywhere in the world. Users can set their Traces to expire or remain indefinitely. They can also leave messages for their future selves—a memory on graduation day to be revisited at reunions

STUDENTS DEVELOP APP THAT LEAVES A LASTING IMPRINT.

down the line, for example. Recipients can leave voice memos or comments in response to Traces. There’s potential to create communities on the app as well. As of late 2023, Milton Academy was the first and only Trace community, allowing visitors to leave general messages to be received by others in a specific location. If they’re in a Trace community, users can leave a message for unknown future visitors. Imagine moving into a new dorm room or apartment and finding a message from a previous occupant.

The idea for Trace came to Siegel and Rhodes-Kropf, friends since they met in Milton’s Middle School, while they were hiking on Cape Cod in the summer after their sophomore year. They volleyed ideas about how they could share the experience with friends or preserve the memories in a more active way than simply posting a photo or a video on Instagram or TikTok. What if they could leave a message, tied to the specific location, for the future?

“There’s a long-term payout,” Rhodes-Kropf says. “Everyone has a box of pictures and papers in their attic, but it’s hard to interact with that history. With Trace, you’re out and about living your life and able to interact with what other people have shared in the past.”

Building things for the sake of building them has always been a hallmark of the pair’s friendship, whether it’s art, or a welding project, or some kind of tech hardware, or a not-quite-seaworthy boat made from recycled water bottles.

They split their responsibilities for the development of Trace, with Rhodes-Kropf building the app’s in-

frastructure and Siegel handling the front end of the platform, including its appearance.

They launched in beta with about 1,000 users in the summer before their senior year, collecting valuable feedback to improve the platform and uncover any glitches in the user experience.

Rhodes-Kropf has been interested in programming and coding since he was in elementary school, honing his skills through a combination of self-teaching and formal classes. He started with Scratch, a block-based coding platform for elementary students, at the age of 10; in his freshman year, he enrolled in a summer program called Coding Dojo at Colorado Technical University, an intensive dive into full-stack development.

By his senior year, Rhodes-Kropf had taken most of Milton’s computer science department offerings. He has been inspired by the department faculty, who champion creativity and exploration. Department Chair Chris Hales often connects current students with successful alumni in the tech industry. He put the duo in contact with young graduates who had launched apps and businesses while attending Milton or college.

One such example is BENJAMIN BOTVINICK ’21, who created a payment platform for entrepreneurs called Hyper when he was just 17. Hyper took off, bringing in millions in capital investment and propelling Botvinick to Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2022. Another connection was to JONO FORBES ’07, an innovator in augmented and virtual reality. “The alumni community is so inspiring,” says Rhodes-Kropf. “It’s incredible to be able to talk with

someone who’s been where you are.”

For now, Trace’s vast marketing potential is mostly untapped. Rhodes-Kropf and Siegel partnered with a musician who left Traces at venues on his tour, allowing users to pick up exclusive videos of new songs when they arrived at his shows. Moving forward, other businesses could register as communities and offer deals or provide a platform for reviews; nonprofits and schools could use Trace for guided tours.

Siegel and Rhodes-Kropf have already had some practice pitching the app to interested partners. Representatives for the musician they worked with contacted them after seeing a TikTok about Trace, which led to the tour project. So far, they have built the app independently, but they plan to seek investors this spring. They’re adding users in batches, hoping to home in on product market fit before launching it broadly.

“We’ve made a pitch deck and we’ve gone on some calls, which was a great experience,” says Rhodes-Kropf. “What we realized was that the money would be helpful, but at the same time, we’re so busy with school and didn’t feel like we could really do it justice. If you’re venture-backed, it’s a big commitment. We’re hopeful that when things calm down a bit, we’ll be able to accelerate development.”

To learn more about Trace and see it in action, scan this QR code.

Ben Rhodes-Kropf ’24, left, and Benjamin Siegel ’24 are the creators of Trace, a new app.

The Best of Buddies

BY SARAH ABRAMS

“The fifth-graders seem just as excited to see the kindergartners as the kindergartners are to see the fifth- graders.”

LOWER SCHOOL PRINCIPAL AMY CRISWELL

on a warm, sunny fall day, fifthgraders Sophie Kalin and Emily Munko are eager to explain what makes Milton’s buddy program so special.

For Sophie, “It brings back memories of when I was in kindergarten,” and for Emily, “I just love hanging out with the young kids.”

Today, they watch as their kindergarten buddy Malachi Campbell scoops up wood chips off the ground, carefully arranging them around the legs of one of the playground’s benches. He wants to make sure, he explains, that the bench doesn’t wobble when someone sits down.

While Malachi and his fifthgrade buddies work on the bench, others on Milton’s Lower School playground are playing hide-andseek or T-ball, swinging on the jungle gym, or just chatting and laughing. They are all thrilled to be outside and with one another.

The buddy program, which pairs the Lower School’s kindergarten students with fifth-grade students for unstructured play once a week, has been hugely successful for more than three decades, says fifth-grade teacher Jennifer Katsoulis, who has been teaching at Milton for 18 years.

Over the years, the program has forged friendships that often last

well beyond the students’ first year together. “When you see your buddy later,” says a fifth-grader recalling when she was a kindergartner, “there’s a special feeling that you have. After all these years, there’s this bond.”

The program evolves each year pretty organically, says Katsoulis. Each week for half an hour, the Lower School’s fifth-graders visit the kindergarten classes. They read books together, play math games, work on art projects, or play with Legos, blocks, and Play-Doh. In good weather, they play outside.

“We’re not telling them what activity to do,” Katsoulis says. “It’s really up to them to figure that out, and that’s an important skill, to not have to be always told, ‘Here’s the next thing we’re doing.”’ They also link up during school wide events— at assemblies, the Veterans Day flagpole ceremony, pep rallies, and other school performances.

Partnerships are not assigned. As the students get to know one another over the course of several weeks, relationships begin to emerge. “There might be a couple of kids who are naturally a little hesitant or shy, and they magically find each other,” says Katsoulis. “It’s nice to see. It’s really about finding someone you connect and click with. For

MILTON’S BUDDY PROGRAM BUILDS A LIFETIME OF SKILLS.

“The [fifth-graders] are old enough to navigate and be flexible and help their buddies get to know them and other people. They do a really nice job of taking on that role.”

FIFTH-GRADE TEACHER JENNIFER KATSOULIS

them to be able to go through that process is kind of cool to watch.”

Kindergarten teacher Kiana Gibson loves watching as the relationships between the school’s youngest students and the fifth-graders build over the course of the year. “They get to know each other’s likes and dislikes,” she says.

“The other day I loved watching a few kids play T-ball,” Gibson says. “The kindergartner wasn’t sure how to hold the bat. His buddy was so patient as he helped him develop this new skill. It’s a really nice bond that they built.”

The value of a program like this, the teachers say, cannot be overestimated. “The kindergarten program centers on building the students’ social/emotional skills,” says another kindergarten teacher Martha Slocum. “The students are going to get the academics as they go through Milton, but if they know how to meet and play with a friend and maintain that relationship over an entire year, they’re going to use that later—when they’re a lab partner in high school or when they’re in a board meeting in the office as an adult. All these skills that we’re imparting to them now are lifelong skills.”

And the program gives fifthgraders an opportunity to serve as leaders and role models. “They are old enough to navigate and be flexible and help their buddies get to know them and other people,” Katsoulis says. “They do a really nice job of taking on that role. ‘Here’s our school and here’s our community and have you met this big buddy?’ It definitely plays out during recess time.”

“Many of the fifth-graders were

here in kindergarten,” adds Slocum. “When they come back, they’re full of joy in returning to their former classroom and being there in a different capacity. Now they’re a mentor; now someone is looking up to them. They’re taking that five-yearold through some of the steps they had to go through when they were a kindergartner. That bond is really quite strong.”

Amy Criswell, the Lower School’s new principal, has enjoyed observing how the buddies interact with one another—both inside and outside the classroom. “The fifth-graders seem just as excited to see the kindergartners as the kindergartners are to see the fifth-graders,” she says. “Even when they’re out and about on campus, they have their radar out for their buddies. When they pass each other on campus, they’re running up and giving high-fives to each other or getting quick snuggles.”

Criswell is delighted that Middle School Principal Steven Bertozzi and the sixth-grade teachers have continued the program to include first- and sixth- graders. The former kindergarten/fifth-grade buddies—now first and sixth graders—read together. “The joyful energy is just amazing,” says Criswell. “The sixth-graders flood into the first and second grade classrooms and curl up reading books together.”

As recess comes to an end, Malachi is still at work, making certain the bench is more secure than when he began his project. When it is suggested he might one day become an engineer, he never looks up, but continues his efforts to stabilize the bench. “I am going to be an engineer,” he says quietly.

Boys’ Soccer Wins NEPSAC, Fall Teams Win ISL Championships

The undefeated boys’ soccer team finished its season winning the NEPSAC Class-A finals in a 2–0 victory over Taft. The team, under the leadership of head coach Chris Kane, won the Independent School League (ISL) championship as well.

Also taking home ISL championships in the fall were the volleyball and girls’ cross -country teams.

matt risley

Robotics Team Off to a Strong Start

Milton’s robotics team held its top rankings through the beginning of the 2023–2024 season. One of the team’s robots—operated by a small group of students—held first place in southern New England and moved up the ranks globally, while other Milton robots consistently ranked at the top of regional tournaments. Working year-round in their expand-

ed lab on the ground floor of the Art and Media Center, the robotics team is a dedicated, inclusive, and highly skilled group of students who have impressed their coaches and competitors with their incredible abilities and their positive attitudes. Upper School robotics students have mentored Middle School competitors, securing a successful future for the program.

ROBOTICS

Film Students Enter NYC Festival

Milton film students traveled to New York City for the All-American High School Film Festival, where two students, YEVGENIYA REGENT ’24 and LUKE WITKOWSKI ’24,had films accepted and shown.Regent’s documentary, Prayer of the Birds made it to the Best of Fest showing and was nominated for Best International Film and Best Documentary.

Regent has earned accolades at several festivals for Prayer of the Birds, winning Best Picture and the Audience Choice Award at the Williston Northampton Film Festival and Best Film

About a Social Issue in the Student World Impact Film Festival. The documentary chronicles the experience of a young Ukrainian refugee—Regent’s sister—as she adjusts to life in a new country. Witkowski’s film, Bloodshed, won Best Editing at the Williston Northampton Film Festival.

The All-American High School Film Festival received approximately 15,000 submissions, “so this was an amazing opportunity for Luke and Yevgeniya, and a great experience for all to be part of the festival,” says Performing Arts Department faculty member Shane Fuller.

ARTS

photography: opposite page, adam richins, right, courtesy of shane fuller.

(Left to right) JAIDEN DELVA ’24, OLENA PETRYSHYN ’25, YEVGENIYA REGENT ’24, faculty member Shane Fuller, CYRANO DESROSIERS ’24, and LUKE WITKOWSKI ’24 at the All-American High School Film Festival.

Milton Hosts Second TEDx Event

In its second year, TEDxMiltonAcademy took center stage at King Theatre on December 1. The event featured seven student, alumni, and faculty speakers with original talks on topics including traditions, grief, love, and medicine. This year’s speakers were, L-R, TANYA EVERETT ‘02, ADRIENNE FUNG ’25, VALERIE GU ’25, SAMANTHA BERK ’24, faculty member Kristine Palmero, SEAN

photography: left evan scales; right page, far right, rebeecca w. simulis

BURNS ’94, and JULIA SHEPHARD STENZEL ’82. The talks were recorded for the TEDx YouTube channel.

Milton Magazine Awarded Gold

In 2023, Milton Magazine, received a Gold award in the Circle of Excellence from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). CASE judges noted: “With its elegant design and smart writing, this magazine has all the hallmarks of a commercial publication.” It’s the second year in a row that the magazine has been a finalist for the Robert Sibley Magazine of the Year Award. In 2022, it made history by becoming the first publication from an independent school to receive the Sibley, the highest honor in the field.

NEW PRODUCTION SCHEDULE

We’re making some changes to our production schedule. Your fall/winter Milton Magazine will arrive a few weeks later than usual.

Dining Services Expands Plant-Powered Options

NYT Bestselling author Ilyon Woo P’25 Visits as Heyburn Lecturer

Historian, author, and educator ILYON WOO P’25 visited Milton in the fall to deliver the Heyburn Lecture and spend time in U. S. history classes. Woo is the author of Master Slave Husband Wife, a riveting true story about an enslaved couple’s escape and journey to freedom. The New York Times selected Woo’s book as one of its 10 best books of 2023. “You can continue to add to history rather than choosing and privileging one dominant narrative,” Woo told students.

The HENRY R. HEYBURN ’39 Lecture, which commemorates Heyburn’s love of history and dedication to Milton as a student, parent, and Trustee, brings historians to campus for lively discussions about their research.

Milton has begun offering more “plant-powered” meals in Forbes Dining Hall, thanks to the advocacy of the student Sustainability Board and in partnership with Aramark, the school’s dining services vendor.

MELANIE FORNEY ’24, GUS VOGEL ’25, and JUNI BREWSTER ’25 worked for the past year to expand the dining hall’s plant-based offerings, says Linnea Engstrom, a Science Department faculty member and Milton’s sustainability coordinator. Historically, the dining hall has offered a plant-powered meal during Earth Week.

“Eating less meat has a large impact on the environment,” Engstrom says. “The livestock sector is one of the leading causes of deforestation; and there are a large number of resources needed to raise meat, both through land use in growing crops for the livestock to eat and drinking water for them. There is also livestock waste, which can pollute water sources.”

Milton has taken additional sustainability measures related to dining, including composting, which helps reduce the production of methane; promoting low-waste dining choices; and offering locally grown foods.

The Making of a Milton Loyal Donor

The Making of a Milton Loyal Donor

The Making of a Milton Loyal Donor

The Making of a Milton Loyal Donor

Rudy Reyes ’90 is not a Milton lifer. In fact, he only attended the Upper School for his last two years of high school. In his time as a member of the Milton community, however, it has become clear that Milton Academy runs through his veins. And it was through his Milton experiences that Rudy learned a new way to approach learning and thinking, which set the stage for his academic career at Harvard, his professional career, and his advocacy work.

Rudy Reyes ’90 is not a Milton lifer. In fact, he only attended the Upper School for his last two years of high school. In his time as a member of the Milton community, however, it has become clear that Milton Academy runs through his veins. And it was through his Milton experiences that Rudy learned a new way to approach learning and thinking, which set the stage for his academic career at Harvard, his professional career, and his advocacy work.

As Verizon’s southern and western vice president and deputy general counsel for state regulatory, government affairs, and local affairs, Rudy led negotiation efforts to have the City of Sacramento named one of the first 5G cities in the world, a landmark agreement that was repeated throughout California. The motivation and inspiration for Rudy’s milestone 5G negotiation: creating greater access to education through high-speed internet for marginalized communities.

Rudy Reyes ’90 is not a Milton lifer. In fact, he only attended the Upper School for his last two years of high school. In his time as a member of the Milton community, however, it has become clear that Milton Academy runs through his veins. And it was through his Milton experiences that Rudy learned a new way to approach learning and thinking, which set the stage for his academic career at Harvard, his professional career, and his advocacy work. As Verizon’s southern and western vice president and deputy general counsel for state regulatory, government affairs, and local affairs, Rudy led negotiation efforts to have the City of Sacramento named one of the first 5G cities in the world, a landmark agreement that was repeated throughout California. The motivation and inspiration for Rudy’s milestone 5G negotiation: creating greater access to education through high-speed internet for marginalized communities.

Rudy Reyes ’90 is not a Milton lifer. In fact, he only attended the Upper School for his last two years of high school. In his time as a member of the Milton community, however, it has become clear that Milton Academy runs through his veins. And it was through his Milton experiences that Rudy learned a new way to approach learning and thinking, which set the stage for his academic career at Harvard, his professional career, and his advocacy work.

As Verizon’s southern and western vice president and deputy general counsel for state regulatory, government affairs, and local affairs, Rudy led negotiation efforts to have the City of Sacramento named one of the first 5G cities in the world, a landmark agreement that was repeated throughout California. The motivation and inspiration for Rudy’s milestone 5G negotiation: creating greater access to education through high-speed internet for marginalized communities.

As Verizon’s southern and western vice president and deputy general counsel for state regulatory, government affairs, and local affairs, Rudy led negotiation efforts to have the City of Sacramento named one of the first 5G cities in the world, a landmark agreement that was repeated throughout California. The motivation and inspiration for Rudy’s milestone 5G negotiation: creating greater access to education through high-speed internet for marginalized communities.

Rudy’s focus on supporting education can be traced back to his start at Milton, fresh off the plane from Houston, Texas. He is grateful to this day for the financial aid that made it possible for him to attend and thrive at Milton Academy. That is where his journey to becoming a 17-year loyal donor to the Milton Fund began. “Milton gave me 100% financial aid including a grant for a two-week tour of Kenya, Africa, with the chamber singers in my rising Class I year (summer 1989). I give so that other students can have the same opportunity I was given,” says Reyes.

Rudy’s focus on supporting education can be traced back to his start at Milton, fresh off the plane from Houston, Texas. He is grateful to this day for the financial aid that made it possible for him to attend and thrive at Milton Academy. That is where his journey to becoming a 17-year loyal donor to the Milton Fund began. “Milton gave me 100% financial aid including a grant for a two-week tour of Kenya, Africa, with the chamber singers in my rising Class I year (summer 1989). I give so that other students can have the same opportunity I was given,” says Reyes.

Rudy’s focus on supporting education can be traced back to his start at Milton, fresh off the plane from Houston, Texas. He is grateful to this day for the financial aid that made it possible for him to attend and thrive at Milton Academy. That is where his journey to becoming a 17-year loyal donor to the Milton Fund began. “Milton gave me 100% financial aid including a grant for a two-week tour of Kenya, Africa, with the chamber singers in my rising Class I year (summer 1989). I give so that other students can have the same opportunity I was given,” says Reyes.

Rudy’s focus on supporting education can be traced back to his start at Milton, fresh off the plane from Houston, Texas. He is grateful to this day for the financial aid that made it possible for him to attend and thrive at Milton Academy. That is where his journey to becoming a 17-year loyal donor to the Milton Fund began. “Milton gave me 100% financial aid including a grant for a two-week tour of Kenya, Africa, with the chamber singers in my rising Class I year (summer 1989). I give so that other students can have the same opportunity I was given,” says Reyes.

When asked about the impact Milton had on him, Rudy made it clear that he received more than just a diploma, “as an adoptive father myself, the way I think of my time at Milton was that Milton adopted me and gave me unconditional love and support during my time there. I had never experienced the academic rigor and whole-person support that Milton offered. And the discussions in the classroom were matched by equally illuminating discussions in the dorm.”

When asked about the impact Milton had on him, Rudy made it clear that he received more than just a diploma, “as an adoptive father myself, the way I think of my time at Milton was that Milton adopted me and gave me unconditional love and support during my time there. I had never experienced the academic rigor and whole-person support that Milton offered. And the discussions in the classroom were matched by equally illuminating discussions in the dorm.”

When asked about the impact Milton had on him, Rudy made it clear that he received more than just a diploma, “as an adoptive father myself, the way I think of my time at Milton was that Milton adopted me and gave me unconditional love and support during my time there. I had never experienced the academic rigor and whole-person support that Milton offered. And the discussions in the classroom were matched by equally illuminating discussions in the dorm.”

—Rudy Reyes ’90

When asked about the impact Milton had on him, Rudy made it clear that he received more than just a diploma, “as an adoptive father myself, the way I think of my time at Milton was that Milton adopted me and gave me unconditional love and support during my time there. I had never experienced the academic rigor and whole-person support that Milton offered. And the discussions in the classroom were matched by equally illuminating discussions in the dorm.”

Rudy Reyes ’90

Rudy Reyes ’90

Rudy Reyes ’90

Are you ready to start your Milton Loyal journey? It takes just three consecutive years of giving to the Milton Fund to become a member. Already a member? Thank you!

Are you ready to start your Milton Loyal journey? It takes just three consecutive years of giving to the Milton Fund to become a member. Already a member? Thank you!

Are you ready to start your Milton Loyal journey? It takes just three consecutive years of giving to the Milton Fund to become a member. Already a member? Thank you!

Are you ready to start your Milton Loyal journey? It takes just three consecutive years of giving to the Milton Fund to become a member. Already a member? Thank you!

Please remember to make your Milton Fund gift before June 30, 2024, to keep your Milton Loyal status going and growing just like Rudy Reyes ’90.

Please remember to make your Milton Fund gift before June 30, 2024, to keep your Milton Loyal status going and growing just like Rudy Reyes ’90.

Please remember to make your Milton Fund gift before June 30, 2024, to keep your Milton Loyal status going and growing just like Rudy Reyes ’90.

Please remember to make your Milton Fund gift before June 30, 2024, to keep your Milton Loyal status going and growing just like Rudy Reyes ’90.

Visit www.milton.edu/donate to make your annual Milton Fund gift today.

Visit www.milton.edu/donate to make your annual Milton Fund gift today.

Visit www.milton.edu/donate to make your annual Milton Fund gift today.

In Artificial: A Love Story Amy Kurzweil ‘05 explores the many forms love can take.

1951

NANINE (POWELL)

RHINELANDER has been writing memoirs for several years. She self-published the story of her family’s cruise to Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, from the French island of St. Pierre and illustrated the piece with the many watercolors she painted of the landscapes and birds they saw. She is currently working on a second short book that covers her maternal family from 1906 to 1930.

1952

Zoom mini-reunion in November. All reported good health and vigorous daily activity. One has moved to a retirement community, one is thinking about it, and the third is just contemplating deaccessioning.

JOHN ELIOT has been a 13-year resident at the Riderwood Retirement Community in Silver Spring, Maryland, as an emeritus professor from the University of Maryland. Alas, his wife died from a stroke in 1999. He has been using

the computer to prepare documents about cognition, spatial intelligence, and theology for the past eight years. He is blessed with two daughters and three grandsons who live nearby. Milton now seems like ancient history— but with memories about fellow students and faculty.

EMERY (BRADLEY) GOFF CARHART celebrated her 89th birthday in her retirement home in Portland, Maine. She finally retired from her antiques business, which she and her first husband, Roy Goff, started in Bath, Maine, in 1968. She and her second husband, Bill Carhart, ran the business for 50 years on Great Island, Maine, and later in Farmington, Maine. She is delighted to be the grandparent of seven grandkids and now an adorable great-granddaughter, though she finds it weird to be the mother of a grandfather! She is also upset that she missed her latest college class Zoom; she slept through it. The hazards of old age, alas. She would be very pleased to be in touch with any classmates, though she no longer drives.

1954

70TH REUNION, JUNE 14–15

SARAH “SALLY” (CHASE) FLYNN is so blessed. She is still playing golf and tennis. She is running two campaigns for the city commission in Winter Park. She was honored for her work in historic preservation. Family

is first in blessings: five children, twelve grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. Sally went on her sixth safari to Kenya this summer. Each time, twelve members of her family accompanied her. How lucky can one be?

1955

her husband, Peter Titelman, moved to Rockridge Retirement Community in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 2022. Peter

was transferred to the memory care unit three months later. He gets excellent care there. Tinka keeps herself busy taking long dog walks, playing chamber music, serving on the Development Committee of Northampton Neighbors, and supporting the Palestinian House of Friendship, a small community center in Nablus on the West Bank.

LYDIA (STOUT) DANE and ROGER DANE ’52 are moving to The Cypress, a continuing care community on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. At ages

JACOB BROWN II, CHARLES FITZGERALD, and JOHN BIGELOW had a

KATHARINE “TINKA” (GRATWICK) BAKER and

1954

DAVID EHRLICH moved to Washington in 1979. He instituted an amateur chamber music concert series in a church near his house and has mounted almost 200 programs since 1997. PETER FLYNN ’65, left,and MARY MCCUTCHEON ’65, right, joined David, center, in a celebration following an all-Haydn concert in October.

LISA “BETTY” (HARTMANN) BLAKE ’58 wrote a poem to be shared with her Milton friends before her passing in late 2023.

85 and 90, Lydia and Roger feel it is time to leave the farm they have loved for 35 years. Lydia trusts that they will never have to move again. She and her dog will both miss the freedom of the open space on the farm, but Lydia enjoys the friends they have already made and finds so many civilized activities there rather than the lengthy driving time from the farm to almost anything. There is even a land trust in the community, and of course, music and art and interesting neighbors. “New things keep us going,” says Lydia.

1956

RUPERT HITZIG, once known as “Bobby Broadway,” is now coming out as “Rapperdaddy85.” Milton was so long ago, yet so clear in his memories. In so many ways, it seems like yesterday. Rupert will fly east just to see all of his surviving classmates and then visit the cemetery to conjure up some fun memories. Rupert asks, “Let’s take this time to catch up with each other! Please let me know who is coming.”

(BELOW, L–R) FREDERIC “FRED” E. CHURCHILL ’59, LLOYD “DAVE” BROWN ’59, SPENCER BORDEN IV ’59, THOMAS “TOM” CLAFLIN ’59, THOMAS “TIM” WILLIAMS JR. ’59, WILLIAM “NICK” BANCROFT ’59, and BRIN FORD ’59.

1959

65TH REUNION, JUNE 14–15

LLOYD “DAVE” BROWN and his wife, Jane, had a summer full of family visits. His two teenage granddaughters from Austin spent the summer with them, and now his eldest is a freshman at BC. Dave’s son, his wife, and their 14-month-old large German shepherd spent a couple of weeks just before they left to represent the FAA to Latin America from Brasilia for the next two to four years. Dave is looking forward to a little peace and quiet. They recently spent a couple of days with a group of Milton Class of 1959 grads and their spouses: Mary and THOMAS “TIM” WILLIAMS JR., Rachel and THOMAS “TOM” CLAFLIN II, Bay and WILLIAM “NICK” BANCROFT,

Joy and BRIN FORD, Margot and FREDERIC “FRED” CHURCHILL, and Beth and SPENCER “SPENCE” BORDEN IV. Noni and CHARLTON AMES were planning to come but got COVID-19 instead. “People don’t change a lot, but we are definitely all getting older,” says Dave.

TONY GAENSLEN felt the “Change of Heart” story about his life in the fall 2023 edition of Milton Magazine was “well written and beautifully set up.” ANN SHEFFIELD found it “riveting and most impressive…he has certainly ‘dared to be true,’” and CHARLTON AMES said, “He certainly deserves recognition for all the effort he has put into making this world a better place.”

WENDY (CUTTER) MAYNARD still receives Milton Magazine, even in Wilmington, North Carolina, where she moved from

PHILIP KINNICUTT and Marcia Schoeller had a busy summer of travel featuring a cruise around Italy, from Venice to Rome with a visit to Pompeii, as well as an African safari in Tanzania. They topped things off in the fall with a visit with friends in Sun Valley and a rendezvous with his three sisters in Lake Tahoe. They have decided to take it a little easier in 2024 and limit their excursions to North America.

Ohio to be closer to her daughter and her family. Her other daughter and family live in San Jose, California, and understand why Wendy moved there: $$, rather than San Jose $$$$$!

Wendy bets that her class will have a good turnout for their 65th Reunion this June. “Remember how our class at our last reunion (60th) outshined those celebrating a mere 50th reunion?” Wendy lived in Ohio for

four more years after her husband passed. She loved Lake Erie and the rich, ever-changing deposit of sea glass, the beautiful leaf colors in the fall, the snow and cold to a lesser degree, and the pro sports teams and the theater. The fall colors are only in the western part of North Carolina, but she has no snow to shovel, which is a good thing. Wendy has become a member and volunteer with the local art

museum. “It is a jewel of an art museum,” she says, “small but rich in exhibits of local artists and the vibrant Latino population. They had a great showing of Mary Cassatt and a local folk artist, Minnie Evans, who was prominent in the 1940s–80s. Look her up; she was a fascinating woman. The museum has no funding umbrella; it all comes from the public. It has events almost every weekend, concerts,

family days, meet-the-artist days, etc.,” says Wendy. She spends a lot of time there. One of her favorite times was a wonderful jazz concert she saw. Wendy still quilts, although she leans toward smaller projects like table runners, wall hangings, etc. She lives an active life doing things she enjoys with a 15-yearold feisty calico cat to keep her company at home.

STEPHEN “STEVE” PARKER’s widow, Barbara Long, reports that their son Harrison and their King Charles Cavalier dog, Henry, happily reside in her cottage and that she is living a good life. Barbara is thankful for the great Milton friends she has enjoyed over the years and hopes the “Steve Memorial Tree” on the lawn near the front of the chapel is doing well. She was happy to report that it was thriving the last time she visited it.

1960

STEPHEN “STEVE” BINGHAM reports that despite living with the daily grief of losing daughter Sylvia, he and his wife, Francoise, continue to move forward with their lives. Both are sustained by being very busy all the time. His road safety advocacy started after Sylvia was killed by a truck driver four months after her Yale graduation in 2009. Steve is active in Families for Safe Streets and Vision Zero Network, both of which advocate for safer streets and cars. Steve is also part of “TEAM Underride,” a network

1959

“ He certainly deserves recognition for all the effort he has put into making this world a better place.”

CHARLTON AMES ’59 ON TONY GAENSLEN ’59

of advocates trying to get the U.S. Department of Transportation to require protective side guards on trucks, which would probably have saved Sylvia’s life. Steve organizes a local Marin County Ride of Silence every May and serves on the national board. Alongside his wife, Steve co-directs the Sylvia Bingham Fund (https://sylviabinghamfund.org). On a more personal note, Steve’s niece, Catherine Masud, finally finished her film about his unusual life. A Double Life premiered at the Mill Valley Film Festival last month and won an audience favorite award. Steve and Francoise manage to visit France almost every year, reconnecting with family and friends who all remember him as “Robert.” He also finally had to hang up his roller hockey wheels, partly for health reasons and because the rink shut down. His health is now on an even keel, and he has been a survivor of prostate cancer for over 12 years and counting. Steve does not like to think of it as a “battle”; he negotiates with his cancer, promising he will do his best to live a healthy life and asking his cancer to politely stay in the background. So far, so good. One positive aspect of living with cancer is that it focuses Steve’s mind on the joy of living and not wasting time.

SHELDON STURGES shared that his children and stepson are flourishing, as are his three grandchildren. Sturges Publishing is now 39 years old. In 2003, the company filed for a

provisional U.S. patent outlining the data science requirements for developing chatbots [conversational robots] that would help people worldwide learn on the cell phone. The U.S. patent for LearningPlaybots™ was published in 2010, three years after the first iPhone. We now know from ChatGPT that this idea is tantalizingly close to being realized. It still has a long way to go before resolving the barriers of high processing costs, privacy, copyright, and trademark protection. Sheldon remains optimistic. Sturges has just published A Rolling Stone, a second book of philosophy by classmate WALDO “SPIKE” FORBES

In the meantime, for the past 23 years, Sheldon has been focused on making local democracy work better. He made the first phone calls in 1999 to form a volunteer organization that would draw on the expertise of those “who really know things” in his town. The idea has been to stimulate conversations about the vision for his town and then to listen very carefully (www.princetonfuture. net). Sheldon has been with his wife, Tatiana, for 27 years. He feels very lucky and very blessed. She is a remarkably beautiful and intelligent wife in every way. Last September, they had a glorious wedding for her son, Artyom, and his beautiful bride, Lydia. Sheldon’s oldest, Beka, has become a successful landscape architect, living in New Haven with her husband, Jack, and her energetic son, Abraham. Sheldon’s son, Zack, was recognized this past year by his

1969

NICK MCDOUGAL is enjoying a sunset career producing audiobooks. He shared that memoirs, autobiographies, and nonfiction offer fascinating accounts of our journeys through these amazing, confounding, and inspiring times.

Timepieces: Three Decades of Commentary in the Baltimore Sun

PETER A. JAY ’58

TIDEPOOL PRESS

Shortly after working as a war correspondent in Vietnam for The Washington Post, PETER JAY ’58 left the paper to focus on life closer to home: his home state of Maryland. He bought a local weekly newspaper and began writing a column for The Baltimore Sun in 1974. Timepieces offers a selection from among the 1,840 columns he wrote until 1997, highlighting his eclectic interests from politics to farm life (he continues to be a longtime farmer) to life on the water (he held a U.S. Coast Guard master’s license). Arranged by the decades in which they were written, the columns cover topics that remain relevant today, such as the merits of daylight saving time and an attempt to censor an art exhibit. The columns also represent a tribute to an era when print newspapers were an important part of people’s lives. Jay writes in the introduction, “It was a great time to work in the news business, and it is now long gone.”

Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure

MAGGIE JACKSON ’78 PROMETHEUS BOOKS

Oftentimes people who appear unsure are seen as lacking vision or clarity. Yet MAGGIE JACKSON ’78 argues that “uncertainty plays an essential role in higher-order thinking, propelling people in challenging times toward good judgment, flexibility, mutual understanding, and heights of creativity.” Based on hundreds of interviews, the book examines different aspects of what the author calls “uncertainty-in-action,” including how to move past hubris, the social side of uncertainty, and the strengths of people raised in precarious circumstances. She describes examples of how uncertainty can lead to positive results: an organization called the Leadership Lab that facilitates conversations among people with different perspectives to reduce bias; astronauts on the space station Skylab who improved the crew’s effectiveness and performance by questioning the practices of NASA; and a new movement designed to make artificial intelligence uncertain to achieve better safety and adaptability. One can even imagine a future, Jackson concludes, in which our uncertainty can save humanity.

Discipline

DEBRA SPARK ’80 FOUR WAY BOOKS

In an interactively plotted novel, DEBRA SPARK ’80 weaves stories of different characters and eras, all connected to a troika of paintings called the Triplets. Largely set in Maine, where Spark teaches at Colby College, the book opens during the winter of 2018 with the art appraiser Gracie Thomas arriving on an island off the state’s coast to assess the value of a wealthy developer’s collection. Much goes awry, including the fact that three paintings of sad-looking children by renowned 20th-century portraitist J. Morrison are missing. Details from the past unravel the mystery, including letters written by the artist and his wife from the 1930s and ’40s. The artist’s daughter, Lisa, arrives in Maine in 1975 to tend to her late father’s home and art. A teenage boy, Reggie, who is sent away to a cruel and violent Maine boarding school in 1978, has a chance encounter with Lisa when he seeks to escape. Decades later, Gracie meets Reggie and learns more than she ever imagined about the missing paintings.

A Global Force for Good: Sea Services Humanitarian Operations in the Twenty-First Century

JOHN DARRELL SHERWOOD ’85 NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND

In 1908, an earthquake destroyed much of the Sicilian city of Messina and killed 75,000 people, with a subsequent tsunami killing 2,000 more. U.S. battleships in the area responded by delivering supplies and rendering other assistance. It was the first major U.S. Navy foreign-disaster response, with dozens more to follow, according to JOHN SHERWOOD ’85 The U.S. military, in particular its air and sea services, is “often the only entity capable of responding in a timely and meaningful way to these disasters,” he writes. He analyzes three of the largest U.S. Navy disaster relief operations in response to: the 2004 Indonesian earthquake and tsunami; Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005; and the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011. He reveals the Navy’s successes and shortfalls in the operations and their larger ramifications. The humanitarian efforts represent some of the Navy’s biggest successes, Sherwood contends, and have a greater impact than many of its combat operations. He notes that its response to the 1908 disaster in Italy has engendered goodwill that comtinues to this day.

Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks

PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE ’94 DOUBLEDAY

A staff writer for The New Yorker, PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE ’94 has compiled a dozen stories from that publication which, he writes, “reflect some of my abiding preoccupations: crime and corruption, secrets and lies, the permeable membrane separating licit and illicit worlds, the bonds of family, the power of denial.” They include articles on the hunt for the notorious Mexican drug lord “El Chapo,” a death-penalty lawyer who took on the case of the Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and how the reality-television producer Mark Burnett portrayed Donald Trump as an icon of American success. Some of Radden Keefe’s subjects refused to talk with him; nevertheless, he writes that he enjoys the challenge that presents and can often find more-revealing information about his subjects from others. The book showcases “the adventure of magazine writing,” which the author first became fascinated with in junior high school, when he dreamed of someday writing for The New Yorker.

Xavier, The Super Hero!

NAFEESAH ALLEN ’02

ILLUSTRATED BY

CHERISE JACKSON BLACKBABYBOOKS.COM

In her children’s picture book, NAFEESAH ALLEN ’02 presents a story in verse of a young boy who fears getting a shot at the doctor’s office. But once he gets it, he discovers his power, becoming a superhero who helps people and does good deeds. He shows his friends that “they could be superheroes too if they try.” The book is offered in multiple languages, reflecting Allen’s dedication to presenting stories of diverse characters and cultures. She has lived in Spain, India, Mozambique, Angola, South Africa, and Peru and speaks four languages. She writes on her website: “As a mother of expat kids of color, I realized very quickly that books for multicultural, multilingual children are hard to find. The few that exist are a high reading level and historically educational, leaving a serious gap in reading options for the younger demographic. This is what led me to begin writing dual language children’s books.”

longtime employer, the Securities and Exchange Commission, which awarded him two prizes: the Ferdinand Pecora Award and the Stanley Sporkin Award. He and his wife, Parvin, have two spectacular kids, the genial 6’3” Lucas and the lovely and intelligent Daphne. Sheldon’s youngest, Louise, paints, and with her husband, Tyler, is rebuilding the family farmhouse in Maine. They were both recognized by Sundance for Best Documentary in 2015. Sheldon is very pleased by the appointment of Alixe Callen! Daring to be true matters. Now more than ever.

1962

DIANA “DINA” B. ROBERTS is completing four years as director of advancement at Gore Place Preservation Museum in Waltham, Massachusetts. Home of Christopher Gore, the seventh governor of Massachusetts, Gore Place has a mission to preserve and promote the country estate of Christopher and Rebecca Gore as a unique community resource that tells the story of early19th-century life. Dina’s third book, Missing Parts, a novel, will be published in 2024, and her earlier works are still available on Amazon. She and her husband, ROBERT “BOB” BRAY JR. ’56, celebrated their 26th wedding anniversary on November 26, 2023.

SUSAN “SUSIE” SHERK has semi-retired and celebrated this along with her recent Honorary Doc-

torate and Arts award by taking several exploratory trips to Namibia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Egypt, and Jordan last spring and summer. She recently returned from Greenland and the Torngat Mountains of northern Labrador. Much of this travel focused on researching impact assessment and change management of forced human migrations.

1964

60TH REUNION, JUNE 14–15

1966

ANNE BREWER shared that she

1969

(RIGHT, L-R) Milton day school classmates SALLY (WALKER) HELWIG ’67, BETSY (WEYERHAEUSER) BENTINCK-SMITH ‘67, RAMELLE COCHRANE PULITZER, CORNELIA “NINA” BROWN ‘67, PHOEBE (HEMENWAY) ARMSTRONG ‘67, and MARY “LYN” (WHEELER) ANDERSON ‘67 met in September for lunch in Chestnut Hill for a wonderful reunion.

and SUSAN (CARR) PICKETT ’58 are members of the same amateur dramatic group in New York City. They had fun this fall in a contemporary version of a comedy by Aristophanes, Lysistrata. Susan, a real professional, never misses a line!

MURRAY “MAC” DEWART JR. released a new book with Schiffer Publishing called Hammer and Tongs: Journal of an Artist and Sculptor. It is compiled from his daily journals about his 50 years spent making sculptures. It was reviewed in HeadButler. com by JESSE KORNBLUTH ’64, who called it an “original, revealing and thoughtful memoir.”

SARAH DIXWELL BROWN’s book, Regicide in the Family: Finding John Dixwell, was awarded first prize in the family history/ genealogy category by the Connecticut Society of Genealogists. She narrated an audio version of the book for those who like to listen to books. Her website is sarahdixwellbrown.com.

1967

PHOEBE (HEMENWAY) ARMSTRONG met with Milton classmates in September for lunch in Chestnut Hill for a wonderful reunion. Phoebe will be moving back to her hometown, Milton, with her husband, ROBERT “BOB” ARMSTRONG, in July 2024, after many years living away in northern Virginia and Vero Beach, Florida.

1969

55TH REUNION, JUNE 14–15

1970

MARTHA SULLIVAN wants to draw attention to the death of an important member of the Milton Academy alumni community. CORA ANN PRESLEY passed away on September 19, 2023, after a long battle with cancer. She was a pioneer in Milton’s diversity program. She was honorable, smart, and courageous. She was the only African American girl in their class, and at some point in her three-year stay, she may have been the only one in the Upper School. Martha writes, “An ABC program recruiter found this brilliant young girl, full of potential, in Atlanta. When I say courageous, it is not only because she would stand out by the color of her skin, but because her life stood apart in other ways from so many of the other students.”

Cora came from a family of modest means; her mother was a single parent. She had never before experienced the cold weather that New England could deliver. Needless to say, she excelled academically. She also overcame other hurdles. When she arrived, she had never experienced a decent physical education program. The Sullivan and Bailey team spotted her potential, and she went on to play varsity field hockey at Stanford. After Milton, she attended Stanford University for her B.A. and Ph.D. in African history. She received a Fulbright Scholarship to do the research for the book she authored. She was hired by Tulane to firmly establish an African history department there. Eventually, for

WILLIAM “BILL” QUINBY III ’67 married Annette Hilton in May with his sons, Nicolas and Joshua, in attendance.

various reasons, she felt called back to Atlanta, where she spent her remaining years teaching African history at Georgia State. “In 2014, my daughter, HANNAH VOSE (BRADY) KRAFCHICK ’03, and I flew down to Atlanta, and we were able to spend time with her while she was still in good health. I wanted my daughter to know her because of how special she was,” says Martha.

1971

SYLVIE PERON and Luc shared a wonderful lunch with classmate MARGARET TRUMBULL NASH and her husband, Mike Nash, at the Eden Roc Hotel in Cap d’Antibes on the French Riviera in October 2023. She is looking forward to more of these fun reunions with visiting classmates!

1972

ELIZABETH “BETH” HIRD’s painting of a humpback

whale and calf was chosen to represent the Whale Trust at the annual Whales Tales conference at the Ritz-Carlton in Kapalua, Maui. Beth moved to Maui in 2021. She swims in the ocean daily and paints ocean creatures and scenes of Maui.

1973

PAUL VARNEY, DOUGLAS “DOUG” LAMONT, and STEVEN “STEVE” O’BRIEN got together with Doug’s son, CHRISTOPHER “CHRIS” LAMONT ’07, and his friend GABRIEL “GABE” GERSHENFELD ’07 to watch the Milton-Nobles Day football game at Milton on November 11, 2023. It was just like the old days as Milton crushed them 27–7. Both teams were undefeated in the November 1972 game when Milton stormed out to a 28–0 halftime lead and cruised home with a 35–7 victory to win the league championship. It was the same in Chris and Gabe’s senior year, with Milton easily defeating Nobles in the November 2006 game. While Doug, Paul, and Chris have attended many of the games, it was a 50-year reunion with their old friend Steve, who joked that he had been in the Milton Academy witness protection program since graduation. To ensure that this nonsense didn’t continue for another 50 years, Paul, Doug, and Steve played a round of golf two days later at

(LEFT, L-R) DOUGLAS “DOUG” LAMONT ’73, CHRISTOPHER “CHRIS” LAMONT ’07, STEVEN “STEVE” O’BRIEN ’73, GABRIEL “GABE” GERSHENFELD ’07, and PAUL VARNEY ’73 enjoyed watching the Milton-Nobles Day football game together in November.

1973

Paul’s Southers Marsh course, among the cranberry bogs in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Everyone played surprisingly well, although plenty of what the locals call “white cranberries” (also known as golf balls) were deposited into the bogs from time to time. Paul and Doug are now retired, Steve is wrapping up his law career, Chris is a software engineer with Google in Boston, and Gabe now lives and works in the Boston area after working for the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team for several years.

1974

50TH REUNION, JUNE 14–15

SIMON CHIVERS and ERIK GAENSLER ’75 returned to Centre Street this past October and took a tour of Milton’s campus.

1977

SUSAN (ROGERS)

become a member of the Photography Acquisition Group at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

MOEHLMANN has

JONATHAN “JAY” QUINBY returned to Centre Street and enjoyed his 50th Reunion this past June. He was accompanied by his sisters, MARGUERITE “MOLLY” (QUINBY) EBERLE ’69, left, and SUSAN “SUSY” QUINBY ’71, right.

CHALLENGING THE STATUS QUO

1978

MAGGIE M. JACKSON published a new book called Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure in November (see pg. 53).

DENISE M. MCKINSEY attained a doctoral degree in Strategic Leadership from Liberty University this year.

In her debut novel, AUTUMN ALLEN ’95 tells the story of two young Black men in different eras, each navigating predominantly white educational settings, who speak out for what they believe in despite the risks of challenging the prevailing power structure. In 1995, Gibran attends the fictional Massachusetts prep school Lakeside Academy, which threatens to expel him after he literally pulls the plug on a performance of white students mimicking hip-hop artists. He must decide whether he will defy the school when it denies his request for an excused absence on the day of the Million Man March in Washington, which inspires him to write an open letter on racism at Lakeside Academy. In 1968, Kevin, a student at Columbia University in New York, participates in protests against the school’s plans to build a new athletic facility in Harlem, only a small portion of which would be accessible to predominantly Black community members, earning it the nickname Gym Crow. The protests are based on real events that led to a violent confrontation with police and injuries, arrests, and suspensions of students. Later in the book, the stories of Gibran and Kevin intersect through their connection to Gibran’s mother. In an author’s note, Allen writes that the book was inspired by a trend she saw in her generation of Black youth at preparatory schools who diverged from the path and lifestyle the schools groomed them for. “I felt a need to understand the choice, its roots in the individual, the family, society, and history, and how the consequences of that choice affected people’s lives,” she writes.

1979

45TH REUNION, JUNE 14–15

STEPHEN HARRISON was at Milton for just one semester as an exchange student from Clifton College, England. His short stay left an indelible mark. He is always interested to read updates. Life has moved on to children and grandchildren, but he had a happy career taking his family’s 132-years-old business forward.

HARRIETTE “BUNNY” (MAURAN) MERRILL, HAILEY KLEIN, KATHERINE “KATHY” (RAYMOND) ELKIND, and JESSICA (WARREN) BENNETT gathered in Waitsfield, Vermont, earlier this year to celebrate the publication of Kathy’s wonderful memoir, To Walk It Is to See It (reviewed in Fall/Winter ’23 issue), about her hike (with her husband, Jim) on the GR5 from the North Sea to the Mediterranean.

1980

MICHAEL “MIKE” CHASE shared that he and his wife, Carolyn, are still in Providence, Rhode

MAKOTO SAWAI’S classmate JOHN “JOCK” TOULMIN recently visited Japan. They got together with FRANK PACKARD for a Japanese fish dinner. (L-R): Frank Packard, Jock Toulmin, Makoto Sawai, and Keiko Sawai.

1976

□ ALUMNI BOOKS

Ashley Avignone

Island, where they raised their four children. “We are technically empty-nesters, but the birds often come back and work from home, so it doesn’t feel that way! We are grateful to be able to witness them grow into adults.” Mike also shared some professional news: “After more than 20 years remaining independent, my partners and I at Rex Capital Advisors merged with Pathstone Family Office, one of the largest multi-family offices providing investment, estate planning, tax, and other services to families across the country.”

DEBRA SPARK published her latest novel, Discipline, in March of 2024 (see pg. 53). The book is an art mystery involving the haves and have-nots of Maine, an abusive therapeutic boarding school, and the

challenges of parenting. The author Liam Callahan describes it as a “fascinating exploration of art and trauma and what happens when the legacies of each intersect.” Debra hopes you’ll consider getting a copy.

1984

40TH REUNION, JUNE 14–15

1985

JAMES “JAMIE” MASELLA III has had a year of change. After almost a decade as a partner at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler, James has become a partner at Ballard Spahr. Also, after a decade at Packer Collegiate, two of his children started at The Trinity School in Manhattan this fall.

(BELOW, L-R) HARRIETTE “BUNNY” (MAURAN) MERRILL ’79, HAILEY KLEIN ’79, KATHERINE “KATHY” (RAYMOND) ELKIND ’79, and JESSICA (WARREN) BENNETT ’79

JOHN SHERWOOD continues to work as a historian at the Naval History and Heritage Command. Among other projects, he is currently working on a leadership book based on the life and career of Admiral Michael G. Mullen, the 17th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (See pg. 52 for a review of John’s most recent publication, A Global Force for Good: Sea Services Humanitarian Operations in the Twenty-First Century.) John also hosts the Naval Academy Museum’s Preble Hall Podcast, which you can listen to at https://www.usna.edu/ Museum/PrebleHall/index.php. He lives in Arlington, Virginia, with his wife, Darina. When

he’s not working, he enjoys hiking and skiing at Timberline Mountain in West Virginia.

1987

ALISON FITZGERALD KODJAK recently joined the leadership team at ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative news organization. As assistant managing editor, she oversees the work of several veteran investigative reporters and editors. She’s open to receiving news tips from all her former Milton classmates!

1988

OMPHEMETSE MOOKI was appoint-

1983

RANDALL DUNN, a former Milton trustee and faculty member, is currently the head of school at Rye Country Day School and chair of NAIS (National Association of Independent Schools). In November, he addressed 8,000 attendees at the 2023 NAIS People of Color Conference.

“We are technically empty-nesters, but the birds often come back and work from home, so it doesn’t feel that way!”

MIKE CHASE ’80

IVAN

ed a judge of the High Court in South Africa.

1989

35TH REUNION, JUNE 14–15

ANNELIESE “LIESEL” EULER is a member of Río Hondo College’s Theatre Arts faculty. She recently co-directed the performing arts department’s open-air rendition of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

HADLEY (DAVIS) RIERSON co-wrote a new book, Not

Yet: The Story of an Unstoppable Skater, that was published in February.

1990

JOSHUA “JOSH” CARPMAN has relocated to the Philadelphia suburbs after living for about 30 years in Houston, Texas, raising twin boys. The boys have left the nest! One remains in Texas, where his job is, and the other is pursuing a Ph.D. in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

ALEXIS GREEVES caught up with

her dear friend and classmate, DAVID “DAVE” HARRIS, in Minneapolis. She notes he is still as thoughtful, kind, and compassionate as he’s always been.

1992

ADAM HUDSON recently earned an M.B.A. from the Robert Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. He also recently celebrated his 50th birthday with ALEXANDER AITKEN , MERRICK AXEL , JENNIFER “JENNA” (BERTOCCHI) STAPLETON , DEREK FREDERICK-

SON , ROBERT “MASON” SMITH , DANIEL “DAN” STANZLER , and HUNTER CLARY ‘91

1994

30TH REUNION, JUNE 14–15

1995

ROBERT “NAT” KREAMER and CHRISTOPHER “CHRIS” CHEEVER are working together on the board of Highland Electric Fleets, which is building the largest electric vehicle fleet in the U.S., starting with school buses in 15 states. The New York Times recently featured Highland’s pioneering work using school bus batteries as peaking power plants on the grid. Nat and EDWARD “ED” FENSTER previously founded SunRun (NASDAQ: RUN), which is now the second-largest solar company in the U.S.A.

1998

SARAH MCGINTY LONDON was named #22 on the Forbes “Most Powerful Women 2023” list.

1999

25TH REUNION, JUNE 14–15

2003

BEAU H. RHEE is honored to be selected as a 2024 laureate artist at Cité Internationale des Arts,

1992

TING ’92 hosted a group of alumni to meet with Trustees PATRICK TSANG ’90, Hendrick Sin, and Helen Zhu last November. (L-R) DANNY CHOW ’99, JESSICA CHENG ’04, TE-HEN “TOKU” CHEN ’96, STEPHANIE LAU ’95, HELEN LIN SUN ’80, SIMON TANG ’93, Hendrick Sin, JACKSON TSE ’11, PATRICK TSANG ‘90, BRIAN KONG ’11, SIMON CHAN ’98, Helen Zhu, VINCENT LEE ’00, SAMANTHA “SAM” KIM ’00, and IVAN TING ‘92

A LOVE STORY IN COMIC FORM

In her new graphic memoir, Artificial: A Love Story, the New Yorker cartoonist AMY KURZWEIL ’05 tells the story of the grandfather she never knew: Fredric Kurzweil, a renowned Austrian musician and conductor who fled the Nazis in the late 1930s.

Divided into themes, the memoir depicts her journey as she spends countless hours sorting through photographs and documents that had been locked away for decades in storage units. In all, Kurzweil spent seven years photographing her grandfather’s archival material, sketching, writing, and, finally, transforming the narrative into finished images.

Artificial also depicts Kurzweil’s assistance in helping her father, the inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil—whose numerous inventions include reading machines for the blind and the first electronic musical instruments—as he seeks to use artificial intelligence to bring his father’s words to life.

At her book launch in November, Kurzweil talked about the advantages of telling stories graphically. Her first graphic memoir, Flying Couch, was published in 2016.

“Without comics I wouldn’t be able to play with perception so vividly and viscerally,” she said. “Comics make my work really emotional. You’re in it with me; the emotional contagion is so immediate.”

Kurzweil also discussed how Artificial explores not only her relationship with her grandfather but other relationships as well, both familial and romantic. Over the course of her research, she writes in the book, she grew to love her grandfather. “After all this, I still don’t know if I know my grandfather Fred. But I think I love Fred.”

“There’s all these different kinds of love stories that I’m telling,” Kurzweil said at the launch. “I wanted to invite people in with the classic love story, but I also wanted you to be thinking about the different kinds of love that exist in your relationships. My hope is that by the end of the book you’re also revising your concepts of love and thinking about all the different versions of love stories that are depicted here.”

In Memoriam

1940–1949

Janet Stearns May ’42

William P. Murphy, Jr. ’42

William D. Weeks ’44

Dorothy Hooper Dean ’47

George S. Harris ’48

Nathan Newbury III ’48

Peter L. Runton ’49

1950–1959

T. V. Corsini, Jr. ’50

Andre J. Navez ’51

John S. Ames III ‘54*

William H. Farnham, Jr. ’54

Ann Feeley Kieffer ’54

Saran Morgan Hutchins ’57

1960–1969

Rosamund Stone Zander ’60

Haidee Whiteside Flinders ’60

Arthur Willis III ’60

Susan Williams Dickie ’60

Bruce D. Borland ’61

Elizabeth L. Auchincloss ’69

1970–1979

Cora Presley ’70

David R. Smith III ’77

1980-1989

Felicia N. Taylor ’82

John C. Lualdi ’84

2000s

Creighton C. Muscato ’07

Nathan J. Honey ’15

Arianna G. Kamal ‘23

Faculty and Staff

James D. Baldwin

Richard Barbieri

Louise Bearce

James F. Hejduk

* Former Trustee

ALUMNI, FACULTY, AND STAFF WHO PASSED JULY 1, 2023–DECEMBER 31, 2023. TO NOTIFY US OF A DEATH, PLEASE CONTACT THE DEVELOPMENT AND ALUMNI RELATIONS OFFICE AT ALUMNI@MILTON.EDU OR 617-898-2447.

“I wanted my daughter to know her because of how special she was.”

JEFFREY “JEFF” MARR JR. returned to campus in October during Mustangs Care Month to speak to students about the importance of giving back. Class of 2004 classmates JOSHUA “JOSH” KRIEGER, ELIZABETH “LIZ” (BERYLSON) KATZ, and ILANA (SCLAR) KRIEGER all came to the assembly to show their support for Jeff. (L-R) Josh Krieger, Jeff Marr Jr., Liz Katz, and Ilana Krieger.

2004

CHLOE DLAMINI DUGGER

2022. The

and

’02

her husband, Nhlanhla Dlamini, welcomed their daughter, Naledi Dahlia Dlamini, in October

family lives in Johannesburg, South Africa.

MARTHA SULLIVAN ’70 ABOUT HER FRIEND AND CLASSMATE CORA PRESLEY ’70 WHO PASSED AWAY IN SEPTEMBER 2023.

Paris. Cité is an internationally recognized artist residency program that was founded in 1965. Beau will work on an in-residence performance and drawing project at the Cité Marais site from January to May 2024. She will be delighted to connect with Milton community members in Paris! Feel free to write to her at rheeb@newschool.edu.

2004

Milton Academy Board of Trustees 2023-2024

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

Yunli Lou ‘87 P ‘24 Vice President Shanghai, China

Luis M. Viceira P ’16 ’19 Vice President Belmont MA

Edward E. Wendell, Jr. ’58 P ’94 ’98 ’01 Vice President Milton MA

Ronnell L. Wilson ’93 Vice President West Orange NJ

Peter Kagan ‘86 Treasurer New York NY

Stuart I. Mathews P ’13 ’17 ’17 Secretary Woodstock VT

Bradley M. Bloom P ’06 ’08 Emeritus Wellesley MA

James M. Fitzgibbons ’52 P ’87 ’90 ’93 Emeritus Boston MA

Franklin W. Hobbs IV ’65 P ’98 Emeritus New York NY

David B. Brewster ’90 P ‘25 Cambridge MA

David Cappillo P ’20 ‘24 ‘26 Wellesley MA

ETHAN WARREN published a book earlier this year called The Cinema of Paul Thomas Anderson: American Apocrypha

2009

15TH REUNION, JUNE 14–15

Jason Dillow ‘97 Greenwich CT

Rana El-Kaliouby P ’21 ‘27

Milton MA

Shadi Farokhzad P ’23 ‘25 Chestnut Hill MA

Yeng Felipe Butler ’92 P ’25 ’33 Milton MA

John B. Fitzgibbons ’87 Bronxville NY

Lamont Gordon ‘87 Cranston RI

Sonu Kalra P ’23 ’26 ’28 Milton MA

Molly King Wellesley MA

Ravi Mallela P ’22 ‘24 Moraga CA

John D. McEvoy ’82 P ’19 ’20 ’25

Milton MA

Meika Neblett ‘90 Lincroft NJ

Osaremen Okolo ‘13 Cambridge MA

Gene Reilly ’79 P ’10 ’12 Delray Beach FL

Hendrick Sin P ‘23 ‘25 ‘27

Hong Kong

Gabriel Sunshine P ’22 ’24 Boston MA

Patrick Tsang ’90 P ‘27 ‘27

Hong Kong

Justin Walsh ‘99 New York NY

Helen Zhu P ’25

Hong Kong

2008

Andrew

a deep passion for this project. After all these years, it’s quite remarkable that he returned to Milton to contribute to redesigning the library, where he and his friends spent countless hours studying.

2012

2013

2014

LYNDSEY MUGFORD was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to pursue postgraduate study at the University of Oxford beginning in the fall of 2024. Lyndsey is completing her studies in human developmental and regenerative biology at Harvard University, where she has also volunteered with the Boston Healthcare for the Homeless program and served as the first female cast vice president and president of Harvard’s Hasty Pudding Theatricals. At Oxford, Lyndsey hopes to research regenerative treatments for chronic pain in older adults.

SUBMIT A CLASS NOTE!

Have news to share?

Your classmates want to know! Share your accomplishments and life updates with Milton and your classmates at https://forms.gle/ 4NHrztmPtjPpGq6n6.

Your submission may be shared on social media, in an email to alumni, and/or in the next edition of Milton Magazine.

THOMAS ENGLIS married Claire Quintrell in September 2023.

OSAREMEN OKOLO (at left in photo, far right) joined Upper School Principal Dr. Monica Benton Palmer to see The HalfGod of Rainfall, starring JASON BOWEN ’00 at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge in September 2023. (L-R) OSAREMEN OKOLO, JASON BOWEN, and Dr. Monica Palmer.

10TH REUNION, JUNE 14–15

2019 5TH REUNION, JUNE 14–15

ANDREW LARSON served as one of the architect designers at ARC involved in the new Cox Library and Farokhzad Math Center design.

has

SARAH LYN ’11 joined fellow 2011 classmates in London this past August to celebrate the wedding of SAMANTHA NOH.

(L-R):

NWOTQ*

*Newlyweds on the Quad

ALUMNI WEDDINGS

DEMETRIUS CAMINIS ‘08 married Meredith Shoenig in Chios, Greece. Surrounded by family and friends, including RUSSELL KEATHLEY ‘08 and JAMES WILLIAMS ‘08, they celebrated their lifelong commitment, making the day truly special.

DAVID “DAVE” FORBES ‘02 married Rachel McCloskey on June 17, 2023, in Dennis Port, Massachusetts. Many friends from Milton celebrated with them! (L-R) FAZAL YAMEEN ’02, EBEN MILLER ’02, Rachel Miller, DANIEL “DAN” MCLENNAN ’02, Allison McLennan, JAY DESHPANDE ’02, Julia McDowell, SETH M. MAGAZINER ’02, former faculty member Missy Manzer, Rachel McCloskey Forbes, DAVID “DAVE” FORBES ’02, NIKOLA “NICK” KOJUCHAROV ’02, GILLIAN KRUSKALL ’02, Jesse Leddick, JONATHAN “JONO” FORBES ’07, Dulce Sanchez, IAN PEGG ’02, and Julia Vose.

JUSTIN KAHN ‘07 and SAMUEL “SAM” BODKIN ’07 attended Justin’s wedding to Somrita Urni Ganguly in Kolkata, India, in November. Sam, also known as “Heavy Meadow,” performed several original compositions at the celebration with his good friend Kyle Schmolze. Justin also performed a few choice love songs for the occasion. Other special guests at the wedding included Bengali rock singer Rupam Islam and U.S. Consul General of Kolkata, Melinda Pavek. A U.S. reception for the couple is currently being planned for May 2024. Please contact Justin at justin.eli. kahn@gmail.com if you would like to attend.

where students from participating schools showcased work and fielded one another’s questions. In spite of our physical distance, students were talking across schools, and they were taking the lead.

After seeing the inequality that covid highlighted, and the mental suffering of students in remote and hybrid environments, our teachers chose public health as our next theme. Boston International Newcomers Academy (binca) was able to fully participate, and John D. O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science, also public, joined the consortium. For this iteration, we hosted our mid-year panel in-person at Boston College High School and returned to the Edward M. Kennedy Institute with the conference model that centered our students’ voices. The keynote, by Dr. Bisola Ojikutu, executive director of the Boston Health Commission, provided further inspiration for the students.

This year, we are five, and we know that we’ve built something that others want to be part of. In less than a year, a presidential election may change our democracy’s trajectory, so we’ve chosen democracy for our next theme. We must admit: in pursuit of our wish, we’ve discovered that the humanities do not solve our problems, but to ask them to do that is to misunderstand them. The humanities, as our students now understand, exist so that we can see our problems with clarity, empathy, and purpose. They are why the work matters at all. p

ENGLISH FACULTY MEMBERS ALISA BRAITHWAITE, CO-FOUNDER AND CO-DIRECTOR OF THE HUMANITIES WORKSHOP, AND MELISSSA FIGUEROA, INTERIM CO-DIRECTOR.

ASHLEY BAIR, SARAH LYN, SHANNON MCHUGH, SAMANTHA NOH, ROBERT BEDETTI, JANE MA, and DORIANE AHIA.

Humanities Take the Spotlight

A COMMUNITY-WIDE PROJECT CONCEIVED AT MILTON HIGHLIGHTS THE IMPORTANCE OF THE HUMANITIES TO A ROBUST SOCIETY.

we began the Humanities Workshop with a worry and a wish. Our worry: The stem-focused trend in secondary education would diminish the relevance of the humanities in our students’ lives. stem lends itself to student inquiry and project-based units preparing students for the available jobs after school and addressing the problems they would inherit as adults. But as schools put more resources into these fields, what would be left for the humanities? Did literature, history, and the arts play no part in career development and problem-solving? Could issues like poverty and climate change be solved without considering their historical and human contexts? And what about issues that cannot be codified, such as race relations or religious strife? How would our students understand how to approach these conflicts without the humanities at the forefront of their education? Our wish: to find a way for the humanities to capture the imagination of our students and our administrators in the same way that the stem fields have. How might we highlight how humanities courses, too, center student inquiry and project-based learning, allowing students to see the change they can make in their communities through their work in the humanities?

Inspired by The Humanities Action Lab, a coalition of universities, issue organizations, and public spaces that collaborate to produce public humanities projects on urgent social issues throughout the country, we wondered if it would be possible to do something similar on the secondary school level.

We were heartened by how will-

come true.

“ The humanities exist to support community: They tell our stories, help us to see, question, and express ourselves to others.”

ing teachers were to take this challenge on. In our own community we found connections to Boston Latin School, Boston College High School, Boston Collegiate Charter School, and the Academy of the Pacific Rim our first year. We brought 22 teachers to campus to discuss our first theme—economic inequality— and watched while a professional scriber made our thoughts visual: It was happening! Together, teachers were creating an opportunity for our humanities students to think differently. When we saw what 1,000 students produced that first cycle, displayed in the magnificent atrium of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute, our wish seemed to

But our key takeaway was the need to get students to talk across schools. It was all well and good to have them work in their silos and then present together, but what conversations were they having with each other from their varying perspectives? This question continues to drive each iteration of the Workshop, but the second iteration made it feel nearly impossible to answer. covid arrived, and we wondered if we could go on. We were still new and now couldn’t be in the same space with our own students let alone students in other schools. But those difficulties became a call to action: If the Humanities Workshop could happen when we were so far apart, wouldn’t we also show why the Humanities Workshop needed to exist? The humanities exist to support community: They tell our stories, help us to see, question, and express ourselves to others. Although we were physically separated, technology—our former nemesis—allowed us to reconnect our communities and continue telling our stories.

The climate crisis was our theme, and technology brought us together more often than meeting in person. A mid-year panel, hosted by recent alum EDWARD MORETA ’18 , featured local experts in climate change and climate justice. Journalist David Abel shared his film about the right whale’s possible extinction and met with students in a virtual talkback about the intersection between working-class livelihoods and environmental protections. The platform Envoys helped us host a virtual conference

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 IN ASIA

Thursday, April 11–Sunday, April 21

NESTO OPENING RECEPTION - REUNION SHOW

Thursday, April 25

TRANSITIONS PROGRAM REUNION: CELEBRATING 40 YEARS

Friday, May 3

MILTON NIGHT OUT: BOWERY BAR AND PATIO (CLASSES 2009 –2020, AGES 21+)

Friday, June 14

reunion

(CLASSES ENDING IN 4 AND 9)

Friday, June 14–Saturday, June 15

“I am happy to have been part of a good fight, but also happy to be part of a network that is moving forward with new projects.”

ROBB CHAVIS ’94 , ABOUT THE 148-DAY WGA STRIKE THAT ENDED SUCCESSFULLY IN SEPTEMBER. (SEE PAGE 10)