NMH Magazine 2016 Spring

NMH Magazine

16 spring

volume 18 • number 1

Northfield Mount Hermon

AFTER 41 DAYS IN AN IRANIAN PRISON, MATT TREVITHICK ’04 TELLS HIS STORY.

NMH Magazine SPRING 2016 Volume 18, Number 1 Editor Jennifer Sutton P’14 Design Lilly Pereira Contributors Sharon LaBella-Lindale P’17 Susan Pasternack Harry van Baaren P’16, ’18 Emily Weir Class Notes Editor Kris Halpin Class Notes Design HvB Imaging Print Production Pam Lierle P’17 Director of Communications Stephen Porter Head of School Peter B. Fayroian Chief Advancement Officer Allyson L. Goodwin ’83, P’12, ’14 Archivist Peter H. Weis ’78, P’13 Northfield Mount Hermon publishes NMH Magazine (USPS074-860) two times a year in fall and spring. Printed by Lane Press, Burlington, VT 05402 NMH Magazine Northfield Mount Hermon One Lamplighter Way Mount Hermon, MA 01354 413-498-3247 Fax 413-498-3021 nmhmagazine@nmhschool.org Class Notes nmhnotes@nmhschool.org Address Changes Northfield Mount Hermon Advancement Services Norton House One Lamplighter Way Mount Hermon, MA 01354 413-498-3300 addressupdates@nmhschool.org

NMH Magazine

16 spring

volume 18 • number 1

features

20 The Fifth American

After 41 days in an Iranian prison, Matt Trevithick ’04 tells his story.

26 T he Year of Working Secretly

What happens when two married artists collaborate?

30 Getting the Word Out

J. Peter Donald ’05 helps shape the image of the NYPD.

36 M astering the Classroom

How NMH’s youngest teachers get better faster.

departments

3 Letters

5 Leading Lines

6 NMH Postcard

8 NMH Journal

14 Movers & Makers 16 In the Classroom 18 Past Present 42 Alumni Hall 46 Class Notes 96 Parting Words << HANDS-ON HOW-TO In NMH’s Science Club, students prototype an inexpensive microscope with a laser pointer lens.

C O V E R PH O TO : J AV I E R S I R V E N T TA B L E O F C O N TE N TS PH O TO : D AV I D WA RREN

NMH Fund

Take a walk around campus. You are making a difference everywhere.

Gifts to the NMH Fund help supply our science labs and art studios, keep technology current, buy team uniforms, and bring fresh produce into the dining hall.

No other fund is this versatile. Or this necessary. Or this important. Please make your gift today.

Return the enclosed envelope, go to nmhschool.org/give, or call 1-866-NMH-GIVE (1-866-664-4483).

2 I NMH Magazine

Well. Grounded.

LETTERS

NMH Farm Products

Download an order form at nmhschool.org/nmh-farmproducts or return a copy of this order form, along with a check payable to Northfield Mount Hermon, to: Farm Program, NMH, One Lamplighter Way, Mount Hermon, MA 01354. Please attach mailing instructions to your order.

All prices include shipping. Please note: The minimum order for each mailing address is $25.

YOU GO, GIRLS

I was thrilled to see the article on the Ivy League women pioneers from Northfield School for Girls (“The Pioneers,” Fall ’15). I am one of them, in a sense, because I got my Ph.D. in classics from Yale in 1966, three years before the undergraduate college went coed. I had gone to McGill in Canada and Cambridge in the U.K. as an undergrad, but still was not permitted to be a teaching assistant at Yale, even though I was given university fellowships. I subsequently taught classics full time at the college level for 46 years, mostly at the University at Albany (SUNY). I also raised a daughter, Siobhan Reagan ’87. So I did not fail to keep up my end.

Sylvia Barnard ’55 Albany, New York Thank you for the wonderful article about the first women entering the last of the all-male Ivy League

schools. They were my peers, yet until reading the article, I was unaware of their trailblazing experiences. I was so excited about my history-making schoolmates that I presented their stories to a weekly current-events group that I attend.

A discussion ensued about how times have changed. For example, because more women than men now attend college, institutions of higher learning now have to market their programs to men. To the pioneers, I tip my hat. You go, girls!

Joan (Elgosin) Milnes ’72 Beverly, Massachusetts

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The article “Game On” in the Fall ’15 magazine brings back to life — again! — that day when I was in the stands and watched Silliman burn. Many times I have seen the famous Van Fleet picture, but this is the first time I have heard anyone suggest that the fire might

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spring 2016 I 3

LETTERS

Keep Calm and Carry On

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4 I NMH Magazine

have been started by boys “having a forbidden cigarette.” In fact, I have never seen any explanation for the fire before this. It is as if the origin of the fire did not matter (just as, in fact, Silliman itself seemed not to matter very much). Was a cause of the fire ever determined?

Ed Sundt ’54 Garrett Park, Maryland

“ Many times I have seen the famous Van Fleet picture, but this is the first time I have heard anyone suggest that the fire might have been started by boys ‘having a forbidden cigarette.’”

From NMH archivist Peter Weis ’78, P’13: The speculation about a cause for the fire in Silliman Laboratory is just that — speculation. No cause was ever determined. It’s likely that it was electrical, given the age of the building, but we’ll never know.

CROWDSOURCED FACT-CHECK

I enjoyed your little piece about the Dwights (“A President and a Preacher, Connected by a Name,” Fall ’15). But the first paragraph didn’t sound right to me, about a night in October 1890 when Dwight Eisenhower’s mother named him after Dwight Lyman Moody. Great little piece of trivia! However, you stated that Moody “... had not yet founded Northfield and Mount Hermon Schools.” I’m pretty sure I remember the founding dates of 1879 and 1881, respectively, so the schools HAD indeed been founded by 1890!

Whether it was a typo or careless factchecking, I’m not sure, but something as big as the schools’ founding years is pretty important! I’d be surprised if other alumni haven’t also written you about this.

Don Hodgkins ’69 Wakefield, Massachusetts Editor’s note: Mr. Hodgkins is correct on both counts. We got the date wrong AND more than a few other alums notified us of the error.

WHAT DO YOU THINK? NMH Magazine welcomes correspondence from readers.

Letters and emails may be edited for length, clarity, and grammar, and should pertain to magazine content. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policies or positions of Northfield Mount Hermon. Reach us at NMH Magazine, One Lamplighter Way, Mount Hermon, MA 01354, or email us at nmhmagazine@nmhschool.org.

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LEADING LINES

A Twig, a Vote, a Field Goal One doesn’t mean much. Thousands do.

by PETER B. FAYROIAN, Head of School

I have a confession to make. I did not vote in the Massachusetts presidential primary on Super Tuesday in March. Rather than cast a ballot for Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, or any of the other candidates (Roque “Rocky” De la Fuente?), I spent the day completely immersed in NMH business.

I chatted with some really smart people interviewing for jobs on campus; wrote dozens of emails, even a few letters; met with admission staff as they prepared to send out emails to newly accepted students; got interviewed by a student writer from The Hermonite; heard a proposal from a senior who wants to establish a student arts council; had lunch with senior administrators; picked up my daughter from school; and finally, had dinner with a job candidate and several faculty members.

I was busy all day. That’s what I told myself, and others. But the morning after the primary, shortly before 9, I stood in my office, looking out the window onto Beveridge Bowl, and I regretted not voting.

We had had heavy winds the night before, and the still-frozen grass was littered with twigs and branches. I watched as Fred Anthony, one of NMH’s groundskeepers, steered his utility vehicle to the edge of the sidewalk, hopped out, and collected several handfuls of twigs, which he tossed in the back. He and his colleagues had likely been doing that work for close to two hours, and might well be at it for the rest of the morning.

Twigs. Votes. One or two or a handful may not be a big deal. Thousands of them put together are a big deal, whether they’re adding to the already considerable workload of keeping NMH looking its best, or they’re building support for a political candidate. I high-fived myself for coming up with a halfwaydecent metaphor before 9 am, but still, I felt compelled to go straight to Google and confirm my creative thinking.

“Twigs as a metaphor for voting,” I typed. Turns out I’m not as original as I thought. Tecumseh, the Shawnee chief who led a fight for the rights of Native Americans in the War of 1812, had beaten me by a long shot. “A single twig breaks, but the bundle of twigs is strong,” he said more than 200 years ago, as he gathered a confederation of tribes behind a single cause.

PHOTO: MICHAEL DW YER

So, on Super Tuesday, I did not make anyone’s bundle of political twigs stronger. (Rest assured, I will do so in November.)

On that morning after the primary, as I watched Fred go about his work, my metaphorical thinking grew further, beyond twigs, beyond votes — to NMH, this place, and what it takes to make it go. It’s every student: the ones speaking up in their Diversity and Social Justice class (p. 16), the one breaking field-goal records on the basketball court (p. 10), and the ones who make a retired teacher miss his job (p.

96). It’s every mom, dad, and grandparent who shows up for Family Days. It’s every teacher — veterans and newbies (p. 36) alike. It’s every alumna/us who comes to a reunion and either loves what we’ve done with the place or is full of complaints. It’s every song belted out in an a cappella concert, every enrollment form filled out in anticipation of the coming school year, every muffin baked at 5 am in the basement of the dining hall.

And I’d be avoiding the big fat elephant in the room if I didn’t also mention: every dollar you donate. We need those dollars. We — I speak for students, faculty, and administrators — make excellent use of them. And we deeply appreciate them. In the coming months and years, as we embark on a campaign to fund our strategic planning initiatives, I will have more to say about your dollars and how they can help propel your school into the future.

But for now, enough.

Let’s get back to talking about the election. [NMH]

spring 2016 I 5

NMH POSTCARD

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NMH JOURNAL

I N QATAR While attending a Model UN Conference in Doha, Qatar, in February, NMH students and faculty visited the Souq Waqif, a local marketplace.

P HOTO: G LEN N MINSH ALL

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NMH JOURNAL

Saying the F-word

According to Gloria Steinem, it’s more important now than ever.

Political activist and feminist leader Gloria Steinem brought a simple but powerful message to the NMH campus on March 29: “None of us is being treated fairly if we’re not all being treated equally.”

It was a familiar theme from the woman who co-founded Ms. Steinem’s visit magazine in 1972 and, for many, remains the face of 20th-century was supported by the Jacqueline feminism. The Presidential Medal of Freedom honoree spent an Smethurst Series. afternoon talking with NMH students in classes and small groups View a video of before giving an evening address to the entire school. the evening talk at http://bit.

Isabella DeHerdt ’17, who introduced Steinem at the evening ly/1WXCkrV. event, called her “a personal hero,” and “a woman who has impacted history, the world, and every one of our lives in a way no one is going to forget.”

Soon after the 82-year-old Steinem arrived on campus, she dove into a question-and-answer session with NMH students from several history and literature

8 I NMH Magazine

courses, with the discussion ranging from race, class, and gender to prisons, the late Congresswoman Bella Abzug, abortion rights, sex trafficking, and the origins of lacrosse.

The word “listen” figured prominently in the conversation. “If you’re in a group that has power, remember to listen as much as you talk,” Steinem advised. “And if you’re part of a group with less power, talk as much as you listen.” When Emily Jacobson ’16 asked how Western women can advocate for

“ If you’re in a group that has power, remember to listen as much as you talk. And if you’re part of a group with less power, talk as much as you listen.” feminism in places such as Saudi Arabia, where many don’t embrace the concept, Steinem replied, “Listen even to the people who won’t listen to you; listen, and support those women.”

For young people trying to find their own path to feminism, Steinem suggested, “Ask what’s not fair. Then say, ‘I’m going to do whatever I can about it.’ That will grow into projects and alliances, and then change.”

Steinem’s name has long been synonymous with the struggle for women’s rights.

But does her message resonate with today’s youth? Do they even recognize her name?

Drew Platt ’16 had heard of Steinem before her visit, but wasn’t sure what to expect. “A lot of what she said about eliciting change through understanding other people’s issues transcends generations,” he said after spending an hour with her in class.

Allie Stamler ’16 described Steinem as “an inspiration to my mother’s generation [who] has continued to illuminate both modern and historical women’s issues for mine.”

Taking the long view during her address in the chapel, Steinem pointed out crucial links between human-rights issues. “Our movements have tended to grow up in silos, so we think of the civil rights movement, the feminist movement, the environmental movement, and the LGBT movement as separate,” she said. Each of these onceinvisible movements had to declare its own importance, she said, but “now we are ready to emphasize our interdependence.”

PIECE BY PIECE

On Diversity Day in February — when classes are canceled and the campus community participates in dozens of workshops led by students — each student painted a ceramic tile to represent themselves. Installed by art teacher Mona Seno, the result now brightens a stairwell in Beveridge Hall.

Steinem tied environmentalism to overpopulation and women’s reproductive rights. Racism and sexism are “twin systems that can only be uprooted together,” she argued. Domestic violence and public violence by men stem from the idea that men are “born into a system that says they’re not masculine enough unless they are in control,” she said.

During a question-and-answer session at the end of Steinem’s talk, Spencer Wierda ’16, a self-described conservative, asked if Steinem thought political correctness in the U.S. had gone too far; he also compared his situation at NMH

to Steinem’s, stating that both of them expressed views that society around them didn’t want to hear.

Steinem politely disagreed. “It isn’t the same thing,” she said. “Nobody is stopping you from talking; they’re just getting mad at you. People get mad at me, too; you just have to live with it. But I support you saying what you believe.”

Throughout the day, Steinem challenged her audiences to see feminism at the heart of every important human issue. “Think of the human race as a bird with two wings,” she said. “If one is broken, the bird can’t fly.” —Emily Weir

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NMH JOURNAL

THE SHOT HIGH P O IN T During the 2015–16 season, forward Vanessa Udoji ’16 broke records to become the leading scorer in NMH basketball history — among both female and male athletes — with a final tally of 1,540 points scored over her four years at NMH. Girls’ varsity coach Grace Rehnquist says of Udoji, who heads to Connecticut’s Quinnipiac University this fall: “Vanessa has just begun to scratch the surface of her potential.”

HEAVY HIT T E R S The boys’ nordic ski team won the Lakes Region Athletic League championship after winning every Lakes Region race in the 2016 season, becoming the first NMH nordic team to be undefeated Lakes Region champions.

The girls’ alpine ski team clinched its fourth consecutive Mount Institute Ski League (MISL) championship.

On the boys’ alpine ski team, Nick Bertrand ’16 won the NEPSAC giant slalom championship race, becoming the second NMH racer to win multiple

10 I NMH Magazine

individual New England titles in the past 20 years (he placed second in the slalom race). Bertrand also won the MISL giant slalom championship.

Wrestler Jordan Rowlette ’17 earned All-American honors at the National Prep championships, as well as first-place finishes in the Class A and New England championships.

The boys’ varsity basketball team won the NEPSAC AAA championship, with Nate Laszewski ’18 earning MVP honors for the tournament. The team swept both regular-season and postseason play for the first time in NMH history. The team also advanced to the National Prep

Championship Final Four for the fourth consecutive year.

The girls’ varsity basketball team won its first New England Eight School Tournament championship.

Last fall (after our fall issue went to press), the boys’ cross-country team won the New England Prep School Track Association Division 1 championship for the first time since 1991 and took the top two spots: Estevan Velez ’16 finished first, at 16:06; Ace McAlister ’16 placed second. Both runners received All-New England honors, Velez for the fourth year in a row.

PH O TO : R I S L E Y S PO R TS PH O TO G R A PH Y

NMH JOURNAL

More Voices Join Leadership Team Both familiar and new faces will help NMH implement strategic priorities.

NMH will get an infusion of fresh energy this summer, according to Head of School Peter Fayroian, who recently announced the return of Charles A. Tierney III, a familiar face to many, as the new associate head of school. Fayroian also announced the hiring of a new dean of diversity, equity, and social justice, and a new director of athletics.

The latter two positions will be elevated to become part of NMH’s senior administration, as will the director of college counseling, Peter Jenkins. “It’s an effort to bring more voices to the table as we embark upon the implementation of our strategic plan and prepare to launch a new capital campaign,” Fayroian says. “Each of these positions represents areas that are of critical importance to the future of NMH. Having this kind of input at the senior level will help us better meet our institutional goals and fulfill our mission to educate students to act with humanity and purpose.”

Tierney will return after two successful years as head of the Tatnall School, a day school for 650 students in Wilmington, Delaware. He will replace Dr. Sharon Howell, NMH’s associate head since July 2014.

Howell led the school’s strategic planning efforts throughout her two years on campus, and also oversaw the design process for a new $34 million integrative science and math facility that will be built on campus in 2017–18. Howell will become the director of Indian Springs School, a progressive day and boarding institution with 300 students in Indian Springs, Alabama, outside Birmingham. She will be the first woman to lead Indian Springs.

From 1998 to 2014, Tierney worked at NMH in a variety of roles: history teacher, coach, dorm advisor, dean, assistant head of school, interim plant facilities director, interim communications director, and interim head of school. “I’m delighted to have Charlie Tierney back at

NMH,” Fayroian says. “He has a deep understanding of and affection for the school. He has been and will continue to be a trusted school leader.”

NMH history and social science teacher Martha Neubert will become the dean of diversity, equity, and social justice. She succeeds James Greenwood, NMH’s director of multicultural affairs for the past nine years, who will join the Shady Hill School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as director of inclusion and multicultural practice.

Charles Tierney Neubert joined the NMH faculty in 2005 and, in addition to teaching, has Martha Neubert served the school as a dorm counselor, advisor to the Gender Sexuality Alliance, lacrosse coach, and coordinator of numerous programs related to diversity, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and privilege. Neubert recently earned a master’s degree in education and child study from Smith College.

Finally, Kevin Klein will join NMH as director of athletics. He replaces Tom Pratt, a 21-year NMH veteran who has held the A.D. job since 2005 and also has coached the boys’ varsity hockey team for nearly a decade. Pratt will move on to Kimball Union Academy in New Hampshire, as Kevin Klein director of leadership gifts.

Klein served as deputy director of athletics at the U.S. Naval Academy, his alma mater, for four years, as well as a strategic planner for the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Haiti and director of operations for the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

Put Your Phones Down, It’s Trivia Night!

Quick: Can you name the six most populous cities in New England? The U.S. governor who once hosted the Emmys?

The number of tennis courts at NMH? That’s a taste of Trivia Night, an occasional Friday-evening activity hosted by history and social science teacher Grant Gonzalez and much beloved by the 50 or 60 students who typically show up. In teams of five, they answer questions that

cover science, sports, history, geography, pop culture, and current events. “Everyone gets really into it, so it’s competitive in a fun way,” says Lauren Downes ’16. “The questions are challenging, and it’s impressive because so many kids are getting the answers right.”

Gonzalez tries to include topics the students are interested in, such as lyrics from songs that were popular when

P HOTOS: SH AR O N LAB ELL A- L IN D AL E , G L E N N MIN SH AL L , C O U R T E SY O F K E V I N K L E I N

they were younger, or movies from their childhood (think Disney). There are NMHfocused questions, too, such as this one: In front of Memorial Chapel stands a fountain that is dedicated in honor of whom? “If they can’t answer that one, I want them to think, ‘How come I pass by this every week and don’t know what it is?’” Gonzalez says.

(Answer: Harriet Ford Cutler)

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NMH JOURNAL

WHO•WHAT •W H Y

Mr. Nice Guy During his first winter at NMH, Yash Mehta ’16 liked to go sledding down the snowy hill by Memorial Chapel after every Monday-morning all-school meeting. In just a T-shirt and jeans. No jacket. No gloves. “It was the first time I ever saw snow, and I was just loving it so much,” Mehta says, grinning. “Sometimes I even rolled down the hill!”

Many NMH students make a name for themselves in one way or another. Over his two years at NMH, Mehta, who’s from Mumbai, India, has earned a reputation as the most cheerful kid on campus. There he goes, whizzing across campus on a mountain bike, waving madly. There he is again, leading a conga line of giggling ice skaters on Shadow Lake in January. When he described the dining hall’s burrito bar at a storytelling event, he threw his arms open with joy, as if offering a giant hug. Ask him what he thinks of his courses, and he marvels, “Every day, I walk out of my Genetics and Ethics class and think, ‘Oh, my God, what just happened?’ DNA is so cool!” In the 2016 yearbook, Mehta is listed as the senior “Most Likely to Brighten Your Day.” Not so, he insists. “It’s the other way around. Everyone else here makes my day.”

Mehta says his upbeat outlook comes from his father. When Mehta was about 12, he was in a restaurant with his dad, eating a cheese sandwich. “If you’re in a restaurant in India, there is always someone asking you for food, and it happened that day,” Mehta recalls. “I didn’t give the person my sandwich, and my dad asked me, ‘Are you happy?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘Go buy five sandwiches and give them to those people over there.’” Mehta protested, but his father was firm. After Mehta handed out the sandwiches, his

12 I NMH Magazine

father asked him again if he was happy. “I said, ‘Dad, what did you do? I’ve never felt this way before.’ Ever since then, I have understood that eating a sandwich will make you happy, but when you give the sandwich to someone else, that’s true happiness.”

Mehta comes from a large, close, extended family, and when he calls his parents in India, he’s often on the line for a couple of hours as the phone gets passed from one relative to another. Yet he does not get homesick, he says. The transition to NMH was only hard for about 10 minutes. “I’m pretty sure there was no time that I was actually sad,” he says. “Everyone was so friendly and nice. It felt right away like I had a new family.”

At NMH, Mehta has launched himself on a busy, I’ll-try-anything trajectory.

He ice-skated for the first time. Read crime fiction.

He’d never paddled a canoe or ridden a mountain bike, but as a member of the NMH Outdoor Team, he competed in, and eventually won, boat-bike-run triathlons in western Massachusetts.

When his affection for those NMH burritos led to extra pounds, he asked his best friend across the hall in the dorm, Will Desautels ’16, a varsity soccer goalkeeper and a pole-vaulter, for help. “Will taught me to pick out foods that were good for me, like spinach instead of dessert,” Mehta says. “This year, he said, ‘Let’s work harder,’ and he started training me. He’ll say, ‘This is the last sprint,’ and we do the sprint, and then he says, ‘Just kidding, let’s do 10 more.’”

That’s got to be annoying — even for the most cheerful student on campus. Right? “Oh no,” Mehta says, surprised. “I love it!”

Mehta sports his and his teammates’ numbers after a triathlon, and (above) leads a parade of skaters on Shadow Lake.

PH O TO S : G L E N N M I NS HA LL

NMH JOURNAL

FOR THE RECORD

READING LIST

“ I was a dorm cleaner Mr. Splitfoot

By Samantha Hunt ’89 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt January 2016

A New York Times Editors’ Choice, and a 2016 Most Anticipated Book in New York Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Bustle, The Millions, BookPage, National Book Review, BookRiot, Estella’s Revenge, The Week, and Refinery

freshman year, and it was the first time in my life I had ever used a vacuum cleaner. My parents were surprised when I went back to Korea and actually did my own laundry and cleaned my room.”

SUBIN LEE ’17, describing one of his workjob experiences during an accepted-student visit day on campus in March.

Literary April

Choice of Enemies

The Genome Rhapsodies

Worlds to Discover

M.A. Richards ’74 Sunbury Press January 2016

Anna George Meek ’87 Ashland Poetry Press November 2015

Jim Payne ’57 Lytton Publishing Co. November 2015

Hoedowns, Reels, and Frolics

Little Gangster

The Spaceship Next Door

Phil Jamison ’71 University of Illinois Press June 2015

Victor Cino ’57 iUniverse September 2015

Gene Doucette ’86 Amazon Digital Services December 2015

April may have been the cruelest month, as T.S. Eliot once wrote, but this year, it also was the most fertile, especially for readers and writers. In honor of National Poetry Month, the English department created a rich agenda of literary events. Topping the list was a visit by novelist Ruth Ozeki, whose books — A Tale for the Time Being, All Over Creation, and My Year of Meats — have been published in dozens of countries around the world.

Poets Laura-Eve Engel and Michael Morse each settled in for a weekend-long residency, leading workshops with students, visiting classes, and reading their work. And students were invited to submit their poetry and prose in a literary contest judged by Samantha Hunt ’89, author of Mr. Splitfoot (see “Reading List,” left), The Invention of Everything Else, and The Seas.

“Visiting writers are an extraordinary opportunity for NMH students to enhance their classroom encounters with literature,” says English teacher Michelle Chan Brown, who organized the events. “The workshops debunk the notion of the “Writer” as inaccessible, and talent as given, not developed through practice.”

spring 2016 I 13

MOVERS & MAKERS

Last year, more than half a million refugees, mostly from Syria, entered Europe through Greece. Right: Megan McIntosh Frenzen (left) and her husband, Seth Frenzen.

Nonstop Need In a refugee camp in Greece, Megan McIntosh Frenzen ’95 makes herself useful.

by JENNIFER SUTTON

Late last year, Megan McIntosh Frenzen ’95, a health care economist based in Burlington, Vermont, lost her patience with presidential candidates Chris Christie and Donald Trump. Christie, the governor of New Jersey, had just declared that his state would not open its doors to a single Syrian refugee, and Trump had announced that, if elected, he would ban Muslims from entering the country.

Frenzen and her husband, an orthopedic surgeon, had spent a decade doing service work, mainly in Haiti, Cambodia, and Uganda. “I knew we could find a way to be useful,” she says. So she started looking for hands-on ways to help migrants who were trying to make their way out of Syria. She located refugee-support organizations in southeastern Europe, raised money for travel expenses and supplies, and assembled a team of volunteers — some of whom she’d worked with before in Haiti.

The group included her husband, a local Vermont nurse practitioner,

14 I NMH Magazine

several other nurses, and a Syrian-Canadian student at St. Michael’s College in Vermont who volunteered as the group’s interpreter.

By early January, they were on Lesbos island in Greece, six miles off the coast of Turkey, where in 2015 alone, half a million migrants entered Europe by making this short but perilous crossing of the Aegean Sea. Frenzen and her team worked with an organization called Off Track Health, which ran a 24-hour clinic in the chaotic Moria refugee camp on Lesbos — the same camp that Pope Francis would visit in April. According to Frenzen, the camp housed roughly 500 people, with several thousand others occupying tents in a muddy olive grove nearby. Some of the refugees came from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and Morocco, but Frenzen says most were Syrian women and children who stayed in the camp for a week or two, waiting to register with the European Union before moving on.

Frenzen and her team worked the night shift at the clinic, treating upper respiratory infections,

PH O TO : N I C O L A S E C O N O M O U

“ I magine 3,000 soaking wet, terrified people showing up on the beach every day.”

wounds, stomach viruses, and hypertension; providing prenatal care to pregnant women; entertaining children and cleaning — whatever needed to be done. “There was nonstop need,” Frenzen says.

After finishing their shift, they’d go down to the shoreline, where boats packed with refugees were coming in from Turkey. “Imagine 3,000 soaking wet, terrified people showing up on the beach every day,” Frenzen says. “We’d help get them into dry clothes, hand out blankets and juice boxes for the kids, and make sure there were no immediate medical problems.” Then the volunteers would load the refugees onto United Nations buses that, at the time, were running shuttles between the beaches and the Moria camp.

Much of the volunteer work on Lesbos was nonmedical, Frenzen says; in other words, anyone could do it. Besides helping refugees as they came ashore, volunteers collected all the wet clothes and life jackets left behind on the beaches, working with small grass-roots groups in Greece that “are pouring their heart and soul into their work,” according to Frenzen.

After eight days on Lesbos, Frenzen returned home to her young son and her job, to the “guilt of privilege” she says is the byproduct of doing service work. She remains connected through email and social media with other volunteers who are still working on the island, and hears stories like that of a 5-year-old girl who died of hypothermia just before her boat made it to shore.

“Every single one of us has the opportunity to choose compassion when it comes to this crisis,” Frenzen says. She hears about boats coming ashore without any volunteers or aid workers available to meet them. “Some of the refugees don’t even know where they are. They just pick up their children, find the nearest road, and start walking.” [NMH]

BRIGHT LIGHT

REVIVING THE VILLAGE VOICE When Peter Barbey ’76 (below) heard The Village Voice was for sale last year, it took him about five minutes to decide to buy it.

Three reasons. First, he could afford it: His family owns The North Face, Timberland, and Lee Jeans. Second, as CEO of the Reading Eagle in Pennsylvania, Barbey knows publishing. He had a hunch he could breathe life back into the iconic Voice, which had tumbled far from its peak in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s. Finally — perhaps most important — he’d been a fan of the weekly ever since he’d begun reading it as a teenager at NMH, as he told students during a visit to campus in April.

“I was a Boston kid, and The Voice was a window into a world where I wished I was,” Barbey says.

Now he wants to restore The Voice to what he sees as its rightful place in American journalism.

“It’s an amazing historical newspaper, but it’s also a wonderful journalistic brand,” he says. “I want to take it forward, while also recapturing some of its old zeitgeist — the political voice, the strong defense of arts and culture. I want it to do more than just tell people, ‘Hey, here’s a great show.’”

Soon after Barbey bought The Voice last October, the calls came in from business reporters, not just those in New York but also from some in Milan and London. “It was heartening to realize, ‘Wow, people really do care about The Voice.’ It’s like a bonsai tree that’s been cultivated over many years, and it has a lot of meaning to a lot of people,” he says.

In January, Barbey brought back former Voice editor-in-chief Will Bourne ’83 (they realized their NMH connection during the job interview), and is shoring up the business end of the paper.

He’s convinced his vision of a print and digital publication can succeed in a media world dominated by entities such as BuzzFeed and Gawker.

“There are two camps in publishing today,” Barbey says. “One says that content is king, that good writing is good writing. The other claims that the digital revolution is forever altering the landscape of thought, that everything’s got to be a few hundred words or less and adaptable to an app. I love technology, and I’m an early adopter, but most of all, I like good writing.

I like places where people are batting around really interesting ideas. I think publications like The Voice have a big role to play.” [NMH]

PH O TO : G L E N N M I N S H A L L

spring 2016 I 15

IN THE CLASSROOM

Racism. Sexism.

Ageism. Classism.

Fighting prejudice, building awareness.

by TARA JACKSON

When Iiyannaa Graham Siphanoum ’17 took Northfield Mount Hermon’s Diversity and Social Justice course last year, she was “amazed that all of these different ‘isms’ were being acknowledged.” She says, “The class gave me the tools to describe some of the social injustices I’ve seen all my life, but it also opened my eyes to the ones I overlook every day.”

That’s the idea. James Greenwood, director of multicultural affairs, who developed the course with other NMH faculty, says its primary goals are that “our students are exposed to new information, that they leave with a greater vocabulary to talk about issues of diversity and social justice, and a greater understanding of their own identity as well as the perspective of others.”

The course, which is three years old and required for sophomores, is organized around the “big eight” social identifiers: age, ability, ethnicity, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status/class. NMH faculty teach the class in pairs. Greenwood helped assemble a repository of lesson plans and multimedia resources for DSJ teachers, but there is also flexibility for teachers to “create lessons to respond to the group of kids they actually have in front of them,” Greenwood says.

Earlier this year, the group in front of co-teachers Jennifer Keator and Joel Lowsky dived in with a topic raised by one of the students: a boycott of the Academy Awards to protest the lack of diversity among Oscar nominees. Each class session begins this way, with a student presenting a current event to talk about — the previous week it was David Bowie and the ways he challenged gender norms. Next, Keator got the class talking about the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, as an example of environmental racism. Keator, who has taught the DSJ class seven times, says, “hearing from different voices on important and relevant topics” is what she likes most about it.

It’s no accident that Keator, a religious studies and philosophy teacher, and Lowsky, NMH’s director of academic technology, are working together.

Greenwood says it’s important to have DSJ co-teachers modeling conversations across lines of differences. Ideally, he would like to have faculty from every department creating as diverse a teaching pool as possible for the course — to mirror the students who show up for class every term. They are, Lowsky says,

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“like Chex Mix: You never get the same handful; it’s a different experience each time.”

When Gratia Sullivan ’16 arrived at NMH as a new sophomore, she was among the first to take DSJ. “I came from a very homogeneous town, so being catapulted into an extremely diverse class to discuss issues of identity and multiculturalism was a new experience for me,” she says. “It’s had a lasting impact.” This is one of the reasons why sophomore year is an ideal time for students to take the course, Greenwood says. “It’s a joining activity. It becomes a common experience that leaves students with some common language.”

But why require the course? Before DSJ, diversity education at NMH was limited; it was optional, offered primarily in residential life settings.

“Institutionally, you demonstrate what is important by what you require and what you devote time and resources to,” Greenwood says. Graham Siphanoum says she feels safer at a school where diversity and social justice are priorities. “It’s empowering.”

Surveys are conducted at the end of each DSJ class, and Greenwood says the results are “overwhelmingly

“ It used to be rare

to see students on campus openly talking about issues of race, sexuality, or socioeconomic class.

Now it’s more common.”

I LLUSTRATION : LA U R EN S C O T T C O R W IN

positive.” Sullivan says DSJ led her to become a member of the Student Diversity Committee and leader of the Gender Sexuality Alliance. Graham Forrester ’16, who also took the class in its first year, sees a change among many of his peers: “Prior to this course, it was rare to see students on campus openly talking about issues of race, sexuality, or socioeconomic class. [Now] it is more common than not to sit down at a lunch table and hear students discussing and debating these issues.”

Greenwood recalls that when he taught the class and was discussing ableism, he asked his students to imagine going through their normal day without the ability to walk, see, or hear.

One student came up to him after class and said he had never considered how difficult having a disability would be.

“That greater awareness and empathy for the experience of others is huge, and that’s what we hope for in this course. That’s what we hope for education in general,” says Greenwood. [NMH]

spring 2016 I 17

PAST PRESENT

A Portrait to Remember Photographing Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin during World War II.

by PETER WEIS ’78, P’13

On Feb. 9, 1945, during the final year of World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in Yalta to discuss military strategy and postwar international relations. The “big three,” as the men were called, sat for a group photograph that would become famous around the world, but the U.S. Army photographer who took the shot remained unknown and uncelebrated. Until now.

Photographer Robert Hopkins ’40 (left) with his father Harry, a confidant of FDR.

He was Robert Hopkins ’40, who also photographed Roosevelt’s wartime meetings with General Charles de Gaulle in Casablanca, Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo, and Stalin in Tehran as well as Yalta. In Hopkins’s World War II memoir, Witness to History, he recalled the Yalta photo shoot: “I sensed a kind of euphoria among the principals and members of all three delegations … their faces reflected relief from the strain

18 I NMH Magazine

of negotiations and there was a good deal of laughter and good-natured banter among them.”

Not even a decade earlier, Hopkins had enrolled at Mount Hermon just as the school year began in 1937, having moved to Northfield with his brother Stephen ’43 and his divorced mother. In school, his path did not follow the academic straight and narrow. Interested in photography

and the dramatic arts, he hoped for admission to the theater program at Yale, but his grades failed to match these aspirations, and his desultory study habits frustrated more than one of his Mount Hermon teachers.

Yet a letter his father wrote to him upon his graduation from Mount Hermon suggested other aspects of his character that would serve any man well: “courage, strength, and clean spirit.” Hopkins’s father, Harry, had experience in judging such matters: He was one of the architects of the New Deal, and a member of President Roosevelt’s inner circle.

During his first year in college at the University of North Carolina, young Robert watched as the United States was drawn closer into the vortex of war. Deciding to choose rather than be chosen, he left the university and enlisted as a private in the U.S. Army in October 1941.

Hopkins had held a summer job with the newsreel company that produced the “March of Time” series, familiar to moviegoers of that era, who watched the news rather than previews of coming attractions, before a feature film. After he completed his Army basic training, Hopkins shipped out for Europe carrying a camera instead of a rifle.

His status as Harry Hopkins’s son did not prevent him from documenting combat in North Africa, as well

P H O T O S: C O U R T E SY O F G E O R G ETO W N U N I V E R S I TY L I B R A RY S PE C I A L C O L L E C TI O N S R E S E A R C H C E N TE R , R O B E R T H OP K I NS

as the Italian campaign, the invasion of Normandy, and the liberation of Paris. But his family name had its perquisites. When President Roosevelt needed a photographer to document his conferences with Churchill and other world leaders, Robert Hopkins got the call. His photographs remain iconic images of World War II. Hopkins married an Englishwoman in the summer of 1944, between combat photography assignments, and after the war, he worked in Hollywood as a screenwriter at 20th Century Fox, as a radio producer for the Marshall Plan in Paris, and as a writer of Fodor’s Guide to France.

In the 1950s, he began a long career with the CIA as an agent stationed in Europe and South America, retiring in 1980. But

he would require the courage, strength, and clean spirit that his father had once observed in him to face the final chapter of his life.

His son, Sean, was born in 1964. As a young gay man, Sean was caught in the web of HIV and AIDS in the mid1980s, and died in 1990. Robert Hopkins shared the experience of losing his son to AIDS in his 1996 book Sean’s Legacy: An AIDS Awakening, A Father Remembers His Only Son, which historian Doris Kearns Goodwin called “profoundly moving and terrifyingly honest.” It was, at the time, “an awakening to the plight of homosexuals in the scourge of AIDS,” Kearns Goodwin wrote.

Robert Hopkins died in 2007. [NMH]

Yalta, February 1945: Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin sat for a wartime portrait by Hopkins.

“ Their faces reflected relief from the strain of negotiations and there was a good deal of laughter and good-natured banter among them.”

spring 2016 I 19

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IN JANUARY, FOUR AMERICANS WERE RELEASED FROM PRISON IN IRAN AFTER A LONG, SECRET GOVERNMENT NEGOTIATION. IRAN ALSO RELEASED ANOTHER MAN: MATT TREVITHICK ’04.

ALMOST NO ONE KNEW HE HAD GONE MISSING.

THE FIFTH AMERICAN Matt Trevithick in Turkey in June 2015

PHOTO: © ERIN TRIEB/CORBIS

BY CALEB DANILOFF ’88

spring 2016 I 21

MATT TREVITHICK,

30, walked into a Boston coffee shop towing a roller suitcase. He was as tall as I remembered — six-foot-four — but less stocky, less of the collegiate oarsman apparent in his physique. Same quick smile, same gleam in his blue eyes, though a cloud of seriousness hovered about his face, and his hair was shorter, thinner.

The last time I’d seen him was two and a half years earlier, when I wrote about his efforts to launch national rowing programs in Afghanistan and Iraq. Since then, Trevithick had reported from the Korengal Valley in northeastern Afghanistan — one of the deadliest patches of Taliban territory — for the online magazine The Daily Beast, ghost-written a memoir for the first post-Taliban minister of higher education in Afghanistan, settled in Turkey, and co-founded an independent research group devoted to humanitarian crises in the region. He smiled when he recognized me. I pulled my hand from my pocket. But knowing he’d just spent 41 days in Iran’s most notorious prison, I gave him a hug instead.

Trevithick reunites with his mother, Amelia Newcomb, at Logan International Airport in Boston in January 2016.

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Trevithick was running late, so we didn’t have time to catch up over coffee.

His train for New York City was scheduled to leave Boston’s South Station in 35 minutes. He was on his way to “break his silence” in a series of national interviews, starting with Anderson Cooper on CNN. Trevithick’s release from Evin Prison in Tehran 10 days earlier was big news. He’d been freed along with four Iranian-Americans, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, who had been held for more than 500 days. When I saw Trevithick’s name among the released, I was shocked. Almost no one had even known he was in prison.

His family and the U.S. State Department had kept his detention under wraps while diplomatic channels were being worked.

A few days after the story broke, a picture appeared in the Boston Globe showing Trevithick and his mother rushing out of Logan airport on their way to the family’s home in Hingham, Massachusetts. News trucks gathered outside the house, waiting for something, anything. More than one report described Trevithick as “in seclusion,” and I wondered if he’d suffered some sort of trauma while behind bars.

We stepped outside and grabbed a taxi, settling in the back as the cabbie steered us into the morning traffic. The tan computer bag on Trevithick’s lap was the same one he’d been carrying the day of his arrest and the only item he left Iran with, aside from the clothes he was wearing. Trevithick had been studying Farsi at Tehran University. It was his second trip to Iran; the first was

PHOTO: © ARAM BOGHOSIAN/EPA/CORBIS

as a tourist several years earlier. He’d been applying to the university’s language program for five years before he finally received a government invitation.

“I was ecstatic,” he recalled. “I get to spend three months in this country that’s such a mystery and an anathema. I wasn’t super-nervous about my safety. I pegged the chances of something happening, some kind of odd behavior from the authorities, at 10 percent. Pull me over and question me, maybe. I accepted that. I have nothing to hide. If it was just a few days in jail and some questioning and ‘We’re going to deport you,’ I would have accepted that. But then everything got political and I didn’t tell them what they wanted to hear and my time in jail kept getting longer and longer.”

IT ALL STARTED ON DEC. 7, 2015. The political atmosphere in Tehran had been making Trevithick nervous.

The United States and Iran had signed a nuclear agreement a few months earlier, but the hard-line politicians, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, were making their displeasure known, denouncing America in the newspapers at increasingly hostile volumes. The surveillance of Western students had become more widespread, more obvious.

Trevithick had even been questioned for several hours the previous month.

He decided it was time to pack things up. On his way to buy a plane ticket home, a Hyundai Sonata pulled up beside him and three large men got out. “Are you Matthew?” As soon as he answered, Trevithick was shoved into the back seat. Within 20 minutes, the car was pulling into a hangar at Evin Prison, where he was blindfolded and led into a small, cold room, his cellphone and computer taken away, then his clothes.

“They gave me a pair of pants, a long-sleeve button-down, and flip-flop sandals, which were dirty and worn down. I wondered how many other pairs of feet had put them on.”

After fingerprints, mug shots, and intake paperwork, the blindfold went back on and Trevithick was steered up to the second floor, to a six-by-seven-foot cell. “I could touch three walls at any given time. No bed, just a thin fabric covering the floor. They gave me a wool blanket and I used my towel for a pillow.” The interrogations started immediately. To his jailers’ surprise, Trevithick answered most of their questions in Farsi.

“I was accused of personally trying to overthrow the government. Of having access to bank accounts with millions

PHOTO: EHSAN IRAN/WIKIMEDIA

TREVITHICK WAS SHOVED INTO THE BACK SEAT OF A HYUNDAI SONATA, AND WITHIN 20 MINUTES, THE CAR WAS PULLING INTO A HANGAR AT EVIN PRISON.

Evin Prison in Tehran, where Trevithick was held for 41 days.

of dollars, and weapons caches. The first question they asked was, ‘Do you know who Jason Rezaian is?’ I said, ‘Of course, the whole world knows that name.’ ‘Well, he’s never getting out of here and neither are you.’”

The cab pulled up to a red light. The driver turned his head. “I’m being nosy, sorry. But what the hell happened to you, man? You mentioned Farsi. What country is that?”

“Iran,” Trevithick said with a smile.

“You didn’t make the headline news, did you?”

“Yeah, I’m one of those guys. I’m number five.

The fifth American.”

“I gotta ask, did it go to the extreme when it came to interrogating you?”

“No, it was all mental games,” Trevithick said. “There was dried blood and smashed tiles on the floor of the interrogation room. They’d say, ‘We’ve been treating you extremely well so far, with the gloves on. You’re never going to leave unless you tell us what we want to hear. The situation’s going

spring 2016 I 23

to become much worse.’ Their goal was to get me to confess on national TV.” On the third day, Trevithick was forced to call his mom and lie that he would be without cellphone service for several days. Amelia Newcomb and her son had agreed to be in daily contact, so Newcomb, who happens to be the foreign editor at the Christian Science Monitor and had sent plenty of reporters to the Middle East, had already alerted the State Department. “He sounded so normal that I was thrown off at first,” Newcomb would later tell me. “When he said, ‘I’m going to the mountains, on vacation,’ then I got it.”

Back in his cell, the light was always on, so Trevithick slept in his blindfold. He knew when the guards were approaching by the smell of their cologne. Breakfast was a packet of honey, a frozen pat of butter, or a piece of bread.

Soon, time started to blur and lose meaning, so Trevithick pulled out the small amount of money he had been allowed to keep and used it as a calendar, flipping a bill upon waking each morning. He created a sundial by marking the sun’s movement across his yellow cement cell wall with a spoon.

“I spent an entire day watching the sun move across my cell.

It’s fun the first time. Then it gets really trying.”

As a former rower, he began exercising to kill time. “I turned every day into a really long workout session.” By the end of his time in solitary, Trevithick was doing more than 1,000 sit-ups and hundreds of push-ups a day.

Every four days, Trevithick was allowed 10 minutes of outdoor time and a shower. In the bathroom, other inmates had carved notes into the wall: “Don’t give in.” “Nobody stays forever.” He scratched out his own name in the concrete, but the maddening uncertainty of his future was taking its toll. Scared his grip on reality might start slipping, he turned to a thought exercise. “I decided to recall my entire life, starting with my very first memory: identify it, describe it, think about it, live in it. Then move on to the next one.”

This included his years at NMH. “I walked straight through my time in Wilson Hall, Tracy Student Center, the library. And the music building. I spent so much time in there. I was in a bunch of bands. Vocals and bass. I went through our entire catalog in my head.

How did we write the songs? What was song number three?

I thought about rowing on the Connecticut River, beyond the fields at the bottom of the hill. Then running up that hill after practice.”

On the 10th day, Trevithick was rushed to a five-star hotel, where he was told the Iranian intelligence minister would review his case. It was there he got his first look in a

24 I NMH Magazine

“ I WAS ACCUSED OF TRYING TO OVERTHROW THE GOVERNMENT. THEY ASKED, ‘DO YOU KNOW WHO JASON REZAIAN IS?’ I SAID, ‘OF COURSE, THE WHOLE WORLD KNOWS THAT NAME.’ ‘WELL, HE’S NEVER GETTING OUT OF HERE AND NEITHER ARE YOU.’” mirror. Wan skin, unkempt beard, weary eyes. Again, he was put before a camera and told to admit his role in trying to topple the regime. When he refused, he was driven back to Evin, back to solitary. Ten days later, his head was shaved, not a good sign. He listened to the sound of another inmate trying to hang himself in a nearby cell.

The cabbie jumped back in. “That’s crazy, man. Why do you think they were doing this to you?”

“It was the purest strain of paranoia I’ve ever come across,” Trevithick said, shaking his head. “I was asked, totally straight-faced, ‘Why did Obama tell ISIS to attack Paris?’ I was told that America has a machine to create earthquakes. I laughed then and they did not like that.

They’re convinced Obama has an earthquake lever in the White House — to create the pretext of humanitarian intervention, but it’s really a front for intelligence work. They think we’re way more powerful than we really are.”

According to the clock on the monitor in the back of the cab, Trevithick had a mere nine minutes to catch his train, but he seemed entirely unfazed.

“After 29 days, I was finally moved out of solitary,” he continued. “That was a great day. I was put in a cell with two other inmates, including the man who had tried to kill himself. He’d been in solitary for 13 months.”

Trevithick said he now heard foreign languages, other international prisoners. He found himself surrounded by dissidents, artists, academics, many on their second, third, and fourth incarcerations. He recalled how the prison was nicknamed Evin University because of the number of intellectuals jailed there.

On day 41, after nearly six weeks behind bars, Trevithick was again blindfolded, this time hustled to a dark basement.

His interrogator sat behind a white sheet while another man

Trevithick at the Golestan Palace in Tehran, before he was jailed in Evin Prison.

in a surgical mask trained a video camera on him. Trevithick was told this was his last chance to tell the truth. When he said he had nothing more to say, his interrogator replied, “You’ve made a very bad decision.”

Trevithick was rushed back to his cell and told to collect his things. A few minutes later, the guards were pushing him down a hallway, through a door, and into another building. There, his blindfold was removed. His clothes, wallet, cellphone, and computer bag were shoved at him. It was over. A Swiss diplomat was waiting outside to take him to the airport. Two days later, he was back in Massachusetts.

“Let me ask you something,” the cabbie said, pulling over in front of South Station. “Are you going back after what’s happened to you?”

“Yeah, I’ll be heading back to Turkey soon.”

PHOTO: COURTESY OF MATT TREVITHICK

With two minutes to spare, Trevithick strolled down the platform toward his train, completely relaxed. I wondered if his sense of time, his valuation of time, had been forever altered by his experience in Evin Prison. Maybe he was simply luxuriating in being able to buy a ticket, go where he wanted, to have choices, agency, free will.

“I’ll be in touch when I get back,” Trevithick told me, as he showed the conductor his ticket and stepped onto the train. “We’ll get together.” [NMH] [NMH] Caleb Daniloff is a contributing editor for Runner’s World and the author of Running Ransom Road: Confronting the Past, One Marathon at a Time and November Project: Inside the Free Grassroots Fitness Movement That’s Taking Over the World. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

spring 2016 I 25

THE Y E A R OF

Working Secretly What happens when two married artists collaborate?

BY JENNIFER SUTTON

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L

fit together. And now that Philip and Evans are presenteila Philip ’79 lives on a hilly dirt ing the book at poetry readings and exhibitions, they road in northern Connecticut, surrounded have found that the story of how they worked — or by woods and wetlands. She teaches writdidn’t work — together is as appealing to people as the ing at the College of the Holy Cross in poems and the watercolors themselves.

Worcester, Massachusetts, and has published nonfic“It began so simply,” Philip says. “All we did was ask tion books and essays that chronicle her experience in a question: What shall we do and how shall we do it?” specific places: the Hudson Valley farm that her family has operated since 1732, a Japanese village where she apprenticed to a master potter, the Colorado River, Northfield Mount Hermon. Her writing is a rich fusion hilip grew up in Manhattan. But her of memoir, biography, history, even art criticism, layered grandparents, and then her parents, ran with details and side-trip stories. the family farm and orchard in the In contrast, Philip’s latest book, Water Rising, Hudson Valley, so at 16, she felt as compublished by New Rivers Press, is spare. Instead of fortable riding a tractor as she did the prose, she wrote poems, some only a handful of lines subway. She arrived at NMH in the mid-’70s, from long. Accompanying the poems are abstract watercolors the chaos of a New York public school. “I remember by her husband, artist Garth Evans. walking into the classroom at NMH and think“I’d been looking for a new challenge, and I wanted ing, ‘Nobody’s talking behind the teacher’s back. to stretch myself creatively,” Philip says. So when Evans Everybody’s listening.’ It was incredible.” emerged from his basement studio one weekend and She was among a small group of students that helped suggested they do a project together, she immediately revive the school’s farm program under the direction agreed. They’d been married for 20 years, raised a son, of Richard Odman. They acquired a single cow, which and always shared their work in progress with each they milked by hand. They tended a pair of goats, other. But they’d never collaborated. made maple syrup, even launched a honeybee operaInspired by the creative and tion. Philip recalls being summoned personal partnership between modbetween classes one day to pick up ern dance choreographer Merce a shipment of bees that had arrived Cunningham and avant-garde comfrom Georgia. The alarmed mail poser John Cage, Philip and Evans center staff could hear them buzzing. decided on a few ground rules for “Somehow it made sense to study their experiment. They would both AP English and then go milk a cow step outside their usual genres: Philip or take care of bees,” Philip says. would write poems and Evans, who “It was a good break for the mind.” works mostly as a sculptor, would Philip also edited The Bridge at paint. And they would work secretly; NMH, and experienced firsthand Leila Philip ’79 (right) with they wouldn’t show each other anythe power of storytelling. One her husband Garth Evans thing for a whole year. Philip didn’t evening, while assembling an issue want to make poems that commented on the waterof the newspaper, she was confronted by a group of colors, and Evans didn’t want to make watercolors that students from Iran who had heard she was preparing illustrated the poems. a story about the shah and the political unrest in their The result is a “stunning and original collaboration,” country. They begged her not to run the story, for fear declared a review in the online magazine Artcritical. that their families at home could be targeted. Philip The journal River Teeth called Water Rising “a tribute to consulted with Bill Batty, the advisor to The Bridge, a shared creative life.” Both Philip’s poems and Evans’s but he gave her the freedom to decide what to do. At watercolors are meditations on the natural world — first, Philip dug in her heels, citing freedom of speech, how different pieces of the environment and humanity but in the end, she pulled the story. “It was not a game

P

PHOTO: ARIANA RANDOLPH

spring 2016 I 27

The couple decided on a ground rule for their experiment: They wouldn’t show each other any work for a whole year.

changer for NMH, and the case these students were making for consequences at home was real,” Philip says. “But what I remember most was being faced with a dilemma and having to make a judgment call — having to rise to that kind of occasion.”

After NMH, Philip spent a year working as a reporter at a small newspaper, then enrolled at Princeton, where she studied with the creative nonfiction writer John McPhee. She worked as a journalist after graduation, earned an M.F.A. from Columbia, and taught at numerous colleges and universities before settling down as a professor at Holy Cross. When she found herself missing the “ongoing learning” that journalists do each time they tackle an unfamiliar story topic, she looked for faculty members in other departments at Holy Cross to collaborate with. She developed interdisciplinary courses combining science, religious studies, art, and creative writing. “That border, that crossing over — I really like that,” she says.

T

he year of working secretly began

for Philip and Evans in the fall of 2012.

They commuted to their day jobs during the week (Evans ran the sculpture program at the New York Studio School), went to their son’s soccer games and took him on college visits, and in their free moments, they’d go their separate ways to write and paint.

Philip hadn’t written much poetry since Princeton.

“There was a feeling that we were beginners again,” she says. “It was fun and scary to explore something without a predetermined idea. I had been losing touch with that willingness to take a chance.”

After a year, it was time for the big reveal. “I was nervous,” Philip says. “What if it wasn’t any good?” She and Evans laid everything they’d been working on out on the floor.

The poems and watercolors “spoke to one another in a way that was interesting and strange,” Evans says.

The paintings were steeped in the color of the trees surrounding their house: curving shapes in green, rust, purple, and gold. The poems were rooted in real objects and scenarios but also explored less tangible ideas: a

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poem about a beaver assembling its lodge became a reflection on youth and middle age; another described a beautiful stone found on a beach but morphed into the story of a mother watching her son grow into a man.

Since both Philip and Evans had turned to the landscapes around them for inspiration, they decided to turn their work into an art book with an environmental mission. They would donate all profits from the sale of Water Rising to nonprofit environmental organizations such as the Connecticut Audubon Society and Wave Hill, a public garden and cultural center in New York City. “It sounds simple, but change is only going to happen if everybody does what they can, wherever they can,” Philip says. “This is what we can do.”

T

he small collaboration conceived at a

Connecticut kitchen table has now grown into a multimedia installation finding audiences across the country and the world. A music professor at Holy Cross read Philip’s poems and offered to compose music around them. The watercolors are being turned into giant digital projections.

Grants from the Connecticut Office of the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts will allow Philip and Evans to take their project on the road this fall: to the local Quinebaug Valley Community College; to the Wave Hill performance center; to several colleges in Oregon; and, Philip hopes, to Donegal, Ireland, where she and Evans would collaborate with Gaelic artists. At each event, proceeds from book sales will benefit local conservation groups.

Philip and Evans have two goals for their nascent Water Rising book tour: to bring attention to environmental stewardship and to talk about their artistic collaboration and the idea of taking risks. “When people hear the story about how the project came to be, it somehow gives them permission to think about what they might do themselves if they just said, ‘Let’s start,’” Philip says. “There is so much pressure to produce in our world, to know what we’re doing before we get there. It’s important, especially for young people, to remember that creative work begins with exploration.

It’s like driving in the dark with your headlights on.

The road reveals itself as you go.” [NMH] To learn more about the environmental mission of Water Rising, go to www.water-rising.com.

NIG HT TRAIN And if I found the way would you could you, could we follow those tracks, back down along the river, whistle in the dark while the silver train cuts through night tides surging, the great memory of water returning, returning to the sea.

Sit my love, the candle flickers and the moon is full, listen the crickets are at it again punching holes in the great ticket of the night their great hunger swelling again, again.

Look, summer stars brilliant as gems â&#x20AC;&#x201D; while we were busy, evening slipped a ring over the hand of day.

Our candle flickers now alert to any shift, a blink or toss of eye that might turn diamonds into coal.

Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hold our breath and dive, or run, catch that train, silver arrow hurtling back twenty years, that night hand in ringed hand, we dashed to our car while rice flew like stars and the dark train sped fast along the river.

spring 2016 I 29

gETTInG THE WORD OUT THE

J. PETER DONALD ’05 HELPS SHAPE THE IMAGE OF

NYPD.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY AMY TOENSING /

TEXT BY JENNIFER SUTTON

30 I NMH Magazine

“MOST PEOPLE DON’T KNOW what cops do or how they do it,” says J. Peter Donald ’05, who spends his days and many of his nights disseminating news about the New York Police Department.

He’s the director of communications for the NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner of Public Information (DCPI) office, hired in June 2015 by Commissioner William Bratton to help reshape the image of the nation’s largest police force. The goal, Donald says, is to tell stories about police officers “in the most interesting, creative, thoughtful way possible.”

Donald came to the NYPD from the New York office of the FBI, where he was a spokesman and public information officer. At 28, he is decades younger than most of his colleagues in the NYPD administration, a fact that seems to intrigue everyone except Donald himself. “It has no effect on how I do my job,” he says.

Ask him about his daily routine and he laughs. If something big happens in the middle of the night — a police officer gets shot, or there’s a major fire or accident — he gets the call and shows up at the scene. On a “regular” day, he says, by 6 am , he’s plowing through news and updates on Twitter, NPR, Politico, the Times, the Daily News; from the NYPD’s operations center, press office, and detective bureau; and from city and state government.

Then he gets in his car and drives to work.

On the job, Donald is part old-school beat reporter, building connections and relationships with officers in the city’s precincts so they’ll feel comfortable telling him their experiences, which he can then share with the world.

He’s also guiding the department’s social media presence, which he says had been “a missing piece — one that affects our ability to tell our story in real time.”

Donald joined the NYPD at a time when police departments across the country are under intense scrutiny, accused of enforcing racist policies and unfairly targeting minorities. Yes, Donald says, the NYPD has work to do to continue building trust in the communities it polices. Roughly 60 percent of New Yorkers trust the NYPD, he says, according to polls by Quinnipiac University and Marist College, among other institutions. It’s his job to help increase that statistic — “with the African American community, the Asian community, the Caribbean community, in Harlem, in the Bronx, in Lower Manhattan, in Brooklyn, in Bed-Stuy, and everywhere in between.”

But he adds that “anytime something happens anywhere in America, it gets played on CNN and Fox News and shared on social media everywhere, and that affects the reputation of the NYPD, despite the fact that last year, we had fewer uses of force by officers in the history of the department. We had fewer summonses, fewer arrests, and crime was at an all-time low.

That’s not the headline people are going to write, but that’s the story we need to tell.”

Donald finds a quiet spot behind the scenes of a press conference at the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.

“If I’m not busy telling stories every day, or lining up stories to be told in the days ahead, I’m not doing my job.”

spring 2016 I 31

01 Donald drives from his apartment on the Upper East Side to his office at 1 Police Plaza, downtown near City Hall. It’s a 5.9-mile trip, he says — “six minutes in the middle of the night.”

01

02 02 For Donald, multi-tasking — working the phone while monitoring multiple television news broadcasts at his office, for example — is like breathing. “I’m focused on finding new ways to get our story told on both social and traditional media.”

32 I NMH Magazine

03

Most people donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know what cops do or how they do it. My goal is to get that information out in the most interesting, creative, thoughtful way possible.

03 Donald confers with (from left) NYPD Commissioner William Bratton, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, and NYPD Deputy Commissioner Stephen Davis before a press conference.

04 Donald keeps a watchful eye on reporters during a press conference at NYPD headquarters, where Mayor de Blasio answers questions about a triple homicide in Staten Island.

04

spring 2016 I 33

05

06 05 Donald takes questions from New York Times reporter Joseph Goldstein (far left) and Jake Pearson, an Associated Press reporter, along with Deputy Chief Kerry Sweet of the NYPD’s legal bureau, about “StingRays,” the devices used to help locate fugitives in murder and kidnapping cases.

06 Donald plays a significant role in shaping the NYPD’s digital identity, so he’s constantly monitoring Twitter posts created by various police precincts and media outlets.

34 I NMH Magazine

We had fewer summonses, fewer arrests, and crime was at an alltime low. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not the headline people are going to write, but thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the story we need to tell.

07 Donald leaves City Hall with Deputy Commissioner John Miller after their weekly meeting with Mayor de Blasio, Commissioner Bratton, and Deputy Mayor Anthony Shores.

07

spring 2016 I 35

36 I NMH Magazine

NMH teachers and Penn graduate students, past and present: (from left) Lucy Stockdale, Shaakira Raheem, Lauren Spagnuolo, Anthony Mantegani, Jesse Pritchard, and Kara Walker.

Mastering the Classroom A groundbreaking collaboration with the University of Pennsylvaniaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Graduate School of Education is helping new NMH teachers get better faster.

B Y J E N N I F E R S U T T O N / P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y J O A N N A C H AT T M A N N

spring 2016 I 37

ENGLISH TEACHER Lucy Stockdale greets her students at the classroom door with a bowl of numbered PingPong balls. “Hi, how are you?” she asks, holding out the bowl. “Pick a ball, look at the seating chart on the board, and find your spot.” The Ping-Pong balls ensure that the 16 students in her American literature class don’t sit next to the same person every day.

This is Stockdale’s first semester teaching on her own, and today she’s tackling Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance,” which her students read for homework the night before. “What did you guys think of this essay?” she asks. She has them free-write for 10 minutes about the reading, then launches them into small-group discussions. Bringing them back together as a class, she asks, “What were your favorite lines?” She points out one of her own: “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.”

In pairs, the students scribble down three of Emerson’s lines that they liked. The pieces of paper get tacked up on the classroom walls, and the students circle the room, checking out everyone else’s choices and drawing stars next to their favorites.

If you were to enter the classroom at this moment and take a quick look around, it would be difficult to determine who the teacher is. At 23, in black jeans and a flowy blue shirt, Stockdale is only six years older than her students. Yet as she herds everyone back to their seats, looks over each student’s copy of “Self-Reliance” to make sure they annotated as they read, and explains the writing assignment due the next day, there’s no question who’s running the room.

38 I NMH Magazine

English teacher Lucy Stockdale is halfway through her Penn master’s degree.

Stockdale may be just starting her career, but she is one of a dozen novice teachers at Northfield Mount Hermon who are helping the school stay on the cutting edge of secondary education.

In 2012, NMH joined eight other northeastern boarding schools and the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education to start the Penn Residency Master’s in Teaching (PRMT), a two-year program that allows its students — “Penn fellows” — to earn a master’s degree in education while working as boarding-school faculty members. Stockdale just finished her first year.

Asking students to free-write off the top of their heads to reflect on a reading, to move around the classroom and engage with one another instead of just with the teacher — those are practices Stockdale learned through the Penn program. They’re not rocket science, but she wouldn’t have picked them up so quickly if she had started her teaching career at another private school, or at NMH six or seven years ago. Instead, she would have simply been handed a

“

class to teach, a sports team to coach, a group of students to advise, and a friendly “good luck” at the beginning of the school year.

“Many new teachers used to have a ‘sink or swim’ experience,” says NMH Dean of Faculty Hugh Silbaugh. As a result, NMH lost enthusiastic, energetic young faculty members who had the potential to be great for the school but who found it “bruising to have such an abrupt entry into the job, with so little coaching and support, so little intellectual scaffolding for the work they were doing,” Silbaugh says.

Today, all of NMH’s first-year teachers enroll in the Penn program. NMH pays most of their Penn tuition as well as a modest salary, and provides them with highly structured mentoring from veteran faculty. As the Penn fellows immerse themselves in boarding-school life — besides teaching American literature, Stockdale coaches girls’ volleyball and basketball and is advisor to four ninth-grade girls — they also gather with their Penn grad-school professors and mentor teachers for several concentrated academic weekends each year. In between, they engage in distance learning: readings, research papers, and online discussions with fellow grad students at Penn’s other partner boarding schools.

It’s an intense two years. Silbaugh, who serves as Stockdale’s mentor, likens the program to medical school, with the boarding schools serving as the equivalent of teaching hospitals. “We’re ending up with young teachers who, after this program, have much of the same wisdom that a 10-year veteran has,” he says. “They don’t have the experience yet, but they have this thoughtfulness.

It’s incredibly powerful.”

One of the big ideas of the Penn program is studentcentered learning — asking the questions, What can students take in, and what can they do with what they take in?

After finishing her Penn degree, Kristine Nakada (right) continued to teach math at NMH for another year.

IT’S ALSO UNIQUE. Graduate degrees in education are typically geared toward public schools, and until the PRMT was established four years ago, no university offered a master’s in education specifically designed for boarding-school teachers. The program has grown quickly: This year, there were 2,000 applicants vying for 27 positions at the nine partner boarding schools (Deerfield, Hotchkiss, Miss Porter’s, Lawrenceville, Taft, Loomis, Milton, and St. Paul’s in addition to NMH). “To me, that indicates a huge need,” says Lawrence Smith, the academic dean at St. Paul’s School, who conceived the PRMT six years ago with other boarding-school administrators, including Silbaugh.

“We were interested in giving these young teachers a more measured entry into the work, but also in reducing teacher attrition in the first five years, which is huge,” Silbaugh says — in part because the boarding-school world is more of a round-the-clock immersion than a job.

Smith contacted a dozen universities, proposing that education professors join forces with a consortium of independent schools to develop a lowresidency master’s degree for boardingschool teachers. Penn “took a plunge,” Smith says. “They agreed to radically redo their program to fit a very small sector of secondary-school education.” The result: an education master’s that covers pedagogical theory and

spring 2016 I 39

cognitive science; the history, culture, and social context of U.S. boarding schools; and how to develop a reflective, flexible teaching practice. Penn professors co-teach the courses with deans or senior faculty from the partner boarding schools.

Though Penn fellows typically start the program right after college, a few of NMH’s fellows have worked for a year at other schools, and one, Brandon Hew, spent a year playing professional hockey.

One of NMH’s newest fellows, Shaakira Raheem, had worked abroad, teaching English as a second language in Morocco and working for an international-study program in Ghana. Two fellows — Stockdale and Raheem — are midway through the program, and of the remaining 10, seven were hired as permanent faculty members after earning their degrees.

They say they chose NMH not only because they wanted Penn fellows-turned-faculty members: (from left) Sally Komarek, Brandon Hew, Kristine Nakada, and Alex Braile. to work with teenagers and spend less money on grad school, but also because NMH felt differtalked with students,” Komarek says. who earned his master’s alongside ent to them than other schools they “You’re trying to figure out what good Nakada and now teaches economics. considered working at. “There are high teaching looks like.”

“I was encouraged to speak up and expectations here, but it’s not cutIn the spring, Penn fellows contribute.” throat. NMH students are competing teach a class of their own. The second During their first fall at NMH, Penn with themselves, not with each other,” year they teach two classes each semesfellows assist in their mentor teacher’s says Kristine Nakada, who finished the ter. Meanwhile, they’re working on their classroom. History teacher Sally Penn program a year ago and was hired own grad-school projects and assignKomarek, another former Penn fellow, as a math teacher. “I never felt singled ments, which include collecting and worked with department chair Chris out as the new young guy who was analyzing data from their classrooms for Edler. “I watched everything she did — expected to sit quietly during departtheir thesis-like final research project. what she wrote on the board, how she ment meetings,” adds Tony Mantegani,

40 I NMH Magazine

“

Art teacher Alex Braile, who’s just finishing his Penn degree, researched resilience levels in his students over the course of several design and painting projects. “Every day, I was taking notes on what they were doing, what they were saying, how they were responding to what I was giving them,” he says. “I always told them when I was collecting data. For some of them, it was a little weird — teachers don’t usually set up a video camera in class. But they seemed to like knowing I was invested in them and in becoming a better teacher.”

Math teacher Brandon Hew’s project focused on what happens to students’ problem-solving skills when he emphasized process over the end result in his algebra II class. “I was asking them to take a step back. I asked them, ‘What did you actually do? What steps did you take? What did you learn about yourself as a thinker?’ Because having that information is going to be way more helpful in five years than learning what the cosine of 135 degrees is.”

“It was weird and uncomfortable at first,” reports Ellery Ketchum ’18, who took Hew’s class. “Everyone had always been taught that in math, the answer is what matters. But Brandon had us writing in journals. He wanted us to explain how we got from point A to point B, and how we felt when we tried to solve a problem and it didn’t work.” Hew’s approach actually helped, Ketchum says, especially when she got stuck. “When you’re able to detach from a problem and look at it more from the outside, it’s better than just staring at it and getting more and more upset because you don’t know what to do.”

Even though Penn provides “a wealth of resources and strategies —

We’re ending up with young teachers who have much of the same wisdom that a 10-year veteran has.

It’s incredibly powerful. a toolbox for teaching,” according to history teacher Komarek, the two years still end up being a lot to balance.

“It’s ‘do I grade these 30 essays, or do I work on my own paper?’”

Komarek says. “On one hand, we’re here to be teachers. On the other, all of us are very serious students, too, so of course we want to prioritize our Penn schoolwork. But the students at NMH come first.”

Putting students first goes beyond day-to-day responsibilities like getting papers graded. It means adopting the philosophy that good teaching is more important than being a math genius or literature whiz. “Classroom skills trump content every day,” Silbaugh says. But that doesn’t equal putting on a wonderful show, he adds, despite what popular culture tells us (think Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society or Edward James Olmos in Stand and Deliver). “Schools have thrived for years on teacher-centered instruction — a performance delivered by a charismatic person,” Silbaugh says. “One of the big ideas of the Penn program is student-centered learning — asking the questions, What can students take in, and what can they do with what they take in?”

NEW TEACHERS such as Stockdale are answering those questions for themselves, little by little. The first lesson she ever taught by herself, back when she was still assisting in Silbaugh’s classroom, left a lot to be desired. She led the students in a

“fishbowl” discussion, in which onehalf of the class observes the other half having a discussion; then the groups switch. “I wouldn’t categorize it as bad. There was just a lot of awkward silence and clear apprehension on my part,” Stockdale recalls.

“But Hugh was supportive. He promotes screwing up in order to learn from it.” There happened to be a number of athletes in that class, Stockdale says, so when she tried the exercise again, she talked to them like a coach.

They should view the discussion as if they were two teams, she told them, and they needed to help their teammates. That tactic worked.

Whether it’s the day-to-day mentoring that goes on between veteran and novice teachers, or the intensive “Penn weekends,” when all the fellows gather, the support network surrounding Stockdale and other Penn fellows is what makes the PRMT successful.

It’s also bringing NMH unexpected benefits, Silbaugh says, beyond the fact that new young teachers are getting better faster. “It’s also what the mentors are learning, how that affects their own teaching and their influence on their peers, how it filters up into department chair discussions, and how it informs our thinking about teacher evaluation,” he says.

“Schools like NMH need to keep improving and transforming education in ways that will help us serve students better and make us worthwhile over the long haul,” Silbaugh says. “The PRMT is helping us do that.” [NMH]

spring 2016 I 41

ALUMNI HALL · T H E first A N N U A L ·

Founders’ Challenge NMH celebrates the birthday of D.L. Moody every February with the tradition known as Founder’s Day. This year, the celebration was expanded to include other “founders” who got their start at NMH, including Friendly’s Ice Cream magnate S. Prestley Blake ’34, whose age — 101 — was the theme of this year’s Founders’ Challenge. (See p. 97) And what’s a birthday party without a game? The school challenged the NMH community to make gifts to the NMH Fund over a 101-hour period. And you crushed it.

ALUMNI GIVING # of gifts by year

115

101 CHALLENGE GOALS

• HOURS of online fundraising • GIFTS per decade • GIFTS from parents, parents of alumni, grandparents • GIFTS from the campus community • GIFTS from the Class of 2016

157

2010s

G O A L : A T O TA L O F

1990s

228

187

164 1960s

1,010

gifts for the NMH Fund

2000s 1970s

191 Campus Community

199 Parents/ Grandparents

193

115 1980s 2016

233 The Grands (’30s, ’40s, ’50s)

GIFTS RECEIVED

1,782

TOTALING MORE THAN

$333,000 (including a $101,000 lead gift from Pres Blake ’34)

42 I NMH Magazine

Secure your future ... and the future of NMH

Edosomwan ’13 conceived the #HarvardBlackIs project as a college freshman.

Dispelling Stereotypes at Harvard Zena Edosomwan ’13 is a powerful force on Harvard University’s basketball team, but he’s also a budding social activist. Last fall, he published a multimedia storytelling project called #HarvardBlackIs featuring more than a dozen Harvard students of color. His goal was to “dispel stereotypes” and spread “a message of positivity” among African Americans at a time when they were being bombarded with negative images of themselves in the media.

Edosomwan started the project during his freshman year at Harvard, soon after George Zimmerman was acquitted of shooting Trayvon Martin, an unarmed African American 17-year-old, in Florida. When the killings of two other unarmed black men, Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York, took over the headTo view lines, the project became even more relevant. “It seemed #HarvardBlackIs, important that people, especially people of color, rememgo to www. youtube.com/ ber to be positive and that being black doesn’t mean being watch?v=Z1HnZz1‘less than,’” Edosomwan says. “I wanted to invoke positivrpc and http:// ity rather than the white-versus-black dynamic that made harvardblackis. tumblr.com/ up a lot of what was on social media at the time.”

After seeking advice from Harvard professors such as the African American studies scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., Edosomwan set up a camera and asked students to choose a single word to describe themselves and explain why. They chose words like “ambition,” “unique,” and “triumph.” Even though his Harvard peers “reflect a particular privilege,” Edosomwan says, “we all come from different backgrounds, and the Harvard black community, diverse as it is, can act as a microcosm of what black is.”

Two months ago, Edosomwan began planning a second project, tentatively titled #WeAreOne, which he hopes will appeal to a wider audience. “People are individuals — religious, transgender, gay, black, Asian — but the message, at the end of the day, is that despite your personal beliefs, your sexuality, height, class, race, we’re all human.”

PHOTO: MA D ELINE R . LEAR

A charitable gift annuity gives you: • Fixed lifelong payments • Favorable annuity rates • A secure investment • Tax benefits • A gratifying legacy Sample rates based on a single life CGA* Age 68 73 78 83 Rate 4.9% 5.5% 6.4% 7.4%

Visit nmhschool.org/plannedgiving or contact:

Jeff Leyden ’80, P’14

Director of Capital and Planned Giving 413-498-3299 jleyden@nmhschool.org

Sue Clough P’06, P’08 Senior Associate Director of Planned Giving 413-498-3084 sclough@nmhschool.org

*Rates displayed are for illustrative purposes only.

spring 2016 I 43

ALUMNI HALL

Four generations of Fosters (clockwise from bottom): Bud ’38, Randy ’59, Ethan ’18, and Shawn ’87.

“ You know how much Mount Hermon wanted to charge me as a local kid? $100.

I didn’t have $100. I told them, ‘I’ve got no money.’

They said, ‘Come anyway.’”

Going Way Back Since the 1930s, the Foster family has had a stake in NMH.

More than 80 years ago, Frank “Bud” Foster showed up at the Mount Hermon School for Boys.

He was 15 years old, working in a grocery store in nearby Bernardston, Massachusetts, and his boss suggested he check out the school. “You know how much they wanted to charge me as a local kid, a day student? $100,” Foster says. “I didn’t have $100. I told them, ‘I’ve got no money.’

They said, ‘Come anyway, and work in the school store.’”

So Foster worked off his tuition, graduated — and then bought the store.

“We sold books, skis; we strung tennis racquets, installed ski bindings,” he says. “My wife pressed pants. My mother made apple turnovers and I sold those, too. During the

44 I NMH Magazine

war, the potato chip man stopped coming because we weren’t buying enough, so I went out and bought a popcorn machine, and sold popcorn to the kids. Paid for itself in three weeks.”

Foster’s son Randy ’59 spent much of his childhood on campus — “because my dad owned the store,” he says. “I always thought Mount Hermon was my school. From the time I was 5 years old, it was my dream to go there.”

Eventually, Bud Foster started Foster’s Supermarket in nearby Greenfield, Massachusetts, which became a local institution, as did Foster himself. Over the years, as he established himself as a businessman and community philanthropist, seven family members followed him to NMH: besides his son Randy, five of Foster’s 15 grandchildren have attended the school, including Randy’s son Shawn ’87; and three of Foster’s great-grandchildren, including Shawn’s children, Ethan ’18 and Natalie ’20.

It’s a family legacy that goes back to the era of Elliott Speer, the Mount Hermon headmaster who was murdered in his study in 1934. Bud Foster was 16 then. After the murder, Maeve Whittle Moody, D.L. Moody’s daughter-in-law, advertised for a babysitter for her two grandchildren because she feared that whoever was involved with the murder might turn their attention to her family. Foster applied for the position and was invited for an interview.

“I went over to her place in Northfield,” Foster recalls. She said, ‘How old are you?’ I said, ‘16.’ She said, ‘I want somebody 18 or 19.’ I said, ‘Ma’am, anything they can do, I can do better.’ She asked, ‘Can you sing?’ I belted out a song. She said, ‘You’ve got the job.’”

PH O TO : S H A R O N L A B E L L A - L I N D A L E

ALUMNI HALL

ALUMNI COUNCIL PROFILE

GAIL PA R E ’64

Hometown: Newington, New Hampshire Profession: Retired, District Executive for Boy Scouts of America Alumni Council position: Nominating Committee member, former member of the Awards Committee, Reunion Advisory Committee Why do you volunteer for NMH? As a long-time NMH volunteer in many capacities, I have made friends with alumni who represent classes spanning more than 80 years. All of them share similar core values and an NMH attitude that I have not experienced anywhere else. You can’t define it, but you know it when you see it.

Serving on the Alumni Council is a way to help involve more alumni and to recognize their service. Plus, I enjoy returning to the beautiful campus and learning more about the current school.

NEW T RUST EES JOIN NMH BOARD From left: Tiffani Brown ’96, Matthew Glass P’15, Alex Levy ’00, Alex Lotocki de-Veligost ’70, P’15, Shannon Weinberger P’14, ’16, Ryan Vineyard ’98, and Warren Webster III ’92. Missing from photo: Maurice Coleman ’87.

Dick Gregory, a Northfield Girl’s Muse Turn Me Loose, a new Off-Broadway play about the groundbreaking 1960s comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory, has distant origins at the Northfield School for Girls.

Playwright Gretchen Law ’70 was a sophomore at Northfield in 1968, “feeling the pain of the times and searching for ways to confront the danger and injustice swirling around all of us,” she says. Law listened to the cutting-edge comedy of Gregory — one of the first black comedians to be embraced by white America in the 1960s — in Wilson Hall. He was “unedited and uncompromisingly funny,” Law says, but more important, “he articulated the pathology of racism without reserve.”

Law, who is also a practicing psychotherapist, says Turn Me Loose, her fifth play, is “topical because it addresses racism with the intensity and humor of Gregory himself.”

Produced by singer John Legend and starring Tony Award nominee and Emmy and NAACP Image Award winner Joe Morton (“Scandal”), the play opened this month at the Westside Theater in New York.

2015–16 ALUMNI COUNCIL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE What’s the most satisfying moment you’ve experienced on the Alumni Council?

Helping create the Community Service Award to recognize alumni for their service to people beyond NMH. That award now allows the Alumni Association to recognize the greater good that an NMH education inspires in so many of us.

P HOTOS: G LEN N MINSH AL L

www.nmhschool.org/alumni-get-involved Caroline Niederman ’78 President Dorrie Krakower Susser ’56 Vice-president Wendy Alderman Cohen ’67 Secretary Molly Goggins Talbot ’93 Executive Vice-president Ty Fox ’59 Nominating Committee chair

Stuart Paap ’93 Strategic Advisory Committee chair John McClintock ’56 Advancement Committee chair Dave Hickernell ’68 Awards Committee chair Stephen Green ’87 Reunion Advisory Committee chair

Heather Richard ’91 and Donnie Smith ’07 Diversity Committee co-chairs Kate Hayes ’06 Young Alumni Committee chair Marggie Slichter ’84, P’10, ’11, ’12 Director of NMH Alumni and Parent Giving and Programs

spring 2016 I 45

CLASS NOTES

CLASS NOTES

VITAL STATISTICS page 92/ IN MEMORIAM page 94

39

Northfield Edith Bender Southwick 395 N 70th Street, Springfield, OR 97478

40

Northfield Elizabeth Jane (B.J.) Smith Johnson robert.johnson53@comcast.net

41

Northfield Dorcas Platt Abell sabell3@nycap.rr.com

41

Mount Hermon Carleton Finch zeke137@aol.com

42

Northfield Cora Lee Gethman Gibbs coraleegibbs@aol.com

42

Mount Hermon Loren Bullock mlbullock9@gmail.com

From Loren Bullock: I still have wonderful memories of our time at Mt. Hermon: the view across the valley; the whistle of trains; kicking leaves as we walked to Northfield for a parlor date in the fall; our librarian, Mr. Fleckles, learning all our first names around the lunch table in West Hall; studying in the stacks of the library for Louis Smith’s English class; the biweekly theme reviews with all those red-ink corrections (but I learned to write!); and the cross-country ski trail through the woods in winter. I now recognize how formative those years were, and I’m grateful.

What an amazing heritage we have all received from Dwight L. Moody. We’re in our 90s now — not something we planned or even expected.

So greetings to all of you. • Jack Burke writes, “Still on earth, but recently hit some bumps in the road. At present I have a good prognosis.

My four years at Mt. Hermon began in 1938.

Now that’s ancient history. Best wishes to all the survivors.”

43

Northfield Mount Hermon Please send news to: nmhnotes@nmhschool.org

44

Northfield Mount Hermon Charlton R. Price charltonrp@gmail.com

Let’s stay in contact with each other as long as we can! I sent an email to all of you, asking that you tell me where you are, how you are, and the favorite memories you have “on the banks of the Connecticut so grand,” on the campuses “fairest in the land.” • George “Zeke” Trask has called in from Randolph, Vt. He turned 90 this spring. What memorable lives of this all-Yankee Trask family! Like other

WASHING WIN D O WS AT RE C ITAT IO N H AL L , 1964

Trasks have done since 1932, Zeke for a time managed the Mt. Washington Cog Railway (where one of his sons is now trainmaster).

Zeke also ran a panel-finishing mill for Weyerhaeuser in Hancock, Vt. One of his sons is a semiretired athletics director and former coach in Colebrook, N.H. One of Zeke’s two daughters is senior vice president of a bank in Cranston, R.I. I have found out from Zeke that 70 years ago some intrepid Hermon ’44ers would slip off campus nocturnally to “operate” in Greenfield. We were awed and amazed to find out that one of those night prowlers was the late John “Rev” Kennedy, who was also the head Mt. Hermon Chapel deacon. Now I learn from Zeke that there were others! • Dan Pawling raised a lot of money for NMH with his many years of phone calls. He’s finally left New York after a 39-year business career to be with family in Newton, Mass. He’s seen NMH crews compete in the Head of the Charles rowing races. He and Alan “Dinty” Moore intend to be at this year’s NMH reunions (and I hope to be there with them). Dinty and his late wife, Elizabeth, created a special fund at NMH to promote excellence in coaching.

The fund supports trips off campus for NMH faculty coaches for training sessions and other contacts to improve their coaching skills. Ed Cox celebrated his 90th birthday by making a trip with family back to campus from his retirement home in Florida. He says that NMH “has a wonderful atmosphere and much of which to be proud.” Sue Clough, longtime NMH staff member, “toured us around by golf cart to see all the old and the new on campus” — Crossley, Overtoun, West (now Alumni) Hall, the Rhodes Arts Center, and the Bolger House for alumni and admissions services. • Arthur “Chick” Chickering (that’s Ph.D./Professor Chickering) takes care of his wife, Jo, on their own Chickering Road in the woods of Plainfield, Vt. Three score and seven years ago, who would have guessed he’d become a distinguished academic — an expert in higher-education student development based in his career-long teaching and research in education? Chick barely squeaked out of Hermon, “103rd in [our] class of 107,” somehow managing to graduate despite cutting quite a few classes, playing a lot of poker, getting in trouble with Coach Axel Forslund, and just fooling around. But then in college, graduate

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school, and later (as he tells in his recent book about “challenging higher education”), he developed innovative new educational theories and methods. He had learned from his own experience how to stop fooling around and take charge of his own intellectual and professional development. Amazing!

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Northfield Arlene Finch Reynolds arlenerey@aol.com

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Mount Hermon Pete Devenis ingadevenis@aol.com

As we approach our twilight years, it is a great pleasure for me to re-connect with so many of you. I look back at my Mt. Hermon years with fondness. Please send me an email or letter to let me know that you are still alive and what you’re doing. • Morris “Moe” Weinstein passed away on 5/11/15. He attended Syracuse University, served in the North Atlantic with the Navy, and attended University of Miami, where he met and married his wife, Florence. They lived in West Hartford, Conn., for many years before moving to Avon. At Mt. Hermon, Moe enjoyed cross-country, golf, and tennis. He is survived by three children and five grandchildren. • Edwin Sample passed away on 8/20/15. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1949 after interruption to serve in the Army in Germany from 1947–48.

He enjoyed football at Mt. Hermon, as well as singing in the choir and a cappella. Ed worked in sales and marketing, and after retirement, began a second career in real estate. He is survived by his wife, Gaye, four children, two stepchildren, and four step-grandchildren. • Dr. William Bahnson passed away on 9/15/15.

Bill was my roommate at Mt. Hermon during senior year and at Yale during freshman year.

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spring 2016 I 47

CLASS NOTES

A CLOSER LOOK

A Long Career of Mentoring New Physicians Dr. Robert S. Wilkinson Jr. ’46 More than half a century ago, in 1962, Dr. Robert S. Wilkinson Jr. became the first African American attending physician in the Department of Medicine at the George Washington University Hospital. At the age of 87, as a professor emeritus, he continues to mentor future doctors by helping teach an introductory course in clinical medicine for a group of eight to 10 medical students.

As a result, in January he was given the Outstanding Volunteer Clinical Teacher Award from the American College of Physicians (ACP), the national organization of internists. The award goes to a Member, Fellow, or Master of the ACP who has consistently volunteered to teach medical students and residents while demonstrating outstanding teaching ability and serving as a role model.

“I was fortunate to receive a faculty appointment at the beginning of my career,” says Dr. Wilkinson. “[Teaching] is stimulating and challenges one to continue to learn. It is rewarding to observe students as they mature and acquire the knowledge and skills that physicians utilize.”

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Although he participated in soccer, skiing, and tennis, it was in studies that he really excelled — being our salutatorian was no small feat.

Bill and I enjoyed kicking the soccer ball, playing bridge, going to movies, and having blind dates. Initially an internist and family physician, Dr. Bahnson became a psychiatrist at Austen Riggs Center (1968–79) and Berkshire Medical Center (1968–84), and maintained private practices in Pittsfield and Greenfield until his retirement in 1988. He is survived by two children and his companion, Maryanne Ludgin. • Inga and I visited a Northfield classmate. Last fall Eleanor “Ele” Cox Lawrie, moved into an assisted living complex in Concord, Mass. — very close to where we live.

Previously, she had been living in Concord with her daughter, Cynthia. Ele has traveled to 50 different countries as a missionary, and started a girls’ boarding school in Kenya when she was 56. She is a happy person, always smiling. Members of the Kuria tribe in Kenya called her “Mama Joy.” • For three weeks every spring, we go to Innisbrook Resort and Golf Club in Palm Harbor, Fla. It turns out that several Mt. Hermon ’45 classmates live nearby, like Ted Covel in Dunedin and Don Krueger in Bradenton. Both of them were at the 70th reunion, and the three of us plan to get together. Bill Wallace lives in St. Petersburg, and I hope that he and his wife, Sally, can join us. Like many of us, Bill has become bionic, with an artificial knee, pacemaker, and eye implants. He was in the insurance agency business from 1950–92 and is retired: not only from work but also from driving a car and playing golf. Bill keeps in touch with Ted Covel and Colin Selley. Colin was his roommate and tennis partner in the last year at Mt. Hermon. Perhaps some of the other classmate Floridians from the west coast of Florida (Ed Golden from Dunedin, Ed Pinkham from St. Petersburg, and Bob Buker from Fort Myers) will join us in our minireunion. The sixth classmate living in Florida is Wink Cornwell.

He and Pris moved to an independent living apartment in Palm Beach Gardens. • Edwin H. Humphrey passed away on 8/25/15. We enjoyed his company at our 70th reunion. Ed was especially funny demonstrating his croaks next to the Crossley apartment entrance of the biology teacher nicknamed “The Frog.” After Mt. Hermon, he obtained a bachelor’s in physics at American International College (Massachusetts) in 1949, and became a teacher. Ed was principal of A. Ward Spaulding Elementary School in Suffield, Conn., after earning his master’s from University of MassachusettsAmherst. After retirement on Cape Cod, Ed continued to work to help homeless people in Hyannis. He is survived by four children, eight grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

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Northfield No secretary Please send news to: nmhnotes@nmhschool.org

46

Mount Hermon Hugh Findlay hughf@occia.com, findlay22@verizon.net

47

Northfield Joan Pearson Turner turnerjoan4@gmail.com

Anne Hardman Allen writes, “I still live in

the house my husband and I built 50 years ago. My husband died but my children and grandchildren live nearby, so I see them often.

Two grandchildren are still in college and two have their first jobs. One granddaughter just got back from a work-related trip to Guam!

I did manage a fun-related trip to Alaska last summer, however, though traveling has gotten more difficult.” • Anne’s call to classmate Priscilla Hartwell Hansen prompted Priscilla to “write a few lines to fellow alumnae who might have known me in the 1940s as a tall, thin, redheaded teenager from Durham, N.H. Older, wiser, and white-haired, I have since graduated from University of New Hampshire; taught kindergarten in Albuquerque, N.M., where I met my husband, Jack, whom I lost 22 years ago after 41 years of marriage; raised six children; and lived in nine different states.

I am now blessed with 11 grandchildren ranging in age from 8 to 32…only one is married.

Will I ever have great-grandchildren? One granddaughter was adopted by my daughter Jill from a Russian orphanage when she was 8 years old. I retired from the collectibles industry in Illinois to come back home to New Hampshire in time to help Jill — a single mom — turn her non-English-speaking daughter into an all-American girl, who next spring will be 18. I have always loved to travel, and through the years have been fortunate to have seen all of America and much of Europe.

Although I still live with Jill, during the last six years I have enjoyed the company of a man with whom I have continued to do some traveling, visit antiques stores, and explore the beautiful state of Maine. Life is good, and I feel fortunate to have some wonderful memories of my days at Northfield and friends, a few of whom I still keep in touch with. Anyone in the Nashua, N.H., area? I’d love to get together!” • Meredith “Diffy” Cushman Ransohoff “had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday gathering at our daughter Susie’s house in Chester, N.J. Susie and her husband, Neal Abramson, hosted about 17 family members. Their daughter, Lindsey, was home from the College of New Jersey, where she is a sophomore. Nick and Caitlin — twins — are finishing up their senior year of high school.

Other grandchildren news: our oldest, Will Ransohoff ’10, works for Amazon in Seattle; sister Lauren is a senior at Cornell, majoring in mechanical engineering; and sister Jaime is a sophomore at Colgate. Our youngest grandchildren, Millie and Anna (in 7th and 5th grades, respectively), live 40 minutes away, so we get to see them frequently and enjoy things like ballet performances!”

CLASS NOTES

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Retirement doesn’t mean sitting in a rocking chair anymore. John “Crif” Crawford writes of his latest venture: When floods destroyed the first floor of the nursing care unit at John’s retirement community in Colorado, he put his geologist’s training to work. With another retired geologist, he developed a documentary on what happened and how to prevent future flooding. Search for “Boulder Flood 2013” on YouTube to view John’s work. • Speaking of geology, Brad Bond writes from Ohio that he’s preparing for what may be his last adult education course, this time on rocks and minerals, at Marietta College. Last year it was a course on Latin American natural history from trips to Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Belize, Cuba, and Trinidad. His older brother died this spring, which led to a family reunion in Vermont and a visit to his daughter with multiple sclerosis in Greenfield, Mass., with his partner, Becky.

His wife of 50 years died in 2003. And to round things out, Brad notes that “Outdoor education for grade schoolers, volunteering at Marietta’s recycling center, guiding [his] steam-powered towboat, singing Handel’s Messiah for what seems like forever, and walking the trails around the local hills with Becky keep life enjoyable.” • Bill Paton encourages everyone to view Dr. Neal Barnard’s video on Alzheimer’s and diet — an important topic in later years. It’s from a talk at the Healthy Lifestyle Expo in 2012, and is viewable by searching for “Alzheimer’s & Diet — Neal Barnard MD” on YouTube. • Roly Coates had the occasion to contact Jeff Leyden in NMH’s development office, wondering if Jeff was related to our classmate George Leyden.

George is his uncle, living in Ballston Spa, N.Y., with his wife, Jean. Looking forward to reunion, Roly hopes that George and Jean will be there. A good plan for the rest of our class as well. • Jack Daggett and Jan will downsize, but he notes it is a distasteful job to throw out possessions that have been in the family for many years. Most of the retirement homes/condos in his area have units that are only 2,000 square feet or less, so they have a long way to go. • Little did I know that moving into a retirement community would put me into a network of NMH people. My next-door neighbor is Ed Nutt ’45, who left in his senior year to enlist in the Army. A fellow choir member is Yorke Peeler, father of Steven Bathory-Peeler — orchestral director at NMH, and our choir director here is Henry Wing, classmate of Joe Elder at Oberlin, where they sang in the choir. Our ambitious plan for spring is to perform The Mikado, allowing me to reprise my role as Pooh Bah. Oh, modified rapture! • Start thinking about reunion plans; it will be here sooner than you think.

Last fall, University of Massachusetts dedicated the Howard M. Ziff Gallery in its Integrative Learning Center, which celebrates the school’s journalism program past and present. Our well-remembered and much-admired late classmate was born in Holyoke, and after graduating with honors from Mt. Hermon and UMass, worked for the City News Bureau in Chicago before becoming a city editor at the Chicago Daily News. He moved to Amherst in 1971 to create the journalism school at UMass, where he was chairman for 13 years and served on its faculty until his retirement in 1998. • My wife (Bev Anderson) and I celebrated our 63rd anniversary in June. She has become a talented watercolor artist, and I have become older. A history buff, I do tend to read a lot.

Mount Hermon Charles A. Kennedy chask@myfairpoint.net

Northfield Mount Hermon Phil Baker bakpn30@earthlink.net

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Northfield Carolyn Noble Santoro doncary@optimum.net

Bobbie Groth Gilbert is very involved in church activities and in Monadnock at Home — a group that provides services to people in their homes, such as transportation and help with computers. They have a resource bank of vetted electricians, plumbers, and handymen.

There are many such organizations growing up around the country. You can find one in your area by doing an Internet search for the Village to Village network. • Carroll McConnell Manning is still living in Webster, N.H., but she has moved to a free-standing bungalow at 923 Cobbler’s Run. Mary Lyman Heist is living at the Edgehill at 122 Palmers Hill Road, Stamford, Conn. She says it is a good place to visit and would love to see anyone who’s in the area. • Joyce Heissenbuttel Neill’s children are scattered across the country. Her son Chris, who was married last summer, lives in Denver, Colo., and works for a spinoff company of Cisco Systems and is in charge of training. Her older son also works for the same company as head of sales in the Midwest. All the Neill grandchildren are very active in sports, and her youngest granddaughter has developed an enthusiasm for curling. Wonder where she got that! Joyce and Clark spent Christmas with their son in Natick, Mass.

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Mount Hermon Jim Hanchett jch46@cornell.edu • David Durham dedur@aol.com

From Jim Hanchett: Larry Andrews (Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif.) favors “a new career every once in a while.” A former rocket scientist and aerospace manager, he has been an adjunct professor at USC and head of the U.S. delegation on an ISO committee for space ops. His A Space Oddity — released last year — has been described as a captivating tale of cosmonauts Misha Sokolov and Babette

Bescond, whose outer-space romance leads to pregnancy and discord. Check bookstores, barnesandnoble.com, or amazon.com. • Larry’s Hermon roommate, Bill Deacon, and wife Nancy (Port Charlotte, Fla.) are comfortable in their Florida west coast home, and active. They grow bananas and various veggies with their garden club. They volunteer at their public library, repairing books. Both enjoy their woodworking shop creating toys, including wooden trains that spell out names.

They do yoga a couple of times a week and ride bikes over an 11-mile course. That’s when they’re home. Some years they spend several months in Austria, roaming around the Alps (but not on bikes) and elsewhere in Europe — in cars. There’s not much biking in the Alps, Bill observes. • Bill Mellin (Houston, Texas) reminds us all of the familiar signs of a stroke.

A neurologist says he can totally reverse its effects if it is recognized and medically cared for within three hours. The classic signs, you may recall, can be identified if the victim has trouble with a request to smile or speaking a simple sentence like “it is sunny out today” or raising both arms. If so, call emergency immediately. Bill submits another test: If someone sticks out his or her tongue and it goes to one side or the other, that’s also a stroke indicator. Pass the word along, says Bill. It might help someone. • A Bronxite before he was a Hermonite, Hugh Barbour (Fort Myers, Fla.) says he misses the city “where I grew up,” but remains active in Florida real estate. At the time this was composed, he was dealing with Class A motor homes. That’s better, he says, than sitting around talking about golf — a primary activity of many of his retirement facility neighbors. He’s retired from golf and tennis, but was impressed by a 14-year-old Korean girl who had lately shot a 64 in a tournament.

• Swapping tales of this and that with Paul Jaques not so long ago, some sea stories came up. Paul looked back on some of his son’s memorable degrees of peril experienced on the sea back in his Annapolis years. They included three stormy days without power or working radio — with a happy ending at Marblehead — and an exchange of strong words with a volatile skipper, Ted Turner. “We’re still here (in Baltimore),” says Paul Dubeau, “watching our Ravens go down the tube this year. But we don’t travel much anymore.” He inquired about goalies Norm Crook ’48, Frank Sherwood, and Jim Clarke. “I often think about those guys,” he said. There was also a pleasant, if rueful, exchange of political views. • We reached Paul Rikert (White Plains, N.Y.) in mid-December, when his neighborhood wasn’t white owing to spring-like temps on the brink of winter. But he made his annual trip to Mount Snow to ski. He also returned, again, to campus for Christmas Vespers. His appraisal: “outstanding.” • George Hamilton (Vienna) reported that “waves of refugees” were being received from Syria, Iran, and Afghanistan in his parts. “Johnny Woods and I

spring 2016 I 49

CLASS NOTES discuss this over the phone from time to time.”

Johnny’s a longtime resident of Sweden, which was likewise a haven for “waves of those seeking a better life in a more peaceful environment.” George says he’s “still semi-active as a journalist here, writing with an Austrian angle on energy for Platts/McGraw Hill’s London office. More than enough to do.” George was planning visits to his alma mater, Syracuse, and mine, Cornell, to see if anyone there “would be interested in eventually assuming my substantial collection of books and materials on printing, type design, type founding, and relateds, including items dating back to the mid-1700s.” He managed a 2014 trip to Mt. Hermon, which included “an excellent meeting with Head of School Peter Fayroian, a great tour of the brilliant new arts center, and a general look around the campus.” • Larry Warshawsky: “Although I had graduated from Greenfield High School in 1948, I was enrolled in Mt. Hermon’s class of 1949. In March 1949 I left and enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and never looked back. Up until that time, I commuted by car every day with Bob MacIntyre, Kerwin Stotz, and Robert “Tony” Sturtevant, all mentioned in the latest NMH Magazine edition. As we were all friends prior to enrolling at Mt. Hermon, I had always kept track of them in later years. Unfortunately, I regret to say that Bob MacIntyre and Robert Sturtevant have both died in fairly recent years.

As to Kerwin Stotz, he retired from the faculty of Virginia Military Institute. As for me, I spent almost four years in the U.S. Air Force, earned my wings as a flight engineer, graduated from Springfield College in 1948, and received my M.S. at the University of Illinois.

I retired from the faculty of Millersville University of Pennsylvania in 1991 as an associate professor emeritus and assistant football coach and head track coach.” • This just in as the annual Bemis-Forslund Pie Race drew near: All those who have passed their 50th reunion and finished the race get a pie. Please let us know if you were a winner this year — or any other time. Or whatever else you’d care to share. See you at our 70th reunion in 2019, if not before.

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Northfield Mount Hermon Janet-Marie Fitzgerald Whitley janwhitley@aol.com

I regret to start this column with news received today from Fred Monett about the passing of Ralph “Tim” Craig on 12/8/15. More about Tim later. • Toby Cullum Frost spent last summer planning a memorial service for husband Wes in September. The service consisted of a Friends Meeting, as she and Wes had been Quakers most of their lives. Toby spent the last four years caring for Wes, who had Alzheimer’s. • Katherine Spry Goldstein lives in Lake Wales, Fla. She is being treated for colon and ovarian cancer. The most she can expect is management, but she believes in miracles. All prayers are welcome. We are

50 I NMH Magazine

pulling for you, Kathy. • Lois Seekamp Dole and husband spent time this past summer at their summer home in Wayne, Maine, and at church camp. They will spend less time at each, as the next generation seems to be able to carry on. Her winter plans are to hunker down in Maine. Her son, who had his femur shattered by a careless skier in Colorado, had a hip replacement. Jean Cook Glidden was Lois’s roommate in Crane, and volunteers to read to a 99-year-old blind woman. • Diana Bond Holtshouser had a great reunion with family in Rockport, Mass., last July. They were invited to spend time in the home her grandfather previously owned, where they summered in the 1940s. She also stayed in a bed and breakfast her parents had owned for more than 35 years. Her kids are helping her relive her past. She had a small reunion in Rochester, Minn., with members of her class of ’49 from India. They have done this for years. Regrettably, they realize it was the last. While in Minnesota, she visited her sister, Midge, who a week later fell at her assisted living facility and wasn’t found for almost six hours. Her shattered femur required surgery and a long convalescence. Diana recently crossed off an item on her bucket list — she took a motorcycle ride. • Shirley Forrest Fenner and Jack Fenner were able to visit family in Maine in September. Their eldest daughter, Kathy Forest Deschambault ’73, works for the Kennebunkport animal shelter. If their health holds, they plan to return in April for an extended stay. Jack’s third pair of glasses since his partial cornea transplant appear to be working. • Lenny Krull Hirschberger has returned to her home in Fitzwilliam, N.H., after an eight-year hiatus living with her significant other in Florida, New York, and on his boat.

He passed away in August, so she returned home to rejoin activities she left: the Tropical Sensations steel drum band, the Keene Chorale community chorus, and Weavers Guild. She also has lots of house maintenance to do. She still plans to sail her Nonsuch30 sailboat at the Cape as long as she is able to get the sail up and down. She is happy to be closer to NMH with Christmas Vespers and Sacred Concert. • Margaret Brown Fleming’s husband, John, finished and published his memoir of his growing up in Hell’s Kitchen, The Book That Is, which is available on Amazon Kindle. It was a great year for her grandchildren’s college graduations. Paul graduated from University of Prescott and is teaching physical education at his alma mater, Pueblo High School. Kelly graduated from University of Arizona with a degree in neuroscience. She is working on a master’s at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Eric also graduated from University of Arizona, with a degree in psychology, and is working with adults with developmental disabilities at La Frontier, a behavioral health center. Brian and Derek are sophomores at the same university, studying graphic design. • Patricia Lawrence Schwartz welcomed her 13th great-grandchild, born to

grandson Patrick and wife. All her children are doing well. Her daughter and husband are sailing cruisers on their Catalina sailboat. Son Steven and partner have been touring the U.S. for two years. He is an archaeologist and she is a “rock art” specialist. Pat turned 84 this year, and is active in her church and proclaiming “The Word” with a strong voice. • Philip Dietterich has been busy playing for the Wicked Good Musical Review at the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse. He also plays the organ and directs shows in different churches on the island. In 2015 the Island Community Chorus included his “Wind Song” in the December program.

Being co-chair of the Vineyard CROP Hunger Walk took some of his hours in October, but he finally got his sailboat hauled. Phil also leads the Scottish Society Burns supper, which took place in January. He has no trips planned. Gee, Phil, can’t understand why — you have so much time on your hands! • Bruce Dunn just published his second book in the four-book series titled The Children of Lemma, which is available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. He is finishing his third book. Now that it is winter, Bruce and friends cross-country ski in the Rockies, or just as often put on micro-spikes and hike. You are an amazing man, Bruce. • Vic Scalise’s major task engaged in since our 65th reunion was completing a self-published memoir by henschelhausbooks.com of Milwaukee, Wis. It is scheduled for release in January, with 20 pages devoted to the Mt. Hermon years. • Dan Hopkins has been traveling with their RV most of the summer while visiting various family members in New Hampshire. He then went to Ithaca, N.Y., for his wife’s family reunion. They also traveled to Colorado and Utah, four-wheeling with their Jeep. They are wintering in Lake Worth, Fla. • Roy Meeks continues to work at his hotel, the Best Western Lafayette Executive Plaza and Conference Center. Over the years he’s been a hotel and restaurant operator along with being a real estate developer in the area. He has two sons: one in West Lafayette and one in Delray Beach, Fla. His considers Frances, his wife of some 60 years, to be his most valuable asset.

Roy thinks of Mt. Hermon often, the fine education he received, and remembers his English instructor, Thomas Donovan, who set him on the straight and narrow. Roy graduated from Brown University, worked for the Bank of Detroit, and then graduated from Naval OCS as an ensign. He served aboard an ice breaker in the Arctic and Antarctic. After his naval years, he went to Lafayette, Ind., where he operated a Howard Johnson motel and restaurant. He is a member of Purdue University’s President’s Council, and wishes all his old schoolmates of the class of ’50 the very best in 2016. • Fred Monett went on a cruise with the John Hagee Ministries. In 12/15 he went to San Antonio, Texas, to be with them for their annual Christmas event. He wrote that watching Pastor Hagee makes him think there is a parallel between his work and D.L. Moody’s, “if D.L.

CLASS NOTES Moody had today’s technology, then what a powerful word would have been supplied.” • Ron Wertheim retired as a judge of the Superior Court in D.C. He lives with his wife (a painter) in Philadelphia, but returns to D.C. periodically to work part time as a senior judge. His daughter lives in Berkeley, Calif., with her husband and two children. His deceased son’s daughter lives in Norwich, Vt., so he travels across the country to visit. He is in reasonably good health at 82. That is my greatest wish for all our classmates, Ron. • Dick Whelan works out two hours each day, either lifting or biking, and spends time at the Trout Club and the Gun Club. December was busy with the Marine Corps League Toys for Tots Program, and he serves with the Marine Corps League Honor Guard at the local Veterans Cemetery and at parades and other ceremonies. • Arnulf “Arnie” Esterer reports that after two killer winters, lots of work is being done in his Markko Vineyards, located near Lake Erie, to bring the vines up on the trellis. He had only a 10 percent crop in 2015. They will replant 2,500 of 3,500 vines lost. He has fond memories of his time spent on “the hill.” • Jim Whitton is living in a retirement community in Fort Meyers, Fla., with his second wife, Barbara. In the same community are three Northfield ladies from the early 1950s, and Hugh Barbour ’49. The Whittons summer at their home near Boone in the North Carolina mountains. NMH men’s basketball team played Christmas 2014 in a holiday tournament in Fort Myers. They did not win, but it was an impressive team. • Stuart Lohr wrote about his roommate, Ralph “Tim” Craig, only days before Tim passed away on 12/8/15.

Tim was the best man at Stuart’s marriage to Kathy 58 years ago and was responsible for their meeting on a blind date. “Despite having been afflicted by Parkinson’s disease for over 15 years and in declining health, Tim had a twinkle in his eye and a very wry smile on his face whenever I asked him about the Northfield girls he dated and chased around the campus when working at the Northfield Summer Conference.

I’m sure he still had a ‘little black book’ with names, addresses, and priceless comments on many of his loves.” Stu said that I, (Jan), would never print names, and he is correct. I hear so much about those summer conferences. It was a very fun time, I am told. • Tim Craig is survived by his wife, Ginger, five children, and 10 grandchildren. He grew up in New Hampshire and was an Eagle Scout and the New Hampshire state diving champ. In addition to NMH, he attended Swarthmore and University of New Hampshire, where he was an All-American lacrosse player. He graduated magna cum laude with a degree in mechanical engineering.

Tim, we are all so proud to have been a classmate of yours. • Bruce Roberts sends greetings from Argentina to all his classmates.

Thanks for keeping in touch, Bruce. • The family of Al Higgins — classmate and NMH teacher (1957–83) — wish to inform former students, colleagues, and friends of Al’s recent

move to the memory unit of a retirement community in Orono, Maine. Write to him c/o Dirigo Pines, 9 Alumni Drive, Apt. 150, Orono, Maine, 04473. He would love to hear from you! To arrange a visit, please email his daughter at wendy@cutterblue.com. • As for the Whitley family, Gene and I were ill over three weeks. I got better, but he ended up with pneumonia. Our fireman/EMT grandson, Brian II, was just named 2015 Firefighter of the Year for the Woodbridge (California) Fire Protection District. Quite an achievement for a 25-year-old. The district is currently sending him to officer training school. I know his father, Brian I, is smiling in heaven. When you read this in late May, I hope all is well with you and your families. If you do not get an email from me requesting news, then I either have a wrong or missing address. Please see that I get your correct email address. Have a wonderful 2016.

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Northfield Pat McCormick Hoehing sylv.snail@bex.net

It is always hard to report news six months before publication. By the time you read this, our 65th reunion will be history. As I write this, I am thinking “peace and joy at Christmas.” As you read this in June, it is “Happy Summer.” • Fred Miller has emailed the following news to me about Jane “Chip” Morrill Geraghty. Jane’s brother, corresponding with Fred, reported that Jane died in 2014. She was a high school graduate student for one year and lived in West Marquand. She married Pat Geraghty in 1955. Living in the Baltimore area, they raised three children. She also had two brothers who were one-year students at Mt. Hermon. • Mary-Ann Efird Higgins writes that their son, David Higgins ’89, has returned from his second semi-annual checkup at MD Anderson in Houston. Grateful, he continues to be cancer-free. Mary-Ann and Al Higgins ’50 were honored last July with the establishment of an endowed fund in their names in support of faculty salaries. Perhaps we will have learned more of this at reunion and I can relate it to you in the fall 2016 issue. As many of you probably know, both Mary-Ann and Al were faculty at Northfield, Mt. Hermon, and NMH after the merger. Al has moved to the memory unit of a retirement community in Orono, Maine. You can write to him in care of Dirigo Pines, 9 Alumni Drive, Apt. 150, Orono, Maine, 04473. He would love to hear from you! To arrange a visit, please email his daughter at wendy@cutterblue.com. • Once the New England snows melted last spring, Carol Maxham Whittall enjoyed visits to Gettysburg and Philadelphia, as well as scenic spots throughout New England. She said a trip to Florida mitigated the first of those many blizzards in Massachusetts.

Participating in mah-jongg and cribbage helps keep her brain active! • The blue ribbon award for traveling mileage belongs to Mary Erickson Perry and husband Gardner. With home base

being Driggs, Idaho, they put 40,000 more miles on their well-traveled Subaru Outback.

Various trips took them to multiple spots on the West Coast, on the East Coast, Florida, Ohio, upstate New York, the upper peninsula of Michigan, and South Dakota. Mary says, “The poor car must be getting tired and discouraged. It has taken to drinking…oil!”

Since Mary can see the Tetons from her living room window, “home” sounds pretty good as well! • That’s all for now. May the rest of 2016 be kind to you!

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Mount Hermon Frederick W. Miller fwcemiller@sbcglobal.net

This past year was a rough one for our class with the death of five classmates, one through an automobile accident. Four of the deaths were listed in the Vital Statistics section of the fall 2015 issue of NMH Magazine. This is a summary of each man’s life after Hermon. • William R. “Butts” Butler was a two-year man from Saratoga Springs, N.Y. He played football and lacrosse, skied, swam, wrestled, was in the outing club, and worked on The Hermonite. He graduated from the College of William and Mary, and had lived in Atlanta, Ga., for a number of years. He died on 4/18/15. He was 82. • William S. Calkin died on 7/10/15 in a car accident near Monte Vista, Colo. He was 82. Bill was a four-year man, born in Ithaca, N.Y., but grew up in Framingham Center, Mass. He played soccer, but his sport was high and low hurdles at Hermon and at University of Maine, where he was Maine state champion all four years. He set numerous school records and ran many times against Harrison Dillard, the Olympic gold medalist in 1948 and 1954. Bill was inducted into the university’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 2009. He was a math major, earned a master’s degree in geology at Maine, and a doctorate in geology at Colorado School of Mines in 1969. He lived in Golden and Lookout Mountain, Colo., for more than 50 years. • Daniel A.F. Schwenk, a dentist in New Jersey for 36 years who retired to Walpole, N.H., in 1996, died on 4/4/15 from complications due to Parkinson’s disease, with which he had lived for several years. He was 81. Dan was a four-year man, lettered in football, and participated in basketball and track. He was our senior class treasurer and class correspondent for 25 years. Dan was a 1954 graduate of Ursinus College, Collegeville, Penn., and a 1960 graduate of Temple University Dental School. He had perfect attendance in the Ocean City (N.J.) Rotary Club. As a dentist, he treated Medicaid patients when no one else would, and treated patients in poor areas of Cape May County, N.J. Many patients paid Dan in eggs, a chicken, or fish. He received a commendation from Ocean City for his years of service, including to the school district. In Walpole, he tutored Cambodian immigrants in English, was a volunteer tax preparer for

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CLASS NOTES senior citizens, a trustee of trust funds, a recycling committee member, and treasurer of the Friends of Walpole Library. • Frederick G. Simpson Jr. died on 4/24/15 after a 10-year battle with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 82. He received an alumni award for his dedication to Mt. Hermon, especially as decade and class chairman. Raised in Branford, Conn., he was a one-year Hermon man. He earned degrees from both Cornell and Columbia in engineering. After U.S. Army service, he pursued graduate degrees from Northeastern and Tufts.

Fred worked for 20 years in research and development and design analysis in the chemical and mechanical processes of the aerospace industry. He later taught in high school and college, and was a technical recruiter. Giving and volunteering were important to Fred. He was head of the Westwood, Mass., Lions Club, program coordinator for the American Cancer Society, and on the Medfield State Hospital cemetery restoration committee. He lived in Medfield, Mass. • Chester L. Towne, born and raised in Waltham, Mass., died on 3/5/15 in South Hadley, Mass., where he had made his home for years. A graduate of Bowdoin and Harvard, he was an educator his entire career, retiring in 1993 after 10 years as superintendent of schools in South Hadley. He had previously served Mount Kisco, N.Y., schools.

A three-year Hermon man, he was a tenor in the choir and a cappella choir, worked on The Hermonite, and played football, hockey, and baseball. Chet was 82.

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Northfield Mount Hermon Julie Taylor Clemens jtclemens@cs.com • Bruce G. Holran bruceholran@comcast.net

News of the last ’52 class minireunion in October 2015 will seem “old hat.” Suffice it to say that 13 class members plus friends and staff made up a group of about 30. We had several very cold but sunny days in the delightfully colorful landscape of New England. Details were included in a long report from this scribe by way of the NMH communication network. Then there were several after-reports to fill in responses and any untold news. Hopefully, telling the story once is enough, and we can now talk about the next minireunion of the NMH class of ’52, which will be October 14–16, 2016. The annual minireunions began following our 45th reunion, so this next one is number 20! Those who have made the trip to reunite with old and new friends have found it worthwhile.

Those who live nearby certainly have missed a good time. Many who drive long distances find it is a good time to see family or friends in the area. • Your scribe and husband often visit a granddaughter at Williams College and family in Boston. • Mel Smith has done a terrific job of getting out a reminder letter, organizing dinner arrangements as well as interactions with the NMH staff for our class

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meeting and lunch at the dining hall or today was “very helpful for grandkids, etc.” • classrooms. The October 2015 mini included For the first time in 35 years, Jean Munro the chance to take a boat ride on the Bedell and her husband did not go to India Connecticut River with geological and but rather went to Nicaragua and Cuba. A historical commentary by the guide, and a grandson and a daughter-in-law accompanied sighting of a bald eagle! However, it was frigid, them to Nicaragua, where they were with a and even hats, scarves, and blankets couldn’t medical team sponsored by Corner of Love. keep us warm enough despite the air of fun She told of “lots of back, shoulder, and neck and adventure. • News of classmates reminded pain from stoop labor in coffee plantations.” us that we are getting older and our health can Then they went to Cuba: “Income is low but be quite fragile. We welcomed Melissa Walker, total health care, education through graduate school, and housing are free with almost zero who was encouraged to come as many had unemployment. Richest folks are the taxi become so fond of Ian Walker, her late drivers, who sport 1950s Chevrolets and husband. Melissa is now an honorary member Fords,” said Jean. When she heard about news of the class of ’52. Another honorary member from Ruth Murdick Walker, she said that Ruth is Julie Roberts, who makes it possible for Brad and Nan Stewart Roberts to attend by didn’t say enough about her quilting. Now your scribe has to add, “Why don’t you, Jean, driving her parents from Connecticut. It gives visit Ruth not far from NMH and then come Nan a chance to see several old classmates who together to the 65th in 2017?” The chance to can illicit memories. We have heard that Nan see such good friends in the atmosphere of an had a difficult fall in November with a broken NMH gathering is priceless. Consider it. How hip, has had surgery for a partial hip to get Lucy Jackson DeMonchaux back to a replacement, and was last in rehab. Her daughter reported that she is not in pain and mini or the 65th? Lucy, you need to get has a good appetite. Nan and Brad, as well as someone to take care of your pets so you are Julie Roberts, have reserved rooms for the free to drive straight from your Michigan October mini and the 65th reunion in 2017. • summer home to the mini en route to North Carolina. • By now you have guessed that your Dave Hartman and Mary also plan to attend scribe is intent upon getting as many ’52 next year’s mini and report that Mary’s classmates as possible to the 65th reunion chemotherapy for breast cancer is going well.

June 2–4, 2017, as well as the mini in Dave appeared on the Good Morning America October! Although the dorm callers of TV show recently when the show celebrated Northfield, who worked so hard for our 50th, its 40th anniversary. Although Bruce Holran have not been asked this year to contact couldn’t be there this year due to Barbara’s everyone in their dorm, it is a time to cancer, he has reserved a room for our 65th. remember which people are most likely to Russ Broad came to the mini, but Carol was make the trip and encourage them. If you unable to attend due to a stroke and rehab. have a special roommate or friend with whom Russ made sure she was included in the future you keep in contact, why not propose a special reservations. • Others hoping to make a mini trip this year or next to renew old times? • Mel or the 65th: Carol Kiger Allen is hoping to attend the 2016 mini for the first time due to Smith and Sybil Benton Williamson are our better timing. She also hopes to get to real links to NMH. While your scribe sends Cleveland for the marvelous art show of reports, it is these two classmates who do all Monet-Matisse, with a focus on painters in the groundwork! Mel sends on news he gardens at the Cleveland Museum of Art. gathers and makes contacts with NMH When Carol reports that she saw Mary Merin concerning our minis, etc. Sybil has become “president pro tem” and helped lead the class Tinkham in Portland last June, your scribe is discussion at the mini regarding future plans. thinking, “Why not get together and both encourage each other to come to the mini and/ All agreed to a 2016 mini, and many were encouraged to sign up with reservations at the or the 65th reunion?” An early holiday letter from Mary reported that meeting with delight, Crumpin’ Fox Inn or the Riverside in West Chesterfield, N.H. Because the staff from and that she celebrated her 80th by taking her NMH asked that rooms at the Fox be family to Kauai. • Anne “Cokey” Lanoue available for the 50th reunion of the class of Weber writes from California that she was so ’67, Russ Broad ceded some of the rooms he impressed with Dr. Engell’s graduation speech that she wrote him a letter. (That speech is had reserved for our class in 2017. Russ worth looking at in the last NMH Magazine, planned even farther ahead than the 50th fall 2015). Cokey volunteers extensively in her reuniting class did! Thanks for all your work, community: A local thrift shop run by the Russ. Yes, we won’t be able to have everyone Assistance League Chapter takes up much of from our class in one place but that was her time. In addition, she works in a hospital unlikely in any event! The Fox is much closer and does bookkeeping for her church. That’s (and less expensive), so that was a nice choice real service for her community! • A number of for many. Russ has been an active organizer for classmates have expressed their thanks for the our big reunions every five years. His address reports by saying that the NMH communicafor anyone with questions: 6115 Reserve tion has been their one real source of ’52 class Circle, Apt. 2003, Naples, Fla. 34119. • news. Bill Rosser thinks the data about NMH Another subject brought up at the class

CLASS NOTES meeting was our ’52 Class Student Scholarship Fund. Our class hasn’t received a letter yet from that individual, but Mel and Sue Clough both sent word that his name is Dominick ’17.

One serious note about our contributions to the NMH Annual Fund and our Student Scholarship Fund: It is suggested that we consider marking our donations with half for the Annual and half for the Student. That makes sense when you consider that our Scholarship Fund only had about $123,000 last June in endowment from which to draw income for a student. We need to enlarge that source so there will be more each year for a student scholarship. Once again, Sybil Benton Williamson will help with fundraising for our class since Bruce Holran has a very ill wife, whose care is taking a great deal of his time.

Sybil also represents the class at the Alumni Council meetings. Thanks, Sybil. • When classmates asked for up-to-date information about NMH, we asked the school to send us some data. Sue Clough sent your scribe a pamphlet about this year’s student body and courses, and much of that info was included in a blast to the class after the reunion report.

Small classes, global world appreciation, 25 percent foreign students, big scholarship help for at least one-third of the students, small advisory groups, many choices of intellectual subjects as well as in the arts and culture areas, and lots of sports. • Leanna Young Brown writes, “I had a wonderful 80th birthday party, which my sister, Lucinda Young Kelly ’56, flew all the way across the country to attend. I have been enjoying politics and writing.” She also noted that the card had a painting of Archangel Raphael, angel of healing, on the front. This is a painting that she now has in her apartment but was bought by Stan and Leanna “in a bed and breakfast while traveling in Buenos Aires, Argentina, around 2002.”

She also attended the International Women’s Forum with her granddaughter (age 22) in South Africa. • Don’t forget: 2016 mini,

October 14–16 (you don’t have to be there the whole time, just come). Then think ahead and plan for the class of ’52 reunion, our 65th, June 2–4, 2017. It isn’t too early to reserve places. Write at least one NMH friend and suggest reunions! • This news will arrive in the spring, with time to make donations and plan trips to NMH. Hope to see you in 2016 and 2017!

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Northfield Mount Hermon Will Lange will@willemlange.com • Abby “AJ” Nicholson Hodges ajhodges@comcast.net

From Will Lange: Dear Classmates, We had a green Christmas here in Vermont; hardly a dusting of snow. But I’ve gotten a few gifts of news from some of you. • Ken Lindfors’s younger brother, Bernth (’55), sent me a note: “Last month two dozen family members, including six cousins and a niece from Sweden, gathered on Cape Cod for a weekend to celebrate Ken’s 80th birthday. We had a lot of fun, toasting him with limericks in both English and Swedish.” • Aileen and Bob Chutter are having the time of their lives traveling, with Road Scholar, I believe: “We’re back home after four weeks in France, Switzerland, Croatia, and Austria. Another wonderful trip with fun traveling friends and super weather!

Our granddaughter returned from more than two years in Togo with the Peace Corps. We’re planning a warm homecoming on Thanksgiving, as we have so much to be thankful for.” • Karen and Bob Holton moved to a retirement community not far from Houston for the same reasons many of us do: to be closer to family and “excellent medical facilities.” Their grandchildren, like the kids in Lake Wobegon, are all way above average. They also traveled this summer to England, Wales, and Scotland.

• Mary Little Brummett writes, “In 2013, after my husband’s death, I moved from Saluda, N.C., to beautiful Sarasota, Fla., where my

Bob Dixon ’53 was the official starter at the 2015 Pie Race with Head of School Peter Fayroian.

daughter and her husband have been longtime residents. Interestingly, I have found two NMH graduates living in my development: Virginia Brooks Baldau ’51 and Polly Hospital Flansburgh ’50. We have good times reminiscing about our NMH days. Soon after relocating here, I learned that my NMH roommate, Jennifer Meares Meinert, also lives in the city.

We have enjoyed spending time together, and she had her daughter join my daughter and me on a river cruise through southern France last year. I am continuing to paint almost daily, and life is good!” • Ida and I had a lovely dinner recently with Holly Goodhue VanLeuven and her dear friend, Bert Whittemore, in Concord, N.H., on the occasion of a book signing of my latest. Holly sends me depressing photos of her and Bert in sarong and shorts sipping margaritas with palm trees in the background. • I hear often from John Cayward, who usually has a trenchant comment on my newspaper column. • We continue here as we have been. Currently logging the woods behind the house — big change! I finally finished the siding on the front of my barn and installed an antique (though motion-activated) floodlight to startle the deer when they sneak by at night. Busy with the TV show, writing, and telling tales of a New England that probably never was.

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Northfield Mount Hermon Dennis Kelly dskelly1935@gmail.com • Be Jay Froehlich Hill bhill24@juno.com • Dan Fricker dcfricker@videotron.ca • Marcia Samuel mnutsam1@verizon.net

From Marcia Samuel: Just 62 years ago we were newly graduated! • A quote from Barbara Helmle Simon: “It is a unique pleasure to have friends from NSFG share bits of their lives today.” Please drop me a note for next issue, so we can share our experiences of entry into the eighth decade! • Suzanne Buckson Crowder and husband Jim continue to thrive at Broadmead in Cockeysville, Md., where she does committee work and Jim is president of their residents’ association. Suzanne retired from nursing 16 years ago and now utilizes the education and experience as a health consultant. She recently discovered FaceTime, and is amazed at how much more personal phoning is by using it. Suzanne and Jim keep in touch with their four children, all graduates of NMH, spread across the country in Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, and Virginia. She is in touch with her Weston roommate, Ann Tomasek Staub. Ann and her husband, Paul, live in Florida. • Nancy Wickens’s current challenge is adjusting to retirement! She began working in home health in 1970 and continued doing so until last year.

She and her husband, Al, sold their Tampa, Fla., home and now live in Mebane, N.C. Son

spring 2016 I 53

CLASS NOTES David (board-certified in pediatrics and internal medicine) and family are but a five-minute walk from them, and son Eric (counsel at Merck Pharmaceutical) and family live in Scotch Plains, N.J. • Perona Farms in Andover, N.J., is a glorious dining experience, where Debbie Fryer Gorin and I treat each other to birthday brunch twice a year to “catch up.” She has gladly shed the considerations of snowplowing, grass cutting, and other household chores, and has moved into an apartment in a Bristol Glen retirement facility near her home. • Barbara Helmle Simon wants to “age in place”! She has invested in a new comfortable condo near her son in Connecticut, and bought into the membership of the Senior Choice at Home — a local long-term caregiver organization. They will bring her whatever services she might need in the future.

For now, she is back in Killington, Vt., for the winter ski season. • Toni diStefano Norton organized a mini 61st reunion in October.

Faced with the challenge of geographical distances, she chose a midpoint from north (Boston) to south (Mebane, N.C.). Where else would a cougar of “near” 80 choose but the Hotel Thayer at West Point? Those joining her were Toni Browning Smiley, Ann Newman Sundt, Betty Vermey, Gail Schaller Storms, Marcia Samuel, and Nancy Wickens. One of the highlights of the two-day adventure was a sinfully delicious luncheon at the French restaurant of the CIA (Culinary Institute of America) in Hyde Park. • From Dennis Kelly: Do any Northfield ladies remember a classmate named Bertie Boynton? Bertie entered Northfield as a freshman in the fall of 1950 and stayed three years, ultimately transferring to a smaller school in Rhode Island. She roomed with Toni Browning Smiley in her junior year at Center Gould.

Bertie lived next door to me in Little Silver, N.J., and we went through grammar school together. She married, had three children, and settled in Allentown, N.J. I hadn’t seen her in a very long time, but I have been in touch with her over the years. Her daughter gave her an 80th birthday party at a nice restaurant in Allentown last November, with 25‒30 people in attendance. I was invited, along with Toni, who couldn’t make it due to recent travels, but I went — it was a terrific party, where I saw a lot of very old friends I hadn’t seen in 65 years.

• Stu Leyden still plays tennis, even though he has had two knee replacements, suffers from diabetes, has had cataract surgery, and has high cholesterol. Stu and his wife, Donna, have downsized from their place in Alpharetta, Ga., to a retirement community in Suwanee.

His address is Park at St. John’s Creek, 4345 Alta Drive, Suwanee, Ga. 30024. His cell phone is still 678-372-4756, and Stu would love to hear from anyone nearby or traveling through. Stu and Donna took an extended cruise to the Far East last year and climbed the Great Wall of China. • Nancy and Stan Peck stopped by our place here in Bay Head, N.J.

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— the garden spot of the Garden State. We strolled over to the Bay Head Yacht Club for cocktails and dinner, and I showed Stan the club renovation after Hurricane Sandy wrecked the place and most of the town three years ago. • Susie Craig Hastings sold her home in Norwich, Vt., and has moved into an independent living facility across the river in Hanover, N.H. She comes down to Hilton Head Island, S.C., every winter and rents a place in a plantation near my own rental home in the Sea Pines Plantation. I look forward to enjoying some chocolate martinis with Susie in Hilton Head this winter. • Jay Crawford and his wife, Joan, stayed with us at our little cottage by the sea here in Bay Head last July when Jay came up to attend a memorial service for an old business associate here. We had dinner with Jay and Joan at the Bay Head Yacht Club. The Crawfords are as spritely as ever. • I have been in touch with Bill Young about trying to help him with some scam artist that has ripped off Bill’s patent for a unique product. Bill produces a niche product called a Bilge Shark. It is a small piece of foam rubber cut in the shape of a shark that is infused with microbes that automatically consume oil and grease in the bilges of boats.

This scam artist copied Bill’s product and then froze him out of a large national marine chain-store operation. We are planning a lawsuit with me as an expert witness. Bill had a recent heart attack and the doctors put two stents into his arteries. He’s doing well and is back on the golf course once again. • Fred Rice has had his trawler yacht listed with several brokers, but they don’t seem to be doing a very good job of getting potential buyers. He may move the boat down here to the New Jersey shore from Poughkeepsie, N.Y., this spring, where there is a bigger market. I will, of course, help him if he needs me. Fred comes from a very old family stretching back to the late 17th century. He is reconstructing some of his life’s stories and has sent some of them to me, which I find quite interesting. We should all do that to pass our stories on to our descendants. You can find some great questions to address by visiting StoryCorps. org. • Toni Browning Smiley has a CPA practice in Washington, D.C., and has been very helpful to me in my travails with the IRS. She is also an ice cream expert, and is writing a book of adult ice cream recipes. Each recipe includes a small vignette of her life. Along with Toni, I invited Ed and Ann Sundt to my place on Hilton Head Island this past fall to check it out as a possible “girls’ getaway.” The price is right (free) and sits empty in the fall.

And the invitation goes out to anyone in our class who might like a nice place to escape to in the autumn. • Toni’s granddaughter visited her from Sweden this past summer and was shown the sights of Washington. She’s the spitting image of Toni. Toni and her daughter also took a 10-day trip to Turkey this past summer and saw the sights of Istanbul along

with the refugees from Syria. • Ed Sundt has published his second book, My Helsingsfors — a good fictional story of a young man in Helsinki, Finland, in the early part of the 20th century, which is taken from Ed’s father’s unpublished autobiography. I bought it on Amazon and enjoyed it immensely. His first book, Children of the Wind, was also a great success. If you haven’t read either, may I suggest a visit online to Amazon? Ed and Ann hosted a dinner party at their home in Garrett Park, Md., just outside of Washington, D.C. Guests included Toni Browning Smiley and Andrea Bear Rugh ’53, with her husband, Bill.

The Rughs are neighbors of the Sundts. The Army/Navy game was on at the time, and Ed and Ann have a granddaughter, Hannah, who is a midshipwoman at the Naval Academy and somehow is attracted to a cadet at West Point.

• I was saddened to learn of the passing of Roscoe “Rosk” Stevenson ’53. Rosk roomed with Yogi Nicholson on Third South Crossley, down the hall from me and my roommate, Dave Jansky. I thought Rosk was the funniest guy I had ever met. He had a wonderful sense of humor and was remembered in the ’53 yearbook as “most witty.” He was from Woodstock, Conn., and played baseball all four years at NMH, then went on to Colby College and had a career as a teacher in St. Albans, Vt. Unfortunately, he never returned to a class reunion. • Yogi Nicholson remembered Roscoe and was saddened to learn of his passing. Yogi had two heart attacks this past year, and the doctors put two stents in his arteries. He seems to be doing fine — when I called him, he had just come in from clamming and oystering, using clam rakes and waders. He retired to Osterville, Mass., on the south shore of Cape Cod. • As for your loyal scribe, I am still occasionally gainfully employed. This past summer I corralled my grandson, Lukas, age 16, to come with me as crew on a yacht delivery of a 35’ sport fisherman from Bay Head, N.J., to Boothbay Harbor, Maine. It took four days, and we were in one ocean, one gulf, three canals, seven harbors, and five sounds. We had fun, and I was lucky to have him, as he has better eyes than I do to pick out navigation marks. • Our 65th reunion is only three years away, and your reunion committee is hard at work planning the festivities. We have persuaded Willem Lange ’53 to be our guest speaker. As you know, Will is NMH’s famous TV star (PBS’s This Old House), writer, leader of adventure treks, author of four books of short stories, and teller of NMH tales. We have had Will as guest speaker before, and I never tire of hearing his stories. We will probably be housed in the Infirmary, which is adjacent to the dining hall, because each room has its own bathroom, and we may also be housed in adjacent Hayden Hall. Please block out your calendar for the first week in June 2019. • Thank you all so very much for your generous contributions to the McVeigh Scholarship

CLASS NOTES fund — it now totals near $190,000. Let’s try to make it $200,000 by our 65th reunion.

Stay healthy, eat wisely, and get plenty of exercise. We’ll meet again at our 65th!

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Northfield Mount Hermon Lisa Tuttle Edge etedge@aol.com • Don Freeman d.freeman4@verizon.net

From Don Freeman: Art Duel writes that he and his family have relocated to the Naples area of Florida. His new address is 19361 Silver Oak Drive, Village of Estero, Fla. 33967, and Art is eager to see any classmates who may find themselves in the neighborhood. • Stan King reports that he has heard from a number of friends who are evaluating a boarding school for their child or grandchild. Each is excited about the construction of the new building at NMH for STEM studies. • Ernie Imhoff writes, “Hilda and I had a lovely dinner in October with Jenny and Reverdy Johnson.

Reverdy was attending a national lawyers’ meeting in Baltimore and studying family roots in Maryland. An ancestor, Reverdy Johnson, was a 19th-century U.S. senator from the state; a WWII Liberty ship built in Baltimore was named for him.” Reverdy writes, “My daughter, Jennifer Foley from Maine, and I had a genial breakfast with Jim Richardson in Williamstown in September while Jen and I were in town for the local high school 60th reunion with old friends. Jen, a Colby alumna who works in gift planning at Bates College, and Jim, who is interested in the subject (for NMH and Williams, of course), talked friendly shop.” • Dana Holman has a difficult row to hoe. Every year, poor guy, he has to accompany his wife, Margorie, to her professional conferences in hardship posts like St. Kitts and Cancun. This year it’s San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Apart from that, Dana is still teaching social work students at Fordham and still enjoying it. • Don Freeman’s granddaughter, Caroline “Firefly” Freeman-Cherry, is following in the family musical tradition by singing in the San Francisco Girls Chorus. • Lucretia Hoover Giese and her brother, Henry B. Hoover Jr. ’53, have released their recent publication, Breaking Ground: Henry B. Hoover, New England Modern Architect (University Press of New England, 2015). Writing is in the Hoover family, as Lucretia and Henry’s sister, Elizabeth Hoover Norman, has co-authored, with Darcy White, Public Sculpture of Sheffield and South Yorkshire, Public Sculpture of Britain Volume Eighteen (Liverpool University Press, 2015). Congratulations to the Hoovers!

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Northfield Mount Hermon Nelson Lebo nlebo@nmhschool.org

From Debby Adams McKean: Lucinda “Lu” Young Kelly and her husband, Thorpe, enjoyed their trip to New Zealand to celebrate the first birthday of their son Bruce and wife Sheryl’s baby, Curtis. Back home again in

Seattle, they were thrilled to watch 13-year-old granddaughter Anna display her “remarkable” voice as Dorothy in her Wizard of Oz school production, and at the same time excel on the lacrosse pitch! Lu shared her appreciation for all her grandchildren as they pursue their particular gifts and talents. • Pattie Pelton Lanier visited her daughter, Kate, and her family near London, where they enjoyed visiting museums and attending theater together. They strolled in one of the queen’s parks and on a beautiful heath. Kate is filling her garden with bee-attracting flowers as she investigates beekeeping, and Pattie herself is adding butterfly attracters to her own yard in Florida. She has joined a genealogical society in hopes of uncovering some stories to flesh out the lives of recent ancestors, and sees the possibility emerging of some interesting adventures within the U.S. in this pursuit! • Five of Ruth Ann Fredenthal’s large paintings were on display at the Palazzo Della Penna in Perugia, Italy, last June through November as part of “The Palazzo Della Penna in Perugia” exhibit, which was accompanied by a very large illustrated catalog. Ruth Ann traveled to Italy in November to see the exhibition. She spent the day in Perugia and was featured in a public discussion of the Panza Collection and her own work that evening with the art editor and curator Giorgio Bonomi. • Shortly before going to Italy, Ruth Ann was in Columbus, Ohio, for the opening festivities of the new wing of the Columbus Museum of Art. This included an exhibition of Paul Feeley’s paintings and sculptures, plus the dedication of the permanently installed new fabrication of the painted-metal multi-piece sculpture, “Karnak” (formerly titled “Sculpture Court”), whose painting Ruth Ann had supervised. Paul Feeley had been her teacher at Bennington College, where she painted all of his sculpture during his lifetime. After his death in 1966, she directed the execution of and personally painted his huge “Sculpture Court” for the Paul Feeley memorial exhibition in 1968 at New York’s Guggenheim Museum. “Sculpture Court” was later destroyed due to extensive damage, and hence its remake in metal for the Columbus Museum of Art. A large book with the discussion of Ruth Ann’s work with Paul Feeley, plus a full-page color photo of her painting Feeley’s sculpture in 1965, is in this book. • The weekend after returning from Italy, Ruth Ann was invited, as an honored guest and an artist in the Panza Collection, to the gala and activities surrounding a new Panza acquisition by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery titled “Light and Language from the Panza Collection: 1967–1990.” She also participated in a panel discussion about “Collecting the Panza Collection” with the curators of the museum and Giuseppina Panza. • Evie Walsh Stevenson writes, “Jan Mitchelhill Leas came over from Stone Ridge in November, and we rode together on the train to New York for a planned lunch with the Merrill

Keep gals. It was an info session concerning our 60th reunion and a fun lunch on a rather dreary day. My son, who works upstairs in the Graybar Building for Korn Fairy, paid us all a quick visit. It is always great to see people whom you have known for more than 50 years.

Of course, we really haven’t changed very much!” • Elinor Abbot is hoping to make it to reunion. She retired after many years working with the mission organization, Wycliffe Bible Translators. Her time at Northfield was definitely part of the preparation for such work. • From Nelson Lebo: A class minireunion was held last September at the home of Betsy and Bruce Zimmerli at Falmouth on Cape Cod. Northfield and Mt. Hermon classmates, along with some spouses and several members of the school’s advancement department, enjoyed a wonderful evening. We thank Bruce and Betsy for again hosting this event. Seven or eight minireunions have been held since our 50th reunion! • Neil Sheeley: “So that you will not think that I am goofing off in my old age, I would like to mention that my recent paper in the Astrophysical Journal (co-authored by my colleague, Yi-Ming Wang) was selected as a research highlight from the journals of the American Astronomical Society. A summary by editor Susanna Kohler is on aasnova.org under the heading Witnessing Solar Rejuvenation.” • Ron Lotz writes, “You are never too old to do the unusual. Recently returned from Arizona after riding the Cochise Stronghold Trail in the Dragoon Mountains. Rode with my favorite wrangler, who has taken me on pack trips in Wyoming. She is an accomplished rodeo rider, and we have known her since 1995, when we first started to ride in Arizona with our children. Now we are taking our grandchildren once they are 5 years old and have learned to ride. This time we spent 10 days without the children — our time was spent with friends and riding off trail. I still enjoy doing antiques shows, but fewer of them as I try to retire for the second time.” • Carol and Nelson “Wink” Lebo visited Cuba in late October. They won the trip in a fundraising drawing at New England Public Radio.

There were 35 people on the trip. It was very informative and enjoyable: museums, schools, music, food, old cars, Hemingway sites, interactions with the people, etc. On their final evening before their farewell dinner, the group had rides through Havana in old cars. They and another couple were in a ’57 Chevrolet four-door hardtop with the original engine.

Wink’s first car was a ’57 Chevy! • From Tom Veal: “After 45 years of orthodontic practice in Oxnard, Calif., I have officially retired, selling both my practice and office building. For the last 25 years I have been seeing patients just three days a week, and that has been a good pace. I wanted to continue that way another five years, but due to my wife’s illness it is time for me to take care of her. Fortunately, we have been able to do significant travel over the years, so now we will just take a lot of

spring 2016 I 55

CLASS NOTES short trips as long as she can. I still have so many fond memories of our classmates and my four years at Mt. Hermon.” • Jean and John McClintock and Carol and Wink Lebo attended a lovely Christmas Vespers service on campus in December in Memorial Chapel.

Wink notes that for the last seven or eight years before he retired from NMH in 2003, he served as head usher for the evening service at Mt. Hermon. His responsibilities included recruiting and training candle lighters (seniors) and ushers (juniors). During the actual service, he “supervised,” turned chapel lights on and off as needed for congregational singing, and helped to quiet children who were really too young to be there. • Oklahoma University Press published John Lubetkin’s Prelude to War: The 1871 Yellowstone Surveys. This is his third nonfiction book with OU Press in four years.

On the fiction side, despite good reviews, John reports that Custer’s Gold turned out to be a “box office” disaster of the first magnitude! Perhaps he shouldn’t have been so generous giving books to classmates who upped their Annual Fund donations. Undiscouraged, John is now writing a rock ‘em, sock ‘em, unliterary, escapist, post‒World War II book. • The James A. Rotherham ’56 Endowed Scholarship Fund has been established by Jim’s wife, Bev Thierwechter, and son Andy Rotherham. Donations to this fund, as well as to the Class of 1956 Scholarship Fund, are always welcome. When donating to either of these funds online or by phone, be sure to indicate what scholarship the donation is meant for. As usual, support for the NMH fund (Annual Fund) each year is requested.

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Northfield Mount Hermon David C. Williams revdcwms@metrocast.net • Jeanne Schwartz Magmer jeannem57@gmail.com

From Jeanne Schwartz Magmer: In just one year we will be celebrating our 60th reunion on the Mt. Hermon campus. Back in 1957, we only got to see the Hermon boys on Saturdays and Sundays if we taught Sunday school and got to ride the bus through the Mt. Hermon campus and provide mail delivery service for our dormmates. Now it’s NMH, with boys and girls sharing the same campus, and your NMH ’57 classmates are working together to plan a spectacular 60th reunion event. All it takes now is for you to make your reservations to be there. • I’ll do a better job next issue contacting all of you via email on NMH Connect to find out how you’re doing and if you plan to be at the reunion June 1‒4, 2017. I also encourage you to add your updates to Lloyd Mitchell’s excellent NMH School Class of 1957 website at classcreator.com/Mount-Hermon-MassachusettsNorthfield-Mount-Hermon-1957. You can see photos of the first girl in the Schwartz family in three generations, Brylee Lynn, born 12/19/15. • Martha Johnson is retired with a

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new late-in-life mission as life journey guide and author of life journey books. She enjoys keeping up with her stepchildren of two marriages and their progeny; and is particularly proud of the three who took over her former business and made it their own: Gilburg Leadership, Inc. • Thalia “Terry” Verros says it has been quite an adjustment after the loss of her spouse, and she is struggling to reclaim her life as an independent woman. She is fortunate to have good health, with some aging orthopedic parts: knees, shoulder, and feet. They have not deterred her from traveling, biking, kayaking, and pool classes. In July 2015 she traveled to Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. In January 2016 she was off to Vietnam. In November, she did volunteer work in Costa Rica. She is continuing to paint and study Buddhism, and was at Karme Choling in Vermont for a weeklong retreat. And at 76, she is blessed to have a new love and companion in her life. • From David Williams: Michael Doudoroff lost Gay Anne Galbraith, his wife of 52 years, after a very long battle with cancer. Her memorial service was held at Trinity Episcopal Church in Lawrence, Kan., near where they have lived.

His son and wife live in New York City. Mike says that he is keeping busy, coping as well as can be expected. With such deep roots in his community, church, and the university where he taught for so many years, we wish him well, hoping and praying for a healthy transition and a long life. “Of course,” he says, “our 2017 reunion is on my calendar.” • Bruce Turner has yet to attend a class reunion, and assures us that he and Linda will join us in June 2017 for our 60th! They are still living on Cape Cod, have their two children, who both have two children, all living within two hours — lucky them! Bruce plays on the Cape Cod Senior Softball League all summer and billiards several times a week with a group of seniors. Given their location on a saltwater pond, they “sea food and eat it” regularly! • Steve Springer and Barbara, his bride of 53 years, have been splitting their time between homes in Randolph, Vt., and Salem, Ore., and are now “downsizing” — planning to end up in either an apartment near their kids in Oregon or a retirement community in Vermont, where they spent most of their years. They seldom miss a reunion; no reason to start now!

• Nelson Hulme and his wife, Dot, are looking forward to our 60th reunion. They have two married sons, one living in Orlando, Fla., and the other in Medford, Mass. They have six grandsons and one granddaughter. After graduating from the Naval Academy in 1961, Nelson served first on a destroyer and then a nuclear submarine, and concluded his career on land at Millstone Nuclear Power Station in Waterford, Conn. • George Ed Olsen and his wife, Susan, live in St. Augustine, Fla., where he is still bicycle riding, even at the Senior Games (for oldsters over 50). He keeps busy building handicap ramps, and stays in touch with his former roommate, Bill Bertsch. Ed

promises to be at our 60th reunion, and we have encouraged him to convince Bill to join us! • Our 60th reunion means that we need to crank up the preparation and planning in this coming year. Please reach out and encourage your old roommates and classmates to connect now and encourage one another to celebrate that “Big 60” together on campus. • As for this year’s 59th, at least the New England classmates scheduled their “Maine Madness” event this coming fall — with dinners and class meetings on Friday and Saturday, August 26 and 27, 2016, in the Portland, Bath, and Boothbay Harbor area. There will likely be events on either side of the two dinner days, with schedules and information broadcast as we get closer to the events. Classmates too far away to travel “down Maine” are encouraged to create their own minireunion with those living closer by! • Jim Payne has a new adventure, published in November 2015, Worlds to Discover, available at lyttonpublishing.com. In Jim’s words, “It is the story of an older, wiser paddler.” • After a lifetime as an environmentalist, entrepreneur, and political activist, Vic Cino has published his first book.

Vic says, “It’s the story of a boy transitioning from an aspiring Lower East Side gangster to a responsible young man at a New England prep school.” Little Gangsters is on Amazon. Those both sound like autobiographies in which we’ve shared some of the story! • It’s old history now, but last November Jon Staley and I brought honor to our ’57 class with both of us getting a warm apple pie just for finishing the Pie Race. That’s the oldest continuously run road race in America, several years older than the Boston Marathon! Watch for posting of this year’s race; you, too, can get a pie, even by walking or walk/running the 4.4-mile course!

• If you have suggestions or questions about the 60th reunion, please be in touch with our reunion co-chairs ASAP: Lloyd Mitchell at mitch6680@gmail.com, or Darrell Cooper

Judith Rosenbloom Hodges ’57 with grandchildren Fiona and Seth

CLASS NOTES

From left: Mike Litt, Jan van Eyes, Judith Rosenbloom Hodges ’57, and Jeanne Schwartz Magmer ’57 in Portland, Oregon

at infoall@rr.com. • If you have news about yourself, your family, how your life is changing, whatever that you would like to share in the fall 2016 issue of class notes, I need to have it by May 2016. Likewise, news for the June 2017 issue (our 60th reunion special) must be sent to me by November 2016 at revdcwms@metrocast.net.

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Northfield Mount Hermon William Hawley hawleys@acsalaska.net • Helen Engelbrecht Ownby helen.ownby@gmail.com

From Helen Engelbrecht Ownby: Greetings from the south of Georgia! Now that I live about 15 miles off I-95, I have had five classmates come to visit and check out St. Mary’s. Joan Millet Walker and Steve Walker arrived in the spring on their way to Rhode Island for the summer. They have moved into their domes in Bell, Fla., for winters. I can’t wait until we are able to drive over to see them. I got a report on the domes from Sharon Hutchinson Hosley and Leigh, as they stopped to check them out after their visit here. Impressive! Steve is still very involved with steam trains. Sharon and Leigh were on their way back to Texas for the winter. They had been near Acadia National Park for the summer. Near the end of last spring, Trinka Craw Greger and John Stone stopped in for a short visit on their way north from Florida. They spent the summer on John’s boat, Epilogue, off the coast of Maine. Trinka managed to see Sharon at Southwest Harbor.

Trinka became a great-grandmother last November — to Lyric Rose! John and Trinka headed to Amsterdam for a river trip to Basel through the Christmas Markets...this is the reverse of the trip we made a few years ago.

They spent Christmas in Basel, a few days in the Alps, and were home for New Year’s.

• Sister Prudence Allen was appointed by Pope Francis to the International Theological Commission in September 2014. She is one of five women on the commission, and is a member of the Catholic chaplaincy team at Lancaster University, England. • Lynne Bodry Shuman has moved from Marietta, Ohio, to Florida. Lynne spent last year trying to

decide where she should settle at this point in her life. Having no clues, she researched things like auto insurance, utility costs, and housing. Her family helped her prepare the house and its contents for sale. Her son, Jay, accepted a position out of the country for two years, so Lynne and her cat have moved to his house. • Mary Myers Samia went on a nine-day tour in September with her daughter and granddaughter, visiting Venice, Florence, and Rome. They saw a full moon eclipse on a clear night. • From Ellen Watson Payzant and Tom Payzant: “This has been the year of the big 75 for us all. It is hard to believe that we are that old! Our kids surprised me in June by coming to Utah to help celebrate.

We spent Thanksgiving in Las Vegas, since the twins, now 15, had a soccer tournament, and we celebrated Tom’s 75th there — again with all our kids. What a treat for us both!

We continue to enjoy life in Utah, living near our youngest daughter and her three boys.

We both sing in the choir of our Unitarian Church (Sheila taught us well) and exercise regularly. Having retired from the NMH Board of Trustees last May, we will miss our trips to NMH. It was a wonderful experience and opportunity to serve the school.

Hopefully, we will return for Sacred Concert this spring.” • Claire Kurtgis-Hunter spent six months on Nantucket and is now back in Florida. Claire and Paul celebrated their 26th anniversary visiting grandchildren and greatgrands in Valdosta, Ga., Jacksonville, Fla., and Live Oak, Fla. • As for me (Helen), we finally sold our Evans home after five years, and have decided to see parts of the world before we become too old to travel. Last spring, we took a river trip through the Netherlands and Belgium, just in time for the tulip season. In summer, Kathy ’94 came home for a month and we headed to Reisterstown, Md., to visit David ’91 and his family, as well as my sister and her daughters in Salisbury and Richmond.

With the arrival of September, we went to Finland and Norway, took the Hurtigruten along the coast, then spent a few days in Oslo before returning home.

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Northfield Mount Hermon Nancy Bissell Goldcamp ngoldcamp@cox.net • Peter Welsh peter@cantope.ca • Tom Baxter baxtg741@comcast.net

From Nancy Bissell Goldcamp: Ty Bair Fox and Susan Warren Ambrose attended a memorial service for Betty Blake Hinkley in Orleans, Mass., last July. They were joined by Tom Baxter, John Eten, Jock Bethune ’62, and Jen Williams from the NMH advancement office. Tom said, “In early October, Ty, Emily Tucker Dunlap, and I returned to campus for the annual Alumni Council Leadership Weekend. Ty is chair of the nominating committee, and Emily and I serve on the

awards committee. We three held our own minireunion with Lynn and Randy Foster and my wife, Carol, as we enjoyed dinner out at one of the local restaurants. This is one of the benefits of staying involved and trying to keep members of ’59 connected.” • Victoria Travis writes, “In September my son, Rich, married Laura, the love of his life, in Aspen, Colo. I decided to use the event for a personal makeover. In June I started losing weight, and

by September I had lost 25 pounds and was working out four–five days a week. In the process it occurred to me: Why can’t we, as fabulous mature individuals, gain muscle mass and strength as we age instead of losing it?

Silver Sneakers is great, but who says we can’t get even stronger than we are? So, to put that thesis to the test, I’ve been doing some Olympic weight lifting — carefully, of course, and with a trainer — and hope to compete in my age group in 2016 or 2017. My hair stylist, Maria, even volunteered to do my hair and makeup! Yes, we can still do this!” • Emily Tucker Dunlap continues to be involved with writing and will be attending a writing workshop on Anna Maria Island in Florida in January. She had a lovely visit in Seattle with her son and his family — Sadie (8) and Bridget (6). “I’m enjoying my time on the awards committee at NMH — such a great place!” • An early Christmas letter from David and Virginia McCann Giammattei brought news of their travels up and down the East Coast to participate in various “rites of passage,” sporting events, and other activities involving their four grandchildren. The whole family planned to gather in California for Christmas. • When we received the wonderful booklet last August about the restoration of the Meany House, I sent in a donation to the project in honor of Nancy Johnson, Mike Lee, and Peggy Lee ’64, whose father, Guy Lee, had been a close friend of Ned Meany’s when they were in graduate school. You may recall that Guy Lee was a Foreign Service officer stationed in Indonesia when we were at school, and it was only logical that Nancy and Mike, and later Peggy, would have come to Northfield and Mt. Hermon. In a nice thank-you note, Nancy wrote: “I made two trips this summer. One was to San Francisco for four nights of opera, and then to San Diego to spend a few days with Mike and his family. In addition to my annual trip to England, I went to France to attend the wedding of Rennie Heyde’s second son, Simon, to a lovely French woman. The service was in her grandmother’s local church, outside Montpelier. It was a wonderful occasion.” • Anne Roeser Bloemen writes from halfway around the world: “My husband, Tony, had a heart attack in September when we were traveling between Copenhagen and Amsterdam, so we spent a quiet month in Belgium with Tony’s family while he was recovering before flying home in October. We’re having a Singapore Christmas with our son, daughter-

spring 2016 I 57

CLASS NOTES in-law, and their three children, and our daughter and her son, who are based in Beijing. We’re treating the three older grandchildren to five days at Club Med in Bintan. Our daughter and grandson will be coming back to Perth with us for another two weeks so we can catch up with friends.” • Louise Klinck Ferrebee writes, “Lynn Frye Wolcott ’62 and I sang in our club’s chorus (in July). She has a fabulous voice.” • From Tom Baxter: I got in the mood for writing class notes by calling Peter Welsh. I found him driving across Canada in a blinding rainstorm, transporting one of the many dogs that are a part of his kennel business. We shared a few hockey memories before he had to concentrate on driving in the bad weather. • Frank Partel rented a farmhouse in the Loire Valley last June and spent a few days outside of Chenonceau, and thence Paris before returning to Chappaquiddick for the summer.

Grandchild count is now up to five, and they are expecting the sixth in March. Frank made a trip back to midcoast Maine — he hadn’t been there for about 60 years. “We visited old childhood haunts like Wiscasset sans the old schooners, Boothbay Harbor, Camden, Damariscotta, Searsport, and Belfast,” wrote Frank. “We spent a nice lunch in late August as guests of Kevin Leary at the Falmouth Yacht Club. I had just acquired a boat: a 2000 Blue Star 29.9. We plan to make it a reciprocal annual event.” • Kim Boyle, another world traveler, is back from Geneva after a three-month sojourn. He also went on a Caribbean cruise over Christmas. Kim sends his best wishes to all his Mt. Hermon classmates. • Dick Barker writes, “Linda and I have been very fortunate. We’re living in a beautiful area in Arizona in the winter and spending our summers on our ranch in Wyoming, which we’ve had since 1979. My golf game stinks, but I’ve learned that everyone thinks their golf game stinks and, armed with that knowledge, I continue to hack away at nine holes per day with my buddies, many of whom are Vietnam vets. We have a blast. Summers are spent with a shovel in my hands working on the ranch. I never get tired of it and have always felt that good, honest, hard labor is good for me mentally as well as physically. Oh, and then there’s all the hunting and fishing that go along with a Wyoming residency. In the winter, we see Anne and Jim Newman fairly often, which gives Jim a chance to give me a golf lesson.

Life is good.” • Peter Olsen continues to live a “routine” life. He’s thankful for good health, enabling him to still be active in triathlon. He also works as a “referee” for the USA Triathlon and gets to officiate at some big races. And he works for hospice as a spiritual care coordinator. His free time is filled with grandchildren, travel, photography, and writing books. “I really enjoyed the camaraderie of the 55th reunion, perhaps even more than the 50th reunion, and look forward to the 60th. Living

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in Texas keeps me out of touch with most classmates, since they tend to congregate around New England. But always open and welcoming to any who might drift this way,” says Peter. • A recently retired Randy Foster sent the following just before leaving for Vespers: “After 19 years working with Prudential and 31 years as a partner with the Albert B. Allen Insurance Company, I have finally retired. Not working after 50 years has been a challenge, but I have a great wife who likes me, and our five children are committed to the continued success of NMH. We support the school in many ways. We attend concerts, dance recitals, and sporting events, and all these have been a real joy to us. Next year, we hope to have our second grandchild (Natalie) begin her freshman year. And thanks to Tom Baxter — I am enjoying Facebook, a great way to stay connected.” • Robert Friedman has moved from Venice, Fla., to Sarasota: “We now have a beautiful home on a lake and a much larger piece of land in the suburbs of Sarasota, yet only minutes from downtown. Sarasota is a great small city with a beachy environment, but a very high level of cultural offerings. With an amazing symphony orchestra, ballet, and opera company, it has the advantages of a bigger city but with a relatively modest population. We spend seven months in Sarasota and five months in Connecticut each year. Our other big news is the birth of our granddaughter. She is the daughter of my son, Kent, who is chief of nuclear medicine at NYU Medical School.”

Robert has been doing some genealogy and has discovered that on his paternal grandmother’s side, he can trace the lineage back to 1523 Yorkshire, England. The name was Butterfield and they came to Boston in 1630.

He was fascinated to discover that various family members have fought in virtually every major conflict of the U.S. Robert adds, “I have a great pool for laps, a beautiful community to

walk in, and try to do my workout as often as possible. Hard to believe it has been more than half a century since my Mt. Hermon days.” • Those of us on social media were able to watch Jim Newman and his wife make their last move. Jim writes, “Anne and I completed a successful move of our summer home from Vermont to Plymouth, Mass., where we will be near our two sons and their families, including six young grandchildren. This is a new experience for us, and being engaged grandparents is beyond our expectations. I hope we will be able to connect with nearby NMH classmates. As I write, we are at our Phoenix home and yesterday played golf with Dick Barker, who soundly beat me. We frequently meet and usually rehash our youth and exaggerated war stories. I continue to mentor small-business people with SCORE, a volunteer organization.” • Closing our column on a personal level, I have fought cancer to a standstill for yet another time. I continue working as I can to end substandard housing with, now, two Habitat affiliates. I have started working with a local veterans’ organization building wheelchair ramps, so disabled veterans can get out into their community.

Grandchildren keep us going: we are band geek grandparents for our middle grandson, I participate in shooting sports with my youngest grandson, and I go to horse shows in which my granddaughter competes. Also, there are opportunities to visit the oldest grandson in his college dorm. We enjoy our trips to Rockwood, Maine, where we thoroughly enjoy Moosehead Lake. I am enjoying my visits back to the campus for Alumni Council and awards committee, and to attend the reunion weekend. I have met so many new amazing people from across the age spectrum who attend. Meeting and talking with the students is a great experience. I have learned so much about the school as it participates in a private school world so very

Bob Macomber ’60 with his family at his graduation 56 years ago

CLASS NOTES

Alums like you frequently say, “I wish I could do more.”

You can.

From left: Bill Thibault ’60, Dave Clapp ’60, Albie Booth ’60, Karl Radune ’60, and Will Holton ’60 in northern Maine

much different than when we were there, and how it works hard to hold on to much of what we hold dear. I am excited to be able to see the new daycare center and STEM building rise up, and to see how Mr. Steven’s laundry is turned into a fitness center.

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Northfield Mount Hermon Phil Allen philhallen@gmail.com

In September, a group of MH ’60 classmates enjoyed a stay at Nahmakanta Lake Camps in the north Maine woods, thanks to planning

by Albie Booth. This was the 10th in a series of adventures in the north Maine woods, lakes, and rivers, starting in 2005 and organized

by Albie. Nahmakanta Lake Camps is a traditional fishing camp dating back to 1872.

It is just off the Appalachian Trail in the 100mile wilderness and within sight of Mount Katahdin. The last leg of the trip to reach it is a 27-mile drive on dirt logging roads. There were six participants, five of whom were MH ’60 classmates: Albie, Will Holton, Dave Clapp, Bill Thibault, and Karl Radune. Although this trip was less strenuous than previous trips, they still were able to get in a fair amount of canoeing, kayaking, hiking, fishing, and swimming. Each evening after dinner they enjoyed swapping stories and reminiscing around a campfire on the beach in front of their cabin.

• Bob Macomber writes, “Debbie and I have been married since 1968. We built a home on the slopes of Mount Wachusett in Princeton, Mass., in 1987; we can see the Boston skyline from our deck. Our two daughters are both M.S.W.’s. Not from me, a mechanical engineer and M.B.A.; it’s Debbie’s doing. Our younger is plying her trade in southern Maine. Her sister is teaching yoga and raising three daughters in Costa Rica, where her husband directs the Costa Rica Country Day School in Escazu. They will transfer to Beirut next year, where he will head the American Community School there.”

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Northfield Mount Hermon Alexandra Groome Scopteuolo sandis10992@yahoo.com • Craig Walley operacraig@aol.com

From Craig Walley: Bruce Schwanda writes, “The year was busy and a lot of fun for the Schwandas. In June we had a wonderful visit with Barbara and Larry Leffingwell at their beautiful home in Victor, Mont. We celebrated multiple birthdays with all of our family for a week in August at Wild Dunes, S.C. Anne and I spent a week in early October in Coronado, Calif., at a reunion of all Marine A-4 Skyhawk pilots, some of whom I had not seen since 1970 in Vietnam. We then celebrated our 44th anniversary at Hammock Dunes Resort in Palm Coast, Fla. I continued for the 24th year as a member of the Conference Committee for I/ITSEC (Inter-service, Industry, Training, Simulation, Education Conference), the largest training and simulation conference in the world, held annually in Orlando. I consult for several companies in the training and simulation industry, but try to take Mondays and Fridays off to work on my golf game. Health is good and life is good, and I consider myself extremely blessed for a wonderful life since I left Mt. Hermon so many years ago.” • Sherif Nada reports from Bean Town: “Happily, John Bryan and his wife, Deli, are now living in Cambridge, Mass., giving us the chance of getting together more easily. John and I started what we hope to be a new tradition of meeting for lunch periodically, exploring new restaurants in the Boston/ Cambridge area. Also, Mary and I found out, to our delight, that we are close neighbors on Beacon Hill of Bruce McClintock ’60 and his wife, Carrie Pelzel ’70. We have, happily, resumed our friendship from Mt. Hermon.” • Meanwhile, my wife Connie and I drove from Columbus to Yellowstone this fall. It was a great reminder not only of how large our country is, but also of how many interesting small cities there are here. We loved Sheridan,

By including NMH in your will. With that simple act, you can have an impact on NMH students for generations to come.

Call 413-498-3084 or go to www.nmhschool.org/ plannedgiving Wyo., Lawrence, Kan., and many others, as well as the national park.

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Northfield Louise Cole Nicollet lnicollet@gmail.com

My dear Northfield ’62 classmates, it is with a very heavy heart that I must inform you of the death, by cancer and related complications, of my dearest friend, Susan Saunders Chandler, on 10/21/15 in Melbourne, Australia. Shortly before Susan died, she and her family had been informed that she had only a few months to live. Her passing so soon after was a huge shock to all those who loved, and now mourn, the fine and very special person that she was. • Susan received a B.A. from Oberlin College (1966), an M.A.T. from Yale University (1967), and an M.B.A. from University of Melbourne (1986). She and her husband, David (emeritus professor at Monash University), moved to Australia in 1972. She was a voluntary guide at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne from 2004 to 2014. Susan and David have three children — Margaret, Elizabeth, and Tom, as well as four grandchildren — Laura, Charly, Sophia, and Saskia. • Susan was the Northfield ’62 class secretary for years. When she discovered that she was seriously ill early in 2015, I offered to take over the “job” and intend to keep it for as long as I can — in honor of my beloved friend.

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CLASS NOTES

Susan Chandler ’62 (left) and Louise Cole Nicollet ’62 in France, a decade ago

I leave you with Susan’s last words to me in an email dated 10/12/15: “The one thing I want, my glorious friend, is for you and yours to be well and happy. Don’t worry. Everything will be fine. I am just checking out early. We all have to go someday. And who knows? I may last for a while. Your job now is to enjoy life to the full. You are good at that. And know that I’ll be thinking of you and our many happy adventures. I have learned so much from you over the years, my treasured friend...” • Take heart from Susan’s courage and love for others up to the very end of her all-too-short life. • In other news, Karen Anne Smith Zee writes, “I was so happy to see many of you at our 50th reunion. And as it turned out, the big surprise was to become reacquainted with and to fall in love with Eric Riedel, whom I had dated at NMH. So Yum Yum married a Nobleman in September 2014. Eric is now retired and moved to Boston in July 2014. We have joined our homes in Brookline and expect to be here through the fall of 2017. So, this is definitely the time to come visit. We were at Vespers this year to help soothe our hearts and minds after the passing of my roommate and dear friend, Susan Saunders Chandler. Please keep her family and close friends in your hearts. In addition, we are troubled by the epidemic of shootings here at home, plus wars in other countries. We are grateful for an active Greater Boston Interfaith Organization that allows us avenues of good works along with other Christians, Muslims, and Jews.” Karen Anne sings with her church choir and with the Harvard Choral Society. She is also a five-year volunteer curatorial assistant in the woodblock print section of the Japanese collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. • Emily “Emmy” Zapata Doherty spent the past few months with her daughter, Becky, and family while learning to walk again after major spinal surgery. “Being an everyday grandma to Lukas (4) is just the best!” says Emmy. • Along with fellow classmates facing the daunting prospect of diving into the waters of our eighth decade, Rosamond “Roz” Roswell Gianutsos has the good fortune of being in excellent health and struggling with the “R” word: retired. Roz is “pursuing my interests in evaluating driver competency and promoting rational, safe decisions, I am an instructor for the AARP

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retirement and is keeping busy with seminars and travel reports for the Meriden Power Squadron. Websites for Meriden, Pattaconk Yacht Club, and Ellington Historical Society round out the volunteer work. Granddaughter Eliza (12) is a constant joy and invites Jim to Veterans’ Day celebrations at her middle school. Jim’s wife, Nancy, is the curator at the Nellie McKnight Museum in Ellington, Conn., where they live. Summertime is boating on their 32-foot lobster boat. Trips around Long Island Sound are the most frequent excursions. Two longer trips include a trip up the Hudson to Troy, N.Y., and a trip to From left: Elise Elderkin ’63, Heidi Herrick Davis ’63, Mardy Swett Gordon ’63 Boston’s Charles River Basin for the fireworks.

Winter brings wood cutting for the following Smart Driver program. I do clinical driver year’s wood stove. • Our very own Indiana evaluations and continue to work with people Jones, Jonathan Meader, has two new books. attempting to forge a new life for themselves He just released a children’s book, I Dream I following severe brain injury. I’m involved Am, and with his co-author, Barbara Demeter, with the New York City Medical Reserve Ancient Egyptian Symbols: 50 New Discoveries.

Corps, which was formed after the 9/11 attack “I discovered the sources and meanings of 50 as a further layer of emergency response. In ancient Egyptian symbols, including many the grandchild department, we have four little of the most important. I’ve been working on ones on the ground and one more in the pipethis project for 12 years,” says Jonathan. Most line. I expect to stay in the New York City area, of the more than 300 color illustrations are and would very much welcome classmates Jonathan’s work. “I’m delighted to have blurbs who would like to use my guest room as a from leading Egyptologists. My background jumping-off point for visits to New York. Best is as an artist, which may explain why I saw contact is email: cogrehab@pipeline.com.” • I things others missed; but it doesn’t give me hope that you will all help me to make our credentials that most Egyptologists would take column a full and newsy one in the next issue very seriously.” Three months after a hip reof NMH Magazine. To that end, send your placement, he suffered a “widow-maker” heart news now, while you’re thinking of it! attack (less than 10 percent survive). “Luckily, the only doctor in the area who knew how to Mount Hermon operate on my condition just happened to be E. Scott Calvert passing by the hospital. Then I had to wait a scottcalvert@mac.com year before I could have major back surgery, As those who received my September email and got addicted to pain meds. Nasty business. know, Laddie Jeffers received a pancreatic However, I was just out riding my Kawasaki cancer diagnosis in June 2015. He is being a week ago and feel great.” • Dick McKerr: “I treated at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New am loving being back in Boston, and have York City. As he reported in September, “I re-connected with my early-teenage-years best am in a very good place — my days are very friend, and after having seen each other three full of stuff to do: fellowship meetings, stock times in 47 years, we decided that no further market machinations, working with Long delay was necessary. I sold my business in Island Choral Society, church choir, keepRaleigh, and moved in with Jain in Jamaica ing up with newspapers, and trying to help Plain, Mass. Jain and I traveled to India in and follow the lead (and instructions) of my October for a three-week visit. I had been beloved Liz — my advocate, helpmate, and in India after graduation from Middlebury partner. She has been amazing!” In November, College until 1968 in the Peace Corps, and Laddie added that initial reports after a comhad traveled extensively. I can report that the pleted chemo regime were encouraging. • If you did not receive my September email about Taj Mahal looks just like it did 48 years ago, but with more people. I’ve also been cranking Laddie, that means you have not registered or up the French I started to learn at NMH, reported a change in your email with NMH. driving around rural France for about three As we move into a more electronic world, it weeks a year. Small-world department: In the becomes essential that you do so if you wish mid-1970s I went to Harvard Business School to keep up with the class. It is really easy to for two years for an M.B.A. and I kept seeing do on the NMH website at nmhschool.org/ a guy in the halls who looked familiar. I never alumni-2, click on “NMH’s Online Community,” and follow directions. • Ted Lenz reports, stopped him to ask why he looked so much like Dave Rikert ’63, who was my roommate “Anne and I will have been married for 50 senior year at Mt. Hermon. This was in 1977, years this December (met her at age 14 at Mt. and I just discovered that he looked like Dave Hermon, but who knew?). We’re planning a because he was Dave Rikert.” trip somewhere (probably Hawaii), but seem to be having more fun talking about it than actually planning.” • Jim Long is still enjoying

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CLASS NOTES

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Northfield Mount Hermon Diane Sewall Chaisson diane@meadowlarks-farm.net • Willard Thomen wthomen@stfrancis.edu

From Diane Sewall Chaisson: It’s Vespers time as I write, but you won’t read until after Sacred Concert. Below are some of the notes received since last summer. I recommend people getting on Facebook and “friending” classmates to keep up with their many adventures. Travels, family news, events, broken ankles (Wendy French Palm), life-changing experiences, creative endeavors, etc., are all there — too many for me to record here. • Heidi Herrick Davis had a spate of visitors all summer, one of the most recent being a mini Northfield reunion with Elise Elderkin and Mardy Swett Gordon in Victoria.

“It was fabulous! I liked the ‘British’ part of British Columbia. Elise surely felt at home!

She was in B.C. to visit one of her two daughters, Libby, her husband and her baby.

With Mardy in Seattle, it all seemed just too easy to pass up — I was sort of halfway in between, so it all worked out to rendezvous here,” says Heidi. • Carol Waaser had her 70th birthday in December. “I celebrated with a dinner with friends in a private dining room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was really terrific. Then this morning I led a 50-mile bike ride…of course. In October, I did a cycling tour through the Puglia region of Italy (the heel of the boot). I’m loving retirement: going to museums, theater, concerts; cycling both here and abroad; and generally staying healthy, aside from a few arthritic joints.” • Lydia Adams Davis is enjoying her home in Beacon, where she is active with The Clearwater and the Beacon Sloop Club. She attends MusiCares events, the

Jonathan Meader ’62 on his Kawasaki

Musicians Traveling Union, and family visits.

“One Earth So Green and Round” was up for a Grammy in 2012, and won the Parents’ Choice award. She happily volunteers with at-risk teens, writing songs, poems, and raps.

And sings at assisted living and nursing home venues, and in many Hudson Valley and metro New York–area coffee houses. She also does library and school events and many fundraising concerts for peace, environmental, and global themes. Keep up with Lydia’s many activities through Facebook and her website, LydiaAdamsDavis.com. • Sue Hines Rohrbach retired from her position as district director for State Senator Dan Wolf in November after 14 years of working for two different senators.

She loved her job, but is loving retirement so far! Husband Chick retired at the end of December after a career as chief financial officer for several small companies. They have a new grandson, Augustus Duncan, and another grandchild expected in early January, for a total of five! They live on Cape Cod and plan to stay there and enjoy all it has to offer, between trips to visit children and grandchildren! • Wyndie Estes Eberle and husband Doug took their four grandchildren and two daughters to Tanzania, Africa, last summer.

“Our third trip, but one they will long remember. Our 15-year-old grandson wrote an article for his school newspaper, which validated our hope that they would have a life-altering experience and understand how very blessed we are. Built wonderful memories!” She and Doug traveled to India in January 2014 — a life-changing experience for them! Stop and see Wyndie if you are in Savannah. • Harriet Goff Guerrero’s oldest granddaughter, Sophia, is now 15, and Ava is 11! Hard to believe. They are both field hockey players and participate in a lot of state and

regional competitions. Some colleges from Massachusetts and private schools in Connecticut have their eyes on them. • Sandy Freund Borden had dinner with Ellen-Marie Hurter Bush and Bill last summer, and remarked that she’d lost touch with her NMH friends. They had lunch with Mimi/John and Deb Jenks a couple times during the spring, and with Katie Steinmetz Dater and Phil last June. She keeps up with Candace Kent, and Roger and Pam Sargent Ryley, too. Pam and Roger took a trip to England last summer before heading back to school. • Last fall, Margery Attwater Mosher saw Elise Elderkin, who was in the U.S. visiting friends. “We learned at the 50th that Elise was born in Putnam, lived in Pomfret as a child, and went to nursery school at The Rectory School — my former employer! Since my husband lived in Greenwich and went to Greenwich High School, and Elise lived in Old Greenwich when she was at NMH, we had more in common than we had originally thought! We are in the process of putting an in-law apartment on our younger daughter’s house in Mansfield, Conn., and will be moving there sometime in 2016. We have a total of six grandchildren and one step-granddaughter — and she has a little boy, so that makes us great-grandparents!” • From Will Thomen: Chris Fredrick set out from Florida last January on a 37-day cruise through the Panama Canal to Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argentina, and the Palmer Peninsula in Antarctica. He’s probably one of the few of our class to go there. He is sorry to report that global warming is very much in evidence, as moss-covered ground had replaced the ice that should have been present even in the summer season. The scientists with whom he spoke were very concerned, especially with a balmy 25 degrees in early February, which was warmer than Boston and Chicago. Chris also ran into an interesting circumstance in Argentina. When the customs officials saw a Falkland Islands stamp on his passport, they went crazy. “They are still smarting from their defeat by the Brits back in 1982. Nonetheless, Buenos Aires is a spectacular city to see and experience and currently very inexpensive.”

Chris reminds us that our Class of ’63 Reunion Scholarship Fund is continuing to accept contributions. • Bill Freiheit and Nan Browning Freiheit sold their Berkshire cottage this past year, so they are full time in Vero Beach. Nan is still enjoying selling real estate and Bill still has his boat, though it is on the market. • Robert “Leche” Milk and wife Rosa traveled to Adelaide, Australia, last April to visit family, and took a side trip to Bali, where they met up with Ricker Winsor and his wife, Jovita. Their shared highlights of Hermon days included Spanish classes with Ma Baxter, singing in various ensembles, love for soccer, and an acknowledgment of how those dreaded Monday-morning compositions assigned by highly demanding English teachers prepared

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CLASS NOTES them so well for what followed in life. And how could they forget their final year? All too much time spent at The Cloud, where they sharpened their bridge and Ping-Pong skills while exploring the deeper meaning of life.

“Rick is the same old friendly, sociable guy we knew back then, albeit with a little less of that glorious red hair!” says Robert. • The Sakonnet Times of 8/20/15 had an article on Coll Walker and the struggle he has protecting his corn fields in Little Compton, Mass., from marauding birds. An acre can disappear in an hour, costing between $3,000 and $6,000 in revenue. With birds getting used to Mylar balloons and bird distress repeaters, Coll has had to resort to using propane cannons to scare off the birds. • Rick Waltman found his true calling in medicine. He is still working, with a focus on geriatrics and chronic illness.

He has written extensively for medical and general audiences. His four years at Mt. Hermon had a huge effect on him, and he still uses lessons learned every day in his work life.

“Thomas Donovan taught me to write and Al Clough taught me to read — and I have been doing both ever since.” He has written a mystery novella, Good Rabble, Bad Rabble, with a Mt. Hermon theme as a background. It is available on Kindle, and all sales benefit a program he and his wife started that sends deserving urban youth to a five-day educational adventure in Yellowstone National Park every July. (Visit myyellowstoneadventure. org.) • George Whitehead, a psychology professor at Salisbury University, is a Daily Point of Light Award honoree. Long involved in education serving on the Wicomico County board of education and with the local chapter of the youth-focused America’s Promise Alliance, in 2005 George founded the Youth Leadership Academy (YLA) in Salisbury, Md. Throughout the last decade, about 500 middle and high school students, evenly split between male and female, though slightly skewed toward young people from minority backgrounds, have used their YLA training to benefit their schools, communities, and beyond. “I think the skills we introduce — public speaking, working with teams — are really important in building confidence and determining what it is you’d like to do with your life. For me, it’s always been really important to help young people reach their potential. Experiences like this level the playing field.” • I certainly appreciate your sending your messages to include in our class notes. — Will

now permitted to “un-celebrate” birthdays? • Nine of us ’49ers had lunch together last July.

The event at the Greenfield Country Club was organized by Marcia Eastman Congdon, and included nine Northfield classmates, plus others who grew up in Northfield and attended the public schools. The NSFG ladies (besides Marcia) were Nancy Schouler Smith, Jeanne Wright Moore, Marcia Stacy Kemp, Gail Myers Pare, Pat Dunklee Putnam, Aline “Bunny” Kirtland Coffey, Jean Thompson, and Pam Street Walton. • Besides being a minireunion organizer, Marcia enjoys living in Arizona and returning to Massachusetts for the summer months. Marcia creates her silver jewelry and her husband, George, turns his wood items. Their daughter, Nancy Congdon ’89, works for the Red Cross and has moved only blocks away from them in Arizona. Their son, John Congdon ’94, continues his full-time position at UMass Medical School while working on his M.B.A. at UMass. The entire Congdon clan visited NMH last summer during a week of travel to celebrate John’s 40th birthday. • Jean Thompson had a visit from Linnea White Powell last August, and they journeyed to the Dog Chapel in St. Johnsbury, Vt. — a location where people write notes to their pets and stick them on the walls. In November, Jean accompanied a friend moving to Arizona (and the friend’s two vizsla dogs) on a 2,900-mile, six-day road trip out to the Southwest. The bonus was that she was able to visit and sightsee with George and Marcia Eastman Congdon. • In September, Brian Farrell asked Virginia “Weegee” Look Brooks to dinner in New York with Peter Guild and his wife, Ann. It was a delightful evening, and Weegee especially enjoyed getting to know Ann. Then, on her way to Burlington, Vt., to babysit for her newest granddaughter, Frankie, Weegee had a perfect fall lunch with Peter Marsh and Judith Bryant in Richmond, Vt. They compared grandparent stories, and both lamented that it is difficult having daughters that live far away. • After 40 years of licensing exams for doctors and lawyers, Sue Creasy Case says she is loving retirement. She and husband, Bob, took a one-week vacation to Ajijic, Mexico, soon after Sue retired. While they had never been to Ajijic, it didn’t stop them from purchasing a

home the second day there, but with two daughters and five grandchildren in the U.S., they frequently visit back and forth. Now in residence in Mexico for two years, they are building a new home two blocks from the original abode. They have two guest rooms and are located in the center of town, an easy walk to all points of interest…and would welcome any of us for a visit (no more than a week). • Never take having Thanksgiving with your family for granted! Being in the medical field, Marcia Stacy Kemp worked on Thanksgiving most years. This past year, for the first time in many, she had it off and enjoyed a wonderful celebration with her family. After undergoing three ablation procedures last June, she is thankful to say, “I feel good.” • Diana Atwood Johnson writes that since our 50th, she has had to focus on her health more than she would wish on anyone. She has a wonderful primary care physician, Dr. Lydia Dugdale. Diana notes: “Dr. Dugdale’s specialty is biomedical ethics, as it relates to where I am and where we all will eventually be. My medical journey gives the context to her newly published book, Dying in the Twenty-First Century: Toward a New Ethical Framework for the Art of Dying Well (available on Amazon). It’s a difficult subject, but I’m glad to have approached it through this collaboration.” Diana went on to say that life continues to be interesting, despite many challenges. Thank you, Diana, for sharing your journey. • Karen Singer Baker enjoys get-togethers with Carol Fishman Czaja ’63, who recently moved (with her husband) to Rhode Island. Carol stayed with Karen a couple of times before moving into her new home, the first time when Karen was recovering from a spinal fusion procedure.

Karen’s energy level and quality of life have improved; she is feeling good! After eight weeks of medical leave, Karen returned to work as a mental health counselor in Cranston, R.I. By the way, she recently passed her exam to become a licensed chemical dependency professional. While most of us are retiring, she is continuing her education and taking exams at an age when fear of failure is profound.

Kudos to Karen! • Sue Chapman Melanson had put becoming a certified grant writer on her bucket list, and in 2015 she accomplished

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Northfield Mount Hermon Robert Eastman rheastman4@comcast.net • Pamela Street Walton pawalton@myfairpoint.net

From Pam: There are only three years until our 55th reunion! This upcoming celebration seems mind-boggling, since we are a mere 49 years of age! Have you been told that we are

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The NMH Congdons (from left): John Congdon ’94, Nancy Congdon ’89, and mother Marcia Eastman Congdon ’64

From left: Bill McConaghy ’64, Jo McConaghy, Teresa Petschl, Skip Smith ’64

CLASS NOTES

Marcia Eastman Congdon ’64 and Jean Thompson ’64 in Arizona

her goal. So far she has been instrumental in writing three grants for her local school district. As members of the school board, both she and Art are busy at work making the Sacopee Valley District “a place you want to be.” They also work to make Oak Hill Farm in Hiram, Maine, “a place to visit.” Sue and Art boiled 500 gallons of maple syrup last year, and Sue continues to paint in her storage shed gallery. To keep her metastatic breast cancer at bay, Sue eats a vegan diet, takes the meds her oncologist recommends, and has acupuncture every two weeks. Scans for her breast cancer show no progression, and she plans to attend our 80th class reunion in 2044 and celebrate her 100th birthday in 2046. Now that’s positive thinking! • It is Vespers season as I compile this column. I asked Gail Myers Pare if she attended, and she said she hadn’t but did listen to the live stream while visiting her granddaughters in Raleigh, N.C. She remembers Mr. Raymond and the wonderful music program he directed each time she is asked to re-learn a piece once sung at Vespers.

This year her current chorus (Portsmouth Pro Musica) included “El Noi de la Mare” in their Christmas Concert. Do you remember Mardi Drew Keyes’s solo in that piece from our Vespers? • Knowing that you will read this column six months from now, I end by telling you to enjoy the summer, plan minireunions, and, as Bob “Easty” Eastman would say, consider sending some legal tender to our class scholarship! • From Bob Eastman: Tony Roubound writes, “The Tucson summer kicked in with a vengeance. I started getting up at 5:30 AM, so that I could be on my bicycle pedaling furiously west in an attempt to avoid the rising sun and all the short wave radiation that it ushered into the day. There was always a catch. I had to ride home. I would normally ride 20–30 miles round trip four or five days a week. It was amazing how this much activity could keep the deleterious effects of Mexican food at bay. By the end of [last] June, Nancy and I were planning a trip to the Northwest to commune with Seattle and Vancouver, B.C. In the first week of August, we shifted from bicycles to airplanes. In Seattle, we stayed at the Edmonds Harbor Inn — a Best Western hotel that I have frequented for the last 15

Northfield ’64 minireunion (back, left to right): Nancy Schouler Smith, Jeanne Wright Moore, Marcia Eastman Congdon, Marcia Stacy Kemp, Gail Myers Pare. Front, left to right: Pam Street Walton, Pat Dunklee Putnam, Aline Kirtland Coffey, Jean Thompson

years, on and off. Most of the time in Seattle musicologist. Many of her early-music scores was spent with my son and his fiancée. My son will appear on BiddingForGood.com. While is a fireman with the nearby town of Kent. preparing for the work of moving Lucy’s This not only inspires my penchant for library, I looked up her biography. To my limericks, but offers the opportunity to head surprise, there was an NMH connection! At to Vancouver for a few days while he is the Northfield School for Girls, she sang in all ensconced in the firehouse with his co-workers. the choirs, acted in all the plays, and was We stayed in a high-rise hotel in the middle of concertmistress of the orchestra. Life is full of downtown Vancouver. The room I cleverly hidden connections.” • Bill McConaghy and negotiated on the ‘net’ turned out to be the David “Skip” Smith went back for the Pie size of a postage stamp. However, the tasty Race in 2015, and were pleasantly surprised to bacon at the breakfast the hotel provided run into each other. Both Skip and Bill were made up for the squeeze. Our out-of-room successful in finishing the race. Fortunately, time in Vancouver was spent either in art finishing the race is the only requirement to galleries or restaurants. I found a fantastic win a pie once you are beyond your 50th totem pole carved by Susan Point, one of my reunion. • I just spoke with Connie Putnam. favorite local artists. Alas, it would not fit in He is looking for a new gig. He winters down our house, as it was 12 feet tall. Oh, and they in Northfield and will spend time sitting wanted more than $250,000 for it. Back in around the wood stove. Come spring, he Seattle, we spent a day antiquing with my son, hopes to play more golf than he has in the past had a wonderful lunch on the outside deck of several years. If you are in the area, give him a a restaurant in West Seattle, and took a ferry call. Like many of us, he spends time visiting from Edmonds to Kingston. Fall in Tucson the kids. • Sally and I have been doing some has been like midsummer everywhere else. traveling around the country and spending as Around the end of October, I raked two or much time as possible with our grandchildren. three leaves up. Upon close inspection, it • Our class website is still up and running. If appeared they had been scorched to death. you have any questions, please contact me.

This did burst my bubble, as I had surmised Write soon and send money! they were the first results of autumn. At least I Northfield Mount Hermon know my rake will last a long time.” • Greg Wendy Swanson-Avirgan “Bill” Holden writes, “We have our first wsavirgan@aol.com grandchild (a grandson) in St. Petersburg, Fla., • Henri Rauschenbach and have purchased a small home there. Our henri.rauschenbach@gmail.com older son is an investment manager and the www.northfieldmounthermon65.com younger son is in his ninth year at Google in From Wendy: I enjoyed reading Sally Atwood Ann Arbor. I am now retired, although I still Hamilton’s article in the fall issue of NMH do a few things at the Leadership Academy at Magazine on the transition of Dartmouth to the Goizueta Business School in Atlanta, a coed school and the role of some Northwhich includes work in the BVIs and at Fort field graduates who were part of that change.

Benning. I am thankful for my wife of 37 Responding to my congratulations, Sally also years.” • From Paul Ross: “After my career at wrote, “I’m a member of the reunion advisory PC Magazine, I joined a nonprofit called committee of the Alumni Council, and helpGotham Early Music Scene (gemsny.org) as ing other 50th reunion yearbook editors operations manager. My eclectic role has been put together their yearbooks. It’s great to be to run the box office and other front-of-house able to share my experience and knowledge activities at many early-music events in the with others headed down the same path. In New York City area, managing the volunteers, September, Mark and I had lunch in Portland and various odd jobs. One of those jobs is to with Charlotte Lucas Small and a mutual help dispose of the astounding music library friend, Della, from Kittery Point, Maine. At of the late Lucy Cross, a pioneer in early reunion, we discovered that Char and Della music and a well-known lutenist and

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CLASS NOTES

are longtime friends. Della goes to Florida in the winter and was in our church there. We sang with her in the choir — Della and I held up the alto section. Small world.” • Susan Brunnckow Oke had a great trip to England and Scotland in October, including visits with son Wes and his family, who are living

tassel from our Northfield graduation! • Anne Winter Forsyth and I had planned to meet for lunch and visit in Stamford in October, but between a bout of bronchitis (me) and knee surgery (Anne), we had to postpone. Hoping to reschedule soon. • From Beth Zelnick Palubinsky: “Last summer, I had breakfast one

have had a relatively quiet period since the 50th reunion this past summer. So many of our classmates had a thoroughly wonderful time and shared a lot of time and stories with many of the folks from our class. • I saw Peter Ticconi, who was up in Boston on business for Georgia Tech. We had a great lunch and reflected on many of the wonderful memories he had of our 50th. Later in the fall, I had dinner with Matt Couzens, Jon Eager, Chris Parker, Peter Barber, and John Clark. It was a fascinating meal focused intensely around football and the undefeated season Mt. Hermon had 50 years ago. There was much discussion as to where some of our classmates were, and where John Clark is going. John is really quite an adventurer, and has walked and ridden all over the place, including Canada. He has another large (secret) adventure planned, which I hope to write about for the winter

The class of ’65 celebrates at last year’s reunion.

in England for a few years. She notes that her two granddaughters have acquired wonderful British accents. Susan enjoys reading news of Northfield friends who post on Facebook. • One balmy September Saturday afternoon in Connecticut, I saw Nan Waite at our favorite dry cleaner in Old Greenwich. We sat outside on the steps for a while and reminisced about the 50th reunion. Nan writes, “The owner said we looked like a couple of little kids sitting there! I look back at it as a moment in time I want to remember.” Nan was a clown captain again (12th year!) in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, costumed as a graduating senior.

With special permission from Macy’s, Nan added to the mortarboard her brown and gold

Nan Waite ’65 was clown captain in Macy’s 2015 Thanksgiving Day Parade.

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day with Elena Berg Zimmerman, who lives merely blocks away from Al and me here in West Philly, but whom I have hardly seen in years. Later in the summer, William Stearns came to visit us, and we had a rollicking fine few days of sightseeing, talking, walking, and long lazy meals. In October, on a quick swing through Portland on our way to a vacation in Acadia National Park, Al and I stayed overnight with Dan and Elinor Livingston Redmond, and the next morning we had breakfast with Bevinn O’Brien, too (well, Al took a walk, leaving us three Northfield girls to gab).

Then, while in the D.C. area to hear some music, Al and I had breakfast in Alexandria, Va., with Jacqua Hill Yeomans. Jacqua was one of my ‘housemates’ at reunion, thanks to the loving and generous friendship of Peter Weis, the NMH archivist, who gave me, Jacqua, Molly Hinchman, and Deborah Boldt his cozy, homey apartment in Northfield for reunion weekend. Meanwhile, I continue to work at my new music interest: collaboration with a D.C.-based poet, Bernardine Watson, with whom I’ve been close friends for 40 years.

We’ve written, produced, and performed three shows of original poetry (hers) and a mix of original and interpreted songs (mine) in Philadelphia and D.C. For me, with decades of rock ‘n’ roll and country music under my belt, this new project is a big change. It’s by far the most personal, challenging, and deeply musical undertaking I’ve ever made.” They also had a performance for the annual Martin Luther King Jr. celebration at the Washington Ethical Society in January. • Special thanks to Dave Stone for compiling information on our class reunion gifts. Our five-year 50th reunion gift from 152 donors totaled more than $2,309,687, including outright gifts, pledges, and planned gifts. We also gave more than twice as much to the NMH Fund in 2015 as in 2014. As a special reunion project, our class raised funds to purchase 17 beautiful wooden doors for Memorial Chapel. • From Henri: We

2016 issue. I have heard from many of you, including Brad Fitzgerald, John Stinchfield, and Mark Boeing. I am about to move around the country extensively and hope to see some of you in the process.

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Northfield Mount Hermon Marilyn Attwater Grant classsecy1966@verizon.net • Frank Sapienza sapienzafc@cdm.com

From Frank: Hello, classmates! By now you should have received the fall 2015 50th reunion newsletter. The newsletter is a terrific summary of all the great events planned for our 50th. Barbara Hazard was awesome in getting this into print, and give a big hand for our reunion committee for all their contributions, particularly: Marilyn Attwater Grant, Jean Penney Wheeler, Suzanne Steenburg Hill, Constance Kane, Barbara Tweedle Freedman, Wil Everhart, Dave Edsall, Chris Taylor, Robert Bruce, and Jim Weiss. There are lots of fun events planned, so get psyched and come back for a great time. I have got to mention the reunion yearbook, also. Lots of work went into this, and it’s full of great life stories, remembrances, and personal accounts.

You will truly want to read this. Thank Elsa Calderón, Lois Lake Church, Jennifer Stevens Dunmire, Day Merrill, Christine Anderson, Peter Fulton, and Frank Donnini for putting this together. • Many classmates have expressed gratitude for receiving the 1965 Christmas Vespers CD, which surely brings back fond memories. Heng-Pin Kiang has joined our class website and says he will be returning for our reunion. Heng-Pin lives with his wife, Shirley, in Seattle, Wash., and works as an international business advisor. • Frank Lihn has worked as a chef since the mid-1970s, mostly in New York City and California. He left New York to raise his two girls in California to be nearer their grandparents and the rest of the

CLASS NOTES family, and then got into “school food” as director of nutrition, first at Fort Bragg S.D., then Santa Barbara S.D. — both in California.

He retired at the end of August 2013 and has recently moved to Pattaya, in southeast Thailand on the Gulf of Siam. He no longer cooks or consults professionally. Other than that, he likes to scuba dive, read, relax, and be retired. • Derrick Mason’s experiences include Reed College in Portland, Ore.; Peace Corps service in Togo, West Africa; organic farming in Maine and West Virginia; radio and TV in Tampa, Fla.; ride-sharing services in Oregon and D.C.; and sign making, organic farming, rural economic development services, and volunteer community services in western Massachusetts. • Derrick Mitchell is a retired architect after a 35-year practice in Bermuda (and five initial years in Toronto), and now lives in a restored farmhouse in the Marche region of Italy. • William Prowse has had a variety of jobs working for the IRS, Office of Inspector General, Nevada Attorney General, and others. With wife, Janet, he enjoys golf, sailing, skiing, biking, gardening, and playing duplicate bridge. • Brad Minor retired after 43 years as a reporter for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. He now enjoys gardening, fishing, and freelance writing. • J. Craig Shaw is a retired attorney living in Tallahassee, Fla. He says he will make it back to the reunion. • Steven Sheiffer lives with wife, Jennifer, in Janesville, Wis. After 36 years in city management, he has finally retired. • Steven Skibniowsky is an environmental scientist at Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station. He remembers his days working in West Hall and the songs the crew sang. • Yusuf DeLorenzo has been busy as an author and translator. “My translations are from Arabic and represent some of the more positive aspects of Islam,” says Yusuf. “While one work deals with law, and another with sufism, The Destitute [a translation published in 2014] deals with the human condition in general and is likely to be of interest to anyone who inhabits this planet of ours.” • Ken Stevens reports good times since Mt. Hermon.

Ken has had a variety of careers: truck driver, NYPD police officer, bartender, liquor store owner, salesman, carpenter, and owner of three restaurants. We’ll definitely want to hear about his exploits at reunion and how he “earned more demerits than anyone else in our class.” • We want to see you all back at reunion and want to hear more great stories.

See you then.

up to the end. • Will Melton and Jim McBean represented the class at Dick’s memorial service, held at the church in Providence where Dick’s late wife, Jeri, had been church secretary. Here are Will’s recollections: “[Former faculty members] Ann and Dave Burnham got the Upsons to become church members. Dick’s daughters and two brothers, Tim and Terry Upson ’56, were among the speakers. Dick was the son of a Mt. Hermon grad (Warren Upson ’22). When I lived in Rhode Island, Dick and I spent time playing music together (sometimes performing with the McBeans) and talking about the blues. He ran a jewelry industry show in Providence for 10 years and worked in radio. Dick was a naturally funny man and much-loved by students at Roger Williams University, where he taught film, the 1960s, and popular music, and was advisor for the radio station. We once performed together on his show, ‘Blues with a Feelin’.’ A gifted writer, he finished several unpublished screenplays and sci-fi stories, and a blog that’s archived at bluessoulrocknroll. blogspot.com. During Dick’s service, I couldn’t help but weep at the loss of a longtime friend, but the beautiful stained-glass Tiffany window of a waterfall landscape that lay behind the pulpit of Dick’s church was a comfort. Dick and I talked about the window at his wife’s funeral 12 years before Dick’s, and I knew it held meaning for him. Me, too.” • Kip Story is doing well following heart surgery last summer. And after being briefly sidelined, Helen Fowler was able to resume the traveling she loves after recovering from back surgery. • One of the highlights of 2015 for Maddi Lenagh was a July trip to New England. It was a sentimental journey to all childhood haunts.

Of course, Northfield was on the list. The trip to the States from the Netherlands provided the impetus for a two-day get-together in Northfield in July. Maddi was joined by Wendy Alderman Cohen, Donna Eaton Mahoney, Robin Whyte Reisman, Ann Haigis Banash, Eliza Childs, Sheila Morse, and Dana Gordon for activities that included lunch at the Farm Table in Bernardston, where the group met up with Carol Ball, who works there.

They toured the Northfield campus on their own during the first afternoon, and Maddi

was relieved to see that the upkeep was better than in recent photos she’d seen. The next day included a visit to the NMH campus, where they were taken around by two students.

Maddi had been a bit ambivalent about the consolidation and move to the Mt. Hermon campus, but this tour put her doubts to rest and strengthened her resolve to return for the 50th reunion. • Martha “Marty” Ratcliff Rix and Molly Lininger Alkan took advantage of Jean Walker’s visit from Sarasota, Fla., to meet for dinner in New York and report they had a great time. Marty recalls the experience as being like time travel — they felt 16 again. • There were also minireunions on the West Coast. When Jim Baldwin’s band, Domestic Harmony, played a gig at the Fenix in San Raphael, Calif., Gene Harmon stopped for a chat, and Skip Walker and wife Anne stayed for the whole show. A few weeks later, Gene did more socializing when he got together with Max Millard and his wife, Salve, in San Francisco. This time, Gene was accompanied

by Irma-Riitta Simonsuuri Jarvinen (a.k.a.

“Irmis”). The rekindling of Gene and Irmis’s romance has been chronicled in previous editions of this column. Gene retired from his railroad logistics company in 2013, and Irmis still works part time as an advisor for the University of Helsinki and has written/edited several books in Finnish. Irmis stays in touch with Bonnie Parmenter Fleming, whose family was her host during her Northfield days. • While dealing with Medicare and Social Security paperwork, John Mudge wonders if anyone in our class was thinking of such things back in 1967. He is happily living on his New Hampshire hillside with a view of Vermont. About 35 percent of his electricity comes from solar panels, and most of the heat for the winter comes from a wood stove. And when there is a power outage, there’s a generator for backup. Having been self-employed since 1989 and being a business of “me and myself,” John reports that retirement really means saying to people that “I’m not taking on new clients.” John hopes to have more time to do some research and writing in the coming years, with two book projects in the rough stages under way. • Melinde Hatheway Kantor and husband Jack still live

67

Northfield Mount Hermon Donna Eaton-Mahoney dmeato@aol.com • Dana L. Gordon mounthermon1967@comcast.net

Once again, we start with some sad news. In September, health problems, including a pulmonary embolism and stage IV cancer, claimed the life of Dick Upson. According to his daughters, he put up a valiant fight right

From left: Irma-Riitta Simonsuuri Jarvinen ’67, Gene Harmon ’67, Max Millard ’67

NMH ’67 minireunion (from left): Wendy Alderman Cohen, Donna Eaton Mahoney, Robin Whyte Reisman, Sheila Morse, Carol Ball, Maddi Lenagh, Dana Gordon

spring 2016 I 65

CLASS NOTES in the home they built in Calais, Vt., 35 years ago. They spend time in the summer at their cottage 10 miles away, and in February escape to Amelia Island, Fla. Melinde has a web business designing dance and skating costumes, while Jack does residential appraisals and housing development. They visit their daughters in Santa Monica, Calif., and Washington, D.C., as often as they can.

Melinde would love to hear from NMH friends. • Patricia Watson Bartlett and husband John continue to travel back and forth to Moshi, Tanzania, to work with a project linking Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center and Duke University. Trish is in charge of linking the community to the HIV research efforts in the form of a community advisory board. Two years ago, she facilitated a youth community advisory board, so that they could talk about issues that seemed more pertinent to them. Trish and John have two granddaughters and enjoy coming home to see them and spending time at their cabin in the mountains of North Carolina. • Debby Buhrman Topliff has been working to put her various projects into finished form. Last January, she published a book about her process of visual Bible study, And the Word Became Color. She’s also busy getting three novels into final form. The first one, Hiding, is ready and she hopes to finish revising the others soon. All are self-published through Amazon. She’s also looking for a publisher for Squirrel Tales, a children’s story. Debby has been calling classmates from Marquand to encourage them to come back for our 50th reunion, and has gotten positive responses from Faris Bennett and Beth Gordett who, in turn, have encouraged Anne Shafmaster and Helen Drew Stowe to attend. • Alex Ives is doing a bit more traveling than he has in recent years. His journeys have included festive weekends in Ann Arbor, Mich., time along the Atlantic at Topsail Beach, N.C., with family, and even more family time in Anacortes, Wash. • No more full-time teaching for Laura Thompson. She’s semiretired at last, but continuing with her part-time job pouring wine in the tasting room of a local vineyard.

She also substitute teaches in her local school, working with small children rather than high school students with special needs. Laura is happy to have traded her previous 60-minute commute for a seven-minute one, and the option of saying, “sorry, not today!” She’s working on long-neglected projects such as de-cluttering her house and taming her yard. • Les Petrovics Ofner got a job in distant work as a neuropsychologist researching Alzheimer’s.

This will probably allow him to make the trip for our reunion and to share info on new meds with classmates who are interested. His son, Daniel, graduated from University of Groningen in Holland, and traveled in Asia after his semester abroad in South Korea before applying for grad school in sustained development. • Will Eddy says he’s retired, but

66 I NMH Magazine

you can still occasionally see his face on a TV commercial. He and his wife, Anne Nathans, have been doing quite a bit of traveling and enjoying some of the world’s great variety of food and wine. • Meanwhile, Peter Savas was giving some of his wine away. Peter donated approximately 1,080 bottles of vintage American, French, Spanish, Italian, and Australian wines from his wine cellar to be used for special events or selectively auctioned.

We can only hope there will be some left for us to enjoy at reunion, although Peter reports the oldest wines are from the 1970s; nothing from 1967. • We now have an official date for our 50th reunion. It’s Thursday, June 1, through Sunday, June 4, 2017. Classmates who have said they plan to attend or are giving it serious consideration include: Will Ackerman, Kurt Adams, George Alexander, Tracy Ambler, Mollie Lininger Alkan, Jim Archibald, Daniel Atlan, Sylvia Kuhner Baer, Jim Baldwin, Carol Ball, Anne Haigis Banash, Joel Bartlett, Patricia Watson Bartlett, Janet Atlan Blair, Mary Briggs, Cindy Bruins, Gretchen Reed Burnham, Bruce Burnside, Kori Hedman Calvert, Eliza Childs, George Christodoulo, Wendy Alderman Cohen, Chris Crosby, Nancy Crothers, Tina Dobsevage, Donna Eaton Mahoney, Bonnie Parmenter Fleming, Helen Fowler, Jay Garbose, Dana Gordon, Tom Hanna, Gene Harmon, Jill Heathman, Nancy Hemmerly, Willy Hermann, Bill Hicks, Peter Higgins, Pam Crawford, Linda Hoff-Irwin, Alex Ives, Bill Johnson, Holly Taggart Joseph, Dave Keene, Becky Parfitt Kennedy, Vin Kennedy, Lorry Gresham Kenton, Jean McBean Koenig, Kit Williams Krents, Maddi Lenagh, Ross Mason, Margaret Maxwell McLaughlin, Will Melton, Marlee Meriwether, Tom Myers, Max Millard, Claudia Stanley Moose, Sheila Morse, John Mudge, Laurie Norton, Lissa Perrin, Robin Whyte Reisman, Martha Ratcliff Rix, Peter Savas, Samantha Schreiber, Irma-Riitta Simonsuuri Jarvinen, Jim Smolen, Chuck Streeter, Wendy Syer, Laura Thompson,

Debby Buhrman Topliff, Bob Turner, Nancy Dodd Uhl, Jean Walker, Skip Walker, Brad Waterman, Charlie Watt, and Anne Barrus Zeller. If your name is not yet on the list, we

hope you’ll let us know to add it. • Many of the above-listed classmates are among more than 120 members of our class Facebook page.

If you’re on Facebook and not already a member, you can join by going to facebook. com/groups/nmh1967 and requesting membership. You can also keep up with the class at our website, nmh1967.com. Please add yourself to our interactive map: zeemaps. com/map?group=1410259. If you have more than one residence, add them all. • Don’t forget to fill out and send back your reunion yearbook questionnaires. If you’re interested in working on any aspect of reunion planning and execution, don’t hesitate to volunteer.

68

Northfield Mount Hermon Kris Alexander Eschauzier pkeschauz@maine.rr.com • Peter L. Eschauzier pkeschauz@maine.rr.com • Mark G. Auerbach mgauerbach@gmail.com

A group of NMH ’68 classmates gathered on Cape Cod for their annual summer reunion.

In attendance were Nancy Alexander Randall, Kathy Knapp Marn, Marion McCollom Hampton, Betsy Brunner Lathrop, Judy Molesworth Darnell, and Richard Costello (Wendy Wade Costello’s husband) and his friend, Anne Marie Doherty. • Karen and Bill Newman hosted the annual D.C. ’68 dinner last September.

Joining them were Scott Byers, Steve Cone and friend Laura, Denise and Fred Cook, Deborah Sliz and husband Alan Yandow, Pam Beam, Ed Cook, Don Stanton, Rafe Sagalyn, Jeff Sliz and wife Maria Beach, Henry and Alison Ely Barschdorf, Marjorie Swett, and Tempe and Jon Ives. Bill writes, “Last summer Karen and I went out on the Haberlands’ boat in Muscongus Sound, Maine, and then had a

The Washington NMH ’68 reunion party at Bill and Karen Newman’s home

CLASS NOTES

From left: Dave Hickernell ’68, Becky Bright Freeland ’68, Mark Auerbach ’68

wonderful dinner with Evie and Jay Haberland in Round Pond. On the way back, we stopped and saw Mimi and Buddy Whitehouse in Kennebunk. Buddy is looking forward to reunion and mentioned working with Ed Cook on a ride through Northfield and the surrounding area during the reunion.” • Mark G. Auerbach, Becky Bright Freeland, Marion McCollom Hampton, Dave Hickernell, Deborah Sliz, Cap Kane, and Jay Ward returned to campus for a 50th reunion planning session in October. • Harriet Scott Chessman wrote the libretto to Jonathan Berger’s opera, My Lai, which had its world premiere in the San Francisco Bay Area in October, followed by a staged performance in January in Chicago. The opera was commissioned and performed by the Kronos Quartet. • Ginny Haines writes, “I spent the first part of the summer getting my garden ready for a huge garden tour and the rest of the summer trying to keep it alive during the western drought. I’ve been promoting the Village Movement (independent living for the aging and disabled) in the Portland, Ore., area — advocating for residential solar power and getting ready for a huge road trip to see as many national parks as I can.” • Gary Hopson is still working at NASA as rail safety analyst, performing outreach and PR for the Federal Railroad Administration‒sponsored Confidential Close Call Reporting System, designed to mitigate or eliminate risk before accidents rather than after. He’s happy to report that they have recruited the entire Northeast Corridor railroads, including all commuter agencies from Boston to D.C. Having seen so many terrible railroad accidents over the span of a 45-year career, he finds this work very satisfying. • Barbara Kane Russell had her first public reading of poems and short prose pieces in May at Nashville’s Looby Theater. The reading was part of the Tennessee Women’s Theater Project, begun by Maryanna Clarke several years ago. Barbara says, “Despite years of working in publishing and writing for various employers, this experience was richer, scarier, and more exhilarating by comparison.” • John Maynard is in his fifth year of running the online discussion group “Islamic Civilization” for Harvard’s graduate alumni office. Last fall, he completed an 800-page book, Twelve

Capitalism: An Economic History of Civilization, now undergoing revision for publication. In 2016, his second book of poems, Turning the Barbarians, is due for publication. Recently, the prestigious AC Scholarly Index copied his blog, arabrevolutions.blogspot.com, into its archives, some 1,000 pages on its own, then divided it into many separate small articles.

Published individually, they are all now circulating widely — about Islam, the Near East, North Africa, and Central Asia. He lives in Amherst, Mass., and Tashkent, Uzbekistan. • From Mary Renaud: “I’m grateful to you for publishing Nancy Burnett’s message in the NMH ’68 newsletter earlier this year, which was how I learned she was so ill. She and I were roommates at Northfield for two of our three years there. We had been out of touch for quite a while but were able to re-connect during the last few months of her life. That re-connection was an incredible gift.

We talked at length on the phone, emailed, shared pictures and stories, and reminisced.

She was incredibly touched by the messages she received from other NMH friends, too — each one meant a great deal to her.” Home for Mary these days is Ashland, Ore., where she and husband Mark Williams retired five years ago after more than 15 years in the San Francisco Bay area. She worked in publishing for more than 30 years, the last 20 as a freelance book editor, primarily for the University of California Press. • After five years on the staff of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Don Stanton started a new job last August as aviation advisor to Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx. Don works closely with the FAA and feels fortunate to have the opportunity to use some of his past aviation and policy experience in support of the Department of Transportation and the administration. • Richard Staples writes, “I have stepped away from retirement for a few months to volunteer as interim executive director for HousingWorks RI at Roger Williams University in Providence. HousingWorks (housingworksri. org) is a statewide housing policy and research organization that tracks and reports on housing affordability and its impacts on economic development, employment, education, health, and quality of life throughout the state. I was guaranteed it wouldn’t interfere with skiing.” • Ruth Stevens’s new book, B2B Data Driven Marketing: Sources, Uses, Results (written with Theresa C. Kushner), was published last summer. For details on the book, visit racombooks. com/books/strategy-tactics/b2b-data-drivenmarketing. • Jay Ward and Peter Weis ’78 (NMH archivist) were featured in the NFL documentary Playing with Fire, about the 1965 fire at Silliman during the Mt. Hermon/ Deerfield game, and the iconic photograph seen around the world of the building on fire as the backdrop to the uninterrupted football game. Search for “The Day a Fire Couldn’t Stop Football — NFL Films Presents” on YouTube.com. • After almost 34 years in

hi-tech stress, Alan Winslow let it all go as of New Year’s Eve — he retired! “I’ve only worked for three companies in that time,” says Alan, “Sprague Semiconductor, Intel Corp, and Vindicia — all of them great. Time now for travel and rest. A couple of cruises already set up; the best will be spending Christmas 2016 on the Seabourne Quest in Antarctica.” • Mark G. Auerbach caught up with Steve Holt over lunch when Steve’s daughter, Adrienne Campbell-Holt, was directing a play at the Williamstown (Mass.) Theatre Festival. From Mark: “I’d thought I’d be slowing down at this age, but I’ve returned to work as a reporter part time and added a couple of clients, so I realize I was meant to be a workaholic until I drop, and I’m loving what I do. I’m the primary arts reporter for the Westfield News Group, a series of newspapers in Massachusetts and Connecticut. My theater reviews get picked up by BroadwayStars.com. I’m also a contributing writer to the award-winning Succeeding in Small Business blog.” • Pete and Kris Alexander Eschauzier are still getting along one week into Pete’s retirement!

69

Northfield Sue Pineo Stowbridge sue.stowbridge@gmail.com

Unlike last year, December in New Hampshire is unusually mild as I get started on the news.

All the firewood is moved and stacked, and time still remains for outdoor yardwork — a nice thing for those of us who have procrastinated! However, I am not used to wanting to be outside while sitting indoors writing.

In any case, there is lots of news to share, so enough about me for the moment. • Madeline Baum reports that she and husband Bob are both reasonably healthy, though she does emphasize that having the shingles vaccine would have been smart. She is busy with travel, meditation, pottery classes, book club, and a “midlife” women’s group. She says the group inspired her to take an improv comedy class, and she is the oldest student by 30 years. She says, “It turns out that improv is great for boosting confidence and lowering anxiety. I also think it’s good for the brain.” • Chris Fleuriel writes from Maine that after more than a year singing with Women in Harmony, she moved on to her prior synagogue’s tiny choir and is now with a brand-new group based in Falmouth. There are 21 women, four

From left: Boni Morse ’69, Charlotte Dickey Gereige ’69, Sue Pineo Stowbridge ’69

spring 2016 I 67

CLASS NOTES

Margie Hord Méndez ’69 celebrates the publication of Tali: 365 Drops of Dew for Young Women.

with NMH connections: Nancy Chittim Farrand ’75, Katy Gordon Kline ’60, and Constance Bloomfield ’61. While conducting a training session for new graduates, a fellow asked Chris if she had graduated from Mt. Hermon because she had an NMH lanyard.

The fellow’s father is John Aspinwall ’62 and his aunt is Sue Aspinwall ’70. Chris told Louise Rothery ’70 about all the connections, and Louise said that Chris brings small world to a whole new level. Beyond all the “small world” stuff, Chris’s brother, Andre Fleuriel ’74, married longtime partner Mark Boyd in October. • After working 30 years as a school psychologist in Connecticut, Susan Griggs retired and moved to Wenatchee, Wash., where she worked as a church planter with Latinos.

Unfortunately, she was unable to build the church up so that it could be financially selfsustaining, and she had to move on. She is now a chaplain intern at Providence St. Peter Hospital in Olympia. She has two children and five grandchildren close by on Bainbridge Island, Wash., and spends much of her free time there. • Marti Hall Malabad and her husband enjoyed “a great month in England and Scotland. Hiking, sightseeing, and eating way too much good food. Wonderful experience.” • Alice Hildebrand and I connected via email when I vacationed in Bar Harbor last summer. It turns out she is married to Allen Myers ’61, brother of Tom Myers ’67, sons of my father’s second cousin, Ed Myers. Small world! Alice has worked as a chaplain at Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital and the Family Birth Center at Maine Medical Center since 2011. She stays in North Yarmouth and Allen remains in Brooklin, Maine, and helps care for Alice’s father, who’s healthy at age 95 but no longer driving. Perhaps next summer I will have better luck catching up with Alice and Allen. • In November, Margie Hord Méndez and three other women published a book of daily meditations for a whole year, for young women. The Spanish title could translate as Tali: 365 Drops of Dew for Young Women (Tali means “my dew” in Hebrew). She says it was a wonderful experience, under the leadership of a woman who has quite a few books under her belt, including novels. Margie and her husband still belong to a 300-person choir. • Bev

68 I NMH Magazine

From left: Lisa Fleuriel Hall, Andre Fleuriel ’74, Chris Fleuriel ’69, and Mark Boyd at Andre and Mark’s wedding

Knoll Tosi and Dave were grieving the loss of two of their dogs: one of old age and the other by accident, leaving them with a dachshund/ papillion mix that came to live with them after Bev’s mother passed away in 2012. On a happier note, she reported that a recent snack of a couple of graham crackers brought back fond remembrances of “Milk Station” in the basement of Stone Hall. Better not take more than two graham crackers, though! Bev retired from SimplexGrinnell in February 2015. Since then, they have spent a couple of days a week caring for grandsons Jack and Ben. (Ben and our granddaughter, Bri, were both born on May 10, 2012!) “They are bright, active boys, and we are enjoying this time with them,” says Bev. They are grateful for the chance to help their son and daughter-in-law. They recently purchased an office suite, which is rented to three private-practice lawyers, one of whom is son Greg, who left the public defender’s office in 2014 after 10 years. The couple has been on two Prairie Home Companion cruises, one to the Baltic Sea and another to the Caribbean.

• Emelda Peters Kennerly and her husband were delighted that when their Share and Seed Academy for the Performing Arts performed The Wiz at the Ritz Theatre in Jacksonville, Fla., last summer, the 402 seats were sold out.

Also, Emelda published The Magnolia Seed: From Last Child to First Lady last July. Although all of the names have been changed, it is an autobiography. • Sue Pineo Stowbridge enjoyed 50 years of updates and reminiscences with Boni Morse and Charlotte Dickey Gereige at the Orinoco Kitchen in Boston’s South End in June 2015. Charlotte still lives in Lebanon, but was visiting her daughter in Boston. Strangely enough, we did not look like we were 14 years old, and were glad we had provided identifying information. Sue also had lunch with Margaret Bixby at El El Frijoles in Sargentville, and with Louise Merriam at Tracy’s Seafood in Sullivan while on vacation in Southwest Harbor, Maine. In September, Sue and husband Marc traveled to Seattle and visited MarthaJane Tippett Peck and husband Rob at their home in Port Townsend, and also with the Pecks’ son, Jon, his wife, Ania, and daughter, Allie, in Seattle. There were lots of sights to see, fabulous restaurants, brunch

From left: Becky Shafer Tuuk ’69, Wendy Ferris Greeney ’68, and Libby Leonard Siegmund ’69 in Traverse City, Michigan

at the Space Needle, and sailing on Puget Sound. • Becky Shafer Tuuk has also caught up with some old friends. In August, Becky, Wendy Ferris Greeney ’68, and Libby Leonard Siegmund met over lunch in Traverse City, Mich. In November, she enjoyed a visit from Don and Faith Goodwin Hodgkins, who went to Michigan for a week to celebrate Beck’s father’s birthday. She says, “Even at 105, he still loves to tell jokes, reads, and plays some chess.” For the holidays, the Tuuks planned to see their daughter, who is working until the end of January 2016 at an eco-lodge on the Pacific Coast. • Sheryl Powers Kropp writes, “NMH has always held a special place in Peter’s (Kropp) and my hearts. We fell in love there for the first time — mixers, sports events, choir. During Peter’s illness over this past year, our love for our fellow classmates and NMH deepened. We received so many notes, cards, messages, visits, music, and videos to support us and show us that we were not alone in our difficult journey. After Peter left NMH, he found another passion at Boston University: early childhood education. He taught at the Ezra H. Baker Elementary School in West Dennis, Mass., for about 10 years. After he left teaching, Peter remained in contact with some students and teachers. Sadly, my best friend left us on 11/12/15. Fortunately, we were able to keep him home, and both my sons and I were with him. Hundreds were at his service, including students he taught 30 years ago and fellow teachers as well as NMH friends. His service ended with the Northfield Benediction. When our family learned that an early childhood education center for NMH faculty and staff is being built, we felt that anything we could do to support that effort would be a fitting tribute to Peter. We have asked that any friends who wish to do so, contribute to that fund in Peter’s memory. In that way, Peter will continue to make a difference for children and foster their education.” • Thanks to everyone who took the time to submit both text and photos. Whether you read this in print, via email blast, or on Facebook, best wishes. If you’re not getting the email blasts from NMH and wish to receive them, please go to nmhschool.org and make sure your information is up to date.

CLASS NOTES

From left: Don Hodgkins ’69, Faith Goodwin Hodgkins ’69, Roger Tuuk, and Becky Shafer Tuuk ’69 at Mackinac Bridge, Michigan

69

Mount Hermon Roland Leong rl99@me.com

Robert Jackson writes, “As of this past November, I am no longer the CEO of the Rural Health Program, which serves mostly low-income patients in the Black Belt counties of Alabama. I am now in the process of starting up an organization, One Humanity LLC, which produces and publishes e-books, audio books, and DVDs that contribute to positive social change through education and economic development. The website should be finalized in a couple of weeks, at which time I’ll ask the ’69 crew for feedback on how to make it better.” • Steven Harris has been playing with Moonshine Alley, a bluegrass and country band. • David Lansdale went on a trip to Ecuador to visit a dear family, the Terans, who in February 2015 planted papayas, which are now bearing fruit. • From John M. Fitzgerald: “The finance committee of NMH’s Board of Trustees are listening to the call for adopting a socially responsible investment policy for the school’s endowment, and the chairman of the committee has asked his main investment advisor, Mercer Inc., to brief him on the options they could provide along those

Paul Murtha ’69 mentors the Calle Paz y Respecto team in Ecuador.

Ulgen Gulcat ’69 with his wife in Ankara, Turkey

lines. We had hoped to have a decision by now or at least an actual schedule for making one but we do not. On the personal side, my retirement consists so far of leading a citizen-supported lawsuit challenging a light-rail line called the Purple Line in Maryland. I am happy that I am still serving on the boards of directors of Green America and the Environmental Investigation Agency (U.S.) and helping them in small ways.

Regarding our fellow classmates, my partner of two decades, Christine, and I recently had a very enjoyable dinner with Grady Houseknecht and his recent bride, Cynthia. Grady was the main pitcher for our undefeated Junior League NMH baseball team in the spring of 1967. John Lee and Stan Stalla ’70 also pitched very well for us. All our teammates — from John Frerichs to John Mustone — were great, as was Mr. Baja, who let us coach ourselves. I was the starting catcher. Grady is still a competitive tennis player. I still enjoy softball, as placing the hits becomes more important than hitting them as far as you can, and avoiding errors is more important than spectacular diving catches.” • Last summer, Ulgen Gulcat spent most of his time preparing the second edition of his book

on unsteady aerodynamics, which was published last year. Ulgen traveled in Turkey and attended four weddings. • Gordon Ellis is enjoying retirement at his home in Warwick, Mass., and has recorded a CD of some original and some covered religious music — just him and his guitar. It’s titled, “That There May Be Love.” • Stan Stalla ’70 writes from Amman, Jordan: “I continue to work for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which has two broad portfolios: economic development and humanitarian response. I moved to Amman, Jordan, to become part of USAID’s Syria Response Team.

I’m overseeing a huge food-assistance portfolio, benefiting Syrians still inside Syria, as well as millions of Syrian refugees in neighboring countries (Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt). Work consumes my days, though I hope to see a bit of Jordan’s tourist attractions when my wife visits. My home base is Maine.

Every time I manage to get some weeks at home, I truly appreciate what it means to be an American and a Mainer. When I think about the suffering of our fellow human beings in places like central Africa (where I lived the past three years) and now the Middle East, I realize how fortunate we are.” • From Don Hodgkins: “Son Thom and his wife are in the process of buying a 200-year-old house in Rhode Island, and daughter Allyson graduates from University of Miami Medical School in May with her M.D./M.P.H. As for Faith Hodgkins and me, we’re both enjoying retirement, although I’m still working three part-time jobs, so I guess I’m not really retired!” • Walter Lowe was on the NMH campus in September as part of our reunion planning team. The planning sessions went well, but what defined the weekend for Walter was the time he spent in classes with current students. It was a reminder of what a special academic environment NMH is, and how committed and focused the students are as they take full advantage of their unique opportunity. “What a blessing our school is!” says Walter. • Morgan Dodd writes, “In May [2015] I spent a week at Yosemite National Park. Awesome landscapes and the waterfalls were still running despite the drought in California. Spent three weeks in July and

Morgan Dodd ’69 enjoyed the beauty of multiple national parks this year.

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CLASS NOTES

David Lansdale ’69 in Ecuador

August at our cottage on Cape Cod. Was awarded a sabbatical after 16 years of service at National Parks Conservation Association. In September, headed to Yellowstone National Park for the very first time. Spent two weeks taking two courses at the Yellowstone Institute with great naturalist guides. Highlight for me was early-morning observation of wolf packs in the Hayden and Lamar Valleys. Also found time to visit Grand Teton, Glacier, and Waterton International Peace Park. Had a family reunion with cousins in Montana, including Nancy Dodd Uhl ’67. A six-week break from the daily routine as a nonprofit fundraiser for the first time in 40 years of work was truly liberating. Training camp for retirement? No time soon.” • Paul Murtha has been mentoring the Calle Paz y Respecto team in Ecuador for three years. Five gang leaders now write, edit, and produce their own weekly radio show that airs on National Public Radio Ecuador. The wonderful deal is that their message/music/urban hip-hop jive is one of peace, well-being, taking care, and community building. • From Steve Pollock: “The loss of my ’69er cancer buddy, Pete Kropp, was hard.

We’d been in this ‘together’ since we were both initiated with radical prostatectomies in 2009.

Pete started at stage I, but drew a bad hand.

After nearly five months of chemo over the summer of 2015, I’m still here, thriving in year eight of stage IV survivorship. I do believe in miracles. And the friendship of our Bay Area ’69er ‘fellows’ has been a big part of a memorable year. I’ve sold my shares in APF, and while my name’s on the door, I’m an hourly employee and loving my ‘only as needed’ work schedule. The freedom of semiretirement is well-timed, as my daughter, Lia, brought us a grandson, Jace.” • George Naughton finished his associate degree at Springfield Technical Community College last June. He volunteered to do some video work for the Amherst History Museum in January 2015, and is now on their board of directors. • Steven Shapiro’s grandkids are getting big and more fun to play with, but his golf is getting progressively worse, so he says. Steven traveled in Spain for golf for a couple of months, and looks forward to hearing from Hermonites headed to Florida. • And from yours truly: I picked up William Johnson from Newark

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airport on a sunny Saturday in late November, and we drove up to Cape Cod for a trip that we wished we didn’t have to make, but were absolutely willing to do. The following rainy day we attended Peter Kropp’s memorial service at the Cape Cod Synagogue. The temple was completely full. Brian Bauer, Don Hodgkins, and Faith Hodgkins were also there.

• Like many of you, I’ve known Peter and Sheryl Kropp for almost 50 years. While we’ve not been the closest of friends after graduation, the fabric of our friendship has always been present, and whenever I’d tugged on it, I’ve always felt the reassuring returning pull from them. Peter was an active and lively individual at Mt. Hermon, and he served us as class secretary for many years. He had a memory that was Google-like about our class and our time at Mt. Hermon. I believe that Peter was an individual who tried to make everyone his friend and, more often than not, had an upbeat attitude. It’s been said by some that one measure of your life’s work are your children. If that statement holds any merit, Peter and Sheryl have done exceedingly well, as their sons, Jason and Adam, are fine men. • I will miss Peter, as I know many of you will, but certainly not as much as Sheryl and the rest of Peter’s family. Thanks to those who reached out to Peter. You are the best. See you soon, mes amis.

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Northfield Katherine Truax Scimenti katetruax@aol.com

Sri Lanka in March. • Martha Nace Johnson is releasing a new book, her fourth: Navigating an Organizational Crisis. Along with a co-author, she interviewed nearly 60 leaders who had weathered tough times and learned valuable life and leadership lessons. She has previously published a novel, a book on youth worship, and a book about her ups and downs in the Obama administration. Martha and her husband, Steve, live in Annapolis, where she also does consulting and executive coaching.

She plans to be at the next reunion. • Kim Wade Ryan and her husband, Jim, celebrated their 40th anniversary with a 17-day trip to England, Scotland, and Wales. You can see Kim wearing her class of ’70 reunion cap by Hadrian’s Wall on our NMH Class of 1970 Facebook page. • More minireunions for the class of ’70! Linda Kellogg Glover, Carol Ramsey, Carrie Pelzel, and Anne Shyavitz Foran enjoyed getting together for a luncheon in San Francisco in October. And on Lake Washington in Kirkland, Wash., classmates: Deborah Hill Serrano, Carol Ramsey, Martha Takaro, Jill Zaremba, and Tracy Comstock McConnel enjoyed time together as well. • The 2015 NMH Christmas Vespers were held on campus on December 6. I was not able to attend, but Neil Kiely sent me a note saying that the performance was outstanding and the pre-concert reception was well attended: Neil and Laurie Reich Kiely, Jennella Porter and husband Dave, Susan Hurlburt Jacques, Ellen Frost, Margaret Wilson, Burdge, Michael Verrilli, Stephanie Coons Frederick and husband Bill. Also joining the group were Les Clifford and Liz Lewis Clifford. • What fun it is to hear from classmates either via email and/or Facebook posts. Please continue to send news and keep the spirit of these minireunions going!

Since our 45th reunion in June, there have been minireunions both on the West and East Coasts. Please join our Facebook group — Northfield Mount Hermon (NMH) Class of 1970 — for posts and photographs. On 10/3/15, Carrie Pelzel organized a wonderful minireunion in Boston. Muffie Michaelson Mount Hermon flew in from Atlanta; Carol Ramsey and Tess Neil Kiely Pemantel Dunhoff from Los Angeles; Sylvia neil@marketinginmotion.com Marshall Bailey from North Carolina; and I hope that this year brings you all much health and happiness. Lots to report, so thanks Jeri Poller from Florida. Other classmates to those that answered the call, including attending were: Lucinda “Brandy” Brandt, Spencer Burdge, Judy McCorkle Cole, Peter “PJ” Brown who, after getting divorced in 2012, moved from Mount Desert Island Stephanie Coons Frederick, Jim and Nan (Bar Harbor), Maine, where he had resided for Hellens Gregory, Sue Hurlburt Jacques, Steve 30 years. After two years in Camden, Maine, Johnson, Linda Keniston, Enid Sodergren he moved to Truro, Mass., and is a news Oberholtzer, Dave and Jennell Porter, Cynthia reporter for a local paper. He also takes people Roney, Louise Rothery, Marty Seely, Marjorie on tours of the spectacular sand dunes that are Grace Vaughn, and Gene Ward and me. The part of the Cape Cod National Seashore. • luncheon was lovely and the hours spent with classmates a delight! Thank you to all for Skip Hansen lives in Alpharetta, Ga., after keeping the spirit alive! • In September, Louise living in Kansas City for 16 years. He and wife, Nancy (chief nursing officer at North Rothery lost her husband, Bob, to cancer and Fulton Hospital), have three children, and by is getting on with a new phase of her life. She the time you read this, they will be empty writes, “The support of family and friends during this sad time has just been phenomenal. nesters. Skip works for Zurich Insurance, but telecommutes to KC headquarters, where he The minireunion in October was so much works with computers as a solution architect. fun, especially with Kate Truax and Sylvia Loves what he does, but looks forward to Marshall Bailey staying with me for the weekretirement so he can spend more time snow end; so good to have company in the house!” skiing and sailing on their new 30’ sailboat.

Louise is still working hard, planning to retire “Would love to hear from or see classmates in 2017, and hopes to take a two-week trip to

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CLASS NOTES

From left: Jesse Eichenbaum ’70, Sam Brett ’70, John’s daughter Catherine, Bruce Berk ’70, and father of the bride John Gordon ’70

when in the Atlanta area,” says Skip. • Rajan Batra spent 45 weeks on the road in 2015! He says that he loves what he does, which makes that amount of travel tolerable. He and wife, Robin, thoroughly enjoyed a Viking Cruise down the Rhine from Basel to Amsterdam.

Rajan suggests that we organize such a trip as a ’70 minireunion. He reconnected with Jeff Bone. They have met several times about the possibility of having their companies work together in the lighting and electronics arena. • Jim Singiser regrets missing our 45th, but he tries to spend as much time as possible on the back of his horse. He spent much of June doing just that in the Black Hills and Big Horn areas of Montana. He visited with Rob Glover and wife, Linda Kellogg Glover, at their Northfield “camp on the knoll” last summer.

Jim rides a great deal in Vermont and is determined to locate Mark “Vitz” Chute, who he hears has “been playin’ the blues in those hills for years.” • Collins Lein and his wife, Cheryl, have moved her mother from a nursing facility to their home, where they provide round-the-clock care. Becoming “elder care specialists” has added to their hectic lives.

Collins still pastors a church and is about to release a new CD of just guitar instrumentals.

He is blessed with “a great leadership team and lots of musicians to help carry on shining the light to our area of western Massachusetts.” • Edmund “Ed” Dehn completed a busy year acting in the U.K. (his 38th) to include lots of stage and film. “Not married and no kids, but I’ve taken up and love to play duplicate bridge, which I do two to three times a week,” says Ed. • Mark Jacobsen continues a now three-year battle with cervical dystonia. This year he had a deep brain stimulation procedure. They implant electrodes deep in the brain and place a signal source in the chest. Mark describes it being like a “brain pacemaker.” The procedure has offered some improvement and relief, but he is still on disability and not able to do many of the things he loves: skiing, dirt biking, and tennis. His “loving wife of 35 years, Edna, has been a huge source of strength, support, and encouragement,” says Mark. • After competing in the 2015 Boston Marathon, Jon Rounds returned to campus last fall to run in the 125th Annual Bemis-Forslund Pie Race.

He was having an enjoyable run at a pace he thought would qualify for an apple pie “when all of a sudden the women’s cross-country team blew by me on a hill singing a cappella together while I was struggling to simply breathe.” Congrats to Jon, who finished the race and did in fact have a time good enough to win a pie! • Hap Schadler recommends enjoying the low energy prices now. He continues to work in the domestic oil and gas field, which is undergoing a very difficult time, with many layoffs and survival-mode economics. • Greg Warner invites anyone to Berwyn, Penn., to taste and enjoy one of his latest brews: Double IPA, Kolsch, or Helles lager. He has been home brewing beer since 1972, and if you show up (he is very serious about this!) for a taste, he may even grill up an elk burger for you. • Mike Pontius has a granddaughter and, by the time you read this, she will have a little brother. • Jim Eckert formed the band The Magnetics in the late 1970s. Because of geographic separation, they usually can only play one gig a year, and did so at a soldout venue in Annapolis in October.

The good news was that “no one threw anything and no major injuries were sustained by the band,” writes Jim. • After months without work, Tom Baldwin, who is a disaster insurance adjuster working out of his home in Oklahoma, was sent to Washington after major storms hit the state last fall. He arrived before Thanksgiving, and, as I write this, he is still there. • John Hargreaves is sorry to have missed the 45th reunion. He is a widower living with two stepchildren in central Pennsylvania. He is also the director of volunteers for the Pennsylvania Prison Society — the oldest continuous nonprofit in the country. He still competes in triathlons and was recently inducted into the Franklin and Marshall Athletic Hall of Fame. • Thanks to Matthew Quint who, while trolling the Internet, discovered that Biff Watson has just begun a term on the Country Music Association Board of Directors, where he represents musicians’ interests. • After becoming frustrated with the lack of interest from potential hospitality employers, Bruce Parmly acquired his CDL license in North Carolina and is behind the wheel of an 18-wheeler. Demand is high and there might be an opportunity in management after a year on the road. • Dave Ericson continues to enjoy his second career in real estate with Keller-Williams. Planning ahead, he and Karin recently moved into a one-level home in Burlington, Vt. Dave doesn’t need it now, as he is still playing competitive tennis on a national level. • Steve Lahr had a great time at Cornell with Tom Kastner and the late Gary Kwok, and competed in football, basketball, and track. He started in pre-med but ended up majoring in biology and economics. He retired five years ago after a career in sales and marketing, traveling internationally. His company was in the polymer business,

manufacturing different products that replaced causes of ozone depletion. He still loves to hunt and fish, and 36 years ago bought a house on Seneca Lake — the largest of the Finger Lakes in upstate New York. Married for 20 years to his second wife, they have four sons between them. Steve has had a hip replaced, and because of a botched cataract surgery is blind in one eye. He is publishing two books of poetry — he has long enjoyed writing. The Rantings of an Ivy League Madman and Duck Hunting in America (has nothing to do with the sport!) will be published later this year. Steve has promised to attend our 50th! • Another example of why I would like you to share your email with me occurred last fall. I contacted many of you as soon as I heard that Tom McCarty died in October shortly after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Tom was a terrific guy who had joined us from his home in California for two of our Hogger ’70 minireunions over the last couple of years. A lawyer by trade, he spent much of his career helping clients navigate the development landscape of Los Angeles. He was incredibly active. In addition to swimming, he loved mountain biking, hiking, and travel. He was one of the first to summit on the hikes I enjoyed with him. I didn’t know Tom that well in school, which made it all the more enjoyable and heartwarming to get to know him as an adult. I spoke to his wife, Julie, who expressed the appreciation he had for his time at Mt. Hermon. More important was the love and appreciation he had for the many friendships he developed during that time and since. Tom was truly one of the good ones and will be missed. • Send me your email address and news so that all of us can continue to develop and nurture friendships and relationships between now and our 50th reunion in four years!

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Northfield Please send news to: nmhnotes@nmhschool.org

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Mount Hermon David C. Eldredge d.eldredge@verizon.net

Last September, a New York Times obituary of New York Giants star Tom Scott Jr. had no mention of our dear classmate, Tom “Scotty” Scott III, as a survivor. This caught the attention of a number of you. But it was Cathy Shufro and Chet Winkowski who dug deeper and alerted yours truly that Scotty had passed just a few weeks prior to publication. So very sad. • Chet’s life update: “Life has been and continues to be a remarkably full experience. I have been practicing law for 33 years, the last 28 as an immigration lawyer. I will have been married to my wonderful wife, Cathy, for 40 years. I am awfully lucky to have her. We have three grown children, Christopher, Kimberly, and Julia (Winkowski ’02). Our girls have given us two beautiful grandsons, Ryan (4) and Alexander (2). It is absolutely amazing

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CLASS NOTES being a grandfather; more fun and more rewarding than I can describe. Unfortunately, I probably won’t catch up to Chris Keniston in collecting grandkids. We have a camp in northern Maine. It is quiet, peaceful, and very therapeutic there. I try to spend as much time as possible there fishing in remote areas. I also ride my motorcycle on the coastal and country roads near our home in Amesbury, Mass. The last few years were kind of tough, as I had some neurological and orthopedic issues that had me somewhat disabled. However, a spinal fusion and a total hip replacement later, I have had a remarkable turnaround. I should be back on the bike and deep in the woods this spring. You just don’t want to be behind me in line at a metal detector. In the past year or so, I have exchanged email with Erle Flad and John Bendixen. I miss those guys. Dennis Phillips and I met for lunch and had a great time catching up for a few hours. I was saddened to learn of the passing of Tommy Scott. He was a great guy and a lot of fun. It is certainly a personal loss, but as part of the last class of Mt. Hermon, I believe that the loss of any one of us is uniquely significant. I hope that all of our class members are well and enjoy life — I would enjoy being in touch. I can be reached at cwinslaw@aol.com.” • I’m happy to report that the 45th (can you believe it?) reunion class committee — Cindy Kitchen Hogan, Sevi Rice Milano, Jonathon Whitehouse, Stetson Heiser, David Eldredge, and Peter Horne — have already been on conference calls indoctrinating the powers that be as to how we wish to be handled in June. We need you all to come back to justify our brinkmanship and, most importantly, plan for the 50th!

You’ll be hearing from us. Until then, let me hear from you!

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Northfield Mount Hermon Karen Beshar Zakalik karen.zakalik@gmail.com Facebook.com/Groups/47624874849 • Tom Sisson 1972NMH@gmail.com

After only three years in northwestern Indiana, Tom Riegelman and his wife, Susan, have decided to move back west, and are headed out to Golden, Colo., to be closer to their children. They are planning to build a home on some property they own in the foothills.

They are pleased that they will be within easy reach of trout fishing, rock climbing, snowboarding, and mountain biking. All they need to do now is find someone to buy their Indiana home. • Bill Shea writes, “In May, I rolled off the NMH Board of Trustees after 13 years of service, the last three as chair. At my first board meeting in September 2002, the board began discussions on the consolidation of the two campuses, and I asked myself, ‘What have I gotten myself into this time?’

Thirteen years later, NMH is thriving and embarking on a new strategic plan, which emphasizes an innovative curriculum, a new

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math and science center, as well as investments in financial aid, our endowment, and in our faculty/staff. I leave with a feeling that much was accomplished during my board tenure.

But the two things I enjoyed most were connecting with the NMH students and sharing the past 11 years on the board with Betsy Compton — an amazing board member, philanthropist, and friend. On a personal note, our daughter, Allyson, graduated cum laude from Columbia in 2012, and after a three-year stint at Sperone Westwater Gallery in New York City, is going to law school to study intellectual property law with a concentration on the arts. Austin graduated from Williams College in December and went to work for a private equity firm in Westport, Conn., founded by Seth Alvord ’89. It’s an odd choice for an astronomy and studio arts dual major with a minor in astrophysics. But considering he planned to be an Army ranger, we are thrilled with the abrupt shift in career paths.

Lastly, after three years of growing a transportation leasing firm, Direct ChassisLink, we are in the process of selling the firm and bringing on a new private equity partner.” • Shirley Sulyok Klinger’s third back surgery has gone quite well. She can walk more upright but still with some pain, and she has been spending days exercising at a senior center to remain mobile. She also dog-sits a few dogs during the week. Shirley adopted a rescue English chocolate Lab to add to her black Lab and horse. Husband Gary continues in his accounting business but hopes for retirement in a few years. • Daniel Haslam has completed his 100th walking tour for Walkabout International, a walking organization. Over the past 15 years, he has lived on the road in hotel rooms, hostels, trains, boats, and B&Bs, and for two years has covered more than 10,000 miles on foot in 10 countries. He and his partner, David Squire, live a bicoastal existence, with six months in San Diego and the remainder in Cape Cod. Walkabout International is an all-volunteer walking organization with headquarters in San Diego.

Dan manages the small, seasonal Cape Cod outfit. They provide more than 1,000 free walks each year in rural, urban, and suburban environments (visit walkabout-int.org). The organization has walks every day of the year and a variety of social activities, like a walking club. • Dr. Ric Stobaeus is building a place on the river in the middle of Dominica in the rain forest. “My sister, Lynn Stobaeus Mayo ’76, and her husband, Geoff, just left to go back to New York,” says Ric. “Dr. Nobuki Stobaeus ’04 is still practicing veterinary medicine in Tampa at Royal Resorts Veterinary Center. Keiko Stobaeus ’07 is at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta after the Peace Corps and one summer teaching at NMH. Emiko is graduating from the College of Coastal Georgia in medical IT. Kenji is at Berry College in Rome, Ga. Akira has started at Vanderbilt University. They have promised

to visit Dad next summer!” • Lucy Erdman writes, “I graduated from University of Colorado with a degree in dance. Soon afterward, I moved to Los Angeles, where I have been ever since. I am currently a teacher at Bay Club in Pacific Palisades, where I have been employed since 1990 — first as a massage therapist, and for the past 15 years teaching Pilates. Over the years I have traveled to 26 countries around the globe, mostly in Europe and Central America. My hobbies are weightlifting, movies, attending Latin jazz concerts here in Los Angeles, salsa dancing, and biking along the great beach bike paths in Southern California. I cannot believe that so much time has passed since attending NMH, but I still have great memories of my brief time there.” • Frank Brewer’s son, Eli, married in November at the Post Card Inn in Islamorada, Fla. Frank’s daughter, Corey, and her husband, Jeff, have purchased a row house in the Highland section of Baltimore. “Gloria and I are still planning for our retirement in the near future,” writes Frank, “and to add to our insanity, we decided to add a Portuguese water dog puppy to our family. It was another great boating/fishing season on the Chesapeake Bay on the Wicked Blues. Coming up on my one year since I had my heart attack and all is going well, just need to slow it down a bit.” • Bernie Niemeier and his new wife, Lisa, were married at St. James’s Church in Richmond, Va., on 9/12/15. The couple honeymooned in northern Italy for two weeks and now reside in Richmond, where Bernie is the publisher of Virginia Business, a 30-yearold statewide monthly business magazine. • Henry Blood sang in Awaited at Crossroads Church for the ninth year. The production really draws a crowd, with 100,000 tickets given away last year. He’s doing all 30 shows this year. His daughter, Alexandra, is 16 months from becoming a doctor, earning a D.O. from Ohio University and doing rotations in Columbus, Ohio. Henry also finished his associate degree in accounting in December. • Jeff Kessler: “I stopped in at the 2015 NMH reunion after learning that Ben Schapiro was coming to ride in the first annual Pie Ride. We had a chance to catch up after way too many years. Ben rode the 30-mile loop with his brother, Bill Schapiro ’74. I also enjoyed hearing the school’s 2020 strategic plan presentation while there. In August I met up with my sister, Stephanie Kessler ’73, in Maine. She and her husband, John, were there from Wyoming to drop their son, Duncan, off to start at Bowdoin.” • Stephanie Bennett Vogt writes, “As selfemployed empty nesters, my husband, Jay, and I are now dividing our time between beautiful Concord, Mass., and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where we have a second home. Some of you may remember that I came to the Northfield School in 1970 direct from Mexico City, where I was born and raised (ill-prepared, I might add, for New Eng-

CLASS NOTES land winters). I am pleased to announce the arrival of my second book, A Year to Clear: A Daily Guide to Creating Spaciousness in Your Home and Heart. It is to clutter clearing what the slow food movement is to eating. It invites a conscious, nourishing, and sustainable shift in the way we live our lives. Along with my first book, Your Spacious Self, which came out in 2012, it gives readers a new, gentler way to relate to their stress and stuff. You can learn more about it by visiting my website, spaceclear.com.” • With all that being said, please take a few minutes to do a couple of things for me (Tom Sisson). First, I want to hear from those of you who have not sent anything to me lately. I keep track! Second, our 45th reunion is coming in 12 months, during the first weekend in June. Please mark your calendars and plan to attend. Ask anyone that attended four years ago — it was the best.

Email me if you can help with the reunion.

Come on, I know some of you have the time. • About me, I now have four grandchildren: Autumn (12), Liam (4), Colin (2), and Evelyn will be nine months. Follow me or the class on Facebook. In October, I had dinner with Joe and Barbara Elliot. At Christmas Vespers I spent some time catching up with Ed and Ginny Brooks and sat with Channing Harris, Jeff Kessler, Nancy Klarman, and Sue Fenske McDonough ’74. I am now a member of the NMH Alumni Council on the awards committee. There are now seven of us from the 1970s on the Alumni Council. It is great fun to get more involved in NMH.

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Northfield Mount Hermon Heather Blanchard Tower smtower@comcast.net • Bill Stewart billstewartnmh73@gmail.com

From Heather: Vespers was magical in December, and the kids were wonderful — they continually amaze me with their exquisite voices, nuanced playing, and ability to make it all sound so easy. • Jane Murray is still playing and teaching oboe and English horn. “Actually, this is my 37th season with the Rhode Island Philharmonic,” says Jane. “My latest venture is a certification in ‘body mapping’ — a movement-awareness curriculum rooted in Alexander Technique for musicians and others who wish to learn how to move well and avoid pain and injury.” With the unique perspective of 15 years of experience as a gymnastics coach, Jane understands anatomy and body mechanics, and uses that knowledge to apply the principles of body mapping for musicians of all genres. Jane presents workshops at colleges, for choirs, conductors, and voice teachers.

Find out more at her website, janeoboe.com. • Mark DeGarmo was recognized last year with the Martha Hill Mid-Career Award 2015.

He combines a notable career as an innovative dancer/performer and choreographer/ writer with founding a highly respected and impactful dance education program based on

trans-disciplinary scholarship. He’s created more than 100 dance/theater works based on contemporary social issues, performed in multiple international tours. He serves as founder and artistic director of his own company, Mark DeGarmo Dance. Honors and awards include a Fulbright Senior Scholar Fellowship (Peru), American Cultural Specialist Award from the U.S. Department of State (Ecuador), and National Finalist in Dance, Millennium Artist Program. Mark earned a Ph.D. with a specialization in experiential education and the arts from Union Institute & University, and a B.F.A. in dance from The Juilliard School.

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Northfield Mount Hermon Stephanie Lynn Gerson stephanie.l.gerson@gmail.com

Griswold “Gooz” Draz collapsed on 11/5/15 while chopping firewood at home after a good, healthy life in Wellfleet, R.I. Gooz earned his B.F.A. from Boston Museum School, and was a large-format nature photographer. His photography can be viewed at goozdraz.com.

He owned Zoe Gallery, Boston, exhibiting works of emerging local artists. In June 1994 he married Heather MacDonald, a painter.

They had two sons, Emmett and Julian. Gooz was a fierce environmentalist. “He lived a couple doors down from me senior year. A great guy,” said Chuck Adams. “I remember his love for photography at NMH; he lived his life with passion,” said Holt McChord. “Never without a camera,” wrote Melissa Reed.

Barbara Forshay was in touch with him before reunion. Peter Allenby remembered, “We shared a few chuckles in our day, and the long hair we thought was so cool.” • “It’s with a heavy heart” writes Dean Poole, “that I tell you our classmate, Robert “Bob” Scott, passed away on Cape Cod, 11/25/15. He’d been suffering with dementia for some time. I spoke to him in October; he had very fond memories of his time at NMH. Bob was an outstanding person, and I remember him warmly. His roommate was Everett Smith.”

Bob studied theology and psychology, and earned a B.A. from Miami University in Ohio.

He enjoyed skiing and sailing, and worked in the sailboat industry and, later, his own woodshop. He leaves son Bradford and daughter Heather. • Dean Poole visits his Ottawa-based sister bimonthly from his Cincinnati home. He’s an empty nester, on his encore career following commercial photography, writing, and advertising agency ownership. “NMH math teacher Peyton Pitney was the best teacher I ever had, bar none,” writes Dean. In 1975, Dean and senior roommate, Rob Brougham ’75, drove cross-country to visit Bob Scott in Huron, Ohio. “Mutual friend Rob alerted me the morning after Bob Scott died,” writes Everett Smith. “Bob was a great roommate and wonderful guy. Who could forget his ready smile, positive attitude, and ‘All-American’

persona? I was lucky to have him as a friend.”

Everett’s alternative energy investing website is goldensetcapital.com. • From Josie Hart, “The December Fort Lauderdale boat parade was one of the most exciting holiday celebrations South Florida has to offer. I celebrated with Anne Lawrence Salle and Keith Gray, enjoying the decorated boats and yachts.” She attended Christmas Vespers in New York City.

“I enjoy seeing Sam Smith ’81, who lives down the street. I’ve begun my ninth year on the NMH Board of Trustees, and encourage classmates to find ways to stay connected to the school! The Alumni Association, headed

by Carrie Neiderman ’78, is active across the country and internationally, and is doing a great job harnessing the passions and interests of former students.” • Adam G. Thomson III earned his second associate of science degree: applied science, computer-integrated machining, with aerospace composites. He’s preparing a laptop-frame patent, and plans to enter North Carolina State University’s Industrial Engineering and Design Schools. “I just got a 2013 Honda Civic Hybrid, placing my NMH decal beside my Harvard alumni tag. Let’s make a difference as we pass 60. I encourage classmates to look forward, not behind, celebrating our opportunity to live extraordinary lives with new technical advances on the horizon.” • Three of Connecticut painter Jill Harrington Nichols’s canvases hang in the FBI director’s D.C. collection, including the recent “Grand Canyon.” “I paint from a place of gratitude.

My painting is poetry; a lyrical composition of color and light.” Jill exhibits and sells in Darien, Conn., and Chester, Vt., galleries. See her work at jillnichols.com. • In his 59th year, John Burnham is sailing as much as possible from May through September, winning a few, losing a few, and loving the chance to be on the water most of the week. While continuing as lead editor for boats.com, Boat Trader, and YachtWorld, he’s begun training as a leadership coach, with encouragement from Rev. Claire Bamberg, and looks forward to coaching opportunities in 2016. • As civil engineer on the Grace Farms River Building project, a curving glass pavilion in Connecticut, Holt McChord saw his work gracing the November cover of Architectural Record. He and Shelby went on a North Carolina motorcycle trip and

Andy Tofuri ’74 (left) with Betsy Dudley Youngsma ’74 at Uxbridge Library, Mass.

spring 2016 I 73

CLASS NOTES skied Killington Mountain, Vt., post-project.

The year ended with a pre-Christmas right knee replacement, matching the 2012 left knee — with no signs of cramping his style! • Florida-based Andy Tofuri ran into classmate Betsy Dudley Youngsma, librarian, at her Uxbridge (Mass.) library last August. • Susan Perkins Stark graduated from Western New England University School of Law last May, and passed both Florida and Massachusetts bars, where she was admitted to practice.

Daughter Maddy Stark ’13 had her professional acting debut last year at New York City’s International Fringe Festival in Michael Stock’s No Chaos. • “My wife and I moved from Wisconsin back to New England,” writes Jeff Sawyer. “I’m managing editor for Garnet Hill, in Franconia, where we live in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. Older daughter is a veterinarian and younger daughter an artist. We enjoy hiking in the area and being close to family again. Too soon to think about retiring — still enjoying my career!” • Laurie Lee Jillson Mason has a newfound passion: golf. Her love remains riding and dressage, as she trains her 6-year-old Friesian/Clydesdale horse, Atticus.

With husband Bob, she owns Inner Space Services, the hydraulic dredging and water treatment company, including commercial diving for Massachusetts locks and dams. They snowbird in Florida. • Liz Johnson Cua had a full year, highlighted by her son’s Villanova graduation. Their daughter continues with her D.C. start-up, Aspire. “I am still a full-time Boston-area radiologist. We’ve had the good fortune to travel to Chile, Easter Island, and Antarctica this year. With winter bearing down, we invested in an elliptical to beat back the ‘delights’ of age. We are very grateful for our health and opportunities.” • Lyn Tranfield Bennett’s year included her parents’ 60th anniversary celebration (they are former faculty members, Charlie and Pat Tranfield)

Liz Johnson Cua ’74 and husband in Antarctica

74 I NMH Magazine

with all children and grandchildren but one, followed by their downsizing from a Keene, N.H., house to an apartment. Lyn’s daughter, Vera, found a job in her field — at Legendary Entertainment as assistant special effects coordinator on The Great Wall, to be released later this year. In October, Lyn visited son Chris, who spent the fall in London. • Bonnie Sue Boswell Claypoole returned to nursing at Kindred Hospital, Texas Medical Center, Houston. She is pursuing an M.A. in executive nursing, dovetailing with her B.A. in business administration. Bonnie, widowed with two daughters, visits her Boulder-based younger daughter, a movie scriptwriter. Bonnie’s older daughter does entertainment public relations in Houston. Bonnie’s bucket list includes visiting Italy and Alaska. • Geologist Stephen E. Laubach is deeply into the power of quartz crystals, as discussed in his paper, “Insights into rates of fracture growth and sealing from a model for quartz cementation in fractured sandstones,” published in the Geological Society of America Bulletin. You can find Steve at his web page, jsg.utexas.edu/sdi. His daughter, Eva Laubach ’15, is happily ensconced at Cornell. Daughter Isabel ’17 is next year’s volleyball co-captain. • “I never imagined I’d feel so young at this age,” writes John DiMeo, “and three years into my encore career as psychotherapist. Still gaining mental-health work experience, I completed an 18-month Stonewall Project program under San Francisco AIDS Foundation, treating gay men seeking recovery from crystal methamphetamine addiction. My red hair has turned white as the driven snow! Have yet to experience the health issues of our age, which I attribute to continued fitness training since 1974, healthy diet, volunteer work, and brilliant friends of the younger generation, who keep me sharp.” • Margaret Honey continues to run the New York Hall of Science in Queens, New York City’s only

Margaret Honey ’74 and late husband Ron Thorpe in Nantucket, Mass.

hands-on interactive science and technology museum. She invites all NMHers to come and visit. Sadly, Margaret’s husband, Ron Thorpe — a respected advocate for high-quality teaching in K–12 education who ran the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards — lost his battle with cancer in July 2015. • Nancy Doonan Coppelman writes that in 2015 “on April Fool’s Day (no joke!), I was laid off from my Framingham Heart Study job through federal budget cuts. Over seven months, I enjoyed summer, re-connected with old friends, participated in career workshops, traveled, applied for jobs, and did ceramics at Danforth Museum.” As of December, Nancy is an outreach coordinator for the Center for Alzheimer Research and Treatment at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston. • “I’ve been running wildly about in usual chaotic fashion for the holiday music crunch,” writes Bonita Hyman after singing the December UNICEF Deutschland Benefit Gala. “How do I feel about that impending 60th birthday? Still mentally clinging to 45, although my knees have other ideas. Four choirs, two music schools, concerts, and opera engagements keep me busy. I’ll be blessed with my official stage debut as soloist at the New York City Metropolitan Opera just three days after my 60th birthday, singing Erste Magd in Richard Strauss’s Elektra, the same Patrice Chéreau production I performed in Aix-en-Provence (2013), and at La Scala, Milan (2014). The production continues to Helsinki, Berliner Staatsoper, and Barcelona over 2016. My son is now 17 and shaving. I am not yet used to this idea.” • In summer 2015, Meredith O’Dowd Adams and Ed cruised down the Connecticut coast over to Long Island, meeting Lynne Trezvant for Shelter Island bike riding. “Son Luke, 22, graduated from Brown, moved to San Francisco, and is now a data scientist for the small dot-com Wiser. Many of my friends’ kids are hitting the road to find their fortune in California. Sad parting.

Luckily, Ed’s sailing coaching takes him that way frequently; I joined him in Tiberon for a nice vacation with Luke. Our big October trip was to Turkey. It was great! Istanbul was fascinating and vibrant. We visited World Heritage site Cappadocia, finding its vibe akin to Moab — ‘geological oddity of honey-

CLASS NOTES

Michael Richards ’74 and wife Young attended the U.S. Consulate General Marine Ball, Jerusalem.

combed hills and towering boulders of otherworldly beauty’ with friendly people. We mountain biked and hiked the ancient cave-dwelling tours. I would love to know whether other classmates have visited Turkey.”

Planning for New England hiking, crosscountry skiing, and snowshoeing with Stephanie Gerson, Sue Fenske McDonough, and Lyn Tranfield Bennett. • Christopher Matthews traveled to Guatemala, Panama, Germany, and Spain, communicating missionary opportunities with seminarians and parishioners for those European cities where the Spanish-speaking diaspora live and work. He was in Guatemala during September’s historic presidential election, and toured the Panama Canal Zone after lecturing at Panama City’s Chinese Seminary. In October, Chris presented at a Stuttgart conference, then led a Spanish tour from Valladolid, Salamanca, Ávila, Toledo, Córdoba, to Sevilla following the Camino de Santiponce, tracing the steps of 16th-century Spanish reformers smuggling forbidden literature. Beth joined him in Malaga for their first grandson’s birth, then taught a conflict resolution intensive while Chris taught cross-cultural communications at the Sevilla Seminary. • From Michael Richards: “I recently retired after 24 years as State Department cultural attaché, having served in Baghdad, Jerusalem, Lagos, Moscow, Seoul, and Tel Aviv, to pursue my muse as a writer. My first novel, Choice of Enemies, launched in January 2016, and my second novel, A Thousand Enemies, is set for publication in August. The third book of the series, Enemies in the Gate, publishes 2017.

Visit marichardsbooks.com for my bio and book info. When not playing the role of reclusive writer, I can be found in the company of my wife, Young, a ceramic artist and painter. Palm Beach, Fla., is our home now, but when the travel bug bites, we visit friends and relatives in Israel and Korea.” • Let’s congratulate Andy Taber, executive director at the Mountain Institute, for his panel discussion at the Paris COP21 Climate hearings: “Conference sur les Changements Climatiques, Nations Unies,” Paris 2015! • Email johnsburnham@gmail.com for our Facebook page; and send your updated contact info to addressupdates@nmhschool.org.

Andrew Taber ’74 (far right) spoke at the UN’s climate change conference in Paris.

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Northfield Mount Hermon Veronica Froelich Adams veronicafadams@gmail.com • Carrie Roantree Ahlborn crahlborn@gmail.com

Strive ’75 Is Coming Alive ’75! After a wonderful 40th reunion last June, a number of classmates volunteered for a steering committee that will work together to strengthen our connections with one another and with NMH. Thanks to Jamie Robinson for helping to coordinate our reunion! Committee members include: Betsie Lord Danforth, Kansas Collins Wight, Carrie Roantree Ahlborn, Christine Blount Graves, Deborah Rosenberg, Gary Thurston, Hollis Graves, Jamie Robinson, Randy Showstack, Ronni Froelich Adams, Sallie Dillingham Bowling, Sarah Chapman, Sarah Sherrill, Shelly Pevner Zakim, Steve Johnson, Stuart Patterson, Tim Horrigan, Whit Inzer, and Laura Wright Brock. • Carrie Roantree Ahlborn and Ronni Froelich Adams have stepped up as co-class secretaries, taking the reins from Karen Perkins and Sallie Dillingham Bowling, who ably served in that role for many years. Thank you, Karen and Sallie!

Be sure to write Carrie or Ronni with your updates! • If you’re on Facebook, please join the Northfield Mount Hermon Class of ’75 page.

Also, we’re in the process of updating our email list, which is woefully out of date. Be sure to send Carrie or Ronni your latest preferred email addresses. • After some schooling in Middlebury, Vt., and New Haven, Conn., Chip Lende got married and headed out to Alaska in 1982, eventually settling in Haines.

He has run the local lumberyard there for the last 30 years. He has five grown children (two are NMH alumni) and five grandchildren so far. When not working or reading stories to grandchildren, Chip can be found on a bicycle or at a hunting camp in the Chilkat Valley. You can find out more about Haines by visiting Chip’s wife’s blog, heatherlende.com. • Ruth Lapin reports that she had an amazing time with Ilene Feldman Steele when she came for a visit, and they spent a night at Ruth’s home in Woodstock. • An unexpected work trip to Atlanta gave Jamie Robinson an opportunity to get together with Karl Fezer last July. They had talked about this back in 2005, but it took 10 years for the opportunity

to come along. Jamie reports that it was great to see Karl, catch up, and reminisce. Karl gave Jamie a tour of his workplace in Atlanta, where he does pilot training and check rides for a commercial airline. Jamie does similar work on the railway, but as he has been fascinated by airplanes for many years, this was a fantastic experience for him! • J.B. Langer lives on the north shore of Boston in a place called Prides Crossing. He has a house and a fully appointed but little-used guesthouse on seven acres, and welcomes any NMH classmates if they are visiting the Boston area.

J.B.’s elder daughter, a junior at NMH, was home for Thanksgiving. On a side note, J.B. has rekindled his interest in the poetry of the Great War (Owen, Sassoon, and Rosenberg). • Anne Harris retired from General Dynamics and now has her own consulting business in the corporate compliance and ethics field. • Ronni Froelich Adams is back in the D.C. area working on a federal diversity and inclusion project, and plans to move increasingly into leadership development and innovation management consulting. Recently in New York City, Ronni enjoyed lunch with Brian Lehrhoff and a couple of shows with David Caldwell, who’s continued his impressive career as a musical director and composer. She also visited with Randy Showstack and his family on Thanksgiving, and is plotting a D.C.-area class dinner with Lucy Lisle Austin for this year. • John Buckley is the author of the novels Family Politics (1988) and Statute of Limitations (1990). In 2010, The Business of Happiness by Ted Leonsis with John Buckley became a bestseller. In 2013, his novel The Geography Lesson, which is about a botched National Geographic Society expedition, was published, and his agent is currently shopping to publishers Not a Pretty Picture, his fourth novel. John has held senior positions in three U.S. presidential campaigns, and been the top communications executive at several companies, including AOL. He started his career as a rock critic for New York Rocker, the Soho Weekly News, The Village Voice, the National Review, and Rolling Stone magazine, and for a decade has published the blog “Tulip Frenzy: Commentary on Music (Mostly), With An Occasional Photo.” He is currently managing director of the Harbour Group, a strategic communications firm, and lives in Washington, D.C., and Wilson, Wyo., with his wife, Anna Bennett, and son, Will.

• Carrie Roantree Ahlborn is in her fourth year as the director of annual giving for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Foundation.

She and her husband, Seth, headmaster of Henderson International School and home of Findlay Prep, welcome NMH visitors to their home in Henderson, just minutes from Vegas! Carrie’s four daughters were home for Thanksgiving — age 22 (working in theater in Vegas); 24 (going to grad school in art in Alamosa, Colo.); 26 (teaching chemistry and coaching at National Cathedral School in D.C.); and 33 (teaching in Madison, Wis.) —

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CLASS NOTES

A CLOSER LOOK

with a 4-year-old granddaughter and one on the way! As both Carrie and her NMH roommate, Gail Majdalany Heaslip, weren’t able to attend our 40th class reunion last June, they connected in May and spent the afternoon on the Mt. Hermon campus visiting some of their favorite places and reminiscing! Gail works at Ridgefield Academy in Ridgefield, Conn.

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Northfield Mount Hermon Susan Loring-Wells susanloring@me.com • Joe Mcveigh joe@joemcveigh.org

Trailblazing Through Hot Lava Tina Neal ’77 After nearly 25 years as a volcanologist in Alaska, Tina Neal ’77 has returned to her old stomping grounds in Hawaii to become the scientist-in-charge at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO). She is only the second woman to lead the HVO in its 103-year history.

Neal worked at the HVO from 1983 to 1989, monitoring the Kilauea volcano during the early years of its long-term eruption, which continues today, as well as the Mauna Loa volcano during its 1984 eruption. She assumed her new position on International Women’s Day, securing not only one of the few coveted jobs in volcano research, but also status as a role model for young women interested in exploring work in the sciences.

During her tenure at the Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO), Neal helped organize regional eruption monitoring and crisis response efforts with Russian counterparts.

She inaugurated the first federal geoscience advisor position in the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance, which coordinates American governmental responses to natural disasters overseas. In this role, Neal traveled to Thailand, Nepal, Ecuador, Colombia, and Kazakhstan, among other countries. She is also internationally recognized for her efforts to reduce the risk volcanic ash poses to airplanes.

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From Susan Loring-Wells: Amazing that our 40th reunion is here! I hope to see many old familiar faces as well as some new ones! Our class will be housed on the third floor of Crossley dorm. • Sarah Livingston and her husband, John, bought an apartment in D.C. in 2014 in a neighborhood they love. They are now trying to figure out if downsizing and sharing walls was the right move for them.

Their son Max works for a marketing firm in Cleveland, and son Peter is a paralegal at the Justice Department in D.C. Sarah enjoys tutoring in an elementary school and taking private Italian lessons. • Maureen Miller Hallock and Susan Bennitt had “the best” visit at Maureen’s house in Westport, Conn. They hadn’t seen each other in 40 years! Susan now lives in Branford, Conn. • Jennifer Nash Morgan Johnson and husband Royce spent Christmas aboard their catamaran in the Bay Islands of Honduras. Last summer they left their boat in the Rio Dulce in Guatemala and returned in October after spending time in Austin, Texas, and Royalston, Mass. They have done more diving in Honduras in the past month than in the past two decades! Daughter Bailey and son Liam came aboard for holiday visits. • Jodi Barber DiGennaro works for Adelphi University as director of administrative affairs for the College of Nursing and Public Health. She writes, “Charlie and I enjoy time riding our Harleys. Jessi and family moved to Jeju Island, South Korea, where he teaches high school chemistry, biology, and physics at Korea International School. Kiel is ranked #1 Florida amateur heavyweight strongman for the second year and competed in the worlds in March.” Her son Chas and family have two children, which makes Jodi a grandmother of four! Jodi plans to attend reunion as she was sorry to miss the last one due to the birth of her second grandchild. • Pam Kaull retired 15 years ago from landscaping in the San Francisco Bay area. In 2015 Pam and husband Dennis traveled to South America and then to Antarctica by ship.

In October they went on a walking tour of northern Japan, “the cleanest country in the world! Not one spot of trash on the ground.”

Pam doesn’t row much anymore, but plays tennis weekly and devotes time to community service with “friends of Bill.” She has four grandkids (ages 5, 7, 9, and 12). She says she

stays in touch with Ann Gross Butenhof via Facebook, and indicated that both of them may show up at the reunion. • From Joe McVeigh: My consulting travels occasionally let me meet up with classmates in different parts of the country. In June 2015 I met Dongsok Shin and Charlotte Bacon Holton for dinner in New York City. In October 2015 I met Naomi Benattar-Yablong in Chicago after a 40-year separation. Naomi is still her short, bubbly self and is active in programs supporting financial literacy, humane care for animals, and Jewish charities and causes. She had many warm memories of her two years at NMH. • Jeff Chase and wife Caroline live in Wilmington, N.C. Their house is two miles from the beach and, as their three children are all in their 20s, Jeff and Caroline are experiencing the pleasures of being empty nesters. Jeff works in real estate, but his real love is painting. His artwork sells from Boston to New Orleans. See his online gallery at jeffchasestudio.com. • Chris Kraus and husband Peter Morgan live in the East Rock neighborhood of New Haven, Conn., with one dog, one cat, and Chris’s collection of rare book-cover designs. Chris hopes to relinquish her role as acting chair of the Near Eastern languages and civilizations department at Yale.

Daughter Eleanor is a freshman at Haverford. • Dave Perry and wife Sue gathered with the families of Rich Lennon, Adam Saffer, and Phil Hosmer for a New Year’s party in New Hampshire. Dave’s daughter Liz received an M.A. in school administration; daughter Sarah graduated with an M.A. in art therapy. Three other daughters have given them a total of four grandchildren. Dave and Sue are looking forward to the reunion. • Phil Hosmer has left the ranks of management to return to patient care as a respiratory care practitioner at Southern Maine Healthcare, working in both Biddeford and Sanford, Maine. His wife, Karen, works at York Middle School. Son Matthew (28) is finishing a degree at the University of Maine while working at a restaurant in Portland. Daughter Jenna (25) and son-in-law Kenny live two miles away. A lack of snow in the early part of the winter meant a slow start to Phil’s ski patrol position at Gunstock Mountain resort. • Adam Saffer has moved to Cairo, Egypt, to focus on strengthening entrepreneurship, small-business development, and job creation, with an emphasis on women and youth. He and wife Alison are celebrating their return to expatriate life with trips to Aswan, the Pyramids, the Nile, and the Red Sea. Son Jordan graduated from Newcastle University in the U.K. Son Taylor is a freshman at Bryant University in Rhode Island. • Also taking up residence in the Middle East are Bill Bodie and wife Lorelei, who live in Abu Dhabi — capital of the United Arab Emirates. Bill works for Parsons, a global engineering and project management company. In his spare time he has been swimming in the Persian Gulf, playing squash,

CLASS NOTES

Matt Kennedy ’76 and daughter Anna

Joe McVeigh ’76 and Naomi Benattar-Yablong ’76 in Chicago

Adam Saffer ’76 and wife Alison

and kayaking. Daughter Clio is a junior at Haverford and son Julius is starting his third year of law school at Loyola. Bill is in contact with John Buckley ’75, Addison Cook ’77, and Peter Barbey — his old Hayden Hall roommate and current owner of The Village Voice. Bill notes, “Peter is now the subject of more intense attention from the media than he ever received from the disciplinary committee at NMH!” • Matt Kennedy and family live in Westchester County, N.Y. He stays connected with Addison Cook ’77 and sometimes sees Charlie Knirsch. Matt’s older daughter, Anna (15), is a sophomore at NMH. So, after many years away, Matt is a regular visitor to the campus. • Laura Durgin Corl works in air pollution control for the State of Virginia. She makes regular trips to New England, especially Martha’s Vineyard and Maine. Laura hopes to see everyone at reunion in June. • Kate Selleck Shea and husband Bob have one daughter in college at Grinnell and another daughter at Amherst. Kate has much more available discretionary time as a result and hopes to make it to our reunion. • Will Cosby and his wife, Lisa, have left the small island off the coast of New Jersey for the hills of western Massachusetts. Will is looking for stories of our years at school to create a booklet for our reunion. If you’d be interested in contributing or collaborating, please email him at wilvis@aol.com. • Helen Coons moved from Philadelphia to Denver in June 2014.

She has her own business as a clinical health psychologist and routinely presents to healthcare providers and community groups.

She serves on the board of directors of the American Psychological Association. Helen travels for work and adventure, and relaxes with snowshoeing, cycling, tennis, and hiking.

Last winter she had the chance to ski with James Hallock ’77 and enjoyed a recent dinner with Ellen Balka ’77. • Mark Caprio is celebrating his 20th year at Rikkyo University, Tokyo. He often travels for conferences and research. He also conducts tours of historic Tokyo on the side, so if you are ever in that part of the world, contact Mark. • Ed Richardson is in his 25th year working as an urban planner for the City of Milwaukee. • Mike LaChance lives in Westerly, R.I., working on design/build projects for energy

companies in Connecticut and Rhode Island.

During sugaring season, he returns to volunteer at the NMH farm and sometimes brings his daughters along. He’s looking forward to reunion. • Don Boyden and a group of fellow alums from Weston Hall are organizing a group to return for reunion. Don lives in Plymouth, Mich., and works for an online publishing company. His cohorts include Dave Schwartz, who started a real estate investment and management company in New Jersey, and Scott Silverstein, CEO of a shoe company in New York. Don reports that Nate Aldrich and Andy Wedeman won’t be able to make it. Nate is a new-media artist and educator residing in Penobscot, Maine, who creates installation, video, performance, and acousmatic art. Nate is currently on the faculty of the new-media department and the intermedia M.F.A. program at the University of Maine-Orono. You can see his work at nbaldrich.com. After 18 years at the University of Nebraska, Andy Wedeman moved to Georgia State University in 2012, where he is a professor of political science and heads up the China Studies Initiative. Andy is an expert on the contemporary political situation in China, particularly the relationship between growth and corruption. • Carla Crimmin Pope writes that her years at NMH were not the happiest for her, but she has enjoyed getting caught up on the lives of many of our classmates and realizing that — good or bad — those were formative years that have contributed to the person she is today. • Travis Hudelson saw former NMH bandmate and bass player Marshall Wood ’75 when Marshall appeared with Tony Bennett. Travis is still playing music and combines playing with raising money for charities, such as the Caring Contact crisis intervention hotline. Daughter Molly is pursuing a career in photojournalism, son Luke is spending a year teaching in Thailand, and daughter Maddie is a high school senior who’s interested in musical theater. Travis frequently runs into Adrian Shoobs ’75 in their shared hometown of Westfield, N.J. Travis would love to hear from any other NMHers who are in the area or visiting New York and New Jersey. • Isabel Childs spent most of 2015 teaching at the Institute of Foreign Affairs in Vientiane, the

capital city of Laos. While there, she traveled to Thailand and Myanmar with wife Deb Campbell. They had an amazing time exploring the tropical atmosphere, delicious foods, and warm people and customs of Southeast Asia. • In late December 2015, Maureen Miller Hallock posted on our NMH Class of 1976 Facebook page: “Had the best afternoon with Susan Bennitt here at my house in Westport, Conn. She lives in Branford, just up the road. Forty years in between. She walked through the door like it was yesterday. We scratched the surface for a few hours and vowed some more visits to catch up on the rest. I loved hearing about her amazing life in Spain, her wonderful daughters, and her life adventures. Yea for re-connecting! I feel blessed to have seen her again.” • It is way easier to stay in touch if we have your current contact information. Please make sure the school has an up-to-date email address for you by emailing addressupdates@ nmhschool.org; opt to make your information available for sharing on the NMH online community and on the NMH Connect mobile app; and join the NMH Class of 1976 Facebook page. We’d love to help you connect with old friends — just send us an email and, if we’ve got their contact info, we’ll be glad to pass it along. We hope to see you back on campus from June 2–5 for our 40th reunion!

Put it on your calendar now, call your old friends, and plan to be there!

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Northfield Mount Hermon Anne Howson ahowson@rics.bwh.harvard.edu

After seven years overseeing ad sales at the Weather Company (the Weather Channel), Chris Raleigh joined Placemedia as chief commercial officer last year. The company has developed a platform that utilizes data and automation to evolve the legacy practices of how television/video advertising is bought and sold.

Chris credits his media sales career to his early days of selling sponsorships for his WNMH radio show. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, and has three children — the youngest considering NMH for the fall. • Under very tough circumstances, Ellen Balka saw Grace Mauzy in Vancouver last April, with Grace’s daughter, who was injured and ended up in

spring 2016 I 77

CLASS NOTES the hospital Ellen works at in Vancouver (and is now doing well!). Ellen was also in touch with Jeff Aliber, and had dinner with Helen Coons ’76, who seems to be enjoying the Denver lifestyle. • Joanie Kaplan Williams opened their first assisted living community in Lake Nona (Orlando), Fla., of which 50 percent of the units are leased after less than two months. “It is so rewarding to see our very happy residents who came to Watercrest of Lake Nona to live, not to die,” says Joanie.

“We have three others under construction, and three more breaking ground by February.” • Peter Leberman has joined Upton & Hatfield with more than 30 years of legal service in New Hampshire, and most recently as vice president and general counsel at Northeast Delta Dental. Peter focuses on counseling forprofit and not-for-profit businesses and health care providers and insurers. • Anne Howson: “This summer I met up with John Spence and Pamela Watson-Hogan for a fun dinner in Central Square, Cambridge, Mass. John was in town to visit his family, and Pamela came in from her home outside Boston. Both are doing well! Over a vegetarian meal, we practiced cell phone photography skills amid much hilarity. On Thanksgiving, I was cheered by the presence of David Allen and his family in Brookline, Mass.: wife Holly Allen ’74, son Richard, and daughter Page. Page lives in Massachusetts, Richard in New York City, and Holly and David visit extended family in Massachusetts and Vermont for the holidays.

Always a great time with this family — banter, biting wit, and buffoonery each time we meet!”

• For most outgoing energy and positive outlook, Jeff Aliber definitely garners the 2015 award for “NMH ’77 Alumni Man About Town.” He connected with classmates Ellen Balka and Grace Mauzy earlier in 2015; me in November for dinner in Boston to catch up on life; and Sophia Severino at Logan Airport during her flight layover in December. And likely a host of additional classmates whose names were not available at press time!

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Northfield Mount Hermon Carrie Niederman thedoc@txequinedentist.com • Cathy Abraham Hopkins cathy.hopkins@gmail.com

Chris Crowder’s daughter, Laine, is in her freshman year at Santa Clara and loving the West Coast setting and weather. Son Tyler is in his second year at Hobart and seems intent on a high school teaching career — and so far his student teaching experience hasn’t discouraged that! “My wife (Nuan) and I are adjusting to different noise and activity levels as ‘practicing’ empty nesters. Having said that, with three active dogs, it’s never really that quiet,” writes Chris. He and his family spent Christmas and New Year’s in Australia. • Linda Gay Lawhead writes, “My family has been living in southern Illinois (near St. Louis) since 1989.

My husband, Larry, and I have two daughters,

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one son, and two beautiful grandchildren (one girl, one boy). I stay busy with church and community activities as well as quilting, crafting, and baking. I regret my last visit to campus was in 1988!” Please consider coming back for our 40th reunion in 2018, Linda!

You’ll pick up where you left off! • Finally, I’m going to report on an epic minireunion that Beth Graden Rom and I hosted in Niagaraon-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada, for the usual and not-so-usual suspects in October 2015.

Colleen Cunningham Johns, Lisa GlovskyZeien, Ellen Sennott McGillivray, and Beth came up to stay at my place a day early and did the Maid-of-the-Mist and lunch at Niagara Falls before preparing for our friends’ arrivals. We were joined by Erika Monsees McCormick, Cami Miller Beckman, Wendy Mauser Moores ’79, Kyle Warendorf, Dan Genis (who flew himself and Dave Paiken), and from farthest afield, Hirath Ghori. These men are brave souls! We truly picked up where we left off, and it was a beautiful and memorable couple of days together. In addition to some wonderful food and shopping, we did a raucous Yankee Swap, Dave and Colleen won the wine-tasting quiz, and we can now all open a bottle of bubbly with a saber!

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Northfield Mount Hermon Paige Relyea Lehman Paigerelyea@Yahoo.com • Cary Liebowitz Bonosevich Bonosevich@Hotmail.com

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Northfield Mount Hermon Jack Farrell jack@jackfarrell.org • Antony Pang aa1105@yahoo.com • Lynelle Kucharski lynelle@lynellekucharski.com • Kristin Kellom kkellom@nmhschool.org

From Kristin: As I write this, we are about to ring out 2015 and ring in 2016. When you read this, it will be nearly a year since our 35th reunion…already! At reunion we promised to keep getting together with minireunions scattered about the country. We have been good at keeping our commitment, and by November 2015 had held two such gatherings.

• Sue Gibbs generously hosted a minireunion in Washington D.C., and Chris Lindstrom Schaeffer did an excellent job at getting the word out and keeping track of the RSVP list. Those who attended the September 11 gathering were: Sarah Browning, Jae So, Lee Coykendall, Karen Lange, Cab Dempsey, Kit Crawford Arthur, Lydia Perry Schodel, Peter Weis ’78, Abby Millager, and Henry Wooster, and of course, Chris and Sue. Phil Schoenfeld expressed regrets for not being able to attend. • Catherine “Cuppy” Howe Gordon and her husband, Dick Gordon, also generously offered to host a minireunion at their home in Wellesley, Mass. Cuppy and Kristin Kellom coordinated the event, which was held on November 16.

The response was great, and underscored how much interest there is for these types of events and for the opportunity to stay connected or get re-connected. Classmates Bill Perrin and Jack Melanson with wife Lisa (also current parents) traveled a good two hours from Maine to be there. Also in attendance: Bob Gibson, Mitzi Fennel, Mike Griffin, Neal Monagle, Adrienne Talamas, Anne Shepard, Julie Taub Vogel, Kristen Lofgren Dennison, and Jeff Leyden. A number of us had not seen each other since commencement in June 1980! Unable to make it at the literal last minute were Sue and Jim Mulholland, Jen Donham Wells, and Beth Perry. We had also hoped that Mary and Jay Barry might be able to make the trip from Connecticut, though it would have been a distance to travel. Dick and Cuppy were terrific hosts, and Cuppy went the extra mile to track down and invite classmates whom we’d not seen for decades. Special thanks to Mitzi, who helped get us moving and offered support for planning our first Boston-area minireunion! Please accept my apologies if I have inadvertently missed anyone on these guest lists. • Apparently, I did miss seeing Laura Oot-Sheridan, who returned to run the Pie Race. Viva Hardigg also ran the Pie, and it was fun to see her back on campus. Hanif Moledina also returned to campus in August while his daughter was enrolled in Summer Session. • Jeff Leyden travels frequently for NMH and catches up with classmates while on the road, and visited Elisabeth Carter in Boston and Stephanie Ackler in New York City. Head of School Peter Fayroian also happily visits with ’80 classmates when he travels, and he spent time with Nick Chinlund when he was in Los Angeles last November.

• Kristin Kellom doesn’t get on the road so much, but hopes to soon see Melanie Calitri Holden and Mara Keggi Ford. While in Tennessee during the summer, she passed mighty close to Liz West Blakely, but was unable to stop by. Other classmates who remain in touch are John Mason, Amelia Maloney (who spends many hours volunteering her time for NMH and currently serves on the NMH Parents Council along with her husband, Dave DeHerdt), and Carol Abizaid, whose daughter is at NMH. • Please stay connected, please attend a class minireunion if one is near you, or consider hosting one, and please support the school that has meant so much to so many of us. Wishing all of you health and happiness in 2016!

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Northfield Mount Hermon Frank Chandler frankchandler1@verizon.net • Marina Colman marinacolman727@yahoo.com • Lilian Blacken Hannapel lilhannapel@gmail.com • Class of ’81 Website: www.nmh81.us

From Frank Chandler: Let’s start with a big hello to the best group of folks I know…you!

CLASS NOTES Elizabeth Wright sends greetings from the San Francisco Bay area: “I’m constantly striving to balance work and other life demands, and reconnecting with NMH is one of my priorities.

I may seek out the local NMH group. And I am eager to come back for the next reunion.

Best wishes to all.” • Jay Kulick is shooting shows for TV, concerts, and events of all sorts, including a network television production of Peter Pan. He also received a major athletic award from his alma mater, New England College, for his student accomplishments on the lacrosse fields. • From Andrew Pratt, “I moved to Utah in 1997 after a couple of years in Los Angeles, where I worked in the tennis event business. Since moving here, I’ve kept my work as a real estate broker in the Salt Lake City area and lived in Park City. I live with my wonderful longtime girlfriend, Susan, who has an art gallery in the Old Town area of Park City. Hoping to see everybody at reunion in the spring.” • Personally, I stay in touch with quite a few friends from our class, but often I forget to write about them. I travel a bit for my 12-year-old son’s wrestling competitions, and Lilian Blacken Hannapel came out to Greensboro, N.C., last year to spend some time with us at a tournament. She looked and sounded great, as usual. I saw Janeth Lazore Murphy in Virginia Beach at another tournament last fall. She and her husband live in southern Virginia. Among other things, she’s doing some work at the local library and smiling a lot. Somebody needs to talk her into coming to reunion. Marina Colman is living in Taos, N.M., and spinning tunes on local radio station KNCE. The radio station is run out of a very cool trailer, where Marina does her show. It’s broadcast via the Internet every week and having listened in on many a Friday afternoon, I can say that Marina has incredible taste in music. I saw Julie Kawadler Kendall in Boston — she was home visiting family and casting for a part in a TV show. She has a recurring role in If Loving You Is Wrong, and is pursuing her dreams full time. Ian Stone is living in western Massachusetts and continues to practice law there. Larry Chase was in Florida with his family for the holidays. • I strongly suggest you join our Facebook page — “Class of 1981” — if you would like to stay in touch with classmates in real time. More than 150 of our classmates are in that group, and it’s been a great tool for staying in touch or finding lost classmates and friends. Our 35th reunion is this spring, and I urge you all to come back to campus for an afternoon, an overnight, or the entire weekend. I know that everybody battles their own ghosts (obviously, me, too) when it comes to high school reunions, but I’m telling you a spring weekend with your classmates on the NMH campus is probably just what you need to put a big smile back on your face. I hope to see you there and maybe catch you on Facebook even sooner. My warmest regards to you all.

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Northfield Mount Hermon Sally Willis willissally@hotmail.com • Michael Rickard mrickard330@cox.net

Congrats to classmate Andrew Wolkoff on the birth of a namesake calf at the NMH farm.

Andrew is the newest member of the school’s herd of seven. • Congrats to Suzy Smith Long, who writes, “Chad Prosser and I married on my birthday in December and honeymooned in Tahoe, where my mom was a ski teacher.

We enjoyed skiing, visiting the house where I grew up in Reno, Nev., and the medical school that my dad founded in 1967. Chad enjoys running his hospitality and cloud computing companies. We will live on the South Carolina coast, in Murrells Inlet, with our three teenage sons and two pups! • Jessica Neary: “I have sublet a studio in Montpelier, Vt., and am painting after a hiatus. Painting again feels great.” • Shelagh Connelly writes, “Our final child is now a sophomore at NMH. Liza follows the trail of her sister Molly, who graduated in 2016, and Liza has her sights on 2018! Our son, Liam, chose to go to our local high school instead of NMH, but he visited last month and ran the 125th Pie Race (he came in fourth place overall…not bad for a high school senior!). We are looking forward to attending Vespers…one of our favorite afternoons on campus. I encourage all our classmates to make the journey some year, as it is inspired song and celebration. My husband, Marty, and I still own and operate a biosolids and wood ash recycling company based here in Holderness, N.H., and we work throughout all of New England and eastern New York. I usually go back for NMH Farm Day in the spring and teach a few classes on why recycling organic byproducts is such a good thing…kind of fun to bring it full circle, as we provide wood ash fertilizer for the NMH farm to improve crop yields. Love being connected to NMH and can’t wait for the new science building!” • Jennie Anderson, who is busy making a big move north from Pennsylvania, was called to be the priest in partnership at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Norwich, Vt. Her post began in January. • Brett Jacobs Axelberg made the move to Pennsylvania.

Her husband, Marc (and Brett as a volunteer), retired from the Army this fall. Marc was on active duty for 28 years and they were at 11 duty stations. Brett and Marc are in Carlisle, Penn., now and looking forward to staying put for a while. • We have covered the West Coast in this round of notes, with updates from Oregon, Washington, and California. • Ginny Cairo: “I have been living in Roseburg, Ore., since 1999. I just started my 26th year working as a civil engineer with the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. My current work includes improving frost control for cranberry growers near Bandon, Ore. I became a ‘grammy’ in February to Yaffa.” • George Thomas lives in Redmond, Wash.,

with his son and daughter. They get out often to ski, hike, and mountain bike while tending to their property, with numerous gardens and a pinot noir vineyard (thanks, NMH farm program!). This recent summer, George returned to NMH when son Henry attended summer school: “a memorable experience for him and fond memories for me,” says George.

“In 2014, I had the opportunity to spend time in Cambridge while finishing my master’s in sustainability at Harvard. I currently apply my sustainability studies within a few different aspects of the wine industry. And I ran into Toby Green in Maui! Connect with me on LinkedIn.” • Alison Mandaville is at Fresno State (Calif.), in her third year working with future educators, and teaching and writing about comics and graphic novels. “Summers in Seattle keep me out of the heat,” writes Alison, “but fall and spring in the Central Valley are lovely, and the Sierras are a short drive away.

Come visit! Also, I’ve been translating poetry by women from Azerbaijan for an anthology spanning 800 years. Hoping this project will support strong, creative voices in a world that surely needs some. My daughter graduated from Macalester College in May 2015 — we are officially elders. Which the daughter says is a positive thing. I’ll take it.” • John Hsu writes from Hong Kong, “Since graduating from NMH, I attended Colgate University, then Columbia Business School, returning to Hong Kong in 1993 and working in the maritime and asset management professions. Recently, I was in Sydney, where I completed my 10th full marathon. Please ping me if you’re ever passing by Hong Kong!”

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Northfield Mount Hermon Allyson Goodwin agoodwin@nmhschool.org • Angela Lambert drangela@mac.com Audrey Hanson Davis’s son, Chaz Davis,

returned from winning the silver medal in the 5,000 meter at the Toronto 2015 Parapan Am Games. “His next goal is to make the U.S. Paralympic track and field team and go to Rio 2016 after he graduates from the University of Hartford this spring. He’s a great runner and obviously didn’t get his talent from me! Proud mother,” says Audrey. • Martha Phelps writes, “I am here in the Twin Cities with my family

Newlyweds Chad and Suzy Long Prosser ’82

spring 2016 I 79

CLASS NOTES joins her brother, Brixton (2). One of the best as part of the Best Buy turnaround team. So parts of getting older is being a grandparent… far it’s going well. We spent Thanksgiving in who knew?” • Robin Hirshberg Jobe writes, New Orleans with my sister, Laura Haynes Chambers ’88, and her family. My daugh“Tric and I finally moved to a bigger house in ter, Susie, is in seventh grade and is a level 7 Denver. We have more room now and guests USAG competitive gymnast. Daughter Anne are welcome! Our first guest was Mark Brodie. is a proud new member of the Smith College Hope to see more of you in Denver.” • A Class of 2020, continuing the Smith tradifriendly tip from professional organizer Janice tion in our family.” • Krista Schmitt Davey Russell: “Because we want to have lots of people at our 50th reunion and beyond, just continues to teach part time at Nashoba a reminder that we are at a time in our lives Brooks School and is working to grow her when there are a number of suggested medical photography business with small events, wedtests and screenings that should occur at regudings, portraits, and a concentration in pet lar intervals. They may not be fun, but they photography. She writes, “All is keeping me can be life-saving.” • Finally, Allyson Goodwin more than busy, and I added a litter of nine puppies to the mix! I created a post called the had a chance to say a quick hello to some ‘dog daily dose,’ which chronicled the puppies’ classmates at the inspiring NMH Vespers eight weeks...It was a fun photo challenge, and service in New York City in December. Sam I had over a thousand followers both nationServello, Bill Rowe, and Mike Sleeper and his ally and internationally. Sometimes you never family were there representing 1983. • Please know what will grow a business. A highlight keep the news and photos coming, classmates. of the fall was returning for the Pie Race on We tend to keep up quite well with each a spectacular fall afternoon. Our oldest will other on Facebook, which is great…but some be getting married in August…life is full!” • members of the class are not on Facebook, and we want to inform our classmates with this Dana Christensen Thompson writes, “Dave “old-fashioned way” as well. All the best to you (Thompson ’82) finally retired from the Main 2016! rine Corps after 25 years of active service (and 10 moves). We had a great family gathering Northfield Mount Hermon at the Marine Corps Museum in Quantico to Liz Mayers celebrate. I’ve recently received a promotion lizmayers@outlook.com with the organization Hope for the Warriors, Brian Smiley and Roger Miller got together where I’ve been doing social work for the past two years. Our kids are doing great — our son, just before Brian went on an epic two-week Rob, is getting his college applications finished, trip to Turkey over Thanksgiving break. Roger, his wife, and three kids moved to a neighborand Emily is in her second year at St Mary’s hood just south of Denver a little over a year College of Maryland. Our daughter Liz is ago. • Tom McKean is enjoying life in Santa enjoying her work at ‘Reptiles Alive!’ as one of Barbara with his husband, MarQ Taylor, who their best local presenters. We’re very proud of teaches yoga. They remodeled their midour kids and happy that they all got a chance century modern under the mountains. He to experience Summer Session at NMH. Hope manages the southwest territory for JPMorall our friends and former roommates are dogan Funds and plays some acoustic Grateful ing well!” • Last October, Jennifer Lynn Goller Dead on the side. Their son, Jon (26), works Letourneau became a grandmother for the at Men’s Warehouse and gives Tom a great second time. “My daughter, Ashley, gave birth discount on his suits. Tom says that if you’re to the beautiful Nora,” says Jennifer. “She

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ever in Santa Barbara, give him a call (805280-8583) — he’d love to say hello! • Heidi Kronenberg recently moved to the Hudson Valley, N.Y., from Chicago. She lives near Bard College and works for the website ESME.com.

Her son is at Tufts and her daughter lives with her. Heidi loves visitors and has a wonderful mountain view! Kerry Doyle and Caitlin Dyk have already visited. • Mark Rudolph is working for the State of Colorado at the Department of Public Health and Environment in the Hazardous Materials Program. His work involves abandoned mining districts, and his main work sites are the Summitville Mine Superfund Site near the Wolf Creek ski area and the Standard Mine Superfund Site in Crested Butte. In 2016 he’ll take on the mining district in the upper Animas River, encompassing the recent spill of the Gold King Mine and mines in the Silverton mining district. He’s looking forward to skiing in 2016. “With both kids out of the house now and in college,” says Mark, “I have three spare bedrooms, and am happy to host people coming in from out of town.” • Juan Rachadell lives in beautiful south Portugal, where he has been a surgeon for the last 13 years. His wife works in the same hospital’s pediatric ward. His older son is in medical school in Lisbon, along with his second son, who’s studying to be a computer and systems engineer. His daughter is finishing high school this year. Juan writes, “I’ll always remember fondly my time at NMH. It made a big difference for me, making me a more tolerant and happy person.” • I was happy to catch up with Marggie Slichter at the Pie Race, and we reminisced about freshman English class and fond memories of Miss Curtis. At the race, I cheered on Kirsta Schmitt Davey ’83 and Cheney Eng Tow ’82, who both won pies!

My brother, John Garbiel ’86, and his wife, Sheelagh, had their first baby, Adam Raymond, in October. I’ve so enjoyed being an aunt, and spent the first two weeks after the baby’s birth helping them out in Methuen, Mass. • A huge thanks to Marggie for her devoted years as class secretary!

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Northfield Mount Hermon Jennifer Buell Horschman jenhorschman@yahoo.com

Left to right: Jim Husson ’83, Laurie Smith ’83, Mike Rowe ’78, Tiran Kiremidjian ’83, Paul Rowe Tollefson, Bill Rowe ’83, Heather Jones Sano ’83, Marggie Slichter ’84, Bill Hattendorf, Sheila Heffernon, Molly Goggins Talbot ’93 at Bill Rowe’s and husband Paul Rowe Tollefson’s housewarming party.

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On Thursday night, the avant-garde reunioners, Maria Bate Grannell, Faith McClure, Chris “Zak” Pastuszak, Erik Lovequist, Ceylan Onor and Rob Sherman, and David Skeeter and Madeline Gibson, cruised the class of 1965 party in Crossley, took many 12-ounce trophies, and retreated to the far side of Blake. After an hour or so of reminiscing, teasing, and laughter, a large ruckus erupted out of sight but near the front door of Crossley. When it didn’t quickly subside, Zak and Skeeter went around the corner to investigate or calm or defuse the apparent fight or riot that had broken out amongst the class of ’65. About a minute later they returned, proclaiming, “They’re doing

CLASS NOTES New Hampshire. This fall they are adapting to exactly the same thing we are — they’re just an empty nest, with an older daughter deaf!” • On Friday, Maria Bate Grannell, finishing up at Colby College and a younger Skeeter, and Madeline went on an unofficial one just starting at the University of Maine, Mt. Monadnock hike. Rob Obremski hosted Farmington. They also recently moved to a an impromptu craft beer fest. Jay Tolo held a “new” house on almost 10 acres that will really fun dance party outside of C-V on provide Mark with the “hobby farm” he has Friday night. • On Saturday, the class of ’85 long wanted. • Bonnie Streetman Gibbons hosted a new event: the Pie Ride, a 30-mile bicycle ride and a shorter 10-mile ride (the writes, “I’ve lived in the Chicago area for 24 Strudel Ride). Ellen McCurtin, Josh Lee, and years with my husband (of 21 years), John Gibbons. As a music teacher, he keeps my Laura were the co-organizers. Tons of people musical brain cells alive while I lead the SEO arrived and many people visited the Northteam at Cars.com, but my cello currently field campus. Whitney Tilson held a seminar gathers dust as I work on vocal technique on school reform. Skeeter made red and blue instead. Lots of what I study is in Russian (the tie-dye bandannas with Cheryl Obremski for other thing I was into at NMH). So, when everyone all weekend. We ended the evening Duolingo released their Russian course in beta, with a fire in the Beveridge Bowl! • On I managed to reach level seven in one sitting.

Sunday, Steffani Bartlett Bennett gave out Thanks to Tchaikovsky, et al., I did not CDs of Fergus and Steff: “1985 — The Coffee House Sessions.” • And everyone went home. • completely shame our beloved Russian teacher, the late Fred Johnson.” • Living between Besides who’s already been mentioned, here is Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas, with her family, a list of more attendees: Gayle Robinson Boudreau, Chris Carlisle and son Marcel, Maria Bate Grannell has been involved in scouting for the past several years, serving as a Maura Coughlin, Ann Davlin, Kathy Roof den leader and pack chair, and volunteering at Deckers, Derek Edwards, Elizabeth Edwards, U.S.A. swim meets. • Randy Gravitz missed Bob Fisher, Jack Foster, Dru Stewart Fritzel, Ethan Garber, Clif Gray, Linda Maddern Leduc, reunion terribly — the first one he was unable to attend. But he says he will be at the 35th.

Jacqueline Lewis, Steph Madoff, Heather He recently began a new career in insurance Hewitt Main, Norm Schneeberger, David when he got his Oregon Resident Health and Sears, Eric Squire, Ann Baccari Steffes, Molly Life license. He will be getting his property Sterner, and Diane West. • Steffani Bartlett and casualty lines of authority when his Bennett moved back to New York City a year temporary gig is up after ACA open ago and is happy to be there! She’s continuing enrollment completes. He also bought a to teach piano and voice, as well as creating beautiful Trek 920 to begin training for the and distributing care packages for the city’s 2020 Pie Ride. • Nancy Klingener recently homeless. It’s become a new passion, as the homeless population continues to grow and returned to journalism after a seven-year needs are plentiful! If you’re interested in hiatus working at the community college and following, contributing, or participating, find public libraries in Key West, Fla. She covers her page on Facebook: Care Packages for the Florida Keys for WLRN, South Florida’s NYC’s Homeless. Steffani would love some public radio station. She learned how to make NMHers to get involved! • Maura Coughlin is radio in the spring of 2014 at the Transom Story Workshop in Woods Hole, where she associate professor at Bryant University in was about two decades older than most of her Rhode Island, where she has been teaching art classmates. • After spending a few years history and visual studies since 2007. She entertaining Cape Cod as a radio disc jockey, splits her time between Somerville and Eastham, Mass., where she lives with her Erik Lovequist has been working from home partner, Toby, and awesome daughter, Molly. • for a music airplay tracking company, Mediabase, for the last 18 years. He also has a Kathy Roof Deckers: “It was great to side business, Lovequist Antiques. “E Love” re-connect with everyone at reunion. I seem to has remained a lifelong resident of Massachuhave just as many new friends — alums I setts, and currently lives in Billerica with his didn’t know or know well at NMH — as I do wife, Mel, and two black cats. • Heather longtime friends. I am still in Marlborough, Mass., with my husband and kids, working as Hewitt Main: “I’m in Burlington, Vt., with a director of research and human resources for husband and two teenage boys who keep me Equinox Group — a pharma consulting well informed about New England pro sports. company. Any time outside of work is spent I have spent my whole career in health on my kids’ insane athletic/activity schedule, education and am now self-employed (since and I wouldn’t change a thing! It also was 2002) with Main Wellness Works — focusing super-nice to have an extra visit with my on workplace health promotion and personal daughter’s fairy godmother, Heather Hewitt fitness training.” • Faith McClure writes, “I’m living in Lake Worth, Fla. I bought a little Main, in November for my daughter’s house here about two years ago. I’m starting a birthday.” • Lorna Ellis and Mark Chutter business, Solo Professor, providing online celebrated their 25th anniversary. They have business law courses to small businesses.” • lived in Durham, N.H., for nearly 20 years, where they both do computer programming Ceylan Onor graduated in May 2015 with her for scientific satellite projects at University of master’s in counseling from Johnson State

College, and is now working as a substance abuse counselor for Central Vermont Addiction Medicine. After almost 30 years of living in the Montpelier, Vt., area she is planning to move out to Santa Barbara, Calif., this year. • Chris “Zak” Pastuszak lives in lovely, historic Salem, Mass., and enjoys spending time with his wonderful and wickedly intelligent daughter, Anastasia. Zak was once a key software developer with KOZ, the best dot-com start-up ever, misses the weather, people, music, and ’cue in North Carolina, and, like Bilbo, is plotting and looking forward to his next big adventure! • David ATN Skeeter disappeared from NMH after sophomore year, but here’s a list of major events since then: went back to Tulsa, Okla., to help take care of and be a part of his Yuchi and Creek ceremonies; graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in Tulsa; went to Bogotá, Colombia, as an exchange student; earned an associate degree from Haskell Indian Junior College, 1991; received a B.A. in linguistics and started grad school at the University of Kansas, 1992; had jobs at Muscogee (Creek) Nation, Macalester College, and Apple. Currently, he and his partner, Madeline Gibson, are at City College of San Francisco in the math and cinema departments, and are freelancing live sound and production film. David and Maddy are also hosting some alumni picnics in San Francisco — the first was attended by Chris Carlisle and his son, Marcel. David is also enjoying wearing his NMH cap, as it engenders meeting other NMH alumni and friends, such as former NMH math teacher Andy Shaw. • Ann Baccari Steffes is living in Omaha, Neb., and starting her 25th year as an interventional radiology RN. Her hospital will become a level-one trauma center soon, so it’s a very exciting and scary adventure for Ann. • Molly Sterner is still teaching in San Diego. She spent “a lovely Thanksgiving with Jodi Tsapis in Northern Cal. Had a fantastic visit this fall with Anne Rosenau Most, Jim, and their kids!

Spent a wonderful weekend with Steph Madoff and the Mosts in Vermont, and ended it with a beer and Jay Tolo in Connecticut.” • Jay has been living in Enfield, Conn., for 13 years. This spring he will take his family on the annual spring break vacation to Naples, Fla. • Many thanks to David ATN Skeeter for gathering news for this issue’s column.

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Northfield Mount Hermon Geoffrey Locke gwlocke@gmail.com

From Geoffrey Locke: Greetings, everyone. A couple of minireunions happened last summer.

Over July 4th, Charles “Chuck” Abel, Wendy Mansfield Donovan, Dan Carson, Michael McNally, and Alysa Ray descended upon Schuyler “Skip” Bush’s home in Amherst, Mass.

Then later in the summer, Beatrice “Bebe” Brown, Nilda Lopez, Kendel Leet, Li Lin Hilliard Hally, and Cindy Decker converged on

spring 2016 I 81

CLASS NOTES the beach in Los Angeles. Nilda also spent a week on Cape Cod with her family, including her parents, and visited with Deirdre Anderson Detjens and her extended family for another minireunion. Nilda, and Deirdre’s parents had not seen each other since graduation in 1986.

Laura Longsworth ’87 also stopped by for a visit. Nilda recently spent a wonderful holiday in Australia. • Ina Anderson writes, “I was married July 28, 2015, to Dana Gibson and have relocated to Kansas City, Mo. I was lucky to land a job in my field as a senior program officer for the Kansas City office of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, a nationwide nonprofit community development organization. My husband is in commercial and residential real estate development and manages a family business of converted loft buildings in downtown Kansas City. I am enjoying life in this part of the country and never would have imagined that I would marry again and make such a big life shift! Also, I will soon be a grandmother. My son, Toby, who many may remember as a baby at our fifth reunion, is expecting a boy in February. He was married last October to a longtime family friend. My daughter, Roze, is finishing up her B.A. at UMass-Boston. Finally, I ran into Steve Patrick in October at a conference in Los Angeles — he looks great and is doing admirable work at the Aspen Forum for Community Solutions at the Aspen Institute. Such a treat to cross paths!” • Bertha “Buffa” French moved back to the U.S. from Amsterdam and is living on New York City’s Upper West Side. Buffa writes, “I’m focusing my energy on getting my kids (ages 14, 11, and 8) settled in their respective schools, and my 14-year-old is putting the pressure on about going to NMH. I’m continuing my work in impact investing with a focus on gender lens investing. Have had communication with Karin Kimbrough, Debra Koffler, Rachel Berman ’85, Steffani Bartlett

’85, and Ann Davlin ’85. Ann is the managing director at Maroon Capital Group in New York. My sister, Dee Dee French Boone, is living in Virginia Beach with her three beautiful kids. Please reach out to me — would love to re-connect: frenchbe@gmail.com.” • Abbe Bartlett Lynch writes from Seattle to report she rowed this past fall at the Head of the Charles Regatta in an eight-person shell, and also spent a very fun couple of hours with fellow West Goulders Jenn Seavey ’87 and Lisa Wise Slade ’87. Abbe still works at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and “somehow” finds time to row with three kids, Sarah (5), Drew (8), and Kieran (13), and a “hubby” who rows for a different club in the area. “The great thing about having a rowing husband is that when we travel for racing, it is like a multiple-day date (usually no kids with us).” Abbe hopes to make it to our 30th reunion. • Wendy Mansfield Donovan has been having a great time working on planning our 30th reunion and re-connecting with people along the way. “Chuck Abel and I are so grateful for the support we’ve received from the reunion committee and the rest of the class,” says Wendy. “As for me, I’ve just completed my 21st year as a design engineer for the Kennebec Company. I also keep busy with Girl Scouts and the local historic preservation commission, in addition to watching lots of middle school basketball. Looking forward to seeing everyone at reunion!”

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Northfield Mount Hermon Kit Gattis kitnmh@gmail.com www.facebook.com/nmh1987 website: nmh1987.org

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Northfield Mount Hermon Anne Stemshorn George anastasia.s.george@gmail.com

An ’86 minireunion (from left): Chuck Abel, Dan Carson, Michael McNally, Schuyler B. Bush, Wendy Mansfield Donovan, Alysa Ray

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Steve Patrick ’86 and Ina Anderson ’86

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Northfield Mount Hermon Chris Roof roofsound@comcast.net • John Carroll jcarroll@nmhschool.org • Caryn Crotty Eldridge slickcke7@gmail.com

From Chris Roof: I successfully biked up Mt. Washington. It was incredibly challenging, but the accomplishment came with much satisfaction. Nat Simpson, who’s long wanted to tackle that ride, is training to do it with me this coming summer. • Nancy Congdon moved to Tucson, Ariz., in August 2012 to be closer to her parents. She loves it out there, working for the Red Cross in the blood services division. She was recently able to travel back east and spend time with family, including a delightful day roaming the campuses and catching up with Gail Doolittle. Nancy’s looking forward to our next reunion. • Nate Cade recently opened a second law office and thoroughly enjoys the ability to work from home. When not drinking Dogfish Head, he continues his search for other spirits created by fellow classmates. • Colleen Gibney and husband Paul are walking 5Ks to keep up with daughter Gemma (9), who runs them. Colleen is in her fourth year supporting military biomedical research and development at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md. • Julia Clark got married on 11/8/15 to John Gray, whom she met when she joined the Orland Fire Department in 1998. • Julie Siegel Falatko’s debut picture book, Snappsy the Alligator (Did Not Ask to Be in This Book), illustrated by Tim Miller, was published last year by Viking Children’s Books. • Meghan Collins Lyons is living is San Francisco, working as an operating room nurse, and is married, with two dogs.

She saw Julia Hand and John Morrisseau at Julia’s Christmas party and Garrett Price ’88 at his birthday party. Meghan is looking forward to local San Fran NMH events and would love to see anyone visiting San Francisco! • Katie Clapp Sonin’s son, Udo (8), had his heart set on operating a lemonade stand in July. His second customer was Mark Medeiros! Katie had a great time visiting Alicja Trout when she was in Lexington, Mass., with her girls. Katie’s son, Viggo (5), started kindergarten in the fall.

She managed to channel her inner designer

CLASS NOTES

From left: Katie Clapp Sonin ’89, Violet, Alicja Trout ’89, Udo, and Viggo

with Halloween costumes. She met up with Larisa Mendez-Pinate in Salem and spent time visiting Eileen Williams and taking in the Halloween festivities. Recently, Katie read a story with her boys where the main character is worried she’s going to get shipped off to boarding school. They had lots of questions, including wondering whether it really was punishment to go to boarding school. • We are sad to report the death of our classmate, Thomas George, on 1/5/16. Less than two years ago, he became the personal face of the ice bucket challenge, as he was diagnosed with ALS. Tom and his wife, Rebecca Brown George, were examples of bravery and truly lived their lives to the fullest following the diagnosis, creating powerful memories by traveling to Australia, Hawaii, Iceland, England, the Caribbean, and places in the U.S. Tom is very much missed.

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Northfield Mount Hermon Robbianne Mackin robbianne.mackin@gmail.com • Travis Lea travislea@gmail.com • Kristin Steele kaste@conncoll.edu • Toryn Kimberley Stark torynk@yahoo.com

From Kristin: I have been on campus many times since reunion, most recently returning for Christmas Vespers. It’s always great to see so many of our wonderful teachers. Among those that I had a chance to visit were Carol and Nelson Lebo, and Sandy Messer. A big bonus was sitting up front next to Sheila Heffernon with my mother. Definitely one of the best Vespers services I’ve seen. If you’ve thought about attending, do it! • Matt Walker writes, “After living in Thailand for over a decade, I moved back to the States in 2013 with my wife and two daughters. We started in Los Angeles and now are in the Phoenix area.

Still working from home for a tech research/ consulting company. It’s great to be back in the U.S. — we’re all loving it and are planning a cross-country road trip this summer. Thuan Nguyen lives nearby, and we’ve hung out a couple of times. The NMH Connect app tells me lots of other alums live in the area. Living overseas made it all too easy to lose connec-

tions, and I’m looking forward to rekindling those.” • Mimy von Schreiner-Valenti had a wonderful time at the 25th: “I loved seeing everyone but especially loved seeing my MerrillKeep girls: Dawn Fitzgerald (she came with her lovely husband, Jeff, and their two darling kids), Anne Comstock (her first reunion!), Lila Javan (who is cancer-free and looks amazing!), Najoh Tita-Reid (who’s living in London with her two adorable kids and husband), and Michelle Matteo (who had a little girl almost two years ago to add to their two older boys).

And although she wasn’t able to make reunion, I had a wonderful visit afterward with Jen Gardner Reuss, who is living in a fabulous house in Andover with her amazing, adorable kids and still killing it in marketing!” On a sad note, Mimy’s mother, Mary Cookson von Schreiner ’57, passed away in April 2015 from complications following open heart surgery.

Mimy sends thanks to the many of you who have extended sympathies and reached out to her. • I had a blast at reunion, too, with Abby Lechthaler, Brendan Pack, and Kate Toland and her husband, J.J., whom we consider to be an honorary member of the class of ’90! • Personally, I am still selling luxury real estate in Naples, Fla., with my business partner of 14 years, Kate, and the newest addition to our team: my husband of 20 years, John. He retired last year from a very successful and lucrative career in banking to help us grow our business even more. We have two boys: Jack (12) and Will (9). Both are healthy and happy.

We are blessed. • I do so hope all of you who missed the 25th will make it to the 30th! It was really a great time, and a huge thanks to Kristin and Heagen and Danny and Toryn for all their hard work. • I hope everyone starts planning now for the 30th. Let’s not wait.

There should be many minireunions over the next few years! Send in pictures and write-ups about each gathering, so we can all join in on the fun.

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Northfield Mount Hermon Dairo Moreno demoreno@post.harvard.edu

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Northfield Mount Hermon Jennifer Sadula De Vore devorejr@msn.com • Ini Obot iniobot@yahoo.com • Cate Steele Hartzell cate.hartzell@gmail.com

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Northfield Mount Hermon Susannah Sprong Cahillane coloradocahillanes@mac.com

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Northfield Mount Hermon Carol Koldis Foote carol.foote@gmail.com • Dan Furlong furlongtime@gmail.com

Greetings, class of 1994! We hope 2016 is treating you well. • Jeremy Bohrer earned his

master’s in mathematics last summer and is, for the time being, teaching undergrad math classes at Iowa State University. • Christina Lamb Sidell moved back to Boston (renting in Needham, looking to buy somewhere) last fall and is working for the market research firm 451 Research. Her son, Quinn, has settled in nicely at his new school, and husband, Philip Sidell, continues to work for Cengage Learning as head of mobile application development. They are all splitting their time between Boston and Vermont. Christina just returned from another sailing adventure with Oceans of Hope, a global voyage to change perceptions of multiple sclerosis, in Barcelona, where she had an amazing time. She also works two blocks from Anne Miner Jarek but never sees her and thinks that is funny. Christina also encourages the class to please get your gifts in or she will be forced to come and visit you!

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Northfield Mount Hermon Please send news to: nmhnotes@nmhschool.org

From Erin Sprong Murrell: After a very fun and memorable 20th reunion, the class of ’95 is back in action! I want to send a big thanks to Ralph Bledsoe ’79, our class parent, for rallying the troops and making the time to come visit with us last June. I also want to thank everyone who sent in a submission.

Keep them coming! • Jim Dillon kicked off a truly memorable reunion weekend by celebrating his 39th birthday in Holyoke, Mass., with Erin Sprong Murrell, Cameron Murrell, and their two boys, Oliver (10) and Oscar (8). Cam is currently the lead fabricator at 42 Design Fab, where he spends his days listening to podcasts and inventing ways to make cool stuff. Erin was thrilled to represent the class of ’95 in the NMH alumni boat at the 51st Head of the Charles. • Sarah Sheridan is in New Jersey working as a speech/language pathologist in inpatient rehabilitation, helping adults after brain injuries and strokes. She has two daughters, Eleanor (5) and Winifred (3). • Keely Isaak Meehan is living and dancing in Seattle with her husband, Mike. Keely had a daughter, Ada Louise, in February 2015. “She fills my days with laughter and light,” says Keely. • Nick Vida is in the Los Angeles area building solar operations for Direct Energy Solar in California. He is the director of regional operations and spent his year opening three new offices. He is building new teams through 2016. “So any Hoggers can holler at your buddy here. No super-cute kid for me yet, but life is good,” Nick writes. • Mark Labouchere is living in Atlanta, Ga., with wife Andrea and two kids: Adeline (5) and Luke (2). Mark works at The Westminster Schools — a large independent day school — teaching history and economics. He also coaches lacrosse and is the technology integration specialist for the upper school. • Ben Schuman moved from Denver in 2013 and is now in Pensacola, Fla.,

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CLASS NOTES

Amy Marks ’01 and husband Adam Dornbusch

Tim Liponis ’08 and wife Catherine in Lenox, Mass.

Julia Schofield ’01 and Sean Fleming at their wedding in Vermont

Anastasia Olynyk ’00 and husband Anthony Pecora Jr. Hannah Wentworth Rider ’08 and husband Asher Sullivan

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CLASS NOTES

From left: Emily Thomas ’07, Carla Cevasco ’07, and Emily Jacke ’07 at Carla’s wedding

Katie Guffin ’05 and bridesmaids

Bride Aiko Kawakami Kato ’98 and groom Sohta Kato in Tokyo

Sara Shinkle ’05 with husband Joseph Patrick Haggerty IV

Jesse Mayhew ’01 and wife Kim at their wedding

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CLASS NOTES

From left: Erin Jaworski ’97, Abi Kornet ’98, Kristen Mitchell ’97, and Caitlin Thompson ’96. Erin Sprong Murrell ’95 in front, Head of the Charles, Boston

Class of ’95 reunion

working in management at NEXCOM, a Department of the Navy organization. Ben and his son, Judah, love to watch the Blue Angels practice at the little beach down the road, and they plan on returning home to Massachusetts in the coming year. • Manon Whittlesey lives in Maine with her partner, Justin, and their two boys, Merlin (6) and Peregrine (10 months). Manon is a printmaker and owner of Morphee Creations (morpheecreations.com). You can find her at local farmers’ markets, art events, and online. She is also an artist mentor for adults who have developmental disabilities, and she coaches in adaptive sports skiing. • Winthrop Walker is a project manager with a green remodeling company in the San Francisco Bay area. He would like to introduce you all to Hugo Madrid, born 10/27/15 • Judy Tong quit her job at The New York Times after 15 years, moved to the San Francisco Bay area, and is now working at The Guardian, a British media company expanding in the U.S., at their new West Coast office. “Looking forward to the great outdoors, good food, and getting to know these weird people and their weird ways! Why does no one jaywalk?” writes Judy.

• Also in the San Francisco Bay Area are Anne Elefterakis, working at the San Francisco Zoo, and Maya Lockwood, who works for a public relations firm that represents tech startups. • Elizabeth McConky Martin moved back to Massachusetts several years ago with her husband and two kids, Alexander and Emily.

She works for Concord public schools in the special education department. “Love being close to home again.” • Jocelyn Leary Lavallo checked in from New York City, where she lives with her husband, 5-year-old daughter, and two wiener dogs. She is a project finance lawyer and focuses primarily on financing solar projects. She and Laura Astor Mauldin got together last summer in Maine. “It’s so sweet to see our daughters becoming friends!

I talk regularly with Emily Ennis Alexander ’96, and I am following trends in the art world vicariously through her amazing Instagram posts. So sad I missed our reunion! Looking forward to 2020.” • Caroline Leonard is living

86 I NMH Magazine

in Rockport, Maine, with her three kids, Field (18), Addison (12), and Iris (4), and dog Penny. • Allison Schofield Steel is living in Old Chatham, N.Y., with her husband and two boys, ages 1 and 4. Allison creates hand-carved slate gravestones using only a mallet and chisel. • Amity Gann moved to Philadelphia from Seattle a year ago with her wife and cat. She is halfway into her third graduate program, where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in education with a focus on science.

This is after six years of teaching middle school math and science, and previously doing biological research. “I love it and think it combines all my past experiences really well, as if I had planned it that way,” says Amity.

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Northfield Mount Hermon Matt Gamon mattgammon@aol.com • Brian Pressman brainjpressman@gmail.com

From Brian Pressman: Hello to all ’98ers! I received a nice note from Aiko Kawakami Kato, who recently got married. She writes, “I got married to Sohta Kato on 6/28/15 in Tokyo.

So happy to see some old NMH faces, such as Hiroto Mihara ’99, Saeko Tanaka Hayashi ’99, and Soo Ran Kim ’99 at the wedding. Also met up with Yukiko Shishikura ’01 in London a week after the wedding.”

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Northfield Mount Hermon Jon Rini jonathanrini@hotmail.com • Heidi Geis heidi.m.geis@gmail.com

Northfield Mount Hermon Audrey Korte aekorte@cox.net • Melia Knowles-Coursin meliakc@gmail.com • Molly Loveday chefmollyloveday@gmail.com

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Ben Schuman ’95 and son Judah

From Rose: It was great to see everyone who made it to reunion last June. I am living in Easthampton, Mass., with my fiancé and three sons. Looking forward to continuing school and seeing what the New Year brings. • Anastasia Olynyk Pecora married Anthony Pecora Jr. on 5/30/15 at a church ceremony, with a reception in Clinton, N.J. The happy couple stopped by NMH for reunion weekend on their way home from a honeymoon in Maine, and have started a construction business where they currently reside, in North Plainfield, N.J. Anastasia is also still singing and is a cantor at Saint Joseph of North Plainfield Roman Catholic Church. • Carl Michaelson is coaching hockey in Dunkerque, France, for a second season. After graduating NMH, he went to Hobart College. After playing four seasons of hockey, he headed back to Hobart to start a coaching career in 2009–10. • From Genevieve Bergeret: I posted the following on Facebook: “If I were crazy enough to quit my job to travel around the U.S. and write

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Northfield Mount Hermon Laurel Havas laurelsuzanne@gmail.com • Julia Cohen jmacleodcohen@gmail.com

Northfield Mount Hermon Rose Jackman Lynch rosejackmanlynch@gmail.com

CLASS NOTES a book, where am I welcome and for how long?” I was amazed and overwhelmed by the responses — a vast number from NMH friends and acquaintances. I couldn’t possibly have visited them all in two months! I started my trip in June 2015 with our 15th reunion.

We danced on the field to Tron, there was a memorable bonfire by Shadow Lake, and we sang “Jerusalem” with abandon. It was great to see so many classmates and contemporaries — some for the weekend, some passing through including Alex Levy and wife Ariele Yaffee, Cutler Heiser, Daisun Cohn-Williams, Eddie Jacome, Elizabeth Fitzpatrick (who is starting her own company), Elliott Bernstein and his wife (who both recently moved back to the U.S. from China), Emerald Levick, Emily Funk Delldonna and her family, Erin Craw, Janez Hicks Ruzzo, Jessica Bordner, Jessica Scherm-Martin Corwin, Cricket BorntraegerWheeler Nisbet (all the way from London), Kayla Biegun, Margaret Kimball Curtis (who has since had a baby), Matt Siegel, Nate Head, Niko Sommaripa, Pat Murdough, Payson Ayer-Dufner, Rose Jackman Lynch and her family, Rosy Metcalfe, Samantha GreenAtchley, Anastasia Olynyk Pecora (on the way to her honeymoon), Spencer Murata and his family, Tony Sorci, Yezaira Salcedo Malave and her husband, Anne Sherman ’99, Desmon Romain ’01, Ellen Richardson Fretnzen ’01 and her husband, Emily Storm ’01, Jeanna Jensen-Segal ’99, Kelly Hoffman ’98, Nick Popoli ’01, and Nell Fay ’99 (who missed her reunion last year because she was having a baby). • I stayed for two extra days with Jessica Scherm-Martin Corwin in Sunderland and wrote the first pages of my book at the Bernardson Book Mill, where Lindsey Dawson often studied during college. Onward to D.C., a city I first experienced on a choir trip with SWE freshman year, where Tara Innes ’01 welcomed me into her home. I had lunch (and a writing break) with Christiana Gammon Richardson, while two of her three children played in the restaurant booth; I believe we learned more about each other during that lunch than while at NMH. Janna Blais Patterson put me up for a few days; I enjoyed playing make-believe with her daughters while Janna calmly managed her newborn son. In Philadelphia, I had drinks (and breakfast) with Benjamin Palubinsky, followed by a week with Ginny Neusius Caramana ’99 in Pittsburgh.

The end of July came and I made my way back to Europe, where I was invited to travel around Italy with Muriel Rebora, who had been my roommate at NMH on an exchange from Argentina. I eventually found myself back in the Netherlands, with a new job as the sales manager at ProctorExam, an Amsterdambased start-up that provides safe online exams.

I’ve got half a novel and enough invitations to let me backpack around the U.S. (and parts of China and the U.K.) for months! Perhaps another summer I’ll finish the book, but for now I am thankful for those who supported

A C L O S E R LO O K

Jessica Brown Bailey ’01 with her children, Atticus and Brett

me on my adventure and continue to give me encouragement to take risks and ask big questions. What a great group of classmates! Hope to see you all at the next reunion.

01

Northfield Mount Hermon Josh Grubman joshuagrubman@gmail.com • Christopher A Zissi christopher.zissi@gmail.com

From Chris: Happy New Year! It has been a great year for our class — filled with weddings, births, new jobs, and exciting moves. • Jesse Mayhew got married on 7/10/15 on a beautiful day at the Red Barn in Amherst, Mass. The bridal party and guest list was overflowing with NMHers — both faculty and staff. Included in the bridal party were: Luke Snelling, Alina Gross ’02, Ian Wilson ’98, and Ben Wyatt ’98. Jesse and his new wife, Kim Hutt Mayhew, are currently living in Easthampton, Mass. • Amy Marks married Adam Dornbusch on 7/11/15 at her parents’ home in Woodside, Calif. Sarah Lannon was maid of honor. • Julia Schofield married Sean Fleming on 8/22/15 at her home in Vermont.

There were several NMH alums in attendance, including Evie Drew Fahey ’02, Jordan Conn Evans ’03, Sarah Port Laberge, Catherine Murcek, Brynn Mitchell Alcraft, Christopher Zissi, and Caitlin Inglehart and Ben Galuza. • Speaking of Caitlin and Ben, later last summer they relocated from their home in Oakland, Calif., to London, England. Caitlin is pursuing a master’s at the London School of Economics, and Ben was able to transfer his job at Integral Group to the company’s London office. They are both enjoying their new city and finding opportunities to travel around Europe and Africa. They are interested in meeting up with other NMHers in London!

• Ria Jodrie Kalinowski and her husband, Jim, welcomed a baby girl! Ella Mei was born on 9/12/15. • Jessica Brown Bailey and Gregg Bailey announce the birth of their second son, Brett Allen, on 10/8/15. He joined the family with older brother, Atticus (3). Both Atticus and Brett love swimming, just like their mom.

• Jonathan Feeley and his wife moved to South Portland, Maine, last summer, had a baby, and bought a house. Good things come in threes!

O Canada!

David Graham ’99 “Now I can really start making a difference.” Those were the words of David Graham, soon after he was elected to the Canadian Parliament last fall.

Graham now represents the Laurentides region of Quebec, which is where he grew up. His civic vision will be a marriage of his past work in information technology and public service. He says that thousands of people within his impoverished jurisdiction have limited access to the Internet — with only inefficient satellite or dial-up service.

His mission is to improve technology in these communities and widen the scope of fast and reliable Internet service, now considered a requirement rather than a luxury in day-to-day life.

Before running for a Parliament seat, Graham had worked as an assistant to several other members of Parliament. He also worked more than eight years as a technology journalist. He was a co-founder of the Open and Free Technology Community, a three-term board member of the nonprofit Software in the Public Interest, and a volunteer with many charities.

Looking back at his education at Northfield Mount Hermon, Graham considers it “a defining part of my life,” and credits the school and its early investment in technology with introducing him to the possibilities of a future in computer technology.

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CLASS NOTES through May), Malaysia (June through July), and New York City (August and beyond).

Please contact her at: sh2285@gmail.com.

05

Northfield Mount Hermon Donnie Blackwell ptowndon@gmail.com • Arjun Pant arjunpant@gmail.com • JingPing Zhang jingping.ellen.zhang@gmail.com

Ria Jodrie Kalinowski ’01 with baby Ella Mei

• Desmond Romain’s son, Ayden James, was born on 11/21/15. • Year 2015 was a great one. Looking ahead, our 15-year reunion will be taking place this summer during the weekend of June 5. Mark your calendars and RSVP!

02

Northfield Mount Hermon Danielle Henry Beale dhbeale@gmail.com

A huge congratulations to Miranda Sajdak!

She was a winner of the Next MacGyver competition, which looked for TV ideas that featured female engineers or female protagonists who use their powers of engineering to solve problems. Miranda created a concept set in World War II called Riveting. • I’ve recently moved to West Palm Beach and was lucky enough to connect with Penny Morgan ’71, who helped us narrow our real estate search.

Thank you, Penny! • Keep me updated, ’02! I love hearing from you.

03

Northfield Mount Hermon Dee Guo deedith@gmail.com • Mira Sharma mira.sharma.mcgill@gmail.com

04

Northfield Mount Hermon Jamieson Baker jamieson.baker@gmail.com • Jane Lilly Warren janelillywarren@gmail.com • Daniela Frias daniela8_5@hotmail.com • Nina Scheinman nina.scheinman@gmail.com

From Nina: Shin Young Hwang, J.D. ’15 (Michigan) and B.A. ’10 (Columbia), has just graduated from the University of Michigan Law School and is currently bar prepping and barhopping in Ann Arbor, Mich. In spring 2016, Shin Young will be near Brussels, Belgium, as a visiting research scholar, and will spend the early summer in Kuala Lumpur as a Michigan Fellow at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Malaysia. She will come back to the States in August 2016 to work for a law firm in New York City. Shin Young would love to meet up with NMH alums in the area: Belgium/France (March

88 I NMH Magazine

From JingPing: Greetings from New York City, everyone! The year 2015 was a memorable one for us, as we celebrated our 10th year since NMH graduation. Wish I made it back to the reunion, which I heard was a great time!

• After a gap year working full time at Sony Music as a digital strategist, I went back to Harvard to finish my M.B.A. and got to work on some interesting projects, one of which was to advise the rock band Linkin Park on how to go beyond music and invest in technology.

I moved back to New York City, and it’s been awesome catching up with NMHers such as Putri Kafrawi, Lila Nazemian, Nicole Williams, Henry Wainhouse, Laurel Edson, and J. Peter Donald at various alumni events every once a while. • Putri Kafrawi had an adventurous 2015. She began the year with a pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, had a blast at our 10-year reunion, and celebrated Eid with family in Indonesia for the first time in 13 years. She also passed all four parts of her C.P.A., and rewarded herself with a beautiful and scenic trip with her travel buddies to Bhutan. • Cait Nordehn met up with Amihan Jones in Kathmandu, Nepal, in December. Amihan is working in Kathmandu for Save the Children as a Leland International Hunger Fellow. Cait traveled to Nepal from Washington, D.C., to meet with stakeholders for a USAID-funded gender, nutrition, and agriculture project that she supports. • Shannon Spaulding writes, “I recently graduated with my M.D. from Flinders University (Australia).” She started her internship at Alice Springs Hospital in January. “I’m looking forward to working as a doctor and not being a student after all this time! The only NMH alum I’ve seen lately is my brother, Duncan Spaulding ’09, who works in optics near Rochester, N.Y. He’s recently learned to ride a motorcycle, and lives in his bachelor pad with two cats.” • Sarah Shinkle Haggerty says, “On 5/2/15 I married Joseph Patrick Haggerty IV. I also started working as a human resource client partner at George Washington University in September.

It was a pretty good year!” • A bit belated, but Katie Guffin married Abram Hecht in November 2014, and her close friends Rachel Disbrow and Jenn Donais were both bridesmaids and in attendance. • Hannah Marshall is assistant editor at a weekly newspaper group in Vermont. In 2015 she appeared twice onstage with the Burlington-based Lyric Theatre Company in the ensemble of White Christmas and as Elle Woods in Legally Blonde: The Musi-

cal. She would also like to thank all involved for a great 10-year NMH reunion weekend. • Remember to join the “NMH Class of 2005” Facebook group to better stay in touch. Look forward to seeing more of you this year!

06

Northfield Mount Hermon Ramon Guadalupe rmg57@cornell.edu • Collin Lever collinlever@gmail.com Zach Rogers is living in Philadelphia, working

for the Philadelphia Housing Authority as a compliance unit manager. He’s also co-owner and CFO for a start-up coffee-roasting and distribution business that seeks to provide job opportunities to returning citizens (excons). • Khrystin Bryant Brown says, “Thank you, NMH, for showing me how to use my voice, not only in the spotlight but also in the background to help others move forward.” • Matt Shephard-Lupo writes, “I’m living in New York City with Alex Boll ’07 and working in tech/BD for a corporate travel management company. I’m running two travel organizations as well: Young Travel Professionals and Travel+SocialGood.

Been traveling around a bunch of this year in Asia and Central America for biz and pleasure.” • Kate Hayes is living in New York City and working at Echoing Green, where she manages a leadership development program for young corporate professionals. She travels frequently, does a lot of yoga, and still sees Amanda Kusek all the time. • Amanda Kusek celebrated three years at Highgate Hotels, where she spends her days branding independent hotels and managing a hectic office. She finally fulfilled her dream of going to Paris, and tacked on Stockholm for good measure. Amanda spends all her free time freelance writing and editing, and still lives with her little Jack Russell terrier. • Eli Lovely says, “After spending a year in Turkey on a Fulbright, I pursued an M.A. from Georgetown. I’m currently a communications director for the American-Turkish Council, and helping to plan NMH alumni events in Washington, D.C.” • Jon Gustafson is pursuing his M.A. in teaching, with an emphasis on K–6 elementary education, at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minn. He’s also a literacy tutor for primary school students in Minnesota Reading Corps. “I’ve taken a step back from my D.J. alter ego, ‘guffstar,’ after playing at various Minneapolis venues and accumulating 1.5 million SoundCloud plays on various R&B remixes and edits,” says Jon. • Tom Howley is completing a federal clerkship in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, after which he plans on returning to private practice litigation. He also serves as president of public policy at the Philippine American Chamber of Commerce. • Emily G. Wood is a student of Light University, and is on her way to becoming a biblical counselor

CLASS NOTES with a specialization in crisis, trauma, and grief. She also works with prisoners and victims of abuse through two Christian ministries. Emily’s book, Six Feet Above, is being published on Kindle this year. • Daisy Gonzalez writes, “I am living in New York City, working in business development, and getting my M.B.A. at Long Island University.”

Daisy is now a certified kickboxing instructor and is doing lots of yoga in her free time. • Paige Landry had a great year traveling throughout the U.S. and spent some quality time with several NMHers along the way.

She lives in Boston, working as a physician assistant in dermatology. • Ryn Flynn writes, “I’ve now been married to Adam Flynn (yes, he took my name) for three years. In June 2014, I graduated from University of Washington with my M.F.A. in lighting design, and am now working as a freelance designer in Seattle, Wash.” • “I have spent the past four years working in college admissions at Bowdoin College and Brown University,” says Taylor McCormack, “and recently made the switch to recruiting for a hedge fund in New York. It’s been fun re-connecting with many NMHers in the city!” • Ian Boll lives in Colorado, spending his winters as a snowboarder and filmmaker, traveling all over the U.S. and Canada to produce a snowboard movie each year. The summers involve some work for Ian, but it’s mostly road trips. • Jo Grubman writes, “I’m living in Boston and have been working at the New England Organ Bank as a recovery coordinator. I recover tissue and organs from deceased donors to be implanted in living recipients. It’s very interesting and rewarding work! Other than that, I spend my time going on adventures with my rescue pup and exploring the Boston area in my truck.” • Kimberly Royer works in Salt Lake City as an internal auditor with KPMG, and is taking full advantage of the proximity to the mountains for hiking and skiing! • Hickory Lawson is a freelance videographer. He has spent the last several years, after graduating from Emerson College, collecting adventures from the Caribbean, New York City, and Greece, among other places. • Chantal Palacci Sagnes moved to France in 2012 to pursue her M.B.A. and married Nicolas Sagnes in May 2015. She currently lives in New York and is director of growth for Co:Collective, a strategy and innovation consultancy. • Alice Hannah Ryu is a financial advisor with UBS Financial Services in Connecticut. She enjoys yoga, traveling, and being a foodie. • Since graduating from NMH, Conor Shillen got a degree in film from Syracuse University and is now living in Brooklyn as a writer/ director. • David Engel moved in with his fiancée, Elizabeth Edwards, in Brooklyn Heights. He’s a senior associate in market research consulting at Sachs Insights. In February, David took a weeklong ski trip on the Powder Highway with fellow alum Chris Swoszowski. • Devin Hill is in the media

and entertainment industry, with a goal of working in brand partnerships. He still resides in Harlem, N.Y.C. • Monica Panwar says, “I am working toward my master’s in biomedical sciences at Marshall University (West Virginia), and plan to graduate in May 2017. Over the past year, I have been keeping in touch with fellow Wallace women Rachel Disbrow ’05 and Caroline “Kelsey” Dickey.

Any NMHers in the West Virginia or Tampa area (my hometown), please do reach out.” • Rosa von Gleichen began her Ph.D. in social policy at the University of Oxford in England, where she currently lives. • Laura Carbonneau writes, “I started graduate school in the fall at Green Mountain College, studying sustainable food systems. And I started working as an assistant director in NMH’s advancement office in October.”

07

Northfield Mount Hermon Dith Pamp dith.pamp@gmail.com

From Dith Pamp: Hello from Oregon! I am working to create more NMH events on the West Coast. If you live out west and would like to help plan an event, please let me know! • Harrison Abry says, “I’m teaching IB environmental science at an international school in Costa Rica. Before that, I was teaching outdoor environmental education at the Ocean Institute in Dana Point, Calif. I taught marine biology/ecology on a research boat. I worked there for two years before going back to school to obtain my master’s in education at University of California-Santa Barbara. I graduated in June 2015 and then moved down to Costa Rica to teach. I spent a few years working/traveling after college as well. Went to Bali, Sumatra, Java, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Malaysia, Singapore, Tokyo, Hawaii, and a few other places.” • Carla Cevasco and Alex Oberg were married in a city hall wedding in August 2014, and celebrated their marriage with a big party at Carla’s parents’ farm in Bernardston, Mass., on 8/15/15.

From left: Karissa Scano ’08 and Emily Arena ’08 celebrate Karissa’s graduation from Boston Police Academy.

08

Northfield Mount Hermon

Emily Jacke ejacke@middlebury.edu • Sarah-Anne Tanner tanner.sarahanne@gmail.com

It’s Emily Jacke this time, writing to you fireside in December 2015 in Vermont. By the time you read this, I will be living in San Francisco! My job at the Vermont Community Foundation is finally coming to an end, and I’m packing up my bags to see what happens in places that aren’t New England. Thanks to all who sent in your news — it’s awesome to hear what you’re up to! • Hannah Wentworth Rider got married to her childhood friend, Asher Sullivan, last August at City Hall in Manhattan; and this fall, Tim Liponis and his wife, Catherine, tied the knot in Lenox, Mass.!

Congratulations all around! • Ben Weyers got a promotion to a new sales/client relations position at Geezeo in July 2015, and moved to a new apartment in Wethersfield, Conn., around the same time. The work lets him travel all over the country throughout the year, which he loves. He was planning to run a 10-mile road race on Martha’s Vineyard in February, and is still busy playing Ultimate Frisbee year-round. • Abby Zelenka is working her dream job at International Studies Abroad and living in Austin, Texas. She says, “I ran into Caitlin Sullivan ’07 randomly at a goingaway party for my boss. It was fun to see a familiar NMH face. So far, I adore Austin and am making it my mission to attempt to try every food truck!” • Christina McCausland is in New York City, working as a cultural consultant for TV networks. “I work with networks to help them make their shows more ‘culturally relevant.’ If it sounds vague, that’s because it is,” says Christina. “Basically, I just figure out how to make TV shows better.”

Sounds like she’s getting to be really creative.

She’s looking forward to catching up with NMH people at the New York City Vespers concert. • Britt Lilienthal just entered her third year working at Planned Parenthood in Burlington, Vt., which she loves. Outside of work, she is helping a local German goldsmith brand her business, and is pursuing her love of graphic design and photography. She is also enjoying being an aunt! • Katie Evans

Daisy Letendre ’09 (left) and Sarah Heist ’08 at the NMH “Welcome to the City” event in Washington, D.C.

spring 2016 I 89

CLASS NOTES

A CLOSER LOOK

Suspending Suspension Margaret Sturtevant ’12 When Margaret Sturtevant was a firstyear student at Connecticut College in fall 2012, she volunteered at a local elementary school, and students told her stories about classmates who had gotten suspended for minor infractions rather than extremely disruptive behavior.

Sturtevant was puzzled. Wouldn’t taking a student away from education cause more harm than good?

Over the next three years, in several of her classes, Sturtevant researched and advocated for a solution to this problem.

The result was a paper titled “Suspending Suspension: An Inclusive Disciplinary Framework to Support Student Learning,” which was named Policy of the Year by The Roosevelt Institute, a national organization that engages college students in public policy issues. “I feel uncomfortable getting attention for my policy,” says Sturtevant.

“This is about students — especially those who are black, Latino, LGBTQ, or have disabilities — being excluded from academic success through suspension and expulsion.”

Sturtevant also worked with community members, board of education members, and school administrators to develop a proposal for the New London public schools to revise their disciplinary practices to include the practice of “restorative justice” as a way to address school suspensions and to be more supportive of student learning.

90 I NMH Magazine

writes, “I am enjoying life as a medical student in Burlington, Vt., and have fun getting together regularly with Sarah Shephard-Lupo.

I will be graduating from the University of Vermont College of Medicine in May. Excited for ‘match day’ in March, when I’ll find out where I’ll be completing my four years of ob/ gyn residency training!” • Jake Sweet is living in Greenfield, Mass., with Shannon Ketcham ’09 and is working for a Jewish calligrapher in Colrain. He’s still running tabletop role-playing games, using the Internet to connect with players in different parts of the country, and thinking about returning to school sometime in the future. • Karissa Scano graduated from the police academy in Boston in June 2015 and is now working for the force! Emily Arena came to her graduation. Karissa and Emily spent a weekend in Washington, D.C., visiting Sarah Heist. Sarah is teaching fourth-grade math and working on her master’s in elementary math education and technology integration at Johns Hopkins. Meanwhile, Emily is teaching fifth grade in western Massachusetts, and Karissa has a dog named Crossley! • Sarah Anne Tanner once again hosted a raucous gathering of NMH ’08ers in the Boston area (and a few from beyond) for the eighth year running! “We had a second Thanksgiving (turkey roasted beautifully by Nikki Rossetti and carved handily by Spencer Hattendorf) and sang ‘Jerusalem’ before eating. Most of us still remember all the words, and I have to say we also sounded really good! Also in attendance: Eli Stiefel, Juliana Beecher, Brooke Evans, Jim Montague, Julia Mix Barrington, David Rome, Max Mazzone, Becky Gillig, Rachel Koh, Sebastian Friedrich Winter, and various non-NMH friends and significant others. It was a lively gathering, as usual!” • Spencer Hattendorf’s band, The Rooks, is taking the funk scene by storm. Brooke Evans has started an M.S. in food policy and applied nutrition at Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition. Julia Mix Barrington passed her qualifying exam for her Ph.D. in English at Boston University and is working on her prospectus. David Rome passed the bar exam in October! Max Mazzone is still working in real estate. Juliana Beecher is living in Athens, Ohio, baking and managing at a small artisan bread company and plans to head west again this summer. Rachel Koh is heading to Copenhagen for a few months to do wind energy research. And Sarah Anne Tanner is still living in Somerville and signed up for some language classes — she’s daydreaming about moving abroad again! • I am in relatively regular touch with Rebecca Young, who is living and working in Seattle, and Lilly Richardson, who has her feet on the ground in Portland, Ore. I interrupted Renee Forcier’s studies in veterinary medicine to consult with her as I began working again on the fantasy novel we started when we were in Merrill-Keep. (I took a stab at the National Novel Writing Month — NaNoWriMo — challenge in November.)

And in August, I went to Carla Cevasco’s (’07) wedding celebration, where I also saw Emily Thomas ’07 for the first time in many years! • I love hearing from all of you. Stay in touch!

09

Northfield Mount Hermon

Daisy Letendre daisycletendre@gmail.com • Eshalla Merriam eshallamerriam@gmail.com • Pamela Chen pamchen13@gmail.com • Fayette Phillips fayettephillips@gmail.com • Anna Stevens annagstevens@gmail.com • Galen Anderson gjande01@syr.edu

From Daisy Letendre: The class of 2009 has taken the state of North Carolina by storm.

Leopoldo Toralballa, who will likely be deployed in the next year or so, is stationed an hour south of Fort Bragg, N.C. Leo and Johannes Wesselhoeft, who have remained close friends since graduating from NMH, see each other quite often, as Johannes is completing his transatlantic master’s program in political science at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Johannes will spend the upcoming year in the U.K. at University of Bath as part of this program. Allison Hartman is also enrolled at UNC-Chapel Hill, where she is halfway through completing her Ph.D. in physics. • Sawyer Connelly graduated from Colorado College in May 2015, and after spending the summer at an Atlantic salmon lodge in Norway, he moved to Missoula, Mont., to join Backcountry Hunters and Anglers as a Wyss Fellow. Pascale Guay is also living in Montana and working with Youth with a Mission — a training and sending organization for missionaries. • Elisabeth Jeff cote is living in New Hampshire and working toward her master’s in nursing. Elisabeth, Melanie Bete, Hannah Perlman, and Daisy Letendre all traveled together to Nashville, Tenn., to celebrate the Fourth of July, where they ran into Mike Marra. • Sebas Shrady recently moved to Chile, where he will be doing some sustainability work. • Caitlin Curtis is living in Australia now on a working holiday visa and plans to be in Australia and Southeast Asia for the foreseeable future.

Leopoldo Toralballa ’09 (left) and Johannes Wesselhoeft ’09 in Chapel Hill, N.C.

CLASS NOTES

Faculty Joan Pack hpack@nmhschool.org

Allison Hartman ’09 and Johannes Wesselhoeft ’09

10

Northfield Mount Hermon Eli Spector elishsp@gmail.com • Jed Kundl kundlj@gmail.com Tassos Bareiss has been awarded a Fulbright U.S. Student Program grant to Laos for an English teaching assistantship. Recipients of Fulbright grants are selected on the basis of academic and professional achievement as well as demonstrated leadership potential. The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program that is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the U.S. and the people of other countries. Congratulations on your achievement, Tassos!

11

Northfield Mount Hermon Olivia Van Cott vancott.olivia@gmail.com • Nisha Malik nishamalik92@gmail.com • Olivia Wolpe oliviawolpe@gmail.com Olivia Wolpe here. Well, well, well. I once

again find myself scrambling for some last-minute updates. Needless to say, the class of 2011 is cleanly split between some super-grads, who are out in the productive, adult-like world, and the other half, who are still figuring out their path and spending a lot of time doing things that are mostly just legal in Colorado right now. • Chelsea Yang is back in Asia, working at a bank in Hong Kong and trying to navigate the frenetic haze (both proverbial and physical) of a Chinese metropolis.

• Oliver Dormady is living in Alameda, Calif., as a programmer, working to make Internetradio relevant again, while Savannah Yates is working as a registered nurse at Fox Hospital in New York. Cammie Chan is working in Singapore and still meeting up with some of her favorite NMH people, including Kate Kim, Merry Lo, and Hanson Cheng. Milo Korman always seems weirdly confused about how class notes work and is doing the same thing he was last time (i.e., Frisbee and physics). • Our class group on Facebook is an absolute mess and can be used as easy fodder should anyone head into politics. Through a little stalking, it

From left: Daisy Letendre ’09, Melanie Bete ’09, Elisabeth Jeffcote ’09, and Hannah Perlman ’09 visit the Johnny Cash Museum in Nashville, Tennessee.

would appear that Cathy Blewer is currently traveling through Paris, Jordan Anderson is the most excited for our reunion, and Jordan Kreyling is still doing things that appear sepiatoned and mysterious. Junius Ross-Martin’s dreams have been crushed, and Julie McCausland is studying linguistics without ever having written a proper grammatical sentence on the Inter-web. • Sierra Dickey is living in Brattleboro, Vt., and has a captivating and funny newsletter, “Stay Fluid,” that she publishes on a weekly basis. She recently visited me out here in Berkeley, Calif., where we resurrected Crack Bed and almost got kidnapped by some German cyclists. • As for me, I am working as a nanny and recently ended an internship with the International Rescue Committee in Oakland. Fellow class secretary Olivia VanCott recently graduated and took a trip across the country to celebrate. She is currently living in New Hampshire with her boyfriend, close to campus! • No class notes would be complete without an update from our most elusive grad, Ashley Grevelink, who texted me yesterday saying, and I quote, “I’m gonna need a lawyer in the future, are you going to law school? I will pay you.” • And on that, I take my leave…

We received word from her nephew that Katherine “Kitty” Green Holmes died 10/9/15. She had taught French at Northfield in the mid– late 1960s. For the past eight years, she resided at Havenwood Heritage Heights in Concord, N.H. • Gar Allen (NMH faculty, 1958–62) retired in 2014 as professor of biology at Washington University in St. Louis, where he had been on the faculty since 1967. He was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2005 and served as president of the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology from 2006–08. He reports, “I stay in close touch with former NMH colleagues Jeff and Barbara Baker and Lou and Lee Turner.

The Bakers still spend their time between Ivy (Charlottesville), Va., and Vieques, Puerto Rico, where Barbara has served for many years on the board of the Bioluminescent Bay Conservation Project. I’ve been able to visit them several times in the past year in Ivy, as Jeff and I have a contract for another book with Springer Publishers in Germany. The book is a spinoff, with numerous updates, from a previous work published by John Wiley in 2002.

I also see Lou and Lee Turner in Falmouth, Mass., at various points in the year when I’m in Woods Hole, working at the Marine Biological Laboratory. It’s always been fun to keep up the long-standing NMH relationships, and we still laugh about some of the enjoyable times we all had (including our frequent trips to the Bernardston Inn) as beginning faculty members in the late 1950s and 1960s.”

12

Northfield Mount Hermon

Parker Peltzer ppeltzer@gmx.com • Wilson Josephson josephsonw@carleton.edu

From Parker Peltzer: I am writing this in December, but by the time it gets to you it will be late spring. By then, most of us will have graduated college; the next class notes column will be full of the excitement of moves and new jobs. One more musing: We left NMH four years ago. Next year it will be five. I look forward to catching up with many of you at our first class reunion.

13

Northfield Mount Hermon Please send news to: nmhnotes@nmhschool.org

14

Northfield Mount Hermon Please send news to: nmhnotes@nmhschool.org

KEEP IN TOUCH Address updates addressupdates@nmhschool.org Send news for the magazine nmhnotes@nmhschool.org Join NMH’s online community community.nmhschool.org

spring 2016 I 91

CLASS NOTES

Vital Statistics BI R THS

1986

Adam Raymond to John Garbiel and wife Sheelagh October 2015

1993

2001

Jesse Mayhew to Kim Hutt July 10, 2015 Amy Marks to Adam Dornbusch July 11, 2015

Stav Yonah Emilia to Anna Schuleit Haber and Yotam Haber September 9, 2015

Julia Schofield to Sean Fleming August 22, 2015

1995

Sarah Shinkle to Joseph Patrick Haggerty IV May 2, 2015

Ada Louise to Keely Isaak Meehan and husband Mike February 2015 Hugo Madrid to Winthrop Walker October 27, 2015

2001 Ella Mei to Ria Jordie Kalinowski and husband Jim September 12, 2015 Brett Allen to Jessica Brown Bailey and Gregg Bailey October 8, 2015 Ayden James to Desmond Romain November 21, 2015 M A RRIAGES

1972

Bernie Niemeier to Lisa Gray September 12, 2015

1982

Suzy Long to Chad Prosser December 1, 2015

1986

Ina Anderson to Dana Gibson July 28, 2015

1989

Julia Clark to John Gray November 8, 2015

1998

Aiko Kawakami to Sohta Kato June 28, 2015

2000

Anastasia Olynyk to Anthony Pecora Jr. May 30, 2015

92 I NMH Magazine

2005

Katie Guffin to Abram Hecht November 2014

2006

Chantal Palacci to Nicolas Sagnes May 2015

2007

Carla Cevasco to Alex Oberg August 2014

2008

Hannah Wentworth Rider to Asher Sullivan August 2015 Tim Liponis to Catherine Shi October 2015 D E AT H S

1927

Margaret Barber Eames May 11, 2014

1929

William Hamilton December 27, 2015 Survived by Robert Hamilton ’45

1935

Ann West Hoskins August 24, 2015 Survived by Barbara West Elliott ’42

1936

Virginia Hamlin Cribben October 24, 2015

1937

Philip Bagley August 29, 2015 Survived by Ruth Bagley Simokaitis ’76, Karen Forslund Falb ’59 Lee Bentley December 7, 2014

Carolyn Rikert Harris January 27, 2013 Survived by David Babson ’41, Ruth E. Greenwood ’42, Paul Rikert ’49, Richard Rikert ’52, David Rikert ’63, Rachel Rikert Burbank ’65, Hannah Rikert Morvan ’66, Jonathan Corson-Rikert ’69, Rebecca Bittle JohnsDanes ’76, Darrell Rikert ’81, Tryfan Evans ’88 Margaret Bissett Holton August 8, 2015

Catherine Munro Evans January 27, 2014

Ann Allison Howard July 6, 2013 Survived by L. Allison Wunder ’66

Doris Elliott Hefler August 23, 2015

Janet Belknap Jacobsen September 28, 2015

William Pelley June 7, 2012

Bruno Larsen December 2015

Duncan Cushing June 16, 2005

1938

Roberta Haden McCreary August 22, 2015

Doris Cain Landman September 16, 2015

John Pierce June 10, 2015

Marian Treybal Pinkerton December 27, 2012

Elizabeth Riley Sites July 6, 2013

Janice Hawthorne Probyn August 13, 2015 Jane Bowers Shaw May 29, 2011 Mary Reed Sisson July 12, 2015

1939

1941

Rena Bracewell Brautigam May 5, 2014 Priscilla Bullock Bubar November 21, 2015 Richard Burton July 31, 2015

January 4, 2016 Wayne Roy November 13, 2015 Survived by Ralph Roy ’46 Richard Stevens September 1, 2015 Elizabeth Newcomb Wetter March 14, 2012

1943

Katharine Birge May 5, 2015 Survived by Grace Phillips Neff ’37, Dorothy Birge Keller ’51 Margaret Heidner George August 29, 2015 Survived by Elisabeth Heidner Britland ’48, Elizabeth Fenniman Tobey ’53 Marjorie Burton Thresher February 23, 2014

1944

Phyllis Carroll Clark September 15, 2015 Survived by Jacqueline Clark Struthers ’69 Robert Nickerson October 20, 2015 Survived by David Nickerson ’72 Harry Shepard Rowland July 30, 2015 Dorcas Eldred Tabor September 16, 2015

1945

William F. Bahnson September 15, 2015 Survived by Maya Gillingham ’84

Clinton Robert Carlisle November 14, 2015

Dorothy McGown Yoder December 6, 2014

Elizabeth Terhune Porter December 2, 2015

1942

Elizabeth Goff Carroll October 25, 2015

Edwin Humphrey August 25, 2015

1933

Sarah Duff Steptoe August 6, 2015

Stanley Chisholm October 26, 2015

Constance Turner Nold October 3, 2014

Hazel Fellows Tucker January 27, 2016 Survived by Kimberly Tucker Landon ’70

Helen King Bemis December 23, 2006

1940

Alberta Marriott Geisler September 19, 2015 Survived by Hope Geisler Rulison ’71

Edwin H. Sample August 20, 2015

Joyce Sehrt Gordon November 24, 2015 Clover Holly Wolf March 1, 2015 Hildreth Wheeler Finn January 23, 2015

Walter Hastings May 9, 2015

George Gilbert April 7, 2015 Survived by John J. Gager ’60, George Gager ’66, Arthur Gager ’67

Henry Walp August 30, 2015

Charles Hall November 11, 2015

1934

Leslie Call Greene February 21, 2012 Samuel Holbrook March 17, 2014 June Ulrich King September 21, 2015 Elizabeth Bolton Mead

Helen Hinman Bardwell August 1, 2015

Howard Spellman October 28, 2015

1946

Frederick Boyle September 26, 2015 Jane Everett Haslun Survived by Muriel Haslun Heiland ’44, William Haslun ’46,

CLASS NOTES Janet Golder DeBoer ’48, Kenneth Golder ’52, Bruce Haslun ’55, Robert Haslun ’70, Erik Haslun ’82 Margaret King Nelson February 11, 2015 Marilyn Bliss Scott October 2, 2015 Dixie Haffenden Stewart June 2, 2010

1947

Margaret Ellis Bain 2015 (date unknown) Patricia Connor Chase April 2, 2015 David Gray June 4, 2015 Survived by George M. Hindmarsh ’40, Alexander T. Hindmarsh ’46, Richard Gray ’54 Nancy Bixler Isaacs December 4, 2015 Survived by Anne Seelye Stolz ’53, Katherine S. Naughton ’66, George Naughton ’69 Christopher Parker December 22, 2015 Survived by Hattie Miller Friedman ’90, Henry Miller ’94 Fred Scheidler July 13, 2015 Survived by Janice Swanson Hess ’55 Norma Horsford Whittinghill January 2, 2016

1948

Ethan Colton December 9, 2015 Edward Dow September 29, 2015 Henry Hamlin March 11, 2015 Survived by John Hamlin ’44 Ernest Leavitt September 9, 2015

1949

Harold Berlind August 6, 2015 Survived by Leona White Berlind ’50, Anne Berlind Turner ’50 Margaret Romer Cernak October 1, 2015 Survived by Cheryl Cernak Folstad ’72 Elmer Count

August 8, 2011 William Gill April 25, 2015 Robert MacIntyre September 13, 2006 John Semple November 8, 2015 John Shultis December 14, 2015 Survived by Timothy Shultis ’78

1950

Frank Browning August 2015 Survived by William Browning ’49 Ralph Timothy Craig December 8, 2015 Survived by Stephen Craig ’82 Janet Fulscher Kistler February 8, 2014 John Newton March 3, 2013 Owen Arthur Stacey August 7, 2015

1951

William Calkin July 10, 2015 George Howell November 22, 2015 Survived by Fred Howell ’55, Stephen Gripe ’71, David Gripe ’75

1952

John Cummings February 8, 2014 Bruce Johnson December 10, 2015 Ann Timbrell Mine October 6, 2015 Survived by Elizabeth Ellis ’89, Alexander Mine ’90

1953

Carol Wosak Hill September 12, 2015 Survived by Gordon R. Wosak ’58

Clara Conklin ’07

1955

Michael Taff December 17, 1994

1956

Dickinson Upson August 27, 2015 Survived by W. Terrell Upson ’56, Edward Upson ’64

Jacqueline Van Cott March 26, 2014 Survived by George Van Cott ’53 Norman Kennan March 26, 2014 Survived by Erlend Keenan ’54 Jay Tomb November 24, 2014

1958

Betsey Cummings August 11, 2015 Survived by Timothy M. McTighe ’88 Jane Smith August 21, 2015

1959

Erwin Elithorpe December 20, 2015 Timothy Farmer December 26, 2013

1983

Natalie Cole December 31, 2015 Survived by Charlotte Hawkins Sullivan ’38, Timolin Cole Augustus ’79, Casey Cole Hooker ’79, Ross Jordan ’03, Windsor Jordan ’03 Steven Tower January 17, 2016 Survived by Susan Tower Hollis ’57, Heather Blanchard Tower ’73, Christopher Tower ’05, Sara Tower ’07

1969

Peter Kropp November 12, 2015 Survived by Sheryl Powers Kropp ’69

Arnold Pietola August 28, 2013 Susan Koch Reilly January 4, 2007

1962

Susan Saunders Chandler October 21, 2015

1964

Susan White September 4, 2015

1966

Deborah Dudley November 9, 2010

Lee Poole September 2015 Survived by Stanley Poole ’51

Lois Knight August 15, 2015 Survived by Alfred Knight ’60, Laurel Knight Cobb ’61, Nathan Cobb ’88, Lisa Cobb ’91

Audrey Zabriskie Robb December 22, 2015

Julian Nichols August 31, 2015

1954

Peter Weeks November 10, 2015

William Chater August 30, 2015 Survived by Deborah Chater Richman ’57, Michael Chater ’65, George Conklin ’05,

1968

1961

Frederick Odell February 1, 2012

Lisa Javitch August 1, 2015 Jean Pendleton Madden January 12, 2015

1960

Edward Gawelko February 28, 2015

1977

William Van Blarcom September 3, 2004

Thomas Bartow August 13, 2007

William Stillman August 30, 2015

Mimi Watstein December 22, 2015 Survived by Sarah Watstein ’71

Thomas McKinlay August 21, 2010 Survived by David McKinlay ’66

1970

J. Thomas McCarty October 23, 2015

1971

Sean O’Brien August 21, 2014

1988

Sean Sheehan January 17, 2016 Survived by Sarah Sheehan Mosier ’92

1989

Thomas George January 5, 2016

1995

Steven Schwartz June 9, 2015

2003

Samuel Longnecker August 2015 F O R ME R FA C ULTY & S TA F F Katherine Green Holmes October 9, 2015 Dorothy Livingstone July 25, 2015 Survived by Robert Livingstone ’66, Samuel B. Livingstone ’99, Alexandra Livingstone ’04

Thomas Scott August 15, 2015 Survived by David W. Scott ’73

Susan McCanna April 15, 2011 Survived by Benjamin McCanna ’92

1972

Christine McCollester November 28, 2015 Survived by Darshan Khalsa ’66, Kerry Smith ’70

Carl Shapiro November 2015

1974

Nicholas Cassavetes September 8, 2012

William Pachalis November 14, 2015

Griswold Draz November 5, 2015

John Reed March 12, 2014 Survived by Susan Reed Johnson ’69

Robert Scott November 25, 2015 Survived by Dorothy Rugg Fitch ’51, Robert Fitch ’81, Thomas Fitch ’83, Laura Fitch Mattson ’85

Ruth Robeson October 5, 2015 Emma Spielman October 6, 2015

1967

spring 2016 I 93

CLASS NOTES

In Memoriam Alice M. Kells Alice M. Kells joined the Northfield science department in 1970, just a year before the merger that created Northfield Mount Hermon.

Best known as a biology teacher, she taught at NMH until her retirement in 1991. She died peacefully at home in Greenfield, Massachusetts, on Jan. 30, 2016, at the age of 89.

“What I remember most about Alice was her joy in teaching her subject and working with kids, and just how nice and kind she was to everybody,” says science teacher and registrar Jay Ward, who was welcomed to the science department by Kells in 1976.

Kells was born in New York City on Aug. 24, 1926, to Charles and Mary Anna (Klages) Kells, and grew up with her two brothers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She graduated from the local Taylor Allderdice High School in 1943, and went on to earn her undergraduate degree in biology from Pittsburgh’s Chatham College in 1947. She took a job as a laboratory technician at a New York City hospital for two years, and then spent the next six at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons Institute of Cancer Research, working in experimental chemotherapy. She continued working in cancer research at the University of California, Berkeley, after moving to San Francisco in 1955, and was involved in amino acid studies and clinical chemistry related to experimental surgery.

In 1964, Kells took a different path and enrolled in graduate school at San Francisco State to acquire a secondary school teaching credential. She began her teaching career in 1965 as a substitute teacher in biology and applied science at Polytechnic High School in San Francisco.

She taught biology, chemistry, and earth science for two years at Sarah Dix Hamlin School before accepting a position at Northfield School for Girls in 1970.

94 I NMH Magazine

B Y N O EL L E A NS ON

Kells was a member of the Northfield faculty only a year, when the merger of the two schools transformed her world. Undaunted, Kells went about her duties in the science department and in Merrill-Keep dormitory, where she lived for several years, with total professionalism.

“Alice was very organized,” Ward says. “Whether she was preparing for her labs or hosting a meeting with her advisees, she did it efficiently and with great attention to detail.” Hughes Pack, who joined the science department in 1978, says, “I knew early on that if I could be even half as diligent, caring, and invested in my students and teaching as she was, I would be a super teacher.”

Kells taught biology throughout her years at NMH, but also branched out into environmental science, human physiology, and other related subjects. She taught at the summer school, participated in continuing education programs, and, in her early years at NMH, traveled to Europe and East Africa, among other destinations. In 1981, her parents moved to Northfield, and she took care of them for several years until they both passed away. In addition to sabbaticals in 1980 and 1990, Kells spent the 1987–88 academic year at Portsmouth Grammar School in England as part of the British American Educational Foundation exchange program. She formally retired from NMH in 1991, but stayed to teach part time for several years. She also gave regularly to the school, and was a member of the Lamplighter Society.

In retirement, Kells did more traveling and became a regular and enthusiastic volunteer at Baystate Franklin Medical Center and St. James Episcopal Church, both in Greenfield, Massachusetts. According to the Greenfield Recorder, she continued to volunteer through the last week of her life — “a true testament to her generous spirit.”

Kells is survived by three nieces and numerous grandnieces and grandnephews. A memorial service was held at St. James on Feb. 6, 2016. Memorial donations may be made to the Annie S. Barclay Scholarship Fund at Baystate Franklin Medical Center, 164 High St., Greenfield, Massachusetts 01301.

CLASS NOTES

B Y PETER W EIS ’7 8 , P ’ 1 3

Robert Weis Robert Pomeroy Weis, 87, of Dublin, New Hampshire, died on Feb. 8, 2016, at Monadnock Community Hospital in Peterborough. He was born on June 12, 1928, in Taunton, Massachusetts, to Rev. Frederick Lewis Weis and Elizabeth Williams Stone. He grew up in Lancaster, Massachusetts, and attended Andover, Williams College, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, graduating with degrees in mathematics and civil engineering. He served in the U.S. Army outside Washington, D.C., where he met his first wife, Rosamond, with whom he had three children before her death in 1960. He is survived by his second wife, Mary; his children Sarah ’71, Jonathan, Peter ’78, and Richard ’87; eight grandchildren; and a sister, Virginia Bourne.

When Weis — my father — arrived at Mount Hermon in fall 1962, there were few hints that suggested he might devote the rest of his professional career to teaching mathematics to high school students.

He had come from the civil engineering department at the Alden Hydraulics Laboratory in Worcester, Massachusetts, and had just turned down a job offer from the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, New Hampshire. Needing a fresh start with his new wife and three small children, he answered the call for a lastminute opening in the Mount Hermon math department.

From his first moments in the classroom, Weis — “Bob” to his colleagues — demonstrated that teaching and learning are as much about patience as anything else. If he encountered a student losing his or her temper, or their confidence, he was known to advise, “Life is too short to get upset.”

His reputation for supporting students was almost legendary. Jerry Batty ’63 recalled regular visits to his senior-year math teacher’s home for extra help before tests. “He saw to it that I passed,” Batty says. Another mathematics department stalwart, Dick Peller, adds, “During a sabbatical, Bob decided that his time would best be spent offering extra help to students during evening study hours.”

While Weis clearly enjoyed teaching AP Calculus and Elementary Functions (the department’s pons asinorum, which separated the high-

achievers from the rest), it was the struggling students about whom Bob cared the most.

“I know how lucky I was to be taught by him,” writes Molly Talbot ’93, who had had negative math experiences before encountering Weis.

“I was brought to tears almost daily in class. When I was moved into [Mr. Weis’s] class, he was so welcoming and reassuring and always made me feel like I was doing just what I should be. He took my broken confidence and slowly pieced it back together. He never once seemed annoyed or frustrated with my myriad questions and he was my biggest fan when I did well.”

Weis was a beloved colleague as well. When Chris Edler, chair of the history and social science department, first arrived at NMH, Weis went out of his way to show her around. “When I ate lunch in the overwhelming space of West (Alumni) Hall, he took me to his table, introducing me to other faculty members,” she says. “The amazing thing was that he was often where you needed him to be without you ever having asked him to be there.”

Despite Weis’s strengths, he was not a typical prep-school teacher.

Yet as he emerged from the shadow of his first wife’s death, he took on coaching intramural soccer and recreational skiing, and supervising the woodworking shop, where he likely saved as many students as he did with math help. The “craft shop,” as it was called, was open to all comers. As he helped students with their projects, he also worked on his own, including the wooden body of a 1926 Ford Model T and an endless stream of antique farm machinery.

When Weis retired with Mary to Cricket Hill Farm in Dublin, a few days before his 65th birthday in 1993, he remarked that he hadn’t really had to go to work since 1962. Some of his retirement was consumed with restoring antique vehicles and farm machinery and tending to civic duties in the town of Dublin. Much of the rest he spent reading aloud to Mary, something he did throughout their 54-year marriage.

At 5 p.m. on Feb. 8, he noted the time. I said it was lucky he didn’t have to teach one of those five o’clock classes and he chuckled. He asked that the shade be drawn and the lights turned down. His words trailed off, and he settled comfortably on his back. His brown eyes turned to agates. He died shortly before 6 p.m.

spring 2016 I 95

PARTING WORDS

Two-Way Street

A retired teacher considers life without teenagers.

by JAMES C. BLOCK

I taught English, coached, advised, talked with, and lived with teenagers at Northfield Mount Hermon for 43 years. Now retired, I find my life away from those students in many ways less interesting, less rich than it was when I left NMH in 2014. Tell most adults you enjoy daily life with teenagers, and they’ll find you, at best, odd. Search the Internet for “life without teenagers,” and see how many hits you get. But those of the adult persuasion who doubt my sanity don’t know, really, what they are missing.

Most boarding-school promotional material tries to persuade teenagers and their families of the great benefits students will experience on campus. Indeed, those advantages are considerable.

But the publicity leaves out (rightly so) the benefits that boarding-school students bestow upon their teachers. In my last spring at NMH, at my dorm’s farewell gathering for the seniors, I said as much. I told them that the facultystudent relationship runs in both directions: that, of course, teachers do much for students, but that students benefit their teachers’ lives in ways the students may not realize or understand.

Some of my most gratifying experiences came in taking students off campus to museums and to Pioneer Valley music and dance performances.

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At intermissions and on the drives back home, I listened to students’ comments, and I learned from them. One evening at the Springfield Symphony, some NMH Orchestra members, my wife, and I heard a well-known string trio perform Beethoven’s Triple Concerto.

Though I am an avid Beethoven fan, I was uninspired by the performance, not lifted out of my seat as I often am by Beethoven. I wasn’t sure why. When the piece was over, the NMH cellist with us leaned toward me and expressed his own disappointment at what he’d heard.

He found the performance flat and stiff.

He used words I had not the skill to articulate. Because of that one remark, I have become a more thoughtful listener.

Academically, the distinct payoff of teaching NMH students became clear to me when I twice returned from spending a year as an exchange teacher at competitive private schools in England and Turkey. Both times, when I came back, I saw that my NMH students wanted me to teach them something. Though the students overseas were quite capable, their need to prepare for the looming, all-important national exams likely kept their sights on something other than what I was trying to do. It put an unfamiliar distance between them and me. I missed the sense of responsibility that NMH students engendered in me.

I’m not the only boarding-school teacher to believe students enrich their teachers’ lives. One day at a crosscountry invitational meet, a coach from

another school and I stood together at a point on the course where we could see our runners. He told me of a recent visit by his college-professor brother, who had a busy life and an impressive record of research, advising doctoral candidates, flying to conferences, and so forth. I thought I heard wistfulness in his voice — regret that he hadn’t had a similar life of engaging university work (which is also the life I wanted until I decided I liked teenagers). So I looked my buddy in the eye and asked him, “Who gets more reward when he goes to work every day?” Smiling, he knew my point exactly and agreed.

Like the fish in the river who asked another fish what water is, I may not fully have understood what a rich life I was living, how good the water was where I was swimming. One semester at NMH, on walks up to lunch with an experienced teacher new to the school, I exchanged greetings often with students we encountered on the way. He later remarked upon them. I hadn’t been paying attention to the frequency of greetings; I was saying hello to people I knew. I now understand that that teacher wasn’t yet fully tuned into just how friendly NMH students are.

Another teacher, this one a veteran known to me for her wit, remarked to the faculty who assembled at her retirement gathering, “I will miss most of you.” That’s sort of how I feel now about NMH students. I don’t miss all of them, just the ones I knew. They served me well. [NMH]

PHOTO: GLENN MINSHALL

GIVING BACK

FRIENDLY GUY PRES ’34 AND HELEN BLAKE At 101, S. Prestley Blake ’34 knows how far hard work can take a person.

He and his brother, Curtis, co-founded the Friendly Ice Cream Corp. in 1935, borrowing $547 from their parents to purchase an ice-cream freezer. Over four decades, the brothers built the business from a single storefront selling 5-cent cones in Springfield, Massachusetts, to more than 500 restaurants across the eastern U.S. and the Midwest.

So it’s no surprise that he cites Northfield Mount Hermon’s work program as one of the reasons he supports the school with such generosity and loyalty. Pres worked as a “house boy” in Overtoun and a waiter in the school’s kitchen, and believes that working outside the classroom is a crucial part of a great education.

“Kids need to understand that they’ll have duties in life,” he says. NMH, adds his wife, Helen, “makes students more well-rounded and fit for the real world.”

Other reasons that Pres and Helen have placed themselves among NMH’s top donors: Pres’s father and eight other family members are alumni; he finds the campus, especially the chapel, beautiful; and because he recalls with great fondness his English teacher Tommy Donovan. “He was very strict,” Pres says. “If a paper was due on Monday and you handed it in on Tuesday, he’d rip it up in front of you.”

Pres and Helen helped build the Blake Student Center and a faculty home named Blake House; they also established a faculty fellowship in their names and a student scholarship fund. In February, they helped NMH launch a new philanthropic initiative called the Founders’ Challenge (see p. 42). Yet Pres is quick to point out his ordinary beginnings, which is why he supports NMH, he says. “I want to help other people who are looking for tools to do well in life.”

PHOTO: THOMAS WINTER

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Sunset at the farmâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sugar house.

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