NMH’s long, proud radio tradition is still going strong after almost 60 years 54 Green Leaders Students on the forefront of environmental change
MISSION
Northfield Mount Hermon educates the head, heart, and hands of our students. We engage their intellect, compassion, and talents, empowering them to act with humanity and purpose.
ALUMNI PROFILES
38 Mariah Draper Calagione ’89
42 Toni Cook Bush ’74
44 Carrie Pelzel ’70 and Bruce McClintock ’60
GETS LEED CERTIFIED
WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU! Drop us a line at nmhmagazine@ nmhschool.org and let us know what you think.
Editor
Maureen Turner
Design
Aldeia, www.aldeia.design
Staff Writer
Max Hunt
Contributors
Karennahawi Barnes ’24
Matthew Cavanaugh
Stephanie Craig
Tony Downer
Meg Eisenhauer
Maddie Fabian
Natalie Georges
Elise Gibson
Amy Haefele
Greg Harrell
Shelley Lawrence
Delphi Lyra ‘24
Ivan O ’25
Sarah Olson ’26
Lisa Robinson
Seven Pair Studios
Aurora Song ’26
Bill Sweet
Lindsey Topham
Harry van Baaren
Todd Verlander
Peter Weis ’78
Head of School
Brian Hargrove
Chief Advancement Officer
Trish Jackson
NMH Magazine
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NMH Magazine (USPS074-860) is printed by Lane Press, Burlington, VT 05402
Cover photo by Max Hunt
LETTER FROM HEAD OF SCHOOL BRIAN HARGROVE
This Is NMH
Finding hope and optimism in this special place
GREETINGS from Northfield Mount Hermon. Today, I seek to bring you a breath of hope and optimism from our school.
As I travel across the country and around the world, alumni and parents often want to know how our students navigate the political divisions and conflicts witnessed in the United States and abroad. As adults, I find that it is often hard for us not to project our own anxieties and genuine concerns onto our children. Of course, it is true that they often are experiencing similar challenges. Yet — and here’s the good news — I think it is important to note that our students are also buoyed by all that NMH offers, including an environment shaped by loving adults, a world-class education, and the remarkable natural beauty of our home on the Connecticut River.
Since our founding, when D.L. Moody accepted our first students, NMH has sought to be a place that welcomes all, meets students where they are in their journeys, and gives them the opportunity to be, well, kids. Our commitment to center students in all we do shapes nearly every decision we make at NMH. At our best, we are a community that seeks to lift up different ideas and perspectives, values diverse backgrounds, and navigates differences with respect, where members support one another. In short, we are a community that strives to hold all members with care, respect, and love. This is NMH. Alumni and students alike often refer to the “NMH bubble.” To be sure, this is a special place that offers a unique environment to live, learn, and grow. There is no question
PHOTO: JO CHATTMAN
that the clarity of our mission, the work we expect of our students in and out of the classroom, and the physical setting of our campus create a place that offers students the room, the safety, and the privilege to focus their energies on what, in fact, is very good in themselves and our broader world. This is also NMH.
For 145 years, we have nurtured students, challenged them with a rigorous education, and launched them in service to communities around the world. We have done this in the midst of macro unrest and turmoil. This was true when we were founded and during the Depression, world wars, the civil unrest of the 1960s, and, most recently, during the COVID pandemic. While we cannot possibly know what the future holds, I offer the comfort of what we do know: NMH makes a difference in the lives of our students.
Together, I ask us to reflect on all that NMH offers and how our mission to empower students to act with humanity and purpose stands as such a powerful, hopeful force for good. Our values of inclusivity, learning for life, and service are markers on our DNA. We prepare students to be citizens and leaders with the skills and resolve to learn with passion, lead with intention, and act with humanity. This, too, is NMH.
As you read this issue and dive into just a bit of what is happening every day here at Northfield Mount Hermon, I hope you will take inspiration from the many wonderful ways we educate every student’s head, heart, and hands. [NMH]
What do you think of this issue of NMH Magazine?
Drop us a note at: nmhmagazine@nmhschool.org and let us know.
A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR
Each issue of NMH Magazine is several months in the making, from the development of a story list to the reporting and writing to the design and production process. Finally, the issue heads to the presses, then to the mailing house — and we eagerly wait to hear what you, our readers, think of it. In this issue, we’re excited to reintroduce a letters-tothe-editor page to share some of that feedback with you.
Sometimes you’re not happy about something in the magazine. (We hear you, readers who wondered why the last issue didn’t note the recent retirement of longtime, beloved teacher Sandy Messer, and we hope you’ll be glad to see a lovely tribute to Sandy in our coverage of Commencement 2024 on page 28.)
Sometimes you have kind words to say about the magazine, which we are humbled and grateful to receive.
But our favorite letters are the ones in which you share your unique NMH experiences and connect those experiences with what you see and hear and read about life at the school today. Since its founding, our school has been consistent in its commitment to a core set of values; in NMH Magazine, we strive to show how those values have carried from generation to generation of students.
— Maureen Turner
FROM OUR READERS
My two years at Mount Hermon reinforced my parents’ values and inspired a very interesting life for me. I attended five colleges and have a BA from Syracuse University and an MS from California State University, Dominguez Hills. I also enlisted for six years in the U.S. Marine Corps, serving as a first lieutenant company commander in South Vietnam in 1969. Now I am the “last man standing” in my 93-year-old business.
“Head, heart, and hand” is so wonderful. NMH and your magazine give me faith and hope that the USA will survive the current strange happenings.
WILLIAM
D. STULL ’61
I just finished going through the spring issue and I am mightily impressed!
The cover is gorgeous! It drew me into the magazine. The placement of the carillon story (“The Magic of the Bells”) at the end made me notice the all-around excellence of the layout and keyed my interest in reading other stories as well. The paper quality, photography, variety, and interest of the stories all built to a kind of crescendo, reminiscent of the sounds heard on walks with my classmates up the hill from Revell-Hilton toward morning chapel. Congratulations on a beautiful magazine!
LORRAINE GELPEY COOK ’58
Many thanks for the latest issue of NMH Magazine, which as always I have read with close interest and in which I found much to inspire and admire, as well as evoking fond memories of my sojourn On the Hill nearly 60 years ago. I was only at Mount Hermon for two semesters, as a (British) EnglishSpeaking Union exchange scholar, but it left an indelible impression on me, as it was not only the first time I had been away from home for a long period but also my first experience of spending a significant length of time abroad. Boarding school life presented many new challenges, as well as several new opportunities, for which I remain permanently in the school’s debt.
A random selection of indelible memories would include:
• The distant vista of Mount Monadnock, after which a particular type of landform is named about which I had learned at school in England without knowing where the name came from
• The names and dates of all the U.S. presidents and all the state capitals, which we were required to memorise
in our history class (once learned, the knowledge that Grover Cleveland was both the 22nd and the 24th president is never forgotten)
• Much that I might never otherwise have known about El Salvador, my roommate’s home country
• The very special care and attention given to overseas students by Mrs. Meany, wife of Northfield’s headmaster, particularly for introducing me to Debbie Krum, my graduation ball partner who became a lifelong friend
• The unique teaching style of Tommy Donovan (English literature)
• Just how physically exhausting it is to have compulsory swimming every afternoon
• An introduction to both Chinese and Japanese history and literature, which were offered on the curriculum
• The extracurricular learning opportunities available during Saturday Night in the Parking Lot, even with two feet of snow on the ground, which were nowhere mentioned in the school’s prospectus
So thank you again, Mount Hermon, for these and many other enduring experiences, and very best wishes to you all in the great work you are doing.
JOHN CARTLEDGE ’67
CAMPUS NEWS
Back to School
There’s nothing more exciting than the start of the new school year. This fall, NMH welcomed 630 students, from 30 states and 60 countries, to campus for the 2024-25 academic year. With the support of student leaders, new and returning students settled in, caught up with old friends and made new ones, and got ready for a busy year of living and learning together.
FACULTY PROFILE
Nhu Gonzalez Hoang
NHU GONZALEZ HOANG first learned about NMH from her childhood friend Minh Doan ’09. The one-time kindergarten classmates reconnected when they both ended up at college in the Boston area. “Listening to her talking about her lifelong friendship with her roommate in Lower South Crossley and about how her high school art teacher (shout-out to Bill Roberts) inspired her to apply to art school, I remember being a little jealous, wishing I had similar opportunities,” Gonzalez Hoang says. When she visited campus for the first time in 2015, she says, “I saw everything that I had heard from Minh about the school — the commitment to educating and caring for the whole person. The opportunity to engage with young people not just academically but also in the dorm and on the playing field was incredibly appealing to me.”
Almost a decade later, Gonzalez Hoang has played many roles at NMH: She’s taught robotics, math, and chemistry; has mentored a UPenn teaching fellow in chemistry; and currently chairs the Science Department. She’s written and adapted introductory chemistry textbooks. She’s also served as an advisor, dorm faculty, and dorm head; coached the junior varsity swim team; advised the Vietnamese Student Association; and led efforts in faculty governance reform. Her husband, Grant Gonzalez, is assistant head of school for campus life and a history and social science teacher.
What first drew you to science? My love for science was born when my dad plopped my 6-year-old self into one of the rainwater barrels outside of our house in Vietnam so that I could feel the supportiveness of water that Archimedes once felt thousands of years before me. That day, I laughed and played with my father and sister while I learned. When my physics teacher wrote “Archimedes’ principle of buoyancy” on the board six years later, it was like meeting an old friend. My dad, an electrical engineer from Vietnam Maritime University, helped me overcome my fear of water and taught me how to swim with physics. In doing so, he instilled in me a sense of wonder and appreciation about the inner workings of the world around me. This love grew in the cramped 8th-grade chemistry lab of 48 students as I watched in excitement as my teacher transformed potassium permanganate, this beautiful purple
substance, into oxygen via redox reaction, and, to top it off, lit it on fire (you can’t do this demonstration in a high school lab anymore). Watching that match blazing up, I couldn’t help but marvel at the magic — the science — of it all. Our class wasn’t supposed to cover oxidation-reduction reactions for another few months. My teacher was having fun — he was playing — and 48 13-year-olds were enthralled. It was this intertwined relationship between learning and playing, of understanding something through my hands, my heart, and my head that sustained me through the long nights when I couldn’t figure out why my reactions weren’t working or coming into the lab at 10 pm to check on my dialysis setup. And it was that love and play that brought me to education and informed my commitment to bring the same sense of wonder to my students in a field that many have often found opaque, obscure, or inaccessible.
PHOTO: LINDSEY TOPHAM
What’s the most rewarding part of your job? When my students trust me enough to invite me to be part of their journeys. Adolescence can be an uncertain and overwhelming time. Navigating this — discovering their identity and place in the world — can be a deeply personal and sometimes vulnerable process. Being invited to witness and support these developments for me is a privilege, something I don’t take lightly. So whether it is “Why do we need common denominators to add fractions?” or “How do I get faster in my 100-yard breaststroke?” or “What am I going to do if I didn’t get into my dream school?” I make sure to give all questions that my students ask the attention and care that they deserve, because they do.
What’s your favorite NMH tradition? Mountain Day. For the past nine years, I have been a hike leader for the underclass hike in Northfield. I enjoy meandering in the woods and getting to know my fellow hikers. This most recent Mountain Day is the first time I felt that the students were pushing the pace with me, and I was a little winded at the end. It must be that they are getting stronger and faster.
Favorite Alumni Hall food?
The salad bar. I get one (the same one) every day and the students working at the salad bar have my order memorized.
Spreading Joy
Operation Happy Birthday is still going strong after 20 years
BY SARAH OLSON ’26
Operation Happy Birthday is an NMH club that wraps gifts and hosts birthday parties for families in shelters. The club’s slogan is “Every child deserves to feel the magical feelings of blowing candles and opening gifts.”
When Sumire Sumi ’24, saw the slogan in her 9th-grade year, she immediately wanted to join. “The club is a special way to connect with people we live side by side with,” said Sumi, who served as the club’s leader for two years. On every visit to the shelters, the members build a connection with the families and children. Sumi said that the kids became less shy at the birthday parties and, over time, became smiley and cheerful.
Science teacher Tabatha Collins, the club advisor, said her favorite part about Operation Happy Birthday is “how much NMH students enjoy throwing a party for people that they don’t even know. They get as much joy out of it as the children, and they love birthday games like musical chairs, hide-and-seek, or a good Nerf war.”
Operation Happy Birthday was founded by Will Giordano-Perez ’04 (inset right), who grew up homeless for most of his life. He attended Pioneer Valley Regional School in Northfield and was the class president, but he lived in a shelter the whole time, and nobody knew. His mother could never afford to have a birthday party for any of his siblings or him.
“Your birthday represents your presence on this planet and celebrating that life,” Giordano-Perez said. “To not have it fully celebrated and to already be someone who’s living in homelessness, it was really easy to feel invisible in the world.”
Giordano-Perez reached out to local shelters and started throwing big birthday parties for all the kids. He also made sure to reach out to the parents of the kids and let them know that he knew what they were going through. “It was really important to me that folks didn’t feel like I was invading their privacy and didn’t belong there,” he said. “If anything, I wanted folks to know that this is where I come from.”
When Giordano-Perez came to NMH, he realized the stark contrast between his life and the lives of other kids. He now had his own bedroom for the first time, and he didn’t have to worry about where he would get food. He felt a lot of guilt over the amount of privilege he was surrounded by. In his junior year, he received $500 as an outreach prize for volunteering. He used the money to start a program to give kids who grew up like him a birthday celebration.
After graduating from NMH, Giordano-Perez took the program with him to Brown University, where it became a large student group that also added tutoring and mentoring for young kids. He started giving talks during his sophomore year at Brown and even won $50,000 in an entrepreneurship competition in which he had to present a business plan. He used the money to build the club even more. “The club was never meant to be anything more than a simple reminder to folks who would otherwise be feeling alone in the world and forgotten. A reminder that they matter,” he said. “It’s important to keep that message alive.”
Giordano-Perez is now a doctor who specializes in family medicine and is the chief medical officer for a large health system in Washington, D.C. He oversees immigrant health, infectious diseases, and schoolbased health and is also an assistant professor at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. Giordano-Perez has also done medical work in Haiti. “It’s such a cool feeling, being able to empower a group
of clinicians to provide access to care that hasn’t previously been provided,” he said. “Just knowing that it’s going to affect a lot of lives in a positive way.”
Giordano-Perez was always a motivated student who got straight A’s. While growing up homeless, school was always the one constant in his life. “While everything else was unstable, math was always math, Spanish was always Spanish, and spelling was always spelling,” he said. At NMH, he realized, for the first time, that his focus on schoolwork could mean something significant for his future. “There were just so many people who were there to love and support me,” he said. “NMH put that confidence in me to apply to all these schools that I didn’t even know existed.” Giordano-Perez was the first person in his family to graduate high school.
NMH’s Operation Happy Birthday club is still going strong. The club meetings involve planning, buying presents, and then visiting the shelters for a birthday party. The goal is to do one birthday party every month, but members also try to create birthday boxes for kids for when it’s not possible to go to the shelter.
Leo Piamthipmanus ’25 is the current club leader. “All the connections you make along the way are very meaningful, and the experiences you gain as well, like seeing smiles on people’s faces,” he said. His favorite part of the club, he said, is “doing good for the community. … Sharing a little bit of happiness with others means a lot to people.”
Sarah Olson is an NMH junior from Ketchum, Idaho, whose workjob is with the Office of Marketing and Communications.
CONNECTING STUDENTS WITH ALUMNI
Journalist Vossoughian visits as second Alumni Fellow
National TV journalist Yasmin Vossoughian ’96 returned to campus for two days last spring to connect with students, as part of NMH’s Alumni Fellows Initiative.
The interdisciplinary program, supported by Ruth Stevens ’68 and launched in the 2023-24 academic year, brings two distinguished alums to campus each year to engage with students and faculty through talks, classroom visits, and other opportunities for meaningful connection. Vossoughian was the second alumni fellow, following a visit by Kimmie Weeks ’01, a Liberian-born, internationally recognized activist and humanitarian.
As part of her visit, Vossoughian, a reporter for MSNBC, joined New York Times reporter Rukmini Callimachi for a conversation about citizenship and leadership — last year’s learning theme — at an all-school meeting in Memorial Chapel. In the conversation, both journalists spoke about their commitment to giving voice to people who might otherwise go unheard.
Asked by student moderator Jessica Zhang ’25 about what legacy she’d like to leave, Vossoughian replied, “I want people to see me as someone who has held people accountable. I want to lead with the truth about who I am, and I want to speak truth to power. If you’re sitting down with me, I am going to hold you accountable, no matter what side of the aisle you sit on.”
During her visit Vossoughian also met with classes, recorded a student podcast, toured campus, and shared lunch with students interested in journalism and dinner with the Muslim Students Association and the Interfaith Leaders.
Leilani Aires ’24, who spoke with Vossoughian in her U.S. history class, appreciated her emphasis on the importance of understanding context. “She had one response that was really amazing: It was when she was talking about how journalists can only do so much — she can only cover as much as she can cover — and so that’s when it becomes the viewer’s responsibility to take it upon themselves to do some extra work,” Aires said.
“Opening a history book, getting context, talking to other people who are informed and watching news are all part of how somebody can be proactive about learning about what’s happening in the world,” Aires continued. “That was really meaningful for me.”
— Shelley Lawrence
PHOTOS: MATTHEW CAVANAUGH
Mahe-Lee Caron ’25
A leader on the field, Caron has found community and explored new interests at NMH
BY MADDIE FABIAN
MAHE-LEE CARON knew nothing about Northfield Mount Hermon until an exchange with coaches at a soccer showcase in Montreal led her to visit the campus. She quickly fell in love with the community.
“It was like home,” Caron says. “People were treating me like they knew me for 10 years, but it was the first time I saw them. … I was like, ‘This is the place. This is where I’m going.’”
Coming to NMH as a junior from Montreal, Canada, Caron was nervous to be so far from home.
“My first language is French, so I had to switch over to English and I was really scared at first,” she says.
But she quickly gained confidence as she found support from her teachers, fellow international students who were experiencing similar situations, and her community of peers in general.
One place in particular where Caron has built community and found a sense of belonging is on the soccer team.
“There’s this culture of having an after-practice team dinner where you get to know everyone,” Caron says. “There’s this trust that we have with each other, even on the field. … We always do our best to push each other, and that’s the thing that I really like about the team.”
Now a senior, Caron is the soccer team’s starting goalkeeper and team captain. Last season, she received an honorable mention in the all-NEPSAC (New England Preparatory School Council) team.
“She is one of the most complete keepers that I’ve ever had the opportunity to work with,” says Amy Haefele, a varsity girls’ soccer coach and recruiting coordinator. “She embodies all the qualities you seek in your ideal keeper, ideal teammate, and ideal leader.
“She is able to lead by example, speak up and be vocal when needed, and elevate the intensity and level of competition without being ruthless,” Haefele adds. “You can see the mutual respect and sense of aspiration from teammates. They don’t view her skill as something intimidating or out of reach – instead, they see it as something to strive for.”
Caron has played soccer since elementary school. She says that soccer has always been “like a therapy” for her.
“I love my sport,” she says. “I could eat, sleep, and play soccer every day, and it will always make my day.”
At NMH, Caron says, she has formed her closest friendships with girls on the soccer team, and the sport has shaped her as a person. “I got this autonomy that I didn’t have before coming here.”
Haefele says that Caron is “an ideal example of what it means to be an NMH student. Not only is she an incredible soccer player, she is an amazing friend, teammate, leader, singer, student, and advocate for seeing the positive in tough situations.”
As a leader, Caron takes time out of her own training to stand with other
players, teach them what she knows about the game, and foster a collaborative environment. “She approaches every opportunity with an incredible openness and a genuine eagerness to learn, always seeking to improve and grow, no matter the challenge,” Haefele says.
Caron’s excitement about learning new things extends well beyond soccer and into Caron’s extracurriculars, social life, and academics.
Since coming to NMH, Caron has taken up basketball. (“I’m not very good, but I love trying new things,” she says.) She is also manager of the boys’ lacrosse team.
She has also gotten involved in Stage Band – a group of students who learn and perform popular music, classic and modern rock, and R&B songs – as a singer, and she even gave a capella a go last year.
“Before coming here I didn’t have the time because I was playing soccer at school, but here I have the time to do new things that interest me,” Caron says, adding that she plans to stay involved in music during off seasons at college.
Beyond athletics and music, Caron’s schedule is filled to the brim with other activities, including her three-hourper-week “workjob” in the campus mail center and her involvement in the French Association, Circle of Sisters, and the Black Student Union.
In her academics, Caron has embraced learning new skills and
gaining new knowledge. In the fall, she took digital photography, graphic design, bioethics, and global women’s literature.
“My experience at NMH was really about experimenting [with] new stuff, and I really fell in love with the new stuff that I have experienced,” Caron says.
Even though she still has the rest of senior year ahead of her, Caron is already committed to the NCAA Division I soccer team at Western Illinois University, where she plans to study political science on a pre-law track.
“My dream since I was little was to play soccer in college,” Caron says.
“I am grateful for the time I had working with and getting to know Mahe,” says Haefele. “I’m excited to see what the future holds for her and I genuinely believe that she will achieve everything she sets out to do.”
Maddie Fabian is a writer and editor in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Hidden Treasure
An exhibit at the Morgan Library & Museum explores the life and times of Belle da Costa
BY MAX HUNT
The life, work, and legacy of Belle da Costa Greene, Northfield Class of 1899, are the subject of an exhibition at New York’s Morgan Library & Museum, part of the institution’s 100th anniversary celebration.
“Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy” which runs through May 4, 2025, explores Greene’s impact as the librarian and director of the Morgan Library, as well as the liminal space she occupied as a “passing” woman of color in an era marked by sexism and racism.
Greene’s connection to NMH dates to 1896, when the Northfield Seminary received an application for the enrollment of 16-year-old Belle Marion Greener from New York City. The daughter of Richard Greener, the first African American graduate of Harvard and a prominent civil rights activist, and Genevieve Ida Fleet, a teacher and scion of a wellknown African American family in Washington, D.C., Belle was working as a clerk at Morningside Heights Teachers College.
Despite her pedigree, Greener faced a tenuous situation at the time of her application to Northfield: Her parents had separated after a tumultuous relationship, and her mother was left in poverty to care for Greene and her siblings. Due to the intense segregation of the era, Greener’s mother adopted a fictional Dutch ancestry, passing herself and her children off as white in public.
Greene, Class of 1899
In a letter of recommendation, Belle’s employer described her as “bright, intelligent, industrious and faithful in her officework,” adding, “[S]he is capable of being led in almost any direction by those she loves, but never to be driven into anything.”
Under “preferred area of study,” Greener indicated that she “would like to fit for librarian.”
Greener’s application was accepted, and she was admitted to Northfield in 1896. While she would leave before graduating, the education the aspiring librarian received here would lay the foundation for her later success.
Known to history by her chosen name, Belle da Costa Greene, she would go on to become one of the most influential librarians of her day, overseeing the personal library of J.P. Morgan and serving as his broker in collections purchases. Greene’s notable acquisitions for the library include numerous illuminated Bibles and texts, handwritten edits and drafts of books by Honoré de Balzac and Charles Dickens, and works of art by Albrecht Dürer and Thomas Gainsborough, among many others.
When the Morgan collection was made public in 1924, Greene became the Pierpont Morgan Library’s first director. Renowned in the academic world for her efforts to make rare texts accessible to the public, Greene was hailed as “one of the best-known librarians in the country” by the New York Times upon her death in 1950.
Despite her renown within the academic world, Greene remained an elusive figure, largely by her own design. A profile published in the 1932 Northfield Alumnae Chronicle remarked on the “difficulties” of interviewing Greene: “She shrinks from personal publicity, and while she doubtless has as wide a reputation among scholars of the world as any American woman she is almost an unknown personality outside this esoteric group. She doesn’t want to talk about herself for publication, though she is willing and eager to display the gems in her care.”
Her reluctance to divulge personal information was more a survival tactic than a display of modesty: Greene spent years obfuscating her past, creating a fictitious origin story that stretched from Virginia to Portugal, even lying about her age in an effort to obscure her racial identity. Before her death, Greene destroyed her personal papers and diaries, further shrouding her past.
“One of the most challenging parts of telling Greene’s story relates to her identity as a white-passing Black woman,” said Erica Ciallela, exhibition project curator at the Morgan. “Passing is a personal experience that cannot be generalized and is frequently a controversial topic because of its entanglements with class and colorism. We have aimed to highlight a variety of lived and imagined experiences of racial passing in the early 20th century to reveal the social conditions in which passing became an option for Belle Greene and her family.”
Greene’s secrecy extended to her time at Northfield, according to an essay by historian Daria Rose Foner included in the exhibit. While secondhand accounts from friends and patrons attest to her fond feelings for the school – Greene was instrumental in persuading her younger sister Ethel to enroll at Northfield — she never returned to the campus, and no
references to Northfield exist in her surviving personal correspondence.
Greene’s time at Northfield had slipped into obscurity until recently. It wasn’t until the Morgan Library & Museum reached out to NMH archivist Peter Weis ’78 that he realized her connection to the school, he said. Researchers from the museum working on the exhibition happened upon a letter written to D.L. Moody’s wife, Emma Moody, on Greene’s behalf during her application process.
“We had a record of this, but we had forgotten that we ever knew it,” said Weis of Greene’s time at Northfield. “I got this query from the researcher — who was just pulling on a thread — asking about this letter, and I was shocked. We found her file and some other important papers, loaned them to the library, and they are part of the exhibition.”
The information from the NMH archives helped paint a fuller picture of Greene’s early life, said Philip
Palmer, the Robert H. Taylor Curator and department head of literary and historical manuscripts at the Morgan. “The student file on Greene offers much new information about her education at Northfield, though it says more about her around the time she applied to the school than her actual experience as a student,” he said. “We also found the earliest letter written by Greene in her student files, which is on view in the exhibition.”
Greene’s legacy is one of defying expectations, said Ciallela. “She found ways to maneuver in a world that consistently tried to place limits on her due to her race and gender. We hope that her story inspires visitors to reach for their goals despite what others say they can and cannot do.”
Belle da Costa Greene and her application to attend Northfield Seminary, from 1896.
“The
Future Lies in Our Hands”
Ivan almost passed up the opportunity to join NMH’s Model U.N. program. Three years later, it’s one of his passions.
BY
IVAN O ’25
Seven years ago, in middle school, my Spanish teacher was the school’s Model U.N. program’s assistant director. He offered my class homework passes for participating as a page – otherwise known as a staff member — in the school-hosted Model U.N. conference. That is how my Model U.N. career began.
As a young page, I was captivated by the relationships and actions between countries. Although I continued this interest by participating in my middle school’s Model U.N. club, I also wanted to pursue other interests, namely in the STEM field. Little did I know that this would lead to one of the greatest regrets of my time at NMH: Coming in as a 9th-grader, I participated in many activities, including debate, Ultimate, swimming, and Concert Band, but I decided to pass on Model U.N. It was rumored that Model U.N. was not a robust cocurricular activity due to COVID-19 restrictions.
I joined Model U.N. in the winter season of my sophomore year when I realized that the NMH team had the potential to grow. The timing was perfect since the team was about to head to the Harvard Model U.N. conference. When I finally spoke the words, “Honorable chairs and fellow delegates,” I realized I should never have stopped this activity. I enjoyed the rigorous impromptu speaking activities and the Avengers World Crisis Committee simulation, an ad-hoc committee where delegates represented characters in this fictional setting and debated while live changes occurred.
By the end of the year, even though I was new to NMH Model U.N., I decided to take my chance and apply for the deputy secretary-general position. This position is significant because it assists the secretary-general with various responsibilities, such as maintaining decorum in committee sessions and filling in as a page during simulations. Erika Jing ’23, the secretary-general then, shared a valuable insight that stuck with me: “There are countless other opportunities to get leadership positions; most others require less work, so if you are only here for the position, you shouldn’t be running.” Admittedly, I was partially motivated by the potential to get my first-ever student leadership position on campus. Still, mainly, I wanted to push myself to help grow this 15-student organization. It was the best decision I have made in my high school career.
Last year, NMH Model U.N. quadrupled our membership, with more than 50 members in a season. In addition to hosting weekly meetings, I helped
organize, along with my fellow leaders Wilson Cheung ’24, Gab Alingog ’24, Ian Lee ’24, and Peter Villano ’24, to select a team of 10 talented delegates who would join us to represent our school at the annual Harvard Model U.N. conference. There, I had to analyze a lengthy background guide written by the committee president to understand what the committee was expected to cover during the conference, background information, and historical facts on the topic. I compiled personal notes regarding my delegation, including basic national facts, stances on every point the background guide covered, historical relations to the crisis, and personal insights into potential solutions. I eventually won the Diplomatic Commendations award in my committee, along with two other members. I could not have achieved this without the help of my fellow leaders, as well as our faculty advisors, Tiffany Thiri and Katie Hunt.
Model U.N. has helped me realize my true passion is diplomacy, international relations, and politics. It forces you to take the stance of the country you represent, disregarding personal opinion. It requires extensive preparation. The critical difference between excellent and regular delegates often comes down to their knowledge of the designated topic. I enjoy the competition, as it pushes me to be assertive, diplomatic, outgoing, and hardworking. For me, competition and winning awards are not what Model U.N. is truly for; rather, it is to simulate global collaboration, positive trade relationships, and problem-solving. It empowers delegates like me to see how someone could bring change to the world. My experience in Model United Nations is one that I hold dear. My experiences as a secretary-general, delegate, and even support staff are why I am interested in pursuing international relations and political science as my intended major.
Alas, the future lies in our hands, our generation. Currently, we may have very little to do with global politics, but we will one day carry on that mantle. I believe that global politics is very similar to a Model U.N. conference. If you truly think about it, even those who we regard as the most powerful people in the world are doing the same thing I do in Model U.N. with the other people representing their respective nations.
Ivan O is an NMH senior from Shanghai.
In just a few years, NMH’s Model U.N. program has grown from 15 members to more than 50.
PHOTO: LINDSEY TOPHAM
Head and Heart, Hand in Hand
In Bioethics, students explore the moral implications of biological topics
BY MAX HUNT COOL CLASS
It’s Friday morning, and students shuffle into Gilder 209, water bottles and warm tea in hand, finding their seats next to classmates at group tables. As the class begins, religious studies and philosophy teacher Jennifer Keator steps to the front of the room to announce a “pop quiz” of sorts, table versus table, first to answer wins. As Keator throws out rapid-fire questions, students’ hands fly into the air, and points are tallied on a white board.
The subject matter, in true NMH style, transcends the normal potpourri of people, places, and names: These students are grappling with complex topics that define the very nature of human identity and how societies are constructed around those evolving definitions.
Enter Bioethics.
The class, taught jointly by Keator and biology teacher Clare Knowlton, tackles a variety of ethical issues throughout medical history, across cultural boundaries, and between scientific disciplines. Bioethics encourages students to take a dialectical approach to clinical research and procedure, learn from the past, and apply critical thinking skills to the moral and ethical questions raised by modern medical science.
The classroom dynamic in Bioethics is predicated on its participatory nature: Both teachers strive to
incorporate a variety of voices in classroom content and allow ample space for students to parse information and bounce ideas off of each other.
“There’s a lot of deep engagement,” said Keator, who’s taught this class for 11 years. “We don’t promote one ethical theory over the other, and [we] emphasize being able to engage with topics intelligently, using reason and logic to think it through.”
As a dual religious studies/philosophy and biology course, Bioethics draws students from a variety of backgrounds. Some, like Paeto Wangweera ’25, are interested in pursuing a career in the biomedical field.
Wangweera, who hosts a podcast on biomedical engineering in his free time, said he’s learned a good deal of medical knowledge in class. “The beautiful part is that you learn about the technology, and then you learn what happens with that technology,” he said. “We link it to ethical ideas, like egoism, altruism, things like that.”
Other students, like Klaus Erdos ’25, were drawn to the class because it tackles the moral implications that arise from medical and biological studies. “I’ve always been interested in a combination of activism – specifically disability activism – biology, and genetics,” Erdos explained.
Learning the scientific nuts and bolts behind issues like cloning, fertility, and gender dynamics lends depth to the ethical questions that come out of that information, he added. “What does it mean for us that we can do all of these things, and how should we be using it?”
Knowing that a bevy of complex, emotionally charged topics would come up in class, one of the first things students worked on at the start of the semester was a list of “classroom norms” that outlined expectations for discussions and ensured the class is a safe space for people of all backgrounds to express and explore ideas.
“There are some pretty heavy topics that can be kind of shaky to bring up,” said Griffin Moore ’25, but Keator and Knowlton do a good job of keeping classroom discourse on topic. Moore added that the values of the NMH community have primed students to keep discussions civil and inclusive.
Sam Zhong ’26 echoed that sentiment. One of the strengths of Bioethics, she said, is that it gives students a chance to learn about how other cultures view these issues and to question their own biases.
“Coming from Asia, I never really thought about how people in different countries have different standards,” Zhong said. “Obviously, my values
are very much shaped by my parents’ values or my culture, but in class we have Canadians, Chinese, and even cultures from different [American] states, which I think is really valuable to learn from.”
As the Friday morning Bioethics class moves on, students watch a quick “60 Minutes” segment on the concept of merged DNA before delving into a discussion about a podcast they recently listened to that explored the moral duties medical professionals have to their patients.
Having two teachers from different academic backgrounds helps students to contextualize information, said Moore. “It’s a good opportunity to learn about both sides: the people aspect and the universal science aspect. Jen and Clare know how to work with each other. Yes, they’re teaching two different things, but it’s two different things that connect and intertwine.”
As the morning session of Bioethics finishes up, students are presented with two scenarios from a medical ethics journal and asked to examine the role of cultural norms in questions of medical application. The
back-and-forth discussion generates several questions that Keator and Knowlton are asked to clarify.
Knowlton admitted that students do a good job of keeping both instructors busy. “I’m googling things constantly,” she said with a laugh. “I feel like I have to be very much on my toes, which is good. Given the complex nature of our topics, and our need to stay objective, it takes layers of emotional as well as intellectual energy to show up well prepared as the instructor.”
While both teachers take pains not to insert their own beliefs into classroom discussion, Knowlton acknowledged that objectivity must be tempered with a sense of authenticity. “You have to find ways to connect with them,” Knowlton said, “but how and where can we do that? We have to be very judicious about how that connects to the content.”
Key to that is reinforcing students’ agency to draw their own conclusions, which Wangweera cited as a unique aspect of the NMH experience. “In my previous schools, we memorized information, but here we analyze information,” he said. “The way you express, the way you listen, the way
In Bioethics, students learn to think critically about complex issues — a skill they’ll carry with them for the rest of their lives.
you deal with others’ opinions really matters in the NMH community.”
Regardless of the path students take once they leave NMH, Knowlton believes that what they’re learning in Bioethics will help guide them through their adult lives.
Ultimately, the goal is straightforward: prepare students to think critically about the issues at hand. “We always say to them that they are the ones who are going to be creating the policies,” Keator said, “and so I hope they walk away from here feeling empowered, knowledgeable, and aware.”
In that sense, Bioethics serves as a model of NMH’s overall mission, a sort of living demonstration of the “citizenship and action” learning theme for this school year.
“If you walk into the Bioethics class, I feel like you will get a pretty good picture of the school’s values,” Erdos said. “We’re collaborating and learning through conversation, learning more about the world and each other through it, which I think is really good and also just really fun. …
“I think, at least for some of us, this class is probably going to significantly change the way that we interact with other people and where we want to go with our lives,” he said.
PHOTO: LINDSEY TOPHAM
ARTS
Behind the Scenes
A student filmmaker documents the making of “Les Miz”
BY MAX HUNT
When the NMH Theater Department announced its intention to produce the famous musical “Les Miserables” last year, Aurora Song ’26 knew it would be special, and she was determined to document the experience.
Armed with a camera, microphone, and some guidance from her workjob supervisors in communications, Song set forth to capture the magic on stage, in rehearsal, and behind the curtains. It was a journey that would take her the better part of a year as she waded through hours of interviews and film, crafting a narrative out of the raw materials. We sat down with the filmmaker to discuss her recently completed documentary, the process of creating cinematic work, and what she learned along the way.
NMH: What inspired you to create a documentary about the production of “Les Miserables”?
AURORA SONG: My workjob is assistant for communications, so I am, I guess, instinctually more inclined to think about what I can record and show to the public. Since I’m really involved in the theater at NMH, I thought: “What more could I do for the theater community and for the school community as a whole?”
“Les Miz” is a big production; I knew it was going to be a lot of work, with a lot of people and a lot of things going on. I happened to not be [cast in] a major role, so I thought: “Why not use that time to capture what everyone else was doing?”
I went into it just trying to record everything I could see, from the cast learning and acting, to the tech people designing and creating everything. I approached it more like a bystander: just prop the camera up and try to capture as much as I could.
NMH: As the project unfolded, did your approach change at all?
SONG: It was very different from what I first imagined, because theater rehearsals are not as repetitive as you’d think. You can’t expect that if you missed this scene today, they’re going to do the exact same things tomorrow. I was not 100% prepared for it, but I quickly realized what was going on.
NMH: Did being in the play help inform the direction of your film?
SONG: I knew when really interesting things were going to happen, so I was prepared to capture them. I also know the tech crew very well – I know what kind of work goes into that and just how much effort they put into creating everything. Even within the theater community, there’s this lack of appreciation for the people working backstage. I think part of my goal was to really show how awesome the backstage people are.
NMH: That’s the tricky nature of working backstage, right? If they’re doing their jobs correctly, you won’t notice them.
SONG: Right! We don’t want you to know, but we also really want you to know how much we put into this.
NMH: What was it like editing all that footage down into something cohesive?
SONG: Painstaking! It’s kind of like picking cabbages out at the supermarket. There’s so much that I wanted to show: the acting, the dialogue, the visuals, people’s movements, and then also the music – instrumental and the vocals. How do I blend all these without it seeming very chaotic? I didn’t really have an idea how big the scale was until I started sorting through everything – I had over 20 hours of footage! I used the interviews that I had with the teachers to try to create some kind of a narrative. With those in mind, I decided what footage fit into the story. Blending all those together took a long time, but everything was smoothed out in the end.
NMH: What lessons did you take from this whole process of putting this film together?
SONG: You need to be very organized! And you have to ask yourself: “What do I want to convey through the documentary?” For me, it was the passion for theater: I wanted to make sure that the documentary looked professional but that you’d see that we all really love this production and the theater at work.
PHOTO BY STEPHANIE CRAIG
SEE MORE Watch Song’s documentary at bit.ly/3ZGC8VY or scan this QR code:
In The Gallery
Student artists had numerous opportunities to connect with and be inspired by professional artists this fall, thanks to a busy season at The Gallery at the Rhodes Arts Center.
The year kicked off with “Tertiary Effects,” multimedia artist Jess Star’s exhibit of sculptures, prints, and drawings that deploy creative, sometimes absurd visual language to explore big issues like climate change and social inequities. “Star’s art practice explores fundamental questions of self and society that we all face and that are critical to our individual experience as members of any shared community,” said Jamie Rourke, The Gallery’s coordinator.
“Tertiary Effects” was followed by a group exhibit by members of the Western Massachusetts Illustrators’ Guild, whose diverse pieces range from editorial work to illustrations for graphic novels and children’s books. Having examples from professional illustrators on campus gave students a chance to see a wide variety of working artists in the medium, said art teacher Bill Roberts, and offered insight into the techniques they use to tell stories.
“Countervail” exhibited the work of Anne Thiam ’09, mother of Aissatou Thiam ’19 and Tidiane Thiam ’24 and former co-chair of the NMH Family Council. The collection of sculpture, poetry, and music examines themes of struggle and resilience, including a piece that reflects on calls for justice after the execution of Marcellus Williams. To use the language of the NMH community, I hope my work inspires others not to simply speak words of equity but indeed to act with humanity and purpose,” Thiam said in her artist statement.
“Teranga Embrace,” by Anne Thiam
“A Storm of Horses,” by Ruth Sanderson
<< Aurora Song ‘26 on the stage of”Les Miz”
“Filles du Roi,“ by Jess Star
“Let us bring all our minds together and give thanks and pay respect to our grandmother, the moon. So let our minds be that way.”
The Lodge
BY KARENNAHAWI BARNES ’24
It’s just past seven o’clock, the moon1 shining bright in the night sky. I can feel the cool night breeze and the frost that will form till the sun rises. We’re sitting outside in a circle on wooden benches around a fire as we wait for the rest of the women to show up. We’re in a clearing at Louise Herne’s2 house. The field is open, surrounded by trees with a dirt road going down the middle.
So far at the lodge, it’s my mom, little sister, and me, along with nine women ranging in all ages, from 9 to 90 years old. We all have our ribbon skirts3 on, long material draped around our hips with ribbons sewn onto them. Everyone has a different color; no two skirts are the same.
Another pair of women show up, a mother and a daughter, I presume.
“Okay, now we have everyone,” Louise said. “Let’s get started.” To begin any gathering or ceremony, we start by saying the Ohen:ton karihwatehkwen, the opening address4. Louise goes around the circle and has each person say a section. I recite, “Akwe:kon enhskat ne tsi entitewahwe’non:ni ne onkwa’nikon:ra tahnon teiethinonhwera:ton ne iethihsotha karahkwa. Ehtho ni’iohtonhak ne onkwa’nikon:ra. Let us bring all our minds together and give thanks and pay respect to our grandmother, the moon. So let our minds be that way.” That is one of many sections, one specifically about the moon. Louise helps everyone who has trouble reciting the section that randomly lands on them. Once everyone has recited their section of the opening address, we start the burning of the sacred tobacco in the fire.5 We acknowledge how each moon has a different name and purpose; this full moon was the Full Frost Moon.6
1.“I think if the moon didn’t exist, though, the wobble of the Earth would just spin out of control.” - Louise Herne
2. Louise Herne, or “Mama Bear,” is the clan mother of one of the two longhouses on our reservation and the host. She’s an older woman, with a big family and many grandchildren of her own. She has long brown hair with gray and silver streaks of highlights in it. Louise has been helping me with my healing journey since the fall of 2022. She has conducted multiple ceremonies for me. Louise is a huge help in the community. She has been an influence on the community as a whole.
3. We wear ribbon skirts out of respect, a way to show modesty. “It’s also emblematic of every individual woman’s life, about her coming from far away, coming here, and her purpose; her purpose here on Earth is already wired within her,” Louise explains to me during an interview.
4. This opening is a way we give thanks to all aspects of creation, thanking the sun all the way down to the dirt. We thank everything for what they do for us, how the animals give us food, how the rain gives us plants, and how the sun gives us light.
5. “In the tobacco burning, we’re acknowledging her importance. We’re letting her know that we know who she is, we know what her name is. We know what her responsibilities are, and how important she is to the women and to the earth and for the regeneration of life,” Louise says.
6. It is called this because the frost and ice will start to form as the earth grows colder. The animals will start to hibernate, and the leaves will fall from the trees as the land becomes bare. The moon is encouraging a sudden move or shift in people’s lives. It’s said to let this shift happen, to learn from your past mistakes.
Once the fire burning is over, we start the process of moving into the lodge.
We enter the lodge. It’s pitch black. No light is able to come in and no heat able to escape. It’s like a sauna. As I walk through the lodge to a seat, the earth’s dirt is cold against my bare feet. The lodge is a symbol of the womb within a woman. Built of 13 white willow branches to represent the 13 moons, with a large canvas waterproof tarp that is placed on top. We enter the lodge walking counterclockwise, sticking to the edge to avoid the shallow pit in the middle for the burning hot rocks to be placed.
We are all in a circle in the lodge along the walls.7 Some on wooden benches, similar to those outside, and the younger ones on the ground. Louise and the other elders are sitting near the doors, as they enter the lodge first. It’s hard to see anyone, let alone make out the silhouettes of their figures. The only indication of people being in the small circular lodge is the sound of many voices. My mother and I sit next to each other with my little sister, Onahkwiio, at my feet, as we begin Round 1. We bring in four of the grandmothers to start. One of the women is perched on the edge of the pit full of the burning rock, to make it easier for her to pour water onto the grandmothers.8 We introduce ourselves by saying our name, clan, and where we are from as we pass the horn rattle from person to person. Each woman says her intro in her native language, or English if she doesn’t know it, and then shakes the horn rattle.9
Being in the dark creates a sense of curiosity while I listen to everyone’s voices but can’t see them. It’s almost like a game, trying to match the voice to the person.
As the last woman finishes the last word of her introduction, Louise says a few words to sum up the round,10 why we do it, and what it means. The lodge isn’t too hot during this round; we can start to feel the sweat forming but none of it drops. After introductions, we begin one of the songs of the night. One of the other elders, Katsiooni Fox, leads the song, “The Women Power Song” by Bear Fox.11
The end of the song marks the end of the round. To begin the second round, we bring in five more rocks. This is the shedding round. Now that we’ve introduced ourselves, it’s time to get rid of all the negativity in our lives.12 Similar to Round 1, after each woman shares what they need to say, they will shake the horn rattle. During this round, a multiple of different things are shared; some say grief, some say anxiety, some say past relationships. I can hear the emotion in the women’s voices shaking with sadness or anger as they speak about what they want to get rid of. By now I can start to feel the beads of sweat forming on my forehead and arms. Being in such close proximity to the women is only making it hotter.
After the last woman speaks, after the horn rattle shakes, we begin another song. This song is the moon song. 13 Everyone sings during the rounds. Some women hum because they don’t know all the words, while others sing proudly, pronouncing each word perfectly.
7. We walk counterclockwise for Skywoman, the woman in our creation story who danced counterclockwise on top of a turtle with mud on its back to form the Mother Earth we walk on today. “And because women are in charge of life, and we always dance for life, we always go counterclockwise, which is the exact same way that the moon rotates around the Earth,” Louise says.
8. Each round starts with bringing in hot stones we call “grandmothers.” In total, we bring in about 30 or 31 grandmothers, 28 to represent the days of the month, four rounds with seven grandmothers for the seven days of the week, with a few extra to represent the extra days of the calendar.
9. The horn rattle is used to mark the ending of a woman’s talk. After each woman says her piece, we say, “She:kon, Thank you,” thanking her for words and for sharing them with us.
10. We sing after every round. A “round” is when every woman shares what she needs to say. Since we go in a circle, we consider it a round.
11. “Every woman that has her Moon time is a self-cleaning oven that is strictly tugged on by the gravitational pull of the earth, and also the gravitational pulling of the moon,” Louise says.
12. Each month, shedding happens in a woman’s body. This round represents that.
13. “I don’t think the moon gets enough credit, because the sun gets all the credit, right?” Louise says. “Because he’s the bigger one, he’s the masculine force, he is stronger, sends more energy and stuff like that. But she’s, like, the calm, but she still emanates light. And she still emanates a powerful force within the continuation of life.”
The emotion is still heavy as we begin Round 3,14 where we call in what we want to bring for ourselves. What we need, what we seek. An act of rejuvenation and renewal.
Some call for love and relationships, some call for confidence and self-love, along with minor ones like passing grades. One woman sticks out to me: She says she wants to call in a baby in her life. She and her partner recently had a miscarage, and she wants nothing more than to have a child.
The heat isn’t moving; the lodge is so full of steam it feels like you are surrounded by it. Every now and again you can hear the sound of the little girls drinking the water they brought in. Since the elders have been doing sweat lodges their whole life, they feel no need for water.
My mother turns to me and says, “Your grandmother did lodges much hotter than this one.” I can’t imagine being in an environment hotter than this one.
“Since we are trying to bring in a life,” Louise says, “why don’t we sing the seed song? To awaken the seeds within her uterus.”
Again, Katsiooni leads the song, but this time all the women sing. Everyone knows the words. All the voices blend beautifully together, creating a melody in a space full of non-singers.
We bring in another round of grandmothers; this time it’s six. We start Round 4 like every other round, with more water being splashed on the rocks, creating even more steam. Making the lodge even hotter than the rounds before.
This round is about gratitude. 15 Giving thanks for what we already have. Family, partners, parents, friends are all mentioned. Though, one stands out.
“The sunsets. They remind me that the day is over, and the sun will always rise again. It is the only constant thing in the world.” I can’t pinpoint who says it; she is sitting across the lodge, the heat only making it harder to see.
“Katsiooni, what song should we sing this time around?” I can recognize Louise’s voice anywhere.
“We started with the women’s power song, maybe we should end with it,” ‘tsiooni replies.
We finish with the song we started with and leave the lodge when it ends. The cool air hits like a brick wall as I exit the lodge. I can feel the goosebumps rising on my skin the longer I stand out in the cold.
As the ceremony comes to an end,16 the fire still burns strong with yellow and orange hues lighting up this patch of grass. We share the berries brought by everyone, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries. The moon shines bright in the sky; it’s far higher now. Her glow casts a shadow on the trees below that surround us and the lodge. The chilly night air feels cold against our sweaty skin. There are multiple conversations talking about what people are feeling, what they thought about the lodge, or simply what their plans are after this. As Louise begins the closing address to put an end to this ceremony, the sense of renewal, community, and empowerment is strong. Every woman can feel it. As a final goodbye, Louise says with a warm smile on her aging face, “Thank you all for coming, until next month.”
14. Louise refers to this round as the “Ovulation” round, the replenishment of the seeds within a woman’s body.
“The sunsets. They remind me that the day is over, and the sun will always rise again. It is the only constant thing in the world.”
15. “And at the end of the ceremony, always it’s that gratitude just to the whole process, of having our ability to be able to remember our stories, to remember the names of the characters in our stories, to still know the language that our creation story was originally told in,” says Louise.
16. “And she’s really the grandmother that’s Ahsonhtenhnehkha Karahkwa, our grandmother, the moon,” Louise says.
Karennahawi Barnes ’24, a member of the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe from Akwesasne in New York State, wrote this article for a journalism class at NMH. During her time on campus, she made it her goal to include more representation for current and future Indigenous students. A few major accomplishments include putting the Haudenosaunee flag up on the wall in Alumni Hall and writing a letter to be excused from the Sacred Concert with the help of her Native peers. She is now studying business and creative writing at Ithaca College.
Commencement
IN MAY, 193 students joined the ranks of NMH alumni at the school’s 141st Commencement. Hundreds of faculty members, family, and friends gathered under a tent on Thorndike Lawn for the ceremony, which included a keynote address by Cady Coleman, a retired NASA astronaut and Air Force colonel.
Coleman, a western Massachusetts resident and parent of two NMH alums — Josiah Simpson, class of 2002, and Jamey Simpson, class of 2019 — shared exciting news in her address: That morning, as the graduates were lining up for the ceremony in Gill, 90-year-old Ed Dwight, the first Black person trained as an astronaut, was finally traveling to space, on a private space launch in Texas. Dwight had been selected for the NASA program during the Kennedy administration, but his space career had been sidelined due to apparent racism.
Despite the barriers Dwight faced, Coleman said, “He didn’t stop.” She urged the graduates to work toward tackling the inequities that limit opportunities. “How do we make sure that people don’t wait so long for what clearly they have the potential to do?” she asked, adding that NMH prepares students to take on those sorts of big questions. “A lot of the world out there has just not gotten to learn the things that you’ve gotten to learn,” she said. “And so, by default, you are leaders, and you are people that can enable the rest of the world, literally. And I think that’s quite a mission, right?
“I’ve now given you a very big assignment,” Coleman continued. “You’re part of a mission, no matter what you’re doing. ... And the paradox, I think, of a mission is that the mission, by definition, is bigger than you are. … The mission is bigger than all of us. And yet, it actually depends exactly on the individual talents that you bring and you make sure that you bring forward. And even if people don’t recognize you, if you realize you have these things to bring, you have to bring them forward.”
Commencement was the culmination of several days of special events honoring the graduating class, including a Baccalaureate service, a Recognition Assembly, and the “Chat” dance. On Senior Day, the Friday before Commencement, the soon-to-be-graduates planted their class tree and were formally welcomed into the Alumni Association before gathering to sign yearbooks.
“I feel like I was just a freshman,” Will Johnson ’24 said on Senior Day. “We love that there’s a day to commemorate all of the memories that we’ve had … and to form more.”
STUDENT SPEAKERS
BACCALAUREATE SERVICE
“I was so desperate to find my purpose at the beginning of high school, but looking back, I now realize that I have already discovered something far more valuable. Since the beginning of my quest, it’s been the journey itself and the people who’ve journeyed alongside me that have truly mattered and fertilized my life. … Purpose is not a static endpoint but a dynamic essence woven into the very fabric of our existence and journey.”
Salutatorian YUXUAN “RICKY” ZHOU
RECOGNITION ASSEMBLY
“Remember our struggles, our many mistakes, and our accomplishments. Remember that we are going to make many more mistakes and fail over and over again. Also remember the incredible successes, the joys, those moments when we were surrounded by people who cared about us. And remember that each one of us has made an impact here, and we will continue to make a difference wherever we go.”
Valedictorian WILLOW SUJIN BRANDT KWAK
“If we want to challenge like Rosa, we have to stand. If we want to write like Baldwin, we have to read. If we want to dream like Martin, we have to dream. And if we want to change the world, we have to do all these things and more. … So, as we go on to leave our marks on the world, let us not get complacent in what we have done today or ever. I ask that we keep in mind that there is always more to do.”
Class orator DENNIS PENNY LOPEZ
Honoring Sandy Messer
Last year, Messer retired after 40 years as a teacher, advisor, coach, mentor, colleague, and friend to so many in the NMH community
BY MEG EISENHAUER
Sandy Messer arrived at NMH in the fall of 1984 and has been a stalwart member of our community ever since. In her four decades here, Sandy has not only taught across the English curriculum but also served as associate dean of faculty, assistant academic dean, and chair of the Executive Committee. She has, as PG advisor, enriched the lives and tended to the educations of scores of postgraduates. She was part of the team that developed and brought to life the concept of Humanities I, whose four essential questions — Who am I? What is my place? What does it mean to be human? How, then, shall I live? — remain central to the NMH experience. In her early years she was a resident of Hibbard; eventually, she moved to this side of the river and has been on the faculty of just about every dorm on campus. She’s led students, travel notebooks in hand, on trips to Italy, South Africa, and India. She’s coached volleyball, softball, and ice hockey and taught a smattering of PE classes, including one on bike touring.
Somewhere along the way, Sandy spotted Rich Messer across a crowded dining hall; the rest is, as they say, history. Sandy and Rich were married in Memorial Chapel, raised three daughters — Sarah ’06, Emily ’13, and Anna ’16 — and, ever the consummate hosts, have made a steady stream of students, colleagues, and friends feel at home.
Through it all, Sandy’s dedication to the craft of teaching has been unwavering. Week after week for all these years, she has methodically, patiently, and with great intuitive wisdom helped students to discover whole worlds of words, sentences, and ideas in books, in the writing process, and in themselves. For Sandy, reading and writing are ways
that we make sense of our own lives and expand our understanding of the lives of others. She gives students space and time to settle into their own voices, to explore their truths, and to discover what matters to them. She treats her students as the serious readers, writers, and scholars she knows they can be. Sandy doesn’t just grade papers; she writes back to each and every student, engaging them in a daily, semester-long correspondence about reading and writing and about themselves as readers and writers. Many years later, her students recall being stunned to receive such thorough and serious feedback.
Helping students to connect their education to this particular place is central to Sandy’s way of teaching. From the community of mutual care and respect she forges in the classroom to her assignments — recalled fondly by her students — to spend time outside in nature and write about their observations, she has artfully created the conditions for students to explore their sense of place and to locate themselves in the Northfield Mount Hermon community. It is as important a part of their education as learning to write a beautiful sentence.
Sandy knows in her bones that good teaching matters and that dedicated teachers are the bedrock of a school. We owe her endless thanks not only for everything she has invested in our school but also for the enormous care, compassion, and wisdom she has devoted in passing on her legacy to younger generations of teachers. She has taken so many of us under her wing. A great guardian of collective memory, Sandy reminds us of where we’ve been and fortifies our imagination of possible futures. Whatever will we do without her?
We wish you all the adventures, rest, and stories you could hope for, dear Sandy.
Meg Eisenhauer is chair of the English Department. She shared this tribute for the Baccalaureate service during Commencement weekend.
“Something for Everyone”
About 750 alums gathered with classmates over dinners and campfires, hiked and played pickleball, toured the Gill and Northfield campuses, and took part in traditions both established (the Mec Peller Run, Pie Ride, and Rowing event) and emerging (a screening of “The Holdovers,” partially shot on campus) at NMH Reunion 2024.
Reunion, as always, was a chance both to reminisce with former classmates and to reconnect with the school. Alums enjoyed a special NMH Reunion 2024 brew, created by Sam Calagione ’88, co-founder of Dogfish Head, and Chip Samson ’04, co-owner and founder of Shaidzon Beer Co., at a tasting event. Some gathered at affinity luncheons for alums who are veterans, international, LGBTQ+, and people of color.
This was the 50th reunion year for the Class of 1974, whose members were inspired to undertake a special fundraising effort. In the end, they raised more than $17 million, the largest class gift ever made to NMH. The class focused in particular on the Class of 1974 Memorial Scholarship Fund, with dramatic results: The fund is now valued at $1.5 million and will provide a full-tuition student scholarship.
Artists from the Class of 1974, meanwhile, shared their work at an exhibit in The Gallery at the Rhodes Arts Center, with work by Kate Barber, Anne Flash, Barbara Forshay, Stephanie Gerson, Peter King, Ginger Hinman McEachern, Laura Nelson, Carolie Parker, Andy Tofuri, and the late Yolanda Suarez. The Connie Putnam ’64 and Friends Band got everyone dancing at a concert in the Blake Student Center, while opera singer Bonita Hyman ’74 and clarinetist Jonathan Towne ’74 were joined by pianist Raymond Harvey, their class choir teacher, for a stunning performance.
Reunion was also an opportunity for alums to hear about the latest at NMH, including at presentations by Head of School Brian Hargrove and Athletics Director Rick Hendrickson. A series of well-attended “Back to School” panel discussions explored the school’s history and the ways alums have carried their
NMH experience with them in their lives and their careers. A “Northfield Campus, Past, Present, and Future” panel looked at the difficult decision to consolidate the two campuses and the fate of the Northfield property, most of which is now owned by Thomas Aquinas College. Patrick Ford, the college’s director of east coast development, joined the conversation, expressing his school’s deep appreciation for Northfield’s legacy and for the campus, which since 2022 has borne a plaque honoring that legacy.
A panel called “The Class of 1974: Making a Difference,” moderated by Ed Pitoniak, founding CEO of VICI Properties, brought together panelists Margaret Honey, CEO of the Scratch Foundation; Valerie Jarrett, former senior advisor to Barack Obama; and Betty Edwards Johnson, who was a geophysicist at Chevron, for a conversation about their professional journeys and the ways they’ve found opportunities to make positive change in the world. The Class of 1969, meanwhile, hosted “Defying Expectations: How NMH Helped Overcome Career Stereotypes of Gender, Race, and Social Background,” with moderator Al Gilbert. Panelists Brian Bauer, Barbara Deinhardt, Walter Lowe, and Carol Ward discussed the effects that social movements and political upheaval — including the antiwar movement and campaigns for civil, women’s, and gay rights — had on them as students and in their careers in medicine, law, and business. Mariah Calagione ’89 moderated a panel on “Doing Well and Doing Good” with alums from across the decades — Toni Bush ‘74, Rob Werner ‘79, Dawson Her Many Horses ‘94, and Daisy Gordon ‘09 — discussing citizenship and leadership, which was the 2023-24 “learning theme” for NMH students.
“It was a glorious weekend!” said Stacie Hagenbaugh, NMH’s director of alumni engagement. “There was something for everyone, and it was wonderful to see alums engaged in meaningful conversations, enjoying our spectacular campus, soaking up beautiful art and music, and connecting with new and old friends alike.”
Maureen Turner
NMH Reunion 2025 will take place June 5 to 8. Registration opens in mid-March. Learn more at nmhschool.org/ alumni-home/reunion.
WINTER 2025
PHOTOS: MATTHEW CAVANAUGH, SEVEN PAIR STUDIOS, LINDSEY TOPHAM
Remembering the Boys
BY DELPHI LYRA ’24
Among the many events at NMH Reunion 2024 was a presentation by Delphi Lyra ’24 of this essay, which she wrote to mark the end of her time at the school. Delphi, who consulted with NMH archivist Peter Weis ’78 about the history of Memorial Grove and what it stands for, is now studying at Cornell University.
“DELPHI, THESE ARE THE BOYS.”
I remember my mother saying this to me, one beautiful day, running up on the lawn between the dining hall and Ford Cottage.
Sixty-nine white pine trees are planted there, the boys; they sway quietly in the wind.
The pine grove lawn is a space that gathers students and families on days of celebration: Mountain Day, the first day of school, the Baccalaureate dinner, Commencement lunch. There is often a great white tent pitched there, with food and friends, and the feeling of grass underfoot.
On these joyous days, we don’t often realize that the boys watch over us on Memorial Grove Lawn, where white pine trees are planted in homage to 69 Mount Hermon boys who left their schooling for WWI — and never returned home.
I previously drifted by this memorial with little thought. I would have continued this if not for my mother’s words that day: “Delphi, make sure you choose to remember.”
One of these boys is Paul Buck, born in 1895. His parents were farmers. He applied to Mount Hermon from Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1913. His reverend at his local church wrote one of his recommendation letters and said, “I can think of no young man of my acquaintance who better meets the conditions required at Mount Hermon than Mr. Buck.” Paul got into NMH and loved it. In 1917, Paul was drafted.
On Christmas Eve, Paul was still across an ocean in unknown territory. That night, he received a package from Mount Hermon, containing a freshly baked fruitcake. The school during the Christmas of 1917 had packaged up more than 100 fruitcakes, to remind one of home, and sent them out to current students and alumni who were overseas contributing to the war effort.
The school archives contain thank you letters that students wrote back to NMH. Paul thanked Dr. Cutler: “The greetings were appreciated so much the more because they arrived at a time when my thoughts were turned particularly towards home and my friends in the States. As usual, you and the school are trying to cheer up us boys who are away from home. I remember all too well how you did everything possible for our happiness at the school on the Christmas of 1913, when I spent my first Christmas away from home.”
Paul continued, “Wherever I have been in France, I have been able to find Hermon boys. We have always tried to
carry the ideals of the school with us, and wherever we have been, we have tried to do our best to help bring a lasting peace for the entire world. My best wishes are with you and the school for its future success after the stress of war times.”
As you may have guessed, Paul never came home. One of those trees standing up on the hill stands for him. I choose to remember Paul today.
All of us move into new stages of life. We are all part of the memory that is constantly being collected here. Choose to remember. By remembering, by honoring, we recognize our connectedness to a larger whole, to community, and to the sacrifices of others.
Memory and community are more important to me than when I started at NMH. My mother taught me that memory is a practice, and if you practice it regularly enough, you will never truly be alone.
Our world is not so different than Paul’s. In a fast-paced life, always rushing to the next individual achievement, we sometimes don’t pause to look behind us.
Though it is easy to forget, we choose to remember. We practice remembering the people who came before and the fruitcakes that are sent overseas.
“Choose to remember, so we may never leave one of our own alone.”
If we choose to remember the dorm faculty who comforted you after you were crying about calculus, if we choose to remember the dining hall staff member who memorized your salad order and always put the perfect amount of tomatoes in your bowl, if we choose to remember the parent or guardian you called after your class won Rope Pull, then though you may be physically alone, you will never be truly alone. I choose to remember the boys.
Whether or not you believe in ghosts, choose to remember them anyway. Right here, right now is the community that will travel with you wherever you go. We are part of this story together.
Grass underfoot, wind blows through these 69 pines. Celebrating with us, they cast their eyes down upon another graduating class who departs the campus where they forever stand still.
Choose to remember, so we may never leave one of our own alone.
Delphi Lyra and her mother, Samantha Harvey, at Commencement >>
Giving Back
Li family gift supports wrestling center
BY MAUREEN TURNER
A generous donation from the Li/Wang family has added to the momentum around investments to advance athletics facilities at Northfield Mount Hermon.
NMH’s multisport athletics facility has been named the Li Wrestling Center, in recognition of a $1.5 million commitment from the family. The facility, which opened in 2022, holds special significance for the family, since their two sons were members of the wrestling team during their years at NMH.
At NMH, “our children each found the fields and goals they hope to pursue in the future,” Dong Li said. “NMH provided them with resources to explore their interests outside of classes in athletics and higher academics.” The Li sons are enjoying their college lives now, he added.
Through the gift, Li said, “I hope to provide even better facilities and resources for the students at NMH. At the same time, I also want to set an example for my own children by
showing them the importance of giving back and helping others when you have the ability to do so.”
The family’s gift supports This Place, This Moment: The Campaign for Northfield Mount Hermon, which seeks to raise $275 million by 2026. One of the campaign priorities is improvements to campus facilities, to enhance students’ academic and residential experience.
The facility supports NMH wrestlers, who enjoyed a strong competitive season last year: The coed team
PHOTO: MATTHEW CAVANAUGH
won the New England Preparatory School Athletic Council Class A championship and took sixth place in the National Prep Wrestling Championship. In addition, the girls’ team finished in second place in its NEPSAC division, and both the boys’ and girls’ teams finished second in the New England Preparatory School Wrestling Association.
The Li Wrestling Center is one of several recent exciting developments in NMH’s athletics spaces, including a hockey arena and
UPDATE
fieldhouse project (see “A Rink of One’s Own,” page 36). These developments follow the new Calagione Fitness Center, a 6,000-squarefoot space available to all students, which opened in 2021, and the Draper Riverhouse, home to NMH’s rowing program, which opened the previous year.
For the Li family, the gift is an acknowledgement of what the school has meant to them. “We loved the beautiful campus at NMH on our first visit in 2017, and we
have loved the diverse community at NMH,” Li said. “We believed the environment, combined with an education for the head, heart, and hand, would provide a holistic education to help cultivate our children’s broad vision and perspective. We are even dreaming of our grandchildren at NMH, too! …
“I hope that more outstanding students and families will graduate from NMH and, in the future, give back to society and their alma mater,” he added.
Thanks to the generous support of donors, This Place, This Moment: The Campaign for Northfield Mount Hermon continues to move toward its goal: At press time, the campaign had raised $230 million for scholarship aid and support of our programs, faculty, and campus!
Learn more about This Place, This Moment: The Campaign for Northfield Mount Hermon at campaign.nmhschool.org
A Rink of One’s Own
New facilities will expand access and equity for NMH athletes
BY MAX HUNT
Northfield Mount Hermon has announced an exciting next step in reimagining the physical footprint of athletics on campus with the construction of a new hockey facility and the conversion of McCollum Arena into a multisport, multiuse field house. This forward-thinking, tone-setting project reflects the community’s passion and enthusiasm for an inclusive athletics program.
“This is a game-changer from a programming perspective,” said NMH Athletics Director Rick Hendrickson. “The combination of building a new hockey arena and renovating the old one into a field house helps us achieve our ambitious vision: to develop the most innovative, inclusive, and successful athletics program in New England.”
These projects follow the construction of the Draper Riverhouse, the Calagione Fitness Center, and the Li Wrestling Center. Together, they support one of the top priorities of This Place, This Moment: The Campaign for Northfield Mount Hermon, the school’s ongoing campaign: namely, the enhancement of students’ academic and residential experiences through the improvement of campus facilities.
The new construction and the renovation of McCollum will provide a modern facility for the school’s hockey programs, more practice space for other winter sports teams, and two new gathering spaces for campus events, while meeting the sustainability and equity needs of the NMH community.
To understand where you’re going, it helps to remember where you’ve been. In January 1967, Northfield Mount Hermon’s hockey program was at a crossroads. That year, the varsity hockey season was suspended despite the talent of the players and its popularity among alumni and parents.
The reason? “Only for lack of ice,” wrote Harold Wyman, assistant athletics director and varsity hockey coach at the time. While nearly every opponent NMH faced had access to an artificial rink, the school relied on the natural freezing cycles (or lack thereof) of the winter season.
Faced with this challenge, the school’s administration launched an ambitious plan over the next year. That effort culminated in the Dec. 8, 1967, dedication of McCollum Arena, a multipurpose building with tennis courts and a covered gathering space for school assemblies and special events.
“The McCollum Arena is more than just another school building,” a press release announcing the opening proclaimed. “It is a new community center.”
McCollum Arena became the backdrop for numerous athletic triumphs, including an undefeated 1978–79 hockey season and many deep playoff runs. More important, it became a place of togetherness for the NMH community, a role it continues to fill today.
“There’s a picture of me as a little kid on the ice from like 10 years ago,” said Dan Tracy ’26, a current member of the boys’ hockey team whose father played for NMH.
As McCollum Arena approaches its 60th anniversary, the needs of a modern athletics program call for the NMH community to take bold action once again. In response, the school has embarked on the two-fold project of creating a state-of-the-art hockey facility while reinventing McCollum Arena into a space that serves students on and off the field.
The new facility, tentatively scheduled to be ready by the fall of 2026, will feature a climate-control system, efficient use of natural light, modern locker rooms, and a large mezzanine to accommodate spectators. Its location on the site of the former NMH orchard will revitalize that part of campus,
adding trees and landscaping, and will help connect the central campus with the lower athletic fields.
The conversion of McCollum will follow on its heels. That building will be enclosed and equipped with heating and ventilation, with the ability to convert to practice space for basketball, tennis, and a host of other activities as needed.
As NMH works to continue to elevate its hockey program, the new arena will help fuel that effort, said Brianna Wood, who joined the school as the girls’ hockey coach this year.
“It’s a unique opportunity — rebuilding a program and then getting a new rink on top of that,” Wood said. “Everybody’s excited about it in the hockey program. I know it’s a very big confidence booster to the girls — it shows them that we care.”
Boys’ varsity coach Jake Bennett concurred, noting that the new hockey facility will cut travel time and allow more students to practice and try out for the team, while the field house will enable flexibility in other teams’ practice schedules.
“Being able to help more kids, give kids that quality of life where they don’t have to leave campus, they don’t have to sacrifice doing other things to play a certain sport or activity is at the heart of this project,” Bennett said.
Hockey player Chloe Corbin ’25 said having a new arena will help her team “tremendously,” by allowing players to focus on the controllables of the game, rather than environmental conditions or off-site travel.
“There’s been a lot of talk going around campus about the building of the new rink and students are excited,” Corbin said. “A new arena and a wellsupported program can provide a positive space for the community.”
Boys’ varsity captain Mateo LaHaie ’25 agreed and hopes a more comfortable environment will encourage the community to come out to hockey games.
“This is a game-changer that will help achieve our ambitious vision: to develop the most innovative, inclusive, and successful athletics program in New England.”
“It definitely helps to shape the community,” he said. “I try to encourage the hockey team to go to watch other [NMH] teams play. Hopefully more teams will do that [with the new facilities], which will lead to a better experience for players.”
The benefits of the new buildings will extend beyond hockey. With 80% of the student body playing at least one sport, indoor practice space sometimes can be hard to come by. Converting McCollum Arena to a multisport field house will benefit a host of athletics programs, while also investing in the experience of the campus at large, said Hendrickson.
The future field house will provide the NMH community with a large, covered venue for graduation, Family Days, and other big events, he added.
“You can do social activities and practices there; you can have competitions and host admission and college fairs,” Hendrickson said. “It literally may wind up being one of the most used buildings on campus.”
Both projects align with the NMH athletic department’s ultimate goal, Hendrickson said. “We want to provide opportunities for transformational experiences in athletics, personal fitness, and wellness for our students. The ripple effect from building the ice hockey rink and field house will be felt by most, if not all, of the school community.”
For more information about the projects and about how to make a gift in support, contact Jake Bennett, head boys’ ice hockey and baseball coach and assistant director of annual giving and athletic engagement, at jbennett@ nmhschool.org.
Helping Students Soar
BY MAUREEN TURNER
Afew years ago, Mariah Draper Calagione ’89 and her husband, Sam Calagione III ’88, bought a new motorboat. Unsure what to christen the boat, they posed the question in the family chat they share with their kids, Sam IV ’18 and Grier ’20.
It was Grier and her NMH classmate and friend Holliday Wear who quickly came up with the perfect name. “They texted back, ‘You need to name it Humanatee and Porpoise!’” Mariah recently recalled with a laugh.
The boat’s name might be baffling to others, she admitted. But to the Calagione family, whose connections with Northfield Mount Hermon run deep and wide, it’s a fun way to acknowledge the profound effect that the school had on them and the lessons they learned there that continue to guide their lives. “What you learn at NMH just sticks with you,” she said. “There’s a lot of classroom learning that sticks with you, too. But it’s the ethos: humanity and purpose; head, heart, and hand; the expectation that you’re going to go out and serve the world.”
For Mariah Calagione, that has included extensive service to the NMH community. Last year, she completed 13 years on the school’s board of trustees — six of them as chair — following in the footsteps of her father, the late Thomas Draper ’60, who served on the board in the late 1970s. She and Sam have also been generous donors to the school,
funding everything from scholarships to high-profile campus buildings as well as making annual gifts to the NMH Fund and encouraging their classmates to do the same.
“For both Sam and me, it was important to us that we meaningfully support the school, because it’s done so much for our family through the generations,” she says. Whether it’s by making an NMH education more accessible to more students or by bolstering key capital projects, the goal, she says, is “to help make the school a better place for our students and let them soar.”
NMH was a familiar place to Calagione even before she enrolled as a 9th-grader. Throughout her childhood, she and her family took road trips to campus to visit her father’s good friends, Bill Batty ’59, who was a beloved member of the faculty for many years, and his wife, Linda, an equally beloved librarian at the school. “Having the opportunity to broaden my horizons in a place that still felt familiar made NMH a great fit for me,” she says. “I come from a very small town in coastal Delaware, which I love, but I was also ready to expand my world a bit.”
At NMH, Calagione stretched academically and pursued new interests; a serious ballet dancer throughout her childhood, in this new setting, she explored modern dance and played soccer. (“I’m not an athlete — I think I was on the eighths team,” she jokes.)
MARIAH DRAPER CALAGIONE ’89
But the most special part of her time at NMH, she says, were the people she met and the deep bonds she formed with classmates and teachers. She remembers the excitement of moving into her dorm that first year and meeting students from around the world. “It was such a different experience than going to school with the same kids that I’d gone to school with since pre-K. I was finding connections with people who were not from the same type of background or experience or area that I was from.”
She and Sam met during a shared workjob shift in the dishroom in Alumni Hall and continued to date through college. (Mariah went to Brown University, where she studied public policy.) They married in 1996 and founded a brewpub and commercial brewery, Dogfish Head, in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
The two work, literally, side by side. (“Our desks are right next to each other at the brewery,” she says, adding, with a laugh, “There are times when I will say to him, ‘Isn’t it time for you to go on the road again?’”) Sam, she says, brings “the entrepreneurial spark, the idea, the creativity. And I bring a little bit more of the ‘Well, did you think about this?’ And ‘Let’s poke some holes in it to make it an even better idea.’ We balance each other out pretty well.”
Their complementary approaches have proved successful: Dogfish Head quickly expanded from its origi-
PHOTO: GREG HARRELL
nal site in Rehoboth Beach and, as demand for their popular beers grew around the country, they enlarged their brewing operation, added a distillery, opened several new pubs, and racked up multiple industry honors, including a James Beard Award for Outstanding Wine, Spirits, or Beer.
One hallmark of Dogfish Head’s business approach is its emphasis on philanthropy and community partnerships. Through its “Beer & Benevolence” program, the company supported a range of initiatives, from hosting road races to raise money for the Delaware chapter of The Nature Conservancy to employee-volunteer days working with Habitat for Humanity. “It was almost like a natural thing when we started our business that we were going to find ways to connect back to our communities,” Calagione says. That impulse comes in part from growing up in a small town where neighbors help neighbors and in part from NMH’s emphasis on “that broad approach to how you engaged, with your soul and your mind and by rolling up your sleeves and just doing things.”
In 2019, Dogfish Head merged with Boston Beer Company, maker of Samuel Adams beer. Sam now sits on Boston Beer’s board, while Mariah leads the company’s social impact team, which supports community projects, mentoring programs, and employee service days — a callback to the work of Dogfish Head’s Beer & Benevolence initiative. “It’s fun and it’s also gratifying,” she says. “It lets me connect with coworkers in a way that’s beyond their day-to-day work, and it also lets me connect with a lot of our community partners, whether that’s arts, environmental, or commu-
nity-building organizations.”
Through the busy years of growing her business and her family, Calagione also stayed connected to Northfield Mount Hermon: serving on her class committee, attending her and Sam’s reunions, and, eventually, becoming an NMH parent when their children enrolled.
The Calagione family also has supported the school philanthropically, with donations that allowed for the construction of the showplace Draper Riverhouse in 2017 and the 6,000-square-foot Calagione Fitness Center in 2021. In addition, they’ve supported financial assistance for students, including by endowing a scholarship fund named for Thomas Draper.
More recently, a gift from the Calagiones established the Arshay Cooper Endowed Scholarship Fund, which assists academically strong students from underserved areas, with special consideration to students interested in rowing. Cooper is author of “A Most Beautiful Thing,” which tells the story of the first African American high school rowing team in the U.S., and co-founder and director of the A Most Beautiful Thing Inclusion Fund, which works to increase access to the sport for young people. The Calagiones first met Cooper through a collaboration with Dogfish Head. They subsequently introduced him to NMH, where he has mentored students and, as of this year, serves as a trustee. They decided to name the scholarship fund in Cooper’s honor, Calagione says, because his focus on lifting kids and
Mariah and her husband, Sam Calagione ’88, are regulars at NMH Reunions and other events.
PHOTO: MATTHEW CAVANAUGH
offering them new opportunities is so in keeping with NMH’s vision.
Calagione joined the NMH Board of Trustees in 2011 and was elected to the first of her two three-year terms as chair in 2018. During her 13 years of service, she says, the board focused on strategic planning, “defining what kind of school we wanted to be and what we needed to do to start to make moves to get there,” including financial restructuring, a review of the investment policy, and changes to the board committee structure. “It was, in many ways, getting ready to be in a position where we could have the kind of success that we’re having in the current campaign [This Place, This Moment: The Campaign for Northfield Mount Hermon], where we can compellingly tell the story of need at NMH through the kind of impact that we have on students.”
Under her board leadership, NMH’s endowment grew dramatically, from $136 million in fiscal 2017 to more than $200 million today. The financial aid budget grew from $9.6 million in 2017 to more than $12 million today — a trend that continues, with needbased scholarships identified as a key campaign priority. The NMH Fund grew, too, from $3 million in fiscal 2018 to $5.8 million last year.
As board chair, Calagione welcomed new Head of School Brian Hargrove to NMH in 2019 and then partnered with him and other leaders as the school responded to the outbreak of COVID-19 in the spring of 2020. That thoughtful collaboration allowed NMH to reopen that fall, providing a safe environment for students who returned to campus and a robust virtual learning experience for students who did not. She also led
“There’s a lot of classroom learning that sticks with you, too. But it’s the ethos: humanity and purpose; head, heart, and hand; the expectation that you’re going to go out and serve the world.”
the board through the construction of the Gilder Center, a $30 million, 42,000-square-foot model of sustainable design, which opened for classes in the fall of 2021. The campus also added the Li Wrestling Center; new faculty homes; and a new dorm, Norton Cottage, in addition to the riverhouse and fitness center.
Serving on the board, Calagione says, gave her a new perspective on the school that has meant so much to her and her family. “It was a completely different lens. I got to learn from and learn about the leaders of the school and the amazing work that they were doing.”
It also allowed her to partner with fellow trustees — 52 total over her 13 years of service, she recently calculated — who brought their unique backgrounds and perspectives to the work. “It was almost like being back in a classroom with people from around the world,” she says. “I learned a lot from the other trustees, from the heads of school, from the other senior leaders around the table.”
Equally gratifying, she says, was the opportunity to connect with both alums and current students and to see how the school has affected so many people across so many generations.“We would have a board meeting in New York or San Francisco or Boston and get to talk to alumni and
we would hear them say, over and over, ‘NMH transformed my life,’” Calagione says. “Then we’d sit in the dining hall with current students and say, ‘What drew you to NMH?’ And we’d hear, ‘The people, the place — this is where I wanted to be.’ Hearing students say that, then hearing alumni 30 or 40 years out of NMH say, ‘It changed my life’ — you see that whole arc, and that’s really cool.”
Calagione’s term on the board of trustees ended last summer. But her connections to NMH are hardly over: She and Sam are honorary co-chairs and serve on the steering committee of This Place, This Moment. And she’s excited to see what lies ahead for the institution that has meant so much to her and her family.
“NMH is in amazing hands, and there are more alumni out there who will become trustees, who will become volunteers, who will get involved in the Alumni Council,” she says. “And they’re the ones that are going to keep NMH moving forward to be the school of the next century and the next century and the next century.”
[NMH]
Aiming High and Doing Good
BY ELISE GIBSON
At the dawn of what people were only beginning to call the Information Age, Antoinette (Toni) Cook Bush ’74 took a first-year law class on broadcast law. That class piqued her interest enough that in the summer of 1979 she took a job at a firm that did work before the Federal Communications Commission. She couldn’t have known then that a revolution in communications — cable television, cell phones, the internet, the worldwide web — was about to erupt, and that for the next 40-plus years she would be at the center of helping to shape and regulate it.
“It was a heady time, because we were really trying to figure out what is in the best interest of the public,” Bush said in an interview from her longtime home in Washington, D.C.
Throughout her career, she represented private companies as they dealt with growing competition and with new and evolving technologies. She also spent many years working in the U.S. Senate, notably on the Children’s Television Act, which required TV stations to provide educational content, and the pivotal Cable Act of 1992, which opened the door to multichannel video competition. “I learned how the political system really works” during those years working on legislation, she said.
By the time Bush retired in 2022, she was global head of government affairs for News Corp, whose holdings include the Wall Street Journal,
HarperCollins, and Realtor.com. And she had played a role in key issues as varied as vertical integration, in which the same company owns both content and its distribution; funding for public television; and spectrum sharing. “One of the things I find so fascinating about communications law is that it is not just radio and television stations, but also cellular, satellite, and, importantly, new technologies,” Bush said. “It was, ‘How are the technologies going to be licensed and regulated to best serve the public?’”
In some families, a career as notable and influential as hers might be considered extraordinary. For Bush, however, success and accomplishment are in her DNA, thanks to a generations-long family emphasis on education. By her count, 11 members of her family have attended Northfield Mount Hermon so far, including her mother, Ann Dibble Jordan ’51 (whose second husband, Vernon Jordan, was a prominent civil rights activist), three of her mother’s siblings — Helen Dibble Cannaday, Robert Dibble, and Clarice Dibble Walker — and two cousins, Barbara Taylor Bowman and Rose Martin Palmer, both class of 1946. Toni and three cousins — Valerie Bowman Jarrett ’74, former senior advisor to President Barack Obama; Rochon Dibble; and Chyla Dibble — all attended NMH at the same time, and all went on to top colleges. For Bush, it was Wellesley College, then
Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law.
Her family’s education pedigree goes back much further. Her great-great-grandparents met at Oberlin. A great-grandfather, Robert Robinson Taylor, was the first African American graduate of MIT; he used his architecture degree to help design and build the Tuskegee Institute along with founder Booker T. Washington. Her grandfather, father, sister, and uncle all attended Amherst College. The list goes on, and their collective accomplishments could fill a book.
Bush herself decided on NMH for her final two years of high school after her mother determined the Chicago high school she attended wasn’t challenging enough. Bush thought it would be glamorous to follow the family tradition and go away to boarding school.
“I thought, ‘I’ll be able to be on my own.’ Little did I know that Northfield had more rules than my mother did!” she said with a laugh.
Rules aside, she fondly recalls NMH as a place where she honed her writing and learned to be independent, to manage her time. “The thing that always stuck with me was the work requirement. One year for me it was mopping floors. Another year I worked in the meat section making lunch. It made a sense of community, knowing that we were all responsible for making the campus work.”
Beyond work and academics, NMH gave Bush the opportunity to spend a summer in Morocco, which sparked a lifelong connection with the country. She attended the American School of Tangier, where she lived in a dorm with an NMH classmate. But for one week they lived with a family of goat herders.
“It was an amazing experience,” she said, describing the men rising at 4 am
TONI COOK BUSH ’74
PHOTO: SEVEN PAIR STUDIOS
to take the goats into town, the women baking bread, and then everyone gathering for dinner around a communal tagine. “I remember thinking they had this wonderful life with their family and community.” Some years later, she and her husband, Dwight Bush Sr., spent their honeymoon there. She returned again to give the commencement address at the school and to join her husband when Obama appointed him to the ambassadorship there.
Despite the relative diversity of her schools in Chicago, NMH was the first time Bush was immersed in a predominantly white community. “It was a learning experience for me to see the challenges that some of my classmates had in acclimating to the environment. When you’re in a community where you’re around a lot of Black people all the time, you don’t really think about it. And then all of a sudden you’re in a community where you really are the minority,” she said. “That sparked a lifelong interest in and appreciation for better understanding the African American experience in America.” That interest carried through Bush’s time at Wellesley and her professional life. She’s active on several nonprofit boards, notably as board chair of The History Makers, a digital video archive of interviews with more than 3,700 African Americans (her own interview is in progress). “I think it’s critical to preserve this important part of American history,” she said. “I mean, it is the American story, right?” The archive is housed at the Library of Congress and is available in more than 200 colleges, universities, and public libraries.
She also is on the advisory council for the Obama Foundation’s My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, which was launched by the former president as a
“Workjob made a sense of community, knowing that we were all responsible for making the campus work.”
way to harness community support to improve outcomes for boys and young men of color around the country.
Bush’s list of nonprofit board memberships — from the Smithsonian to Children’s National Hospital — is long and dates back to her days as a young lawyer serving on the board of the Legal Aid Society. “I think it’s very important to give back and to play an active part in your community,” she said. “That comes directly from my mother — she was a social worker. She was always involved in nonprofit organizations that helped people in our community, and so that’s always been an important part of who I am.”
Now that she’s retired, and even with all her board work, Bush has more time to spend with her family. She and Dwight have been married for 34 years and have two children: Dwight Jr., a digital marketer, and Jackie, who served as campaign deputy press secretary for U.S. Sen. Angela Alsobrooks.
Bush, an avid reader who is midway through biographies of every U.S. president, is about to add “author” to her already extensive resume. She and her paternal uncle are penning a novel based on the lives of her great-grandmother, opera singer Abbie Mitchell, and great-grandfather Will Marion Cook, a gifted violinist who studied with Antonin Dvorak and who wrote the 1903 musical “In Dahomey,” the first all-Black full-length musical to play on Broadway. Bush hopes that a novel will find more readers than a biography. “Worst-case scenario is we’ve written a book for our children and grandchildren,” she said with a smile. [NMH]
Elise
Gibson is a freelance journalist in western Massachusetts
Two Alums Who Came Home to NMH
BY BILL SWEET
Though their paths would not cross until after their days as Northfield Mount Hermon students, the lives of Carrie Pelzel ’70 and Bruce McClintock ’60 are intertwined with the NMH story.
Looking back over long and fruitful careers in philanthropy and institutional development, the couple credits NMH for nourishing their sense of fairness and the importance of giving back.
“I look at Northfield Mount Hermon as the bend in the road of my life. It was where everything changed,” says McClintock, who was director of alumni relations and development at NMH from 1965 to 1970 and then spent four decades at Marts & Lundy, a New Jersey-based consulting firm specializing in nonprofit fundraising and philanthropic strategy.
“I’ve always been proud that our founder’s goal was to provide access to education for students of limited means, making inclusivity a central value from the beginning,” says Pelzel, currently interim vice president for advancement at her other alma mater, Trinity College. During a career of more than 40 years in educational advancement, she served as associate director of university development for Harvard University during a $2.3 billion campaign and later led a successful $1.3 billion campaign as senior vice president for advancement at Dartmouth College.
Pelzel spent much of her childhood on the Northfield campus, years before she took a single class there. Her family moved to town when she was in the third grade, when her father, Carl Pelzel Sr., accepted a position as director of buildings and grounds at the school. Her mother, Norma Andersen Pelzel, worked in NMH’s admission office and later for Howard Jones, president and trustee of the school from 1961 to 1979. The Northfield campus was her backyard.
“I used to skate on Perry Pond as a kid with the Northfield girls and always looked up to them and wondered whether it might ever be possible for me to be one of them,” she remembers. “It was quite a wonderful day when I was admitted to Northfield.”
CARRIE PELZEL ’70 AND BRUCE MCCLINTOCK ’60
Carrie and Bruce attended NMH 10 years apart — but their shared love of the school led to their own love story.
Two years in at Northfield, she moved into Marquand Hall, literally across the pond from her home. While moving to a dormitory freed her from the strictures of home, Pelzel says her transformation truly occurred in the classroom. In particular, she remembers studying under Barbara Southard, then head of the Department of Biblical and Religious Studies, after whom an academic prize is now named.
“She taught metaphysics and challenged us to question fundamental assumptions,” Pelzel remembers. “I felt I was being transported 10,000 miles from home, intellectually. And I loved it. I will forever be grateful to Barbara Southard for teaching us the power of critical thinking and the courage to think differently.”
McClintock, an athlete in cross-country, basketball, and lacrosse at Mount Hermon, says his “a-ha” moments about school weren’t in a specific class but were experienced through the campus culture.
“When I arrived, what struck me more than anything else was the fact that 80% of the students were on financial aid, and if anyone happened to come from a family of great wealth, you would never, ever admit it because the culture of the school was that we all worked 15 hours a week on campus jobs,” he says. There was a sense from early on of everyone being in this together, and it’s a feeling that has stuck with him more than a half-century later.
“When I left Mount Hermon, I left with a clear sense of respect for people, for who they are and not for what they pretend to be,” he says. “That was enormously helpful.”
“I’ve always felt that the school was way ahead of its time, in the sense
“I’ve always been proud that our founder’s goal was to provide access to education for students of limited means, making inclusivity a central value from the beginning.”
that it was committed to diversity in all ways before diversity was a term,” Pelzel says. “It was embedded in the very founding of the institution, and it has been a thread ever since.”
Those values would bring each back to NMH — and together.
After graduating from Denison University, McClintock returned to NMH, to serve as director of alumni relations from 1965 to 1968 and director of development through 1971. Four years later, fresh from graduating from Trinity College, Pelzel was offered a position in NMH’s alumni office.
“I had no idea what alumni relations work was all about,” she remembers. “I was on my way to law school but needed to earn money first to pursue that path. I felt enormous gratitude to Northfield for the education that I had received and decided to accept NMH’s offer.”
Her responsibilities included working with the president of the Alumni Association and a trustee of NMH, a certain Bruce McClintock. It proved to be a benefit for everyone all around, as the school proceeded into a successful capital campaign.
“As Carrie was working on the campaign, things just started to click,” McClintock says.
Pelzel would ultimately take over McClintock’s former job as NMH’s director of development and then become director of external affairs.
In 1978, the two would marry. It was so much an NMH moment that the school’s director of alumni relations, the Rev. Deane R. Lanphear, officiated the ceremony.
At the end of the capital campaign, the chair of the consulting firm that had worked with Pelzel, Marts & Lundy, offered her a position.
McClintock recalls, “One day he called Carrie and said, ‘We’re eager to know, Carrie, if you would like to join Marts & Lundy.’ And she said, ‘The time just isn’t right. I’m really interested in gaining more experience running a program.’ And so he said, ‘Well, is Bruce there?’”
McClintock took the call and the job. He stayed at Marts & Lundy for the rest of his career, working with more than 100 clients, helping them raise more than $12 billion in philanthropic support.
“Every year we’d have a staff conference, and people would ask me, without fail, ‘How’s the person we really wanted to hire doing?’” McClintock says, amused.
Bruce and Carrie summed it up: “Our careers have given us each exposure to many exceptional educational institutions. When we return to NMH for our reunions, we always feel as though we are truly coming home to one of the very best.” [NMH]
Bill Sweet is a writer and editor in Northampton, Massachusetts.
STORY BY PETER WEIS ’78
ARCHIVAL
A History of the Campus Radio Station
IN ))
the spring of 1967 a group of dedicated Mount Hermon students, led by Curtis Hansen ’68, set out to start a radio station.
Often stories like this begin by describing “a small but dedicated group…” Not so with WMHS. According to the first published report (in an April 26 issue of The Hermonite) about the nascent station, 75 students — more than 10% of the student body — were involved, and by the time the studios opened three weeks later that number had swelled to more than 90. Plans for broadcasts matched this enthusiasm and included everything from reports from the lost and found to a proposed interview with poet Allen Ginsberg. Supported by a $160 grant from the discretionary fund of then-headmaster Arthur H. Kiendl, coupled with student-led food sales, the station went “live” on May 17, 1967. Kiendl himself welcomed WMHS to the airwaves from the cozy confines of a studio in Hayden Hall.
75 STUDENTS (more than 10% of
the student body) were involved at the new radio station.
In this earliest iteration, the radio station broadcast only to Hayden and Crossley Halls. The fall of 1967 saw its AM signal boosted to allow the station to reach as far as Overtoun, and the entire campus could tune in to a variety of programming 54 hours a week. By the arrival of coeducation in the fall of 1971, the station could boast nearly 70 hours of programming a week, but now its signal, no stronger than it had been four years earlier, reached only half of the school’s students. A belated change to the station’s call letters from WMHS to WNMH in the fall of 1975 helped symbolically. But while the
dedicated core of student DJs and technicians kept the station humming, its inherent inability to bring the campuses together helped to ensure its downfall, and in 1978 that humming stopped.
Almost immediately, students clamored for a new station — one with an FCC license to allow a more powerful signal and with the accompanying antenna and transmitting equipment to reach both campuses and even to the far reaches of Greenfield.
Those efforts took time. WNMH was once again listed in the Student Activities guide for 1982-83, with the exciting news that, “The application for our own FM educational station has been submitted!” The hope to be on the air again by 1983, under the guidance of faculty advisor Ted Thorton, was not realized, however. Raising the necessary funds (all undertaken by students and other interested parties) caused inevitable delays, so that the next year’s activities guide could only report that an FCC license had been issued to build the station and that call letters had been assigned. Hope for a station was still only hope, but funds were now in place and the promise of next spring now seemed a realistic target. Turntables, tape decks, a new soundboard, microphones, and all other needed paraphernalia coalesced, as a basement room in Stone Hall was transformed into the new studios. In May of 1984, after years of silence, WNMH, now broadcasting at 91.5 FM, was back on the air.
The spring of 2001 saw further improvements to the Stone Hall facilities, and WNMH, now broadcasting at 345 watts, was, according to then-co-programming director Ross Blankenship ’01, the most powerful high school radio station in the country. Other improvements included the ability of DJs to create playlists of MP3 format materials, allowing the station to broadcast content 24/7 without the presence of a DJ. These
91.5 FM.
The
halcyon days seemed as though they might be short-lived, with the closing of the Northfield campus in the spring of 2005, but WNMH persevered without missing a beat. The studios in Stone Hall were seamlessly transferred to the “Crossley Underground” over the following summer, and with the antenna still functioning at Northfield, music and commentary continued to flow from 91.5 FM and spread itself up and down the valley. But there was still a fly in the ointment! The antenna remained at Northfield, and with the sale of the campus, one outlet for WNMH radio was sold as well. Emergent technologies prevailed, however, so that while over-the-air broadcasting ceased, the internet streaming service that allows WNMH to be heard all over the world continued — and continues today. Last spring marked the 40th year of continuous broadcasting at WNMH, and, amazingly,
106.7 FM.
studios in Stone Hall were seamlessly transferred to the “Crossley Underground” over the following summer, and with the antenna still functioning at Northfield, music and commentary continued to flow from 91.5 FM and spread itself up and down the valley.
The campus radio station has been a special place for generations of students.
in this time the station has been overseen by only three faculty advisors: Ted Thornton, Bill Hattendorf, and Megan Latimer. That constant has calmed the turbulence of four decades of broadcasting. Salud! to their efforts, and to the efforts of WMHS/WNMH 1.0, which laid the foundation. [NMH]
NMH archivist Peter Weis ’78 hosts “From the Archives” on WNMH on Tuesdays at 8 pm.
<< Rewind ALUMNI LOOK BACK
Had a great time DJing on WNMH radio (serving Northfield, Gill, Keene, and Brattleboro!). I played so much ska and punk on there; it was the best.
The late Curt Hansen ’68 was taking a survey to gauge whether there was enough interest to proceed with building a campus radio station. I told him to sign me up. I was on the air the first day the radio station signed on in 1967. Two years later, I got my first paying radio job and went on to have a career in radio, TV, and voiceover.
DANA (LEE) GORDON ’67
I had my radio show for approximately two years on WNMH. Favorite memory was the FCC calling the station and telling me to knock it off when I changed the power setting and was broadcasting on Deerfield’s channel as well.
DAVID CADE ’89
AARON GUITERMAN ’92:
Dave Williams and I had an awesome late night show. We rocked the Pioneer Valley.
DAVE WILLIAMS ’92: “Prepubescent Jazz” was the name (I think). It was Friday nights from 8 to 10 pm. We thought no one would be listening but apparently they were! Great fun.
AARON GUITERMAN: We had folks calling in from all over loving what we were “spinning.”
EMILY SAEX ’03
I
have fond memories of playing records on the airwaves of WNMH. My show was called the “Oh Dear Show with New Wave Dave,” playing mostly late ’70s, early ’80s new wave, punk, and ska. New Order, Big Boys, and The Specials were on
a heavy rotation.
DAVID TAIT ’85
Fond memories of WMHS in the basement of Hayden. Around 1970 it went from broadcast to carrier current with transmitters in a few buildings. Signal reached maybe 50 feet from those buildings, in accordance with FCC regs at the time. The original studio had a couple of turntables and reel-to-reel tape, with a somewhat clunky control board. In 1970 the control board was updated with a cleaner model. Both of those boards had dials.
PETE HORNE ’71
I was working with a 15-year-old autistic boy recently who loves music and has a great vinyl collection. I suggested that he could have a radio show on his local community radio session and he didn’t believe me, but when I told him I had done it in high school he opened up to the possibility. Sometimes just knowing that something is possible makes all the difference.
Used to tune in every weekend night, or the random times my crush DJs would be on! Even better when they’d play our crazy (subliminalnot-obvious-crush-pick-me!) requests!
JESSICA DAKIN-KINZIE ’96
ANNIE MCCASLAND-PEXTON ’93
ON AIR (( the ))
Today’s students continue the long radio tradition
STORY BY SARAH OLSON ’26 PHOTOS BY MATTHEW CAVANAUGH
There’s also a student board of directors, which is the leadership of the station. The student board answers questions, creates events, and guides the vision of the studio. Megan Latimer, WNMH’s advisor, says the radio studio is an amazing space because “it brings a special feeling, knowing that people are here because they love music.”
Every Wednesday at 8 pm, Wyatt Amos ’25 and Dani Rosen ’25 start their show in the small room in the Crossley basement, decorated with colorful LED lights and posters. They begin by sharing with their audience news, school updates, and whatever else they feel like talking about. The two play music — usually music they’re in the mood for that night — and have a microphone break, where they chat with their audience for a couple of minutes, every half hour.
RADIO HAS BEEN AT NMH since the 1960s and has always been a special space for many students. Students who are involved with the station, called WNMH, get a two-hour time slot each week to talk and play music. It’s stationed in the basement of Crossley dorm, in a room with a radio board connected to a computer that broadcasts to an online streaming platform that anyone in the world can tune into.
While Amos and Rosen are playing music, they catch up with each other and do their homework. Sometimes, friends visit to be their special guests and talk about sports games and school events. They finish the show off by introducing the last song and saying, “See you next week.”
The show holds a lot of meaning for Amos since his mother, Jessica Hodges ’90, and his sister, Mazzy Amos ’22, both had the same show time when they attended NMH. “It’s been interesting to see how far the show’s come and also how much it’s changed,” Amos says.
TUNE IN!
WNMH’s schedule includes hip-hop to history, classic rock to pop, punk and new wave.
HOW TO BE A DJ:
Students interested in radio are assigned two-hour time slots during which they broadcast to the world. Students play music or talk about something of interest to them or of relevance to the community. New ideas are continually put forth by excited DJs who would like to create shows about their passions.
The radio connects the NMH community by having shows by faculty and students. Jim Overton, who works in the dining hall as the assistant manager, has a punk rock show. Peter Weis, who works in the library as the archivist, has a show about history. Andrew Lippman, who works in IT, helps with the equipment and is the station’s engineer.
Students get cocurricular credit for being part of WNMH. They also learn the technical aspects of the radio board, gain public speaking skills, and develop the ability to multitask while playing the music they choose. “It definitely helps students gain more confidence, because they’re preparing a live show for listeners,” Latimer says. The equipment is also a huge part of being in the cocurricular: Students learn how to use the radio board using individual channels and levels for microphones, physical media, and laptops and how to troubleshoot all those aspects.
On his show, “From the Archives,” Weis talks about NMH history and plays music he likes. He has had a show for around 11 years and says, “I just have a lot of fun with it.” His show used to be all vinyl records that he would have to haul around campus, but now he does everything from the station’s computer. He tunes in to student shows whenever he has a moment, and he genuinely enjoys being part of the station.
Amos has been on the station’s board of directors since sophomore year. He loves playing music and sharing it on the radio. Being part of the board is a leadership position and also a learning experience. “It’s a really cool space and environment to be in,” he says.
“When you’re listening to the radio, and you hear your favorite song that you haven’t heard or thought of in so long, there is this nostalgic moment that happens,” Latimer says. [NMH]
Sarah Olson is an NMH junior from Ketchum, Idaho, whose workjob is with the Office of Marketing and Communications.
Student Ecoleaders work to a sustainable future -at NMH and beyond
PHOTOS BY MATTHEW
STEPHANIE CRAIG, TONY DOWNER, SKYLAR MCALPIN, AND LINDSEY TOPHAM
Green ✺ Leaders
STORY BY MAUREEN TURNER
CAVANAUGH,
The Ecoleaders are an example of NMH's commitment to empowering students to make real change.
Since her childhood in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, Jasper Neff ’25 says, “one of my main interests in life has been environmental science and climate activism. My mom’s a biologist, so I grew up around nature, learning about nature, caring about the Earth, caring about animals, and learning how human actions impact them.”
Jane Namusisi ’26 became interested in environmentalism after witnessing the effects of large-scale deforestation, fuel shortages, and a water-shortage crisis on her hometown of Kampala, Uganda. In middle school, she joined the environmental club, which worked on projects like planting new trees, collecting rainwater from rooftops for use in farming, and reusing the residue from charcoal used for cooking to create a new fuel source. “I was that kid who saw a problem and always wanted to find solutions,” she says.
For Kelvin Cheung ’25, his interest in environmental work was spurred by a sixth-grade class back home in Hong Kong, where he learned about crucial issues such as global warming, the need for alternative energy sources, and the problem of trash disposal in an area where landfills had reached capacity. “That was the first time I developed this sense of global citizenship: The world is experiencing these kinds of things, and we have to do something about it,” he says. While their paths varied greatly, Neff, Namusisi, and Cheung have each found an outlet for their passion as Ecoleaders, Northfield Mount Hermon’s student sustainability group. While many schools have environmental clubs, Ecoleaders is different: For one thing, it’s a student leadership role, meaning prospective members have to apply for one of about a
Jasper Neff ’25
That was the first time I developed this sense of global citizenship: The world is experiencing these kinds of things, and we have to do something about it.”
KELVIN CHEUNG ’25 “
justice is part of that,” says science teacher Skylar McAlpin, the group’s faculty advisor. “Prioritizing [Ecoleaders] as a student leadership position helps to model that we are committed and that the students need to be involved and want to be involved in real ways.”
For students in the group, that empowerment is transformative. Neff decided to come to NMH in part because the school offered leadership positions focused on environmental work. “To actually have a say in sustainability initiatives at the school, to be able to spearhead our own initiatives and be included in conversations about institutional change — it’s mind-blowing that NMH has an opportunity for student voices to be so heard and involved,” she says.
dozen spots in the group. Their membership in Ecoleaders also counts as their “workjob,” a recognition of the hours and effort they put into the role.
That effort is significant. “Ecoleaders do work here that adults do at other schools,” says Pete Sniffen, NMH’s sustainability coordinator and a science teacher. “If I made a list of all the things that Ecoleaders accomplished this year, it would be a meaningful list for a sustainability coordinator at another school.”
The Ecoleaders are a tangible representation of two of NMH’s key values: a commitment to sustainability that calls for action on both the local and the global level, and a dedication to empowering students to make meaningful positive change in the world. “Our history at NMH is rooted in social justice. And climate
The Ecoleaders initiate and implement sustainability projects on campus, from recycling and composting efforts to the Green Cup Challenge, an annual competition to see which dorm can conserve the most energy. Their work has a strong educational component, including a week of workshops and events on climate issues every spring. The Ecoleaders’ work also extends off campus, with members joining like-minded peers to organize at youth climate events or lobby for environmental bills before the state legislature.
The group grew out of a larger focus on campus sustainability efforts that took off 20 years ago, with the establishment of the NMH Task Force for Sustainability. The task force was proposed by two members of the faculty, Becca
The Ecoleaders work on and off campus to promote a sustainable future.
Prioritizing [Ecoleaders] as a student leadership position helps to model that we are committed and that the students need to be involved and want to be involved in real ways.”
SKYLAR MCALPIN Faculty Advisor
Malloy and Sarah Rebick, after they returned from a conference on sustainability education, says Associate Head of School Charlie Tierney.
“They came back so pumped up about the idea of creating a holistic group on campus to focus on issues of sustainability,” recalls Tierney, who served on the task force. “And that group would be interdisciplinary and intergenerational and would bridge faculty and staff and students, to make sure that those voices and those experiences would be included.” The group comprised representatives from departments such as dining, plant facilities, and the power plant, as well as teachers and students, all focused on making campus operations greener.
The task force’s early initiatives included a ban on mini-fridges in dorm rooms to reduce energy use, the creation of water-bottle filling stations around campus, and the move to a “trayless”
dining hall to cut down on food waste. In 2006, NMH partnered with the Lawrenceville School and Phillips Exeter Academy to found the Green Cup Challenge, which has since grown into a international nonprofit effort, with hundreds of participating schools.
GREEN CUP CHALLENGE
NMH was of three schools that founded the Green Cup Challenge. Today, hundreds of schools participate.
“There were a lot of ideas that came out of this work that led to some policies on things like purchasing green energy, shifting to biodiesel in the power plant, and using compost on the fields,” Tierney says. There was also a strong outreach component to the work, with efforts to educate the school community about the issues driving these changes.
About one-third of the task force’s roughly 20 members were students, who evolved into the first cohort of Ecoleaders. “We immediately recognized that the students had a power in their voice that probably was a lot stronger than any of the other folks around the table had,” Malloy says. “Young people are the problemsolvers and the team builders that would make this work effective in an embedded way on campus.”
Maggie Fellows ’09 was a member of the Task Force for Sustainability and an early Ecoleader. Growing up on an organic family farm in nearby Warwick got her thinking about the environment from an early age, so the group was a natural fit for her. “High school is a time for learning and development and finding your place in the world,” she says. “I was looking to live a more sustainable lifestyle and figure out how I could help other people become aware of climate change, how our world is changing and what our role in it is.”
“The early Ecoleaders were a really fun mix of folks who were very goal-oriented and strategic and thoughtful,” says Malloy, who served as the group’s faculty advisor before leaving NMH in 2022. “They were enthusiastic young people who lit things up and were willing to put on the Hogger costume and deliver compact fluorescent light bulbs to dorm rooms and say, ‘Hey, change your light bulb so that you can win the Green Cup Challenge!’”
Much of her role as advisor, Malloy says, was about empowering Ecoleaders to take ownership of their work — then stepping out of their way, “so that they could be creative forces in the way that NMH students are.”
The Ecoleaders support NMH's Climate Justice Club, which is open to all students.
After 15 years, much of the Ecoleaders’ work has become part of the fabric of life at NMH, such as the Green Cup Challenge. Held every spring, the competition now gives awards both to the greenest dorm and to an individual student winner. “We added individual challenges to highlight the importance of individual action,” Neff says. Students can earn points through actions, like reducing the length of their showers, or by self-education, such as reading an article about sustainability or calculating their personal carbon footprint.
The Ecoleaders also produce a digital newsletter, have a social media presence (@nmhecoleaders on Instagram), and make announcements at all-school meetings in Memorial Chapel. They volunteer at community events, like the annual Source to Sea cleanup project along the Connecticut River watershed or the Franklin County Fair, where they staff recycling and composting stations. The Ecoleaders also run NMH’s Climate Justice Club, which is open to all students.
In 2023, the Ecoleaders organized a youth climate summit on campus. The next year, it expanded to include 60 students from a halfdozen schools in the region. “We wanted more interaction with other schools like ours, to see what they’re doing, talk about climate change and the environment, and spread all the good work we’re doing here at NMH onward,” Namusisi says.
The daylong summit included workshops and panels with professionals in the field, such as Sofia Assab ’17, a consultant on corporate environmental policies; Digaunto Chatterjee, a vice president of Eversource Energy, whose daughter, Priya ’25, is an Ecoleader; and David Newman, a conservationist, former attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, and father of Oliver Newman ’27.
For Ecoleader alum Sasha Kracauer ’23, a highlight of her time in the group was Climate Action Week, held in April. The event began a few years ago with a single environmental workshop on Earth Day. But the Ecoleaders wanted to do more, so they petitioned the school for a full day of workshops.
“We worked so hard with the administration,” Kracauer recalls. “I think that they were skeptical, because when you ask for no classes for a day, that’s a big ask — that’s a whole day taken out of teachers’ curriculum. … But because we built that trust with the administration, we were able to build it up into this whole day. It was just incredible to see that progress.”
Climate Action Week now begins with a day of workshops led by Ecoleaders, alumni who work in the field, and other professionals. In a comingfull-circle moment, in 2024 Kracauer returned to lead a workshop at the teach-in on systemic sustainability and institutional change. Kracauer, who is now studying environmental engineering with a focus on renewable energy technologies at Smith College, taught the workshop with fellow Ecoleader alum Meena Relyea-Strawn ’23, now a student at Mount Holyoke College.
“When I joined the Ecoleaders, that’s when NMH showed me that I can be a leader,” Kracauer says. “I could propose different ideas, and people would be open to them and so receptive, and then we’d work together as a team to make them come into fruition, and it felt like I was making a huge impact.”
"I was that kid who saw a problem and always wanted to find solutions," says
Ecoleader Jane Namusisi.
As the group’s advisor, McAlpin does a lot of unseen, behindthe-scenes work while offering the ideal mix of support and grounding, students say. “What I loved most about Skylar was that I would come to her with these crazy ideas, these huge, huge ideas,” Kracauer says. “And it maybe was feasible; maybe it wasn’t feasible. But no matter what, she was always receptive to hearing it. And instead of taking over that idea, she would say: ‘How can I support you to achieve that goal?’ It was just amazing to have a leader like that to guide us but not to take over, and she just fit that role so perfectly.”
That’s what makes Ecoleaders special to Namusisi, too. “It’s student-driven. That’s meaningful,” she says. “[Environmental work is] not just another school rule — it’s students leading it and showing other students why it really matters.”
Abig part of the work of the Ecoleaders, Cheung says, is motivating other students to play their part in addressing environmental challenges. That’s not easy, he notes: “There are people who are overwhelmed by the challenge, who [think]: ‘This is such a huge, huge problem. What can we really do about it?’”
The Ecoleaders work to create opportunities for engagement, not just for fellow students but for the entire NMH community. “Our goal is to provide them with activities where they can see their impact,” Cheung says.
Individual positive actions may seem insignificant compared to the large-scale environmental damage caused by industry or inadequate government policies, Neff notes. “But if you can create a society where sustainability is valued and people take all these little actions, with the mindset ‘I want to protect the Earth’ or ‘I want to fight against climate change,’ then that forces structural change.”
More than 15 years after her graduation, Fellows acknowledges, she doesn’t remember all
Climate Action Week includes hands-on work by students to take care of NMH's beautiful campus.
Sasha (right), now studying environmental engineering at Smith College, returned to lead a workshop during Climate Justice Week.
When I joined the Ecoleaders, that’s when NMH showed me that I can be a leader. I could propose different ideas, and people would be open to them and so receptive, and then we’d work together as a team to make them come into fruition, and it felt like I was making a huge impact.”
SASHA KRACAUER ’23 “
the details about her time as an Ecoleader. But the experience stayed with her in other, profound ways: After NMH, she majored in environmental studies and languages at St. Lawrence University, where she continued the competitive rowing that she began at NMH. Then she moved to Vermont to train at the nonprofit Craftsbury Outdoor Center’s Green Racing Project, where elite athletes work on sustainability projects in exchange for room, board, and coaching. Today, she lives near Boston, where she’s training for the USRowing national team and volunteering with environmental advocacy groups.
“Ecoleaders opened a pathway for maintaining action and interest in something that’s really central to how our world is changing, while also pursuing other interests,” Fellows says. “Caring about the environment doesn’t necessarily need to be your only goal in life. … We all have a responsibility. You can still have your friends and your family and your academics and your extracurriculars and your sports, but do something that makes a difference in the world, too. …
“It goes along with the NMH mission statement of [education for] the head, the heart, and the hand,” Fellows continues. “What matters to people, and what can you do about it? Taking action doesn’t have to be big. If we all look at the magnitude of the problem and say, ‘It’s too big to do alone,’ then no one’s going to act. So taking those small steps are important to help other people get started but also to keep yourself moving in the right direction: What can I do? How can we make a difference?” [NMH]
After Halloween, Ecoleaders collected and composted jack-o'lanterns from around campus.
Gilder Gets LEED Certification
The Gilder Center has been recognized as Northfield Mount Hermon’s greenest building since it opened in 2021. Last year, Gilder received yet another accolade, when it was officially awarded Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). The world’s most widely used green building rating system, the LEED program is administered by the nonprofit U.S. Green Building Council.
Fittingly, Gilder is the center of STEM activity on the NMH campus. Home to the math and science departments, the 42,000-square-foot building is named for the late Richard Gilder ’50, who, with his wife, Lois Chiles, donated the lead gifts for the project.
This isn’t NMH’s first LEED certification; both the Rhodes Arts Center and Bolger House, home of the admission office, received gold LEED certification after they opened, in 2008 and 2009, respectively. But in the rapidly advancing field of sustainable building, what was groundbreaking just 15 years ago has since become industry standard, notes Jeff Seymour, the school’s director of facilities and grounds. The criteria used to evaluate the Gilder project reflect the latest developments in the field — features that were incorporated into the building from the earliest inception.
That thoughtful planning began with the siting of the building. The LEED evaluation system awards projects points if they’re built on the footprint of a previous development, rather than on untouched land — in the case of Gilder, that former use was the Silliman Laboratory building (which famously was destroyed by fire in November of 1965 while a football game between Mount Hermon and its rival Deerfield Academy continued, uninterrupted, on a nearby field).
“In terms of materials, we strove to get things as locally sourced as we could,” Seymour says. The granite and slate on Gilder’s exterior, for example, came from Vermont and New Hampshire. Natural materials were chosen over manufactured ones where possible.
Inside the building, LED lights, efficient appliances, and low-flush toilets help minimize energy and water use. Much of the building has floor-to-ceiling windows that let in beautiful views and natural sunlight; the windows are patterned with small, faint dots, which deter birds from flying into the glass, explains Pete Sniffen, NMH’s sustainability coordinator and a science teacher.
STORMWATER MANAGEMENT
Gilder’s stormwater management system reduces the flow of pollutants into the Connecticut River.
THE SCIENCE AND MATH CENTER IS THE THIRD CAMPUS BUILDING TO ACHIEVE THAT DESIGNATION
Sustainable principles are also integral to the Gilder Center’s infrastructure, including its heating and cooling system. That system uses chilled beam technology, which Sniffen likens to “a fancy, high-efficiency radiator”: Pipes that are part of the ceiling-mounted lights carry heated or cooled water; ducts then blow air across the pipes, picking up that heat or cold and distributing it around the room. In addition, each room in the building has its own thermostat, allowing teachers to individually control the temperature of their space. Visitors can track in real time the building’s energy and water use on a dashboard in its lobby — the kind of educational component that the LEED certification system values.
Gilder is an airtight building, which supports the efficiency of the heating and cooling system by ensuring that that heated or cooled air doesn’t leak out through gaps. That means it’s especially important for the building to have a strong air-exchange system, to keep its indoor air quality high.
“You have to get fresh air somehow. It’s not enough to just open a window, and you don’t want to do that in the wintertime,” Sniffen notes. Instead, Gilder uses a countercurrent heat exchange system, in which heated air leaving the building is used to warm the cold air entering, retaining the heat but bringing in fresh air.
Gilder’s stormwater management system also provides teaching opportunities. An inadequate system could have negative environmental effects, by allowing stormwater to carry pollutants into local waterways — in this case, the Connecticut River. It could also contribute to flooding, which can overwhelm municipal sewer systems along the watershed, resulting in sewage outflow into the water. But the biggest threat, Sniffen says, is the runoff of nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus from farms and sewage systems into the waterways. That leads to eutrophication, an overgrowth of aquatic plants that depletes oxygen and threatens both plant life and gillbreathing animals.
“Good environmental stewardship suggests anything you can do to slow the water’s path as it moves towards the river is good,” Sniffen says. “So the task then becomes: How do we slow water down?” At the Gilder Center, drain pipes carry water from the roof to nearby swales, where it’s collected.
A small one near the building provides a convenient teaching opportunity, he notes, while a larger one farther away captures water from across campus.
75% reduction in greenhouse emissions since 2006
“We were really thoughtful about how we designed the building,” Seymour says. Gilder was also designed to meet the standards of the 2030 Challenge, which calls for sustainable design strategies and other measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Gilder’s roof and floors are made of cross-laminated timber. This prefabricated engineered wood product is made by gluing layers of boards together, which makes it strong and reduces shrinking and expanding. Using cross-laminated timber also dramatically reduced the amount of concrete and steel — the production of which result in high CO2 emissions — used in the building. In addition, Sniffen says, the trees from which the timber was made sequestered carbon as they were growing.
COUNTERCURRENT HEAT
Certain animals, such as ducks, use countercurrent heat exchange as their blood passes through capillaries and veins in their legs and feet, allowing them to withstand cold temperatures. “From an ecology perspective, I enjoy teaching about [the system],” Sniffen says. “It’s a neat parallel with the natural world.”
The careful design and construction of the Gilder Center is just part of NMH’s overall commitment to sustainability. That commitment is evident in many ways, from the composting bin that sits near the dish room in Alumni Hall to the school’s 75% reduction in greenhouse emissions since 2006, achieved through measures like the move from fossil fuels to biofuels to heat the campus and the purchase of renewable electricity through renewable energy credits. The school is now undergoing a yearlong, campus-wide sustainability audit that will result in a long-term sustainability and climate action plan.
PHOTO: MATTHEW CAVANAUGH
Catch Up with Old Friends
Among those celebrating the L.A. Dodgers’ victory in the 2024 World Series: Galen Carr ’93, the team’s vice president for player personnel. This was the Dodgers’ second championship win since Galen joined the organization in 2014. Before that, he was part of three World Series champion Red Sox teams. Galen is a regular panelist at the annual Dick Peller Hot Stove Night, a beloved annual tradition that brings together baseball pros, alums, and students for an evening discussing all things baseball.
Kiano Moju ’09 has brought together her passion for food, culture, and chemistry in “AfriCali: Recipes From My Jikoni” (Simon & Schuster), her debut cookbook. Born in California to African parents, Kiano has created recipes that honor those heritages, like kijani seafood pilau, berbere braised short ribs, and green mango olive oil cake. A longtime food-media producer, Kaino is also the founder of the nonprofit Jikoni Recipe Archive (jikoniarchive.org), which documents and celebrates the legacy of African and Black cooks.
Erika Jing ’23, now a student at Williams College, received the 2024 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize for her poem “Follow.” She read the poem — which she dedicated to her mother — and several other poems at an award ceremony at The Jule Museum at Auburn University. Erika’s winning poem was published in the fall 2024 issue of the Southern Humanities Review. The prize honors poet Jake Adam York, who dedicated his career to writing about social justice.
NMH ALUMS: What are you up to?
Share your latest news — and catch up on the latest from your friends and classmates — at our online Class Notes portal at nmhschool.org/classnotes.
You can also find fellow alums in our searchable directory at nmhschool.org/ alumnidirectory.
“ There’s a lot of support for students wanting to be well-rounded community members.
Being part of teams, clubs, affinity groups – it’s a big part of NMH culture.”
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SAGE ’23, STATE COLLEGE, PENNSYLVANIA
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NMH’s Theater Department staged an innovative, updated production of Shakespeare’s mistakenidentity comedy “Twelfth Night” in the fall.
“The joy in working with students on Shakespeare is sort of taking him down off of that pedestal – not just lifting him gently down from the shelf, but toppling him off the soapbox – into somewhere that fits in [students’] lives,” said Theater Director Jared Eberlein.
“There’s something special about the humor from 1602 resonating with an audience more than 400 years later,” said Brooke Hindinger ’25, who played Viola.
