P OLY PREP MAG AZI N E
The
BREAKTHROUGH MOMENT
Artists talk about their
and
big breaks moments life-changing
FA LL
2016
BOARD OF TRUSTEES 2015-16 OFFICERS Susanna Furfaro, M.D. P’13, ’15 Co-Chair Robert Sabbagh ’87, P’27, ’30 Co-Chair LOWER SCHOOL 50 Prospect Park West Brooklyn, NY 11215 MIDDLE AND UPPER SCHOOLS 9216 Seventh Avenue Brooklyn, NY 11228
Michael A. Correra ’87 Vice Chair Kristerfor Mastronardi ‘95 Treasurer
BOARD MEMBERS Robin Bramwell-Stewart ’86, P’16 Lawrence Brandman, Esq. ’78, P’16 Cynthia Cheswick Capone ’88 Michael Clark P’07, ’14 Jeanne Cloppse ’84 Elizabeth Comerford P’09, ’11, ’14 Charles Diker ’52 Karen Burke Goulandris, M.D., Ph.D. P’15
Jennifer Jordan Gorman ’99 Nicholas Gravante, Esq. ’78, P’20, ’23 Gary Hanna, Esq. ’84 Arnold Mascali ’84 Cassandra Metz P’21, ’26 John Regan ’86 Daniela Vitale-Howell P’20, ’23, ’25 Vincent Vigorita, M.D. ’68, P’96, ’99, ’15
Wade Saadi, Jr. ’95 President, Alumni Board of Governors
TRUSTEES EMERITI Clifford Barr, Esq. ’48 Harry Petchesky, Esq. ’55
Thomas Parker ’65 Secretary Grace Sawyer P’82 Assistant Secretary (Emeritus)
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POLY PR E P MAG A Z I NE
F E AT URE S Olivia Merola ‘18 poses with classmates for “On Pointe,” a photo series by Storm Bookhard ’18 (on pp. 12-17)
2 State of the Arts Audrius Barzdukas P’20 in conversation with Performing Arts director Sonya Baehr and Latin teacher Runako Taylor. 4 The Breakthrough Moment Alumni, students, and faculty write about the moment they knew they wanted to become an artist, from dance and comedy to theater and film. 10 Building in Spanish Verse: Q&A with Jose Oliveras The actor, teacher, and director opens up about crossing cultural borders, the overlapping of sounds and meaning, and growing up in Puerto Rico. 12 On Pointe: Student Dancers Among Us Student Storm Bookhard ‘18 looks at what it means to embody two worlds through the lens of five dancers. 18 Drumbeat In Our Feet From salsa and reggae to violin and ballet, a look at children’s self-expression from the perspective of dance, drama, and music.
EDITOR Sousan Hammad Associate Director of Engagement & Communications STAFF WRITER/PHOTOGRAPHER Linda Busetti Engagement & Communications Manager
Illustration by Matt Huynh. O N T H E B AC K Kodak contact sheets from 1999.
22 Deconstructing Dance Two World Languages teachers, Dr. Angela Gittens and Ryan Rockmore, take on the political task of breaking down and rebuilding the meaning of dance.
COPY EDITOR Grace Duggan
26 A Mixtape For Every Song: Q&A with Dan Doughty Behind the musical direction of the Performing Arts chair, from Concert Choir to musical theater.
DESIGN Spoon+Fork
D E PA RT ME N TS
PHOTOGRAPHY Linda Busetti Martyn Gallina-Jones P’15 William Rosario Poly Archives
ON THE COVER The Breakthrough Moment
20 Freeze Into Poses: A Profile of Jill Bolstridge A window into the world of a Middle School Performing Arts teacher’s career, and how she inspires and instructs her students on stage and in the classroom.
THE BLUE & THE GRAY is published by Poly’s Engagement & Communications Office. It features news from the Poly community of alumni, faculty, and students. Inquiries and submissions are welcome. Contact the Editor at shammad@polyprep.org.
For more information about Poly Prep, visit www.polyprep.org.
28 Young Things: Flash Fiction by Christy Hutchcraft 30 The Culture Section: What We’re Listening To, Reading, Watching 32 Annals of a Progressive Voter: Jabari Brisport ’05 on Acting and Activism 33 Of Note: Student Achievements 34 Faculty Retirements 40 Spirit Award 42 The Empowerment Print Project 44 Commencement 46 Alumni Awards 47 Class Notes 54 Obituaries
State of the Arts
Audrius Barzdukas P’20 in conversation with Sonya Baehr and Runako Taylor Before becoming Poly’s tenth Head of School, Audrius Barzdukas P’20 was Associate Head of Upper School at HarvardWestlake School in California for five years. Barzdukas sat down with Runako Taylor, who teaches Latin and coaches fencing, and Sonya Baehr, a key part of Poly’s Performing Arts Department since 1990. The three met on the morning of Special Reunion to talk about the importance and challenges of performing arts at Poly, the subtler challenges of diversity, and what it takes to make an actor. What surfaced was not only an intriguing combination of people—a Latin teacher, an administrator, and a performing arts director—but also a conversation that was spirited, intimate, and— often at length—humorous. —S O U S A N H A M M A D Runako Taylor: We’re here to have this little chat, so I thought I would ask: What’s your understanding of or personal relationship with the arts? Audrius Barzdukas: My parents are proud immigrants, and Lithuanian song and dance helped that nation survive the Soviet occupation. There was always an annual song or dance festival, but, more importantly, there is a deep-rooted appreciation for the arts among Lithuanians, including printmaking. RT: Printmaking? AB: Yes. In particular, woodcuts. There’s a fine tradition of graphic arts among Lithuanians. An appreciation for the arts was instilled early in my life. I grew up on Saturdays going to Lithuanian school, and on the drive home my father always listened to the broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera. I was also a board member of the regional theater in Colorado Springs, The Colorado Actors Theatre. Among our different achievements, we produced a film and an original play about Nikola Tesla in Colorado Springs. The arts are imbued in my life and in my family’s life, and I really believe that words are only one way for us to communicate. I think what the arts do is that they give us, our children, a means of expression and a way of getting what’s inside of us out of us, a way that is enlivening and empowering and humanizing. Sonya Baehr: You know, just listening to you speak, you have a very good voice. Have you ever done any singing yourself? RT: I think this might be your audition, Audrius. You better be careful. 2
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AB: I just listened to a great podcast about the power of taking up something new to learn. And there was an op-ed in The New York Times about learning something new late in life, so I would aspire to learn how to sing! SB: Well, I don’t think you’d have to learn too much. Basically you listen to somebody’s voice. One of the things I do at Poly is teach the art of public speaking, and I’ve also been a professional singer for many years pre-teaching. You can listen to the way someone produces sound and how they’re using their breath, and what kind of resonances they have. AB: There’s hope? SB: Not only hope, but great potential! AB: Well, good; I like our conversation already!
SB: Luckily, at Poly we’ve been able to cut across group lines, so in other words you can be a member of one particular group and find yourself in a play or musical, and all of a sudden you’re meeting people who aren’t from your group and it creates a bond and cuts across class levels at the school, which I also find a very powerful and positive thing that we’ve been able to do over the years. AB: And it speaks towards diversity: the idea of all of us getting out of our comfort zones and being comfortable, more comfortable with difference than similarity. It’s a noble goal to which we should all aspire in different ways. Because as our world continues to get smaller, we’re going to have to find ways, our children are going to have to find ways, to relate to people from
SB: My husband is a choral director and he was here for 21 years as the head of the arts program at Poly. AB: Well, I think a vibrant choral program, a collection of young voices, is as powerful as anything a school can produce. SB: And this is the interesting thing about the connection between the arts and athletics, groups of people working together to achieve something that’s greater than any one of those people could have done by themselves. And forming bonds while they’re doing that makes it an extremely powerful community connection, which you’re talking about with the Lithuanian community and is here in the Poly community, as well. RT: A proper team effort! Runako Taylor
around the world, because our problems are transnational. Our opportunities are transnational, and I think that the arts can really bring people together in interesting ways. Just like at the Olympics when the world marches into the stadium, some 160 countries, all together. SB: That must be very exciting. AB: It’s a powerful moment. RT: I did a little searching online and I’m curious as to how you view yourself. You’re heavily linked to the Olympics, but there are a handful of scholarly articles that have your name on them. Or is that another Audrius out there? AB: I don’t know how many of those are roaming around. I’m a learner, and I do think.
My parents came to the U.S. with nothing. I was part of the Lithuanian diaspora. SB: When was that? AB: After World War II. My father was living in a displacement camp and the goal was to get to America, the land of opportunity. Early on, I was taught that if you learned, if you tried your best, there was a chance. And so I grew up reading. I remember having cereal at breakfast and every morning I read The Washington Post. I always liked reading Art Buchwald because he was a funny columnist. Reading, learning, engaging with the world in a way that you’re curious about—are all ways to find connections and meaning. I think if there is a theme in my life… RT: It’s the searching. AB: Yes, it’s the searching. SB: I think that connects with Poly’s past, too, because Poly has served, historically, as a gateway for immigrant communities to come into New York City and join the rise to
success. But because we were in Brooklyn, we became a gateway school for immigrants and people who wanted an opportunity for their kids. Frankly, it’s one of the reasons I feel that my work here has been of great meaning. Because it’s a part of the growth and integration of all kinds of kids who may not otherwise have an opportunity. For me, that’s really important. AB: My wife’s parents are Portuguese immigrants. We go back to Portugal every summer to visit her family, and I think Poly’s identity, and indeed Brooklyn’s identity, as the crossroads of the world, a place where you can maintain your identity and stay who you are, is an ideal to which our school should continue to aspire. And I think it’s a source of strength as you were describing, and a unique identity upon which we should build. RT: I can only imagine that your path, your creative path and searching, is a monumental thing. You follow your instincts, you follow your drives, you follow your curiosities, and that opens up
a path. I’m wondering how much of that world outlook translates into theater specifically. How much do you learn from those experiences? SB: Well, theater training is basically empathy training. You’re putting yourself in somebody else’s shoes. In the process, you’re trying to understand another human being’s way of looking at the world. And it’s also conflict resolution training because it’s always about solving a problem. Theater really tells different stories about the human existence and by our participation in those stories, we’re learning how a person might deal or interact in a relational situation. That’s why it’s been so strong at Poly—because our emphasis on physical activity and physical prowess goes hand in hand with an art form. RT: Yet the arts have always tended to be more marginalized in academic settings. Sonya, how do you think Poly deals with that? Do you think we can proudly say that arts are a big deal? Are they flourishing here? SB: I think they are definitely flourishing, but I don’t think they’ve perhaps gotten the kind of PR as they could have or should have. AB: We’re going to change all that! (laughs) To answer your question, Runako, I think that discipline and rigor is a habit. So I think it can translate from the classroom to the stage, to the studio, to the playing field.
Sonya Baehr, Performing Arts (Upper School) , Audrius Barzdukas P’20, Head of School
RT: Everything you do is with rigor, and the creativity comes second. And it’s one of the things I always say. If an athlete walks into my classroom, I tell them from day one, I expect you to be the best student because you are aware of what it’s like to fail. We all need that. It’s not just the classroom, it’s almost certainly not just on the stage, and it’s certainly not just on the field. So you just said two amazing things that extremely resonate
with me. AB: One of the great things with athletics is half the teams lose every day. It’s a great gift that prepares you for the rest of your life. RT: Do you see any connection between the arts and languages at all? AB: Absolutely. I’m fluent in Lithuanian. What learning another language allows you to do is see the world in a different way. So, just as with the arts, it’s a different way to allow you to express your humanity. A different language gives your mind, yourself, a perspective on the world that is different, and that is empowering because it gives you a more complete picture of how the world is. RT: It’s kind of what you were saying about theater where you’re literally forced to be in someone else’s shoes. AB: Empathy training! SB: This way you’re forcing your brain to structure things differently, just like if you’re listening to Mozart, you start to incorporate the way that Mozart structures reality, which is why it enhances your intelligence. AB: Syntactically, in terms of translating, it frees your mind up. RT: It allows you flexibility, thought, and experience. AB: And the things that we want to pass on to our students, to our children, and I think that the best way to teach is to be. You must be what you want your children and your students to be. And so if you want them to be learners and inspired, and happy, that’s what you have to be. RT: That’s what you have to be, to model it. AB: Yes, so our work is to figure out what we want our students to be, and how we make ourselves that way. P O LY P R E P M AG A Z I N E FA L L 2 016
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The
Illustration by Matt Huynh
BREAKTHROUGH MOMENT This year’s theme for The Blue & The Gray is centered around performing arts at Poly. In this main feature, we spoke to over 20 alumni, students, and faculty to ask them when they knew they wanted to become an artist, from dance and comedy to theater and film. For some, this moment might have come early; for others, it may land several years into a career. Everyone has their seed moment, their beginning—whether it’s a song or a role—and often that start feels like nothing out of the ordinary. But looking more closely, those beginnings and aha! moments can be some of the most transformational experiences lived. —S o u s a n H a m m a d 4
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ROBERT CORT ’64
MICHAEL FALOTICO ’03
Movie Producer
Musician
— Making a movie, it turns out, is like camp, and being a producer like being the head counselor. — I LOVED MY first job—counselor at an eightweek sleep-away camp on a remote lake in the Adirondack Mountains. Campers and staff were so involved in each other’s lives it felt like family—freed from the overwhelming presence of parents. When I “retired” at age 22, I actually worried if I’d ever find anything as pleasing.
out for two days, watching the crew, actors, and director, and most of all, the producer, who seemed like a big brother to all. By the time I flew back to Hollywood, I knew I wanted to be him. Six years later I left the more secure ranks of studio executives to strike out on my own as a producer. It took me a while, but I eventually understood the power of the connection. When you make a movie, you go away with a group of people you barely know, and within a few months, you bond with them intimately. You’re all involved in a similar pursuit: making a story come alive. The world outside could end, but you’d keep filming. And when production is over, you hug goodbye and vow to see everyone again soon. Sometimes you even do.
Flash forward almost a decade. I was a management consultant in marketing, and Columbia Pictures became a client of our firm. After the study ended, the studio offered me a job as deputy chief of advertising, publicity, and promotion. I realized that selling movies appealed to me more than the other consumer products. A month after taking the job, I visited the set of our movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, to interview the actors for behindthe-scenes press material. Although the location in the Badlands of South Dakota was the first movie set I’d ever been on, I experienced a strong déjà vu. It was as if this was the place I was meant to be. I hung
— I WOULD SAY that it was a combination of two things. The first was when I watched the film Woodstock with my father. I was in Middle School before I ever started playing music. In particular, Santana’s performance of “Soul Sacrifice.” When the drummer took a five-minute drum solo, I had never seen anyone’s hands move that fast. I felt like I could do that, except not on drums because I had already tried that and it never really stuck. The second moment was when I first performed live on bass guitar. It was during Holiday Chapel at Poly my junior year. The whole place erupted and all my friends cheered before and after our performance. That was when I knew I could be a musician, and I knew I could do it with this instrument.
Making a movie, it turns out, is like camp, and being a producer like being the head counselor. And as I prepare to go on location for my 57th film this fall, I do so with the same anticipation and excitement. Maybe I just never grew up.
LEAH HOROWITZ ’97 Actress
— FOR ME, it happened in two distinct moments. The moment I knew I wanted to be on stage was after seeing a production of The Music Man at a community theater. I was six years old. I had seen theater before, but had never seen children on stage. I told my mom, “I can do that,” and she took me to audition for a local production of The Wizard of Oz. Soon I was making my debut as a very dedicated munchkin. But I didn’t ever think I could make a living as an actor. Even though I spent a large percentage of my time performing, doing it on Broadway seemed a very lofty and unrealistic, impractical goal. I applied to colleges with the idea of being an engineer. But my mom suggested that as long as I was applying to NYU, I should audition for the Tisch School of the Arts, just to see what would happen. I was so ambivalent about it, I put off scheduling the audition for weeks,
KATE BERNSTEIN ’95 and when I finally called, on a Friday, they gave me an appointment for the following Monday. I put off working on my audition till the night before. When we got to the audition, I found I was auditioning for the head of the school, Arthur Bartow. There were six of us there that day, and Arthur sat us down before we auditioned and told us all about the program. I sat there listening and thinking, “This sounds amazing. Why didn’t I spend more time working on my audition?” But I went in and gave it my all, and when my acceptance letter came, I just knew I had to go. That moment, receiving that letter, knowing that the head of Tisch thought that I could be a working actor, changed my life. His opinion meant more than any of my family and friends’ biased opinions, in my mind. I look back at that moment and think, if he hadn’t picked me, I’d probably be an engineer. And life would probably be more stable, but way less exciting.
Screenwriter and Producer
— WHEN I WROTE and directed my first one-act play, “Life-In-Progress,” senior year at Poly—the absolute exhilaration and insane terror I experienced knowing I was responsible for everything happening on stage and it was now being released out into the world (or at least into the Richard Perry Theatre). Feeling the energy of the audience sitting around me, connecting to words I wrote, I knew I wanted to do that in some capacity forever. I also felt such insane relief to not actually be on stage anymore—I’m glad I realized in high school I was much more suited to being behind the scenes than in the spotlight!
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PAMELA POLLOCK FACULTY
BREAKTHROUGH I DON’T KNOW if I’ve had a moment. I’ve had a series or arc of moments. I began studying acting as an aspiring creative writer. My thought was, well, stories have this immense power potential, and actors do this amazing and sometimes noble thing in illuminating these stories. I should learn how to relate to actors. Understand their process and that sort of thing. I began studying the craft of acting. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done. Period. And after a summer intensive workshop that introduced me to acting, my teacher pulled me aside to say, “I could do this.” I stayed— despite having no clue what she was talking about. I didn’t see it. But I stayed. I felt that since it’s all connected, one artistic sleeve will warm and nurture the other. Three years later, a year out of acting school, after doing a couple of plays, I began to get in the room for some serious auditions. The feedback was positive. I kept at it.
LUKE FORBES ’97
Six years ago this past summer I performed in Shakespeare in the Park, one of the pinnacles of New York City theater. I’ll never forget day one in the rehearsal room for that production. Al Pacino walked in and passed me to his seat. Just a few seats away. I steadied myself. I was so humbled. I realized that I’m doing okay. I realized I belonged. Point is, encouragement made me realize this is what I ought to be doing. I stayed at it.
Actor
— Al Pacino walked in and passed me to his seat. —
LAURA TERRUSO ’99 Writer and Director
— WHEN I WAS in Middle School, I became obsessed with musicals. I had a crate of records in my room and would play them religiously every day after school. I loved the heightened worlds that musicals created. Lacking any dancing ability, I actually taught myself to juggle just so I could be in the school’s production of Carousel. After a year or two of voice lessons, I finally got my big break when I was cast as Berthe in the
BRIANA SKY RILEY ’16 Actress
— I’VE WANTED TO become a musical theater actress ever since my first performance on the Poly stage, when I sang “Cruella de Vil” as a second grader at Lower School. In that moment, my shyness disappeared and I felt this surge of energy and joy. I look forward to dedicating my life to musical theater at The Boston Conservatory at Berklee College of Music and feeling this surge of energy and creativity every day I pursue my passion. 6
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high school production of Pippin. It was a dream role. I was a 16-year-old girl playing an 80-year-old woman and I loved every minute of it. It was the first time I realized that I could use pieces of my own experience and personality and bring them to a character to create something completely new and different. I was hooked on storytelling after that.
Dancer
— ...dance was the language I knew and it helped me feel more connected... — WHEN I WAS two years old and too young to participate, I used to watch my older sister take dance lessons. Instead of just sitting there, I would mimic everything the teacher and students would do; I enrolled the next year and was hooked on dance. I started taking classes at various studios, and when I was a teenager I became the assistant teacher at the very studio where I watched my sister. But it wasn’t until college that I realized I had to dance. I minored in Theater with a Concentration in Dance at Binghamton University and was a featured dancer in all of the musical productions, community performances, as well as a teaching assistant for the dance classes. When I studied abroad in London my senior year with the world at my fingertips, I found myself seeking out dance classes at studios all over the world, and that’s when I knew. I would travel with friends, but I would always take a dance class; dance was the language I knew and it helped me feel more connected to these different places. When I returned from my study abroad program, my professor encouraged me to think about incorporating dance into my career plans, but I had other ideas about life in advertising. After a few years of working at Saatchi & Saatchi, I really missed dancing and started to perform in Off-Off Broadway productions and enrolled in NYU’s master’s in Dance and Dance Education Program. I then left the world of advertising, and upon receiving my master’s, I began teaching dance at Poly Prep and never looked back. I am fulfilled professionally and personally because I get to instill the love of the dance that took hold of me so many years ago and has served me in so many different capacities throughout my life.
DANIEL LEMPERT ’09 Comedian
—
MOMENTS
THOM BISHOPS (TAREK BISHARA) ’94 Actor
— “you must strive to find your own voice. Because the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are to find it at all.” — THE ESCAPISM OF going to the movies was a huge relief and regular respite from the feeling I always had as a kid in the pit of my stomach, of never fitting in.
I SPENT MY three years in office at Poly (as class and then high school president) doing the noble work of enacting policy, representing my constituents, and most importantly, hosting bake sales. For this is how we raised money for prom (I hope they’ve found a better way). And at that time, prom was very important. Sure, the student government hosted school-wide events, and did important charity work, but in the back of my mind I was constantly thinking, “Do I have a Bundt pan?”
It’s hard to believe the irony that years later, the first film I had a lead role in, The Final Cut, starred Robin Williams. Mysterious ways.
I remember the first of many times I watched Dead Poets Society, and feeling something click in. I thought Robin Williams’ character was speaking right to me. Telling me to make the most out of my life… “You must strive to find your own voice. Because the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are to find it at all.”
When that film came out in theaters, my dad called me after he saw it and told me, “I understand now why you want to be an actor. Seeing my own son on screen like that with Robin Williams and holding his own, I get it.” What my dad didn’t know is that it was Robin Williams’ performance in Dead Poets Society that inspired me to follow my gut, get up, and become an actor to begin with.
Robin’s performance and Tom Schulman’s writing were powerful and inspired; it made me think, I want to do this…It kept me thinking way after I finished the movie.
HARRISON NESBIT ’09 Filmmaker
Being president also earned me the confidence of my classmates, and I was very excited when my peers chose me to give the graduation speech, which I wrote in an exhausted flurry the day after prom (big success—those cookies paid off). Reading it over, I decided to throw in some jokes to lighten things up. I’d been in plays all through Poly, and was pretty silly by all accounts, but I’d never really written something comedic and then performed it for a large group. And thankfully people laughed at my jokes—from my anecdotes about working at IHOP over the summer to my disdain for the sit-and-reach fitness test (which I still maintain doesn’t measure fitness as much as torso length). It was an amazing feeling. And it carried straight through to college, where I promptly abandoned my extracurricular political ambitions in favor of doing improv and sketch comedy. And I’m so happy I did. Although I do sort of miss the bake sales.
That film made a difference in my life.
—
I WAS SITTING in Riverside Park watching the cars rush home as the sun dipped into the Hudson. Gosh, I thought, I’m a bit sad. Earlier that day I’d wrapped working on my first film—doing background casting for the poignant Love Is Strange—and was expecting to be greeted with some grand relief, like when you’re trapped in a cage with a hungry bear and someone finally takes the bear out and you’re safe again, albeit still in a cage. Or, more relatably, when you finish your finals and run off into summer. Anyway, instead of relief, I felt empty. The mad rush, the vampiric hours, the communal joys and horrors of set life—I missed it all already! I missed the weight of the walkie-talkie on my hip and all the conversa-
tions, coded and frantic in my earpiece. It’s an adventure. And like all the good ones, it’s shared. The day-to-day stress can make one neglect the brilliance of the experience until it’s over. Each day brings unique challenges to solve, as in, the kid I cast to skateboard down the street for the closing shot of the film turned out to not be able to skate. So, I ran through the neighborhood, found someone who could skate, and wanted to be in 10 seconds of a film and learned a practical lesson: “Yeah, I skate OK” doesn’t mean “I skate.” Reflecting on all of this, I understood that the madness is part of my love for film. Love Is Strange, indeed. P O LY P R E P M AG A Z I N E FA L L 2 016
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JILL SIGMAN ’85
BREAKTHROUGH
Dancer
KHAIL BRYANT ’17 Actress
— IT’S FUNNY, when people see child actors and actresses it’s assumed that they are new to the business, but the reality is most of us have worked for several years before getting our big break. I got into the business at only four years old after growing tired of watching my brother audition and not having the opportunity myself; I kept asking when I would get my chance, so my mom took me on my first audition for a Downy fabric softener commercial. To my surprise, I booked that very first audition I went on. It was a huge national commercial, starring me. Along with that, I essentially became the face of Downy and I truly believe that was a defining moment for me. At only four years old, I had my breakthrough moment and found a passion that has only grown stronger over the years. This one moment led me to so many opportunities, such as starring in my first feature film at only six, The Perfect Holiday, or getting to grace the stage at the Minskoff Theatre in Disney’s The Lion King on Broadway, and so much more. I must say, however, it’s a difficult business to be in; you have to love it because you hear no more than yes and it can get very discouraging. It’s even more difficult for people of color because there are not a lot of roles out there for us, but I feel more than blessed to have found my passion and to have had these opportunities at such a young age.
NOAH ABERLIN ’00 Dancer
— MY STORY IS just like Mike’s monologue in A Chorus Line. I would tag along with my mother to pick up my sister at dance class and would start mimicking the older kids there. My mother saw how much enjoyment I got out of it, signed me up for classes at the local dance school in Carroll Gardens, and I’ve been dancing ever since, both professionally and for the sheer enjoyment of it! 8
T H E B L U E & T H E G R AY
— WHEN I FINISHED my Ph.D. in philosophy, I felt like my feet were on two different icebergs, the worlds of mind and body. And as much as it all seemed continuous to me, the icebergs just kept floating farther and farther apart. I knew I needed to be a choreographer. I knew I needed to ask philosophical questions in movement rather than in journals. And I knew that this was the point of no return. So I leapt. One of my first gigs around that time was commissioned by an organization called Dancing in the Streets. It was at Wave Hill, a stately garden in the Bronx. So one sweltering summer, I crawled
on hot gravel, rolled down an itchy hill, and did a duet with a tree. It was my first site-specific dance, and it also led to my first photo and interview in Time Out New York. There was no going back. That piece set me on a path of dancing on fences, rooftops, islands, and roads, and in factories, cemeteries, swimming pools, arsenals, museums, and bus stations. I have been making live performance for alternative sites around the world ever since. In 2015, I completed The Hut Project, in which I performed in 11 site-specific huts made of cast-off objects (trash) that I built by hand.
CRISTINA COTE ’05 Comedian
— Dressed in drag, wearing a tracksuit, du-rag, dollar sign gold necklace, and painted-on goatee using eyeliner, I practiced my best “Booyakasha!” — MY SENIOR YEAR at Poly, I was student government vice president and the head of Honor Council and often made speeches in Chapel. I was involved in a lot of different extracurricular activities and loved the arts, but never had the chance to be in any of the plays or musicals. I have been passionate about comedy since I was a child, and in high school, I was obsessed with Saturday Night Live and Sacha Baron Cohen’s character Ali G. With a captive audience every week and a desire to express myself creatively, I started writing and performing in my own skits to promote the Homecoming dance and Oasis Night. I wrote renditions of my favorite classic SNL sketches infused with Poly jokes like the “Spartan Cheerleaders” and borrowed someone’s Blue Devil Cheerleader uniform. One of my best friends at Poly helped me develop my jokes and brainstorm ideas while we were commuting on the school bus to Poly. My breakthrough moment happened
senior year. I convinced the Headmaster to allow me to come to school an hour early to take my Calculus midterm so I was finished in time to perform in Holiday Chapel as Ali G. Dressed in drag, wearing a tracksuit, du-rag, dollar sign gold necklace, and painted-on goatee using eyeliner, I practiced my best “Booyakasha!” and wrote a sketch called “The Ali G Family Holiday Special.” The librarian, Mr. Kemp, played my dad, the football coach wore a long blonde wig and played my mom, teachers Mr. Sivin and Mr. Disimile played my brothers, and some middle schoolers played my children—everyone wore matching bling necklaces and eyeliner goatees. Chapel was packed to the gills with students and faculty from both Upper and Middle School—over 500 people. I will never forget the intoxicating feeling of hearing the crowd roar with laughter. It was wonderful to collaborate with a team and see my vision come to life. This is when I knew my dream was to act/write and produce my own shows and videos… and the rest is history!
ALYSSA GOLD ’08
MOMENTS
Actress
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THERE WAS NEVER a time when I didn’t want to be an actor. I started performing on my parents’ coffee table when I was four, at summer camp when I was seven, and made the jump to working professionally when I was nine. I liked pretending and I liked storytelling; I loved the catharsis I felt when I was singing at the top of my lungs (though you’ll all be relieved to hear I have since learned that the catharsis is more important for the audience to have than for me and no longer stand on tables at restaurants belting out “Tomorrow” from Annie). But all that rejection is hard, especially for a kid, and I was always battling with myself about if I should commit to making this my career as an adult. My junior year at Poly, I was cast as Millie in Thoroughly Modern Millie and I was over the moon about it. I was not a trained dancer, and Sonya Baehr and Kevin Wallace, then Poly’s incredible director and choreographer, pushed me as hard as they believed in me. I clearly remember one Saturday when I had been dancing for six hours, already sore from the past month of nonstop dancing and singing and exhausted from the general work and stress of junior year of high school. And I was the absolute happiest I had ever been. I remember thinking...
If this is what it takes, if this is how busy and exhausted and sore I’m going to be, but I’m going to be this happy, then this is probably what I should do for the rest of my life. —
HANS BILGER ’12 Musician
— When I was 11, I discovered Paul Simon’s “Graceland.” After the third verse of “You Can Call Me Al,” Bakithi Kumalo, the album’s bassist, took a twomeasure solo that totally floored me. I felt a sudden urge to make similar sounds myself. I asked my parents for an electric bass that summer, and they cautiously indulged me. Later on, I learned that Kumalo played only half of the solo that inspired me——the recording engineer had simply flipped the first measure backwards to form the second part of the lick. But I was long hooked by that point. P O LY P R E P M AG A Z I N E FA L L 2 016
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ONGTIME SPANISH TEACHER Jose Oliveras (who, this year, reached his 20-year milestone at Poly) is also an actor, director, and co-founder of Teatro Círculo. In 2015, Oliveras won the best actor award from the Association of Independent Theaters for his portrayal of the Dominican dictator, Rafael Trujillo, in the play La caída de Rafael Trujillo. As I spoke to Oliveras, he had just wrapped up a program called Abuelito dime tú (Grandpa, tell me a story), which provided theater training to two senior centers on the Lower East Side.
Q&A
As a bilingual speaker who moves fluidly thinking of the emotional world that language must represent for you, how present is the multiplicity of cultures—the nuances and rhythms, histories and idiosyncrasies— in your identity and life?
—————————————————— You are the artistic director of the Latino theater space Teatro Círculo, which you co-founded in the East Village in 1994. Initially, you started off as a traveling company that would perform the classics, but you widened the scope to include the archipelago of Latino and Spanish theater. How has this inclusion of “two but many worlds” been perceived by the New York City community? We created the company out of our urge to work with Spanish classical plays. However, from our inception we decided that we also wanted to work with Latin American theater as well. In fact, the name of the company (Círculo) conveys the idea of inclusion. Historically, as well as in academia, Spain and Latin America have been politically and aesthetically opposed. Even though we share the same language and many traditions, Spain and Latin America have historically “unappreciated” each other’s contributions to literature and the arts. The founding members of Teatro Círculo felt that this cultural sectarianism did not apply to our pluralistic community in New York. For the last 21 years we have been producing plays from both the Spanish classical and Latin American repertoire with very enthusiastic responses from our audiences. I’m aware that at certain levels translation is impossible, and most of Teatro Círculo’s performances are in fact not translated, but would you say there is a proximity, musically or emotionally, that exists? For the last 10 years, we have made a concerted effort to offer English supertitles as an outreach tool to our English-speaking audience. However, these supertitles are not a word-by-word 10
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translation of the plays. For practical reasons we try to give a gist of the dramatic situation without translating all the written text. Fortunately, theater is written to be represented, which means that there are many other theatrical elements that facilitate an emotional proximity that allows the audience to appreciate and understand the play from an experiential perspective.
Building in Spanish Verse: An Interview with Jose Oliveras BY SOUSAN HAMMAD
The Latino actor, teacher, and director opens up about crossing cultural borders, the overlapping of sounds and meaning, and growing up in Puerto Rico.
Certainly, language defines ourselves to a great extent. We can extrapolate a lot of information about the sociological context of a speaker just by closely examining a single statement. When you live through any transculturation process there is no doubt that those experiences change you. You incorporate new behavioral paradigms; you change the way you relate to others; even your self-perception changes. I remember that when I first came to the U.S., I became such a different person simply because I could not communicate in English as I could in Spanish. It took years for me to learn the language and to be able to present to others an identity closer to mine. Now, I just enjoy indulging in playing with both languages, overlapping sounds and meanings signifying nothing. You were once a Ph.D. candidate at CUNY. What were you researching? I completed all the coursework and both the written and oral exams in the Spanish and Luso-Brazilian Literature Program at CUNY Graduate Center. My area of study was 17th-century Spanish theater. However, once I founded Teatro Círculo and started my full-time job at Poly, it was very difficult to find the time to write the dissertation. I had to seriously reflect on my priorities and the decision was to follow my heart and not my brain. (Do I regret it? Of course not.) How does your role as an educator inform your role as an actor and director? For me being an actor and being a teacher are exactly the same thing. Like a teacher, an actor has to learn his part very well and deliver it effectively in front of an audience. Like an actor, a teacher has to have empathy for his
fellow players and audiences. Like a teacher, an actor has to have a generous soul. I see the classroom and the stage as parallel spaces connected by a pedagogical intent and choreographed by the chi of love. Tell me a little bit about growing up in Puerto Rico and why you eventually left. I come from a family of 10. Being number nine was not the easiest thing, since I had very little seniority for almost everything. However, in retrospect it was the best thing that could have happened to me. Growing up with older siblings in a very competitive environment forced me to find my own voice and to develop survival strategies that clearly helped me later in my adult life. Curiously enough, many of these survival tricks were related to my ability or inability to use language to convince and persuade. I clearly remember an altercation I once had with my oldest (six-foot-tall) brother when I was 11 years old. One day I was taking my bike out of the garage and by pure accident I scratched his car. I tried to evaporate from the scene as soon as I could, but my brother saw what I did from his bedroom window. He started shouting at me and in no time got out of the house. He rushed towards me like an avalanche of mud and curses with the clear intention of sending me straight to the cemetery. There was no doubt in my mind that I stood no chance to survive his anger, so, with very little time to think or run, I stood up as tall as I could and with the deepest ultra-tomb voice I could muster, I told him, “You can beat me up if you want, but you will have to kill me because if you leave me alive I will grab a hammer and scratch the rest of your car.” Those words were like a bucket of ice water that paralyzed every muscle of his body until he came to a complete halt just few feet in front of me. I took advantage of his moment of hesitation and ran for my life to safety. Clearly, words have been my allies since I was a child. As artistic director, you’ve taken on a number of plays, from the Surrealist poet/playwright Federico García Lorca to the pre-eminent writer Miguel de Cervantes, but if there was any one play you could choose to direct, what would it be and why?
I am in love with a 16th-century novel written in dialogue called La Celestina by Fernando de Rojas. This novel, believed to be the inspiration for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, presents the extraordinary struggle of its protagonists with the new values and morals of the Renaissance. At the end, of course, tragedy supersedes, but what I really like is the way de Rojas manipulates the language. Even though Teatro Círculo produced this play seven years ago, I was still intimidated by my admiration for the text. This is, however, my first choice for directing a play I really love.
friends. This exercise really opened my appetite to write poetry and years later I started to write poetry with a more aesthetic intention.
Did you always know that you were an actor? When did you decide to pursue acting “professionally”?
There are hundreds of Spanish writers we should read. If I were to suggest names for an anthology of contemporary writers of different genres whose work is significant, I would say the following:
When I was a child I had my own company of puppets with some friends from the neighborhood. I think that is my earliest memory to my connection to the performing arts. Later in high school, since we did not have a theater teacher I organized a theater club and did some productions. However, it wasn’t until I entered college that I decided to formally train as an actor and work professionally. What is the most extraordinary detail, one that goes unnoticed by most, of the city you grew up in? I grew up in a city in Puerto Rico called Carolina. In the 17th century that region had a high concentration of African slaves, which explains the love and the passion inhabitants from Carolina have today for African dances and rhythms. We breathe music and drums in Carolina and, like breathing, it is something that goes unnoticed. Tell us about your connection to poetry. My connection to poetry is the Spanish classical theater. This theater was written in verse and the most beautiful poetry in Spanish language can be found in plays like El caballero de Olmedo by Lope de Vega or La vida es sueño by Calderón de la Barca. When I was studying for the Ph.D. comprehensive exams, I decided that in order to really internalize all the different stanzas from the 17th century, I needed to write using those meters. For almost eight months I wrote in redondillas, décimas, and sonnets for even the most mundane communication to my
Who were your favorite writers growing up? I would have to include in this list Abelardo Díaz Alfaro and Enrique Laguerre, both Puerto Rican novelists, and Federico García Lorca, the Spanish poet/playwright who really impacted me. Are there Spanish-language writers that we should read?
From the Latino diaspora in the U.S.: Esmeralda Santiago, Carmen Rivera, María Irene Fornés, Eduardo Machado, David Mikas, Miguel Algarín, Pedro Pietri, and Miguel Piñero. From Latin America: Luis Rafael Sánchez, René Marqués, Elio Palencia, Octavio Paz, and Alejo Carpentier. From Spain: José Carlos Somoza, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Ana María Matute, and Javier Marías. Have you already begun your next project? Can you tell us anything about it? Our next project is a play called Miguel Will by José Carlos Somoza. This year we want to commemorate the 400 years since the deaths of Shakespeare and Cervantes and Somoza’s play is the perfect vehicle. His play presents the story of Shakespeare and his company of actors rehearsing Shakespeare’s last play (Cardenio), which is about Don Quijote. As the characters in the play are confronted with the challenge of understanding the complexities of Cervantes’ novel, Shakespeare (like Don Quijote) becomes mad. At that point many episodes of Cervantes’ novel find their parallel in the plot of Somoza’s play. This game of mirrors and parallelisms takes the audience into a labyrinth of possibilities and enigmas. Miguel Will will open in October and I am thrilled by the challenge this show represents. P O LY P R E P M AG A Z I N E FA L L 2 016
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On Pointe Student Dancers Among Us
Mind. Body. Character. Poly students are pushed to embrace all sides of ourselves on a daily basis. When understanding the body aspect of our school’s mantra, the opportunities to test and understand our physicality may include athletics or the performing arts. For this series, I wanted to highlight how we (myself and peers included)
balance our various passions and truly embody what it means to hover between two worlds. We are athletes, dancers, photographers, and academics. To highlight this concept, I chose to place dancers in unconventional locations to experiment with dualism and allow viewers to gain a deeper understanding of the boundless roles that each Poly student plays. — S TO R M B O O K H A R D ’ 1 8
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Khail Bryant ’17
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Isabel Berneri ’19
Ana Reyes ’18
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Olivia Merola ’18
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Olivia Merola ’18
Lola Charles ’18
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D R U M B EAT The Creative World of Lower School’s Performing Arts Program BY LINDA BUSETTI
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Music and Chorus On any school day, salsa or reggae may be pulsating from the third-floor Music Room at the Lower School’s Park Slope campus building. A typical day begins with Stephen Taylor on guitar leading 12 Nursery students seated on a music-themed oval carpet through Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds,” or, as the children call it, “the bird song,” … “Don’t worry. Everything is going to be all right.” When the children jump to their feet for the Hokey Pokey, Taylor offers colored scarves, which they 18
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fling in the air as they dance. Next, Taylor passes out small instruments such as claves, shakers, or triangles to each child seated on the carpet for a “salsa jam” to a recording of Venezuelan bass player and percussionist Oscar D’León. “I expose them to a wide variety of world music,” Taylor explained. Often, he said, children make a connection to something they have heard at home. Nursery has music class once a week and Pre-K–Grade 4 have it twice a week. The young students “get music in a very natural way,” Taylor said. “They understand music before they have spoken language. Small children can express themselves with music and rhythm before they can have a conversation.” Music also gives the older children, who may sit for long periods during the day, an outlet for expression, Taylor added. When Pre-K A arrives, Taylor takes out his guitar and begins to strum the Simon & Garfunkel song ”El Condor Pasa.” “Could we dance to it?” Taylor
proposes, and the children are up and dancing with partners or in their own unique styles. Veteran Lower School music and chorus teacher Jennifer Nelson P’12, ’14, ’19 welcomes first grade with an Indonesian folk song, “Burung Kakatua,” which tells the story of a cockatoo that serenades a grandmother. She invites them to “fly” around the room as they sing. The children already know “Hotaru Koi,” a Japanese children’s song about fireflies. Nelson asks them to “create spring in this room,” as they sing, “Haru Ga Kita (Spring Has Come).” As Nelson plays the piano, students take turns “being the conductor” with the rest of the class as the chorus. “Dylan [P.] can be the wind,” Nelson says, as a youngster gently moves his fingers through a set of hanging chimes. Kindergarten comes to the Music Room to practice for a May Day Celebration. After singing “White Coral Bells,” there is time left to practice the Virginia Reel.
U R E T IN O E F Nelson and Taylor quickly set out all the chairs before fourth grade chorus arrives. Students spent weeks preparing for a Third and Fourth Grade Music and Dance Concert on May 26, which included a German folk song, “Die Gedanken sind frei,” about freedom of thought, and “Shosholoza,” a South African folk song. Nelson says she has great memories of students she has taught in this Music Room who have moved up to the Dyker Heights campus. “Khail [Bryant ’17] and Zach [Kimmel ’17] used to make up shows here in music class,” Nelson recalls. Both have gone on to leading roles in Middle and Upper School musicals. —
Instrumental Music The Lower School offers children lunchtime instrumental lessons in the Music Room. One afternoon, Matt Ragsdale was giving a weekly trumpet lesson to Liam McCummings ’24 and Sebastian
Davis ’25. It was Liam’s second year of lessons and Sebastian’s first. “Let’s start with a tango,” Ragsdale suggested. Carrie Dowell teaches the Lower School violin class. “There are a total of 20 students this year,” Dowell said, usually third and fourth graders. Jeff Adler teaches saxophone and clarinet and David Weschler instructs the young flute players. All of the instrumental students performed for parents in the May 26 concert. —
Drama Mary Rice (Associate Teacher, Grade 4A) teaches third and fourth grade drama class, which often incorporates classroom curriculum. For example, third grade performs a play about United States geography while they are learning about the United States. Rice also teaches ballet and musical theater for Kindergarten through Grade 4 in the Lower School After-school Enrichment Program.
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Dance
Courtney Cooke can be found directing the Lower School’s dance program in the modern Aberlin Dance Studio, full of natural light. All students have dance class once a week. “Students begin to choreograph and present their own dances in the first grade,” Cooke explained. “The dances they create usually tie in a theme from the classroom curriculum. For example, second grade’s dances are inspired by New York City architecture and iconic buildings.” “The dance program is a creative movement/modern dance focused program,” Cooke said. “Students receive training in technical dance skills and skill in composition and choreography.” Illustration by Sara Juarez
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FREEZE INTO POSES
Teaching Drama,
Teaching Emotion How Actor and Director Jill Bolstridge Instructs Her Students B Y L I N D A B U S E T T I POLY’S MIDDLE SCHOOL DRAMA teacher Jill Bolstridge, who began performing at age six, was acting in dinner theater in Connecticut by sixth grade. Bolstridge, who began her career with ballet, tap, and jazz lessons, knows what it is like to be an aspiring middle school performer. How she got into teaching is a different story. While attending Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, Bolstridge took on the role of theater arts teacher at a local elementary school to gain community service credits. 20
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At 19 years old, she found herself, with no teaching experience, in the middle of a gym with 40 screaming fourth graders bouncing around. Her teaching method sprang from necessity. She had the children form a circle and devised games to teach them acting skills, which she still uses. Before coming to Poly, Bolstridge worked at the Children’s Theatre Company, a non-profit in New York City. In 2009, an opening for a Middle School drama teacher lured Bolstridge to Dyker Heights, where she also directs Middle School plays and musicals.
Bolstridge teaches fifth- through eighth-grade drama at Poly using methods she has honed over the years. She may ask students to “freeze into poses” and have the rest of the class guess the story they are acting out from “the frozen human pictures.” Bolstridge gets Middle School students interested in acting through “bait and switch.” She never starts a class saying, “Today we are going to learn about X.” Instead, she may play the “Noodle Game” and have students move through traffic cones or an obstacle course. She toots a bicycle horn every time a student turns their back to the audience. At the end of the class, she asks, “So what does that have to do with acting?” About five or six students will figure out the activity was about “cheating out,” which is turning the face or entire body out toward the audience so the actor can be better seen by the audience.
is common for students to be working on their choreography in the hallways outside the theater, she said. “At any time there may be up to nine teachers trying to teach class in four possible spaces: theater, Chapel, Dance Studio, and Room 201.” Bolstridge estimates that 20-30 students took part in the Middle School play and 40-50 in the musical, either as actors or stage crew, this past year.
Bolstridge enjoyed watching her young performers blossom from Middle School stars of Grease or A Midsummer Night’s Dream to this year’s graduating class with “so many talented triple threats,” accomplished actors, singers, and dancers. Dante Stewart ’16 was “amazing in Grease.” Kristen Haynes ’16, who played JI L L B O L ST R I D G E For the past three Rizzo in years, Bolstridge Grease at age has also taught 11 “and [is] so acting in Hawaii during summer talented,” told Bolstridge she wanted as part of the Ohana Arts program. to be an actress. Bolstridge recalls Bolstridge is a talented actress Julian McBride ’16, Briana Riley ’16, herself, having recently played a and Micaela Rodriguez ’16, who, in “wisecracking” lady of the night in addition to Haynes, had leading roles The Hot L Baltimore and Patricia Fodor in the 2016 Upper School musical, In and Lottie Child in Crazy for You at the the Heights. Narrows Community Theatre in Bay Ridge. She adds to the list Tom Simpson ’15, who worked on lighting design for “Acting makes you a better director,” Poly musicals from 7th through 12th Bolstridge said. “You are really vulgrade. Simpson is studying lighting nerable when you are up on stage. All design at Emerson College and Boldirectors should act.” stridge has put him in touch with a professional in Boston. Bolstridge said the highlight of her professional experience at Poly is Performing Arts is valuable not only working in an incredible performance to launch students on a professional space such as the Richard Perry acting career, Bolstridge said, but Theatre with “amazing faculty.” She also to teach “creative collaboration points to Poly’s Theater Manager and skills, problem solving, and how to Technical Director, David Higham meet deadlines.” P’07, and his incredible lighting designs, dance teacher Ashley Hacker’s “My Grease babies came to see 13, choreography, and the costumes Bolstridge said of this year’s Middle and set design, which make Middle School musical. McBride told her, School plays and musicals have a “If Grease was the Michael Jordan of professional quality. Middle School musicals, then 13 was the Kobe Bryant.” Bolstridge also points out, though, the great need for rehearsal space. It
POEMS BY JULES GABELLINI ’18
she was exhausted after throwing away the teapot she was exhausted after throwing away the teapot, having stumbled upon a sparrow near the river and realizing that she no longer had a need for such frivolous beverages. she wouldn’t miss the lukewarm coat of the abandoned liquid on her tongue, but rather, the wooden shoe she lost as a child while running through the valley, feet rustling in the high grasses. there was the rust of footprints in the winter mud, the smooth dog chasing a finch down the hill by the barn. the antiseptic taste of soap shoved in her mouth when she said hell, only rivaled by her sour tongue upon awakening with the question: why is my blanket so heavy? thus, she mourned the loss of cardboard lemonade stands with the clinking of dimes in a metal can. one man offered to pay for his cup with a fact: crickets hear through their knees. she imagined two blue ears growing out of her stiff legs and handed him a dixie cup full of thin yellow liquid.
feeling narrow i’m sitting cross-legged on a floor. there is a sunset behind me, with the sun an orange sphere between the skyscrapers. i’m reading carson, and i didn’t see it.
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DE CON STRUCT ING DANCE BY SOUSAN HAMMAD
They dip, stomp, and twirl—the music gets louder as each note, like a dandelion, lifts into the sky. In southern Spain, a drama unfurls while fingers click castanets and the dancer stomps to the beat of defiance. And on the coast of Senegal, drumbeats live on the long, dark decks of slaveships carrying 15 million people who use dance to survive.
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What began in places like Andalucía, a region in Spain with a long history of Jewish, gypsy, and Arab influence, or in the West African coastal towns of Senegal, traditional dances, such as flamenco or sabar, were never just about creative or cultural expression. They were a way to communicate, a way to cope with the social realities of life, but, more importantly, they were a way to mirror the idea that dance could act as a catalyst for political thought and action. Although the same could be said of most forms of artistic expression, the notion that dance goes beyond the artistic and into the political is at least true for teachers Ryan Rockmore and Dr. Angela Gittens. Whether it’s playing with the ideals of masculinity as a flamenco dancer, or picking up the pieces of the African diaspora via choreography, dance—for Rockmore and Dr. Gittens—is a political act that transcends tradition.
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— DR. ANGELA GITTENS
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In Defense of Dancing A Baltimore native, Dr. Gittens is a dancer, linguist, and scholar. After attending Oberlin and Yale, she received her Ph.D. in Performance Studies from NYU. Dr. Gittens, a speaker of six languages, teaches French in the Middle and Upper School; when she’s not teaching, she’s either dancing professionally with the Conjunto Nuevo Milenio, a Panamanian performing arts company, or curating black dance festivals around Brooklyn. “To me art is all about politics,” says Dr. Gittens. “Whenever an artist creates a work it comes out of somewhere. It came from a spark of a thought. Even if an artist wants to say, ‘I’m not saying anything,’ that is a political stance. I think it’s extremely important to take on that responsibility.” From West Africa and New York to the Afro-Latino communities of the Caribbean, Dr. Gittens explores the evolution of black culture by taking traditional forms and techniques and placing them in a contemporary context. What surfaces is not only the Panamanian story, for example, but also its African and indigenous influences as well. “A lot of people think that African dance is getting up and doing whatever feels good to the rhythm, which is completely false. There is a technique that is done for every dance performed according to every orchestra of instruments, which is also reliant on which region it is from. This also applies to the Latin dance that I do too,” Dr. Gittens said.
“An example of this,” explains Dr. Gittens, “could be the Senegalese dance, sabar, which is performed by only women during ceremonies that celebrate women and what they have done in their communities. This is typically performed in the street at an event. By putting sabar in a setting in the United States, possibly a dance studio, there are young women who may be uncomfortable with the technique and form because they have probably never seen it. So in Senegal where just the women would be doing it, the dancers I am instructing could do it at a performance where it is choreographed in a certain way versus doing it in the traditional context.”
Dance as Subversive Act Where one rebuilds, the other breaks down. For Ryan Rockmore, yet another dancer who teaches in the World Languages Department, his approach is similar to that of Dr. Gittens in terms of bending the rules. Regardless of the dance itself, both use an approach that aims to shake things up, both in a traditional and political sense. “I am a man dancing in a dress. I take a stance against tradition,” said Rockmore, a Spanish teacher in the Upper School. Rockmore first picked up the form while studying in Spain, where he lived for two years after receiving a Fulbright scholarship to study dance. In Sevilla, he honed his Spanish and studied flamenco, so much so that he decided to pursue it further by applying to graduate school
Much of what Rockmore’s study looks into is the masculine/feminine divide of flamenco dancers in Spain. Can men perform a dance that is historically and traditionally meant to be a “passive” role, he asks? Despite that male flamenco dancers “thrived” throughout the 36-year dictatorship of Francisco Franco, albeit in a sanitized and censored version that strayed from its gypsy roots, the dancers in turn promoted what Rockmore says was the “ideal masculinity” of Spanish gender ideologies during an era of brutal repression. It was only after studying the traditions and history of the 19th-century dance that Rockmore took on the task to challenge flamenco in a political way. “I believe that you have to know the tradition before you break it. I take real contention with contemporary dance. I believe you should know ballet before you know contemporary, and ballet before modern, and most of all you should learn traditional flamenco before you are going to twist and turn it so that you can know what you are breaking down,” he said. So while Rockmore breaks down the social constructions of gender performativity, Dr. Gittens picks up the pieces that Africans left as cultural legacies by blending traditional African with diasporic styles in the Americas. Yet both rebel against the standards set forth in the modern and contemporary dance world by telling stories that are fresh and different.
Even if an artist wants to say, “I’m not saying anything,” that is a political stance. I think it’s extremely important to take on that responsibility. Dr. Gittens says she first picked up her love for dance in high school, but it was in her undergraduate years at Oberlin that she joined a black student dance troop called Essence, where they combined contemporary, modern, and African dance. Dr. Gittens believes it’s crucial to have dancers of color act as role models for younger women. This is why she started an African Dance and Drum Club at Poly, where she encourages students to “get comfortable in their own skin.” On the other hand, as a professional dancer, she also seeks ways to create a mosaic of tales by keeping the cultural sustenance of the African diaspora alive.
at the University of Roehampton in London, where he received an M.A. in dance anthropology. Rockmore, who is also the Upper School Diversity Coordinator, wrote his thesis on feminine history and the “contemporary male appropriation of the Spanish tail skirt.” “When I was studying flamenco, I learned that the masculine form of flamenco didn’t come out of nowhere. It was informed by what men wore, how men acted, what they did, their place in society, and the characteristics that were expected of them. I think that dance anthropologists look at that and evaluate how dance both informs and is informed by culture. Whether that is through religious practice or art,” he said.
What began as songs of sorrow, heartaches bent from years of repression or slavery, elevate to songs of resistance and empowerment, because in dance— as new meanings are formed with each crescendo—so, too, does performance create a catalyst for social change. In today’s globalized world, gender and cultures are far more fluid than ever. Dance no longer represents one culture, one nation-state, or one gender. It mirrors life, and if in life change is the only constant thing, then let us dance to express this.
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Q&A A Mixtape
for Every Song Behind the Musical Direction of Dan Doughty BY SOUSAN HAMMAD Illustration by Sara Juarez
L
ooking back to when people created and consumed mixtapes, of building and receiving them, it was a time when we could construct the perfect 90 minutes of music, song by carefully constructed song. Unlike the CD, iPod, or Spotify playlists that came to take its place, the mixtape was a labor of love. On the cassette cover we wrote down the title and artist of each and every song, printed in super tiny font into the plastic case. We were sharing experiences and discovering new music, but we were also collaborating, curating, and expressing ourselves emotionally—it was both labor and love, a mixtape for every song. This is how Dan Doughty, Chair of Poly’s Performing Arts Department, has come to view his role at the school. “I like to think of what I do as making mixtapes,” he said. In Middle and Upper School, Doughty has taught everything from singing and guitar to A Cappella and Concert Choir. Whether he’s in the classroom with fifth-grade student singers or on the road with members of the Concert Choir, traveling near and far to cities like Prague and Berlin, he has helped shape the Performing Arts Department since his arrival in 2006. Doughty, who has performed with choral, opera, and musical theater ensembles worldwide, is also the musical director for all Upper School musicals, most recently Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights. He holds a B.M. in music education and performance from Westminster College, an M.A. in music education from Brooklyn College, and Kodaly Certification from New York University. We talked to Doughty about what it takes to direct a school musical, and the labors and love behind concert choir productions. —————————————————————— Let’s start with the mixtape metaphor. How does it fit in to your role as choral director at Poly? As a child of the 80’s and 90’s, I loved making mixtapes: cassette tapes that contained songs from a variety of sources, curated around a self-imposed theme. I would make these tapes for myself, for my family, and for my friends. I would make them for specific events and activities like holidays, road trips, running, and homework. I would even tailor-make mixtapes for specific moods! I loved the process of searching through my music collection and finding the perfect songs for a mixtape, songs carefully vetted for particular themes, genres, origins, styles, tempi, tonality, and lyrics that I organized in a way that would, if successful, take the listener on a journey. I was recently reminiscing about the countless hours I spent on this hobby as a kid and realized that it was actually excellent training for one of the best parts of my job as choral director at Poly: programming concert music. Each summer I begin with hundreds of pieces of music separated into piles by choir. As I look through the music, I begin to pull together possible repertoire combinations for the upcoming year’s concerts. I consider the variety of pieces within
each group’s performance as well as the sum of those parts: the overall concert experience for the audience. It’s important to think about the strengths, interests, and experiences of the students who make up these groups, some brand new to the vocal music program singing alongside others who have been performing at Poly for years. Finally, I consider the work that will go into teaching and learning the music and the skills and concepts that can be taught from each piece of music. Like a carefully crafted mixtape, to achieve an engaging musical experience, a choir’s concert repertoire should include some pieces that are instantly familiar and accessible along with others that are surprising and challenging but ultimately gratifying. The technology may have changed since my days of making mixtapes, but the skills I honed remain and continue to serve me well in my work at Poly. And what about for the stage? I imagine musical direction for a play like Les Miserables or In the Heights doesn’t allow for the kind of flexibility or improvisation available in Concert Choir. It takes a lot of collaboration. There are directors for every aspect: choreography, set design, costume design, technology, and at the head of that is the Director, who is Sonya Baehr. She makes sure all of the collaborations are working. I start by creating a list of each character that we are going to be using, and their vocal range. I then start to look at what would be the best songs to audition the students in order to figure out their range and cast them accordingly. Has there ever been a moment when you found a student who didn’t have the exact range you needed but you really wanted to cast that person? We have had cases in the past where a song that we thought would be fine in a higher range ended up being taxing for a student. With boys it is hard because their voices might be changing still, so what works in December might not work in February, so we would bring the song down a third and rewrite the music for the orchestra. After figuring out what songs would be best for auditioning, we have the first round, where students come in and we test their range. The next day we have an acting audition, and the following day we have a dance audition. By the end of that we have begun to narrow it down to the students we want to see again, and we start to get a sense of whether they are ready for a lead, if they have the qualities we are looking for in that character, or if they have the particular voice type. So you do get to play around a little. It’s not quite like the mixtape, but still! Yes…sometimes it just comes down to chemistry. P O LY P R E P M AG A Z I N E FA L L 2 016
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BY CHRISTY HUTCHCRAFT, ENGLISH
Illustration by Matt Huynh
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T H E B L U E & T H E G R AY
When I was fifteen,
a student from the commufascination. nity college came to our high Ivan had beauschool one weekend to help tiful arms, and us with our haunted house. when he painted His name was Ivan, he was me that night I just shy of nineteen, and he was captivated by was an art student. I was the tufts of hair to be a vampire. Ivan sat that sprouted from me in the dressing area, beneath his shirt withdrew from his rucksack sleeves, the conhis palette of white, red, stellation of moles and black, and got to work on his lower neck, on me, rubbing the thick the way his stomach paste into my cheeks, his rose as he leaned thumbs kneading the in close to work. He black charcoal under my and a few other art eyes so that I would look students volunteerabsolutely revolting. ing from the college What I remember most had constructed an about that hour was elaborate set on our old the way he touched my villa’s lawns, tented face, the way he took rooms that looked from in my dimensions, the outside like white carefully planning a keeps to a castle. Inside course of action like they had dangled rubber taking a pencil to a bats from the tent poles map and beginning to and cut coffins out of plot where he wanted refrigerator boxes, all to go. I had never had spray-painted black. someone look at me My classmates and I, so closely before, girls who had attended sinwith such calculagle-sex Catholic schools all tion and non-judgour lives, rehearsed an hour ment. It didn’t before the patrons were admatter that my mitted. We hovered around neck was covered the plastic gravestones waitin hives from a ing for Tommy, a freshman tree I may or may at the college, to dim the not have been allights. Cotton cobwebs stuck lergic to. It didn’t to our tennis shoes when we matter that I had took our places. None of us felt chipped my front very scary. tooth on a soda “You’re going in one of these,” bottle the sumIvan said and gently lifted mer before and the lid to one of the cardboard even though coffins. There were little pieces my parents of twine glued on the top to hadn’t noticed it, I ran my tongue over the missing piece every day in quiet
lift it with, and I slid inside and lay down. “You’re tall,” he said. “It will scare the hell out of them when you pop out.” Tommy doused the lights and we settled into the dark. I couldn’t tell In the corner, Ivan if it was stuffy inside that cardwas laughing so hard board box or if it was just the idea he was holding his of being trapped that made me privates. nervous and claustrophobic. Or “And that was just if it was the fact that I knew Ivan rehearsal!” he said. would be watching the rehears Later that night, al from the corner of the tent. when all of the hauntWolves howled and an organ ing was through, he stormed a tune. The smoke took a washcloth to a machine began to churn and the bucket and then asked room fell heavy in mist. me to come over to sit “Wait for the signal,” Tomnext to him. Only a few my whispered from behind kids were left lingering a black velvet curtain. Jasin the changing room. It mine and Chloe, sophomores was late for me, almost dressed as goblins, chuckled ten-thirty. He ran the in the corner. The sound of washcloth across my a grandfather clock chimed cheek very slowly. He three times from the speakran it across my nose, my ers, and through a slit in the eyes, my neck until the cardboard I saw the spotlight cloth and bucket turned a illuminate midnight. dishwater gray. I let out a piercing “Those are some lungs you scream, a scream I must have,” he said. have tried to stifle all of “Where does a girl like my life. All of my fifteenyou scream like that?” He year-old confusion was had been impressed that I buried in that scream and had been able to sustain five it lasted a full minute and separate screams for each bewildered me. I had risgroup we admitted into the en out of the coffin like haunted house. a beanstalk, just as Ivan He packed up his paints and had told me, and I had asked me if I wanted a ride continued to scream. home, and I told him that my Everywhere it was parents were probably already dark. I felt my power there to pick me up, that they grow; I could take over were waiting in the parking a room. lot. He shrugged as if he didn’t When the rehearscare and then said, “I’ll listen al was over, Tommy for you on the real Halloween. flipped on the lights. I’d recognize that scream anyHe was chewing on where.” the end of his pen for I put my vampire robe in my dear life. There was backpack between Algebra I and one other vampire, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, hoisted the two zombies, and straps over my shoulders, and the goblin girls, began to leave the tent. I gave and they stood him my phone number because there, their fake he asked for it, all nine digits on teeth wobbling a piece of paper torn out of my out of their jaws, marble composition book, and I deafened and irrifelt that fluttering of the heart tated, the smoke all of the girls talked about at the lingering around lunch table. Me with a college boy? us like an embarMy mind envisioned our future rassing memory. together and it envisioned nothing because I had not yet kissed anyone. He called me, but it was six months later, right after they put his mother in the hospital. When I picked up the phone he said, “I think I need to hear that scream.” P O LY P R E P M AG A Z I N E FA L L 2 016
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Culture
Faculty, students, and alumni discuss their favorite books, movies, and music.
READING Sarah Werner ’11: Louise Glück’s A Village Life, her 11th collection of poems, offers quiet and reflection for the frenzied mind. The poems contained in this small volume flow together and call to each other, with astounding, calm silences marking the moment between the end of one poem and the beginning of the next. As in previous works, Glück magnifies smaller, intimate moments while keeping a disciplined distance from them. The reader’s discomfort at the patience and methodical nature of her observations (and her refusal to look away, where less courageous might) is underlined by a comedy similar in experience to viewing Philippe Halsman’s 30
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Yes, but don’t try to uncover my secret (Dali’s mustache)—traits illustrated to particular effect in “At the River” and “A Slip of Paper.” In rejecting excess entirely in her approach to her subjects, Glück’s illumination of themes prone to effusive (and often ineffective) expression—as pleasure and loss, life and death—is refreshing. Eva Freeman (English): Viet Than Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Sympathizer, begins with this tantalizing declaration: “I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces.” The nameless narrator is a Viet Cong agent working for a South Vietnamese general who, in the opening pages, must negotiate a tumultuous escape from the fallen capital, Saigon. Once in the United States, it becomes clear that his duplicitous employment reflects a more literal bifurcation. He is the illegitimate child
of a Vietnamese woman and a French priest. His fractured country becomes a reflection of his own fractured soul and his mind the metaphorical crossroads of East and West. His most heroic act it turns out will be resisting this binary construction, the ridiculous impulse to categorize and so limit the breadth of human experience.
WATCHING Bud Cox (Head of Upper School): Doctor Mouldy, a British doctor, has just delivered a baby to a Bosnian Muslim refugee couple in a London hospital in 1993. When he asks what they will name the child, they joyfully say, “Chaos.” This moment is just one among many in this carnival of seven intertwined stories that unfold in Jasmin Dizdar’s film, Beautiful People. Ironically, chaos embraces much of the spirit of the whole film, as the narrative moves along a line between Bosnian chaos and British order. In several interviews, Dizdar makes it clear his film is not a polemical war story: “Physical war is boringly simple. Urban London family
drama is far more interesting to me.” Taking his idea of “physical war” and “family drama,” Dizdar has created a finely tuned social drama around a perspective of human absurdity and humor through pain. The film unfolds through a bizarre series of personal relationships that suggest the world of London is a mix of nationalities, refugees, and local Londoners, who also feel like aliens in their own land. Two middle-aged Bosnians, one Croatian and the other Serb, who had lived in a village next to each other before the war, frame the story. Now, they carry the war to London, as they chase each other through the streets in the shadow of a Winston Churchill statue and Big Ben, pounding each other so badly that they wind up in a hospital room shared with a Welsh terrorist. What Dizdar creates in Beautiful People is what the Belgrade director Srdjan Karanovic has explained all good films share: a sense of the cinema as “documentary fairy tale.” In other words, each of the seven tales is anchored in a “documentary” reality we can recognize as true to life. There are failed marriages, new romances, friendships fractured by ethnic conflict, misunderstandings, and simple pleasures that make up real life as we know it. The film, thus, enlightens without preaching, as we can laugh at the human condition. As Dizdar suggests, our humanity has as much to do with what makes us all beautiful—much like the delayed appearance of the word Beautiful after the letters forming People have already landed on screen in the title sequence. If we are able to step back from the struggles surrounding us, as Dizdar implies, there is beauty to be found. Maite Iracheta P’16 (World Languages): A triad of movies that I watched at Film Forum this past year have been memorable linguistics of the imagination. La calle de la amargura, or Bleak Street, by the Mexican director Arturo Ripstein, is a grim tale of Mexico City’s forgotten citizens, a combination of form and content that somewhat matches the imagery of the streets of Meereen and Braavos after midnight. Güeros, or Blondes, by another Mexican director, Antonio Ruizpalacios, is about students on strike at the national university. Güeros is playful and poetic, and its realistic eye rubs against the documentary realm. The young characters in this handsome black-andwhite film are on a quest for meaning, careful not to look up to the sky for hope
since what comes down from the D.F. (Federal District) sky is only smashing material. Also at the Forum, and on February 14, I watched La belle et la bête, or The Beauty and the Beast, a 1946 classic by Jean Cocteau. It had been a year since World War II ended when the film premiered, and maybe Cocteau’s fairy tale was a testament to preserve antagonisms and impossibilities. Some psychological horrors remained. His superb creativity and command of the special effects on this masterpiece could give any 21st-century high-tech system a stroke of long-lasting envy. Cocteau’s film responds efficiently to any aesthetic altitude demand.
LISTENING Shannon Cohall ’10: Okay, Poly, now let’s get in formation! This album is the talk of the town! Now I haven’t always been a Beyoncé fan, but I must say that Lemonade is legendary. In this work of art, Beyoncé has used her position of privilege and power to express the emotions and circumstances to which many women, and particularly Black women, can relate. I remember watching the accompanying hour-long video album on HBO and being glued to the TV. The depiction of beautiful Black women of the past, present, and future was so empowering and uplifting for me to watch. This album is so much more than an album of relationship issues— it is a beautifully crafted masterpiece composed of a wide range of musical genres and fascinating imagery. While not the most popular song on the album, “Pray You Catch Me” sets the stage for what becomes an engaging story of disappointment, anger, redemption, and hope. Queen Bey takes us on a journey of a woman who is fed up with wondering about the infidelity in her relationship, so much so that she
asks the question, “What’s worse being jealous or crazy?!?!” She shows us that this journey of self realization continues past her anger and resentment to a place of redemption in the songs “Sorry” and “6 Inch.” Let’s just say that if you are in a relationship and decide to watch this first half of Lemonade, you might give your man the side-eye. Thanks, Bey. The second half of the album is all about moving forward with her relationship, herself, and her cohort of sisters with their natural hair and Shea butter. She places images of the mothers of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, and Michael Brown throughout the song “Freedom.” I definitely got teary-eyed watching this as Beyoncé reminded us to NEVER forget their stories. What made this masterpiece even more spectacular was how she weaves the poetic words of poet Warsan Shire throughout the music videos. Those spoken word pieces truly enhanced this from just an album to a work of art. Beyoncé is a legend and has greatly impacted my friendships. Recently my friends and I went on a girls’ trip to North Carolina. We spent no less than four hours discussing and dissecting this Lemonade story while sharing our pride for our Black Womanhood. Throughout my life there have not been many positive images of Black Women in the media, yet Beyoncé made the world stop and focus on the beautiful complexity that is the Black Woman! Thanks, Bey, for telling our story! Trevor Nunez ’17: Rebelión by Joe Arroyo is, in my opinion, the crowning work of one of the greatest salsa artists of all time and a definite go-to choice whenever I need a pick-me-up. The melody is powerful and invigorating. Arroyo has a one-of-a-kind voice and sings with a passion that is palpable. His lyrics are meaningful and resonate strongly with me, as they outline the experience of two slaves having just arrived in the New World. This story, of a slave standing up to the master who is beating the slave’s wife, only serves to further the artistic excellence of this track. Instrumentally, the song is vibrant with strong acoustic accompaniment from the trumpets and piano. The dance break is legendary in the world of salsa and one of the best I have ever heard. This is without a doubt the most complete salsa I have ever listened to. It is one that is fit for enjoyment in the car with the windows down, or for grabbing someone’s hand and tearing it up on the dance floor. P O LY P R E P M AG A Z I N E FA L L 2 016
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ANNALS OF A PROGRESSIVE VOTER
In July 2016, actor and writer Jabari Brisport ’05 traveled to Philadelphia for the Democratic National Convention. Brisport kept an active social media presence on Facebook during his time at the DNC. We reached out to ask the Poly alumnus about his turning point into activism and how he navigates the worlds of art and politics.
Jabari Brisport ’05 on
A
Acting and Activism
Jab ari B risport ‘ 05 marc h e s a t th e D e m o c ra ti c Nat i onal Convention i n P h i l ad e l p h i a .
rt without politics is useless. An actor’s job is to hold up a mirror to society and reveal everything that’s there—both the good and the bad. For me, getting involved in political theater fed my soul. It started in 2009, during Barack Obama’s first term, when my theater group, Political Subversities, would put on a weekly live show using humor, music, and spoken word to explore everything we thought was right and wrong with America and the world at large.
that’s useless—so in 2013, during my third year at Yale, I devised a piece called Derivatives, which explored the awful effects of income inequality and the disappearing middle class.
Four years later, I was accepted into the MFA program at the Yale School of Drama. In my first two years at Yale, I thought I wouldn’t have time to continue performing political theater, which was unfortunate because by 2012 I felt disillusioned and needed an outlet for what I saw going on in the world. It had been my fierce opposition to the Iraq War and my desire for more love in a divided America that made me vote for Obama in 2008. But by 2012, the troops were coming home and just being replaced with predator drones. Obama extended the Patriot Act, something I had feared for years, and America was even more polarized. I didn’t feel like voting for him again, but I did anyway—since then, my views on third-party candidates have changed significantly.
Today, I am still craving a political revolution, racially and economically. Bernie Sanders answered my worries. Though I never worked for his campaign directly, I volunteered my heart out. I knocked on doors in six states, I registered hundreds of voters, and I made over 1,000 phone calls. Even though I’m sad to see the revolution I had hoped for won’t manifest in a Sanders presidency, my artist/activist journey has led me to Green Party candidate Jill Stein, as I don’t see real change coming from either of the two corporate parties. But, more importantly, I’m voting for Jill Stein because I’m enthusiastic about the environment, and the first thing I fell in love with was her call to move to 100 percent renewable energy by 2030. She has also called for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to address the lingering specter of racism. (Because Black Lives won’t Matter until we talk about these issues head on.)
At the same time, I was waking up to the problem of income inequality. As part of my acting career, I had always maintained a synthesis of art and politics through my organization, The Glass Theater Company, which produced performances on topics such as gentrification and Wall Street. At Yale, I was frustrated about being in an artistic bubble without politics—as I said before, 32
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By the time I graduated, it was 2014 and Black Lives Matter was gaining traction. I felt radicalized, especially after I met a group of likeminded individuals in the group Artists for Change. We were going out into the streets and standing up to a corrupt system.
I could go on and on about why third parties are necessary to keep the political ecosystem balanced, but I’m much more excited to go out and engage with people face to face. My journey is just getting started.
POEM BY LIAT WEINSTEIN ’18
On Being Asked Where I See Myself in Ten Years I say I want to be happy and I look down at the floor. I say I want to pursue a degree that looks good on paper,
Of Note. Five students were named National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists in 2016. David Almonte ’16, Michael Bogdanos ’16, William Kalish ’16, Sonja Lindberg ’16, and Jotham Thodiyil ’16 attained NMSQT semifinalist status.
Say I’m training to become a registered dietician or a Therapist for kids
I say proudly that I want to spend my nights reading large stacks of papers for a Russian literature class. And then I say I don’t really want to spend my
Happy’s not a career, they tell me. But, I say, I want to see the sun rise over a mountain When the sky is silver lined books and ripped envelopes and late night TV. I don’t say that in ten years, I see myself
Sophie Rodney ‘17, founder of Poly’s Special Olympics Club, spearheaded the First Annual Ralph J. Herreros Memorial Poly Prep Unified Basketball Skills Invitational, which was held in conjunction with Special Olympics on April 30 at Poly.
making mistakes and regretting them and regretting regretting them. I say I’ll stay in shape mom, I promise. I say that every Thanksgiving I will take a plane home and I’ll look out the window and remind myself why I have to come back I’ll arrive with suitcases full of clothes and I’ll stay a few days, ok? I wish I could say
Active members of the organizing committee included Annika Anderson ‘16, Emma Haskel ‘17, Jules Gabellini ‘18, Addee Kim ‘17, Zach Kimmel ’17, and Janet McAllister ‘17. Daniel Heijmen (English) was their advisor. The event included a keynote speaker, a performance, a series of topic-specific workshops led by activists in the field, and a panel discussion.
with special needs.
nights reading.
A group of Poly students organized the first annual Human Trafficking Conference, which was held on Sunday, February 7 at Poly.
Rodney credits Poly’s Service Learning course, which she took during freshman year, for inspiring her desire to serve. “Through this class,” Rodney said, “I discovered that I wanted to work with people with intellectual disabilities for my community service project. I am an avid lover of sports, so when Mr. [Elijah] Sivin suggested I look into the Special Olympics, I was really excited.”
Kassidi Cheng ’17 was accepted into the Maimonides Women in Science Program for Summer 2016. The program was a one-month summer internship for female high school students who wish to pursue a career in medicine. “When I was in Dr. [Peter] Rice’s ninth-grade bio class, I first realized my passion for biology and the study of the human body,” Cheng said. “He really pushed me to pursue that interest and, honestly, if it weren’t for his class I don’t think I would even be considering going into medicine.”
John Scaccia ’16 was accepted to the U.S. Naval Academy for Fall 2016. Scaccia participated in the Academy’s one-week STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) program in the summer of 2014 and the U.S. Naval Academy Summer Seminar in 2015. Scaccia credited his chemistry teacher Mandy Pabon and eighth-grade science teacher Guy Devyatkin P’00 for preparing him to succeed in the Academy’s Summer STEM Program.
Poly Blue Devils Varsity Basketball player Najee Taylor ’16 signed a letter of intent to play for Dominican College. Taylor is the only player in Poly history to record over 1,000 points and 500 rebounds. He is a two-time All-Ivy League and a twotime team MVP. Taylor accomplished all this while commuting from Newark, New Jersey, to Poly each day.
Brett Restrick ’17 competed in the final round of the New York City Science and Engineering Fair on March 29 and won a Second Award. Restrick presented her project, “Changing the Characteristics Associated with the Color Blue in Marketing Initiatives,” which she had developed as part of Poly’s three-year Science Research course.
Kristen Haynes ’17 won a $5,000 scholarship at the Roger Rees Excellence in High School Musical Theatre Performance Awards on May 22. “Poly offers a lot of performance opportunities, whether it’s the fall play, the winter musical, the Spring and Winter Arts Festivals, or the dance concerts,” Haynes said. Julian McBride ’16, who also competed said, “Ms. Baehr, Mr. Doughty, and the Performing Arts Department have done an excellent job of preparing me for things like the Roger Rees Awards.” Haynes is attending The Boston Conservatory at Berklee College of Music and McBride is at Brown University.
I just don’t know.
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Faculty Retirements
Bud Cox 15 YEARS
Jo-Ann Menchetti 13 YEARS
Bud Cox, beloved teacher and friend to many at Poly, came to the school in 2001. He received a BA from Amherst College and an MA at Columbia University’s Teacher College. Throughout his 41-year teaching career, Cox has taught English, art history, music history, and film. In addition, he has coached varsity football and both boys’ and girls’ varsity basketball.
Artist Jo-Ann Menchetti came to Poly in the fall of 2003 to teach AP Art History, and by 2009 she became chair of the Visual Arts Department. In her 13 years at Poly, teaching advanced courses in painting and drawing, she has played a momentous role in guiding students along as both mentor and teacher. Menchetti says that her career path to teaching was “an organic process,” as she studied at Maine College of Art and New York University Graduate School to become an artist. But her love of being with students, helping them internalize and realize new worlds through art, has been the most rewarding. Having grown up as one of nine children in a house that was in a “state of nonstop chaos,” she says it has always felt very natural to be in the classroom. Both she and her husband, Bud Cox, will be moving to their enchanted home in New Mexico.
HEAD OF UPPER SCHOOL ENGLISH
V I S UA L A R T S D E PA R T M E N T C H A I R MIDDLE/UPPER SCHOOL
Illustrations by: Shane Sahadi is a comic illustrator as well as fine art painter and filmmaker. You can see his
work in the young adult graphic novel Entertaining an Elephant. He loves teaching young people
the classic skills of fine art as an alternative to digital devices. He
paints large-scale pop art paintings, landscapes, and nudes.
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Asked about his time at Poly, Cox said, “Why did these past 15 years seem so short and meaningful? Because of the people in this Poly community. Nothing is more important for students than to probe for the inconsistencies in what they learn. For me, it has been at Poly, a welcoming place for all people no matter their background, where I have understood how challenging and fulfilling relationships can be, what are at the heart of the learning process. Everything from the familiar smells of the hallways and the grounds, the mysteries of Chapels, the teachers who freely and wholly mentor and guide students, and the students from the classes of 2002-2016 makes clear to me how significant the roles they have played in shaping who I am today.
Menchetti’s parting words to Poly? “There are no Cherokee words for goodbye.”
Leonie Bolles 28 YEARS NURSERY LO W E R S C H O O L
Dan Wood 6 YEARS
SCIENCE LO W E R S C H O O L Illustrations by:
Before Nursery Associate Teacher Leonie Bolles P’08 returned to her native Nicaragua, colleagues feted her and Dan Wood at a retirement party. It was agreed that Bolles, who taught at Lower School (going back to the Woodward Park days) for 28 years, and Head Teacher Irwin Tawil P’08, had created a magical place in Nursery B. “Observing Leonie interact with the students in her care is like watching a master class on child-centered constructivism at work,” said Terell Cooper P’29 (Head Teacher, Grade 3B; Director of Associates Program). “At any one time, children in Nursery B are engineers building structures with blocks, scientists observing rocks and shells under magnifying glasses, or storytellers embodying characters in the dramatic play area.” “We can all agree that there is magic in Nursery B,” Cooper said, “but it’s not only because the physical environment resembles a naturalist’s wonderland—complete with a tree canopy overhead—but because the curriculum is well-conceived with young children placed lovingly at the center of each decision.”
Lower School was fortunate Dan Wood, an educator for 40 years, spent the final six years of his career as a science teacher in the wondrous fourth-floor classroom he transformed into a discovery center. After earning a BA in biology at Fresno State University, Wood was a naturalist/science teacher in San Francisco before getting a master’s at San Francisco State University. During the next 17 years in Oregon, Wood served as principal at two elementary schools and as adjunct professor of education for Concordia University for seven years.
Deirdra Hazeley ’00 is a proud alumna of Poly, Cornell
University, Florida International University, and Columbia
University. She is a Grade Four
Head Teacher and Co-Director of
the Junior Multi Arts camp. Deirdra was a resident artist at the League Residency at Vytlacil and the Vermont Studio Center. She
is a participant artist in the
Brooklyn Museum’s exhibition
Iggy Pop Life Class: A Project by Jeremy Deller. Her art can be seen at www.deirdrahazeley.com.
Wood called Lower School “a dream job, full circle to being strictly science, as I had once done in San Francisco. I knew I would like teaching science again, but never realized just how wonderful it would be. I have never enjoyed a school atmosphere, or a position in education, more than I have at Poly. The chance to create a program, in which students K-4 were able to enjoy a myriad of experiences and to love science, was an amazing way to spend the last six years of my career.”
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Justthe
TWO of Us
LOOKING BACK AT DUETS IN POLY’S MUSICALS
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1917
The Three Queens
2003
Theater rehearsal
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2003
You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown
1967
The Pirates of Penzance
2004
Guys and Dolls
1980 Godspell
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1952
The Mikado
1969 Carousel
2003 Dracula
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I met Bud Cox over 10 years ago when I was interviewing for a teaching position in the English Department. I vividly recall the energy and passion with which he discussed literature and teaching. That conversation was only a preview to the many engaging, provocative, and meaningful conversations I would have with Bud in the next 10 years. Bud is known for his poetic and philosophical messages to the faculty, which regularly reminded me of why I teach and inspired me to strive for my best self as both a teacher and an individual. I admire Bud for the fervor and dedication with which he approaches every aspect of his life. He is never less than his complete self, and that authenticity is what makes him such an insightful educator and such a remarkable human being.”
—
Marisa Gomez English Department Chair
Bud embodies the term ‘spirit.’ His love and appreciation for his students is unparalleled, always celebrating the accomplishments of others both in and outside of the classroom. I admire Bud’s dedication to the Poly program in its entirety by providing guidance and input to the academic and co-curricular program, thus ensuring the best experience for our community as a whole. I could think of no one more appropriate of being named this year’s recipient of the Spirit Award.” —
Lori-Anne Brogdon, ‘95, P‘27, ‘28 Assistant Head of School and Academic Dean
For 15 years, Bud Cox served at the spiritual center of Poly Prep, so it’s fitting he’s honored with the 2016 Spirit Award. Because he cultivates relationships that seek the good, people flock to receive Bud’s guidance or to be heard by him—he, a curious listener. Bud values solitary reflection and then translates that contemplation into action by engaging in discourse with vigorous commitment. Consequently, he convinces students and colleagues they matter more than distractions: if Bud gives you his attention, he stuns you with exalted fellowship. During those encounters with Bud, he makes his comrades feel that they really matter, as time seems suspended in his presence. By being the country day school’s psalm bearer and number one fan, he believes in others such that they come to believe in themselves. Furthermore, Bud’s idealistic rhetoric on education inspires both devotees and skeptics to entrust his philosophical maxims and participate in his mission to continue learning. For Bud and those thousands he influences, what does not change is the desire to grow in wisdom. When we look up at the clock tower and beyond, we’ll think of crusader Bud Cox, whose mark on campus remains indelible.” —
Sean Mullin English
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H O M E C O M I N G
Bud has been Poly’s biggest cheerleader. I do not believe he has missed a single performance in the theater in his time at Poly. On any given afternoon, you know you can always find him on the back field or in the gym cheering on one of Poly’s many teams. I love that he will even cheer for my daughter when I bring her to a game. But beyond the obvious places to be a cheerleader, Bud has been there cheering us all on to succeed and be our best authentic selves. In every difficult parent meeting with a student, it is clear that Bud’s goal is to support the student’s growth as an individual. And, of course there are those famed handwritten letters. They are Bud’s way of saying great job! Keep it up! I believe in you. It has been an incredible gift to be able to work for someone who supports me and encourages me to grow as an educator. Thank you, Bud!” —
BUD COX Spirit Award 2016
Flo Turkenkopf
Form V Dean, Science
It came as no surprise when I learned that Bud was going to be the 2016 recipient of the Spirit Award; the only surprise was that he hadn’t already been honored with it! Bud is the perfect recipient of this award. He exemplifies ‘Spirit’ around Poly like no other person I know. His sincere interest, support, and celebration of all things Poly has been experienced by so many and appreciated. During his 15 years at Poly, Bud has impacted the lives of so many students, faculty, and staff. He did this by showing up, caring, listening, and trusting. Congratulations, Bud!” —
Mildred Piscopo
Each year, the Poly Prep Alumni Association and its Board of Governors present the Spirit Award to one member of the faculty or staff who has exhibited exemplary dedication to the school and a commitment to excellence inside or outside the classroom. The winner of the 2016 Spirit Award is former Head of Upper School Bud Cox (English), who retired at the close of the 2015-16 year. In a Poly career spanning 15 years, Bud came to the school in 2001 after having taught for over 25 years in schools around the country. Throughout his 41-year teaching career, Bud was loved by students, faculty, parents, and alumni alike. The Poly community will miss him tremendously and would like to send a heartfelt congratulations on winning the 2016 Spirit Award.
Director of Athletics
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THE
EMPOWERMENT
PRINT PROJECT
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THE EMPOWERMENT PRINT PROJECT is part of the seventh-grade unit on Identity. Rather than create work with figurative imagery, students were asked to think abstractly and explore working within the framework of the non-figurative, text-based, and graphic. Using personal word choice, as well as font, composition, and placement of text, students sought to convey a message that is perhaps broader than, or even contrary to the literal meaning of, the word itself. The class researched artists who use text as installation, text as landscape, and text as part of minimalist wordplay, including Ed Ruscha, Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer, and David Hockney. From their research, students embarked on carving linoleum prints that support personal, political, and social messages of empowerment. — HELENA ELKO, VISUAL ARTS (MIDDLE SCHOOL)
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Commenceme nt
C L A S S of 2 0 1 6 44
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Senior speaker Seth Herschkowitz ’16 addresses the crowd. Adia Benjamin ’16 and family.
Lily Redstone ’16 and family.
The Blue Notes sing a Boyz II Men song.
Poly football players pose with diplomas. A Cappella sing an Andy Grammer song.
Devin Malanaphy ’16 and family.
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2016 Alumni Honorees Each year, Poly Prep’s Board of Governors honors alumni on Special Reunion Day to recognize outstanding graduates from across disciplines for their exceptional personal and professional achievements and contributions to society. Congratulations to our 2016 Alumni Award honorees.
D ISTINGUISHED
D IST ING U IS H E D
D I ST I N G U I S H E D
D I ST I N G U I S H E D
SCH OOL
ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
S E RV I CE AWA R D
Daniel Pollack ’65 is recognized as one of the preeminent trial lawyers in the country. Pollack received a B.A. magna cum laude from Harvard College; an M.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Univer sity of Oxford; and an LL.B. from Harvard Law School. Along with heading his own boutique law firm, Pollack & Kaminsky, he served as Managing Partner of McCarter & English’s New York office from 2012 to 2015, and he is now Managing Partner Emeritus. Early in 2016, he succeeded in effecting a $4 billion settlement of the 15year litigation between Argentina and its lead “holdout bondholders.”
Ira Bleiweiss ’76 is an internationally recognized specialist in anatomic pathology. In addition to having been affiliated with multiple hospitals in the New York area, including Mount Sinai and St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center, he is now a Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and The Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He has written and published over 100 articles and collaborated in clinical research studies around the world. In 2015, Newsweek listed Dr. Bleiweis as one of the Top Cancer Doctors in the U.S.
Stephen Brandman ’81 is the co-owner and founder of Sixty Hotels. Brandman has been in the hotel business for close to 30 years. In 2011, Brandman was one of the founders, owners, and the CEO of Commune Hotels, which owned and operated Thompson Hotels and Joie de Vivre. The portfolio consisted of approximately 50 hotels with revenues in excess of $450 million. Currently, Brandman oversees a portfolio of hotels in Miami Beach, Los Angeles, and Montreal, and he is also heading a new lifestyle hotel brand called Eaton Hotels, which he will soon be opening in Washington, D.C, San Francisco, and Hong Kong.
Loretta Ippolito ’81 is a partner at the Paul Weiss law firm, where she is a co-chair of the Personal Representative Department in New York. Ippolito’s practice involves all aspects of estate planning and estate and trust administration. Ippolito attended Amherst College, where she received her B.A. in mathematics in 1985. In 1989, she graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School. She currently serves as co-chair of the Committee on Trusts & Estates of the New York Women’s Bar Association. In 2012, Ippolito received the Up and Coming Wealth Management Lawyer of the Year Award from Chambers USA.
Robin Bramwell-Stewart ’86, P ’16 serves as Manager of Business Planning of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, where she is the leader of major strategic planning for the largest port on the U.S. East Coast and the third largest in the nation. Prior to joining the Port Department in March 2011, Bramwell-Stewart was a Senior Program Manager in the Office of Strategic Initiatives. She is a graduate of Howard University and Brooklyn Law School, and she has long been active on the boards of educational institutions. She previously served on Poly’s Board of Governors, has been a trustee since 2008, and is a parent to Dante, Class of ’16.
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Class Notes 1940s 1947
F. Peter Libassi is living with his wife of 62 years, Mary Fran, at Duncaster Retirement Community in Connecticut. They have enjoyed a wonderful life of government, business, academic, and philanthropic service.
1948
Alan Roland is still practicing as a psychoanalyst in Greenwich Village and is on the faculty and Program Chair at the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis. He is still doing (and exhibiting) artwork, mainly watercolors and conte crayon drawings, and still writing, both in his field and as a playwright. His play, “Flight of the Ibis,” set in the Umayyad Caliphate in Cordoba, Spain, has been performed three times, the last at SUNY Purchase, featuring Lauren Flanagin of the Metropolitan Opera. He has three young grandsons, two with daughter Tika in the Berkshires, and one with son Ari, a jazz musician who lives “like us” in Greenwich Village. His wife, a professor of Middle Eastern History, is still teaching at Pace University. � Hugo Freudenthal is alive and well in Florida with Anita. On June 5, they celebrated their 61st anniversary on a paddleboat on the Mississippi River. Their two kids, Ellen and Richard, have given them six grandchildren. They are soon to be great-grandparents. � Arthur Levitt says his days working on the Polygon and competing in the annual Bearns Speaking Contest trained him for his work on Bloomberg radio.
1949
Homer Eckerson and his wife are in a life planning community.
Illustration from The Polyglot, 1950
‘46
‘51
Class of 1946 Roy S. Fidler Class of 1951 Front Row: Edward Rappaport, Richard Marlin, Jay Levine, Thomas Blumberg. Second Row: Peter Malkin, Stephen Ehrlich.
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They summer in Maine and enjoy golf, bridge, and biking. He says, “I hear from Bob Magnus, who with Mary now lives in Rye. Poly seems to be getting better and better!!”
1950s 1950
Arnold Tolkin and his wife just had their second great-grandchild, Rylee Mila, born to their grandson, Ryan Tolkin, and his lovely wife, Ariella. Tolkin and his wife are off to Europe in the fall to experience the newest, most luxurious cruise ship ever built. They live in Palm Beach Gardens, FL, and next year Tolkin will turn 85 and take his entire brood for a short cruise on a yacht. They have four sons, 12 grandchildren, and two great-granddaughters with another on the way. He still lectures on genealogy. Tolkin also mentors young people who need direction and have achieved a certain amount of success. � Joseph DePaola says, “This year marks my 50th anniversary as a Texan. Joan and I relocated to the Dallas-Fort Worth area with American Airlines.”
1952
Joel Spector is still practicing law on Long Island.
1953
Peter Liebert just completed a three-year graduate course at the Hagan School of Business at Iona College in New Rochelle, NY, and received an MBA in Finance and Healthcare Management. He continues to practice pediatric surgery in Westchester and Connecticut, and he hopes to begin research in population health and tran-
sition into that field, utilizing years of experience as a practicing surgeon.
1955
Ira Merritt is an active realtor in Boca Raton, FL, and has been living in Boca West Country Club for the past 28 years. He has been married to Vivian for 55 years. Merritt says he received birthday wishes from his classmate Rudy Brody.
1956
Edward (Ted) Fuller started a new company, Cruzer Scooter LLC, to manufacture electric scooters for the college student and urban commuter. The Cruzer goes 28 MPH, has a battery life of 25 hours, and features cup holders, speakers, extra storage, and a touchscreen dashboard. � George Marks says he enjoyed the 60th reunion more than he can say. This year, he toured the beautiful national parks in the southwest USA: Bryce, Zion, Arches National Park, and the Grand Canyon. He says, “Best to all my classmates.”
1957
Peter Siviglia’s treatise, “Commercial Agreements,” has been a best-seller since publication in 1993. He’s saved deals for major international companies that they and their high-profile law firms couldn’t handle. But despite these accomplishments, he says, “My wife and all other teachers do more for humanity in a day than I’ve done in a lifetime.” � David Lifton is completing Final Charade: Oswald, Strategic Deception and the Murder of JFK. The book is a sequel to Best Evidence, his 1981 best-seller, and breaks new ground by exposing a strategic deception, one designed to disguise a political murder as a historical quirk of fate and thus pave the way for the ascendancy of LBJ to the Oval Office.
‘56
1958 Michael Kay and his wife Erica recently moved from Boynton Beach, FL, to a new home in Delaware. Kay works in the Appeals Division of the State Attorney’s Office in West Palm Beach, where he is a paralegal volunteer. September found Mike and Erica in Albuquerque, NM, where his daughter Tamara and her husband, Harold, are professors of sociology at the University of New Mexico. Mike is proud that granddaughter Mireya, age four, is fluent in English and Spanish thanks to her parents’ efforts to ensure her heritage as a native-born puertorriqueña. For recreation, Mike plays tennis and occasionally rides motorcycles. � Mark Groothuis: “Far from the heights called Dyker, there’s a town they call Delray.” Mark says he has given up employment to play golf every day, but brother Mike’s still working. “Don’t know when the day will be, when he leaves NY for the sunshine, and joins me on the tee!” � Edward Jeffer had the opportunity for a comprehensive tour of Afghanistan. Jeffer and his father’s postcard collection was donated to The College of Staten Island and is available on their web site. 1959
Gary Mettler is still doing gigs and recording sessions. Several videos are on YouTube under his name. Mettler has three original tunes in the top 20 of the Blues/Rock category on Number 1 Music. � Frank (Jim) Tuttle retired from the board of the Kinderhook Bank and recently returned from 10 days in his primitive northern Quebec camp, where he identified warblers, following a week in Budapest. � David Lichtman recently retired from his practice of orthopaedic surgery in order to spend more time at his second home
‘61
Class of 1956 Front Row: James Flug, Neil Koreman, Anthony Purpura, Michael Heitner, Michael Rosen. Second Row: Michael Bradford, Daniel Pollack, Walter Williamson, Richard Press,
Stephen Krass. Third Row: Harry Yates, Robert Schoenemann, George Marks, John Kells, Richard Segall. Fourth Row: Maurice Finkelstein, John Malhame, Edward Fuller II, Malcolm Thompson, Arthur Delmhorst. Class of 1961 Front Row: Peter Richtmyer, Albert Keck, Robert Coates, Allan Rosenbloom, Richard Linn, George Sherman, Jr. Second Row: Stephen Pearlman, Francis Love, John Delmhorst, Paul Feinstein, Barry Musikant, John Brancato.
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on the beautiful northern California coast. He still does plenty of travelling and lecturing. When in NY, he gets together religiously with Steve and Shelly Goetz. Lichtman says, “Looking forward to seeing you all at our 60th in 2019!”
1960s 1960 Julian Ferayorni retired from
his ophthalmological practice in 2012 in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, and moved to the north Georgia area.
1961
Paul Feinstein and his wife, Martha, now spend the winters at their new Delray Beach, FL, home, and love it. He says, “Many of our classmates have migrated to South Florida and we hope to have a class reunion there this winter.” Feinstein is still practicing law and playing tennis. “Our 55th reunion at Poly was terrific and the school looks better than ever. See y’all soon.”
1962
Roger Freilich has been retired for four years in West Palm Beach and western North Carolina. So far, he has loved every minute of it, including travel and seeing old friends. He says, “It beats Bay Parkway.” He has also seen Jay Springer on several occasions.
1964
Robert Herzog just published his first novel, A World Between. You can find out more on Amazon or robertmherzog.com. Herzog says, “Support from my classmates has been fantastic!” � Elihu Estey and his wife, Cindy David, live in Seattle, WA. Eli is a Professor at the Fred Hutchinson
Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington Medical School. He specializes in clinical research and treatment of adults with acute myeloid leukemia. � John (Jack) Carter and his wife, Valerie, are still in Houston, getting ready for a good golf season. He is still hard at work helping Houston grow. Carter loves to put projects together. His kids are now both married. Daughter Laura has two children, Brooklyn and Enzo. Carter says, “It is worth getting older if they are your prize. Cheers to all.”
1965
Terry Martinson says, “2013 retirement was followed by a two-year interim ministry on Martha’s Vineyard.” Martinson is currently serving as an interim minister in Dennis, MA. � Patrick Burger just moved to Myrtle Beach, SC. � Roger Heymann still works at Heymann, Suissa, and Stone CPAs. He says, “Sorry I missed the big 50 but hope to catch up one of these days.”
1966
Sheldon Greenberg is a double board-certified otolaryngologist and plastic surgeon, and has been the Chief of Plastic Surgery at Norwalk Hospital for over 20 years. He just attended his 50th reunion at Poly. “Hard to believe! I remain best friends with my closest friend from Poly.”
1967
Richard Lutz has retired from a career in TV news and now runs his own company, rhlmedia.com. He lives in Britain with two grown sons. His brother Bill (70) lives in Monterey and all are in good health.
1968
Vincent Vigorita was fortunate to have served on the Search Committee
‘66
that selected Poly’s new Head of School and to have met many classmates this year, including several at George Couri’s estate.
1969
Eric Miller is starting his fourth year as owner and innkeeper of the Journey Inn Bed & Breakfast in historic Hyde Park, NY, with his partnerin-crime, Valerie. “We’ve had several Poly alums stay with us,” he says. “I’ve rekindled my passion for photography in a very photogenic place.”
1970s 1971
Keith Fisher recently left private practice to do public interest work for the National Center for State Courts, where he is Principal Consultant and Senior Counsel for Domestic & International Court Initiatives. He also took over authorship of the Lexis-Nexis/ Matthew Bender Banking Law Treatise. Fisher is mostly in D.C. and Massachusetts, but is also traveling internationally for work.
1972
Joel Rush has an orthopedic surgery practice in Fort Lauderdale. He is also the program director of an osteopathic orthopedic surgery program at Broward Health Medical Center, a Level 1 Trauma Hospital in Fort Lauderdale. Rush is also a professor at Nova Southeastern University College of Osteopathic Medicine in Davie, FL. � Henry Warshaw received the distinguished alumni award from Washington University in St. Louis, MO.
1973
George Fordes is currently
‘71
Class of 1966 Front Row: David Oxman, James Nelkin, Lee Saltzman. Second Row: John Ross, George Sawaya, Michael Di Raimondo. Third Row: Richard Kay, Sheldon Greenberg, Michael
David, Andrew Benjamin. Fourth Row: Frederick Haddad, Robert Telson, Alan Steinberg, Mitchell Bernstein, Jonathan Moldover. Class of 1971 Front Row: Frank Desner, Kenneth Stern, Harold Hellenbrand, Frederick Jenks, John Fritz. Second Row: Michael Junsch, Anthony Tagliagambe, Robert Colombo, Vassilios Livanos, Thomas Durakis, Vincent Pantuso, Jr. Third Row: Abbott Seligman, William Fordes, James Hatgipetros, Keith Fisher, Alan Feinberg, Ronald Schachter, Louis Vogel.
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retired after working as a geologist for ExxonMobil for nearly 35 years. He lives with his wife in Houston but visits NYC frequently. They have two grown sons who live in Chicago and Houston. Fordes currently enjoys playing and recording music, cooking, and bike riding.
1974
Tim Hollister published his new book in 2015, His Father Still: A Parenting Memoir. It has been featured in O, The Oprah Magazine and Publisher’s Weekly as “must reading for any parent.”
1975
Ira Feldman, with a J.D. in Law from Columbia University, is the President and Senior Counsel of Greentrack Strategies, a consultancy on strategic environmental management and sustainable business practices. He also uses his 25 years of experience as an attorney to focus on environmental regulatory innovation, such as sustainable business practices or corporate social responsibility. � Lawrence Savell’s fourth published short story, “The Bequest,” was a winner of the 2016 New York State Bar Association Journal Short Story Contest and appears in the May 2016 issue. Larry, who at Poly was a freelance essayist for Polygon and won the Mitchell Prize writing competition, is Counsel at Herbert Smith Freehills New York LLP. � Guy Minoli completed his term as president of The New York Academy of Dentistry for 2015-2016. He recently accepted the American College Section Achievement Award recognizing a Mentorship Lecture Program created in 2013 serving the NYC Metropolitan area.
1979
Dave Bezahler is currently president of Golden Rat Studios in Los Angeles, CA, making mobile games for
the greater China market. � Jeffrey Bamonte and his wife, Lisa, have two daughters, Marissa (age 20) and Lauren (age 17). Marissa is a junior at the College of Charleston and is a varsity member of the sailing team. Lauren is a senior at Moses Brown School in Providence, and is captain of both field hockey and softball. Bamonte has been the Director of Sales for Novocure, a medical device company, since 2012.
1980s 1980 Michael Ingegno has lived in
Oakland, CA, for the last 15 years, the “Brooklyn of the West Coast,” where he works as a vascular surgeon. He has two children, ages 12 and 15. Ingegno enjoys the Bay Area, and in his free time skis and plays with old cars.
1983
1987
Armin Tehrany is an orthopedic surgeon in Manhattan. His pre-medical internship program includes Poly students and alumni. He was selected to the New York University Board of Directors and is an executive producer for the film Birth of A Nation, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2016 and won the Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize.
1989
Stacy Campbell (McIlraith) is the Director of the Scholars Program and Associate Professor of Management at Coles College of Business at Kennesaw State University in Georgia. She lives in Athens, GA, with her husband, Keith, and two girls, McKinley (13) and Charlotte (8).
1990s 1991
James (Jim) Brusco resides in Morristown, NJ, where he often sees many Poly alumni. His pride and joy are his wife, Bobbi Jo, and children Matthew (5) and Victoria (3). He says, “My closest friends at Poly are still some of my closest friends today, except it’s expanded to all our families—quite the crew! Regards to all my classmates and wishing them the very best.”
Claudio Caballero says, “It’s a big year for me, as I wed my Thai fiancée in August in Bangkok, accompanied by ’83 classmates Andrew Klapper and E.J. Antonio, who are flying in with their spouses.” In December, Caballero will graduate from INSEAD’s Global Executive MBA program. � Gregg Kaye has been the Commissioner of the Commonwealth Coast Conference (CCC) since 2007. At the CCC, Kaye oversees 15 different sports. He also continues as a member of the NCAA Division III Baseball Committee, for which he has represented the New England region from 2010 to 2014.
1992 Dr. Alexis Kulick and her husband, Alexander Slanger, welcomed their second baby girl on January 22, 2016. Her name is Bellamy Valentina. Bella has a three-year-old sister, Madeline (Maddie).
1986
1993
David Wilson is married and works as a psychotherapist in New York.
‘76
Aaron Cistrelli is married and living happily in Redondo Beach, CA.
‘81
Class of 1976 Front Row: Joseph Perez, Kenneth Dashow, John Minoli. Second Row: Michael Yellin, Ira Bleiweiss, Ira Checkla, Sanford Saunders, Samuel Elkind, Jay Greenfield. Third Row: Peter
Tumminelli, Frank Sinatra, Craig Nelson, Bryan Pickett, Edward Burke, Paul Barbara. Fourth Row: Mark Ettlinger, John Laudi, Charles Kreines, Andre Ciprut, John Harrison, John Grillo. Class of 1981 Front Row: David Klahr, Adam Pass. Second Row: Nancy Mertzel, Loretta Ippolito, Daniel Stein, Martha Ginsberg-Rosenfeld, Martin Valk. Third Row: Erik Zetterstrom, Andrew Stillman,
Michael Katz, Stephen Brandman, William Sprance.
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1994 Thom Bishops (Tarek Bishara) recently starred opposite Richard Gere, Steve Buscemi, and Jena Malone in the film Time Out of Mind, and appeared in The Tale opposite Laura Dern, Common, and Ellen Burstyn and The Jingoist, written by Norman Mailer’s son, John Buffalo Mailer. � Jon Marrelli is Director of Primary & Behavioral Health Integration at NYU-Lutheran. He works on innovative projects to bring medical and mental health services together to provide integrated care, a new approach that is a more effective way to treat patients and at lower cost. Those interested in psychology should feel free to reach out to him. 1995
Kate Bernstein has worked for reality show Made as a writer-producer, and subsequently as a supervising producer, co-executive producer, and executive producer overseeing the entire series. Now, as a screenwriter, she writes stories about gender, race, and social justice issues. � David Crystal’s company, Crystal Clear Tutors, is the first known SAT/ACT and college prep company to offer a money-back guarantee that clients will get into a top-50 university.
1996
Alyson Fox, who fell in love with liver transplant surgeries during medical school, now specializes in transplant hepatology. Fox takes care of patients before and after their surgery, acting as a counselor and forming a close relationship with them. Additionally, Dr. Fox is medical director for the living donor program at Columbia University Medical Center, along with working as an assistant professor in the Division of Digestive and Liver Diseases at Columbia University, where
she teaches both medical students and interns. � Christine Tortora founded her own “Made in Florence” handbag brand in 2013 called ViaBuia (dark street in Italian)! This endeavor has been so rewarding, reconnecting Christine with many old friends through shared enthusiasm. Check out www.shop.viabuia.com.
2000s 2001 Rolando Mathias capped off
Matthew Wallack recently was promoted to Director of the Public Accounting Group at The Forum Group. The Forum Group is a New York Citybased, full-service, veteran-owned recruiting firm that has been in business for over 40 years. He leads a team that places mid-level and senior level positions within CPA firms across the country. � David Alperin’s clothing store, Goose Barnacle, keeps growing, and this fall he will launch his own collection of menswear. The store also had a recent full-page feature in The New York Times.
his modeling career with a full-page spread in GQ and a three-page spread in Men’s Health. He subsequently left the fashion game and moved on to his long-term plan and passion, working as a UX designer where he tries to design thoughtful, elegant interfaces for desktop and mobile applications. � Ksenia Winnicki presented her paper, “Declassifying and Reclassifying Medieval Werewolves,” at the University of Hertforshire in the UK last September. She is also a senior publicist at Tor Books. � Rudi Hanja is busy in the residential real estate market as one of the top agents at Brown Harris Stevens, alongside his father, Siim. They were recognized as the highest producing team in their new Flatiron office for 2015.
1999
2002 Dr. William Atallah, M.D.,
1997
Jennifer Behrends says, “People are a passion of mine! That’s why I work for Belfor, the leader in integrated disaster recovery. I also have a small private practice as a Transformation Coach. What drives me is being a proud wife and mother of three beautiful children, Layla, Orion, and Elijah. This world belongs to them, so if I can make a difference, I will do just that!” � Henry Greenidge returned to Brooklyn after living in Washington, D.C., for five years. He is now working at the New York City Mayor’s Office as a Senior Policy Advisor.
Chief Resident in Urology, and classmate Dr. Christian J. Zaino, M.D., Chief Resident in Orthopaedic Surgery, worked at the Brooklyn VA Hospital this summer. They enjoyed working at the VA, as their operating rooms overlook the back fields of Poly. Dr. Atallah is applying for a fellowship in laparoscopic endourology, and Dr. Zaino will be a fellow in hand surgery at the University of Chicago this summer. � Evangeline Arapoglou moved to Lima, Peru in 2013 to be with her husband, Alberto. Alberto and Evangeline met while studying for their MBAs at Duke University. Since living in Lima, she has been working as the Head of Fixed Income Distribution, Peru, at Credicorp Capital.
‘86
‘91
Class of 1986 Front Row: Gabrielle Scarpaci, Alicia Maresco, Laura Torrado-Malley. Second Row: Christine Cochrane, Carla Sinatra, Deborah Guarna, Karen Rappaport, Naomi Kirkman. Third Row: David Wilson, Jennifer Baker, John Regan, Robin Bramwell-Stewart, John Williams. Fourth Row: Andrew Koven, Melissa Monahan, Caleb Epstein, Scott Katen, Julie Flansbaum, Bryan Lev-
ell. Class of 1991 Front Row: Ronald Cino, James Brusco, Frederick Lansigan, Jodi Quintiere, Tracy Factor, Jessica Brooks, Vincent Tortorella, Peter Volpe. Second Row: Michael Samuels, Joseph Tasso, Candace Ryan, Shawn Frankel, James Regan, Elizabeth Somers, Christian Davenport. Third Row: George Hubela, Marc Brownstein, Beth Jacobs, Taikwan Wright, Maria Tandon, Anna Tuyl, Glenn Prager. Fourth Row: Michael Sturtz, Michael Grossman, Timothy Harkins, George Staphos, Philip Kelly, Becket Sorce, Jeffrey Trimarchi. P O LY P R E P M AG A Z I N E FA L L 2 016
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2003 Peter Rocco received his M.A. in International Global Studies in 2015 from University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies. � Ryan Hyland, Head Basketball Coach at John Jay College, is following his lifelong passion. Basketball has played a huge role for as long as he can remember, and coaching is a profession that he finds unique and rewarding. After graduating from his master’s program at Catholic University in 2014, Hyland moved right back to NYC and took the job coaching this Division III team. � Joakim Noah signed with the New York Knicks and is excited to play pro basketball in his hometown. � Jesse Campoamor’s son Rafael Sol Campoamor was born March 31, 2016. � Nikki Grillos moved to Los Angeles, after becoming a two-time Jeopardy! champion, where she is working as a talent agent. 2004 Robin Tucker-Drob is currently Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Texas A&M University. Tucker-Drob received a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Caltech in 2013 and was a National Science Foundation post-doctoral fellow from July 2013 to August 2015, hosted by Rutgers University.
2005 Josh Adams says comic books
have always been a part of his life, so it just felt natural to get into it professionally. Adams draws, writes, and creates in all forms. If he had to give advice to teens, it would be to practice, because sometimes you need to draw a thousand bad drawings to draw one great one. � Ben Bronstein is a production artist at thelab, a creative agency, where he specializes in retouching, as well as photography,
compositing, web, and interactive work. � Cristina Cote is a comedian and actor who got her start on the Poly stage. She hosts and produces the soldout comedy variety show “HERsterical” at Caroline’s on Broadway that has been part of the NY Comedy Festival for the past three years. She currently hosts the Emmy Award-winning show “Best Places to Live.” � Justine Benanty is a maritime archaeologist with the African Slave Wrecks Project, which works to document countless shipwrecks. One of the organizations she partners with is Diving With a Purpose, which brings underprivileged kids to a week-long summer program in maritime archaeology and diving. In addition to her work as an archaeologist, Benanty works with The Antiquities Collection as a maritime research analyst in Washington, D.C., where she currently lives. � Sammy Jacobs is heading into the fourth year of running HoosierHuddle. com, which has five employees and an intern and recently surpassed the 250,000-view mark. This past December, the company was in the press box at Yankee Stadium for the Pinstripe Bowl. � Elisabeth Santana has been the owner and operator of ES Blooms, a floral design company in New York City, since 2013. The company specializes in arrangements for events, corporations, and hospitality clientele. Clients include Columbia University, BMCC, Viacom, WeWork, Cameron Mitchell Restaurants, and The New-York Historical Society.
2006 Amanda Boston is a Ph.D. can-
didate in the Department of Africana Studies at Brown University. Her work focuses on 20th-century African-American history and politics, black popular
culture, and the politics and culture of race in the post-Civil Rights era. � Eva Lipiec says, “After enjoying the wonderful Pacific Northwest for the past three years, I moved to D.C. to work on marine policy issues (as well as endangered animals, land/sea conservation, agency funding, and everything in between) as a fellow with the House Natural Resources Committee. I’d love to connect with D.C. Poly alums, old and young, so give me a shout at eva.lipiec@gmail.com.” � Jennifer Jimenez is a production assistant at Penguin Random House. She spends her days overseeing the production work for several of the paperbacks and hardcovers, and makes sure every detail in the book will print and bind well so that readers get a beautiful finished product. She says, “It’s my dream job!”
2007 Lorenzo Daughtry-Chambers
is director of the Invictus Youth Initiative. With Invictus, a program that focuses on impacting youth and youthbased organizations, Daughtry-Chambers delivers character-based services to schools and communities throughout Brooklyn. � Gabrielle De Allie just moved back to New York from Grenada. She is currently in her third year of medical school and says, “Life is great!” � Daniel Dimant is now Manager of Digital Advertising at David Yurman. � Isaac Katz married Laurie Hutt in August 2016.
2008 Madeline Turner received her
master’s degree in Art History from NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts in May 2015. She is now pursuing her Ph.D. in the same department and will start working on her dissertation next year.
‘96
‘01
Class of 1996 Front Row: Melanie Wilson-Taylor, Jennifer Riso, Dionne Wilson, Jennifer Pulidore, Rhett Madison, Tarsha Sanders, Robyn Brattner. Second Row: Melissa Harty, Nicholas Nakos,
Lauren Stelzer, Andrew McNally, Latasha Edwards, Christine Tortora, Joseph Ryu. Third Row: Leana Ferdinand, Alyson Fox, Thomas Yu, John Vavas, Austin Perilli, Chinyere Vann, Page Travelstead, Matthew Durando. Class of 2001 Front Row: Matthew Marino, Eileen Ahasic, Margo Power. Second Row: Joseph Pontone, Joseph Menezes, Miguel Hernandez.
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2009 Hannah Miles is a high school
biology teacher in the Bronx, along with coaching the girls’ soccer team. Her senior year at Brown University, she applied for Teach for America, the program that placed her into her first biology teaching position. � Razie Alter completed a graphic design intensive at the Shillington School in Manhattan after receiving a BA in Art History. In January 2014, she moved to Israel and started her own business in Jerusalem as a freelance graphic designer and general creative. In August 2015, she married an Israeli she met as a counselor at summer camp. � Park Cannon says, “I am proud to serve as the State Representative for District 58 in Atlanta, GA, which is where Midtown, Georgia State University, the State Capitol, and Turner Field are!” � Daniel Lempert is living with two classmates, Harrison Nesbit and Hal Bergold, next door to fellow class of 2009 alumni Jared Hedglin, Greg Dorris and Ben Kochman. (And with frequent visits from fellow classmate Michael Onah.) He says, “If you’re ever in Fort Greene and need a cup of sugar, give one of us a call.”
2010s 2010
Corinne Cathcart works on the Politics desk at ABC News in New York City. � Marika Soltys is currently halfway through an M.A. in Russian Literature at McGill University in Mon-
treal. She teaches elementary Russian to undergrads. � Richard Carbone is an Associate at Jefferies LLC in New York City, working in Equity Research Sales.
2011
Samuel Alter finished a sixmonth internship in July, working at the Geological Survey of Israel. In August, he started graduate school to receive his master’s in Geological Sciences at Arizona State University.
2012
Olivia Atlas graduated from Cornell University in May. She received a bachelor’s degree in Performing and Media Arts. She specializes in teaching children receiving mental health care by using performing arts and other creative disciplines. � Rolanda Evelyn is Associate Product Marketing Manager at Google as of September 2016.
2013
Nicolle Mora completed her junior year as a Finance major and Fashion Studies minor at Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business. During her junior year, she interned at Barneys New York in the buying office. This summer, she interned at Bloomingdale’s in their Executive Training Program for Buying and Merchandising.
2014
Hugh Kenny has certainly made the best of an unfortunate situation with a hamstring problem. He won the Men’s C Division of the Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conference, shoring up the victory for the season by winning a race in Northern MA. Hugh is as happy as ever after a rough first year battling those hamstrings.
‘06
SAVE THE DATE! HOMECOMING SEPTEMBER 24, 2016
OASIS NIGHT JANUARY 20, 2017
NY REGIONAL JANUARY 11, 2017
GALA MARCH 10, 2017
SPECIAL REUNION APRIL 29, 2017
‘11
Class of 2006 Front Row: Angela Dahir, Sara Duaban, Ashley Matney. Second Row: Alexandra Caleca, Dustin Tupper, Jennifer Jimenez, Max Spiegel, David Lei, Matthew Garaufis, Aarthi Raju. Third Row: Alessandro di Guglielmo, Maryanne Bryan, Catherine LaRocca, Jennifer Prezioso, Amanda Boston, Noah Rothman, Kristina Tafuri, Loretta Cacace, Arianna Imperato. Fourth Row:
John Capotorto, Andrew Yagnatovsky, Samuel Polifka, Eva Lipiec, Reed Katz, Gregory Zizza, Christine Lois, Daniel Papandrea. Fifth Row: Matthew Clifford, Maciej Radkowski, Max Dougherty, Elizabeth Semmens, Alexander Wright-Johnson, Samantha Swensen, Kaitlin Donohue, Alexander Holman, Nathaniel Benfield, Ian Pearson. Class of 2011 Front Row: Christina Dellaporte, Kristine Abrenica, Asia Coladner, Morgan Mathiesen, Dominique Brown, Frances Chudner, Biana Gotlibovsky, Lauren Farraye, Qadir Forbes. Second Row: Abby Feiner, Marielle Warner, Anecia Richards, Shayna Capers, Kailin Twomey, Joseph Gambino, Kadaicia-Loi Dunkley, Kimberly Ross, Frances Chudner, Melissa Akselrad, Krista Cederstrom. Third Row: Kathleen McDevitt, Cassidy Fazio, Kayla Metelenis, Mikenzie Ginsberg, Alexis Druyan, Curran Dhar, Savanna Leak, Joseph Laresca, Steven Carrubba. Fourth Row: Vincent Licata, Peter DeSantis, Jacob Rivers, Mary Nolan, Emilie Ratajczak, Marley Randazzo, Devin Keskinkaya, Daniel Conde, Alexander Clemente. Fifth Row: Thomas Figueroa, Alexander Buford, Lily Donahue, Jack Redell, Theo Kalogerakis, Adam Dicarlo, Andrew Becker, Sean Penso. P O LY P R E P M AG A Z I N E FA L L 2 016
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Obituaries
1930s Joseph De May ’33 of Garden City, NY, died on June 16, 2015. He was predeceased by his first wife, Joan, and is survived by his wife, Sylvia. He is also survived by children Joseph, Jr., Toni Ellen, Joan Meagher (John), Peter, Richard (Anne), David, and Stephen (Linda); cherished grandchildren Lauren Meagher Wright, David Meagher, Erin Nicholas, and Matthew and Lindsey De May; and great-grandchildren Sienna and John Henry Wright and Kaetlyn Meagher. He was the loving brother of the late Anthony J. De May, Florence Trippitelli, and Jane Macchione. A graduate of Poly Prep and Dartmouth College, Joseph served as a major in the U.S. Army in World War II and was awarded the Bronze Star. Rockwell Staniford ’38 died peacefully at his home in Vero Beach, FL, April 22, 2016. He is survived by his wife of almost 70 years, Frances Ingersoll Staniford (Cricket); daughters Caro lyn Staniford Sollis, Martha Staniford Myers, and Virginia Staniford Reid; grandsons Edwin Bryant Sollis II, Jonathan Gardner Sollis, and Alexander Rockwell Reid; and numerous nieces and nephews. Born in Brooklyn, NY, Rocky was a World War II veteran who served in the Pacific in the U.S. Coast Guard as Captain of the LST 168. He spent many years in Westhampton Beach, NY, and his working life in Rochester, NY, where he was an active volunteer and Captain of the Brighton Fire Department.
1940s Thomas Constant ’42 of Alexandria, VA, died on February 6, 2015. Tom, son of Victor and Ester Constant, loving husband to Clarine Aust Constant, passed away from complications of dementia. He is survived by his son, Stephen, five nieces, and one nephew, and
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was predeceased by his brother, Vic. He grew up in Beijing, China. Returning to the States, he followed his father’s lead and graduated West Point in 1946. He served in the Korean War, Tokyo, Taiwan, and Vietnam before retiring as a colonel in 1970. Tom and Clarine lived in Alexandria 40 years. He loved volunteering at Mt. Vernon Hospital. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery with Clarine, who passed in 2009. Gerald Phillips ’43, attorney, ethicist, and philanthropist, passed away on October 19, 2015, in Los Angeles, CA, surrounded by his devoted family. He is survived by his beloved wife of 58 years, Francine A. Phillips; daughter, Stacy D. Phillips; son, Louis M. Phillips; daughter-in-law, Jackie Phillips; and grandchildren Andrew and Alison Bloomgarden and Bobby and Jeffrey Phillips. Phillips began his career in 1950 at the New York law firm Phillips, Nizer, Benjamin, Krim & Ballon, founded by his father, Louis Phillips. Concurrently from 1950 to 1983, he was a Vice President of United Artists, leading its Litigation Department and its Special Markets Division. From 1984 to 1987, he served as Chairman of WNYC, New York’s flagship public radio station. Until his death, he served as an adjunct professor at Pepperdine University School of Law. Russell Tilley, Jr., M.D. ’43 passed away quietly at his home in Washington, D.C., on June 28, 2016. Dedicated doctor, loving husband and father, loyal colleague and friend, Dr. Tilley is survived by his wife, Betty Ritter Tilley; his son, Richard M. Tilley; his granddaughter, Kathleen Mayo; his sonin-law, John Mayo; and his brothers, David and Peter. He is predeceased by his beloved daughter, Kimberly Ann Tilley, who passed in 2013 at age 60. Alan Cruikshank ’44 died on February 19, 2015. He is predeceased by his daughters, Jill and Janet, and brother, Warren. He is survived by his wife, Fran; son, Andrew (Cathy St. Denis); and sister, Carol. After Poly, he graduated from Princeton in 1948 with a bachelor’s in engineering. He enlisted
in the U.S. Navy while at Princeton and remained in the reserves, retiring as a Captain. He earned an MBA from NYU and returned to a career at Kodak. He earned a law degree from SUNY Buffalo in 1983. After retiring from Kodak, he joined the Monroe County District Attorney’s office and served as an assistant district attorney for more than 10 years. James McMahon ’45, a computer sales executive, died May 26, 2015, in Connecticut, after a short illness. After graduating from Poly, he attended Colgate University. Jim married Barbara Doyle in 1950. He joined the Coast Guard following college and eventually rose to the rank of Lt. Commander. Jim joined Univac Remington Rand, where he worked for most of his career. Jim is survived by his wife, Barbara, of Essex, CT; daughter, Melissa, and her husband, Jonathan, of New York City; son, James, of Greenwich, CT; and two grandsons, Thomas McMahon Cramer of New York City and Matthew James Cramer of Chicago. He was predeceased by brothers Edward and Thomas, both graduates of Poly Prep. Sheldon Kravitz ’47, an advertising icon who partied with Frank Sinatra, played in a swing band, and trumpeted Trans World Airlines to the masses, died on Oct. 3, 2015, of pulmonary fibrosis. Kravitz, a former Poly football player, was a Renaissance man who attended medical school, worked briefly as a theatrical manager, and toiled grudgingly as a lawyer until a client offered him a job in 1961 in the fashion industry, an opportunity he leapt at. Kravitz is survived by his wife, Lori; son, Daniel; and brother, Paul. Richard Edelman ’48, beloved husband of Anne Coyne Holbach, died peacefully at home in Manhattan on May 25, 2016. A lawyer and teacher, his keen intellect led him to public service and a career that made him a staunch defender of civil liberties. He was passionate about the arts, in particular poetry, and was a devotee of Shakespeare, Winston Churchill, and Mozart. He earned degrees from Harvard College and Harvard Law School. In addition to his wife, he is
survived by two sons, David Armstrong Edelman, and wife Yahne Miorini, and Jonathan Sams Edelman, as well as his sister, Louise Sagalyn, and two grandchildren, Antoine and Annabel Edelman.
1950s Leonard Frank ’50 died unexpectedly in his home on January 15. He was a human rights activist, writer, aphorist, and editor. He collected quotations for most of his life and published a number of “Quotationaries” (a term he coined). Leonard also lectured widely on his experiences with insulin coma and electroshock treatments and was a leader in the psychiatric survivor’s movement. Leonard’s books include: “Random House Webster’s Quotationary”; “Freedom: Quotes and Passages from the World’s Greatest Freethinkers”; and “The Greatest Things Ever Said” series (“Wit,” “Money,” “Inspiration,” “Wisdom,” “Love”). He remains an inspiration to many and will be greatly missed by his friends, family, and admirers. Leonard is survived by his sister, Eleanor Frank Weinstock, and her three children, Ann, Jane, and Chuck. Barry Nova ’50, a former senior corporate executive, lifelong Democratic Party activist, and Director of Communications for the YWCA of Greenwich, CT, died March 2, 2016, at Greenwich Hospital. He was the son of Barnett J. Nova, an official in the administration of New York Governor Averell Harriman. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1954 and served two years as a Lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force. In 1957, he began a long career in advertising, later moving to Lennen & Newell, where he became Senior Vice-President, working on such accounts as Ballantine Beer, Muriel Cigars, and the non-profit Job Orientation in Neighborhoods, a “War on Poverty” program of New York Mayor Robert Wagner, and directing Hubert Humphrey’s campaign advertising. He is survived by his wife, Susan; his daughter, Elisa; his son, Scott,
and daughter-in-law, Alexis; and his brother, James. John Thompson ’52 of Westport, CT, passed away surrounded by his family on March 31, 2016, at Yale New Haven Hospital St. Raphael Campus after a brief illness. He was a graduate and former Trustee of Poly. John was a graduate of Clarkson University ‘56. He served as a Clarkson Trustee for 21 years and was elected an Emeritus Trustee. John practiced as a CPA during an ever-changing time in the accounting industry. He began his career in 1956 at Arthur Young & Company. He became Partner at D.L. Thompson & Company in 1958. During his time there, John graduated from New York University School of Law and was admitted to the New York State Bar. He is survived by his wife, Bunny, of 55 years and two children. John McNeill ’53 died at home on Hilton Head Island, SC, on December 12, 2015. Before retiring to South Carolina in 2008, McNeill had worked for General Electric in Syracuse, NY for more than 30 years, and then co-founded RE/MAX Masters Real Estate with his wife, Mary (née Reilly), in Fayetteville, NY. At Poly, he excelled in both academics and athletics. He was the catcher on Poly’s championship baseball team in 1952 and won all-league honors as center on Poly’s 1953 football team. In 1957, he earned a B.A. in electrical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. McNeill is survived by Mary, his wife of 55 years; his sister and brother-in-law Carol and Ernest Kirchheimer; son and daughter-in-law John McNeill and Kris Wile; son Jim McNeill; daughter and son-in-law Mary Anne and David Cramer; and five grandchildren. Christophil Costas ’58 of New York passed away on January 12, 2016. Raised in Brooklyn, he was the adored husband of Elizabeth, a devoted father to Alex and his wife, Jaime, and doting grandfather to Jack and Josephine. Chris was the genuine article, a lover of history, literature, music, fine food, and wine. His enthusiasm for life, love of family, sense of humor, and kindness touched us all.
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Obituaries
1960s
1970s
In Memoriam
Mitchell Kamen ’60, formerly of Lexington, MA, passed away peacefully at his home in Tucson, AZ, on March 23, 2015. An artist, teacher, naturalist, and peace activist, Mitch was one of a kind, beloved by friends and strangers alike for his compassion, intellect, and gregariousness. He is survived by his wife, Trudy Kamen; his children Deborah Kamen (and Sarah Levin-Richardson) and Daniel Kamen; his ex-wife Helene Kamen; his stepchildren Emil (and Mara) Rudolph and Teresa Billick; and his step-grandchildren, Tristan and Emma Rudolph.
John Basso ’71 passed away at home on May 22, 2016. As a prominent local attorney and 1982 graduate of Brooklyn Law School, he was a perennial selection by his peers for New York Super Lawyers. He was well respected in all legal circles, including the Judiciary, and was beloved by his employees and scores of grateful clients. John was a lifelong athlete, having been recognized at Poly as a Varsity Captain and selected as an All New York City linebacker in football and Varsity Captain in lacrosse. John is survived by his wife Kathleen (Mueller) Basso of St. Louis, MO, and sons Raphael John Basso, Luke Henry Basso, and Zachary Emmett Basso. He was a stand-in father to his nieces Corie, Elaina, Gina, and Chrissy, whom he thought of as daughters. He is also survived by his brother, Donato Basso, II; his sisters, Mary Caccese, Margaret (Peg) Basso, and Jane Basso; nephew, Donato Basso, III; and niece, Dina Basso.
Señor Ralph Herreros: Poly Prep mourns the loss of Señor Herreros P ’90, , ’94, a gifted and dedicated Poly educator. He taught at Poly from 1967 until he retired in June 2002. Ralph was Head of the Language Department, Form VI Dean, guidance counselor, and assistant coach for soccer, lacrosse, and wrestling. Señor Ralph will be sorely missed by all those whose lives he touched. Born in Gijón, Spain, Ralph immigrated to the United States at age six in 1947. He graduated from Mount St. Michael Academy and earned a B.A. at St. Francis College in Pennsylvania before going to earn a master’s degree at Middlebury College. In 1971, Ralph married Raquel, with whom he raised their three children: Raquel ’90, Roxie ’94, and Ralfie.
Dr. Vincent Ruys DiGregorio ’60 passed away on February 9, 2015, while in the British Virgin Islands. He was a loyal husband to Jennifer and a devoted father to Nicole, and although he came to have a family late in his life, he embraced it fully. Dr. DiGregorio was a practicing plastic surgeon with the Long Island Plastic Surgical Group of Garden City and Chief of Plastic Surgery at Winthrop University Hospital in Mineola. He graduated from Hobart College and began his medical studies at Albany College of Medicine. He served his country as a surgeon on the front lines of combat in Vietnam between 1970 and 1971. In addition to his wife and daughter, he leaves behind his sister, Maryanne Bennett. John Butera ’61 passed away on August 19, 2015. Dr. Edward Cutler ’66 passed away on October 20, 2015, Dr. Cutler was a pediatric endocrinologist. He received his undergraduate degree in Latin & Greek at the University of Pennsylvania, and then he attended the A.T. Still University of Osteopathic Medicine and trained at Columbus Children’s Hospital and The Ohio State University Hospital. He opened his practice in a section of Columbus, OH, Franklinton, where some of the poorest of the poor in the U.S. dwell. His dedication to his patients never wavered. He would labor away on their behalf, and often his practice would never be paid.
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Mark Oransoff: We at Poly Prep were extremely saddened by the unexpected loss of our dear friend and former colleague, who served as the assistant in the College Counseling office for over 20 years before retiring in June 2013. Mark’s wife, Ann, is Poly’s Grade 5 and 6 Technology teacher and, like her husband, beloved and respected by all who know her here at school. Ann Oransoff said, “That he was a beloved member of this community and had special relationships with so many at Poly provides me with a tremendous amount of comfort that carries me through.” Ethel “Peg” Parker passed away on May 17, 2016. She was predeceased by her husband, Harlow Parker, who taught at Poly for 40 years. Throughout her Brooklyn residence, Peg was a tremendous supporter of faculty, frequently hosting new teachers at her home. She was also a regular at Poly’s sporting events, and for years the girls’ basketball team bus would stop at the Parker house to pick up Peg and Harlow to go to the team’s away games. Son Tom Parker said that Poly, for Peg, was a magical kingdom that gave kids an incredible opportunity. Peg grew up in Wisconsin as one of 10 kids. She is survived by her four children, Alice Morris, Tom Parker ’65 (Trustee), Sam Parker ’70, and Jane Cheremeteff ’79, and as well as 10 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Poly Prep Performers Are Almost Home Our new Jacquin P. Fink ’54 Center for the Performing Arts will provide much-needed space and facilities for our robust and impressive performing arts program. Visit polyprep.org/home for more details.
Nonprofit Org U.S. Postage PAID WHT RIV JCT VT Permit 86 LOWER SCHOOL 50 Prospect Park West Brooklyn, NY 11215 MIDDLE AND UPPER SCHOOLS 9216 Seventh Avenue Brooklyn, NY 11228