Inside: Griffins Rising Pomfret Athletics is looking up.
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TIM TALK
Head of School Tim Richards shares his source of centering and peace.
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54
Updates from the alumni community.
74 ON THE HILLTOP Campus news from November 2023 – April 2024.
26
CHAPEL TALK
Olivia Bourgault ’24 takes the long way home.
Pomfret School
398 Pomfret Street • PO Box 128 Pomfret, CT 06258-0128 860.963.6100 www.pomfret.org
Editor Garry Dow gdow@pomfret.org
Head Writer
Corrine Szarkowicz
Copy Editor
Deb Thurston
Class Notes Editor
Deb Thurston dthurston@pomfret.org
Designer Jordan Kempain
Contributing Writers
Olivia Bourgault ’24
Tim Richards
Photographers
Ivy Dowdle ’24
Reilly Dresher ’26
76
IN MEMORIAM
Remembering those we lost.
What is a toaster?
Grant Gibson (Creosote Affects)
Jim Gipe (Pivot Media)
Sasha Green ’24
Nika Horvath ’25
Anna Kahl ’23
Lindsay Lehmann
Tina Lefevre O’Connor
Jayne Riew
Tim Richards
Giulia Salsano ’26
Ian Sherman ’26
Henry Spence ’24
Corrine Szarkowicz
Jovan Tanasijevic (Above Summit)
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Way back in 1914, my paternal grandfather — a lifelong boarding school educator — and his wife built a classic lake cottage on an isolated and unpopulated point of land on Squam Lake. Squam is a beautiful seven-mile body of water located just south of White Mountain National Forest in the heart of New Hampshire. It is home to a healthy population of loons, snapping turtles, bald eagles, a wide variety of fish, and majestic great blue herons. For you more “seasoned” readers, it was also the location for the filming of On Golden Pond forty-three years ago.
Our house — built of thin planks of pine and lacking any heating system — is really only “comfortably” usable from June through September or early October. My dad and mom, also lifelong boarding school educators, inherited the property along with my dad’s siblings, and now my siblings and I share this special place with a few cousins. It is no exaggeration to say that the house on Fire Point is, for everyone in our family, our favorite place in the world, a geographical and mental antidote to the stress and demands of the non-Squam world.
Days at Squam are populated by almost nonstop activity: rowing, swimming, gravel biking, hiking, canoeing, kayaking, sailing, fishing, and stand-up paddleboarding. There is no television, so evenings are filled with lake cruises, endless games of Scrabble,
puzzling, and rafting with friends and extended family members. The pace, however, is self-imposed and intentionally relaxed. The days invariably conclude with long leisurely dinners full of laughter, storytelling, and enjoying great company. It is a place that resonates with family history, a shared love of the outdoors, and the importance of time spent with people you love. It is hard to explain just how much time spent there means to me. The days I spend there ground me, center me, refresh me, and restore me. Sadly, the time there is always too short, limited by the calendar and the demands of my job as head of school.
I have been told by many people who know and love Squam that the best time to be there is in September and early October, when the lake quiets down and the days remain warm, but the nights start to acknowledge the impending change of season. It’s when the foliage switch gets turned on, and the trees begin to glow in their autumnal beauty. Yet, with very rare exceptions, for the past sixty-one years, I have not experienced Squam at this magnificent time of year. As it was for my grandparents and my parents before me, September has always meant returning to the rituals of boarding school life, that six-plus-days-a-week lifestyle that runs from September to June. It’s a custom that I have happily embraced for nearly four decades, yet one that has precluded me from spending more time at this source of centering and peace.
In early January, I formally announced that the 2024–2025 school year would be my last as head of school at Pomfret. Serving as Pomfret’s twelfth head has been the single greatest professional honor and privilege of my life. I have been blessed to work with three terrific board chairs and a fantastic and supportive board of trustees. Add to that the wisdom, compassion, and guidance I have received from my senior leadership team and the collegiality of a dedicated and talented faculty, and the fact is that I have been truly blessed. I would be remiss not to recognize the most important constituent group, our students, who have inspired me in countless ways across every aspect of school life since the day we arrived.
busy. They will be full of joy and hard work and opportunities to celebrate this great school. They will also be an opportunity to enjoy time with the people who live and work and study here. We have a comprehensive capital campaign to complete, a new science building to dedicate and inhabit, and a long list of new, continuing, and emerging initiatives to work on as we strive to improve how we educate young minds. We have to prepare everyone for the new head of school to arrive and pick up the mantle and lead Pomfret into its next inspiring chapter.
I have been asked dozens of times over the past couple of months what I am looking forward to most when I step down from Pomfret in June 2025. The list is long, and includes spending more time with my family; knocking off bucket list travel items with Anne, my amazing wife of thirty-five years and my partner in all adventures; and being able to go see friends … on a Tuesday … in New York … in January. I’m looking forward to whatever my next professional chapter may be and to opportunities to volunteer more frequently to help those less fortunate than I am.
Let me be clear; I know that that day is another twelve months away, and I am excited the end of my tenure at Pomfret is not imminent. The next twelve or so months will be head-spinningly
And once that hard and satisfying work is done, in early September 2025, as life on the Hilltop is ramping up, Anne, Baloo, and I, with joy in our hearts and time at our disposal, will drive in unhurried fashion up Route 93 to Exit 23. We will turn onto Route 3, take a left on Route 113, and 8.2 miles later will turn right onto Coolidge Farm Road, a serpentine, bumpy, and almost labyrinthine 2.5 mile dirt road that will lead us to the final left turn into our home on Fire Point. And with hearts and minds full of gratitude, we will pull into that driveway, let Baloo out to go for a swim, and know that a lifetime of waiting and service to schools was worth it.
Barbie, Ken, and an eclectic assortment of their plastic counterparts embraced a daring descent from the Olmsted Student Union balcony. Tethered to their ankles were bungee cords fashioned from rubber bands. The pivotal factor in this exhilarating escapade was the precision of the Integrated Math III students’ calculations regarding the optimal number of rubber bands to use. A well-calculated bungee cord ensured a triumphant plunge. A miscalculation, on the other hand, could curtail the thrill with an abrupt end to the jump or, worse, an inadvertent collision with the floor below.
Students began the experiment with a series of test jumps at varying heights. They meticulously plotted their findings on a graph, recording the number of rubber bands used and the distance the dolls traveled. They found the line of best fit and derived the equation of the line. To prepare for a jump off the balcony of the Olmsted Student Union, they constructed the bungee cord using the number of rubber bands they’d calculated, hoping the number would be just Ken-ough for their doll to fall closer to the ground than their classmates’. “The experiment was really fun. We all had a good laugh while learning,” said Haynes McCoy ’25, reflecting on the experiment. “Mrs. Browne is always so creative in teaching us. It makes her class special.”
When Ashleigh Facey ’24 entered her anatomy classroom and saw six pig hearts laid out on the lab tables, she wasn’t certain she’d make it through the class. “When I entered the room, I could actually smell the hearts. At first, I was afraid I might even be sick,” she said. But armed with a foundational understanding of the heart’s anatomy from her study of the cardiovascular system (and with a quick dab of Vicks Vaporub under her nose to combat the smell!) Ashleigh rose to the challenge.
Students began the procedure by identifying the right and left sides of the heart and observing the interventricular sulcus. They continued to explore the organ’s external anatomy before making their first incision. “Although I was nervous at first, my lab partner really helped me overcome my fears,” says Ashleigh. “After he made the first cut and I could actually see inside the heart, I became more interested in finding the different structures we’d studied. It was so different to see inside a real heart versus a model.”
Science Teacher Maegan Windus couldn’t agree more. “While there’s no doubt that models and images on a screen are helpful tools in the classroom, nothing can replicate the experience of an actual hands-on dissection to reinforce students’ understanding,” she said.
Miles McClentic ’24 spent many nights sitting on the sidelines watching his friends play Magic: The Gathering. He’s not an expert on the game’s complex rules and storylines and doesn’t fully understand the purpose of the more than 1,000 Magic cards. Instead of mastering Magic, he decided to conjure up some of his own. He paired up with Clayton Lehmann ’24 to design a game with fantastical elements similar to Magic but is easier to learn and play. While creating a game requires substantial time and effort, the duo managed to play their cards right and earned course credit through Pomfret’s independent study program in the process.
Clayton and Miles studied the fundamentals of game design and game balance, drawing on some of the concepts Clayton learned in the 3D Animation and Gaming course he took during his sophomore year. To help improve the likeability of their game, aptly titled Masters of Magic, the boys interviewed novice and experienced gamers to learn what components of game design players find most desirable. They used this data to enhance their game’s design. “People like a balance of randomness and skill. They don’t want something to be completely random that only requires luck, but they don’t want to spend hours and hours perfecting their strategy to win,” explains Clayton.
The completion of Masters of Magic and the independent studies isn’t game over for Clayton or his love of gaming. He will study game design in college and even wrote his application essay on the subject.
This year, students and faculty have had a front-row seat watching Shawmut Design and Construction make significant progress in bringing the new science building — VISTA — to life. They have witnessed the installation of the building’s windows, internal and exterior walls, siding, and roof.
“It’s been so encouraging to see the speed and quality of the progress on VISTA as Shawmut has created the foundation and built up the steel structure. It’s at the point where you can really visualize each of the new spaces and get a sense of how the building flows,” shares Science Department Head Josh Lake. “It’s amazing to see a long-term dream of our Science Department become a reality each day!” VISTA is on schedule to open this fall in time for the first day of classes.
Applying to college is stressful. Joy St. John, director of admissions at Harvard, knows that. But as a member of a fifty-person admissions committee at one of the most prestigious universities in the world, she also knows what it takes to successfully navigatethecompetitiveapplicationprocess.AsPomfret’s 2023 W. P. Carey Speaker, she shared her insights into what students and their families should focus on during the application process.
In her lecture, St. John emphasized the importance of self-agency and self-reflection. She empowered students to thoughtfully consider the list of colleges to which they wish to apply, what they would contribute to those schools, and how to best portray themselves in their application. In the holistic college review process — where students are more than their grades and test scores — students should share not only their achievements but the skills and lessons they’ve learned. “You need to do some reflection because colleges want to know what you will bring to their community.”
St.Johnencouragedstudentsandfamiliestoremember that college is not a measure of potential success. “Being accepted into a college is not a prize and does not define who you are.” She suggested that instead of fixating on the process being fair, who deserves admission, and what the reputation of the School is, students should focus on what they can control.
Fourteen Pomfret students were among more than 2,000 high school students from the US and across the globe who participated in the 50th Yale Model United Nations (YMUN) Conference. This experiential learning opportunity had our students drafting position papers, researching topical issues, and arguing their positions. Delegates spent one day outside the traditional MUN conference schedule attending Master Lectures with distinguished Yale faculty, touring the Yale campus and art galleries, and participating in workshops with Yale student groups.
Two Pomfret students received awards at the YMUN Closing Ceremony. Sev Harrington ’25, co-leader of Pomfret’s Model UN club, received an Outstanding Delegate Award for his portrayal of Richard Uihlein on the Joint Crisis Committee: American Presidential Election 2024 — Republicans. Liam Ventresca ’24 received an Honorable Delegate Award for his representation of Beetee Latier on the Catching Fire: The Hunger Games Specialized Committee.
After three intense days of debate and diplomacy, where civil discourse was encouraged, the delegates left as better, more flexible global citizens.“The YMUN was really outstanding,” shared Jay Youm ’26. “Being among some of the best delegates from the entire world helped facilitate my engagement in the debates.”
The sophomore dorms were buzzing about Jacobson v. Massachusetts and smallpox vaccine mandates. In the dining hall, passersby could hear conversations about Tinker v. Des Moines and freedom of speech. On the walk from Centennial to the School House, cohorts were bantering about New Jersey v. T.L.O. and unreasonable search and seizures. The Hilltop could have been mistaken for a law school as the sophomore class prepared for the annual Supreme Court Debate project.
For the Humanities II: American Studies assignment, pairs of students chose a controversial Supreme Court case that has had a significant impact on high school–aged students. And, while they were given a choice as to which case to focus on, they were randomly assigned which of the arguments they would represent. Using what they’d learned through their study of the Bill of Rights and the US Constitution and through the research they’d conducted, they debated the facts of the case. After hearing the arguments presented, the audience of their unbiased classmates decided the outcome — the result of which did not always align with the Supreme Court Justices’ opinions.
“This is always one of my favorite assignments,” shared History and Social Sciences Department Head Dr. Alyssa Walker. “Beyond learning about the case and the law, students learn about empathy when arguing a side they don’t agree with.”
From the campus trails and Hard Auditorium stage to the National Radio Quiet Zone in West Virginia and the rainforests of Costa Rica, twenty-five Project: Pomfret groups explored and discovered the answers to their proposed essential questions. Over the course of ten days, they focused solely on their projects. The time was dedicated to getting out of the classroom, being in the moment, and gaining valuable insight into how things work, how things are made, and how they can make a difference. “Project: Pomfret is a great example of experiential learning at its best,” says Director of Experiential Learning Doug Litowitz.
The Beyond the Stethoscope group focused on working in the healthcare industry and explored inequalities that exist in medicine. They shadowed medical professionals at Connecticut hospitals and visited the UConn Virtual Anatomy Lab. “I really enjoyed our hands-on approach to studying the medical field in a way I could not learn anywhere else. I discovered information about professions I didn’t even know existed,” said Anna Drobna ’25.
The Dark Skies over West Virginia group spent three nights in the National Radio Quiet Zone (NRQZ) at the Green Bank Observatory. They gathered and analyzed data with the facility’s forty-foot telescope — and even saw the world’s largest fully steerable radio telescope. “Learning how to operate the radio telescope was so cool,” said Niko Gratton ’24. “We used the data we gathered to map out the Milky Way.”
The Invent a New Game and Sport group focused on creating a new pastime to compete with popular yard games such as Kan Jam and Spikeball. They were given challenging prompts such as three teams, no hands, and even moving backward. With each challenge, they had to specify what equipment would be needed — some included custom creations — and how players would score points. “This project has widened my perspective on sports. I’ve really enjoyed creating new games that my friends and I would like to play,” said Will McLean ’25.
Perhaps the sweetest project of all belonged to the BYOMS (Bring Your Own Maple Syrup) group. After visiting community farms and local sugar shacks to learn the process behind syrup making, the group tapped into the maple trees in Pomfret Woods, collecting thirty gallons of sap from six sugar maples. It took twentyone hours to boil down the sap before the hydrometer read 66 percent sugar — meaning they officially made maple syrup. Eighty-six ounces of it! “It’s a lot of work to get a little syrup, but it’s fun and all worth it in the end,” said Paige Anderson ’24.
The culmination of the Project: Pomfret period was a two-day Celebration of Learning, during which students showcased their achievements through reflective essays, gallery walks, a TEDx event, and a project fair. No matter the project, students learned that, when fully engaged and committed to mastering something that excites them, anything is possible.
Jess Stolarek ’25 receives feedback on her painting from Artist-in-Residence JP Jacquet.
Jess Stolarek ’25 receives feedback on her from Artist-in-Residence JP Jacquet
In his speech before the boys varsity ice hockey team took the ice in the NESPAC Piatelli/Simmons Small School quarterfinal game, Head Coach Matt Goethals drew from one of his favorite books, The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown. He spoke to his players about playing with swing. Swing is a rowing concept about performing with perfect synchronicity and unity. On the ice, it’s about knowing where your teammates are. It’s about coming together and playing as a team. And that is just what they did.
The seventh-seeded Pomfret team took on the secondseeded St. Mark’s Lions. Classmates, faculty, families, and friends traveled nearly fifty miles to support the Griffins. Their energy, along with that of the team, surprised the Lions. Pomfret scored first and never relinquished the lead, winning the quarterfinal game 5-2.
“This team worked hard throughout the season and played their best hockey in the final month,” said Goethals. “It was a great victory over St. Mark’s in the quarterfinals, and we gave Canterbury all we could in the semifinal. I’m so proud of the boys.”
In the inaugural season of the Vaillancourt Conference, the girls varsity ice hockey team finished the regular season ranked fourth. During the playoffs, they faced off against the fifth-seeded Kents Hills in the quarterfinals. Despite beating the Huskies twice in the regular season, a goal sixteen seconds into the first period, and another three minutes later, the Griffins ultimately came up short.
When postseason honors were awarded, Pomfret was the only school to have two students — forward Anna Weaver ’24 and goalie Avery Valente ’24 — named as members of the All-Conference First Team. “Anna is a very talented multi-sport athlete with a high work ethic and compete level who leads by example on and off the ice,” said Girls Varsity Ice Hockey Coach Dave Peltz. With six goals and five assists, she was the second-leading point scorer on the Griffin team.
In addition to her first-team honors, Avery was also named the Caroline Heatley Impact Player of the Year Award for making 800 saves — the most in the NEPSAC — and achieving a save percentage of 92 percent. “Avery is a hyper-focused goalie and is one of the best I’ve seen in her position,” said Peltz. “She is a fierce athletic competitor and makes everyone around her better.”
See Page 35 to learn more about the establishment of the Vaillancourt Conference, named after Pomfret alumna Sarah Vaillancourt ’04.
Postgraduate Eze Wali ’24 signed a National Letter of Intent to continue his basketball career as a Bulldog at The Citadel, a Division I school. “I chose The Citadel because the coaches made me a priority during the recruiting process while also making me feel like I was already part of the team,” said Eze. During the 2023–2024 basketball season as a Griffin, Eze scored 473 points in twenty-two games, averaging twenty-two points, six rebounds, four assists, and two-and-a-half steals per game. He was named to the All-NEPSAC Team.
“Eze Wali is a true winner. He embodies consistency, belief, discipline, and a genuine love for others. Continuously seeking ways to enhance himself and uplift those around him, Eze prioritizes winning in all aspects,” said Boys Varsity Basketball Head Coach Ronnie Turner. “The city of Charleston is sure to embrace and appreciate Eze!” Additional members of the Class of 2024 who plan to continue their athletic careers and compete at the Division III level will be celebrated in May.
On a sunny Saturday afternoon at the end of April, the boys and girls crew teams, members of the Board of Trustees, and alumni gathered at the Blodgett Boathouse to celebrate the establishment of Pomfret’s newest endowed faculty position — the Marsh A. Bryan ’51 Head Coach for Crew.
Marsh Bryan came to Pomfret as a second former in 1947. While on the Hilltop, he discovered his passion for crew and led his team to three consecutive undefeated seasons. The endowed position named in his honor was established in 2020 through the generosity of Marsh’s wife, Helen M. Bryan; daughter, Linda Bryan Brenske ’83; and son, T. Bomber Bryan ’86.
Linda and Marsh’s granddaughter, Sydney, attended the dedication ceremony, which honored the inaugural recipient of the Marsh A. Bryan '51 Head Coach for Crew, Greg Rossolimo. Rossolimo is an English Teacher who has taught at Pomfret since 2003. While studying at Brown University, he was a four-year member of the crew team.
“It is my great pleasure to celebrate the Bryan family and Coach Rossolimo today,” Head of School Tim Richards said in his remarks. “Through their generosity and dedication, we are better able to honor and recognize the passion and hard work of all the crew coaches, student rowers, team captains, and supportive family members who do so much to perpetuate the great tradition and legacy of Pomfret crew.”
“If you look close enough, you can see the alphabet everywhere,” says Arts Department Chair and Photography Teacher Lindsay Lehmann. In her class, Photography: The Magic of the Smartphone, she sent student-photographers out into the world to capture letters hiding in plain sight. Back in the studio, they printed and hung these photographs on a dedicated wall outside of the studio, and invited passersby to spell a name or leave a message for someone else. The interactive display was located on the first-floor hallway of the Main House.
When she first arrived on the Hilltop, Rowan Lehmann ’27 learned that there was no organized fencing group on campus. So, she decided to share her love for the sport by establishing one. She gathered her former middle school teammates and recruited new fencers to join her every Friday night in the Wrestling Room. Rowan and the experienced fencers taught the newcomers the techniques, rules, and lingo. They take turns fencing and judging bouts. “Judging is an important skill to master because it helps you learn the rules and develop your personal strategy,” she shares. The club primarily competes against one another but had the opportunity to face Rectory in early February.
For its winter production, Pomfret School Theater staged the fantastical musical Into the Woods. Written by James Lapine, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, the complex and layered story weaves together various fairy tales — including “Cinderella,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Jack and the Beanstalk,” and “Rapunzel.” It explores wishes and the repercussions of those wishes coming true, highlighting how characters’ dreams can impact their lives and the lives of others in unexpected ways.
The first act introduces a baker, played by Nathan Kikonyogo ’25, and his wife, played by Carolina Volcker ’24, who desperately want to have a child but are unable to do so because of a curse placed upon their household by a witch, played by Rhys Price ’24.
To break the curse, the couple has three days to gather four ingredients — a milk-white cow, hair as yellow as corn, a blood-red cape, and a slipper of gold. Along their mission, they meet four well-known storybook characters each on their own quest. Cinderella, played by Sofia Liu ’24, wishes to escape her stepmother’s house and go to a festival. Little Red Riding Hood, played by Kylie Corrigan ’25, is seeking sweets for her grandmother. Rapunzel, played by Science Teacher Maegan Windus, wants to escape her tower. Jack, played by Remy
Jacquet ’26, is struggling with wanting to keep his cow that does not produce milk and having enough food to eat. Each character has something that the baker and his wife want. After much struggle and turmoil, by the end of the first act, the couple collects the four ingredients and they all live "happily ever after."
The second act picks up with what happens in the aftermath of “happily ever after” or as the narrator, played by Zane Ender ’26, describes it, “once upon a time … later.” The scenes become more ominous as the repercussions of the achieved wishes are realized. Together, the characters overcome obstacles and challenges their actions have created.
“While this play is set in a land of make-believe with fantastical characters, the very human need to find community is at the heart of this story,” shares Theater Director Chip Lamb. “The show reminds us that what sustains us is our relationships with one another.”
The cast and crew did an amazing job bringing this complex show to life. “It’s an ambitious show with themes of suffering, loss, and triumph — which are important to share with young people,” says Lamb. “But the cast and crew rose to the challenge and delivered an outstanding performance.”
It can take a while for an artist to be contracted for their first commissioned piece — unless they are a Pomfret student. During a recent assignment, students studying ceramics, painting, and drawing created custom pieces of artwork for faculty to display in their homes and offices.
Sophia Zhang ’26 was commissioned by Theater Director Chip Lamb. She painted a neon green bus parked in the woods behind Lamb’s house. She added two lambs in the foreground as an homage to his last name. Katie Beck ’25 created a portrait using acrylic paints of a grandfather and his grandson from an image French Teacher Tim Deary ’05 took in France. In ceramics, Tyler Bousquet ’25 made a colorful octopus salt and pepper set for Art Department Head Lindsay Lehmann. And Lia Stewart ’26 created two beautiful sgraffito plates for English Teacher Michaela Vitagliano.
During a QUEST session on January 27, the Pomfret community joined people around the world in remembering the events of the Holocaust on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It was a solemn and significant day dedicated to remembering the millions of Jews and other minority groups who were killed, honoring the survivors, and pledging to prevent hatred and discrimination from taking root in society.
The freshman class created a pop-up memorial to honor some of the brave victims and survivors of the Holocaust. The display also celebrated those in our own lives who have shaped and made us. “We created this memorial with the shared understanding that every person is a loved one of someone else,” said Katie Forrestal, a QUEST co-leader. “It is this spirit that connects us all: we all want to be loved, deserve to be loved, and are capable of giving love.”
The day concluded with a school-wide lecture from Dr. James Waller, the Christopher J. Dodd Chair in Human Rights Practice at the University of Connecticut. He spoke about why Holocaust remembrance matters in our deeply divided world. He shared that while it is important to remember the events, history, and victims of the Holocaust, our actions cannot stop there. “We have to learn not just the history lessons of the Holocaust, but we have to learn the lessons from that history,” said Waller. “One of those lessons is that deeply divided societies don’t heal on their own. If we’re not active in trying to heal some of the divisions that are tearing apart our society today, it leaves us at risk.”
“Find a way out of no way. That is the most valuable life lesson I learned from hip-hop,” shared Dr. Todd Craig, this year’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day keynote speaker. As a high school student who earned Cs in English, Craig never dreamed he would become a tenured college professor who now teaches English composition in the City University of New York system. But through his love for hip-hop and passion for storytelling, he earned a Master’s from Harvard and a Doctorate from St. John’s University. He also recently published a book, “K for the Way”: DJ Rhetoric and Literacy for 21st Century Writing Studies
In more than twenty afternoon student- and faculty-led workshops,studentscontinuedtoexplorethethemeoftheday,which was shared around the country, “Living the Dream: It Starts with Me — Spreading Hope, Courage, and Unity.” Musical workshops such as “Kendrick Lamar: The Power of Lyrics” and “Lyricism in Rap” echoed Craig’s focus on hip-hop. Other workshops, including “Income and Wealth Inequality” and “Rational Discourse in an Age of Political Polarization,” focused on topics of social justice and political discourse for which Dr. King was known.
A red T-shirt with a logo that reads “Def Pom” is the hottest piece of Pomfret apparel on the Hilltop. But you won’t find it in the School Store. To get one of these shirts, you have to earn it. The idea of the T-shirt and Def Pom, short for Definitely Pomfret, was imagined by Director of Spiritual Life Bobby Fisher this past summer. He was searching for a way to celebrate school spirit and share stories of goodness within our community.
Around his dining room table, Fisher heard his children — Sydney ’17, Madison ’19, and Tatum ’22 — saying “most def,” short for most definitely. He soon began using the phrase, “That is so Def Pom” when describing something unique to Pomfret. The shirt symbolizes that hard-to-pinpoint, impossibleto-describe feeling of community and spirit that makes Pomfret, well, Pomfret!
Fisher awarded the inaugural shirts to a pair of students in a chapel service. Since, he has been approached by students inquiring about what they might do to earn their own Def Pom T-shirt. “It has caught on and taken on a life of its own,” says Fisher. In addition to the requests for T-shirts, Fisher has experienced a flood of stories of community generosity and spirited good deeds in his inbox. Fisher has been told by one Def Pom T-shirt recipient that he plans to give his shirt to someone else when he sees them doing something that reminds him of why he chose to be part of such a wonderful community. That is so Def Pom.
Clark Memorial Chapel, brimming with community members, fell silent as the lights went dim. Moments before, it was filled with joyful music and heartful readings about peace, love, and light. Director of Spiritual Life Bobby Fisher lit his candle and passed the flame to a student reader and orchestra member, who, in turn, passed the light to the people seated next to them. Quickly, the Chapel was illuminated by candlelight. The quiet broke as the festival chorus began to carol “Silent Night,” and the audience joined in.
“Like so many others in this community, Candlelight has become more than just a program to me. Given all that is going on in the world, having the opportunity and privilege to come together and celebrate that which unites us all is something I have come to cherish,” says Director of Music Dr. Ryan Burns. “Whatever we believe and celebrate, I think being part of something bigger than ourselves is something we can all get behind.”
To end the evening, the GriffTones and Festival Chorus sang “Let There Be Peace on Earth,” encouraging and reminding everyone to live each moment and be a source of peace in the world.
Winter can be a lonely time for housebound individuals, seniors, and those facing food insecurity. To ease these feelings, students in Pomfret’s The Happiness Project class made community members’ days a little brighter and, in turn, they became even happier. The students stocked pantry shelves and served lunch at the Covenant Soup Kitchen. They also made and delivered soup to seniors and other homebound residents with TEEG, a local non-profit.
Through these experiences, students genuinely appreciated how intentional acts of generosity, kindness, and service for others have profound impacts on the quality of our lives, wellbeing, and happiness. “All of the small and big practices we did in The Happiness Project class have given me a sense of fulfillment. I have learned so much about perspective, investing in myself, and doing the work. Our learning in class inspired me to explore other aspects of wellbeing,” shared Layla Miller ’25.
Our student-run knitting group, the Yarn People, gathers each Saturday night to teach others how to knit and to make some pretty awesome creations. They have made scarves, hats, sweaters, and mittens and are spreading warmth — one stitch at a time! Recently, the group donated some of their handknit hats to warm the heads (and hearts) of oncology patients at Day Kimball Hospital. “Thank you to the knitting club for thinking of our patients and for the time put into making these beautiful hats,” said the Day Kimball Hospital Foundation office upon receiving the club’s donation.
Students view the solar eclipse on the Quad on April 8, 2024.
Students view the solar on the Quad on 8, 2024
Pomfret School is pleased to announce Melissa Lee Woodin as its next chief financial officer. “Everyone who has worked with Melissa sings her praises,” said Head of School Tim Richards in his announcement to the community. “I’m impressed with her passion for independent school finances and extensive experience as a presenter at regional and national conferences.”
A veteran financial leader with over twenty years of experience, Woodin has deep experience in auditing and spending, as well as in the preparation of long-term forecasts and financial models.
At Pomfret, Woodin will oversee Pomfret’s financial and business matters, as well as benefits and insurance programs. She will also be heavily involved in critical aspects of the School’s physical plant and operations.
For nearly a decade, Woodin has served as the controller at the Hotchkiss School and was the interim CFO during the 2018–2019 academic year. Prior to Hotchkiss, she was the controller at Marist College, where she also taught accounting to undergraduate students. Before moving into education, Woodin held several high-ranking roles in industry, progressing in her career from accounting clerk all the way up to controller.
In addition to her day-to-day responsibilities, Woodin is also an active member of NBOA, formerly the National Business Officers Association, and ABOPS, the Association of Business Officers of Preparatory Schools, where she recently served as program co-chair. She is also a sought-after conference speaker who has presented on auditing best practices, closing the gender pay gap, school partnerships, and hybrid business offices.
Woodin and her husband, George, have two daughters, Camryn and Danielle, and a black lab named Scout. She and her family love to travel, camp, garden, and tend to their chickens.
THE FOLLOWING EMPLOYEES HAVE JOINED THE GRIFFIN PRIDE.
Shay Albert, Digital Arts Teacher
Melanie Branco, School Store Manager
Ethan Lippert,Woodwinds Instructor
Christine Pelletier, Staff Accountant
Dr. Patricia Snyder Dustin, Organ Instructor
Kristina Torrente, Nurse - LPN
THANK YOU FOR THE MEMORIES
Stacey Benoit, Staff Accountant
Dr. Sandy Chase, History Teacher, Science Teacher
Tad Chase, Latin Teacher
Doug MacLeod, Dean of Academics, History Teacher
Johanna Mawson, Director of Annual Giving and Constituent Programs
Holly Sullivan, School Store Manager
Tie Watkins, Director of Technology
Cut to the Chase
At the end of this academic year, Dr. Sandy Chase and her husband Tad will retire after fifty-two years of combined service to Pomfret. Together, they have three children who have attended Pomfret — Harrison ’13, Zander ’15, and Davis ’17.
A published author, Dr. Chase has been a member of the Pomfret faculty since 2004. From 2008–2014, she was also a visiting professor at Brown University. A world traveler, Chase has lived in Colorado, Hawaii, France, Italy, Switzerland, and Yugoslavia. We will miss her anthropology and forensics classes, and her legendary “Chase Brownies.”
Once a Griffin, Always a Griffin
Tad also leaves behind a long and distinguished academic career. Prior to coming to Pomfret in 1992, he worked as an attorney for six years, serving as a law clerk to the Honorable David S. Nelson in the United States District Court of Massachusetts, and was an associate attorney in civil and criminal litigation at the law firm Choate, Hall & Stewart. Tad leaves some big shoes to fill in the World Languages Department and on the tennis court. Both will be sorely missed.
Chief Financial Officer Ed Griffin and his wife, Lauren, director of learning support, are leaving Pomfret after nine years. Lauren and Ed have three children — Julia, Kevin ’17, and Brandon ’19.
During Ed’s tenure, Pomfret’s endowment increased by 75 percent ($30 million) in just nine years. He also refinanced the School’s long-term debt, locking in a fixed interest rate of 2.6 percent; tempered its tuition increases, reducing the School’s relative tuition costs; and established an experiential travel fund so that every Pomfret student can see the world.
In a joint statement, trustees Lindsay Paul and Michael Marrus, who sit on Pomfret’s Finance Committee, wrote: “Battling the perennial challenges of sufficient tuition revenue, uncertain gift and endowment draw amounts,
inflationary cost increases, and necessary infrastructure investment, Ed consistently managed to develop budgets that were both ambitious and achievable. With an accountant’s grasp of the details, he understands that numbers reflect people: students, faculty, staff, and administrators in service to Pomfret’s mission.”
Having already served as a learning specialist at Pomfret, Lauren was named the director of the Collaborative Learning Center last spring after a national and international search. She has over twenty years of experience working as a support specialist, teacher, and advisor. She received a Bachelor of Science from St. Michael's College in Vermont and later completed her Master’s in Education from the University of Hartford in Connecticut. Before coming to Pomfret, Lauren worked as a tutor in Middletown, Connecticut, and as a standardized testing assistant at Choate Rosemary Hall. Go Griffins!
Tad Chase Dr. Sandy Chase Ed Griffin
By Olivia Bourgault ’24
Finding comfort in consistency is a good thing because how we spend our days is in fact, how we spend our lives.
When I was a little kid,I only ever wanted to be one thing — a race car driver. It was anything but short of an obsession. If you showed me any car, I bet you I could have named it.
The thing is, this wasn’t a thought-out dream, as I never considered one of the most important details — actually being good at driving. Although I do not consider myself to be a bad driver, I did manage to fail my driving test twice. I may have backed straight into a tree, or driven on the wrong side of the road, but I did eventually get my license. And even though I’ve hit a parked car,or have blown out my tires multiple times,or even gone off the side of the road into someone’s front yard, I never fail to take the long way home. Whether that is in driving to my friends’ houses or turning my five-minute drive home from work into a fifteen-minute one, I continuously find myself repeating this pattern. I don’t necessarily love driving. To be honest — most of the time it stresses me out.Yet, I somehow always stretch out my drive home.
Maybe the point isn’t purely driving from one place to another, with a constant destination in mind.Maybe it’s not going straight home,but rather slowing down,and resisting the urge to speed straight to the ending.
We cross days off calendars and count weeks and hours,but slowing down is never harmful.Trying not to speed through every single aspect of life can be beneficial. Life is not a race track — although if you told my five-year-old self that, I would have begged to differ. Finding comfort in consistency is a good thing because how we spend our days is in fact, how we spend our lives. And there is no harm in hitting pause,whether that is only for a couple of seconds,or for taking the long way home.
I can surely say I will probably never drive race cars, but without this childhood dream, I never would have discovered truly the most important epiphany — that a life full of slowing down and hitting pause can unknowingly lead to a life full of enrichment.
When the Battle for Route 44 kicked off, the quest for Pomfret’s third championship in as many years was still in doubt. For the better part of the morning, Pomfret and Millbrook had traded wins and losses in equal measure.But as the hours ticked by and the afternoon scores rolled in, you could feel a sense of anticipation building across campus. Volleyball was the final game of the day, and the standing-room-only crowd inside Lewis Gymnasium was growing larger by the minute. When Rosi Martines ’24 scored the final point, sweeping the Mustangs in three straight sets, the Pomfret fans rushed the court in a spontaneous burst of joy.
It was the culmination of a weeklong celebration. During dinner the night before, Head of School Tim Richards climbed on top of a dining hall table, all six foot four inches of him, and said to the gathered crowd, “I’m a lifelong teacher and believe that you should be learning all the time,” he said. “But there is a famous quote about learning more from losing than you do from winning. And tomorrow, I don’t want you to learn a damn thing!”
Started in 2021,the Battle for Route 44 is a day of competition with our rivals down the road, the Millbrook Mustangs. Now an annual event,it’s one of the biggest days on the Pomfret calendar. The competition takes place on the second Saturday in November, with the host school alternating each year. It’s a winner-takeall format that culminates with the raising of the Peck-Pulling Trophy, named after the founders of the two schools.
In three short years, the Millbrook rivalry has gone from a novelty to one of Pomfret’s most beloved traditions. How did this happen? Well, for one, the day isn’t really about sports; it’s about pride. The pride we take in the long and storied history of our School. The pride we take in punching above our weight. The pride we take in being a Griffin. “Athletics is unique,” says Richards, himself a big sports fan. “Whether it’s a country, or a city, or a school, athletics has the power to bring people together like few things can.”
When William Peck founded Pomfret with his wife Harriet in 1894, they brought with them a love for sport. This commitment was solidified by Pomfret’s second headmaster, William “Bull”Olmsted,who,over the next thirty-three years, transformed Pomfret into an athletic powerhouse. One early pupil of his remembers,“Mr.O could be seen most afternoons charging up and down the sidelines, barking orders.”
In those early days, before manicured fields and artificial turf, the boys played on rough meadows lined with ground chalk. Baseball — known as “the nine” — was technically the first Pomfret sport, but it was football — known as “the eleven”— where Pomfret really excelled. Milton was our chief rival. In 1898, Pomfret beat Milton 53–0, a drubbing for the ages. In the winter, the boys played hockey. Ice permitting, home games were held on Paradise Pond. Eventually, the School dammed a new portion of Wappoquia Brook to create a rink adjacent to where Jahn Rink stands now. The last of the original sports to be introduced at Pomfret was rowing. The first shell, nicknamed Milk Shake, was christened on the Quinebaug River in 1903.
As the decades passed and the list of sports grew longer, so did the roster of legendary Griffin athletes. Perhaps the most notable was William Neely Mallory ’20. Mallory arrived at Pomfret in the fall of 1914 as a lanky first former and went on to become the captain of the Yale Bulldogs, where he played against fellow Pomfret alumnus Chauncey Buell ’18, who captained the Harvard side of the football.
Writing in 1985, Julian G. Buckley ’24 shared this personal memory about Mallory. “On the football field, he was the star halfback and a savage tackler. On the hockey rink, he would dash about taking the puck away from everybody and slamming it into the goal. On the ball field, where he was a catcher, he could peg the ball to second
base straight as an arrow about two feet from the ground.” There is no doubt Mallory was one of the greatest Pomfret athletes of all time.Tragically, after leaving Yale, he went on to fight and die in World War II. Today, a plaque bearing his name stands behind the backstop, dedicating Mallory Field in his honor.
Since the 1920s, Pomfret has given birth to many esteemed athletes, including tennis pro Peter Daland ’39; golf coach Wally Goodwin ’45, who discovered Tiger Woods; NFL scout Bobby Vega ’01; Olympic hockey player Sarah Vaillancourt ’04, arguably the best female hockey player to ever lace up skates; NHL standout Brian Flynn ’07; and Olympic rower Felice Mueller ’08. These are just a few of the many, many talented athletes who got their start on the Hilltop.
Today, the Pomfret Athletic Department offers twentyfive varsity team options across seventeen unique sports. Our varsity squads routinely compete against the best teams in New England, and in recent years, our volleyball and hockey teams have taken home NEPSAC trophies. On average, Pomfret produces thirty New England Preparatory School Athletic Council honorees each year. Fifteen are recruited NCAA players. But it wasn’t always so.
Back in 2016, football was in trouble. Dwindling interest and a string of disappointing seasons had killed morale and put the program under a microscope. So much so that when the team’s captain, Aidan McGannon, delivered his Commencement address in 2016, he began the speech this way: “I am deeply honored by the trust placed in me to deliver
this graduation speech... I don’t think I can do much worse than the football team this year, so I’ll be alright.” Everyone chuckled, but it was far from a laughing matter. Pomfret Football, a cornerstone of the School’s athletic program since 1894, was about to be eliminated.
“It looked pretty bleak,” said then-Athletic Director Jon Sheehan. “We had two options. Cut the program, or join an eight-man league.” By the start of the 2017–2018 season, four pioneering prep schools had signed on to play in the new league: Forman, The Gunnery (now the Frederick Gunn School), Millbrook, and, of course, Pomfret. Eight-man shares the same rules, procedures, and structure as the traditional eleven-man game,but there are some key differences.Eight-man is played on a narrower field, typically 80 yards by 40 yards. Offenses usually eliminate two linemen and a fullback or tight end.Defenses tend to drop two defensive backs and a lineman. With fewer players and more room to run,the games are faster and the scores higher. An average scoring game can reach fifty points or more.
For whatever reason, the new format clicked: On a chilly afternoon in November, Pomfret defeated Millbrook 44-20 in the championship game, capping a perfect season. Seven wins, zero losses. It was the School’s first undefeated season since 1958 and its first championship in twenty-four years.
In the summer of 2022, Pomfret hired Marcela “Mo” Gaitán as athletic director, the first woman to lead Pomfret Athletics. She follows in the footsteps of such legendary ADs as Dutch Brown for whom the original Brown Rink is named, and Manny Mansfield H ’48, who was Pomfret’s longest serving athletic director.
A native Minnesotan with almost two decades of coaching and administrative experience, Gaitán came to Pomfret after a stint as the associate director of athletics andco-curricularactivitiesatTheHillSchoolinPottstown, Pennsylvania. Prior to that, she was the program director for women’s lacrosse at Concordia University in St. Paul, Minnesota. “One thing I love about high school athletics is that our student-athletes get to work out all of the world’s tough problems without the real-world stakes,” says Gaitán. “It’s an important part of a Pomfret education.”
No stranger to the world of competitive sports,she is a former member of the Columbia Lacrosse Women’s National Team, most recently competing in the 2022 World Lacrosse Women’s World Championship. At Pomfret, Gaitán is ably supported by Assistant Athletic Director Billy Harrington, Head Athletic Trainer Lauren Jarominski, Assistant Athletic Trainer Mike Waller,and Operations Coordinator Amber Wildes.
“Herworkasaprepandcollegecoach,heraccomplishments as an international athlete, and her proven track record as an athletics and co-curricular administrator really set her apart from many other talented candidates,” said Head of School Tim Richards in a statement at the time.“We are thrilled Mo is coming to Pomfret.”
Now in her second year, Gaitán has injected fresh new energy into the program, bringing with her a vision for the future of Pomfret Athletics built on three key tenets. The first tenet is a winning mindset,the second is an increased emphasis on athletic recruitment and coaching, and the third is the boosting of athletic pride through sports marketing and event promotions.“Every day is an opportunity for Pomfret Athletics to hone in on these tenets. We have made great strides in two years and will continue to elevate year after year.”
“It’s not surprising that many of our students consider athletics a highlight — if not the highlight — of their Pomfret careers.”
Director
o irector o thletics and ternoon
— Mo Gaitán
of Athletics and Afternoon Programs
Over the last couple of years, Pomfret has made significant investments in its coaches, players, programs, and facilities. “It really began with my predecessor, Jon Sheehan,”Gaitán says.“He was the one who restored track and field. He was also a member of the group that brought 8-person football to New England,” after three heads of school — Peter Becker from The Frederick Gunn School,Drew Casertano from Millbrook School,and Tim Richards from Pomfret School — first originated the idea.
Last winter,Gaitán announced the girls ice hockey team would join the newest conference in the New England Preparatory School Athletic Council (NEPSAC). The league, called the Vaillancourt Conference, is named in honor of Pomfret alumna Sarah Vaillancourt ’04, a two-time Olympic Gold medalist and the pride of Canada. After graduating from Pomfret,Vaillancourt played NCAA Division I hockey for the Harvard Crimson,where she was one of the top players in the nation.
“When we were approached with this opportunity, we knew it was something that would greatly benefit our girls hockey program and the young ladies who train day in and day out,” says Gaitán. “The addition of these league games will give us an opportunity to create parity across our schedule, even as we remain committed to the majority of our annual opponents. This change will be a welcome challenge for our program.”
The six conference teams are Austin Preparatory School (MA), Kents Hill School (ME), Northfield-Mount Hermon School (MA), North Yarmouth Academy (ME), and
Worcester Academy (MA). For the first time since joining the NEPSAC ranks, the Pomfret girls team are eligible for conference postseason play and conference awards.
Joining the new league is just one in a series of positive developments for the Pomfret hockey program. In 2021, the School invested $3.8 million in renovations to Jahn Rink, including a new state-of-the-art mechanical room, brand-new ice-making equipment, and a new dehumidification system, which has made it possible for Pomfret to keep the rink open to players for most of the school year, from September 1 through April 1. “The new ice on its worst day is better than the old ice on its best day,”said one happy Pomfret hockey player.
And just this year, Pomfret hired Dave Peltz to lead the girls varsity hockey program. Dave is a Level 4 coach (USA Hockey) with twenty-five years coaching experience behind the bench at both the Junior and Tier 1 AAA youth hockey levels. Coach Peltz has won a USA Hockey National Championship, has had three Junior Hockey National appearances with several regional and state championships. Through Dave’s coaching career, he has led his teams to the AYHL, NEGHL, EHF and CHC Championships / appearances. Dave has coached New England area teams successfully earning him a loyal following among hockey families who have now seen numerous players matriculate to Professional, Division 1 and Division 3 college hockey programs. In his first full year with the School, Peltz has already recruited eleven hockey players to join the program.
Pomfret also made waves recently when it announced it would add swimming to its burgeoning roster of programs. Pomfret does not have an aquatic center, but through a new partnership with the local YMCA, Pomfret students now have access to their pool. In the near future, there is a very real possibility that a Pomfret team, or co-op team with Marianapolis Prep, could compete in the New England Prep School Swimming and Diving Association League against other independent schools.
And just this spring, the Pomfret Athletic Department launched its newest sport,Ultimate Disc.One of the fastestgrowing sports in North America, Ultimate combines elements of basketball, soccer, and football, with significant amounts of running, cutting, and passing. Seven team members playing both offense and defense must move down the field into their opponent’s end zone to score a point.It is a non-contact,self-referred sport that encourages teamwork, sportsmanship, and fair play.
While Ultimate is new to Pomfret, it is not new to New Englandprepschools.TheNewEnglandPrepSchoolUltimate League (NEPSUL) was founded in 2001. The Griffin team will play against JV teams in the NEPSUL,including Choate Rosemary Hall and Williston Northampton, as well as some public school teams in the Connecticut High School Ultimate League (CTUL).With a dozen games on the team’s schedule, they have their eye on the CTUL Division II tournament in
May. “We are intentionally starting small,”says Dylan ErnstSchäfer, who has previously coached Ultimate at other prep schools. In both swimming and Ultimate, students travel to compete and earn a letter.
Despite these efforts,the School still faces stiff competition from club teams and other top prep schools as more and more students choose to specialize in a particular sport.
Citing market research that shows a competitive athletic program is critical to the recruitment, retention, and overall satisfaction of many independent school families, Gaitán recently chaired a task force charged with developing a vision for the future of Griffin Athletics.The group has been meeting regularly since October, and — though the conversation is ongoing — several priorities have risen to the top, including an increased emphasis on player recruitment, coaching, athletic facilities, and athletic marketing.
This winter, the Athletics Task Force notched its first major win when the Pomfret Board of Trustees unanimously approved adding an athletic goal to the School’s strategic plan, Change Makers and Problem Solvers,affirming the board’s commitment to athletics as a sustained, long-term priority. “Athletics consistently ranks near the very top of student satisfaction,” says Gaitán. “So it’s not surprising that many of our students consider athletics a highlight — if not the highlight — of their Pomfret careers.”
Recently, a coalition of the nation’s leading experts in pediatric health issued an urgent warning. In a letter penned jointly by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Children’s Hospital Association, and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the three organizations declared that America’s teenage mental health crisis had become a national emergency.
Later that same month, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, the highestranking doctor in the United States, shared these startling statistics: Between 2010 and 2019, rates of anxiety and depression among high school students had skyrocketed by more than 50 percent. The suicide rate for adolescents ages ten to nineteen had risen by 48 percent. One in three high school students reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness.
Around the same time, mainstream media outlets also began reporting on America’s teen mental health crisis. Released in 2020, The Social Dilemma takes a deep dive into how Big Tech hooks users, especially teens, on its products. Using industry insiders, the documentary exposes the strategies used by social media companies to increase screen time and extract data at any cost. In one of the most quotable lines of the film, Tristan Harris, former Google design ethicist and co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, summed it up this way: “If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.”
“Gen Z, children born between 1996 and 2012, are more anxious, more depressed, and more fragile than any generation in American history.”
— Jonathan Haidt Social Psychologist at the NYU Stern School of Business
Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the NYU Stern School of Business, is a leading expert in the field. Haidt has made a career speaking truth to power backed by data in the most difficult landscapes — communities polarized by religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now, the public health emergency facing today’s high schoolers, Gen Z.
In The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness,published in March, Haidit lays out one of the most cogent and persuasive arguments ever made on the subject. “Since about 2010, rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide have all risen sharply, more than doubling on many measures,” he writes. “Gen Z, children born between 1996 and 2012, are more anxious,more depressed,and more fragile than any generation in American history.”
Through his research, Haidt shows how play-based childhood began to decline in the 1980s and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the phone-based childhood in the early 2010s. In The Anxious Generation, he presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which the “great rewiring
of childhood” has interfered with children’s social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism.
“In my junior year, I became overwhelmed by the stress of the future and what I wanted to do with my life,” says Anna Weaver ’24. “I thought I needed to be perfect to succeed in life. I constantly prioritized my homework over my health and relationships with others. Instead of spending time with or talking to my friends, I isolated myself. Instead of going to bed early when I needed sleep, I stayed up late working on assignments. My happiness depended solely on my performance.” Weaver still struggles with perfectionism, but she has made a lot of progress since junior year. “No one is perfect,” she says. “And I have learned that over-criticizing yourself and rushing through life will cause you to miss out on what really matters.”
Though Weaver does not directly point the finger at social media, she is a member of the first generation in history to fully grapple with its impact. Of course, social media is not the only stressor facing teens. Mass shootings, international
Young people think social media is the main reason youth mental health is getting worse.
SOCIAL MEDIA
EXPECTATIONS FROM FAMILY, SCHOOL, COMMUNITY
WORK OR STUDY PRESSURE
POLITICAL, SOCIAL, ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
BULLYING
GAMING, THE INTERNET
INTERPERSONAL PROBLEMS
STIGMA AROUND MENTAL ILLNESS
DRUGS AND ALCOHOL
Teen life moves en masse on to social media.
moves en masse on to media
Source: Headspace National Youth Mental Health Survey (2018).
Source: National Youth Mental Health Survey (2018)
AGES 18-25
139% increase since 2010
AGES 26-34
103% increase since 2010
AGES 35-49
52% increase since 2010
AGES 50+
8% decrease since 2010
AGES increase since 8% decrease since 2010
Source: U.S. National Survey on Drug Use and Health
Source: U S National on Use and Health
“Gen Z was the first generation to get social media in middle school, a time when their brains were still being wired up.”
— Jonathan Haidt
conflicts, and the pandemic have all contributed to a world in which many children do not feel safe, even when they are.
Still, the correlation between adolescent social media use and the prevalence of anxiety and depression is striking.In one particularly fascinating section of Haidt’s book, he plots the growth of social media against the decline of teenage mental health. When Facebook first went public in 2006, he says, it was marketed as a social media network, a place to connect with friends and family. Then, in 2009, Facebook introduced the “Like” button, a new and seemingly benign feature. A short time later, Twitter responded with an innovation of its own, the “Retweet,” which allowed information to spread faster and wider than ever before.
This was exactly when teen social life moved en masse onto social media,and it correlates precisely with the gigantic spike in anxiety and depression we are now seeing in high schoolaged students. “By the time 2011 rolls around, every kid is training every other kid with these tiny little reinforcement buttons,” Haidt writes. “An entire generation is hooked up, all training each other to do whatever is rewarded online. This is a major change in human development. Instead of adults teaching kids or kids working things out in small groups, it all becomes one big public performance.”
Today, the average teen spends 4.8 hours a day on social media apps like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat, according to Gallup. Among girls, that number rises to 5.3 hours. On average, a teen gets pinged 237 times a day. Pomfret students spend comparatively less time on social media, probably because the School keeps them so busy, but the numbers are still high. On a normal class day, the average Pomfret student spends two to three hours on social media, with 9 percent spending four or more hours.
Haidt thinks the wholesale shift of society onto social media has been bad for everyone. But it has been particularly bad for Gen Z, whose brains were particularly susceptible to the psychological damage of a phone-based life just when a phone-based life was becoming the norm.“Gen Z was the first generation to get social media in middle school, a time when their brains were still being wired up,” he says. “This makes their experience very different from millennials, who didn’t start using social media until college, and almost nothing like the childhood Gen X remembers.”
In the last several years, an uptick in tragedies has shaken independent schools accross the country. In the aftermath, many boarding schools, including Pomfret, have turned to a new tool designed to assess teenage mental health within their own schools.The Independent School Health Check (ISHC) is administered by Indiana University Center for Survey Research in partnership with the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS).
The ISHC collects information about students’attitudes and life experiences, touching on many aspects of student wellbeing, including nutrition, exercise, sleep, self-esteem, stress, integrity, sexual behavior, and substance use. Student participation is voluntary and anonymous.In the spring of 2023,Associate Head of School Don Gibbs invited all 350 of Pomfret’s students to take the survey. More than 95 percent accepted. A few weeks later, NAIS sent back the group findings.“The results were sobering,” Gibbs says. “The same things we were seeing nationally were manifesting themselves locally at Pomfret.”
According to ISHC data, 25 percent of Pomfret students reported “being diagnosed by a professional with anxiety.”Nearly 38 percent reported feeling depressed — defined as “feeling so sad and hopeless that you stopped doing your usual activities”— within the last year.
Not long after the ISHC data was released, Head of School Tim Richards convened a task force charged with tackling the issue of social media and technology use on campus. The group was one of five student life task forces charged with combining data and student input to inform policy and best practices in a given area of concern.
After six months, the Social Media and Technology Task Force,chairedbyScienceTeacherStephenVanHoesen,submitted its final report.Rather than recommending a ban on cell phones, the task force issued guidance limiting the use of technology during meals in the dining hall and arguing for the prohibition of cell phone use in Chapel.The group also recommended keeping tabs on when and how technology is being deployed in classroom spaces. Lastly, the task force strongly recommended partnering with an outside firm, The Social Institute, to implement a
“Adolescents are experiencing a great deal of angst right now. They look at social media and think this is life. Then, they look at their life and think something is wrong with them. My job is to make sure our students have the tools they need to see through the illusion.”
— ERIN FISHER Director of Wellbeing
“healthy habits”curriculum for freshmen and sophomores.
“I am very pleased that Pomfret has decided to move in this direction,”says Richards.“It’s critical that our students learn how to harness the power of social media while also being fully aware of the dangers of living too much of your life on a screen.”
Gibbs believes the key to Pomfret’s long-term success is to include more students more consistently in the design and implementation of the School’s wellbeing initiatives. “Our students need to be co-leaders in this work,” he says. “I am glad Pomfret has the courage to ask these questions, and I am proud that our students have the courage to answer them.”
In recent years, more Pomfret students have begun taking advantage of the School’s counseling services. “I am the first licensed clinician that Pomfret School has had,” says Director of Counseling Fannie Deary. “Four years ago we did not have any counselors. Now we have three.”
Today,the office offers crisis,short-term,and ongoing weekly and bi-weekly sessions for students suffering from anxiety, depression, OCD, ASD, suicidal ideation, self-harm, family conflict, social stressors, disordered eating, and perfectionism. Appointments are made at the request of the student or at the suggestion of the advisor. Students also have access to a private room in the Health and Wellness Center where they can engage in telehealth appointments. If a student needs more support, the School typically recommends seeing an outside provider.
Dearybelievestheincreaseindemandisduetotheavailability and normalization of therapy in society and the visibility of the Counseling Office on campus. The need has always been there, sheargues.Buttheriseofstudents’engagementinthetherapeutic process is due to social-emotional curricula introduced over the past decade. “Educational institutions have been engaging students at early ages to learn about emotion identification and language to express their emotions, so when they feel and identify shifts in their regulation, they know where to go to gain the support they need.”
OneoftheplacesstudentscangoistheWellbeingDepartment. “Adolescents are experiencing a great deal of angst right now,”says Director of Wellbeing Erin Fisher.“They look at social media and think this is reality.When in truth,so much of what they are seeing has been curated and filtered. So when they look at their own life it doesn’t measure up.Our work is to make sure our students have the tools they need to see through the illusion.”
Today, Fisher — a social worker by training with degrees from Cornell and Columbia — and her colleagues present at national conferences, including an upcoming presentation at the Association of Independent Schools in New England Health and Wellness Conference.
But back in 2020, Pomfret was still nibbling around the edges. “I remember sitting at home during Covid with my
husband,Bobby,who was the head of the Religion Department at the time, and we started talking about the need for a more comprehensive approach to support student wellbeing.” Eventually, the Fishers hit on the idea of creating an academic department devoted to the mental, physical, and spiritual wellbeing of its students. Soon after, they brought the idea to Head of School Tim Richards, who agreed immediately. The next year, the Wellbeing Department was born.
At most schools, wellbeing programs are relegated to the co-curricular or extracurricular part of the coursebook. But at Pomfret they are considered full curricular offerings tied to academic credit and required for graduation. Using the six foundational dimensions of wellbeing as a framework, the catalog of standalone and cross-listed courses offered through
“There is something about this place, something about its environment and its people, that helped mold and change me. Now, whenever I jump into something new, even if my hands still shake and my voice still quivers, I know I am well on my way to conquering my fear.”
— CAROLINA VOLCKER ’24
the Wellbeing Department continues to grow. Popular classes include Foundations of Wellbeing; Mindfulness: Intro to Meditative Practice; Becoming Kinder: The Science of Generosity and Gratitude; and the Biomechanics of Yoga. “Foundations is a graduation requirement,” Fisher says. Students can take it any year, but sophomore year is really the sweet spot. The sophomore class doubles in size,and sophomores are more developmentally ready for this kind of information.
“When I first came to Pomfret, my anxiety was at its peak,” says senior Carolina Volcker. “But there is something about this place, something about its environment and its
people, that helped mold and change me. Now, whenever I jump into something new, even if my hands still shake and my voice still quivers, I know I am well on my way to conquering my fear.”
Through healthy practices like yoga, meditation, mindfulness, sleep hygiene, exercise, healthy eating, and authentic friendships, Fisher believes students like Volcker can learn to live healthier, more fulfilling lives. “Self-awareness is one of the most important lessons you can teach an adolescent,” Fisher says.“Without self-awareness, it’s impossible to process what you are feeling and why.”
While the world knew Nelson Mandela as “Madiba” or “Tata,” Ndaba Mandela knew him as “Granddad.” At eleven years old, Ndaba went to live with his grandfather. While in his care, he received many pieces of advice, which he chronicled in his book Going to the Mountain: Life Lessons from My Grandfather, Nelson Mandela. As the 2024 Schwartz Visiting Fellow,Ndaba shared with the Pomfret community the wisdom he learned from his grandfather and what it was like to grow up in South Africa in the aftermath of Apartheid. All that he experienced, witnessed,and learned as the grandson of the iconic leader now guides Ndaba as he travels the world advocating for the causes in which he believes.
Born in 1983, young Ndaba knew very little about his grandfatherandhisrevolutionaryworkinthe1950sand1960s, resulting in the leader’s twenty-seven-year imprisonment. At seven years old, Ndaba first met his grandfather when his family visited the elder Mandela in jail. It was a bewildering experience. He pictured jail to have concrete walls, wardens, dogs,and heavy security.But when he arrived at Victor Verster Prison, he saw a house bigger than the one he lived in. There was also a swimming pool and a chef. “I left thinking that when I grow up, I want to go to jail.”
Ndaba shared what it was like to live with his grandfather as he served as the first black president of South Africa.The elder Mandela expected great things from his grandson, including getting top marks in his class. But Ndaba just wanted to be a normal kid. “It was a lot of pressure,” Ndaba recalls. “It was only later in life that I realized our parents put pressure on us not because they want us to fail. It’s because they want us to shine. Our parents understand that we are capable of achieving much more than we think we are. They want us to shine like diamonds. Diamonds are created through great pressure.”
This is just one of many stories and pearls of wisdom that Ndaba shares. Some of the stories he shared in his lectures appear in his book, Going to the Mountain. The book contains
Xhosa folk wisdom his grandfather told him and related anecdotes about living under his grandfather’s roof.
In Xhosa culture, “going to the mountain” is a rite of passage for young men, in which they spend a month learning about their heritage and history and the responsibilities of being a man. As a part of this ritual, men are given a new name. Ndaba’s manhood name is Zwelijika, which means “the world is changing.” Through his advocacy work, Ndaba is a torchbearer for his grandfather’s enduring legacy and is making great changes in the world.
It has been ten years since Mandela’s death and five years since Ndaba wrote his book. In that time, he has traveled the world, advocating for a better future. But instead of sharing folk wisdom, he uses his grandfather’s words, and those of other prominent social justice revolutionaries, to inspire his audience to be a source of change in the world.
NDABA IS AN ADVOCATE for progress. From the end of racism and the eradication of HIV, to equality for women and the importance of mental health, he believes that young people have the power to make the world a better place. “We need to get behind the young people because they’re not stuck in the old ways,” said Ndaba. In the words of the late Nelson
“Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X are the leaders of the past. Their time has gone. They have done their part. It is time for you to pick up the baton and run with it, it is our turn to march, to protest, to stand up for the things we believe in.”
— Ndaba Mandela
Mandela, “Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that generation.”
The younger Mandela encourages all young people to play a part in their democracy. He reminds us that his grandfather believed in the youth more than anything. In his eyes, children represented hope and a new beginning. Before his election, the former South African president attempted to reduce the voting age to fourteen. Ndaba urged people to vote. “You cannot complain about the problems in your world if you do not vote. You have to be part of the electoral system. You have to make your voice heard. So many people before you never had that opportunity to vote.” He noted that in the United States, Black people have only been able to vote for six decades, and women earned the right to vote a century ago. “It’s important for us to vote, not just for the president, but for the mayor and representatives from your district. Those are crucial positions because they control huge budgets that affect our lives.”
Beyond voting, Ndaba suggested that our students take a more active role and appear on the ballot to fill the seats of their local government.“You are the ones who can change the policies that can make the world a better place.”While the late Mandela did not initially want to be president because he felt out of touch with society after spending nearly three decades in jail, he did encourage others to lead. “What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference
we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead,” preached the elder Mandela. Ndaba suggested that if students don’t wish to be a leaders, they could also make a difference in other ways. “Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X are the leaders of the past. Their time has gone. They have done their part. It is time for you to pick up the baton and run with it,”he shared.“It is our turn to march,to protest,to stand up for the things we believe in.” While serving as leaders, Ndaba encouraged students to listen to community members experiencing hardships. “There is a reason God gave you two ears and one mouth,” he preached. “When you help people facing challenges, they often have the solutions.You need to listen.Together, you can build the solutions for the community.”
Before living with his grandfather, he lived in the ghetto surrounded by gangs, drugs, and domestic violence. “Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings,” said the late Mandela.
Ndabaisdoinghisparttohelpchangethelivesofthousands of Africans through his foundation, Africa Rising, which is dedicated to promoting a positive image of Africa around the world. During his first visit to the United States, someone asked him how big the lions were. He was confused because
“There is a reason
gave you two ears and one mouth. You need to listen.”— Ndaba Mandela
he had never seen a lion outside the zoo or on a safari. When he traveled to London, another person said they wanted to visit South Africa but were worried about their safety. “What hit me was that people had many misconceptions of Africa and South Africa,” said Ndaba. “I am living in one of the best countries in the world. I’m lucky.”
Through programming,films,media,and social interaction, Ndaba helps highlight and identify areas for social and economic development with which young people from around the world can engage. Recently, to help shine a positive light on the wonderful things Africa has to offer, he partnered with Visit South Africa in a YouTube video. He gave a tour of his hometown of Soweto, sharing his culture and home and encouraging people to visit.
NdabahasalsopartneredwithBETNetworkon The Mandela Project. The International Emmy-nominated mini-series, for
which he serves as the narrator, highlights globally recognized celebrities’ meaningful contributions to their communities. “It shines a light on the incredible and inspirational legacy of Nelson Mandela,” says Ndaba.
To end his all-school and community lectures,Ndaba led the audience in a powerful salute and chant. The salute, dedicated to his grandfather and other social justice revolutionaries, was similar to how South Africans acknowledge their leaders. “Long live the spirit of Nelson Mandela,”he cried.In return,the audience responded with “Long live!” The chant that followed left an empowering message. “I am a leader,” he boomed. “I am a leader! What my mind can conceive, I can achieve! It is in our hands to work together to make the world a better place!”
During his visit,Ndaba also answered questions from a student panel, attended classes, and signed copies of his book — all the while imparting all that he learned from his grandfather.
The Schwartz Visiting Fellow program is the result of the vision and generosity of Michael Schwartz ’66 and Eric Schwartz ’69. Past fellows include animal science professor Temple Grandin; author Bill Bryson; human rights activist Madame Jehan Sadat; historian David McCullough; and celebrity chef Ming Tsai.
Al Reimers wrote, “My personal continuing contact with Pomfret has been a couple of class reunions over twenty years ago, mainly because I became a citizen of Canada in 1963, eleven years after ordination as a priest in the Anglican Church of Canada, and posting to a cold location in northern Ontario. I have published a book about the charismatic renewal in Canada entitled God’s Country: Stories of Charismatic Renewal.”
In December 2023, Steve Davenport published his book Ninety-Day Wonder: How The Navy Would Have Been Better Off Without Me, a memoir about his stint in the Naval Reserve. It can be ordered via bookstores or Amazon.
Class notes featured in this issue were received prior to March 18, 2024. Notes received after this date will be published in the next issue. Class notes are appreciated and may be submitted via your Class Agent, the Pomfret School website, or by e-mail to:
Deb Thurston, Class Notes Editor, at dthurston@pomfret.org.We encourage and welcome appropriate news items and photographs from all alumni and friends. Please note that not all submissions are guaranteed to appear based upon subject matter, photo reproduction quality, and space availability. Also, we reserve the right to edit for consistency and style but we will give every consideration to each author’s individual writing style.
Bill Bramhall ’69 began doodling and responding to the news through illustrations when he was a student on the Hilltop, drawing political cartoons about the Vietnam War. While he never imagined he would work for a tabloid newspaper in New York City, Bill has been the editorial cartoonist for The New York Daily News for eighteen years. As one of only twenty editorial newspaper cartoonists left in the country, he spends his days doodling.
Bill starts his day by reading newspapers and various blogs and listening to podcasts. He writes down his ideas as he goes and begins doodling. He does a cartoon a day, Monday through Thursday. On Fridays, he draws two cartoons to be published over the weekend. “There’s a lot of news to choose from on a particular day, at the national and state level — and New York City is its own world. Sometimes it’s obvious,” says Bill. “Other times, it’s four o’clock, and I go to my slow news day list and draw something on the gas prices.”
Learn more about Bill Bramhall ’69 on our website
Alex ter Weele reported he is in the process of cleaning out storage boxes from his basement.He came across a box packed with exams and grade books from 1966 when he was chairman of the mathematics department at Milton Academy. (The following year,he was invited to teach at Pomfret,but was sorry he couldn’t accept because he had already committed to doing his doctorate at Harvard.) During the 1960s, Alex taught geometry, algebra, trigonometry, calculus, and physics at the International School of the Hague, the American School of Beirut,theHillSchool(summersessions),theEmersonSchool (NH), and the aforementioned Milton. In parallel with his teaching,he managed to get a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Dartmouth, a master’s in particle physics from Brown, and a doctorate in the economics of education from Harvard. He did post-grad work at the University of New Hampshire and the Technische Hogeschool te Delft (Holland’s MIT). With a doctorate in hand, Alex joined the World Bank and developed and/or upgraded education systems in some 108 countries around the world. He steadfastly maintains that of all those years in institutions of higher learning, it was at Pomfret that his mind was formed. After Pomfret, he says, studies elsewhere were a piece of cake! Along with his professional work and writings,Alex managed to publish “fun” reading (go to alexterweele.com), including the biographical saga of his family and himself in the book We Escaped: A Family’s Flight from Holland During World War Two. Alex now lives in Virginia on a mountain overlooking the Appalachian Trail.He has just recovered from a knee transplant and is back to one of his passions: hiking and camping in the Blue Ridge.
Dave Allan wrote, “I continue to work on interesting marine projects. Currently, we have a $3 million job rebuilding the waterfront facility for the New Hampshire state police on Lake Winnipesaukee. This involves installing new precast floating docks, and driving steel piles in the lake bottom. A number of islandjobsawaitusthissummer,requiringtheuseofmy75-foot Navy landing craft and an assortment of Army trucks. During the warmer seven months, we live on our 15-acre island, where peace and tranquility abound. Previously, my 38-foot ketch sailboat was such a source, but then I found the island does the trick, with no worry about the anchor dragging. My wife, Nancy, is a potter and has an honor shop at the driveway end of our (mainland) boathouse property. Over the past twenty years, she has sold about $50 thousand worth of her creations, and she has only been stung for $35. I think folks really like the notion of being trusted to leave payment in the cash box, knowing there’s nobody around to watch. (Nancy’s studio, where she spends her time, is a half mile down the driveway).”
Congratulations to Don Mennel, who was elected Mayor of Fostoria, Ohio, in November 2023 and began serving his term in January. Don has been an active member of the community for forty years. After retiring as president of Mennel Milling, he has served on the Fostoria City Council and other various local government committees, and he’s been a leader at several non-profits.
Jack Viertel reported, “At 75 [years old], I’m officially retired. But only officially. I have a new novel out – Broadway Melody – available wherever you buy books,and a new musical that’s going to be launched in Phoenix, Arizona, of all places. I just finished working on the Broadway musical based on The Outsiders, and beginning work on another that’s a few years away. I’m a ‘consultant’to these productions, which means I’m old and experienced,while the creators are young and talented (and inexperienced). Linda and I now split our time between Tarrytown, New York, and Maine, where our daughter Anna is about to get married.Son Josh is hard at work creating an agricultural center for learning, farming, fishing, hunting, and various destination events in upstate New York,and overall,none of us are complaining.Well,not about family or career events anyhow.”
Joel Rathbone was proud to announce that his oldest grandchild, Chloe, is headed to college at State University of New York (SUNY) at Fredonia. She will be studying primarily STEM classes as she eyes a career in engineering.
Ralph Earle released his newest collection of poetry in his book Everything You Love is New published by Redhawk Publications in March 2024.This book follows Ralph’s previous success with The Way the Rain Works, published by Sable Books in 2015 and winner of the Sable Books Chapbook Award.
Griffins from around the world met up on Thursday, April 11 to celebrate Pomfret and spend time with each other. In total, more than 140 people participated in the event.Venues ranged from private homes and clubs to restaurants and businesses.
Special thanks to Darien, Connecticut hosts Joey Moffitt ’82 and Etienne Vazquez ’04, Boston host Brendon Giblin ’95, Philadelphia host Justin Klein ’65, Seoul host Stella Kim P ’25 and Santa Monica host Buzz Yudell ’65 (1)
(1) Pomfret alumni and past parents gathered on November 3, 2023, at the New Canaan Field Club for an evening of paddle tennis. Front row, L-R: Louisa Jones P ’04, Etienne Vazquez ’04, Kenyon Clark ’67, Jean (Sinica) Still P ’05, Joey Moffitt ’82, Katie (Bell) Bues ’03, Kelsey (Hubbard) Rollinson ’89, Susan Squires, Andrew Sereysky ’67 Back row, L-R: Paul Fowler ’64, Director of Financial Aid Peter Anderson, David Still ’05, Elena and Nick Phillips P ’27, Lisa Walsh ’87, Joan Sereysky, Art Crabtree
(2) Alumni gathered at Pomfret’s holiday reception in New York City on December 7, 2023. L-R: Toyin Moses ’98, Kayla Sheehan ’10, Hayden Clarkin ’13, Prisca and Greg Jones ’06, Kelsanah Wade ’09 and guest Joshua SanchezSecor, Etienne Vazquez ’04, David Still ’05, Hadley (Weiss) Rosen ’97, Luis Cruz ’82
(3) Former Pomfret girls varsity soccer players had a mini-reunion in December 2023. L-R: Coach Erin Fisher P ’17,’19,’22, Rory Schauder ’19, Tatum Fisher ’22, Olivia Ferrara ’18, Sydney Fisher ’17 (rear), Bridget Horst ’22, Maddie Fisher ’19, Coach Tim Deary ’05, MK Marshall ’22, Gillian Horst ’19
Lenny Klein’69 and Robert Shasha’69 in Delray Beach, Florida, on January 18, 2024.
Robert Shasha reported that he was the producer and co-editor of the book Iraq's Last Jews: Stories of Daily Life, Upheaval, and Escape from Modern Babylon, which was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in 2008. It is available through Barnes & Noble.
Otis Read wrote, “I have been performing both original music and cover songs, semi-regularly, at the Knickerbocker Café in Westerly, Rhode Island with Jim Corwin ’72 and various other musicians.Over the past few years,we have managed to corral both Ridley Pearson and John Siebel ’72 onstage with us at different times. Not only that, but we have been pleased to attract audience members who are former classmates at Pomfret, including Peter Castle, Paul Nauman, Skip Hine, Rob Palmer, Chad Gregson ’70, Tom Arnold ’70 (RIP), Charlie Reyburn ’73, and David Kenney. (Sorry if I have forgotten some). We try to make regular appearances there every few months; we hope that other alumni from the area who want an invitation to our next appearance can please contact me at otisread@gmail.com.I recently turned 70 and don’t appear to be slowing down!”
Harry Fisher announced, “In January 2024, I was elected to be the chairman of the Board of Estimate and Taxation for the Town of Greenwich, which is the finance board that sets all budgets and taxation in the town. It is arguably the most powerful position in town, as the chair holds a tie-breaking vote on a board that is split six Republicans and six Democrats.”
Former faculty member Ham Clark worked in Admissions and College Counseling,coached,ran a dorm,and met his future wife,Ceci Addison,at Pomfret from 1974-77.He wrote,“Now life has come full circle as I am back at Pomfret with two colleagues from [the executive search firm] RG175 helping the newly established search committee to identify your next head of school. Pomfret had a beautiful campus when I was there in the 1970s, but the new additions are stunning. The School has maintained the campus core with the original dorms, Arcades and magnificent chapel, while adding breathtaking new facilities from the squash courts and fitness center to Parsons Lodge and a reimagined Hard Auditorium. Soon, the new science building will be a fantastic addition.I was at Pomfret in what is described in the illustrated history in the academic building as ‘the dark days,’ but the School is now clearly living in some of its best days. The faculty and leadership are outstanding, the students are interested and engaged, stunning student artwork is pervasive all over campus, and innovation and individuality abound.It was a thrill to be back on campus recently, and I can guarantee that there will be lots of very talented individuals lining up to see if they can have the opportunity to help write the next chapter in Pomfret’s history.”
Amy Cohen announced that she will be a grandmother for the first time in June 2024!
Mary Paganelli reports that she and her sister, Carla Paganelli ’78, are doing great. Mary lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and son; she is the director of membership services for Northwest Community Conservancy, a nonprofit in Portland. Carla lives in Westchester, New York, with her husband and three kids; she is a psychologist with a private practice. Mary and her family are planning a trip to Japan in the fall of 2024 and would love to reconnect with classmate and exchange student Takayoshi Kamei ’75.Tak, if you are out there, please get in touch!
Rich Cody ’76 recently caught up with Cindy Shearer ’75 in Naples, Florida. They are both beginning to think about their 50th reunion.
Hilary Romaine wrote, “After two-and-a-half years in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, twenty in Los Angeles, and twelve in Nashville, I am finally back on the East Coast to be closer to my daughter Casey. After thirtyfive years, it feels really good to be back in New York, and the Hudson Valley is a beautiful place to land. Casey was married in September 2023 in Ridgefield, Connecticut, at her husband’s family home… and I was so glad my dear friend and musical compadre Sander Coxe ’83 could be there with his fabulous partner, Angela Pierce, and their party animal, Sophie the dachshund! Looking forward to more musical collaborations with Sander and connecting with more Pomfret peeps in person now…How is it our 40th reunion is in [June] 2024!?”
Brooke Toni ’86 skiing on a mountain in Niseko, Hokkaido, Japan.
Brooke Toni wrote, “In January 2024, I went to Japan for skiing and sightseeing in Tokyo. It snowed every day!”
Dr. Marc Harrigan ’87 began a career in primary care almost twenty-five years ago. But when he found himself with a caseload of 4,000 patients and had a waiting period of up to six months, he almost hung up his white coat and stethoscope for good until he made a change.
This spring, Marc celebrated the fifth anniversary of Concierge Medicine of Buckhead — his concierge medical practice in Atlanta. “It has probably been the most rewarding years of my career,” says Marc. “There’s not been a day that I do not look forward to coming into the office.” There’s something different every day. Marc can provide medicine that needs to be delivered with a high focus on good customer service. His patients feel like they are the only person in the office, and many times they are. ”I have more significant relationships with my patients, which allows me to have a greater impact,” shares Marc. “My relationships with my patients are golden.”
Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park Education Specialist
Jody Anastasio ’87 (left) and Kupu Americorps Service Member GlenAllen Beavers (right) accepted the Excellence in Education Award from National Park Service Director Chuck Sams in August 2023.
Jody Anastasio led the National Park Service team that won the National Excellence in Education Award in 2023. As an education specialist at Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park, she started the Earth, Sea, and Sky program in partnership with two other local environmental education organizations, Mokupāpapa Discovery Center (sea) and ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center (sky). To date, more than 1,700 students from the Island of Hawai‘i have completed Earth,Sea,and Sky field trips.The theme that connects all three sites is kilo (to observe). At ‘Imiloa, students kilo pō (observe the night sky) in the planetarium and learn about constellations significant to Hawaiian culture. At Mokupāpapa, students kilo Hilo Bay, then move to the aquarium to kilo the coral reef environment. At Hawai‘i Volcanoes, students spend half a day outdoors and explore the geology and biodiversity of the volcanic landscape, and how these connect to traditional Hawaiian culture.
Joanna Parson ’89 with her new husband, Graham Stevens
Pomfret friends helped Joanna Parson ’89 (center) celebrate her wedding in February 2024. L-R: Jessica Ziegler ’90, Cara (Landi) Buckingham’89, Joanna,Nicole (Horne) White’90, and Jennifer Patenaude ’90
Joanna Parson announced, “I was married to Graham Stevens in New York City on February 5 of this year, and the amazing Jessica Ziegler ’90 helped me plan a great party on February 12. Cara (Landi) Buckingham, Jennifer Patenaude ’90, and Nicole (Horne) White ’90 attended, and many others were there in gossip – I mean spirit. And love.”
Allison(Glasmann)Reiner’95 climbed to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro with mountaineer David Hahn and nine others in September 2023, raising $28,000 for the American Lung Association.
JamesFichter’97 published his book, Tea: Consumption, Politics, and Revolution, 1773-1776, in December 2023.
Amanda (Holt) Shipley and Rebecca (Holt) Squires love opportunities to work together in several ways, most recently in the online company they co-founded, Progressive Pelvic Education.Their newest program, Progressive Pregnancy, helps women prepare their mind, body, and pelvic floor for homebirth — a passion they share after giving birth to all of their children at home — that uses Amanda’s expertise as a pelvic floor physical therapist.They also enjoy getting to play soccer together in a women’s rec league in Atlanta.
JamesBartolomei isthrilledtoannouncethatheisacandidate for the Arkansas House of Representatives and will be on the November 2024 ballot.After nearly twenty years of practicing law and public service stints in the US Senate, White House, and US House of Representatives, he intends to split his time between his civil law practice and working hard for families and small businesses in Arkansas, if elected.
In November, Caroline Murphy ’06 and Josh Wildes ’04 were inducted into the Pomfret School Alumni Association Athletic Hall of Fame.
Caroline was a twelve-letter athlete at Pomfret, excelling in soccer, ice hockey, and lacrosse. As a Yale Bulldog, she played four years of ice hockey, serving as the captain her senior year, and also played one year of lacrosse, competing in the NCAA tournament. She was selected for the USA Hockey Player Development Camp four years in a row, and after college went on to play hockey in Europe.
Josh was a four-year varsity wrestler and two-time co-captain. He won the Western New England conference tournament and was the first four-time New England Prep champion in the conference’s history, earning the titles of National Prep All-American and New England Preparatory School Wrestling Association champion every year he competed. At Wesleyan, Josh continued his wrestling dominance, serving as team captain in 2008. Following college, he continued his career in wrestling as a coach. Today Josh serves as a wrestling coach and math department head at Pomfret.
Kristen (Brush) Vincent published her first children’s book, Hope Beneath the Tree, in October 2023. It can be found on her website www.Copperandbirchvt.com, a small wreathmaking business in Vermont where she also teaches wreathmaking workshops. Kristen donates part of her proceeds from her wreath making and her book to the Vermont organization Hope Beneath the Tree, helping children with incarcerated parents receive holiday presents. She resides in Shelburne, Vermont, with her husband, Jared Vincent ’01, and her two children, Caroline (10) and Henry (7).
Congratulations to Jo Anna (Galanti) Fellon, who was named one of ROI-NJ’s Women in Business Influencers 2024. Jo Anna is a tax partner at Marcum Accountants & Advisors.She serves as the National Leader of the firm’s Private Client Services practice, as well as the Office Service Line Partner-In-Charge for the East Hanover, New Jersey office.
Matt Lowell and his band, Lo Moon, unveiled their new single, “Borrowed Hills,” in March 2024.The song was first inspired by his time at Pomfret in the confusing days following 9/11,when he wrote his first song and performed it in chapel — excited at being able to express himself musically. He returned to the Hilltop and the chapel in December 2020 to reconnect to that same feeling, putting him on the path to the single and their next album, I Wish You Way More Than Luck, which was released on April 5.
Annie Dickson wrote, “I married Sankaranarayanan Sundarapandian on November 19, 2023, in his hometown of Thanjavur, India. We met in 2018 while living in San Francisco. The wedding festivities spanned four days, and over 5,000 people attended! It was incredible to share our special day(s) with over thirty family and friends from the US who traveled so very far and experienced a lot of firsts to join us. This included my parents, sister and her family, brother Joe Dickson ’01, and his son,Thomas. Earlier in 2023, we quit our corporate jobs and moved to India, where we plan to start a project focused on sustainable living. Come visit!”
Mark Breen ’78 is the senior meteorologist and planetarium director at Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. He has worked there since 1981 but had his moment in the sun in the months leading up to the total solar eclipse on April 8. With the museum located in the path of totality, Mark has spent the year sharing his expertise with local and national media outlets, perfecting the planetarium's eclipse show, and welcoming an influx of visitors.
Now that the once-in-400-year event is over, Mark can refocus his efforts on delivering weekday weather, “Eye on the Sky,” and stargazing reports, “Eye on the Night Sky,” on Vermont Public Radio, which he has done for the past forty-two years.
www.sevendaysvt.com
L-R: Michelle (Gilmore) Castiglione ’06, faculty member Beth Jacquet P ’26, Remy Jacquet ’26, and Tamara (Ferreira) Marcella ’06 attending the premiere of Pomfret’s production of Into the Woods on February 15, 2024. Both Michelle and Tamara were very active in the theater program at Pomfret; yet more importantly, both had appeared in Into the Woods when it was directed by legendary former faculty member Bob Sloat in 2003. Their effort to attend and share their experience, both then and now, shows their deep connection to the School and the belief that the arts are integral to our identity.
Sade Porter ’09 graduated from the Rutgers University Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology (GSAPP) in 2022 with her Doctor of Psychology (PsyD) and became a New York and New Jersey licensed psychologist in 2023. She is currently working at a group practice, Rennicke & Associates, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan.
Head of School Tim Richards P ’15 with members of the Class of 2017 at Pomfret’s holiday reception in Boston on November 30, 2023. L-R: Rebecca Bullied, Sydney Fisher, Melissa Browne (rear), Samantha Yoon, Brandon Mitchell (rear), Mallory McArdle, Milan Marzilli, Nathan Donze (rear), Chris Wright, Kevin Griffin (rear), Jon Beniers
Matt Clayton announced, “After three-and-a-half years as a woodworker and entrepreneur, I started a new career as an estimator at a construction management firm called D.C. Beane & Associates in Boston. My office is very unique as it’s located on the water in Charlestown’s historic Navy Yard. The Navy Yard is a part of Boston’s Freedom Trail and the home of the still-afloat USS Constitution and the USS Cassin Young (I highly recommend touring both). Fun fact: the USS Constitution still fires its cannons — blanks of course — every day at 8:00 a.m.and again at sunset.”
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The Pontefract Society honors all those who have taken the special step of including Pomfret School in their long-term plans through a bequest provision, life-income gift, or other deferred giving arrangement. Members of The Pontefract Society have demonstrated a loyalty, foresight, and generosity that will benefit Pomfret and contribute to its excellence for generations to come.
To request a printed copy of full-detail alumni obituaries, call the Advancement Office at 860.963.6129.
Alexander M.McDougal ’46 November 8, 2023
Peter F.Hayes ’58 December 16, 2023
Stephen Heartt ’49 October 16, 2023
August Zinsser III ’59 December 1, 2023
W.Lambert Welling ’50 August 29, 2023
Paul D.Jackson ’68 November 5, 2023
Robert B.Fleck ’57 January 25, 2023
Linda Howe Hall ’71 March 21, 2024
“Dear friends, we know that life is short and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us. So be swift to love, make haste to be kind.”
— HENRI-FRÉDÉRIC AMIEL
David W. Matzdorf ’71 November 18, 2023
Mary C. Kerrigan ’76 October 25, 2023
Aren C. Craft ’18 February 8, 2024
Rachel E. Prentiss ’77 December 24, 2023
Facilities Groundskeeper 1981-2018
Lee Minutelli January 16, 2024
Charles A. W. Conlin ’09 January 4, 2023
You may be wondering where the nickname “toaster” came from. We asked around and couldn’t find a definitive answer. Some say it originated from the nickname for an early model Volkswagen bus, while others believe it’s due to the bus’s compact, boxy shape — like a kitchen toaster. Either way, it appears the nickname is here to stay!
We all know the saying, and it couldn’t be more true when it comes to Pomfret’s toasters. Whether belting out the lyrics to T. Swizzle’s latest hit, or having one of those deep, meaningful conversations with your bestie that you know you’ll never forget, there are some things that can only happen when you're together on a two-hour bus ride.
WHETHER HEADED TO THE BIG GAME OR A LOCAL ANIMAL SHELTER TO PERFORM COMMUNITY SERVICE, EVERY POMFRET STUDENT WILL RIDE IN ONE OF OUR MID BUSES — AFFECTIONATELY KNOWN AS “TOASTERS” — AT SOME POINT DURING THEIR TIME ON THE HILLTOP. BUT WHAT EXACTLY IS A TOASTER?
Each toaster travels an average of 13,000 miles per year. The longest trip recorded was to Montgomery, Alabama, where students in American Studies: Criminal Justice visited museums, prisons, and courthouses on a quest to learn more about criminal justice reform.
The term toaster has led to some comical confusion in the past. Legend has it that during a long ago fall preseason, a beloved field hockey coach (we’ll call her Mrs. Jones) told her players to meet her at the toasters. All but two brand new students showed up at the bus lot. The missing duo was later found in the Dining Hall eating bagels, wondering when the rest of the team would arrive.
Pomfret’s toasters have only been around since the (last) turn of the century, when, for safety reasons, they replaced the School’s fifteen-passenger vans in operation at that time. Just think: during the School’s first turn of the century, the horse and buggy was still in fashion. We wonder what the next turn will bring!
Hillary
Mike
Rebecca (Holt) Squires
Wheeler (Simmons)
Katharine (Carnes) Petrycki
Hadley (Weiss) Rosen
Livia (Skelly-Dorn) Roustan
Lindsey (Boardman) Duerr
TJ
Caitlin (Rogers) Connelly
Cooper
Libby
Chris
Chelsea (Weiss) Baum
Chris
Mackie (Pilsbury) Spadaccini
