RISE BEYOND BY JENNY WALTON, ALUMNI ENGAGEMENT COORDINATOR
Ash Avildsen has forged his own path since graduating from Randolph-Macon in 1999. Today, he is a CEO, screenwriter, director, and producer – and he’s just getting started. Avildsen was raised by his mother and grandmother in an apartment in Maryland. His father, Academy-Award winning director John Avildsen (Rocky, Lean on Me, The Karate Kid) was estranged from the family. Deciding that he would benefit from the structure Randolph-Macon Academy provided, his mother and grandmother sent him to “The Hill” in the seventh grade. Avildsen would attend all the way through twelfth grade, as both a boarding cadet and a day student. While his transition was a little rocky – he recalls that there was some bullying because he was small for his age, and the only seventh grader on the tennis team at the time – there were two things that helped him to fit in. First, he could beat anyone at the video games Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter; and second, the older kids always wanted to borrow from his music collection. By the time he graduated, he was senior class president. Avildsen continued playing tennis throughout his time at R-MA (under the watchful eye of teacher and coach, Mr. Eric Barr), served as captain of the chess team, and became a senior yearbook editor. His senior superlative? “Life of the party.” Avildsen said he learned many things at R-MA, even beyond the “strong academics” – he particularly recalls R-MA teachers Mr. Barr and Mrs. Armstrong – things like independence, team building, discipline, accountability, and social skills. “You learn to appreciate things other people take for granted,” Avildsen noted, as well as “respect for the armed services,” and to “appreciate your choices, and your freedom to make those choices.”
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The Sabre - Winter- Spring 2021
