Sewickley Speaking - Spring/Summer 2023

ENGINEERING a Legacy

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Dear Readers,

I recall learning that President John F. Kennedy once said, “For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” In compiling this issue of Sewickley Speaking, it was evident that nothing and no one at Sewickley Academy stands still for very long – if at all. You will find many stories of change and growth as you continue to read.

While the quote indicates that “change is the law of life,” it does not state that change is easy. Before coming to Sewickley Academy, I had been with my previous employer for 18 years. Choosing to move on was a huge and difficult decision. Now, with more than a year and three issues of Sewickley Speaking under my belt, I can confidently say that making that scary choice was the right move for me.

I have witnessed so much growth at SA during this past year. There have certainly been physical changes to the campus. There has been professional growth for myself and my colleagues. I have seen students develop their skills and talents and overcome obstacles. Even Sewickley Speaking continues to undergo change, and I hope that you have appreciated the new appearance and content revisions.

Sewickley Academy has been an exciting place to be, and I look forward to continuing to be a part of its future.

Jennifer Donovan Communications Manager

Juniors Tejas Mitra and Ryan Scott competed on teams with BrainSTEM robotics in the FIRST® PA State Championship and World Championship in Houston, TX. The Middle School Robopanthers Red team earned the Engineering Excellence Award and fifth place overall (out of 42 teams) at the FIRST® Lego® League Western PA Grand Championship Robotics Tournament hosted at SA in December 2022.

Senior School Whoa!Bots team members Derek Peng ’23, Alex Wang ’24, Makhi Lambert ’23, and Zan McClain ’23 with their Finalist Alliance trophy at a Pennsylvania FIRST® Tech Challenge (FTC) qualifying tournament in February 2023.

Editor-in-Chief

Jennifer Donovan

Communications Manager Design

Direct Axis Creative, LLC

Contributors

Chris Anderson

Associate Head of School

Dr. Ashley Birtwell Head of School

Carey Byrnes

Annual Giving Officer

Derek Chimner

Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Jennifer Donovan

Communications Manager

Dave Fortna

Chief External Relations Officer

Dr. Ron Kinser

Senior School Faculty

Kate Lukaszewicz

History and Social Sciences Department

Chair and Middle School Faculty

Win Palmer

Director of Athletics

Jessica Peluso

Senior School Faculty

Rachel Smith

Theater Faculty

Dr. Susan Sour

Alumni Relations Associate

Brittani Spencer

Major Gifts Officer

Class Notes are submitted by alumni. Photos provided by SA faculty and staff except where noted.

Sewickley Speaking is published twice a year in the Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter for the alumni, students, parents, faculty, staff, and friends of Sewickley Academy by the Office of External Relations, 315 Academy Avenue, Sewickley, PA 15143. www.sewickley.org

Access the digital issue at sewickley.org/about-us/ explore-sa/publications @sewickleyacademy

ON THE COVER

Billy Sullivan ’14 was the driving force behind robotics at Sewickley Academy.

Sophomore Chase D’Antonio in Big Fish.

Photo by Chrissy Olson, Portraits by Sal & Bella

UNDER THECupola

Dear Sewickley Academy Community,

This issue of Sewickley Speaking features the story of alumnus Billy Sullivan ’14. What stands out most to me about Billy is his resolve and diligence to not only develop a robotics program at Sewickley Academy to satisfy his personal interest, but to leave a legacy to be enjoyed by students for years to come.

His story had me thinking about how many of our students, past and present, have had the ambition to take on projects above and beyond what is required of them in the classroom, often for the benefit of others. For instance, this May, junior Anjali Shah saw her vision to host a Tedx Youth event on campus come to fruition. No one asked Anjali to take on this endeavor during what is already an extremely busy and challenging academic year for any high school student. She shared, “I wanted a passion project - something I could really put my time and energy into. I have a tendency to be a leader, but I’m not the typical ‘STEM kid’ like mostly everyone else in my family. So I wanted to do something that represents leadership on a universal level; removing the stigma that there is only one route to success.”

In addition to Anjali, but without exhausting the pages of this magazine, I will share just a few more instances of our students excelling beyond classroom expectations. Grade 11 student Claudia Kronk is working to address the issue of food insecurity in our region through micro food pantries. This need came to her attention as she developed her own bakery business, Desserts by Claudia, and witnessed the amount of wasted food in the restaurants with which she partners. Also, Sebastian Tan, a Grade 10 student, developed a website offering resources and employment opportunities to previously incarcerated individuals. Sebastian’s family’s business has historically hired workers who have been incarcerated, and he was motivated to offer support when he learned of the challenges they face in reentering the workforce. He has been in touch with officials from our state government and the Department of Corrections as well as Pittsburgh-based reentry programs and is working toward making the platform more widely available.

In this issue, you will find our Panther Spotlights focused on individual student achievements as well as the link to

LETTER FROM THE HEAD OF SCHOOL

His story had me thinking about how many of our students, past and present, have had the ambition to take on projects above and beyond what is required of them in the classroom, often for the benefit of others.”

more stories on our website. One of our earliest spotlights was Senior Hudson Colletti who took his love of music and created Free the Music, an initiative to make gently used, artistically painted pianos available for public enjoyment. He has pianos located across the community, including in the Sewickley Gazebo, and is working with the Pittsburgh International Airport for placement of pianos inside their facilities. Another spotlight focused on Grade 5 student Nolan Hutton who wanted to ensure that the patients at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh receive toys during their stays and has spent several years raising funds and coordinating toy drives to make this happen.

The stories of student accomplishments at Sewickley Academy are endless. And, of course, they continue to excel as alumni. You will certainly find even more tales of achievement as you turn to the Class Notes section.

I am inspired every day by our students, and I am excited to see what they will achieve as Academy graduates. I hope that you enjoy the stories shared in this magazine and that you will continue to tell us about your successes as they occur.

With warmth and appreciation,

Ashley (Brown ’00) Birtwell, PhD Head of School

AN UPDATE ON ACADEMICS from Associate Head of School Chris Anderson

As we approach the final days of the 2022-23 academic year and the feelings of accomplishment and optimism that accompany the coming months, I would like to thank all members of our community for the parts you played in moving us forward. This year, our Sewickley Academy community experienced tremendous academic growth and progress.

With the overwhelming publicity surrounding the benefits and pitfalls of Artificial Intelligence and the looming deadline for this communication, I was, admittedly, tempted to turn to AI to see what it might produce. I first sought out Google’s Bard, only to find I was put on a wait list for new users and would likely miss my deadline had I waited for admission. Next, I tapped Open AI’s Chat GPT. I found the output to be mildly impressive, but rudimentary and lacking the excitement and buoyancy that exists within our community and lies ahead for education. I suspect our students are finding similar results as they test out this new tool – one that will likely improve significantly in a short period of time.

The advent of this developing technology brings forth the question of what we should target to prepare our students for a worldwide environment that is evolving at a faster pace than we have seen in decades. Our solution has been to simultaneously focus on the basics

while recognizing the importance of the development of soft skills. To that end, we began the year with a new academic schedule that significantly increased the amount of time spent in core classes, allowing more time for depth and breadth of instruction accompanied by increased student collaboration and exploration. Additionally, we increased student advisory, support, and enrichment services, concentrating on personal development, academic guidance, and student potential.

This year, our Lower School introduced new literacy curricula with strong and consistent threads extending across the grades for a seamless educational experience. Students are realizing gains in both literacy and math proficiency, with significant movement both out of support services and into enrichment experiences. Middle School students now have the benefit of time in skillbased labs, additional competition clubs in science and mathematics, a new advisory program, and innovative, deeply enhanced computer science courses. In the Senior School, students are benefitting from an expanded computer science curriculum, 50 different senior school clubs, our first ever Esports team, increased data-driven communications to students and families, and a career week featuring alumni who are experts in their fields. Through Global Online Academy, our students have access to fascinating courses that broaden our

curriculum and invite students into virtual classroom experiences with peers from around the world.

Next year, our kindergarten program will expand to full-day for all, the Middle School will explore the possibility of a hands-on STEM trimester, and the Senior School will add a onecredit computer science requirement. To support this shift, we will add courses including Game Design, Web Development, and Artificial Intelligence. Our AP program will add Computer Science Principles and both Macro and Micro Economics. The science department will bring back its popular Anatomy & Physiology course, while our mathematics department will re-envision its curriculum to include Data Analysis and offer trimester electives in Finance, Inferential & Descriptive Statistics, and the History of Mathematics. Finally, in order to more fully prepare our future world leaders and citizens, Global Studies will become an official department with new core and elective courses.

The impact of technology and the role of education are constantly and rapidly evolving. It will require increased dedication and vigilance to keep pace with this evolution. It is critically important that we keep an eye on the marketplace’s most in-demand skills and work vigorously to develop these talents in our students, embrace the changes that lie ahead, and hold tight to our core values. Our students must learn to both excel and simultaneously improve in their knowledge and skill.

I look forward to the immense possibilities that lie ahead and invite you to reach out with your thoughts and contributions.

The impact of technology and the role of education are constantly and rapidly evolving. It will require increased dedication and vigilance to keep pace with this evolution.”

MISSION MOMENT:

CHARACTER

A SPOTLIGHT ON PANTHERS MAKING SA PROUD

Throughout the 2022-23 academic year, students from each division have been selected for monthly “Panther Spotlights” in the All School Newsletter. Nominated by division heads and faculty, these students are showcased for their talents and unique contributions to our community. They are excellent examples of Character, the Core Value of Sewickley Academy defined as follows: “Sewickley Academy upholds the highest ideals of honor, integrity, responsibility, respect, empathy, and kindness and the actions that flow from them.”

Read more about the following students and continue to visit the Academy’s website each month for new stories found under Admissions > Experience SA .

NOLAN AND NADDISON HUTTON

Lower School Spotlight on Philanthropy Grades 5 and 3 respectively

KASH STEVENSON

Middle School Spotlight on Theater Grade 7

I wanted to help them feel that joy either at the end or during their stay in the hospital.”

Nolan

After an extended stay as a toddler at Children’s Hospital, the staff gave Nolan a Mickey Mouse stuffie wearing a hospital gown which he still has in his bedroom. The gift got him thinking about other children in the hospital. “I got a rush of happiness (from receiving the toy), and realized that there might not be enough donations for every kid to get a toy. I wanted to help them feel that joy either at the end or during their stay in the hospital.” Since 2014, Nolan and his family have spearheaded a toy drive by placing collection boxes throughout their community as well as at SA. Nolan also regularly speaks about his toy drive during mass at his church. Donations are delivered annually to the Child Life Department of Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. Naddison helps with the toy drive by spreading the word and contributing her own toys that she has outgrown or no longer uses. For her last birthday, she asked that everyone attending her party forgo a gift for her and instead bring a warm item to be donated to the homeless. When asked why she chose to contribute to homeless shelters, Naddison replied, “I was thinking about people and health and what people need that I can give them.”

As the lead role of Prince Eric in the Middle School musical, The Little Mermaid Jr., Kash was able to showcase his acting, singing, and dancing talents – singing being his favorite. Though he’s new to SA, this wasn’t his first performance. Last year, as a sixth grader, he landed a part in his prior district’s high school musical, Freaky Friday An outgoing and animated young man, he first caught the acting bug when his godmother saw a Facebook ad for an open call for a talent agent. She and Kash persuaded his parents to allow him to give it a try. A series of call backs led him to California where he was assigned to an acting agent. He has gone through a “pilot season” on the West Coast and made it to the final two for a role in a Broadway production of The Lion King, only to receive the heartbreaking news that he was too young to tour. Kash also enjoys modeling and playing football – he was on two championship teams prior to making the move to SA.

Hutton, Grade 5

NAOMI WIGLEY

Senior School Spotlight on Career Aspirations: Pilot

Grade 12

Naomi uses her time outside of school to work toward her dream of becoming a pilot which began with an interest in the Air Force. Early in her freshman year, her father suggested she investigate careers in air traffic control, which led to finding the High Flight Academy at the Pittsburgh-Butler Regional Airport and the opportunity to take a Discovery Flight. “After that flight, I was hooked,” she said. Naomi has earned scholarships and flown and logged nearly 70 hours since Grade 10, at least 10 of which have been solo. She officially earned her pilot’s license on December 31, 2022. Her training has included three flight camps that have allowed her to expand her wings beyond the Pittsburgh region and experience the skies in Maryland, Texas, and Idaho. Regarding her career plans, she was accepted to multiple colleges with flight programs and also considered joining the Air National Guard. She has made the decision to attend Baylor University to study aviation science.

CHELSEA HAHN AND GRACE JARDINI

Middle School Spotlight on Science

Grade 8

As participants in the Pennsylvania Junior Academy of Science (PJAS) Club Regional (R7) Competition which included more than 400 participants from 50+ schools, both Chelsea and Grace scored high enough to qualify for the state competition in May at Penn State University. Chelsea and Grace worked on two very different projects that both happened to meet the requirements of the Biology category for the PJAS competition. Chelsea is an avid young horsewoman and chose to examine the effects of various saddle fits on horses. Grace recruited her family members to watch a Spiderman movie while she studied how their emotions affected their heart rates. These two scientists modified and improved their projects for the state competition based on direct feedback from the PJAS judges. Grace chose to participate in PJAS because she wanted to enhance her understanding of science. She also feels that she has improved her time management and research techniques by participating in PJAS. Chelsea feels that she has gained significantly by learning to develop her own project, do her own research, and modify the procedure based on circumstances that occurred as the project progressed. She also believes that she is a better presenter and public speaker as a

Sewickley Academy would not be the same without its people. Students, faculty, staff, families, alumni, and friends all impact our school in countless ways, contributing to the excellence that leads to SA’s strong and established reputation since 1838.

A school cannot exist for 185 years without requiring some physical change. Not to mention that the people who populate the campus deserve to learn and work in state-ofthe-industry spaces.

Historically, Sewickley Academy has grown from a brick house on Beaver Road to a multi-acre campus primarily

located on Academy Avenue. It went from being a boarding school to a day school, from having faculty living on campus, to a school of commuters. It expanded from the Richardson building that now houses the Lower School to include a separate Early Childhood building, as well as Rea Auditorium, the School Center, the Oliver Science Building, the Events

Center, Hansen Library, and the Middle and Senior schools that exist today. Wrestling rooms became cafeterias, parking lots became green spaces – the changes go on and on year after year.

The campus underwent some notable advancements during the 2022-23 academic year. Walking into the School Center, you are immediately greeted by a transformation. The reception area has been updated to include a classically modern feel. The main desk has been relocated, additional seating is available, and display cases have been added to feature fantastic Sewickley Academy memorabilia. Just off this main area is the new Admissions Suite designed to welcome visiting students and their families. A waiting/meeting area, two offices, and a conference room create the full space that includes very special artwork. On one wall hangs a four-and-a-half-feet tall framed collection of drawings that last year’s Grade 3 class created for the Annual Auction. Another wall features an art piece titled “No. 2,” painted and graciously donated by alumnus Jackson O’Neill ’16. His 5’ x 4’ piece in the abstract expressionist-style of his namesake, Jackson Pollock, hung in the Campbell Art Gallery as part of the Alumni Art Show October 6December 16, 2022, before making its way to the Admissions Suite.

Next to the School Center is the Oliver Science Building housing

I would say one of the biggest benefits of this new space is that we have the ability to provide students with specialized software for classes. In addition, this room has two projectors… (one) can display a presentation and one could be displaying the code we are writing.”

Cristy McCloskey Computer Science Teacher

Computer Science lab features a wall made, in part, with preserved plants.

classrooms used by both Middle and Senior school students. Three of the spaces in Oliver underwent significant renovations starting last summer and reopened for use just after students returned from Winter Break. A former physics classroom is now dubbed a hy-flex (hybrid-flexible) space meaning it can be configured for multiple uses and modes of participation. Fully branded in the school’s black, red, and white, it includes both traditional desk seating as well as curved boothstyle seating around multiple smart boards and a projector.

Down the hall, the former robotics lab is now a dedicated computer science classroom that features modular desks, 22 desktop workstations as well as space for laptops, and a unique wall made of preserved plants that was inspired by the movie The Matrix and that capitalizes on the green-house-like windows open to the building’s roof. Computer Science teacher Cristy McCloskey said, “I would say one of the biggest benefits of this new space is that we have the ability to provide students with specialized software for classes. In addition, this room has two projectors that can either show the same content or different content. Therefore, one projector can display a presentation and one could be displaying the code we are writing.”

In the upper level of the Oliver Building, the former photography lab is now a dedicated Senior School robotics lab where students can work on robotic design, coding, and building. It includes a 12’ x 12’ arena

Playground Gets a New Look

Decades of children from the Academy as well as the surrounding Sewickley-area have enjoyed the playground nestled just below the Lower School and Early Childhood buildings. Known as “Timbertown” the wood structures were gifted to the school in 1994 by the Konig family, Tom, Jeri, Kristin, and Chadd, and have been diligently maintained for 28 years. But the need for repairs and more frequent splinter injuries resulted in the resolution that it was time for an update.

Timbertown was dismantled in the fall of 2022, and with great excitement came the opening of a new playground space in February 2023. Designed to take advantage of the terrain, it includes two uniquely different play zones that utilize the existing playground footprint as well as the hillside. Preserved in the renovation were the gazebo and amphitheater. The gazebo is home of an SA-student-

invented game called Gazebo Soccer in which seven children sit inside, one per bench, goalkeeping and kicking a soccer ball back and forth while trying to score by getting the ball under one of the benches. Per Dr. Jerilyn Scott, Head of Lower School, “This has become a beloved tradition that is passed on from class to class and played at nearly every recess. There is even a Gazebo Soccer tournament offered as an after school club.”

As a hub for the community, the new playground includes a rope bridge, two large climbing structures, monkey bars, numerous obstacles, and of course, slides. Playground turf has been installed on both the flat and hillside areas to allow for both organized and unstructured play. A connecting walkway, landscaping, benches, and picnic tables complete the area. A mild winter has allowed students and children of all ages to enjoy the space almost daily since its opening, and they have even created new games like races that involve repeatedly rolling down the turf hillside.

Hy-flex classroom

with customized lighting for practicing for the FIRST® tech challenges. The lab also includes 3-D printers, plenty of storage, work counters, tool chests, movable tables, and a TV for wireless presenting. Across the hall, a lab for Middle School Lego® robotics is complete with new kits, a double competition table and movable challenge table, charging stations with enough programmable robots for each student to work individually, and bins upon bins of Lego® blocks and pieces. Erin Whitaker, SA’s educational technology coordinator, noted that the improvement to the space, “allows students more time to work on their robots and complete the challenges.”

The Events Center also saw significant advancement with the renovation of the 10,000 square foot newly named Panthers Performance and Wellness Center, aka “The Den.” The space is overseen by the Academy’s Sports Performance and Wellness Coach, Sam Futrovsky, a certified personal trainer, USA weightlifting coach, and former member of the Slovak National Lacrosse Team. It is designed to be used by all Middle and Senior school students as well as faculty, and staff, and Coach Futrovsky said he wants everyone to get “that feeling that it’s a welcome space no matter what your fitness level is.” Highlights of the facility include customized free-weight, machine, and cardio equipment options and

six fully-equipped weight racks all customized for Sewickley Academy by Plae, a company who designs elite training environments for numerous professional and collegiate athletic teams such as the Philadelphia Eagles, Toronto Blue Jays, Arizona State University, Vanderbilt University, and the Under Armour Performance Center in Baltimore, MD. The center also features technology to store training sessions and testing results allowing users to follow their performance and progression.

Tours of the new facilities were available on February 1 and were well-attended. One of the attendees, parent Elise Scott, noted that, “It was a joy to share the positive energy and see the new spaces. [Your team has] done a phenomenal job, on a very short timeline, creating so many opportunities for the students.” Another parent, Kristene Smith, commented on social media, “Absolutely amazing transformation and exciting time for all students to utilize and have fun learning in these decked out, cutting edge computer science classrooms….Well done, SA!”

Rea Auditorium received paint and carpet over Spring Break as hopes for a successful Campaign for Rea (see page 24) will lead to significant updates including lighting, storage, dressing rooms, equipment, and more.

Other facilities improvements this year have included a redesigned workspace for Breakthrough

It was a joy to share the positive energy and see the new spaces. [Your team has] done a phenomenal job, on a very short timeline, creating so many opportunities for the students.”

Elise Scott, parent

Pittsburgh, new flooring in both cafeterias, as well as new furniture in the Middle/Senior School Cafeteria, and enhanced security both inside and outside of the buildings.

Still in the works are enhancements to Nichols Field to include paved parking and improved walkways, stormwater management, new bleachers, fencing, scoreboards, backstops, and batting cages, as well as aesthetic updates to the concession stand and restrooms. The baseball infield will be replaced with synthetic turf.

For an up close view of many of these campus improvements, check out the Academy’s Facebook page, facebook. com/SewickleyAcademy, for the Live tour that was recorded and posted on February 2.

Left: Panthers Performance Center; Right: Senior School robotics lab

At Sewickley Academy, facilities updates and technology upgrades are important, but it is our people who truly provide for our outstanding reputation. In this issue of Sewickley Speaking, let’s recognize some of the people on Academy Avenue who put our students first day after day.

MR. RODNEY SLAPPY

Senior School History and Social Sciences

Mr. Slappy started teaching at Sewickley Academy in August 2020. He grew up in Beaver Falls, PA, and has three children who are all currently enrolled at SA: Rodney (Grade 5), Elijah (Grade 2), and Sarai (Pre-Kindergarten). This year, during Spring Break, he accompanied a group of students on a Civil Rights trip visiting several historically significant locations throughout Alabama and Georgia.

What is it about Sewickley Academy that keeps you coming back?

My students not only make this job more enjoyable, but they also motivate me to do the best job that I can as their teacher.

Why did you choose to be a teacher?

As an undergraduate student in college, I had the opportunity to work as a classroom tutor at an elementary

school in Washington, D.C. Working with the students there was an extremely rewarding experience, and I enjoyed having the chance to have a positive influence on the lives of young people. That experience, along with my enthusiasm for history, is what inspired me to become a social studies teacher.

What is your favorite lesson to teach?

My favorite lesson so far has

My students not only make this job more enjoyable, but they also motivate me to do the best job that I can as their teacher.”

been the Genghis Khan Mock Trial that we do in my Modern World History class. We put Genghis on trial for war crimes. I like it because not only is it focused on one of the most controversial people in history, but it is also a lot of fun watching the students act out their character roles. Every student participates, and most of the time it gets pretty competitive. There have even been some students who dressed up as their character. Usually our students find him guilty!

What is your favorite movie or TV show?

I have a lot of favorite movies and TV shows, but the one that made me want to learn more about history was Braveheart.

Above: Rodney with his wife, Tiffany Left: The Slappy children: Rodney, Sarai, and Elijah

MRS. JAYNE PARKER

Lower School Grade 3

Mrs. Parker has been teaching at SA since 2001. She grew up in Pleasant Hills, a town in the South Hills of Pittsburgh, with four siblings including a twin brother. She and her husband, Dan, have one son, Eddie, who is a paramedic for the city of Pittsburgh, and Mrs. Parker could not be more proud of him. At SA, she particularly loves her colleagues from whom she has learned so much, getting to know her students and reaching them so that they may gain a love of learning.

Where is your favorite location on campus?

The Lower School Library. Each week the students are so excited to check out books. Also, our librarians support our curriculum with fabulous book choices. Storytime in the library is a favorite time for both the students and the teachers. The books Mrs. DeMicheli [the librarian] chooses to share with us support an inclusive community.

What part of your classroom best represents you and why?

The classroom rug where we have

many lessons and meetings together. I love to share stories with my children that teach life lessons. We come together for read-aloud, which is so relaxing and fun. And lastly, the rug is where the children receive “The Parker Lecture.” Often I will share stories from my past that model mistakes I’ve made. This supports students as they learn and grow. What is your teaching style or philosophy?

My philosophy is to really get to know my students and find out their interests, what challenges

I try my best to reach each child so that they can reach their full potential both academically and socially.”

them, and how I can help them face those challenges. This requires a safe environment where children reflect on their learning. I try my best to reach each child so that they can reach their full potential both academically and socially. Creating a classroom setting where the children really know each other and feel safe in taking academic risks supports growth in learning.

Share a defining (or ah-ha!) moment in your career. There are many little moments that make me love teaching, but one stands out. There was a student that was really struggling to understand what he was reading, he could decode and read, but was not taking it in. One day he was reading to me

and started crying at a sad part in the book, and I started crying, too. He looked at me and said, “you are crying, too?” Yes, but not because of the sad part in the book, I was crying because the text had meaning to him. He was understanding what he was reading and now could read for joy.

What quote or philosophy do you live by?

Be YOU! I live by that. And if you are feeling down, find a way to put a positive spin on it and learn from your mistakes.

Jayne with her son, Eddie (left), and her twin brother, Jay (right)

MRS. DANIA PAUL

Lower School Grade 3

Following the footsteps of her mother-in-law, Mrs. Dolly Paul, who taught Lower School science, Mrs. Paul joined the SA faculty in 1992. She grew up in Weirton, WV, and married Joe Paul ’82. Her brotherin-law, Greg ’88, sons, Willie ’16 and Jackson ’19, and nieces, Hilary ’15 and Maggie ’19, are all SA grads as well. As a teacher, she hopes to inspire, encourage, and instill a love of learning in her students.

Sewickley Academy is a special community. Our Lower School faculty is a tight knit group and we appreciate everyone’s strengths. This is one of the reasons why I love teaching here.”

What is it about Sewickley Academy that keeps you coming back?

Sewickley Academy is a special community. Our Lower School faculty is a tight knit group, and we appreciate everyone’s strengths. This is one of the reasons why I love teaching here. Another reason is our supportive community. Our administration and families go out their way to help make this community stronger.

Where is your favorite location on campus?

My favorite place on campus is the Marion Hutchins Library in the Lower School. When I visit

the library with my students, they enjoy selecting books and sharing their favorites with friends. Their excitement for reading a beloved series or author is palpable. Many times I will visit the library to find another read-aloud book or browse through the teacher resources, and I find that the time escapes me because it is such a magical place. Our librarians do a fantastic job of making the library a safe space where our students are represented in the books they choose. It is such a welcoming environment.

Why did you choose to be a teacher?

I decided I wanted to become a teacher late in college. I will never forget the day I went home and told my parents that I wanted to pursue a career in teaching. My father said, “Finally, one of my children will follow the tradition in our family.” My paternal grandmother and aunt were both elementary teachers.

What is your favorite SA story or memory?

The best thing that happened to me while at SA was being able to give my sons, Willie and Jackson, their diplomas at graduation. Throughout the years, they were greatly impacted by their teachers in some way. When handing them their diplomas, I was so grateful to my colleagues for their dedication to my sons as well as all of the other students.

Do you collect anything?

I really don’t collect anything, but over the years, I have enjoyed receiving Christmas ornaments from my students. When I decorate my tree every year, I have fond memories of each child. From the seashell snowman with a purple hat and scarf, to a holiday-adorned Minnie Mouse, I can envision each student’s face. It’s definitely a trip down memory lane for me every time I reminisce about a student.

Dania and her husband, Joe ’82, with their sons, Willie ’16 (left) and Jackson ’19 (right)

MR. FREDDY MORENO Middle School Mathematics

Mr. Moreno has been a teacher at SA since 1998 and says “there is nothing better than spending your work day with 12-14 year olds and interacting with them both socially and academically.” He grew up in Morningside, an eastern Pittsburgh neighborhood, and now resides in the South Hills. He and his wife of 20 years, Tina, have three children –Alessia is a sophomore at Penn State, Anthony is about to graduate from high school, and Joey is a freshman. Why did you choose to be a teacher?

Very simple – my love of kids. Originally I was an accountant – that was the degree I graduated with, and I had a job right out of college with an accounting firm. However, the business world was not for me, and, because I have always loved kids, I went back to school and earned my teaching degree.

What is your teaching style or philosophy?

I believe you have to let the kids know you care about their learning

and have them understand what you are teaching them will help them succeed not only in their higher education but also in life. I also believe you need to set very clear expectations for students, both academically and socially, and hold them accountable for these expectations. This helps them grow not only in my classroom but in the real world as well.

Where is your favorite location on campus?

My classroom! It has quite literally been my second home, as I have been the only teacher to ever teach in my classroom (having been hired the year the Middle School was finished being built).

What is your favorite SA story or memory?

One of my favorite SA memories is sleeping under a gazebo under the starry

I believe you have to let the kids know you care about their learning and have them understand what you are teaching them will help them succeed not only in their higher education but also in life.”

Lake Erie skies with Roy Parker, my principal at the time, while we were on a Grade 6 field trip to a small research island on Lake Erie.

What do you hope to learn in 2023?

How to juggle!

Freddy (center) with his sons, Anthony and Joey (left), his wife Tina, and daughter, Alessia (right)

MISSION MOMENT:

DIVERSITY

DIRECTOR OF DEI HELPS SA UNPACK

Even prior to accepting the ongoing role as SA’s Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in February, Derek Chimner ’04 recognized his colleagues’ need for adult education workshops and spaces to have crucial, and at times uncomfortable, conversations with internal community members.

While attending the People of Color Conference (PoCC), sponsored by the National Association of Independent Schools, Derek engaged in a workshop called “Using ActionBased Definitions for DEIJBA” led by Dr. Liza Talusan, author of The Identity Conscious Educator: Building habits and skills for a more inclusive school. She spoke of the need to truly unpack the meanings behind Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Justice, Belonging, and Accessibility (DEIJBA) in order to have meaningful, relevant, and effective strategic plans and institutional buy-in. Embracing the expression, “what is said here, stays here, but what is learned here, leaves here,” Mr. Chimner began leading interested faculty and staff in discussions on how the components of DEIJBA are defined and represented at SA.

The workshops began on January 18 with a deep-dive into diversity and SA’s definition of the word, particularly as it is one of the Academy’s Core Values. Participants engaged in an enlightening discussion centered around the Waterline of Visibility graphic shown below and the community’s tendency to focus on what makes someone visibly diverse, such as skin color, race, age, and gender, as opposed to what may be considered hidden diversity like values, skills, political views, and learning differences. The group discussed the diversity of SA’s community and how that diversity can lead to empathy, open-minded conversations, shared experiences, and confidence.

In-depth, active discussions have followed and will be ongoing through the end of the academic year. Participants in Mr. Chimner’s workshops are thoughtfully evaluating Sewickley Academy’s strengths and blind spots. For instance, regarding inclusivity, it was agreed that SA is inclusive of religions and cultures,

represents diverse figures across curriculum, and provides space and ability to put a voice to DEI conversations. We will continue to pursue opportunities to be more inclusive of and accessible to a wider population.

Members of our SA community have varying levels of DEI understanding and education. Some have been engaged in this work for years, and others have only just begun to unpack their knowledge of DEI topics. Some constituents live and express it outwardly, while others are more internal and quietly passionate. These workshops are a step toward bringing these separate groups, and those who fall somewhere in-between, together in valuable, collaborative education, discussion, and an opportunity to better our own understanding as a school community.

Mr. Chimner’s work is helping to ensure that the Sewickley Academy culture reflects fresh and multiple perspectives and understanding for students and their families, as well as faculty, staff, and alumni.

The reviews are in, and...Sewickley Academy topped the charts! Thanks to the generosity of a sell-out crowd and online donors, the SA Auction was #1 at the box office on Saturday, April 22, 2023. In fact, it was a blockbuster year with more than $460,000 raised! Funds donated impact SA students across academics, athletics, arts, and more, and help faculty and staff with resources and professional development opportunities. This year’s auction also exceeded the goal for Breakthrough Pittsburgh and our Fund-A-Need initiatives!

As always, the true stars of Sewickley Academy are the students, and they did not disappoint at Lights, Camera, Auction! Freshman Emma Ehan and sophomore Avni Kathju shared their experiences on the service trip to Belize, junior Max Peluso and senior Ibrahim Khan literally sang for their supper as they shared the significance of Rea Auditorium to their SA experience, and senior Isaac Ulloa explained how Breakthrough Pittsburgh has been life changing for him.

Much appreciation is extended to the members of the Auction Committee who volunteered countless hours of planning and preparation: Annie Batyko, Carey Byrnes, Sonia Chowdhry, Cyra Contractor ’99, Dru Cox, Tammy DeFallo, CJ Duckett, Lauren Garraux, Carlin Griffin, Kati Hammond, Janice Hay, Lesly Kasky, Susan Kinser, Annie Mancos, Naomi Marshall, Stephanie Menzock, Rachel Murphy, Lindsey Petruska, Elizabeth Purpura, Jessica Revtai, Terri Schubenski, Dawn Schultz, Holly Seifert ’01, Brittani Spencer, Jayme Thompson, and Jennifer Young.

Mark your calendars for next year’s event on Saturday, April 20, 2024!

From top: Gunjan and Sonia Khanna; Annie Mancos and Derrick Mullin; student speakers Avni Kathju ’25 and Emma Ehan ’26; Catherine and Dan Coast; Mike and Emily Hammel, Dave and Liz Hammel, Allison and Josh Fogle; Lexi Shazer and Sarah DeMicheli looking glamorous on the dance floor; Robert Frazzini and Anne Zacharias; Casey Calland, Holly Seifert ’01, Heather Border, and Win Palmer

SCULLEY SABBATICAL Tracking the Truth on

By Kate Lukaszewicz, 2022 Sculley Sabbatical recipient

A historian must concern herself with historiography, the writing of histories and especially of how those histories evolve and are interpreted. The current prevailing narrative of any historical event or biography can be fully comprehended in the present only if one has fully grasped how that narrative has been understood–and misunderstood–over time.

In fact, my favorite author on the subject, Sir Simon Schama, reflected in Dead Certainties: Unwarranted Speculations, that “Historians are left forever chasing shadows, painfully aware of their inability ever to reconstruct a dead world in its completeness, however thorough or revealing their documentation …. We are doomed to be forever hailing someone who has just gone around the corner and out of earshot.”

My “someone gone around the corner” is Father Suitbert Mollinger,

the founding pastor of my childhood parish and elementary school and a founding funder of my graduate school. I am confident that he died on June 15, 1892, but four different birth dates are identified on four different sources. As a young man, he studied as a surgeon, or in a seminary, or served in the Crimean War, but there is no surviving documentary evidence of any of these vocations. Even so, he was ordained a Roman Catholic priest and practiced medicine. He diagnosed and prescribed compounds of his own invention, tending to more than 300,000 pilgrims by the end of his twenty-fouryear tenure in Pittsburgh’s Troy Hill. He healed not only with compounds, but also relics and the intercessions of the prayers and ephemera associated with Roman Catholicism. (As a historian, I must question that if the relics offer a placebo effect, is that “divine power” sufficient to be recounted as truth?)

These conflicting “facts” about Mollinger’s life have complicated my efforts of writing a book-length biography of this internationally famous priest. For 130 years, the historiography of Suitbert Mollinger had been thus: born to a wealthy and aristocratic family, his Protestant father died when Suitbert was just ten, and Suitbert, afforded all the luxuries of a European education, studied medicine before finding his vocation as a priest. He studied at seminary somewhere in the Netherlands or Belgium or near

Pennsylvania, was ordained in the Diocese of Erie in 1859, spending five years there before relocating to Wexford in 1864 and Allegheny City in 1868, where he would become famous for his efficacy as a healer and collector of Catholic relics, which numbers 5,000.

My research is at the mercy of historic documentation: sometimes too little to offer any cogent narrative, sometimes so much that the prospect of analysis and interpretation daunts.

But in January 2020, my skill and persistence were aided by luck: I found a document that turned the extant Mollinger biography on its head.”

At that time, I determined to write a full-length biography of the man, for, despite his fame, none existed. Sitting at my dining room table, I made my first visit to an online Belgian genealogy website. Within minutes, I was looking at gevangenisregister: a prison register. I was shocked, but my finding was confirmed by a professional translator. With this new information, I searched Dutchnewspaper archives and found dozens of newspaper articles that chronicled the 1851 fire in Mollinger’s

Father Mollinger circa 1890

Kate Lukaszewicz with her researcher card at Maastricht

apartment, his reported losses of fine art, precious metals and gems, and books. In January 1852, the papers were covering his trial and conviction. A deeper look into the genealogical records revealed a conviction of fraud, a prison sentence of five years, and an early release for good behavior. That Mollinger was acquitted of the arson charge spared his neck, for the Dutch penal code indicated that arson was punishable by beheading.

With this discovery, I knew that to tell the complete story would require research in his home countries. Under this premise, the leadership team at Sewickley Academy awarded to me the Sculley Sabbatical for Summer 2022, so that I could “reconstruct a dead world” in the Netherlands and Belgium.

Last July, I arrived in Amsterdam, rainy and cool, but I was hot on Suitbert’s trail. He had owned a tobacco shop in Amsterdam, but the Amsterdam City Archives shed no light on where the tobacco shop had been or how Suitbert had otherwise spent his time in this city. The addresses of his domicile and tobacco shop are lost to us, and we are left with history as hypothesis. However, I did lay my hands on a copy of a directory of the Dutch patrician families, learning more about the father who had died when Suitbert was just ten.

Without any more information about Suitbert’s life in Amsterdam, I explored the diversions that had been available to him. The Rijksmuseum

offered much, with centuries of art, including pieces by a landscape artist whose work the mendacious Mollinger had claimed to have owned and lost in his apartment fire. He and I must, I thought, have gazed upon the same canvases and sculptures, pieces secular and sacred, and I wondered whether this panopticon of art inspired his myth of his own middling – and fictional – art collection having been reduced to ash.

With that unanswerable question, I turned my attention to the city’s Mozes en Aaronkerk, a church dedicated to the saint for whom Suitbert named his own chapel: St. Anthony of Padua. This Catholic church was among the Netherlands’ “hidden churches,” expected literally to hide behind a facade that did not reveal the building’s true purpose, as required by Dutch law at the time. My Civics-teacher-brain tuned in, thinking of the First Amendment’s promise to protect religious freedoms, which surely must have appealed to anyone who saw – and sees – their state persecute their sincerely-held religious beliefs. That this church dedicated to St. Anthony of Padua is tucked behind statues of Old Testament brothers in Amsterdam’s Jewish Quarter perfectly illustrates the spirit of the since-repealed Dutch religious laws: the state must be able to plausibly deny having awareness of your worship so as to not legally prosecute.

This contrived deceit speaks to Suitbert’s particular brand of fraud: to not only insure items that he did not actually own, but to insure them multiple times over, via different

Report of the Curious Trial of S. G. Mollinger accused of arson and incendiarism conducted before the Provincial-Geregtshof of Limburg

Kate in front of the Basicila of St. Servatius

The paradox of Suitbert’s life is that he concurrently had aspirations towards a religious vocation and a life beyond his personal–but not familial–wealth.”

Moyses of Mozes en Aaronkerk

brokers, a deception he managed because he was dressed as a seminarian when he approached insurance agents. The paradox of Suitbert’s life is that he concurrently had aspirations towards a religious vocation and a life beyond his personal – but not familial – wealth. While I cannot find a single record of his seminary attendance, witnesses at his criminal trial admitted that he had been committed to a life of prayer and the study of Latin, suggesting that his sacred and profane urges were sincere. There is no record of Suitbert’s attendance in the Mozes en Aaronkerk, and I chose to visit it based only on its name.

While historical documents may disappear into the ether without a single trace of their existence, buildings provide sturdier stuff for research. Suitbert had been sentenced to the penitentiary at Hoorn in the northern tip of the Netherlands; the building, conveniently enough for the unpampered traveler, serves now as a hotel.

I reserved the least comfortable accommodations available, a decision which did not disappoint as the air refused to circulate and the room’s creature comforts remained spare.”

This is why historians must travel: most of us will never step inside a penitentiary cell, yet I slept in the same prison in which my subject slept for nearly five years, and believe my construction of what that experience was like was aided by actually being present in the spot.

This was also the case with Eck en Wiel, a small town that hosted

the estates of the Mollingers and the van Hellenbergs, Suitbert’s maternal family. I was hosted by Jan, himself a historian and well connected within the region. Jan brought me into Little Joyful, the name bestowed upon the van Hellenberg home in which Suitbert spent part of his childhood. The manse rests in an idyllic setting, that, combined with its name, makes me certain that the sun always shines from a crystal blue sky and the verdant flora is always in full efflorescence. As I admired the corbel ceiling domes, I wondered how a person who had come from such earthly riches could turn to fraud, and I wondered the same when Jan took me to the Catholic church that the van Hellenberg family had funded. I am resigned to never knowing what motivated Suitbert’s crime, and I suspect that no one ever will, just as I suspect that I will never have a sense of how the years in the Hoorn prison brought Suitbert to what seems to have been a sincere repentance.

My travels brought me next to Maastricht, where Suitbert and his family had lived occasionally, and which also holds the archival collection of the region’s criminal trials. I stepped into the local archives and, with my limited Dutch, began opening the registration books of the local Catholic churches and the censuses. In Suitbert’s time and place, the Dutch census was a dynamic document, with people registering in their new towns every time they moved. That Suitbert is unfindable on these documents after the death of his father speaks to the slippery nature of historical research. One can find his siblings and mother, aunts, uncles and cousins, but no Suitbert, suggesting that he was evading yet another obligation or had, as long purported, left the country to continue his education. Another unknown. I turned my attention then to the court records housed in the archives, and the archivist, after hearing my query, helped me to locate the epic tome that held the

Above: Hoorn with Prison, 1858, Published by G.G. Long. Left: Hoorn in 2022

Little Joyful

appropriate records so that I could begin to turn the pages, one by one, in search of Suitbert. The archivist and I were both surprised that I found him within minutes, the benefit of his trial having begun in early January 1852. It was a long record, scores of pages, in a beautiful Dutch script, now awaiting for a translator to unlock its secrets for me.

Mechelen, the city of Suitbert’s infancy, brought me into Belgium, at a time when the country was celebrating its religious heritage with Open Churches, a multinational effort to bring people into houses of worship. Mechelen’s contribution was a walking map of its eight historic churches. Mission literally in hand, I began my work: Basilica of Our Lady of Hanswijk, Church of Our Lady across the river Dijl, Saints Peter and Paul. All eight visited, but nothing more accomplished than imagining the Mollinger family attending services and gazing upon statues upon which their eyes may have rested. Digital research in my hotel room located baby Suitbert on the local census, but at an address so very indeterminable that even the house historian at the local archives

admitted that to navigate the housenumbers customs of the time in order to identify the home would be a fool’s errand, but I think that he enjoyed his herculean effort all the same.

My sabbatical took me to other towns and cities, but their Suitbert historiography was paltry. He had lived in Rotterdam, so I spent a day there, but Nazi bombings had nearly obliterated the city’s documentary history. Though I was unable to definitively answer all of my questions about Suitbert, I was sure to take full advantage of my time overseas. Long an educator of the Holocaust, I visited the Anne Frank House. And as a devotee of international politics, I happened upon the European Union’s Parlamentarium and House of European History, whose images and maps summoned forth the longdormant memories of my own AP European History course.

While these travels enriched me personally and professionally, I greatly appreciated the opportunity for our students at Sewickley Academy to see a teacher engaging the skills that she purports to value in service to her field of study.”

The Sculley Sabbatical supports “enriching, idiosyncratic travel,” which was of immeasurable value to my research, and, just as importantly, to modeling for students what it means to be a joyful, lifelong learner.

Mollinger Trial Document from Limburg archives in Maastricht

Tracks

BOYS SOCCER

Regular Season Standing: 11 - 1 in section, 14 - 2 overall

Seniors: Hudson Colletti, Michael DiSantis, Alexander Jenkins, Lucas Mendonca, Alexander Quiqley, Garrett Smith, Daniel Torres, Thomas Varghese, and Adin Zorn.

The Panthers captured the Section Championship this season. With WPIAL playoff victories over Our Lady of the Sacred Heart (OLSH) and Springdale High School, the team advanced to the WPIAL semifinals, where they were defeated in overtime 4 - 3 by Winchester Thurston and fell to Eden Christian Academy in

the game that determined PIAA qualifiers. They completed the season with an overall record of 16 – 4. Seniors Hudson Colletti, Michael DiSantis, Lucas Mendonca, and Adin Zorn were selected to the All-Section Team. Hudson and Adin were also selected to the AllWPIAL Team.

GIRLS TENNIS

Regular Season Standing: 7 - 0 in section, 17 - 3 overall Senior: Maria Silvaggio

The varsity girls tennis team captured the section championship but were defeated by Knoch High School 3 – 2 in the WPIAL championship match. SA defeated Cathedral Prep 4 – 0 in the PIAA

Semifinals to set up a rematch with Knoch for the state championship. Knoch ended up winning 4 – 1, earning the Panthers a runner-up trophy. Junior Ashley Close advanced to the PIAA Singles Championship match and the doubles team of junior Gwyneth Belt and sophomore Rayna Thakkar advanced to the semifinals of the PIAA Doubles Championship.

GIRLS SOCCER

Regular Season Standing: 4 - 6 in section, 8 - 8 overall

Seniors: Isabella Capito, Kaitlyn Hayden, Rinnie Jardini, Jayne Miner, Elena Mohan, and Sally Moravitz.

The varsity girls earned a WPIAL playoff spot where they lost to eventual WPIAL finalist Springdale High School 3 – 2. Sophomore Katherine Varghese was selected to the All-Section Team.

FALL

GIRLS GOLF

Five underclass golfers combined to form the first varsity girls golf team in a number of years. The Panthers played an exhibition schedule in preparation for future years with the return of all five players plus golfers from current grade eight.

BOYS GOLF

Regular Season Standing: 8 - 2 in section, 15 - 5 overall

Seniors: Leon Jiao, Zan McClain, Joey Mucci, and Nick Straka

The varsity boys golf team completed the season in second place in the section. In the WPIAL playoffs, the Panthers captured the WPIAL Championship in extra holes after finishing tied after 18 holes with Belle Vernon High School. Seniors

Joey Mucci and Nick Straka, along with sophomores Severin Harmon and Karan Kad participated in the playoff as the Panthers earned the 9th WPIAL Championship in the past 10 years. The PIAA Championship moved to Penn State this year where the Panthers finished third. Joey and Severin advanced to the State Individual Championships.

CROSS COUNTRY

Seniors: Christopher Achkar, Mary Grace Gordon, and John Shillingsburg

The girls and boys cross country varsity team competed in multiple section and major championship meets this season. Junior Wesley Riddle advanced to the PIAA Individual Championships in Hershey.

John Doucette Photography

Ashley Close at the PIAA Girls Tennis Singles Championships

Tracks

GIRLS BASKETBALL

Regular Season Standing: 2 - 10 in section, 6 - 16 overall

Seniors: Olivia Jackson, Rinnie Jardini, and Laila Wade

The varsity girls basketball team finished the season sixth in the section. One of the highlights was capturing the Neighborhood Academy Holiday Tournament. Junior Libby Eannarino led the team in scoring and was named to the All-Section Team.

BOYS BASKETBALL

Regular Season Standing: 0 - 10 in section, 3 - 18 overall

Senior: Colin Helbling

Finishing sixth in the section, a highlight of the varsity boys basketball season was the defeat of Winchester Thurston in front of a large home crowd on Spirit Night. Sophomore Nolan Donnelly led the team in scoring and was named to the All-Section Team.

WINTER

CHEERLEADING

Seniors: Allyson Aufman, Alex Cordle, Nikki Golestan, and Mary Grace Gordon

The cheerleading squad brought plenty of enthusiasm to the boys and girls basketball games this season. They also hosted a popular Panther Cubs Mini Cheer Camp for our future boosters in grades Pre-K through 5.

BOYS SWIMMING & DIVING

Regular Season Standing: 3 - 3 in section, 4 - 4 overall

Seniors: Ashton Ragoowansi and John Shillingsburg

The co-operative (with Quaker Valley High School) varsity swimming & diving team finished third in the section. SA Junior Wesley Riddle advanced to the PIAA Championships in both the 200-yard medley and the 400-yard freestyle relay. No SA girls competed in swimming and diving this season.

John Doucette Photography

From Stage to Sea, Broadway andBeyond

Senior School

Musical: Big Fish: School Edition

The opportunity to perform as a student at Sewickley Academy is an essential part of the education process. Many alumni have appreciation for the lifelong benefits they have received from first getting on stage as an Academy student. On average, Sewickley Academy students benefit from more performance opportunities than traditionally found in regional schools. This year was no exception.

On February 15, the annual Student Recital included performances by seven Middle School and eight Senior School students in Hansen Library. Displaying talents in voice, violin, piano, cello, guitar, flute, and viola, the performances included songs from Broadway shows Beauty and the Beast and Dear Evan Hansen and various classical pieces from notable composers such as Rachmaninoff and Vivaldi as well as more contemporary work by LinManuel Miranda and Bruno Mars.

The season was launched with SA’s annual All School Piano Recital, held in Rea Auditorium on Wednesday, October 12. A total of 14 student performers across three divisions shared the works of Frédéric Chopin, Aram Khachaturian, J.S. Bach, Billy Joel, and Scott Joplin, to name a few.

Ibrahim Khan

Performed in March, the show featured a small-but-mighty ensemble who worked incredibly hard to pull off a piece that travels to a wide variety of locales and walks a fine line between reality and fantasy. Cast members were challenged to learn new skills such as walking on stilts, tap dancing, and stage combat as they portrayed everything from werewolves to swamp witches to circus performers. Senior Ibrahim Khan and junior Max Peluso played the leads as a father and son who struggle to connect with one another over the course of their lifetimes. Audiences were treated to a production that was

Top left: Karl the Giant and Amos Calloway (circus ringleader) played by junior Logan Carlson and freshman Ben Holsopple.

Right: Ibrahim Khan ’23, performed as the lead, Edward Bloom, in Big Fish Photos by Chrissy Olson, Portraits by Sal & Bella

I’ve been performing on this stage since first grade. It’s going to be tough to say goodbye, but I’m very excited for what comes next.”

The Little Mermaid, Jr.

The students of the Middle School performed The Little Mermaid, Jr. this past November. The cast had a great time bringing the Disney classic to life while putting their own spin on it. In addition to the well-known characters from the movie, ensemble members had the opportunity to embody ocean waves, stormy winds, and creepy tentacles as part of the sea chorus. Highlights of the show included crowd pleasing numbers such as “Under the Sea” and “Kiss the Girl,” as well as the lesser known songs sung by the mersisters and seagulls. Visitors during Grandparents and Special Friends Day were able to preview the performance before it opened to the public. Overall, there was great audience turnout, and it was lovely to welcome so many community members into Rea Auditorium.

Arts Fest

Arts Fest will take place June 1-3, 2023. It will be a celebration of student’s visual and performing arts with a focus on student-written and directed theater and music ensembles as well as student-curated visual art exhibits. Student proposals include fashion shows, musical theater showcases, stage combat, and interactive art galleries. For performance details and tickets, visit sewickley.org/tickets.

Trifles & Tomfooleries

In October, the Senior School performed Trifles & Tomfooleries (a collection of comedies by George Bernard Shaw). The cast rose exceedingly well to the challenge of performing Shaw’s languageheavy pieces and enthusiastically explored melodrama as a genre of theater. In addition to stellar performances by the cast and crew, seniors Claire Cable and Rinnie Jardini put together an incredible lobby display detailing the historical relevance of George Bernard Shaw and the context of his dramatic works. Some of the cast later traveled to the PA State Thespian Conference where they performed one of the pieces, “The Dark Lady of the Sonnets,” for an audience of their peers. Their performance was lauded both by the other Pennsylvania theater students and by the adult adjudicators.

ENGINEERING a Legacy

With the excitement of all of the newly updated spaces on SA’s campus, particularly the robotics facilities, it seemed like the right time to reflect on how robotics became such an important part of Sewickley Academy’s curriculum and activities. It all officially began in 2010....

Actually, for William Sullivan, Jr ’14 (aka Billy), robotics has been a lifetime interest. For as far back as he can remember, and much to his parents’ dismay, Billy had been taking things apart and trying, not always successfully, to put them back together. Household appliances, electronics, toys – if it had a power button, he wanted to see just what made it tick, beep, buzz, whirl, and so on.

This interest in electronics and robotics, particularly when it came to his childhood obsession with vacuum cleaners, was recognized by Billy’s principal, Sister Christy Hill, when he was in seventh grade at Mount Gallitzin Academy, a private Catholic school. With her support, a young Billy set about starting a FIRST® Lego® League (FLL) middle school robotics team at Mount Gallitzin, the first step in what would be a rocky road in the years that followed. The effort included a fundraising campaign that allowed the school to purchase four $300 robots, four computers, and all necessary software. Billy lined up a mentor for the team whose father built and donated a competition table so the fledgling team could practice robot challenges. Though just getting started, Billy’s team made a great initial showing at the FLL Pittsburgh Regional Competition in December 2008 and went on to win the May Madness Challenge at the Sarah Heinz House in Pittsburgh’s North Side in the spring of 2009.

A short time later, the first of many obstacles in Billy’s quest to pursue a future in robotics occurred. He

Billy at iRobot’s on-site museum

learned that Mount Gallitzin Academy was permanently closing. His beloved, supportive school and his competitive robotics team were now defunct. After investigating both public and private schools in the region, the closest Billy found to one with a robotics program was Sewickley Academy which had a small group of Senior School students competing on an independent team that used the school’s name but was not sponsored by the Academy. Mr. Bruce Houghtaling, Head of Senior School at the time, offered to connect Billy with the Evanko family which had two sons on the team and had offered their garage as the team’s meeting place. This essential opportunity was the deciding factor in leading Billy to become a Panther starting in Grade 8. His younger brother, Bradley, chose to follow Sister Christy to St. James Catholic School in Sewickley where she became principal.

away, meaning an end to the unofficial robotics team. He was devastated.

Many of Billy’s former teammates from Mount Gallitzin had also enrolled at St. James Catholic School and were eager to maintain the momentum they had developed the prior year. Unfortunately, the small school did not have classroom or storage space available with the influx of students. However, Sister Christy entrusted all of the equipment to the Sullivans who allowed a hastily created independent team, including both Sullivan boys, to meet in their basement. The group earned a third place finish out of 42 teams in that year’s FLL Pittsburgh Regional Competition.

Billy turned to Sister Christy, who acknowledged that St. James would still be unable to sponsor a team in the 2010-11 school year, and gave Billy her blessing for the SA team to use the robots, laptops, and table originally acquired for Mount Gallitzin.

In the fall of 2010, SA’s Middle School FLL robotics team, the Robopanthers, was ready to compete. However, Billy was in Grade 9 and had moved up to the Senior School. He therefore served as a coach, and the team included Bradley Sullivan ’15 who had transferred to SA that fall as an eighth grader. The team also had the adult support of Billy and Bradley’s mother, Jennifer, along with Dr. Sour as faculty sponsor.

With the start of the 2009-10 academic year, Billy Sullivan excitedly began his first days of school on Academy Avenue, only to learn that the Evanko family would be moving

Billy still hoped to develop an FLL team at SA and approached the Head of Middle School at-the-time, Dr. Susan (Ratcliffe ’55) Sour. He explained his vision for the Academy to have a robotics team that would last long after he had graduated to be enjoyed by others who shared his passion for science, technology, and robotics.

A requirement for any club or activity at Sewickley Academy is the involvement of a teacher, and try as he might, Billy could not line up available faculty at that point in time. Eventually, Dr. Sour committed to sponsoring an FLL robotics team for the SA Middle School.

With only a few months together as a team, the inaugural Robopanthers participated in a competition at Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) in December 2010 along with 77 other teams. They finished an impressive 6th place in the robot challenges and 11th overall – more than enough to prompt notice from the SA community. By the Spring 2011 May Madness competition, the Robopanthers had acquired Mr. James Boone and Mr. Jon Riddle as faculty coaches and finished third for their programming skills and 7th in the robot challenges.

The next hurdle in Billy’s race to leave a robotics legacy at SA was budget. With only $600 allotted to this new team at Sewickley Academy, there was no way to purchase the necessary equipment to get started.

By the fall of 2012, the Middle School RoboPanthers earned a spot at the Grand Championship. The team’s rapid rise to recognition included the opportunity to host the FLL’s newly created scrimmage as well as the annual regional competition in December 2012. “It was kind of crazy to see nothing and then all of a sudden the school is hosting 200plus – there were probably 20 teams there,” said Billy. SA has continued to host FIRST® events annually since 2012 and has been hosting the Grand Championship each year since 2018, except when it was virtual in 2020 due to the pandemic.

If it wasn’t one thing, it was another

Yes, that’s me, and yes, I work for a robot vacuum company, so it all came full circle.”

But what about a team in the Senior School?

As Billy headed into his sophomore year, he was still seeking the opportunity to compete with a team of his peers at the Senior School level. The prior year, he had received details from FIRST® on creating a team. Once again, a faculty sponsor was required, and he would need the approval of SA’s Head of School. While things did not work out in Grade 9, by Grade 10 Billy had arranged, with the support of Mr. Houghtaling, to have Patricia DePra, the Regional Director for Western PA FIRST® robotics, speak during a Senior School announcements session to gauge interest in starting a team in the fall of 2011. The interest was definitely there, but the funding and the space were not.

Senior School-level teams compete in either FIRST® Robotic Competitions (FRC) or FIRST® Tech Challenges (FTC), not Lego® competitions, and they must build a functioning robot – an endeavor significantly more costly than the tabletop requirements of the Lego® teams. In fact, FRC competitions occur in arenas approximately 25’ x 54’ with robots weighing up to 150 pounds and extendable up to 7’ tall. FIRST® regularly allowed rookie teams to purchase an FRC robot kit at a deep discount, but since the team Billy had originally hoped to join with the Evankos had competed under the Sewickley Academy name, a new SA team would not be considered a “rookie.”

Space to work on and practice with such a large robot provided another conundrum for Billy and his potential Senior School teammates.

The solution was found when Billy and his mother contacted a robotics professor at Robert Morris University (RMU), Dr. Arif Sirinterlikci, who agreed to partner with SA so the team could utilize the university’s engineering lab after school. A student of Dr. Sirinterlikci, Charles Mura III ’09, who had been a member of the early independent SA team with the Evankos, eagerly stepped up to serve as a mentor.

Ms. DePra helped to secure a grant for Sewickley Academy and the Senior School team, the Whoa!Bots, named by faculty sponsor Mr. Ben Spicer, was on their way to building a robot and competing in the Pittsburgh Regional FRC event in March 2012.

“What really took it to where it is today,” Billy recalled, “was the creating of the robotics program at Gallitzin. It is what really allowed me to understand what it means to be on a robotics team, because I was never on a robotics team before, and what it is like to lead a robotics team and how you create a robotics team. Yes, I experienced hurdles, but I would say that after the first time I’d done it, what’s three more times?”

By the Spring of 2012, Sewickley Academy had sustainable robotics teams in both the Middle and Senior schools. Later that year, the Senior School Whoa!Bots chose to compete in FIRST® Tech Challenge (FTC) instead of FRC, which they continue to do today. FTC requires smaller robots which meant traveling to RMU would not be necessary, and instead, an 1,100 square foot lab space dedicated to robotics was established in the Oliver Science Building. In

January 2023, SA unveiled two newly renovated robotics labs – one dedicated to tech challenge robots and the other to Lego® robot design, development, and competition (see article on page 8).

Where is Billy Sullivan today?

After graduating from Sewickley Academy in 2014, Billy matriculated at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Worcester, Massachusetts, for the university’s first-of-its-kind bachelor’s degree in robotics engineering. Within four years he had graduated with distinction from WPI with two full bachelor’s degrees in Robotics Engineering (RBE) and Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). “I now know why a lot of schools don’t have robotics as a sole degree, and it’s just because it’s so broad,” Billy said. “You basically took intro classes to robotics, CS, mechanical engineering, and dynamics, which is like an advanced physics class. The degree is meant to groom people to be managers and directors so they don’t need to know all of the nitty gritty, they just need a general understanding. That’s why I’m glad I did electrical engineering as well. But, if I had to do it again, I would do CS and robotics engineering just because there are not enough software engineers, and they’ve been saying that for 20 years in this industry.”

I was working on a project for New Balance during my senior year on a robot for their assembly line. Their skilled workers were retiring, and sewing was a dying art, so they were trying to use robots as a replacement.”

The inaugural Middle School FLL robotics team: Connor Ward ’15, Bradley Sullivan ’15, Rahul Pokharna ’15, Billy Sullivan ’14, Sheraj Singh ’17, and Raj Thimmiah ’17 with Dr. Jennifer Unis Suillvan, coach

Billy is currently a Senior Software Automation Engineer at iRobot bringing his childhood love of vacuums and his passion for robotics full circle. “I was working on a project for New Balance during my senior year on a robot for their assembly line. Their skilled workers were retiring, and sewing was a dying art, so they were trying to use robots as a replacement. One of my team members, Sarah, already had a job at iRobot lined up and had developed some strong connections there. She recognized the effort I was putting into finding solutions and alternatives for New Balance and recommended me for a position at iRobot.”

Since starting with the company in July 2018 as an associate engineer, Billy has earned three promotions. “I don’t really touch physical robots anymore,” he explained. “I work on simulations, but the concepts are the same. My job is kind of cool. Every day developers introduce new code changes, and with each new fix or feature they may undo or break something else in the code. It happens all the time. So it’s my job to run thousands of simulations every night of model houses and model robots. The code that would typically run on real robots runs on these models. You can kind of think about it as a robot on a treadmill. It’s still getting the same sensor feedback as it would normally, but it’s all virtual. The robot actually does drive around in a virtual house and when it bumps into things it sends that data back to the code, and we do that to verify and spot check all of the changes that have been done. Every time a developer creates changes, we run the set of tests that my team works on.”

Billy credits Sewickley Academy for much of his preparation for college and his career. “I would say that my college was easier than my SA experience. I knew how to study and how to ask for help. How to seek out resources and manage my time…. Mrs. Levine was great in teaching

me how to interact with professors, navigate college and ask for help.” He also noted appreciation for Mr. Blaser who offered him a summer job reimaging computers after graduation. “Lots of teachers at SA impacted my education and experience. There was Mrs. McCloskey, Mr. Spicer, Ms. Waz [Wazenegger], Dr. Cassie, Dr. Sour, Mr. Michaels, all of the math and science teachers.”

To show his appreciation, Billy returned to SA in April for the Academy’s first Career Week, during which he presented to a packed meeting room of Senior School students about blazing their own paths. He showed them examples of his work at iRobot, answered their questions, and told them about his 2014 senior project when he built a drone with image recognition software to track missing people. For students interested in following in his footsteps, he encouraged them to determine which area of robotics most interests them – computer science, mechanical design, etc. –and focus on finding a college that will support them in growing and developing their passions.

He also had the opportunity to tour the Academy’s new robotics facilities during his visit. Upon walking into the Senior School robotics room, he reflected on the space where he once worked at SA, “We had an old machine shop,” he said. “To walk in here and have everything organized and all of the tools easily accessible – the fact that there’s actually a field to practice with the robots – it’s amazing.” He was also envious of the Middle School Lego® robotics lab with facilities that he noted are so much nicer than the plywood tables they’ll use at competitions.

Having Billy visit on-campus labs that grew from his initial desire to launch a robotics program at SA was incomparable. Never underestimate the passion of a middle-school-aged student. He just might change the world for generations to come.

FLAT PANTHER Goes On Spring Break

Our Flat Panther certainly made his rounds during Spring Break 2023. This handsome, flat cat journeyed from east to west in the US and made an appearance in at least six other countries. Enjoy these snapshots from his travels and don’t forget to take him with you on your upcoming trips.

Share your Flat Panther photos with camiller@sewickley.org – be sure to include the location and identify anyone in the photo. Or post them on Facebook @SewickleyAcademy or Instagram @sewickleyacademy. Use hashtags #WheresFlatPanther, #FlatPanther, #SAPanthers

1. Gazing at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California! with Camryn Miller, Marketing & Branding Specialist

2. Spring training in Myrtle Beach, SC! with Liam ’31, Savannah ’34, and Andrew ’31 (far right) Petruska and Nashton Donnelly ’34 (2nd from right)

3. So much to see at the Grand Canyon! with Hayden Hodinko ’30

4. Just chillin’ in Aspen, Colorado with the Donnelly family (Nashton ’34 and Nolan ’25)

5. G’day from Australia! with Neel Bunnell ’34

6. Up high in Dubai! with Riaa Morena ’31

7. Olá from Lisbon, Portugal! with Julia Moya ’34

8. Sand between my toes in Montego Bay, Jamaica! with Quincy Sirko ’25

9. Just roamin’ around Rome, Italy! with Wendy Berns, Admissions Assistant

10. Ready to ride at Universal Studios, Florida! with Myron ’31 and Madison ’29 Milkovich

COUNCIL CORNER COUNCIL CORNER

The Alumni Council 20222023 has reorganized after several years of hiatus to be a resource and engagement force that connects with classmates and friends to bring news of the school, update alumni contact information, and support events sponsored by the Alumni and Advancement Offices.

Dr. Ashley (Brown ’00) Birtwell, Head of School, has attended all meetings to date to share updates and initiatives of the school, and answer questions from Council members. Derek Chimner ’04, Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, has also been a guest speaker at a council meeting.

The Alumni Council is excited to take part in the planning of the newly updated Alumni Weekend, formerly Reunion Weekend. Alumni, family,

and friends are all invited to help us celebrate on October 6 and 7, 2023. All members of the first Senior School (1966 - 1968) are specially invited to gather as the 1968s celebrate their 55th anniversary with classmates and friends from those pioneering days. Other class parties on Friday will include five-year recognitions for the Class of 2013 (10th) through the Class of 1973 (50th). Saturday will include family-friendly activities such as face painting, a balloon artist, sporting events, and more. Finish out the day with a gala reception at Allegheny Country Club. The Council encourages all alumni to make plans now to return to SA on this fun-filled weekend with family and friends.

Please note that the Class of 2018 will be celebrated for their 5th reunion at the Alumni Holiday Party on December 23 at the Edgeworth Club.

Council members include:

Virginia (Nimick ’00) Elliott President

Clayton Morris ’11 Vice-president

Logan Cole ’16

Co-secretary

Ciara Donohue ’17

Co-secretary

Ian Carroll ’11

Meredith Doyle ’12

Jason Fincke ’93

Willie Paul ’16

Henry Shenk ’74

Todd Thompson ’85

Anna Zappala ’07

MISSION MOMENT: COMMUNITY

SERVICE LEARNING FOR SA STUDENTS

After a multi-year pause in travel programs during the pandemic, the Sewickley Academy administration was excited to once again provide students with the opportunity to participate in school-sponsored service learning trips that took place in February and March.

PUERTO RICO

Eleven students traveled with faculty, Mr. John Basinger and Señora Michelle Bonham, to Puerto Rico February 17 - 21 where they stayed in the capital city, San Juan. As the students volunteered in a community garden as planters, weeders, and harvesters, they were inspired by the closeness of the community. They also performed trail maintenance at a Taino heritage site that includes sacred caves with pictographs that the students were able to study. Additionally, the group from SA learned about and assisted with the process of planting and harvesting at a coffee farm, particularly enjoying the opportunity to sample the various coffees produced there. The

You get to see your students outside of the classroom. Since they are all in a new environment, they rely on each other and you and that builds some amazing bonds.”

John Basinger, Math Department Chair and chaperone on the trip to Puerto Rico

students experienced the culture through a dance class and a visit to the COPI Cultural Center, and broadened their culinary knowledge at a cooking class as well as a jam and jelly workshop at a chocolate farm. The trip included walking tours of the city, a cavern hike, and visits to the historic Castillo San Felipe del Morro fort, La Coca waterfall, and the

Tower in the El

Yokahú

Forest. The group returned with tremendous knowledge about the region, its history, and culture.

In addition to these trips, a group of students is scheduled for a 9-day trip to Poland in partnership with Classrooms Without Borders. The annual Swiss Semester for Grade 10 students will also be available for up to five participants in September through December.

Observation

Yunque National

Bottom left: Students and chaperones visiting Paseo Roberto Clemente.

Upper right: Planting and transplanting fruits and vegetables at Tenedor Social, an organization that teaches about planting and food security.

BELIZE

Dr. Ron Kinser and Ms. Jamie Nestor led ten students on a trip to western Belize during Spring Break in collaboration with Global Public Service Academies (GPSA). Over the course of this week-long service trip, students performed basic health assessments, including blood pressure, blood sugar, pulse, and body mass index, for rural populations in a number of healthcare settings. Many of the students acquired these skills while taking World Health, an elective offered biennially through the Global Studies Department. In addition, students created and

delivered health-related lessons and activities for two local elementary schools and a specialneeds camp for kids. In their free time, students visited the Xunantunich Mayan Ruins, hiked in the jungles of El Progreso, visited the AJAW chocolate factory (grinding the cacao by hand with a stone), participated in a pottery workshop at the Women’s Co-op, and explored sustainable coffee production at

“This was a transformational trip for our freshman daughter. She was a little nervous about the trip initially, but when she returned she was a cup overflowing with stories, experiences, and a new perspective on life.”

Matthew Christ, father of Annabelle Christ ’26, who went to Belize

the Oxmul Farm. Students were in homestays throughout the trip, which made it easy to share in the lived experience with the villagers of San Antonio. Being immersed in a cross-cultural experience allowed students to learn about new foods that included fruits, vegetables, herbs, and traditional regional dishes, as well as to help prepare meals, play with kids, practice Spanish, and so much more. The trip to Belize left a lasting impression on all travelers, showing the fundamental importance of relationships, collaboration, and service to others.

Right from the beginning, we were trusted to work in a clinical setting, given the space to make mistakes, and were supported every step of the way. In only a week, we made so many lasting friendships with the children in our neighborhood and host families and became so much closer with one another.”

Aekam Kaur ’24

Teaching at the United Pentecostal School about the importance of nutritious foods and exercise.

Enjoying fresh coconut water at Oxmul Coffee farm.

Grinding cacao using the traditional Mayan technique.

CIVIL RIGHTS

From March 23-26, nine students traveled with Ms. Jessica Peluso and Mr. Rodney Slappy to Alabama and Georgia on a Civil Rights tour. Leaders of SA’s Black Student Union generated the idea, created the itinerary, and hosted multiple fundraisers and community events to support the trip. Students immersed themselves in historical context and had the opportunity to experience a variety of informative and interactive museum displays, hear a firsthand account from someone who was a child during the march from Selma to Montgomery, and reflect in conversation about the connection between the past to the present and the work that is still being done today. Their travels took them to the cities of Birmingham, Selma, and Montgomery in Alabama, as well as

in the Dead Sea

ISRAEL

Atlanta, Georgia, during which they toured several museums including the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, the Voting Rights Museum, the Rosa Parks Museum, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Legacy Museum, and the National Museum of Civil and Human Rights. They were also able to visit significant landmarks such as Kelly Ingram Park, the 16th Street Baptist Church, the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the Brown Street AME Church, the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, and Smith Plantation. Additionally, the students enjoyed southern cuisine and toured the campuses of two historically black colleges or universities (HBCU), Clark Atlanta University and Morehouse College.

From March 18-30, Ms. Kate Lukaszewicz led five Sewickley Academy students and five students from other local schools on a service trip to the Children’s Village in Karmiel, Israel, organized by Classrooms Without Borders. The Children’s Village is a gated community composed of foster families, where parents may care for as many as ten or twelve children who cannot be with their biological parents. Our students quickly built meaningful relationships with the Children’s Village families, bonding despite language barriers. For the final days of the trip, the group visited the ANU Museum of the Jewish People, learning about Jewish customs and the Jewish diaspora. After a tour of ancient Jaffa, they headed to the Negev Desert, where

The Israel Study Seminar was one of the best experiences of my life so far. It truly captured what it means to be a global citizen in regard to taking action, learning about the world around you, and appreciating everyone who is part of the global family.”

they learned of Bedouin customs before a night of stargazing and sleeping beneath a Bedouin tent. Other activities included a morning hike in the desert, floating in the Dead Sea, and riding a caravan of camels. The trip concluded in Jerusalem, wading through the frigid water of the ancient City of David and visiting the Western Wall at the base of Temple Mount.

Floating

Emma Di Domenico ’26

It was an experience I will carry with me for the rest of my life”

Olivia Jackson ’23

(below right of sign)

MISSION MOMENT:

EDUCATIONAL VIGOR

SEWICKLEY ACADEMY SPEAKER SERIES ’22-’23

With a reputation for excellence and educating tomorrow’s leaders, it is important for Sewickley Academy to create opportunities to introduce the members of our community to others who are leaders in their respective fields. As such, an exciting line-up of external speakers was shared in January and February 2023.

PITTSBURGH CLO GALLERY OF HEROES

After a successful discussion in April 2022 on the topic “Internal and External National Security Challenges,” SA once again invited speakers from the U.S. Army War College’s Eisenhower Series College Program to our campus. On January 17, 2023, four students of the War College, including, from the U.S. Army, Lieutenant Colonels Marion Thomas (Artillery) and Tamisha Norris (Information Operations), Lieutenant Colonel Chris Power of the U.S. Army National Guard (Military Police), and Colonel Steinar Dahl of the Norwegian Army (Infantry), met with faculty, staff, and members of our community to discuss such relevant topics

as the Russia/Ukraine conflict, national security risks of foreign investment and ownership in U.S. agricultural land, global security risks of climate change and arctic resources, and security and competition in an information environment. Each speaker provided a short presentation on their topic of expertise before opening the discussion to the audience.

The hallmark of the Eisenhower Series is the candid exchange between the experienced military officers and the members of the audience. Their goal is to have reasoned and thoughtful discussions with the society they serve and protect.

A cast from Pittsburgh’s CLO performed “Hero: The Boy from Troy” in Rea Auditorium on February 3, to the immense enjoyment and education of our students and community. Based on the book by Nambi E. Kelly, and music and lyrics by Joe Plummer, the story shares the life of John Lewis who became a civil rights activist and served in Congress as a representative from Georgia. As a boy from Troy, Alabama, Lewis struggles to belong and learns about the racism and fear Black Americans endured, particularly in the segregated South. He was impacted directly when, even as a straight-A student, he was repeatedly denied admission to Troy State University to pursue his dream of becoming a preacher. Through theatrical encounters with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks, Lewis discovers his path in which he can do something better with his anger and help others to live together.

After the production, the actors took time to answer several student questions that varied from John Lewis’s life to music and props in the show to the challenges the actors encountered in mastering their roles.

Funded by the Pittsburgh Penguins Foundation, Massey Charitable Trust, and other organizations, Pittsburgh CLO’s Gallery of Heroes program travels to area schools to educate and enlighten students about the lives and accomplishments of significant historical figures through 50-minute, mini-musicals.

THE U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE EISENHOWER INSTITUTE SPEAKERS

JEFF SELINGO

Knowing that Mr. Selingo’s subject matter would be valuable to so many students and parents who are in the midst of, or preparing to start, their college search, Sewickley Academy opened this February 28 event to the public, and more than 300 guests registered. Mr. Selingo provided a summary of his best-selling book, Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside

College Admissions, then answered questions moderated by Head of Senior School Jamie Nestor followed by a Q&A opened to the audience. He explained the factors that impact a college admissions office’s decision-making process, the current trends that have decreased college acceptance rates over the past 30 years, and encouraged students to “widen their lens” when choosing to which college(s) they want to apply.

SAM MIHARA

ROSETTA LEE

A professional diversity speaker and trainer, Ms. Lee spoke with our community in Gregg Theater the evening of February 7, regarding the topic “Parenting with Identity in Mind.” She focused on the importance of inclusive communities in our children’s success, how to coach children to be positive influences on others’ identities, and age-appropriate ways to instill positive self-identity.

Ms. Lee spent two days at SA during which she met with Senior School students to discuss best practices and strategies for “Navigating Microaggressions,” as well as with our faculty and staff on the topic of “Beyond the Why and Into the How: Practical Steps Toward Inclusive Classrooms.” She also met in small group settings with members of our administrative leadership team and Senior School student leadership discussing strategies to foster greater unity within our community.

As Mr. Mihara stated at the beginning of his presentation, “people remember history when you make it personal.” On February 22, he spoke of the prejudice, hysteria, and greed that led to the imprisonment of more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942. Mr. Mihara (at age 9) and his family, like so many other Japanese-American families, were given one week’s notice before they were moved to one of ten prison camps in the United States. His family of four was taken from San Francisco, California, to Heart Mountain, Wyoming, where they resided for three years in a 20’x20’ barrack lacking utilities and insulation with winters reaching -20° F. Mr. Mihara explained that, as American citizens, they were stripped of their “liberty and justice for all.” He also told the audience of mostly Middle and Senior school students that he and several of his friends went on to seek higher education and successful careers as their way of combating the racism that continued after the Supreme Court closed the camps.

Mr. Mihara also met with students from the Senior and Middle schools separately. A key takeaway was the potential for actions like Executive Order 9066 to be repeated as groups are targeted for their race, ethnicity, religion, and other factors. Mr. Mihara’s book, Blindsided – The Life and Times of Sam Mihara, can be purchased via his website at www.sammihara.com

People remember history when you make it personal.”

Sam

Mihara

Middle Schoolers Nicholas Zanic, Eli Stephan, and Arthur Mendonca with Mr. Mihara

Do you enjoy reading CLASS NOTES?

So do we, but we need your news to share!

It’s your turn to tell us how proud you are of your family, report on the interesting work you do, put in a plug for community service, or anything else going on in your life these days.

Submit a Class Note for the next issue of Sewickley Speaking by visiting the Alumni section of our website, www.sewickley.org. If you have a digital photo to share, please send it to alumni@sewickley.org with a note identifying the people in the photo.

1950s

1955

Susan Ratcliffe Sour made a presentation to the Query Club in Sewickley called Ragtime, Blues, and Ballads: The Music of the 1920s. It included standards from the American Songbook featuring favorites by Scott Joplin, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Irving Berlin for the audience to sing along.

1958

John Culbertson wrote an opinion piece in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on March 26 in response to an article in the newspaper heralding the 161 children who were guinea pigs for testing the efficacy of the Salk polio vaccine in 1952-53. Cliff Nichols, Headmaster at SA, and Dr. Robert Nix, local pediatrician, encouraged Academy parents in a meeting at the school to allow their children to take three vaccination shots for this pilot study. The results, as we know, were life-saving. John wrote: “in late August, 1953, my brother

Dick, the son of a family friend, and I were picked up at summer camp by my father. I was ten. The trip home took two days, so we stopped for the night in an upstate NY town. Unrealized by us, a polio epidemic had broken out, and we went to dinner, a movie, and our motel. The family friend was not in the Salk study. When we got home, my brother had extensive flu symptoms for two weeks. Our mother called Dr. Salk, and he wanted to test my brother. I went along to Oakland, where they tested my brother and found that he’d had polio, but had fought it off because he’d had two of the three shots. The family story is that Dr. Salk said it was one of the first actual patient proofs that the vaccine worked.” Classmates and families at SA were a major part of this clinical breakthrough.

1970 Lois (Carson ’70) Griffin, her husband, Graeme, and mother, Irene Carson, with Jan Gaugler ’70

1970s

1970

Lois Carson Griffin shared news of a mini Sewickley Academy class of ’70 reunion in Leesburg, Florida: “It was the first time in 53 years that my mom and Jan Gaugler have seen each other – not since the day we graduated in June 1970. For my husband and me, it had been 8 years. Jan lived with her grandparents across the street from us and we carpooled together. At lunch at SkiBeach restaurant, Jan brought her SA yearbook. We had fun reminiscing! My husband and I both retired in

2019. We’ve been snowbirds the last 4 winters (although lockdown in 2020 sent us back to Michigan early). My mom (Irene Carson) now lives with us. We hope to put her house in Beaver Falls up for sale this summer.”

1973

Leslie Bates Johnson reports from Xenia, Ohio: “I retired in March from my university admin position at Antioch and haven’t looked back. After using my last two months to train my replacement, I was able to leave with a clear conscience knowing the chancellor and the university are in good hands. After taking it easy the first week, I began looking for volunteer opportunities with a non-profit and found something that’s perfect for me – tutoring English as a second language to Ukrainians aged 14-35. My first (and only) student so far is 32 and lives in Kyiv Oblast, so we deal with a 7-hour time difference

and connect by Zoom once a week for an hour (more if we want to). It’s challenging, but we get on well, and I’m sure I can help her improve, just as I’m sure I’ll learn things from her, too. There are needs analyses, lesson plans and evaluations, so it will keep me about as busy as I want to be. Besides spending time with my 100-year-old mother who lives nearby, Doug and I are looking forward to lots of travel this year.”

1976

Mike Reed and his wife Bobbie, Pittsburgh residents, are urgently seeking a kidney donation for their son George Alexander “Alex” Reed, now age 33. His kidney failed two weeks after his graduation from Penn State, and thanks to a generous donor, he received a new kidney that gave him seven more years of life. Now, he is in desperate need of another kidney. He is back on home hemodialysis in order to stay alive. If you or anyone you know might be willing to consider this life-saving process, please contact Kidney Solutions at 830-285-2140 for more information.

1979 Debra Sirinek ’79 (left), Angela (Carrera ’79) Cooper, and Bob Kaveny ’79 enjoyed a vacation on Edisto Island, South Carolina.

1976 Alex Reed, son of Mike ’76 and Bobbie Reed, needs a kidney donor to stay alive.

1983 Mark, Eleanor, Liza (Standish ’83), and Bertie Sackson visited London in December.

1980s

1980

Peter “Pete” Sour came back to Sewickley recently to play the piano for Susan (Ratcliffe ’55) Sour’s program on the Music of the 1920s (see 1955). Pete has played for more than 60 musicals since leaving SA where he was active in Mario Melodia’s many productions. Pete currently serves as Adjunct Professor/Director of Music at Marietta College and as Director of

Music at First Presbyterian Church in Marietta, Ohio. He also has been musical director of numerous shows for the Actor’s Guild of Parkersburg and the MidOhio Valley Players Theater.

1983

Elizabeth “Liza” (Standish) Sackson shared an update: “Our family has grown in the past year—our son, Nevin, and his wife, Emily, welcomed a baby girl, Abigail Johanna (Johanna was my mother’s given name), and son, Stewart, and his wife, Audrey, welcomed Andrew (named for my maternal grandfather) Jeremiah in December. They both are sweet babies and being a grandmother is a new adventure.

“Currently, I am serving as President of the National Society of Colonial Dames of America for the state of Virginia, which I am really enjoying. It is a lot of work, but has connected me to my passion for decorative arts and historic preservation, and has afforded me the opportunity to connect with some wonderful like-minded women. Our daughter, Eleanor, is planning to attend Porter’s (formerly Miss Porter’s School) in Farmington, Connecticut,

next fall. Our son, Bertie, is now 20 and is a sophomore at the College of Charleston, studying Arts Management, which he really enjoys.”

1990s

1991

Elizabeth “Betsy” (Wiegand) Wentz celebrated the release of her new book, Design Happy: Colorful Homes for the Modern Family, at a launch party on Wednesday, March 30 at her Studio B in the Sewickley Village. Betsy’s book includes photos of her home design projects, color studies, and practical advice. Pick up a copy on Amazon or from her website, betsywentz.com

1999

Clay Duetsch accepted a new opportunity working with West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin.

2000s

2006

Somya Kaushik Bhan reports, “I live in Portland, Oregon, where I’m the General Counsel for Mineral, Inc., the largest HR SaaS company in America. I’m married to Shivam Bhan, and we have a son named Sayan Kaushik Bhan – he’s two years old. I’m the president and founder of the South Asian Bar Association in Oregon and have recently authored my first children’s book called You,

1991 Elizabeth “Betsy” (Wiegand ’91) Wentz and her new book.

2006 Somya (Kaushik ’06) and husband Shivam Bhan, and their son, (2) Sayan Kaushik Bhan, age two. (3) Children’s book by Somya (Kaushik ’06) Bhan.

Yes You! It can be found on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powell’s and here: https://store.bookbaby.com/book/ you-yes-you or www.thevedaclub. com (my business website). And I’m a professor of law at The Lewis and Clark Law School!”

2008

On October 30, 2022, Bradleigh Sherry married Dewar Peterkin in an intimate ceremony at Phipps Conservatory, a favorite Pittsburgh location of both bride and groom. The reception was held at Azul Bar y Cantina, owned by the groom’s family and where the couple met in 2011.

2010s

2014

Mackenzie Pryor married Scott Hastings on July 23, 2022, at St. Stanislaus Kostka R.C. Church in Pittsburgh’s Strip District, followed by a reception at the Carnegie Museum of Art & Natural History. They met in graduate school at Texas A&M and now live in Chicago where Mackenzie teaches high school biology at Wolcott College Prep and Scott is an airport planner. Many Sewickley guests attended; brother Justin ’17 was a groomsman and Rupali Goel ’14 was a bridesmaid.

Sarah Duplaga Ware shared an update: “I graduated from Pitt in 2019. I also married Deano Ware, Jr. in St. Anthony’s Chapel in Pittsburgh in September 2019. Then I moved to Dallas to start graduate school. Right now, I’m a third-year PhD student in the Cell and Molecular Biology program at the University of Texas Southwestern. I have an American Heart Association Predoctoral Fellowship and an internal trainee award to study Duchenne muscular dystrophy-associated heart failure. I’ve studied the heart all throughout undergrad and grad school, thanks to Mr. Gallagher at SA and shadowing Dr. Magovern for my senior project.”

2020s

2021

Ellie Zack is having a great season as a major force on the Swarthmore College lacrosse team. Early in the season, she ranked second on the team in points with 14 goals and three assists, second in caused turnovers with six, and first in shooting percentage at .667%, draw controls (18) and ground balls (15). Her coach reported, “Ellie has the speed, agility and quickness to catch defenders off guard. She has

been a consistent scorer and a solid defender.” Ellie helped lead SA to the state playoffs in her 2021 senior season as the Panthers, coached by Chelsea Cameron, defeated several larger schools to reach the PIAA semifinals for the first time in school history, finishing with a 17-3 record.

2022

Brooke Kries is enjoying all aspects of her freshman year at Dartmouth University. She is on a pre-law track studying history/environmental studies. She is involved with the dance team, yearbook staff, newspaper, class council, and Alumni Relations Office to name a few of her extracurriculars.

2022 Brooke Kries ’22 at Dartmouth University

2008 Bradleigh Sherry ’08 and Dewar Peterkin

2014 Mackenzie Pryor ’14 and Scott Hastings

2014 Kennedy Stine ’14, Olivia Ragoowansi ’14, Rupali Goel ’14 (bridesmaid), Sophia Werner ’14, and Catherine Weis ’14 at Mackenzie Pryor’s wedding.

Margot Childs Cheel ’60

Visual Artist

Margot is the very embodiment of a woman who has repeatedly reinvented herself. Early in her career she worked in business, followed by a production job for WGBH-TV public television, and then became a teacher of creative arts in the Boston area. At the age of 50, she followed her dream of becoming a pilot, and, using the camera that was always at her side, she began taking aerial photos from the cockpit window. She saw Cape Cod with the eyes of an artist, and soon her aerial photography was recognized in art galleries in New England, Florida, and Canada.

She gathered her photos and published a book called Sea and Sand from the Sky, which has been very successful, but she was not finished. Margot noticed that when showing her book to children, they would often find shapes hidden in her coastal photos. This observation encouraged her to write a children’s book entitled, What Do You See? It challenges children to use their imagination to see shapes from a different perspective and to make a different kind of connection with nature.

Margot is a past president of the New England Chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers and the former Governor of New England for the Ninety-Nines International Women Pilots Organization, founded in 1929 by Amelia Earhart. She leads local workshops on creative expression and coordinates events for women pilots. She has been a frequent participant in the Air Race Classic, a four-day event covering 2,500 miles or more within the U.S.

Her classmate and friend Sally (Flower ’60) Getty says, “These, of course, are just statistics of achievement. What I find most impressive about Margot is that she is the embodiment of David Brooks’ book, The Second Mountain more than fulfilled all the necessary expectations of the first mountain but has gone on to reinvent herself successfully over and over. Each decade brings her closer to a richer and more exuberant expression of her infinite capabilities as a woman. I feel that her life (still active at age 77), accomplishments, and spirit are an inspiration to all.”

SA appreciates the alumni who represented their fields at the first on-campus Career Week April 17 - 21:

Logan Cole ’16

Clayton Morris ’11

Carrington Motley, PhD ’12

Willy Paul ’16

Nicholas Smyth ’01

Billy Sullivan ’14

Appreciation is also extended to John “Buzz” Moyer ’82 for presenting to the Senior School on March 1, and sharing details of his career and experience as a highly regarded Steadicam operator in films and television such as A Man

Carrington Motley, PhD ’12 with Head of Middle School Shannon Mulholland during Career Week

IN MEMORIAM

Through March 31, 2023

ALUMNI

JANE (GUERNSEY ’76) BIRMINGHAM

Jane Birmingham “chose a degree in economics over a career in ballet and was an exquisite writer as well as dancer,” wrote her husband, Charles. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1980 with a bachelor’s degree in economics, and joined Penn’s staff as a development officer, where she conducted fundraising during the 1980s. After leaving Penn, she joined Ocean Institute in Dana Point, California, where she raised more than $20 million over two decades to introduce Title I students to STEM and the environment.

Jane died December 5, 2022, and is survived by her husband, Charles, and her sisters, Anne (Guernsey ’74) Barnes and Susan Guernsey.

JOHN E. ERSKINE ’57

John E. Erskine, 81, of Emporium, Pennsylvania, passed away at his residence on March 23, 2023. He was born February 2, 1942, in St. Marys, a son of the late Bernard and Edith Ferguson Erskine. John came to Sewickley Academy in Grade 6, then attended Avon Old Farms School in Connecticut, Staunton Military Academy in Virginia, and graduated from Quaker Valley High School.

Surviving are two sons, John D. and Harry; his daughter, Shawnarae Callahan (Tom), also all of Emporium; seven grandchildren, eight greatgrandchildren; and his brother, Peter ’62, of Prescott, Arizona.

DRAYTON HEARD III ’56

Drayton Heard III died on March 2, 2023, in Raleigh, North Carolina. He was 82. Born on January 9, 1941, in New Haven, Connecticut, to Helen Owsley and Drayton Heard, he spent his youth in Sewickley, and summers in Watch Hill, Rhode Island. He attended Sewickley Academy, Philips Academy Andover, and the University of North Carolina. Married in 1968 to the late Janet Mason Heard, they made their

home in West Hartford, Connecticut, and raised their two daughters.

Drayton is survived by his companion, Nancy Westerveld, of Lexington, Kentucky; brother, John Owsley “Jay” Heard ’60, of New York City; sister and her husband, Helen (Heard ’68) Heatherington and Edwin Sherin Hetherington ’67, of New York City; daughters and sons in-law, Nancy Heard Krahmer and Charles Hohmann Krahmer of Duxbury, Massachusetts, and Allison Owsley Dugan and Brent John Dugan of Raleigh, North Carolina; six grandchildren, and a nephew and niece.

ELIZABETH

(ZUG ’60) JOHNSTONE

Elizabeth Zug Johnstone, of Mason’s Island, Connecticut, passed away on July 9, 2022, following a short illness. Born and raised in Sewickley, she spent most of her adult life on Mason’s Island in the home built by her grandparents, Harry and Ethel Loutrel. Lisa had a joyful and fun-filled life thanks to her loving husband, Tod Johnstone, her brother, Terry Zug ’53, and her “three kids” (stepdaughter, Alexandra Wood, nephew, Geordie Zug, and niece, Eliza Cox), along with their children, and innumerable friends.

Lisa was predeceased by her parents, Gordon and Harriet Zug, and her brother, Christopher Zug ’56

ELIZABETH CLARKE (JOHNSON ’89) KINDELBERGER

Beth Kindelberger died peacefully on November 6, 2022, from complications of lung cancer. She was surrounded by her loving husband, Walter, and daughters, Genevieve (Genna) and Madelyn (Aly), as well as her siblings, Laurel and Christopher ’98 (Joe Sheehan), and parents, Tom and Cathie Johnson.

She was President of her class and Editor-in-Chief of the yearbook at Sewickley Academy. She graduated from Dartmouth in 1993 where she was President of her Delta Gamma sorority, and later earned a Master’s degree in

library science from the University of Pittsburgh.

Beth and her family are particularly thankful for the excellent and sensitive care provided by her doctors, nurses and all those at Shadyside Hospital and Hillman Cancer Center.

JOHN STEPHEN MIKITA ’74

J. Stephen Mikita ’74 passed away on March 1 at the age of 67. Born with spinal muscular atrophy, Steve could not move from the neck down and was not expected to live past the age of two. During his life he inspired and empowered others with his legal and advocacy work. He served as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Utah and was legal counsel for Utah’s two largest state agencies, providing protection and services for people with disabilities and vulnerable adults. Among his many awards, Steve received the first National Personal Achievement Award from the National Muscular Dystrophy Association and was inducted into Sewickley Academy’s Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame in 2009.

Steve was the first student in a wheelchair to attend Duke University where he graduated magna cum laude, with a double major in political science and religion. He received his law degree from Brigham Young University. During law school, he was law clerk for the United States Senate Judiciary Committee.

Steve is survived by his siblings, Carole (Neil York), Bill (Pattie), and Judith ’76 (Richard Krzyminski); his cousins Rev. Jeffrey S. Mikita ’90 (Christine) and Kathryn Mikita ’88; eight nieces and nephews; and seventeen great-nieces and nephews.

VANESSA (TAYLOR ’86) PATTERSON

Vanessa Taylor Patterson passed away unexpectedly on February 8, 2023. Vanessa was born April 3, 1968, in Orange, Texas. Early in life, her family moved to Pittsburgh and she became a life-long Pittsburgh

Steelers fan, claiming it was a mostly tortured experience. She moved west for college, attending the University of California, Irvine, where she first met her long-time partner, Pete.

She is survived by Pete; sons, Carter and Graydon; her brother, Alex Taylor, his wife, Natali, and their sons of Ben Avon, Pennsylvania.

WILLIAM BLAIR WARDROP ’90

William Blair Wardrop, Jr., 51, passed away suddenly on January 21, 2023. He was the beloved son of Bill ’55 and Susie (Coyle ’60) Wardrop, brother of Elizabeth (Wardrop ’91) Lawley, and uncle to her two children, Alex and Carolyn. Blair was married to Colleen Dobson Wardrop whose large family included her parents, Helen Dobson and Edward Dobson (deceased), and her six siblings, Michael, Deborah, Marc, Christina, Keith, and Gregory, as well as all of her siblings’ children. Blair’s family includes his aunts, Alison Wardrop and Nina (Wardrop ’62) Brooks, and Nina’s husband, Frank ’62

Blair attended Sewickley Academy, and graduated from Valley Forge Military Academy as a Battalion Commander, ranked sixth of 810 in his class. He then pursued his love of flying airplanes at Averett College. In his career, he achieved the rank of captain.

FACULTY AND STAFF

ALEXANDER W. “SPIKE” BERRY, JR.

Alexander W. Berry Jr., 78, of Ambridge, PA, died on February 20, 2023, at Good Samaritan Hospice, Beaver. Better known as Spike, he was born July 23, 1944, to the late Alexander and Hattie Berry. Spike retired with 28 years of service from the Ambridge Borough of Public Works. The retired life was not for him, so he went to work at Sewickley Academy, where his father had also worked, retiring with 11 years of service. Spike enjoyed football, golf, classic television, cutting grass, and all things Motown. He was known for many things, but mostly for being a good person. He leaves behind his wife

Rose Claudette Berry, five brothers and seven sisters, seven children, and thirteen grandchildren.

HOWARD HALLEY “HAL” SHOCKEY, JR.

Howard Halley Shockey, Jr., (Hal), formerly of Winchester, Virginia, and Sewickley, passed away on November 9, 2022, at his home in Portage, Michigan. He had been coping with the effects of ALS. Hal was born January 11, 1937, in Winchester, Virginia, the son of Howard Halley Shockey, Sr. and Mary Ragsdale Shockey, both of Winchester. He graduated from Handley High School in Winchester in 1956 and Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, where he received a BS in electrical engineering in 1960. In the spring of 1964 he met Sarah, his wife-to-be, on a week-long trout fishing trip with friends in the mountains of North Carolina. On November 11, 1964, Hal and Sarah were married in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Immediately after graduation, Hal worked for Duquesne Light Co. in Pittsburgh as an engineer designing transmission and distribution lines. He then spent two years as a writer of fiction. In 1970, he took on a part-time job with Sewickley Academy, teaching geometry to high school students, and discovered that he had found the right profession. He spent the next 30 years teaching mathematics from plane geometry to Advanced Placement calculus at the Academy. He was also an avid gardener and singer. When Hal passed away, he was in his favorite chair, looking out the window at the garden he so loved.

He is survived by his wife, Sarah Lynn Lemon Shockey, his daughter, Deborah Lynn Shockey Gillespie of Boise, Idaho, his son, Richard Matthew Shockey ’92, and his grandson, Thomas Calvin Manwell Shockey in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

KATHARINE E. SWEENEY

A Grade 1 teacher in her second year with the Academy, Kate passed away suddenly from illness on November 9, 2022. She was a graduate

ANNUAL Wenning Workshop

Twelve SA Senior School students were treated to the opportunity to observe glassblowing by experts, learn about the process, and then have the chance to do it themselves. Students were fascinated by the process and delighted to be able to choose their own colors for a personal paperweight that they shaped and fired as a souvenir. They also created mosaic suncatchers using multiple glass shavings on designs of their own which ranged from birds and flowers to abstract shapes and forms. These, too, were fired and turned into permanent souvenirs of this inspiring learning experience.

The Wenning Workshop was founded by David Darby ’85 and Sondra Hudak ’85 in memory of Bill Wenning ’85. Current SA students work once a year with an artist or an author learning “behind the scenes” aspects of their crafts, participating in workshop projects with them, and finding inspiration for their own lives through these special experiences.

Julia Glance ’24, daughter of Jonathan Glance ’93, shapes her personal paperweight

of Bloomsburg University with a bachelor’s degree in elementary and early childhood education and earned a master’s in literary education from New York University. In her short time at Sewickley Academy, Kate had already become a curriculum leader, a beloved teacher and colleague, and an integral part of the Lower School. An adventurous, cheerful, confident, and playful person dedicated to her students and generous with her time and talents, Kate is survived by her parents, Michael and Diane Sweeney, siblings, Colin (Salta) and Anna, and grandmother, Lucy Sweeney.

FAMILY OF ALUMNI

NEILL MCINTYRE BARKER, father of Alison (Barker ’82) Korman and Todd Barker ’87

GEORGE J. BERRY, MD and GLORIA BERRY, parents of George ’76 and Bill ’78 Berry

PATRICIA DALE SILVER CASELLA, mother of Catherine “Renny” (Casella ’90) Manning and William Casella

LAURIE BATCHELAR CULBERTSON, wife of John D. Culbertson ’58

REV. DR. ROBERT THOMAS DOWNS, father of Rebekah (Downs ’87) Mazariegos and Micah Downs ’89

SALLY DUNBAR, mother of Laura (Dunbar ’74) Doty

SUSAN GARBER ELSTE, mother of Scott ’87 and Drew ’89 Elste, sister of Larry Garber ’66, grandmother of Lydia ’18 and five other grandchildren

JULIA ALYSON EVERETT, wife of Fred Everett ’66

JANE HOWARD GUERNSEY, mother of Anne (Guernsey ’74) Barnes, the late Jane (Guernsey ’76) Birmingham, and Susan Guernsey

JACQUELIN MARSHALL HAZZARD, mother of Elizabeth (Hazzard ’61) Tuttle, Jaquelin Hazzard ’69, and Sumter Hazzard-Adolph ’72

ROBERT S. MCGINNIS, father of Graham McGinnis ’82 and Alix (McGinnis ’83) Giometti

JUNE HOGSDON NIMICK, wife of David Nimick ’39, mother of Susan (Nimick ’67) Holland, Carol (Nimick ’69) Gold, and David Nimick, Jr. ’69

MARGARET RIEHL PEABODY, sister of Hank Riehl ’70

THOMAS M. POTTER, father of Tom Potter ’77 (deceased), Tracey Potter Opheim, Elizabeth Potter Hall, Will ’85 and Chris ’86 Potter

ROBERT PETER SHUTY, father of Adam Shuty ’96 and Lauren (Shuty ’99) Smathers

BENJAMIN V. SMITH, JR., MD, father of Ben Smith ’90 and Elizabeth Smith Squire

PATRICIA STUART, mother of Lyall ’70, Anne ’73, Eben ’79, and Alex

PATRICIA TEMPLETON WHALEN, mother of Claude ’78 and Clark ’82 Whalen, and Malinda (Whalen ’86) Newman

ROGER CONANT WIEGAND, father of Roger Wiegand, Jr. ’90, Betsy (Wiegand ’91) Wentz, Susan (Wiegand ’96) Brown, grandfather of nine grandchildren including Jack ’21, Cooper ’24, Finn ’26, and Marlowe ’30 Wentz

FRANCO HARRIS

A former Pittsburgh Steeler known for the “Immaculate Reception,” Franco was a four-time Super Bowl champion, Super Bowl IX MVP, 1972 Rookie of the Year, 1976 NFL Man of the Year, and Pro Football Hall of Famer. He grew up in New Jersey and graduated from Penn State University with a degree in Hotel and Restaurant Management. Franco was married to Dana Dokmanovich and they had one son, Franco “Dok” Harris ’97. He died at home in Sewickley on December 20, 2022.