SYCAMORE SWEETHEARTS

SYCAMORE

SWEETHEARTS

BY MARY O’MALLEY

Sycamore has created many life-long friendships in its thirty-six years. Students make friends for life that they know will be at their wedding if not in it. For several alumni, being at their friend’s wedding included them as their spouse.

ERIN JACOBS & JP MOORE ‘98

Erin and JP became friends when he arrived at Sycamore in Fourth Grade because as soccer players, they both wore Umbro shorts and sported Samba shoes. In Seventh and Eighth Grades, they were on the Middle School soccer team and “used to talk on the phone almost every night and hang out on weekends, playing soccer in JP’s basement.” Erin says.

They remained close friends all throughout their four years at Brebeuf Jesuit High School. JP graduated from IUPUI, and Erin graduated from Miami of Ohio and received a Master’s in Social Work from IUPUI.

After college they were roommates and then “ended up dating” when they were 24. In 2013, nearly 20 years to the day after they met at Sycamore, they were married in Indianapolis at the Eiteljorg Museum and fittingly arranged the seating with photographs at the tables according to the different stages of their lives that they knew each other. Classmate Elizabeth (Stephens) Lee, Erin’s best friend at Sycamore, was the maid of honor; alums Patrick Young and JT King attended the wedding.

Currently, JP is a CPA/Director at Katz, Sapper, and Miller. Erin recently left her directorship at a local behavioral health agency to stay home with their two children Evie (5) and Alfred (17 months).

Evie attended Sycamore for Preschool and Pre-K. “It was wild seeing the school now and watching our daughter walk the halls!” Erin shares.

ABOVE: ERIN AND JP MOORE AND FAMILY

It was wild for some of the staff to see both Erin and JP in the Early Childhood carpool line as parents.

CELIA RISTOW & JULIAN TOUMEY ‘06

Celia remembers the day that her future husband, Julian, shadowed at Sycamore in the Fourth Grade, and she still has the card he gave her at her Bat Mitzvah. “The whole grade was invited. We weren’t close friends, so the handwritten message is very generic, ‘Congratulations!--Julian’ was the sentiment. I love that he was there, and I treasure the card!”

Although they were classmates all through Middle School, they didn’t interact much with each other. Being their Fifth and Sixth Grade Language Arts teacher, I can attest to this because I did not associate one name with the other back then. In fact, looking through the archives, there aren’t any group pictures of Celia and Julian in the same row. Furthermore, I don’t recall casting them as Romeo and Juliet!

They started dating during their senior year at North Central High School, where they both ran cross country. Celia’s mother, Becky Ristow, articulately states, “The shared experience of being students at Sycamore gave Celia and Julian a sense of security and a respect for each other’s character and integrity as their relationship grew.”

NIKKI SULLIVAN & DAVID YANG ‘05

Nikki came home from Preschool and told her mother, Annette Sullivan, that there was a sweet boy in her class named David who needed to be comforted so she would “rub his head, and he had really soft hair.” Little did Annette ever dream that she’d be planning their wedding 20 years later. Their story is like no other. Throughout their educational careers, they went to school together all through Sycamore, Brebeuf, University of Notre Dame, and Indiana University School of Medicine.

Ironically, the only period in their lives since early childhood that they have been apart has been for the past five years because they did not get a couple’s match for their different medical residencies. David is currently at Mayo Clinic doing his urology fellowship; Nikki is doing a Mohs fellowship in dermatology in New Zealand.

“They were always ‘best buddies’ throughout school,” Annette notes. Nikki used to ask her mom to put more food in her lunch. Her mother soon learned it was because she wanted to share it

Celia attended Haverford College in Philadelphia, and Julian attended Purdue University. After graduation she moved to Chicago, and he moved to Madison, WI. Shortly thereafter, knowing they wanted a future together, they both moved to Connecticut for Celia to pursue a Master’s in Environmental Management at Yale, and for Julian to pursue a Master’s in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Connecticut.

Due to the pandemic, only their parents, siblings, who are also all Sycamore alumni, and a Sycamore Flag were in attendance at their wedding ceremony, which took place this past August at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

“Though we weren’t close friends at Sycamore, we have so many shared memories of teachers, classes, field trips, and friends!” Julian says. Adds Celia, “Not everyone can turn to their husband and say, ‘Remember that documentary about fireworks that Mr. Schuth showed us in Sixth Grade?’” with her friend David.

Nikki even threw her friend a surprise sixteenth birthday party at the Sullivans. They decided to go to the Junior Prom together. After that they thought why not date each other? The rest is history! However, there’s more to the story for me to tell as I was so honored to be a guest at their wedding in 2015 at St. John’s Church in Indianapolis and spend time with them and some classmates such as Matt Kroeger and Anthony Sabatino whom I also taught.

LAURA PEEK & MATT YACKO ‘00

Laura and Matt were acquainted when he was shadowing Sycamore in the Sixth Grade. It was Mrs. Fair’s band class

where Laura saw him and gave him an “awkward wave.” They immediately liked each other and went on “dates” like Sixth Graders do, going to the movies, cheering each other on at school athletic events, and going to Middle School dances enjoying their song, “All My Life” in what was then the “cafegymnatorium.”

She went to Carmel High School, and he went to Brebeuf. Over the years, the two lost touch because their college careers beckoned Laura to Texas and Matt to Missouri. Six years transpired before she randomly reached out to him, knowing that they both were back in Indianapolis. They have been together ever since. They used their Sixth Grade Sea Camp trip photo to inform others to “save the date” for their wedding, which took place in October 2017 at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church. It was practically another Sycamore event with former teachers and classmates, Kellee Miller, Elliott Patrick, and Gregory Martens, who somehow shockingly brought and wore his red Eagles basketball warm ups. No reception speech would be complete, without the mention of the days on 64th Street, and their first wedding dance was appropriately “All My Life.”

The couple lives in Fishers. Laura is a doctoral candidate in Psychology and runs a residential treatment unit for courtordered boys with disabilities, trauma, and aggression. Matt helps run his brother’s restaurant.

Mr. Jeff Stroebel, long-time Seventh and Eighth Grade History teacher and former Head of Middle School, who taught every one of these students explains, “I am really thrilled to hear about each of these couples. Knowing what great kids they were as 11-13 year olds, it is so nice to see that they have developed relationships that began at Sycamore into life-long partnerships. One of the great things about a school like Sycamore is that children have a chance to find ‘their people.’ It’s not necessarily expected to develop into life-long relationships, but it’s certainly wonderful when it does. I had the pleasure to attend Laura and Matt’s wedding. To think that a relationship that started in Sixth Grade eventually became a marriage is really neat. Other marriages are far harder to trace back to Middle School, but I am glad that they found each other.” As much as Sycamore would like to take some of the credit, we know that not even the in-depth study of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in Sixth Grade or the fairy tales they read in Preschool had anything to do with the couples’ “I Do’s.” However, we certainly do wish them all a “Happily ever after.”

LILLIAN TOUMEY & NIKHIL NATARAJAN ‘05

Julian is not the only Toumey to marry a Sycamore classmate; his older sister, Lillian, married Nikhil Natarajan. Julian and Celia were engaged when Nikhil and Lillian had their reception. Someone at the reception said they thought Sycamore couples marrying was unusual. Celia and Julian were sitting nearby at

ABOVE: LILLIAN TOUMEY AND NIKHIL NATARAJAN

the time and Celia said, “Well, in the Toumey family it isn’t.” Much like her brother and Celia, Lillian and Nikhil were friendly at Sycamore but didn’t become friends until they went to North Central.

They did not have most classes together; therefore, they don’t recall much about each other at Sycamore. Lillian does remember, however, that Nikhil carried a laptop to every class and quadruple-knotted his shoelaces and that he was wellacquainted with Lillian’s best friend, Tina Taliercio, because of their frequent “lunch dates” with Mrs. O’Keefe. Lillian was not invited to attend!

They both went to Indiana University and would often carpool together back and forth from Indianapolis to Bloomington. It was not until after college in 2014 that they started dating. Lillian’s mom, Alison Jester, recalls that they began to date after they went to a Sycamore class reunion at Tina’s house. “What occurs to me is that Sycamore provides an environment for students to get to know one another through scholarship, class trips, social gatherings and other extracurricular activities. Because it’s a smaller school, lasting friendships are made. That’s what I see in my children and their spouses.”

“ONE OF THE GREAT THINGS ABOUT SYCAMORE IS THAT CHILDREN HAVE A CHANCE TO FIND ‘THEIR PEOPLE.’”

JEFF STROEBEL

In July 2019 Lillian and Nikhil were married at the Indianapolis Arts Garden with their closest Sycamore friends in attendance: Kat Shirrell, Tina Taliercio, Jonathan Pechette, Ian Mills, and the other Toumey siblings Julian, Anneliese, and Elliott.

The couple currently lives in Boise, Idaho. Nikhil is working as a software development engineer for Amazon; Lillian has taken a break from teaching this year and is working for the state of Idaho’s Division of Behavioral Health as a community resource specialist. She plans to go back to teaching elementary school post-pandemic. n