Winter 2014 Hotchkiss Magazine by The Hotchkiss School

143897c 4/5/14 12:57 PM Page 1

HOTCHKISS M

Nonprofit Org. U.S. Postage

PAID Permit No. 36

11 INTERLAKEN ROAD LAKEVILLE, CT 06039-2141 (860) 435-2591 w w w. h o t c h k i s s . o r g

Pittsfield, MA

HOTCHKISS M

W i n t e r

Z 2 0 1 4

143897c 4/5/14 12:57 PM Page 2

Board of Trustees Thomas C. Barry P’01,’03,’05 John Coumantaros ’80, P’16 Ian R. Desai ’00 Thomas J. Edelman ’69, P’06,’07 William R. Elfers ’67, Vice President John E. Ellis III ’74

EMERITI

Lance K. Beizer ’56

Howard C. Bissell ’55, P’82

Katheryn Allen Berlandi ’88 Ex-Officio

John R. Chandler, Jr. ’53, P’82,’85,’87, GP’10

Miriam Beveridge ’86

Frederick Frank ’50, P’12

William J. Benedict Jr. ’70, P’08, ’10

David L. Luke III ’41

Adam Casella ’06

Dr. Robert A. Oden, Jr. P’97

Robert V. Chartener ’76

Francis T. Vincent, Jr. ’56, P’85

Caldwell Hart ’87, P’16

Arthur W. White P’71,’74, GP’08,’11

Keith Holmes ’77

Lawrence Flinn, Jr. ’53

Bernice Leung Lin ’88

Diana Gomez ’76, P’11,’12

Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet ’85 Eleanor Green Long ’76 Forrest E. Mars, Jr. ’49, P’77,’82 GP’09,’09,’11,’11,’14, Vice President Christopher H. Meledandri ’77, Vice President Kendra S. O’Donnell Jean Weinberg Rose ’80, President Roger K. Smith ’78, P’08 Jane Sommers-Kelly ’81

Alumni Association Board of Governors

Hullihen (Chip) D. Quarrier III ’90

President Edward J. Greenberg ’55

David Sei-ngee Tan ’91

Vice Presidents Christina M. Bechhold ’03

Carolyn H. Toolan ’97

Keith E. Bernard Jr. ’95, Chair, Alumni of Color Committee Patricia Barlerin Farman-Farmaian ’85, Chair, Gender Committee Quinn Fionda ’91, Chair, Communications Committee

John L. Thornton ’72, P’10,’11,’16 Officer-at-Large

Thomas R. Seidenstein ’91 Chair, Alumni Services Committee

Daniel Wilner '03 Stephanie Bowling Zeigler ’84

Class of 1964 - 50th Reunion Class of 1949 - 65th Reunion

For more information please contact: Megan Denault ’03, Associate Director of Alumni Relations, at (860) 435-3114 or mdenault@hotchkiss.org. You may also visit www.hotchkiss.org/alumni and click on Events & Reunions.

Daniel N. Pullman ’76 Ex-Officio

Marjo Talbott

William B. Tyree ’81, P’14, Treasurer

Classes of 1934, 1939, 1944, 1954, 1959, 1969, 1974, 1979, 1984, 1989, 1994, 1999, 2004, 2009

Nichole R. Phillips ’89

Edward Greenberg ’55

Elizabeth Gardner Hines ’93

September 26-28, 2014

Alessandra H. Nicolas ’95

Sean M. Gorman ’72, Secretary

Kevin M. Hicks, Ex Officio

June 13-15, 2014

Casey H. Reid ’01 Bryan A. Small ’03

Michael G.T. Thompson ’66

Stephanie Bowling Zeigler ’84 Ex-Officio

Hotchkiss REUNION

George A. Takoudes ’87, Chair, Nominating Committee Douglas Campbell III, ’71, P’01, Secretary and Chair, Nominating Subcommittee for Membership

Photo by Jonathan Doster

143897_01_13_toc 4/5/14 1:20 PM Page 1

COVER PHOTO: JONATHAN DOSTER

HOTCHKISS M

F An evening program with a surprise announcement See story on p. 2.

HEAD OF SCHOOL

Dr. Kevin M. Hicks EDITOR

Roberta Jenckes DESIGNER

Christine Koch, Boost Studio CLASS NOTES EDITOR

Divya Symmers Communications Writer WRITERS AND CONTRIBUTORS

Dr. Kevin M. Hicks Dr. Jay Lehr ’53 Daniel Lippman ’08 Henry McNulty George A. Ranney Jr. ’58 Divya Symmers Brenda Underwood The Hotchkiss School does not discriminate on the basis of age, sex, religion, race, color, sexual orientation, or national orientation in the administration of its educational policies, athletics, or other school-administered programs, or in the administration of its hiring and employment practices. Hotchkiss Magazine is produced by the Office of Communications for alumni, parents, members of the faculty and staff, and friends of the School. Letters and comments are welcome. Please send inquiries and comments to: Roberta Jenckes, The Hotchkiss School, 11 Interlaken Road, Lakeville, CT 06039-2141, email to rjenckes@ hotchkiss.org, or phone 860-435-3122.

It’s winter. The brisk, cold days and even colder nights create an inner space for equally long thoughts. What will this year bring? What will the future hold? Where have we been? Big questions … In this issue we take some fun journeys into the past, exploring the School’s history and its original “family.” With the help of Ancestry.com CEO Tim Sullivan ’81, we discover some of the famous forebears of our founders, Maria Hotchkiss and Timothy Dwight V. And we talk with George Ranney ’58, who engages head-on with the complex issues of growth and change facing the Chicago region and municipalities all over the country – traffic congestion, universal access to early childhood education, criminal justice. You’ll find these and more features in this issue. Enjoy!

Tim Sullivan ’81: Helping us to find ourselves in our ancestors

George A. Ranney Jr. ’58: Along the road less traveled

P A

R T

Campus Connection

Teaching Matters

Alumni Profiles

History Makers

True Blue

Class Notes

In Memoriam

It’s My Turn

P.4

P.14

W i n t e r

2 0 1 4

143897_01_13_toc 4/5/14 1:20 PM Page 2

FROM

THE HEAD

o f s ch o o l

One of the least C O M P L I C AT E D

P L E A S U R E S O F S E RV I N G A S H E A D O F S C H O O L I S T H E A U T H O R I T Y T O G R A N T A S U R P R I S E H O L I D A Y.

Though students seem to have perfected the occult art of anticipating the dates of these surprises—which generally occur twice a year—their buzzing anticipation as the hour approaches only adds to our collective enjoyment of the tradition. At 8:30 p.m. on February 12, students and faculty gathered in Elfers Hall, having been notified by email that afternoon of a special musical performance. Predictably, the invitation’s encouragement to wear costumes was taken by many as a signal that something was afoot. Some background: last summer, I selected Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are (1963) as our all-School summer reading. In announcing this assignment, I wrote: “On one level, it is ‘just’ a children’s picture book with only 338 words of text; at the same time, its embedded challenges are as relevant now as they were when it was first published 50 years ago: the shape and mystery of childhood, the interdependence of authority and resistance, the notion of rumpus as antidote to anger, and the myriad ambiguities that surround imagination, travel, and strange encounters with monstrous others. Above all, Sendak’s book constitutes a passionate declaration of its author’s faith in the dignity of children—reason enough, perhaps, for us to

O T C H K I S S

A G A Z I N E

engage with it as a community.” Early in the first semester, Professor William Gleason, Chairman of the Princeton University English Department and an expert on children’s literature, visited campus and spoke eloquently to the book’s history and complexity; later on, students staged a marvelous performance of Sendak’s story in our Black Box Theater. Unbeknownst to all but a few, in July Michael Musillami, one of our music instruc-

tors and an accomplished jazz guitarist, had accepted my invitation to compose an original score—inspired by Sendak’s book—that could accompany a dramatic reading of the text. He seized the opportunity by the lapels, and enlisted his fine colleagues—Jay Bradley (drums), Charlie Tokarz (saxophone), and Richard Syracuse (bass). Upon our return from the Winter Holiday, Mike assured me with his characteristic panache that “the cats are ready.” The only remaining challenge was to find the right reader. Confidants— sworn to secrecy—nominated a number of local celebrities, any one of whom would have been wonderful, but the search ended one afternoon with a solution closer to home: Michael Ware. Michael is one of our veteran security officers, and an experienced musician in his own right (vintage performance footage can be found on YouTube filed under the bandname “Ware and Tare”); his rich and resonant voice, combined with his dignified showmanship, made him the perfect complement to the quartet of faculty musicians. Thus, it came to be that our students and faculty were treated to a world premiere original jazz composition that all but blew the doors off of Elfers Hall, and revealed an array of gifts that merit our admiration and respect.

143897_01_13_toc 4/5/14 1:20 PM Page 3

OPPOSITE: The evening featured a world-premiere performance by Michael Musillami, (back to camera), and his ensemble.

The students’ appreciation for this special moment was deep, sincere, and fitting. Following this performance, it gave me great pleasure to declare the holiday in honor of Caitlin Cahow ’03, who played soccer, field hockey, ice hockey, and lacrosse at Hotchkiss. At Harvard, she played ice hockey and majored in anthropology. As a member of the U.S. Women’s Ice Hockey Team, she won Olympic Bronze in 2006 and Olympic Silver in 2010. [Cornelia and I knew her before we knew much about Hotchkiss, because Cornelia was one of Caitlin’s coaches for the four years leading to Vancouver.] Now also the pride of the Boston College Law School, Caitlin was selected to travel to Sochi as part of the U.S. Olympic Delegation. Her poise, grace, and clarity in a barrage of media interviews testify to the School’s enduring values: intelligence, discipline, curiosity, and fidelity. In addressing the audience in Elfers Hall, I recited one of her recent dispatches from the Games: I have been very fortunate to grow up in a safe and accepting environment, none more so than my hockey community. The more I began thinking about LGBT issues in Russia, the more guilty I felt about how little I had spoken out and been honest about my life. I had the opportunity and the platform to make a difference, and I hadn’t engaged it during my playing career. So I chose to speak publicly about my thoughts concerning human rights, politics and the Olympics. […] I did not go to Russia solely representing the LGBT community. I am proud to be a member of that community, but this moment and this message extends far beyond one group. We are bringing a message of universal equality, which knows no classifications and refuses to discriminate for any reason. Most importantly, we are choosing to focus on a positive, constructive discourse. […] We are able to

do this because we firmly believe in the power of sport to bring out the best in each of us for the greater good of humanity. Our goal is to serve that ideal. That night, we were blessed by the gift of a heavy snowfall, which continued generally over the remainder of the holiday. Our campus was for some few hours made quiet and calm—a rarity!—and we all moved about as if in a dream, marveling at how such climactic events can defamiliarize landscapes we know well, and allow the discovery of new contours hidden in plain sight.

TOP & ABOVE LEFT: Students were invited to come in costume, and many happily complied.

ABOVE: Olympians Caitlin Cahow ’03, second from left, and Brian Boitano, with Janet Napolitano, left, and Rob Nabors, right, at Sochi

W i n t e r

2 0 1 4

143897_01_13_toc 4/5/14 1:20 PM Page 4

CAMPUS

connection

SPEECH

DEBATE

TEAM

H O T C H K I S S T E A M S C O R E S I M P O R TA N T W I N AT YA L E M O D E L U N IN LATE JANUARY, 1700 STUDENTS FROM AROUND THE WORLD PARTICIPATED IN WORKSHOPS AND DEBATES OVER FOUR DAYS OF COMPETITION AT THE YALE MODEL UN.

Julia Chen ’16; Jack Chrysler ineteen members of ’16 - Honorable Mention, the Speech and SPECPOL; Jimmy Chung ’14; Debate Team and Locke Curtis ’16; Jesse their coach, Instructor in Godine ’17 - Outstanding Humanities David Conti, Delegate, Food Committee; represented Hotchkiss, Dwight Greenhouse’15; Alex attending workshops and Kilroy’15; Viola Lee’16; small group discussions on Maddy Nam ’14; Jackie Ryu committee topics presented ’17; Anne Elizabeth by Yale professors. Sidamon-Eristoff ’16 By the conclusion of the Outstanding Delegate, events, the Hotchkiss team UNESCAP; Zoe Sun ’14 had earned several distincBest Delegate, SPECPOL; tions, winning eight individNatalie Treadwell ’15; Sophia ual awards and taking the Wang ’16 - Honorable overall title as Best Large Mention, ECOFIN; and Jake Delegation. At the Model Yoon ’15. UN Zoe Sun’14 and Martin Earlier in the debating Carrizosa’14 won the highseason, at the Fifth Annual est award, “Best delegate,” in Choate Invitational Debate their respective committees. Tournament, the Hotchkiss Co-captain Jimmy Speech and Debate Team Chung’14 said, “I think the advanced and novice simulations (mock Model T OP : Co-captains Maddy and Jimmy accept a silver bowl debaters from Hotchkiss UN) we ran as a group for a recent win by the Debate Team, and ABOVE: student debaters captured two of the top prior to the actual Model are photographed at the Yale Model UN with their coaches, three individual awards for UN really helped. Also, David Conti and Paula Russo. advanced debaters and four Hotchkiss students seemed of the six awards for pairs. The field at that event counted 220 to be familiar with the process of research, which was crucial to debaters from 18 schools. the delegation.” Co-captain Jimmy Chung ’14 was the Best Overall Advanced In mock international negotiations designed to replicate the Debater at the tournament and joins co-captain Maddy Nam ’14 actual United Nations process, Hotchkiss students represented as a qualifier for the Debate World Championships to be held Moldova and China. In all, 40 countries were represented by the this spring in Lithuania. student participants in the diplomatic discussions. Commenting on the team’s performance at Choate, Conti Hotchkiss students were selected through an application said, “It was especially good to see great balance on the team. process. Advisor David Conti and Instructor in History Paula The Senior co-captains have qualified for Worlds, and Upper Russo chose the students and coordinated the trip. The following Mid Jackson Burow was just one point behind Chung in the students participated in the Yale Model UN competition: Jon individual competition. The pair of Upper Mids Russell Clarida Morgan Barth ’15; Gerard Bentley ’15 - Honorable Mention, and Andrew Scott won all of their debates and came in third Environmental Committee; Alex Brown ’15 - Outstanding place. All of the novice debaters are Lower Mids and allow us to Delegate, UN Security Council; Martin Carrizosa ’14 - Best Delegate, Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice; feel confident for the future.”

O T C H K I S S

A G A Z I N E

143897_01_13_toc 4/5/14 1:20 PM Page 5

MLK

The School2009 community takes GRADUATION The Promise New Day center stageofona MLK “EVERYBODY CAN BE GREAT. BECAUSE

EVERYBODY CAN SERVE.” … “SAY THAT I WAS A DRUM MAJOR FOR JUSTICE; SAY THAT I WAS A DRUM MAJOR FOR PEACE; I WAS A DRUM MAJOR FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS. …”—MARTIN LUTHER KING JR., THE “DRUM MAJOR INSTINCT” SPEECH

The beauty of Dr. Martin Luther King’s words and the brilliance of his example filled the School during its annual commemoration of King’s life on Sunday and Monday, January 19 and 20. “This year, a new generation of leaders from the Black and Hispanic Student Alliance, broadly supported by peers, faculty, and staff, directed our attention to King's legacy of social action and the enduring challenge it poses for all of us, regardless of background or political sensibility,” said Head of School Dr. Kevin Hicks. “Their programs found a powerful synergy between the history of the civil rights movement and the inspiring and open-hearted testimony offered in our ‘Community Voices’ program.” Irisdelia Garcia ’14, who worked with fellow BaHSA Co-president Brandon Ortiz ’14 on coordinating events in the MLK Day program, said of her experience: “I first thought it daunting, planning MLK Day without the presence of longtime faculty advisors to BaHSA like Ms. Patricia Redd Johnson and Ms. Nancy Bird. However, as more and more faculty stepped in to help us really make this day special, poignant, and wholesome, I think that in itself emulated the spirit of the national holiday and what Dr. King wanted from all of us. Reaching out to others when in need and being truly honest with each other stuck with people, and I am honored to have helped organize a day where our small, some-

times sheltered community can have that honesty and openness with itself that we don't often have. I am blessed to be part of a community that gives that opportunity to students like me to help create a program like this MLK Day program was. Truly blessed …” Many participating in the program quoted King or read from his works; what better way could there be to honor him than to share his voice? Dean of Faculty Thomas Flemma read to the School at the “Community Voices” program some of the “Drum Major Instinct” speech of February 1968, given two months before King’s

ABOVE: Fordham University Assistant Professor of Political Science Christina Greer spoke in Walker Auditorium in the morning.

death, where he reflected on what he would want to have said about him at his funeral. The hope for the future that Dr. King expressed in his life was echoed by Director of International Programs David Thompson in his reflection: “I am grateful to live in a community that embraces Dr. King’s dream – that ‘my … children will

W i n t e r

2 0 1 4

143897_01_13_toc 4/5/14 1:20 PM Page 6

CAMPUS

connection

MLK munity in sharing their thoughts, songs, memories of Hotchkiss, poems, and dance performance. LORENZO CASTILLO ’05

Lorenzo graduated from Hotchkiss in 2009 and went on to study business at the University of San Diego. After college, he joined Teach for America and taught for two years in his hometown, Houston, TX. He went on to teach in New Orleans, LA and developed a program that uses music to manage student behavior. Lorenzo then launched his first company, Education Everytime. www.educationeverytime.com/

PHOTOS: ALAN MURPHY

NAIMA LILLY ’97

TOP: Bennett Rathbun ’03 and Naima Lilly ’97 were among the alumni participating in the afternoon program. ABOVE: Former Teach for America educator Lorenzo Castillo ’05 spoke in the afternoon.

O T C H K I S S

A G A Z I N E

one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.’” Additionally Dr. Christina Greer, assistant professor of political science at Fordham University, engaged her student audience in Walker Auditorium in a discussion of King’s beliefs and goals. Greer, whose talk was sponsored by the Class of 1963 English Endowment Fund, asked the students to consider the issues King talked about from their own perspectives today. “If all men are created equal, how do we translate that into a 21st-century conversation?” she asked. “What does it mean to be a member of a global community? What does it mean to have a civil rights agenda? When economic equity is out of balance, there is inequality in everyday life for some—lack of housing, education, clean drinking water. What can we do about it?” In the afternoon, Katherine M. Elfers Hall in the Esther Eastman Music Center brought together students, faculty, and staff for the Community Voices program. Three young alumni returned for MLK Day, joining members of the School com-

A New York City Public School educator in her 12th year, Naima Lilly (Class of ’97) seeks to take action in and outside the classroom to manifest the ideal of teaching to the whole child in the public education system and ensure that teachers’ voices play a prominent role in education policy. She has also been asked to blog for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation “Impatient Optimists.” BENNETT RATHBUN ’03

Bennett Rathbun is co-founder and Executive Director of Hope on a String, a nonprofit organization working to improve socioeconomic conditions in Haiti by fostering community engagement through music and advocating for grassroots change initiatives. www.hopeonastring.org/ Highlights of the Community Voices program, along with video of Christina Greer’s talk, can be found in the Hotchkiss Today: News and Events section of the website, www.hotchkiss.org.

143897_01_13_toc 4/5/14 1:20 PM Page 7

MEDIA

ma k e rs

Hotchkiss Alumni in Print The Akeing Heart: Passionate attachments and their aftermath: Sylvia Townsend Warner, Valentine Ackland, Elizabeth Wade White BY PETER JUDD ’49 AMAZON, 2013

In The Akeing Heart, Peter Judd ’49, author of several prize-winning books on family history, tells the intimate, interwoven story of three fascinating literary women: English novelist, critic, poet, and biographer Sylvia Townsend Warner, her partner, “the minor lesbian poet” Valentine Ackland, and Connecticut-born Elizabeth Wade White, the future biographer of Anne Bradstreet (and the author’s godmother). Set in the landscape of rural Dorset in the 1930s, with civil war in Spain and a European war looming, the story of the three’s complicated yet enduring relationship is told through an “impeccably edited collection of newly discovered letters,” including 60 letters from Sylvia Townsend Warner that add an expansive new dimension to Warner and Ackland’s own writings and biographies. “They are possibly the most important literary letters to be published this year,” noted an online reviewer.

Emil du Bois-Reymond: Neuroscience, Self, and Society in Nineteenth-Century Germany BY GABRIEL FINKELSTEIN ’81 THE MIT PRESS, 2013

The most important forgotten intellectual of the 19th century, Emil du Bois-Reymond (18181896) grew famous in his native Germany and beyond for his groundbreaking research in neuroscience and provocative addresses on politics and culture, including popular talks on Darwin and the mystery of consciousness. Written by Gabriel Finkelstein ’81, an associate professor of history at the University of Colorado Denver, this extensively researched and critically praised biography draws on personal papers, published writings, and contemporary responses to reveal a major scientific figure whose discovery of the electrical transmission of nerve signals, innovations in laboratory instrumentation, and reductionist methodology helped lay the foundations of modern neuroscience. It also “shows how politics (both national and academic) and the arts permeate science, and how science drives culture as an intellectual endeavor.”

World Architecture: A Cross-Cultural History BY RICHARD INGERSOLL ’68 AND SPIRO KOSTOF OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, DECEMBER 2012

Expanding on the global vision of the late Professor Kostof’s A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals, Richard Ingersoll ’68 has written an entirely new textbook that provides a comprehensive method for understanding and appreciating the history, cultural significance, and beauty of architecture from around the world. Presented chronologically, each chapter focuses on three unique architectural cultures, giving instructors the flexibility to choose the traditions most relevant to their courses. The insightful text provides additional pedagogical tools, including timelines, comparative maps, a glossary, and text boxes devoted to social factors and specific issues in technology and philosophy. Professor Ingersoll teaches courses in Renaissance and contemporary art, architecture, and urbanism at Syracuse University in Florence and Milan. His previous book was Sprawltown: Looking for the City on Its Edges (Princeton Architectural Press, 2006).

W i n t e r

2 0 1 4

143897_01_13_toc 4/5/14 1:20 PM Page 8

CAMPUS

connection

PHOTO BY MILEY XIAO ’17

PREP SKATING PARTY

LUNAR NEW YEAR CELEBRATION

At the annual Prep Skating Party on Sunday, February 16, members of the Class of 2017 led children from the community in skating lessons around Schmidt Rink. Bucky the Bearcat made a special appearance; cookies and cocoa, and fun music added to the festive mood on the ice.

THE DINING HALL WAS TRANSFORMED INTO A PARTY VENUE ON SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8, FOR THE CELEBRATION OF THE LUNAR NEW YEAR. THE CELEBRANTS HELPED THEMSELVES TO A TEMPTING ARRAY OF DUMPLINGS, TRIED THEIR HAND AT GAMES OF CHANCE AND CALLIGRAPHY, AND WISHED EACH OTHER GOOD FORTUNE IN THE YEAR OF THE HORSE.

STUDENT LIFE

QUINCY MCLAUGHLIN HEADS HEALTH SERVICES

ppointed in Summer 2013, Elizabeth Quincy McLaughlin serves as the Director of Health Services and succeeds Nancy Bird, who had held that post since 1987. Quincy, as she is known, has considerable experience as a clinical social worker in a variety of settings. She has worked in pediatric programs at Albany Medical Center and Nationwide Children’s Hospital. She has been an instructor in pediatric behavioral health at Albany (N.Y.) Medical College, a research consultant at the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Mass., and Director of Horizons and the Girls Leadership Project at Miss Hall’s School in Pittsfield, Mass. She comes to Hotchkiss from Bard College at Simon’s Rock, where she was Director of Academic Support Services and Disability and taught courses in psychology and social work. She is also an adjunct assistant professor at the Smith College School for Social Work and has consulted to independent schools on mental health issues and social emotional curriculum. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Sarah Lawrence College and a Master of Social Work degree from Smith. Last summer, McLaughlin was one of the featured speakers at a Hotchkiss program and webcast called “Parenting from a

O T C H K I S S

A G A Z I N E

Distance.” It gave all Hotchkiss parents, particularly new ones, a good grounding in what for many is a first-time experience: being a parent of a child who is not under your roof for much of the year. Topics included “Navigating Adolescence,” “Rhythms of the School Year,” and “Formal and Informal Advising.” When McLaughlin’s appointment was announced, Head of School Kevin Hicks noted that “those who met with her were impressed by her warmth, balance, thoughtfulness, good humor, and systems-based approach to both management and quality of life issues in a school setting.” He added, “We have every reason to expect that Quincy will serve as a powerful leader of, and advocate for, Health Services, and swiftly establish herself as a transformative force in the lives of our students.”

143897_01_13_toc 4/5/14 1:20 PM Page 9

H I G H E S T

H O N O R

PHOTO” JONATHAN DOSTER

H O T C H K I S S ’ S

THE 2013 ALUMNI AWARD WINNER RUSS SHIELDS ’59 An Entrepreneur Who Has Led the Way in I.T.-based Businesses By e has spent the past 40 years creating and developing companies that have helped define entire segments of information-technology-based business, such as call centers, data mining, and computer map databases. …” That’s how Russ Shields ’59 was introduced at Hotchkiss this past fall as he was presented with the 2013 Alumni Award. It sums up, in 30 words, the odyssey of a man whose work has touched nearly everyone in one way or another – even if they have never heard his name.

Henry

McN ul t y

Born in Los Angeles, T. Russell Shields grew up in various parts of the West and Midwest as his father, in the oil business, took on different jobs. By the time he was in high school, he was in Colorado Springs, and “terribly bored with it,” he says. Seeking a more challenging environment, his parents enrolled him in Hotchkiss for his Lower Mid year. “At Hotchkiss, I was a very bifurcated student,” he says. “I had about a 75 average. The math and science grades were high, the English and language grades

were questionably passing.” He enjoyed interacting with other students, especially those whose backgrounds differed from his. “What I didn’t like were rules,” he admits, “and I was not good at doing something that the rules required. I was in the headmaster’s study multiple times.” ABOVE: At the award ceremony, from left: Alumni Association President Ed Greenberg ’55, Russ Shields, Robert Dineen ’59, and Head of School Dr. Kevin Hicks

W i n t e r

2 0 1 4

143897_01_13_toc 4/5/14 1:20 PM Page 10

CAMPUS

connection

ing two master’s degrees. He also married and had two children: R. Stratford Shields ’82, who now works for Morgan Stanley in Chicago, and Crystal Owens, a secondgrade teacher in the Dallas area. His introduction to new technology came at a Wichita bank, where he got a summer job during school. “They had gotten their first computer, which nobody knew how to use,” he says. “I taught myself how to use it.”

ONLY 21, BUT LEADING A LARGE STAFF

ABOVE: Shields spoke extemporaneously to his audience of students, faculty, and staff. OPPOSITE: Russ and his wife, Yuka Gomi

O T C H K I S S

A G A Z I N E

ON TO COLLEGE It turned out that Russ, however he did in the classroom, was good at taking tests. He aced the math portion of the SATs with a 796 (“missed one darn problem,” he says with regret), and did well enough on the English test that a college recruiter from Cornell asked him, “why are you wasting your time in high school? Why don’t you just come to Cornell next year?” So after his Upper Mid year, at age 16, he left Hotchkiss and went to college. “One of the things I learned at Cornell was how to play poker,” he says, “and I turned out to be pretty good at it. It’s not the math; the key to poker is understanding people, and why they do things.” Unfortunately, a lot of money ended up in Russ’s pocket. The dean of students was not amused – “so I left Cornell in the second half of my second year and went to Wichita State University.” The poker experience taught him an important lesson, though, one he has applied throughout his professional career: “At all times, clearly and completely understand who you’re dealing with.” After Wichita State, he went to graduate school at the University of Chicago, earn-

The Wichita experience led to a job as a graduate student at the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center, which had also just installed computers that few understood. Again, it was Russ to the rescue: “Here I was, all of 21, a student, leading this department of 20 people, trying to move from punch cards to real computers,” he says, “And of course I had no idea how to manage people – but fortunately they had a lot of bright people who could figure out how to do that.” After finishing graduate school and running the Information Technology department at the American Hospital Association in Chicago, he started his own firm, Shields Enterprises Inc. (“original name, huh?” he jokes), which dealt with very large databases. One of its first customers was the credit bureau now called TransUnion: “Then it only covered parts of the country, but we had about 10 million people in the database.” Another early customer was the book marketer Time Life, which had a fulfillment department in Chicago. “One day in 1973, I was talking with the marketing manager, and we thought up a new way to get people to buy books,” Russ says: “Advertise them on television with a phone number people can use to make an order right then.” The company came up with a commercial to run on a local TV station, and Russ recruited four women to take the phone orders. After the commercial ran, however,

143897_01_13_toc 4/5/14 1:20 PM Page 11

only two calls came through. “We couldn’t understand why it didn’t work,” he says. “I thought direct marketing on TV was a pretty good idea.” Just as they were about to concede defeat, a squad of police burst into the call center, trying to find the people responsible for sabotaging the city’s telephone system. It turned out that so many viewers had called the same number all at once that the entire phone system in that part of Chicago was blown out. “That’s why we got only two calls,” he says. “Three months later Time Life had a half a dozen local call centers. It was the first time anybody ran a TV commercial with a phone number like that.”

SEEING THE FUTURE OF CELL PHONES Russ’s firm then supported databases for government agencies such as the Veterans Administration, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Social Security System. “We also were involved with redoing the computer system for the President’s office in the White House using an early IBM system that allowed people to do messaging,” he says. “This was 1979, so it was pre-e-mail, but similar.” Seemingly everywhere he turned, Russ saw business opportunities in emerging technologies. Cell phones, for instance: “That business started with Motorola,” Russ recalls, “so we worked on the first mobile phone software for them.” Another time, on a plane ride, Russ fell into conversation with the head of Budget Rent A Car, which then had its headquarters in Chicago. “I got to talking with him, and his people were just starting to figure out how to put computer systems into the big airport locations,” he says. “My company got a job to work on that.” But perhaps his biggest success had to do with global positioning systems. “In 1985, GPS was just getting started,” he says, “and it was mostly used at sea, for ships. We knew that the maps for roads on land had to be much more complicated than the maps for boats, so, at the request

of the CEO of Budget Rent A Car, we did some market research and started Navigation Technologies, which compiled huge databases of streets and roads as well as the routing tools needed to make global positioning work for drivers.” Patience was definitely needed. “The first time we made a small profit was 2002 – 17 years after we started,” Russ says. But when the payoff came, it was immense; in 2008 the company, then known as Navteq, was sold to the Finnish telecommunications giant Nokia for more than $8 billion.

SEEKING NEW FRONTIERS His present company is Ygomi LLC, named for his wife, Yuka Gomi. As befits a firm at the very edge of technology, it has no headquarters “except where our executives happen to be,” Russ says. The chief financial officer is in Paris; the chief technology officer is in Bath, England; software development is done in Chengdu, China; the head of the company’s mobile business is in California; and the head of the automotive business is in Yokohama. There are about 350 employees.

“We created it as a holding company, and we’re working in a whole lot of different areas,” Russ explains. These include wireless voice and data communication, automotive support services, and call centers. His work with new technologies has made Russ an internationally recognized leader. He has been inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Intelligent Transportation Society of America, and in 2008 was given the Distinguished Entrepreneurial Alumni Award of his graduate school alma mater, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. But he insists that he is not at the center of the high-tech universe. “What my companies have been good at is working with people in big firms who had ideas of these new technologies that we were able to do a piece of – not the core technologies themselves,” he says. “We didn’t do GPS, we did the maps. We didn’t do mobile phones, we did the billing. The credit bureau – we didn’t understand what we were doing; we did the database. “It was never our idea. It was always somebody else who had the idea. We just provided the enabling technology.”

W i n t e r

2 0 1 4

143897_01_13_toc 4/5/14 1:20 PM Page 12

CAMPUS

connection

E.E. Cummings biographer Susan Cheever discusses the power of breaking rules

BY DIVYA SYMMERS

For most of the overflow audience of students gathered in Harris House last November to hear Susan Cheever talk about E.E. Cummings, the unconventional modernist of half a century ago is probably best known for his lowercase byline in anthologies of American poetry. “Cummings was very popular in the 1920s, but then his career went south,” Cheever told her Hotchkiss audience. “But by the mid 1950s and early 1960s, he was extremely popular again, and doing a lot of readings, which were almost like performances.” Invited to speak by Poet-in-Residence Susan Kinsolving (they taught together in the Bennington College M.F.A. program), Susan Cheever is the author of five novels, four memoirs, and five other books of nonfiction – including E.E. Cummings: A Poet’s Life, published by Random House this February and already earning accolades from critics across the country. (The Cleveland Plain Dealer cites the book’s elegant blend of biography, memoir, and cultural history, while The Economist praised Cheever “for making this tricky poet understandable.”) As the author herself relates in her new book’s preface, she met the poet only once, in 1960, but it pretty much changed her life. “One night he came to read at The Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, NY, where I was a junior. I knew that he had been a friend of my father’s (author John Cheever) and I’d heard a lot of stories about him. When his reading was over, he said, ‘Come on, you guys, drive me back to the city.’ So we piled into my family’s secondhand Dodge, and as we drove he told me how spirited I was and that if I was having trouble with the school, it was the school’s fault. He said that I shouldn’t be so openminded that my brains would fall out. He really inspired

ABOVE, RIGHT & OPPOSITE: Visiting speaker Susan Cheever encouraged students to be adventurous, and try the unexpected, in their own writing.

O T C H K I S S

A G A Z I N E

me. It was the first time I really thought about being a writer, sitting in the back seat of that old car with Cummings rattling on and making my father and I both laugh. It was a wonderful, wonderful evening.” For senior Celia Morris ’14, who introduced Cheever that evening, E.E. Cummings has been an inspiration since seventh grade, when she chose him as her subject for an English poetry project that included trying to represent one of his poems through film. He remains her favorite poet. “I liked that he was referred to through initials rather than names,” she said. “His disjointed syntax and uninhibited structure somehow smoothed the lumps in my throat. It was the first time that complicated poems didn’t confuse me to the point of repulsion. Instead, his words intrigued me.” Edward Estlin Cummings, who died in 1962, was born in Cambridge, earned two degrees from Harvard, and had deep roots in the Boston area, although he much preferred New York’s Greenwich Village and lived in the same apartment there for 40 years. A modernist famous for his quirky punctuation and a formalist who created unforgettably unique rhyme schemes, Cummings encompassed a wealth of creative contradictions: When Edna

143897_01_13_toc 4/5/14 1:20 PM Page 13

St. Vincent Millay was asked to recommend him for a Guggenheim fellowship, she wrote, “If you give him enough rope, maybe he’ll hang himself. Or maybe he’ll lasso a unicorn.’” His oeuvre was far-reaching, encompassing 3,000 poems, two autobiographical novels (including The Enormous Room), four plays, and several essays, along with a slew of Cubist-inspired drawings and paintings. As Cheever explained between reading “the cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls” and other striking Cummings works, his lifelong experimentation with language went beyond using lower-case initials for his first and middle names (something he actually didn’t adopt until later in his career). Many of his avant-garde techniques, she suggested, are ones students could try in their own writing. Sound as sense, or the idea that the sounds of words create content, for instance: “When he says ‘watersmooth silver stallion,’ you can feel the speed of the horse,’ she said, after reading his famous first poem, “Buffalo Bill’s/defunct.” “And when he says, ‘and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat’ you can feel he’s going ‘bang bang bang bang,’ right?” As he entered his sixties (he was 67 when he died), this original, funny, sometimes irascible poet became more and more attuned to the natural world. The last entry in his journal on the day he died is about delphiniums, Cheever noted. Then she read one of his later works, a tiny, plangent poem called “(Me up at does)”: Me up at does out of the floor quietly Stare a poisoned mouse still who alive is asking What have i done that You wouldn't have “He knew all the rules, and that’s why he was able to break them in ways that work,” said Cheever. She smiled and adjusted her glasses. “I hope you will read Cummings more. I hope that you will come to love him. And I hope you will learn the rules so that you can break them.” Susan Cheever's visit and lecture were underwritten by the Class of 1963 English Endowment Fund.

RECENT

CAMPUS

VISITORS

Visitors, speakers, artists, and performers – all distinguished in their fields – come to Hotchkiss throughout the school year. They perform on our stages, share their expertise with our students, and bring perspective and knowledge as they engage with us. Here are some recent visitors to campus: Poet J.D. McClatchy Psychology professor Marvin Chun Science writer Paul Bogard Professor Laurie Santos CEO Marjorie Yang P’99 Filmmaker Cynthia Wade Microfinance specialist Laura Giadorou-Koch P’14,’16 Political scientist Christina Greer Poet Carol Muske-Dukes Guest artist-in-residence dancer Miki Orihara Guest artist-in-residence musician Howard Fishman Guest pianists-in-residence John and Mina Perry

W i n t e r

2 0 1 4

143897_14_20_features 20-27 4/5/14 1:41 PM Page 14

TIM SULLIVAN ’81 HELPING US TO FIND OURSELVES IN OUR ANCESTORS | BY BRENDA UNDERWOOD

ABOVE: Sullivan family: from left, Hilary (Scott’s wife), daughter Blaire, Scott ’78, Taylor ’15, Christine ’82, Steve (Dad), Betty Jane (Mom), Steve ’76, Martha (Steve’s wife), Lindsey ’13, Tim ’81, Thomas ’16, and Jane (Tim’s wife).

O T C H K I S S

A G A Z I N E

The last few years have seen a great interest in tracing our ancestry, in knowing from whom we are descended and putting names to the branches of our family tree, a phenomenon brought about by shows such as Who Do You Think You Are?, a British television series encouraged to cross the Atlantic. Among those involved in the effort to bring the show to the U.S. was Tim Sullivan ’81, the president and CEO of Ancestry.com. It was a logical step given the website’s database at that time of four billion searchable genealogic records and the potential audience among its one million subscribers. Who Do You Think You Are? made its U.S. debut on NBC in 2010 with Ancestry.com facilitating the research and helping with financing. Since then, the show has traced the ancestry of dozens of well-known celebrities such as actresses Susan Sarandon and Gwyneth Paltrow, filmmaker Spike Lee, and singer-songwriter Lionel Ritchie. In 2012, the show was nominated for an Emmy Award; this fall marked its fourth season with TLC. Meanwhile, Ancestry.com, the engine that powers genealogical searches, has grown impressively and now has a database with 11 billion searchable genealogical records and several million subscribers. The site’s database includes family history records from 40 countries reaching back to the late 1300s. These are records to which everyone has access, not just celebrities, and the only prerequisite is to want to know who you are and from whom you are descended. “Everyone has a history waiting to be discovered,” said Sullivan, “and every story has surprises that can be pretty amazing and emotional.” “Members join Ancestry.com for many reasons — to explore roots, discover their eth-

143897_14_20_features 20-27 4/5/14 1:41 PM Page 15

W i n t e r

2 0 1 4

143897_14_20_features 20-27 4/5/14 1:41 PM Page 16

Maria Hotchkiss Founder of The Hotchkiss School Maria H. Bissell Hotchkiss Family Discoveries After her husband Benjamin’s death in 1885, Maria Harrison Bissell Hotchkiss became a benefactor, as the founder of The Hotchkiss School. Her story of triumph after tragedy is a familiar one in her family. Melville Bissell (Maria’s Maria Hotchkiss third cousin, once removed), was the inventor of the Bissell carpet cleaner and founder of the Bissell Company that is still family-owned today. When Melville died in 1889, his wife, Anna, took over the company and became the first female CEO in America. Both of these amazing women contributed much to innovation and education in America. *Maria and Melville’s common ancestors are Isaac Bissell, born in 1682, and Elizabeth Osborn, born in 1684, both in Windsor, CT. Further information from Ancestry.com

HOTCHKISS MAGAZINE EDITOR’S NOTE: The Hotchkiss history, Hotchkiss: A Chronicle of an American School, states on p. 3: “There had been prominent Bissells in Litchfield County since the eighteenth century, and Harrison cousins in Ohio – in what was once Connecticut’s Western Reserve – had already produced one, and, in Maria’s lifetime, would produce a second U.S. president.” However, the Ancestory.com genealogists who researched the possible Maria Harrison Bissell Hotchkiss connection to President Harrison have determined that there is not enough evidence to confirm the connection. The genealogists who worked on this research did say that the surname of Harrison is found in many states in New England, except, surprisingly, New Hampshire. And in 1790 there were at least 374 Harrison families that appeared in the census.

O T C H K I S S

A G A Z I N E

nicity, and to seek community with distant, perhaps unknown, relatives,” he said. And, with the addition of a family tree feature to the site, he pointed out, members have made billions of connections with other members who potentially share a common ancestor. Facilitating those searches would not have been possible without the Internet. But when Sullivan arrived at Hotchkiss, following in the footsteps of his brothers Stephen ’76 and Scott ’78, as did sister Christine ’82 later, a career in technology was not on his radar, still being several years in the future. And Hotchkiss may not have been in the cards either had it not been for his brother, Steve, who had heard about Hotchkiss and was determined to attend. While his parents were a little skeptical, Steve persevered and convinced them that Hotchkiss offered a unique opportunity. That was 1973 and since then seven Sullivans have attended the School. “Our entire family was just so lucky to find Hotchkiss.” And, “I was lucky to have had two brothers precede me at Hotchkiss,” said Sullivan, who entered the School as a lower mid. “By the time I arrived, I knew that Hotchkiss was all about getting involved in things that you cared about, even if they were new to you.” The year was 1978, the Vietnam War had ended, movie theatres were showing “Grease,” the Bee Gees were singing “Stayin’ Alive,” and, in the Mischianza of that year, most of the boys were wearing their hair longer than today’s male students. And, while current fashions were tolerated, Hotchkiss was not only a place to expand but also more significantly, a place of academic rigor. One lesson Tim took away with him from Hotchkiss is the importance of an education where one learns how to read, think, and write. He believes he learned those skills particularly from “Uncle” Roy Smith, who taught Shakespeare, and George Norton Stone, who taught math. “These men were teaching at such a high level of expertise, passion, and commitment; it was truly inspiring to have the chance to learn from them.” Sullivan, also known to his friends at Hotchkiss as “Sully,” worked on the Hotchkiss Record during his stay and competed on the wrestling and football teams. “I was the smallest guy on the varsity football team my senior year, and even though my playing time on Saturdays was pretty thin, I enjoyed the whole experience.” In a poll conducted by fellow students at the end of senior year that included such categories as “Most Radical Student,” “Best Auditorium Speaker” and “Favorite Class Expression” (“Bag-It!”), Tim Sullivan was voted “Most Likely to Succeed,” a prediction yet to be realized. When he graduated from Hotchkiss in 1981 and entered the University of North Carolina as a Morehead scholar, his goal was to pursue a career in medicine. But there were epic changes on the horizon, ones that would impact Sullivan’s life. In 1981, IBM introduced its first PC, and the Internet was about to take the stage. While pursuing a pre-med path through his freshman year at UNC, he switched direction and became a political science major. After graduation and marrying Jane Bowen, a fellow student at UNC, Sullivan moved to Boston to work on an MBA at Harvard. Two years later, with an MBA in hand, he took a position as a senior financial analyst with the Walt Disney Company in California in the home video group; he later moved to Hong Kong to help set up an office in Asia. “It was a booming business,” he said, “but then the Asian economic climate took a nosedive and video piracy exploded in the region. In turn, the business imploded.” On looking back he realized that, “Learning to manage in crisis stayed with me longer than managing in the boom.” Recognizing the rise of the Internet, Sullivan next joined Ticketmaster

143897_14_20_features 20-27 4/5/14 1:41 PM Page 17

‘‘

MEMBERS JOIN ANCESTRY.COM FOR MANY REASONS – TO EXPLORE ROOTS, DISCOVER THEIR ETHNICITY, AND TO SEEK COMMUNITY WITH DISTANT, PERHAPS UNKNOWN, RELATIVES.”

’’

Online-City Search as Vice President of e-commerce. From Ticketmaster he moved to Dallas to become CEO of Match.com where, “I had a fantastic run building the business,” said Sullivan, “but was ready to move on to other ventures.” He was then offered the position of CEO at MyFamily.com, a precursor of Ancestry.com. “It seemed to be a highly promising business that hadn’t reached its full potential, and it also offered the chance to live in the mountains.” [Ancestry.com has its headquarters in Provo, Utah.] After several years with Sullivan at the helm, MyFamily.com changed its name to Ancestry.com and the company went public. “I’ve never had a master plan,” said Sullivan, speaking of his career. “I don’t think there’s a linear path from high school to college to where a person ends up in his ’40s. I’ve tried to be opportunistic and react intelligently to events, and have found that what may seem like a negative experience at the time can actually lead to a positive change. One such setback led me to my position at Ancestry.com, where I love coming to work each day. We are a company with a unique challenge and opportunity.” “Genealogy is a greater mystery in the United States,” said Sullivan, “because we are a country of immigrants.” With offices not only in Utah and San Francisco but around the world—Dublin, London, Sydney, Toronto, and Munich—an enormous number of family trees are now being created, helping to lessen the mystery of the past for many. The company servers handle 40 million searches daily, and the site has expanded the Ancestry.com experience to reach the mobile and social media worlds. “It’s all about being in touch,” said, Sullivan. “It is a way for users to publicize their family history discoveries on Ancestry.com.” For example, a subscriber can post a document such as a digitized handwritten census report on Facebook or Twitter for friends and family to see. And, with the addition of more historical documents from state and local courthouses, including U.S. census, immigration, and military records, there is a greater possibility for a successful search. It is now possible to do an ancestry search with a simple DNA saliva test; this enables Ancestry.com members to go even deeper into their family history research. As to Sullivan’s Hotchkiss family tree, it is also off to a good start. Sullivan’s two children and niece are the latest members of the family to join the Hotchkiss community. Lindsey graduated in 2013 and is attending her father’s alma mater; Thomas, Class of 2016, returned to Hotchkiss in September; and Taylor, Class of 2015, Scott’s daughter, is an upper mid. This is a Hotchkiss family tree showing very healthy growth. It goes without saying that the Senior Poll of 1981 was on to something.

Timothy Dwight V The visionary behind The Hotchkiss School Timothy Dwight V Family Discoveries It was exciting to learn that many individuals along Yale University President Timothy Dwight’s ancestry were involved in the beginnings or “firsts” of many facets of American history. Dwight served as Yale’s 12th President; his grandfather, Timothy Dwight IV, was Yale’s eighth president.

Timothy Dwight V

Thomas Hooker (1586-1647) Timothy Dwight’s 3rd Great-Grandfather, “Father of Connecticut” • Thomas Hooker was a founder of the colony of Connecticut as well as the city of Hartford, Connecticut. He was also the first minister of Cambridge, Massachusetts. • Thomas Hooker helped write the “Fundamental Orders of Connecticut,” one of the first written constitutions in the United States.

Thomas Willett (1605-1674) Timothy Dwight’s 3rd Great-Grandfather “First Mayor of New York City” • Thomas Willett served his community and the government in many different capacities: –7 Jul 1646, Deputy for Plymouth to Plymouth Colony General Court. –7 March 1647/8, Willett became the Captain of the Plymouth Colony Militia. –6 June 1649, Willett was made the surveyor of the highways. –1651-1664, Willett was magistrate of Plymouth Colony. • Thomas Willett later served as the first and third mayor of New York City.

Rev. Solomon Stoddard (1643-1729) Timothy Dwight’s 2nd Great-Grandfather “First Librarian of Harvard” • Solomon Stoddard graduated from Harvard in 1662 and shortly thereafter became Harvard’s first librarian. • Solomon was the grandfather of well-known theologian Jonathan Edwards.

W i n t e r

2 0 1 4

143897_14_20_features 20-27 4/5/14 1:41 PM Page 18

GEORGE A.RANNEY JR.’58 ALONG THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED | BY ROBERTA JENCKES George Ranney ’58 is President and CEO of Metropolis Strategies, an organization created by business and civic leaders in Chicago to make northeastern Illinois competitive in the global economy. What he does now, at age 73, isn’t the whole story, however innovative and forward-thinking the regional plan he has helped devise is. It’s how he got there….

PHOTO SUPPLIED BY THE CENTER FOR HUMANS AND NATURE

BELOW & OPPOSITE: George Ranney '58, President of Metropolis Strategies; and opposite, an illustration by Mitchell A. Markowitz, supplied by Metropolis Strategies, from its published plan

O T C H K I S S

A G A Z I N E

If you were to take a look at the 1958 Misch, you would find he was president of the student council, the editor of the Record, and winner of the Estill Prize for “spirit and scholarship.” He loved literature, and English Masters Dick Gurney and Bill Olsen encouraged that passion. He was also influenced by Russell Edwards, the Latin teacher who gave him the nickname of “G.A. poet,” as the Misch reported. Most important, however, was George Van Santvoord, who gave Ranney “the most important career advice I ever received,” when Ranney was considering leaving Hotchkiss early to study in England. We’ll see more about that later …. George graduated from Harvard magna cum laude, then headed the Law Review at the University of Chicago Law School. He became involved in civil rights and law reform. He became a partner at Mayer Brown, a global law firm headquartered in Chicago. And he spent much of his career working for Inland Steel Industries, managing its coal and iron ore mines and serving as Vice President of Raw Materials and Energy, then Vice President and General Counsel. At the request of members of the Donnelley family including Gaylord Donnelley (H’27) and Strachan Donnelley (H’60), George and his wife Vicky developed Prairie Crossing – a 395-home “conservation community” based on environmental principles which has pro-

vided the initiative for protection of 3,000 acres of open land At the same time, he cultivated his interest in public policy, first encouraged when he served in the late 1960s as the deputy budget director for the State of Illinois. Later he ran as a progressive Republican for the U.S. Senate, losing narrowly, but his narrow loss would have been bigger had it not been for the work of Bob McCormack (H’58) as his finance chairman, for which he says he will always be grateful. Well-known as an advocate for the common good, in 2004 Ranney received the Order of Lincoln, the state’s highest honor. He participated for many years in the work of the Commercial Club of Chicago, which in 1909 published the Burnham Plan for Chicago and in 1998 followed up with a landmark plan for regional development. And that is where our story begins. …. How did the work of Metropolis Strategies come about, and how did you become involved? In the late ’90s, leaders in the senior business community of Chicago became interested in how to make sure Chicago was globally competitive by the year 2020. Through the Commercial Club, they asked me to be the CEO of an organization to implement recom-

143897_14_20_features 20-27 4/5/14 1:41 PM Page 19

W i n t e r

2 0 1 4

143897_14_20_features 20-27 4/5/14 1:41 PM Page 20

LEFT: An illustration showing the miles of pavement needed for the cars of an anticipated 1.6 million new residents expected in Chicago

mendations that other members of the Club and I developed. Your plan posed a central question: “We are expecting 1.6 million new residents. Where will they all go?” We used questions like this to get people's attention. We pointed out that we would need pavement stretching from Florida to Alaska simply to park all the cars those new people would need under current growth patterns. We suggested that with effective planning, all of that pavement would not be necessary and that the average resident could spend 155 fewer hours a year stuck in traffic – the equivalent of four workweeks. We were able to define a scenario with additional mass transit and development located near it that made Chicago a much more attractive and workerfriendly place to live. Your plan is based on regional approaches. How do you achieve this, since the tendency everywhere seems to be to think locally and act locally? The most concrete result of our work has been the creation of the

O T C H K I S S

Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, which has developed an official plan for the entire region that directs where federal and state capital investments should go. This achievement, after 40 years of effort, is having a noticeable impact on growth and development in Chicago. The secret to this success is simply getting public officials to realize that they can make better investments if they are not continually competing with each other to protect local interests. What other issues has your group addressed? We have focused heavily on improving transit and roads, including design of a new, more environmentally sensitive parkway. We have worked to improve the area’s ability to attract and retain businesses. We have operated on the assumption that a successful region depends upon effective social services, including nearly doubled early childhood education and better ways of dealing with nonviolent and juvenile offenders than putting them in prison. We led the rewrite of the criminal code for Illinois that reflected our philosophies.

A G A Z I N E

How did you come up with the personnel to address these different challenges? We recruited primarily people who were about 60 and looking for new challenges, and who had some experience with public policy. Most of them had done well enough by that time in their lives that they were able and willing to accept our invitation to work half-time without compensation. They were certainly not ready to retire. They had won respect in their careers broadly throughout Chicago. They included a university president who had served as chief of staff for policy for an Illinois Governor, the president of the MacArthur Foundation, the head of strategic planning for Inland Steel, and the CEO of a successful home security alarm business who had just sold the business he led. How did you choose the specific areas to which to assign these people? We were pretty entrepreneurial. We took the various features of the Commercial Club’s report and chose the leaders for them depending on their interests. The senior executive who chose justice and violence did so because the region was desperately in need of leadership in that area from the civic and business community. She has become a highly influential expert in the field. Another, the CEO of the home security business who had experience

working with local mayors to change their housing codes to permit alarm systems, which we translated into a skill set of persuading municipalities to accept more economically affordable housing. How did you happen to choose to do this? Did Hotchkiss have anything to do with it? I was about to turn 60 when I was asked to lead this effort. That age can be an important stage in one’s life. It’s an opportunity for many people to do something different. Metropolis was that for me. I had just spent several traumatic years working on a transaction to sell a substantial part of the Inland Steel Company, for which I was the fifth generation of my family to work, and was ready for something new and different. In the 1960s, I had worked for the Illinois Budget Bureau under an enlightened Governor, leading negotiations for the state’s first income tax and for a reformed regional transportation system, so this was a logical progression. I found good public policy is not unlike good poetry – it has to have a purpose and be well written. Finally, I was reminded of a conversation with “the Duke,” George Van Santvoord, who had taken an interest in me when I was a Prep, I think because my father had been a Prep in the Duke’s first year as Headmaster years before. I consulted him as to whether I should leave Hotchkiss before my senior year to study abroad. He quoted Robert Frost’s poem beginning, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,” and asked what more I would learn at Hotchkiss if I stayed? – and what I could learn if I left. Ever since I have thought about choices in this way, and I like to think it has helped me to choose to go down “the road less traveled.” So I have Hotchkiss to thank for this lifelong insight – and my present occupation.

143897_21_Layout 1 4/5/14 1:46 PM Page 1

Hotchkiss Hot chkiss Alumni Alumni M Mobile obile App App STAY S TAY CONNECTED CONNE ECTED TThe he Hotchkiss Hotchkiss School School Alumni Alumni A Association ssociation is pleased tto o off offer ffe e er or o alumni tto a new way way ffor o sta stayy in touch. touch.

DOWNLOAD DO OWNL W OAD A IT T TODAY! OD DAY Y! More M ore her here ew www.hotchkiss.org/alumni ww.hotchkiss.org/alumni

fac ebook facebook

ttwitter witter

flick flickrr

IInstagram nstagram

V Vimeo imeo

143897_22_23_tmatters 4/5/14 1:50 PM Page 22

TEACHING

ma t t e rs

Merrilee Mardon: Leading students to discover the real-world study of economics

B Y

R O B E R T A

J E N C K E S

Finding the subject that will capture and hold your interest

feels a bit like falling in love. Just ask Associate Dean of Academic Life and Instructor in Economics Merrilee Mardon. For her, the immersion happened

“I walked out of a Shakespeare class and into an economics class,” she says. “The professor had a broken arm from a political protest he had recently participated in. He connected theory to politics in a really exciting way – a way that helped me think more about my own life and my parents’ struggles to care for three kids. And I thought, ‘I love this class. This is a different ballgame.’” Mardon’s high school experience in Kirkland, WA offered no such awakenings. “My high school was the opposite of Hotchkiss,” she says. “There were 556 students in my senior class. I was advised to go to a community college because I would be getting married soon.” Mardon, on the other hand, expected her future career would be as a teacher or businesswoman. Before coming to Hotchkiss in 2008, she taught at Connecticut College. There, she was visiting lecturer in the economics department, then visiting assistant professor, and finally Vandana Shiva Assistant Professor in the departments of Economics and Gender and Women’s Studies. Earlier, she taught economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst as a graduate student. Teaching at Hotchkiss offers new and different rewards, Mardon says. “I like the students’ enthusiasm and watching them experience the thrill of discovery, as they learn this subject. In many ways, it seems our students

O T C H K I S S

A G A Z I N E

PHOTOS: ALAN MURPHY

during her freshman year at Smith College.

work harder and get more out of classes than was true at the college level. College students have so many other things going on. I have more time with my students here, and I can do more with them. “Also,” she says, “our students know how to ask for help; that’s one of the things they learn here. They know that they can reach out for help, and that their teachers want to give that help.” Senior Sutton Fanlo says, “Dr. Mardon is a great teacher, simple as that. She has given

me a very solid base of economics which I fully intend to use while seeking an undergraduate degree in economics. She has made me think about economics in a much broader sense of the word, as a lens to see the world through, and as a way to look at many of the world’s problems. “My one-on-one time with her for my independent study has been even better than I expected,” he continues. “She points me in the right direction every time I need guidance, but also allows me to figure out some things

143897_22_23_tmatters 4/5/14 1:50 PM Page 23

RIGHT: Instructor Merrilee Mardon talks with students after their class in AP Economics.

on my own. … She has had an incredibly positive impact on my Hotchkiss experience.” Senior Caitlin Callahan says, “I cannot remember a time where I showed up to class and Dr. Mardon was not standing at the board writing down the topics for the day, eager to begin. She has a passion for the subject and she uses that passion to inspire her students.” RESEARCH THAT EMPOWERS AND ENRICHES

Reaching beyond the guidance she had been given in high school, Mardon became the first among her siblings to go to college. She learned at a college fair that Smith College had a junior year abroad program in Hamburg, Germany, and she had studied German in high school and spent six months in Germany in an exchange program. And Smith was need-blind in admissions at that time. “I remember doing my application on my mom’s typewriter. My mom and dad supported me,” she says. “My dad said, ‘Go for it. We’ll make it work out.’” After graduating from Smith College with majors in economics and German language and literature, she earned a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She held a Fulbright Teaching Assistantship in Germany and conducted research in Brazil, following her research interests in gender and development, Latin America, rural development, household and family economics, collective action, social norms, and property rights. “My research in Brazil was, in a way, a chance to figure out how I fit in the world,” Mardon says. “My work there came from a larger question about understanding how poor women and men can be better off, in a deeper sense. I really connected to the work on an emotional level –still thinking about my parents and their struggles to be better off – even though what I was seeing was so different on an intellectual level. “More recently,” she says, “I've been think-

ing about educational outcomes for people from different socioeconomic backgrounds and from different groups. How important are race, gender, and class in shaping attainment? If these things are important, what are the mechanisms? These are not new questions, but still very important. I think the research is just beginning to tease out the relative importance of the different factors that influence attainment as well as the ability and willingness to make the most of education.” In choosing her academic specialty, Mardon entered a field that that has not traditionally attracted women. “It tends to be male-dominated,” she notes. Although there was a notable increase in women entering economics in the 1970s, the percentage since then has remained fairly steady. “About 30 percent of the Ph.D. recipients in economics are women, and many of that number get allocated into the lower end of the job market,” she says. So, the number holding prestigious positions is only a portion of that 30 percent. Currently, in addition to her work as Associate Dean of Academic Life, she teaches three sections of AP Economics, a “pretty popular course. … Economics is different … kind of like an applied math course. For some students, it comes very naturally. I hope that students in the course gain an understanding that economics is as important as it is interesting, and that there is more than one way to think about economic problems. I hope, too, that many of them will go on to study economics in college, and that I've prepared them to start ahead of the game.” Cason Reily’13, now a freshman at Oxford University, has found that his class with Dr.

Mardon prepared him well. “I have decided to pursue economics as part of my degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics,” he says, “and have found that I’ve been much more than adequately prepared for the introductory study at university level. “I took Dr. Mardon’s AP Economics class in my upper mid year and then worked with her in an independent study in economics my senior year. She did a very good job of making the AP economics material both accessible and interesting to me; of course, I learned the AP curriculum well, but she also helped cultivate a broader interest in economics and economic topics that encouraged me to continue studying it. For my independent study, Dr. Mardon helped me work through some of the great historical economic texts and worked with me to think about their connections to current economic theory and topics.” NEW APPOINTMENT

Head of School Dr. Kevin Hicks has appointed Dr. Merrilee Mardon as the next Dean of Academic Life, effective July 1, 2014. She succeeds Tom Woelper, who has been appointed Head of School at the Far Hills Country Day School in Far Hills, NJ. In making the announcement, he noted the “considerable experience, knowledge, and talent she brings to the position, the sum of which distinguished her in this search,” adding that Dr. Mardon is “known by all as a fine teacher.”

W i n t e r

2 0 1 4

143897_24_25_alums 4/5/14 1:54 PM Page 24

ALUMNI

n a me s a n d f a ce s

Brad Rathgeber ’97:

Creator of the Online School for Girls

BY DANIEL LIPPMAN ’08

During one memorable summer between college years, Brad Rathgeber ’97

traveled around Zimbabwe, interviewing kids for a program that would provide scholarships for them to go to a boarding school in the city.

O T C H K I S S

A G A Z I N E

“I will never forget calling up a school to tell them, ‘Listen, we are going to take your student into the program,’ and I remember the principal’s dropping the phone, screaming, and just being overjoyed. They couldn’t talk to us for five minutes,” he recalls. “That type of happiness in education is so special and amazing.” Rathgeber has devoted his professional life to date to education. Currently, he serves as the executive director of the Online School for Girls, which this year will bring together 50 teachers to present 25 yearlong courses to 920 students from 80 independent, mostly girls’, schools. Rathgeber, raised in Kensington, CT, says his time at Hotchkiss influenced his interest in teaching, especially the traditionally small, seminar-style classes. One weekend his senior year, he helped Blair Torrey to rebuild a memorial to Vietnam veterans that had been overgrown with honeysuckle in the woods. And, because he was on the swimming and water-polo teams, he taught a generation of faculty children how to swim. He explains that Hotchkiss teachers “are really good at their craft, and they show each and every one of their students that they really care. And that to me is the most special of those things.” “If one of their students has a passion,” he observes, “then they’re going to have that passion, too, and they’re going to help get that along.”

143897_24_25_alums 4/5/14 1:54 PM Page 25

OPPOSITE: Rathgeber making a presentation at the American School of Bombay RIGHT: With students at St.

Says Keith Moon, dean of the Class of 2017 and instructor in history and English, “Brad has always been, even at age 14 when he started at Hotchkiss, one of those remarkable people who can learn the culture of a place in a hurry while simultaneously shifting that culture to being its best self. I have known Brad well, first as a student at Hotchkiss and then again as a professional colleague at the Harvard Summer School and, in both experiences and at both stages of his life, he worked the same magic. He engages with everyone – regardless of age, regardless of station – with such ease, respect, and confidence that he very quickly appears to have been around for years even when he’s just arrived on the scene. It is impossible for me to imagine someone who doesn't like Brad Rathgeber; he has so many dimensions and layers that there is always a connection point for others.” Rathgeber was awarded a Morehead Scholarship, the oldest, most prestigious merit scholarship program in the country, to attend the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he majored in history and graduated in 2001. After working as a capital gifts fundraiser at UNC for a couple of years, he returned to college, choosing Dartmouth College for a Master’s degree in Liberal Arts Studies. He was drawn to concentrating on oral histories; he loved the role that storytelling could play in society, he says. Then in 2004, he became a history teacher at the all-girls Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, MD, where he developed a reputation for using technology in unique ways. One assignment at the National Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum had students record podcasts that would give listeners (their fellow classmates) a virtual gallery tour. This innovative learning experience won a write-up from The Washington Post. Rathgeber was soon named director of academic technology, where he helped teachers use

PHOTOS SUPPLIED BY THE ONLINE SCHOOL FOR GIRLS

Andrew’s Priory School

the online academic platform Blackboard, start discussion boards online, and use data analytics to assess whether students were fully engaged in their classes. When asked by the head of school what he would like to do next, Rathgeber replied that he wanted to explore online education. “It seemed to me there was a niche that wasn’t being filled,” he says. While major corporations, states, and top universities had entered the space, there were few options for high school students from independent schools to take online classes to supplement their curriculum. So in 2009, Rathgeber helped create the Online School for Girls, starting with four independent girls’ schools, including HoltonArms. Now 80 schools participate. “One of the ideas here is that every school can’t offer everything under the sun,” he says. “Even a school like Hotchkiss might have two, three, or four kids who are ready to take the most advanced algebra or mathematics course. Does it make sense and is it the best environment for them to be taking a class of two, three, or four students, or is it better for them to be taking a class of 15 with top math students from around the country?” Students typically take one class at a time (limited to 20 students per section), with their schools usually picking up the tab. While a class doesn’t meet in real-time, there is homework, and grades are issued.

Rathgeber says the school helps prepare its students for college, where 70 percent of college students will take an online course, and the “real world, where you might have to collaborate on projects with colleagues five timezones away.” For students, he says, courses also offer flexibility and the ability to take many different subjects; for teachers, they learn a lot to make their face-to-face classes more engaging. He says his school aims to be a supplement to face-to-face learning at the partner schools and acknowledges “the biggest challenge is helping faculty members at school understand it is not trying to replace what they’re doing at their campus, and that nobody is devaluing what they do.” Some interesting things he’s found so far: videos from teachers should be under seven minutes so that students stay engaged. He also observes that “kids that are wallflowers are often the most loquacious [in online classes] … So those kids you thought in the face-toface classroom didn’t have a voice all of a sudden are among the loudest voices.” DANIEL LIPPMAN (@DLIPPMAN) IS A JOURNALIST BASED IN WASHINGTON, D.C., AND CAN BE REACHED AT DLIPPMAN@GWMAIL.GWU.EDU HE’S WRITTEN FOR THE WALL STREET

JOURNAL, MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS, REUTERS, AND THE HUFFINGTON POST.

W i n t e r

2 0 1 4

143897_26_28_history 4/5/14 1:57 PM Page 26

H I S T O RY

ma k e rs

Bissell Hall: The ‘Quiet Years,’ 1933-1974 BY BRENDA UNDERWOOD

In its 120-year life tucked unobtrusively behind Main Building, Bissell Hall has played many roles. It has embraced generations of Hotchkiss students: boys when it was first built in 1894 (and again for one year,

Known to one generation of students as “The Yellow Submarine” because of its tawny yellow bricks and inevitable comparison to the famous Beatles song, Bissell Hall has stamped something enduring on the memory of Hotchkiss alumni that they will carry with them for the rest of their lives. As one former student expressed it: “… whenever I see a building built out of yellow bricks, I feel that tug of home.” But, while Bissell Hall has watched over the development of legions of Hotchkiss students, it was not always in the role of student dormitory. During the years 1933 to 1974 it had another, off-the-radar, life. By the early 1930s after four new dormitories (Memorial Hall, Tinker Hall, Wieler Hall, and Edward Coy Hall) had been built and focused the activity of the School towards the south side of the campus, Bissell Hall was decommissioned as a dormitory and embarked on a long period in the background of School life.

O T C H K I S S

A G A Z I N E

PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE HOTCHKISS SCHOOL ARCHIVES

in 1974-75), and Upper Mid and Senior girls after its renovation in the 1970s.

OPPOSITE: The familiar entrance of Bissell Hall ABOVE: A postcard from a student features a warmly tinted Bissell.

During those years, Bissell remained somewhat apart from the rest of the campus, giving it a slightly mysterious aspect for some students. But while it may not have garnered the warm memories of comfort and camaraderie as it had as a student dormitory, it still featured importantly in the day-to-day life of Hotchkiss. Through the combined memories of alumni

and former staff members,* we have been able to shed some light on this period—a period that has left memories of creaking floorboards, dark hallways, housekeeping staff with psychic powers, and a ghost who wandered Bissell’s halls for most of its existence. And, although there were moments of sheer terror in the imaginations of some boys of the era, Bissell had a solid existence during that time and became, in effect, the hub for the maintenance of the School. The basement housed the carpenters,’ plumbers,’ and the electrician’s shops. John Worrall P’09, a carpenter at Hotchkiss for 42 years and whose parents were also employed at the School remembers that, “We had plumbers here, and we had one electrician. We fixed everything from windows on up.” And Hotchkiss ran its own cafeteria, which necessitated bringing in employees from other areas. Being remote, and transportation not being what it is today, Hotchkiss provided

143897_26_28_history 4/5/14 1:57 PM Page 27

W i n t e r

2 0 1 4

143897_26_28_history 4/5/14 1:57 PM Page 28

H I S T O RY

ma k e rs

RIGHT: An aerial view of Bissell Hall, east side, from October 2012

accommodation for dining room and housekeeping staff in Bissell. In the earlier part of this time, chambermaids, who took care of student rooms, had their accommodation on the second and third floors; in later years, they were accommodated on the first floor. Also in the basement was a working laundry where linens and student clothing were laundered in soapstone sinks and ironed by the housekeeping staff. Harold Scott ’35 recalls that, “on Saturday all student laundry was left in a bag outside each room and collected by a horse-drawn wagon on Sunday morning.” When it was ready, students went to the back of Bissell to pick it up. In addition to these uses, part of the first floor was used as a study hall and test-taking facility; SAT tests were administered there during the 1960s although, not surprisingly, this fact has been relegated into the far corners of memory by many students. During the 1930s and the 1940s, the first floor was also used as a pre-school for the children of faculty members. Julian Coolidge ’52, son of master Archibald Coolidge, who taught English, remembers being a student in a small class taught by Emma Berry, wife of Master Charles E. Berry, who taught German. When former Headmaster Rusty Chandler ’53 first came to Hotchkiss, “there was a covered wooden walkway that led from the back of Main Building to the south end of Bissell Hall.” That walkway was a good place to play for children of faculty on rainy days, recalls George Gurney ’57, whose father, Richard C. Gurney, was master of English from 1935 to 1971. Gurney also remembers childhood afternoon teas with Winnie and Lila, “two sweet, presumably Irish, maidens,” who lived in Bissell. “We always went during the day as there was very little light in the corridors, and the wood stairs and hallways creaked something fierce underfoot—enough to be a bit spooky. We’d rap on a door, and either

O T C H K I S S

A G A Z I N E

Winnie or Lila would ask us in to their very Spartan room and offer us tea and cookies. The latter was probably the hook that inspired our visits. After a while, Winnie would ask if she could read my teacup as she had special powers. She looked intently at it and then looked at us with a bewildered look and say, ‘It says you are wanted at home!’ and we would pound back down the stairs.” At a later period when the second and third floors were closed off, Bissell entered on a faintly shadowy existence, at least in the memory of one former alumnus. When Robert Chartener ’76 arrived at Hotchkiss, “Bissell was a slightly scary place… Though it was officially off-bounds for students, I walked in at one point, for a brief and terrifying peek, and it looked a bit like the set for a movie about a Victorian asylum with beat-up wooden floors, cracked plaster on the walls, bare bulbs on the ceilings, and… I exited quickly. ” During this period the housekeepers lived in rooms on the first floor. Chartener recalls that when Bissell was renovated in 1974, a piece of wood paneling was discovered with the initials “HHW” and the year “1896” carved on it. After a check against alumni records they were found to be those of Henry Hubbard Wells, Class of 1896. Mr. Wells was still alive at the time, and after receiving immunity from disciplinary action for defacing School property, he was given the piece of wood by School officials.

And herewith we grant immunity to another alumnus who decided to enter a Bissell doorway that carried the sign: DANGER. DO NOT ENTER. “I couldn’t resist,” said Steve Adams ’60, who discovered “three floors of empty dormitory rooms with the flotsam and jetsam of former Hotchkiss students.” In one of the rooms, Adams noticed a hole in the wall and, being curious, reached in and pulled out a letter dated 1926 from a mother to her homesick son. Leaving the same way as he entered, “I was left with a wonderful sense of satisfaction and mystery.” As memories of one generation give way to memories of the next, there will always be stories to tell. Bissell Hall will be remembered in all its incarnations—as the first dormitory at Hotchkiss named after its founder Maria Bissell Hotchkiss, for the quiet years we have been able to uncover, and, for the role it played in ushering in the first female students. “It will be sad to see Bissell go,” said Robert Chartener, “but I’m glad that there is such a wonderful effort to preserve its history and memories.” *Steve Adams ’60, Ed Brammer, Sr., John R. “Rusty” Chandler ’53, Robert Chartener ’76, Julian Coolidge ’52,Walter DeMelle, George Gurney ’57, Robert F. Haiko, Don Mayland, Harold Scott ’35, John W. Titcomb ’68, John Virden ’64, John Worrall

143897_29_30_alums 4/5/14 2:00 PM Page 29

TRUE BLUE Albert Sly: At 90, the former music teacher still uplifts others through song

BY HENRY MCNULTY

“Al helped us learn the notes,” says Tom Aydelotte ’58. “But even more, he taught us how to

sing the music. There’s a big distinction. You can just sing the notes and it sounds terrible, but you

Tom spoke at a celebration in the fall of 2013 for the 90th birthday of Albert C. Sly, who taught music, music history, theory and harmony at Hotchkiss, and directed the Glee Club and Choir, from 1950 to 1970. Al also–and this is how many alumni of the period remember him best–played the organ in Chapel. But his two decades at Hotchkiss were just one movement of the lengthy symphony that has been his life so far; indeed, in his 10th decade Al Sly is still the organist at the Congregational Church of Salisbury, as he has been for almost 44 years. Born in Flushing, N.Y., Al was one of the first students to attend the then-new High School of Music and Art in Manhattan. After graduation, he enrolled at Yale University, but as with many young men of the era, World War II intervened. He became a chaplain’s assistant in the 42nd Infantry, serving in France, Austria, and other parts of Europe, and played the organ both at religious services and at musical programs for the troops. After the war, he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Yale School of Music, studied for a time in Europe with famed organist Marcel Dupré, and then came to Lakeville. “I got the position thanks to a friend at Yale, Walter Collins, who was directing the Glee Club at Hotchkiss,” he says. “He was the

PHOTO: JONATHAN DOSTER

can sing music, and phrase it, and accent it, and it is something wonderful.”

one who started the Blue Notes.” Many graduates associate Al with the fifth (Toccata) movement of the 5th Symphony of the French composer Charles-Marie Widor. Frequently used in weddings, the Toccata was always played by Al at Hotchkiss as the recessional when a surprise school holiday was

announced in morning chapel. “The Toccata is not all that difficult to play,” Al says, “but the thing is, you have to keep going. It’s kind of relentless that way.” He played it at other times too. “Whenever I hear the Widor Organ Symphony I think of Al Sly, and chapel the way it was, and the serenity W i n t e r

2 0 1 4

143897_29_30_alums 4/5/14 2:00 PM Page 30

TRUE BLUE

PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE HOTCHKISS SCHOOL ARCHIVES AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

LEFT: Al Sly at the keyboard during his years on the Hotchkiss faculty

of evening chapel on Sunday night,” says Phil Pillsbury ’53, now retired from the foreign service. “Sundays were a spiritual double-header in a way. We left the chapel Sunday morning uplifted by the very life of the Widor Toccata, and then at Sunday evening Vespers we entered a tranquil state of mind when Al took us into the great hymn, ‘Now the day is over, night is drawing nigh.’ Even now, when I think of it, it brings me peace.” John Garvan ’63, a retired consultant and fundraiser, recalls how Al helped him “learn how to be the ‘pitch pipe’ – that is, the director – of the 1963 Blue Notes. I had sung in various choirs as a kid, and had studied music, but never had to actually take an arrangement and help people learn notes and blend their voices. Al was my mentor as the group got going in the fall of ’62, and he also helped us arrange performances on campus where we could sharpen our skills. He would never interfere during a rehearsal, but was always available to answer questions I or others had about the songs we sang.” And Al’s lessons lasted beyond Hotchkiss. “Selecting soloists was always a tricky blend of picking the right voice and not offending others in the parts,” John says. “When I got to Yale and was pitch pipe of the Baker’s

O T C H K I S S

A G A Z I N E

Dozen group, I recalled Al’s advice many times in making decisions about who to include or exclude, and how to run rehearsals and performances.” Says Tom Aydelotte: “I was in the Glee Club, the Choir, and the Blue Notes. Al did the musical arrangements for the Blue Notes. He wouldn’t accept anything less than the optimum, and as a result, there were some magical musical moments. Perhaps the greatest thing we learned from Al Sly was how to enjoy music and have fun with it.” Tom, a retired advertising executive and headhunter, also remembers Al’s leadership of a five-school chorus (Hotchkiss, Taft, Choate, Deerfield, Loomis) that performed once a year, separately and together, in Hartford. “We sang wonderful works such as Mendelssohn’s Elijah and Honegger’s King David at the Bushnell Hall,” Tom says. It was in connection with one of those concerts that Al met his future wife. “In 1962, it was my turn to lead the five-school glee club concert,” he says. “We rehearsed at Choate, and that night Choate’s director of music, Duncan Phyfe, asked me to have dinner with him at his house. He’d also invited the woman who was looking after his children, Elizabeth Taber, and we fell in love.” They were married

the next year, and spent 44 years together. At Hotchkiss, they lived in Van Santvoord for five years and then moved off campus. Liz, who was an accomplished equestrienne and horse trainer, died in 2007. In 1970, Al left Hotchkiss to become the minister of music at the Salisbury Congregational Church. “I just figured that 20 years at Hotchkiss was a nice round number,” he says. From 1973 to 1987, he taught music appreciation at the Torrington branch of the University of Connecticut, taking over from another longtime Hotchkiss music teacher, Charles Demarest. He was also involved in local music organizations. For many years he was associated with the Berkshire Hills Music and Dance Association, serving as its president starting in 1980. “We presented such diverse groups as the Romeros, Chanticleer, Momix, Pilobolus, Marian and Jimmy McPartland, the Boston and Hartford ballet companies, Goldovsky Opera, and many others,” he says. He was also on the board of Music Mountain in Falls Village, home of the country’s oldest continuing summer chamber music festival. Although Al – known to many as “Albo” – left full-time Hotchkiss employment in 1970, he has never lost touch with the School. “I play for the candlelight Lessons and Carols service each Christmas,” he says, “and occasionally there’s a wedding or a memorial service.” And, of course, there are the reunions. “There are hundreds, maybe thousands, who have been moved and inspired by Albo’s musicianship and friendship,” says Tom Aydelotte. “He is a warm, compassionate, wonderful human being. We’d come back for reunions, and everyone would say ‘get Albo to the table.’ “Yes, Albo was a member of the faculty at Hotchkiss, and a person to be respected at all times,” Tom says. “But Albo was our pal; he loved being with us, and the feeling was mutual. We didn’t sing for him, we sang with him. He was our partner.”

143897c 4/5/14 12:57 PM Page 2

EMERITI

Lance K. Beizer ’56

Howard C. Bissell ’55, P’82

Katheryn Allen Berlandi ’88 Ex-Officio

John R. Chandler, Jr. ’53, P’82,’85,’87, GP’10

Miriam Beveridge ’86

Frederick Frank ’50, P’12

William J. Benedict Jr. ’70, P’08, ’10

David L. Luke III ’41

Adam Casella ’06

Dr. Robert A. Oden, Jr. P’97

Robert V. Chartener ’76

Francis T. Vincent, Jr. ’56, P’85

Caldwell Hart ’87, P’16

Arthur W. White P’71,’74, GP’08,’11

Keith Holmes ’77

Lawrence Flinn, Jr. ’53

Bernice Leung Lin ’88

Diana Gomez ’76, P’11,’12

Alumni Association Board of Governors

Hullihen (Chip) D. Quarrier III ’90

President Edward J. Greenberg ’55

David Sei-ngee Tan ’91

Vice Presidents Christina M. Bechhold ’03

Carolyn H. Toolan ’97

Keith E. Bernard Jr. ’95, Chair, Alumni of Color Committee Patricia Barlerin Farman-Farmaian ’85, Chair, Gender Committee Quinn Fionda ’91, Chair, Communications Committee

John L. Thornton ’72, P’10,’11,’16 Officer-at-Large

Thomas R. Seidenstein ’91 Chair, Alumni Services Committee

Daniel Wilner '03 Stephanie Bowling Zeigler ’84

Class of 1964 - 50th Reunion Class of 1949 - 65th Reunion

Daniel N. Pullman ’76 Ex-Officio

Marjo Talbott

William B. Tyree ’81, P’14, Treasurer

Classes of 1934, 1939, 1944, 1954, 1959, 1969, 1974, 1979, 1984, 1989, 1994, 1999, 2004, 2009

Nichole R. Phillips ’89

Edward Greenberg ’55

Elizabeth Gardner Hines ’93

September 26-28, 2014

Alessandra H. Nicolas ’95

Sean M. Gorman ’72, Secretary

Kevin M. Hicks, Ex Officio

June 13-15, 2014

Casey H. Reid ’01 Bryan A. Small ’03

Michael G.T. Thompson ’66

Stephanie Bowling Zeigler ’84 Ex-Officio

Hotchkiss REUNION

George A. Takoudes ’87, Chair, Nominating Committee Douglas Campbell III, ’71, P’01, Secretary and Chair, Nominating Subcommittee for Membership

Photo by Jonathan Doster

143897c 4/5/14 12:57 PM Page 1

HOTCHKISS M

Nonprofit Org. U.S. Postage

PAID Permit No. 36

11 INTERLAKEN ROAD LAKEVILLE, CT 06039-2141 (860) 435-2591 w w w. h o t c h k i s s . o r g

Pittsfield, MA

HOTCHKISS M

W i n t e r

Z 2 0 1 4