Hotchkiss Magazine Fall 2015

Fall 2015

Board of Trustees

EMERITI

Paul Mutter ’87

Charles Ayres Jr. ’77

Howard C. Bissell ’55, P’82

Thomas C. Barry P’01,’03,’05

John R. Chandler, Jr. ’53, P’82,’85,’87,GP’10,’14,’16

Nichole Phillips ’89 Vice President and Chair Alumni of Color Committee

Robert Chartener ’76, P’18

Frederick Frank ’50, P’12

John G. Coumantaros ’80, P’16

Dr. Robert A. Oden, Jr. P’97

Ian R. Desai ’00

Francis T. Vincent, Jr. ’56, P’85

Thomas J. Edelman ’69, P’06,’07

Arthur W. White P’71,’74, GP’08,’11

William R. Elfers ’67, Vice President

Forrest Mars ’49 P’77, ’82, GP’09,’09,’11,’11,’14

Diana Gomez ’76, P’11,’12 Sean M. Gorman ’72 Secretary Edward J. Greenberg ’55 Ex Officio John P. Grube ’65, P’00 Charles F. Gulden ’79, P’12 Elizabeth Hines ’93

Emily Pressman ’98 Chip Quarrier ’90 Vice President and Chair, Communications Committee

Alumni Association Board of Governors Ed Greenberg ’55 President

Casey Reid ’01 William Sandberg ’65 Tom Seidenstein ’91 Vice Presidentand Chair, Alumni Services Committee Bryan Small ’03 Sheria Smith ’01 David Tan ’91 Michael Thompson ’66

Christina Bechhold ’03 Vice President and Chair, Nominating Committee

Carolyn Toolan ’97

Kendra S. O’Donnell

Miriam Gelber Beveridge, ’86 Vice President and Co-Chair, Gender Committee

EX-OFFICIO MEMBERS

Thomas S. Quinn ’71, P’15,’17, P’19

Sirin Bulakul ’06

Jean Weinberg Rose ’80, P’18 President

Doug Campbell ’71, P’01 Secretary and Chair, Membership Subcommittee of the Nominating Committee

G. Peter O'Neill Jr. Head of School

Roger K. Smith ’78, P’08 Marjo Talbott John L. Thornton ’72, P’10,’11,’16 Officer-at-Large William B. Tyree ’81, P’14 Treasurer

Katie Berlandi ’88, P’19 Past President, Alumni Association

Adam Casella ’06 Vice President

Dan Pullman ’76, P’14 Past President, Alumni Association

Nathalie Pierrepont Danilovich ’03

Chuck Gulden ’79, P’12 President, The Hotchkiss Fund

Charlotte Dillon ’10

Jean Weinberg Rose ’80, P’18 President, Board of Trustees

Mark Gall ’59

Rebecca van der Bogert

Peter Gifford ’93

Daniel J. Wilner ’03

Caldwell Hart ’87, P’16

David B. Wyshner ’85

Keith Holmes ’77 Vice President and Co-Chair, Gender Committee Annika Lescott ’06 Barrett Lester ’81 Nisa Leung Lin ’88

A River Runs Through It On the cover, Charles Frankenbach, instructor in English, helps a lower mid perfect his cast on the Housatonic River near Cornwall Bridge. (Photograph by Wendy Carlson) Fishing in northwest Connecticut's rivers, lakes and streams is a long-standing tradition for students and faculty. In recent years, fly fishing became an official co-curricular, led by Frankenbach. Students not only learn the art of tying a fly and casting a line, but they also gain knowledge about entomology and river ecology. This year, students planted trees and shrubs along the Salmon Kill in Salisbury as part of a river restoration project led by Trout Unlimited.

COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY WENDY CARLSON

HOTCHKISS M

A

G

A

Z

I

N

E

Fall 2015

F a

l

l

2

0

1

5

HEAD OF SCHOOL

G. Peter O'Neill Jr. CHIEF COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER

Hellen Hom-Diamond EDITOR

Wendy Carlson GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Eugene Wang WRITER AND DIGITAL CONTENT PRODUCER

Chelsea Edgar COMMUNICATIONS COORDINATOR

Julie Vecchitto VIDEOGRAPHER AND DIGITAL MEDIA SPECIALIST

Tyler Wosleger DIGITAL MEDIA MANAGER

Alan Murphy CONTRIBUTORS

Joan Baldwin Irisdelia Garcia ’14 Roberta Jenckes Daniel Lippman ’08 Dierdre Lord ’85 Caroline Phipps Megan Tady Vivian Xiao ’15 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: The Hotchkiss School, 11 Interlaken Road, Lakeville, CT 06039-2141, email to magazine@hotchkiss.org, or phone 860-435-3122.

F

E

A

T

U R

E

S

16 Finding J. D. Salinger 22 The Writing Life at Hotchkiss 32 New Life for Old Books 36 Back To Her Roots at Fairfield Farm 50 After Huricane Sandy, A Big Idea

D

E

4

Campus Connection: Visitors, New Faces, Athletics

P

A

R

T

M

E

N

T

S

54 Class Notes 82 In Memoriam 88 Parting Shot

F a l l

2 0 1 5

1

From the head

of Sch o o l

“W hat does it mean to live a good life? What about a productive life? How about a happy life? How might I think about these ideas if the answers conflict with one another?”

P

2

H o t c h k i s s

M a g a z i n e

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JONATHAN DOSTER

rofessor Richard Light from

the Harvard Graduate School of Education cited these questions in his article, “How to Live Wisely,” published in The New York Times on July 31. Over the years, he asked his students what would improve their college experience. In recent years, he’s observed that the tone of their answers has changed, moving away from the specifics of curriculum towards a broader examination of life.

These essential questions posed by Professor Light at Harvard will sound quite familiar to students at Hotchkiss. In fact, some very similar questions are displayed in the English wing along the hallway in three-inch block letters, close to the literal heart of the School: “What makes a ‘good’ society? What are the elements of a ‘good’ life? What is the place of human beings in the natural world?”

While we race back and forth to classes and meetings every day, these questions are reminders to take stock of our lives. Light’s questions enjoin us to reflect upon our own condition, but the ones on the walls of the English wing at Hotchkiss address even broader concerns: how the individual fits into the larger social fabric. At Hotchkiss, we don’t just ask ourselves what makes a “good life,” but what makes a “good society.”

From the opening of school, we’ve been focused on answering that question. Our community is built on “trust, mutual respect, and compassion,” as our mission statement reads — and, I have added, characterized by civility. A “good life” at Hotchkiss is one in which students are genuinely connected with each other and with faculty members. Conversations and debates

Letters to the Editor Peter and his wife, Peggy, greeting students on Opening Days

about current affairs and academic topics are not limited to the classrooms; they can be overheard from the Main Building couches and Dining Hall tables. Students cheer each other on in a show of camaraderie, both on the playing fields and on the stage. During study breaks in the dormitories, they relax and bond over pizza. Building a community — a “good society”— is an experience and responsibility we all share one moment at a time.

Not long ago, I attended an Admission outreach event called “Hotchkiss in Harlem,” where I had the privilege of listening to four current students speak. While they differed in class years, interests, and hometowns, they echoed a common theme: They came to Hotchkiss in a leap of faith, jumping out of their comfort zones in search of a demanding experience. As nerve-racking as the transition to boarding school life might have been, each talked about how the welcoming community helped them feel at ease right away.

Recently, I have asked our students to examine another question presented by Professor Light to his students at Harvard: “How well do your commitments actually match your goals?” Many of Light’s students found that they spend much of their precious time on activities that they don’t highly value. We encourage our students

to make choices about how they spend their time in a way that reflects their priorities and keeps their lives in balance.

At Hotchkiss, the answer to the essential question — “What makes a ‘good’ society?”

— is not limited to Lakeville. The School has a deep commitment to educating informed leaders who will engage confidently and competently in our complex world. From my ongoing talks with Craig Bradley, our incoming Head of School, I know that he shares a strong belief in global engagement.

During Craig’s recent visit to campus with his wife, Elizabeth Webb, he connected with our community in a warm and heartfelt way that reflects his leadership style. (To learn more about Craig Bradley, see page 6.)

As the leaves continue to fall, creating a colorful mosaic on the lawns surrounding our campus, I have encouraged students to stop for a moment and take in the beauty of the Berkshire-Taconic landscape. That simple practice is a way to acknowledge that part of what makes a “good life” here in Lakeville is the “good place” we are fortunate to call home.

Congratulations on your masterful creation printed in the summer 2015 Hotchkiss Magazine, “A Haven for Naturalists.” I enjoyed this issue enormously because of its natural history theme involving the School. Also the excellent piece on John Virden — a fine gentleman in all respects.

Patty and I left Hotchkiss 50 years ago, after six years in the biology department under Jack Bodel. I left to take a position as head of the science department at Far Hills Country Day School, and then on to the Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island for 20 years.

Peter Matthiessen ’45 was like a member of our family while his book, The Shorebirds of North America, was in progress. Bob Clem painted the illustrations, Ralph Palmer did the species account, and Gardner D. Stout (Dad) was editor and sponsor. Boker Doyle ’49 was at the Museum of Natural History while Dad was president, Donnie O’Brien ’52 was a next-door neighbor in New Canaan, Conn. Bob Hawkins was a senior dorm master when I was dorm head, Bob Royce, Russ Hansen — fellow birdwatchers at Hotchkiss — the list goes on and on.

All those naturalists, operating and sharing their love of the School’s splendid natural beauty, contributed to my lifelong dedication to nature, which has lasted these 83 years!

One more remarkable Hotchkiss quirk of fate that enriched my life. I became a screen tour lecturer for the National Audubon Society as a result of filming chilly fall sports at Hotchkiss.

I gained a remarkable degree of training in following the ball up and down the field — good training for filming birds in flight!

–Prentice K. Stout, Wakefield, R.I. F a l l

2 0 1 5

3

CAMPUS

co n n e c t i o n

Meet Kate Jones, New Dean of Students Kate Jones joined Hotchkiss in July 2015. She was previously an assistant dean of students at Lake Forest Academy in Illinois.

What have you learned about the Hotchkiss community in the brief time you’ve been here?

The adults in this community are deeply committed to the students and this place — they see their work as a service. And the students are lively and eager to cheer each other on. The school spirit they showed when they sprinted off the five fan buses at a Salisbury football game this fall was remarkable.

What are your top initiatives?

My most important goal is to better understand this community and the students. I plan to create an annual survey that collects information on student behaviors — both healthy and unhealthy — across a variety of topics, including stress and anxiety, intimacy, and alcohol and drug use. Learning about the prevalence of specific behaviors can help us create more effective programming. In my ideal world, I would love for Hotchkiss to be a leader among independent schools for helping high-achieving students learn how to pace themselves, find balance, and embrace growth.

4

H

O T C H K I S S

M

A G A Z I N E

Anything surprise you about Hotchkiss?

I am surprised by how connected I feel to the people and place after only a short time. From proctor training and senior class dinner to Matriculation and Convocation to the prep class trip to Fairfield Farm, I felt that each event drew me into the student community before classes even began. And I’ve been so impressed with the amazing concoctions students come up with at the stir fry station in the Dining Hall! Hopefully, they’ll teach me some of their techniques.

With your background in clinical social work, you bring a unique set of skills to the position. How does this inform the way you approach your work?

The clinical lens allows me to put a student’s behavior in context — biologically, psychologically, and sociologically.

You have big shoes to fill. John Virden ’64 has been at the School for well over 35 years. What advice does he give you?

He told me to trust what my colleagues have to offer; they are dedicated adults who care deeply about the students.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY WENDY CARLSON

You moved here with your husband, Justin, who teaches history and coaches, and you have two young children. Any first impressions they’d like to share about Hotchkiss?

They are amazed by the number of families with kids the same age as ours that live and work at Hotchkiss. Every Dining Hall meal is a combination of families — sometimes our kids don’t even choose to sit with us!

What do you and your family do in your spare time? What do you think of the terrain around here?

My favorite kind of day here involves a campus bike ride or hike with my kiddos, a trip to the Scoville Library in Salisbury to pick out chapter books, and baking muffins as we rock out to our favorite Pandora stations, all culminating in a family board game, puzzle, or craft project.

I’m a runner, and I’ve had to get used to the elevation — we’re 2,000 feet higher than Lake Forest! You can’t run anywhere without going over a few hills.

Mike Webster, new general manager of dining services, on a visit at Fairfield Farm.

A P P O I N T M E N T S S O N I A B O N S U joined Alumni and Development this fall as the new director

of The Hotchkiss Fund. Bonsu was director of development at the Calhoun School in New York City. She also served as director of annual giving at Calhoun for five years and as a litigation consultant for nearly six years. An alumna of the Calhoun School and the Prep for Prep program, Bonsu earned her A.B. at Harvard College and her J.D. from Fordham University School of Law. J A Y T H O R N H I L L is the new associate director of admission, coordinator of

international student recruitment, and varsity soccer coach. He is a graduate of the Loomis Chaffee School, where he worked as assistant director of admissions, athletic director, international student director for the summer program, coach, dormitory head, and psychology teacher. He holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology and fine art from St. Lawrence University.

M I K E W E B S T E R took on the role of general manager of dining services

last summer, replacing Andrew Cox. Webster had been executive chef in the Dining Hall since last January. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, he has a strong commitment to sustainable food practices and our regional purchasing program.

K E V I N W A R E N D A joined the Hotchkiss community as director of

information technology services last July. Kevin served for the last nine years as director of technology for Longmeadow Public Schools, a Massachusetts school district that consists of six schools (three elementary schools, two middle schools, and one high school) serving 3,000 students and employing some 700 faculty and staff. Kevin earned his B.S. in business administration and his M.B.A. from the University of Connecticut, where he worked for eight years as both the IT coordinator and system administrator.

F a l l

2 0 1 5

5

CAMPUS

con n e c t i o n

Meet Craig Bradley, Incoming Head of School Craig Bradley will join Hotchkiss in the 2016-17 academic year.

During his first official visit to the School, Hotchkiss Magazine sat down with Craig to talk about what drew him here, what he’s been reading recently, and the importance of fun in a boarding school environment.

For the past ten years, you’ve been planning and establishing international boarding schools with the Aga Khan Development Network. What drew you to Hotchkiss?

I had made a decision a long time ago that the next thing I wanted to do in my career was to lead a residential secondary school, so I’ve been focused on developing boarding schools in my work with the Aga Khan Development Network for the last ten years. It’s been clear in my mind that the next chapter for me, the thing I most want to do, is to lead a wellestablished school whose values and culture feel well-aligned with who I am and what I care about in terms of education and community life. When the opportunity to work at Hotchkiss came along, and as I got acquainted with the School and the people, it became clear to me that this was just the right place.

Describe your ideal school community.

To me, the ideal school community is a place where learning is always the center, the focus — a place that values learning and values giving people an opportunity to explore, and in the case of faculty members, to continue to develop their craft and go in new directions. And there’s greater intensity in a

6

H

O T C H K I S S

M

A G A Z I N E

Craig Bradley and his wife, Elizabeth Webb, visit an art class with seniors.

residential environment. The beauty of living together is that it allows for a much more substantial and purposeful learning experience. And I think it’s important for us to place some value on fun and playfulness, to absolutely do our best work academically and in terms of the quality of teaching, but also to have fun.

In 1996, when you became dean of student affairs at Bowdoin College, only 28 percent of students said they were satisfied with the community at Bowdoin. When the same question was posed to students in 2005, 88 percent of students reported feeling satisfied with the school community.

How did you accomplish that?

Right before I arrived at Bowdoin, the board convened a commission on residential life to review the overall quality of the social and residential experience at the college. When I came on as dean of student affairs, I was named co-chair of the commission. So we began asking, “What do we expect students to learn from living at Bowdoin? What are the values we care about as a learning community?” We had many discussions on campus and off campus, and we met with lots of alumni

groups. All the responses circled back to a sense of belonging, friendships, and relationships with faculty members. So we had a very clear idea of what we were trying to create, and we were very sensitive to the quality of the experience that people who had been there before had enjoyed. We didn’t want to compromise the Bowdoin they knew. I think we were successful in enhancing the school community, and it still feels like Bowdoin. We didn’t create an alien place for those folks. I think they’re quite proud of what’s emerged.

“The beauty of living together is that it allows for a much more substantial and purposeful learning experience.”

Who are some of your role models?

me that all students can learn, and nothing is too complex to be understood. There’s no need to shy away from a hard problem.

One of my biggest role models is my father, who was devoted to the family and loved teaching high-school biology. He grew up in a small town in New Hampshire and was a great lover of nature, and he taught his students and his children all kinds of things about the natural world. I enjoy woodworking and making furniture, and part of my love of woodworking comes from knowing about the trees in the forest and thinking about how different woods are used for different purposes. My father taught me those things. He was an optimist and infinitely curious about things — science and history and music and people. He taught

What are you reading right now?

Since becoming involved with Hotchkiss, I’ve really enjoyed reading Shadow Country

by Peter Matthiessen. I was blown away by it. And I’ve been reading John Hersey’s Life Sketches, too. I’m trying to educate myself about Hotchkiss culture and history through its writers.

To watch a video of Craig Bradley’s address to the School community and listen to a podcast of this interview, go to hotchkiss.org/meetcraigbradley.

F a l l

2 0 1 5

7

Visitors Stories of Grit and Determination

An athlete and an adventurer overcome obstacles to follow their dreams she wanted to compete in a few local events.

From there, her world opened up; since then, she has competed in 26 marathons, finishing twice in the top 100 female racers in the Boston Marathon, earned six gold medals in four different events, and won the 1996 Arthur Ashe Courage Award. Her message to Hotchkiss students was simple: “It’s not how much you have; it’s what you have and how you use it.”

And she encouraged them to find ways to connect with people who have intellectual disabilities through unified sports programs, volunteer work, and everyday interactions.

“I’d like to see, one day, when you walk into a bank — or any business — and you see a person with intellectual disability, that you see they’re just another person, the same as you and your community,” she said. The audience responded with a standing ovation. — Chelsea Edgar

Ryan Pyle P’17,’19

Loretta Claiborne

ATHLETE & MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER

When Loretta Claiborne took the stage at an all-School assembly on September 25, she greeted the audience in sign language — one of three languages, including Russian and Arabic, that the six-time Special Olympian has taught herself.

Born partially blind and physically handicapped, Claiborne overcame intellectual disability and tremendous odds to become a world-class athlete and motivational speaker. “I was told I wasn’t going to be able to graduate from high school, or even go to school,” she said. She grew up in York, P.A., one of

8

H

O T C H K I S S

M

A G A Z I N E

seven children raised by a strong, resourceful mother who taught Claiborne how to walk by placing apples on the ground. When York public school administrators wanted to send Claiborne to an institution, her mother refused. So Claiborne stayed in public school, where other kids taunted her for being different. She had to protect herself, and the only way she knew how was to fight back with her fists. Fighting earned her a reputation for toughness, but she struggled to feel accepted by her peers. Claiborne’s escape was running, which she learned to do on her own — and which, ultimately, was her path to a better life.

In 1971, a Special Olympics coach who had seen her running on the streets asked her if

From a Guinness World Record-breaking motorcycle ride around China to a road trip through the Amazon jungle, Ryan Pyle has traversed the globe in search of compelling stories. The photojournalist-turned-television-producer spoke at Hotchkiss on September 29, offering students insight as they navigate a maze of choices — from where they’ll go to college to what they’ll do for a living.

Pyle’s own path has taken some unexpected turns. He graduated from the University of Toronto in 2001 with a degree in international politics, and then, much to his mother’s chagrin, he moved to Beijing with only $2,000 and vague plans to become a photographer. It wasn’t exactly the logical next step: He had limited experience with cameras, and he didn’t speak a word of Chinese. But he was determined to find a way to turn his newfound passion into a career, and he began taking photos and shopping them around to newspapers and magazines. By 2004, he’d become a regular contributor at The New York

PHOTOGRAPH: COURTESY OF SPECIAL OLYMPICS CONNECTICUT

ADVENTURER & FILMMAKER

Times; in 2009, he was named one of the 30 best emerging photographers in the world by Photo District News. But Pyle wanted to take on an even bigger project, one that would allow him to delve deeper into China’s rich culture and landscape: a motorcycle trip around the entire country. He pitched the idea of making a documentary about the trek to a few major television networks, but all of them said it was too risky, too

much of a gamble. So he and his brother, Colin, decided to try to pull it off on their own. In 2010, the pair set off on a 65-day, 11,000-mile motorcycle trip around China. The adventure became Tough Rides: China (a.k.a The Middle Kingdom Ride), which the brothers filmed and produced independently. The documentary later aired on The Travel Channel, creating an opportunity for Pyle to turn more itineraries into television.

More Campus Visitors Jason B. Carmel ’91, this year’s

PHOTOGRAPHS: (TOP) COURTESY OF RYAN PYLE; (BOTTOM) WENDY CARLSON

George F. Cahill Jr. ’44 lecturer, spoke about the science of the brain to a standing-room only audience on September 25.

Carmel is a neuroscientist and neurologist, improving treatments

for patients with brain and spinal cord injuries. At his laboratory at the Burke Rehabilitation Center in White Plains, N.Y., he studies how electrical nerve stimulation might help in rehabilitation.

The nervous system is “what makes us who we are, and what gives us our most human attributes,” Carmel said.

“So when that’s robbed from people, it’s a very difficult experience. My hope is to restore some of those functions such as the ability to move, which will have a huge benefit for people in terms of their independence.”

Carmel’s research team uses electronic stimulator implants on the brain’s motor cortex and the spinal cord to restore lasting mobility in impaired lab rats. “We’re essentially using the language of the nervous

During his talk at Hotchkiss, he showed slides of his recent trip to Brazil, an odyssey that took him and his team through dense rainforest and over dangerous, muddy roads. In one photo, he’s covered head-to-toe in a motorcycle outfit, visibly melting in the equatorial heat.

“I might joke about how miserable it was,” he said. “But I can tell you that I was smiling every day.” — Chelsea Edgar

system to repair it,'” he said.

Biology instructor Susan Park said, “To me, Carmel epitomizes the tireless investigator who stands at the precipice of discovery.”

John Hennessy carries two pens with him at all times: an EpiPen, due to his allergy to bees, and a ballpoint pen, which he uses to sketch out lines of poetry whenever an idea strikes him.

Hennessy is the author of two books of poems, Bridge and Tunnel and Coney Island Pilgrims, and he teaches English and creative writing at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. When he came to Hotchkiss to give a reading on September 17, he engaged students with his ability to turn even the most mundane moments into meditations on what it means to be alive.

Hennessy draws inspiration from the industrial landscape of northern New Jersey, where he grew up, following the tradition of poets like Walt Whitman who found beauty in unexpected places. For Hennessy, even a highway median holds poetic potential: “Concrete glows shell pink on one side, pearl on the other/Car tires thrum like running water,” he writes in “Graffiti Avatar,” one of the poems he read aloud to Hotchkiss students.

F a l l

2 0 1 5

9

CAMPUS

co n n e c t i o n

Beep–Beep–Beep.

B

eep – beep – beep. the iconic sound of radio pulses broadcast by the Soviet satellite Sputnik 1 became Arthur F. Hebard’s “Hotchkiss moment.”

A distinguished professor of physics at the University of Florida, Mr. Hebard accepted the School’s highest honor, the 2015 Alumni Award, during an all-School assembly on October 23 in the Katherine M. Elfers Hall of the Esther Eastman Music Center.

Addressing the audience, Hebard said he recalled exactly where he was during three world-altering moments: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the 9/11 tragedy, and the launch of Sputnik 1, which he called his “Hotchkiss moment.”

He learned of the launch, on October 4, 1957, while he was walking through Main Building, and he heard a radio broadcasting the satellite’s steady beeping.

Sputnik 1 was the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth, and it signaled the start of the Space Race. A year later, Congress passed the National Defense Education Act, which poured billions into science education. It was a pivotal moment for Hebard, too. At the time, he felt thoroughly confident that his Hotchkiss education had prepared him well for a future in science.

Over the course of his career, Hebard has co-authored more than 265 peer-reviewed papers, holds 11 patents, and, in addition to his academic duties, currently serves as an associate editor of Reviews of Modern Physics.

He is a recipient of two major awards given by the American Physical Society: the 2015 Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Physics Prize, for the “discovery and pioneering investigations of the superconductor-insulator transition,” and the 2007 James C. McGroddy Prize for New Materials, “for the discovery of

10

H

O T C H K I S S

M

A G A Z I N E

high temperature superconductivity in nonoxide systems.” He has spent the last 19 years as a physics professor at the University of Florida, where he researches thin-film structures. But his passion for physics began back at Hotchkiss. He arrived in 1954 from New Canaan, Conn., following in the footsteps of his older brother, Edgar Hebard ’56.

George Stone, his math instructor, first recognized young Hebard’s potential.

“He told me I didn’t need to bother with geometry, gave me a book to look over during the summer, and then tested me when I returned in the fall. I received a good enough test grade to skip geometry,” Hebard said.

After Hotchkiss, Hebard earned a B.A. in physics at Yale, where he overcame the awkwardness of telling people (especially girls) that he was physics major.

Then, he went on to Stanford for ten years, earning his M.S. and a Ph.D. in physics and researching free quarks.

The first 24 years of his career were spent at AT&T Bell Telephone Laboratories.

He specialized in research on thin-film superconductors, which led to high-speed switches in communications systems. In 1994, he left to teach at the University of Florida. “It was a place,” he said, “where I thought my hair won’t grey so quickly, and I’ll be surrounded by young eager learners.”

Even when he’s not in the classroom, Hebard is a consummate physicist. He takes pleasure in following the stars and planets while walking his dogs at night.

But his other passion is windsurfing in 30-knot winds on the open ocean, according his son, Andrew Hebard ’89, an English professsor at Miami University in Ohio.

His father nurtured in him a curiosity about the world around him.

“It meant that he would let me play with liquid nitrogen in the privacy of our home, and he gave me a chemistry set that could actually blow things up,” he said. It also meant he had to explain to his friends why his father drove a car with a bumper sticker that read, “Quark, Quark, I stop for quantum ducks.”

Speaking to students, Hebard stressed that they should not make career decisions based solely on intellect, but that they should listen to their hearts and take risks. He quoted writer Ray Bradbury: “You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.”

He added that our creative juices “are really flowing when you are at that cliff’s edge.”

“In physics, we call this unstable equilibrium, where a fluctuation will carry you one way or the other. Whether you are pushed or take a jump, your chances of success are in direct proportion to what you know and how well you have been prepared. That,” he said, “is one of the main reasons you are here at Hotchkiss.”

THE MISCHIANZA

How a radio wave became 2015 Alumni Award winner Arthur F. Hebard’s ’58, P’89 “Hotchkiss Moment” by WEN D Y C A R L SO N

PHOTOGRAPH BY JONATHAN DOSTER

Arthur Hebard ’58, P’89 juggles a “Buckeyball,” a fused-ring structure made of 20 hexagons and 12 pentagons.

(Opposite page): Hebard in the 1958 Misch.

F a l l

2 0 1 5

11

CAMPUS

con n e c t i o n

Down at the Grange: Pianos, Pizza, and a Whole Lot of Potatoes WRITTEN AND PHOTOGRAPHED

by Wendy Carlson

It all began with a bunch of potatoes. The Grange started out as a simple root cellar, a practical solution to keep the harvest from spoiling. But over time, it evolved into a 6,000-square-foot facility that is now a hub of activity at Fairfield Farm.

Since it was completed last spring, the Grange has been used for an range of activities: reunion class dinners, new faculty orientation barbecues, weddings, staff retreats, professional development seminars, and a summer faculty symposium.

In August, a Steinway piano was carefully wheeled onto the porch for a Summer Portals piano recital, Tanglewood style, for the Hotchkiss and local community members who reclined on lawn chairs and blankets. This fall, proctors held pizzamaking sessions in the kitchen as part of

12

H

O T C H K I S S

M

A G A Z I N E

their team-building exercises, and they later communed on the porch overlooking the vista of fields and woods.

As for all those spuds, which make up a large portion of the farm’s 23,000plus pounds of produce, there’s more than ample storage. “It makes the connection between the farm and the Dining Hall seamless,” notes Josh Hahn, assistant head of school and director of environmental initiatives.

Back when Hahn first proposed the idea of building a root cellar, the need was immediate

and obvious, recalled Sam Niles ’84. Niles was instrumental in securing a $1.5 million grant from the Manton Foundation to build the Grange.

“The Manton Foundation grant solved that problem overnight, really. It was the right size project for the Foundation; it tends to support projects that can make a difference rather quickly,” Niles said.

But the grant also made it possible to build much more than a root cellar, allowing for a teaching kitchen, two bathrooms, processing space, a farm manager’s office, an outdoor porch, and funding for ongoing maintenance.

Farming and the environment have always been of deep interest to Niles. He grew up on a small farm in Connecticut, where he helped his brother run a part-time fieldmowing business. Now, he lives on a horse farm outside of Boston with his wife, Sandra, and two daughters.

When he was a student at Hotchkiss,

Above: An outdoor concert at the Grange, which also stores potatoes (right) and allows students to cook at the farm.

he was active on the Woods Squad, clearing trails, building bridges, and cross-country skiing in the woods.

“Had there been a Fairfield Farm Ecosystems and Adventure Team (FFEAT) when I was at Hotchkiss, I would have been on it,” he said.

In his own farming experience, Niles said he has learned to appreciate the lessons in leadership that FFEAT offers to Hotchkiss students. So when he had a chance to help Hotchkiss fund a project, the Grange was a perfect fit.

The construction also was a significant step in a more wide-reaching plan to expand the farm’s infrastucture.

“The Grange project was really the ‘kick start,’” said Niles. The hope is that it will encourage more donor funding for future farm projects, he added.

And, he said, he’s looking forward to having his next class reunion at the Grange.

“My class had its 30th Reunion dinner at the farm in 2014, but it was held under a tent, and we were using porta potties because the construction had only reached the foundation stage,” he recalled. “At our next reunion, at least we’ll be able to count on indoor plumbing!”

F a l l

2 0 1 5

13

A Tale of Two Prep Schools

B

y the end of Spirit Week

each November, Hotchkiss pride reaches a fever pitch, bubbling into a frenzy of blue and white poised to unleash itself against Taft. The Bearcat-Rhino athletic rivalry might seem as deeprooted as the Montague-Capulet feud, but it only began about 40 years ago, after Hotchkiss became co-educational.

Until the mid-1970s, Hotchkiss’s main athletic rival was Kent. When Hotchkiss began admitting girls, Kent’s stillfledgling girls teams were no match for the Bearcats. Taft, which already had a strong girls athletic program, became Hotchkiss’s primary opponent — not only on the playing fields, but in the fight to outdo each other in a series of increasingly boisterous pranks.

As former Dean of Students John Virden ’64

14

H

O T C H K I S S

M

A G A Z I N E

recalls, most of these pranks were goodnatured, if a bit childish. In the early 2000s, a group of Hotchkiss students painted hundreds of tennis balls and dumped them into a pond on Taft’s campus; Taft responded in kind by filling a van with rotting seafood and parking it in Hotchkiss’s Main Circle.

But the two pranks that have endured in the School’s collective memory involved subtler feats of skullduggery. In 1999, Dan Morosani ’00 and Ian Desai ’00 masterminded an ad announcing that Taft was up for auction, complete with a fake reception date and a phone number (Morosani’s dorm room number, in fact) for all sale-related calls. The ad ran in the Waterbury RepublicanAmerican and led to a few serious voicemail inquiries, which were broadcast during auditorium at Hotchkiss. A couple years later,

Elliot Ferwerda ’02 designed a disarmingly realistic-looking Crunch bar wrapper covered with digs at Taft (“The Official Candy Bar for Bunglers in New England Prep Schools;” “Serving Size: 1 Bar Per Failure”), then ordered hundreds of pre-wrapped chocolate bars and handed them out on Taft Day. The shenanigans have grown tamer in recent years, but in early November 2014, both schools started channeling the rivalry into a more productive outlet: a fundraising effort, called The Hotchkiss-Taft Challenge, in which the schools compete to see who can rally the highest percentage of recent graduates to donate over a six-day period. Last year, Taft edged its way to victory with 21.7 percent participation, but this November, Hotchkiss is determined to take the lead. Rumor has it that the winner will receive an endless supply of Crunch bars.

THE HOTCHKISS SCHOOL ARCHIVES

by C H ELSEA ED G AR

CAMPUS

connec t i o n

Athletic Season Wrap-Up Fall 2014

Varsity Teams B O Y S C R O S S C O U N T RY 7 W 1 L

3rd in Founders League; 7th in New Englands Marco Quaroni ’16 set a new school record of 16:39 on 10/18/14. He broke his own record of 16:43, set on 10/12/13.

G I R L S C R O S S C O U N T RY 6 W 1 L

G I R L S S Q U A S H 12 W 3 L

10th in New England in Class A BOYS SWIMMING 3 W 3 L

4th at Founders League Championship 8th at New England Championships GIRLS SWIMMING 3 W 5 L

5th at Founders League Championship; 13th at New England Championship WRESTLING 8 W 8 L

3rd in Founders League; 5th in New Englands Carlota Corbella Alcantara ’15, Founders League Champion, New England Champion

10th in Western New England John Martisch ’15 New England Champion at 285, All-American

FIELD HOCKEY 6 W O L 1 T

Junior Varsity and Thirds Teams

New England Class A Champions; Western New England Champions; Founders League Champions; New England Tournament (#2): (Quarter-Finals: Hotchkiss 2, Deerfield 1 (OT) (Semi-finals: Hotchkiss 2, Westminster 1) (Finals: Hotchkiss 1, Loomis 0) F O O T B A L L 1 W, 7 L

BOYS JV BASKETBALL 1 2 W 3 L BOYS JV HOCKEY 7 W 6 L BOYS THIRDS BASKETBALL 7 W 6 L GIRLS JV HOCKEY 7 W 4 L 1 L GIRLS JV BASKETBALL 9 W 2 L BOYS JV SQUASH 6 W 6 L

B O Y S S O C C E R 10 W 6 L 4 T

GIRLS THIRDS BASKETBALL 1 W 5 L

G I R L S S O C C E R 10 W 5 L 2 T

GIRLS JV SQUASH 1 0 W 1 L

VOLLEYBALL: 8-8

New England Tournament (#6): (Quarter-Finals: Hotchkiss 1, Loomis 3) WAT E R P O L O : 4 - 1 0

Junior Varsity and Thirds Teams B O Y S J V C R O S S C O U N T RY 5 W 4 L BOYS JV SOCCER 7W 3L 3T

Varsity Teams BASEBALL 2W 12L BOYS GOLF 15W 3L

2nd in Founders League, 4th at KIT

vault with a height of 10'2", breaking the old record of 10' set by Jen Fountain ’03 in 2003.

Carlota Corbella Alcantara ’15 set a new record in the 3000m with a time of 10:07.14, breaking the old record of 10:08.34 set by Samantha Glass ’14 in 2014.

SOFTBALL 0W 11L

U LT I M AT E F R I S B E E 2 2 W 1 L Amherst Invitational Division B Champions CT State Champions; NEPSUL CHAMPIONS Henry Crowley ’15 set a new school record, with 181 career points between 2013-2015, breaking the old record of 139 points set by Hamouda Da’ajneh ’12 in 2012. Crowley also set a new school record for points in a single season, earning 89. The old record, 60 points, was set by Brian Cintron ’12 in 2011.

BOYS TENNIS 12W 3L

G I R L S WAT E R P O L O : 1 - 6

Varsity Teams

Founders League Tri-Champions; New England Tournament Quarter Finals: Hotchkiss 4, Milton 0, Semi Finals: Hotchkiss 2, Taft 4

Junior Varsity and Thirds Teams

BOYS BASKETBALL 1 5 W 8 L

GIRLS TENNIS 10W 4L

G I R L S J V C R O S S C O U N T RY 4 W 3 L B O Y S T H I R D S S O C C E R 1 3 W 1L 2 T JV FIELD HOCKEY 9W 2L

GIRLS GOLF 9W 7L

2nd in Founders League BOYS LACROSSE 6W 10L

GIRLS JV SOCCER 5W 6L 2T

GIRLS LACROSSE 11W 2L

THIRDS FIELD HOCKEY 3W 4L

SAILING 12W 6L

GIRLS THIRDS SOCCER 2W 3L 1T JV FOOTBALL 0W 4L

Winter 2015 PHOTOGRAPHS BY GREG LOCK

Spring 2015

G I R L S B A S K E T B A L L : 1 2 W 11 L

Northeast Eight Tournament; Quarter Finals #2 Hotchkiss vs. #3 Choate, W 42-30 Semi Finals #2 Hotchkiss vs. 1 Taft, L 35-38

2nd O’Day Championship; 3rd New England Women’s & New England Team Championship

2nd in Founders League, 3rd at Kent Tournament; New England Tournament Quarter Finals: Hotchkiss 4, Groton 5

JV BASEBALL: 2-5 BOYS JV TENNIS: 6-4 BOYS JV GOLF: 6-5 GIRLS JV TENNIS: 4-4 BOYS JV LACROSSE: 5-6

BOYS TRACK 9W 0L

BOYS THIRDS TENNIS: 2-4

2nd in Founders League; 3rd in New England

GIRLS JV LACROSSE: 8-3

GIRLS HOCKEY 6 W 1 5 L 1 T

GIRLS TRACK 9W 0L

GIRLS THIRDS TENNIS: 3-2

B O Y S S Q U A S H 14 W 8 L

2nd in Founders League; 5th in New England Julia Greenberg ’16 set a new record in the pole

GIRLS THIRDS LACROSSE: 1-6

B O Y S H O C K E Y 12 W 1 1 L 3 T

10th in New England Class A

JV SAILING: 1-4

F a l l

2 0 1 5

15

F I ND I N G A search for a reclusive writer led James Sadwith ’70 back to Hotchkiss W RIT T EN AND PHOTOGRAPHED b y WE N D Y C A R L SO N

He appeared on the sundeck, a towering figure, godlike in khakis, a rumpled green sweater, and white athletic socks.

“Can you please tell me where I can find ‘Mr. Jerome David Salinger?’” James Sadwith yelled from below, as he tried to shake off the fat dachshund feverishly nipping at his pant leg.

“I am he. What do you want,” the voice boomed.

“Mr. Salinger. I’ve been looking for you for almost a year and half.”

“Well — why didn’t you write?”

16

H

o t c h k i s s

M

a g a z i n e

F a l l

2 0 1 5

17

This page: Sadwith flips through the Misch. Opposite page: a dog-eared copy of The Catcher in the Rye, a photo of Sadwith from his Hotchkiss production, and remarks from his English instructor.

T

hat was 47 years ago. But

James Sadwith recounts with clarity his teenage quest for Salinger, an adventure that inspired his first feature film, Coming Through the Rye, released this fall. An award-winning television director, writer, and producer, Sadwith’s movies have won or been nominated for more than 35 Emmys and Golden Globes.

After years working in Hollywood, he now lives with his wife, Nerissa, in Woodstock, Vt., a half-hour drive from Cornish, N.H., where Salinger lived until his death in 2010.

Sadwith’s home office is crowded with television manuscripts, awards, and accolades. Several thick manila folders hold yellowed copies of the The Record, dog-eared Hotchkiss composition notebooks, letters, and black-and-white photos, bits and pieces of his Salinger story.

IT BEGAN IN 1969 While the rest of the country was seething in antiwar protests and racial strife, James Sadwith was struggling to find his own footing at Hotchkiss.

18

H

o t c H k i s s

M

a g a z i n e

Like many adolescents at that time, he identified with Holden Caulfield, the anxious, disaffected protagonist in J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. Sadwith had entered Hotchkiss as a prep from rural New Jersey, full of expectations about boarding school life. His older brother, who attended a co-ed boarding school in Pennsylvania, brought home autographed bras and tales of going out to dinner with teachers and Saturday matinees. It all seemed very ideal to young Sadwith.

Looking back, Sadwith says, he didn’t realize that Hotchkiss was “a whole other ballgame," where academics came before adolescent antics. Still, he was excited about going there.

Hotchkiss was socially challenging for Sadwith. He was not into sports like many of the other boys, and he felt awkward and out of place. And he was one of a few Jewish students at Hotchkiss during a time when most prep schools were far less diverse than they are now.

The Catcher in the Rye was required reading, and Sadwith’s classmate, John Hill ’70, remembers that a lot of students identified with Holden and his plight. “Jim

just took it to the next level and did something about it,” Hill recalls.

“It was a tough time to be at all all-boys boarding school in the late sixties,” Hill adds.

“Vietnam, racial tensions, drugs coming on the scene. Hotchkiss, for all its contributions to us students, was a lonely and intimidating place for Jim.” Sadwith, who had acquired the nickname “Caulfield” as a result of his obsession with The Catcher in the Rye, began adapting the novel into a school play, which eventually turned into his senior English project. He felt destined to play the role of Holden — not just in the Hotchkiss production, but on Broadway and in the movies. But there was a hitch.

“I remember someone asking me if I had Salinger’s permission to turn his book into a play, and it was something I really hadn’t thought about before,” Sadwith recalls.

Finding Salinger was next to impossible for the most determined journalists, let alone a teenage boy. The author was reclusive, and he was vehemently opposed to adaptations of his work. In the wake of the novel’s success in the 1950s, he had turned down

Sadwith, who had acquired the nickname “Caulfield” as a result of his obsession with The Catcher in the Rye, began adapting the novel into a school play, which eventually turned into his senior English project.

many offers to adapt The Catcher in the Rye for the screen. Students from Dartmouth College, not far from his home, made regular pilgrimages looking for him, and fans from near and far sent letter after letter, to no avail.

Sadwith, in his youthful naiveté, was optimistic. He believed that if Salinger met him and read the play, he would be impressed with his work, and just maybe that would launch Sadwith’s acting career — first, off Broadway, and from there, who knows? So one fall weekend, Sadwith told his dorm head he was going home. Instead, a friend from New Jersey picked him up at school in his VW Beetle, and the two left to find Salinger.

LOOKING FOR SALINGER A black-and-white photo of Sadwith taken when he was at Hotchkiss belies his intensity at that age. He’s wearing a shabby corduroy jacket, arms folded, hair tousled, a broad grin on his face. Among the photos are letters from his search for Salinger, including one written by former headmaster George Van Santvoord, who was then living in Bennington, Vt. Sadwith knew Salinger lived somewhere in New England. He thought Van Santvoord might know where, so he wrote to him. Van Santvoord suggested that he contact Bennett Cerf, one of the founders of Random House

Books. Cerf suggested he get in touch with Salinger’s literary agents, Harold Ober Associates in New York.

In his upper-mid year, he took a bus to New York and spent an entire day waiting at the agency’s office, only to be told that Salinger would never read his script. Don’t bother writing to him, they said.

Sadwith returned to Hotchkiss disappointed, but undaunted. His luck changed when he met a girl who went to the local public high school. She’d acted with Sadwith in the School’s theatre productions, and she knew that he was trying to reach Salinger.

Her dad had showed her a 1963 Newsweek article about the writer, revealing that he lived in Cornish, N.H. Back then, Cornish was a bend in the road, comprised of a one-pump gas station that doubled as a general store. But for Sadwith, it was a destination.

He found the post office, where Sadwith introduced himself to the clerk and politely asked if he knew Mr. Jerome David Salinger.

“Nope, don’t know him,” was the reply.

Nor, it seemed, did anyone else, or so they pretended. A group of children, amused

by Sadwith's plight, gave the secret away. From the front of the store, he heard them singing: “Salinger lives up on Dingham Hill, Salinger lives up on Dingham Hill. In the woods. Back in the mountain.”

When he asked the children how to get there, six hands pointed six different ways.

Finally, the mother of the children, who was standing nearby, took pity on him and gave him some vague directions. After five hours of being strung along by other residents of Cornish and many wrong turns, he arrived at a house that looked “Salingerish” to him, based in part on the description of Holden’s fantasy retreat — a remote cabin in the woods.

Later, in a story written for a school literary magazine, he described it as “a twostory house with a sundeck surrounding the second story, giving the appearance of one of those modern, above-the-ground pools.”

When Salinger finally stepped out in those white athletic socks, flanked by his pudgy dachshund, he shook hands with Sadwith.

“I know he wasn’t expecting what I was going to tell him — I was not quite asking for his permission to do the play. I just felt obligated to tell him,” Sadwith recalls.

“It cannot be done successfully,” Salinger told him. “It was written for the stage in people’s minds,” he said, becoming more and more irritated.

“What do you expect me to say to you?

Didn’t you know I’d say NO to you? Didn’t you suspect it?” Salinger finally asked.

In a last-ditch effort to move him, Sadwith explained that he was having a bad year, that he had found refuge in the book.

Salinger sized up Sadwith’s ’60s

F a l l

2 0 1 5

19

“You look imaginative.

You look creative,” he said.

“Why don’t you do something of your own?”

–J.D. Salinger

attire. His dingo boots, blue jeans with colored fabric sewn into bell bottoms, and corduroy jacket looked like an outfit foraged from Bob Dylan’s hamper.

“You look imaginative. You look creative,” he said. “Why don’t you do something of your own?”

BACK AT HOTCHKISS When he returned to his dorm room, Sadwith recorded every detail of his experience on a reel-to-reel tape recorder, including the dialogue with Salinger and a description of the characters he met along the way. He played it first for his dormitory head, then for all the English classes.

After lengthy discussions with the headmaster, faculty members, his parents, and even former headmaster Van Santvoord, Sadwith staged his production.

It got a standing ovation and high praise from the student body and faculty, proof enough, Sadwith thought, that an adaptation of the book could be successfully done.

But Sadwith also felt conflicted, that the script was really just Salinger’s work in play form. He removed his name from it, and then he decided to return to Cornish over winter break and offer the script as a gift to Salinger.

20

H

o t c H k i s s

M

a g a z i n e

This time, Sadwith borrowed a sports car from a friend and drove himself to Cornish.

When he reached the house, Salinger opened the front door. A cat ran out instead of a dachshund.

“Now look what you’ve done,” said Salinger, exasperated. He waved Sadwith inside.

“Mr. Salinger, don’t be angry, but we did your play,” Sadwith told him.

At first, Salinger wanted to know how the play was received, but his mood quickly shifted. He became annoyed — not specifically with Sadwith, but with the whole notion of his work being commercialized.

“I hate the theater. I hate the movies. And they’ll never get The Catcher in the Rye,” he said.

Salinger was in a hurry to take his son to the train station, and he offered Sadwith a lift there. “I often wondered what would have happened if I had taken the ride, how much more I might have learned,” Sadwith says.

Instead, the two shook hands for the last time. Salinger refused to accept the script.

Back at Hotchkiss, Sadwith’s senior-year English instructor, Christopher Getman, was not taken with the script, either. He gave him a grade of “double B-minus” and wrote, “I’m giving you a B-minus on this effort, not because I think this will make a very good play, I don’t — but because of the effort you have put into it simply by typing — and editing.”

But when it was time to apply to colleges, Sadwith submitted copies of his tape about Salinger rather than writing the standard college essay. In Holdenesque style, he attached a note to the tape that read: “If you really want to know what I’m about, listen to this.”

He thinks that helped him get accepted into Harvard, where he studied for two years before leaving to pursue a degree in veterinary medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He always had his sights set on Hollywood; working as a vet, he reasoned, would pay his way there.

BREAKING INTO SHOW BUSINESS Sadwith became a full-time vet on Martha’s Vineyard, but show business was always in the back of his mind.

“I thought if veterinary medicine wasn’t satisfying, maybe I would make some connections,” Sadwith recalls.

He did connect with celebrities, especially their pets: John Belushi’s cat, and dogs belonging to James Taylor, Beverly Sills, and Walter Cronkite.

But after a year and a half, restless and pining for Hollywood, he decided to move west, enrolling in the University of Southern California’s graduate school of film and television.

His professors there told him the fastest route to directing was to write. The first screenplay he wrote as a student won Sadwith $2,000, a Datsun B210 station wagon, and an internship to work on a National Lampoon movie.

His master’s thesis was made into a television movie starring Robbie Benson, called Two of A Kind, which was a finalist for the prestigious $40,000 Humanitas Award. After receiving that honor, he wrote Salinger to thank him and share the news. Salinger never wrote back.

Meanwhile, his career took off. “It was the height of TV movies. Each network was producing about 30 made-for-TV movies a year,” Sadwith says. Every time he reached a milestone in his career, he wrote to Salinger.

After he won an Emmy for Best Direction for the CBS miniseries Sinatra in 1992, he wrote Salinger and thanked him.

“I thought, ‘maybe he’ll write me back this time,’ but he never did.”

COMING THROUGH THE RYE In 2012, two years after Salinger died, Sadwith sat down to write a novel about meeting him. But he realized he was a better screenwriter than novelist, so he wrote the script for Coming Through the Rye. The indie

film stars Oscar-winner Chris Cooper as Salinger and is currently making the rounds at film festivals across the country.

Sadwith didn’t intend to film the movie at a school that resembled Hotchkiss. He was looking for a private boys’ school that had a ’60s appearance and vibe. Hotchkiss, with the modern updates to Main Building, didn’t fit the bill.

He chose Woodberry Forest School, an all-boys private school in Virginia, for its ’60s feel and balmy climate. Still, the school’s brickgate entrance, long drive leading to a whitecolumned brick chapel, sprawling playing fields, and lake are reminiscent of Hotchkiss.

Alex Wolff (Hair Brained and A Birder’s Guide to Everything) plays 16-year-old Jamie Schwartz, who has adapted The Catcher in the Rye as a play. A dark-haired, laconic character, Jamie bears a striking resemblance to a teenage Sadwith. Like Salinger’s novel, which was partly autobiographical, Sadwith’s film was inspired by his time at Hotchkiss. The book takes place in the seedy urban jungle of Manhattan in the late 40s, while the film is filled with beautiful, pastoral scenes. The main character, Jamie, lacks Holden’s cynicism, and in the end, he overcomes his social anxiety.

The scenes where Jamie interacts with Salinger are based on Sadwith's own brushes

From left to right: Movie poster for Coming Through the Rye; scenes from the film starring Alex Wolff as Jamie Schwartz (looking much like a young Sadwith) and Chris Cooper as J. D. Salinger.

with him. The crusty New Hampshire farmers and tight-lipped neighbors Jamie meets are carbon copies of the locals Sadwith encountered. And some of Jamie’s interactions with other students at his prep school were drawn from Sadwith’s Hotchkiss experiences, most notably the scene in which his dorm room is bombarded with firecrackers. Instead of sneaking away from school for a weekend in a VW Beetle, as Sadwith did, Jamie runs away in a vintage Rambler with a townie, Deedee Gorlin, played by Stefania Owen (The Carrie Diaries and The Lovely Bones), and the two develop a relationship. Ann Villano, an instructor in film at Hotchkiss who screened Coming Through the Rye last summer, praised the film for succeeding in taking viewers back in time to Sadwith's prep school days.

Still, Sadwith doubts the film would have earned Salinger’s seal of approval.

“He hated publicity and would probably be unhappy about it,” Sadwith reflects.

“But more importantly, it has brought me closure with events that happened during my years at Hotchkiss.”

F a l l

2 0 1 5

21

The Writing Life

From the days of the fountain pen to the age of the keyboard, Hotchkiss has given generations of students a strong foundation in writing. by WENDY CARLSON

I

t’s been decades since Dr. Richard Bernstein ’64 sat in a Hotchkiss classroom, staring at a blank notebook in agony over what to write for Daily Themes. The writing exercise began in the early 20th century and requires lower mids to compose one essay a day over a two-month period.

“I knew I was getting to the end of my tether when I submitted a streamof-consciousness essay about struggling to find a topic. Fortunately, I completely filled the required two pages. Ironically, theme writing got easier after that,” Bernstein muses.

These days, he teaches graduate students in public health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, where he uses a similar writing practice.

“Many students need feedback on their syntax, punctuation, and even paragraph structure,” he says.

A graduate of Yale, Bernstein earned his M.D. at Mount Sinai, but he credits

22

H

O T C H K I S S

M

A G A Z I N E

Hotchkiss for providing him with a strong writing foundation.

Hotchkiss has taught generations of students to write with clarity and style, serving them well in college and beyond.

Recent alumni, like Madeline Nam ’14, echo Bernstein’s appreciation for a Hotchkiss writing education. “Writing is one of the areas that I worry least about,” says Nam, a sophomore at Harvard. For both Bernstein and Nam, Daily Themes was an invaluble primer.

English instructor Charles Frankenbach further encourages daily writing by asking students to spend the first ten minutes of class doing “free writes,” which can take the form of a list, a poem, or a stream of consciousness. The free-form assignment gives students a jump-start in their writing. “The goal is clarity and economy of thought,” Frankenbach says.

In humanities classes, students hone their analytical skills by writing essays, which they can submit as contenders for the coveted Teagle Essay Prize, awarded each year to one senior. And some students explore creative writing with Poet-in-Residence Susan Kinsolving, who teaches poetry in the fall and prose writing in the spring. “She brings such a wealth of knowledge of poetry,” Frankenbach says. And she has greatly expanded the range of visiting poets who have come to speak at Hotchkiss, including Seamus Heaney, J.D. McClatchy, Charles Simic, and several U.S. Poet Laureates, among others.

“Our students get to hang out for the evening with Pulitzer Prize-winning poets.

They are struck by those experiences — and that’s pretty awesome,” Frankenbach says.

Learning the mechanics of writing, too, has been a mainstay of the Hotchkiss

experience. Throughout the School’s history, English instructors have been legendary for wielding their red pens, going after dangling participles and comma splices with aplomb.

“English instructor Carle Parsons, Class of 1909, hammered into me the correct use of commas,” recalls Clinton Ely ’45, who, after graduating from Yale, taught English at Hotchkiss from 1950 to 1963. As a result, Ely became such a stickler for punctuation that he antagonized teachers at other schools where he taught.

While instructors emphasize the mechanics of prose, they also help students discover the joy of writing. Nature journaling — a tradition that started with Blair Torrey ’50 and continued in the outdoor saunters led by English instructor Geoff Marchant — has helped students develop their own voices.

“Mr. Marchant made me believe I could be a professional writer, because he encouraged me with thoughtful comments,” says Daniel Lippman ’08, now a writer for Politico.

“He taught me that one could spend his entire life improving writing skills, and it’s a worthwhile goal. He also pushed us to write with all our hearts, and not to be satisfied with a first draft, but to continue to rewrite papers until they’re better.”

Countless alumni learned that lesson before Lippman. Julie Cotler Pottinger ’87, the author of 15 consecutive New York Times bestselling historical romances under the pseudonym Julia Quinn, thanks Hotchkiss for teaching her the nuts and bolts of language.

“People say that grammar and punctuation are dull,” she says, “but you have to know the rules in order to know when you can break them.”

at Hotchkiss One

Sund ay m or nin g my As w e sta broth r ted er an off in dId Ne w the c ecide Yo r k a r, w d we . We e woul t houg had d go ht w alwa wood e ys ha woul ch u c d hea d goo k hu d up d luc nting k the t ow a .

As w rd Sa re, a e app nd th lem, roac e d ay hed S was f ield alem p e r fe s nex , I lo c t fo aded t to t r ch u my r he ro ck s . i ad. W f le, h and walk opin hen ed up g to s we a r ee a r i ve d a hil ch u c l. In at a k in f i ve good one o minu f i e l tes f the d , my broth er le f t th e car

F a l l

2 0 1 5

23

WRITING at HOTCHKISS

The Teagle Essay Prize The student who sets out to win the Teagle finds that the real prize is learning to love the writing process.

by R O B ER TA JEN C KES

T

he Teagle Prize, the

School’s most coveted writing award, was established by Walter C. Teagle, longtime president and, later, chairman of the board of Standard Oil Company, in honor of his son, Walter C. Teagle Jr. ’31.

The goal of the Prize was to instill in students the importance of craft — hours of thought, painstaking revisions, and, above all, a commitment to excellence.

The Prize’s best-known recipients demonstrate its predictive success. The late Peter Matthiessen ’45, a renowned writer and naturalist who holds the distinction of being the only person to win the National Book Award in both fiction and nonfiction, was an early winner. His writing career began at Hotchkiss, where he was chairman of the board of the Mischianza and wrote

24

H

o t c H k i s s

M

a g a z i n e

Walter C. Teagle established the Prize in honor of his son.

for The Literary Monthly. Tom Reiss ’82, who went on to win the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for biography for The Black Count, was another

Teagle winner. As chronicled in the fall 2013 issue of Hotchkiss Magazine, Reiss obsessively pursued the Teagle: He chose Jack Kerouac, for whom he’d developed an adolescent affinity, as the subject of his Teagle essay. But less than a week before the essay was due, he woke up one morning and decided he didn’t like Kerouac after all…Looking around for a new topic, Tom quickly opted for Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes, finding everything he could by or about him in the Edsel Ford Memorial Library and setting up his desk in the Dana common room, even going so far as to tell dorm mates they weren’t allowed to watch TV for the next 72 hours.

“Somehow, everybody seemed to think it was really cool that I was going to write my Teagle essay in 72 hours, with no sleep," Reiss recalled. "They were like, ‘Oh, Reiss is crazy!’

It took more than 72 hours, but I never left that common room. It was my greatest fellowship experience at Hotchkiss: All the kids in the dorm brought me food. I even talked one guy into schlepping books for me to and from the library. I think they thought it was kind of romantic — here’s this guy typing away on one of those continuous rolls of paper, like Kerouac, who of course I’d rejected….”

M

emories of Hotchkiss teachers associated with the Teagle are etched indelibly in the minds of many alumni.

The late Michael Flinn ’58 recalled in his Misch II write-up that “Gus” Gurney was his favorite teacher at Hotchkiss. “He fired my imagination,” Flinn wrote, “and he gave me the Teagle Prize.”

Nearly half a century later, Instructor in English Charlie Frankenbach encouraged Irisdelia Garcia ’14. Garcia said that “the Teagle process was one that really took an emotional, healthy turn for me.”

Then, there is the story of the “Lost Teagle,” told by winner Ray Finucane ’61 in the winter 2011 issue of Hotchkiss Magazine.

As a senior in Richard Gurney’s English class, Finucane wrote his essay on Joel Chandler Harris, author of Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings. His prize was a copy of the 1895 A.B. Frost-illustrated first edition of Uncle Remus. When he left for Yale that fall, he took the book with him. In April 1963, he enlisted in the Marine Corps. He packed up his belongings and entrusted them to his Yale roommate, Earl Potter ’61. When Finucane came back from Vietnam in 1967, he collected his boxes from Potter, but the Teagle had mysteriously disappeared.

Forty-three years later, in July 2010, Finucane’s nephew, Brian, who was attending Yale Law School, met a professor who had a box of books that belonged to Finucane. In that box was the long lost copy of Uncle Remus.

Over the years, the winning Teagle works have varied in topic, length, and format. At least one winning entry was a

short story, and last acadmic year's winner was a graphic novel and essay by Vivian Xiao ’15. A look at the prize-winning essays, archived in a locked bookcase in the Edsel Ford Memorial Library, reveals a range of titles: “A Teagle of Our Climate”

by Thompson Warren ’02, “Myth and Fact in Lakeville’s Economic History” by Andrew Roberts ’80, and “Chronicles of Dark Years: Novels of Postwar Japan”

by James Osial ’03.

Through these very different essays, countless students have begun a lifelong journey to find their voices as writers.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Hersey ’32 was another Teagle winner. Hiroshima was published in The New Yorker in 1946 and is considered one of the best works in journalism.

F a l l

2 0 1 5

25

Don’t Think. Just Write.

I

think too much sometimes. I didn’t have much self-esteem in my writing, always getting a solid B or B+ in most English assignments, so I came into my English elective expecting just that. Self-conscious and with no sense of a writing style, I went blindly into Mr. Frankenbach’s class. As the semester continued, however, my writing increasingly became my own. I wrote for no one but myself, and Mr. Frankenbach encouraged that until the day I handed in my Teagle.

“Does it have to be analytical?”

Irisdelia Garcia '14 and her mother, Elizabeth Marrero

26

H

o t c H k i s s

M

a g a z i n e

“It can literally be anything, Iris.

Just jump into it.”

Earlier in the year, I had done a monologue from For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange. The play had deeply affected me, describing experiences that have shaped my life and the people around me. With those thoughts, I wanted to find a way to use the play and the Teagle to create a dedication to my mother. My mother has been my greatest supporter in my life. She has always pushed me to take

risks, and no matter what happened, she was always proud of me. I wanted to give back to my mother, to show how much I was proud of her and the work she has done to create the person I am today.

“Can I write a memoir?”

“How long? You know it’s not gonna be a regular eight to 10-page paper...”

“I know, I have a lot to talk about.”

And so began my journey into my mother’s life, told in prose and poetry through the theatrical lens of Shange’s work. I framed snippets of my mother’s life in stanzas of For Colored Girls and tried to shape my mother’s life in a way that didn’t ask for pity, because she is far from one to be pitied, but for admiration and respect. The story is about our journey to where we are now, and where we are going — and telling that story is the way I wanted to complete my time at Hotchkiss. I wanted to finish Hotchkiss with the woman who helped me start it.

Mr. Frankenbach gave me confidence in my writing that I never felt before. I felt invincible with a pen in my hand. I felt that every word I wrote was important, that someone wanted to read what I was saying.

With his easy-going nature and wit, Mr. Frankenbach made me feel comfortable talking about my anxieties in class, about writing the Teagle, and, ultimately, my worries about my mother, which became the conflict in my Teagle. I owe a lot to Mr. Frankenbach.

“Hand it in for the prize, Iris."

“I don’t think I’ll win, Mr. Frankenbach.”

“Hey, you never know.”

And I never knew. But I did it, and as I walked up to the stage in Elfers and gave Mr. Frankenbach a grateful hug, I winked at my mother from the audience as she cried.

I called the Teagle “Mujer Negra,” woman in black, the title encompassing my mother’s life.

My experience with my Teagle deeply affected me, a spiritual journey that changed the way I view my mother and myself.

Don’t think. Just write. — Irisdelia Garcia ’14

PHOTOGRAPH BY HELLEN HOM-DIAMOND

Irisdelia Garcia ’14, a sophomore at Amherst College and the 2014 Teagle Prize winner, reflects on the life-changing experience of writing her essay.

WRITING at HOTCHKISS

A Shakepearean Tragedy with a Comic Twist Stanford freshman Vivian Xiao’s 2015 Teagle prize-winning essay was both a graphic novel and a thesis that explored Shakespeare’s Richard III.

F

or my senior year Teagle essay, I adapted two speeches and one scene from Shakespeare’s Richard III into a graphic novel. I was inspired

by Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, which gave me a deeper appreciation of comics as an art and literary form and provided a framework for me to understand the mechanics of graphic novels. The process for creating the graphic novel involved several steps. I began with annotations on the original text to note important imagery, then created rough sketches of each panel. I arranged the pan-

els into a draft composition for each page, and then pasted the text onto the page to determine text composition. The final graphic novel is illustrated in pastel with digitially added text, typeset in Actionman.

My thesis explores Richard's dual nature as both culprit and victim; although he skillfully constructs an evil identity and denies his villainous acts, he eventually reaches an acknowledgement of guilt when he fails to suppress his conscience. In the opening soliloquy, I focused on colors and textures to evoke a violent and fast-paced mood, imagery portraying the play’s theme of self-judgment, using shape and line to emphasize distortion

in Richard’s insecurity and manipulative behavior. The second scene from Act I compares Lady Anne and Richard’s behaviors and explores their denial of accountability.

The final soliloquy provides justification for Richard as a tragic hero. — Vivian Xiao ’15

WRITING at HOTCHKISS

Daily Themes: W hen Clinton Ely ’45

taught English at Hotchkiss from 1950 to 1963, students wrote their Daily Themes with fountain pens, scribbling madly to fill the required two pages. Back then, writing was almost as physically rigorous as it was intellectually demanding, an exercise that left hands aching and palms stained with ink. Leafing through Daily Themes from half a century ago is a sensory experience: The curled yellow notebook pages are musty and fragile, but still intact. Each one bears the writer’s imprint — his particular method of dotting his i’s, his preference for black ink

versus blue. Today, lower mids record their thoughts on a glowing white screen and save their work in Google Drive, which seems fleeting and antiseptic by comparison — all Times New Roman, double-spaced, size-12 font, all erasable with one keystroke.

But some things haven’t changed. As Ely wrote in an essay for Hotchkiss Magazine in fall 2009, the goal of Daily Themes has remained the same. In the words of Dick Gurney, who was head of the English department when Ely taught at Hotchkiss, “Towards the end [of the six-week period in which lower mids write Daily Themes], a lower mid should be able to write an acceptable short composition in the brief period between

breakfast and Chapel (sometimes necessary because of added reading assignments and the overall heavy academic load). The hope was that time pressure would foster effective brainstorming, spontaneity, and conciseness.”

When faced with a blank sheet of paper (or a blinking cursor on a white screen), students learn to trust their own creative process, and amazing things start to happen: a set of dentures turns up in an ashtray, a name becomes more than just a name, an ordinary pebble takes on extraordinary meaning. In the excerpts below — some fiction, some nonfiction— selected from Ely’s students and the Class of 2016, we get a glimpse of that process at work in two very different eras.

w at a ro th to le bb pe a up s ck pi he en wh y, bo e The averag ng lo a at wh t ou ab k in th to s op st r ve ne tree or some bird, le bb pe e ag er av e th y or st hi g in st re te in ry ve and probably aterial, m e bl ra du d an rd ha e m so of d se po m co is has. If it h. rt ea e th on d te is ex fe li re fo be ng lo d te it probably exis erable m nu in of k in th n ca he n, io at in ag im s hi If one uses . le bb pe is th to ed en pp ha ve ha ay m h ic wh things

It was a rough day on the ocean, especial y for our small boat, and as it started to get dark, we headed for home. The boat was swaying back and forth and throwing us all around.. it seemed to get rougher with every wave, and although we had only about two thousand yards to go, it seemed like miles.. It kept growing rougher and rougher, with the boat bending under the wind, until finally the boat capsised (sic). I had been thrown clear, but Jack was stil trapped under the boat. With one dive I freed him, and we started drifting. There was not a thing we could do about it.”

28

H

O T C H K I S S

M

A G A Z I N E

Then & Now

by CHELSEA EDGAR

een

years since fir st killed someo ne. rowin’ up with your time, in my part of Te e cept go out ba as, there’s noth ck and shoot. ing to do idn’t matter muc day, ’d have be h what you shot en bout , w at, just did it. ent out back to ne shoot jus’ like into my neighb any other day. or ’s leg. arris T ur ne d out, shot righ started makin’ a racket, so ha t pissed at me, st d to go over to arted yellin’ ab shut him up. out how was e got all gonna pay for th No one else was is, how he wou around, and st ld come get me on ill had the gun e day. on me. Figured only thing co killin’ him and uld do. still re runnin’ away w ckon it was bette as the r than him com in’ after me.

e s . I w is h e d e m y d iffe re n c c a r b m e t o n d i u n g e r, I d W h e n I w a s y o e d to b le n d in n n a m e . I w a n t o m m o c e r o m in a n d a m id d le I h a d lig h te r s k th m y la c k o f a i W . s d i k e h t f o y w ith th e re s t p re te n d th a t it in c o n s p ic u o u s l th a t I lik e d a n d e m a n n a c i r e p ic k a n A m so n a m e , I w o u ld e n u s W illia m s e S e re n a a n d V v o l o t d e s u I . n a m e c a u se m y w a s m y m id d le w h ile . A ls o , b e a r o f ” s m a i l l i d le n a m e “ W a rb le G u p ta ” in I m a d e m y m id ro te “ K a n ik a M w I , h s i n a p S n a rb le ” i b e g a n to n a m e m e a n t “ m le s c h o o l th a t I d d i m l i t n u t o n s s a c h ild . It w a y s s ta y tru e a ll m y b o o k s a h a t w o u ld a lw a t e m f o t r a p a n a m e w a s e . re a liz e th a t m y a n iz e d I b e c a m e r h o w A m e ric t t a m o n e g a t i r to m y h e Thanks to Clinton Ely ’45, Kanika Gupta ’16, Stephen Moon ’16, and Sylvie Robinson ’16 for providing Daily Themes.

So many songbirds fill your

kitchen. No, not entirely yo ur kitchen, because of the wh iter walls, covered in that fin ely sifted flour you didn’t bothe r to sponge. The flour that co st 39 cents, deducted from yo ur weekly allowance. So ma ny songbirds sing in your flour blurred kitchen, and you de light in the oddity. You wear the red dress you haven’t seen since you were seventeen; the one tha t the country boys watched float around you on the dance flo or. A plum sits in your lap and when bitten, the cold juice slides down your whites ch eeks, runs onto your forearm, sli ps just past your chin. For yo u many songbirds sing.

F a l l

2 0 1 5

29

WRITING at HOTCHKISS

Pulitzer Prize-winning writer

Archibald MacLeish ’11 An extraordinary poet and a catalyst for social change by ERIN REID

A

rchibald MacLeish arrived in Lakeville in September 1907.

Following an attack of severe homesickness, he found success in both academics and athletics. At Hotchkiss, he wrote John Milton, an essay in which he addressed the inner conflict of a man facing the choice between public service and writing poetry. It would become symbolic of his own lifelong struggle between the two.

Working for Fortune magazine under Henry Luce ’16, Archibald MacLeish had enough flexibility to find time to work on both his poetry and his social convictions.

MacLeish was already well known in literary circles. After Hotchkiss, he graduated from Yale, married, and served as an ambulance driver in France in World War I. He and his wife, Ada, then spent much of the 1920s in Paris, where his friend, the artist Gerald Murphy ’07, introduced them to Picasso, Stravinsky, Léger, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, and other leading lights. He became a

30

H

o t c H k i s s

M

a g a z i n e

lasting friend of Ernest Hemingway, who was also living in Paris. And he published four volumes of poetry, including The Happy Marriage and The Pot of Earth.

Back in the United States, he was awarded his first of three Pulitzer Prizes in 1933 for Conquistador, an epic about the Spanish conquest of Mexico. He also became more politically active.

As a Fortune staffer, MacLeish used the position to tout his political views. He covered government and issues he felt passionate about, and in his spare time, he found other ways to make political statements. In the spring of 1934, he wrote the ballet Union Pacific about the plight of the Irish and Chinese workers who had built the railroad west. He also wrote Panic, a play about the industrial scene and a critique of both capitalism and communism. He blamed the Great Depression on capitalists and joined the League for Independent Political Action to promote alternatives to capitalism.

In 1938, he became the curator of the Nieman Collection of Contemporary Journalists. His friend Judge Felix Frankfurter, whom he had met at Harvard Law, was a newly appointed associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and Frankfurter endorsed MacLeish as Librarian of Congress to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. MacLeish at first declined, but FDR eventually convinced him of the importance of the position. (MacLeish later said, “Mr. Roosevelt decided that I wanted to be Librarian of Congress.”) He needed the salary for his children’s college educations, but he also saw the position as a way to make a difference, and he accepted.

Controversy followed. The American Library Association questioned MacLeish’s qualifications. J. Parnell Thomas, a Republican on the House’s Special Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities, accused MacLeish

of sharing views of the Communist Party.

But he had many allies as well. Several national newspapers backed him, including The New York Times. The final role call vote on his appointment showed 63 in favor, eight opposed, and 25 non-voting. In the fall of 1939, at the age of 47, MacLeish became the ninth Librarian of Congress.

One of his first actions was to form a committee including representatives from the University of Chicago, Harvard, the New York Public Library, and Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library. Two months later, the committee produced a 300-page report suggesting a thorough overhaul of the Library of Congress. MacLeish asked Congress for a whopping increase of more than one million dollars to acquire books in underrepresented subjects, bolster the research staff in Legislative Reference Service, and improve pay for all Library of Congress employees. He didn’t get the million, but he did get a $367,591 increase, the largest grant to the Library of Congress until then.

M

acLeish secured a grant from the Carnegie Corporation for recording equipment to document American folk music by activists such as Woody Guthrie, readings by American poets, and classical music. The Librarian of Congress inaugurated new programs and revitalized existing ones. Some referred to him as Roosevelt’s “minister of culture.”

His political activism continued. Between 1939 and 1945, he wrote dozens of political essays and made numerous public addresses.

America Was Promises, published in 1939, was written when many Americans opposed getting involved in World War II; it was viewed as a call to action, urging the U.S. to join the fight. His patriotic, pro-war stance

Largely because of his strong political convictions and his journalistic background, MacLeish was enlisted by FDR as a speech writer.

offended many left-wingers, the very group with whom he had been associated.

Largely because of his strong political convictions and his journalistic background, MacLeish was enlisted by FDR as a speech writer; it didn’t hurt that his views on the war in Europe mirrored Roosevelt’s.

Then, in December 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and America was at war. The Librarian of Congress and his staff spent the next two weeks removing the most valuable books, manuscripts, and other items in case the building was firebombed. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Gutenberg Bible, and Stradivarius instruments were put in hermetically sealed containers and sent to Fort Knox.

Meanwhile, the FBI, under the tireless J. Edgar Hoover, investigated MacLeish. He was accused of being associated with various liberal and communist groups and having a pro-Russia stance. The FBI produced a 600page report on MacLeish, longer than any

ever done on an American writer until then.

Despite that, Roosevelt asked MacLeish to chair the Committee on War Information, which advised on communications, laid down principals regarding security, outlined general propaganda objectives, and recommended subjects for publication and radio.

By December of 1944, MacLeish had ended his tenure as Librarian of Congress, but he was not ready to leave Washington. He attended meetings of a secret committee on the peace organized by FDR and supervised by foreign policy advisor Sumner Welles.

Roosevelt then nominated MacLeish for the post of Assistant Secretary of State for Cultural and Public Affairs. Over the objections of conservatives, he was confirmed. His first task was, he said, “to sell the concept of the United Nations to the American Public” by conveying information about the State Department’s plan for the U.N. to achieve lasting world peace.

He worked with his longtime friend (and later U.N. Ambassador) Adlai Stevenson to

provide briefings to the press, but his biggest contribution was his involvement in writing and editing of portions of the United Nations charter, and in particular, its preamble.

MacLeish was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1946, sponsored by writers including Robinson Jeffers, Thornton Wilder, Carl Sandberg, and Robert Frost.

For the next few years, he defended freedom of expression, fighting against the anti-Communist smear tactics of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

MacLeish argued that Communism was an attempt to control people by police action— yet America was exhibiting similar behavior in its attempt to battle it. “The defense of freedom under attack is more freedom,” he said. He continued to denounce McCarthy’s campaigns aimed against college faculty, and he often spoke up for academic freedom.

MacLeish wrote his Collected Poems, 1917-1952, in November 1952, for which he won his second Pulitzer Prize, along with several other awards. He was elected president of the Academy of Arts and Letters the following year, nominated by William Faulkner, E.E. Cummings, and others. His third Pulitzer came in 1958 for the book (and later, play) J.B., a reflection on the senseless killing of innocent people.

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy asked him to write a poem for the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. At that point, MacLeish was still active.

But much of his time was spent on his farm in Conway, Mass., writing in the morning and then doing chores.

In his 80s, MacLeish did what he had always done: He wrote about his feelings and views, this time on aging and death. The man with the extraordinary ability to inspire and a heartfelt obligation to serve died on April 20, 1982. He left behind an incredible story, and he remains one of Hotchkiss’s finest.

F a l l

2 0 1 5

31

An exhibit of the School’s rare book collection inspires art students to push the limits of their creativity.

B

oards, bindings, spines,

marbled paper: Books and their anatomy took center stage at the Main Building rotunda this fall.

There, hefty, ancient, leatherbound volumes sit cheek by jowl with Hunter Thompson’s slim ode to Timothy Leary, while hand-set type by the likes of William Morris

and Pennyroyal Caxton bask, black on white, in the sky-lit space.

The exhibit, Miscellaneous Company: Rare Books Meet Art, which pairs volumes from the collection with student artwork inspired by the books, continues through midDecember. It showcases 55 books from the School’s collection of close to 1,000 volumes, An Upper mid his piece on Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories.

32

H

o t c H k i s s

M

a g a z i n e

most of which are gifts from alumni, friends, former faculty, and heads of school. Like much of Special Collections, the rare books have flown under the School’s radar for years, but thanks to the imagination of students in Bradley Faus’s Architecture 530 class, they’ve taken on new life.

At the beginning of the school year, Faus asked his students to select a book from the exhibit and create a piece of sculpture based on their interpretation of some aspect of the book — whether it be bindings, text, illustrations, or end papers — and create a three-dimensional work of their own.

“We're combining two styles of timeless art,” said upper mid Ian Duncan.“Often, old pieces of art and literature are preserved and displayed, but in this case, we get to interact with them in a special way.”

The rare books, as Duncan and other students discovered, are portals. They transported the students to Martin Luther’s Germany, to the newly formed American Republic, and to Charles Dickens’s London.

They contain a wealth of knowledge, from how to identify birds and insects to accounts of South America written by early English explorers. They provide insight into different forms of worship, from collections of hymns and psalms to 19th-century instructions

THIS PAGE: PHOTOGRAPH BY WENDY CARLSON; OPPOSITE PAGE: PHOTOGRAPHS BY JONATHAN DOSTER

b y J O A N B A L D W I N , C U R AT O R O F S P E C I A L C O L L E C T I O N S

Upper mid Henry Lee Stanton's work depicts the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

for Rosh Hashanah in Hebrew and German.

And, as cultural artifacts, they manifest changing standards of beauty, style, and utility over time.

Senior Isabel Weil's geographic piece is composed of sculptured maps.

34

H

o t c H k i s s

M

a g a z i n e

For some students, the project was an opportunity to judge a book by its cover.

Senior Yon Kee Lee was drawn to the aesthetics of The Floricultural Cabinet and Florists Magazines, a bound version of the magazines from 1841, which contains articles as well as hand-drawn and painted flowers. Upper mid Henry Lee Stanton initially selected The Artistic Guide to Chicago and the World’s Columbian Exposition because of the designs on the cover. But he ended up using the idea of Chicago's history itself as inspiration for his piece, focusing on the world exposition as a turning point for the city after the Great Chicago Fire in 1871.

This kind of conceptual challenge allowed students to engage with history in a different way. “It is intimidating to create something of the same standard as this older work, yet in a completely new and original way,” said upper mid Jack Otterson. He selected W.F. Kirby’s European Butterflies and Moths, with its richly embossed cover. “The dynamic gilt cover and full-color illustrations are designed

to pull the viewer into the author's hobby and passion,” he said.

Otterson’s brother, Clark, also an upper mid, was curious about the how writers and artists work in related ways. “Working with rare books as inspiration for three-dimensional design pieces showed me the similarities between authors and artists,” observed Otterson. “To a reader, a book’s design is just as influential as its contents. The rare books in the exhibit are great examples of purposeful design. I drew on this idea in the creation of a sculptural book that complements a concept.”

But senior Isabel Weil realized that even creativity has its limits.

“Books proved to be a perfect platform for an architectural project, as they are works of art themselves. What proved difficult was how inspirational these books were,” she said. “They generated so much creativity in response, a creativity that didn't always translate into a feasible piece. When writing a book, you can go wherever you want with the story and create the impossible, but I have learned that architecture has limits.”

THIS PAGE: PHOTOGRAPHS BY WENDY CARLSON; OPPOSITE PAGE: PHOTOGRAPHS BY JONATHAN DOSTER

“Books proved to be a perfect platform for an architectural project, as they are works of art themselves. What proved difficult was how inspirational these books were.” — Isabel Weil, senior

A Brief History of the Rare Book Collection

N

o Hotchkiss headmaster

set out to establish a rare book collection, but through the literary inclinations of Huber G. Buehler (1892-1924) and George Van Santvoord (1926-1955), the School amassed an array of important works. During headmaster Buehler’s tenure, the school began assembling art and rare books, fulfilling his belief that well-educated, Yale-bound young men should be familiar with the literary and decorative arts and reverent in the presence of significant volumes.

Buehler’s mission was continued and built upon by the School’s third headmaster, George Van Santvoord, a graduate from the Class of 1908, a veteran of World War I, and a scholar in his own right.

Van Santvoord was also a book collector, and some of the current collection’s most notable volumes are gifts from him, including Johnson's Dictionary, The Works of Mr. John Milton, and Leviathan.

Before the Library was the distinguished Delano and Aldrich building it is today, the rare books were displayed in a locked case. By the 1960s, when the Library moved to the second floor of the current building, the collection moved as well. Throughout the 60s, the books were stored in an inauspicious, eight-by10-foot locked room behind the library foyer, a mysterious location that led to numerous Record articles.

This fall, the rare book collection moved again to the north of the Library’s second floor. The collection resides in a locked room with metal shelving, a considerable improvement over the wooden shelves that used to hold them. Unlike the old room, where the lights stayed on until 10 p.m., the new space protects the fragile books from light damage by going dark when it's not in use. More importantly, its new location is more accessible to the Hotchkiss community.

F a l l

2 0 1 5

35

Back to Her Roots at Fairfield Farm

Mary Graf, a descendant of Maria Hotchkiss, digs in at the farm — and raises a barn. by

n a misty afternoon, a swath of grass glistening under her feet, Mary Graf looked out over the expanse of Fairfield Farm and sighed with satisfaction. “It’s the spaciousness — that’s part of what I love about this place,” she said.

The farm’s pastoral beauty is not the only thing that appeals to Graf. Her relationship with Fairfield Farm began several years ago, after she and her husband, Jack, purchased a farm in nearby Amenia, N.Y., but her connection to Hotchkiss has even deeper roots. Although she grew up in Greenwich, Conn., she often visited relatives in northwest Connecticut as a child. During one of those visits, she learned she was the greatgreat-great-niece of Maria Bissell Hotchkiss, the School’s founder.

She didn’t think much about the ancestral link until she moved to the farm in Amenia. Then, “with Hotchkiss in my blood, I thought I should learn more about the School,” she said.

Once she visited Fairfield Farm and saw how engaged the students were, she wanted to help sustain it. The farm, just a mile from campus, has been an invaluable resource, offering students an opportunity to connect with the land while learning about environmental stewardship.

Quick with a smile and outgoing, Graf has been involved in helping others her whole life, from volunteering at hospitals as a young girl to working at an orphanage while attending boarding school to teaching fitness at a local YMCA. Now, at 70, still spry and energetic, she has come to the realization that she can make a difference at

Fairfield Farm by helping to fund it — and “have a blast at the same time,” she said.

The farm has developed through the generosity of others like her. In 2004, Hotchkiss acquired 280 acres of mixed forest, wetlands, upland fields and pasture from alumnus and former trustee Jack Blum ’47 and his wife, Jeanne.

In recent years, Graf has taken a handson approach, meeting with students and contributing generously to support the farm operations. Her initial financial gift in 2012 allowed the School to hire Kurt Hinck ’08 as the farm’s first full-time manager. Last year, she made a gift to permanently endow the farm manager position, now held by Ellie Youngblood ’10. And last July, she committed to fund the construction of a new barn to replace a ramshackle former dairy barn on the property.

“I guess I’ve always had some farm girl in me, but my involvement with the farm has just enabled my ‘farm-girl-ness’ to sprout,” she quipped.

She and her husband now split their time between their home in Los Altos, Calif., and Round Pond Farm in Amenia, where they recently started raising Angus cattle. In the process, she’s warmed up to farm life. Her barn jacket and muck boots have become part of her daily uniform, and with her bobbed hairstyle, she looks every inch the farmer.

“I was never fond of outdoor activities, including gardening,” she conceded. “But when the opportunity to have a new life experience by establishing my own farm came along, I grabbed it.”

She shares that same spirit and enthusiasm when she’s at Fairfield Farm.

O

36

Wendy Carlson

WRITTEN AND PHOTOGRAPHED

H

o t c H k i s s

M

a g a z i n e

F a l l

2 0 1 5

37

Mary Graf's gift will allow Hotchkiss to build a new barn complex to replace the existing dairy barn.

“ I ' v e a lway s h a d s o m e f a r m g i r l i n m e , b u t m y i n vo lv e m e n t h a s j u s t e n a b l e d m y ‘fa r m - g i r l - n e s s’ t o s p r o u t,” q u i p p e d M a ry.

“Mary has been the linchpin in the farm’s development,” said Ellie Youngblood. “Few people who frequent the farm are as inquisitive, engaged, and at home with us as she is.”

G

raf enjoys watching

students work on the farm, and she’s inspired by the way the School weaves hands-on learning and environmental awareness into its curriculum, teaching that sustainability is not just a theory, but a way of life. Students in the School’s Fairfield Farm Ecosystems and Adventure Team (FFEAT) program — an afternoon equivalent to team sports — clear fields, care for the farm’s several hundred chickens, and plant, cultivate, weed, and harvest crops that range from beans and potatoes to arugula and rosemary.

FFEAT started in 2008 with a handful of students who were looking for an alternative co-curricular activity. Today, the program is thriving, and the work of this dedicated group — and the farm in general — adds another dimension to the Hotchkiss experience.

“I am constantly amazed by how working the landscape can engage both kids and adults,” said Charles Noyes ’78, Fairfield Farm curriculum coordinator and art instructor. “Working at the farm gets under your skin,” he added.

Some of the farm’s five-year goals include teaching agricultural skills, focusing on environmental issues, and providing organically

38

H

o t c H k i s s

M

a g a z i n e

grown food to the School’s Dining Hall, according to Josh Hahn, assistant head of school and director of environmental initiatives.

While Hotchkiss isn’t training students to become farmers, it does “expect them to grapple with the increasing ecological, social and economic complexities of food systems," Hahn said.

Last year, the farm produced enough potatoes to supply the Dining Hall from the beginning of the school year until spring break. In all, the farm grew about 36 varieties of produce, totaling 23,222 pounds. Local food banks received a surplus 1,500 pounds.

This year’s harvest was even larger, with 44 kinds of produce.

“I love the idea that preps harvest the potatoes that they eat in the Dining Hall,” said Mary, who has worked side-by-side with students digging asparagus trenches.

The bucolic setting doubles as an outdoor classroom where students study environmental science, art, math, history, and humanities — even poetry.

Most of these classes take place outside, but with the construction of the barn complex slated to begin next spring, students, faculty, staff, and alumni can look forward to even more farm-based activities. For instance, the plans for the barn call for a south-facing indoor courtyard as a potential growing space, so that students can enjoy the benefits of farming in the colder months.

The existing barn needs repair, and the

interior cement wall and flooring with milking stanchions aren’t useful for current farm operations, according to Hahn.

Proposed features for the new barn include storage for equipment and temporary housing for animals, along with several finished spaces, including an apartment, a classroom, and sleeping quarters with bunk beds.

“It will make it logistically a lot easier to do more overnight programming at the farm,” Hahn said. “If, for example, the Astronomy Club members want to come out and need to be up at 2 a.m. to view the night sky, they’ll be able to stay over at the farm.”

Overnight housing will make it possible to use the farm as a retreat for faculty and develop Summer Portals programs. It will also allow for expanding the farm’s summer internship program, which introduces Hotchkiss students to day-to-day operations at the farm and provides them with a direct experience of the natural world. Currently, the program only accepts students who can commute.

“By funding the construction of the new barn and endowing the farm manager position, Mary is not just supporting bricks and mortar.

She also is supporting key human resources like the farm manager position. She is helping us build an infrastructure which ensures the the farm's sustainability,” said Hahn.

Graf is thrilled to help, and she's looking forward to a barn raising. "You bet I’ll be there. I can't wait," she said.

2014-2015 Annual Report of Giving

Dear members of the Hotchkiss community, As this year’s Head of School, I am in the enviable position of reporting the successes of the last fiscal year. It is abundantly clear that you accepted the challenge with enthusiasm and incredible generosity, and you have fortified the financial health of our School in vitally important ways.

The Hotchkiss Fund, which supports a significant amount of the annual operating budget, had a stellar year, with $5,478,049 raised through 40 percent alumni participation. Twenty-five classes achieved 50 percent participation or higher, and our youngest 15 classes reached 36 percent overall participation. Current parents raised $1,666,979, with 75 percent participation. Equally impressive is the work of our tireless volunteers, who numbered more than 1,000.

Through your financial support, time, and energy, you provided the resources needed for the School to deliver to its students a first-rate independent education. Not only did you help cover the operating costs, you made possible the plethora of programs and activities that create a distinctive and robust community life at Hotchkiss.

A single year can make all the difference. As this year’s story unfolds, we can move forward with complete confidence, knowing that the Hotchkiss community fully supports our efforts to serve our students, faculty, and staff. Thank you for your enduring commitment.

With deep appreciation,

G. Peter O’Neill Jr. Head of School

40

T h e

H o t c h k i s s

S c h o o l

2014-2015 ANNUAL REPORT OF

GIVING

The Town Hill Society

The Town Hill Society helps ensure that a Hotchkiss education will be available for generations to come.

Society members, who provide for the School in their estate plans, create a powerful and admirable legacy that connects one generation with another, preserving the past while investing in the future.

We are deeply indebted to the 609 Town Hill Society members who have demonstrated unwavering support of Hotchkiss and its mission.

609 $1,145,000 $3,899,249 The School received

The School received

in new revocable estate commitments

Town Hill Society Members 10 new members

2 0 1 4 - 2 0 1 5

in new irrevocable estate commitments

A n n u a l

R e p o r t

o f

G i v i n g

41

2014-2015 ANNUAL REPORT OF

GIVING

Revenues and Expenditures

The School takes great pride in the stewardship of its funds. Charitable giving allows Hotchkiss to continue providing an outstanding education.

Percentage of Total Revenues

%

%

Net Tuition (Gross less financial aid)

45.9%

Salaries, Wages, and Stipends

42.1%

Authorized Endowment Utilization

33.8%

All Benefits

16.9%

The Hotchkiss Fund

11.6%

Plant Operations

10.3%

Fees and Other

4.3%

Other General Institutional

8.6%

Auxiliary Enterprises

2.5%

Plant Capital and Special Items

7.1%

Summer Portals

1.7%

Student Support

6.1%

Restricted Annual Gifts

0.2%

Legal, Insurance, and Other

The 2014-15 operating budget was approximately

$47.3 million 42

Percentage of Total Expenditures

T h e

H o t c h k i s s

S c h o o l

Professional Services

3.9%

Interest on Debt

2.7%

Summer Portals

1.6%

Contingency

0.7%

Award Winners

The Armitage Award STEPHANIE BOWLING ZEIGLER ’84 is the recipient of this year’s Thomas W. Armitage ’25 Award, given annually to a member of the Hotchkiss alumni body for distinguished service to The Hotchkiss Fund. President of The Hotchkiss Fund since 2013, Stephanie previously served Hotchkiss as a class agent, reunion gift committee member, and event host.

Under Stephanie’s leadership, The Hotchkiss Fund twice achieved 40 percent overall alumni participation. The number of alumni classes achieving at least 50 percent participation grew from 15 classes in fiscal year 2013 to 25 classes in fiscal year 2015. Moreover, participation from the most recent 15 alumni classes increased from 29 percent in fiscal year 2013 to 36 percent in fiscal year 2015.

We extend our sincere thanks to Stephanie for her long-term commitment to Hotchkiss, her dedication to The Hotchkiss Fund over the past two years, and her tremendous energy, enthusiasm, and positive attitude.

The McKee Award DOUG AND JULIE OSTROVER P’16 are the recipients of this year’s McKee Award, named in honor of Hugh and Judy McKee P’78,’80,’84,’89, in recognition of their tireless work for The Hotchkiss Fund. The award is presented annually to a parent or parents for distinguished service to The Hotchkiss Parents Fund.

As chairs of the Parents Fund for the past two years, the Ostrovers have demonstrated a level of dedication and enthusiasm that resulted in record-setting fundraising.

The Fund raised $1,666,979 this year from current parents, the highest level in the history of the School. In addition, parent participation reached an impressive 75 percent.

The Ostrover’s true-blue spirit created a wonderful sense of community among Hotchkiss families. Whether hosting an event, cheering from the sidelines for their daughter Olivia’s teams, or reaching out to welcome new families, they showed a warmth and energy that brought the community together and built momentum for School support. Hotchkiss is very grateful to the Ostrovers for their extraordinary service.

2 0 1 4 - 2 0 1 5

A n n u a l

R e p o r t

o f

G i v i n g

43

Report of Gifts July 1, 2014 – June 30, 2015 ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

The Hotchkiss Fund

$5,478,049

Restricted Current Use

$142,889

Restricted Endowment

$6,268,546

Unrestricted Endowment Property, Plant, and Equipment Gifts Pending Designation Deferred Gifts at Present Value

Total Gifts

16%

25%

$244,878 $6,043,090

28%

$144,146

29%

$3,367,758 $21,689,356

Giving Societies

All cash gifts to the School from July 1, 2014 – June 30, 2015 GIFT LEVEL

DONORS

THE HOTCHKISS FUND

TOTAL GIVEN

Head of School’s Council $50,000 or more

50

$1,399,795

$13,042,435

Leadership Council $25,000 - $49,999

44

$792,655

$1,313,581

St. Luke’s Society $10,000 – $24,999

127

$1,238,313

$1,614,911

Maria Hotchkiss Society $5,000 - $9,999

169

$751,727

$929,958

The 1891 Society $1,891 - $4,999

220

$486,730

$542,279

4

$2,285

$3,185

12

$8,032

$10,282

3,559

$798,511

$864,965

Olympians 1st – 5th Reunion $250 - $4,999 Pythians 6th – 10th Reunion $500 - $4,999 Blue & White Society up to $1,890 44

T h e

H o t c h k i s s

S c h o o l

2014-2015 ANNUAL REPORT OF

GIVING

The Hotchkiss Fund Reaches Goals for 2014-2015 Total amount raised

Our youngest 15 alumni classes reached

$5,478,049 36% 25 40% We achieved overall alumni participation of

participation overall

alumni classes achieved

50% participation or higher (20 classes in FY14 and 15 classes in FY13)

(34% in FY14 and 29% in FY13)

for the second straight year (37% in FY13)

The Hotchkiss Parents Fund Highlights Total amount raised in 2014-2015

$1,666,979

Current parent participation

75%

• Under the extraordinary leadership of Julie and Doug Ostrover P’16, The Hotchkiss Parents Fund set a new record by raising $1,666,979 — the highest level in the history of the School.

Congratulations to the entire team of 60 parent volunteers, whose enthusiastic and dedicated outreach to other families resulted in this success.

• The School is grateful to the many parents who supported The Hotchkiss Parents Fund — 75 percent of current families made a gift this year.

• Special congratulations and appreciation to our international families and volunteers. Our highest level of participation was achieved in South Korea, with 95 percent of parents contributing, followed closely by China, with 88 percent parent participation, and the United States, with 77 percent.

• Thank you to all for this tremendous expression of support.

2 0 1 4 - 2 0 1 5

A n n u a l

R e p o r t

o f

G i v i n g

45

Class Giving Summary Results July 1, 2014 – June 30, 2015 TOTAL DOLLARS

CLASS YEAR

% OF THE HOTCHKISS PARTICIPATION FUND

DONORS ALL FUNDS

TOTAL DOLLARS

9

$34,605

1975 (40th)

37%

$20,009

42

$20,199

$6,043

3

$6,043

1976

41%

$43,473

49

$51,773

100%

$295

4

$23,712

1977

30%

$153,930

43

$927,397

100%

$27,078

7

$257,078

1978

46%

$108,278

62

$445,708

CLASS YEAR

% OF THE HOTCHKISS PARTICIPATION FUND

1935 (80th)

100%

$34,605

1936

100%

1937 1938

DONORS ALL FUNDS

1939

86%

$1,630

6

$51,630

1979

31%

$53,596

44

$62,290

1940 (75th)

100%

$3,000

2

$3,000

1980 (35th)

34%

$223,020

44

$1,650,574

1941

31%

$600

4

$5,700

1981

37%

$217,167

52

$333,884

1942

86%

$6,500

12

$207,000

1982

26%

$96,453

39

$133,951

1943

53%

$4,972

9

$164,001

1983

36%

$104,086

48

$104,086

1944

88%

$19,943

22

$569,039

1984

38%

$222,877

53

$245,627

1945 (70th)

43%

$5,793

13

$30,793

1985 (30th)

48%

$218,790

69

$366,204

1946

68%

$7,575

15

$18,873

1986

34%

$61,533

55

$62,233

1947

70%

$15,909

33

$16,909

1987

41%

$66,778

59

$67,028

1948

76%

$27,974

22

$41,474

1988

40%

$52,072

61

$62,322

1949

100%

$178,180

46

$695,248

1989

41%

$68,770

61

$73,870

1950 (65th)

79%

$33,549

27

$58,949

1990 (25th)

45%

$49,926

61

$62,426

1951

50%

$9,770

24

$10,070

1991

34%

$31,904

49

$46,969

1952

69%

$11,530

24

$11,930

1992

31%

$24,207

44

$24,207

1953

83%

$75,002

43

$101,302

1993

28%

$15,185

45

$15,285

1954

62%

$16,829

28

$17,579

1994

21%

$8,875

32

$29,820

1955 (60th)

80%

$56,509

37

$200,143

1995 (20th)

28%

$77,752

45

$278,902

1956

67%

$34,525

33

$1,049,575

1996

47%

$69,727

72

$269,727

1957

68%

$22,030

39

$42,030

1997

28%

$22,606

44

$27,606

1958

81%

$33,515

46

$134,015

1998

20%

$9,381

31

$109,381

1959

55%

$29,100

32

$150,100

1999

25%

$9,050

42

$9,050

1960 (55th)

73%

$78,896

32

$128,896

2000 (15th)

30%

$14,121

50

$46,621

1961

50%

$11,798

28

$12,748

2001

27%

$9,343

39

$17,928

1962

66%

$6,000

29

$6,000

2002

38%

$11,472

59

$111,592

1963

53%

$53,045

27

$229,681

2003

37%

$12,761

55

$21,186

2004

30%

$5,241

53

$5,241

50th Reunion Campaign in Progress

1964*

50th Reunion Campaign in Progress

2005 (10th)

58%

$4,925

97

$4,945

1966

33%

$40,501

29

$40,526

2006

43%

$7,291

68

$7,311

1967

36%

$56,107

26

$61,507

2007

38%

$4,357

68

$6,007

1968

33%

$35,893

27

$2,042,518

2008

50%

$13,778

92

$14,582

1969

49%

$60,639

42

$279,638

2009

39%

$17,050

71

$17,625

1970 (45th)

61%

$19,920

47

$27,420

2010 (5th)

38%

$7,813

66

$7,813

1965** (50th)

1971

43%

$70,935

30

$73,335

2011

32%

$11,630

57

$11,665

1972

39%

$65,751

37

$66,051

2012

38%

$1,703

66

$7,019

1973

31%

$34,867

29

$64,867

2013

25%

$2,968

44

$3,418

1974

32%

$46,094

32

$46,094

2014

25%

$1,487

44

$2,087

* The Class of 1964 celebrated their 50th reunion in October 2014. Their 50th reunion totals will be included in the 2015 – 2016 Annual Report of Giving. **Members of the Class of 1965 celebrated their 50th reunion this September. Their 50th reunion totals will be included in the 2015 – 2016 Annual Report of Giving.

46

T h e

H o t c h k i s s

S c h o o l

2014-2015 ANNUAL REPORT OF

GIVING

Hotchkiss - Taft Challenge

In November 2014, Hotchkiss and Taft started channeling their rivalry into a productive outlet: an annual fundraising effort, called The Hotchkiss-Taft Challenge, in which the two schools compete to see who can rally the highest percentage of young alumni (graduates from the last 20 years) to donate to their school’s annual fund.

The Hotchkiss-Taft Challenge coincides with Spirit Week, which culminates in a day of athletic contests between the two schools. In the first year of the Challenge, Taft achieved 21.7 percent participation, surpassing Hotchkiss by a mere four-tenths of a percent. In spite of the narrow defeat, Hotchkiss was overwhelmed by the support of its young alumni: 667 recent graduates gave to The Hotchkiss Fund over a six-day period. This November, Hotchkiss is determined to best Taft with an even greater show of solidarity from its community of dedicated young alumni.

21.3% 667 95% 93 overall participation from the Classes of 1995-2014

donors from the Classes of 1995-2014

participation from class agent volunteers

The highest number of donors in one class (Class of 2005)

We are grateful for our volunteers.

Hotchkiss is extremely fortunate to have hundreds of alumni and parent volunteers who support the School in a variety of ways. Whether as a reunion committee member, class agent, parent fundraiser, event host, board of governors or trustee member, admissions volunteer, phonathon caller, guest speaker, or international student host, each volunteer is so valuable to the School. These volunteers help bring together the Hotchkiss community in their hometowns and around the world, and our students, faculty, staff and extended Hotchkiss family benefit greatly from their hard work.

Hotchkiss is very grateful for our volunteers, and we encourage everyone to get involved – thank you!

48

T h e

H o t c h k i s s

S c h o o l

2014-2015 ANNUAL REPORT OF

GIVING

Thank a Donor Day! Nearly 500 loyal Hotchkiss alumni donors received thank-you notes from students, faculty, staff, and community members.

2015 Senior Class Gift

101

members of the Class of 2015 made a gift in support of the 2015 Senior Class Gift Campaign

62%

of seniors gave, raising a total of

$1,958 2 0 1 4 - 2 0 1 5

A n n u a l

2

fire pits were purchased for Fairfield Farm and Hotchkiss Beach R e p o r t

o f

G i v i n g

49

ALUMNI

in t h e me d i a

After Hurricane Sandy, A Big Idea

M

iranda Massie may

not be the most obvious candidate to create a museum in New York City devoted to the subject of climate change. As a child growing up in the Hudson Valley in the 1970s, she rebelled against her father’s early efforts at recycling. Later, after flirting with getting a Ph.D. in history, she became a lawyer specializing in civil rights and took a job in Detroit.

Upon returning to New York several years ago, though, Ms. Massie began to view environmental issues — and climate change in particular — through the lens of social activism. “If you don’t have the right to thrive as an organism, then everything else falls away,” she said. “I came to see the environment as a civil rights issue.”

While it is still just a concept, the Climate Museum has become Ms. Massie’s mission.

Last month, the New York State Board of Regents approved its provisional charter, and next month, the museum’s newly appointed five-member board of trustees is to meet for the first time. Still needed: a place for the museum to be built, and money to build it.

For now, Ms. Massie, 48, a slightly built woman who radiates restless energy, is working with several summer interns in space donated by a law firm on the 18th floor of a Midtown Manhattan office building. And just as she would construct a legal case, which she did most recently at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, she is assembling the building blocks of an institution that she believes will fill a void in the campaign to slow global warming.

Groups and research centers such as 350.org, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Columbia University’s Earth Institute are doing groundbreaking work,

50

H

O T C H K I S S

M

A G A Z I N E

Ms. Massie said. What is lacking, she argued, is a broad effort to educate the public.

“It’s that kind of gap analysis that produced the idea for the museum,” she said.

The concept came to her gradually in the weeks and months after Hurricane Sandy. Living in the West Village, she was among those affected when the storm plunged virtually all of Manhattan south of 39th Street into darkness. “I think Sandy took the urgency I was feeling about the climate and raised it by an order of magnitude,” she said. “It made me feel like I didn’t have the idea; the idea had me.”

She went online to determine whether anyone had beaten her to opening a climate museum. Someone had, but it appeared that there was only one, the Jockey Club Museum of Climate Change in Hong Kong.

Ms. Massie quit her job as a lawyer last year to focus on the Climate Museum concept full time, and now she is the director.

In addition to the board of trustees, she has

convened a 19-member advisory board.

Between them, the two panels include environmentalists, academics, architects, public relations experts, ministers and others.

Among the trustees are Cynthia Rosenzweig, a senior research scientist at both NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the Earth Institute; the architect James Stewart Polshek, a former dean of Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation; and Dominique Browning, former editor in chief of House & Garden magazine and founder of the environmental group Moms Clean Air Force. Ms. Massie, who is also a trustee, said she wanted the boards to reflect a range of disciplines because the museum itself will address many aspects of society.

“Climate now touches virtually every facet of the human experience,” she said. “It affects human health, what food is available, how much people pay for insurance, how they experience cities, especially in summer.”

The ultimate goal is for the museum to have a space in an area of the city that draws heavy tourist traffic, something Ms. Massie acknowledges is several years off. But this fall, she hopes to begin a campaign to raise the money needed to cover the cost of planning a temporary space, perhaps in an office building. And next summer, she said, the museum may welcome the public with a pop-up exhibition on Governors Island.

Ms. Massie, who recently visited the Hong Kong museum, knows that there will be naysayers along the way, including those who argue that the topic of climate change is too narrow or depressing to attract crowds.

“There are many museums devoted — worthily — to subjects that will not determine the outcome for our species,” she said,

This article was originally published on August 21, 2015, and reprinted with permission from The New York Times.

THE MISCHIANZA

Miranda Massie ’84 quit her job as an attorney to start a climate museum in New York by LISA W. FO D ER AR O

GREGG DELMAN/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX

“ I t h i n k S a n d y t o o k t h e u r g e n c y I wa s f e e l i n g a b o u t t h e c l i m at e a n d r a i s e d i t b y a n o r d e r o f m a g n i t u d e .” referring to existing institutions in the city dedicated to mathematics and Tibetan art.

(There also are at least two museums in upstate New York devoted to cheese.)

As for the gloom factor, Ms. Massie plans to make the museum equal parts repository of knowledge and catalyst for change. Recent events have given her hope: the climate march in New York City last fall that drew hundreds of thousands of people; Mayor Bill de Blasio’s pledge to reduce by 80 percent greenhouse gas emissions in the city by 2050; the agreement between the United States and China to jointly cut emissions; and the encyclical issued this year by Pope Francis in which he called for swift action on climate change.

A visit to the future Climate Museum will reflect such developments, Ms. Massie said,

as well as sobering projections from scientists who say global warming could eventually render the world uninhabitable. But the larger idea is to give visitors a new resolve to take concrete steps.

“You’ll be able to make a commitment to some kind of action,” Ms. Massie said. “It could be weatherizing your house, talking to a colleague about climate change” — or even, she added, “taking a semester off college to volunteer with a Republican climate hawk.”

Edward W. Maibach, director of the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication and a member of the museum’s advisory board, said the museum could play an invaluable role in raising public awareness of a major looming threat.

“Climate change is not only the defin-

ing issue of our time; it is very likely to be the issue that most influences the well-being of humanity for the next many centuries to come,” he said. “Yet inexplicably, few Americans understand this.”

“Museums are intended to provoke thoughts, feelings and conversations,” he said. “A climate museum, if done well, can help start an important conversation about climate change in America.”

Since this article was published, the Climate Museum has continued to grow and expand its presence. In 2016, the museum will present at South by Southwest and the inaugural Yale Environmental Sustainability Summit. For more information, visit climatemuseum.org.

F a l l

2 0 1 5

51

ALUMNI

in t h e me d i a

The Teacher and the Skull Digger How one alumnus brought an archaeological discovery to life for his students

science teacher at St. Mark’s School of Texas in Dallas, brought human evolution to life for his students this fall through social media — and, in the process, became part of a major archaeological discovery.

It began late one evening several years ago, when Mead was sitting at his computer preparing a lesson plan on Australopithecus sediba, a human ancestor discovered by paleoanthropologist Lee Berger. On a whim, Mead decided to reach out to Berger on Facebook.

He sent him a message asking if he would field questions from his students. To Mead’s surprise, Berger replied minutes later.

“I had expected him to say, ‘I’m a busy guy,’” said Mead in an interview with The Dallas Morning News. “But he said, ‘Sure. Tell me about your school.’”

The two became friends and colleagues, a relationship that gave Mead and his class an opportunity to be involved in Berger’s more recent discovery of the new species of human relative, Homo naledi, which was announced in September.

Through social media, Mead and his students followed Berger’s daily progress. On his blog, Mead wrote that “the unprecedented open access nature of that excavation allowed my students and me to follow the hour-by-hour updates on Twitter, which led to the creation of what’s become known as the ‘Twitter Play-by-Play’ of the excavation.”

In July 2015, Mead spent two weeks in Johannesburg, South Africa, with the scientists and explorers of the site. In a series of video interviews posted on his blog, team members talked about the excitement of the collaborative effort and bringing the thrill of the discovery into the classroom.

Two days after the findings were announced, Mead posted on Facebook: “Having the chance to witness real scientific discovery in action and to show students and others that modern science is not just old guys in white coats with test tubes has been exciting.” —Deirdre Lord ’85

52

H

O T C H K I S S

M

A G A Z I N E

LEE ROGER BERGER RESEARCH TEAM

J

ohn Mead ’85, a sixth-grade

Messages from the Alumni Association

D e a r A lu m n i, T h e B o a rd o f G o v e rn o rs is th e E x e c u tiv e C o m m itte e o f th e A lu m n i A s s o c ia tio n , o f w h ic h a ll H o tc h k is s a lu m n i a re a u to m a tic a lly m e m b e rs . O u r p u rp o s e is to e n g a g e a lu m n i b y c re a tin g a n d s u p p o rtin g d y n a m ic , e d u c a tio n a l, fu n e v e n ts a n d p ro g ra m s a c ro s s th e c o u n try a n d th e g lo b e , in c lu d in g th e a n n u a l D a y o f S e rv ic e a n d lo c a l g a th e rin g s in v o lv in g a lu m n i fro m le a rn h o w th a t

a llo w

a ll d e c a d e s . P le a s e c o n ta c t u s to

y o u c a n p la y a ro le in h e lp in g s h a p e p ro g ra m s H o tc h k is s to re m a in a n im p o rta n t p a rt o f y o u r

PHOTOGRAPH BY JONATHAN DOSTER

life a n d th e liv e s o f y o u r fe llo w

a lu m n i.

S in c e re ly ,

E d G r e e n b e r g ’ 55 P re s id e n t, H o tc h k is s A lu m n i A s s o c ia tio n

Join the Alumni Career Network and help fellow Bearcats

 L

ast March, The Hotchkiss Alumni Association introduced the next generation of trusted web-based career networks: the Hotchkiss Alumni Career Network (a replacement for Career Connections on Alumnet). We have partnered with Evisors, making us the first secondary school in the country to provide this cloud-based service for our alumni. As an advisor, this new network allows you to choose the services you would like to offer (i.e., career conversations, resume critiques, and mock interviews). As an advice seeker, you can search for alumni in many industries. Signing up is fast and easy at www.hotchkiss.evisors.com.

F

a l l

2 0 1 5

53

PARTING SHOT

A New Observatory on Campus

PHOTOGRAPH BY ANNE DAY P ’09,’11,’13

The Hotchkiss community will have more opportunities to stargaze when the new observatory opens this winter. Built on the edge of the 6th fairway, between Dana and Garland dormitories, the observatory houses a telescope with a camera to capture images of the night sky.

88

H

O T C H K I S S

M

A G A Z I N E

Hotchkiss Reunions June 10-12, 2016

Classes Ending in 1 or 6

Hope to see you in Lakeville!

For more information, please contact: Kamaren Suwijn, Assistant Director of Alumni Relations, at (860) 435-3114 or ksuwijn@hotchkiss.org Visit www.hotchkiss.org/alumni (click on Events & Reunions)

11 Interlaken Road Lakeville, CT 06039 - 2141 (860) 435-2591 www.hotchkiss.org ALUMNI

Nonprofit Org. U.S. Postage

PAID

Permit No. 36 Pittsfield, MA