Hotchkiss Magazine | Fall 2020

M

A

G

A

Z

I

N

E

Forging a Path Forward

Fall 2020

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

ALUMNI ASSOCIATION BOARD OF GOVERNORS

AS OF JULY 1, 2020

AS OF JULY 1, 2020

Robert R. Gould ’77, Co-President Elizabeth G. Hines ’93, Co-President Robert Chartener ’76, P’18, Vice President Raymond J. McGuire ’75, Vice President David B. Wyshner ’85, Treasurer Roger K. Smith ’78, P’08, Secretary Charles Ayres ’77 Austin M. Beutner P’20,’22 Anne Matlock Dinneen ’95 John Grube ’65, P’00 Alex Hurst ’97 Nisa Leung Lin ’88 Cristina Mariani-May ’89, P’23 Carlos Pérez ’81 Thomas S. Quinn ’71, P’15,’17,’19 Christopher R. Redlich Jr. ’68 Susan Green Roberson ’87, President, The Hotchkiss Fund, ex officio Thomas R. Seidenstein ’91, P’24, President, Alumni Association, ex officio

Timothy P. Sullivan ’81, P’13,’16 Rhonda Trotter ’79 Rebecca van der Bogert U. Gwyn Williams ’84, P’17,’19 EMERITI

Howard C. Bissell ’55, P’82 John R. Chandler Jr. ’53, P’82, P’85,’87, GP’10,’14,’16,’22 Thomas J. Edelman ’69, P’06,’07 William R. Elfers ’67 Lawrence Flinn Jr. ’53, GP’22 Frederick Frank ’50, P’12 Dan W. Lufkin ’49, P’80,’82,’88,’23 Robert H. Mattoon Jr. Dr. Robert A. Oden Jr. P’97 Kendra O’Donnell Jean Weinberg Rose ’80, P’18 John L. Thornton ’72, P’10,’11,’16 Francis T. Vincent Jr. ’56, P’85

CREATION OF ADVISORY COMMITTEE FOR SEXUAL MISCONDUCT PREVENTION AND EDUCATION Earlier this year, the Board of Trustees established an Advisory Committee for Sexual Misconduct Prevention and Education. The Advisory Committee includes Hotchkiss alumni, representatives from the Board of Trustees, and experts in the field of sexual abuse and prevention. It is charged with bringing informed thinking and expertise to ensuring that: • All Hotchkiss students are safe, seen, and supported; • all employees live and work in a safe and healthy environment; • all members of the on-campus community are well-trained and alert to the signs of inappropriate behavior; and • all alumni are provided with avenues of communication and support.

The following, inaugural members have been appointed by the Head of School and Co-Presidents of the Board of Trustees to serve a three-year term: • Mark Berkowitz ’88, investor and strategic advisor • Ann Sprole Cheston ’91, P’23, LICSW, previously Adjustment Counselor at the Dover-Sherborn Middle School and High School • Brandeis Nilaja Green ’99, Ph.D, licensed Clinical Psychologist, Trauma Specialist, and Consultant at Standpoint Therapy & Organizational Consulting • Elizabeth Krimendahl, Psy.D.,’78, Director of the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology • Jennifer Mahon ’85, Ph.D., psychologist and founder of the Practical Psychologist and Proficient Parents, PLC • Tim Sullivan ’81, P’13,’16, member of the Hotchkiss Board of Trustees, vice-chairman of the Morehead-Cain Foundation Board of Trustees, chairman of Ancestry.com, and board member, AllTrails • Rhonda Trotter ’79, member of the Hotchkiss Board of Trustees and Partner, Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP Faculty Liaisons: • Christy Cooper P’08,’11, Dean of the Class of 2021, Sexual Misconduct Prevention and Response Coordinator, Instructor in English • Steve McKibben P’22, Dean of Community Life, Instructor in English To offer feedback or ask questions, please contact Ms. Cooper by email at ccooper@hotchkiss.org.

Anyone wishing to come forward to report abuse by an adult member of the Hotchkiss community is invited to contact the School’s independent investigator, Alison O’Neil, by telephone at (617) 239-0729 or by email at hotchkissinvestigation@lockelord.com.

Tom Seidenstein ’91, P’24, President Natalie Boyse ’09 Rafael Carbonell ’93 Weijen Chang ’86, P’22, P’24. VP and Chair, Admission and Engagement Committee Nathalie Pierrepont Danilovich ’03, VP and Co-chair, Diversity and Inclusion Committee Marita Bell Fairbanks ’84 Danielle Ferguson ’97 Carlos Garcia ’77 Brooke Harlow ’92, Vice Chair, Chair, Nominating Committee for Membership Julia Tingley Kivitz ’01 Robert Kuhn ’75 Annika Lescott ’06, VP and Co-chair, Diversity and Inclusion Committee Barrett Lester ’81, VP and Chair, Communications Committee Keith Merrill ’02 Nick Moore ’71, P’89,’01,’06 Paul Mutter ’87, Vice Chair, Chair, Nominating Committee for Awards Honey Taylor Nachman ’90, P’21,’23 Steve O’Brien ’62, P’87,’01, GP’17 Daniel Pai ’19 Blake Ruddock ’12 Bill Sandberg ’65 Marquis Scott ’98 Adam Sharp ’96 Richard Staples ’74, P’10,’12 Tom Terbell ’95 EX-OFFICIO MEMBERS

Craig Bradley, Head of School Ed Greenberg ’55, Past President, Alumni Association Robert R. Gould ’77, Co-President, Board of Trustees Elizabeth G. Hines ’93, Co-President, Board of Trustees Susan Green Roberson ’87, President, The Hotchkiss Fund

1

2

FALL 2020 FEATURES

20

M A G A Z I N E

Taking a Stand for Gender Equity

HEAD OF SCHOOL

Craig W. Bradley

Julia Parker Benello ’88

CHIEF COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER

Hope Reisinger Cobera ’88, P’24

31

EDITOR

Wendy Carlson

On the Beat

MAGAZINE DESIGNER

Julie Hammill

with Jonathan Z. Larsen ’57

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS

36

Danielle Sinclair WEBSITE AND DESIGN MANAGER

And Justice For All

Margaret Szubra

Sumi Lee ’02 Takes on a Pioneering Role for Judicial Diversity

CONTRIBUTORS

Roberta Jenckes, Jonathan Larsen ’57, Sarah Anderson Lock P’24, and Daniel Lippman ’08

38

What’s On Tap

PLEASE SEND INQUIRIES & COMMENTS TO:

A Flight of Alumni-owned Breweries from Around the World

The Hotchkiss School 11 Interlaken Road Lakeville, CT 06039-2141 Email: magazine@hotchkiss.org Phone: (860) 435-3122 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 are welcome. Please keep under 400 words. We reserve the right to edit and publish letters.

IN THIS ISSUE 2 From the Head of School 4

From the Board of Trustees

5

Campus Connection

18 46-Plus Years

of Service to Hotchkiss:

Robert Wood

25 The March Towards

Women’s Rights 28 Seeking Better Paths:

Kevin Ervin ’04

45 Class Notes 57 In Memoriam 64 Parting Shot

ON THE COVER

Photo: Harry Roepers ’19 FALL 2020

1

FROM THE HEAD OF SCHOOL

A Focus on Excellence S

INCE 1891, EVERY SCHOOL YEAR

at Hotchkiss has been unique, comprising different students and different experiences. Certain things, however, have been relatively constant: dorm communities coming together, the excitement of interscholastic sports, communal meals, embraces between friends, and a predictable academic calendar, among many others.

Challenges we have experienced this year put 2020 in a category all its own.

The work invested by the faculty and staff to bring students back to campus and to resume teaching amidst the COVID-19 pandemic has been, and continues to be, extraordinary. Equally heartening is the commitment of the students themselves.

Faced with evolving rules and restrictions, Hotchkiss Bearcats have risen to the occasion. Awareness that a major outbreak could result in our having to send all

2

M AGA ZINE

students home to learn remotely has inspired each of us to place an even higher value on being together in person and to commit to doing our part to keep the community safe.

Our time together on campus this fall has been made possible, in many ways, by the ongoing generosity of alumni, parents, and friends of the School. I extend my sincere thanks to all those who have contributed to the School’s success and resilience in trying times. This has been a community effort and reveals the strength and goodness of the Hotchkiss family.

The pandemic has required a great deal of us all. Our responsibility, first and foremost, is to keep the community and all of its members safe. We have had to deepen our understanding of the virus, balance safety with freedom and quality of experience, reconfigure physical spaces, support students and teachers in the new

world of hybrid learning, and respond swiftly when we have had COVID-19 cases on campus — even when the majority of them ultimately turned out to be false positives.

Yet through it all, we have endeavored to maintain our focus on why we are here. Our purpose is to provide an outstanding education to young people who will become thoughtful, capable, and open-minded leaders of tomorrow — leaders our world sorely needs.

An ability to comprehend and value diverse perspectives is critical to leadership. The day following the U.S. presidential election, the School held a long-planned day of civics programming during which students, faculty, and staff engaged in bi-partisan discussion about the voting process, evolving ideology across both major political parties, and the importance of informed media consumption.

This learning space supported the School’s commitment to civil discourse, freedom of speech, and diversity of ideas.

Since our founding, excellence has been the standard. A commitment to excellence and the rigor it requires has grown stronger

LET TERS TO THE EDITOR

From Scarlet Fever to COVID-19

The pandemic disrupted many of the School’s annual events and daily routines, but the spectacular fall foliage remained constant.

PH OTO: WENDY C A R L S O N

“From Scarlet Fever to COVID-19” in Hotchkiss Magazine, Summer 2020, brought back memories of my grandfather’s stories. Edward Raymond was in the class of 1904. He later included this story in a letter he wrote to grandchildren in 1972 just before he died.

“There was an epidemic of scarlet fever at Hotchkiss one year. Because of a rash on my chest, legs and arms (which I later learned was only measles), I was sure I had it and didn’t want to be put in the “pest house,” an old farm house which the school called the infirmary. I ran away to the R.R. station and took the train to Bedford Hills, arriving there at 3 a.m. The train was late because of a heavy snow storm. I walked to Mr. Welphy’s livery stable and begged him to drive me home. We upset the buggy three times in the snow and arrived home about 5 a.m. I felt great, but was very hungry since I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. I recall I ate half an apple pie as soon as I got home. When Hotchkiss found out about my leaving, I was suspended until after Easter Vacation. That was another cause of my failure to keep up with my studies. I didn’t do any serious work all the time I was home.”

As a result, he did not graduate, but somehow went on to Yale. In 1959 he drove me to Hotchkiss and urged me to attend.

DOUGLAS RAYMOND ’63

at our core. Yet the forms excellence takes continue to change as knowledge grows, including knowledge about how students learn, the advent of new educational technology, and evolving best practices with respect to creating and sustaining a safe and inclusive environment for all members of the community.

The recent encouraging news about COVID19 vaccine development prompts me to reflect on some positive changes during the pandemic that may remain with us going forward.

Among these are a deeper appreciation of community; a stronger attraction to nature and the solace it provides; fuller integration of technology into our lives; a reminder of our own resilience; and a deeper sense of our interconnectedness and gratitude for the personal networks to which we are linked.

I wish you and your families a peaceful and healthy holiday season.

All good wishes,

The Hotchkiss Ski Jump In the summer 2020 article about the Larsen Trail, a ski jump was mentioned — built in the 1920s and already in poor condition by I946.

I never saw or heard of that one, but when I attended Hotchkiss (19551959), there was a 20-meter ski jump in the middle of the Beeslick woods in very good condition. I wonder if the trestle for the inrun was built on the same site as the old one. Sadly, it was already a derelict structure when I visited in 1980.

Yes, Hotchkiss had ski jumpers — in fact a whole ski team, which participated in both nordic and alpine events. In 1968, the team was undefeated in four dual ski meets against local schools. Also that year, we placed 2nd out of 12 schools competing at the Berkshire Interscholastic Ski Meet in Pittsfield, MA. The practice on our home hill paid off there, as we won the jumping event by a wide margin, with skiers placing 2nd, 3rd and 5th out of about 30 participants. We must have done very well in the other events also, because these tournaments all included downhill, slalom, and cross-country ski races.

BILL PERRY ’59

FALL 2020

3

A MESSAGE FROM THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES

BY ROBERT CHARTENER ’76, P’18

It was a busy summer and early fall for the Board of Trustees. The Board met three times virtually — twice in June and once in August — and held virtual committee meetings and full Board sessions in late September and early October.

COVID-19 – Administrators and faculty members worked tirelessly over the summer, determining whether students could return in September and then assessing the many steps necessary to prepare the School for a safe reopening. Richard Davis, associate dean of faculty, led a steering group that was assisted by more than a dozen subcommittees responsible for analyzing topics including the academic program, residential life, dining, the Health Center, and community life. The process was complex and iterative. The School was assisted by Dr. Sten Vermund, dean of the Yale School of Public Health, and his team, and it worked closely with federal and state agencies, industry groups (e.g., the Eight Schools, the Connecticut Association of Independent Schools, the Founders League, and other research and consulting groups).

About 95 percent of families expressed a strong interest in returning. The School settled on five major protection strategies: physical distancing, mask wearing, hand and surface hygiene, small groupings, and frequent testing. The decision to return was based on the acceptance of everyone’s role in safe conduct, de-densifying the Main Building, and leveraging our remote location and 95-percent boarding population.

Among other things, the Health Center was expanded upstairs into Wieler to accommodate quarantine spaces, dorm spaces were renovated, classrooms were modified for physical distancing, tents were erected, and bathrooms were reconfigured.

The teaching schedule was adjusted to accommodate both in-person and remote learners. With the deferral of Founders

4

M AGA ZINE

League sports in the fall, athletics were adjusted to give all students access to exercise and the outdoors. Comprehensive plans were developed in the event of smaller and larger outbreaks of COVID-19. While the details of these plans go far beyond the limits of this column, the Board studied the School’s preparedness in detail and determined that Hotchkiss could open in September.

School Opening – Hotchkiss returned on a staggered schedule and tested all students and student-facing faculty members and staff. The School opened with 520 boarders, 65 remote learners, and 28 day students.

(Remote learners include students who did not return to Hotchkiss because of visa issues and individual health concerns, but Hotchkiss is determined to give all students equal access to classroom learning.)

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) – At its meeting on June 30, the Board unanimously passed a resolution to create a DEI Committee, co-headed by trustees Ray McGuire ’75 and Becky van der Bogert, and ranking equally with other Board committees. Its work progressed at great speed over the summer. The committee addresses the reality that today’s students are entering a world with greater racial and ethnic diversity than ever before and that our students must be prepared for a changed environment. The responsibilities of the DEI are broad, running from issues like the diversification of the faculty to curricular concerns to a host of other issues that affect our ability to offer an inclusive and equitable community experience for all students. We intend to ensure that every child enrolled at Hotchkiss has an equal chance for an open welcome, and that all students are “safe, seen, and supported.”

The DEI Committee will work with the entire community, including trustees.

Investments – Anne Dinneen ’95 reported on the performance of the endowment during the 2019-20 fiscal year. The Hotchkiss endowment is constructed to weather a variety of market environments, including bear markets, and is well-diversified across asset classes and managers. Despite significant market stress in February and March, the endowment returned an exceptional 3.7 percent for the 2020 fiscal year versus 2.1 percent for the global MSCI ACWI index.The endowment ended June at $477.7 million, with approximately $25.5 million in cash, fixed income, and gold. The policy portfolio has worked well for Hotchkiss over time and in the short term has protected the endowment from deep drawdowns. Over the past ten years, Hotchkiss has returned 6.4 percent per annum, which ranks us in the top decile versus secondary school peers.

Locke Lord Report – Locke Lord released a supplement to its initial report, published in August 2018. The August 2020 supplement includes the naming of an individual faculty member who was not referenced in the original report. As was the case in 2018, the allegations relate to abuse dating back decades and do not involve any current students, faculty members, or staff.

The report appears on the School’s website.

The investigation remains open, and independent investigator Allison O’Neil can be reached by telephone at (617) 239-0729.

Board elections – The Board elected Alexander Hurst ’97 as a trustee and Kendra O’Donnell as a trustee emerita.

CAMPUS CONNECTION

Hats Off to Hotchkiss Volunteers!

DR. LEI DU AND MS. JEAN Q. CHANG P’18,’21

DAVID M. BALDERSTON ’72, P’07,’12,’14 Thomas W. Armitage ’25 Award Mr. David M. Balderston ’72, P’07,’12,’14 has been selected as this year’s recipient of the Armitage Award. The Armitage Award is presented annually to an outstanding volunteer for distinguished service to The Hotchkiss Fund. This award is named for Thomas W. Armitage ’25 in recognition of his tireless work for The Hotchkiss Fund.

David’s dedication and extraordinary leadership in his role as a class agent for the Class of 1972 and volunteer for The Hotchkiss Fund has been invaluable to the School. He has consistently sought to strengthen and maintain the relationship between our alumni base and the School, which has led The Hotchkiss Fund to tremendous success over the years. He is known to participate in every volunteer call and community presentation, attend alumni events, and is always the first one to raise his hand to ask, “How can I help Hotchkiss in this effort?” His early work and conversations toward facilitating a successful 50th Reunion in Fall 2022 are recent examples of the level of commitment that he exercises on behalf of his classmates and The Hotchkiss Fund. We are deeply grateful for the many ways David has supported Hotchkiss.

2020 McKee Award Dr. Lei Du and Ms. Jean Q. Chang P’18,’21 are the honored recipients of the McKee Award. The McKee Award is presented annually to outstanding parent volunteers for their distinguished service to The Hotchkiss Parents Fund. This award is named for Hugh and Judy McKee P’78,’80,’84,’89 in recognition of their tireless work for the Fund.

Lei and Jean’s dedication to Hotchkiss during the past five years has encouraged inclusiveness, pride in our school, and a sense of belonging among our parent community. They have been such wonderful friends over the years, and we are deeply grateful for the many ways they have supported the School and especially the students.

THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING HOTCHKISS IN 2019-20 The generous support of the Hotchkiss community has always been critical to the School’s mission and never more so than in the past year. Gifts to Hotchkiss are vitally necessary to recruit and retain talented and dedicated faculty and staff; provide an exceptional experience for our motivated and promising student body through the endowment and financial aid; and to maintain and update our extraordinary facilities and landscape. Conditions that arose in 2019-20 identified additional areas of need to protect and ensure the safety of our students and adults, and the Hotchkiss community answered the call for support. We hope that we can count on your continued generosity and enthusiasm for the transformative and enriching experience that Hotchkiss offers in the coming years.

$10,320,470 Total funds raised for Hotchkiss in 2019–20

3,700+

$5,877,449

Donors to the School

Raised by The Hotchkiss Fund

30%

81%

Alumni Participation

Parent Participation

Raised $3,650,962 for The Hotchkiss Fund

Raised $1,856,756 for The Hotchkiss Fund

FALL 2020

5

CAMPUS CONNECTION

Who’s Behind the Masks?

LAUREN-ANNE KONOPKA

Instructor in Math

What I love about Hotchkiss is: hiking trails in Beeslick.

DEMPSEY QUINN

Fun Fact: My favorite theorem is Euclid’s, which states there are infinitely many prime numbers. To date, the largest prime has more than 24 million digits!

Instructor in Math, Football Coach What I love about Hotchkiss is: the inclusive and welcoming community.

Fun Fact: My brother, Brodie ’10, is the director of athletic performance and fitness.

JULIE RAYHILL

Instructor in Spanish

What I love about Hotchkiss is: experiencing the beautiful New England fall foliage.

Fun Fact: I have five younger siblings.

RENÉE MARCELLUS

Teaching Fellow in English, Assistant Director of Diversity & Inclusion What I love about Hotchkiss is: the opportunity to teach a diverse body of students. The varying perspectives and life experiences that the students bring are invaluable to the classroom.

Fun Fact: I really enjoy writing letters in my spare time.

It’s a nice, old-fashioned way for me to keep in touch with my friends, and it’s relaxing!

6

M AGA ZINE

SARA FORBES

Instructor in Spanish What I love about Hotchkiss is: the students. They are so insightful. I really enjoy spending time with them.

Fun Fact: In sixth grade, I wrote a 200-page graphic novel about a teenage pirate that took up the entirety of my five-subject notebook. Notes from my classes that year were conspicuously missing.

This fall, Hotchkiss welcomed new faculty members, 10 of whom are instructors living on campus. They do much more than teach our students; they join them in weekend events, in dorm activities and sports and fitness exercises, and act as mentors. Since arriving on campus, they have complied with COVID-19 protocols, including wearing masks and social distancing. We thought it would be interesting to learn a little more about who they are — behind the masks. We photographed nine instructors and asked them what they’ve discovered they love about Hotchkiss, and to share a fun fact about themselves. You can read their complete biographies by visiting our website, hotchkiss.org/directory.

On the following page, we’ll introduce you to some more new faces at Hotchkiss.

PH OTO: WENDY C A R L S O N

ROBERT HICKMAN

Instructor in Math

What I love about Hotchkiss is: everyone’s dedication to the community; there is a true sense that we are all in this together to grow and learn.

Fun Fact: During the lockdown this summer, I built a custom fat-bike for myself for trail and adventure cycling.

ALEXANDER FORERO

Instructor in Spanish

What I love about Hotchkiss is: the awesome, caring community!

Fun Fact: I play the guitar and love to sing Billy Joel songs!

AMY JUSTINE SIDRAN

Fairfield Farm Education Coordinator

ANDREA BARROWS

Teaching Fellow in French

What I love about Hotchkiss is: discovering the natural beauty of Lakeville and the surrounding region.

What I love about Hotchkiss is: the trails on campus. I love hiking, trail running, and exploring the natural world.

Fun Fact: I have travelled to 32 countries.

Fun Fact: I can play clarinet and saxophone.

GREG BENDER

Instructor in Economics (not pictured) What I love about Hotchkiss is: access to nature afforded by living at Hotchkiss, particularly the lake.

Fun Fact: I eat at least one hot pepper a day, with a meal.

FALL 2020

7

CAMPUS CONNECTION

More New Faces on Campus ALUMNI & DEVELOPMENT GRETCHEN DWYER P’24 has been appointed the executive director of leadership giving. A second-generation fundraiser with more than 25 years experience in educational advancement, Gretchen has been involved with three comprehensive campaigns. Gretchen earned her master’s degree from Boston University and her bachelor’s degree from St. Lawrence University. She is the daughter of Victor von Schlegell III ’65, granddaughter of Victor von Schlegell II ’40, goddaughter of Dean Witter III ’65, and parent of Nell ’24.

BRENT ALDERMAN STERSTE has been appointed the director of gift planning. Brent began his career in advancement at Amherst College, where he served for a decade and rose to the position of executive director of leadership giving. As director of gift planning, he looks forward to helping alumni, parents, and friends of all ages make meaningful, mutuallybeneficial gifts to Hotchkiss. Brent received his master’s degree from Harvard and his bachelor’s degree from Amherst. He lives in rural western Massachusetts with his wife, four children, and a number of assorted pets and livestock.

DUSTIN BRYANT has been appointed The Hotchkiss Fund director. Dustin brings 15 years of fundraising and direct marketing experience to the Hotchkiss team. Dustin comes to Hotchkiss from The New School where he served as senior director of alumni engagement and annual giving programs. Dustin holds a bachelor’s degree in mass communication from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and a master’s degree in digital marketing from City University of New York’s Baruch College of Business. Dustin will be moving to Connecticut from NYC with his husband, Troy, and their dog Horton.

8

M AGA ZINE

IT SERVICES KEISHA MILES BL ANDINA joins Hotchkiss as the associate director of IT services. Keisha spent more than 14 years as a part of Vassar College’s Information and Computing Services team with more than 20 years in service desk and IT project management overall before joining Hotchkiss earlier this spring.

CAMPUS SAFETY AND SECURITY LUIS GARCIA joins Hotchkiss as director of campus safety and security. He began his career more than 20 years ago with the New York City Police Department, where he rose from police officer to sergeant, then as the lieutenant of the detective and patrol bureau where he oversaw a squad of 30-plus detectives in the 13th precinct. Luis was commanding officer of the second busiest precinct in NYC. Most recently, Luis has been the director of safety and security at Jewish Child Care Association, a residential and human services organization serving vulnerable children.

OFFICE OF ADMISSION AND FINANCIAL AID BENJAMIN SORKIN joins as assistant director of admission. Originally from Staten Island, NY, Ben is a 2020 graduate of Harvard University, where he studied sociology and educational studies, and was involved in residential life programming, student advising, alumni affairs, and first-generation, low-income, and LGBTQ+ student advocacy. Ben has interned at and studied independent schools for much of his education and is excited to be joining the Hotchkiss community.

How Sharing an Orange Became a Lesson in Humanity

DIVERSITY IN ACTION

2020 Community Service Award Recipient Joyful Clemantine Wamariya ’09

Joyful Clemantine Wamariya ’09 accepted the 2020 Community Service Award, given each year to an alumna or alumnus in recognition of their service toward others.

In his opening remarks, Head of School Craig Bradley said part of the Hotchkiss mission is to inspire a diverse range of students who are committed to the betterment of self and society.

“The recipient of this year’s Community Service Award is one such person,” he said. “She is an inspiration to us all.”

Joyful is a New York Times best-selling author and accomplished human rights advocate. Her memoir, The Girl Who Smiled Beads (2018), describes Joyful and her sister Claire’s journey from an idyllic childhood in Rwanda up until 1994, to fleeing war conflicts and seeking refuge in eight different countries throughout Africa, to receiving refugee status in the United States in 2000. She has continued to give to the Hotchkiss community by serving as a guest speaker to various student groups, including St. Luke’s, Bluestockings, MoCaH, BaHSA, Café, the Africa Club, and the Kucetekela Foundation.

In announcing the award, Paul Mutter ’87, vice-chair of the Alumni Association Board of Governors and the chair of the nominating committee, said service is a common bond that has united Hotchkiss since the founding of the St. Luke’s Society in 1892. Since she was a postgraduate at Hotchkiss, Joyful’s life purpose has been to spread joy by bringing people together.

One of her favorite Hotchkiss memories was when she rallied the School community together to stage a fashion show, which culminated in a shared sense of exuberance.

Referring to a passage from her book, she explained: “My mother used to test us. ‘Go get an orange,’ she would say at the end of the meal. Then she cut that one orange into several pieces. There might be two pieces, or four, or six pieces. She wanted to be sure we did not take more than our fair share.”

The family had plenty of orange trees, with enough fruit for each of them to have their own. But the test was that if there were not enough pieces for everyone, the children were expected to subdivide the pieces so everyone at the table had one.

“My mother is radical in action, if not in words… We were never to think, ‘This orange is mine.’ This orange is ours. We are sharing what is ours,” she said.

“We need each other. We need to say really, truly, deeply into the heartbeat of a breath that I honor the things that you respect, and I value the things you cherish. I am not better than you. You are not better than me. Nobody is better than anybody else.”

Lifting her award for all to see, she said: “Thank you for this beautiful symbol of ‘together,’ just like my mother’s orange.”

F R O M S E P T. 1 5 - O C T. 1 5 , the School celebrated Latinx Heritage Month with a series of events hosted

by De Colores, a student affinity group, including guest speakers Jonathan Perez ’00 and Rocio Mendoza ’03. BaHSA facilitated a discussion among students on Latinx and Hispanic identity. Hispanic beats, virtual games, and food enlivened the month, including special Dining Hall offerings such as empanadas, arroz moro Cubano, and plátanos fritos.

ES Y O F A P S PH OTO CO U RT

PH OTO: J U L I A Z AV E

I

N A V I R T U A L C E R E M O N Y O N O C T. 2 1 ,

DURING THE MONTH OF OCTOBER,

Hotchkiss marked LGBT History Month with guest speakers and training for proctors and other student leaders. On Oct. 8, the Diversity & Inclusion Committee of the Board of Governors hosted a virtual discussion with Kevin Jennings, the CEO of Lambda Legal, a nonprofit litigation organization for the LGBTQ+ community and those living with HIV. Jennings co-founded LGBT History Month in 1994 and started the educational-advocacy group GLSEN. Rounding out the month, on Oct. 28, psychologist and former NBA player John Amaechi, CEO of Amaechi Performance Systems, spoke during an All-School Meeting on a variety of topics, including anti-racism and intersectionality.

In honor of Native American Heritage Month, former Montana U.S. state senator Bill Yellowtail addressed the community on Nov. 18. as part of the Diversity and Inclusion’s Monthly Speaker Series.

FALL 2020

9

CAMPUS CONNECTION

A Year Like No Other S

I N C E T H E O U T B R E A K O F C O V I D -1 9 , the School has been working to tirelessly to reimagine how teaching, learning, and living can take place in-person in Lakeville while keeping everyone on campus safe. Comprehensive health protocols include weekly testing, masking, hand and surface hygiene, physical distancing, and the de-densification of spaces. Classrooms, dining areas, dorms, and common spaces have been reconfigured to balance physical distancing with the quality of the student experience.

As everyone becomes accustomed to this temporary new normal, teachers, coaches, and advisors are focused on creating an innovative and engaging learning environment. The majority of classes are taking place in-person, with remote classmates participating electronically from around the world. Virtual concerts, theater performances, and workshops provide opportunities for visual artists to showcase their creative talents. Student athletes, while unable to play in interscholastic competitions, are practicing, training, and working with coaches to strengthen their skills. Beyond Hotchkiss’s traditional sports, an extensive list of co-curricular activities offers a range of options including yoga, instructional rowing, and mountain biking.

Students also have access to a wide array of clubs and creative weekend activities. Balancing the focus on physical health, the Health Center and Human Development Department are available to help students cope with stress and day-to-day challenges.

The fall at Hotchkiss has been unlike any other in the School’s history. While it may be different, and while we may yearn for a return to something closer to normal‌ it is still Hotchkiss, and we are glad to be here!

10

M AGA ZINE

HYBRID LEARNING Q & A

WITH JARED HALL, DEAN OF ACADEMIC LIFE Can you help us understand how the hybrid learning program was developed?

Student and faculty survey feedback from the spring was crucial in developing our hybrid learning program for the fall. There has also been a lot of sharing of strategies and resources with peers. Last spring, I spoke with the leadership at several schools that were engaged in online learning before COVID-19: Global Online Academy, Stanford Online High School, Avenues Online, and One Schoolhouse. Our faculty took a three-week training course facilitated by One Schoolhouse. Some faculty members have also been in contact with peer schools in New England and with schools in Europe and East Asia that reopened ahead of us to gain an understanding of what strategies worked for them.

Has there been a technology learning curve for faculty?

It’s been remarkable how quickly our community adapted to new hardware like the Owl cameras, Wacom tablets, and software— everything from Zoom to Voice Thread. It is not necessarily true that younger people (students or younger faculty) have been quicker to run with these tools; some students sorely miss the ability to print out their reading assignments rather than read them on a screen. Tom Drake, our longest-serving faculty member, is a go-to resource for digital innovation in the classroom. The real challenge currently is how teachers manage classes with some students in person and some remote.

Now that Hotchkiss has adapted to hybrid learning, do you believe there are aspects of the model that will remain post-pandemic?

We are not going to change our core model, which is to cultivate a tight-knit learning community where we build relationships in person and learn in small groups with individualized feedback and support. We are a residential learning community.

That said, our investment in the Owl technology and the capacities we built for this year might have implications for how we support students on medical leave, and it could open up new possibilities for guest speakers or summer learning programs.

Has hybrid learning positively impacted the educational experience at Hotchkiss?

By rethinking everything from the ground up, we have found ourselves in productive conversations around learning and assessment. Most tangibly, I hope students are finding a shift this year toward more frequent assessments that, on an individual basis, carry less weight toward a student’s grade. The goal is to create an environment that tips the scales a bit more from evaluation to helping students grow. Behind the scenes, as teachers we are as mindful as we have ever been about our core learning goals, since we have to be adaptable to different formats (in person, online) and shifts in schedule.

FALL 2020

11

CAMPUS CONNECTION

All Things Considerered

PH OTOS: S A R A H A ND ER S O N LO CK

Freedom of Speech, Diversity of Ideas

Instructor in History Tom Drake was instrumental in implementing the Chicago Principles for civil discourse.

A

B R O A D S C O P E O F I D E A S and perspectives is essential for a school that seeks to inspire a diverse range of students who are committed to the betterment of self and society, as stated in the Hotchkiss mission statement. Yet in an increasingly polarized political culture, difference can lead to discord. Enter Hotchkiss’s long-standing commitment to reasoned and reasonable free speech.

“Hotchkiss’s history of critical thinking goes back to our very roots. It is profoundly important that we continue to cultivate this skill in a way that challenges assumptions and leads to deeper understanding for us all,” explained Tom Drake, instructor in history and director of the Center for Global Understanding and Independent Thinking.

In the fall of 2019, Drake joined a group of three then-upper mids and two other faculty members to attend the Freedom of Expression and Open Discourse in High School conference at the University of Chicago. The event focused on the Chicago Principles, a set of criteria developed by the university that encourages a commitment to free,

12

M AGA ZINE

“Our focus in incorporating these principles is to create a culture where no voice or point of view is marginalized.”

—TOM DRAKE, INSTRUCTOR IN HISTORY

robust, and uninhibited debate. Participants examined how these principles could be implemented within secondary schools.

“Our focus in incorporating these principles is to create a culture where no voice or point of view is marginalized, provided it doesn’t cause harm,” explained Drake. “Doing so requires striking a balance between the advantages of unfettered debate and its potential risks to adolescents in a school environment.”

Since the conference, Hotchkiss has continued to prioritize opportunities for open discourse within the School

community. Student clubs, open to all students, and affinity groups, which primarily serve the interests of a particular group of students, hold discussions focused on a broad spectrum of topics.

This year’s U.S. presidential election allowed the School to put the Chicago Principles into action. In the weeks leading up to the election, the students who had attended the conference in Chicago — Felix Bao, Ivy Bhandari, and Max Grossman, all from the Class of 2021 — engaged in planning sessions and spoke in All-School Meetings about the importance of open debate. The Edsel Ford Memorial Library developed a detailed “Lib Guide” comprising a variety of resources on the political process in the U.S. All members of the Hotchkiss community also watched The Social Dilemma, a film by Netflix that explores the profound effect of social media on the world as a result of the way information is increasingly distributed and consumed.

On November 4, the School cancelled classes in order to engage in a long-planned day of civics programming. As states across the nation continued to tally ballots, Hotchkiss students, faculty, and staff spent the morning engaged in a bi-partisan panel discussion that covered anticipated election outcomes, the nation’s electoral system, evolving ideology across both major political parties, and the importance of informed media consumption. The panelists included: CHARLEY COOPER ’90 , who currently leads external affairs for R3, a premier enterprise software firm. Earlier in his career, Cooper served as senior advisor to Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz at the Pentagon.

In 2005, he was awarded the Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service.

ADAM SHARP ’96 , who is the president and CEO of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. Previously, Sharp was head

of news, government and elections at Twitter.

He is a noted expert and speaker on digital communications and marketing, political affairs, and strategy.

DR. KATIE FLEISHMAN ,

an instructor in English, who joined the Hotchkiss faculty in 2019 after teaching at UC Berkeley, among other institutions. Her essays have appeared in numerous publications.

TOM DRAKE , instructor in history, served as the panel facilitator.

A replay of the event is available at hotchkiss.org/news.

To read the Edsel Ford Memorial Library LibGuide, visit libguides.hotchkiss.org/civics.

The work was developed by Kim Gnerre, assistant director of the library, and Kelly Whelan, faculty services librarian, with support from Joan Baldwin, interim library director, and Allison Blanning, discovery services librarian.

To learn more about the University of Chicago’s Principles of Open Discourse, read Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression at provost.uchicago.edu.

From left to right: Margo Donohue ’22; Grace Helm ’21; Eliza Ross ’22; Jack Bourdeaux ’22; Max Beckwith ’21; Langston Harris ’21; Tori Murray ’22, Lily Yang ’21, and Michael Zhang ’21 were among the students who participated in discussions.

STUDENT VOICES LOUD AND CLEAR Throughout the remainder of the day, students continued to debate political ideas during virtual gatherings of student clubs and affinity groups, including BaHSA (Black and Hispanic Student Association), Bluestockings (gender equality), Café (Black and Brown identifying women), De Colores (Latinx and Hispanic identifying students), Gender & Sexuality Alliance (GSA), Hotchkiss Democrats, Hotchkiss Political Union (HPU), Hotchkiss Republicans, Islamic Society, MoCaH (Men of Color at Hotchkiss), PRISM (Current Event Discussion Club), Student Environmental Action (SEA), and Triple A (Pan Asian Advocacy).

Members of SEA, for example, led thoughtful conversations on how politics affect the environment. Co-head Margo Donohue ’22 reported, “We compared Trump and Biden’s endeavors for climate and how the outcome of the election could impact the public’s perspective on climate change.”

Among other topics, De Colores discussed voting behavior within the broad Latinx community. “There are different drivers for Latinx voters, and some of it is dependent upon ethnicity or nationality,” said Anaiz Robinson ’22.

Hotchkiss Political Union (HPU) co-head Grace Helm ’21 is enthusiastic about the way Hotchkiss has created more positive and open environments for discourse.

“HPU is a place for anyone, from any background or any political party to come and debate issues,” she explained. “As today’s panelists mentioned, achieving intellectual diversity is the first step to achieving a truly open environment.”

FALL 2020

13

CAMPUS CONNECTION

SPEAKING OUT LOUD Alumni, Students Weigh In on School’s Anti-Racist Work

S

I N C E T H E S U M M E R , Hotchkiss has continued to focus on anti-racism across the School community. On September 25, student organizers led demonstrations in protest of systemic racism. Meanwhile, the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee (DEI) of the Board of Trustees has been working on policies and practices to enact change, as have volunteers from the Alumni Association’s Board of Governors. Hotchkiss Magazine reached out to several Black alumni and students active in this work for their take on the School’s progress toward building a more diverse and inclusive community. Annika Lescott ’06 and Danielle S. Ferguson ’97, along with students Aleema Kelly ’22 and Langston Harris ’21 agreed to share their thoughts.

Hotchkiss Magazine: Do you feel the School is actively working toward becoming an anti-racist community?

What stands out to you?

Aleema: The School has definitely begun to make progress. It is important to accept the discomfort we feel when engaging in conversations pertaining to racism and discrimination, and I have noticed over the past few months that the administration 14

M AGA ZINE

and many of the students have begun to show up for these discussions. Whether it’s BaHSA, a community conversation, or a demonstration, many members of our community have gotten involved and are continuing to work to be active allies.

There is a lot more work to do, including reforming the anti-hate disciplinary process, creating more standard processes, and creating honors/rigorous cultural classes.

I hope that the School will continue to be open to change and not make this movement a moment.

Langston: I agree we have a long way to go before truly being an anti-racist community, but I think every community does. I was impressed by the School’s overall receptiveness to the “Hotchkiss Proposal for Change” that was sent to the administration over the summer by a group of students led by Aleema. Although not everything we outlined in the proposal was implemented this year, many members of the administration and the Board of Trustees

have displayed a commitment to that work.

Examples of that commitment are the creation of an anonymous bias-incident reporting form (for students and teachers) and the creation of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee within the Board of Trustees.

Annika: From an alumni point of view, Hotchkiss has made significant strides, but we still have work to do.

The black@hotchkiss Instagram accounts [in which students and alumni wrote about their experience with racism as students] have forced us to reckon with our past and confront racism head-on. I serve on the DEI Committee along with other alumni, trustees, and School leaders who are dedicated to creating a learning community where all students feel safe, seen, and supported. The committee is tasked with improving admissions, curriculum, and pedagogy, hiring and retention of faculty, student life and culture, and alumni engagement.

When students returned to campus, proctors and dorm faculty received training on implicit bias, anti-Black racism, and LGBTQ+ identity. Faculty and staff also voluntarily participated in anti-racist reading and discussions. These discussions and training continue today. It is important to note that faculty and staff have taken on this anti-racism work with fierce dedication and in addition to their normal duties of teaching, coaching, and serving as dorm faculty.

We also engaged alumni voices to share their experiences. In July, the Board of Governors and Black alumni hosted an Alumni Town Hall. During the event, alumni shared how racism impacted their Hotchkiss experiences and presented recommendations for the School to consider.

In turn, School leadership, including Head of School Craig Bradley, listened intently, committed to change, and formally apologized to alumni who experienced racism during their tenure at Hotchkiss. The Board of Governors will continue to amplify and celebrate diverse voices of our alumni community through our programming.

“Whatever we do in the Hotchkiss community will resonate across the globe and set a standard.”

—DANIELLE S. FERGUSON ’97

Danielle: I agree, Annika.

I would not have joined the DEI Committee if I did not firmly believe that the School was working toward creating an antiracist environment.

Annika spoke about the readings, discussions, training, and Alumni Town Hall that took place. What stands out to me, and what I recognize to be different from some other schools, is that the work is not falling solely on the shoulders of one individual or small group, and the student voice has been strong throughout the process. Director of Diversity and Inclusion Yassine Talhaoui has the full support of the head of school, the board, administrators, and faculty. That matters! Over the last few months, through countless Zoom calls with Hotchkiss reps, I continue to be impressed by the way that areas for growth are called out, challenging questions are asked, and everyone commits their time and talents to our shared goals.

Hotchkiss Magazine: Can you explain why this work is so important to the School?

Aleema: Hotchkiss welcomes such a diverse range of people with so many different perspectives and experiences, which all of us can learn from. It is crucial for everyone to be able to live in a community where they feel comfortable and safe enough to walk down the main hallway without getting their hair grabbed or slurs thrown at them.

Which is why this work needs to continue, so that every single student, faculty/staff member, or person can be their authentic self unapologetically.

Langston: High school is a transformative experience at any school; especially at a place like Hotchkiss, the boarding school experience is vastly different from any other.

During this time, every one of us is going

through a unique experience that can shape us for the rest of our lives, for better or worse.

This work is important — not just to aid students during their time at Hotchkiss, but post-Hotchkiss as well. Once students cross that stage at Commencement, they are presented with a myriad of opportunities as leaders at their respective colleges and in their careers. That is where the work that we do at Hotchkiss in becoming an anti-racist community can benefit not only students while they are here, but also the world, once we graduate.

Annika: That’s absolutely right. What students experience at Hotchkiss will help shape their roles as future leaders and changemakers. Every student should feel “at home” at Hotchkiss — included in the community and appreciated for the diversity of thought, perspective, and background they bring to bear. We owe it to our students and ourselves to dedicate our time, talents, and treasures to this work.

Danielle: During one of our early DEI Committee Zoom calls, Board of Trustees Vice President Ray McGuire ’75 said, “Whatever we do in the Hotchkiss community will resonate across the globe and set a standard.” With students from 36 states and 27 countries, we must do the work to ensure that graduates are immersed in anti-racist work and have the muscle to be empathetic leaders, wherever they go. I think the success of our program depends a great deal on students’ perceived sense of belonging and the School’s willingness to create a supportive environment.

FALL 2020

15

CAMPUS CONNECTION

MacLeish Scholars Program Announced T

E N S E L E C T E D U P P E R M I D S will spend June 12-27, 2021, at Yale as part of the new MacLeish Scholars Program. Students will divide their time between researching literary materials in Yale’s Special Collections and writing original creative pieces. Scholars also will have hands-on experience in bookbinding, papermaking, and letterpress printing.

They will finish the program by designing and creating a book of their own work.

English instructor Jeffrey Blevins developed the program, named in honor of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Archibald MacLeish, Class of 1911, a Yale graduate and author of more than 50 works of poetry, nonfiction, and drama.

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Archibald MacLeish, Class of 1911, graduated from Yale and Harvard Law School, and served as ninth Librarian of Congress.

16

M AGA ZINE

“I want to make literature come alive for students,” said Blevins. “By opening up an author’s journals, combing through their diaries, perusing their letters, students can step inside an entire literary world: the author’s life, what they were thinking, what they wanted, what they hoped.”

Access to a deep archive also gives students all sorts of rich footholds for analysis and study.

“Many of the archival holdings at Yale are so vast that our students stand a good chance of encountering materials that have never been studied or written about before now. They’ll be contributing to scholarship and human knowledge in a tangible way,” he said.

The main goal of the program is to show students just how interconnected analysis and creativity can be. “To make their way through a complex archive and build an argument out of what they find, students will have to improvise and imagine and create in a sense not all that dissimilar to actual creative writing. In turn, part of the creative writing program will ask them to respond to their research, for instance by writing a fictional book of letters or purposefully draft multiple ‘manuscripts’ of the same story,” Blevins explained. In this program, students will learn how the physical form of a book—its color, shape, and texture—can actually complement or even enhance its content.

“By making their own paper, setting their own type, and doing their own

“I want to make literature come alive for students.”

– JEFFREY BLEVINS, ENGLISH INSTRUCTOR

binding, the hope is that these scholars will gain a better appreciation for books as physical objects, beautiful in and of themselves,” he said.

Blevins will run the program and oversee the students, who will stay in Yale campus residence halls. The scholars will spend their morning in the Yale’s Special Collections library, and in the afternoon they will work on their creative writing at different locations, including museums, parks, and beaches. On weekends they’ll work with an experienced bookmaker on their books, and they will also go on field trips, including a private tour of the Morgan Library, where they will have a rare opportunity to work with its archival materials for the day.

After the course ends, students will be required to enroll in a new year-long Honors English course with Blevins in which they will continue their research throughout their senior year, culminating in a long research essay. Students in the course will also continue to work on their creative writing.

Selected students will be notified in early March. The School plans to subsidize the cost of the program for all students, and to cover the full cost for students with financial need.

The Lufkin Prize and Values

I

S P E A K T O Y O U T O D AY to honor the esteemed Mr. Moon, your teacher and friend, who is the winner of the Lufkin Prize that commends him for his values.

It is my honor to speak to you about why my friend Dan Lufkin wishes you to join in this wonderful recognition of what this School values.

Hotchkiss was created by Salisbury native Maria Hotchkiss and developed by people with a refined set of values. Her school was headed for some 29 years by a man named George Van Santvoord, Class of 1908, whom we called “the Duke,” though never to his face. He was superb in almost every aspect of his persona. We learn values from people; so GVS was our mentor, and Dan and I value him deeply.

He taught us the four traits of an educated person are intelligence, curiosity, discipline, and integrity. One has to know some things. One needs to be curious to learn more things. One needs to be disciplined to master some things, and one must be a person of honor and integrity. Those are the permanent values of Hotchkiss.

Here are three stories about how GVS lived and taught us –– One time he told a fine Yale Ph.D seeking a teaching position there was no room for him at Hotchkiss.

The man emphasized he wanted to teach English Literature, and the Duke said he wanted to hire those who wanted to teach boys. One time on a fishing trip, the Duke paid tribute to the British General Wolfe, who took Canada and loved the poem, Gray’s “Elegy.” The Duke then recited all 30-plus stanzas to that poem. Then, there is the story of Bob Bryan, Class of ’49, the same year as Dan Lufkin.

When Mr. Bob Bryan sneaked into the infirmary to visit his friend with a broken leg, the Duke responded, “If you keep doing things such as you did last night in climbing into the infirmary to see your friend, I am quite confident you will lead a fine and rewarding life, Mr. Bryan, and so I wish you well. You are excused.”

Our social values are civility, order, safety, quiet, and freedom. Our political values are freedom to speak and think as we choose and the freedoms from want and violence, the freedom from hunger and lack of shelter, and the liberty to challenge and object to what we dislike.

Morally –– we are obliged to have some basic beliefs in what makes something wrong and evil. We come from a tradition of the Moses-received Decalogue. We accept the burden of leadership in the finest moral directions.

We are people of simple things like duty, honor, and country, and we are not fearful of making our ultimate concerns known. There is shame in evil, and there are rewards for beauty and truth. We are believers. We do not tolerate boorish and savage conduct. We are not what Aristotle called mankind when he said we are “featherless bipeds.”

This School was molded and sustained and transformed by the Duke. The values of this ancient School require your support. If you cherish them as Dan and I do, this School will continue to prosper. Change is the nature of things. What must not change will depend on your generation. The duty is as great as the challenge. Moniti meliora sequamur.

–– Fay Vincent Jr. ’56, P’85

PH OTO ©A S S O CI AT ED PR E S S: T IM ROSKE

Francis T. “Fay” Vincent Jr. ’56, P’85, addressed the Hotchkiss community in a pre-recorded video honoring Keith Moon P’13,’16, the 2019 recipient of the Lufkin Prize. Moon is an instructor in English, history, and Russian language and holds The E. Carleton Granbery Teaching Chair. The annual prize, established by Dan Lufkin ’49, P’80,’82,’88,’23, honors faculty members of character, commitment, and skill who serve as role models to Hotchkiss students. Read a transcript of his address below.

“One has to know some things. One needs to be curious to learn more things. One needs to be disciplined to master some things, and one must be a person of honor and integrity.

Those are the permanent values of Hotchkiss.”

See the Summer 2020 issue of Hotchkiss Magazine to read more about 2019 Lufkin Prize recipient Keith Moon P’13,’16: www.hotchkiss.org/magazine FALL 2020

17

CAMPUS SPOTLIGHT

46-Plus Years of Service to Hotchkiss After Scaling the Equivalent of Mount Everest, Countless Times, Housekeeper Robert Wood Retires

F

O R N E A R LY H A L F A C E N T U R Y

Robert “Bob” Wood has worked on the housekeeping staff at Hotchkiss. You might think that after logging that many hours, days, weeks, and years cleaning every nook and cranny, Wood, who will retire on January 15, might have some wild stories to tell. He has a few to share, but more on that later.

Wood started working at Hotchkiss in 1974, when he was 19 years old, not much older than the students. It was the first year of coeducation at the School, and over the years Wood watched as the student population doubled and nine heads of school came and went. The campus expanded with the construction of facilities including the Forrest Mars Athletic Center, the Biomass Facility, Esther Eastman Music Center, the expansion of Main Building, and five new dormitories. For the first 40 years, Wood worked cleaning Coy, then an all-male dormitory. Climbing up and down the three flights of stairs in Coy, often 15 times a day for 40 years, might just be the equivalent of scaling Mount Everest, a height of more than five miles, and back — not once but many times. In 2014, when Coy became a girls dorm for two years, Wood was assigned to Garland, which, to his relief, has an elevator.

From mopping up spills to moving furniture, the housekeeping staff, comprising 21 employees, is called upon for “just about

18

M AGA ZINE

everything that comes down the pike,” says Wood. It is a highly physical job. In the beginning of his career at Hotchkiss, housekeepers were required to clean dorm rooms weekly. That was phased out several years after Wood arrived at Hotchkiss. Rooms are now cleaned only when students leave on break. In addition to keeping dormitories and academic and common spaces spiffy, the housekeeping staff also works setting up events, whether it is seating for Reunion dinners, tables for college fairs, or installing a podium for a visiting speaker. Since the onset of the pandemic, the work has become increasingly more crucial, requiring workers to be extra-vigilant disinfecting areas.

Housekeepers are considered essential employees. Regardless of weather, power outages, or other campus issues, they are required to be on campus to start their shift, typically at the crack of dawn. During blizzards, when state roads were closed and before Wood bought a four-wheel drive vehicle, he would get a lift to school from his brother, Gene, who operated a snowplow.

During his years at Hotchkiss, Wood has experienced students trying to sneak everything but the kitchen sink into their rooms. Topping the list of banned items are refrigerators, which students often found creative ways to disguise by covering them with blankets or hiding them behind shelving.

PH OTO: WENDY C A R L S O N

B Y W E N DY C A R L S O N

The most legendary caper began before Wood started working at Hotchkiss. The boys living in Coy removed portions of the original wood paneling from the walls in their room and broke through the cement behind it to create caves and then refitted wood panels over them to conceal the hideouts. One student actually dug a tunnel so students could go from room to room, says Wood.

The caves were eventually discovered and closed up. But, decades later, housekeeping stumbled upon a few that had not been sealed off after one of the workers smelled a burning candle and uncovered the source.

From mopping up spills to moving furniture, the housekeeping staff, comprising 21 employees, is called upon for “just about everything that comes down the pike.”

The wood panels concealing them were swiftly replaced with sheetrock, putting a permanent end to the makeshift man caves.

Another year, the housekeeping staff had gathered just outside of the Dining Hall early one morning when they witnessed one of their arriving co-workers, who had experienced a seizure and fainted, drive right through Main Circle, onto the sidewalk, past the trees, and up onto the steps of the Dining Hall.

“It was quite a situation,” notes Woods, “to be drinking your coffee and see this car heading straight for you.”

Wood grew up in Salisbury just five miles

from Hotchkiss, and attended Housatonic Valley Regional High School, where his father, the first teacher to be hired as a vocational agricultural instructor, worked for 35 years before retiring. During his first years working at Hotchkiss, the School population was substantially smaller than it is now, and it felt like a family to him.

Since then, he has met countless students and members of faculty and staff. Some of the people with whom he has worked the most closely have become lifelong friends.

“Bob’s 46-plus-year tenure here is truly amazing,” says Becky Curtis, housekeeping

supervisor. “He has provided many years of dedicated service to this department and the School as a whole. He has certainly earned and deserves this retirement.”

As Wood reflects, “My body is telling me it is time to slow down.” He looks forward to spending more time with his siblings — three brothers who live in the area, and a sister in California.

Since he lives only three miles from campus, Hotchkiss will never be out of reach. But, he jokes, “At least I won’t have to be there at 5 a.m. anymore.”

FALL 2020

19

20

M AGA ZINE

JULIE PARKER BENELLO ’88:

TAKING A STAND

FOR GENDER EQUITY, And producing an Oscar-winning film B Y W E N DY C A R L S O N

From the time Julie Parker Benello ’88 launched her career as a film producer, she has worked to level the playing field for women and gender-nonconforming filmmakers. She is not only concerned about gender inequity in the industry. “Inequality in all its forms,” she says, “is the most pressing issue in the U.S. today.”

PH OTO: WENDY C A R L S O N

L

AST FEBRUARY, WHEN JULIE PARKER BENELLO walked onto the stage to join the filmmakers of American Factory accepting the Oscar for best documentary feature, all she could think about was not tripping. She had worn her grandmother’s gold earrings as a good luck charm, and the talisman worked its magic.

“I just kept thinking, ‘I can’t believe this is happening, that the team — the directors, producers, and editor — we were all up there accepting the Oscar for this incredible film,’” she recalls.

It was a surreal moment for Benello. As she exited the stage, a bit dazed, she bumped into Robert De Niro, one of her heroes, who started the Tribeca Film Festival and who himself has created opportunities for diverse filmmakers, including women.

American Factory, which took four years to make, tells the story of the culture clash that ensued after a Chinese billionaire opened an automotive glass factory in a shuttered General Motors assembly plant in Moraine, Ohio. The film first premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Directing

FALL 2020

21

“I saw 10 minutes of footage that Julia had submitted and thought, ‘This is going to be a fascinating, characterdriven, cinema verité reverse-globalization story.’ I couldn’t stop thinking about it once I had seen the material.”

Award for a U.S. Documentary and then went on to receive numerous accolades, including the Emmy for Outstanding Directing for a Documentary, the Gotham Award for Best Documentary, the IDA Award for Best Director, the Cinema Eye Honors Award for Best Director, the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary, and the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary.

Benello first learned about the film through Chicken & Egg Pictures, chickeneggpics.org, the nonprofit she co-founded with Judith Helfand and Wendy Ettinger in 2005 to support women and gender-nonconforming 22

M AGA ZINE

filmmakers by providing mentorship and funding for their projects. Julia Reichert, the co-director for what was then called the Chinese Factory Film, had been nominated for a $50,000 Chicken & Egg Breakthrough Award, given to five filmmakers annually who are poised to make a breakthrough in their careers.

“I saw 10 minutes of footage that Julia had submitted and thought, ‘This is going to be a fascinating, character-driven, cinema verité reverse-globalization story.’ I couldn’t stop thinking about it once I had seen the material,” Benello recalls.

She signed on to be one of the film’s

producers. Then, following its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2019, it was acquired by Michelle and Barack Obama’s brand-new company, Higher Ground Productions. Having the former President and First Lady pick up the film as their first project in partnership with Netflix was an enormous boost to its distribution and rollout, Benello says.

The death of George Floyd at the hands of police officers and subsequent protests that ensued have led her to expand the reach of her current venture, Secret Sauce Media, secretsaucemediallc.com. The company produces and invests in film projects and series primarily directed or co-directed by women, from first-time to more veteran filmmakers, with an eye to inclusion and representation on screen.

“I have thought a lot about who gets to tell stories, who has access, who doesn’t. We have been very cognizant of this at Chicken & Egg Pictures and have supported many women of color over the years, especially in the last few years,” she notes. (The nonprofit has awarded $7 million in grants and thousands of hours of creative mentorship to more than 325 filmmakers. Films it has supported have won numerous awards, including Academy and Emmy Awards).

“Following the Black Lives Matter

protests, I made a personal commitment to produce and executive-produce more films and series by women and people of color through Secret Sauce Media.”

For Benello, the secret sauce for a great documentary is “a creative storyteller/ innovative filmmaker partnered with a kick-ass producer, compelling characters, and unique and authentic access to the characters and story, and then a little cinematic alchemy thrown in the mix.”

She has found that kind of synergy with longtime collaborator Judith Helfand, with whom she recently produced the feature documentary, Love & Stuff, about the death of Helfand’s mother and her inheritance of her parents’ belongings.

Most recently, she also produced Athlete A, a documentary about Larry Nassar, the longtime doctor for the U.S. National Gymnastics team convicted of molesting hundreds of young women, including some of the gymnasts on the U.S. Olympic team. Since it began airing on Netflix in June, Benello says the film has spurred gymnasts from the U.K., Australia, and around the world to speak out about the emotional, psychological, and physical abuse they endured as elite athletes.

She credits her passion for social justice to her upbringing. Growing up in France, the U.K., and Bermuda provided her with a more global perspective. She had the opportunity to travel and live in France, Morocco, Egypt, and Senegal during and after college; this sparked in her an interest in other cultures and in changing the world for the better.

“I think it was my overall experience at Hotchkiss that set me on a path to make me feel I could do and be anything that I wanted to be.”

At Hotchkiss, Benello played field hockey, tennis, squash, and lacrosse, but she was keenly drawn to the arts — pottery, printmaking, oil painting, and just about every aspect of the visual arts. Eventually, she discovered her love of storytelling through the student radio station, WKIS. Most importantly, she gained the selfconfidence from her instructors to believe in her own capabilities.

“I think it was my overall experience at

Hotchkiss that set me on a path to make me feel I could do and be anything that I wanted to be,” she says.

“I got a great education. Notable teachers and faculty I remember as being instrumental to my growth were my math teacher Charlie Bell, my art teacher Delores Coan, and my squash coach John Virden –– all of them and many others played a vital role in helping me become the person I am today.”

Benello at the 2020 Academy Awards for American Factory. Benello also provided completion financing for the Oscar-nominated film Honeyland, a 2019 feature documentary that follows the lifestyle of a female beekeeper in a remote mountain village in Macedonia.

FALL 2020

23

“We need to make sure everyone is paid a living wage in all 50 states in the nation, and that goes for women, too. I want to continue to work on film projects that examine these issues, so we can better understand where we are and what we can do about it, to keep a hold of the American Dream for everyone.”

She became interested in gender equality as a student at all-women Barnard College, where there was a heightened awareness around women’s rights, and she became more attuned to the inequalities they face in many industries, particularly the entertainment industry.

She majored in history with a minor in religious studies, setting her sights on pursuing a career in international development and aid work. After graduating, she landed a job managing the press center for the United Nations Conference on Population and Development NGO Forum, where she learned how the media could be used as an effective tool for social change.

In 1994, she took a position working as an archival researcher at Cronkite Ward Productions working on Walter Cronkite’s autobiographical series Cronkite Remembers.

24

M AGA ZINE

She moved on to film, co-producing Blue Vinyl in 2002, a documentary about the health and environmental risks associated with the manufacturing process for the plastic, polyvinyl chloride, also known as PVC. She served as a production executive for the company, Non Fiction Films, before co-founding Chicken & Egg Pictures in 2005, and later Gamechanger Films in 2013, a for-profit production financing company that invested in a slate of ten feature films directed by women, most notably The Tale

by Jennifer Fox and Land Ho! by Martha Stevens and Aaron Katz. Back then, there wasn’t much in the way of financial support or mentorship opportunities for women filmmakers, she recalls.

“The field has expanded quite a bit, and women filmmakers are breaking through more and more. There are new companies that have cropped up to support women, both in the fiction world and nonfiction world. There are festivals like the Athena Film Festival, focusing on women’s leadership, at Barnard. It is heartening to see more and more focus and attention on women filmmakers. It is still hard to get that first lucky break, and it is equally hard to get the big budget projects or win the awards, but there is movement and culture change, and a lot more awareness than there was five, ten, or fifteen years ago.”

Her focus more recently is on inequality in a much broader sense. “I think inequality in all its forms — gender and racial inequality in particular — are the most pressing issues in the U.S. today.

American Factory spoke to the decline of the middle class and well-paying factory jobs with benefits in the Midwest. The big question is, how do we continue to have a robust middle class in the U.S., when so many jobs have been outsourced overseas and unemployment is so high?

“We need to make sure everyone is paid a living wage in all 50 states in the nation, and that goes for women, too. I want to continue to work on film projects that examine these issues, so we can better understand where we are and what we can do about it, to keep a hold of the American Dream for everyone.”

After American Factory won the Oscar, Benello was poised to go full-steam ahead with more challenging projects,

having made new connections through the Oscar win. Then the pandemic struck, and things changed.

“COVID-19 has hit our industry hard, from big Hollywood productions to independent filmmakers who haven’t been able to shoot and have lost freelance gigs.

We pivoted our programs at Chicken & Egg Pictures from in-person to virtual labs and launched an AlumNest relief fund for rapid relief grants to our filmmakers.

On the flip side, it is true that audiences have grown as we are all stuck at home consuming more and more content on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, HBO, etc., so there is a huge need for compelling storytelling in all its forms,” she says.

To that end, Benello signed on as executive producer with the Global Fund for Women, along with YouTube and Refinery 29, to produce the series, Fundamental: Gender Justice, No Exceptions about five women activists from around the world who are fighting for gender justice by disrupting the status quo.

A former board member of the Global Fund for Women, one of the world’s leading foundations for gender equality, Benello supported the work the organization does in funding grassroots women activists from developing countries. “I thought it would be great to profile some of these women activists and the movements they are a part of, so the series, directed by two-time Oscar-winner Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy, seemed like a natural fit and extension of my interests,” she says.

Recently, she came on board to produce Tony Award-winning playwright and performer Sarah Jones’s documentary directorial debut, SELL/BUY/DATE, which is based on her award-winning, one-woman play about sex workers. “Sarah is brilliant and very funny,” Benello says, “and we could all use more humor in this surreal and crazy moment in our world.”

Benello lives in San Francisco with her husband, Allen, and two daughters, Avery and Sophie. She serves on the Board of SFFilm and is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Documentary Branch.

In 1999, she was the Hotchkiss Community Service Award recipient.

100 YEARS AFTER THE 19TH AMENDMENT:

The March Toward Women’s Rights B Y W E N DY C A R L S O N

As the struggle for women’s suffrage gained momentum at home, the boys at Hotchkiss focused on a world at war.

PHOTO: COLLEC TION OF THE LITCHFIELD HIS TORIC AL SOCIE T Y, LITCHFIELD, CONNEC TICUT

I

N A YEAR MARKED BY A PANDEMIC,

wildfires in the West, hurricanes in the South, national protests for racial justice, and election chaos, all upending life as we know it, it is easy to overlook the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, granting women the right to vote. Ratified on August 18, 1920, the amendment followed almost a century of protest. At the time, Hotchkiss was far removed from the struggle, though not entirely.

In their hard-won battle, women carried out relentless lobbying, acts of civil disobedience, and nonviolent confrontations, all far from the rolling hills of Lakeville. As the boys at Hotchkiss learned to be gentlemen and prepared themselves for Yale, women picketed the White House for months, leading to the arrest and imprisonment of many suffragists, which shocked the nation and brought attention and support to women’s rights. Although often alienated by mainstream suffragists, Black women also played a major role fighting for the right to vote, only to be disenfranchised by state laws requiring literacy tests and poll taxes after the amendment passed.

FALL 2020

25

PHOTO: RG 101 CONNECTICUT WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION RECORDS.CONNECTICUT STATE LIBRARY

Across Connecticut, women hit the road, campaigning for the right to vote.

At the time of the first suffrage convention held in Seneca Falls, NY, in 1848, women had few legal rights and were often excluded from higher education and most professions. When a woman married, she lost all control of her finances, her wages went directly to her husband, and she could not own property under her own name. If the marriage dissolved, custody of children was automatically granted to her husband.

While the suffrage movement gained strength in the early 20th century, The Hotchkiss Record during that period offers scant clues about the School community’s views on the issue. The paper shows a school largely living in a parallel universe: boys were focused on sports and the impending world war. They conducted marching drills and worked in an emergency farm program to address the war food shortage. There were no female instructors; the first women to teach at Hotchkiss would not arrive until the 1960s. Students interacted with girls and women on rare occasions, including at the mid-winter dance, at the infirmary where female nurses attended to them, and at the home of Headmaster Huber G. Bueler, (1904–24) whose wife, Roberta, would invite the boys to the house for high tea or what she called the “Queen’s tea.” Nor did the boys travel much outside the campus; rarely, if ever, could they leave Lakeville 26

M AGA ZINE

during term time.

Their views on women’s rights remain a conundrum, which doesn’t surprise Emma Wynn, head of the humanities and social sciences department and instructor in history, philosophy, and religion.

“In my course, LGBTQ U.S. History, we often look at periods for which there is little surviving evidence for how a community felt about a contemporary issue. It’s something you learn to live with as a historian — getting to know as much as you can about the broader historical context and then doing your best to reconstruct how individuals may have reacted to major events.”

In the small towns surrounding the campus, the women’s rights movement was gaining steam in the early 1900s, particularly after a group from Hartford organized an auto tour through the Northwest Corner in 1911, pausing in Sharon and Salisbury to rally support. They tooted their horns as they drove over the bumpy dirt roads past Hotchkiss into Salisbury, stopping to post paper notices on the tree trunks. In Connecticut, the suffrage movement’s biggest impediment remained the state’s longstanding Republican party machine, led by GOP party boss J. Henry Roraback, who just happened to live in Canaan, a stone’s throw from Hotchkiss. Roraback was chairman of the state Republican Party for 25 years from 1912 to 1937. (Eleven descendants of the extensive Litchfield County Roraback clan

“Should Women in the United States Have a Suffrage Equal to that Held

by Men?,” The Record reported: “This question is exceedingly well chosen. The suffrage program has been agitating the world for several years without apparent advantage to either side.”

would go on to graduate from Hotchkiss, including State Superior Court Judge Andrew Roraback ’78.)

The Record acknowledged the suffrage movement in three articles, in 1911, 1917, and 1918, each when the Agora and the Forum held debates over whether women should have equal rights. Reports of those debates were overshadowed by the boldface headlines of sports victories, news like the wonders of the wireless telegraph, and society events such as Yale’s senior proms.

In 1914, when the societies debated the question, “Should Women in the United States Have a Suffrage Equal to that Held

by Men?,” The Record reported: “This question is exceedingly well chosen. The suffrage program has been agitating the world for several years without apparent advantage to either side.”

By the 1917 debate, Agora took the

affirmative side of the argument and was declared the winner by the judges. The subject of the debate was: “resolved that throughout the United States proper, full suffrage should be extended to women equal to that now enjoyed by men.” The Agora Society argued that a woman is man’s equal and that therefore she deserved the ballot, stating, “Women’s suffrage has been continually advancing and has met with success everywhere, as proved by figures from the Suffrage States and foreign countries where it has been tried and therefore as it is a right movement and proved successful and practical, there is no reason why women should not have the ballot, and therefore it should be given to them.”

It would not be until more than a half-century later that women became the subject of numerous School debates and administrative battles. This time the argument centered on whether the School should become coeducational. By 1974, the die was cast: Hotchkiss opened its doors to female students. In the early days of coeducation, girls were sometimes outnumbered ten-to-one in the classroom, and they likely were taught by a male teacher. The first female instructor was Katherine Davies, who taught Russian from 1963-64, according to the Hotchkiss Archives. There would not be another until 1967, when Annette Hunt was hired to teach music.

PHOTO LEF T: THE LIT, 1918

PHOTO: RG 101 CONNECTICUT WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION RECORDS. CONNECTICUT STATE LIBRARY

Suffragettes toured the state’s northwest corner in 1911 to bolster support for voting rights.

As World War I raged on, the boys at Hotchkiss practiced marching around the playing fields with wooden guns.

I

N 1917, WH E N T H E U. S . E N T E R E D WO R L D WA R I ,

representatives from 35 boarding schools, including Headmaster Buehler, met in Hartford, CT, and Lawrenceville, NJ, to consider how to harness their students’ “energy and patriotic spirit” for service to the United States, according to Ernest Kolowrat ’53, writing in Hotchkiss, A Chronicle of an American School. The group focused on food production, asking each school to organize a unit of the School League for National Service by farming their own land or aiding local farmers. Buehler charged a committee of faculty with everything from gathering supplies, drafting letters to parents, and recruiting and organizing student volunteers, as well as housing and feeding them.

The School had a Battalion Squad, and boys took to marching around with wooden guns on the athletic fields, Kolowrat wrote.

Those who got an acceptable academic average at the end of senior year stayed at the School and planted a victory garden that summer. Instead of requiring entrance exams, Yale accepted a certificate that confirmed that they had farmed for 60 days.

In September 1919, Buehler reflected: “Like all other headmasters of my acquaintance, the last 12 months have been the most difficult and trying period of my Head Mastership. I would not have believed in advance that a world war could so disturb academic shades. There was not a nook or cranny of our life, official or private, that the upheaval did not disturb in some way.”

When Memorial Hall was completed in 1922, the cost of the construction was donated in memory of the 22 Hotchkiss students who gave their lives in the Great War.

FALL 2020

27

SEEKING BETTER PATHS

The Unstoppable Kevin Ervin ’04 Committed to Making a Difference for NYC Youth B Y W E N DY C A R L S O N

I

T’S EARLY AUGUST 2020, and Kevin Ervin, executive director of Change for Kids (CFK), has a month to raise $1 million for an educational outreach program he designed for New York City schoolchildren.

His enthusiasm is irrepressible, though he concedes his ambitious staff thinks he is crazy for taking on such a tough challenge under a tight deadline in the midst of pandemic. But Ervin is a bit like the Energizer Bunny, that iconic battery mascot who just “keeps going and going and going.” Once he gets an idea in his head, he is unstoppable.

Ervin grew up in a Red Hook housing project in Brooklyn, which explains, in part, why he is so passionate about leveling the playing field for public school students in the city’s underserved communities.

He wants to ensure they can reach their full potential, much as he has done. In 2018, after more than a decade in youth leadership and working in educational and administrative positions in the city’s department of education, he joined Change for Kids (CFK). The 25-year-old non-profit partners with 13 city schools, providing enrichment and educational programs, resources, opportunities, mentors, and support to prepare students for middle school and beyond.

Last March, when COVID-19 struck and students were sent home for online learning, Ervin and his staff set up one of the city’s first digital educational platforms; it included a “social emotional learning” art program taught by professional artists from a variety of disciplines.

The idea behind the art program was not

28

M AGA ZINE

to single out a handful of talented kids or to “discover the next Beyoncé or Basquiat,” Ervin says. “It’s about helping kids grow socially and emotionally as they work collaboratively in group activities.”

Then, in August, when he learned that students might be splitting the week between remote learning and in-person classes, he saw a pressing need for a similar collaborative learning experience. Many schoolchildren, especially those with working parents or single parent homes, lacked a space where they could go on their remote-learning days –– a place where they

would be safe, among peers, and have adult support with schoolwork.

He learned about a newly-shuttered Catholic school in the Bronx and figured he could lease it and staff it if he raised $1 million by early September. By October, he had raised $1.8 million and was finalizing leasing plans. “If we can get into this building, it would be a game-changer; we could change the proposed trajectory of students in this community,” he explains.

Much of Ervin’s can-do attitude and boundless enthusiasm were formed by his experiences at summer camp in New Jersey

PH OTOS CO U RT E S Y O F AT L A S T M AG A ZINE

and later at Hotchkiss, where he learned firsthand the power of education to create options and opportunity.

Ervin is the youngest of five siblings and the son of a working single mother; she was one of the first healthcare administrators in the country to establish HIV programs in the city. She also was a member of one of the city’s largest medical unions, which covered almost the entire cost of a summer camp that Ervin attended as a kid in New

“Hotchkiss helped me learn how to be critical, how to be intuitive and inquisitive around every subject, and to be far more analytical and strategic in my everyday life.”

Jersey.

Those summers spent with other kids from all around the world had a profound influence on Ervin’s life. “The amalgamation of camp and my Hotchkiss experiences literally created the person I am today — not only my outlook on youth development, but on the entire world,” he says.

“My first year at camp, I had a white counselor from South Africa and a Black counselor from England, which threw me

for a loop as a five-year-old Black kid from Brooklyn, that there were white people from Africa and Black people from England. I experienced that level of growth every summer.”

At 15, Ervin began honing his leadership skills by working as a camp counselor. But he didn’t want to be just a counselor, he wanted to be a great counselor. As he often says, he has a big ego.

“I wanted to be the best counselor ever.

So, I tried really hard. You can’t be great at youth development without really enjoying being around kids. So, in an effort to be the best, I fell in love with working with young people,” he says.

He could have easily taken a different path. As a teenager he wanted to travel the world performing, “kind of like P. Diddy,” he says. But he realized making a career in music would be financially challenging.

Instead, after a few starts and stops, he realized his true calling was in leadership, and he went on to earn a bachelor’s of science degree in leadership from Northeastern University. After graduating, he was hired to head a youth program in the South Bronx.

Two years later, when the city stripped funding for the program, he plowed ahead and raised $135,000 in a month to start another youth program. Nine years later, he had students enrolled in 16 programs across New York City and New Jersey.

FALL 2020

29

SEEKING BETTER PATHS

Ervin’s mom told him the day he arrived at Hotchkiss: “I don’t know if the grass is greener on the other side.

But, if it is, don’t stay there. Learn how to plant it, and plant it back here.”

30

M AGA ZINE

Ervin, who also holds an executive master of public administration degree from NYU, often tells people that the only difference between him and some of his childhood friends, who ended up in prison or worse, was that he was afforded opportunities to help himself.

Hotchkiss, for one, opened a whole new world of possibilities. Although when he first arrived on campus and saw the imposing brick buildings and columned Main Building entrance, his jaw dropped. He thought he had arrived at Hogwarts.

“I remember my mother purchased a very expensive Hotchkiss blazer because she thought every student had to wear one.

I showed up on the first day of class and was the only male student wearing a blazer with the Hotchkiss Minerva on it. I went back to my room and ripped the patch off. The blazer was like $250, and at the time I didn’t have a piece of clothing that expensive. And my mom was so angry that I cut off the patch; she didn’t understand that I didn’t want to stick out from the rest of the kids.”

As a student of color at Hotchkiss he felt alienated at first. “I had been in classrooms with only people of color for most of my life, but actually it turned out not to be such a huge shock because I had gone to camp with kids of all different races and from around the world.”

“And I was extremely comfortable with who I was,” he reflects. “My proctor in Coy was Charlie Ebersol ’01. He was super cool, and he thought I was super cool, which made me feel amazing. He was making movies then, and he knew I was a musician; he enlisted me to create some music for him. And there was Raúly Ramirez ’03, a Dominican from Yonkers, NY, who kept his hair in braids and wore Jordans. He and his family sort of adopted me and brought me food whenever they came to campus.

We had this interracial group of friends, and we all gravitated towards each other, which created a safety net for me and other students of color.”

At Hotchkiss, he also took a stab at playing ice hockey. “I am a Black kid from

the Red Hook projects in Brooklyn; we don’t play hockey. But, again partly because of my ego, I wanted to be the first Black hockey player at Hotchkiss,” he says. “Mr. Cooper gave me my first pair of skates (still got them), Burchy (Chris Burchfield) taught me how to check, and Torrey Mitchell and Pat McLaughlin taught me how to shoot,” he recalls.

Academically, Hotchkiss was a huge shift for Ervin. “New York City public schools teach you what to think. Hotchkiss taught me how to think, which is vastly different,” he says. “Hotchkiss helped me learn how to be critical, how to be intuitive and inquisitive around every subject, and to be far more analytical and strategic in my everyday life.”

Ervin plays seven instruments and has been writing music since he was seven.

During his time at Hotchkiss, he jumped at the chance to study jazz, classical, and vocal arrangements and to continue his own interest in R&B, rap, and pop. Working with Fabio Witkowski, head of the visual and performing arts department, the two built the School’s first recording studio.

“Fabio played a huge role in my musicality and in my career; he was one of the first to encourage me to go against the grain, away from playing purely traditional music.

“We created the soundtrack for Hotchkiss for several years, and we got Head of School Skip Mattoon to rap for us on the ‘Fair Hotchkiss’ remix.”

Today, Ervin conducts his organization’s citywide chorus. CFK just released a cartoon for kids that he wrote, directed, and scored (featuring voiceovers from Lorenzo Castillo ’05). He also continues to work on his own music, which can be found on all major platforms and at KErvMusic.com.

Because Hotchkiss opened so many doors for Ervin, he feels compelled to pay it forward. He remembers what his Mom told him the day he arrived at Hotchkiss.

“I don’t know if the grass is greener on the other side,” she said. “But, if it is, don’t stay there. Learn how to plant it, and plant it back here.”

“So now,” says Ervin, “I am planting.”

On the Beat with Jonathan Z. Larsen ’57 B Y W E N DY C A R L S O N

In his memoir, The Perfect Assignment, Jonathan Z. Larsen ’57 chronicles the ascendancy and decline of print journalism in the 20th century.

FALL 2020

31

New Times art director Steve Phillips, Jonathan Larsen, and publisher George Hirsch, 1974

“I had been an eyewitness to standout events of the second half of the 20th century — the police riot at the 1968 Chicago convention, the Manson murders, the Vietnam War — and edited stories on so many others...”

32

M AGA ZINE

L

ARSEN BEGAN HIS CAREER at Time Inc. in 1963, where his father, Roy Larsen, spent five decades on the business side, building the news weekly co-founded by Henry Luce and Briton Hadden, both Hotchkiss Class of 1916. At TIME magazine, Larsen worked first as a writer in New York, and then as a correspondent in the Chicago, Los Angeles, and Saigon bureaus. As an editor at the magazine New Times and later The Village Voice, he focused on breaking news stories and investigative journalism. Larsen also studied as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard and was news editor at Life magazine.

Hotchkiss Magazine spoke with Larsen about major news stories he covered, those he missed, and his time with the “Coconut Monk,” John Steinbeck IV, and Jane Fonda, among others.

H: What prompted you to write a memoir about your long career in journalism?

I began writing the book for myself. I was retired, I was in recovery from two cancers, and I thought it was time to take a look back at my life. I had been brought up surrounded by bound volumes of magazines my father had published —TIME, Life, Fortune, Sports Illustrated — and now I was surrounded by 10 years of bound volumes of publications I had edited — New Times and The Village Voice — not to mention files jammed with stories I had written for TIME, New York, Manhattan, inc., and The Columbia Journalism Review. I had been an eyewitness to standout events of the second

half of the 20th century — the police riot at the 1968 Chicago convention, the Manson murders, the Vietnam War — and assigned and edited stories on so many others — the JFK assassination, Patty Hearst and the SLA, the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the IRA hunger strikes, the 1989 Central Park rape, the Gulf War, the Catholic Church sex scandals... Along the way, at the very end of the century, I traveled to Oklahoma to conduct an investigation into an event that took place more than 75 years earlier but that had been lost to history — the Tulsa, Oklahoma race massacre of 1921. I believe it was the first account of that tragedy in a general-interest magazine.

H: In the book, you write about many celebrities and notable people you have interviewed. Can you share a few stories with us?

I devote some of my book to excoriating what I call “celebrity journalism,” the insidious phenomenon that made the host of the TV show The Apprentice able to run for president of the United States. My dislike of celebrity journalism began in the late ’60s, while I was the show business correspondent for TIME. I had a front-row seat as top editors turned themselves, and their magazines, inside out so that they could get near the hot new actresses of the day. So many of those Hollywood boldface names, like Raquel Welch, were not remotely worth the copy lavished on them.

One Hollywood star I did come to respect was Jane Fonda. We discovered we had both grown up on remote farms with emotionally distant parents. Our mothers both attempted suicide in the same year, when we were young children. Jane Fonda’s mother succeeded. I interviewed her for a TIME cover shortly before she became famous for another career altogether, that of an ardent anti-war activist.

A sign of her intelligence was the language she used to signal the changes she was going through but could not talk about to TIME magazine: “There are lives being led between all those carefully chosen, safe, staring-downthe-middle words I’m laying down for you.

There’s a whole weird life going on about which I can say nothing at all — but it would make a good story.” Indeed.

In Vietnam, I became friends with Ron Ridenhour, the Army whistle-blower who wrote to Congress exposing the My Lai massacre, in which as many as 400 civilians were killed, including 120 children aged five or less. I admired his courage and moral clarity and took him on as our bureau’s stringer. He performed admirably, but the editors back in New York were not happy with my decision — they apparently considered him a traitor. Now journalism prizes are given annually in Ron’s honor.

I also spent many enjoyable hours with John Steinbeck IV, the son of the author of The Grapes of Wrath. His father was an ardent supporter of the Vietnam War, and both John IV and his brother would enlist in the Army. John would eventually testify before Congress on the rampant drug use

In Vietnam, Larsen became friends with John Steinbeck IV (pictured above), the son of the author of The Grapes of Wrath, who had enlisted in the army and later founded The Dispatch News Service.

Larsen (above) journeyed with Steinbeck to visit Steinbeck’s Buddhist teacher known as the “Coconut Monk.”

among the troops fighting the war. He had also been one of the founders of The Dispatch News Service, which was the first publication to break the story of the My Lai Massacre that Ridenhour had first exposed to Congress.

By the time I met him in Saigon he had become a Buddhist convert, and we made a trek together to meet his teacher, Dao Dua, also known as the “Coconut Monk,” who had taken on Steinbeck as his spiritual son. The monk presided over a theme-parked island in the middle of the Mekong Delta that featured a bridge

between two towers representing North and South Vietnam. The monk’s hope was that he would bring peace to the country if enough of his followers walked back and forth across that bridge. When Steinbeck introduced me to the Dao Dua, he nodded ever so slightly. It turned out he had not spoken for three years. Steinbeck died at 44 after a botched back surgery. He had been in the midst of writing an autobiography, which was finished by his wife Nancy and published by Prometheus Books in 2001 under the title, The Other Side of Eden: Life with John Steinbeck.

FALL 2020

33

“I think the nature of both television news and social media increases the insistence on eyeballs, on clicks, on likes. When you add the extreme partisanship today, you end up with the notion that everything is the best, the worst, or most horrifying ever, when in fact it is often just another day at the office.”

H: You have a whole chapter on Donald Trump in your book.

Did you ever meet him in New York?

No, I never did meet him, but like every other editor back in the day, I put him on the cover. I am happy to say that instead of the usual fawning and celebratory coverage, our 1991 cover story in The Village Voice—a long excerpt from Wayne Barrett’s book, Donald Trump: The Deals and the Downfall—was among the first unblinking looks at the man and his businesses. Barrett’s use of the word “downfall” is certainly humorous in retrospect, but at the time Trump was staggering from a series of failures and bankruptcies—the Plaza Hotel, the United States Football League, the Trump Shuttle, and of course, his failed Atlantic City casinos. There would be many more failures to come—The Trump Soho, the Trump Network, Trump University, not to mention his “charitable” organization, the Trump Foundation, which was shut down by authorities for fraud. Who could guess that anyone could survive so much 34

M AGA ZINE

failure? My favorite revelation in Barrett’s book is that Trump had lied about who his grandparents were and where they lived.

They were German and lived in Queens, but for some reason those facts embarrassed Trump so he made up new ones. In his autobiography, The Art of the Deal, Trump had written—or, more accurately, had told his ghost-writer Tony Schwartz— that his grandparents were Swedish and lived in New Jersey. It would take five years, and Wayne Barrett, to correct that one simple fact. From the beginning the media has played Dr. Frankenstein to Trump’s monster.

His long-time personal attorney, Michael Cohen, writes in his memoir Betrayal that

Trump “screams about fake news and reporters being the enemies of the people, like a tin-pot dictator, but the truth was that the media’s psychotic fascination with Trump was one of the biggest—maybe the biggest—cause for his rise to power.”

H: Are there any particular news stories you wish you had covered?

I wish I had covered the Civil Rights marches of the mid-sixties. Even though I missed those marches of 1963 and 1964, I did cover a minor milestone of the Civil Rights movement in 1967, when I reported a cover story for TIME on the election of Carl Stokes as mayor of Cleveland. He became

with the notion that everything is the best, the worst, or most horrifying ever, when in fact it is often just another day at the office.

President Trump, of course, sets the tone for this. Through his tweets and his news conferences he calls everything the most wonderful or most horrible thing that has ever happened in the history of the world. It all amounts to a loss of context, or precedent ... of history itself.

Larsen, on right, with Village Voice publisher David Schneiderman outside a Hudson Newstand.

the first Black person to become mayor of a major American city. While I have a chapter about this in my book, I left out the part about tearing up in the back of room as the election results were announced.

As Saigon bureau chief, I pushed back against my bosses in New York by reporting — accurately — that we were not only losing the war but losing our army along with it.

They still believed what TIME had published years before, that “it was the right war, at the right time, in the right place.” They were proven wrong on every count.

As editor of The Village Voice, I published the first investigation to detail how the New York police had blown the infamous case

of the rape of the Central Park jogger. The so-called Central Park Five would eventually be found innocent of the crime, but at the time, the women on my own staff hated what we had published, such was the general consensus that the teenagers were guilty, and the common desire for justice. Donald Trump took out full-page ads demanding that they be put to death.

H: What is driving the hyperbolism in journalism today?

I think the nature of both television news and social media increases the insistence on eyeballs, on clicks, on likes. When you add the extreme partisanship today, you end up

H: Has the Internet made it possible for anyone to be a journalist? It has opened the door to citizen journalism, which is more democratic, but perhaps less objective.

Your thoughts?

Back in the day, journalists like myself, working for the major titles that then existed, would talk to as many people as possible within the time frame allowed, weigh the facts as we understood them, and write stories that aspired to objectivity. In the best case, those stories were then fact-checked and edited to make them even more accurate, even more balanced. At least, that is the way it was meant to work. As I write in my book, the publications we worked for often had their own biases and political slants which were then superimposed on our own, either enhancing them or canceling them out.

Citizen journalists bypass these difficulties and speak directly to readers, but for their part, how do readers know where these journalists are coming from? The familiar frames—TIME, The Atlantic, The Washington Post—are missing, along with their known biases. Therefore, there is a greater burden of care upon the reader.

H: What will happen to the media after the election?

Good question. The country is now divided, and so is the media, and those truths are of course connected. It is not just the personality of Donald Trump that has driven the country apart, but the new partisan business model of the media itself. The drive for ratings has crowded out more sober and responsible coverage.

Whatever happens in the election, the two media camps will somehow have to close ranks and go back to reporting the facts as opposed to offering up invective, rumor, and conspiracy theories. Perhaps I should add — in your dreams.

FALL 2020

35

And Justice

“The work I do now is an extension of the commitment to community building that I exhibited during my time at Hotchkiss.�

36

M AGA ZINE

for All T

HROUGHOUT HER TIME at Hotchkiss and in her professional career, Sumi Lee ’02 has focused on using her skills for the greater good. Community service has been both her priority and passion.

So she was elated last February when she learned she was named the head of judicial diversity outreach in Colorado, a first-ofits kind position created by the Colorado General Assembly in 2019.

The effort toward judicial diversity has been underway in Colorado’s courts and the broader legal community for years, says Lee. “But up until now, it was being done mostly by attorneys and judges who were volunteering their time individually and through committee work. This program helps create a focal point for the collective effort,” she explains.

Her ultimate goal is to have courthouses and the bench reflect the community they serve. One major disparity is that there are fewer than 10 percent of Hispanic and Latino judges on the state bench, in a state that has more than 20 percent Hispanic and Latino population. Black, Asian American, Native American, and women judges are also underrepresented on the bench. “There was only one Black judge in the entire state at the end of 2018, and that created a real concern for the future of judicial diversity in Colorado and led to conversations with the state legislature that created this position,” Lee says.

More Native American judges are especially needed, particularly in the southwestern corner of Colorado — where Native Americans make up more than seven percent of the population but don’t hold any judicial offices.

Born in Korea, Lee grew up in Colorado and entered Hotchkiss as a lower mid in 1999. Former science instructor Joseph Merrill, then her chemistry teacher and the faculty advisor for Habitat for Humanity

Sumi Lee ’02 Takes on a Pioneering Role for Judicial Diversity B Y W E N DY C A R L S O N

(HFH), played a role in piquing her interest in community service. For all three years at Hotchkiss, she was involved in HFH. She traveled to Georgia and Florida to build homes during spring breaks as part of a Hotchkiss contingent that participated in HFH’s Collegiate Challenge.

Those kinds of experiences would prove instrumental in steering the course of her law career, even though at Hotchkiss, she was not focused on a legal track. Instead, she deepened her love for reading and writing, which inspired her to double-major in English and Government at Georgetown.

“I was one of those people who really enjoyed writing Teagle essays,” she says wryly.

Hotchkiss also provided high-quality instruction that laid the foundation for critical thinking and analysis, which, she says, is required for a complex issue such as improving judicial diversity in a state that lacks a strong pipeline of next-generation attorneys in rural areas, known as a “law desert” issue.

At the time, her parents were a little disappointed that she did not receive any academic prizes at graduation, though she did receive a community service award, which meant a great deal to her. “In many ways,” she says, “the work I do now is an extension of the commitment to community building that I exhibited during my time at Hotchkiss.”

Lee graduated from Georgetown University and New York Law School before moving back to Colorado for her clerkship.

There, she was also part of the judicial branch’s inaugural class of “Sherlocks,” or self-represented litigant coordinators, and later worked as a trust and estate attorney in the private sector.

In her new role, she is taking a datadriven approach to increase public knowledge and engagement with the

judicial selection process and to create programs to encourage the next generation of attorneys and judges to consider a career on the bench, she says.

Lee is working with the Center for Legal Inclusiveness, a national organization based in Denver, on its Bench Dream Team, a group of volunteer justices, judges, and others who facilitate mentorship and educational programs to encourage diversity on the bench.

“I would love to get to a point where no matter who you are or where you live in the state, you can find inspiration in the stories of the paths different judges took to the bench, where you can connect to a local network of attorneys and judges to study law and access resources when you decide to apply to the bench,” Lee says.

Eliminating barriers long before an attorney is ready to apply for a judicial position is a crucial step toward increasing diversity on the bench, according to Lee. Conversations with law students, college, and high school students should start well before students begin their legal career so that they have the resources to make their dreams of becoming a judge a reality.

As a law student, Lee was a judicial extern for a number of judges and after graduation was a law clerk. “Those experiences were critical in shaping my view of the judiciary and learning what judges do on a day-to-day basis,” Lee says.

The national focus on racial inequity has only strengthened her resolve.

“I have been reflecting about my role in the context of the recent events, which have reaffirmed why the work of improving diversity on the bench is so important — that having proper representation at every level of the legal system is an important part of addressing the inequities of the justice system.”

FALL 2020

37

h round t e World mA fro es

i mn owned u l A f o t Bre h g we li F ri A

S TO R Y B Y D A N I E L L I P P M A N ’08

WHAT’s 38

M AGA ZINE

S

EVERAL YEARS AGO, Matt Greenberg

’07 was driving to work at the brewery he co-founded in the Nicaraguan town of San Juan del Sur when he stumbled upon a police standoff with an armed drug trafficker, which soon developed into a shoot-out only 100 yards away.

“I did a big 180 and then took off,” he recalls. While the Pacific surf town is mostly very safe, the incident was just a reminder of the challenges that Greenberg and his business partner and friend Brendan DeBlois ’07 have faced in starting up two craft breweries in Central America.

There are those who may try to take advantage of nonlocals looking to do business. “So you’ve got to be careful, but there’s less bureaucracy,” said DeBlois.

It all started for the two of them when they went on an innocent surf trip in 2012 to the country where they were visiting fellow Bearcat Liza Daigh ’06. Greenberg was working in insurance in New York, and DeBlois was toiling away in commercial real estate in Denver, but their jobs hadn’t captured their imaginations.

DeBlois, who played lacrosse at Hotchkiss and attended the University of Denver, had worked a couple summers at Nantucket’s famous Cisco Brewery, and Greenberg, who went to Brown, was just a fan of craft beer. After getting the idea and agreeing to pursue it, the two worked on the business plan during lunch breaks of their jobs and moved down there 10 months after their first trip.

“We said to ourselves, ‘Why be America’s 5,000th craft brewery when we could be a different country’s first?’ and basically sought to open Nicaragua’s first craft brewery,” Greenberg says.

Nicaragua Craft Beer Company officially opened on Thanksgiving Day 2014 with a two-phase business model. The first was building a small brewery and brewpub, and the second involved making a deal with the country’s national brewery, so that they could brew for them and package their beer on a much larger scale for wider distribution and export.

The brewing facility for Papagayo Brewing Co. in Costa Rica, started by Matt Greenberg ’07 and Brendan DeBlois ’07

Using German malts and hops mostly from the Pacific Northwest, the brewery has four flagship beers and specializes in tropical fruit ales and dark lagers; they have also experimented with fun flavors like mango, coconut, and chocolate.

While the coronavirus has slowed down sales, causing them to close down their brewpub for a few months, the company does a thriving export business and ships a container full of 2,000 cases every month between Nicaragua and New York. From there, the beer is now sold in 20 states, roughly 100 points of sale per state plus third-party delivery through online vendor Half Time and the Drizzly app. They’re also in restaurants and bars in those 20 states, and Greenberg said it’s “really satisfying” when he’s visiting a restaurant and sees his beer on the menu.

The duo’s next goal is to build a portfolio of craft beer brands in relatively immature markets throughout the world, countries where there isn’t the saturation of craft breweries that there is in North America. They plan to focus on Asia and perhaps parts of South America. Last December, they started selling their beer in a few major Chinese cities, including Beijing and Shanghai.

ON TAP FALL 2020

39

Right: Matt Greenberg ’07 enjoying a beer produced from his Central American breweries, co-owned with classmate Brendan DeBlois

In the almost six years since their company was founded, around 50 Hotchkiss alums have visited their Nicaragua brewery or the new one in Costa Rica (called Papagayo Brewing Co.) that opened last December. In 2015, Tim Krause ’10 started as the general manager of the Nicaragua brewery, and English teacher Chris Burchfield is planning on coming down next school year on his sabbatical to work with them at the brewery and immerse himself in the language and culture.

While friends often tell them that they must be living a dream by getting to drink beer and surf all the time, DeBlois, who also works as an engineer on luxury sailing yachts, said reality doesn’t always match people’s perceptions.

york. the c w om e p dn

2,000 c

es every month as

s ship y an

een nicaragua tw an be

40

“

Why be America’s 5,000th craft brewery when we could be a different country’s first?”

“People want to be envious, but you’re trading a lot of things to be living down there; it’s not all tropical paradise,” he said. “The place is pretty rugged.”

“Whenever people say you’re so lucky for living where we live, I hate it, because it’s really not about luck,” added Greenberg. “You can make anything happen if you’re willing to make sacrifices and work hard enough to achieve your goals. But if you’re not willing to do it, you don’t actually want it that badly.”

The scene outside the Nicaragua Craft Beer Company’s brewpub.

FALL 2020

41

H

ARRY WHALEN ’06, has also

M AGA ZINE

also wasn’t allowed. But the rules were relaxed to save New York’s thriving craft brewing industry.

Great Flats is also officially a “farm brewery,” meaning that 60 percent of its hops and barley comes from farmers in New York State. Whalen’s brewery makes a variety of beers, including American-style ales and lagers, “a pretty damn good” IPA, and also some classics, like a dark German lager and various Pilsners.

They also are often experimenting by making new beers, which are valued highly by the restaurants and bars they sell to in the area.

“It’s fascinating to me that you can make a living and build a business around beer,” he said. “It’s been a no-brainer” for him to pursue a career outside of more traditional fields.

Whalen isn’t the only Hotchkiss-affiliated member of his household to start a new business in Schenectady, a city of 65,000 people. His new wife Haley Priebe ’06 is about to open up a cafe and market called Arthur’s 1795 in the historic district of Schenectady.

farms. e at st

60 P E

T of Great N E FL RC

om new yo s fr rk me co

42

Harry Whalen ’06 (middle-left) co-founded Great Flats Brewing in Schenectady, NY with his brother Andrew Whalen ’03 (right).

ops and barle y s’ h at

lived in a volatile city, Cairo, where some days he couldn’t even go out shopping for necessities because of the unrest during the height of the Arab Spring.

It was “a very exciting time to be there, but after a few months it became pretty violent,” he said. “The city was just total chaos. You couldn’t get to work, you couldn’t get to the grocery store, the Internet was cut off. After a couple weeks of that, we thought it was unrealistic to think we could live our lives there.”

Whalen, who was an international relations major and studied Arabic at Trinity College, had moved to Amman, Jordan, for a year after college, and then tried living in Cairo for a few months, where he worked at a travel agency and tended bar on the side.

That side gig foreshadowed what he does now: after working with other Hotchkiss alums in New York City at a social media start-up, Whalen decided he wanted to start a brewery in downtown Schenectady, NY, near where he grew up.

“Hotchkiss always encouraged me to explore new opportunities, and if something piqued your interest, go for it,” he said.

After a year and a half spent finding an old Firestone tire garage, renovating the space and then buying equipment and ingredients, Whalen, who did some home brewing in college, opened Great Flats Brewing in 2017 with his brother Andrew Whalen ’03 and cousin Tom Owens, who had also been a home brewer for around 10 years.

Because alcohol is a highly regulated industry, Andrew, a fulltime lawyer, deals with the regulatory aspects of the business, while Harry runs it day-to-day, and Tom does the brewing.

Whalen admits that having a small brewery, which last year made a couple hundred barrels of beer, isn’t an easy proposition, because they’re trying to keep quality high and not take on a lot of debt as they increase production and grow the business.

“We’re a small business, and breweries are all about scale.

Reaching scale in a sustainable way is sort of a balancing act,” he said. “Your margins aren’t always great.”

During the pandemic, sales have been down, and their tap room, which is their main source of revenue, was closed for almost four months before reopening in early July. But because they have very little overhead, they didn’t take a huge financial hit to their books.

To make up for the shortfall, the brewery started doing delivery and opened a takeout window in their brewery.

Before the pandemic, because of New York’s strict alcohol laws, they couldn’t deliver beer to people’s houses, and curbside ordering

Chutinant “Nick” Bhirombhakdi ’76, P’09 is the CEO of Boon Rawd Brewery, which makes the famous Thai pale lager Singha beer.

370 m i

year. y r ve

n rawd brew e r ye boo by

terms of size. His company in Thailand, Boon Rawd Brewery, has three breweries and 1,400 employees, who make 370 million gallons of beer every year and are primarily known for their pale lager Singha beer.

Boon Rawd will be 87 years old this year. Nick’s grandfather founded it in 1933 and brought brewmasters over from Germany to make the beer, initially with machinery from Europe. (The original brewery is now a museum.) Bhirombhakdi, who is 60, was named CEO earlier this year, taking over the company right as COVID-19 was starting.

After going to a pre-prep school near Dartmouth, he attended Hotchkiss, where he played varsity lacrosse and JV football.

Bhirombhakdi became good friends with several of his teachers, including Alban Barker, George Norton Stone, and Geoff Marchant, and is also very close with trustee Robert Chartener ’76, P’18. He says he learned from Hotchkiss the importance of being disciplined to maximize the chances of having a successful life.

After doing a joint bachelor/master’s economics degree at Boston University, he worked for a bank for a few years in New York City before heading back to Thailand to join his family

r are produc bee ed of

C

HUTINANT “NICK” BHIROMBHAKDI ’76, P’09 is on the opposite side of the spectrum in

n gallons o i ll

company in 1984. His first job was to learn all aspects of the business from the front end for sales to the back end, where he helped the company start to use computers for all their processes.

He’s had a variety of roles since then, from accounting to being in charge of logistics to becoming CFO in 1990. He’s also served as a senator in the Thai Parliament and helped rewrite the country’s constitution 11 years ago, after a coup. One of his daughters took after her dad with an interest in politics and is a member of Parliament; his son spent a year as a PG at Hotchkiss.

While their beer is sold primarily in Thailand, where it has a nearly 70-percent market share, it’s also exported to 40 countries, including the U.S., to which the company sends 100 containers of beer every year. Southern California and New York City are their biggest markets in America, and of the 4,000 Thai restaurants in the U.S., at least 95 percent carry Singha beer.

But they haven’t been able to crack much of the growing Chinese market yet, where he says the beer is “dirt cheap.” To adapt to changing consumer tastes over the last couple of decades, Boon Rawd has been gradually reducing the bitterness and alcohol content of the beer to make it lighter and easier to drink. They’re not compromising on quality, he says; the company still gets all their hops from Germany.

As the beer business has continued to do well for the company, the family firm has diversified into bottled water and soda and owns more than 40 hotels around the world, including 20 in the U.K. and others in Fiji, Mauritius, and the Maldives.

While Bhirombhakdi loves the beer business, he jokes that instead of taking over as CEO in the middle of a historic global pandemic: “I should be retiring, riding my Harley across the states.”

Daniel Lippman ’08 is a reporter for POLITICO covering the White House and Washington. He can be reached at daniel@politico.com.

FALL 2020

43

BOARD OF GOVERNORS

The Hotchkiss School Alumni Association Board of Governors From left to right, top row to bottom row: Marita Bell Fairbanks ’84, Marquis Scott ’98, Tom Seidenstein ’91, Natalie Boyse ’09, Weijen Chang ’86, Barrett Lester ’81, Nick Moore ’71, Rafael Carbonell ’93, Honey Taylor Nachman ’90, Adam Sharp ’96, Danielle Ferguson ’97, Steve O’Brien ’62, Carlos Garcia ’77, Nathalie Pierrepont Danilovich ’03, Richard Staples ’74, Paul Mutter ’87, Brooke Harlow ’92, Daniel Pai ’19, Robert Kuhn ’75, Annika Lescott ’06, Bill Sandberg ’65, Blake Ruddock ’12, Julia Tingley Kivitz ’01, Keith Merrill ’02, Tom Terbell ’95 *parent years been omitted for brevity

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS:

WE NEED YOUR HELP!

hotchkiss.org/alumni/ notable-alumni-and-awards

—Tom Seidenstein ’91, P’24 President, Alumni Association

Every year the Nominating Committee for Awards works tirelessly to honor alumni doing good in the world. The Alumni Award and Community Service Award are two of the School’s highest honors to be bestowed upon alumni.

Please help us by submitting nominations for both awards.

Join Alumnet today!

44

“Hotchkiss has played a meaningful role in many of our lives. Through the Alumni Association and other ways, we encourage you to keep in touch with the School and fellow alumni.

The Board of Governors serves as the executive committee of the Alumni Association and is always looking for ways to engage the Hotchkiss alumni community. We encourage you to reach out to us with suggestions, comments, and any questions.”

DOWNLOAD THE NEW APP USING THE INSTRUCTIONS BELOW:

FOR iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ graduway-community/id1457549791

FOR ANDROID: https://play.google.com/store/apps/ details?id=com.graduway.hotchkissalumnet

For security reasons, your previous Hotchkiss Alumni App credentials have not been transferred to the new app. You can register as a new user by linking your Facebook, Google, or LinkedIn accounts or using your email and a password you create.

Once you’ve installed the Graduway Community app, search for “Hotchkiss” in the organization field. That will bring you to the Hotchkiss Community.

FOR WEB BROWSERS: https://hotchkissalumnet.org

If you have any questions or trouble during the process, please email Alumnet@hotchkiss.org

M AGA ZINE

CLASS NOTES

Holy Cow! How did this mellow bovid end up on Main Circle? The photo is dated 1996, and we think it was a senior prank. But how did it get there? Who was behind this mad caper? Maybe you can shed some light on this whodunit. Email us: magazine@hotchkiss.org

FALL 2020

45

PARTING SHOT

PH OTO: A MY SID R A N

Leg Up Maddie (Patricia) Lykouretzos ’23 gets a leg up from Cooper Roh ’22 at Lion Rock Farm adjacent to Fairfield Farm.

Student members of Fairfield Farm Ecosystem and Adventure Team (FFEAT) picked hundreds of apples in October for the Dining Hall and to supplement food for the farm animals.

64

M AGA ZINE

19811946 1951 1986 REUNIONS 1966 2000 1996 1971200119511976 1991 1946 2006 CL ASSES ENDING IN 1 OR 6 • CL ASS OF 1995

JUNE 18–20, 2021

While no one knows what the world will look like in June 2021, we are forging ahead with plans for an on-campus reunion June 18–20, 2021! During our planning process this year we are considering several scenarios, including the possibility of a virtual reunion or hybrid model.

These times require flexibility and creativity.

We will keep you up-to-date on reunion plans, and we look forward to celebrating with you this June!

Visit www.hotchkiss.org/alumni (Events & Reunions) for updates For more information, please contact Rachel Schroeder Rodgers ’09, Assistant Director of Alumni Relations, at (860) 435-3124 or rrodgers@hotchkiss.org.

FALL REUNIONS • CL ASSES OF 1970 AND 1971

S E P T E M B E R 25–27 , 2021

NONPROFIT ORG. U.S. POSTAGE PAID

11 Interlaken Road Lakeville, CT 06039-2141 (860) 435-2591 HOTCHKISS.ORG

PERMIT NO. 36 PITTSFIELD, MA