Hotchkiss Magazine Summer 2015

Board of Trustees

EMERITI

Caldwell Hart ’87, P’16

Thomas C. Barry P’01,’03,’05

Howard C. Bissell ’55, P’82

Keith Holmes ’77

John Coumantaros ’80, P’16

Nisa Leung Lin ’88

Ian R. Desai ’00

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

Thomas J. Edelman ’69, P’06,’07

Frederick Frank ’50, P’12

William R. Elfers ’67, Vice President

Dr. Robert A. Oden, Jr. P’97

John E. Ellis III ’74

Francis T. Vincent, Jr. ’56, P’85

Nichole Phillips ’89 VP and Chair, Alumniof Color Committee

Diana Gomez ’76, P’11,’12

Arthur W. White P’71,’74, GP’08,’11

Sean M. Gorman ’72, Secretary

Alessandra Nicolas ’95

Emily Pressman ’98 Chip Quarrier ’90

John P. Grube '65, P'00

Alumni Association Board of Govenors

Kevin M. Hicks, Ex Officio

Edward Greenberg ’55 President

Tom Seidenstein ’91 Chair, Alumni Services Committee

Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet ’85

Christina Bechhold ’03 VP, Chair,

Bryan Small ’03

Christopher H. Meledandri ’77, VicePresident

Nominating Committee

Sheria Smith ’01

Lance Beizer ’56

Kendra S. O’Donnell

David Tan ’91

Miriam Gelber Beveridge ’86

Thomas S. Quinn III '71, P'15,'17

Michael Thompson ’66

Doug Campbell ’71, P’01

Carolyn Toolan ’97

Edward Greenberg ’55, Ex Officio

Jean Weinberg Rose ’80, P’18, President

Casey Reid ’01 VP and Chair, Communications Committee

Secretary and Chair, Membership

Roger K. Smith ’78, P’08

Subcommittee of the Nominating Committee

EX-OFFICIO MEMBERS

Jane Sommers-Kelly ’81

Adam Casella ’06

Kevin M. Hicks, Head of School

Marjo Talbott

Robert Chartener ’76, P’18

Katie Berlandi ’88

John L. Thornton ’72, P’10,’11,’16

Charlotte Dillon ’10

Past President, Alumni Association

Officer-at-Large

Dan Pullman ’76, P’14

William B. Tyree ’81, P’14, Treasurer

Patricia Barlerin Farman-Farmaian ’85 VP and Chair, Gender Committee

Daniel Wilner '03

Mark Gall ’59

Stephanie Bowling Zeigler ’84,

Stephanie Bowling Zeigler ’84, Ex Officio

Peter Gifford ’93

President, The Hotchkiss Fund

Past President, Alumni Association

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

HOTCHKISS

C OV E R P H O T O G R A P H BY WENDY CARLSON

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Eco Day at Hotchkiss: students pitch in at Fairfield Farm.

HEAD OF SCHOOL

Dr. Kevin M. Hicks C H I E F C O M M U N I C AT I O N S O F F I C E R

Hellen Hom-Diamond EDITOR

Wendy Carlson DESIGNER

Eugene Wang CLASS NOTES EDITOR

Divya Symmers WRITERS AND CONTRIBUTORS

Wendy Carlson Roberta Jenckes Daniel Lippman Robert Miller Henry McNulty Divya Symmers Roger Wistar The Hotchkiss School does not discriminate on the basis of age, sex, religion, race, color, sexual orientation, or national orientation in the administration of its educational policies, athletics, or other school-administered programs, or in the administration of its hiring and employment practices.

Hotchkiss Magazine is produced by the Office of Communications for alumni, parents, members of the faculty and staff, and friends of the School. Letters and comments are welcome. Please send inquiries and comments to: The Hotchkiss School, 11 Interlaken Road, Lakeville, CT 060392141, email to magazine@ hotchkiss.org, or phone 860-435-3122.

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Solving the Mysteries of Music and Science

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Retirees: 130 Years of Service

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A Wellspring for Naturalists

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The Seaweed Guy: Shep Erhart ’60 At Journey’s End: 17,000 Miles and 617 Birds e

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Campus Connection: Graduation, Awards,Visitors

Town Hill Society: Lance Beizer 46 Class Notes 59 In Memoriam 64 Parting Shot 44

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HE CRITIC DENIS DONOGHUE writes, “The merit of reading a work of literature is that it enables you to gain access to lives other than your own, and it discourages you from thinking that those lives are simply functions of your own.” At Hotchkiss, we aspire to say the same of our classes, rehearsals, practices, debates over dinner, friends, and teachers. They enable you to gain access to lives other than your own, and they discourage you from thinking that those lives are simply functions of your own.

Graduation season always recalls this line of Donoghue’s to my mind, in part because it’s abundantly clear that each senior class contains a secret library of triumphs known only to those who have felt them; private victories over adversity that remain forever beyond the grasp of such laudatory theater

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and the careful but imperfect deliberations that produce our public rolls of honor.

Owing to my impending departure, this year I found myself reflecting on aspects of my own “Hotchkiss experience” as I dispensed diplomas to the Class of 2015.

Five years ago, I left what I saw as the finest job in higher education – serving as a residential college dean at Yale – because Hotchkiss, more demonstrably so than any other American independent secondary school of its caliber and pedigree, had declared its intention to pursue remarkable and far-reaching goals as the new century unfolded.

Historically, as we know, the School’s promise was inseparable from delivering boys to Yale. Timothy Dwight, then President of the University, was instrumental to the School’s founding in 1891.

George Van Santvoord ’08, who served as headmaster from 1926 to 1955, was a 1912 graduate of Yale College. After winning a Rhodes Scholarship, and later a Croix de Guerre during WWI, he taught undergraduate English at Yale for six years before returning to the Hill. Eventually, he was appointed a lifetime member of the Yale Corporation. During the Duke’s reign, legend holds, he could call down to New Haven with a list of names – a now unfathomable 66 boys in 1935, for example – and secure their destiny.

Because we live in a different world now – a world in which deserving boys and girls from all over the world apply for admission to Hotchkiss, and where one’s roommate (here, as well as in college) may hail from Rwanda, the West Bank, Afghanistan,

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South Sudan, Chengdu, East New York, or the Navajo Nation – that old promise can no longer be kept in quite the same way, and so it must be replaced by a new one.

The opportunity to contribute to the invention and execution of that new promise, in conjunction with the School’s robust, modern commitment to true domestic and international heterogeneity, is what drew Cornelia and me to the Northwest Corner of Connecticut in 2010.

Why did Hotchkiss come looking for us?

Perhaps because, owing to the time we had spent at Yale, we seemed likely to produce an appealing ornamental effect. In practice, though, since arriving we have worked hard (and together with many others) to refine a strategic vision that must attend to the moral and emotional lives of actual flesh-and-blood teenagers, as well as support their authentic intellectual development, if the School is to serve its students and achieve distinction.

This is no easy task, partly owing to the fairly mindless threads of discourse currently animating educational thinking in the United States. In recent years, for example, high schools have become increasingly alert to the need to teach and hone students’ critical thinking skills, and to demonstrate their success in metric terms. For some schools, this initiative appears driven by the mercenary desire to coin critical thinking merit badges in order to achieve a marketing advantage.

Our motives at Hotchkiss, fortunately, are organized by the notion that to properly equip students as critical thinkers is to help them resist the tyranny of received ideas, and so see and act effectively upon the need for change: to the world as it is, and to outmoded traditions. To do this healthily, a high school must alloy its critical thinking curriculum, whatever form it finally assumes, with opportunities for its students to develop: a fine and mindful character; an evolving set of fundamental skills; a textured understanding of themselves as learners; and an intuitive, openhearted capacity to productively and peacefully engage with parents, peers, teachers and other adults, as well as the communities that surround us. In other words, students must learn how an individual lives within a group, and how a group lives with ideals conveyed by an institution.

The challenge, of course, is that critical thinking skills are invariably volatile and

messy in their early expression. If you’re really teaching them, you’ll know you’re inching towards success when your students express an essentially subversive response to assignments that seem to reward them for coloring within the lines.

Many schools celebrate critical thinking, but do little more than reward students for their compliance. Many teachers’ expectations – of process, as well as outcome – are more informed than they may recognize by cultural experiences that are essentially identical to many of their students. This is why it is in all schools’ best interest to create and sustain an environment that draws everyone into the kind of consistent, nourishing, and collaborative self-scrutiny that disrupts the invisible economy by which compliance is mistaken for good citizenship and then privileged over daring, generative acts of resistance.

Though the mission here is far from complete, those who have joined with us in taking it up are excited, committed, and well-equipped for the coming chapter in the School’s distinguished history. Your continued interest in and support for these deeper dimensions of stewardship will continue to inspire all of those who give some portion of their lives to this remarkable place.

In closing, thank you for the great generosity of spirit you have shown us during our five years of service. Though our destiny

unexpectedly leads us to California, Cornelia and I hold Hotchkiss and its extended society of friends in the highest regard. We believe deeply in the School’s mission and purpose, and we will miss seeing the way its promise lights our students’ eyes and meets their need for wonder.

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Graduation

Class of 2015

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NDER AN AZURE-BLUE SKY, with toddlers straddled atop their parents’ shoulders and dogs resting in the shade of trees, family, friends, staff, and faculty gathered on Memorial Quad to honor the Class of 2015 for Hotchkiss’s 123rd Commencement Friday morning, May 29.

Head of School Kevin Hicks delivered his final Hotchkiss Commencement address, telling the 168 seniors that “from this point forward, more powerfully than has ever been the case before, you will represent in your every action, both observed and unseen, not only yourself and

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your family and your nation, but also now this place.”

In earning a Hotchkiss diploma, graduates earn the “right and responsibility to represent Hotchkiss to the world,” said Hicks, who, himself, departs Hotchkiss this summer to become head of school at Stevenson School in Pebble Beach, CA. As has been the theme of many of Hicks’s Chapel talks, he emphasized that graduates should be mindful and use their knowledge, skills, and achievements for the greater good – a theme that was repeated in the address by guest speaker Jonathan Holloway, Dean of Yale

College, Professor of History, American Studies, and African American Studies.

Those pursuing a higher education in liberal arts, said Holloway, will be better prepared for the “big, messy world that is waiting beyond the Ivory tower.”

If you accept the challenge that college presents you, “the liberal arts will help you in this regard because they require that you ask profoundly challenging questions,” he said.

“You are poised to move on to higher things,” he said, referring to the Hotchkiss motto, which loosely translated from Latin means: “After

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Class of 2015: ‘Be a Force for Good’

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P H O T O G R A P H S : ( T O P, L O W E R L E F T ) J O N A T H A N D O S T E R ; (LOWER RIGHT) WENDY CARLSON

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instruction, let us move on to higher things.”

He added that Hicks often speaks of “being a force for good.”

“That’s a lovely phrase. Simple, pastoral, even,” he said.

“I dare you to engage it, pursue it, turn it into a piece of wisdom that you are able to pass along with your lived experience.”

Equally important is the ability to recognize the ‘fundamental power of love.’

“Dare to love,” he said, and in that process “find commonalities where others only see differences, be unafraid to care, be kind, and, truly, be a force for good.”

School Presidents Olivia Ryder ’15 and Briggs Bulkeley ’15 also addressed their classmates, underscoring that moments spent with friends are those they will forever remember. Both Ryder and Bulkeley urged their classmates to share in thanking their parents, family, and others who supported them. “We must thank the faculty who have stood by us through all of the ups and downs. You guys mean way more to us than just teachers in the classroom. You are our coaches, guardians, parents, advisors, mentors, friends, and family,” Ryder said.

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P H OTO G R A P H S : ( TO P ) BY W E N DY C A R L S O N ; ( B O T T O M ) B Y J O N AT H A N D O S T E R

“We must thank the faculty who have stood by us through all of the ups and downs.

You guys mean way more to us than just teachers in the classroom. You are our coaches, guardians, parents, advisors, mentors, friends, and family.” – Olivia Ryder ’15

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SENIOR AWARDS

P H O T O G R A P H S : ( L E F T ) B Y J O N AT H A N D O S T E R ; (RIGHT) WENDY CARLSON

AT H L E T IC S

“As Ben McShane stated in the Record, ‘We are cared for by a dedicated group of faculty, staff, and coaches. These people provide us with every tool we might ever need in the coming years, and all that’s left to do is to keep them sharp,’’’ said Bulkeley.

Leading up to the big event, the month was punctuated with ceremonies and festivities, including an induction dinner where the members of the Board of Governors of the Alumni Association welcomed graduates into the alumni body, the Hotchkiss Chapter of the Cum Laude Society induction, the Senior Dance at Fairfield Farm, and a class picnic. When classes officially ended, seniors filled Elfers Hall for the senior recital, followed by the Senior Awards Ceremony, where departmental and major School prizes were presented.

At the Awards Ceremony, Senior Class Dean and Instructor in German Marc Dittmer sought to avoid graduation clichés.

He compared their time at Hotchkiss to a roller coaster ride, full of ups and downs, that prepared them for the road ahead.

Prior to graduation, in the Baccalaureate service led by Chaplain Lou Pressman, students spoke about their experiences at Hotchkiss; the small moments that enriched their time here, the struggles they faced, and the friendships they formed. Mr. Pressman urged students to be mindful of the opportunities they had while at Hotchkiss.

“Look beyond yourself; extend your opportunities with those who don’t have them – to those who didn’t share your luck,” he said.

Students bade farewell to each other and to Hotchkiss in front of Main Building where they first arrived as Preps. Asked to sum up her Hotchkiss experience in a few words, graduate Jacqueline Perron-Smith, who will attend Dartmouth College this fall, said: “It’s been a challenging experience, but extremely rewarding. I can’t imagine living the past three years without Hotchkiss.”

For graduate Michael “Nicky” Downs, who grew up at Hotchkiss as a faculty child, the campus also has been his home. “But the experience of being a student here has been way beyond what I expected,” said Downs, who will be attending Yale University this fall. –Wendy Carlson

The James T. Bryan ’11 Athletic Award: Francis Atuahene and John Martisch, Jr. The Goss Athletic Award: Bailey Mertz and Jacqueline Perron-Smith The Andrew Knox Dwyer ’01 Award: Benjamin MacShane and Lucy C. Nalen

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The Ellen R. Torrey Dance Prize:

Vivian Xiao

Rebecca Silva

The Peter D’Albert ’70 Memorial Art Award: Vivian Xiao

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The John Hammond ’29 Music Award:

The George Norton Stone Senior Math Prize: Tony Zhang

The Chauncey P. Goss, Jr. ’22 Drama Prize: Mary Rozet (Maisie) Bull

The Robert B. Flint ’23 Science Prize:

Tony Zhang and Sam Bartusek

The Edward K. Klingelhofer, Jr. ’43 Award: James (JJ) McNulty The Robert Haiko Photography Prize:

Grace Glovier and Emily von Weise E N G L I SH

The Thomas H. Chappell ’24 Prize:

Alexandra Kilroy

The Teagle Essay Prize: Vivian Xiao

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The Edward B. Preston ’79 Memorial Prize: James Post Philosophy & Religion: Vivian Xiao

L A N G UAG E S

The Hoey Senior Greek Prize:

Gerard Bentley

Latin: Russell Clarida Chinese: Winslow Radcliffe-Trenner David Demaray Senior French Prize:

Alice Collins

Emerson Bigelow ’13 and John Emerson Bigelow ’44 Prize for Conversational French:

Jonathan Morgan Barth

SCIENCES

Grace Glovier

The Van Santvoord ’08 Environmental Prize: Emily von Weise

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The Frank A. Sprole ’38 Social Prize: Alexander Gotsis

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The First Scholar Prize: John T. Humphries The Head of School’s Prize: Vivian Xiao The Walter Cleveland Allen Jr. ’32 Prize:

Walker Jordan and Vivian Xiao

The Centennial Prize:

Justine McCarthy Potter, Gregory Pezza and Olivia Ryder

The Faculty Prize: Samuel Bartusek, Gerard Bentley, Austin Collins, Casey Kemper, Christopher Kirby, Imani Majied, John Martisch, Jr., Emily Quatroche, Geni Su, Taylor Sullivan, and James Tsui The Charles E. Lord Prize:

Sarah Barkley, Louis-Philippe De Courcy, Sarina Jagetia, James McNulty, Amir Parker, and Emily von Weise The Albert William Olsen ’13 Prize:

The Charles E. Berry German Prize:

Maggie Camillos, Alice Collins, Michael Downs, and Tony Zhang

Spanish: Stephen Brao

The Charles Denton Treadway ’14 Memorial Prize: James Post and Madison Sprole

Lyndell Giffenig

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T h e 2015 L u f k i n P r i z e W i n n e r

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EACHING IS A LIFELONG learning experience; the two are intertwined. This was the message that Sarinda Parsons Wilson P’14,’17 told staff, faculty and students in an assembly recognizing the longtime instructor in French and recipient of this year’s Lufkin Prize.

“In French, the verb for ‘to learn’ – apprendre – can also mean ‘to teach,’ ” said Ms. Wilson in her opening remarks.

“I chose this profession thanks to the strong model of several teachers I had, but also because I wanted to share and teach what I loved and live in an environment where I would be constantly learning alongside my students. I believe that my role is to integrate instruction with the process of shared discovery. I’ve been so fortunate to teach and learn in our classrooms, but also with

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colleagues and students,” she said. In recounting events in her life during which teaching and learning blended together, Wilson spoke endearingly about individuals who inspired – from her family, former teachers, and a wonderful French woman who illustrated the passion of teaching.

Wilson also thanked the fellow instructors at Hotchkiss who helped her along the way, saying that when she first taught at Hotchkiss she was very young.

“I certainly had much to learn. My skills were far from perfect. Over the course of my years at Hotchkiss, I have observed and studied my colleagues’ work, imitated them, and innovated on my own. I’ve made plenty of mistakes, and learned to hone my skills. I’ve come to understand that successes can most certainly happen despite my weaknesses.”

She also thanked Dan Lufkin ’49, who attended the event. In 2006, Lufkin established the prize, given in recognition of faculty members who make a significant contribution to character development within the Hotchkiss community and thus serve as role models for the students.

“I learned that as a language teacher at Hotchkiss, I, too, would eventually have access to travel grants given by Dan Lufkin and his friend Fay Vincent ’56. These two generous men had positive language experiences at Hotchkiss.

They knew the unparalleled value of language immersion. Their generosity allowed me financial freedom to explore and learn about the francophone world as a young teacher. Their vision for language teachers guided me and fed my curiosity. Vincent-Lufkin grants helped me stay wide-eyed, challenged and inspired.”

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Sarinda Parsons Wilson Reflects on Teaching and Learning

NEW TRUSTEES, EMERITUS ANNOUNCED

The following individuals will begin serving multi-year terms on the Hotchkiss Board of Trustees, effective July 1: Charles Ayres Jr. ’77, Robert Chartener ’76, P’18, Charles F. Gulden ’79, P’12, Elizabeth Hines ’93, Dr. Rebecca van der Bogert, and David B. Wyshner ’85. In addition, Forrest E. Mars Jr. ’49, P’77,’82, GP’09,’09,’11,’11,’14, long-serving trustee and former vice president of the Board, has been appointed an emeritus trustee.

HEAD OF SCHOOL SEARCH

Five Teachers Awarded Named Chairs

P H O T O G R A P H S : ( T O P ) J O N AT H A N D O S T E R ; ( B O T T O M ) W E N D Y C A R L S O N

Five longtime instructors were awarded faculty chairs by Dean of Faulty Tom Flemma and Head of School Kevin Hicks in April. In his remarks, Hicks said that the “School is so fortunate to have educators of such remarkable quality and character, and to have donors that make it possible for us to retain and nurture seasoned faculty.” English Instructor Chris Burchfield, hired in 1991, was presented with the L. Blair Torrey Jr. ’50 Chair in English, and Christy Cooper, also an English instructor, hired in 1988, was presented with The Huber G. Buehler Chair. Christy’s husband, John Cooper, hired in 1990, was presented with The Independence Foundation Chair #2. Spanish Instructor Ana Hermoso, hired in 1991, was presented with the The Audrey Meyer Mars Teaching Chair. The E. Carleton Granbery Teaching Chair was presented to Keith Moon. Hired in 1989, Moon is an English and Humanities instructor who has taught numerous courses at Hotchkiss.

Hotchkiss Celebrates Employees’ Service The Hotchkiss community gathered in May to honor and celebrate staff and faculty members who reached work anniversaries this year. In honoring those receiving recognition for five, ten, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, and even 40 years, Head of School Kevin Hicks said in his opening remarks that “to give a significant portion of one’s life to a school—to offer daily the colossal, unique energy that Plato had in mind when, in The Republic, he describes teaching as ‘the art of turning the soul’— this is both an act of courage and a testament of faith in the power of institutions to do good.”

As announced earlier, the Board of Trustees retained internationally-recognized executive recruiting firm Spencer Stuart to manage the search for the School’s 15th Head of School, and additionally appointed both the Search Committee and the Faculty-Staff Advisory Committee to support the process. In order to help provide focus on key leadership qualities and attributes needed to strengthen the community, the committees have met with faculty and staff in a series of campus meetings, and continue to gather feedback from students, parents, and alumni.

Search updates and recent communications are available online: www.hotchkiss.org/abouthotchkiss/ head-of-school-search.

All community members are invited to submit feedback regarding desired qualities and characteristics of the next Head, as well as to submit nominations to the Search Committee Chair Roger Smith at Rsmith@hotchkiss.org or to Spencer Stuart directly at HotchkissHead@spencerstuart.com.

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Community Service Awards Nicholas (Nick) Moore ’71, P’89,’01,’06 and Jenny DaSilva ’94 honored

JE N N Y D ASILVA ’ 9 4

“My experience at Hotchkiss opened my eyes to just how big and awesome this world can really be, just how full of possibility and opportunity,” DaSilva said, addressing students, faculty and staff during an April All-School Assembly.

But her life took some twists and turns before she became the founder and executive director of Start Small Think Big, a nonprofit organization located in the heart of the South Bronx, the poorest Congressional district in our nation. Start Small’s mission is to help lowincome individuals build thriving businesses in order to increase their personal financial security and stimulate economic activity in underserved New York City communities.

“An important part of my story, of what I’ve accomplished thus far, is all the planning that I’ve done. I tried to make the most of my time here at Hotchkiss and worked hard to get into a good college. My grades landed me good jobs. All of that is important,” she said.

“But for me, it’s been those moments in my

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life that were wholly unexpected, that I had no control over, that I couldn’t plan, that have actually been the most pivotal, that altered my life path most fundamentally and ended me up here, where I am now.”

After graduating from Hotchkiss, DaSilva attended Yale in pursuit of an undergraduate degree in political science. In 1997, as a college junior, she read Jonathan Kozol’s Amazing Grace, detailing the South Bronx’s crippling poverty.

Compelled to action, she contacted East Side House, an established nonprofit in the Bronx, and volunteered to start a parent support program. The following year she was hired to direct its Youth Leadership Program.

Three years later, DaSilva left the Bronx to pursue her law degree at Cornell Law School.

“Four days after I started a fancy new job as a lawyer at a big corporate law firm in New York City, my mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She died four months later. That was in April 2006, almost exactly nine years ago to this day. Within a year of my mom’s death, I quit my job at the law firm. I moved with my husband to The Hague in Holland, where he had been offered a job. We spent the next three years living abroad – two years in Holland, one year in Cambodia, all for my husband’s work. I didn’t have a job while we were abroad. I did all kinds of things to keep myself busy, extremely busy.”

At some point, she said, “it became clear that I just couldn’t keep myself busy enough to not just be really, really sad. And so then I did what in retrospect was really the hardest thing of all – I stopped …and I just let myself be really sad. And that was what allowed me, over time, to stop being so sad. It also

allowed me an incredible window into myself.”

That was when she founded Start Small Think Big. Now entering its fifth year, the organization works to “change the expectations of our low-income clients from one of disempowerment to one of empowerment, from one of living in and for the present moment to one of planning for the future and the long term.”

In the last year alone, Start Small helped more than 1,000 low-income entrepreneurs build thriving businesses by providing them with access to more than 4,300 hours of free financial and legal services, valued at more than $3 million.

The upshot, she said, is “that, for better or for worse, life is full of those things that you just cannot plan. But each and every one of these unscripted moments – whether good or bad – is an opportunity to leap out beyond whatever it is that is holding you back. To crash through those mostly self-imposed barriers – and go on to do something so much bigger than yourself, and truly meaningful.”

NI CHOLA S (NI CK ) MOORE ’71, P ’ 8 9 , ’ O1 , ’ 0 6

Nick Moore came to Hotchkiss as a boarding prep in 1967 from New York City. The time spent in the countryside at his parents’ second home in Sharon convinced him that this area was a place he not only wanted to raise his family, but also work to preserve.

After graduating with a B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania, he returned to Sharon. “I wanted to raise my family in a rural area and ended up settling in Sharon where my family had a weekend home and a 400-acre farm that had been in the family for three generations,” he said.

“I was afraid that the unspoiled pastoral nature of the area would not last, and I did not want to miss the good times while I toiled away in a city job. But a funny thing happened.

I began to get involved in local affairs, and I saw that I could make a difference. I got to know local conservation leaders in the

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In April, DaSilva ’94 was recognized for her work as an attorney, founder, and executive director of Start Small Think Big, and Moore ’71, for his work as an advocate for land conservation.

nascent land trust movement,” he said.

Since that time, Nick has been a dedicated advocate for land conservation, preserving, protecting, and promoting Connecticut farmland for the past 20 years. He is a director and past president of the Connecticut Farmland Trust (CFT), the only private land trust in the state dedicated to protecting Connecticut’s working farms and preserving the state’s rich agricultural legacy.

Since its founding in 2002, CFT has protected over 2,500 acres of farmland and has saved 30 working farms.

He acquired his own Sharon farm in 1987, rehabilitated the cropland, and in the process became more deeply interested in farmland preservation through interaction with the Connecticut Department of Agriculture. In the late ’90s, there was no money in the statewide program to purchase development rights from farmers, and the Working Lands Alliance was established to advocate for funding the program.

Moore was also a founding member of the Working Lands Alliance (WLA), formed in 1999 to preserve farmland through advocacy, education, and lobbying activities. With other members at the WLA, Moore introduced the Community Investment Act, which allows towns to charge recording fees for filing documents at town halls. Several million dollars a year are collected through this Act to conserve open space, farmland, affordable housing, and historic preservation.

Moore additionally serves as a member of the Land Trust Alliance (LTA) National Council. LTA advocates on a national level for legislation that helps enhance the pace, quality, and permanence of land conservation.

At Hotchkiss, Moore participated in the country’s first Earth Day celebration in 1970.

“Hotchkiss sent a bus full of students to Torrington, where we marched in the first Earth Day celebration. Coming full circle, I was in Washington, D.C. two days ago, again on Earth Day, with 95 land trust colleagues from 36 states,” he said.

“We are seeing, however, big environmental challenges in the rest of the country and the world. My hope is that you will recognize the value of environmental protection and use those skills you have learned here to be leaders in conservation,” he told students.

“For better or for worse, life is full of those things that you just cannot plan. But each and every one of these unscripted moments – whether good or bad – is an opportunity to leap out beyond whatever it is that is holding you back.” – Jenny DaSilva ’94

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Eco Day: A Rite of Spring Attacking Honeysuckle and Toasting Marshmallows – All in a Day’s Work WRITTEN AND PHOTOGRAPHED BY WENDY CARLSON

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N A CHILLY ECO DAY THAT gave way to sunny skies, more than 700 students, faculty and staff, many clad in orange vests, swept through the campus, surrounding trails, and the local communities. Wearing work gloves and rubber boots, they spread manure and cleared rocks at Fairfield Farm; cleared litter from the roads of Lakeville, Salisbury, Sharon, and Millerton; and uprooted honeysuckle, a tenacious invasive growing in the woods.

And they did so with robust enthusiasm. “Students attacked the honeysuckle

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like beasts. Those honeysuckles now quiver when they see our students,” quipped English Instructor Charlie Frankenbach during a faculty meeting the following day.

For more than a decade, Eco Day has been held during the week of the nationallyrecognized Earth Day holiday. Traditionally, the School commits the day to working collectively in service to the environment with events organized by Josh Hahn, the assistant head of school and director of environmental initiatives. Hahn acknowledged it was an effort organized by his assistant, Diana Jones,

Student Activities Director Kathleen McNaryPillsbury, our grounds crew, and Students for Environmental Action (SEA).

But Eco Day is not just about working outdoors; it is also a day spent reflecting on various ways to become more involved in the environment.

At an All-School morning assembly in Auditorium, students gave presentations that illustrated how they have personally connected with the environment on their own terms. Some read nature-inspired poems with themes that reflected their appreciation of the

“Students attacked the honeysuckle like beasts. Those honeysuckles now quiver when they see our students,” quipped English Instructor Charlie Frankenbach.

School’s surroundings. Others spoke passionately about protecting the environment, and several students illustrated their involvement in promoting locally-grown and unprocessed food, or “real food,” in the dining hall.

Following the student narratives, guest speaker Douglas Glancy ’96, senior manager of Climate Speakers Network, The Climate Reality Project, addressed the audience, advocating that the path toward curbing the escalating climate change begins with the conversations – or stories – that we share with each other.

His final remarks underscored that essential need. “How can sitting around the campfire and staring up at the night sky solve the climate crisis? By stimulating

discourse about it,” he explained.

“For tens of thousands of years, we have survived because we learned from each other, and the way we did that was by telling each other stories around a campfire at the end of the day,” he said. Several members of FFEAT (Fairfield Farm Ecosystems and Adventure Team) did just that when they capped off Eco Day with a campfire back at the Farm after a day of working.

While they toasted marshmallows over a crackling fire, they exchanged stories about how they celebrated Earth Day in their home cities and towns.

In Montreal, there is a citywide effort to turn off all electronic devices and electricity for

a block of time, said Eden Schwartz, an upper mid. “It’s a big thing, it’s so cool,” she said.

Senior Emily von Weise described a similar community-wide event, the Musketaquid Earth Day Celebration in Concord, MA. “People make sculptures out of natural objects like twigs and mud and found-trash, and there is a parade when they are launched and floated down the Concord River.”

Reflecting on the day’s work, she added that pulling out mature honeysuckle was really tough. “I think we had some really mature ones,” she laughed. But with some music to motivate the group, they got the job done.

“And, it turned out to be just a great day to be outdoors,” she said.

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Go, Bearcats!

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P H OTO G R A P H S : ( TO P ) W E N DY C A R L S O N ; ( B OT TO M ) G R E G LO C K

Campus co n n e c t i o n

Bearcats Spring Triumphs

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IGHLIGHTS FROM THE SPRING ATHLETIC season include: the varsity baseball team enjoying its first season on a renovated Hoyt Field, which

saw the entire playing surface redone and the addition of an enhanced backstop; the Ultimate team winning its final 23 games to finish 23-1 with victories at the Amherst Invitational, Connecticut State, and New England tournaments; girls water polo winning its first game in more than five years, beating Staples HS 22-12 on April 29; the boys and girls golf teams earning their highest places at Founders and New Englands in recent memory; and the girls enjoying a winning season for the first time in more than a decade; and girls lacrosse notching double-digit wins (11-2) for the ninth time in the

PHOTOGRAPHS BY GREG LOCK

past ten years. – Roger Wistar

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Visitors U.S. Poet Laureate Charles Wright: Turn, Turn, Turn

BY DIVYA SYMMERS

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Wright, who turns 80 on August 25, is a native of Tennessee and speaks in a gentle Southern cadence so low that his consonants seem to disappear. (A former student compared his voice to “the sound of a small orchestra playing in a distant room.”)

This made his funny, self-deprecating patter between poems that much harder to decipher – though Elfers’ temporarily malfunctioning sound system didn’t help. No matter: in the collective effort to hear every word, hardly a chair squeaked or student coughed as the poet laureate read 10 works, more or less in the order they were written, going back to the 1970s.

Some were short, some longer, but each succeeded in mesmerizing the All-School audience that packed the Esther Eastman Music Center’s Katherine M. Elfers Hall, starting with

“Ars Poetica” (“written in a garage in Laguna Beach”) and “Laguna Blues,” which, he said, “is an attempt at a blues lyric by a tone-deaf guy.”

“California Dreaming” came next (“I’m sorry you don’t know the song” he joked to the tooyoung-to-have-heard-it audience), with its indelible line about the Santa Ana wind “that lifts its hot breathe on the neck of everything.” A later work, “Homage to Mark Rothko,” he explained, is structured like one of its eponymous subject’s best-known paintings, with shorter first and last sections “spoken” by Rothko and a longer middle section by the narrator.

By the final rhythmic line: “I tried to give form to the formless, and speech to the unspeakable/To the light that shines without shadow, I gave myself,” it sounded incantatory. (“This is only the second time I’ve read that poem.”)

P H O T O G R A P H S : ( T O P ) H O L LY W R I G H T; ( B O T T O M ) B Y J O N AT H A N D O S T E R

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N AN UNSEASONABLY COLD evening in late April – so cold it snowed earlier in the day – Charles Wright, the 20th Poet Laureate of the United States and a professor emeritus at the University of Virginia, became the first Lambert Lecturer in history to turn completely around, not once but three times, and address students and faculty seated up in the balcony behind him.

“You can’t hear a damn thing, can you?” he asked the first time, in what became a running theme, as everyone laughed delightedly. “I’m sorry, but this one does seem like a balcony poem,” he said the second time.

“What I found fascinating is that he truly lived one of my favorite definitions of art: to make people see something in a new way,” said Instructor in English Tyler Gardner, co-head of the English Department. “For years we have had guests come and address us from behind the lectern. By shifting himself physically, and turning around and speaking to those sitting behind him, he allowed every single person in Elfers to become conscious of the physical space from which he spoke.”

He added, “Wright’s decision to address us from a different position, and to make something new for his audience, only bolsters his already stellar reputation as a first-rate poet and artist.”

P H OTO G R A P H S BY W E N DY C A R L S O N

He was introduced by a chorus of three students – E-Yeon Chang ’15, Francis (Takyi) Atuahene ’15, and Sylvie Robinson ’16 — and by Poet-in-Residence Susan Kinsolving, who met him many years ago when he agreed to give a reading at the California Institute of the Arts, where she was teaching at the time.

Kinsolving also invited him to Hotchkiss: “I wasn’t sure he’d be able to come, so I was jubilant when he said yes.”

A graduate of Davidson College and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Wright – who was elected a chancellor of the American Academy of Poets in 1999 – has written more than two dozen “gracefully meditative” collections of verse in the past 45 years, along the way winning the poetry world’s top honors, including a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and the 2013 Bollingen Prize, awarded by the Yale University Library. Focusing on “language, landscape, and the idea of God,” his work “catches the visible world at that endless moment before it trails into eternity,” said the late poet Philip Levine. Like Emily Dickinson, noted a critic, he “often finds his richest material right out the window.”

He spent most of the last three decades as the Souder Family Professor of English at the University of Virginia – he retired in 2011, but he and his wife, a photographer, still live in Charlottesville. He also taught a graduate writing workshop in poetry at UC Irvine from 1966 to 1983. (“I loved California, and like everyone else, I came back.”)

Long before, after his own college years, Wright was stationed overseas in Verona for four years of army service. Italy was where he first discovered Ezra Pound, famously an influence on his own work – and the landscape of northern Italy, he once told The Paris Review, is one of his “sacred places.” (In 1979, Wright won a PEN Translation Prize for his version of Eugenio Montale’s The Storm and Other Poems.)

“Home can be anywhere, but my real home is East Tennessee, where I grew up,” he confessed by e-mail, the day before arriving in Lakeville. He also offered advice for students who are serious about writing poetry: “The serious challenge for high school students is the same challenge that college students have: they don’t read enough. And I don’t just mean current poets but also those who came before.

Theodore Roethke famously said to a young person asking what he had to do to be a poet,

‘There’s the library. Get to work!’ ” As he proved easily at Hotchkiss, this is a Poet Laureate who is refreshingly down to earth; not shy about swearing when he lost track of a page, and modestly delighted when he received a spontaneous standing ovation after reading “Ducks,” his last poem of the evening: “Gasoline smell on my hands, perfume From the generator’s toothless mouth, Opening swallow from the green hose, Sweet odor from the actual world.”

Then, too, he is shy enough to look honestly relieved when the study hall bell leaves time only for a single audience question. “If you could recommend one specific poem for students to read, what would it be?” asked a girl sitting several rows back from the stage.

Without missing a beat, Wright answered: “ ‘Sunday Morning’ by Wallace Stevens. It’s blank verse, and it’s a fabulous poem. It’s easy to understand. It’s about the life of the soul – and about the life of the Hartford Insurance Company.”

Everyone laughed.

“It’s a great poem. There are a lot of others, you know.” With only the slightest hesitation, he added, “You could read any one of mine.”

Perhaps “Ancient of Days,” from his 2014 collection, Caribou (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), which ends:

This is an old man’s poetry,

written by someone who’s spent his life

Looking for one truth.

Sorry, pal, there isn’t one.

Unless, of course, the trees and their blow-down relatives Are part of it.

Unless the late-evening armada of clouds

Spanished along the horizon are part of it.

Unless the diminishing pinprick of light

stunned in the dark forest

MORE CAMPUS VISITORS The campus welcomed other visitors this spring, including two history scholars: The Preston Fund speaker, Elliot West, alumni professor of history at the University of Arkansas, spoke on the American West; and Friends of the Library speaker, Dr. Richard Sommers, lectured on the federal grand strategy during the Civil War. The Lambert Fund also sponsored highly acclaimed poet Daniel Halpern (below), who recited works selected from his nine collections of poetry. Jazz pianist Peter Masden (above) performed with his CIA Trio and gave a workshop for the student jazz ensemble. On Eco-Day, Douglas Glancy ’96, senior manager of the Climate Speakers Network, addressed climate change.

Is part of it.

Unless, O my, whatever the eye makes out,

And sends us, on its rough-road trace, To the heart, is part of it

then maybe that bright vanishing might be.

Charles Wright’s visit to Hotchkiss was made possible by the P. Christopher Lambert Jr. ’76 Fund, which sponsors visits to the School by noted writers of prose and poetry.

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Solving the Mysteries of

Music with Science

We all know how listening to a certain song can change our mood, and that some of us can carry a tune better than others. But why? Two students seek answers, using science.

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N HER WHITE LAB COAT, AND balancing a tray of test tubes in her hands, Geni (Elena) Su ’15 is a far cry from the burgeoning pop music star she was at age 14 in China, where her face appeared on covers of teen magazines.

She still loves music and plays the piano, and she studied voice during her years at Hotchkiss. But seeking stardom is not foremost on her mind these days.

by

Wendy Carlson

Two years ago, with financial help from Hotchkiss, Su took a summer lab course at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), which sparked her interest in research.

Last semester, Su, who will be a freshman at Columbia University in the fall, put those lab skills to use in Applied Scientific Research, an elective that allowed her to combine her love of both music and science.

Most students in the class have completed

AP Biology and AP Chemistry, and design their own research project under the guidance of Paul Oberto, associate dean of faculty and instructor in biology and chemistry.

Su wanted to study genetics to better understand the neurobiological basis of music; more specifically, to gain insight into how genes play a role in musical ability.

Studies have shown over the years that musical ability is somewhat inherited, but more recent genetic research has revealed that there are certain genes directly linked to greater musical ability.

Basing her project on previous studies, Su analyzed a repeat polymorphism in the gene known as AVPR1A. (Translation: A certain sequence of DNA that is repeated a variable number of times in different people.)

She collected DNA samples from a group of 40 students and faculty members. The same group also took an online test that measured musical ability, and another test that ranked their ability to detect variations in pitch.

After the samples were processed through the School’s DNA sequencer, Su evaluated the data to determine if there was a correlation between the number of repeats in a subject’s AVPR1A gene and his or her scores on different musical aptitude tests.

While data was still being collected at the end of the year, some preliminary results suggest that those whose DNA showed a higher frequency of repeats of the AVPR1A gene might be genetically predisposed to be better musicians.

So, if we’re tone-deaf, does that mean we can blame it on our parents?

“Kind of,” says Su. While tone-deafness can be blamed on genes rather than environment, it’s just one aspect of musical ability – albeit an important one. There are other factors affecting musical ability. Genes other than AVPR1A have been shown to affect social communication, and musical ability is a form of communication.

As always, there are exceptions in science.

Elena says some members of the group who did not do well on the music aptitude tests ended up having a high number of repeats of the gene. And, if your genome dictates that you have poor musical ability, it doesn’t mean you’re not rock-star material. “It just may mean you have to work harder at it, and it might take longer,” says Elena.

Or, as the saying goes: “How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice.”

The Music-Brain Connection

Ever wonder why a song can make you sad?

Upper mid Daniel DeSouza ’16 plays soprano saxophone in the School’s jazz ensemble, but he’s also interested in how the brain perceives music, and ultimately how it affects our behavior.

Last fall, while taking Neuroanatomy and Human Behavior, an elective taught by Instructor in Biology Susan Park, DeSouza became fascinated with the music-brain connection.

In the class, students read a book called Proust Was a Neuroscientist, by Jonah Lehrer.

One chapter on Stravinsky explores why certain music appeals to listeners and how we develop musical taste.

“When Stravinsky premiered his ‘Rite of Spring,’ the audience did not consider it ‘music,’ because the sounds were novel and strange to their ears,” Park says. (Much the way rock ’n’ roll in the ’60s caused parents to clasp their hands over their ears.)

DeSouza’s interest was first triggered in his prep year when he took a summer workshop with Jonathan Berger at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). Berger, who teaches composition and music theory and cognition at Stanford, has collaborated with a range of scientists, including those in Stanford’s Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience Laboratory, to investigate the effects of music on the brain.

“Music can change your day, and that’s something you can’t replicate with anything else.”

This summer, DeSouza is returning to Stanford to assist on a project combining neuroimaging with how subjects perceive music. That will prepare him for the fall, when he plans to study the music-brain connection as an interdisciplinary independent senior project.

At Stanford, he learned that humans are the only primates whose behavior is profoundly affected by music. “It doesn’t affect other primates as much; it doesn’t trigger the same neurons as it does with us,” he says.

Just how music affects the human brain has “a lot of interesting applications to the fields of education, health, and economics,” DeSouza says. Music can help people with learning disabilities and kids living in poverty improve their cognition. But DeSouza is particularly interested in music applications to neurology and economics, and more specifically how music shapes cultural trends.

“There’s a real disconnect today in how producers market music, and how people are getting their music readily and independently through digital technology,” he says.

After reading Shaping Jazz: Cities, Labels and the Global Emergence of an Art Form, by Columbia Business School Professor Damon Phillips, which talks about how jazz was a small subgenre that became mainstream, DeSouza realized that “there are bigger applications using neuroscience and combining it with marketing and music.”

Armed with all this knowledge, will he be able to produce a record-breaking hit?

“If I did, I would like to think it would have to do with own musical ability, and my ear for music,” he quips.

One thing he knows for sure. “Music can change your day, and that’s something that’s hard to replicate with anything else,” he says.

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Teachers do more than teach.

They are the heart and soul of the community. They serve as role models, advisors, coaches and experts in their field of study.

In this issue, we pay tribute to retiring members of the community who have served Hotchkiss for a quarter-century or longer.

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‘Mr. Hotchkiss’ John C. Virden III ’64, P’89,’91 by

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OME CALL HIM ‘MR. HOTCHKISS.’ For 34 years, he has sat behind the desk and roamed the Main Building hallways as a dean, taught algebra to preps, thrived as a coach of two to three sports a year, and presided over disciplinary issues and dress-code discussions. The worn carpet in his office has been there for 20 years, the same tenure as his occupancy in that space, and the “credenza,” if it can be called that, is much the worse for wear, with sections of its fake veneer worn away and patches of plywood showing.

Yet, Associate Head of School and Dean of Students John Virden looks remarkably fresh.

The weeks leading up to his retirement this spring have been replete with special honors and tributes, along with some surprising revelations.

(When Virden spoke to students at Chapel in May – his first time in that role – he told them that he had exactly two weekends away in the four years he was a student here. THAT made an impression.) He starred in a School-produced holiday video, making such a strong impression that the video’s producer accorded him a 10 of 10 for star power and 9 of 10 for dance moves.

“He jumpstarted the video and was essential in bringing the whole thing together,” said producer Tyler Wosleger.

The dance moves may have surprised some, but Virden’s willingness to take on an assignment for the students’ benefit is legendary. “This is one

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“He was by far the greatest non-family influence in my life. He built up my confidence and helped me find my way in the tumultuous boarding school years.” – Sarah Kemp Fullerton ’95

S pups are CA The Golden . t) h ig (r bey (left) and Ro

Coach Virden with the 1999 Girls Varsit y Squash te am

of those unique professions where you never age,” he says. “When you’re dealing with 14- to 18-year-olds, you have to keep up. For me, it’s been a real treat and a pleasure.”

That Blinking Red Light

It’s a bit of a wonder that Virden returned to work at Hotchkiss at all. He was hired by Headmaster Bill Olsen ’39, who had been the headmaster when he was a student as well.

Virden remembers his student years as hard, but rewarding. “I knew that I was getting a really good education, but I would not call it fun…,” he says.

He felt trepidation each time he returned

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in the fall. The Virden family was originally based in Cleveland, but by his sophomore year, his parents had moved to Palos Verdes, CA. The trip back to Lakeville always involved a red-eye flight from L.A., followed by the train ride, and then a drive to the campus. “I felt queasy as soon as I saw the flashing red light at the intersection,” he says. Virden remembers calling home from the rotunda to say that he had arrived safely and that he didn’t want to be there. His father, who was a member of the Class of 1941, always listened, and young Virden always ended up staying. He made lasting friendships, including from his prep year with three boys who had also come from Cleveland. Jody Nachman ’64 has been an especially close friend. He competed in three varsity sports – football, swimming, and baseball – and served on the Student Council.

“In my last two years here playing varsity football, we went 0 wins, 11 losses, and one tie,” he points out. “Maybe that teaches you humility and a sense of what it takes to win.

It’s humbling to see the skill levels that our students have now.”

He had no doubt that his future career would be in business, and at Lake Forest College, he chose to major in economics. Most important, at Lake Forest, he met an effervescent and witty undergrad named Martha Recht; they married in 1969.

“My first job was teaching math in a public school,” Virden says. “For the next 11 years I taught sixth-, seventh-, eighth-, and ninth-grade math at Lake Forest Country Day School. For the last five years there, I did the business manager job as well.”

Then came the call from Hotchkiss. Rusty Chandler ’53 was looking for someone to take over the Annual Fund, which had grown and needed a full-time director. In addition to being its director, Virden began teaching Algebra I after he had been at Hotchkiss for about a year.

He continued teaching math until three years ago.

Right from the start, he says, “I loved being in the classroom, with my feet on the ground,

surrounded by a bunch of kids. I also had advisees. I remember one year having 17 or 18 advisees. I’m still in touch with many of them.”

Following the Annual Fund directorship, Virden became the director of college counseling, a position that gave him great satisfaction.

“You were taking a group of kids who had performed well and helping them to move on to the next stage of their life,” he reflects.

He moved to the Deans’ Wing when Headmaster Rob Oden appointed him provost.

At the same time he was a dean, acting as the senior class dean for 10 years. With the retirement of Dean of Students Walter Crain in 2005, he became the dean of students. He was named associate head of school in 2007.

Reflecting on one sometimes challenging aspect of his job, Virden says, “I’ve tried to be very fair in the Discipline Committee to respect the rules of the School and help kids to understand that we all make mistakes, and some mistakes are bigger than others. They’re not bad kids; they just made a mistake. I hope they can move on to feel good about themselves.”

The Coaching Life

Virden has been involved in coaching no fewer than six sports during his three-plus decades here. He began by officiating junior varsity football and supervising club volleyball. A few years later he worked along with Rusty Chandler coaching junior varsity baseball.

Virden started the girls varsity squash team in 1984, a program that remains dear to his heart.

In his 30th year coaching girls varsity squash (as the head coach for all but three of those years), his overall coaching record in squash was 251-115, and his teams captured eight Founders League Championships.

In 1987, he began coaching girls varsity tennis; in his 16 years as head coach of girls varsity tennis, his teams won 150 matches and lost only 31. And they won the Founders League Championship seven times.

When Varsity Field Hockey Coach Robin Chandler came to him in 1998 and said she

P H O T O G R A P H S : ( P R E V I O U S P A G E ) A N N E D AY ; ( T H I S PAG E ) T H E M I S C H I A N Z A

John with his grandchildren: Jack, Mary, and Finn

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“One, and one amongst many, of John’s great virtues is his indefatigable knack of just being there, in the right place, at the right time, and all the time. His early start to the day is legendary. He is the consummate school person.”– Malcolm McKenzie P’10, Head of School, 2007-2013 was looking for another coach for the sport, Virden looked up with surprise and said, “Why are you looking at me?” Robin replied, “You’ve watched more field hockey than I’ve played.” And so began his involvement with field hockey; in the years since, field hockey has won 12 New England titles.

Says Coach Chandler, “He has done remarkable work with our goalies, and every player absolutely adores and respects him and what he stands for. John has always been about character development, sportsmanship, and the value of team. And as successful a coach as he has been, he has always put those well above wins and losses.”

Of course, when you bring up the subject of winning records to Virden, he demurs. “It’s not me. It’s the kids,” he says. “It’s up to them.

I’ve been blessed with a number of great players. They take a lot of pride in playing for Hotchkiss, in being a Bearcat. When they put on that uniform, they give it their all, win or lose.”

Another team member figured significantly in the field hockey success story. Martha Virden, who died in 2009, held a constant place on the sidelines as the teams’ most enthusiastic cheerleader. She and John also provided a welcoming home away from home for the girls, where they could gather for a field hockey dinner or a Parents Weekend reception. After Martha’s passing, several members of the Class of 2008 got together to establish the annual Martha R. Virden Alumnae Field Hockey Game.

The first game was played in 2009, and a bench was dedicated in her memory.

Completing the Circle

As retirement beckons in July, Virden considers his years at Hotchkiss philosophically and with not a small amount of gratitude.

“I have been very fortunate to have worked for a number of heads of school, starting with Tim Callard. They’re great people who have

been willing to share their style and their work, and I’ve learned from every one of them,” he says.

“I think all the time about what a privilege it is to be allowed to work so closely with a group of youngsters and to be able to work with them at a time where their lives are changing so much. Hotchkiss takes boys and girls and turns out young men and women. To be part of that transition has always been an honor. I have thoroughly enjoyed my relationships with the families – it’s an extended family, really – in good times and in bad,” he says.

And how about that blinking red light, we have to ask.

“I thought I would never come back to Hotchkiss,” he says. “I still get a reaction to that light. But now it’s more of a welcoming light, like home. There’s a little more warmth and fuzziness to that light now than there was then.”

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A Patient Man

Wayne Gaynor P’99,’04 by

Henry McNulty

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OR ONE SO ADEPT AT TEACHING, Wayne Gaynor did not grow up in a particularly academic family. His mother graduated from high school, but his father left school after the sixth grade. From that modest beginning came an acclaimed Hotchkiss teacher.

High School Inspiration

The youngest of four boys, Wayne grew up in the Mystic section of Stonington, CT, and went to Stonington High School.

It was his 10th-grade geometry teacher who first planted the idea in Wayne’s mind that he himself might become a high school math teacher. “He was clear, dynamic, excited about his subject, and committed to his students,” Wayne remembers. “I was struck by his ability to turn what could be a dreaded and seemingly dull discipline into something fun and accessible.”

Wayne graduated from the University of Hartford in 1974, then taught math at Cheshire (CT) Academy for three years.

In 1976, he married Nancy Swift in Haddonfield, NJ. In 1977, he and Nancy moved to the Hill School in Pottstown, PA, where they stayed nine years. Nancy at first taught reading in the study skills department at Hill, then returned to school to get a master’s degree in education.

Wayne earned a master’s in mathematics at nearby West Chester University. They had their first child, Peter Gaynor ’99, in 1981; Peter is now a middle school teacher at Montclair Kimberly Academy in New Jersey.

Back to Connecticut

Though they were happy in Pennsylvania, the Gaynors missed New England. “I grew up there,” Wayne explains, “and Nancy also

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“Mr. Gaynor is one of the most sincere, loving, and – most important – happy persons I know. Every day in class, without fail, he shakes everyone’s hand and asks how we are all doing.” – Liam Fleming ’15 was very fond of New England, so we decided to return.”

That led them to Hotchkiss in 1986. By that time, the Gaynors were a family of four; their second son, Andrew Gaynor ’04, was born just before the move. After several years as a researcher, Andrew is now studying at the Maine Maritime Academy in Castine, Maine.

Nancy worked as a counselor in the Hotchkiss health services department until last June.

Wayne’s philosophy of teaching calculus, precalculus, geometry, and algebra is fairly simple. “I see math,” he says, “as a vehicle to help students learn to believe in themselves.”

Ask his former students, or his peers, and they will say that Wayne’s vision is also his reality.

“Mr. Gaynor is one of the most sincere, loving, and – most important – happy persons I know,” says Liam Fleming ’15. “Every day in class, without fail, he shakes everyone’s hand and asks how we are all doing.”

Fellow math instructor Bridget Dixon Moon elaborates: “The hand-shaking sounds corny, and maybe a few of the kids think of it that way at the start, but they soon realize it’s not. He looks right at them when he asks how they are. The answers are often simple, but telling.”

Says English instructor Christy Cooper: “Wayne is often found in the corner of the dining room during meal times, with his clipboard, creating impromptu problems for any of his students who need extra help. He engages them with the math at the same time that he shows genuine interest in their lives.”

English instructor Charles “Charlie” Frankenbach coached boys varsity basketball with Wayne for more than 20 years. “The other day,” Charlie says, “a student arrived at my class directly from Wayne’s class.

She told me, ‘That stuff was SO hard. I love Mr. Gaynor.’ That speaks volumes.”

As for the basketball, “We experienced heady triumphs and painful losses,” Charlie says. “During one year with a preponder-

or Family The Gayn

The "International"

ance of the latter, after debriefing a loss – the dreadful basketball post-mortem – Wayne looked up and said, ‘Let’s go home and hug our kids.’ Wise, kind, perfectly pitched.”

Wayne was awarded the George and Jodie Stone Teaching Chair in 2006, and the School’s Lufkin Prize in 2013.

Besides teaching and coaching, music is an important part of his life. “I studied organ for 10 years when I was a teenager,” he says.

These days, he is a member of the bell choir at Salisbury Congregational Church.

This summer, the Gaynors plan to move to Maine, where they have a house in South

Coach

and pla yer

Portland and a cottage in Greenville. During his 2001 sabbatical leave, Wayne built a square-stern 16-foot canoe from scratch, which he continues to use on the Greenville pond. “I think initially we’re just going to settle in and take a break,” he says.

Wayne, says Bridget Dixon Moon, “is a patient man. When you talk to him, it’s as if you have all the time in the world. He is notoriously late for class. It’s hard for a person who glides through life, not rushing things, to be on time. Why would he be ruled by bells in that one aspect of life?

“But boy, oh boy, is he worth the wait.”

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A Quick Wit Tim Acker by

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ECADES OF HOTCHKISS Spanish students can thank the book One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez for giving the School Tim Acker, who retired this year after 37 years as an instructor in Spanish.

Tim was a student at the University of Chicago when he read the 1967 classic that made him choose to major in Romance languages.

“I just found the literature to be so creative. And so rich ... [It] was just something that really spoke to me in terms of the fantastic magic realism,” he said. “I found it to be the most exciting and alive literature that was being written at the time. And I think that anyone who read it couldn’t help being sort of caught up in it.”

Tim grew up in Sheboygan, WI, where

his parents were also teachers. After graduating from Chicago in 1972, he went to Yale for what was going to be a Ph.D. in Spanish and Portuguese, which turned into a master’s degree instead. Afterwards, he taught for two years at St. Paul’s School, then in the Hartford public school system, and after at Simon’s Rock College in Great Barrington. Then in 1978, he came to Hotchkiss.

From Sheboygan to Lakeville “I think I ended up staying longer than I thought I would,” he said. “But it always seemed like a good thing to stay. I think a person always wants to retire when you feel as if you’re still peaking and still really enthusiastic about what you’re doing.”

He stayed so long because, in his words,

P H O T O G R A P H B Y A N N E D AY

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“Tim Acker had the most profoundly positive impact on me intellectually of any teacher that I had at Hotchkiss, Yale or Harvard Business School."

– Craig L. Kennedy ’87

“every year there were interesting people, and every year there were interesting things happening.” He says he loved the camaraderie and kinship with fellow teachers, and grew to appreciate the countryside.

Mentors and work friends over his time included Jeff Kosak, former instructor in French, and his first department head, Alban Barker. “He had a big influence on me, and he had such a tremendous sense for people and for working with students,” he said. “I’ve also learned more about Spain from Angela Janelli (a department colleague) than I have ever learned from books and literature.”

P H OTO G R A P H S : ( TO P ) W E N DY C A R L S O N ; T H E M I S C H I A N Z A

A Jokester, with a Quick Wit

Tim has always been known as somewhat of a jokester, with a quick wit. “I remember there was a kid who used to fall asleep in class occasionally. And it was kind of a standing joke with the class. So one day, he fell asleep in class,” he recalls. “So I told the kids to be quiet and we all sort of sneaked out and turned off the lights and closed the door behind us. We just let him sleep. Ten minutes into the next period or something, he woke up and realized he was alone in the classroom and everyone was gone.”

Over his 37 years at Hotchkiss, Acker taught hundreds of preps first-year Spanish, which he enjoyed because he could see so much progress (hopefully).

“The kids would start with nothing, and then by the end of the year they would seem to know a fair amount, and you felt as if you’ve really accomplished something.” But his favorite course to teach was AP Spanish Literature.

“When the kids get to the AP literature

level, you can actually discuss literature and themes and ideas and style with kids whose language skills are good enough that you can really have Pascal-level discussions in the language. And that’s just a lot of fun.”

Besides teaching, Acker has helped the School and students in myriad ways. For many years, he ran the Saturday night movies in the auditorium before the era of DVDs and laptops. He was also the faculty advisor to a weekly Hotchkiss video news program called “The Weekend Review.”

He advised the Spanish Club and the Whipping Post and served on and off the Disciplinary Committee for a dozen years. On the field, he coached sports including junior varsity girls lacrosse, Thirds soccer, and baseball, but Tim admits he started out as “a terrible coach. But when I first came to Hotchkiss, everybody had to be a coach. Thirds baseball was always an adventure. It was just a bad-news bears. You always considered yourself lucky when you got through a day, and nobody got hit in the head with a ball.” He’s also famous for walking his dogs around campus and bringing them to sports games.

After his last day, he has to figure out where he wants to live, since he has both a house in Falls Village and one in Wisconsin.

He also wants to travel around a bit and visit friends he’s lost touch with.

“I’m sure that by next year this time I’ll be asking myself, ‘how did you ever have time to work.’”

Daniel Lippman ’08, an Acker advisee, is a reporter for Politico in Washington, DC.

The prankster gets pranked!

Singing his h eart out in 19 80

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Bleeding Blue

William Markey P’07,’11

“Bill knew that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

by

– Patrick DeSouza P’13,’16,’19

Wendy Carlson

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HE MANY HOURS STUDENTS spend competing in athletics can have a lasting impact on them long after they leave Hotchkiss, and coaches play a crucial role in making it a positive one.

Throughout his more than 30 years working at Hotchkiss, William (Bill) Markey, was known by everyone, not just for his dedication coaching on the athletic fields, but also for his years serving as the supervisor of security.

In the latter role, Bill did more than hike up flights of stairs to unlock a student’s door; he protected the entire campus community. Bleeding blue, or kindling a spirit of obligation to the Hotchkiss community, was central to Bill’s work.

As a coach, he was versatile. He began coaching in the winter of 1991, and over his career at Hotch-

2006 Varsity Tennis

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kiss he coached basketball, baseball, squash, water polo, and tennis. He coached on three different levels, including the Thirds basketball and baseball, junior varsity squash and tennis, and varsity water polo and tennis. Bill led teams to undefeated seasons, and his teams garnered honors in basketball, varsity water polo, junior varsity tennis, and varsity tennis. Before his retirement, he was an instructor in squash and the boys varsity tennis coach while still holding the position of supervisor of security.

Importance of team play

At the Hotchkiss retirement dinner in May, Patrick DeSouza P’13,’16,’19, whose two sons played on the tennis team under Bill’s coaching, praised him for being a “straight shooter.”

“My first experience with Bill came a short seven years ago with my eldest, Thomas, Class of ’13, who wanted to find out about the tennis program. Bill was not only generous with his time but also direct. He did not over-promise but rather spoke plainly of the importance of team play and the quality of the competition during daily practice.”

Hotchkiss can be a demanding place for student athletics and “in a sport like tennis kids have the tendency to be individualists,” DeSouza said.

“Bill knew that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It is a tough job to communicate the concepts of ‘character’ and ‘team first’ while building a winning tradition. Bill successfully communicated the concepts of ‘team’ over

many years in tennis, water polo, and squash.”

Bill’s fondest memory was not about winning. It was a typical bus ride with the boys when they competed against other schools.

The trips would be characterized by the same pattern: on the way to the opposing school, the first half of the trip would be marked by the typical “chit chat” about girls. Midway through the trip, the boys would all be happily asleep. On the way back from battle, the first half of the return would be about stopping for food. Midway through, the team once again would be happily asleep.

“When I listened to that simple, joyous reality of the human condition with respect to teenagers, I was happy that Bill was watching over my kids and those of countless other parents through the years,” said DeSouza.

Enduring friendships

Remarking on Bill’s years as supervisor of campus security, DeSouza said, “Speaking as a parent, we all recognize the thankless job of safety. Kids often underestimate the dangers that do exist, even in the remarkable places in quiet corners of the world such as Lakeville.”

At Hotchkiss, Bill formed enduring friendships with faculty and staff. His two daughters Erin ’11 and Dale ’07, became part of the community, and he and his wife of 34 years, Robin, live a stone’s throw away in East Canaan. Over the years, many students have left Hotchkiss having formed strong bonds with and lasting memories of Bill – from the playing fields and on campus.

( T O P ) P H O T O G R A P H B Y J O N AT H A N D O S T E R ; ( B O T T O M ) T H E M I S C H I A N Z A

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Messages from the Alumni Association

Alumni Career Network

The Hotchkiss Alumni Association is pleased to introduce the next generation of trusted web-based career networks: the Hotchkiss Alumni Career Network (a replacement for Career Connections on Alumnet). We have partnered with Evisors as the first secondary school in the country to provide this cloud-based service for our alumni.

This new network allows you to choose the services you would like to offer (i.e., career conversations, resume critiques, and mock interviews), and it allows you to set your own schedule for when you are available. Signing up is easy and quick at www.hotchkiss.evisors.com, especially if you use your LinkedIn profile to populate your profile. Connections are made through the platform.

No email addresses or phone numbers are shared.

First LGBTQ Event Held in NYC Last April, Hotchkiss held its first LGBTQ alumni gathering in New York, sponsored by the Gender Committee of the Board of Governors. The event was an opportunity for alumni, parents, and friends to learn more about the current climate on campus for LGBTQ students and to discuss ways to support students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and/or questioning. Quincy McLaughlin, dean of student health, reviewed current best practices to ensure that Hotchkiss students enjoy a safe, inclusive, and equitable community. Emma Wynn, head of humanities and social sciences and instructor in philosophy and religion, described the work of faculty advisors with the identity/affinity groups on campus for LGBTQ students, supporters, and allies. Panelists included Daniel Camilletti ’13, Brad Rathgeber ’97, and Corey Cooper ’08. Other faculty members in attendance included: Keith Moon P’13, ’16, Annie Hall, Juliet Henderson, Christy and John Cooper P’08, ’11 and Kevin Hicks as moderator.

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A Haven for

Naturalists Hotchkiss’s acres of woodland have inspired many naturalists throughout the School’s long history. by Wendy Carlson

A

T HOTCHKISS, HUGO WASSERMAN ’15

“The river running its looping way, water collapsing onto itself, eddies swirling as light breaks itself, shatter and regroup; the branches of a tree fragmenting the open sky”

To find those swirling eddies and canopies of trees he didn’t have to travel far. The natural world, Wasserman noted, “is so intricate that you can see something new and beautiful every minute that you spend in the relatively small expanse of woods.”

} Nature has always set Hotchkiss apart.

Its setting on a hill moved Huber G. Buehler, the second headmaster, to declare at a 1916 meeting on secondary education that the “best thing

This photo of Sucker Brook was taken in 1926.

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PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE HOTCHKISS SCHOOL ARCHIVES

considered himself a naturalist in the broadest sense of the word.

When the rigors of academics became too overwhelming and the stately columns and arched hallways of Main Building too confining, he found solace in nature.

Clearing trails with the Woods Squad or meandering along the ragged-edge shores of Lake Wononscopomuc, he felt liberated, if only for a short time, from the order and pace of Hotchkiss life.

“I came to rely on nature in everyday life, to keep me sane and give me perspective on life in general,” said Wasserman. During morning assembly on Eco Day, he recited a poem he wrote, an ode to nature that read in part:

I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y C L A I R E E M O R Y ' 9 0 ; P H O T O G R A P H C O U R T E S Y O F T H E H O T C H K I S S S C H O O L A R C H I V E S

Artist Claire Emery �90 at work in the field.

Her artwork includes the nature illustrations featured in this story.

about The Hotchkiss School is its location among the mountains of Salisbury.”

The Beeslick Brook Woods, some 200 acres of primordial woodland thick with hemlock, oak, ash, cedar, and sugar maple trees; and the more expansive, pastoral 280-acre Fairfield Farm, both of which fall within a major flyway for migratory birds, are abundantly rich in flora and fauna. With that comes the occasional black bear lumbering through the golf course, or moose swimming across the lake. But the School’s close proximity to miles of wooded trails allows students to tread almost seamlessly from campus hallways to pine-needle paths and boardwalk marshes, immersing themselves completely in nature.

“I would go what I called ‘woodsing’ almost every Sunday, spending hours and hours in the woods, exploring and discovering nature’s marvels,” said Claire Emery ’90, now an artist living in Montana who illustrates scientific journals and creates wildlife-inspired woodcut prints. Jim Morrill, her former biology instructor, further piqued her interest. “He was a such a passionate teacher, in love with the mysteries and systems of life,” she recalled.

And, long before environmental stewardship became a tenet of the School, the land was both a retreat and a wellspring for budding naturalists, particularly birders.

One of the foremost nature authors of the 21st century, Peter Matthiessen ’45, grew up watching birds at his family’s backyard feeder.

At Hotchkiss, he arguably may have spent more time rebelling against the establishment

than he did scanning the sky for red-tail hawks or field sparrows. (Toward the end of World War II, at age 17, he dropped out of school and attempted to join the Coast Guard; his father, enraged, sent him back to Hotchkiss.)

But Matthiessen found common ground with George Van Santvoord ’08, headmaster from 1926 to 1955. The two shared a love of both words and nature. In 1943, Matthiessen was president of the Pigeon Club, which raised homing pigeons; and in 1945, he wrote a poem for The Literary Monthly (The Lit), a homage to the northeast copperhead snake. It was a species that he and his brother, George (Carey) Matthiessen ’46 — who became a marine biologist — were fascinated by, after discovering a den in the back of their parents’ house.

Of the copperhead, named for its reddish-

brown head, Matthiessen writes eloquently in “To The Beauty of Sun on Copper”: “From varied scant of spring-wak’d life, Of rain-blown freshness, new-formed green, And hungry patter, woodland scene, Slides forth the subtle serpent lean.”

} Van Santvoord, or “the Duke,” was credited with being ahead of his time, “articulating the fundamentals of today’s conservationist agenda,” noted the late Donal O’Brien ’52 in Hotchkiss, A Chronicle of an American School (1992).

The Duke began each day with a morning constitutional or a horseback ride. In his journal — along with the baseball scores, births and deaths, and trials and tribulations of S u m m e r

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everyday campus life – he recorded the birds he observed. Van Santvoord also collected Audubon’s original prints, some of which are now part of the School’s Special Collections. He raised pigeons and was instrumental in launching the Woods Squad, recruiting students to chop firewood, clear trails, and build cabins.

Under the Duke’s leadership aspiring naturalists were nurtured, including Howard Brokaw ’34, whose ornithology interest was so intense that he walked around campus with a

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journal tucked under his arm to record birds.

The Duke thought his devotion so significant that he mentioned it in the recommendation he wrote for Brokaw to Princeton.

Brokaw remained an avid birder his entire life, serving as a board member for a long list of nature organizations, including the American Bird Conservancy and the National Audubon Society.

The Duke also helped students raise ducks, swans, and bees — and he allowed one student, L.F. Boker Doyle ’49, to turn his dorm room into a naturalist’s laboratory.

“Boker Doyle raised a blind fox, nurtured baby crows in his room and just about any animal he could find. Of course, we weren’t allowed to have any animals in our room, but the rules didn’t seem to apply to Boker because the Duke recognized that he had a talent,” said Dan Lufkin ’49, one of the co-founders of Earth Day and the first commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, which he helped form in 1971.

He remembers on the first day of classes stopping by Doyle’s room to find him tinkering with his screens on his windows.

“I said, ‘What on earth are you doing?’ Boker retorted impatiently, ‘Don’t bother me. Come back in the morning, if you really want to see.’”

When Lufkin returned the next morning after the 7 a.m. bell, Doyle’s room was filled with night moths. He had pinned two female moths to the screen to attract male moths for his collection.

} DONAL O’BRIEN FOLLOWED IN DOYLE’S footsteps, creating a wildlife collection that included a great horned owl, squirrels, birds, and reptiles. Van Santvoord once gave him a baby woodchuck to raise, which O’Brien carried around in his shirt pocket.

Although Doyle, O’Brien, & Lufkin would go on to high-powered business careers, their interest in nature endured.

O’Brien became the family lawyer for the Rockefellers, but he spent 25 years on the board of the National Audubon Society, 12 as chairman. Both Lufkin, co-founder and chairman of Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette, and O’Brien have been honored with the Audubon Medal, the organization’s highest recognition.

And Doyle, former president of Fiduciary Trust Company, has served as a trustee of the American Museum of Natural History since 1968.

Deep fascination with the natural world isn’t limited to students, though. Over the years, members of the faculty — both in humanities and sciences — became avid naturalists, and imparted their enthusiasm to students.

“I was very much oriented to the outdoors, having grown up nearby in South Kent, near the Housatonic River,” Lanny McDowell ’64 said. “But Robert Hawkins, the fabled Hotchkiss English teacher, was very much a birder, and on Saturday mornings we would go out birding.

An early photograph Sucker Brook

I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y C L A I R E E M O R Y ' 9 0 ; P H O T O G R A P H C O U R T E S Y O F T H E H O T C H K I S S S C H O O L A R C H I V E S

Former English instructor Richard Gurney was an avid outdoorsman.

He kept a journal of what he observed on his daily saunters.

Doyle, now 84 and still an avid birder and naturalist, also confessed to secretly keeping a pygmy rattlesnake in his room, which he fed white mice he raised. From time to time he would snatch baby crows from their nest to raise, releasing them later as adolescents. “The Duke would walk around campus wondering why we had so many crows all of a sudden,” Doyle quipped.

“I was sequestered a lot at Hotchkiss, which meant I couldn’t join in athletics because I’d done something wrong,” he added. “Once it was pitching pennies, considered gambling back then, and another time I threw some cocoa powder out of a window.”

At times, that worked to his advantage, because he was required to walk the “triangle” course, which afforded him an opportunity to browse the wooded lanes and collect more specimens.

I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y C L A I R E E M O R Y ' 9 0 ; N O T E B O O K P R O V I D E D B Y T H E H O T C H K I S S S C H O O L A R C H I V E S

The Beeslick Brook Woods, more than 200 acres of primordial woodland thick with hemlock, oak, ash, cedar, and sugar maple trees; and the 280-acre Fairfield Farm, are both abundantly rich in flora and fauna.

It was great because here was a faculty member who recognized I had an interest and fostered it.” McDowell is still an avid birder on Martha’s Vineyard, where he photographs birds extensively and occasionally writes about them.

Russell Hansen, who taught physics at Hotchkiss between 1968 and 1986, took stunning bird photographs, some of which were published in National Geographic. He shared his expertise with student birders, including Alexander (Alex) Brash ’77, the current president of the Connecticut Audubon Society.

} LIKE MATTHIESSEN, BRASH HAD AN interest in birds from the time he was a child.

But his obsession really took hold when as a prep he witnessed a Brown Creeper hit one of the library’s windows and luckily recover from its dazed state. Holding the injured bird and noting its camouflage plumage and unique tree-gripping talons, he became enchanted with the beauty and diversity of birds. Soon after, he connected with Hansen, and their shared fondness for birds ignited a lifelong interest.

Another birder, Rhys Bowen ’78, son of Anne and the late Jerry Bowen ’42, who taught English at Hotchkiss for 36 years, grew up on campus; and, as a toddler he caught frogs and salamanders in the Stink Swamp. But it was when he returned to Hotchkiss to teach biology after graduating from Harvard that a professional interest in ornithology blossomed, in part because of the pure abundance of birds

here. After leaving Hotchkiss, Bowen spent 15 years studying the Northern Harrier, which has been listed on the Massachusetts Endangered Species list since 1995.

The Hotchkiss community has had even more opportunities to observe wildlife since the School’s acquisition of Fairfield Farm, a process that began in 2004 and was made possible through the generosity of owners Jeanne and John Blum ’47, a former Hotchkiss trustee and former Connecticut commissioner of agriculture.

Retired biology instructor Jim Morrill was instrumental in designing a nature trail highlighting the salient aspects of the Farm’s three main ecosystems: forests, grasslands, and wetlands. Early on, Charles Noyes ’78, art instructor, lifelong outdoorsman, and curriculum coordinator for the Fairfield Farm Ecosystems and Adventure Team (FFEAT), developed a birding list to help students identify species found on the Farm and along Long Pond Trail and Beaver Pond Trail.

“Having students and adults look for and recognize a few of the myriad bird species that populate our woods, fields, fencerows, and backyards makes a simple trek between dorms or around the barns a vastly richer experience,” Noyes said.

The Hotchkiss English department also has a long tradition of appreciating nature, beginning with Richard Gurney, and continuing with Robert Hawkins, Lyle (Blair) Torrey Jr. ’50, and Geoffrey Marchant, and currently with

Christopher Burchfield and Poet-in-Residence Susan Kinsolving. All used nature as inspiration for students’ creative writing.

Nature walks or “saunters” were a popular elective under Marchant, who encouraged his students to write about their observations.

Some learned to identify birds and their songs.

Among them was Charlotte Searle ’13, who described her astonishment on seeing a Baltimore Oriole: “Mr. Marchant suddenly came to a halt, arms open with anticipation. We could see his eyes widening as a sound rang in our ears – a sound which at the time seemed foreign. He stepped a few feet forward, seeking the source of the sound in the trees above. All of a sudden a spot of orange flashed in my peripherals and I pointed up at a branch hovering in a nearby tree with excitement. Within a second, all binoculars were out. The entire group was bug-eyed and searching, trying to detect the orange amongst the endless green. When it was spotted, the entire class became silent.”

Now a sophomore at the University of Virginia, Searle said those experiences gave her a deep appreciation for nature that has persisted even during her busy college years. “I do not necessarily remember the names and habits of all the birds we studied,” Searle said. “But what has really stuck with me is the importance of patient observation. It is hard to remember to take a moment out of our hectic lives to stop and look up – or to simply listen.”

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The Seaweed Guy Shep Erhart ’60 started Maine Coast Sea Vegetables more than 40 years ago.

Today, he is part of a rising tide of farmers harvesting edible plants from the sea.

Wendy Carlson P H O T O G R A P H S by Douglas Merriam WRITTEN

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Shepard “Shep” Erhart ’60 remembers with clarity

the first time he harvested seaweed off the rocky coast of Maine.

He and his wife, Linnette, were wading in the tidal pools on Schoodic Point in Down East Maine one summer day when he noticed a particular species of brownish-colored algae called “alaria.”

The six-foot-long fronds resembled wakame, a Japanese seaweed.

The year was 1970, and the Yale-educated Erhart had recently left Columbia University, where he was a pre-med student, to join the burgeoning back-to-the-land movement.

“At that time a group of us were all reading Euell Gibbons. We wanted to exist off the land, foraging and living ‘low on the hog,’ or really ‘not on the hog’ at all since we were vegetarians,” Erhart said.

He and Linnette had planned to move to Prince Edward Island, purchase land, and become farmers. But during the Vietnam War era, Canada was turning away Americans at

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the border who didn’t have jobs there so Erhart and his wife drifted south and settled in the coastal, blue-collar town of Franklin, overlooking Hog Bay. There they lived off the land, following a macrobiotic diet – a regimen that relies on whole grains, seasonal fresh vegetables, and expensive imported wakame.

All that changed when Erhart made a pot of miso soup from the seaweed he harvested.

“It was delicious. And I thought, here we are spending all this money on imported seaweed when we had something just like it right at our doorstep,” Erhart recalled.

Within months, folks in the macrobiotic network in Boston and New York were calling and asking if they could buy a pound. “So we’d grabbed our hop boots, baskets, and sickles and headed to the rocks at low tide to harvest.

And one thing led to another – all by word of mouth, the original Internet!” Erhart said.

He sold 200 pounds in 1971, and by 1980 he had hired several employees, moved the business from his house to the barn, and was pioneering the state’s and the country’s first sea-vegetable industry.

Since then, Maine Coast Sea Vegetables Inc. has moved from a barn to a former salmon processing plant. It now sells more than 100,000 pounds of seaweed a year, including dulse, kelp, laver, bladderwrack, and sea lettuce. All are sustainably harvested from beds at low tide, and all handling and processing have been certified organic since 1993 – another first in the seaweed industry.

This summer, the company will move again,

“ I t g av e m e t h e c o n f i d e n c e to l i v e v e ry s i m p l y , t o g e t b y w i t h l i t t l e , i n e x p e n s i v e l y, to g row / f o r ag e m o s t o f w h at w e at e . " this time into a custom-built, 18,000-squarefoot plant operated by a staff of 19 employees.

Since seaweed can be a hard sell for American consumers, Erhart is adding a research and development kitchen that allows cooks to test recipes and give demonstrations and classes, as well as an educational area and a retail store.

He has also co-authored a seaweed cookbook in which sea vegetables like dulse and laver are used in traditional recipes such as Apple Blueberry Walnut Pie and Shepherd’s Pie.

THE MISCHIANZA

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T’S AN ACQUIRED TASTE,” conceded Erhart, who compares the varying flavors of the sea algae to wine. Each sea algae harvested from the Gulf of Maine has its own terroir, a distinct flavor depending on the microclimate — the geology and geography of where it was grown. “I can taste the difference from seaweed harvested in Frenchman’s Bay from that in Cobscook Bay,” said Erhart.

Not everyone would agree that seaweed has its own “terroir,” but its nutritional benefits are irrefutable. The rubbery strands contain vitamins and minerals, including iodine, iron, folate, magnesium, potassium, and calcium.

Studies have shown seaweed has medicinal uses as an antioxidant and an anti-inflammatory agent, and has antiviral properties, said Erhart.

He became aware of those benefits back when he was studying medicine. In a way, his interest in sea botanicals recalls the early work of his great-grandfather, Charles F. Erhart, one of the co-founders of Pfizer, Inc. Early in its history, the pharmaceutical company pioneered a way of producing penicillin using wine lees, the dead yeasts that result during wine fermentation, which were imported from Italy, and many of the company’s early products were naturally derived.

Shep came to Hotchkiss from nearby West Cornwall in the fall of 1956 during a time when living off the land, or the sea, might have seemed unthinkable to any other Yale-bound student. Looking back, he said his life took a vastly different

turn than the path he was headed on while at Hotchkiss, where he was a proctor, and a member of the glee club and Blue Notes; and, later while at Yale, where he did an exchange year at the Sorbonne.

But, in many ways, Erhart believes his four years at Hotchkiss “gave him the confidence to be different from the expectations of the particular culture of privilege that was private school during that period of time.”

“It gave me the confidence to attempt to make a living with manual labor, to live very simply (no phone or lights our first years in Maine), to get by with little, inexpensively ($3500/yr. our first year), to grow/forage most of what we ate, and to radically change our diet, dropping meat and alcohol (still to this day), and to live in a working-class community.”

He credits teachers like Robert Hawkins, Clint Ely ’45, and Richard Gurney, long-time English instructors who assigned books such as The Yearling, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Moby Dick – novels that focused on characters who broke from the norm.

Still, it takes determination and a strong mission to turn seaweed into a hip product like the Kelp Krunch bar, an organic snack bar made from sugar kelp. Last summer, Erhart helped organize Portland’s first Maine Seaweed Festival, introducing consumers to ways they can use seaweed on traditional American

foods like burritos, pizza, and ice cream. He’s also working to develop a process to make seaweed sheets used in sushi out of a native seaweed similar to Japanese nori.

These days, Erhart spends less time out on the ocean harvesting seaweed and more time working with regulators to establish sustainable harvesting standards for the industry in Maine. As president of the Maine Seaweed Council, he is working to keep seaweed harvesting from becoming another failed fishery, he said.

Maine is the first state in the country to commercially farm kelp, and Erhart’s company harvested its second kelp crop from its sea farm in Frenchman Bay this summer.

Erhart’s daughter, Seraphina, is now the general manager of the business, helping to oversee daily operations and keeping track of the more than 50 farmers with whom the company contracts to produce native seaweeds.

As Maine’s unofficial “seaweed guy,” Erhart is working to turn the American mindset away from viewing seaweed as smelly, slippery weeds that slither around your ankles in the ocean to valuing it as a food source that tastes good — and is good for you.

“Americans aren’t going to sit down to a big bowl of seaweed for breakfast,” Erhart said. “But their croissants might soon be flavored with flecks of dulse.”

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At Journey’s End 17,000 miles and 617 birds Dorian Anderson ’97 pedaled across the United States looking for birds and discovered a new career path along the way.

WRITTEN

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PHOTOGRAPHS

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Robert Miller Dorian Anderson

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T

HE WHITE-TAILED ptarmigan is an expert in camouflage. In winter, the small grouse’s plumage is snow-white. In summer, it switches to brown and black speckles to match the bare, high ground where it lives.

If you’re going to see it at all in the continental United States, you have to go high into Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, then cross your binocular-holding fingers.

Which, in 2014 is what Dorian Anderson did, on bicycle and on foot.

“I had to go up to 13,000 feet in the Guanella Pass,’’ Anderson said. “I took a step forward, and there it was, by the side of the trail. It was pretty cool.’’

The ptarmigan was one of 617 – maybe 618 – pretty cool birds Anderson saw in 2014, in a remarkable feat of birding and endurance. He rode his Surly Disc Trucker bicycle more than 17,000 miles from the East Coast to the Gulf Coast to the Pacific Coast, ending in Texas.

It was the Green Big Year, a term birders use to describe an attempt to see as many birds as possible in one year in the continental U.S., Alaska, and Canada in the most environmentally-friendly manner possible.

It may be the first time any birder has completed such an extended expedition without petroleum-based fuel powering it.

“There have been other carbon-free big years, in Arizona and California,’’ said Jeffrey Gordon, president of the American Birding Association. “But nobody else covered as big a field as Dorian. And he was out just about every day.’’

Alex Brash, president of the Connecticut Audubon Society and a 1977 Hotchkiss graduate, called it a “phenomenal undertaking that reflects a passion for life.’’

He added that Anderson’s ride should also be seen as part of the continuum of American naturalists and writers that includes Edward Way Teale, Roger Tory Peterson, and William Least Heat Moon.

“There’s a central quest,’’ Brash said.

That quest started when Anderson, now 36, was a child. He grew up in Philadelphia.

By the age of seven he was already fascinated by birds.

“I’m a scientist,’’ he said. “For me, curiosity is everything.’’

Opposite page: Dorian Anderson rides across the heartland photographing birds.

This page: The Common Redpoll.

A

Some of the birds Anderson photographed included a Great Gray Owl and a Black Oyster Catcher. On left, Anderson posted a map of the route he took biking across the country on his blog: bikingforbirds. blogspot.com

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NDERSON ATTENDED Hotchkiss for three years, from 1994 through 1997. He was co-president of School in his senior year. But he acknowledged that he put aside his passion for birding to concentrate on academics, particularly in the sciences at Hotchkiss, where he spent more time peering into a microscope than through binoculars.

That pattern continued through his college years, at Stanford University studying cell and molecular biology, then at New York University, where he received his doctoral degree in developmental genetics. But while he was doing postdoctoral work in neuroscience at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, he decided to change his life.

One reason was that, with federal support for scientific research diminishing, the effort to get funding is becoming never-ending.

“I didn’t want to spend my life begging for money,’’ Anderson said.

He also said he felt increasingly out of place in a world that is completely data-driven.

“My best skills are in leadership, in working with people,’’ he said.

Anderson also admits openly that he is a recovering alcoholic. When he stopped drinking, he began to rediscover old passions he’d neglected, including birding and photography. He also said that, watching his friends all settle into a life of homes, kids, and mortgages, he decided he could put that off for a while.

“I wanted to go on an adventure,’’ he said. “I’ve learned that if someone tells

Alex Brash, president of the Connecticut Audubon Society and a 1977 Hotchkiss g r a d u at e , c a l l e d i t a “p h e n o m e n a l u n d e rta k i n g t h at r e f l e c t s a pa s s i o n f o r l i f e . ’’ you your idea is crazy, it’s a good idea.’’

He had help in logistics from his girlfriend Sonia Giddens, who works in corporate travel and knew the Best Western chain sometimes sponsors environmentally-friendly projects.

This meant free lodging at a Best Western whenever Anderson needed it.

But he also found the birding community was watching him, following his journey on his blog: bikingforbirds.blogspot.com. He used the trip to raise money and support for the American Birding Association and The Conservation Fund, and often he met up with birders who offered him a place to stay.

The biking community also helped out via the website warmshowers.org, a worldwide hospitality network set up to help touring cyclists.

Anderson left Boston on January 1, 2014, and headed south quickly – it was the year of the Polar Vortex, and he needed to get away from the bone-chilling cold. But while in Connecticut, he noted that he saw a barnacle goose in Fairfield.

“I saw it the same day,” Brash of Connecticut Audubon said. “I can verify that he saw it.’’

Anderson was in Florida by March and along the Gulf Coast of Texas by April. He then turned north in May, reaching the Puget Sound by August. He then turned south, heading down the Pacific coast. By October, he turned east into New Mexico and Arizona. By late November, he was in Texas, where his Big Year ended.

In all, he pedaled more than 17,800 miles

and walked 493 miles more. He was in 28 states – the logistics of the trip kept him out of the Great Lakes states, the Midwest and the High Plains, not to mention Alaska. Forget Hawaii entirely.

He figured his year on the road cost about $15,000, including the new bicycle and camera equipment.

“I spent a lot on food,’’ he said. “I was eating 5,000 to 7,000 calories a day. I probably spent $1,000 on candy bars.’’

The trip allowed Anderson to see the landscape of the United States in a very direct way, without a car windshield intervening.

“I think we’ve lost sight of that,’’ he said.

And if he missed some birds by not jumping on a jet or even on a ferry, he probably S u m m e r

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“ I wa n t e d t o g o o n a n a d v e n t u r e .

I ’v e l e a r n e d t h a t i f s o m e o n e t e l l s y o u y o u r i d e a i s c r a z y , i t ’s a g o o d i d e a .” saw others, via bike, that people in a rush might miss.

“A lot of the grouse are hard to see,’’ he said. “They don’t fly unless you flush them.’’

And on Thanksgiving 2014, near the end of his journey, Anderson was in Weslaco, Texas. There, he and other birders clearly saw a red-legged honeycreeper – a strikingly beautiful tropical bird that normally flies no further north than southern Mexico. If the American Birding Association verifies the sighting – Anderson was one of the birders

Anderson is now lecturing about birding and environmentalism, showing images he took including the Painted Bunting and the Piping Plover chick.

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who photographed it – it will be the first time it’s ever been seen in the U.S. It will also boost Anderson’s Green Big Year total to 618.

“We don’t know if it will count,” he said.

“But we think that it will.’’

Along with the adventure, Anderson said he hopes his Green Big Year will inspire others to follow suit, even if it’s only on their home ground. Jeffrey Gordon of the American Birding Association said that it may give people another path to follow.

“I think that it can be, and I think that it

will be,’’ Gordon said. “It’s like going backpacking. You could stay in a RV or a motel.

But you forego that. There really is something to be said in paring things down. That’s what Dorian is trying to do.’’

Anderson’s 2015 year will be busy with writing and lecturing. He wants to spread the message of the importance of low-carbon living, of preserving and appreciating the environment. His story of The Green Big Year, he hopes, will bring people to listen.

“Now,’’ he said, “I have this platform.’’

DAY of

SERVICE

Working Together Toward for a Better World Community service has been part of the fabric of The Hotchkiss School since 1891. To further strengthen that commitment, the Alumni Association Board of Governors and the Office of Alumni Relations organize an annual Day of Service. This year, volunteers from the School’s community worked together for one day in May at one of 17 service sites nationwide and in Beijing and Hong Kong. In Lakeville, students, current and former faculty members, staff, parents of students and alumni, and even a grandparent turned out to clear invasive plants from Beeslick Brook Woods. Leading the group was Sharon resident Roger Liddell ’63, P’98 joined by his son Torrey ’98 and wife Fa. Also lending a hand was former Head of School Skip Mattoon and FFEAT Curriculum Coordinator Charles Noyes ’78, P’03, ’07 along with Outing Club Advisor Sarinda Parsons Wilson P’14,’17.

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Lance Beizer ’56: The Importance of Teaching Ethics

M

Y FACULTY MEMBER OF choice was absolutely Dr. Hoey,” says the Rev. Canon Lance K. Beizer ’56. Not only did Allan Hoey teach some of the subjects he most loved, but he also encouraged thinking about ethics and morality. “That captured my imagination,” Beizer says. “On the other hand, although I had been raised in an Episcopal church, in my senior year when I approached the headmaster, Thomas Chappell, who had been dean of an Episcopal cathedral, with theological questions, and his answer seemed always to be, ‘Well, that’s a mystery,’ that was a pretty frustrating response for an intellectually curious 17-year-old.”

Now, some 60 years later, after a lifetime of challenging experiences in several careers, ministry in the Episcopal faith being the last and current one, Beizer has come around to understanding Dr. Chappell’s response. “I have come to appreciate that all life is really mysterious,” he says softly. “Our relationship to the world is like the experience of skipping stones across a pond.

As the stones sink, you see ripples going out from them. The ripples touch everything in their path.

“Our lives are like that. Whomever we interact with, however infinitesimal the interaction, we have some effect on others,” Beizer says. “Dr. Hoey’s influence on me was really great in his emphasis on ethics. I hope that students at Hotchkiss, who may go on to have a larger effect in the world than many others, think about and feel what that effect is going to be.”

Because of his strong belief in the importance of understanding ethics, Lance Beizer and his wife Ann have established a charitable annuity trust that will ultimately fund the Lance K. Beizer ’56 Fund at Hotchkiss. The Beizer ’56 Fund will provide learning opportunities to explore ethics through the teaching

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and promotion of ethics, including areas such as curriculum development, programs, speakers, and student and faculty training.

“This could be anything from a lecture series to the support of a philosophy course that concentrates on ethical behavior,” he notes.

Lance Beizer came to Hotchkiss in the fall of 1952 from nearby Canaan, CT. During

his four years at the School, he took part in a number of extracurricular activities, including as a member of the Chess Club, manager of the soccer team, and as a writer for the Hotchkiss Record.

“My parents believed fervently in education, and thankfully I got a full scholarship to Hotchkiss,” he says. “By the time I graduated, I had taken Greek, Latin, and French, but no chemistry, physics, or biology at all. I couldn’t face another four years in an all-male school; so Brandeis University was attractive to me. It was coed, had a reputation for being cutting-edge, and the Boston area

was the mothership of Unitarianism. I was thinking seriously of attending a Unitarian divinity school.”

As college graduation approached, he considered his next steps. “My mother’s aunt wrote and asked what law school I was going to. I replied that I really wanted to go into the ministry. When she promised to pay the tuition to law school, I acceded to her wishes and enrolled at Stanford Law School, but stayed only one year.

“My work career got off to a late start in life. Although I went to law school, it was the wrong time of my life to be away … no car, no girlfriend, not much in the way of money, and not much motivation.

I served in the Navy as a supply corps officer, finishing my service in 1965, just as the Vietnam War was heating up. I was living in California then, and again enrolled in college,” he says. This time he earned an M.A. in English, though his undergraduate degree had been in sociology. He began work as the coordinator for selective service affairs for the nine campuses of the University of California; after the war ended, he became coordinator for veterans’ affairs.

At the same time, he earned a law degree at the University of San Diego.

In 1975 he began to look for a more secure, stable path and was hired by Santa Clara County’s district attorney. Thus began a 25-year run as a Deputy District Attorney in San Jose, CA. About halfway through his work with that office, he took on what would become his last, and ultimately most fulfilling assignment, representing victims of child abuse or sexual assault.

“For 12 and a half years, I represented children. I was asked to join a small group within the office who had the contract to represent the children who were being abused or neglected and whom the court would decide whether to remove them from parental control, which could mean foster care or even

P H O T O G R A P H B Y A N N E D AY

by Roberta Jenckes

adoption. It was a very uplifting and, at the same time, disturbing kind of occupation. These children come from a damaged environment. And for reasons having to do with biology, as teenagers they aren’t ready to make good decisions.

At that age their brains aren’t fully formed.

“I found an affinity for the victims. I really did think of that work as a kind of ministry. Enough so to say to me that I ought to go to seminary, if for no other reason than to get a broader perspective than I was able to get in the trenches. It followed naturally from what I was doing,” he recalls. After earning an M.Div. at the Episcopal Seminary in Berkeley and becoming a priest, he joined the staff of the cathedral in San Jose, doing much the same sort of work in the community as he had been doing in court. He sees the shift in career, but not in the work, as another part of life’s mystery. “On a personal level, my interest in ethics and morality continued, but whereas prosecutors tend to see things as black or white I now have a far more nuanced understanding of how life – and the universe generally – work. Thus my transition from Unitarianism back to my Episcopal roots – and to a take on Christianity that at its heart is driven more by mystery and metaphor than by assent to various factual assertions about events that occurred some 2,000 years ago,” he reflects. In a circle that now feels complete, he has returned to his hometown.

He and his wife, Ann, were married in the Hotchkiss Chapel in 2007 and moved to Canaan. He just completed two three-year terms on the Alumni Association Board of Governors.

Since moving back to the Northwest Corner he has involved himself in the life of the community – serving as president of the Salisbury Rotary Club, and now as president of the board of the Housatonic Youth Service Bureau, and a trustee of the Douglas Library in Canaan. He is also on the staff of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Salisbury. “After all, the Bible speaks of loving our neighbor. Where better to do that and get those ripples touching others than right here in our local communities? I turned 70 on the day we moved into our house in Canaan. From it I can see one corner of a little house that my dad built here in 1950.

That really is coming full circle.”

To learn more about planned giving to support an area of interest that has been important in your life, please contact Deborah Fogel, Director of Gift Planning, The Hotchkiss School, at (860) 435-3263 or by email at dfogel@hotchkiss.org.

Thank You For Your Feedback!

Last year, we surveyed alumni, parents, students, faculty, and staff. With the valuable comments you provided, we will launch a new mobile-friendly website later this year.

In the meanwhile, visit us often at www.hotchkiss.org.

We hope to continue the conversation and to hear more from you: email us at communications@hotchkiss.org.

What’s Going On in Your Life?

Submit a class note and photos and connect with your community: email us at magazine@hotchkiss.org.

Stay Connected

to Hotchkiss and friends.

ALUMNI

PARTING SHOT

The Largest Outdoor Classroom

PHOT OG R APH BY W ENDY C AR LS ON

With 280 acres, Fairfield Farm is the School’s largest outdoor classroom. Since 2008, students in the Fairfield Farm Ecosystems and Adventure Team (FFEAT) have connected to the natural environment through working the land. This spring the farm welcomed the arrival of several hundred chicks.

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Hotchkiss Reunions September 25-27

50th Reunion of the Class of 1965 60th reunion of the Class of 1955

June 10-12, 2016

Classes Ending in 1 or 6

Hope to see you in Lakeville!

For more information please contact: Caroline Sallee Reilly ’87, Director of Alumni Relations, at (860) 435-3892 or creilly@hotchkiss.org Visit www.hotchkiss.org/alumni (click on Events & Reunions)

Nonprofit Org. U.S. Postage

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

PAID

Permit No. 36 Pittsfield, MA

P H O T O G R A P H B Y A N N E D AY

ALUMNI