Lawrentian
FALL 2018
THE
Nothing for Granted A life-threatening injury took football away from Grant Newsome ’15, but not his future.
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16 A COTTAGE INDUSTRY
34 FAREWELL, FRIEND 10/2/18 1:12 PM
FEATURES
22 22 N othing for Granted
A life-threatening injury dashed Grant Newsome’s plans for football stardom, but he’s still just getting started.
On the Cover: Grant Newsome ‘15 didn’t let a serious injury stop him.
28 C ommencement 2018
Highlights of the day, along with a reflection from Lawrenceville’s first female graduate.
Photograph by Roger Hart/Michigan Photography
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34 F inding Himself
One alum found his place in the world – and a friendship – with the late Philip Roth.
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TAKE THIS JOB AND LOVE IT 2 From the
16 Take this Job and Love It
Head Master
Russell Gibson ’81 welcomes you to enjoy another type of ‘house system.’
3 From the
Basement of Pop Hall
18 Table Talk
4 A Thousand
Q&A with languages master Yangyang Daniell
Words
Students traveled to Tanzania as part of the Harkness Travel Program in June.
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20 Ask the Archivist
Exactly 100 years ago, the flu pandemic of 1918 touched Lawrenceville at its heart.
6 News in Brief
Lawrenceville’s new CTO, Magic in Woodhull, Welcoming new faculty
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12 On the Arts
Summers aren’t sleepy at the Performing Arts Camp.
14 Go Big Red!
38 Alumni News 40 Class Notes 80 Old School
A 20-year journey through college and the NFL has two old friends together again.
81 Student Snap
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KEEP UP WITH LAWRENCEVILLE EVERY DAY! YOU CAN FOLLOW MORE THAN 25 LAWRENCEVILLE SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS! GET CONNECTED TO ALL OF THEM AT HTTP://BIT.LY/SMDIRECT.
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FROM THE HEAD MASTER
A PLACE TO GROW AS THEY WILL
M
– Adapted from remarks delivered at the opening faculty dinner
ost of you will be familiar with the famous 1936 children’s book, The Story of Ferdinand, by Munro Leaf. Ferdinand famously refused to fight. Other young bulls “would run and jump and butt their heads
together,” hoping to be chosen for the bullfights in Madrid, “but not Ferdinand … He preferred to just sit quietly and
“Let’s remember that one of the most important aspects of our work here is to provide a healthy, supportive, safe environment in which to develop the courage to be exactly who they want to be.”
smell the flowers … out in the pasture under a cork tree.” A recent New Yorker article1 recounted that upon Ferdinand’s publication at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, and much to the surprise of a skeptical publisher, the book was immediately, wildly successful, a sign that it must have touched the public on some deeply human level. On the brink of World War II, humanity may have instinctively sensed the impending disaster and yearned for an alternative. An equally telling measure of how the story has continued to resonate over time is the degree to which it has been politicized, drawn into culture wars, and had all manner of human fears and misgivings projected on the simple character of this gentle bull. The article goes on to say that in wartime, hawks saw it as “subversive pacifism,” while fascists saw it as communist propaganda. Anti-fascists and populists saw it as advocating capitulation. Some saw it poking fun at trade unions, satirizing sit-down strikes. Hitler had it burned; Gandhi apparently loved it. I won’t even get into what the Freudian psychoanalysts of the 1940s and 1950s had to say about infantile pleasures and sexual repression. And then, of course, there were the insinuations that Ferdinand was gay. One critic wrote, “Certain irate fathers assert that the book is a deliberate attempt to make mollycoddles out of little boys.” As for me, I kind of wish people would just let Ferdinand be Ferdinand. The story ends with
our gentle friend under his favorite cork tree, happy, and as far as I can tell, quite comfortable with himself. And that’s probably all that really matters. As we work with young people striving to develop and define who they are; as they struggle with heightened pressures and anxieties that they all too often inflict upon themselves; as the stakes rise in the no-room-for-error, unforgiving environment of social media; as they seek to get comfortable with their identity, whatever that may end up being; let us remember that we can provide something here that is about as close to a sanctuary as one can get. Let’s remember that one of the most important aspects of our work here is to provide a healthy, supportive, safe environment in which to develop the courage to be exactly who they want to be. They are not free from stress and challenge here, and we set the bar very high in this community. Part of our job is to stretch them and help them to get comfortable outside their comfort zone – but with all of you as caring, empathetic mentors, teachers, guides, coaches, and moral supporters at Lawrenceville they at least have a shot at finding their footing, building their confidence, and starting to understand who they are, before heading out to face the world. Sincerely,
Stephen S. Murray H’55 ’65 ’16 P’16 ’21 The Shelby Cullom Davis ’26 Head Master
“How ‘The Story of Ferdinand’ Became Fodder for the Culture Wars of Its Era” by Bruce Handy, December 15, 2017; The New Yorker
Courtesy Viking Books for Young Readers
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THE LAWRENTIAN FALL 2018 VOLUME 82 | NUMBER 4 PUBLISHER Jennifer Szwalek
FROM THE BASEMENT OF POP HALL
EDITOR Sean Ramsden ART DIRECTOR Phyllis Lerner STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Paloma Torres
PROOFREADERS Rob Reinalda ’76 Linda Hlavacek Silver H’59 ’61 ’62 ’63 ’64 GP’06 ’08
CONTRIBUTORS Andrea Fereshteh Webb Chappell ’74 Leonard Deutchman ’74 Lisa M. Gillard Hanson Jacqueline Haun Barbara Horn Joel Kimmel Nicole Lantz Cie Stroud Tai Tatum ’19 Carmen Cifuentes Torres ’18
The Lawrentian (USPS #306-700) is published quarterly (winter, spring, summer, and fall) by The Lawrenceville School, P.O. Box 6008, Lawrenceville, NJ 08648, for alumni, parents, grandparents, and friends. Periodical postage paid at Trenton, NJ, and additional mailing offices.
The Lawrentian welcomes letters from readers. Please send all correspondence to sramsden@ lawrenceville.org or to the above address, care of The Lawrentian Editor. Letters may be edited for publication. The Lawrentian welcomes submissions and suggestions for magazine departments. If you have an idea for a feature story, please query first to The Lawrentian Editor. Visit us on the web at www.lawrenceville.org. www.lawrenceville.org/alumni/the-lawrentian
E
ven before I came to work at Lawrenceville, I knew about Grant Newsome ’15. I follow the college football recruiting scene rather closely, so by the time Grant was a Fourth Former, I knew that collegiate programs from coast to coast were vying for the outsized offensive tackle’s prodigious talents. My first day as editor of The Lawrentian came about three weeks after the Class of 2015 received their diplomas, so I never had a chance to know Grant personally before he headed off to play football for the University of Michigan. However, his lingering impression was evident on our campus. As Grant slid into the Wolverines’ lineup as a freshman that fall, more than one of my colleagues in Pop Hall testified to the fact that the punishing run blocker I had read about was, in fact, a sterling student who, more than that, was also a thoughtful and gentle young man. How nice to hear, I thought, and began to root in earnest for a guy who, by all accounts, deserved it. So, in October 2016, as I tuned in to the Michigan-Wisconsin game sometime in the second half, it was disappointing to learn that Grant had had suffered a knee injury of some sort earlier in the game. Only in the weeks to come did word begin to filter back to Lawrenceville that concerns for the rest of Grant’s season had quickly escalated into fears for his left leg. It was absolutely chilling to learn that even his very life hung in the balance for a short time. When medical staffers weren’t sure he would walk again, Grant ran. When he was told his playing days were over, he kept grinding. And now, just two seasons later, Grant Newsome actually could’ve lined up again at left tackle for the blue and maize. Yes, he was medically cleared. But he elected not to. And it was his choice, however difficult. As he explains in these pages, some things are just too important to risk. The old saw says, “You can’t keep a good man down,” and Grant is still breathing new truth into this timeworn maxim. While he was rehabbing, he also earned his baccalaureate in just three years, and is now in pursuit of a master’s degree at Michigan’s prestigious Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. He’s the kind of guy who people can see being elected president someday. No matter what the future holds, only a fool would bet against Grant Newsome owning it. P.S. A tip of my Big Red cap to Daniel Fletcher, M.D., P’17 of Trenton Orthopaedic Group at Rothman Institute, whose expert care for the ruptured left biceps I suffered in June had me tapping away at my familiar keyboard to get you this fall’s issue of The Lawrentian in plenty of time. All the best,
POSTMASTER Please send address corrections to: The Lawrentian The Lawrenceville School P.O. Box 6008 Lawrenceville, NJ 08648
Sean Ramsden Editor sramsden@lawrenceville.org
©The Lawrenceville School Lawrenceville, New Jersey All rights reserved.
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A THOUSAND WORDS
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SUMMER TANZ
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Photograh by Nicole Lantz
At Lawrenceville, the learning doesn’t stop when school lets out for the summer. Students traveled to Tanzania as part of the Harkness Travel Program, which this year took the School’s House- and Harkness-driven mission to 19 countries and four continents, offering students the opportunity to lead, learn, serve, and discover through meaningful experiences.
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NEWS IN BRIEF
PAST AND PRESENT CONNECT IN NYC Alumnae who lent their time to Women in Leadership at Lawrenceville: WORTH STOKES ’98 Online wellness entrepreneur/ executive leadership expert and the founder/CEO of HeartMind Meditations TM
SHAIFALI AGGARWAL ’98 Founder/CEO of the Ivy Groupe, a boutique admissions consulting firm
LAURA KORNHAUSER ’99 Co-founder, president and COO of Stratyfy, a technologydriven management consulting firm
CAT MCMANUS ’99 Independent admissions consultant and former assistant dean of admissions at Princeton and Penn
ALEX PETRONE OLIVER ’99 Executive vice president/ investment management, PIMCO
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Lawrenceville alumnae met with 22 young women from the classes of 2018 through 2021 in New York City this past spring for an extended conversation in the spring about professional development, success in college, and life after Lawrenceville. Worth Stokes ’98 took the lead in organizing the event for the alumnae, with Grace Blaxill ’18, an active member of Women in Leadership at Lawrenceville (WILL), promoting it on the student side. Emilie Kosoff H’88 ’96 ’00 ’18 P’19, assistant dean of students and history master and an adviser to WILL, accompanied the students to New York.
HEELY SCHOLARS
SELECTED FOR 2018-19
Fifth Formers Rishi Bargaria, Ben Fiske, Shaezmina Khan, Hunter Korn, Hunter Mellon, Emilia Onuonga, Kevin Xiao, and Stephanie Yoon were
Following remarks by five impressively credentialed alumnae, they opened the floor to a Q&A that addressed the participants’ professional lives and experiences, the importance of female mentorship, and their support for building connections among the generations of Lawrenceville women.
selected as Lawrenceville’s
Mikael Canady ’20, who will assume a leadership position as president of Kirby House in the fall, was impressed by the honesty and approachability of the alumnae.
Fifth Formers who have
“It was nice to be able to come together in this conversation,” Canady said. “A lot of the situations the alumnae discussed were close to home, and they gave good advice on how we might handle different situations at Lawrenceville and in the workplace.” Kosoff said the 30 years since coeducation came to the School have seen its alumnae rise to positions of power and influence, becoming thought leaders across communities. “We are able to connect current students, particularly girls, to women who can mentor them through an incredibly accomplished alumnae network,” she said. “Today was about women helping women, how women can and should both support and rely on each other. For students at Lawrenceville, that starts here.”
2018-19 Heely Scholars. The Heely Scholar program is a two-week boarding seminar in archival research for rising demonstrated a keen interest and ability in their study of American history. The intent of the program is to introduce students to primary research from the School’s collection and local research institutions. Each year students consider a particular portion of the collection that allows them to place Lawrenceville within the historical context of national and global events. This summer’s research topic was Antebellum America.
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2018 THE D N E N ATT SE A D TO TO U E S T T C EN T IT ELE WHA STUD NS S D A S E Y E E R G RA ERS PLO COU EW J ,” EX E, EN 39 N MAN L L U F I H O V WO NCE ING RE T WRE F BE 9 WE RE O AT LA 1 U ’ D T L O FU IA , HE THE VIN X RAM ODY: D KE ROG B P N S. A D G B ’19 D AN GRA RDIN DINA BOA FOR “MIN E , R P M C E I U MM BE IAN TOP S JILL ION-FREE SU THIS YEAR’S ITY SEEM TO R A L HO TUIT UE. MAN .J. SC NJSP. THE SINGLE ISS KERS OF HU N S M NA GRA MAR INE A HOSE OLARS PRO H TO EXAM ADITIONAL C R I PA RSEY SCH APPROAC WHEN TR JE GE RY NEW LINA AN A SCIP N IN I A D R M HU INTE O BE NS T A E M
CHARGE IT!
Lawrenceville now boasts its first-ever charging station for electric vehicles. The station, located behind the Kirby Arts Center, is now available for current School community members. The charging station is part of Lawrenceville’s Green Campus Initiative, which focuses on campus energy, materials, and land and water use, applying methods that promote ecological literacy and sustainability education, and involve the broader community outside of the School. Sustainability director Sam Kosoff ’88 H’96 P’19, who supplemented the charger as a gift along with Tim ’85 P’17 and Sara Cabot P’17, said that as electric vehicles become more popular, the School hopes to install additional charging stations at various campus locations.
Cleve-Peat at House Olympics For the second year in a row, Cleve House captured the title of House Olympics champions on September 1. The annual competition is a colorful and spirited culmination of the orientation activities that begin every academic year. Kennedy House and Stanley House finished second and third, respectively.
Housemaster Grey Simpson '20 rallied Cleve to the House Olympics title for the second year in a row.
Comaniciu Presents Research at IEEE International Conference Alex Comaniciu ’19 was the lead presenter on the research paper, “Enabling Communication with Pseudocoma Patients Using EEG and Deep Learning,” at the 40th International conference of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society in July in Honolulu. Comaniciu conducted her research with Laleh Najafizadeh, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rutgers.
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MARQUIS SCOTTTAPPED AS CTO The veteran tech administrator will lead the School’s IT functions.
Lawrenceville welcomed senior administrator Marquis Scott as its new chief technology officer (CTO) this summer. In this position as a member of the institution’s senior staff, Scott will work with leadership there to prioritize and accomplish the technology needs of the School.
Marquis Scott
THE MARQUIS SCOTT FILE Education:
• Hotchkiss School • B .A., Economics and
Computer Science, Union College
.B.A., Rutgers University •M School of Business
.A., educational leadership, •M Montclair State University
Professional: •N ightingale-Bamford School, New York City, 2014-18: Chief technology officer, head of the Computer Science Department, and Upper School computer science teacher •N ewark Academy, Livingston, N.J., 2002-14: Director of information technology, director of the Summer Bridge Program, and director of diversity
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Scott will lead Lawrenceville’s Information Technology Service (ITS) department, articulating technology strategy and working with ITS staff to provide creative and reliable information technology services and resources. As CTO, Scott will evaluate and establish technology best practices, policies, and procedures, including planning and budgeting. He will also manage cybersecurity for the School and planning for business continuity. “Marquis is a seasoned and accomplished leader, well versed in managing both academic and administrative technology but, more importantly, leveraging it to benefit users throughout an independent school environment,” said Ben Hammond, the School’s chief financial officer, who led the search committee. “His ability to anticipate, understand, and meet the technology needs of students, faculty, and staff greatly impressed the search committee, as did his strengths as a leader and his passion for Lawrenceville’s mission.” Scott comes to Lawrenceville from the NightingaleBamford School in New York City, where he has served as CTO, head of the Computer Science Department, and an Upper School computer science teacher since 2014. He began his independent school career at Newark Academy in Livingston, N.J., where he served as director of information technology, director of the Summer Bridge Program, and director of diversity from 2002-14. “Lawrenceville’s longstanding tradition, culture, and commitment to enriching the lives of students are among the main reasons I was attracted to this opportunity,” Scott said. “I am truly appreciative of joining the Lawrenceville staff.”
WELCOME
NEW FACULTY
The Lawrenceville School is pleased to welcome new faculty members for the 2018-19 academic year. They are: L Felicia Aikens Admissions Office M.S. in Education, Harvard University; B.A. in Diplomatic History, University of Pennsylvania L Rex Brodie Visual Arts Department M.F.A. in Sculpture, Savannah College of Art and Design; B.F.A. in Computer Graphics and Interior Design, University of Massachusetts at Amherst L Timothy Cross College Counseling Office B.A. in Classics, Trinity College L Michael Hickey Science Department Doctoral candidate in Education with a concentration in Curriculum and Learning, North Central University; M.S. in Physical Sciences, West Chester University; B.A. and B.S. dual major in Economics and Physics, Dickinson University L Lizabel Monica Language Department M.A. in Spanish, Princeton University; B.A. in History, University of Havana, Cuba L Jessica Pine History Department B.A. in History, Wheaton College L Nicole Stock Athletics Department M.A in Sports Leadership, Northeastern University; B.A. in Political Science, Brown University L Tom Southworth Admissions Office M.S. in Education, SUNY Albany; B.A. Kenyon College L Melissa Verhey Language Department Ph.D. in French, Princeton University; M.A. in French, McMaster University; B.A. in French, McMaster University
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PENN TEACHING FELLOWS JOIN FACULTY Four new Penn Boarding School Teaching Residency (BSTR) Fellows join the Lawrenceville faculty this fall. The BSTR students are part of an innovative, two-year fellowship program involving the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education (GSE) and The Lawrenceville School, Deerfield Academy, Hotchkiss School, Loomis Chaffee School, Milton Academy, Miss Porter’s School, Northfield Mount Hermon, St. Paul’s School, and the Taft School. These novice teachers, who work under the direction of an experienced faculty mentor, are completing the master’s program in teaching and learning at the Penn GSE. They join the faculty for two years as teachers, as well as coaches or assistants in the School’s Community Service Program. Each Fellow receives a House assignment, where he or she learns about (and becomes an important part of) Lawrenceville’s dynamic residential life curriculum. In addition to their Lawrenceville duties, the Fellows are learning – and bringing back to campus – the most current research on best educational practices through their studies at Penn.
Lawrenceville’s newest Penn Teaching Fellows are: L Frank Brown History Department B.A. in History, Wesleyan University L Sarah Pearl Heard English Department B.A. in English, Writing Concentration, Yale University L Ian Mook Math Department B.A. in Mathematics and Chinese, Williams College L Sunho Park Science Department B.A. in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, Middlebury College
VIAULT SCHOLARSHIPS DEBUT “Our family is very happy to be able to introduce this to Lawrenceville and support it. I felt strongly that the School should have a program like this to learn the language and see the world through the eyes of another culture,” said Ray Viault ’63 P’96, benefactor of the scholarship program. “I’m very impressed with the credentials of the three Makayla Boxley ’20, Brandon Henry ’20, students participating in this program. I know it will change their lives as [living and Khat Tuchscherer ’19 are the internationally] changed ours and our recipients of Lawrenceville’s first Viault children’s.” Family International Scholarships, supported by the Viault Family International Fund. The award provides a full scholarship to fund a Lawrenceville student’s immersive study abroad. Boxley and Henry spent five weeks this summer in China, while Tuchscherer traveled to Spain through the School Year Abroad (SYA) summer program.
Students spent their first four weeks in the SYA Summer program living with a host family, participating in language and cultural instruction in the classroom, and deepening their learning through local excursions. The fifth week focused on travel, allowing the students to explore other regions of their “homestay” country.
BIG RED RACE RAISES $20K FOR SCHOOL CAMP The 15th annual Big Red Race raised over $20,000, all used to send local, underserved children to the Lawrenceville School Camp, a residential summer program in Warren County, N.J. More than 500 racers were registered, assisted by more than 100 volunteers. In the 5K race, Dev Chhokra ’19 was the top finisher among Lawrentian boys, while Jesse Brewer ’18 was the best of the girls. Mathematics master Etienne Bilodeau was the first male faculty member to cross the finish line; English master Katie Chaput led the field of female teachers.
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MAKING MAGIC IN WOODHULL A pair of Fourth Formers make sure fun is no illusion. Generations of Lawrentians who spent their student days living in Woodhull might attest to the enchanting experience of residing in the grand old House, but Nick Koca ’20 and Rico Zou ’20 are actually bringing it to life. Magic, that is. “I first got into magic when my dad showed me a trick, when I was about 5 years old,” explains Koca, who more recently introduced his classmate, Zou, to sleight of hand. “It just baffled my mind, and ever since then, I’ve been obsessed.” “I got into magic because of Nick,” Zou affirms. “A lot of people in the House think I got him into it, and he’s not so happy about that, but he actually introduced me to it.” Admittedly, watching Zou ply his craft, it’s easy to take him for a veteran. As he riffles through a deck of playing cards in the kitchen of the House, he asks you to say “Stop!” at any point. When the command is given, he turns the face of the deck toward you to see you’ve stopped him on the six of clubs. He proceeds to remove the card and tear the pip from
Nick Koca ’20 and Rico Zou ’20 make magic happen in Woodhull.
the corner before placing the scarred remainder before you. “Now, what I’m going to do is send this piece – the pip – over into the microwave,” Zou says, nodding over his right shoulder toward the appliance behind him. He uses the fingertips of his left hand to repeatedly rub small circles on the back of his clenched right – the one still containing the pip. After about five seconds of this motioning, Zou opens his fist to reveal an empty hand. “The piece just disappears like that,” he says as his rises from his chair and starts toward
the microwave. He opens the door to reveal the displaced pip – the six of clubs – at the very center of the revolving glass tray inside. He lays the larger matching piece of card beside it. “Doesn’t it fit perfectly?” he asks, though he knows well that it does. Koca is rather crafty as well, showing a crisp $100 bill he explains could be problematic if the pair were to go to dinner but want to split the tab. “It becomes a struggle when only one of us has a $100 bill,” he says, as you realize you’re being set up for another illusion.
“So as magicians, we devised a way to take the money and split it up evenly, or …” And as the last words reach your ears, Koca suddenly snaps the C-note with both hands, seemingly tearing it in half. No sooner do you realize what he’s done than you see he is holding a $50 note in each hand, one of which he casually hands to his protégé. “… fifty-fifty with each other,” says Koca, completing his thought. “Every night or so around check-in, you’ll see one or two of them doing card tricks around the House. They’re legitimate magicians,” says Karla Guido, the Woodhull housemaster. “I half expect to reach into my coat pocket and pull out a card I mentioned three nights ago. I’m afraid one day they might make Cleve disappear…” – From an L10 report
BIOBLITZ BREAKS RECORD LAWRENCEVILLE’S ANNUAL BIOBLITZ COMPETITION, A PERIOD TO OBSERVE AND IDENTIFY AS MANY FLORA AND FAUNA POSSIBLE, ENDED WITH TWO WINNERS. THE TOP STUDENT WAS SIMON CULL ’20, WHILE HISTORY MASTER ORELIA JONATHAN LED THE FACULTY, AFTER EACH IDENTIFIED 396 SPECIES. SCIENCE MASTER JOHN L. CLARK BROUGHT BIOBLITZ TO THE SCHOOL THREE YEARS AGO AND HAS SEEN ITS POPULARITY RISE EACH YEAR. IN 2016, LAWRENTIANS IDENTIFIED 2,857 SPECIES IN 2016; THIS YEAR, 6,676 OBSERVATIONS WERE RECORDED, THE GREATEST TOTAL YET.
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2019 LAWRENCEVILLE SUMMER SCHOLARS PROGRAM
BOARDING AND DAY PROGRAMS
GRADES 6-10
JULY 7-27, 2019
LIVE LEARNING LEARN LIVING
SU M M E R S C H O L A R S . L AW R EN C E V I L L E. ORG
EXPERIENCE HOUSE AND HARKNESS
30+
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ON THE ARTS
ENC RE AN BY LISA M. GILLARD HANSON
•
PHOTOGRAPHY BY CIE STROUD
PERFORMANCE A summer arts camp that began a dozen years ago as a student project continues to brighten the lives of local youngsters every year.
C
eline Satija ’07 was frustrated. During her days as a Lawrenceville student, she taught violin to a local child through the School’s Community Service Program and the Small Miracles Foundation. However, once she and her fellow students headed home for the summer, those lessons had to end. “When I was growing up, summer was a time when I would go to camp for dance or violin. I wanted to help these other kids have something to be excited about in the summer, where they could develop their hobbies,” Satija says. “If I could help even one child experience the joys and friendship that I had through music, that would be an accomplishment.” With funding from a William Welles Award, Satija, along with Nick Johnson ’06, piloted what is now the annual Lawrenceville Performing Arts Camp, or LPAC. Under the Welles Award program, Third- and FourthForm students submit proposals for a summer project they would like to undertake, which,
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if accepted, may be funded with as much
Right here. Band-Aid? Check the conference
song for his dad and that … well, it still gives
as $3,000. A committee of faculty members
room cabinet. Violin bows need restringing?
me goosebumps. We were glad to distract them
review all submitted proposals, with projects
Leave them in Burns’ office – she’ll take them
and let them have fun for a few hours.”
expected to meet a high bar of excellence
to a music store later and wait while they’re
and promise. Since its inception, the LPAC
restrung.
has not only exceeded that standard, but
“I’m like the Camp Mom,” Burns says with
its enduring effect has made the Clark
a chuckle. “I’m going to do what I have to do
Even skeptical students develop an unexpected interest in the arts.
Music Center a safe, fun summer haven for
to make the kids happy.”
Burns recalled one who wanted absolutely
township children.
Nine-year-old Brianne, who worked with
nothing to do with a performing arts camp.
Although LPAC has expanded over the
co-head counselor Linda Li ’19, returned this
Basketball was his passion, and he made it
years, with 100 children attending this past
year for her second summer at LPAC. Brianne
known to anyone who would listen. One
summer, the format for the two-week camp
studied both piano and violin and discovered,
counselor persuaded him to try the drums,
has remained essentially the same – and
“If you keep trying, you can make it sound
and he was instantly hooked.
completely free for its local attendees, including
right.”
transportation and meals. Staffed by current
Li, who this year is editor-in-chief of The
“We had to pull him off the stage,” Burns
Lawrentians volunteering as counselors, the
Lawrence, also fulfilled Satija’s dream of
camp provides vocal and music lessons both
continuing a camper’s piano lessons during
weeks. Drama instruction is also available in
the regular school year. With the extra time,
the first week before being swapped out for
heartwarming.”
she was able to teach him how to read music
dance the next. The young artists perform
The LPAC counselors, also selected by
and some music theory, so he could learn to
for their families in a special concert at the
Burns, know their job is bigger than simply
play pieces on his own.
conclusion of both weeks in Clark.
teaching a child to sing or dance.
“It was really rewarding,” Li says.
“Watching families literally cry because they are so grateful is an amazing experience,” says
“I feel like this camp is an oasis,” says
All of the campers come from families
Andrew Ni ’19, the co-head counselor. “It’s
burdened by worries no child should have.
really important for us to give [the campers]
Lawrenceville provides campers with lunch,
support because many are struggling in their
which Burns varies each day, following an
personal lives. They won’t say that, but it slowly
Satija, now a student at Tulane University
outdoor barbecue on Monday with pizza or
becomes more evident. They get to come here
School of Medicine.
subs the next. When she noticed children
for two weeks and be artists – and that isn’t an
The underlying purpose of LPAC is to
showing up hungry to camp, she began
opportunity that’s always open to them.”
introduce children to the arts, but seven
providing daily morning and mid-afternoon
Satija and Johnson, who co-founded LPAC
consecutive hours of playing piano or
snacks.
more than a decade ago, are thrilled that the
practicing their hip-hop moves would test the
“Kids were coming in with stomach pains
camp continues to grow and thrive.
endurance of the most focused and energetic
and headaches, and I realized it was because
“It’s a blessing that it still exists,” Johnson
child. Instead, each day is divided into
they hadn’t eaten,” Burns says. “Now, I always
says. “We wanted take our experience and
periods, with time for arts and crafts, movies,
have animal crackers and juice for them in the
pass it on to kids who would never get the
and games. Twelve-year-old Gianna, who
morning.”
whole Lawrenceville music or performing
attended her fourth LPAC this past summer,
As her eyes well with tears, Burns recalls one
arts experience. To have the camp as my
enjoys playing hide-and-seek between drum
camper whose father lost his job after falling
lasting legacy is very emotional.”
and piano lessons.
ill with leukemia. As the family negotiated a
Satija is equally proud of their mark and is
“I love camp,” Gianna says. “It feels like a
difficult path, the boy wanted to learn to play
gratified that it continues to brighten the lives
family here.”
guitar – like his dad – so he took a week of
of the young learners.
Colette Burns, manager of the Performing
lessons at the camp. At the Friday concert,
“It really took the faith of some incredible
Arts Office, also serves as director of the
“The father was in tears, watching his son play
faculty to let us do this on our own,”
LPAC, but she might be more accurately
guitar. He could have been up in heaven, and
she says. “It’s still one of my proudest
described as the camp’s “problem-solver-in-
not ever seen his son play guitar, but he got
accomplishments.”
chief.” Need the keys to a rehearsal room?
there,” Burns recalls. “The kid played a beautiful
says. “He was playing like a professional. His mother was shocked; she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It’s just so
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GO BIG RED THE INTERTWINED FOOTBALL LIVES OF DREW INZER AND SEAN MOREY P’22 HAVE BEEN ANYTHING BUT A TRIVIAL PURSUIT.
HOT DOGS AND HELMETS
D
rew Inzer and Sean Morey P’22 have served as assistant coaches for the Big Red football program for the past three seasons. Both are native New Englanders – Inzer from Rhode Island and Morey from Massachusetts – and both fulfilled childhood dreams of playing in the NFL for their beloved New England Patriots. What’s more, neither took a well-worn path to the league – their alma mater, Brown University, is hardly considered a football factory. Now, Lawrenceville is the most recent intersection of Inzer and Morey’s lives. Inzer already knew of Morey before they met in December 1996. Inzer was a senior in high school; Morey was already a star receiver as a sophomore for Brown and a former New England Player of the Year at Hebron Academy. “I looked up to him; he was [already] one of the icons of Brown football,” says Inzer, then a 6-foot-4 offensive lineman from nearby North Smithfield. The Brown coaching staff made Inzer a priority recruit and asked Morey and roommate Shelton Magee ’95, a Lawrenceville alum, to help sell the
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high-schooler on their vision during his official recruiting visit to the university. “The way that our coaches prefaced Drew to us was that this is someone we needed on the team in order to win games and compete for an Ivy League title,” recalls Morey, who would himself become the league’s Player of the Year the following season. The complete details of Inzer’s visit are lost to time and selective memory, but a few recollections stand out to Morey: Inzer playing Trivial Pursuit for hours with Magee in their dorm room, followed by a late-night visit to Spike’s Junk Yard Dogs on Thayer Street – a longtime institution among Brown students. “He and Shelton hit it off. I think the fact that both of them are incredibly intelligent and confident students is something that they shared,” Morey says, “though the fact that they played Trivial Pursuit until the wee hours of the morning is a little odd.” Primarily because the Ivy League prohibits athletic scholarships, Inzer ultimately chose Boston University over Brown, but little more than a month into his freshman year, BU announced it would eliminate its football team at the end of the season.
“When they cut the program, it was like, ‘I really want to go where I really want to go,” he says of Brown. “I loved the campus, I loved the team, and the different kind of guys. I really wanted to be a part of that.” Inzer transferred midyear and quickly fell back in with Morey and Magee. Their friendship translated into success on the field for the Bears, who finished second in the Ivy League in 1998. In Morey, Inzer not only had a friend, but a role model, someone unafraid to forge his own unique direction. “We got a little bit older, but he was such a good guy,” Inzer says. “He was such a good teammate and leader. He was really kind of a unique personality.” Inzer, who became the captain of the Bears’ 2000 team, also recalls many subsequent 2 a.m. trips to Spike’s for late-night hot dogs, but points to one particular aspect of those visits. “Sean used to sweep the restaurant floor for them, even though he wasn’t an employee,” he says. “I just wanted them to know that I appreciated them, at the end of a long night, being willing to put up with a couple hungry guys,” Morey explains. “It was the last stop of the night on
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FROM BROWN TO BIG RED: Football brought Drew Inzer (left) and Sean Morey P'22 together again at Lawrenceville.
PLAYING FOR PAY SEAN MOREY IN THE NFL: L SELECTED IN THE 7TH ROUND OF THE 1999 NFL DRAFT BY THE PATRIOTS L PLAYED FOR FIVE NFL TEAMS L 2008 PRO BOWL FOR ARIZONA CARDINALS
DREW INZER IN THE NFL: L SIGNED AS UNDRAFTED FREE AGENT WITH PATRIOTS IN 2001 L MEMBER OF THE PRACTICE SQUAD AS PATS ADVANCED TO SUPER BOWL XXXVI L SPENT 2002 ON JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS’ PRACTICE SQUAD Saturdays, and they knew I was going to be there, so I wanted them to know that I’m not just a taker.” Inzer spent two seasons in the NFL; Morey played for a decade, earning a trip to one Pro Bowl before retiring in 2010. By that time, Inzer was coaching and teaching at Northfield Mount Hermon, but after the Massachusetts school dropped its football
program in 2015, he joined new head coach Harry Flaherty’s staff at Lawrenceville, where he also teaches history and serves as housemaster of Hamill. One of the first things Inzer did after moving was reach out to his old quarterback at Brown, James Perry, who was by then the offensive coordinator at Princeton University. He learned that Morey was also living in Princeton, coaching the school’s now-defunct sprint football
program with help from retired Lawrenceville athletic director John Simar. “When they were cutting sprint, I immediately called Sean and started talking to him, feeling it out,” Inzer says about gauging Morey’s interest in joining the Big Red staff. Morey began the following fall, and now the old friends are together once again, this time sharing what they’ve learned with a younger generation. “We can push them in ways that not a lot of staffs can, because we know we value academics, and we know what they’re experiencing,” Inzer says. “We don’t want them to lose out on finding that balance, and that’s hard in football.” Morey says the coaches also urge their players to savor the camaraderie of their prep days. “We tell them, ‘Don’t ever forget that football is not about the statistics or the accolades or being recognized. It’s not about the things that you think it’s about,’” he says. “It’s about acknowledging that the best part of football is the relationships that you develop and the experiences you have now that will last a lifetime … you cannot recreate that.”
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TAKE THIS JOB AND LOVE IT
AS THE OWNER/OPERATOR OF A TOP-RATED BED AND BREAKFAST, RUSSELL GIBSON ’81 HAS MASTERED ANOTHER TYPE OF ‘HOUSE SYSTEM.’
AREALCOTTAGE INDUSTRY
P
eople often say, ‘Oh, I’ve always dreamed of owning a bed and breakfast. It’s a great lifestyle,’” says Russell Gibson ’81. “It’s not a lifestyle. It’s a life, because you are on, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.” Gibson and partner Duncan Calhoun have owned and operated The Croff House Bed and Breakfast in Hudson, New York, since 2009. Nestled on a hill leading to the river that bears the small city’s name, just west of the Berkshires, the charming three-color Victorian edifice is Gibson’s intimate answer to more impersonal, name-brand hotels, offering thoughtful, homey touches and an “our-town” brand of local hospitality to travelers. Charming as it sounds, however, success in the B&B world depends on much more than oatmeal raisin cookies for guests while they rock gently on the front porch. The truth, Gibson says, is that the day-to-day realities of operating a bed and breakfast often diverge wildly from common perceptions. “There are a lot of people who have a very ‘Bob Newhart’ view of what running a bed and breakfast is all about,” Gibson explains,
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summoning the deadpan comic actor’s television character who operated an inn in bucolic Vermont. “You never saw Bob cleaning a toilet, or dealing with an irate guest.” It’s part of the job, but that’s not why Gibson and Calhoun do what they do. Instead, the pair thoroughly enjoy providing innovative twists to the B&B experience. Trial ideas such as offering guests an ambitious yet experimental dinner – a one-off concept that was keenly received, if not easily replicated – keeps their enterprise fresh and fun. Gibson says he and Calhoun were looking for a profitable, sustainable business in the town they made their home a half-dozen years earlier. (The couple’s personal residence stands next to The Croff House.) They were also enthusiastic about the chance to put their imprimatur on an industry that had long appealed to them. “We like that personal touch,” Gibson says, “that interaction with the guests; talking to them, telling them about ourselves, the town, and the area.” Gibson says The Croff House silently dispels cliché notions about bed and breakfasts, eschewing twee Victorian décor for a comfortable, current flair that simultaneously
honors the history of the house. The very name of their business comes from architect G.B. Croff, who built the Second Empire style home in 1875, and guest rooms bear the monikers of the original homeowners who established their cozy Willard Place neighborhood. Inside, the pair’s attention to detail extends well beyond the home’s furnishings. Keepsake scented candles embossed with The Croff House logo are a trademark touch – “Smell is a huge trigger of memory,” Gibson says – as are cards bearing the next day’s weather forecast, placed atop pillows during nightly turndown service – itself a B&B rarity. However, the true art of bedand-breakfast ownership, according to Gibson, is heavily predicated on knowing exactly how much of themselves to give as hosts, and when to retreat. “We like our guests to be able to enjoy the space without us hovering over them,” he says. “If you’ve stayed in many owner-occupied B&Bs, a lot of the time you wonder, Am I making too much noise? Can I put my feet up here? Can I go in the kitchen and get a glass of water?” Gibson and Calhoun take great care to remove such ambiguity from guests’ minds: Yes, you are welcome to use that ice, or make that tea you see.
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Photograph by Donnelly Marks
Photograh by Webb Chappell '74
For Russell Gibson ’81, (left) and Duncan Calhoun, a relaxing moment in a porch rocker is not a common sight.
Do you have leftovers from dinner? Yes, please, use the common refrigerator. “We’re in our house, but we pop back and forth, so we’re always available,” Gibson says. “There’s an intercom guests can call, and we’ll zoom back over in two seconds.” Rather than posting a rigid manifesto of guidelines, Gibson and Calhoun also rely on the common sense of their visitors. “We’ve been in places where there was literally a laminated list of rules,” he says. “Don’t leave a glass in the sink … don’t use the knives over here … don’t put your napkin in the hamper … after a while, you say, “Jeez, this is like being back in Lawrenceville again!” Still, Gibson adds, they can’t always rely on their guests to apply their best judgment, so The Croff House does have a few posted rules. “One of them is ‘no smoking,’ but that doesn’t mean you’re not going to get the one person who thinks, Well, if I roll up a towel and stick it along the door, they’re never going to know,” he explains. “I’ve got a nose like a bloodhound so I can smell it in a second … and it’s not always cigarettes they’re smoking.” What happens then? “I take a little pad of paper, and I hand-write a note saying, ‘As a reminder, The Croff House is a non-smoking property. Thank you for your cooperation,’” Gibson says. “And the next morning, they’ll sheepishly admit, Oh, you caught me.” In an age when customers are free to broadcast their thoughts via online review sites, every detail is magnified. Gibson, Calhoun, and assistant manager Delphina place a premium on cleanliness, which is why Gibson is the rare B&B owner who will roll up his sleeves to clean a bathroom. “You can’t overlook one hair, you can’t overlook one spot, and you can’t overlook one dust mote,” Gibson says. “All a guest needs is to find one thing, and then they start looking for other things.” In nearly a decade, that hasn’t amounted to much. The Croff House has consistently been the No. 1- or 2-rated bed and breakfast among Hudson’s sixteen such establishments on Trip Advisor – a status that lets its owners know they’ve maintained the right touch. “That’s kind of fun,” Gibson says. “Owning and running a B&B is one of the few jobs where you’re constantly, constantly, constantly getting feedback.”
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TABLE TALK Q&A
SEEING THE
PATTERNS As the daughter of two university professors, Yangyang Daniell was always in her element on campus. The Beijing native is equally at home teaching Mandarin Chinese to students more versed in other languages, which she has been doing – and loving – since her undergraduate days in China. Daniell, who recently completed her seventeenth year at Lawrenceville, explained to The Lawrentian why the fear many Englishspeaking students have of learning Chinese is completely misplaced. You grew up speaking Chinese as your first language. How did you decide to teach it to students as their second language? Was it something you decided to do after coming to the United States? Well, actually it was long before that, because this is what I chose as my college major. I actually applied to the college that specialized in teaching Chinese as a second language [at Beijing Language and Culture University]. I thought that a fascinating route to go, since I like languages and I like teaching. Both my parents were college professors.
What did they teach? Geophysics at Beijing University … nothing to do with languages! I don’t know anything about geophysics, but when I was little, I always told my mom I wanted to be a teacher, I wanted to be a kindergarten teacher, but as I grew up, I realized I wanted to teach older students. So, my parents and I … in China, being a typical Chinese family, you always decide this kind of thing together.
So even in college, you were preparing to teach
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Chinese to non-Chinese speakers? My university was the first and the only one established just for this purpose, so we had more international students than domestic students on campus.
Where was your first job teaching Chinese? I went to Thailand to teach at Burapha University. I taught for three years there. It was an interesting experience because I had just finished college, so I was only a year older than my students were.
What kind of cultural adjustment did you have to make? It was a fascinating place to teach, because the Thai people are so respectful to teachers. Even though my students were about my age, when they came to ask me a question, they actually have to be lower than me, so they would kneel on the floor when they were asking me questions.
You teach your native language as a second language, which means you not only have to see Chinese through the eyes of students who cannot speak it at all, but also be able to communicate
with them in their own language. Did that change your perspective on your own language? Yeah, exactly, because through high school, the Chinese I learned is Chinese for Chinese people, just like an English speaker learning English. In college, I started to think, OK, this is a totally different field. You have to learn how to view your own language from the other language speaker’s perspective.
You just finished your seventeenth year at Lawrenceville, which most recently saw you complete a term as chair of the Language Department. What brought you here? I participated in an international fellowship program at Mount Holyoke College. There were job recruiters on campus one day – mostly from banks – but a friend of mine told me, “Hey, there’s an educational company there, too – want to check it out?” It was 4:30 in the afternoon, and I didn’t even have a résumé! The deadline was 5:30 that day, so I quickly put a résumé together and slipped in before they closed the door. I interviewed, and they told me there are a couple of openings at independent schools. At that time, not many secondary schools were teaching Chinese, but they sent me to Lawrenceville.
A few minutes later and we might never have known you! At that point, I knew nothing about boarding school. When I came, I was very intrigued by the setting, because it’s a nice campus, nice location, and people live on campus. I love that. All my life, I never lived off campus. I grew up living on the Beijing University campus and then to college on campus. When I went to Thailand, I lived on campus, teaching. When I went to Canada, I lived on campus.
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So it felt like home. It was lovely. I thought, Wow, this is the place I want to be.
Does the typical student in your Chinese 1 class have any knowledge of the language to begin the year? The majority have no knowledge whatsoever, though in recent years, many middle schools have started offering Chinese classes. Some students have a background, but they’re not high enough to be placed in Chinese 2.
It must be fun to introduce them to the language, from a true starting point. I love to bring them from not knowing how to speak or read Chinese, where it’s so novel to them. They just know, Oh, it looks pretty. It has characters. To be able to converse, to be able to understand the basic grammar … I love to see that happening.
Is having to abandon the alphabet they are accustomed to something that many students find intimidating about trying to learn Chinese? I think that characters are the thing that scares some people away. That’s the word on the street: It’s a hard language. But we do slow down the pace, so in that sense, it’s no harder than other languages. I also help them to see the patterns because the characters are not all random.
What do you mean when you say they are not random? It’s not like you learn three thousand different characters that have no correlation whatsoever. There are many repetitive parts, and a lot of those parts suggest certain meanings and a lot of those simple parts suggest certain sounds. When you learn the first hundred, the second and the third hundred become much easier. I help them to analyze the characters, to see the patterns. In terms of grammar, Chinese grammar is much simpler than a lot of Western grammar.
How so? You don’t conjugate. You learn the vocabulary, and then you put them in subject-verb-object order, and then you add some phrases when you want to add some certain meanings. So, grammar-wise, it’s also a language, especially at the foundation level, that follows straight through. It’s not like English, which doesn’t quite follow rules; you always have tons of exceptions.
That must put apprehensive students at ease. Chinese follows the rules, so I always tell students at the beginning, “Don’t worry. It’s a rulefollowing language that has a lot of repetition. If you can do that, you can do Chinese.”
What else is different from English? In Chinese, we use certain vocabulary called a measure word. English doesn’t use it consistently, but Chinese does. For example, in English, if you see a group of something – maybe sheep – you call it a flock of sheep, right? A flock is a measure word in Chinese. Except in English you don’t use it consistently with all nouns; you use it with certain nouns.
So in English, we would call it a flock of sheep, but a herd of horses, or a team of oxen, while Chinese uses the same measure word? That is a big advantage. By the end of the year, what level of mastery do Chinese 1 students have? On the final exam we ask them to write a onepage essay. Some of them write a page and a half, or even two pages, talking about their life here at Lawrenceville.
How many of our students typically pursue Chinese language courses in a year? Eighty to ninety.
That’s a pretty robust number. The School has a diverse student population – are there students from many backgrounds in your classes? It seems that in this country, we don’t
expect people who are not ethnically Chinese to speak Chinese. Right, yes. It’s a language that everybody can learn and people want to try. I have kids who have dyslexia, and the languages are hard for them, but they’re doing perfectly fine in Chinese.
They don’t encounter issues with dyslexia in Chinese? No. They say with dyslexia, they’re confusing the orders of the letters in the words, but we don’t have that. It’s a character; an image for our most basic unit of meaning.
Earlier, you said you made this decision with your family to become a teacher. Was there ever a time since when you questioned that decision? No, never. You know, many immigrants coming to America have to change their field to meet the market – for survival reasons – so I’m one of the lucky ones. I never needed to change what I like. I liked it when I was 19 and choosing a college, and I still enjoy it at 46. I’ve never changed anything along the road. This is always what I wanted to do.
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ASK THE ARCHIVIST ARCHIVIST
Spanish ns from the Complicatio Simon J. ead Master flu felled H 1919. in January McPherson
R A W A
Exactly one hundred years ago, the influenza pandemic of 1918 touched Lawrenceville at its heart.
S T N O R F O ON TW
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Infirmaries such as this one at Camp Funston in Kansas were filled during the flu epidemic.
xactly a century ago, even as World War I continued to devastate Europe, an even deadlier calamity stalked the greater part of the globe: the influenza pandemic of 1918. Between that March, when the first wave of the illness began, and spring 1919, when the third and final wave of the pandemic ended, between 50 and 100 million people died worldwide – approximately 2.5 to 5 percent of the world’s population. Although The Lawrenceville School was spared the worst of the deadly virus, it was not left untouched, with the epidemic playing a significant role in School history. The first wave of the so-called “Spanish flu” in spring 1918 was relatively mild
and caused little alarm, but by the time a second wave began late that summer, the virus had mutated into a deadly and virulent form that began killing a new population: otherwise healthy young adults. In addition to the common influenza symptoms of headache, fever, and chills, the more critical patients would suffer “heliotrope cyanosis,” in which the faces of the afflicted turned blue from lack of oxygen as their lungs filled with a frothy pink fluid. Modern science speculates that the deadly respiratory symptoms of what would later be identified as a strain of
H1N1 virus resulted from an overreaction of the patient’s immune system known as a “cytokine storm,” and that healthy young people’s robust immune systems were the most likely to react in such a lethal way. With war raging, one of the most vulnerable populations were young soldiers crowded together on military bases, and in August 1918, the more contagious form of the disease reached the Eastern Seaboard, transported back to the United States largely along with military servicemen. Port cities such as Boston, New York, and Philadelphia all fell to the
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rapidly spreading pandemic which, by late September, had encroached upon nearby Trenton. On October 5, the New Jersey Director of Health placed the capital city under quarantine and recommended that public gathering spots such as theaters, churches, and saloons be shuttered by local authorities statewide to prevent the spread of the disease. Among the affected events were athletic contests, and Lawrenceville’s football team played only a single game against Barringer High School in Newark on October 5 before the rest of the season was canceled. Despite the deadly effect of the influenza on nearby populations, its initial appearance on campus was surprisingly benign – at least in terms of mortality. By the first week of October, nearly one hundred students were sick, more than a quarter of the student body. However, the strain of illness was generally slight enough to be dismissed as “la grippe,” a popular term for the more traditional strain of influenza, rather than the Spanish flu. Mild as it may have been among the boys on campus, it still filled the infirmary, then located at 1805 Main Street, at the corner of Franklin Corner Road. This necessitated the drafting of Hamill House as an overflow infirmary and the Kafer House (the third floor of the Main Street building now home to TJ’s Pizza) as a home for convalescents. Although it was initially thought that the most severe impact on the School would be a diminished fall athletics schedule (reason enough for the students to grumble at length in The Lawrence), things took a grave turn when Dr. John Forsyth Little, the recently arrived School physician, succumbed to the flu on October 13. The regular school physician, Dr. Elam Lee, had been the first Lawrenceville faculty member to enlist when the United States entered the war in spring 1917, and had been granted a leave of absence from the School while he served in the Medical Corps at nearby Fort Dix in Wrightstown, New Jersey. Lee’s replacement for the 1917-18 academic year had been Dr. Wilfred McIlvaine Post, Class of 1893, but by that fall, Post also
asked for a temporary leave of absence to join a Red Cross relief mission to Persia. Post was replaced in September 1918 by the ill-fated Little, a former anatomy professor at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. Not long after his arrival, boys on campus began to fall ill, and although he is credited with keeping the worst of the disease at bay for students, he was unable to survive it himself. With the pandemic in full force everywhere by the time of Little’s death, Head Master Simon J. McPherson was unable to locate another doctor free to work at the School. Although commonly addressed as “Dr. McPherson,” the head
broader Lawrenceville community of alumni and former staff and faculty suffered with the rest of the world. Particularly hard hit were the alumni in the armed services. Nearly a quarter of the Lawrentians who today are honored for having died in service in World War I were victims of the Spanish influenza pandemic, most in October 1918. The deadly pandemic would leave a lasting mark on campus in the form of the McPherson House, originally built in 1929 as the Simon J. McPherson Infirmary, named in honor of the head master who lost his life while caring for his students. Jacqueline Haun is the archivist at the Stephan Archives in Bunn Library.
Did You Know?
master’s doctorate was in divinity, not medicine. Nonetheless, he took it upon himself to care for the ill students personally. Already in compromised health, the long hours of work took a toll on McPherson, who eventually fell ill with the influenza virus before succumbing to complications in January 1919. Little and McPherson would be the only two people to die on campus during the pandemic. Although the number of deaths on campus was strikingly low compared to other close locations – the death rate in Trenton was nearly five times that of a normal year, with 90 percent of the excess deaths happening in October 1918 – the The third floor of Kafer House, seen here in 1910 and now home to TJ’s Pizza, served as a makeshift infirmary for Lawrenceville students.
Although the influenza pand emic of 1918-19 is commonly referenced as the “Spanish flu,” there is no evidence that the outbreak originated in Spain or affected its residents at a greater rate than elsewhere. The misnomer is due to the fact that with World War I raging in Europe at the same time, newspapers in the United Sta tes, the United Kingdom, Franc e, and Germany censored cove rage of the flu’s viral spread in tho se nations in order to mask ne ws of its deadly effect. Meanw hile, newspapers in Spain, which remained neutral during the war, were free to report witho ut restraint, giving the rest of the world the impression that the Iberian nation was the strain ’s focal point.
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NOTHING for Granted
A life-threatening injury took football away from Grant Newsome ’15, but he’s still just getting started. By SEAN RAMSDEN • Photography: ROGER HART/Michigan Photography
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he offers came flooding in. Grant Newsome ’15 was still just a Third Former when college football coaches stopped sniffing around the massive left tackle and started formalizing their courtship with committable, full scholarships. By the end of the next year, Newsome had accumulated more than thirty-five written offers to play for some of the nation’s premier programs – and those were just the ones who believed they had a shot at the multidimensional young star, who was just as adept in the classroom as he was paving the way for the ball carriers running behind him. The truth is, there was not a college football team in the country that wouldn’t have been over the moon to see Grant Newsome don their uniform.
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Together with his parents, Kim and Leon, Newsome whittled his list to a handful of options before settling on a final two – the University of Michigan and a powerful rival from the Big Ten conference. He weighed the relative merits of both, trying to balance football with the academic side of the experience. “My mom said, ‘You know, the football’s really close. You need to ask yourself if something happens and you just have to be a normal student at one of these schools, at which school would you rather be?” Newsome says of a conversation with Kim Newsome P’15. “And I said, ‘It’s not even close; it’s Michigan.’ And she said, ‘Well, there’s your decision.’” At the time, no one in their family quite understood the effect his choice would have on the young student’s life. It may have even saved it. For Grant Newsome ’15, the University of Michigan’s 110,000-seat “Big House” has always felt like a home.
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Newsome struggles to get to his feet after being injured against Wisconsin on October 1, 2016. Within hours, his future was in peril. (Lon Horwedel/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
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y the time the 2016 campaign began, the 6-foot-7, 318-pound sophomore left tackle was anchoring a punishing offensive line for Michigan. The Wolverines’ cohort of talented running backs frequently found wide-open running lanes behind the blocking of Newsome, his blue-andmaize No. 77 leading their path toward daylight. Michigan was ranked fourth in the nation by the Associated Press on October 1 when they hosted No. 8 Wisconsin for a noon tilt between undefeated teams at the 110,000-seat Michigan Stadium. All eyes were trained on “the Big House,” as the massive edifice is known in the lore of college football, and as the second quarter began, another seven million viewers were tuned in on ABC. The home team enjoyed a 7-0 lead with 13:15 left in the first half when tailback De’Veon Smith took a pitch from quarterback Wilson Speight and began streaking toward the left sideline on the sweep play. Ahead of Smith, blockers sealed off their defenders, including Newsome, who, at the snap of the ball, pulled from his left-tackle position and sprinted laterally down the line of scrimmage to help clear the way. Only Wisconsin cornerback Derrick Tindal stood between Smith and a significant gain, but bearing down on the 5-foot-11, 175-pound Tindal was the much larger Newsome. Tindal did as many defensive backs are coached to do against massive blockers on such plays – go low on the massive lineman’s body to negate the significant size disparity. He did, throwing his red-and-white-clad frame toward Newsome’s legs in order to cut down the blocker, while simultaneously reaching his outstretched arms toward the ball carrier. As the crowd rose in anticipation of a big play, Smith hurdled the grasp of the flattened Tindal on his way toward a seven-yard pickup. While players from both teams headed back toward their huddles, Newsome remained on the ground. Tindal’s dive toward the sprinting Newsome’s knees caught the bigger man’s right foot planted firmly in the turf, stopping the movement of Newsome’s leg while his upper body, carried by momentum, continued forward. The competing forces bent Newsome’s right knee backward at a
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gruesome, 60-degree angle. The Michigan training staff bolted to where Newsome lay near the 35-yard line as the partisan crowd settled back down. He thought the torque of Tindal’s dive had sprained his knee, but curiously, he felt little pain. “I felt some … it was like a vibration, a stinging,” Newsome recalls of those initial moments following the injury. “I tried to crawl to get up, but when the trainers caught up to me, I remember turning over and I felt a pop.” Newsome understands now that the sensation was his dislocated knee popping back into place. “Initially, I thought that was me tearing my ACL [anterior cruciate ligament],” he says. “I muttered to one of our trainers, ‘I just tore my ACL turning over.’” From their seats inside the massive stadium, Kim and Leon Newsome P’15 watched the play, though it didn’t immediately dawn on Kim that their son was the downed player. “He was on the opposite side of the field from us, and it’s a huge place,” she says of the stadium. “I was watching but didn’t realize it was him. Then my husband got very quiet, and I realized it probably must have been Grant, and …” Kim Newsome’s voice trails and she begins to sob, transported back to that October day in Ann Arbor. Two years later, a mother’s fear for her son still resides just below the surface as she recounts the frenzied twelve hours that followed, beginning with
their walk down to the playing field and into the tunnel that runs toward the training room beneath the stadium. Newsome balked at the cart often used to help injured players off the field, fearful of worrying his parents. Inside the training room, the medical staff began to probe deeper into the condition of his knee. Above them, Newsome, the trainers, and the doctors could hear the muffled roar of the crowd, once again engaged with the action on the field. Kim and Leon Newsome made their way to the training room, where their son was still eager to rejoin his teammates on the sidelines while the team orthopedist was asking questions about what he felt in his leg. To the younger Newsome’s way of thinking, the absence of significant pain augured well. “They asked me if I had any numbness or tingling in my toes. I had never had a serious injury like that before, so I said, ‘Yeah, but that’s probably normal, right?’” Newsome recounts. “My doctors looked at each other and said, We’re going to take you to the hospital. It’s probably just precaution, but we want to be safe.” There, medical staffers put Newsome through a battery of tests, each one seeming to lead to another. “No one would really tell me what the results were” he says. “That’s when I kind of knew I was in for it.” Newsome’s ACL was torn, but that injury – the one football players typically dread most – merely
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represented the start of the trauma his powerful right leg had endured. In addition to the ACL and a full knee dislocation, the grotesque angle to which his knee was forced by Tindal’s dive fractured his tibia, tore his medial collateral ligament and posterior cruciate ligament, and damaged three nerves in his lower leg. More critically, however, Newsome’s popliteal artery – a deeply placed branch of his femoral artery necessary to carry blood to his lower extremities – was ruptured. Suddenly, this wasn’t merely a football injury anymore. Newsome’s limb – perhaps even his life – was in jeopardy. “My vascular surgeon said that had it been another 30 minutes, they would have had to just amputate my leg,” Newsome says. Significant, irreversible damage had already taken its toll. For four hours, Newsome’s torn popliteal artery cost the muscle tissue in his leg 50 percent of the blood it needed to survive. Parts of his leg were beginning to die, and doctors removed a section of his calf muscles, which has been starved of oxygenated blood. The situation was growing worse by the moment. “I remember asking, ‘Am I going to have my leg?’” Newsome recalls of his exchange with the doctor. The response was chilling: “We’re going to do our best.”
and Gaines, 8. Surgeons would need to take a vein from Grant’s left leg and create an arterial bypass – a graft – in his right to restore blood flow to his lower limb. He was wheeled into surgery at 9 p.m. for a process expected to take about two hours, but did not emerge until 3 a.m. Even then, the situation was far from settled. “I came out of that surgery, and I didn’t have any feeling in my lower leg, which they now know was because of the nerve damage,” Newsome says. “At the time they feared that the knee was crushing the graft, so the vein they put in to try to fix the Newsome is now a blood flow was failing student-coach, working and my foot was no with the tight ends, but longer getting blood.” still had time to consult He spent the entire with offensive lineman second day in surgery Chuck Filiaga before the as well, and then the Notre Dame game on next nine days in the September 1.
intensive care unit. It would be thirty-eight days before Newsome left the hospital, and only after six surgical procedures. College football followers are familiar with the trope of the coach who promises parents of bluechip recruits that “we’ll take care of your boy and treat him like family.” However, the Newsomes are very clear that Michigan lived up to that ideal in every sense, and well beyond the context of mere football. They also agree that as bad as things were, there was also an element of good fortune to the events that unfolded that afternoon in Ann Arbor. “Had he been in a less-capable hospital,” Kim says, noting the stellar work of the orthopedic team, “he would have lost his leg. I believe that with a pretty high degree of certainty.” Her son sees how the hand of good fortune was on his shoulder the entire time. “There are just so many different scenarios in which if something – even a minute detail – had
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im Newsome remembers accompanying Grant on his official recruiting visit to Michigan, where the coaching staff did their best to sell the talented student-athlete on their program. One thing that stood out to her were the facilities, but not just those designed to dazzle teenagers. “It’s so ironic, because when they were giving us a tour, they pointed out the hospital, and they talked about what amazing medical facilities they have,” she says. “They talked about how they have an X-ray machine in the locker room and how that’s not standard at colleges, and I thought, You know, that’s good to know, never knowing, obviously, that it would be so important in Grant’s experience.” Kim rode in the ambulance with her son on the way to the hospital, trailed by Leon and the Newsomes’ two younger sons, Garrett, then 14,
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been changed,’ Newsome says, “it would’ve gone from a horrific accident to a true … I don’t want to say tragedy, but something very different.”
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ven as he began the rehabilitation process – one that has now seen him log more than seven-hundred hours, including five hundred with a single therapist – Newsome never lost sight of why he was at the University of Michigan. Despite spending thirty-eight days Newsome says he leaned in the hospital, he heavily on the example of was forced to drop his friend Larry Prout Jr., just one of his four a 16-year-old Michigan classes, using a mix football fanatic born with a host of physical challenges, of technology and during the early weeks of his rehabilitation. (Photo courtesy of the Prout family)
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old-fashioned determination to complete the others. “I was really fortunate that teachers were great. They worked with me, letting me Skype into class from the hospital,” Newsome says. “It was funny to be writing papers from my hospital bed, but school was ever-present there.” Undeterred, Newsome finished the year as a 2016 Academic All-Big Ten honoree and a Big Ten Distinguished Scholar, and he won the Arthur D. Robinson Scholarship Award as the football program’s top student-athlete. There were many moments, particularly in that first year, when Newsome drew strength from the classroom while fighting to restore his body. “Even though I was in a wheelchair and then on crutches, school allowed me to be a normal student and forget,” he says. “I thought, I’m not able to play with my team, I can’t go out and compete; I was going through all this pain and all this hurt, but for the five hours I was in school, I was able to escape that and just be a normal student.” All the while, Newsome put in the physical work, too, unsatisfied with the way things seemed to end for him as a football player. Even though his doctors were not completely sure he’d walk properly again, he was determined to return to the Wolverines, even if his NFL hopes – or rather, plans – were seemingly dashed. Though he spent three weeks in a wheelchair, Newsome was walking again two months after the injury – only five or ten feet at first, but managing to navigate fifty feet within another month. Progress was slow and Newsome struggled with comparisons to more conventional football injuries, such as a torn ACL, from which he might have fully recovered in a year. “I lost so much muscle to atrophy from being in the hospital and not working out. It took a solid four months before I could stand for extended periods without just being immediately fatigued,” he says. “That was the biggest adjustment for me, realizing that my injury was not like a teammate’s.” He kept at it, though, and by the end of summer 2017, Newsome was mobile enough to run in a straight line. In late August, head coach Jim Harbaugh tweeted a 24-second video of Newsome running 50-yard shuttles on the
team’s practice field under the watchful eye of a trainer. It was accompanied by the words, “The grueling rehab continues for @grant_newsome. A lesser man would have thrown in the towel many moons ago.” By the time spring practice arrived in 2018, the prevailing narrative had shifted to one in which Newsome had a real chance to contribute to the Wolverines in the fall. As training camp was set to open in late summer, much of the team’s media coverage posed the question: Will Grant Newsome actually return to the field this season? Is it possible? “He’s been training hard, and we’re going to see where he’s at in this point in time – go out on the field and look,” head coach Jim Harbaugh told reporters at Big Ten Media Days in Chicago in late July when asked about Newsome’s possible return when camp opened on August 3. “I anticipate that in the next week.” Football coaches are notorious for playing such subjects close to the vest, but Harbaugh wasn’t being coy. The truth is, Newsome was there. He had done the agonizing rehabilitation work, resumed non-contact football drills, and regained the physical strength and stamina to return to the lineup. Newsome could have returned to the field this fall. But during his two-year odyssey to recovery, he had many chances to reflect and view his ambitions from a distance. He had opportunities to learn about the world and about himself, to learn more about what he valued and the life he would like to live removed from his sport. He no longer takes any of it as a given. “It’s given me a bigger appreciation for that and given me perspective. It’s made me appreciate the little things in life,” Newsome told The Detroit News in January. “Just walking and being able to jog with my brothers and play football with my brothers. Things I won’t take for granted that I would have before the injury.” Even before being hurt, Newsome met Larry Prout Jr., a 16-year-old Michigan football fanatic born with a list of physical maladies that only begins with spina bifida. Prout was also born with an omphalocele, an occlusion in his abdomen stretching from his sternum to his rectum that left his intestines exposed. He was also born without certain parts of
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his body – his colon, for example, as well as several vertebrae and entire muscles. He has endured more than one hundred surgeries. Incredibly, Prout pays little attention to any of it. He just wants to spend time with his teammates. Prout was “drafted” by his beloved Wolverines in 2016 after the nonprofit Team IMPACT connected his family with the Michigan football program. Prout and Newsome met not long before Newsome’s injury, and they quickly became close, communicating daily. After his own struggles with health, Newsome’s appreciation for his friend’s approach to life only deepened. “I’ll never stop saying how inspired I am by Larry and by the attitude and the drive that he exhibits every day,” he says. “You know, we were friends prior to my injury, but it’s made us 10 times closer.” Newsome says Prout’s example has been a guide for him these past two years, but he leaned on him particularly in the early days after being hurt. “Him reaching out to me right after the injury and talking with him in those first few months of rehab, where it’s really the darkest place of the whole process, really kept my spirits up,” he says. “Having someone who knew what I was experiencing and could relate better than anyone else I knew … it was vital having him there.”
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eeks before players reported for fall camp, Newsome completed the requirements for his bachelor’s degree in American culture with a minor in African American studies. That degree, the one that in many ways had tilted the recruiting battle toward the University of Michigan, was his. Mirroring his approach to football, he attacked it and finished in just over three years. “We had always said to Grant, ‘You know, football’s an amazing idea. What a dream come true it would be if you were able to play in the NFL,” Kim Newsome says. “But everybody says NFL stands for Not for Long. You need to get an education.” To Kim and Leon Newsome, both educated at Princeton, it’s a basic tenet. Kim is the dean of students at The Madeira School, an independent
boarding school near their home in McLean, Virginia. Leon, an agent with the U.S. Secret Service, was the Gatorade High School Player of the Year in Maryland for the Gilman School in 1987, but eschewed scholarship offers from several major college football programs in favor of the Ivy League. He, too, knew there were things bigger than the sport. On this, the family remains united. “You need to go to a place where you’ll be poised to do something beyond football, whenever that ends,” Kim says, “whether it’s at the end of four years, or you never set foot on the field.” And so it was that after being cleared to return by the medical staff at Michigan, Grant Newsome chose to walk away from the game on August 20 of this year. “Ultimately, I had a conversation with my doctors, and they were all OK with me moving forward,” Newsome said an hour after announcing his medical retirement from football on Twitter. “But I asked, ‘What’s the plan B? What would we do if something goes wrong?’” In this case, he means the vascular graft that replaced his popliteal artery. Newsome’s right knee is structurally sound, healthy enough for him to play at a high level. But if he were to sustain a similar type of vascular rupture, it would be virtually impossible to repair the artery in the same way. “Instead of trying to do another graft, it would likely be what they call a salvage procedure,” Newsome explains, “which would be, basically, an amputation.” Simply put, it wasn’t a risk he was willing to take. “Just as I was getting to the point where that goal was attainable and tangible, that was also the moment when I had to take a step back and think about it objectively, and then ultimately,” he says. “That’s when it became clear that as much as I wanted to play football again – more than anything else in the world – it was not the right decision.” Newsome’s announcement on Twitter was an artfully crafted statement of the challenges he had faced and overcome, punctuated at intervals with the line, “Not all stories have a happy ending.” When he finally reveals his retirement, calling it the most difficult decision he’s made in his life, he punctuates the deflating news, once more, with, “Like I said,
Before he was the president of the United States, Gerald Ford was the leader of the Michigan offensive line, a role assumed by Newsome eighty years later.
not all stories have a happy ending.” Then, the twist: “But mine does.” After expressing his gratitude to his parents and longtime girlfriend Caroline Doll '14, as well as the entire Michigan community, including the Prout family, Newsome turns his focus not to what he had lost, but to what he had gained. For now, he remains in the Michigan football program as a student-coach, working with the tight ends. He’s already begun his master’s degree at the university’s prestigious Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, which he hopes to parlay into a means of making this world – his world – a better place. Inside his new academic building, standing beneath a portrait of its namesake, the 38th president of the United States, it’s not far-fetched to imagine the poised, charismatic Newsome one day following in the footsteps of Ford, long ago an anchor of the Wolverines’ offensive line before he entered public life. That is a story yet to be told.
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College and University Matriculation Class of 2018 The following is an alphabetical list of the colleges and universities in which graduates of the Class of 2018 have enrolled. Many of these institutions have enrolled multiple members of the class, but in order to support and align with the prevailing best practices in the college-counseling profession, The Lawrentian has elected to publish this list without associated metrics. American University Amherst College Babson College Barnard College Bates College Bishop’s University Boston College Bowdoin College Brown University Bucknell University Carnegie Mellon University Case Western Reserve University Claremont McKenna College Colby College Colgate University College of the Holy Cross College of William and Mary Colorado College Columbia University Connecticut College Cornell University Dartmouth College Davidson College DePaul University Dickinson College Drexel University Duke University Elon University Emory University Fairfield University Florida Atlantic University Fordham University Franklin & Marshall College Gardner-Webb University Georgetown University Georgia Institute of Technology Hamilton College (New York) Harvard University Haverford College Howard University Lafayette College Lehigh University Lindenwood University Loyola Marymount University Marquette University Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Middlebury College Monmouth University New York University Northeastern University Pepperdine University Pomona College Princeton University Providence College Rice University Scripps College Southern Methodist University Stanford University Stonehill College Swarthmore College Syracuse University Texas Christian University The George Washington University The Ohio State University The University of Edinburgh The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill The University of Oklahoma Trinity College Tufts University University of California, Berkeley University of California, Los Angeles University of California, Santa Barbara University of Chicago University of Denver University of Liverpool University of Miami University of Michigan University of Notre Dame University of Oxford University of Pennsylvania University of Richmond University of San Francisco University of Southern California University of St Andrews University of Vermont University of Virginia University of Wisconsin – Madison Vanderbilt University Wake Forest University Washington and Lee University Yale University
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Fifth Form Prizes Valedictorian Bradford Lin Aurelian Speaker Alex Small Visual Art Department Prize Justin Wong Bianca Mangravite The Peter Candler Periwig Award Grace Blaxill The Matthew Dominy Prize Emily Li
The Music Department Prize/ Leadership Jonathan Ge
The Benjamin F. Howell Jr. Science Prize Fund Chris Santamaria
The Tommy Sullivan Award Kaeli Huesman
The Music Department Prize/ Instrumental Henry Golub Alexander Liu
The Herman Hollerith Prize Matthew Gunton
The John H. Thompson Jr. Prize Grace Xiong The Adam and Mackellar Violich Award Abigail Dichter Isaiah Chery The Kathleen Wallace Award Annie McKirgan The Virtus Semper Viridis Award Eric Cheng
The Music Department Prize/ Vocal Bert Getz and Neo Shin The Addison H. Gery Jr. Jazz Prize Sankalp Kumar The English Department Prize for General Excellence Benjamin Cunningham
The Director’s Award Drew Korn
The English Department Prize for Achievement in Creative Writing Charles Christoffersen
The Independence Foundation Prize Hadley Copeland
The Boczkowski Award Maddie Vore
The Owen C. Smith Poetry Prize Drew Korn
The William Mayhew Dickey ’64 Prize Elias Salander
The Dean’s Award Nicole Lim
Free Enterprise Award Isabel Karohl
The Henry C. Woods Jr. Critical Writing Award Bradford Lin
The Frederick P. King Prize Grayson Sherr The Thomas F. Sharp Interdisciplinary Award Nicole Lim The James Sipple Award Alan Lin The Mathematics Faculty Award Kaeli Huesman Ryan Miles The Howard Hill Mathematics Award Alex Liu The Wendell Hertig Taylor Prize Priya Kumar The Paul L. Marrow Award Bradford Lin The Nick Gusz Best Male Athlete Award Mohammed Diakite
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The Melissa Magee Speidel Best Female Athlete Award Tess Maloney
The Elizabeth Louise Gray Prize Riley Rogerson The Andrew T. Goodyear Class of 1983 Award Max Wragan The Max Maxwell Award Tiffany Thomas The Phi Beta Kappa Award Priya Kumar The Masters Prize Justin Wong The John King Prize for Photography Carmen Cifuentes Torres The Performing Arts Department Prize/ Dance Justin Wong The James E. Blake Prize Adrian Lee
Walker W. Stevenson Jr. Prize Bradford Lin The Religion and Philosophy Department Prize Rikki Schlott The Religious Life Award Harini Srinivasan The John W. Gartner Prize Jesse Brewer The John P. Phelps Jr. Prize Ayina Anyachebelu The Benjamin H. Trask Classics Prize Grace Blaxill
The Lever F. Stewart Prize Louise Mellqvist Aldo Leopold Ecology Prize Hiroki Nagao The Henry and Janie Woods Prize For Research Science Calee Schmidtberger The Hubert Alyea Chemistry Prize Bradford Lin The Colin Sullivan Award Alvaro Barrera Lozano The Class of 1995 Journalism Award Grace Blaxill Isabel Karohl The MegnaSchonheiter Award Abigail Raved Parents at Lawrenceville Community Service Award Riley Rogerson The Robert Mammano Frezza Memorial Tiffany Thomas Major L Blankets Tess Maloney Carly Martinson Grace Xiong Amanda Avery Elizabeth Gracey Annie Morgan L12 Jesse Brewer Kaeli Huesman
The Chinese Language Prize Fiona Gould The Lawther O. Smith Computer Science Prize Chris Santamaria
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Looking Back: Lawrenceville’s first female graduate recalls the landmark commencement thirty years ago. The thirtieth anniversary of Lawrenceville’s first coeducational commencement passed in May with little fanfare, but in 1988, the milestone earned notice that extended well beyond the pages of The Lawrentian. Local newspapers were on hand to chronicle the landmark first, but for Libby Beardsley ’88, etched in the annals of Lawrenceville lore as the very first girl to graduate from the School, the distinction was purely a matter of alphabetical happenstance. The bigger story, she says, was about the pioneering group of girls as a whole. “The whole thing was a great experience,” says Beardsley, now an assistant public defender in Hillsborough County, Florida. “We had a very good, solid group of girls. A lot of us still correspond and are still friendly and [McClellan housemaster] Ms. [Leita] Hamill H’65 ’88 ’99 P’96 ’99 was a great mentor to us. We were well aware that there was a lot of focus on us, good and bad.” Beardsley, who enrolled at Lawrenceville as a postgraduate after attending the Nichols School in Buffalo, New York, says her unique distinction never struck her as anything besides a fluke. “There have been a couple times at reunions when people have asked me questions about it,” she says. One former employee of the School was nonplussed at Beardsley’s dispassion toward the historical quirk. “I think he kind of wanted more of a reaction from me than I was feeling,” she says. “I didn’t feel that I was any more special than anybody else. It was alphabetical, you know?” Lawrenceville’s break from 177 years of tradition also positioned her father, James Beardsley ’56, as the School’s first alumnus to have a daughter pick up a sheepskin of her own. “There were several of us who were PGs and daughters of alumni,” the younger Beardsley says, mentioning classmate Meredith Whitney ’88, whose father, Dick Whitney ’55, was a year ahead of the elder Beardsley. “It made my father very proud. I just wanted to make sure I graduated and got into college!” FA L L
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Underform Awards The Visual Art Department Faculty Award Katherine Xiong ’19 The Visual Art Department Prize Hazel Schaus ’20 The Visual Art Department Prize Toby Ilogu ’19 Performing Arts Department Underform Prize Alex Stach ’20 The John H. Imbrie Humanities/English Prize Cherie Fernandes ’21
The Semans Family Merit Scholarship Khatumu Tuchscherer ’19 Lily Vore ’19 Trevor White ’19 The Reuben T. and Charlotte Boykin Carlson Scholarship Jax Floyd ’20 Maggie Ross ’20 The Beverly Whiting Anderson Prize Harrison Abromavage ’21 Ndeye Thioubou ’21 The Marcus D. French Memorial Prize Isabelle Lee ’21 William Murray ’21 The Smith College Book Award Yukki Qiu ’19
The English Department Prize for General Excellence Anton Kandalin ’19 Liana Raguso ’20
The Rutgers University Book Award Hunter Korn ’19
Poetry Out Loud Competition Arya Singh ’20
Wellesley Club of Central Jersey Lily Vore ’19 Stephanie Yoon ’19
The Sterling Morton Prize Linda Li ’19 The History Department Prize Annie Nolan ’20 Casey Rogerson ’20 The John H. Imbrie Humanities/Cultural Studies Prize Houston Kilby ’21 The Richard C. Smith Physics Prize Haaris Mian ’19 Mr. and Mrs. W.R. Niblock Award Teddy Masterson ’19 The Lawrence L. Hlavacek Bowl Diana Bianco ’19 Kenny Garcia ’19 The Eisenhower Leadership Award Kate Monihan ’19 The Peter W. Dart Prize Ivy Zhang ’19 The Richard H. Robinson Prize Aidan Duffy ’19 The Wesley R. Brooks House Historian Award Anagam Udebiuwa ’19
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The Williams College Book Award Linda Li ’19 Dartmouth Club of Princeton Award Raghav Pemmireddy ’19 Madeleine Reinhard ’19 The Yale Club Book Award Kevin Xiao ’19 Harvard Club of Boston Prize Book Award Jonathan D’Souza ’19 The Brown University Alumni Book Award Katherine Xiong ’19 The Eglin Society Pins Devankar Chhokra ’19 David Hernandez ’19 Kevin Xiao ’19 David Zhu ’19 Hunter Korn ’19 Katherine Kosoff ’19 Claire Leahy ’19 Liv Moore ’19 Stephanie Yoon ’19 The Katherine W. Dresdner Cup Stanley House The Foresman Trophy Dickinson House
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LEAVE A LAWRENCEVILLE LEGACY PETER LAWSON-JOHNSTON ’45 GP’95 ’98 ’15 ’18 came to Lawrenceville as a Shell Form student over three-quarters of a century ago. A student leader throughout his years at the School, he continued that tradition by joining the Board of Trustees in 1977 and serving as its president from 1990 to 1997. As a member of the Guggenheim family, Peter is senior partner in Guggenheim Brothers, honorary chairman of The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, and chairman of The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. His experiences have given him a deep understanding of the importance of philanthropy to the success of Lawrenceville in both the near and long terms. With respect to the latter, Peter has added to his already considerable Lawrenceville legacy by creating a charitable remainder unitrust that provides income to his wife, Dede, for her lifetime and will benefit the School in years to come.
“In view of my rather complex background, if I am now a reasonably well-balanced individual, I fully attribute that fact to my memorable Lawrenceville experience.” — Peter Lawson-Johnston
For more information on leaving a bequest to Lawrenceville or for other planned giving opportunities, or if you have included Lawrenceville in your will but have not yet informed the School, please contact Jerry Muntz at the Lawrenceville Office of Planned Giving at 609-620-6064 or jmuntz@lawrenceville.org, or go to www.lawrenceville.planyourlegacy.org.
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WITH HELP FROM A
FINDING FRIEND HIMSELF By LEONARD DEUTCHMAN ’74
After years stuck in the middle of his Jewish identity, Leonard Deutchman ’74 found his footing and a friendship with literary giant Philip Roth, who died on May 22.
grew up in Lakewood, New Jersey, just a few miles from the shore. On the outside, everything about me seemed extreme. I was big and tall for my age, and started shaving in junior high. I had strong opinions – about politics, music, films, and religion, everything, really - which I voiced in classes and other settings where everyone else was afraid to speak. I played organized baseball and football, but I also played rock and jazz piano, improvising everything, when the other musicians I knew played in the junior high band. In
Len Deutchman ’74 in Berkeley, California, in 1978, shortly after befriending Roth.
the summer before Second Form, I helped a nearby rock band set up its sound system and equipment. The band’s leader was Bruce Springsteen. For all of my “extreme” talents and opinions, however, I always felt stuck in some kind of middle. For example, my parents were first-generation Americans, from a Jewish background that informed their Socialist thinking but never brought them to synagogue. Thus, I was “more” Jewish in a social sense but “less” Jewish in a liturgical sense than almost anyone I knew.
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I had read more novels and short stories than almost everyone else I knew, so I could take over English classes, but my opinions weren’t always popular, so I went back and forth between speaking up and sitting silently in class. Perhaps most important to me, my family was neither a wealthy Lakewood family nor a poor one – my parents made enough to “live OK,” but by no means as well as those on the “other side of the lake,” considered the wealthy side of town.
In school and in organized activities, it seemed the wealthy kids were respected. I was not wealthy, so I lacked that respect, but I was also too talented to ignore. There I was, stuck in the middle, liked by many teachers, coaches, band leaders, but not favored; dwelt upon and overlooked at the same time. In eighth grade, my parents and I started thinking about my attending Lawrenceville. My mother’s family had moved from the Bronx to a Socialist
experiment of a community near Princeton in the 1930s, and I was well familiar with the area. My Uncle Kurt, whose full name was David Kurt Kleinman, was in a displaced persons camp in Europe very early in World War II, on the run from the Nazis. He wrote many letters to “David Kleinman” in New York City, asking for help. My Aunt Helen opened one of the letters, and my mother’s family helped Kurt get to the United States, where he married her.
Philip Roth revisited areas where he grew up in Newark, New Jersey, such as this hamburger stand, in 1968. (Photo by Bob Peterson/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images)
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He was a lawyer fluent in many languages but could not find a job as an attorney, so he became a typesetter at Princeton University Press, working on texts in many foreign languages. As a family, then, we spent innumerable days in Princeton, and I grew to know the town, and the area, intimately. Lawrenceville seemed like the perfect way to escape the middle, and I enrolled as a Second Former in September 1970. The problem, however, was that Lawrenceville had its own middle, and I was stuck in it. Perhaps the best illustration of my “middle problem” was in my Jewishness. There were more than a few Jews at Lawrenceville, but so many seemed to be day students who lived in or near Princeton. The School had a requirement that students attend chapel services but no Jewish services were offered, and having been raised in a family in which Socialism was Judaism, I never sought a synagogue to join. The 10 percent or so of the Jewish students who lived on campus would attend the once-a-month Friday night Shabbat dinner hosted by a Jewish teacher, and that attendance would satisfy the services requirement. However, since our family did not celebrate Shabbat, I was unfamiliar with the tradition and rarely went to the teacher’s home. The remaining 90 percent or so of the Jewish students lived at home, and thus had no attendance requirement to meet. Once again, I was simultaneously not Jewish enough and too Jewish: What counted as “Jewish” at Lawrenceville was of no significance to me, and what to me was the essence of Judaism – politics, arts and literature – was in no way part of any Jewish world there. A year after graduating from Lawrenceville, I transferred to the University of Pennsylvania in the fall of 1975 and graduated in 1977. I majored in English literature with a double minor in math and music. In my senior year, I took two classes with the late Philip Roth, who was by far the best teacher I ever had.
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I expected the class to be composed of graduate students, but there were only one or two within a group of about twenty students. I also expected that we would read novels by Jewish writers, and we read a few (short stories and novels by Saul Bellow and Bernard Malamud), but we started with, and concentrated upon, writers from around the world. The first writer we read was Yukio Mishima; Roth passed out copies of a short story, we read it, and the discussion began about twenty minutes into the first class. I was entranced by how quickly and simply Roth got the class going, how great the story was and the combination of insight and sense of humor Roth brought to the discussion, which he directed but did not monopolize. From Mishima we moved to Milan Kundera, who remains one of my favorite writers, and from Kundera we jumped into Bellow and many, many others. Roth was at once serious and funny. I fit in perfectly – finally – and it did not take us long to become collegial friends. A funny story solidified my academic and personal affection for Roth. I do not know what today’s protocol is, but at Penn in 1976 all males, professors and students both, were referred to simply as “Mister,” and all females as “Miss,” “Ms.” or “Mrs.,” as they directed. The only exception to that rule I ever confronted was me, who was always addressed simply as “Deutchman.” After I understood what he was doing, I followed his lead in addressing him simply as “Roth.” A few weeks into the first semester, another student asked about this practice. Roth’s response was, “Can’t you see that and I are just two Jewish kids from Jersey?” I had never discussed my religion or state of origin with Roth, a native of Newark, but we hardly needed that discussion to establish those connections. From then on, I was the “smart” kid who was also the funny one – what had been the middle in which I had been stuck became the exact place for me to be. I did well in the class and, from week to
From Kundera we jumped into Bellow and many, many others. Roth was at once serious and funny. I fit in perfectly – finally – and it did not take us long to become collegial friends. week, looked forward to the next one. When I put together my grad school applications, I asked Roth for a recommendation. He told me he was happy to give me one, but warned me about the way in which grad school could kill the student’s love of literature. He was very close to being right, at least in my case. I look back on those classes as ones that introduced me to many writers with whose work I was unfamiliar, and ones I loved for all of their elements – the works we read, the discussions we had, the insights gained in that West Philadelphia classroom, the joy I got from every element. Class was the Hebrew school and the Lawrenceville I had simultaneously attended and missed. I was no longer in any middle – I was a friend of Roth, with whom I would be discussing important literature in one moment and joking in the next. Roth, may your memory be a blessing.
Leonard Deutchman ’74 is an attorney who helped found and build the largest eDiscovery provider in the United States, specializing in data recovery, data archiving, electronic discovery, data hosting, TAR and managed review, collections and digital forensics, and information technology, with offices across the country and around the world. Before that, he was a chief assistant district attorney at the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office for twenty years, where he founded the Cyber Crime Unit and conducted and oversaw hundreds of long-term investigations involving cybercrime, fraud, drug trafficking and other offenses.
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Stay connected with the
Lawrenceville
Alumni NetworkAPP The Lawrenceville Alumni Network app combines the scope of our alumni database and the power of LinkedIn to connect you with your fellow Lawrentians wherever you – and they – may be. Search by name, class year, profession, company, college, location, and more. For download instructions, go to www.lawrenceville.org and click "Connect and Network" on the alumni tab, or simply search for "Lawrenceville Alumni Network" on the App Store for iPhone or Google Play for Android.
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ALUMNI NEWS The Alumni Association Executive Committee
2018/2019 President Ian S. Rice ’95
First Vice President Charlie C. Keller ’95
Second Vice President Heather Elliott Hoover ’91 P’20
Executive Committee Vincent J. “Biff” Cahill, Jr. ’68 P’09 Frederick “Fritz” E. Cammerzell ’68 P’18 Morgan Dever ’06 Kevin Huang ’05 Neil Mehta ’02 Greg G. Melconian ’87 Brockett Muir III ’80 Porter Braswell ’07 George Arnett ’79 P’16
Alumni Tim Wojciechowitz ’78 P’06 ’10 ’12 Mark M. Larsen ’72 P’01 ’04 ’06
Selectors Martha “Perry” Nelson ’96 John C. Walsh ’99 Bruce L. Hager ’72 Brendan T. O’Reilly ’83 P’16 James A. Rowan Jr. ’66 Emily Wilson ’05
Faculty Liaison Timothy C. Doyle ’69 H’79 P’99
Ex Officio Cat Bramhall ’88 (Lawrenciana)
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FROM THE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION PRESIDENT
A
s we begin another academic year, my thoughts are on the past and the future, the old and the new. In that spirit, I wanted to first take a moment to recap the Alumni Association’s active spring and summer, as there is plenty to report. I’d also like to communicate where we are heading as an alumni organization. As always, we seek and encourage feedback from you, so please consider this a call to action as well. Alumni Weekend 2018 was sunny and warm, attracting a record-setting turnout, with more than 1,400 former students, family members, and friends in attendance. The festivities began on Thursday evening with the dedication of the new Abbott Dining Hall, followed by the annual Fifth Form Dinner. The updated-yet-classic dining facility is a fitting mix of modernity and tradition, with an exterior reflecting the architecture of Upper House, which dates to 1891, an interior design befitting of Hogwarts in grandeur and detail – but with better light! – and enough self-service coffee stations to keep the Fifth Form going for another hundred years. During the weekend, the Alumni Association welcomed 231 new alums from the Class of 2018, as well as 10 new honorary classmates. On Saturday night, at the 50th Reunion Dinner, we also presented the Distinguished Alumni Award to Dod A. Fraser ’68 P’98 ’01, in recognition of 50 years of exceptional efforts as a volunteer on behalf of the School. His son, Dod Fraser ’98, made the short walk across campus from his 20th reunion site to attend the awards portion of the dinner, bridging four decades of Lawrentians. It wasn’t hard to imagine that the friendships the younger Fraser already values will continue to grow into a lifelong fellowship to be celebrated when his own class enjoys a similar milestone dinner in 2048! Other modes of promoting alumni camaraderie outside of campus continue to evolve. Our Class Notes take shape in these pages as well as on email lists, Facebook groups, and Instagram posts. In recent years, we have seen many more regional clubs form, and we now place more than 30 pins on the map worldwide, from Atlanta to Taiwan. These are wonderful epicenters of Lawrenceville activity, bringing people together in real life, across class years, for local events. The next leg of growth in alumni activities is likely to be our affinity groups, which also unite Lawrentians of all ages around a shared interest. We currently have six officially recognized and resourced groups: Crescent, for alumnae; the Young Alumni Council, focused on our youngest 15 classes, which make up 20 percent of the alumni base; the Lawrenceville Black Alumni Association (LBAA); the Lawrenceville Finance Society; the LGBTQ Association; and the South Asian Society. We would love to see more of these affinity groups take shape, and have added resources to support them. Do you have an idea for what you’d like to see – perhaps an Arts Society? A field hockey booster group? A technology roundtable? – and some energy to spare? If so, we would love to hear from you. And I am always glad to hear from you in any case. Wishing you a future even better than the past, Ian Rice ’95 President, Alumni Association ianrice@gmail.com
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ALUMNI NEWS F S an
Francisco alumni enjoyed a happy hour on March 29.
B ill Chapin ’60, John
Pirovano ’59 P’93, and Clark MacKenzie ’59 P’81 take a moment between drives at their annual Lawrenceville Classes of 1959 and 1960 golf outing.
Members of the Classes of 1959 and 1960 got
together for their annual golf outing in February in Florida, organized primarily by John Pirovano ’59 P’93. Standing from left are Pirovano, Jack Luetkemeyer ’59, Gordon Kraft ’59, Chuck Hellar ’59, and George Bunn ’59 P’97 ’99 ’05. Seated are Clark MacKenzie ’59 P’81, Jim Brown ’59 P’85 ’91 ’93 ’95 GP’14 ’16 ’19, Martin Gruss ’60, Bill Chapin ’60, Pres Seckel ’59.
It made sense to have Big Red visit the
Cincinnati Reds at The Lawrenceville Club of Ohio alumni event in May. Luke Franzheim III ’71, Kristen Aland ’03, Christina Williams ’94, Bruce Cummins ’80 P’17, Andrew Quinn ’90, Scott Aland ’07, Tom Cummins ’17, Dan Whiteley ’62, Craig Willis ’74, Dan Bailey ’63, Phillip Long ’61, T. Quinn ’86, Chip Crowther ’89, Ethan Stanley ’89
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OLD SCHOOL
75 YEARS AGO IN THE LAWRENTIAN L FALL 1943
50 YEARS AGO IN THE LAWRENTIAN L FALL 1968
A LEANER FIFTH FORM
AND MAYBE ELECTRONICALLY COMPUTED GRADES…
The effects of the war are really noticeable this year as far as Lawrenceville’s Fifth Form is concerned. The Class of 1944 is probably the smallest and the youngest in our recent history. There are 107 boys in the Form, and the average age is 17 years and 2 months. At the time of writing, there are five boys who are still only fifteen years of age. The boys have all been placed in Upper and Hamill Houses. We are especially fortunate this year in being able to assemble the whole Form together for meals at Upper House. This has helped considerably in achieving a degree of unity and friendliness that is especially evident.
Room B3 in Pop Hall now has a teletype machine linking the School with a G.E. 235 Computer in northern New Jersey and is the latest addition to the School’s growing number of technological innovations and additions. A course in computer math is to be offered, and one boy has already been heard to voice his apprehension that it will be hard to argue with a faculty member who computes his grades on the machine. – From the “Echoes of the Campus” news roundup
– From “On the Esplanade,” an update by Jordan C. Churchill H’44, master of the Fifth Form.
25 YEARS AGO IN THE LAWRENTIAN L FALL 1993
DRESS CODE REFURBISHED A new school-wide dress code, which details acceptable attire for class, dining halls, and other public occasions, has been promulgated across the campus to the mild annoyance of some and the relief of many. The new code requires boys to wear collared shirts, tucked in, to class. Girls may wear uncollared shirts “of a dressier style.” No fatigues, tank tops, ripped pants, athletic gear, or hats allowed in class. In addition, “chapel dress” (which generally turns out to be a blazer and khakis for boys and a dress or skirt for girls) must be worn to lectures and other special events. – The news item by Barbara Preston assessed the new dress code as “lenient” compared with that of other northeastern boarding schools.
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STUDENT SNAP: CARMEN CIFUENTES TORRES ’18
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T Lawrentian THE
usps no. 306-700 the Lawrenceville School Lawrenceville, New Jersey 08648 Parents of alumni: If this magazine is addressed to a son or daughter who no longer maintains a permanent address at your home, please email us at kzsenak@lawrenceville.org with his or her new address. Thank you!
#LifelongLawrentian
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