The Lawrentian - Fall 2014

Lawrentian THE

FALL 2014

Departments 2 From the Head Master 3 Editor’s Note

F e at u r e s

4 News in Brief 20 C ommencement 2014 The Fifth Form says goodbye.

On the Cover: Lawrenceville pioneer Lyals Battle ’67

24 Alumni Weekend 2014 Alumni say hello again!

Photo by David Duncan

28 A Campus of Color The first black students came to campus 50 years ago. We look at the circumstances that led up to this historic event – and how the School has evolved in the years since.

A Letter of Intent 30

The Pioneers

34

Transitions

37

38

Onward

Robots run the course, Li produces poetry, and Murray becomes No. 13.

10 Go big red!

Dishner and Orser follow in their fathers’ (fast-paced) footsteps.

11 Funding the Future East Asian study projects get a boost.

alumni weekend 2014 12 On the Arts Alumni express themselves.

14 Cover to Cover Hoyle explores Miller’s mind.

16 Take This Job and Love It Bennett rolls the dice.

18 Ask the Archivist The longest yard.

76 By the Numbers A breakdown on who’s getting in.

77 Student Shot Domb brings The Last Frontier to the last page.

C ov e r to C ov e r

24 TAKE T H I S J O B AND L O V E I T

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14 Alumni 40 Alumni News

41 Class Notes

9 From the Head Master

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G The be-piped, English Master Max Maxwell H’74 ’81 ’91, was one of the first black faculty members at Lawrenceville. He retired in 2004, but still can be spotted on campus working as a tutor.

n September 1964, just two months after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted, Lyals Battle ’67 and Darrell Fitzgerald ’68 became the first black students to enroll at Lawrenceville. Fifty years later, Lawrenceville is a fully integrated School, with students, faculty, and staff representing myriad races, ethnicities, and backgrounds. We owe that progress not only to pioneers such as Lyals and Darrell, but also to my predecessor, Bruce McClellan H’57 ’60, and to three members of the Class of 1962 featured in this issue, who as students pushed for the School to admit black students. Thanks to their efforts, today we’re well on our way to becoming a truly multicultural community, in which we both recognize our shared humanity and common values and appreciate our differences.

What is often lost in discussions about diversity are the benefits to all students, who are exposed to a variety of perspectives based on not only race, but also gender, hometowns, ethnicities, religious backgrounds, political affiliations, and many other factors that contribute to people’s identities and viewpoints. This was true when Darrell and Lyals enrolled at Lawrenceville 50 years ago, and perhaps is even more important now, given the interconnected world in which today’s graduates will live and work.

For more than 75 years, one of the hallmarks of a Lawrenceville education has been Harkness teaching and learning, in which students deepen their individual and collective understanding of a topic through discussion. Having a broad range of perspectives around the table not only makes Harkness classes more vibrant and rigorous, but also more meaningful, motivating, and enduring, as students are challenged to refine their understanding of a subject by understanding others’ points of views and articulating their own ideas and positions. As English Master Pier Kooistra, who holds the Robert S. and Christina Seix Dow P’08 Distinguished Master Teaching Chair in Harkness Learning, often says, the essence of the Harkness approach is students and a teacher “working together to change our minds.”

Of course, students learn as much outside the classroom as they do within it. Adolescence is a time in which teenagers develop a sense of themselves and their purpose. As they assert their independence, teenagers look to their peers and trusted mentors to help them establish their own identity. Lawrenceville students find both in our Houses. Living as a family with people from a variety of backgrounds broadens students’ perspectives at a critical time in their development. The strong affiliation and loyalty that Lawrenceville’s Houses engender allow students to appreciate both their similarities and differences, to learn from each other, and to form lasting – and sometimes unlikely – friendships.

In his book, The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools and Societies (2007), Scott Page, a professor of political science and economics at the University of Michigan, describes and mathematically models why diverse groups are generally more vibrant and productive than homogeneous ones. Page demonstrates that “diverse groups of people bring to organizations more and different ways of seeing a problem and, thus, faster/better ways of solving it,” and that diverse environments, even if they are more “messy,” tend to be “exciting places that produce lots of innovation and creativity.” As faculty and students can attest, Page’s findings hold true today around Lawrenceville’s Harkness tables and in our Houses.

We have come a long way since Lyals and Darrell first enrolled at Lawrenceville 50 years ago. We still have work to do to become the strong, inclusive community we’re capable of being, one which celebrates both our commonalities and our individuality. I’m confident we’ll get there because of the signature features of a Lawrenceville education: the House system and Harkness approach to teaching and learning.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth A. Duffy H’43 ’79 The Shelby Cullom Davis ’26 Head Master

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Lawrentian THE

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Vo lu m e 78 N u m b e r 4

publisher Jennifer Szwalek editor Mike Allegra art director Phyllis Lerner proofreaders Rob Reinalda ’76 Linda Hlavacek Silver H’59 61 ’62 ’63 ’64 GP’06 ’08 Jean Stephens H’50 ’59 ’61 ’64 ’68 ’89 P'78 GP’06 contributors Alexander Domb ’17 Lisa M. Gillard Hanson Jacqueline Haun Barbara Horn Karla Johannes David Laws Sabrina Li ‘16 Dorothy Quinn Nancy Ruiter Selena Smith Paloma Torres

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 mallegra@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 via email (mallegra@lawrenceville.org).

Visit us on the web at www.lawrenceville.org. www.lawrenceville.org/thelawrentian Postmaster

Please send address corrections to: The Lawrentian The Lawrenceville School P.O. Box 6008 Lawrenceville, NJ 08648 ©The Lawrenceville School Lawrenceville, New Jersey

From the Editor

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o be honest, I was not eager to write a feature on the 50th anniversary of black students at Lawrenceville. I wasn’t reluctant because I don’t find integration to be important. Quite the opposite really; I was reluctant because I do find integration to be important and, well, 50 years doesn’t seem all that long ago. The integration of Little Rock’s public schools preceded Lawrenceville’s by seven years.

Once I began my research, however, I quickly realized that I wasn’t being fair.

In fact, I learned some great stories that could make any Lawrentian proud. Unlike the southern integration stories, which were often accompanied by histrionics, vile threats, and National Guard intervention, Lawrenceville’s breaking of the color barrier was quiet, dignified, intellectual, and almost entirely student driven.

Discussions about integration were nothing new to Lawrenceville students, who frequently took to discussing the School’s color barrier around Harkness tables throughout much of the 1950s. But it was a letter penned by then-fourth formers Charles Strozier ’62, Paul Dry ’62, and George Viles ’62 that pushed the matter to the forefront, and forced the School to take a long hard look at itself. When the trustees didn’t move with due deliberate speed on the issue, other students took matters into their own hands, thereby pressuring the School to pick up the pace.

Lawrenceville may have arrived late to the party, but the progressive grass roots effort initiated by students – and endorsed by the faculty and Head Master Bruce McClellan H’57 ’60 – is something to celebrate.

Less than two years after Strozier, Dry, and Viles signed their names to that letter, the first two African American students arrived on campus – and one would be hard pressed to find a finer pair of pioneers. Lyals Battle ’67 and Darrell Fitzgerald ’68 were two very different men from two very different backgrounds, but both, through their grit and raw intelligence, demonstrated to any lingering skeptics that they were true Lawrentians. Their exemplary scholarship soon paved the way for the rich, multicultural campus we have and cherish today.

In short, this is a golden anniversary to be proud of. It is worthy of sustained recognition and celebration. And I couldn’t be happier to have been so very wrong.

Warmest wishes, Mike Allegra Editor mallegra@lawrenceville.org

Oops…

The lovely and legendary Ginnie Chambers H’59 ’61 ’62 ’89 P’77 found an error in the spring 2014 “By the Numbers” department. The article stated that the longest serving housemaster tenure was 32 years. Not so. This number has been surpassed

by Ginnie and Marsh Chambers H’62 P’77, who served Cleve for 36 years. “I was sure we had the record,” Ginnie writes, “only to find a plaque in Griswold showing otherwise.” Eking out a victory over the Chamberses, with a 37-year housemaster tenure, is Thomas Bertrand Bronson, who oversaw Griswold from 1892 to 1928.

In that same issue, the feature “The Indirect Message” listed an incorrect date for the Battle of Stalingrad. The battle took place during the winter of 1942-43, not 1943-44.

The Editor regrets the errors.

All rights reserved.

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9 News in Brief

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Lucky13 Lawrenceville Announces Its Next Head Master

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he Lawrenceville School is delighted to report that after an intensive sixmonth search, Stephen Murray will become Lawrenceville’s 13th Head Master.

An accomplished educator, proven leader, and a person who emanates intelligence, warmth, and integrity, Murray comes to Lawrenceville with an extraordinary record of leadership at two of the nation’s most prestigious independent schools. In his present role as headmaster of the University School in Cleveland, which he has held since 2005, Steve manages a two-campus K-12 boys’ school with 875 students and 235 faculty and staff.

His leadership has been distinguished by educational innovation while honoring the school’s 124-year history. During his tenure he has overseen two strategic planning efforts and a $100 million capital campaign, and he has more than doubled the financial aid budget.

Prior to University School, Murray had an impressive career at Deerfield Academy. During his 15-year tenure there he served as a teacher, faculty resident, varsity

coach, dean of students, academic dean, and assistant headmaster.

He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy and Williams College, and he earned master’s degrees in both education and French literature from Harvard University.

He also, it should be noted, possesses a very striking moustache.

A father of five, Murray has an affinity for marathon running, cycling, and skiing and is actively engaged in civic and community affairs. The School looks forward to welcoming Steve, his wife, Sarah, and their family at the start of the 2015-2016 school year.

Lawrenceville’s Search Committee, co-chaired by Whitney Hailand Brown ’91 and Michael S. Chae ’86, worked in concert with the trustees, consultants from Spencer Stuart, and the entire School community in a thorough process that involved a careful consideration of a large and strong national pool of candidates. The search included multiple town hall meetings across the country, a global web conference, survey input from more than 800 respondents, and a nearconstant conversation between the

Search Committee and a broad swath of the Lawrenceville community. Through this process, the School is certain that Murray is the ideal successor to Head Master Liz Duffy H’43 ’79, who, last spring, elected not to renew her contract after the 2014-15 School year.

When Duffy departs in June 2015, she will leave a proud legacy. Now in her 11th year at the helm, Duffy has led comprehensive curriculum redesign and strategic planning efforts; overseen the construction of massive building projects; introduced new student leadership, international travel, and environmental sustainability programs; fostered an inclusive culture on campus; strengthened the School’s finances and operations; and raised more than $350 million in capital, endowment, and program support.

The trustees, the Search Committee, and the School as a whole are eager to see Murray build on these achievements upon his installation in July 2015.

Be sure to check future issues of The Lawrentian for more information on Stephen Murray.

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5K Raises $15K

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articipants in Lawrenceville’s Big Red Race, the School’s annual 5K fun run, raised more than $15,000 to benefit local, underserved children. Over the past 12 years the event has generated nearly $250,000 – money used to send local boys and girls to The Lawrenceville School Camp, a residential summer camp in Warren County, NJ. Facilities include four cabins for campers and counselors, a lodge for meals and indoor activities, a basketball court, soccer field, kickball/softball field, and a pond for swimming and fishing. The camp is a separate nonprofit entity led by School faculty, staff, and administrators.

Although the School does offer logistical support, the camp’s operating budget is supported through Lawrenceville student fundraising initiatives and donations from alumni and parents.

In addition to the money raised, The Big Red Race also collected hundreds of pounds of canned goods to benefit local nonprofit agencies that fight hunger.

A In addition to the 5K, The Big Red Race also offered a number of racing events for children.

Kraut Settles in as New Medical Director

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awrenceville recently welcomed Bruce Kraut ’75 as the School’s new medical director. In this role, Kraut oversees the School’s medical, counseling, athletic training, and sports medicine services, and manages the staff of Lawrenceville’s Al Rashid Health and Wellness Center. Working with faculty and staff, Kraut is responsible for the health and well-being of Lawrenceville students.

“We’re excited to have Dr. Bruce Kraut return to Lawrenceville as our new medical director,” said Head Master Liz Duffy H’43 ’79. “He brings a wealth of experience working with adolescents and a deep affection for and knowledge of Lawrenceville. He will be a valued member of the senior staff and School community.”

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G Bruce Kraut '75 and Isabelle

Kraut also relished his return to his alma mater. “I have had the good fortune to pursue my passions in both academia and medicine, and it was Lawrenceville that laid the foundation in me for that scholarly life. Nowhere would I

find a more perfect niche for the practice of medicine and scholarship than in an academic medical home. In that regard Lawrenceville represents the perfect homecoming.”

Kraut received a B.A. from Amherst College, a Ph.D. in classical languages from Princeton University, and an M.D. from Emory University. He did his residency in pediatrics at the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque, NM. He is a board certified pediatrician who founded Pediatric Associates of Ocala (FL) in 1995 and was the medical director and lead physician at the practice. Kraut also served as the chief of pediatrics at Munroe Regional Medical Center (also in Ocala), where he served on the Medical Executive, Clinical Integration, and Infection Prevention committees. He is a

fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics and a member of the Marion County Medical Society and Florida Medical Association.

In addition to his medical practice, Kraut was an adjunct professor of classics at the University of Florida. He has presented research at the University of Florida’s College of Medicine’s History of Medicine Lecture Series, addressing such topics as “Hippocrates and the Power of Observation” and “Controversies Surrounding the Hippocratic Oath.” Kraut has also been published in an assortment of academic journals, most recently “Commentary on Thucydides’ Athenian Plague” in Academic Medicine, in which he draws comparisons between the effects of ancient and modern pandemics on medical thinking.

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L'ville Letters

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Lawrentian THE

Another Flynn Reflection In my Fourth Form year, the Asian flu hit Lawrenceville hard, and my house, Dawes, was converted to an infirmary to handle the excess cases, given that the regular infirmary was too small. Those of us in Dawes were relocated mainly to Upper House, where my roommate for two weeks was Sean Flynn ’60, a kind and unassuming young guy, and probably about the most movie star-handsome student on campus.

Special Olympians Take to Lawrenceville Fields

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he Lawrenceville School is honored to have been a competition site for the 2014 Special Olympics USA games, held from June 14-21 at locations throughout the greater Princeton/Mercer County, N.J. area.

More than 3,500 American athletes competed in the national games, supported by 1,000 coaches, 10,000 volunteers, and an estimated 70,000 spectators.

Lawrenceville hosted the Special Olympics flag football competition, the organization’s second most popular sport. Matches took place on the School’s ’49 Field, Chambers Field, and Keuffel Field.

Lawrenceville has long hosted events for Special Olympics’ New Jersey chapter and many individual Lawrentians serve as mentors to many Special Olympians throughout the year, so the School is particularly honored to play a part in the national games.

I do not know whether you are aware that his mother’s will directed $8 million to Lawrenceville. At the time, it was one of the largest gifts to the School, and underscored the importance of keeping in touch with families of deceased Lawrentians. Your publication serves that purpose well.

Kind regards.

David Pohndorf ’61

Honoring History Congratulations on the spring 2014 issue. It is the best issue of The Lawrentian I have ever read. (You will understand that the number of those is considerable).

The substantive articles are unusual in number and quality. The article by Tina Liu ’13 on the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombing [“The Indirect Message”] was outstanding – almost incredible for a prep school graduate of one year ago. Although I don’t necessarily agree with her thesis, her story has given me information that is provocative, worthy of further thought, and enjoyable in and of itself.

I also especially enjoyed the article on trolley cars [“The Road Hogs” by Mark Foster ’57] and the one on Dorr’s Rebellion [“The Rained-Out Revolution” by History Master Erik Chaput], as well as the others. Dorr’s Rebellion was the subject of the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Luther v. Borden (1849), that the Court would not enforce the clause of the Constitution of the United States, “Congress shall Guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government…”

Keep up the good work.

T.S.L. Perlman ’42

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9 News in Brief

Big Red Kicks Bot in Botball

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his past spring rookie robokids took high honors at the New York/New Jersey Bot-

placing fourth overall.

Botball requires teams to build and program two robots to cooperatively complete a variety of tasks autonomously, like picking up and sorting blocks by color, moving hangers, etc. Using AI, robots sense and react to their environment using cameras, touch sensors, and a variety of other tools.

“It is unheard of for first-year teams to finish this well given that all returning teams can start in September, since they have their robots, computers, and parts from the previous year,” said Science Master David Laws

ball Regional Tournament, earning a special judge’s award for “Outstanding Rookie Team” and

F Aulden Foltz ’15 and Neel Ajjarapu ’16 show off their bots.

Lawrenceville Welcomes New Trustees Lawrenceville is pleased to announce the election of Celeste Mellet Brown ’94 and Leigh Lockwood ’65 P’97 ’02 to the School’s Board of Trustees.

Brown is the managing director at Morgan Stanley & Co. in New York, and is head of global investor, creditor, and counterparty relations. She began her employment with Morgan Stanley in June 2006 as a research analyst in its research division.

An active Lawrenceville student who graduated cum laude, Brown was a Perry Ross prefect; served

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as treasurer of Stanley; was a member of Olla Podrida, Young Democrats, Students for Relief, and Political Club; and was a School Camp counselor, campus guide, peer group leader, and ropes course instructor. As an alumna, she served as a Bicentennial National Campaign Committee volunteer, currently serves as a class agent, and has attended many alumni events.

Lockwood, the CEO and president of U.S. Exports Inc. since 1993, retired as president of the Alumni Association in June 2011. He also served on the Alumni

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Association Executive Committee and his 45th Reunion Committee.

He is co-president of the Lawrenceville Club of Mexico and was a residential initiative volunteer.

Lockwood was president of DIMSA (Mexico D.F.) a subsidary of Doubleday & Co.; executive vice president at Feffer & Simons Inc. in New York, a subsidiary of Doubleday & Co. Inc.; and vice presidentinternational at Periodical Management Group in San Antonio, TX. He later served as CEO of Clark Agencies in Trenton, NJ, from 19871993.

who, along with Science Master Mary Calvert, is the team’s faculty advisor. “In contrast, as a rookie team, we did not receive our equipment until the Botball workshop in mid-March, and so had very little time to prepare.”

“The teamwork our students displayed was amazing,” agreed Calvert. “It was a perfect combination of builders and programmers working together to overcome any obstacle that they ran into.”

The winning team consisted of co-presidents Aulden Foltz ’15 and Neel Ajjarapu ’16, along with Richard Soler ’16, Shrey Chowdhary ’17, Christian Hwa ’17, Dorothy Waskow ’17, and Ricky Williams ’17.

Well Versed Li Earns Honors

By Keera Annamaneni ’16

S 2014

abrina Li ’16 earned a National Medal in the poetry division of the Scholastic

Art

&

Writing Awards. Presented by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, Li’s work was selected by creative professionals as among the most accomplished in the nation. This year, 255,000 works of art and writing were submitted to the competition; only 2,068 were recognized at the national level.

Li and other National Medal recipients were honored at Carnegie Hall in New York City and invited to participate in showcase events at Parsons The New School for Design.

The Awards, founded in 1923, has been proven prophetic in identifying noteworthy young talents who would later make names for themselves in their chosen fields. Past honorees include Richard Avedon, Truman Capote, Joyce Carole Oates, Sylvia Plath, Robert Redford, and Andy Warhol.

Check out Li’s winning poem on the facing page.

The Supposed to Be House

By Sabrina Li ’16

.

It was third floor on Florence Basement on Burk

Leave a

Lawrenceville Legacy

Attic on Allen Before that I can’t remember.

And now it’s Pettit The supposed to be house:

John Cleve Green and his heirs left a legacy that still

The supposed to be white house

resonates more than a century later. Try, for ex-

The supposed to be fence house

ample, to imagine Lawrenceville without the Circle

The supposed to be big yard house

Houses. Planned gifts, large and small, continue to

The supposed to be house

provide critical support for present and future needs,

That Papa smiled about

from student financial aid to teaching chairs. These

Whenever he held a too creased lottery ticket.

include charitable bequests, the easiest way to leave

The supposed to be bedtime story house

a lasting legacy, and life income gifts, which can

That Mama whispered in our ears

provide current financial and tax benefits to you

Accompanied by twirls of dancing hands.

and your family. Please consider what your own

Instead, it’s the house with too tight steps, Holding their breath windows, Collapsed bricks, Swollen front door, And six sad weeping willows

Lawrenceville legacy will be.

For further information, contact Jerry Muntz at 609-620-6064 or jmuntz@lawrenceville.org, or visit our website at www.lawrenceville.org/plannedgiving.

Coughing for breath on city pavement Temporary, says Papa As he tosses the tattered ticket in the drawer

“…only by giving can we affirm our own

With the rest of the thumb nail holed scraps.

small but meaningful place in the scheme of

For the time being Mama sighs

things, and without someone to benefit from our

As she closes the hard bound fairytale

gift, our own life has no meaning.” – Anonymous

But I know how things go.

Home isn’t a place, but a moment And then another And then another Built one on top of each other Like bricks With emerald trees, erect and at attention But I want a tangible home One that is worth the loss of the fluid feel of an old name Wong Ah Lee, the soft strokes got stolen and the robbers only left a Tom Lee Just one bullet point in the list of things we’ve lost but learned to stop missing I know how things go.

Donor

9 Go Big Red!

FAST FRIENDS

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atie Dishner ’15 and Amy Orser ’15 first met as third formers. They were roommates in Stanley House.

This coincidental pairing did not escape the notice of each girl’s father.

Jeffrey Dishner ’83 P’15 and Henson Orser ’83 P’15 were friends at Lawrenceville, too.

They also supported each other as members of the varsity track team.

And, as of this past year, so do the younger generation of Dishners and Orsers.

During the spring season, both girls were part of a stellar team that won both the M.A.P.L. and N.J.I.S.A.A. championships. The girls have distinguished themselves in their own right as well. At the N.J.I.S.A.A., Orser and Dishner placed third and fourth in the mile, respectively, both recording personal best times.

“They are probably the best milers I have,” says Katie Chaput, the girls’ indoor and outdoor track coach.

It apparently runs in the families.

G Katie Dishner ’15 and Amy Orser ’15. Top, from left: Jeffrey Dishner ’83 P’15 and Henson Orser ’83 P’15.

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Amy Orser ’15 and Kate Dishner ’15 follow in their fathers’ footsteps (literally).

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Funding the Future

A Far East Education Jiang Gift Supports East Asian Studies China’s influence on the world stage grows with each passing year. Since Lawrenceville students are trained to be global leaders, it’s only natural for the School to provide a detailed understanding of the Chinese culture. Thanks to George and Helen Jiang P’15, Lawrenceville’s dedication to global understanding is more fully realized than ever before; the Jiangs have committed $1 million to Lawrenceville over the next five years to fund the Greenwoods China Program, a set of initiatives aimed at increasing student and faculty understanding of Chinese language, culture, and history. The Jiangs’ gift will enable the School to support both faculty and student travel to China and sponsor other programs designed to deepen the School community’s understanding of China today.

“The important role that China will play in the 21st century is indisputable, so the opportunity both in and beyond the classroom to expand Lawrenceville faculty and students’ understanding of China is invaluable,” noted Head Master Elizabeth Duffy H’43 ’79. “We are grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Jiang for recognizing and responding to this need.

“Over the past decade, we have been able to increase our community’s exposure to other cultures through a series of generous gifts,” she added. “Going forward, our challenge will be to expand Lawrentians’ engagement with world cultures through global partnerships, global studies, and immersive travel experiences.”

Globalization is a key trend that will require the School’s sustained commitment in the coming years. Preparing students to navigate well in a global society is an important component of Lawrenceville’s strategic plan, which was adopted in January 2014.

The Lawrentian looks forward to reporting on such globalization stories in future issues.

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9 On the Arts

G Photograph by Kendall Mills ’05

Alumni Artists Grace Gruss

O

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Artwork by Alex Lin '14

G Above and top: paintings by Jane LaFarge Hamill ’99

ver Alumni Weekend, Lawrenceville’s Hutchins Gallery serves as a venue to highlight exceptional alumni contributions to the visual arts. This year’s show, featuring the work of Jane LaFarge Hamill ’99, Kendall Mills ’05, and Brocq Maxey ’09, was no exception, offering a diverse and dazzling array of work to be enjoyed by hundreds of visiting alumni.

Hamill, the daughter of Trustee Leita Hamill H’65 ’88 ’89 P’96 ’99, studied art at the Slade School of Fine Art at University College in London, Franklin College in Switzerland, and the New York Academy of Art. She has won numerous grants and residencies and has exhibited internationally. This is not the first time her paintings have been displayed in Gruss; Hamill was featured in last year’s alumnae exhibition to commemorate the School’s 25th year of coeducation.

Mills, the son of Lawrenceville Science Master Ken Mills H’86 P’05, received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in materials science and engineering from Rutgers University. Working full-time as an engineer for the U.S. Army, his photographs capture the beautiful landscapes in and around his native Blairstown, NJ, as well as the many places the Army stations him.

Maxey, the son of Island School Director Chris Maxey H’95 P’07 ’09 ’13 ’14, has, not surprisingly, spent the better part of his life in, on, and around the ocean. What is surprising are his impressive, too-close-for-comfort photographs of sharks and other ocean predators. He is a part owner of a dive company in South Africa and has spent the past decade involved in various oceanographic and marine research projects.

F Photograph by Brocq Maxey ’09

Dancers find international inspiration

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he always eagerly anticipated Spring Dance Concert got the standing room only Kirby Arts Center audience’s toes tapping. More than 120 Lawrentians both in front of the footlights and behind the scenes participated in the show, performing 23 numbers in many styles, including classical ballet, hip-hop, Indian, K-Pop, modern, and more.

One of the evening’s many highlights was the “The Thailand/Cambodia Project,” inspired by a spring break trip to those two nations by Lawrenceville faculty and students. Director of Dance Derrick Wilder called the excursion a “spiritual exploration, an eye-popping, mind-blowing, soul-searching, intellectually engaging, and culturally enlightening dance adventure.

“We explored the magnificent ancient temples of Angkor Wat and Ayutthaya, the capital cities of Bangkok and Phnom Penh, and visited the ‘Killing Fields,’ the Grand Palace, and much, much more!” he explained. “In addition to exploring the rich cultural histories of these beautiful countries, we participated in several classical Thai and Cambodian dance classes, delving deeper into the cultural diverseness of this amazing region. In this concert we shared our experiences through dance.”

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9 Cover to Cover

visiting the

TROPICS

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rthur Hoyle ’59 discovered Henry Miller’s writing by accident. In the 1990s he was browsing in a bookstore when Miller’s essay collection, Stand Still like the Hummingbird, caught his eye. Hoyle was immediately taken by the image the title created in his mind.

“It struck me because a hummingbird doesn’t stand still at all,” he says. “It’s hovering, but its wings are beating frantically.

So there’s all that energy, but it is energy in repose. It’s in motion but also motionless.”

So Hoyle picked up the book, began to read, and was at once struck by Miller’s unique voice.

In some ways, it’s surprising that Hoyle’s introduction to Miller was so long in coming.

Hoyle was an English major at UCLA, less than 20 miles away from Miller’s home at the time. Miller frequently visited the university while Hoyle was a student, and the famed author donated all of his papers to the school upon his death. After Hoyle graduated, he became a high school English teacher – and in all the years he taught, not once did Miller’s name come up in class.

That being said, Hoyle’s decision to write The Unknown Henry Miller: A Seeker in Big Sur, seems, if not predestined, then at least a touch prophetic. For a period of 12 years, Hoyle left the classroom to create awardwinning documentaries, some of which were broadcast on PBS. The distributor for Cattle, Hoyle’s first film, was Grove Press, a book publisher that was making a tentative foray into art house films at the time. Grove Press

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In a compelling new biography, Arthur Hoyle ’59 asserts that Henry Miller’s body of work is far better than the sum of its (naughty) parts.

was the same company that distributed all of Miller’s banned books in the U.S. Another karmic coincidence occurred when Hoyle filmed a documentary about poet Karl Shapiro, who wrote the introduction to the American printing of Tropic of Cancer. “I didn’t know [about the introduction] at the time I was making the film,” Hoyle says. “I was just dealing with the poetry. So years later, when I finally got around to reading Tropic of Cancer, lo and behold, I discovered Karl Shapiro’s contribution.”

Henry Miller is best known for his sexually explicit books, Tropic of Capricorn and Tropic of Cancer, heavily autobiographical novels that were banned in the U.S. for decades.

These titles were but a small fraction of Miller’s work, however. Hummingbird and many other writings that Hoyle cut his teeth on were “Miller’s chaste books.”

“There was nothing in these books that was censorable. They were from a tamer Miller,” he explains.

There was a lot of tame Miller for him to enjoy. In fact, it took Hoyle a few years to finally give Miller’s more notorious titles a try.

“I was nervous about reading Tropic of Cancer, because I was afraid I wasn’t going to like it,” he admits. “But I thought it was great, and a very, very funny book. It had this stain of being pornographic on it. The book was bawdy and obscene, but it was not pornographic. I was relieved to find out that he wasn’t writing smut.”

In addition to reading Miller’s books, Hoyle also read books about Miller. These biographies, he observed, though detailed,

California’s Big Sur, where he completed his late-period masterpiece, The Rosy Crucifixion.

Hoyle’s book also serves as a narrative arc for Tropic of Cancer, the book was first published in 1934 yet could not be sold legally in the U.S. until 1961. Although Cancer’s appearance in the States was a long time in coming, in many respects, its timing could not have been better; it was a book that dovetailed perfectly with the dawn of the countercultural movement.

Hoyle’s book is accessible to even those who have never read a line of Miller’s prose, and it serves as an excellent character study of a man who is rarely admirable but often remarkable. Miller’s unconventional and often chaotic writing style is explored, as is his

creative process, which often, by design, left spurned lovers in its wake. Hoyle observes that whenever Miller’s relationship with a lover died, it spawned a new artistic birth. This led to a vicious cycle of selfish dependency on the women in Miller’s life, behavior that can be traced back to his dysfunctional childhood and domineering mother.

At his core, Miller was a haunted man, one who, through his writing, hoped to exorcise his demons and evolve into a better human being. His efforts did not bring him to the state of fulfillment that he sought, Hoyle notes, but Miller’s body of work – so raw, so personal, and so unpretentious – is an indelible and brilliant byproduct of his failure.

Photograph by Steve Anderson

often failed to capture the spirit of the man who was in evidence through his soul-baring prose.

“I didn’t think he was fully grasped by his biographers – or the reading public who seemed hung up on the fact that he wrote books with graphic sex in them. The sensationalistic aspects of Miller’s career have stayed in the public’s mind. I wanted to change that perception and show that he was a deeply spiritual writer.”

The Unknown Henry Miller eschews the minutiae of the subject’s entire life and focuses instead on the man’s most productive artistic period: Brooklyn; France and Greece; and, in particular, his years in a remote cabin in

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9 Take This Job & Love It

FROM BOARDROOM TO

BOARD GAME

E

d Bennett ’54 never played backgammon as a kid. He never put together a Backgammon Club at Lawrenceville.

He never even bothered to learn the rules until he hit his 40s – and even then he needed a little prompting.

“In 1977 an old friend of mine sent me a book on the game, and sent my son a board. I read the book. I didn’t understand much of it,” Bennett admits, “but I had to learn that game.”

What intrigued Bennett, who, up until this point of his life was more of a card player, was that backgammon was a battle game – like chess or checkers – but also a racing game.

You’re racing your opponents to get all your pieces to the opposite end of the board while constantly banging into each other and making things as difficult as possible along the way. Backgammon also contains a heady blend of skill and luck. Even the best players can lose to merely competent ones if the dice refuse to cooperate.

Bennett was soon hooked. He played all comers, read all the literature he could get his hands on, and developed what he felt was a winning strategy. It wasn’t long before he was ready for more. So, in 1981, he entered his first tournament, The World Amateur Championship in Las Vegas.

He got his head handed to him. It was then he realized just how little he knew. The level of play there was nothing like anything he had ever experienced in his family room.

“Backgammon tournaments are said to be very democratic. If you’re willing to pay the entry fee, they’re willing to let you come. And the worse you are, the more they want you to come,” Bennett says with a laugh. “They were happy to take my money.”

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Ed Bennett ’54 is more than content to stake his future on a roll of the dice.

He’s walked away with grand prizes at championships in Michigan, Chicago, and Jamaica, and was ranked as the No. 3 player in the U.S. He also made it to the top quarter of the World Championships held each year in Monte Carlo. the game much more time and attention, attending as many as 10 backgammon competitions each year.

“The more tournaments I went to, the more I understood. I got better.” But getting better doesn’t always translate into nabbing top honors. “I played tournaments in backgammon for 20 years without making any money,” he says.

“But that’s because I played in championship tournaments a lot earlier than I should have.

Photograph by Eric Swanson

But Bennett was undaunted by his shellacking. Knowing that tournament play was the best way to sharpen his skills, he journeyed to competitions around the country.

In the beginning he would attend one or two tournaments each year. His responsibilities as the chairman and CEO of Banquest Corp/First National Bank of Santa Fe, rarely allowed him the opportunity to do much more. After he retired 10 years ago, however, he began to give

“But I do win sometimes,” he adds.

Indeed he does. He’s walked away with grand prizes at championships in Michigan, Chicago, and Jamaica, and was ranked as the No. 3 player in the U.S. He also made it to the top quarter of the World Championships held each year in Monte Carlo. (“It was enough to whet my appetite,” he explains, “but not enough to land me any money.”)

Despite his achievements, Bennett doesn’t describe himself as a “natural player.”

“All backgammon players are pretty bright, but some have a real knack for how the game is played.”

One person with such a knack, says Bennett, is his own son, Adam.

“I took him to his first tournament in 2004.

He wasn’t busy so I asked him to come along.

In each tournament there are three divisions.

Adam played in the beginners division, and he finished almost in the money. Then he played in the middle division, and he did extremely well there. And the tournament director said to him ‘You have to move up [to the championship level].’ In his first tournament he beat the top three players on the tour. He had a tremendous knack for the game. He played for several years and did very well.”

Despite his winning ways, Bennett’s son retired from competitive backgammon. It’s a game that tends to attract older players – most of whom these days are over 50. Backgammon also doesn’t pay off the way other competitive games, such as Texas Hold ’em, do. The younger players tend to seek out games with larger purses.

If you wish to play in a backgammon tournament, Bennett says, you need to have both the fire in the belly and something approaching a lead butt. A World Championship race to 17 points against an opponent in the early rounds of play can take as long as three or four hours. If a player makes it to the World Championship finals, it is a race to 25, a matchup that can take eight to 10 hours.

None of this deters Bennett, of course. In fact, he planned his summer vacation with his backgammon friend and companion, Leslie Lockett, (who also plays competitively) around the Monte Carlo World Championships and the Portuguese Open.

Nowhere are the stakes higher. Nowhere is the length of play more grueling. And there’s no place where Bennett would rather be.

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9 Ask the Archivist

RooT RooT By

RooT

Jacqueline Haun

1892 is usually acknowledged as the beginning of Lawrenceville’s tradition of house football; archival records, however, show that this date is not so clear cut.

Football was played on Lawrenceville’s campus as early as the 1860s, but the game bore little resemblance to football as we now know it, and was more closely related to soccer. This changed in 1877 with the hiring of

Jotham Potter, the School’s new science and mathematics instructor. Potter, a recent graduate of Princeton, had been a participant at the elite eight-student organizational meeting of the Intercollegiate Football Association that took place in Springfield, MA, on November 23, 1876. He and fellow Princetonian W. E. Dodge met with representatives of Yale, Columbia, and Harvard to determine a shared set of rules that would govern college football

G Football in an era when turtleneck sweaters were considered "protective gear."

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for the

House Team!

play. The 62 rules the group agreed upon were adapted from the English Rugby Union Code and established American football for the first time as a rushing game rather than a kicking one. When Potter came to Lawrenceville, he brought these new rules with him, and the School embraced them with enthusiasm.

The first known football match between two houses took place December 1, 1884, between Davis and Hamill. Davis House, located north

of the School along Route 206 past the golf course, triumphed over the Hamillites 6-0.

(Perhaps the challenge of walking so much farther to campus for daily classes made the Davis boys a better-conditioned bunch.) This isn’t the origin of house football, exactly, as it was only a single game.

As the new Circle houses were completed, intramural competition intensified, and by 1887, there was a House Games Championship in football – awarded that year to Cleve, following a 20-0 rout over Woodhull. It is clear from the records, however, that these games were not yet part of a lengthy fall season, but a Thanksgiving or early December set of individual games.

Through the early 1890s, such competition was not only between houses, but also between the various forms, with the last such games taking place in 1892. In the fall of that year, the Circle houses competed against one another over a five-game “season” for the first time, with Hamill House prevailing as the first champions.

Although it could be classified as American football rather than Rugby or soccer, early house football was still somewhat different from the modern sport. The scoring system

reflects this, with field goals earning more points (five) than touchdowns (four) until 1897. Also, instead of today’s somewhat bulkier gear, athletes wore heavily padded pants and sweaters in keeping with rules that outlawed wearing “any hard substance that in the judgment of the umpire is liable to injure another player.” Many players also wore close-fitting, laced canvas jackets (known as “smocks” after their inventor, a Princeton student, Ledru P. Smock) which were hard to grasp in competition. Helmets were not required until the 1930s, and when first introduced, were made of leather. The absence of helmets was responsible for a fad that swept college campuses in 1890 (and presumably trickled down to Lawrenceville as well) – long hair on football players, who claimed that four to eight inches of extra hair protected their heads and ears from malicious attention from the opposing team’s members during play.

(The fad reportedly came to an abrupt end when Yale, sporting close-cropped dos, walloped a team of Princeton longhairs, winning the championship of 1895.)

For the first several decades of house competition, teams were coached by senior boys who guided the residents of their former houses, and football was just one of several sports in which the houses competed throughout the year for championship titles. Until 1950, points won for such events, as well as individual points for athletic, academic, and club activities earned by students, were counted

toward an All ‘Round Trophy, which would subsequently be awarded to one Circle House at the end of the year, much as the Dresdner and Foresman cups are today.

Although the modern winner of the House Football Championship each year receives only the right to gloat, there are coveted trophies to be fought over in the course of the season – the oldest of which is the Crutch, the prize of an annual battle between Kennedy and Hamill houses. The tradition began in the fall of 1947 when during practice Kennedy House football coach John (“Jack”) Chivers ’24 impulsively grabbed the ball and ran, shouting, “Catch me!” to the Kennedy players. Sandy Souter ’49 duly followed the command and tackled the coach, which resulted in a broken leg for Chivers. A few weeks later, as the recuperating Chivers stood on the sideline of the final season game between Kennedy and Hamill, Souter tackled Hamill fullback Jeb Wofford ’49 so close to the sideline that the sack also took out the previously injured coach and broke his wooden crutch to boot. Since then, the broken Crutch, updated with a series of slats that list the annual game results, has remained in the possession of whichever house last won the pivotal Hamill-Kennedy game.

Forty years later, in 1997, the Muffler was introduced as the object of desire for the Griswold and Woodhull teams. The muffler had come to the end of its first life after falling off Rabbi Lauren Levy’s H’97 P’01 ’02 ’09 car, only to be transformed into an object of veneration by a Griswold student who proposed that ownership be awarded to whichever house won the GriswoldWoodhull game.

The newest trophy is the Pride of the Circle, which was introduced in the fall of 2005 and is decided by the competition between Cleve and Dickinson.

Though the name of the trophy evokes a nickname associated with Dickinson, it does not seem to have granted any special advantage to that house; Cleve has claimed the prize a number of times since its introduction.

Of course there is – and always was – a larger issue at play when it comes to house football. Despite who walks off with a crutch or a muffler or the bragging rights that accompany a championship win, the game – and the house spirit it engenders – leaves a lasting legacy.

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Fifth Form Prizes Trustees’ Cup

Claire Crowley The Edward Sutliffe Brainard Prize

Shubhankar Chhokra Valedictorian

Mark Scerbo The Megna-Schonheiter Award

Mike Klotz Parents at Lawrenceville Community Service Award

Shubhankar Chhokra The Robert Mammano Frezza ’88 Memorial Scholarship

Andreas Vandris

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The Directors’ Award

Aurelio Ayala The Deans’ Award

Marina Hyson Andrew T. Goodyear ’83 Award

Chris Paulino The Phi Beta Kappa Award

Alan Gao The Masters’ Prize

Joe Malle The Elizabeth Louise Gray ’90 Prize

Daisy Wislar The Max Maxwell H’74 ’81 Award

Vilma Jimenez The Kathleen Wallace Award

Zach O’Leary The Catherine Boczkowski H’80 Award

Natalie Tung The John R. Thompson Jr. Prize

Claire Crowley The Aurellian Honor Society Award

Peter Beer

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Underform Awards Semans Family Merit Scholarship

Amit Mallik ’15 Anna Marsh ’15 Samantha Picard ’15 The Eisenhower Leadership Award

The Rutgers University Book Award

Alice Yang ’15 Wellesley Club of Central Jersey

Anna Marsh ’15

Eliot Schulte ’15 The Reuben T. and Charlotte Boykin Carlson Scholarship

Andrew Damian ’16 Nicole Lee ’16 The Beverly Whiting Anderson Prize

Teddy Friedman ’17 Pravika Joshi ’17 The Marcus D. French Memorial Prize

Brian Li ’17 Sydney Friedland ’17 The Brown University Alumni Book Award

The williams college book Award

Eliot Schulte ’15 The Yale Club Book Award

Khuong Do ’15 Harvard Club of Boston Prize Book Award

Liam Hunt ’15 The Katherine W. Dresdner Cup

Stanley House The Foresman Trophy

Hamill House

Eric Chen ‘15

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Photograph by Fred Fields

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t h e l aw r e n t i a n

College Matriculation Class of 2014 Thirteen to:

Three to:

Princeton University

Boston University

Twelve to: New York University Nine to: Georgetown University

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Goucher College High Point University

Bucknell University

Middlebury College

Lehigh University

Claremont McKenna College

Pennsylvania State University

Miami University, Oxford

College of William and Mary Davidson College George Washington University

Smith College University of Colorado – Boulder University of Connecticut University of Edinburgh

Northeastern University Rice University Rutgers University – Camden School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Hamilton College

University of Georgia

Eight to:

Northwestern University

University of Michigan

Cornell University

Stanford University

University of Notre Dame

University of Chicago

University of Vermont

Swarthmore College

University of Richmond

University of Virginia

Syracuse University

Washington and Lee University

Tufts University

Williams College

University of California – Los Angeles

Seven to: Brown University Six to: Duke University University of Pennsylvania Five to: Harvard University Trinity College (CT)

Vanderbilt University Washington University – St. Louis Wesleyan University Two to: Amherst College Barnard College Bowdoin College Colgate University

Sewanee: The University of the South

University of Illinois – UrbanaOne Each to: American University Babson College

Champaign University of Massachusetts – Amherst

Bates College

University of Miami

Boston College

University of North Carolina

California Lutheran University

– Chapel Hill

Carleton College

University of St. Andrews

Catholic University of America

University of Texas – Austin Villanova University

Four to:

Columbia University

Carnegie Mellon University

Emory University

Johns Hopkins University

Franklin and Marshall College

College of the Holy Cross

Southern Methodist University

Gettysburg College

Colorado College

Wellesley College

Wake Forest University

Haverford College

Dartmouth College

Whitworth University

Yale University

Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Elon University

Wilfrid Laurier University

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Meritorious Service Awards Presented annually by the Alumni Association of The Lawrenceville School, this award acknowledges and recognizes extraordinary volunteerism and/or service to the Lawrenceville Community. Candidates may be alumni, honorary class members, faculty and family, or School employees and family.

A Raymond A. Dietz ’49 A Gerald L. Savitz ’54 P’87 A W. Grant Hellar III ’54 P’87 A Joseph J. Felcone II ’64 P’93 ’96 A Se-Jun Park ’06

New Alumni Selectors A George “Tres” W. Arnett III ’79 P’16 A Heather Elliott Hoover ’91

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t h e l aw r e n t i a n

Belli Named Distinguished Alumnus Over Alumni Weekend, John “Jack” P. Belli ’44 P’70 ’71 ’74 GP’06 was selected to receive the Distinguished Alumnus Award.

Presented annually by the School’s Alumni Association, the honor is given to an alumnus who has contributed significantly to the welfare of Lawrenceville and who has exemplified the highest standards of the School.

Belli came to Lawrenceville in September 1938. He resided in Thomas and Woodhull houses and was a member of the track team, Open Door Society, and The Lawrence. He also served as class president.

After Lawrenceville, Belli attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned his B.A. and M.A. in architecture. He went on to own the Belli Company, a real estate and development firm. He is now retired.

Belli has served the Lawrenceville community in many ways; he is a former member of the Alumni Association Executive Committee, a reunion volunteer, and a former selector. He currently serves as class secretary and class president. He was also instrumental in coordinating 2014’s 70th reunion efforts.

Belli and his wife, Maude, live in Pennington, NJ, and Jupiter, FL. Their three sons, John ’70, Noel ’71, and Mark ’74; and their grandson, Andrew ’06, are all Lawrenceville alumni.

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New Honorary Alumni/ae The Class of 1949 Joanna Harmonosky H’49 Mary McLaughlin H’49

The Class of 1954 Lynn D. Johnston H’54 P’92 ’94 Pat Wilson H’54

The Class of 1959 Mary Kate Barnes H’59 ’77 P’11 ’13 Josiah Bunting H’37 ’59 ’88 P’88 ’97 Diana Bunting H’37 ’59 ’88 P’88 ’97 John Silver H’56 ’59 GP’06 ’08 Patrick F. Elliot H’59

The Class of 1964 A. Graham Down H’60 ’63 ’64 ’67 Nicholas F. Gusz Jr. H’64 ’66 ’69 Jean Dickey H’64 P’93 John E. Gore Jr. H’64

The Class of 1969 Edward J. Poreda H’61 ’63 ’69 ’70 ’89 P’77 GP’07 ’08 Paul D. Porter H’68 ’69 ’72 P’76 ’78

The Class of 1974 Benjamin “Champ” C. Atlee ’62 H’74 ’79 ’83 ’84 P’92 James C. Waugh H’74 ’85 ’88 P’68 ’70 ’72 ’74 ’76 GP’12 ’14 ’16 Gray Akers H’72 ’74 P’94

The Class of 1979 Elizabeth A. Duffy H’79 ’43

The Class of 1984 Benjamin “Champ” C. Atlee ’62 H’74 ’79 ’83 ’84 P’92

The Class of 1989 Harold B. Wilder III H’77 ’89 P’97 Brian R. Daniell H’89 ’06

The Class of 1994 D. Davison Cantlay H’89 ’91 ’93 ’94 P’07 ’09 ’11 Deborah McKay H’85 ’88 ’94 ’14 P’97

The Class of 1999 Martha A. Richmond H’99 P’99 ’00

The Class of 2004 Colin Day H’04 Anne Kabay H’04 P’02 ’04

The Class of 2009 Wesley R. Brooks ’71 H’09 P’03 ’05

The Class of 2014 obin R. Karpf H’14 P’11 R Deborah McKay H’85 ’88 ’94 ’14 P’97 Brian Millen H’14

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Hall of Famers Honored Three stellar alumni athletes, Grant Cleghorn ’94, Ryan Arcadia ’04, and Katie Lewis-LaMonica ’04, were inducted into Lawrenceville’s Hall of Fame.

Cleghorn was a three-sport athlete at Lawreneville, receiving three Major Ls in football, and excelling in indoor and outdoor track. He captained both indoor and outdoor track, leading both teams to N.J.I.S.A.A. and M.C.T.A. championships. At the University of Tennessee, Grant was an NCAA D1 Track and Field All-American: Decathlon, and in the U.S. Track and Field Indoor Championships: Heptathlon. He was a Penn Relays champion in the shuttle hurdles relay, and the recipient of the Most Dedicated Athlete Award and the Iron Man Award. He placed second in the Southeastern Conference (SEC) Outdoor Track Championship: Decathlon.

Arcadia was a three-sport athlete, excelling in football, wrestling, and baseball, and captaining both football and baseball his senior year. In football, Ryan was All-M.A.P.L. Offense and Defense, M.A.P.L. Player of the Year, and named to the N.J.I.S.A.A. All-State Prep team. As a Big Red wrestler, Ryan made the All-M.A.P.L. team and All-American honors in his weight class. In baseball, Ryan was a triple threat: All-M.A.P.L., M.A.P.L. Player of the Year, and named to the N.J.I.S.A.A. All-State team. Ryan continued his baseball career in college, becoming a Villanova

Wildcat. He was an All Big-East Conference selection and was elected to the All Big-Five Team. Following Villanova, he played minor league baseball in the Arizona Winter League and Northern League.

Lewis-LaMonica, a three-sport athlete, excelled in soccer, indoor track, and lacrosse.

She captained both the track and lacrosse teams her senior year. In soccer, Lewis-LaMonica was named to the All-Area N.J.I.S.A.A. Team and M.A.P.L. All-Star Team. She was a Mercer Hall of Fame All-Star and Mercer 33 All-Star. She set School records in track for the 4x200 and sprint medley relays. A natural at lacrosse, she was named to the All-Area N.J.I.S.A.A. First Team, C.J.W.L.L. Bedesem Division First Team, All-M.A.P.L. First Team, and Trenton Times AllArea First Team. She was selected Player of the Year, and the Trenton Times named the 2004 Lawrenceville lacrosse team Team of the Year.

At Princeton, Lewis-LaMonica was named a D1 All-American, Woman of the Year for Leadership in Academics and Excellence, and Ivy League Rookie of the Year, she was also selected for the All-Ivy Team and Academic All-Ivy, and she was nominated for best player in the country. The Trenton Times named her Player of the Decade.

She is in the record books as one of the top five in school history for goals scored in a season, and among the top 10 in Princeton history for career caused turnovers and career free position goals.

H From left: Ryan Arcadia ’04, Katie Lewis-LaMonica ’04, and Grant Cleghorn ’94

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Photograph by Bob Mahoney

A

Campus

Color of

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By Mike Allegra

Fifty years ago the first African American students arrived on campus. It was a momentous occasion and a long time in coming. This is the story of how it happened – and how the School has since evolved into the diverse institution it is today.

A Letter of Intent In 1959, English Master Bruce McClellan H’57 ’60 waited in a well-appointed New York City office anticipating a grilling. Allan Heely H’97 ’27, Lawrenceville’s seventh Head Master, had died and McClellan was on the short list to replace him. Actually the list was a bit shorter than the young Head Master prospect might have realized; as the chairman of Lawrenceville’s 150th Anniversary Celebration, McClellan had worked closely with a number of the School’s trustees and, in so doing, had demonstrated his leadership skills and his adeptness at working with a wide variety of tempestuous and hard-charging personalities.

He was likeable. He got things done. And though it would be a stretch to suggest McClellan’s appointment was preordained, it was clear that the grilling he anticipated would never come.

The interview, though formal (this was Lawrenceville, after all) was also relaxed, cordial, and friendly. Only at one point did the conversation stray into an area that McClellan would later describe as “a tough nut” – and, to be honest, even that nut wasn’t particularly tough.

“They wanted to know my attitude toward integration,” McClellan recalled many years later. “I remember saying something to the effect that, “[Integration] is the law of the land.

In any event, that’s where we’re headed.’”

And that was that. He was offered the Head Master post later that day.

But the integration attitude that McClellan expressed so easily in his interview was not one that was shared by all Lawentians. Some of the older alums were more than willing to make their contrasting opinions known – as were a few of the more outspoken trustees who couldn’t care less whether integration was the law of the land or not. They didn’t represent the majority of the Lawrenceville community – not even close – but they were noisy. They also wielded enough influence to stop such progressive discussions dead in their tracks.

And so, nearly two years into his tenure, even with his personable attitude and admirable powers of persuasion, McClellan was unable to enroll a single African-American student at the School.

If McClellan was frustrated by this roadblock, he never publically admitted it. Time, he knew, was on his side. Time is always on the side of progress. He would wait out his de30

t h e l aw r e n t i a n

G Head Master Bruce McClellan H’57 ’60

tractors and apply pressure when the time was right. He would be patient.

k Teenagers are not known for their patience.

“There is a situation here at Lawrenceville of which most of us are aware – the apparent segregation of our school,” the letter read. “As one of the leading secondary schools, Lawrenceville strives to maintain leadership and excellence in critical areas. With this purpose, isn’t it necessary that Lawrenceville should take a definite and affirmative stand on the Negro question?”

Charles Strozier ’62, Paul Dry ’62, and George Viles ’62 all shared the unusual circumstance of being Fourth Form Rhinies; that is to say they began their tenure at Lawrenceville as juniors, which – then as now – was unusual. While many of the boys in their class had long since adapted to the rhythms of The Lawrenceville Way of Doing Things, this new trio found their new school to be a bit of a culture shock.

Strozier and Dry knew each other as elementary and middle school students, growing up in the prosperous Hyde Park section of Chicago. Strozier’s circumstances abruptly changed, however, when his father, a French professor and dean at the University of Chicago, pulled up stakes and moved the family to Tallahassee, FL, to accept a position as the president of Florida State University. Young Charles was 13. There, in an effort to fit in to the slower paced, sports-centric culture (Strozier later described it as “The Old Southern Ways of The Old South”), he let his academic efforts slide in lieu of football.

“At one point I was being scouted by Bear Bryant of the University of Alabama,” Strozier notes. “So I could’ve ended up selling used cars in Tuscaloosa right now.”

His cultural transformation was swift.

Zelig-like, Strozier even cultivated a Southern accent so thick his mother could barely understand him.

Strozier’s father was frustrated with his son’s plummeting grades. But the elder Strozier was frustrated with quite a few things during his Tallahassee tenure. For one, his efforts to integrate Florida State University with Florida A&M, the black school on the other side of Tallahassee, were greeted with, at best, outright hostility and – far more often – thinly veiled threats. Around the dinner table he used to joke wearily that they will probably awaken to find a burning cross on their front lawn.

It never came to that – but that was most likely due to the fact that Strozier never got very far with his integration plans. He died three years into his presidency.

During that time – however short – the family had cultivated a number of influential friends who soon took an interest in young Charles’ future. This was fortuitous, for Charles, bereft by the loss of his father, soon began to reassess his life.

“I knew myself well enough to see I was at a dead end,” he says.

So when a family friend, an heir to the Pullman Car fortune, offered to help Strozier get into Lawrenceville, he leapt at the opportunity.

The first day he arrived on campus he knew he had made the correct decision. “I experienced an intellectual and moral awakening at the School,” he recalls.

His efforts to integrate Florida

State University with Florida

A&M, the black school on the other side of Tallahassee, were

greeted with, at best, outright

hostility and – far more often –

thinly veiled threats.

Dry and Viles’ trajectory to Lawrenceville was less fraught than Strozier’s. Of the two, Dry, who attended the University of Chicago’s Laboratory School, was more familiar with integrated classrooms and saw time and time again that academic excellence transcended race. “Everyone who was there was very capable,” he recalls. But at the time, Dry was experiencing a bit of malaise that he couldn’t quite understand or explain very well. He sensed that a change would be necessary to improve his study habits, so, with his father’s blessing, Dry initiated a boarding school search.

Viles grew up in “the oldest and whitest place in the country,” he notes. To be more specific, he grew up in South Paris, ME. Although he was attached to his community, Viles felt he was treading water. He knew he needed a broader academic challenge – particularly with college looming. It was a happy coincidence that a family friend had recently become a Lawrenceville School development officer.

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Photograph by Donnelly Marks

G Charles Strozier ’62

All three boys arrived as fourth formers in September 1960. Strozier and Dry rekindled their friendship, and Viles soon fell in with the duo, becoming acquainted with Dry through Strozier, a fellow teammate on the varsity football team.

None of them remembers exactly when segregation first came up in their conversations, but the boys had a difficult time not noticing it.

“The Civil Rights era had begun,” Viles says. “When I was in Maine, it wasn’t noticeable to me, because there weren’t really any black people in Maine. At Lawrenceville I saw black people. They were wait staff. I heard the old stories that in years past the boys would leave their shoes out in the hallway and the black staffers would come out of their living quarters and shine them. I don’t know if those stories were true or not, but I do know that the working conditions of the black support staff were not very good. I saw that wall between us.”

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The three boys discussed the matter. Then, on April 29, 1961, they wrote about it.

Neither Strozier, Dry, nor Viles could say with any certainty who composed the letter, though it was almost certainly Strozier; he had the original typewritten copy in his possession and an early draft of the letter in his handwriting was found in Lawrenceville’s archives. He also had the strongest motive; such a letter would be a way for Charles to honor his father and follow in the man’s footsteps.

In their recollections there was some debate among Strozier, Dry, and Viles as to who the intended recipient of the letter was. Strozier thinks it might have been sent directly to McClellan and the trustees, but Dry and Viles remember sending it to The Lawrence in the hope it would be printed on the newspaper’s editorial page. If the latter assertion is correct, it is of little consequence, as the letter was soon intercepted by The Powers That Be. A meeting was called. Strozier, Dry, and Viles were summoned. The trio feared the worst.

McClellan was there, but Strozier, Dry, and Viles don’t remember him saying much.

Also in attendance was Elmore Harbison ’24, a Princeton professor and a longtime Lawrenceville trustee. He, too, was relatively quiet. The man who held the floor was Alton “Red” Hyatt H’39 P’53, a 40-year veteran of Lawrenceville who most recently served as the assistant head master under Allan Heely before joining the Lawrenceville Board of Trustees in 1960. Hyatt sat the boys down, introduced himself – though no such introduction was necessary – and proceeded to explain with great authority why integrating Lawrenceville was not possible.

“What I remember – and this has stayed with me for 50 years – was that Red Hyatt told us that you couldn’t possibly integrate Lawrenceville unless you had one of ‘them’ in each House,” says Strozier. “And you couldn’t possibly have eight of ‘them’ on campus at once. To Red Hyatt that was self-evident and his tone suggested that no thinking human being could think otherwise.”

Photograph by Fred Field G George Viles ’62

Other reasons were given as well – one of which demonstrated a surprising degree of candor. The students were told about an older alumnus who was quite ill and not expected to live very long. “This alumnus was in a position to give substantial amounts of money to the School,” Viles remembers. “And he might not do so if [integration] became an issue.”

As the meeting went on, the boys’ initial anxiety was replaced by feelings of disappointment bordering on disgust. “[The School Adminstrators] were prudent,” says Dry. “They were ineptly prudent.

If the School wanted to set an example of high-mindedness, it failed. Leaders of schools need to set examples that can last 50 years.”

Dry adds, “It was a remarkable meeting, though. We weren’t owed anything. The administration could have said ‘I don’t need to talk to these boys. I don’t need to explain myself.’

“After it was explained why it wasn’t prudent to publish the letter, Professor Harbison apologized to us and said he was sorry that this was the outcome,” Dry recalls. “And I

thought, ‘He gets it. I am not in a position to ask for more.’”

Others, however, were prepared to ask for more. The trio’s modest effort soon began to snowball.

k Program ’75 was a capital campaign designed to prepare Lawrenceville for how the School would need to change by 1975 – then viewed as a pivotal future target date. Attached to a lengthy internal report on the subject, dated November 3, 1962, is an addendum by Religion Master Robert S. Wicks ’41. Titled “Student Attitudes Toward Integration,” the passage notes that many of the upperclassmen believe that the School is “hypocritical in its policy on race.”

Wicks mentions how in the past students (none of whom were named) discussed integration matters with the trustees. They “accepted [the trustees’] answers with good grace, but when they realized that the School was not going to change its policy, they decided on their own to change the situation.”

Wicks goes on to explain how students reached out to people from outside of the School such as Bill Coffin, a Yale clergyman and activist; James Robinson, the founder of Crossroads Africa (the forerunner of The Peace Corps); as well as students and masters from other schools.

“It is important to realize that they did this of their own initiative because they believed sincerely that the School Administration and Faculty could not do anything positive in this area,” Wicks continued. “There is little point in arguing the merits of what they had done.

They have done it and there is every indication that they will continue to work in this cause even after they leave School.”

Wicks concluded his report with a recommendation: “It seems only sensible, therefore, that the School consider whether it has made adequate preparations to meet what may follow from these activities. Perhaps it would be better to initiate the action ourselves so that we Fa l l

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Photograph by Michael Branscom

could maintain control of the situation.”

That, it turned out, was precisely what the School decided to do. The theoretical discussions in the houses and classrooms about hypocrisy had evolved into a grassroots student movement that was getting more and more difficult to control or ignore.

The School needed to integrate. Yes, racist donors would have to be mollified, but that was fine. McClellan had a gift for that sort of thing.

Now that the young Head Master had a mandate from the Board, he could work his diplomatic magic. He would make certain that the transition to integration would be a smooth one.

G Paul Dry ’62

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The Pioneers The School’s brush with the inevitable began in earnest with the desire to find new African American students in-house. Most of the School staff was African-American, after all; surely one of their children would be an excellent candidate to break the color barrier. When those efforts proved more complicated than administrators had expected, Lawrenceville expanded its reach to the surrounding communities: Princeton and Trenton, mostly. They soon found a candidate with the qualities they were looking for.

Darrell Fitzgerald ’68 lived in a Trenton housing project until age 11, when his parents scrimped and saved to move to a better part of town. There he attended Junior Three, then considered to be one of the best junior high schools in the city.

In this new environment, Fitzgerald excelled. He tested well and was placed in academically rigorous classes where he was the lone black student in a sea of white faces, the sons and daughters of the city’s professional class. It was a crash course in racial and economic coexistence that worked better than anyone – save, possibly, for Fitzgerald himself – could have anticipated. He distinguished himself in all subjects, and his gregarious personality earned him an army of friends.

His talents did not escape notice.

One day, when Fitzgerald arrived home from school, his mother sat him down.

“We got a call from The Lawrenceville School,” she told him. “How would you like to go to prep school?”

“That’s great!” Fitzgerald replied without a moment’s pause. And then: “What’s a prep school?”

Wearing what he called his “Sunday-GoTo-Church Clothes,” his father, a Trenton police officer, drove him through Lawrenceville’s gate to the interview. Fitzgerald assumed that his father had taken a wrong turn.

This has got to be Princeton’s campus, he thought.

But, no, he was where he was supposed to be and the sheer opulence of the place unnerved him. His Sunday-Go-To-Church Clothes felt more uncomfortable than usual.

The boy turned to his father and asked a question that sounded a bit more like a plea.

“What do I say? What do I do?”

“They just want to talk with you,” he replied. “Just be yourself.”

Then he dropped Fitzgerald off at the Ad-

thing he had ever experienced before. Right from the start, Battle struggled in English.

Fitzgerald, because he was younger and lived near the School, was afforded more academic support before classes officially began that fall. The summer before, he spent every day with English Master William Geer from 9 a.m. to noon to improve his English comprehension and vocabulary.

Photograph by David Duncan

mission Office and waited outside in the car.

At the door he was met by a friendly face, Fred Eichelberger H’24 ’71 the director of admissions. He was an unassuming scholarly sort, wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a tweed jacket.

“Come on in, son,” he said with a smile.

“He was so nice,” Fitzgerald recalls some 50 years later. “It wasn’t an interview, really, as much as it was a conversation. There were no trick questions, he wasn’t trying to hang me up; he just wanted to know who I was.”

It soon became clear that Fitzgerald would be a good fit for Lawrenceville. A good pioneer.

Eicheberger failed to mention that Fitzgerald would be a pioneer, but that was OK. It wasn’t like the boy would be alone, exactly.

Lyals Battle ’67 had lived in Washington, DC, for three years but hadn’t really taken to the place. “I had a few friends,” he noted, “but didn’t have a lot going on.”

He was originally from Boston and had attended the prestigious Boston Latin School in the seventh grade. The family made the move to DC for his mother’s new job, working on the Kennedy administration’s White House staff.

She soon made influential acquaintances, including James C. Thompson Jr. ’48, a Lawrenceville trustee and a vocal proponent of integration.

In addition to being very good at her job, Battle’s mother – like so many mothers – was also very good at singing her child’s praises.

Thompson was intrigued by what he heard and asked to speak with the boy.

Unlike Eichelberger, Thompson laid the circumstances out for the young man. Lawrenceville was wonderful, he noted. But Lawrenceville was very different from the District of Columbia’s public school system. The culture was different. Most significantly, Battle would be breaking the color barrier at the School and would he be OK with that?

He was.

“I had been brought up in a home that was very progressive,” says Battle. “I was aware of the Civil Rights Movement. I was aware of what was going on in the South. I knew there was an effort for Negroes to be first-class citizens. It seemed to me that if a place I was planning to go to wasn’t integrated then it needed to be.”

Battle soon faced a rude awakening upon his acceptance, however. Even though he was an A student, the academic standards at Lawrenceville were leaps and bounds beyond any-

G Lyals Battle ’67

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Photograph by Bob Mahoney

“Being very smart in a public school was very different from being very smart in a private school,” Fitzgerald says. “I think [Geer] wanted to make sure it was leveled up for me.

He wanted to bolster what I knew already and help prepare me for Lawrenceville. The School didn’t want me to do this and fail.”

Fitzgerald might have been prepared academically by the time school began in the fall, but he was not quite prepared for other discoveries. In 1964, First and Second Form boys were housed in Old Lower, an enormous and, by then, rather ramshackle building divided into four houses. On his first day of school, Fitzgerald took a walk through the building.

First he checked out his classmates in his own house, Cromwell. Then he went over to Thom-

G Darrell Fitzgerald ’68

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as, down the stairs to Perry Ross, and finally through Davidson, peering into all the cubicle-style dorm rooms as he went. There were 140 boys in Lower School and he was the only African-American there.

“I went back to my assigned space, sat on the bed, and thought ‘Oh, man!’”

Fitzgerald and Battle (who lived in Hamill) discovered each other a few days later.

“I was walking to Mem Hall,” says Fitzgerald, “and I see this African-American kid coming across the Circle. We saw each other at about the same time, and we ran to each other. I said, ‘Hey! Have you seen anybody else?’ And he said, ‘No. You?’ I said, ‘Nobody.

You think it’s just you and me?’ And he said, ‘I think so.’ Then we both said, ‘Wow.’”

Fitzgerald and Battle would become lifelong friends, but they were one grade apart, so they shared no classes and rarely saw each other during the school day.

But Fitzgerald was busy making other friends. He grew up in integrated classrooms.

He was used to it, and little fazed him. He was even paired with a roommate from Chattanooga, TN, in what Fitzgerald jokingly characterizes as a social experiment. “I am convinced the School said, ‘Hey! Let’s put a poor kid from the city with a wealthy kid from the South! Let’s see what happens!’”

What happened was they got along famously.

“When I was at Lawrenceville, I came across three groups of students. The first came from integrated schools and thought this was no big deal. Another group was willing to say, ‘He’s a good guy. Everything is cool.’ And, to the last group, I just sort of didn’t exist. They weren’t mean, they just didn’t interact with me much.”

To Battle, things were decidedly more difficult. He was not used to being the lone black kid in a classroom, and he wasn’t too fond of it, either. He didn’t fit into the culture, and he wasn’t sure that he even wanted to.

“I kind of did my own thing the entire time I was there. Remember, this was the middle of the Civil Rights Movement. I was reading about slavery. I was angry during that period in my life,” he says. “More African-Americans came to the School the next year: Simon Love ’69, Rudy Ashford ’67, and others. We bonded and spent a lot of time together. I had a few friends from the majority culture, but most of the time I spent with my African American friends.”

One of his friends during Battle’s first pivotal year was Tom Gallagher ’67, a fellow resident of Hamill. He was also a Catholic attending a predominantly Protestant school that mandated daily chapel services. So he, if to a far lesser degree than Battle, had some understanding of Lawrenceville’s brand of discrimination.

“It was subtle,” Gallagher says. “And passive aggressive.”

A nasty look here. A smart remark there.

The cumulative effect was a low-intensity but ever-present sense of aloneness.

Partly due to his own experiences at the School, Gallagher took an interest in Lawrenceville’s integration experiment and was curious to see how things would develop.

Battle moved in across the hall – and the two boys got along fine – but there was a cultural

Photograph by Donnelly Marks

gap between them. Gallagher, who spent his entire life in all-white classrooms, knew almost nothing about the Civil Rights Movement. When Martin Luther King won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, he decided it was time to learn. He took a trip across the hall to ask Battle some basic, bordering on woefully naïve questions.

“Lyals was so patient with me,” Gallagher remembers. “He sat me down and for the next half-hour – which is a lifetime to a third former – and explained everything about Dr. King and why he received the award. It was fascinating. He explained it the way you might explain a math problem. He taught me something I didn’t know – and there was a lot that I didn’t know. He wasn’t emotional about the fact that I didn’t know. He just taught me.

Lyals, then and now, is the salt of the earth.”

All students weren’t as open-minded as Gallagher – and the racism at Lawrenceville wasn’t always the subtle kind, either. On one particular occasion, Battle remembers an incident where one of his housemates called him the N-word.

So Battle invited the other boy outside and cleaned his clock.

“We agreed to handle it on our own,” Battle says. “And I respect the guy for [letting it end there]. If that fight had been reported, I would’ve been gone. But I couldn’t let him get away with it! Because if I did, then everybody would have been saying that word.”

Battle and Fitzgerald had different personalities, different backgrounds, and two very different Lawrenceville experiences. Both men, however, were similar in one very obvious way: They had a near single-minded drive to succeed.

“I knew I’d be under scrutiny,” Battle says.

“I knew that a lot of people felt that I was only here because of the color of my skin and that I wasn’t mentally competitive. I was focused on putting that rumor to death.”

So when his grades in English that first year were underwhelming, Battle took it upon himself to attend college courses over the summer to build up his skills. His GPA came roaring back in his junior year.

Fitzgerald took more of a long view. “I knew there would be others behind me. If I did well, it would make it easier for the School to accept more people of color. There was a drive to succeed, but also a fear of failure.

“The staff in the kitchen at Woodhull and Cromwell were black,” he adds. “I remember them well. They were like surrogate mothers

G Marcus Mabry ’85

and fathers to me. I remember going into the kitchen in Woodhull in the morning and they would say ‘Son, we are so proud of you.’ So part of my drive was to make them proud. It made me happy to know that I made them happy.”

Transitions By the early 1980s, integration at Lawrenceville was nearly two decades removed from being novel. The School, however, still had a long way to go. The number of African-Americans on campus stood at about four percent, well below the national average, and lacked what Marcus Mabry ’85 describes as “diversity within diversity” – meaning that there was still a dearth of African-Americans students on campus who represented the professional

classes. Almost all were on scholarship – no doubt a great opportunity for gifted students from impoverished backgrounds, but one that also broadened the chasm between the black students and their wealthier, whiter classmates.

Mabry was a full scholarship student. In fact, the family’s financial situation was so precarious that, although he lived in nearby Hamilton Township, he asked to become a boarding student. His reason was twofold.

First, Mabry wanted to be able to get the full Lawrenceville experience in order to better determine whether he wanted to be a part of this idyllic but alien world. The second, and far more practical reason, was to prevent putting undue burdens on his mother; if he was a boarder it would result in one less mouth to feed at home.

Mabry’s step-grandmother had worked at Fa l l

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t h e l aw r e n t i a n

for a community to do. It takes courage and openness. People come here from all different places, all different cultures, all different countries, and all have different values. We need to create a common Lawrenceville value, culture, and tradition that we celebrate and that we are proud of.”

Onward Today Lawrenceville is more diverse than ever before, not only in terms of the percentage of African-American students – which is nearly in proportion with the percentage of African Americans nationwide – but also in its broad representation of all races, religions, and economic brackets. This, coupled with more than 100 international students, has turned Lawrenceville into a very worldly place.

Yet few Lawrenceville students can attest to being worldlier than Kennedy Guest-Pritchett ’15. As a middle schooler, Guest-Pritchett was a student at Georgia’s Ron Clark Academy, a school committed to providing international experiences for its young charges. Through the academy, Guest-Pritchett soon became the ultimate global citizen, visiting five continents before she turned 14.

“In Japan, I did a homestay with a family who barely spoke English,” she says. “And I barely spoke Japanese. I had to learn how to adapt, try new things, meet new people and get along. The school taught us that.”

In all these endeavors, Guest-Pritchett was strongly encouraged by her mother, Sharon Guest, who, for most of her life, was tethered to her home state of Georgia. She wanted her daughter to see and experience more than she had. She also encouraged her daughter to consider applying to Lawrenceville. Guest had it

“If a person grows up in an area where he doesn’t have to think about race, how is he expected to know what might be racially sensitive? That’s why dialogue is important.”

Kennedy Guest-Pritchett ’15

Photograph by Bob Mahoney

Lawrenceville supervising the wait staff in Griswold. As a toddler, Mabry occasionally visited the campus, but remembers little from those visits aside from the ornate Victorian lamps on the Circle. In fact, he didn’t give Lawrenceville much thought at all until he attended his Hamilton Township junior high school. There his principal noticed something unique in Mabry, a raw brilliance and ambition that might be better suited to a more academically rigorous school. Lawrenceville was suggested.

“By the time I was admitted, Lawrenceville was certainly used to black students, but four percent is a pretty small number,” Mabry recalls. “I experienced very little overt racism in my time at Lawrenceville, but lots of subtle racism. The School reflected the times. I think the difference between my Lawrenceville and today’s Lawrenceville is the difference between what happens when you go from token diversity to becoming a truly multicultural and diverse institution.”

Despite the occasional digs or ignorant comments he endured during his tenure on campus, Mabry assimilated well, cultivated a broad circle of friends, and was elected president of Cromwell his first year. He also wasted little time in seizing all that the School had to offer: Glee Club, Lawrentians, Periwig, editor-in-chief of The Lit, features editor of The Lawrence, president of Space Exploration Club. On and on it went.

“I think it’s easier for kids like me, who came from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, to appreciate and be grateful for what Lawrenceville has to offer,” he says. “Limits are all around you if you live in a disadvantaged neighborhood of color. And you are very aware of the limits. You are aware of what people can and cannot do. How black people are treated and not treated in our country. How white people are regarded by white people.

How far you can get in life.

“At Lawrenceville I learned that my future was boundless and that the possibilities were boundless, and that I could do whatever I wanted to do. Lawrenceville gave me that.

That’s giving a person the world.”

Mabry never lost touch with Lawrenceville after he graduated. He is on the School’s Board of Trustees and can see firsthand how the School has evolved and where it still needs to go.

“There is a cultural challenge to both love our differences and love our commonality at the same time,” he says. “That’s not easy

G Kennedy Guest-Pritchett ’15

on good authority that Lawrenceville was a great place.

That “good authority” was a business associate and mentor named Joy Fitzgerald, the wife of Darrell Fitzgerald ’68, who was one of the first two African-Americans to be admitted to Lawrenceville. Now a widely respected architect and Lawrenceville trustee, Fitzgerald had spent many of the years since graduation singing the School’s praises.

“Look at Lawrenceville,” he told Guest-Pritchett. “Give it a try!”

Intrigued by his enthusiasm, Guest-Pritchett agreed to do so. Online research piqued her interest, but it was the campus tour that sold her. “Even though it was a cold and rainy day, I loved every minute of it. I loved the people.

The people here made me feel like they really wanted me to come. Everybody was cool.

When I visited other places, I didn’t get that feeling. I didn’t get that feeling anywhere else.

“And I never would have considered this place if it weren’t for Mr. Fitzgerald,” she adds. “I owe it all to him.”

Though also active in sports, especially basketball, Guest-Pritchett dedicates most of her extra-curricular time to on-campus activities associated with the African-American community – discussion groups such as Students Talking About Racism (STAR) and Courageous Conversations. Most notably she is beginning her second year as the president of the Alliance of Black Cultures (ABC).

“I joined ABC because I am passionate

about being black,” she says. “It is an important part of who I am. It is important to my family. I can’t change who I am, and I refuse to diminish who I am. I am proud to be black.”

ABC, in one form or another, has been a fixture at Lawrenceville for almost as long as there has been something resembling an “African-American community” on campus.

Founded in 1971 as the Black Student Society, the club changed its name and mission several times before arriving at its current incarnation.

Marcus Mabry ’85 was a member of what was then known as the Black Cultural Organization when he was a student. “All we really did was organize a dance with black music and invite groups like ours from other independent schools to these dances,” he remembers. “The

other purpose of the club was so the black boys would have a place to talk about being black at Lawrenceville – to vent or look for some advice.”

As to Mabry’s latter point, ABC still provides a venue for African-American students to share personal frustrations and experiences. But ABC has since evolved into an organization that discusses larger ideas that reach beyond the African-American community: Interracial dating, the N-word, the shooting of Treyvon Martin, and so on.

“We talk about things that pertain to the black culture,” Guest-Pritchett says, “But ABC is open to everybody on campus. We really try to emphasize that.”

Getting a strong cross-cultural membership can be challenging, however. “At the club fair in the fall, we’ll ask everyone to join. ‘Hey! Sign up for ABC!’ Some white people think we’re joking, but we’re being serious. The things we talk about need to be heard by others, and we want others to offer their perspectives.”

Most rifts between races, Guest-Pritchett notes, are not due to hatred or anger but to a dearth of opportunities to communicate with different races freely and openly. “If a person grows up in an area where he doesn’t have to think about race, how is he expected to know what might be racially sensitive?” she asks.

“That’s why dialogue is important. That’s why I plan to spend this year getting those dialogues going.

“I remember meeting a student who firmly believed – and still firmly believes – that a black kid growing up in the inner city in New York has the same opportunities as a white kid who grew up in Martha’s Vineyard. How does a person make it to his senior year believing that?”

She then answers her own question: “The reason someone believes that is because we haven’t done our job understanding and immersing ourselves in different cultures.”

Guest-Pritchett has spent the better part of her life immersing herself in different cultures. If anyone can get such a sensitive dialogue started, she can.

And so, Lawrenceville’s march toward multiculturalism continues to evolve and move forward. Sometimes its strides are assertive and purposeful; other times it shows signs of disappointing trepidation. Regardless, it is heartening to know that whether they be letter writers, pioneers, or gifted communicators, Lawrenceville students continue to lead the way.

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9 Alumni News

Dear Lawrentians,

The Alumni Association Executive Committee 2014/2015 President

Jennifer Ridley Staikos ’91 First Vice President

Ian Rice ’95 Second Vice President

David B. Stephens ’78 P’06 Executive Committee

Scott A. Belair ’65 P’08 ’09 Catherine E. Bramhall ’88 Milano Graves Buckley ’98 Biff Cahill Jr. ’68 P’09 Bruce Hager ’72 Charlie C. Keller ’95 J. Gregg Miller ’62 Brendan T. O’Reilly ’83 P’16 Anastacia Gordon ’07 Alumni Trustees

Hyman J. Brody ’75 P’07 ’08 ’11 Joseph B. Frumkin ’76 P’11 Leigh Lockwood ’65 P’97 ’02 Kathleen W. McMahon ’92 selectors

George Arnett ’79 P’16 Meghan Hall Donaldson ’90 Charles M. Fleischman ’76 Elizabeth M. Gough ’03 Heather Elliott Hoover ’91 John C. Hover II ’61 P’91 Shannon Halleran McIntosh ’93 Paul T. Sweeney ’82 faculty liaison

Timothy C. Doyle ’69 H’79 P’99

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t h e l aw r e n t i a n

As a proud member of the Class of 1991 and a longtime volunteer at Lawrenceville, I am so pleased and honored to serve the alumni community as your president and look forward to a productive three years. I feel fortunate to be surrounded by a great group of officers, including First Vice President Ian Rice ’95 and Second Vice President David Stephens ’78 P’06.

Additionally, I’d like to extend my thanks to Tim Wojciechowicz ’78 P’06 ’10’12, my predecessor, for his tireless devotion to the Alumni Association, and for his hard work on behalf of all of us.

I’d also like to welcome our newest Alumni Association members – the great Class of 2014! Congratulations on your achievement. I know that you will make Lawrenceville proud through your volunteerism, your loyalty to your alma mater, and your great successes out in the world.

It has been a busy summer for Lawrenceville, and continues to be a busy fall.

As you have likely read in other communications from the School, Head Master Liz Duffy H’43 ’79 will be leaving us in June 2015. As part of my role on the Search Committee for Lawrenceville’s next Head Master, I attended Town Hall Search Meetings in both Princeton and New York in June. Additional gatherings were held in Chicago, San Francisco, and Houston, and we also held a web conference. These events were a great success, with Lawrentians and parents of all generations sharing their thoughts on Lawrenceville’s future in a true Harkness-style discussion. My summer reading list included over 750 results from our Head Master search survey, which demonstrates the dedication of our alumni and parents, for which we are very thankful.

It seems as though we always have reason to observe significant milestones at our School, and in September we celebrated 50 years of black students at Lawrenceville with a two-day event filled with presentations, group discussions, and gatherings. Thank you to the many alumni whose volunteer efforts helped to make this event a resounding success!

In October, I had the privilege of awarding the Aldo Leopold Award – the Alumni Association’s highest honor, given annually to an alumnus or alumna who demonstrates “brilliant, life long work in a significant field of endeavor,” to HRH Prince Turki Al-Faisal ’63 P’94 ’07. Prince Turki’s extraordinary body of professional work includes the positions of former Saudi ambassador to the United Kingdom and the United States. Congratulations to Prince Turki on this well-deserved award.

In closing, I would like to encourage you to keep in touch with Lawrenceville – and to reach out to me if you have any questions or thoughts you would like to share. I look forward to connecting and reconnecting with many of you over the next three years, as we work together on behalf of Lawrenceville.

Go, Big Red! Sincerely, Jennifer Ridley Staikos ’91 President, Alumni Association jstaikos@gmail.com

9 By The Numbers

The admission

edition

Racial Breakdown of Student Body

53.9%

Number of

398 Number of

girls (49 percent)

1,890 Number of students who applied to lawrenceville

Black/African American................................ 9.5%

who reside

who reside

outside

in the

the U.S.

U.S.

(14.6 percent)

(85.4 percent)

11.1

Total financial

73

Students Come From Hong Kong

Alaska

Hungary

Arizona

Pennsylvania

India

Rhode Island

Italy

South Carolina

Jamaica

Texas

Japan

Virginia

Korea

Vermont

Malaysia

Colorado

Latino/Hispanic............................................. 6.5%

Connecticut

Number of

Lawrenceville

Oregon

Asian/Indian.................................................. 7.1%

251

Countries, and territories

Ohio

California

Other/Prefer Not to Respond........................ 1.7%

number of States,

States

Multiracial..................................................... 6.9%

58

(51 percent)

Asian & Indian American............................ 14.4%

20

boys

Caucasian................................................... 53.9%

Percentage of legacy applicants accepted

Number of

14.4%

Percentage of applicants accepted

418

students

for 2014 - 2015

6.9%

Lawrenceville students

number of

students

(in millions)

6.5% 7.1%

9.5%

number of

aid budget

1.7%

816

119 697

District of Columbia Delaware Florida Georgia Illinois

day

Kentucky

students

Louisiana Massachusetts

Washington Wisconsin Wyoming

Countries/ territories Afghanistan Bahamas

Mexico Moldova Myanmar Pakistan Philippines Poland Russia Saudi Arabia

Maryland

Belgium

Maine

Bermuda

Michigan

Brazil

Minnesota

Bulgaria

Sweden

Missouri

Canada

Switzerland

North Carolina

Cayman Islands

Taiwan

Number of

New Hampshire

China

Thailand

boarding

New Jersey

Colombia

United Arab

New Mexico

Czech Republic

Nevada

Germany

United Kingdom

New York

Ghana

Vietnam

565 students

Singapore Spain

Emirates

9 Student Shot

95*

by Alex Domb ’17

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 vavanisko@lawrenceville.org with his or her new address. Thank you!