FROM THE BASEMENT OF POP HALL

In June, around the time I sat down to write this message, the New York Times Magazine ran an essay by Brian Dillon titled “To Truly Understand the Past, Pick Up an Old Magazine.” I do this all the time. I have a small collection of vintage periodicals I’ve accumulated over the years – LIFE and Sports Illustrated, but also Better Homes & Gardens and other magazines whose contemporary issues don’t interest me nearly as much as their ancestral editions do.

“Old magazines are cheap time machines,” Dillon writes, adding that each old magazine contains a finite and manageable lens into the culture of the times. “You will execute no deep dive, vanish down no rabbit hole,” he says; “your reading is instead a lateral slice through a culture, class, or milieu.”

It’s true. From the cover stories down to the advertisements, a magazine from 1940 can give you a cleaner view into its time period than you can get through the accounts, mediated by time, of contemporary writers. It works with this periodical, too. In my office, I’ve got a copy of every issue of The Lawrentian since its 1937 debut and those magazines often surprise me with the way they portray a particular time or event. Then I remember I’m engaging with history reported in the moment, not in the way we choose to remember it now, lodged into its eventual perspective by time and shifting attitudes.

It got me wondering how the COVID-19 era will be remembered at Lawrenceville. MerriamWebster says an era is a “period identified by some prominent figure or characteristic feature,” so I think it’s fair to call it that. The graduating Class of 2023 is the one I most associate with this era. They weren’t necessarily the one most affected by it; the Class of 2020, for instance, lost their entire spring term with each other on campus and graduated virtually. But this year’s group lived the entire arc of the pandemic as Lawrenceville students, from its rapid blitz when they were Second Formers to today, when it has receded into the background in every visible way. They are the last ones who remember “before.”

This issue’s coverage of Commencement, which alludes to this arc, is likely the last time any mention of COVID-19 will find its way into our coverage of life at the School. In that sense, the era has come to a close. And that’s good.

But eighty years from now, I wonder how this era will be recalled and interpreted by readers digging into our archives. Will our coverage surprise them? What will they think of us and the way we responded? Will this time be remembered at all? It’s in the hands of history now.

All the best,

Sean Ramsden Editor

Editor

Sean Ramsden

Design

Bruce Hanson

News Editor

Lisa M. Gillard H’17

Staff Photographer

Paloma Torres

Contributors

Andrea Fereshteh

Adam Grybowski

Jacqueline Haun

Stephanie Schloss ’26

Nicole Stock

Angel Xin ’26

Photography by John Cordes

Noah Laubach ’23

Elaine Mills P’05

Dan Z. Johnson

Illustration by Joel Kimmel Resvector Graphic

Class Notes Design

Lerner Design Group

Proofreader

Rob Reinalda ’76

Head of School

Stephen S. Murray H’54 ’55 ’65 ’16 P’16 ’21

Assistant Head of School, DIrector of Advancement

Mary Kate Barnes H’59 ’77 P’11 ’13 ’19

Director of Communications and External Relations

Jessica Welsh

The Lawrentian (USPS #306-700) is published quarterly (winter, spring, summer, and fall) by The Lawrenceville School, P.O. Box 6008, Lawrenceville, NJ 08648, for alumni, parents, grandparents, and friends.

Periodical postage paid at Trenton, NJ, and additional mailing offices.

The Lawrentian welcomes letters from readers. Please send all correspondence to sramsden@lawrenceville.org or to the above address, care of The Lawrentian Editor. Letters may be edited for publication.

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The Lawrentian The Lawrenceville School P.O. Box 6008 Lawrenceville, NJ 08648

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