The Lawrentian - Spring 2014

Lawrentian THE

SPRING 2014

Departments 2 From the Head Master 3 Editor’s Note 4 1,000 Words Lawrentians go beyond 88 keys.

F e at u r e s 20 Out of the Past Lawrentian historians provide new insight on old news.

On the Cover: Historian Charles Strozier '62.

Photo by Michael Branscom.

22 The Unwitting Matchmaker by Charles Strozier ’62

25 The Rained-Out Revolution by Erik J. Chaput

28 The Indirect Message by Tina Liu ’13

30 The Unhelpful Archivist by John J. Stephan ’59

32 The Road Hogs by Mark S. Foster ’57

6 News in Brief Reese’s Country Code, Ferguson’s math mastery, and Houses’ warrior instincts.

10 Sports Roundup Winter sports stats.

12 Go big red!

Girls go for the three-pointer.

SPORTS ROUNDUP 14 On the Arts Memory lapses and mushroom muses.

16 Take This Job and Love It Wherever Aziz goes, smiles follow.

18 Ask the Archivist Still water runs deep.

72 By the Numbers ouse statistics you didn’t H know you wanted to know.

73 Student Shot Berzin caterpillars get cozy.

TA K E T H I S J O B A N D L O V E I T

14 ASK THE ARCHIVIST

16

18

Alumni 36 Alumni News

37 Class Notes

9 From the Head Master

W

hen I worked for The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in New York City, I wrote a book about the history of college admission and financial aid policies and practices from 1955-1994. Crafting a Class (Princeton University Press, 1998) was based on months of archival research by my co-author and me at selective liberal arts colleges in Ohio and Massachusetts. The archives ranged from wellappointed rooms in the college library to boxes of dusty records in admission office basements.

Few facilities were as elegant or extensive as the Stephan Archives at Lawrenceville.

Thanks to generous donations by John Stephan ’59 and his wife, Barbara, in honor of Lawrenceville’s bicentennial, we recently renovated and expanded our archives in the lower level of the Bunn Library. With the renovation, our storage capacity increased fivefold to 6,000 cubic feet, and we now have a dedicated space to peruse our collections. Many of our history classes use the archives to explore events, such as the Civil War, the Gilded Age, World Wars I and II, the Vietnam War, and the 1960s Civil Rights Movement and to see how they affected the School community.

English and art classes also study artifacts for research papers and class projects.

The Stephans were eager to have all students, faculty, and alumni benefit from the School’s collections, so in addition to restoring the archives and endowing the archivist position, their support has also enabled us to digitize The Lawrence, The Lawrentian, and other historic documents and to hire additional staffing to make our collections more accessible through cataloguing and by inventorying and exhibiting historical objects across campus. Many of you who have returned for recent Alumni Weekends have enjoyed the re-creation of a Lower School cubicle. Other major exhibits have featured conservationist Aldo Leopold from the Class of 1905; the history of football at Lawrenceville; former English master and esteemed author and playwright Thornton Wilder; 75 years of Harkness teaching; the history of dining at Lawrenceville; and, most recently, the photography of longtime Latin Master Ed Robbins H ’68 ’69 ’71 ’11, which now adorns the hallways of Pop Hall, where Ed taught for nearly 50 years.

It’s been more than 15 years since I wrote Crafting a Class, and I can still remember the thrill of finding a compelling letter or article that helped me to piece together past events. There is nothing like primary documents to both bring the past alive and transport one back in time. Today’s Lawrenceville students have experienced the excitement of archival research firsthand, not only in classes, but also as research interns. Last summer, the first four Heely Scholars spent a few weeks on campus researching the P.C. Norris World War I Collection. They are now creating a guide and exhibit to be used in Third and Fourth Form history classes.

This issue of The Lawrentian features historical essays by alumni and faculty. I hope some of the Heely Scholars and other students who visit the archives on campus will be similarly inspired to become historians.

Next time you’re on campus, be sure to stop by the Stephan Archives. Please also contact the School archivist, Jacqi Haun (jhaun@lawrenceville.org), if you have any questions or are interested in donating materials or artifacts.

Virtus Semper Viridis,

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

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9

Lawrentian THE

SPRING 2014

|

Volume 78 Number 2

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 Victoria Berzin ’14 Erik Chaput Maxine clarke Shubhankar Chhokra ’14 Lisa Ewanchyna Mark A. Foster ’57 Karla Guido Lisa M. Gillard Hanson Jacqueline Haun Tina Liu ’13 Neil Menghani ’15 Adam Richman ’15 Sonal Shrivastava ’15 Selena Smith John Stephan ’59 Charles Strozier ’62 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

From the Editor

O

ne day, my wife, Ellen, paused to take a good look at my bookcases. She does this sometimes when she wants to tease me.

“Since when have you been interested in Tupperware?” she asked, pulling out the book I found in a dollar bin the last time she and I visited Pennsylvania.

“Since I saw that book,” I replied.

After all, who wouldn’t want to read a book titled Tupperware Unsealed?

And for only a dollar? It would be ridiculous not to buy it. Once I cracked the spine, I discovered that the Tupperware story had a great conflict at its core, one between the product’s inventor, Earl Tupper, and his crackerjack sales executive, Brownie Wise, who popularized the brilliant concept of The Tupperware Party.

Ellen and I have a lot of conversations along these lines. My tastes, which fall heavily toward nonfiction, are eclectic in the extreme. Alongside an armload of books about the Founding Fathers, for example, is a book about the guy who invented sneezing powder. Don’t ask me why, but I take pleasure in knowing that President John Adams shares a shelf with S.S. Adams, the Snakes-In-ACan King.

I’ve always been like this. I have spent my entire life trying to absorb little known tidbits. The very first book I bought with my own money, Strange Facts and Useless Information (which I still have in my possession) taught me that the man who invented the stockade was the first person to occupy it as means of punishment. I find this delightful.

It’s all about my unquenchable quest for knowledge, I think. This thirst led me to Lawrenceville and, later, allowed me to cultivate relationships with many fine Lawrentians whose educational journey is a never-ending one.

So when I learned that several alumni are history professors who have focused a good portion of their professional lives on a specific field of study, I just knew they would have something unique and unexpected to offer. And they did.

When I learned that a faculty member wrote a book about a moment in Rhode Island history I had never known about, I knew he would have a good story to tell. And he did.

And when I learned that a brand new School publication, The History Review, printed the best student research essays, I sensed that I could learn something there as well. And I did.

This issue’s feature (five features, really), “Out of the Past,” offers up this history as told by Lawrentian experts. My most sincere appreciation goes out to Mark Foster ’57, John Stephan ’59, Charles Strozier ’62, History Master Erik Chaput, and Historian-In-The-Making Tina Liu ’13 for their contributions and insight. Take a look. I’m certain you’ll learn something exciting and new.

But if you want to learn about Tupperware, you’re on your own.

Postmaster

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

Warmest wishes, Mike Allegra Editor mallegra@lawrenceville.org

All rights reserved.

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9 1000 Words

Piping Up The only thing that can match the physical beauty of the School’s Henry Woods Organ is the music that emerges from it. Fortunately, the School organist, Tom Goeman, is eager to share this beauty with others; on a regular basis, he provides lessons to Lawrenceville students.

Photograph by Paloma Torres

9

9 L'ville Letters

Typhoon Leads to (Penny) War

Lawrentian THE

WIN TER

2012

Flynn reflections Sean Flynn (“Finding Flynn,” fall 2013) was a year ahead of me, but we played soccer and were on the swim team.

Since I was a day student living in West Trenton with an empty garage bay, Sean figured it would be a perfect spot for his 1957 Chevrolet Bel-Air Convertible with Florida license plates.

Sean spent many weekends at our home during the spring semester of 1960. He was a great, down to earth guy who would get up Sunday morning and spend time talking to my father while my dad worked in the yard.

Barry Rank ’61

By the time Sean Flynn arrived on campus, I had graduated, but I saw him from time to time in 1966, when I was the officer in charge of a MACV (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam) translation division. Besides myself, the unit had 10 enlisted American servicemen and 35 Vietnamese civilians capable of converting into English the several hundred documents we received weekly in up to nine different languages. Flynn befriended our Spanish linguist, who was also a Navy photojournalist with ready access to 35 mm film. It was a good deal for both men: Sean got a reliable supply of cheap film, and Jose got to hang out with Errol Flynn’s son.

George Reiger ’56

6

News in Brief

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

W

hen Typhoon Haiyan hammered the Philippines this past November, carving a path of destruction and killing more than 6,000, Lawrenceville students searched for ways to help. For Luki Elizalde ’15 and Cristian Saguil ’15, that was especially true, for both boys are from the Philippines. Teaming with a third student, Shubhankar Chhokra ’14, they organized an interHouse competition to quickly raise money for disaster relief: A Penny War. To the uninitiated, a penny war rewards both generosity and sneakiness. Each House was issued a jar and encouraged to donate to the cause. The House that raised the most money would earn bragging rights. And this is where the sneakiness comes in; other Houses could drop pennies into any of their competitors’ jars – with each penny erasing 10 cents off of a House’s official total.

For six days, Houses stuffed money into their own jars and poured pennies into the jars of others, in a valiant attempt to strategize a win.

In the end, Carter House employed the best game plan; feigning apathy, Carter kept its jar almost empty until the final minutes of the game when they giddily stuffed it before any of

the other Houses could counterattack. As a result, Carter walloped the competition with an official total of $742 – more than twice that of any other House. After all the cash (pennies included) were tallied, students had raised $2,453 for the cause.

“I was amazed,” notes Elizalde with a wide grin, “I was expecting we’d raise maybe $300.”

The money was given to the Aboitiz Foundation, an organization run by members of Elizalde’s family.

Founded in 1989, the Aboitiz Foundation, was created to address social and economic development needs of less privileged communities and members of society. Half of the money Lawrenceville raised went toward general disaster relief; the other half was used to purchase materials to rebuild and repair the boats of Filipino fisherman.

Ferguson, Truly a Math Master M athematics Master Brent

ing curriculum materials for his ris-

Ferguson was runner-up for

ing sophomore geometry students,

the 2013 Rosenthal Prize for Inno-

who came to PUPP with a wide

vation in Math Teaching, an award

spectrum of mathematical skills. “I

sponsored by the National Muse-

needed something that wouldn’t

um of Mathematics. Created to

bore the kids who had already tak-

recognize and reward exceptional

en algebra and geometry, but

fourth- through 12th-grade teachers

wouldn’t totally blow away the stu-

who employ innovative approaches

dents who were taking geometry

in the classroom, the award is

for the first time,” he explained.

meant to encourage innovation and

His solution was to create a se-

the

hands-on

ries of tasks that required the stu-

methods in classrooms around the

dents to construct a number line

developed supplemental teaching

the students who beta-tested the

country.

using their own personal unit of

notes, worksheets, and extension

lessons, “These were the most

Ferguson’s submission — lesson

measurement, “any length — the

materials for students who wanted

friendly, accommodating groups

plans for an upper-level middle

knuckle-length of your finger, if

to learn even more. He debuted

that I could have asked to work

school class — included teacher

that’s what you wanted,” said Fer-

the final product in a geometry

with. The kids were so responsive

support materials and video foot-

guson. The personalized number

class with Teresa Misiak at the

and generous in how they received

age of him teaching the lesson.

line was then used to learn plotting,

Lawrenceville Summer School, as

me — an outside teacher — and

Ferguson’s lesson plans are avail-

bisecting, trisecting, and other skills

well as in a partnership with

the project,” he said.

able on the organization’s website:

to generate both rational and irra-

Debbie Liwosz at Timberlane Mid-

“The project was one of the most

momath.org/rosenthal-prize.

tional numbers. “The kids had fun

dle School (Pennington, NJ) and

professionally stimulating profes-

He conceived the award-winning

with it.”

Manjul Dravid at Princeton Friends

sional development opportunities

project in 2005 when he was

Ferguson has tinkered with the

School (Princeton, NJ).

I’ve had during my 20-plus years of

teaching at the Princeton University

project over the years, but was in-

“Even if I had not been a runner-

teaching. It was challenging, but

Preparatory

(PUPP),

spired to fine-tune it when he heard

up for the award, I still would have

also highly motivating. Whenever

which serves high achieving, low

about the Rosenthal Prize while at-

been thankful for the off-campus

you are doing something new and

income

Mercer

tending a math conference. To ac-

connections I made through the

challenging that has a purpose, it

County high schools. He was writ-

company the basic lesson plans, he

submission process,” he said. As for

really fires you up.”

incorporation

of

Program

students

from

A Decisive Direction Strategic Directions II A Balanced Approach to the Future

January 2014

THE LAWRENCEVILLE SCHOOL

At Lawrenceville’s winter Board meeting, Trustees unanimously approved Strategic Directions II – a seven-year plan to build on the School’s traditional strengths while responding to emerging trends. This vision is the culmination of nearly two years’ worth of research and discussion to identify the trends, challenges, and opportunities that will characterize the next decade in education and the world at large. Based on Strategic Directions, which was adopted in 2007 to reinforce the underpinnings of School life within a modern educational context, SDII seeks to leverage this foundation in ways that will support the School’s continued success in preparing students for leadership in a society that is destined to be global, technology-driven, and fluid.

The plan advocates a balanced approach to the future. So Lawrenceville will maintain a generalist philosophy – while accommodating the increased desire of students to specialize.

Faculty will responsibly use technology to strengthen Harkness teaching. The board and administration will be good stewards of all the School’s resources, maintain financial discipline, and extend fundraising capacity. And Lawrenceville will seek to broaden and deepen the engagement of students, faculty, and staff in the local community in order to inspire and prepare Lawrenceville students to be responsible leaders; strengthen the School brand; and increase its institutional impact.

Details can be viewed at www.lawrenceville.org/about/strategic-plan/index.aspx.

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Hutchins Scholars Show Their Stuff

By Neil Menghani ’15

L

awrenceville’s Hutchins Scholars, along with several other Lawrentians pursuing specific interests in the sciences, recently shared their research.

The nine scholars completing the program with their presentations were Avanthi Cole ’14, Maeve Devlin ’14, Alan Gao ’14, Jacqueline Jones ’14, Isaac Kim ’14, David Lee ’14, Galen Ogg ’14, Mark Scerbo ’14, and Andreas Vandris ’14. Cary Friday ’16, Kevin Lee ’14, and Robert Williams ’14 also conducted research. The projects covered a wide variety of subjects, including examining genes that affect cancer pathways, building a portable solar charger, and working with electron microscopes.

Lawrenceville’s Hutchins Scholars Program, made possible by a generous donation to the School’s Bicentennial Campaign by Glenn ’73 and Debbie Hutchins, seeks to recognize and support some of the School’s most outstanding science students. The program provides scholars with substantive research experiences, prepares them for leading university science programs, and aims to inspire them to pursue science-related careers.

“This year’s projects have exceeded my expectations,” commented Science Master Elizabeth Fox, who has overseen The Hutchins Scholar program since its inception four years ago. “Each student fully demonstrated understanding of the work he or she had done.”

“Working in a molecular biology lab challenged and wholly absorbed me,” said Gao. “I gained invaluable experience in both scientific technique and thought.

This is an experience that I hope all Lawrentians have, whether part of the Hutchins Program or not.”

After setting up posters in the Kirby Science Center, the scholars shared their work with the whole community. Many students, faculty members, and a few special guests, including Glenn Hutchins, attended the presentations where the students explained what they had set out to research, what they had found, and the implications of their work.

“The program allows students who are considering research and science as a career path to immerse themselves fully in what it means to be a scientist and researcher,” Fox explained. “As each group of fifth formers completes their Hutchins work, I am extremely grateful to be a part of this program and see them grow from being hesitant in the lab to expertly explaining the complex research they have accomplished.”

Caroline Reese Brings Country to Clark

By Sonal Shrivastava ’15

T

he January weather was cold and dreary, but thanks to the School's student-driven Allegro Council, the

Clark Music Building was filled with warm country and folk music. Lawrenceville’s own Caroline Reese ’09 performed to a packed house of Lawrentians eager for a night of deep immersion in folk-country music and songwriting.

It was clear from her Facebook page that Reese was excited to come back to Lawrenceville to talk about her life of music. (“Can’t Wait. Can’t Wait. Can’t Wait,” she posted.) Reese took Lawrentians through the world of songwriting and performing, and sang “Secrets” and “Pennsylvania, Again,” both singles off her new album,

Slow Code. Aspiring songwriters in the crowd stayed after the performance to ask Reese what it takes to excel in the field of music and songwriting.

“Even the simplest things can become songs,” she advised. “You just have to keep working at it until it becomes better. Don’t give up on something too soon.”

Reese’s music career was kick-started at Lawrenceville where she played an active role in the Music Department. She has been writing and performing music since her senior year at Lawrenceville, where she won the Music Department Prize and the Owen C. Smith Poetry Prize. She took a gap year between high school and college at Princeton to explore country music in Nashville before releasing two solo albums, Indian River (2010) and Slow Code (2013), which are available on both CD and iTunes.

Her band, Caroline Reese and the Drifting Fifths, is touring and performing at venues across the tri-state area, ranging from bars to festivals, and was even highlighted on Philadelphia’s famous Gene Shay’s Folk Show on WXPN. The Daily Princetonian praised the band’s humility, natural chemistry, and energetic live performances.

Reese looks to carry the positive momentum to the rest of the country and plans to move to Nashville to pursue her dream of becoming a country artist.

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Water Polo’s Olympic Hopeful

By Sonal Shrivastava ’15 t 6' 5" tall, with a wingspan of 6' 7," Big Red water polo net minder Flynn Walker ’14 is like a wall in front of the goal. More formidable than his physical size, however, is his outsized talent, which recently earned him a spot on the Olympic Development Program’s Youth National Team.

Students selected for the Youth National Team, an organization that has close ties to the U.S. Olympic Committee, work with expert coaches and play in international water polo tournaments.

Given that he comes from a family of swimmers, it was no surprise that Walker started playing water polo. He felt an immediate connection to the sport. “The water felt so nice. I knew it was the place I was meant to be. It was just so natural,” said Walker. He had played several sports before water polo, but none of them seemed to click. “I played goalie for soccer and hockey but then switched to water polo. Goalie seemed to be the right position for me. I haven’t looked back since.”

A

Walker credits his height as a major factor behind his success so far. “I am very lucky to be as tall as I am. It makes it easier to cover the entire goal. I feel that I am able to push water more easily because of my height and that helps me stay up and move around in the water.”

Ramon Olivier, head coach of Lawrenceville’s boys’ varsity water polo team, concurs.

“The best part about him as a goalie would probably be his reach. He can get to either side of the cage, which is usually pretty hard to do since it is 10 feet across.”

Walker believes that this year’s Lawrence-

ville water polo team is one of the best so far.

“I am extremely happy to be part of this team.

In my four years here, I’ve never played for a team that has been this hardworking. There is such a good team dynamic and we are all so excited to play every game… We have had some great upsets this season, beating teams we weren’t expected to beat.”

Walker is still weighing his plans. “Academics come first for me, so I don’t really want to miss school for water polo. That’s why I think playing in college would be more fitting for me. It accommodates everything,” he said.

Archive Goes

LIVE!

Can’t get enough Lawrenceville history? Fortunately, The Lawrenceville School’s Stephan Archives has your fix online at stephanarchives.org. The site offers an overview of exhibits, current news, a regularly updated blog featuring littleseen photographs, and a searchable database for back issues of The Lawrence from 1881 to 2010.

In short, there’s plenty to keep any lover of Lawrenceville busy. And, of course, if you’re ever in the neighborhood, the archives welcomes visitors, too. Please visit the site for directions, hours, and availability.

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9 Sports Roundup

Boys’ Basketball Record: 13-8 Coach: Ron Kane ’83 harlie Card-Childers ’14 Captains: C Mike Klotz ’14

Girls’ Basketball Record: 9-5 Coach: Len Miller Captains: J acquie Klotz ’14 Megan Reilly ’14

Boys’ Fencing Record: 4-4 Coach: Rich Beischer Captains: Justin Gonzalez ’14

Jacky Lam ’14 Justin Parratt ’14

Girls’ Fencing N.J.I.S.A.A. Champions Record: 7-0 Coach: Rich Beischer Captains: Tara Fish ’15

WINTER Season STATS

eleste Matsui ’14 C Naina Sahrawat ’14 Adrienne Yang ’15

By Karla Guido

Boys’ Ice Hockey M.A.H.L. Champions Record: 13-12-1 Coach: Etienne Bilodeau Captains: Stephen Clarke ’14

John Kowalewski ’14

Girls’ Ice Hockey Record: 13-7-3 Coach: Nicole Uliasz Captains: Amanda Drobot ’14

Kaethe Walther ’14

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Girls’ Indoor Track N.J.I.S.A.A. Champions M.A.P.L. Champions Record: 6-0 Coach: Katie Chaput Captains: Coco Doll ’14

Kate Gulbrandsen ’14 Erin Volpe ’14

Boys’ Indoor Track M.A.P.L. Champions Record: 6-0 Coach: Steve Shuster ’00 Captains: R ob Daniels ’14 Myles Hollis ’14 Alec Waugh ’14

Boys’ Squash M.A.P.L. Champions Record: 6-5 Coach: Mark Price Captain: K omron Shayegan ’14

Girls’ Squash M.A.P.L. Champions Record: 6-5 Coach: Narelle Krizek ary Mahfood ’14 Captains: M Natalie Tung ’14

Boys’ Swimming N.J.I.S.A.A. Champions Record: 7-0 Coach: Jim Jordan Captains: Rob Lincoln ’15

Flynn Walker ’14

Girls’ Swimming Record: 5-1 Coach: Rebecca Nyquisty Captains: A lex Brown ’14 Carla Tuan ’14

Boys’ Wrestling Record: 10-3 Coach: Johnny Clore att Apuzzi ’14 Captains: M Josh Durso-Finley ’14 Patrick McLaughlin ’14

For the most current athletic news visit www.lawrenceville.org/athletics. sp S PrRIN i n gG 22001 134 1111

9 Go Big Red!

Girls' basketball gets

NOTHING BUT NET

Raw athletic talent and nimble coaching make girls’ hoops a winning prospect.

by Adam Richman ’15

O

ver the last few years, the girls’ varsity basketball team has consistently performed at an elite level under Head Coach Leonard Miller and assistant coaches Charise Hall and Kevin Mattingly P’99 ’01. Since the 2011-2012 season, the squad has a record of 36-16. This year’s squad, led by captains Megan Reilly ’14 and Jacquie Klotz ’14, has been arguably one of the strongest teams Lawrenceville has exhibited in years, and this can be partly attributed to the hard work the team puts into practicing.

Hall believes that each player at any given time has the ability to guide the team in the right direction: “Every player is ready to be a leader. They all share the wealth.”

The team often begins its practices with a drill called “Perfection,” an individual skills activity that focuses on the basics, such as efficient passing and high-percentage shooting.

Coaches keep track of each girl’s errors and, at the end of the practice, players will run laps – the number of which is based on each player’s mistake count. According to Hall, “As the season progresses, and the girls consistently do the drill, they make fewer mistakes.” After

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

Perfection, the team runs their central plays, followed by scrimmages. Each practice ends with the girls “bringing it in” at the center of the court, where they critique their own and each other’s performances.

Translating a team’s work during practice to an actual game is one of the most difficult as-

pects of basketball. Often, for example, a team might find that its offense is not executing properly. This is where solid coaching comes in, and Miller instinctively knows the right time to call timeouts, make adjustments, and build positive momentum. He notes that the team will sometimes establish certain guidelines – such as making five passes before taking a shot, and setting screens to get players open.

Hall believes that each player at any given time has the ability to guide the team in the right direction: “Every player is ready to be a leader. They all share the wealth,” she says. Nonetheless, the captains must be, and still are, the driving force behind the squad.

Captain Megan Reilly understands that her performance on the court must speak volumes. “I think it’s important that I set a good tempo during practices and pre-game warmups so that my behavior becomes contagious.”

Both team captains have signed to play college ball – Reilly going to Brown and Klotz to Bucknell – as has Amani Fernandez ’14 who will play for Williams. Although their absence will be felt, next winter’s team will still have an impressive lineup of returning starters and new faces.

The future for girls’ basketball at Lawrenceville looks brighter than ever.

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9 On the Arts

Foggy Memories Memorable Theatre Claire (Erin Welch ’14) has a problem, but she can’t remember what it is. That’s the problem.

Every morning when she wakes up, she has no memory of her past. Fortunately, her husband, Richard (Suhav Joshi ’14), is there to enlighten her; he tells Claire who she is, who he is, and offers up a list of her various likes and dislikes.

All seems well until a limping man (Alejandro Roig ’16) who wears a ski mask and possesses a pathological fear of bacon, pops out from under Claire’s bed and floods her mind with doubts about Richard’s intentions. The masked man soon whisks Claire away to a remote country house where she meets some-

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one who may or may not be her stroke-addled mother (Sarah Cartwright ’15), as well as a fellow named Millet (Coby Zur ’16) who is loath to stray very far from his foul-mouthed alter ego, a hand puppet named Hinky Binky. Meanwhile Richard, his drug-addled teenage son, Kenny (Ace England ’15), and a kidnapped state trooper (Maya Peterson ’14) are in hot pursuit, racing to Claire’s rescue.

But even if all the confusing events of the day are cleared up for Claire, will she remember any of it by tomorrow morning?

That, in a nutshell (so to speak) is Fuddy Meers, the at once farcical and tragic play by David Lindsay-Abaire. The show was directed

by Naina Sahrawat ’14 as the Kirby Arts Center’s winter black box show under the supervision of Performing Arts Department Chair Christopher Cull.

Talent with Toadstools This winter, the art of Jim Toia ’80 was on display at the Gruss Center of Visual Arts Gallery. The show, “Tempting Nature,” featured dozens of Toia’s paintings and ink drawings using a process in which mushroom caps create ethereal, abstract compositions.

Toia’s work is represented in New York City by the Kim Foster Gallery in Chelsea, NY (kimfostergallery.com), and the Haines Gallery in San Francisco. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States, Europe, and the Far East. He is in many collections including the Morris Museum in Morristown, NJ; the AT&T Collection; The Dallas Museum of Art; and the Hunterdon Museum of Art to name a few. Toia is the recipient of a New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship and a Geraldine Dodge Foundation Grant.

sSuPmm RIN eGr 22001 143

15 15

9 Take This Job & Love It

Service with a

O

SMILE

ral and maxillofacial surgeon Dr. Shahid Aziz ’88 didn’t know what to expect on his first visit to Bangladesh in January 2006. He just knew that there was a demand for cleft lip/palate surgeons and that he and his small team (a plastic surgeon, anesthesiologist, and two RNs) were ready to help out in any way they could. After landing in the country, the group took a seaplane to a floating hospital located on a river next to a remote village. There Aziz found 70 children waiting for him. Every one of them had a cleft lip.

“It was the most profound experience of my life,” he says. “You never see anything like that in the U.S. When I was a resident and performed cleft surgeries in South America, I didn’t see anything like that there, either.”

But every time he visits Bangladesh that is all he ever sees: jam-packed waiting rooms of children and adults in need.

The number of cleft deformities in Bangladesh is approximately 1 in 750, more common than in America, but not significantly so. What is significant is Bangladeshi access to care.

There is only one oral and maxillofacial surgery training program in the country and many of the graduates go overseas and never come back. Out of the approximately 300,000 cleft deformities in Bangladesh, there are only 30 trained doctors to treat them. That’s one doctor for every 10,000 patients.

Cleft lip deformities are congenital deformities that do not allow the upper lip to develop normally, resulting in significant facial disfigurement. Cleft palate deformities impede one’s ability to speak and eat and can result in the regurgitation of liquid foods, chronic inflammation of the sinuses, and nutritional deficiencies. To many, however, the most sig-

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Shahid Aziz ’88 brightens Bangladeshi lives.

nificant problem is the social stigma; people with the affliction are spurned by their peers and community and are forced to live their lives as outcasts.

The operations are often fairly simple; the problem lies in getting trained surgeons to the poor, rural areas to perform them. To help children get that care, Aziz founded the non-profit, Smile Bangladesh (www.smilebangladesh.org), and visits the country twice a year to perform surgeries, often working for five straight days, sometimes sleeping in the same room where he operates.

Aziz’s desire to give so much of himself to others is not without precedent. His father, who was born and raised in Bangladesh, spent the better part of his life doing humanitarian work in the Developing World, first for the World Health Organization, later in the pharmaceutical industry. Working for Merck, the elder Aziz not only helped create a drug that cured the third most common cause of tropical blindness in the world, but also harangued the CEO of the company into donating the drug to poor regions for free. “Being from the Developing World, he felt the need to make an impact there,” Aziz says. “And that is exactly what he did.”

Now it is the younger Aziz’s turn to work for the greater good. After graduating from Lawrenceville, he attended Rutgers College, received his dental degree from Harvard and his medical degree from Columbia, and completed his general surgery and oral and maxillofacial surgical training at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City. Following his residency, he joined the medical and dental faculty at Rutgers, where he is a professor.

He first applied his surgical talents in Ban-

is an almost comically modest affair. It is run out of Aziz’s basement. Also a testament to the group’s bare bones approach is the fact that only one person visits Bangladesh in advance of the medical team to make the necessary arrangements and ensure that the potential operating room facilities are adequate. Out of the approximately $75,000 to $80,000 Smile Bangladesh fundraises annually, $70,000 goes directly to the mission, sending 10-12 medical professionals to Bangladesh twice a year.

While there, Aziz and his team run three operating tables simultaneously and perform approximately 60 surgeries per visit, 120 per year. To date over 700 surgeries have been per-

formed, including the first mandibular distraction (lower jaw lengthening) procedure ever performed in the country.

Aziz also makes every effort to train local doctors, but it will be a long and arduous process before the supply of surgeons in Bangladesh can even begin to meet the demand.

“It’s going to take years and years and years to match the need,” Aziz says. “I’m hoping that in my lifetime the Smile Bangladesh board will be able to sit down and say, ‘They don’t really need us anymore.’ Our long-term goal is not only to perform surgeries on these kids, but also to make sure these kids can be cared for after we leave.”

Photograph by Michael Branscom

gladesh under the auspices of Healing the Children, but soon decided that creating his own organization would better serve his cause.

“Healing the Children is a great organization, but they weren’t providing us anything of real value,” he explains. “We were doing the legwork, raising the funds, and organizing the missions. We realized that with our own organization, we could raise a lot more awareness for the need for cleft surgeries in Bangladesh.”

When he created Smile Bangladesh in 2010, Aziz was focused on making sure donors would get “more bang for their buck. We want as much money as possible to go toward care,” he says. As a result, Smile Bangladesh

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9 Ask the Archivist

Water Under the

I

t has no official name. In government documents it is often blandly referred to as “unnamed tributary to the Shipetaukin Creek.” Even Lawrentians never bothered to give the matter much thought, simply calling it “duck pond” or just “the pond.”

Carved out of the local waterway in 1829, Lawrenceville’s pond was constructed by way of a cruel and unusual extracurricular activity; School founder Isaac van Arsdale Brown gave his students shovels and made them dig. His aim was to create a reservoir of readily accessible water in case a fire was to ever threaten

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Bridge

the School’s buildings. While it may have only been drawn on once for this purpose – to combat the December 1959 fire that destroyed the Old Gym – the pond and its small island have served many other uses during its long history.

In the earliest years, the pond’s ice was both a practical resource as a refrigerant for perishable foods and as a means of entertainment. Each winter when the pond froze over, students would skate on its surface, sometimes with the young ladies of the neighboring Lawrenceville Female Seminary. The first hockey team in 1896 used the pond as their rink, a role

By Jacqueline Haun

G Bridges don't always span troubled waters.

As part of a senior prank, the pond's bridge was "borrowed" and moved to the Chapel, becoming, albeit temporarily, "The Bridge to Salvation."

that continued until the 1920s, when the team began to play at Princeton’s Baker Rink. (Lawrenceville’s own hockey rink would not be built until 1953.) Well into the 1920s, the pond was also used for “skating cuts,” in which boys were allowed a change of pace in their daily athletic routine by skating for an hour rather than attending their usual gym commitment – ice thickness permitting, of course.

The picturesque island at the center of the pond has also served several uses. Between 1913 and 1915, it was a stage for traveling theater troupes, with the audience seated on a grandstand along the shore. It would take nearly a century for the island to be used that way again; in 2004 it was setting for the Second Form Shakespeare production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by thenPeriwig President Tyler Maulsby ’04.

Until 1996, the island also served a less meritorious purpose, as it was one of the few locations on School grounds where students

G Then and now: The pond provides some winter diversion. Top: Impromptu hockey, 1962. Bottom: Impromptu hockey, 2014.

were permitted to smoke, earning it the name Nicotine Island. It is uncertain how smokers reached the island before the first footbridge was installed in 1918 by the Good Government Club, but reach it they most certainly did.

The Class of 1950, inspired by the pending construction of the Lavino Fieldhouse, donated the current arched bridge as its class gift, believing it would complement the landscaping

around the adjacent athletic facility and a then newly proposed football field. The class may have wished the bridge was better anchored, however, as the Class of 1962 managed to lift it from its moorings and place it in front of the Edith Memorial Chapel as its senior prank, rechristening it “The Bridge to Salvation.”

As early as 1970, the pond was used as an outdoor laboratory for environmental science students. Science Master Robert Lester H’75 ’89 P’87 ’89 (who served as the faculty advisor for the 45-member Ecology Club and is credited with helping to organize the original 1970 Earth Day) would take his Second Form biology classes to the pond to collect water and soil samples and identify animal tracks. Kevin Mattingly P’99 ’01, the first faculty member to receive the then newly established Aldo Leopold Chair in Environmental Education and Ethics, led local Lawrence Township first-graders to the pond for a science project every spring. Today, many of the School’s science classes as well as the Hutchins Scholarship Program use the pond in their curriculum, continuing to study the relationship between physical environment and biological communities and collecting data on water quality.

The entire Lawrenceville community has become increasingly instrumental in efforts to keep the pond healthy and vibrant. In the 1990s Bob and Kay Chaty P’75 and the Class of 1975 led the charge to clean up the island in memory of Bob Chaty ’75. Also the pond has been drained numerous times over its nearly two centuries of existence, most recently in 2007 after it became stagnant. At that time, the fish that inhabit the pond were temporarily relocated and the pond drained of water. Following a drying period, bulldozers removed approximately 10,000 cubic yards of sediment from the pond’s base and the dam at one end of the pond was rebuilt. Students assisted in replacing the ground cover along the edges of the pond with native species in an effort to stabilize the banks, prevent erosion, and intercept and filter polluted runoff from upstream. Those efforts have been paying off handsomely, as several species have readopted the pond as their home, including several birds such as Great Blue Herons, cormorants, and kingfishers; three species of frogs; and fives species of turtles.

It is a picturesque legacy for an “unnamed tributary to the Shipetaukin Creek,” initially designed to serve as little more than an openair fire hydrant.

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of the

Past

T

he great Irish statesman Edmund Burke had a point: “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.”

One could also argue, however, that “Those who don’t know history are missing out on a lot of nifty stories.”

But even that doesn’t cover it, really, for those who do know history are

also missing out on nifty stories. No matter how much information on any one subject you learn, there is always another, more esoteric layer of information waiting to be discovered. To the incurably curious, this is, indeed, a wonderful thing.

For example, everyone knows the broad strokes of Lincoln’s presidency: the Civil War, the Gettysburg Address, the end of slavery. Fewer people know about Lincoln’s pre-presidential years. Even fewer know about his deep bond to Joshua Speed. By the time one narrows the historical focus all the way down to how Speed inadvertently repaired the fragile relationship between Lincoln and Mary Todd, the territory becomes quite unfamiliar. But don’t worry; Lincoln scholar and History Professor Charles Strozier ’62 will walk you through the particulars of that small yet pivotal chapter in Lincoln’s life.

On the following pages are other stories you almost certainly have never heard of: a half-baked revolution, a war between trollies and automobiles, the life of a glad-handing Soviet schmoozer, and the well-hidden ulterior motive behind the bombing of Hiroshima.

Curious? Good. Niftiness awaits.

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T h e U n w i tt i n g M a t c h m a k e r Joshua Speed Helps Lincoln Tie the Knot

“You know my desire to befriend you is everlasting —that I will never cease, while I know how to do anything.”

Abraham Lincoln to Joshua Speed, February 13, 1842

“One thing is plainly discernable – If I had not been married & happy – far more happy than I ever expected to be – He would not have married…”

Joshua Speed to William Herndon, November 30, 1866

A By Charles B. Strozier ’62

O

n April 15, 1837, 28-year-old Abraham Lincoln moved from New Salem to Springfield looking to get a fresh start. Recently admitted to the bar, Lincoln was in town to practice law, which, he hoped, would enable him pay off the debts from his several failed business ventures.

His first stop was Joshua Speed’s store on the town square. Neither man knew the other personally, though Lincoln’s reputation did precede him. Speed, like most Springfield residents, was aware of Lincoln’s significant political role that spring as a state legislator in naming Springfield as the state capital over Vandalia. Speed, 23 at the time and the scion of a large Kentucky plantation, had moved to Springfield – then on the urban frontier of America – two years earlier to make his life as a merchant. He was well known and liked in this town of 1,500 people.

In the store on that sunny April day, Lincoln threw his saddlebags containing all his worldly possessions on the counter and asked Speed how much it would cost to buy the material for a bed. His plan was to sleep in the back room of the law offices kept by his new partner, John Todd Stuart. Speed, as he later told the story to William Herndon, who collected a vast oral history trove about Lincoln, calculated that the materials for a bed would cost $17. Lincoln asked for the money on credit until Christmas but did so in such a “melancholy” and “gloomy” tone that it at once elicited Speed’s sympathy.

“The contraction of so small a debt, seems to affect you so deeply,” Speed replied, “I think I can suggest a plan by which you will be able to attain your end, without incurring any debt. I have a very large room, and a very large double bed in it; which you are perfectly welcome to share with me if you choose.”

Lincoln asked where the room was located and Speed directed him to the stairs that led from the store to the second floor. Without a word, Lincoln picked up his saddle-bags, went upstairs, and set them down. He returned, “beaming with pleasure” and in a much better mood.

“Well, Speed,” Lincoln exclaimed, “I’m moved.”

In 1838 Speed and Lincoln were joined in their room above the store by William Herndon, who later reported: “Lincoln, Speed, and I slept together for two or three years, i.e., slept in the same home, I being Speed’s clerk; and Lincoln sleeping with Speed.” For a time Charles R. Hurst also joined the dormitory, sleeping in a separate bed.

According to Speed, discussion in the store revolved around Lincoln. He was a “social man, though he did not seek company; it sought him,” he remembered. On most nights, especially during the winter, “by a big wood fire, no matter how inclement the weather, eight or 10 choice spirits assembled, without distinction of party.

It was a sort of social club without organization. They came there because they were sure to find Lincoln.”

In the first phase of their relationship, from 1837 until the end of 1840, a period when they shared that bed – something unremarkable for young men of that era – Lincoln and Speed got close, even loving. They talked about politics, literature (especially poetry), and the women each sought to court. Lincoln was never as close to any other man; he and Speed came to depend on each other psychologically in ways that bound them fast. Lincoln confided his most intimate fears about love and marriage to Speed, and to no one else. Even Herndon, who knew both men well and would have liked to have been as close to Lincoln, had to admit that only Speed had special access to his “shut-mouthed” friend.

Sometime in late 1839 or 1840 Lincoln began to court the spritely Mary Todd, who had come to Springfield to get away from her hated stepmother in Lexington and because her sister, Elizabeth Edwards, invited her to stay in her home. Mary was soon accepted as one of the most attractive and interesting young women in town. She could make a bishop “forget his prayers,” as her future brother-in-law put it. She was fluent in French, intensely political, and could recite long poems from memory. Mary came to adore her tall awkward suitor.

By late 1840, she and Lincoln were engaged.

In a move that perplexed everyone, however, Lincoln broke off the engagement on what he came to call the “fatal first” of January 1841.

Neither he nor Mary then or later fully explained what happened. As a result, historians have come up with all kinds of theories: Lincoln’s eye was turned by another woman; Mary had gotten fat that fall; he felt unable to provide adequately for her and couldn’t deal with the haughty, wealthy Todds; and that Mary initiated the split in a jealous rage. There is some evidence for each of these explanations, but none captures the overall texture of the documentary record nor takes into account Lincoln’s relationship with Speed; for another significant event that occurred in 1840 was that he and Speed no longer roomed together. Speed sold his store in preparation for moving back to Louisville after his father’s death.

The loss of Speed threw Lincoln into a kind of panic that made

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G Joshua Speed

it impossible to continue his engagement with Mary. That double loss left Lincoln bereft, and he fell into a deep and suicidal depression. Living in the home of William Butler, Lincoln was attended by his friends, including Speed (who did not leave town until later that spring), but especially by Dr. Anson G. Henry. These friends took pains to keep Lincoln away from his razor and knife.

Lincoln soon stopped attending the Legislature, which was then in session, and his law practice ground to a halt. He seemed to have stayed in bed for several weeks. It has been suggested that Henry might have even bled Lincoln, a common treatment then for clinical depression. At one point Lincoln wrote a friend in a tone of negative grandiosity that, “I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth.”

Just as Lincoln’s friendship with Speed aggravated his struggles with intimacy and love, Speed became, in time, the vehicle for their solution. In the summer of 1841, Lincoln traveled to Louisville and spent six weeks at the Speed plantation to rest and recuperate. That summer, Speed fell in love with and became engaged to “beautiful black-eyed” Fanny Henning (Lincoln’s phrase). Speed came back to Springfield in the fall to settle some business (and seemingly stayed with Lincoln) but left town in early January 1842 to prepare for his wedding the next month. He was terrified and seemed to have some of the same marriage doubts as Lincoln had. In a series of revealing letters to Speed in January and February of 1842 – the letters from Speed have not survived – Lincoln projects his own feelings and experience onto his friend: “Feeling, as you know I do, the deepest solicitude for the success of the enterprize you are engaged in…”

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and “As I think it reasonable that you will feel verry badly some time between this and the final consummation of your purpose…”

Lincoln is especially solicitous about “that crisis on which all your thoughts and feelings concentrate,” namely, Speed’s approaching marriage. That Lincoln underlines the passage suggests their shared anxiety.

Speed was getting cold feet, and Lincoln fully embraced and identified with his friend’s dread. Lincoln’s hope was that “you shall escape and go through [with your marriage] triumphantly” and without another “twinge of the soul.” If Speed, however, did become “agonized and distressed,” as Lincoln suspected he would, at the very least he should listen to Lincoln’s words, because, “[I] have some reason to speak with judgement on such a subject.”

On February 25, Lincoln received the crucial letter from his friend.

Speed, who got married on February 15, had barely tumbled out of his wedding bed on the morning of the 16th before he wrote Lincoln – who opened the letter with “intense anxiety and trepidation.” Even though Speed’s news was all good, Lincoln was still not calm “at the distance of 10 hours.” Why would a man of 33 years be shaking with anxiety for 10 hours after the news that his friend’s wedding night had turned out successfully? Was Lincoln a virgin, a man of confused identity who nourished deep fears of sexual consummation?

Was he simply afraid of intimacy and could trust emotional engagement with a woman now that he had vicariously experienced it? One can only guess, but there is no question that the relief is palpable for Lincoln. “I tell you, Speed, our forebodings, for which you and I are rather peculiar, are all the worst sort of nonsense.”

Whatever the cause, February 25, 1842 was the emotional turning point in the life of Abraham Lincoln. He now was emotionally free to re-engage with Mary, though things moved slowly (and the evidence is inevitably scant and requires some educated guesses to fill in the gaps). Lincoln wrote Speed that spring of keeping an eye on Mary from a distance, not wanting to hurt her again and not yet trusting himself after all his pain on the “fatal first.” That October, however, with the quiet help of some friends in Springfield, he finally met up with Mary and they immediately resumed their relationship.

Lincoln had never asked her to wait; it was she who had gracefully and silently waited while the man she loved wrestled his demons to the ground. They married a month later, on November 4, something Lincoln referred to cryptically a week later as a matter of “profound wonder.”

Charles B. Strozier is a professor of history in John Jay College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, and a practicing psychoanalyst in New York City. His current book is titled Young Man Lincoln: Joshua Speed and the Crucible of Greatness, on contract with Columbia University Press and scheduled for publication in the fall of 2015.

He is the author or editor of 12 books, including Heinz Kohut: The Making of a Psychoanalyst (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize) and Until the Fires Stopped Burning: 9/11 and New York City in the Words and Experiences of Survivors and Witnesses (Columbia University Press, 2011).

T h e R a i n e d - O ut R e v o l ut i o n Thomas Dorr Takes a Stand

A By Erik J. Chaput

I

n the decades after the American Revolution, many of the Founding Fathers assumed that the people would have only a passive role to play in government. Though the 1787 Constitution was submitted for ratification by the people assembled in special conventions, the framers were, overall, cautious about explicitly invoking the revolutionary power of the citizenry.

Indeed, in the years after the Peace of Paris was signed, conservatives all across America expressed fears that the Revolution was falling into anarchy because the people had too much power. In many ways the Framers attempted to put the genie back in the bottle during the summer of 1787. The lid, however, was never firmly closed.

Disputes over the meaning of the people’s sovereignty remained very much alive in post-Revolutionary America. As historian Gor-

don Wood has argued, the “task of hustling egalitarian politicians in the decades following the Revolution” was to “convince the people that they rightfully had a share in government.” In the early 1840s, a group of Rhode Islanders took this view to its fullest extreme when they invoked the part of Thomas Jefferson’s famous declaration against King George III that said that the people had a right to alter or abolish its government when it failed to meet their needs.

For Providence attorney Thomas Wilson Dorr, the Declaration of Independence “was not merely designed to set forth a rhetorical enumeration” of lofty goals. Instead, he believed it established the “absolute supremacy of The People over their political institutions.”

Although relatively obscure to most Americans and many historians, Dorr’s attempt at political reform was the most daring attempt in

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early America to unseat a sitting a government and replace it with an entirely new enterprise.

Born into wealth and privilege in 1805, Thomas Dorr as a young man seemed destined to take his place among Rhode Island’s upper echelon, using his considerable legal training to live a life of gentlemanly leisure and civic pursuits. Dorr would certainly earn his place in the history books, though not quite in the way his father, Sullivan, and his mother, Lydia, had hoped.

On April 8, 1842, from their stately home on the East Side of Providence, Sullivan and Lydia Dorr penned a short and poignant letter to their oldest and beloved son. In it, they tried desperately to persuade him to not carry out his revolutionary plans to implement a constitution that had not been authorized by the state assembly. Dorr’s parents clearly regarded him as a one-man bonfire of the vanities.

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“It grieves us to the heart to know that a son of ours arrived at so mature an age and so well versed in the laws of his Country should be a participant in acts calculated to bring the state into destruction, arouse passions which you cannot allay, and which, God forbid, produce civil strife attended with bloodshed and murder,” they wrote. They then insisted that the people could only act if they had the consent of the existing government. Anything else constituted a revolution based on raw power.

This Rhode Island crisis in constitutionalism was due to the state’s continued reliance on a 1663 royal charter as its governing document. The charter restricted suffrage to only those men possessing real estate (a figure set at $134 in 1798 – roughly $2,500 today), thereby disfranchising most of the population from the commercial and manufacturing districts who were renting their dwellings.

Repeated reform efforts had been squashed by a recalcitrant state legislature in the 1820s and 1830s.

In the summer of 1841, Thomas Dorr had emerged as the intellectual spokesman of the reformists, the Rhode Island Suffrage Association. Dorr believed that citizenship was not a privilege to be enjoyed only by those with landed wealth, but the right of every adult male, vested in his person rather than in his property. With Dorr’s assistance, members of the Suffrage Association were more determined than ever to enact reform.

The Association called a People’s Convention to meet in Providence. By late November, a constitution, largely drafted by Dorr, emerged. The statutory $134 property requirement was eliminated in what became known as the People’s Constitution. Suffrage was extended to all adult white male citizens. Other significant features included equitable legislative apportionment, a bill of rights, and provisions for the secret ballot.

When the votes were finally counted after a three-day referendum in late December 1841, the People’s Constitution was approved by an overwhelming majority—13,944 in favor with just 52 opposed.

The problem lay in the fact that the sitting government, the General Assembly, had not sanctioned any of this, nor had it sanctioned the vote on April 18, 1842 that supposedly installed Dorr as the “People’s Governor.” The man who then held to the governorship, Samuel Ward King, took immediate action to protect the existing government’s hold on power.

When King sought a promise of military support from President John Tyler, events quickly assumed a more ominous cast. Before long a quasi-army of marginal misfits, led by Dorr (who was rightfully described at the time as an overconfident military amateur) decided to lead an assault on an arsenal on the west side of Providence.

On the night of May 18, a band of Dorr’s followers trained several cannon on the arsenal, where a large contingent of charter militia troops were stationed, including several of Dorr’s brothers and uncles.

The cannons never fired, however, because a light rain kept the fuses from lighting.

Dorr promptly fled into the night. His uncles drove him out of the city to the town of Cumberland then over state lines to Bellingham, MA. Eventually, Dorr made his way to New York City, hiding with

Dorr’s attempt at political reform was the most daring attempt in early America to unseat a sitting a government and replace it with an entirely new enterprise.

G Thomas Dorr

labor radicals in the Bowery Lane district.

In late June, Dorr once again attempted to resurrect the People’s Government in the small village of Chepachet in northern Rhode Island. Perhaps remembering Dorr’s state arsenal fiasco, only a few die-hard supporters came to his aid. It was all for nothing, however; when Dorr realized that an overwhelming force of soldiers loyal to the charter government was marching from Providence to face them, he ordered his troops to disperse and, once again, fled the state.

Many of Dorr’s followers were rounded up and thrown in jail, wallowing in prison while Dorr lived in exile. Martial law remained in place for months.

Dorr settled in Concord, NH, where he resided under the protection of Governor Henry Hubbard and former U.S. Sen. Franklin Pierce. While on the lam, Dorr could at least take some solace in the fact that the Rhode Island General Assembly finally approved a modern constitution in the fall of 1842. The document was somewhat lacking – it still did not eliminate the property qualifications for naturalized citizens, for example – but it was a start. The aspiring revolutionary got his message across.

Dorr eventually gave himself up to authorities in October 1843.

He was quickly put on trial for treason against the state at the Colony House in Newport.

At his trial in June 1844, Dorr argued that he did not commit treason at all; he was the lawful governor of the state under the People’s Constitution. His opponents, in contrast, “were concerned with the work of pulling” the new government down and, therefore, “committed all the treason of ’42.” The object of the citizenry, at least for the 14,000 that voted for the People’s Constitution “was not to overthrow the government, but to continue it under the definite forms of a written constitution.” When this new government went into effect in May 1842, “the old government ceased.”

The fact that Dorr could find a way to restate his political philosophy is something to marvel at given the fact that he was tried in the anti-Dorrite stronghold of Newport. It mattered little to the judge.

Dorr was found guilty and sentenced to life at hard labor. He entered the state prison on Providence’s cove and was known simply as prisoner No. 56.

His sentence would not stand, however. People across the nation who were sympathetic to his cause began clamoring for Dorr’s release from the state prison in Providence. The northern Democratic tagline for the 1844 presidential election was “Polk, Dallas, and the Liberation of Dorr.” In June 1845, exactly one year to the day after Dorr entered the state prison in Providence, he was freed.

In 1851, the Rhode Island General Assembly restored Dorr’s civil and political rights, and three years later his conviction for treason was reversed. The following year, Dorr actively supported his good friend Franklin Pierce in the presidential contest.

Dorr was an ardent supporter of the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act and its use of popular sovereignty as a cure for the sectional problems that plagued the country – in this case to decide the issue of slavery in the territory. Dorr died in the bedroom he grew up in — in his parent’s elegant home on the east side of Providence in December 1854, a year before Kansas devolved into a bloodbath. After “Bloody Kansas” many Americans came to a realization that Dorr never did in his lifetime: Democracy included a moral component that was at odds with strict majoritarianism.

History Master Erik J. Chaput is the author of The People’s Martyr: Thomas Wilson Dorr and His 1842 Rhode Island Rebellion (University Press of Kansas, 2013) and the editor of the digital edition of Thomas Wilson Dorr’s letters, which can be found on this website: http://library.providence.edu/dorr. He earned his doctorate in American History from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, and his BA, summa cum laude, from Providence College. He also teaches in the School of Continuing Education at Providence College and writes frequently for the Providence Journal.

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ThE Indirect Message Hiroshima and Nagasaki Become Pawns in the Cold War

A By Tina Liu ’13

T

he decimation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought about a swift and immediate end to World War II. Securing Japan’s unconditional surrender, however, was not the sole reason why the atomic bombs had fallen. This bold act was also designed to intimidate the USSR by demonstrating America’s newfound military might as well as prevent the Soviets from acquiring territory in the Pacific.

The relationship between the U.S. and USSR had been fueled by mutual distrust ever since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 – and eroded further at the onset WWII with the invasion of Poland in September 1939. At that time the USSR was perceived by some Americans as a German ally because of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (August 1939) that intended their joint seizure of Poland. This was soon followed by the USSR’s annexation of the small Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania providing the country a buffer from

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western threats.

The American assessment that the Soviets were in league with Germany does not fully take into account the Soviet mindset at the time, however. Molotov-Ribbentrop was a good deal for the Soviets to be sure, but the pact was also a necessary measure to forestall entering the conflict. In 1939 the Soviet military was virtually nonexistent. A crafty operator, Stalin knew that he would need time to build an effective and relatively modern military machine, time that the agreement with Nazi Germany provided. When the Germans reneged and began their invasion of the USSR in June 1941, the Soviets, while not exactly ready to engage, were more ready than they had been two years earlier. The Soviet Union cast its lot with the Allies and, as a consequence, was seen as a turncoat, an enthusiastic former supporter of the German war machine.

There was antipathy and distrust on the Soviet side as well, but

those feelings manifested themselves later, as the war raged on. Of particular concern to the Soviets was the delay of the Allied invasion of France, originally scheduled for March 1943, but ultimately executed in June 1944. In late 1942, it became clear to the Soviets that, despite their alliance, they would have to hold off the Germans singlehandedly while the Allies plunged into North Africa on the pretense that success there would guarantee the success of the forthcoming invasion of France.

Following the North Africa Campaign in 1943, however, Churchill and Roosevelt deferred the “cross-channel invasion,” resorting instead to a strategic invasion of Sicily (July 1943-June 4, 1944) as Stalin wrestled alone with the bloodbath at the Battle of Stalingrad (winter, 1943-44). Yet again, Stalin needed help but didn’t get it – and the consequences would be dire. The USSR would emerge from the war with more than 20 million deaths – many of whom were civilians – a stark contrast to the 322,000 deaths suffered by the U.S. While the U.S. lost trust in the Soviet Union due to its perceived mid-war defection, the USSR, in turn, came to regard the U.S. as a malicious rather than friendly ally.

As the war in Europe drew to a close in early 1945, U.S.-Soviet diplomacy in the months leading to the bombing of Hiroshima was characterized largely by a dispute over the nature of territorial expansion. This wrangling overshadowed the dwindling threat posed by an increasingly desperate and devastated Japan.

Diplomatically, the U.S. viewed the USSR with immense skepticism as the USSR defaulted on several commitments. In August 1941 the Big Three signed the Atlantic Charter, pledging to build a post-war atmosphere fostering self-determination and global cooperation while guarding against any territorial aggrandizement. Drawing from the Teheran Conference two years prior, the Yalta Conference (February 1945) addressed the unresolved question of whether the pro-Western Polish government in exile in London would assume leadership of Poland or the pro-Communist government in exile in Lublin, USSR. In exchange for resetting the Polish-USSR boundary, Stalin agreed – vaguely – to authorize “free and unfettered elections” in Poland at an unspecified future date. Weeks after Yalta, however,

Stalin systematically foisted pro-Communist governments upon various Eastern European countries to consolidate power in the Communist buffer zone.

Yalta also resulted in an agreement that was favorable to the Soviets – and one that would later help direct the resolution of the war.

In return for the USSR’s involvement in the Pacific conflict, it would receive some of the land it lost in Russo-Japanese War (1904).

Truman ascended to the presidency after Roosevelt’s death in April, and, unlike Roosevelt, was far less enthusiastic about cooperating with Communists. Truman’s “Get Tough” policy sought to obtain “85 percent” of U.S. goals in conference with the USSR. In a meeting with the Russian Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov in April, Truman chastised him for reneging on the Polish promise at Yalta. The dressing down did little good.

The Soviets proved equally uncooperative at the Potsdam Conference where Truman, Churchill, and China’s Chiang Kai Shek signed the Potsdam Declaration (July 20, 1945) delivering an ultimatum to the Japanese. The USSR did not sign the ultimatum, however, for Stalin was eager to enter the war in the Pacific to reclaim lost territory. The USSR would commence hostilities on August 8, 1945.

Stinging from his lack of diplomatic leverage and unnerved by the prospect of a Soviet territorial pervasion into the Pacific, Truman ordered the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, the idea being that if Soviets don’t have a chance to engage Japan, the terms agreed to at Yalta would not need to be honored.

When Japanese surrender did not arrive immediately after Hiroshima, Truman authorized the second bombing at Nagasaki on August 9. The lag time between Japan’s proclaimed surrender on August 9 and its official surrender on September 2 aboard the U.S. Missouri, however, suggests that the U.S. was more concerned with the timing of events pertaining to the Soviet threat than the prospect of bringing the war to a swift conclusion.

Atomic bombs were not necessary to ensure Japan’s surrender. Although the battles at Iwo Jima (February 1945) and Okinawa (April 1945) proved costly to the Americans, by July of that year Japan was on the verge of collapse, suffering from a lack of weaponry and oil.

U.S. firebombing of industrial Tokyo in July effectively instigated talk of surrender. Continuing to napalm the area would have likely compelled Japan’s surrender, while endangering few U.S. soldiers.

With the Soviets on the march, however, Japan’s unconditional surrender became more a matter of timing than a matter of lives. The U.S.’s decision to drop an atomic bomb, capable of far more devastation than necessary, appears to be a symbolic decision intended to intimidate the Soviets and head off a land grab in the Pacific.

The Cold War had begun – the first casualties of which were several hundred thousand Japanese.

Tina Liu graduated in 2013 as a proud veteran of Stanley and McPherson houses. She attends Harvard University where she intends to concentrate in Applied Math/Economics. The initial draft of the above article was written when Liu was an Honors U.S. History student in her Fourth Form year.

S P RIN G

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29

The Unhelpful Archivist A Wily Ambassador Hides Stalin’s Secrets in Plain Sight

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

A By John J. Stephan ’59

P

earl Harbor. Thursday afternoon, December 4, 1941: The Pan American China Clipper glided through the waters of East Loch and taxied up to a jetty to disgorge three dozen passengers. Among them was a pudgy, bespectacled, shabbily dressed figure carrying a thick briefcase and Soviet passport under a name his mother would not have recognized.

Meir Wallach-Finkelstein, better known as Maksim Litvinov, was a man of parts. Born into a wealthy banking family on the Russian Empire’s Lithuanian-Polish borderlands, he embraced Marxism in its Leninist guise. As a Bolshevik activist, he edited a newspaper, laundered money, smuggled arms, and roomed with Josef Stalin.

He had the good fortune to be caught by France’s version of Scotland Yard, Sûreté, rather than by the Tsar’s Okhrana. Deported from France to England, he wed a friend of H.G. Wells: Ivy Lowe. After the Bolsheviks had seized power in 1917, the couple set out for Soviet Russia. Litvinov did well. By 1930, he was Commissar of Foreign Affairs.

During the 1930s, Litvinov enjoyed international renown as a champion of cooperation between the USSR and the Western democracies against Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco. His sincerity impressed; his amiability disarmed; his humor delighted – and, on occasion, disconcerted. At a League of Nations banquet, for example, he whispered, “Peez is indivisible!” to his neighbor, British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden. Eden was alarmed by the remark; was Litvinov asserting that there could be no peace in Europe without peace in Abyssynia? Not quite. The commissar, unable to disguise his amusement, gestured to an adjacent slab of butter that was too cold to cut. Harpo Marx found a kindred spirit when the two performed a stage routine. President Roosevelt called him “Max” whenever they met. Henry Luce put him on the cover of Time. Even The Lawrence referred to him as “Russia’s ace of foreign relations.”

Litvinov dropped out of sight in 1939 when Stalin decided to cut a deal with Hitler and divvy up Eastern Europe. As an anti-fascist Jew, “Finkelstein-Litvinov” (as the Nazis called him) had become an inconvenience. As like-minded friends and colleagues disappeared, Litvinov knew that his turn might come at any moment. Not one to wait for the secret police to take him away, Litvinov resolved to testify for posterity. He had collected a private archive of notes and documents as a resource for his memoirs. The archive also included highly sensitive material about Stalin, so he kept it under lock and key and took comfort in the idea that this information could serve as a bargaining chip for his life – if it ever came to that.

He was spared from this possibility once Hitler invaded the USSR in June 1941. Stalin had Litvinov recalled from limbo and appointed him ambassador to the United States. His directive was to work his personable magic to increase and accelerate lend-lease deliveries of war materiel to the USSR. Ivy would be allowed to accompany him to Washington, but the couple’s two children had to stay behind; they were Stalin’s insurance policy to make sure the ambassador behaved himself.

The war precluded flying over Europe, so Litvinov and Ivy were obliged to take an exhausting, roundabout detour flying over the Middle East and India to Singapore where they boarded a ship, the

Pan Am China Clipper, bound for Honolulu. Litvinov’s archive, packed in a thick briefcase, rarely left his side.

Instead of offering the Litvinovs a respite from the rigors of prolonged air travel, the China Clipper’s layovers in Manila, Wake, and Midway compounded their fatigue. Bad weather, makeshift accommodations, and interminable questions about the European war drew heavily on their usually plentiful reserves of amiability. So did invitations and requests radioed from Hawaii by the governor, the chamber of commerce, and the press. Litvinov declined them all. He would attend no reception, grant no interview, make no statement.

Upon landing at Pearl City, he accepted a lift to Waikiki in the governor’s limousine. He and Ivy registered at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel and retired to their room without mixing with well-wishers and curiosity seekers. The crowds dispersed after a hotel employee announced that the Russian guests had asked not to be disturbed.

Later that evening, however, when the Litvinovs thought the coast was clear, the couple slipped out of the Royal Hawaiian, crossed Kalakaua Avenue, and ducked into the Waikiki Theater to take in the Hawaii premiere of the 20th Century Fox feature, A Yank in the RAF and a Merrie Melodie cartoon. In other words, the eminent statesman representing the world’s first socialist republic, whose country was being besieged by fascist legions and whose stay in the U.S. was predicated on acquiring desperately needed war materiel, spurned every diplomatic opportunity in order to laugh at Bugs Bunny and check out Betty Grable’s gams.

On the afternoon of Friday, December 5, the Litvinovs boarded the China Clipper for San Francisco. Sunday, December 7, the day Pearl Harbor was attacked, the couple was in Washington, DC. Litvinov was recalled to Moscow in May 1943. He left his archive with Ivy, who stayed behind in New York. Before rejoining her husband in December, she entrusted it to an American friend who deposited it in a vault.

During the next two years, the Litvinovs struggled with anxiety.

They were in good standing with the Soviet government, but should the Kremlin learn of the archive, and know that it was in America – of all places – the consequences would be dire, not only for Litvinov but for Ivy and the children.

In 1945, at the behest of her husband, Ivy sent a letter by courier to her American friend, instructing him to destroy the archive. After agonizing over what to do, the friend recruited a witness and burned it.

That was Litvinov for you. On the eve of Pearl Harbor, he eluded his hosts in order to relax. On the eve of the Cold War, he eluded historians in order to survive.

John J. Stephan ’59 attended Harvard and the University of London. From 1970 until his retirement in 2001, he taught Russian and Japanese history at the University of Hawaii, with visiting appointments at Oxford, Waseda, Hokkaido, Stanford, Tufts, Moscow, and Khabarovsk. His books about contested borderlands and contagious illusions have been translated into Russian, Chinese, and Japanese.

A [London] Daily Telegraph reviewer described one of them as “a hilarious blend of Dostoyevsky's Devils interspersed with bits of Munchausen,” but warned, “this is not a book I would recommend to people with no sense of humor.”

S P RIN G

2014

31

T h e Ro a d Ho g s The Trolley Industry Sows the Seeds of its Own Demise

A By Mark Foster ’57

I

n the 1950s car culture was king, and big, showy vehicles ruled the road. General Motors Chairman Charles Wilson, intoned, “What’s good for GM is good for America,” and most of his countrymen agreed. A decade later, the automobile culture was under attack. Renowned social commentator Lewis Mumford claimed that automobility was undermining the cohesive fabric of American cities. He and other naysayers questioned suburban sprawl, excoriating a culture of conformity and crass materialism, to which automobiles and cheap energy were allegedly prime contributors. The car was clearly a major cause of choking smog; traffic gridlock on freeways led to increasingly lengthy commutes, which in turn exacerbated a creeping sense of anomie among suburbanites. Political coalitions halted numerous freeway projects in major American cities, and many voices clamored for the revival of mass transit.

How did America come to such a state? Historical timing provides a partial explanation. With a few exceptions, mostly in the East, American cities experienced their critical growth spurts in the 20th century – after the mass adoption of the automobile. By way of contrast, metropolitan regions in many other parts of the world, particularly Europe, were centuries old. They relied heavily on public transportation; decision-makers would have found it virtually impossible to accommodate the automobile, even had they been so inclined.

Liberal public policy analysts in the United States held up highly centralized, compact European cityscapes as desirable models for future development. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, many urban and regional planners and public policy analysts were calling for the revival and rebuilding of urban mass transit systems which had largely been abandoned by mid-century.

S P RIN G

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By then, I was pursuing a Ph.D. in American history at the University of Southern California, located in Los Angeles. In work following my dissertation, I explored the rapid evolution of urban sprawl across the nation during the first four decades of the 20th century.

Earlier scholarship acknowledged that suburbanization evolved simultaneously with the evolution of commuter railroads and various forms of trolley lines, from horse-drawn to electric, which later largely converted to bus lines. Many scholars also accepted as an article of faith that GM and a number of automobile suppliers had conspired to destroy urban mass transit systems by buying streetcar lines, converting them either to electric or gas-powered buses, then allowing them to fail. By this line of reasoning, American consumers, then, had no choice but to accommodate themselves to the automobile as the primary mode of urban transportation. A complicated legal case, National City Lines vs. United States (1948), which probed those charges, provided a pyrrhic victory for mass transit advocates when a handful of auto industry executives were fined minuscule amounts.

Though not disputing the notion that car manufacturers often employed ham-handed methods to promote their wares, my research led me to conclude that the triumph of the automobile on city streets was far more complex. A century ago, mass transit operators in many cities had thoroughly alienated their customers. Monopolistic franchise arrangements permitted them to charge any fare they wished.

At the turn of the century, trolley companies in numerous eastern cities raised one-way fares from a nickel to a dime. Since the average factory worker earned no more than a dollar or two per day, this hike proved unaffordable and forced many to commute to work by foot.

There was also the issue of traffic fatalities on city streets involving trolleys. Readers of “yellow press” newspapers were routinely greeted by sensationalistic photos of grisly wrecks. One 1904 headline in a Philadelphia daily blared: “Drunk Motorman Flattens Carriage.” A second line noted, “Young mother and infant daughter killed.”

Further contributing to their unsavory collective image, trolley company owners often worked hand in glove with notoriously corrupt city bosses. In return for “machine” approval of monopolistic rights-of-way on city streets and favorable zoning rulings, trolley companies provided hundreds of jobs for party loyalists and kickbacks on various supply contracts. Trolley operators’ negative public image rivaled that of the meat packing industry, so vilified by Upton Sinclair in The Jungle (1906). Theodore Dreiser, one of America’s leading novelists, penned The Financier (1912) and The Titan (1914), tracing the shenanigans of a greedy and scheming street railway magnate named Frank Cowperwood. Most readers understood that the main character closely resembled Chicago’s streetcar king, Charles T. Yerkes.

Street railway operators failed to grasp the extent of the industry’s vulnerability, however. Even though trolley “ridership” peaked in World War I, as late as 1928 one key industry publication reassured its readers: “The time can never come when the city dweller can always depend upon his own private vehicle to supply him with all the transportation he and his family and guests might need... It is true, also, that the automobile industry appears to have reached its peak of productivity.”

The Depression, followed by severe rationing of rubber and gasoline during World War II, would provide the mass transit industry

34

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

a temporary reprieve, but the fact that automobile production had increased fivefold during the 1920s might have revealed public preferences to realists in the transit industry.

Before Henry Ford’s introduction of the Model T, car manufacturers were the “little guys” – at least compared with the mass transit operators. However, proliferation of mass-produced cars quickly overwhelmed city streets and confounded urban decisionmakers. As traffic congestion intensified, reform-minded city council members, as fed up with the mass transit corruption as was the general population, discovered a financial incentive to side with Ford and his ilk. Accommodating cars by widening and improving streets was not only far cheaper, but could be finished much quicker than building new elevated and subway lines. In the interest of being reelected, most backed short-term fixes accommodating motor vehicles.

In the short run, at least, such commitments were generally popular. City planners and politicians understood that most of their constituents valued both the autonomy and privacy that individuallyoperated vehicles permitted motorists. Drivers were not dependent on schedules; they could piggyback personal errands with trips to and from work, and they could ride with whomever they wished.

Few lamented the removal of trolleys from city streets.

No American city accommodated itself more thoroughly to the automobile than Los Angeles. In 1927 Gordon Whitnall, head of the planning department, declared that when large numbers of Americans began relying on the automobile, “cities began to grow with it.

Instead of the automobile conforming itself to the limitations of the cities, the cities began to conform themselves to the necessities and services of the automobile. That is the BIG thing that has been happening here…so prevalent is the use of the motor vehicle here that it might almost be said that Southern Californians have added wheels to their anatomy.”

A golden era of affordable cars, cheap energy, and seemingly unlimited space for expansion brought the American dream of a single-family home of one’s own closer to realization. Whitnall and many of his peers who promoted automobiles saw themselves as urban visionaries, and indeed they were.

The automobile has been a huge factor in the nation’s economic health for over a century. One in seven American jobs is directly or indirectly related to the car culture. But city mass transit systems, now the “little guys,” have been making a comeback: In dozens of cities former systems have been revived or entirely new ones have been built. Nobody knows where this will lead, but, for the time being at least, advocates of private and public transportation seem to have created a sustainable modus vivendi.

Mark S. Foster received his B.A from Brown University, followed by his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. He taught post-Civil War American history at the University of Colorado at Denver for 33 years. He has published a dozen books, including works on the American city and urban transportation. He also published five biographies including those of industrialist and health care founder, Henry J .Kaiser, and a book on Carl G. Fisher, who was the brains behind the Lincoln and Dixie highways, the Indianapolis 500 motor speedway, and the creator of the land upon which Miami Beach was built.

Funding the Future: Aiding Financial Aid Lawrenceville has always been focused on attracting the best and brightest student to campus. Thanks to the generosity of two alumni, Trustee Joseph C. Tsai ’82 and Walter Buckley ’56 P’96 ’99 GP ’09, who have both committed sizeable sums to bolster Lawenceville’s financial aid initiative, the School’s objective has gotten a whole lot easier.

The initiative, titled “Fulfilling the Promise of Lawrenceville: Expanding Our Legacy,” is aimed at making a Lawrenceville education accessible to outstanding students from all socioeconomic backgrounds.

“Since the economic crisis in 2008, more families have applied for and qualified for financial aid,” reports co-chair of the initiative, Trustee Marcus B. Mabry ’85. “Increasing our financial aid endowment by $36 million will allow us to provide need-based scholarships to more than three dozen students, who would both benefit from a Lawrenceville education and contribute to the School community.”

Since the program was implemented during the 2011-12 School year, Lawrenceville has reached $26 million of this $36 million goal. The interest from these endowment gifts will augment the School’s current financial aid budget of $10.7 million – and will go a long way toward enabling the School to admit applicants who would bring extraordinary skills, talents, and experiences to Lawrenceville’s academic, athletic, arts, and leadership programs.

While there have been many generous gifts to “Fulfilling the Promise,” Tsai and Buckley have been significant to the program’s success. Tsai, the initiative’s co-chair, first committed to a $5 million endowed gift to launch the effort. More recently, he followed up with an additional $10 million commitment. Buckley committed $5 million to endow The Buckley Scholarship Fund, which will support two Buckley Scholars in each of the four forms. The Buckley Scholarships will also support educational enrichment experiences during the summers following the recipients’ Second, Third, and Fourth Form years. Among the other generous contributions, The Shelby Cullom Davis Foundation provides five new partial scholarships each year for students from underrepresented countries to attend Lawrenceville and an American college or university.

“We are extremely grateful for the wonderful support this initiative received even before we made it public,” says Head Master Elizabeth A. Duffy H’43. “Maintaining our standard of excellence requires that Lawrenceville admit the best and brightest students from families of all income levels. The promise inherent in a strong financial aid program benefits everyone.”

9

Alumni News

Dear Lawrentians,

The Alumni Association Executive Committee 2013/2014

President

Michael T. Wojciechowicz ’78 P’06 ’10 ’12 Vice President

Jennifer Ridley Staikos ’91 Vice President

Ian Rice ’95 Executive Committee

Scott A. Belair ’65 P’08 ’09 Catherine E. Bramhall ’88 Milano Graves Buckley ’98 Biff Cahill Jr. ’68 P’09 Charlie C. Keller ’95 J. Gregg Miller ’62 Brendan T. O’Reilly ’83 P’16 David B. Stephens ’78 P’06 Cahill Zoeller ’00 Alumni Trustees

Greg W. Hausler ’81 Hyman J. Brody ’75 P’07 ’08 ’11 Joseph B. Frumkin ’76 P’11 Kathleen W. McMahon ’92 selectors

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

Timothy C. Doyle ’69 H’79 P’99

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It is hard to believe that this is my final letter to you as your Alumni Association president. By the time the fall 2014 issue of The Lawrentian is published, my term will be concluded and Jennifer Ridley Staikos ’91 will take my place. I am sure that she will ably lead the alumni community through the next three years.

Looking back on my tenure, it becomes clear to me that the alumni body has never been stronger. The Alumni Association awarded the Aldo Leopold Medal to three exemplary Lawrentians, who have accomplished brilliant, lifelong work in their fields: Wayne W. Meisel ’78 P’13, Hugh A. Cregg III ’67, and Robert P. “Bob” Ryan ’64. We reached the milestone 25th anniversary of coeducation at Lawrenceville in the 2012-13 academic year – and had a year-long celebration which culminated in a memorable weekend for all alumnae.

I was honored to award the Distinguished Alumnus Award to Tim Cutting ’47 and posthumously to Brooke N. Williams ’63 P’90 ’93 ’95 (Nonie Williams P’90 ’93 ’95 accepted the award on behalf of her husband). I am humbled by the lifelong service of these Lawrentians to our School.

I had the pleasure of awarding the Master’s Award, given for distinguished classroom teaching, to Thomas M. Page H’66 (posthumously), Edward A. Robbins H’68 ’69 ’71 ’11, Catherine Boczkowski H’80 ’11 P’89 ’11 (posthumously), Leita V. Hamill H’65 ’88 ’99 P’96 ’99, Thomas H. Johnson P’61 (posthumously), and Charles Williams ’67 H’85 ’98 P’94 ’97. These masters truly exemplify the highest standard of dedication to Lawrenceville and skill in their disciplines.

My personal highlights are the new additions to the Alumni Weekend events. The Memorial Service now includes a procession of class representatives placing a rose on a wreath to remember those Lawrentians who have left us during the year. Immediately following the service, the Fifth Form is formally inducted into the ranks of the Alumni Association with the pinning ceremony. A black and red rosette is pinned to each fifth former by an alumnus as a welcome to the Association. It was especially meaningful for me to watch my son be pinned by his sister with his grandfather’s classmates flanking him.

It is a bittersweet moment for me as I end my term, but I know that the Association is in good hands and that Lawrenceville has a bright future ahead. I would encourage you to come back to campus for a visit, and to get involved with your class activities. It is a great way to reconnect with today’s Lawrenceville.

Go, Big Red! Tim Wojciechowicz ’78 P’06 ’10 ’12 President, Alumni Association mtwoj@wojie.com

* 95

check in on time

Number of

the House Olympics

houses that

three-legged race

have burned to the ground

230 number of

(Dawes and Woodhull)

50 Number of hotdogs

sold by Woodhull Hot Karl’s in the last fiscal quarter

house participants in tug of war

360

Number of hamburgers sold by Woodhull Hot Karl’s in the last fiscal quarter

housemasters throughout its history

1

Number of legs racing in

2

house olympics

Hamill

throughout its history

number of competitive

Number of

House housemasters

88

30 Number of Carter

Dickinson)

students who

tricyclists at the

132

9

Percentage of

32

(Ted Keller H’41 ’64,

by Shubhankar Chhokra '14

tenure in years

House life

Longest housemaster

9 By The Numbers

* 453

Average number of gray hairs a housemaster estimates he/she has gained since becoming a housemaster

*Statistics with an asterisk are the results of a housemaster survey.

Fourteen out of 20 current housemasters responded.

9

Student Shot

Victoria CAPTION Berzin ’14 I came upon these two fellows while walking in the woods on Lawrenceville’s campus. Beyond the natural symmetry of the composition, I was struck by the idea that the caterpillars – who are not normally associated with social behavior in the same way as ants or bees are – appeared to be in a sort of relationship. This left me wondering whether the behavior I photographed was competitive or collaborative.

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!