The Lawrentian - Spring 2012

Lawrentian THE

SPRING 2012

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l arw re tht e hlea w en tn i atni a n

Departments 2 From the Head Master 3 Editor’s Note 4 News in Brief A hello from Hill’s head, Meisel’s medal, and remembering Catherine Boczkowski.

8 Sports Roundup Fall sports stats.

10 Go Big Red Larson and Kukla heal wounded bodies and wounded pride.

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11 Cover to Cover O’Shaughnessy views Mexico through the mind’s eye.

12 On the Arts Student photographers provide a global perspective, and Lucky Stiff knocks ’em dead.

16 Q&A Some thoughts from Lawrenceville’s own Friendly Campus Astronomer.

19 How to Do Everything (Part 2) Tom von Oehsen walks tall.

20 Ask the Archivist Isaac Van Arsdale Brown takes a trip.

22 Take This Job and Love It

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8

Tessa Hessmiller wants you to look beyond the Best Western.

24 1,000 Words Big Red hits the Big Leagues.

80 Photo Finish

Features

ho are these people? Write the caption and W win a prize.

26 Here Comes the Sun Lawrenceville goes solar.

Alumni

32 Well Grounded

40 Harkness and Self-Awareness

Some examples of how Building & Grounds builds a better campus.

42 Alumni News 43 Board Bits 45 Class Notes

On the Cover: Illustration by Jean-Francois Podevin.

F Grounds crewman Tito Matias surveys his domain.

Photograph by Michael Branscom.

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9 From the Head Master

I

In the forward to his seminal collection of essays on conservation, A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold, of the Class of 1905, wrote, “When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” That ethic of care and commitment to a place is something that we try to cultivate in all Lawrenceville students, from the Second Form science and humanities classes’ place-based curricula during the fall term to our campus-wide sustainability efforts to our continual stewardship of the School’s 119 buildings and more than 600 acres.

As those of you who are alumni can attest, the beauty of the Lawrenceville campus leaves deep imprints on all who pass through its gates as evidenced by your nostalgic reactions when you return. Meandering across the Circle, smelling the cherry blossoms or fresh-cut athletic fields, standing beside a majestic Olmsted tree, hearing the Chapel bells or the cacophony of birds as a flock alights from the pond – such sensory experiences have the power to transport you back decades to your time as students here.

The physical and natural features of the campus also shape the culture of Lawrenceville. Not only do the House and Harkness systems contribute to the strong sense of community for which Lawrenceville is known, but so too does the natural architecture of our space. Lawrenceville’s friendly informality can, in part, be attributed to Frederick Law Olmsted’s layout of the campus; his park-like design with ambling paths evokes a more relaxed and contemplative response than a more formal aesthetic would. (Just imagine if the Circle were square rather than amoeba-like, and the Bowl were not a place of play but a formal garden.) When we complete the replacement of the steam pipes and water infrastructure and the renovation of Pop Hall, we will keep that park-like feeling in mind as we re-landscape other areas of campus, including the Crescent, Flagpole Green, and the area between Pop and Woods Memorial Hall.

Over the past nine years, in the spirit of Aldo Leopold, we’ve extended our ethic of care to encompass environmental stewardship more broadly. One of the most significant efforts in our Green Campus Initiative is featured in this issue of the magazine – the construction of a six-megawatt solar field on some of the School-owned farmland adjacent to the campus. In designing the solar installation, we selected technologies that would not scar the underlying land. In fact, our choice to plant wildflowers under the panels and raise bees there should leave both the land and surrounding ecosystem healthier. Look for Lawrenceville-brand honey soon!

Both our sustainability initiatives and the beauty of this place rely on the continual care and attention of the men and women on the Buildings & Grounds staff. Those who are featured in this magazine represent well the dedication and commitment of generations of staff, who have so respectfully and lovingly tended this campus and community.

For that, Aldo Leopold would be proud and all Lawrentians are grateful.

Virtus Semper Viridis,

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

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

9 From the Editor

Lawrentian THE

SPRING 2012

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Volume 76 Number 2

publisher Jennifer Szwalek editor Mike Allegra art director Phyllis Lerner proofreaders Paul Mott, Jr. ’47 Rob Reinalda ’76 Linda Hlavacek Silver H’59 '64 GP’06 ’08 Jean Stephens H’50 '59 ’64 ’68 ’89 P’78 GP’06 contributors Graham Cole H’87 P’91 ‘95 Blake Eldridge ’96 Lisa M. Gillard Hanson Jacqueline Haun Kelly Mangini Selena Smith Paloma Torres Nicole Uliasz Tom von Oehsen ’81 Zoe Vybiral-Bauske

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 correspondence 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 e-mail (mallegra@lawrenceville.org).

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

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

W

hen I first heard Head Master Liz Duffy’s H’43 Green Campus Initiative announcement almost seven years ago, I leaned over to a colleague and said, “As soon as they slap a solar panel on a roof, I’m putting it on the cover.” And I meant it.

Well, like most things, the gap between wanting something and getting it is often longer than expected. Take those solar panels, for instance. First the economic incentives needed to add up. Then the trustees needed to wrap their brains around it. Then research needed to be done; a company needed to be selected, plans needed to be drafted; permits needed to be granted; state, county, and local governments needed to provide the necessary thumbs-up; then the solar plan that was so scrutinized by so many finally needed to be built.

I don’t pretend to know the ins and outs of the process, but I do know that folks like Duffy, CFO Wes Brooks ’71 P’03 ’05, Sustainability Coordinator Sam Kosoff ’88 H’96, trustees Leita Hamill H’65 ’88 ’99 P’96 ’99 and Peter Schweinfurth ’79 P’15, and many others worked for a good long time to make this happen. They did so because they believed in it. They believed it was good for the health of the Earth, yes, but also good for the School’s financial health for decades to come.

That is some brave, forward thinking – a leadership quality that is sadly lacking, I’d argue, most everywhere these days.

Best of all, the years of effort didn’t translate into just a few dozen roof panels – something that usually generates more smug selfsatisfaction than actual electricity. The Lawrenceville array is made up of 24,000 solar panels housed on a 30-acre patch of School-owned farmland.

It will generate more than six megawatts of electricity to meet more than 90 percent of the School’s electrical needs while saving the School millions of dollars.

So that’s why solar is the cover story. Do take a moment to read the article, “Here Comes the Sun,” beginning on page 26.

If the solar plan had required another six months of planning, then this issue’s cover would have featured the good folks in Lawrenceville’s Buildings & Grounds. Made up of 90 men and women in five departments, many of whom work behind the scenes with little recognition, B&G does nothing less than make the School run. I had the privilege to follow a few of these guys around as they worked and was impressed – not by their skill or work ethic, which I already knew was exemplary, but by their love of and loyalty to the School they served.

Warmest wishes, Mike Allegra Editor mallegra@lawrenceville.org

Oops…

Many thanks go to sharp-eyed reader Jo Brewster Devlin P’71 H’66 ’58 ’59,

who reported that boiler house legend Charlie Venner’s name was misspelled in the fall 2011 issue’s “Q&A.”

Mere moments after the winter 2012 issue hit mailboxes, the fine residents of Stephens House expressed their dismay over the magazine’s “News in Brief” item on the House Olympics; this is understandable as it was their House – not Stanley, as reported – that won Olympic gold.

The Editor regrets the errors.

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Remembering

Catherine Boczkowski

R

L

4

awrenceville legend Catherine

In 1992, Boczkowski won a scholar-

career of an outstanding university stu-

Boczkowski H’80 ’11 P’89

ship to the corporation-sponsored Part-

dent”; was one of only nine U.S. educa-

’91, died on November 28. She

ners in Science Program to undertake

tors to receive an award from the College

served Lawrenceville for 34 years, the

two summers of research in chemistry

Board for Outstanding Teaching in the

longest tenure by any full-time female

at Princeton University. This experience

Advanced Placement program; was the

teacher in the School’s 201-year history.

inspired her to develop a Chemistry Re-

first secondary school teacher ever to be

She was the first female faculty member

search Seminar for advanced science

asked to join the Advisory Board of Re-

to reach the service milestone of 25 years

students at Lawrenceville, allowing them

search Corp., a private scientific research

and the first woman to serve as a depart-

to participate in research with profes-

ment head.

sors and graduate students at Princeton.

firm; was recognized by the League of

Boczkowski began her tenure at Law-

It also inspired her to develop, with help

renceville as a math and physics teacher

from her Lawrenceville colleagues, the

before moving to chemistry in 1978. She

School’s research-based science cur-

chaired the Science Department from

riculum. In collaboration with Princeton

1980-1990, served as the School’s dean

Teaching Associates Inc., she also devel-

of faculty from 1995-2004, and then

oped software to help teachers meet the

returned to full-time teaching.

demands of upper-level courses.

Her contributions to Lawrenceville

Boczkowski’s work with students

were wide ranging and helped to shape

was not restricted to the classroom. She

the character and future of the School.

was an advisor to the Dickinson, Kirby,

From 1985-1987, she was part of the

McPherson, Reynolds, Stanley, and Up-

Steering Committee for Coeducation,

per East houses during her Lawrenceville

which led The Lawrenceville School in

tenure. She was the advisor to the National

Boczkowski’s greatest legacy is not

its transition to a coeducational institu-

Chemistry Olympiad and State Science

her many awards and accomplishments,

tion. She also served on an assortment

Day teams, co-founded the student Harlem

however, but the impact she had on

of

curriculum

Renaissance Club, and was the first advisor

generations of students. Affectionately

development, and other institutional

to Women in Leadership at Lawrenceville.

known as Dr. B, she inspired every stu-

committees; and she founded and direct-

Boczkowski received numerous hon-

dent she taught to excel. As Nan Ni ’04

ed the Lawrenceville Summer Science

ors. She was given citations from MIT

recounted at Boczkowski’s funeral ser-

Institute, a program funded by corporate

and Stanford universities as the teacher

vice, “She believed in us even when we

grants for talented area youth.

“most influential in guiding the science

didn’t believe in ourselves.”

long-range

planning,

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

Women Voters of Lawrence Township as one of the community’s most outstanding women; and was presented with The Rider University Sigma Xi Award.

In 2002, an award, gifted by the parents of two Lawrenceville students, was created in honor of Boczkowski on the occasion of her 25th anniversary at the School. It is presented annually to a young woman in the graduating class who best exemplifies personal moral integrity and loyalty to Lawrenceville.

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Kill Hill! (But not really.)

T

he annual football competition between Lawrenceville and The Hill School is the fifth-oldest high school rivalry in the country. In 1887, when Grover Cleveland was the president of our 39 United States, two prep schools met on what might be best described as a field of battle.

“Perhaps it was not love at first sight, or second or third,” said Hill Headmaster David Dougherty, “but it was clearly right and continues robustly today.”

On the eve of the two schools’ fall weekend of sport competitions, Dougherty bravely walked into enemy territory, becoming the

first Hill headmaster in memory to address The Lawrenceville School community. His welcome was a warm one as he waxed historic about the competition between the two schools, relaying fun anecdotes about games both won and lost. Sure, once upon a time, the rivalry faded for consecutive years; Lawrenceville flirted with Andover as Hill similarly pitched woo to Hotchkiss, but neither school’s heart was in it. What once was would remain.

“To some, [rivalries] are blood lusts, fed on animosity and disdain.

To others they are natural, inevita-

6

ble, invulnerable, just meant to be – like Army and Navy, Harvard and Yale – and will always be.” But, said Dougherty, neither description quite fits the relationship between Lawrenceville and Hill. “Great rivalries,” he continued, “are more like great friendships, committed to the same ideals.”

He added that the rivalry had grown more far-reaching and included other sports as the years progressed. Added to football (109 historic matchups) was soccer (72 matchups) then cross country (63) and then water polo (37).

When Lawrenceville embraced coeducation in 1987, the move inadvertently resonated beyond the gates.

“With the admission that year of girls and young women to Lawrenceville, this historic rivalry, for the first time in 100 years, effectively relegated almost half of your student body to the sidelines,” remembered Dougherty.

“I quickly saw when I arrived in 1993 that it was a formula for the demise of our relationship, and was a powerful argument to our alumni when I argued for the coeducation of The Hill.

The games of 1998 constitute my proudest moment in this tradition, when Hill and Lawrenceville girls competed for the first time, establishing a new, dynamic chapter to a great old story.”

And so field hockey, girls’ soccer, girls’ tennis, girls’ water polo, and other sports were added to the mix in an ever-evolving, ever-tightening bond of competition between the two schools.

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

Meisel

Earns Medal A single-minded devotion

of Public Service. Meisel

to service, in a nutshell, de-

has received 10 honorary

fines the life and legacy of

degrees in the fields of law,

the Reverend Wayne Meisel

public service, humanities,

’78, who was recently hon-

and divinity. He is also the

ored as the 21st recipient of

author, co-author, or editor

the Aldo Leopold Award, the

of numerous books, includ-

highest honor the School be-

ing Building a Movement: A Resource Book for Students in Community Service; On Your Mark, Go! Get Set: From Campus Ideals to Community Involvement; Light One Candle: A Handbook for Organizing, Funding and Maintaining Public Service Activities; and Civic Engagement at the Center: Building Democracy through Integrated Co-curricular and Curricular Experiences.

In his speech to the students, Meisel, after sharing some student anecdotes about his horrible fashion sense and his tireless effort to get a pub built on campus, conveyed a simple and heartfelt message: What you do here matters.

“How you treat one another, how you deal with disappointment, what kind of effort you put into everything, and how you engage the world is what will communicate your character to the world and define your own image of self,” he explained. “What you do here and, yes, what you don’t do here, will determine who you

stows upon an alumnus.

Meisel is perhaps best known as the primary architect of Americorps, the national nonprofit organization that has come to define service learning for 75,000 volunteers each year. He is also the director of faith and service at the Cousins Foundation in Atlanta and in that role he created FAITH3 (Faith Action in the Head, Heart, and Hand), an initiative to support young people in connecting their passion for service with their interest in spiritual exploration.

Another

group,

COOL

(Campus Outreach Opportunity League), which he founded a few years after graduating

from

Harvard

University, was recognized by the White House in 1987 as the leading volunteer organization in the country. In 1994, Meisel was named one of the Top 50 Leaders in the U.S. under 40 by TIME magazine and was presented with the National Jefferson Award by the American Institute

9 L'ville Letters Cube Comments I just finished reading the piece about Lower in the current issue of The Lawrentian [“A Return to Form,” fall 2011]. On page 50 it says that “at some point in The Incubator’s history, most likely around the late 1950s, the building’s unofficial name switched to ‘Lower.’”

I entered Lawrenceville as a first former in September of 1935, so I spent two years in Lower when it was really rather new. I can tell you as pluperfect, certified fact that at no time while I was at Lawrenceville was The Lower School called “The Incubator” by anyone. It was known to us boys that the “correct” name for Lower was “The Alumni War Memorial Building,” but rarely and only in special circumstances was Lower called by that name.

Instead it was called, “the Lower School” or just as often, “Lower” or “The Lower,” according to context.

Lawrentian THE

fall 2011

tneassbtelaceHingtimturne s 75

Hark

Charlton Lyons ’40

are and how others react and respond to you.

“If you treat someone poorly, he will remember it.

If you are the captain of a team and you disregard the new kid, it goes on your permanent record. Just because you are unaware, it doesn’t mean that others don’t notice. People do notice. It does matter. It matters a lot.”

Meisel did get the most out of his Lawrenceville experience. He tried out for plays knowing, by his own admission, that he couldn’t

A couple of amendments to your article about the recreation of a Lower School cubicle: By the time I arrived on campus in September 1950 as an 11-year-old shell former, Lower School was already known as “Lower School.” So the name change from “Incubator” took place prior to that time.

Second, our cubicle closets had curtains, not lockable doors. And no covering was allowed across a cubicle’s entrance. I suppose School administrators rationalized that since barracks were good enough for the boys who won World War II, and we just embarked on another crusade that June, this time in Korea, a barracks environment would be good for us as well.

Of the 14 shell formers who arrived on campus in September 1950, just nine of us were left by Christmas, and three were “day boys” who went home at night.

Administrators probably imagined that intramural athletics would siphon off the dark energy generated by cramming 120 11- to 14-year-old boys into four closequarter Houses. The only excuse for such naiveté is that Lord of the Flies was not published until 1954.

George Reiger ’56

act. He belonged to the Glee Club even though, again by his own admission, everyone knew he couldn’t sing.

He noted that he wasn’t the best student – not even close – but he “showed up at every moment as if the whole world depended on whatever was in front of me.

Lawrenceville is where my habits

were

developed,

where my confidence grew… where my spirit lit on fire,” he concluded. “Now it is your turn.”

An Old Lower cube photo [page 46] showed a curtain one could use to “close the door.” This is somewhat misleading and inaccurate. As students, the front of the cube was always open with the exception of finals week when we were allowed to hang bedspreads over the front. Otherwise privacy was forbidden.

I was surprised there was no mention of the study hall on the second floor. We all had desks facing away from the attending master. Under the clock was a sign stating simply: “Time will pass. Will you?”

Another interesting fact not mentioned: On prom weekend, all Lower boys moved out and the prom dates moved into the cubes. The Lower boys were not allowed to go to the prom and were given the weekend off.

In Thomas House a sign was hung over the toilets: “Flush twice. It’s a long way to the kitchen.”

I could easily go on about “Rafter Ball,” steam heat that seldom worked, awful food, endless noise, rhinie duties, and countless other memories. Then-director Julian Thompson ’45 explained that cubes as opposed to

rooms, gave the young lads a sense of togetherness, thus staving off homesickness. I wonder.

Stephen B. Brown ’64 P’98 ‘01 I enjoyed the fine piece about the reconstruction of a Lower School “cube.” It took me back to the days when, with the likes of Neil Bull ’44 H’57 and Perry Knowlton, I was a Lower School housemaster under our benevolent director, Frank Heyniger ’36 H’59.

I have fond memories of my years in Old Lower. A number of “kids” from that time, and my colleagues, have been lifelong friends of mine. I have to feel that the School’s House system, fostering good relationships between teachers and students, never worked much better than it did in Lower during those years, maybe in spite of the cubes.

Julian Thompson ’45 Jigger vs. Jim’s I thoroughly enjoyed the latest issue of The Lawrentian.

A fact with which you might not be familiar was that there was another shop across the side street from The Jigger [“Ask the Archivist,” fall 2011]. Jim’s was a smaller place and was patronized by many of us who played on athletic teams. Jim’s had lower prices than The Jigger (and also the cutest waitress behind the counter). A favorite dish was a brownie or chocolate cake topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Delicious! I’m sure it was snobby, but we turned up our noses at The Jigger as it catered to “new boys” who seemed to go there out of a sense of tradition. Also Pop Bussum’s sense of humor didn’t impress us.

Henry P. Palmer, Jr. ’47

What’s on your mind? Write a letter to the editor at mallegra@lawrenceville.org or The Lawrentian Editor, The Lawrenceville School, PO Box 6008, 2500 Main Street, Lawrenceville, NJ 08648.

Letters may be edited for publication.

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9 Sports Roundup

By Nicole uliasz

Boys’ Cross Country M.A.P.L. Champions Record: 6-1 Coach: Ed Poreda Captains: David Ferguson ’12 Nyall Islam ’12 David Blackman ’12

GIRLs’ Cross Country M.A.P.L. Champions Record: 9-0 Coach: Chris Cunningham Captains: E mma Waugh ’12 Annie Murphy ’12

Field Hockey Mercer county Champions Record: 15-4 Coach: L isa Ewanchyna Captains: Nikki Rivera ’12

Eliza Becker ’12

Football Record: 6-3 Coach: Ken Mills Captains: Walker Kirby ’12

Matt Minno ’12 Crockett Stevenson ’12 Oluwapelumi Shoyoye ’12

BOYs’ soccer M.A.P.L. Champions Record: 8-7 Coach: Blake Eldridge ’96 Captains: E lwood Taylor ’12 Eric Speidel ’12 Mark Leonhard ’12

GIRLs’ soccer Record: 8-7-2 Coach: Tommy Dillow Captains: A ndrea Miesnieks ’12 Jessica Vocaturo ’12

Girls' Tennis M.A.P.L. Champions Record: 11-1 Coach: Penny Foss Captains: Alexa Greene ’13 Melissa Duan ’12 8

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

GIRLs’ Volleyball Record: 6-9 Coach: Katie O’Malley Captains: S am Krieg ’12 Omi Kristoff ’12

Boys' water polo Record: 11-11 Coach: Ramon Olivier Captain: S teve Grune ’12

GIRLs’ water polo Record: 17-3 Coach: Hal Wilder Captain: Laura Poss ’12

Annelies Paine ’12

For the most current athletic news visit www.lawrenceville.org/athletics.

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9 Go Big Red

By Blake Eldridge ’96

Caretakers of Body and Soul

Injured? Jason Larson and Andrew Kukla will put you on the road to recovery.

A

thletic trainers Jason Larson and Andrew Kukla are more than great diagnosticians. They probe with eyes and questions, while trying to distinguish pain from wounded pride, hyperextension from hyperbole. They have to be the bad guy and restrict activity when the student’s will is stronger than the body. Other times, they’re sports psychologists, working to inspire confidence when the body is stronger than the will.

In typical Lawrenceville fashion, they’re completely invested in School life. Larson is housemaster of Upper. Kukla is assistant housemaster of Kennedy. Both are academic advisors. Both have started their families while on campus – Larson with his wife, Amy, and now baby girl, Ella; Kukla with his fiancée, Tyler, and their pup, Piper. And both are available at all hours for curbside or kitchen table consultations.

That complete investment in student life is both a key to success and its own reward, Kukla says. “The best part of this job is being able to work with young, energetic, and motivated individuals through all avenues of health care. It’s also very satisfying knowing that we, as athletic trainers, have created a safe, upbeat facility where student athletes can recover physically, mentally, and emotionally.”

Larson agrees. “Definitely the most rewarding part of my job is seeing kids for an initial injury and following them through their rehab and watching them return to competition without incident. The whole process is rewarding both professionally and personally. You develop a bond with a kid when you are working with him and doing therapy with

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

G Andrew Kukla (left) and Jason Larson mend ailing athletes.

him regularly.”

Larson and Kukla support students as they recover from all kinds of injuries, oftentimes addressing underlying problems or muscular imbalances, making the athlete stronger and more resilient for the future. They’re even expert in long-term post-op physical therapy, helping students recover their strength and confidence after reconstructive or arthroscopic surgery. In those cases, their good cheer and unwavering support are as important as their therapeutic expertise. Much of the healing process is mental, so they have as much to do to reconstruct an athlete’s confidence in his/her body as to rehabilitate the injury. They help the students focus not on what they can’t do, but on what they will be able to do again.

It’s their ability to help students see their recovery from a broader perspective that makes even the tough calls easy. Though we all get excited to watch a triumphant return from injury, Larson and Kukla are as often the ones who have to make game-changing decisions that end less triumphantly. They always put the individual player’s well-being before that of the team. “The toughest part of my job is telling a coach, in a critical moment in the game, that his player is out,” Larson says. “It’s not really tough, but I never like being the bearer of bad news. I always tell the kids that the athletic trainers are their biggest advocates.

“We want to see them play,” Larson adds, “but we also want them to be safe.”

9 Cover to Cover

Once Upon a Time

IN MEXICO

O’Shaughnessy’s first book takes readers to an imagined world south of the border.

A

s far as writers go, Keith O’Shaughnessy ’88 is an anomaly. First of all, he’s a writer who doesn’t read much. “I don’t have the attention span,” he says with a laugh.

He also doesn’t have a disciplined writing routine; he writes when the muse hits him, and when the muse is out to lunch, so is he. “When I don’t write, I just do something else, and I don’t think much about it.”

He also doesn’t bother writing what he knows. His first book, Incommunicado, proves that point. It is a series of poems that all take place in Mexico during the Carnival season. “But I am a complete impostor,” he concedes, laughing some more. “I have never been there. I have never seen a bullfight. I have never seen flamenco dancing. The book wasn’t born out of some affinity for that culture. I’m just trading in the basic dreamscapes we have created for that culture.”

After one reads Incommunicado, however, O’Shaughnessy’s quirks don’t matter much.

When the muse strikes, when he’s making up flights of fancy about a country he’s never bothered to learn anything about, the guy can really write. Ifeanyi Menkiti, for one, is a true believer.

Menkiti, a philosophy professor and poet, is also the owner/proprietor of the Grolier Poetry Book Store in Cambridge, MA, the oldest and arguably the most prestigious poetry book shop in the country.

Upon reading an O’Shaughnessy poem printed in Columbia University’s alumni magazine, Menkiti wrote him a fan letter.

O’Shaughnessy was gobsmacked. “[Menkiti] expressed an interest in my books’ being in his shop,” O’Shaughnessy says, still excited by the memory of it. “This was kind of a dream come true – except for the simple fact that I didn’t have any books.”

Over the course of the next year O’Shaughnessy did, however, get three chapbooks published. All were duly put on sale at Grolier.

Then, on one trip up to visit with Men-

kiti, O’Shaughnessy, rather presumptuously, pressed his “then-fairly-incomplete” Incommunicado manuscript on him, “which I guess was strange, because Menkiti was not a publisher.

“Well, we spoke many times over the next year, and he never so much as alluded to even having read it. Then, all of a sudden, a year, later, he announced, ‘Hey guess what? I read your book very closely. I just didn’t want to mention anything until I had something of substance to say. Well, I founded a new prize, the Grolier Discovery Award, and you just won it.’”

At that, Grolier published his book, a major milestone for any poet. “Getting from ‘I publish poems in magazines and journals’ to ‘I have a book of poems,’ is like going from amphibian to Homo sapiens,” he explains. “It’s really hard to do, because there’s really no money in published books of poetry and there’s hardly any market for them.”

Well, there must be some market. Since its publication, Incommunicado has been well received and the book also earned its author a fellowship. O’Shaughnessy, not wanting to rest on his laurels, is now at work on a new book. This one, he says, takes place in Russia in the dead of winter.

And no, he hasn’t been there, either.

But as O’Shaughnessy proved with his incomparable Incommunicado, it probably won’t matter.

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9 On the Arts

Documenting Korea’s Eden

One of the lasting legacies of the Korean War is a

demilitarized zone between North and South, 155 miles

long and approximately 2.5 miles wide. On both sides

of this enormous no man’s land are legions of soldiers

and heavy artillery. In the middle is one of the most beautiful, untouched, and unplanned wildlife preserves on Earth.

JeongWoo Ha ’12, a resident of South Korea, found

the inherent irony of the DMZ story fascinating; if it

were not for the ongoing tension between the two countries, this paradise would never exist. If peace between the two Koreas ever emerges, the now-pristine wilderness will never be the same.

Ha, who has a passion for ecological preservation,

began to look for ways to visit the area and document what he found. In 2009, he applied for a William Welles Grant, a Lawrenceville award that provides a stipend

for deserving students to pursue summer independent studies, and was awarded $1,000 to proceed with his plan in summer 2010.

During the 2010-11 school year he promoted his

findings. He gave a presentation to the entire School,

created a short documentary about the DMZ that was

accepted into a Princeton film festival, and his photo-

graphs were accepted in galleries in Los Angeles and Philadelphia.

This fall, Ha added another gallery show to his

credit. His photos were on prominent display in the

Gruss Arts Center gallery. Using inkjet printing on

transparent acrylic, Ha experimented with layering

photo images to juxtapose the beauty of the natural environment in the DMZ with the ugly, man-made reminders of war that blight the perimeter.

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Weaver’s Natural Instincts

Zack Weaver’s ’12 passion for photography began

with his passionate desire to become fluent in Spanish.

Last summer, he signed up for “Experiment in International Living,” a course that immerses a student in any

of 30 different countries for an entire summer. Weaver chose Ecuador. Upon his return to the United States, his language skills were pretty near impeccable. His nature photography wasn’t bad, either.

Weaver has been interested in photography for years

and often has a camera with him when he travels. (A summer 2010 marine biology program he took in Aus-

tralia also resulted in some excellent photos.) The natural beauty of Ecuador overwhelmed him, however, and

he was intent on capturing what he saw. To put it an-

other way, Ecuador made Weaver take his photography more seriously.

Others took his photography more seriously, as

well. One of his photographs was accepted into a Princeton gallery show. Moreover, Visual Arts Master

Jamie Greenfield, impressed with what she saw, offered

Weaver an opportunity to display his photos in Gruss,

where his work shared a gallery show with JeongWoo Ha’s ’12 photos of the Korean Demilitarized Zone.

Weaver, who plans to pursue engineering, never

dreamed that he would find such an interest in photog-

raphy (or marine biology, or Spanish, for that matter), but that’s a Lawrenceville education for you.

“If I had not gone here, I wouldn’t have known how

interested I am in these things,” he said. “Lawrenceville is just about as ‘liberal arts’ as a high school can be. This school exposed me to all of it.”

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The musical Lucky Stiff, by Lynn Ahrens and

Harry, ready to cry foul and claim the cash in

Stephen Flaherty, opens with a mild-mannered

the event that the nephew fails to complete his

shoe salesman, Harry Witherspoon (John Fitzpat-

duties.

rick ’12), learning that his long, lost uncle (Ricar-

Little do Harry and Annabel know, however,

do Ayala ’12) died and left him millions of dollars.

that there are a number of others with designs

Good news to be sure, but there’s a catch; to get

on the inheritance who have no intention of

the money Harry has to take his uncle’s corpse,

letting a shoe salesman or a dog fancier stand in

nicely taxidermied and propped up in a wheel-

their violent way.

chair, on a trip to Monte Carlo, the deceased’s

The show, performed on Parents’ Weekend

favorite vacation spot, for a week of gambling. If

on the Kirby Arts Center’s main stage, was

Harry fails to fulfill this wish (as well as a lengthy

directed by Performing Arts Chair Chris Cull.

list of peculiar supplementary demands) the

The musical director, choreographer, and vocal

money will go to a needy Brooklyn dog shelter.

director were performing arts masters Kevin

Annabel Glick (Karley Jarin ’12), a representa-

Smith, Derrick Wilder, and Robert Palmer,

tive of the shelter, tags along with the reluctant

respectively.

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9 Cynthia Q&ATHE ON ARTSTaylor

Star Struck

Science Master Cynthia Taylor, like most teachers on campus, has a busy schedule of classes, coaching, and club advising. She may, however, be best known in her unofficial role as Lawrenceville’s own “Friendly Campus Astronomer,” taking it upon herself to deliver frequent, emailed missives on all types of outer space reportage. If a comet can be spotted in the night sky, if one wants to know the best country to see a partial solar eclipse, or if a Lawrentian needs to be wished a happy aphelion (look it up), she is there.

In a recent conversation with The Lawrentian, Taylor discussed her alter ego, the School’s makeshift observatory, and what the Space Shuttle Endeavor has in common with a secondhand car.

Today Lawrenceville received a reassuring email stating that a school bus-size satellite will probably not land on our heads.

Yes. Pretty unlikely. My friend blogged about it today, so I thought the news might be nice to pass along.

Where did this “friendly, campus astronomer” thing come about?

I don’t know. I think some years ago somebody asked me a question in my astronomy class about meteor showers. He found the answer interesting and suggested that when interesting stuff in the sky occurs I should send out an email to everyone. So whenever something cool happens, that’s what I do.

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Where did your passion for astronomy come from?

Carl Sagan. Cosmos, the TV series. I was in seventh grade when it came out. It just looked so cool, and by that time I was already leaning a little bit toward science.

My dad worked on the final phases of the Apollo program and the lunar lander; with that and Sagan, I just got sucked in. I was fortunate enough to meet Carl Sagan about six months before he died. I was a grad student at Dartmouth, and he was invited to give a lecture. At one point I walked up to him and said, “It’s your fault I’m an astronomy grad student.”

of the month, I came to Lawrenceville to teach. I teach astronomy, physics, pre-calc, and phys-calc – which is honors physics with some calculus.

For your astronomy class, I assume you go out to the observatory all the time.

It depends. Astronomy is a spring term course. A lot of times in the spring we get into this funky weather pattern in which it’s sunny during the day but clouds up at night, which doesn’t help much. I’ve since learned to make sure that anything that involves observing has a web-based backup, just in case.

When did you start teaching here?

Can you describe the observatory?

I started in 1999. I defended my graduate thesis on August 2, 1999 and, at the end

When I first started, it used to have a long power cord that would lead from one of

Photograph by Paloma Torres

the buildings to the telescope. But the cord kept getting cut. The cord was buried, but not deep enough, apparently – so a truck would roll over it and it would break. Later I would drive my car up and plug the telescope into my cigarette lighter, but I accidentally slammed my car door on the cord.

So that plan ended. Now we have a battery pack. I get that fully charged, and it sits right under the telescope.

When was the observatory built?

I don’t know off the top of my head. [Former Science Master] Giff Havens built it.

The observatory is literally the top of a grain silo, and you need to rotate it into position by shoving it. It’s student-powered.

So I stand inside and say, “OK, push that way. Keep going... Keep going... Now…

stop. Nope. Too far. Push it back.” It also has really interesting acoustics in there.

Amazing echoes. So kids usually make silly noises. My feeling is, hey, whatever makes it fun.

bright; they’re pretty easy to find. The students sketch what they see. Then they have to go and look and find an image of it on the web and compare.

How many students can you fit into the dome of a grain silo?

I did. I was of one of those many people behind the scenes who helped make it run.

My job was to compile the data in a format the astronomers could use. I was hired six months before Hubble was launched.

Then, after it was in orbit, on my 23rd birthday, they announced the problem with the mirror.

Not too many, about six or seven. Usually some of them are standing outside.

How large is the telescope?

It’s an 8-inch diameter reflector. It’s sort of your typical amateur astronomer telescope with a bunch of eyepieces.

What can be seen on a clear night with an 8-inch telescope?

You’ve got the galaxies. We look at two different star clusters. They’re pretty

You once worked on the Hubble.

Terrible birthday present.

Yes. The Hubble had a spherical aberration. Basically the mirror wasn’t ground properly, so the Hubble couldn’t focus.

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A shuttle mission made the repair, yes?

December of 1993, yes. I actually got to see that shuttle launch. It’s the only shuttle launch I’ve witnessed. A short time later I was at a 1994 New Year’s Eve party, but was only having a very small sip of champagne. My friends kept asking, “Why aren’t you celebrating more?” So I explained that I had to be at work at 2 a.m. to review the data download with the corrective Hubble optics and run tests to see if my instrument was working.

How do you feel about the shuttle program being discontinued?

In some ways, the shuttle program was wasting money. At some point you have to acknowledge that the car you have is falling apart and it’s not worth the money to repair it. When it is an old car, however, you usually get a new one before you throw out the old one. Yes, we’ve got the Russians to ride with, but the Russian

rockets have issues, too.

Does the lack of a U.S. manned space program act as a deterrent to future astronomers?

I think we’re going to go through a period when we’re not going to get as many kids, but the high school students today still have a real shot of going into space. We’ll do manned flights again, and who knows what’s going to happen with the private companies? Space travel isn’t about Cold War-era governments anymore. All sorts of companies are getting into the space race.

That being said, a lot of people have been grumbling and wondering why we’ve been wasting all this time in lower Earth orbit.

“Why haven’t we gone back to the moon?

Why aren’t we pushing to go to Mars?”

Do you think that criticism is valid?

There are things to be learned about lower Earth orbit, but I would like to see humans

go back to the moon. And we will. When it happens, though, I don’t think we’ll be acting alone like we did with Apollo. I don’t think it will be just NASA. I think in order to get to the moon and to get to Mars, it’s got to be an international effort. We’ll have to start involving the Chinese and the Indians as well as Europe.

With nationalism and world tensions and the quest for proprietary technology, though, that seems pretty unlikely.

It would be difficult, no doubt, but that’s the way it will probably have to be.

NASA’s budget is much smaller than most people think it is.

Last question: Does it drive you crazy when people say astrology?

Oh, yes. I often like to say that astrology is a bunch of B.S. The placement of the doctor and nurses the moment you are born has a larger gravitational force on you than any of the planets.

Help Support the Next 75 Years by Making Your Gift Today P.O. Box 6125 Lawrenceville, New Jers ey 08648 www.lawrenceville.org/giving 609-895-2155

The Lawrenceville Fund The Lawrenceville Parents Fund

75th Anniversary of Harkness The Centerpiece of a Lawrenceville Education (id) Law.HARK.Ads 7.11.indd 2

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7/21/11 4:33:04 PM

9 How to Do Everything (Part 2)

How To

By Tom von Oehsen ’81

I have yet to meet a single person learning how to use stilts who wasn’t nervous about it – and for good reason. Suddenly you’ve gone from a size 12 shoe to one that is only 1½ inches in diameter. I use 3-foot stilts, which, in an instant, turns a 6-foot person into a 9-footer. The added height, along with that tiny foot means that any false move you make can send you toppling over. No wonder you’re nervous. Don’t worry, though; the more you practice, the more confident you will become.

A Start Small

There are two types of stilts, handheld and strap-ons. The handheld are safer and easier to use and they only take you about a foot off the ground. Because they aren’t strapped to your feet, you can safely jump off them if you start to fall. Handhelds are a good way to get used to maneuvering on those tiny rubber feet without any risk of injury. Once you feel at ease, you can move to the strap-ons.

A Get a Friend in Low Places

You can’t jump off strap-on stilts; if you’re going to fall, you’re going to fall all the way down. A spotter can help you balance and/or slow your descent.

A Don’t be Shy

If you see someone wandering into your path, yell. Because if he bumps into you, you’re going down.

A Get a Good Tailor

Stilt walking isn’t really stilt walking until you cover those stilts with a pair of pants to create the illusion of comically long legs.

With pants comes a new set of problems, however. Most important, watch the length; if the hem of a pant leg is too long and covers the rubber tip of your stilt, you’re going to slip.

Illustration by Zara Picken

WALK TALL

A It’s OK to Drop the Ball

When clowns get comfortable on stilts, many will augment that skill with a little juggling. I recommend it. If you make a bad toss, however, don’t reach for the ball. That outstretched arm is more than enough to make you lose your balance.

A There is No Good Way to Fall

It’s the cruel reality of stilt walking. When you fall, it’s going to be a face-plant and there’s nothing you can really do about it. Just remember that on 3-foot stilts you’re not going to get badly hurt.

If you decide to try taller stilts, however, the injuries can pile up.

Ringling Bros. is always looking to hire people who can man the 10-foot stilts. When I was at Clown College, some of my colleagues worked on those stilts in the hope of getting hired. What some of them got, however, were broken wrists and noses and a one-way ticket home. I, for one, never tried the 10-foot stilts. I am more than comfortable with that decision.

Tom von Oehsen ’81, a graduate of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College (and UPenn), runs a summer circus camp for children. During the school year he is the admission director at Princeton Academy.

Know how to do something? Write the editor a note at mallegra@lawrenceville.org, and your pearls of wisdom may appear in a future issue.

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9

Ask the Archivist

By Jacqueline Haun

An Old Head’s

New Home

With only a dozen Lawrenceville Head Masters over the course of 201 years, the expectation of

attending one’s funeral is a fortunately infrequent occurrence.The chance to pause and remember the life of the School’s very first Head Master as he is laid to rest – for a second time – is extraordinary. The Rev. Isaac Van Arsdale Brown founded the School as The Maidenhead Academy in 1810, nurturing it into a thriving and ambitiously progressive school for its day.

F

ollowing the death of both his adult son and his first wife in 1834, Brown retired from teaching and sold the School to his co-principal of the previous two years, Alexander Hamilton Phillips. He relocated to Mount Holly, NJ, where he not only helped found the local Presbyterian church but also helped establish the American Bible Society and The American Colonization Society, organizations which assisted freed American slaves in settling in the African colony of Liberia. While living in Mount Holly, Brown married a widow, Jane Augusta Brown, and the two had a child, Margaret, in 1843. He later returned to Trenton, where he continued writing, preaching, and working for the societies with which he was involved until his death on April 19, 1861.

On All Saint’s Day 2011, nearly 30 members of the Lawrenceville community gathered in the Lawrenceville Cemetery on Route 206 to reflect on Brown’s role as the founder of the School as he, his second wife, and their daughter were reinterred, their remains having been relocated from the decommissioned Mercer Cemetery in downtown Trenton.

The decision to relocate the gravesites came about after Lawrenceville Direc-

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F=From left, Tim Wojciechowicz, John Wellemeyer, and Paul Mott Jr. lay a wreath at Isaac Van Arsdale Brown's new gravesite.

tor of Alumni Relations John Gore had made it a personal project to photograph the headstones of all deceased Head Masters and arrange for alumni to lay wreaths at the sites to honor them during the School’s bicentennial celebration.

Unfortunately, although Gore knew that Brown was buried in the Mercer Cemetery, determining precisely where in the cemetery proved challenging. After a fruitless search of the burial ground to find the right monument, he turned to Wendy Nardi, archivist for the Trentoniana Room of the Trenton Public Library.

Among the Trentoniana holdings: a bag of ancient Mercer Cemetery records, rescued from the former cemetery offices after the building had collapsed.

Not only were the records still unorganized, but the details of grave placements were also in an internal “code,” which took hours to decipher. Once Gore did, he was able to work out the official location of Brown, although it still took some judicious pacing off of the grounds to locate the marker. It still stood, a spire nearly 15 feet tall, but with inscriptions worn nearly illegible.

Then-Alumni Association President Leigh Lockwood ’65 P’97 ’02, together with Gore, dutifully laid a red and black ornamental spray at the grave for the bicentennial, but both lamented the isolated and rough condition of the grave. Inspired by the desire to see the grave more easily watched over and tended, they proposed that Brown and his family be relocated to the nearby Lawrenceville Cemetery, where three other Lawrenceville Head Masters (Samuel McClintock Hamill, James

Cameron Mackenzie, and Simon John McPherson) already have their final resting places.

This plan required the cooperation of numerous Lawrentians and local authorities. First up was Earl Cilley ’54,

the great-great-grandson of Brown, who approved the relocation proposal on behalf of the Brown family. Cilley’s former Lawrenceville roommate, Paul Levy ’54, a retired New Jersey Superior Court judge, smoothed the way legally for the transition to occur, while Mark Arnold, son-in-law of Henry Murphy ’44 of the W. William Murphy Funeral Home, coordinated the handling of the remains with authorities from both the Lawrence Cemetery Association and the Mercer Cemetery Association.

Once the appropriate permissions were obtained, the five-ton grave memorial was disassembled into its six component pieces and relocated to the Lawrenceville Cemetery.

After the monument was removed, archaeologist Rod Brown (no relation to the departed Head Master) stepped in to direct the exhumation of Brown and his family. Much to everyone’s surprise, the Browns’ wooden caskets were found to be enclosed in brick burial vaults, relatively uncommon for the time period due to their expense. Perhaps even more unexpected, Brown was buried with his feet toward his headstone. Rod Brown identified this anomaly as a common practice for ministers, who were often buried in this position as a sign of humility. Using forensic anthropology techniques, Rod Brown was also able to determine that Brown was unusually tall for his day – approximately 6’3”.

On the day of the remembrance service, Acting Head Master Graham Cole H’87 P’91 ’95 spoke on Brown’s role as an innovative educator, and The Rev. Sue Anne Steffey Morrow blessed the departed and the congregants as a wreath was laid at the foot of the relocated monument by trustees emeriti Paul Mott Jr. ’47 P’76 ’85 and John Wellemeyer ’55 and current Alumni Association President Tim Wojciechowicz ’78 P’06 ’10 ’12.

Now, surrounded by fellow Head Masters as well as dozens of other Lawrentians who have benefitted from his forward thinking views on education, Isaac Van Arsdale Brown can, from this point forward, rest in peace.

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9 Take This Job & Love It

A Trip that is

Bountiful A

vacation’s home base doesn’t have to be a Holiday Inn. Instead, one could unpack at a quaint bed and breakfast in Peru that puts its profits toward running a home and school for orphaned children. Or an exquisite resort in Fiji that has created a foundation for marine conservation and research. Or an eco-lodge in Nicaragua that supports a local agricultural college. Or a hotel in Maui that will slash your bill if you agree to volunteer for part of your stay.

They’re hotels that make a difference, and, though the concept is still relatively novel, it is steadily growing in popularity. The trend has also been given a name: socially green travel. The term, coined by Tessa Hessmiller ’00 (nee: Marmion), is defined as a vacation hotel or resort that dedicates time and money to creating a better community. Hessmiller, a devoted traveler and vocal prophet of the socially green movement, has made it her business to promote these vacation places through her new website, www.kutoatravel.com. In short, notes Hessmiller, being good to the community can be good for business.

The germ of the idea behind Kutoa (which means “to give” in Swahili) was formed when Hessmiller decided to take a gap year. She was a day student at Lawrenceville and was planning to go to nearby Princeton University, so she saw a college deferment as a welcome opportunity to get out of her own back yard. “For my own development, I felt that I needed to get out of the area.”

So she signed up with a United Kingdom program, Africa and Asia Venture, to spend six months volunteering in Tanzania teaching English to fifth-graders. “It was exactly what you might think a school in Tanza-

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From the Great Wall to the Galapagos, Tessa Hessmiller’s Kutoa promotes trips for the socially conscious.

Photograph by Steve Anderson

smiller’s charges stood out. Florah, a 13-year-old, came early and stayed late to set up the classroom. Furthermore, the girl’s schoolwork was impeccable. At the end of the term, Florah approached Hessmiller for secondary school sponsorship.

Hessmiller admits that she was reluctant at first. She came to Tanzania intent on not becoming “a patronizing white foreigner, swooping in to throw money at broader

Photograph by Susan McSpadden

nia would look like,” she says. “Cinderblock walls with 100+ students to a room.”

Because there is no free public school in Tanzania, students could attend class only after they had accumulated enough money for tuition, so many of the kids Hessmiller was teaching were almost as old as she was.

Despite the enormous size of the class and the identical uniforms, one of Hes-

systemic issues.” But it wasn’t long before she warmed to the idea. Of all people, Hessmiller thought, Florah deserved a chance to better her education and, by consequence, her community. Over the years, Hessmiller spearheaded fundraisers to pay for Florah’s secondary and, later, college education.

Florah is now in her final year of a teaching degree and is working to put her sisters and brother through school.

“My experience with Florah influenced my travels thereafter,” Hessmiller explains.

“I always get a lot more out of traveling if I can connect with the people who live there.

Ever since I met Florah, I try to take that philosophy wherever I go. Getting to know the culture, to me, is the best part of travel. I just knew that other travelers out there must feel the same way I do.”

Hessmiller researched and discovered a number of hotels, eco-lodges, and resorts that donate time, money, and goods to local causes. The problem however, was there was no convenient, centralized place on the web for the casual traveler to find out anything about them.

Enter Kutoa. The site’s debut in July was modest; only seven hotels conformed to Kutoa’s mission. Hessmiller’s subsequent (and ongoing) research, coupled with good press, word of mouth, and surging web traffic, has increased the number of hotels on the site to nearly 40 and climbing. Kutoa is not a travel agency, she points out, and is absolutely free to those wishing to plan a getaway. The site’s revenue stream comes exclusively from the hotels and resorts that meet Kutoa’s socially green criteria.

Hessmiller’s plans are to keep plugging away, getting the word out about her site and searching out new Kutoaapproved travel destinations – especially those that can be found in the continental United States.

“This concept is very timely for Americans right now. We’re in the middle of a green revolution, and people are very into sustainable practices. But the hotels haven’t really cottoned to that here in the U.S., yet,” she says.

“We just want to get people to hop on board. They’ll be able to increase their business and be a part of a growing movement.”

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9 1000 Words

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Photograph by Paloma Torres

Philly

Faceoff

Citizens Bank Park, the home of the Philadelphia Phillies and the 2012 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic, hosted the latest faceoff in the fabled 125-year Lawrenceville/Hill rivalry. An overtime shootout ended the game in dramatic fashion, frozen at 2-2.

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by mike allegra

Photograpy by paloma torres

here comes the

Sun

The ceremony was in the middle of a waterlogged cornfield, but no one seemed to mind the mud on his shoes. Head Master Liz Duffy H’43, making an appearance during her sabbatical, along with board vice president leita hamill h’65 ’88 ’99 P’96 ’99, and lawrenceville staff and trustees, said a few words and tapped shovels into the ground, making it official.

The ceremony was over in about a half hour, but its significance reverberated through every corner of the Lawrenceville campus. On that very spot construction was to begin on a six-megawatt solar array to supply 90% of the campus’ electrical needs and save the School about $9 million in energy costs over the next 20 years. By any standard, the array would be enormous – 24,000 panels covering a 30-acre tract of School-owned farmland. When complete, it would offset 5,300 tons of CO2 (the equivalent, says Lawrenceville CFO Wes Brooks ’71 P’03 ’05, of taking 2,000 cars off the road forever).

Muddy shoes were certainly a small price to pay for something like that.

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T

he dream of a solar-powered campus had been a long time in coming and, in a way, began shortly after Duffy became Head Master in 2003. Upon her swearing in, a Duffy-initiated mission of sustainability took hold and soon began to work its way into every aspect of campus.

Foods were purchased locally or harvested from the School’s own organic garden.

Trays at the dining halls were banished, to discourage wasting food. (The plate scrap-

phibians now flourish under the new conditions. Pesticides were eliminated from the School’s acres of grassy space in favor of a long term organic plan that will encourage the growth of hardier grass that will require less water to survive. Recycling is up; energy use is down; and The Green Cup Challenge, an annual environmental competition which began at Lawrenceville and Exeter, now involves hundreds of schools around the world.

ings that do remain are mixed into mulch.)

Public Safety personnel drive around campus in hybrid cars, and an on-campus biodiesel manufacturing facility was created to provide fuel for Buildings & Grounds’ vans and trucks. The School pond was dredged and cleaned to the point that vulnerable am-

So it wasn’t long before the School, led by then-sustainability director Josh Haun and, now, Sam Kosoff ’88, quickly turned its attention to alternative sources of electricity. Then, almost as quickly, the School abandoned them. The reason was the bottom line. The School liked the idea of solar,

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but simply couldn’t afford it.

“Early on we brought in consultants and asked them, ‘What would it cost us to go off the grid?’” Kosoff recalls. “One guy in particular, I could just see him turning over the numbers in his head. It was clear that the price was so exorbitant that he didn’t want to even say it. He said $45 or $50 million dollars. Then Wes and I said ‘Um, well, thanks for stopping by.’”

That was in 2007, but the game soon changed. In 2009 the state began to provide hefty rebates to individuals willing to invest in wind and solar to help defray some of their upfront costs. Then New Jersey provided a Solar Renewable Energy Certificate (SREC) for every 1,000 kilowatt hours any solar array produced. These SRECs could be sold to power companies; the power companies soon had a strong incentive to buy them, for New Jersey also passed a new Clean Energy Standard, requiring state utilities to generate 20 percent of their power with alternative forms of energy by 2020.

That’s a lot of solar, a lot more than any power company – no matter how large and profitable – could ever hope to build on its own. The SREC purchases allow the utilities to harvest energy from independent solar fields to comply with the state mandate.

In other words, solar, for the first time, made strong economic sense, and Kosoff was quick to re-pitch a plan for the School.

Trustee Peter Schweinfurth ’79 P’15, later to co-chair the Sustainability Committee with Kosoff, was nothing short of enthusiastic and began to solicit proposals. Brooks, too, was on board and wanted to think beyond slapping a few panels onto roofs. “If we have a choice between doing something small and doing something large, I’d like to do something large,” Brooks said. “So let’s do the whole School.”

Lawrenceville certainly had enough land to make such an idea possible. The plan that was eventually agreed upon was to lease School-owned farmland to one of the many area solar companies that had cropped up in the wake of the new state mandates. This company would design, build, maintain, and pay for the array. The solar company would get the rebates for the equipment and make money from the SRECs it would sell to PSE&G. For its role in providing the land, Lawrenceville would get a Power Purchasing Agreement, whereby the School would

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get locked into a low fixed rate for electricity for the 20-year life of the lease. Low is the operative word; according to Schweinfurth, the School’s energy costs would be as much as 40 percent below the prevailing market rate. It was a win/win for the School; minimum outlay, maximum benefit.

The only uncomfortable part of this plan as it first materialized was that Howard

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Myers ’65 P’10, an alumnus, worked the 268 acres of School-owned farmland, a plot that included the 30-acre patch now earmarked for solar panels. As the plan began to take shape, Brooks braced himself for what might become an uncomfortable meeting.

But Myers, a farmer for 45 years or more, (“I’ve lost count of the number of years,”

he says.) was surprisingly supportive of the whole idea. “I was impressed to see my school looking 20 years ahead,” he says.

“Most schools only look ahead maybe two.”

Yes, he’d lose money if the solar deal went through, Myers admitted, but he preferred to take a philosophical view. “The way I see it, I’m harvesting solar for corn and the School is harvesting solar for en-

ergy. Lawrenceville’s harvest will be more efficient; I’m only using the sun for five months of the year. Lawrenceville will use it for all 12.”

In the end, Myers was so in favor of the solar plan that when the School later presented the proposal before the township Zoning Board for its approval, he was in attendance. Then, on the spur of the moment,

he decided to put his support for the plan on the record and testify before the panel.

After a bidding process, the solar array contract was awarded to Turtle and Hughes, run by alumnus Frank Millard ’49 P’79.

A smaller branch of the company, Turtle Energy, run by Frank’s son, John Millard ’79, would design a solar plan that would maximize energy output while minimizing objections that could be raised by the community.

The panels, instead of being fixed at one angle, would be built on what are known as single-axis trackers, enabling the panels to tilt and follow the sun as it travels across the sky. The single-axis trackers are also ideal for minimizing maintenance costs; in the event of a hail or ice storm, the panels can be positioned vertically to prevent damage.

Also, anyone who might find solar panels unsightly in a historic town such as Lawrenceville could rest assured; the array would occupy land that slopes away from Route 206 and would not be visible from the road.

Lawrenceville, in accordance with its ongoing sustainability mission, also was intent on maintaining the land’s classification as farmland. As the array would be fenced in, crops were out of the question, however.

The idea of using the location as grazing land for sheep and goats, as is done in Europe, was also bandied about. The School, however, eliminated that plan out of fear that the animals might damage the equipment.

“Honeybees turned out to be an ideal solution,” notes Brooks. “First of all, with bee colonies collapsing around the country, we need as many as we can get. Flowers can be planted within the array that grow only two feet high to prevent interference with the panels. The hives would be situated just outside the fence, and the bees can fly in and out of the fenced-in area at will.

“So it’s low maintenance. No one needs to go inside the fence,” Brooks adds. “And the beekeeper will give the School part of the honey harvest and sell the rest.”

After a lengthy township, county, and state review process, the plan was approved, but Turtle, relatively new to solar, soon decided that the size of the project was a bit too large for it to handle. So the design for the array was sold to another solar company, KDC, which agreed to build the

field in accordance with Turtle’s specs, thus avoiding the legal rigmarole of a new round of approvals that a new design would have required.

Apart from that, however, KDC, from Day One, exhibited a level of experience and professionalism that put School administrators’ and trustees’ minds at ease during what was a very uncertain time. “KDC is world class,” Brooks gushes. “They have been nothing short of excellent in executing this project. We couldn’t be happier.”

K Once fully operational, the array will produce during the day almost twice the amount of energy that Lawrenceville could consume. Any excess power will be funneled out to the township through a brand new switch gear system built and maintained by Buildings & Grounds Mechanical Trades Manager Bob Smith and his crew. (This switch gear was funded from the unrestricted $60 million gift that Henry Woods ’40 H’59 ’62 gifted to the School in 2010.) This power is bought by PSE&G. Then, at night, when the sun is no longer shining, the power flows the other way from PSE&G back to the School. So Lawrenceville is not quite off the grid, not yet, but that may change 20 years from now.

After the KDC lease is up, the School has the option to buy the solar array at fair market value; at that point it could follow in KDC’s footsteps – using its SRECs to sell excess power to PSE&G for a profit and buy power back from PSE&G in the evening. Or the School could be truly self-sufficient by purchasing batteries to store the excess solar energy during the day. These batteries could then be drained at night as needed.

Research has already begun, says Schweinfurth, to weigh the most practical and economical options for the School as it moves forward.

Whichever way the School wishes to go, one thing is certain: Through an ambitious policy of sustainability and good long-term planning Lawrenceville will serve as a model for educational institutions everywhere.

Better still, the School’s energy needs will be cheaply and effectively provided for decades to come.

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By Bill Freitas

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Well Grounded

By Mike Allegra Photography by Michael Branscom

Buildings & Grounds is the reason why the grass is cut, the Houses are clean, the water flows, the campus is safe, and the buildings stand up. To put it another way, the men and women of Buildings & Grounds keep Lawrenceville running.

The Lawrentian is delighted to introduce you to a few of them.

Structural Trades At the crack of dawn, a murmuring queue of carpenters, painters, masons, and maintenance men line up outside the cluttered office of Structural Supervisor Phil Vecere to pick up their assignments for the day. Don’t let the mountainous piles of paperwork on the guy’s desk fool you. Vecere, a bundle of barely contained energy, was in early and had sorted everything out before the first man punched in.

Each year B&G collectively receives 7,000 work orders, and The Structural Trades Department that Vecere oversees gets its fair share. Everything from tightening a loose door hinge to rebuilding the

enormous overhang of Pop Hall comes across that desk, and it is Vecere’s job to make sure each assignment is prioritized and matched up with the right guy. Fortunately, Vecere says, he’s got great guys.

“These people can spin on a dime,” he says. “Sometimes a carpenter might be doing the same job for weeks at a time, and other times I’ll have to pull him off that job if something more important comes up.”

Some are better suited to being shifted around than others, of course, so the most important part of Vecere’s job, he says, is assigning work orders that fit both a tradesman’s skills and personality. “For example, Tim [McElroy] does fine woodworking. He can do beautiful, historic detail work. That

requires real concentration and time, so I’m not going to move him around unless I have to,” he says. “So I’ll give him a job and say, ‘See you later!’ Some of the other guys, however, are particularly good at jumping from job to job. So I keep them in mind when something needs to be done right away.”

For Vecere, the key is making sure each person can say, “I’m happy where I am.”

The way he does this is to solicit suggestions from his men – and offer suggestions they do. “When someone requests a new piece of equipment for the shop, I’m usually on the phone putting in the order before the guy is finished speaking. Whatever allows them to get the job done faster and easier, I’ll do.”

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“I tell everyone, ‘The second you drive through the gate never ever forget that you are representing the best school in the country.’”

And when Vecere can improve things by putting in a little of his own elbow grease, he’ll do that, too. When he was first hired, for example, he noticed that the men had to wait in line for the shop’s sole air compressor. Unable to spare anyone from the more urgent jobs on campus, Vecere took it upon himself to work late to reroute a network of

Phil Vecere Structural Trades

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pipes so an air hose would be available at each workstation.

These improvements are welcome to say the least, for the workload never slows down. (“I could have two carpenters doing nothing but doors forever,” Vecere says.) Fortunately, while each man under his watch has a specialty, they are also versatile. So masons will assist carpenters and carpenters will assist maintenance men and so on – whatever gets the job done well.

A man with Vecere’s energy can’t stay in that small office for very long, and he doesn’t. Much of his day is spent traveling from one job site to the next to make sure all is going well, that his workers’ needs are met, and that everyone – to a man – conducts himself in a manner befitting the School. “I tell everyone, ‘The second you drive through the gate never ever forget that you are representing the best school in the country.’”

That advice is lost on no one, least of all Vecere, who is effusive in his praise for his

job; his supportive and generous department head, Dan Peterson; and the School.

As if proof of this is needed, he points to a Post-It note on his crowded bulletin board.

It’s been there for years, and all that’s printed on it is a date: 7/14/02.

“That was my first day here,” he says.

“I keep it there to remind me just how lucky I am to have been doing this job for this long.”

Mechanical Trades Without ever leaving his desk, HVAC Supervisor Paul Milligan has a pretty good idea if you’re a little too chilly. Most every room on campus has a temperature sensor and is independently zoned. Every one of those sensors links back to Milligan’s and Mechanical Trades Manager Bob Smith’s PCs. Every morning, Milligan peruses the campus via his desktop, room by room, searching for the small, niggling problems

that can be corrected remotely.

“It’s impossible to make everyone happy,” Milligan says. “But we can make everyone comfortable. We’re a school, so Priority One is our students. If they’re too hot, I can cool their room off. If it’s too cold, I can warm it up.”

Milligan has worked at Lawrenceville for over 25 years, first as a plumber; later, with the full financial support of the School, he received his certification for HVAC. Many of his colleagues take advantage of similar School incentives for professional

The gesture is his way to give back to a School that has provided him with a steady, challenging, never dull career since age 20.

development, and the result is a Buildings & Grounds staff both highly skilled and surprisingly well adapted to handle any number of jobs. Most recently, Milligan passed his third and final test to become a master plumber. This license, he explains, is not essential for him to do his job (“I’m doing it for the greater good of myself,” he says), so he put himself through the four-year program. The gesture is his way to give back to a School that has provided him with a steady, challenging, never dull career since age 20.

Monitoring the computer is only one part of Milligan’s job. The heating and cooling systems on the Lawrenceville campus, servicing dozens of student houses, academic buildings, office spaces, and faculty residences, is maintained by only a handful of staffers, so Milligan is always on the move, motoring from one location to another. His mode of tranport, he almost proudly proclaims, is “the most cluttered

Paul Milligan Mechanical Trades

van on campus.” And if it isn’t, it sure should be.

On his rounds, Milligan is often surrounded by noise. Right outside his office door are three red-hot, rumbling, 12-foottall boilers that generate the steam to heat the campus. Behind a locked door at Loucks Ice Center are whirring compressors that circulate 6,000 pounds of refrigerant to keep the ice rink a chilly 15.9 degrees. In Woods Memorial Hall there is the rhythmic thumping of main steam lines. Milligan makes sure everything is doing what it should, and is ready to dig in and work when it’s not.

A lot of the equipment he watches over is found in basements, so it is not surprising

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that Hurricane Irene (and the many, many flooded basements it left in its wake) was a particular challenge. Even several months later, Milligan is coordinating with contractors and manufacturers to replace or restore much-needed equipment. But the HVAC war story that’s most deeply etched in Milligan’s memory is “The Ice Flood of ’98,” when frozen ground met with days of torrential rain. After that cleanup was finally put behind them, the Buildings & Grounds guys had T-shirts made to commemorate the event. But these and other happenings are par for the course for a job that, says Milligan, is deeply fulfilling.

“I take pride in the fact that my job helps people be comfortable and healthy. If the machines shut down in the infirmary, those kids will have to be transported to the hospital. If the machines don’t run in the dining hall, the kids don’t eat. I never forget that. I’m always ready to move the second a problem happens.”

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Grounds

Tito Matias and John Hohl were hired by B&G within two weeks of each other in 1988. They found themselves in the very same job, manning a garbage truck. Years ago, dumping garbage was a sort of unofficial B&G boot camp; all the new hires started there. When a position elsewhere opened up, management would draw from what one might assume to be a very eager pool of workers to fill the vacancy. (That was until Matias’ uncle, Geraldo Hernandez, single-handedly changed the system by enjoying his work on the garbage truck too much to leave.) After about six months on the job, Matias and Hohl got their chance for a new opportunity. Matias moved on to

“I like to beautify the School.

I simply treat the School as if it’s my house.’”

John Hohl  Tito Matias  Grounds Crew

the grounds crew and Hohl into the garage.

Matias, in a sense, can almost view Lawrenceville’s Buildings & Grounds Department as a family business. In addition to his uncle, his father-in-law, Pat Grant, also used to work at the School. But the family connection is not why Matias views his work with such a great sense of pride; it’s just a key component of his personality.

“I like to beautify the School,” he says. “I simply treat the School as if it’s my house.”

Make no mistake, he has a lot of work to do at this home away from home; his duties run the gamut from cutting the grass to planting flowers to striping the football field. And, if a weekend snowstorm occurs (and last winter it seemed as if snow fell only on Saturday or Sunday), “then pack a toothbrush,” Matias says, “’cause you’re staying.”

Hohl then completes Matias’ thought.

“Then when you’re done shoveling out the School, you can go home and shovel your own driveway!”

Hohl had a different career trajectory. He runs the garage and the fleet of 50 vehicles that are maintained there: Public Safety hybrid cars, Community Service buses,

lawnmowers, tractors, and assorted vans and trucks. The secret to his job, he says, is to think ahead. Snow vehicles are repaired and rebuilt in the dead of summer, months before they’re needed, and mower blades are sent out for sharpening only after the first frost hits.

Hohl was hired at the garage with the understanding that he would take night classes to become a licensed mechanic – schooling that Lawrenceville paid for. When one class was available only during Hohl’s workday, his then-boss Dave Schorr let him take time off – with pay – to get the necessary course requirements. It is this sort of attitude that breeds loyalty to the School. Hohl, like many of his co-workers in B&G, recognizes Lawrenceville as something quite special, a place few are eager to leave.

Although it’s been decades since Matias and Hohl shared a garbage truck, the two still work together when jobs need to be done quickly: snow removal, setting up desks and chairs for SAT testing, or whatever else.

“We’ll do everything,” Matias points out.

“Whatever is needed.” Hohl adds, nod ding. “A part-timer in the garage, Mickey

Speinheimer, always says, ‘We’ll fix everything but a broken heart – and we’re working on that.’”

Public Safety Joe Montonario seems to possess the oddly peculiar trait of being happy no matter where he is. This is good, for by the time he ends his typical day on campus, he’s pretty much been everywhere. At this moment he is doing dorm checks, strolling through Reynolds making sure the halls are clear of junk, the fire doors are open, and that everyone who passes by is greeted with a hello.

It is there his walkie-talkie crackles to life.

A fire alarm has been tripped in Upper. He’s on it.

“I haven’t seen a real fire on this campus in I don’t know how long,” he says as he begins his brisk walk to the boys’ dorm.

Comforting information, to be sure, but if there ever was a real fire, Montonario is certainly a good guy to have nearby. He’s been a volunteer firefighter in his hometown since he was 16 years old. He is often summoned to run into burning buildings, requiring him to sometimes interrupt his best laid plans – including, on one occasion, his own wedding anniversary dinner.

Being a firefighter is not unique to Montonario, he points out; almost everyone on the 10-person Public Safety squad is either a volunteer firefighter, had been a police officer, or worked in some other lifesaving capacity. Montonario’s link to his local fire department was what brought him to Lawrenceville in 1999, actually. His fire chief was Kevin Dipolito, then head of Public Safety, who thought Montonario would be a good addition to the staff. Initially, Montonario didn’t plan to stay at the Lawrenceville job for very long, but these days he can’t ever imagine leaving. “I just love it here,” he says as he approaches Upper, the wailing fire alarms growing louder and louder. “I get to do something different every day.”

The alarm leads Montonario to the basement and, then, into a thick fog. No real fire here, just a steam pipe leak. As he calls it in on his radio and shuts off the siren, the smiling face of Kevin Reading emerges from the clouds, like a ghost, to help Montonario ventilate the area to avoid tripping any of

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the other alarms down there.

Reading, a former police detective and the director of Public Safety since 2005, clearly likes to be on the move. He roams the campus and, like his Public Safety team, is eager to lend a hand. “Kevin’s rarely in his office,” Montonario later reports. “And when he is, he’s grumpy. That guy would do anything to help us out.”

Almost everyone on the 10-person Public Safety squad is either a volunteer firefighter, had been a police officer, or worked in some other lifesaving capacity.

Once everything is under control in Upper, Montonario is off on another call – this time to give a ride across campus to a student on crutches. People may think of Public Safety as the group on the lookout for rule-breakers, but the team is far more ser-

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vice oriented, really. They transport injured kids to their classes or to the infirmary. They help students if they are locked out of their Houses. They provide a jump start to dead car batteries. They help visitors better navigate the confusing, winding campus roads.

Throughout the day, Montonario alternates between roaming the campus to occupying the guard house. There he relieves Tony Regalado, a 24-year Public Safety veteran who shares a similar devotion to the work. “Lawrenceville is like a family atmosphere,” Regalado says. “I worked security at other places before I came here, and I felt like a robot. I sat all day. I had no interaction with the public.”

The job at Lawrenceville is a different story entirely. Regalado regularly meets and greets everyone on campus, and he, a native of Cuba, has also been a guest lecturer in History Master Len Miller’s class on the 1960s (an appearance that resulted in a number of appreciative emails from students).

That, agrees Montonario, is the whole mission of Public Safety – to help out as needed. “When Hurricane Irene hit, a lot of houses flooded.” Montonario recalls. “It

Joe Montonario Public Safety was several feet of water, and we had to pull all the wet stuff out. We were all working 16-hour days. My feet were wet. I was tired, and I just wanted to go home.

“But then I remembered that these houses we were working on were people’s homes.” he recalls. “This is the kind of stuff we do.

We’re here to make a small difference in people’s lives.”

Custodial Services

Sometimes you can hear Charlie Little before you see him. This is the case at 10 a.m. on the Friday of Parents’ Weekend.

While the Hamill House residents are out and about, showing Mom and Dad around campus, the chipper sounds of Little’s whistling can be heard echoing off the tiles of a second-floor bathroom and down the still hallway. Inside, Little is scrubbing away

with speed, diligence, and good humor, and the sight of this little vignette raises a question: What on Earth can make a person exhibit such cheer while cleaning toilets?

According to Little, it’s because there’s nothing about the work that really warrants a complaint. “It’s a good job,” he says as he runs a soapy brush over the sink fixtures.

“People are good to me. I respect them.

They respect me. The kids are great, and [Housemaster] Larry [Filippone] is great.”

For the record, these good feelings run both ways.

“For over two years, I have walked through Hamill to hear Charlie whistling, singing, telling stories, and striking up conversations with everyone he meets,” notes Walker Kirby ’12, a Hamill prefect. “He brings more energy to the House than anyone else.”

Oluwapelumi Shoyoye ’12, now a prefect at Davidson, agrees. “From his songs to his words of wisdom through peculiar stories, Charlie possesses an energy that cannot be

“It’s a good job. People are good to me. I respect them.

They respect me. The kids are great, and [Housemaster] Larry [Filippone] is great.” found anywhere else on this campus.”

“I think students and faculty alike could learn a lesson from Charlie Little,” adds Lawrence Stevenson ’12, another Hamill prefect. “He’s a fun-loving, social, and hardworking individual who earns tremendous respect from everyone he knows and especially from his house: Hamill.”

And the praise goes on and on.

Little started working at Lawrenceville in 1967, but left after one year to pursue a variety of jobs, including a brief stint at The Hun School. He was lured back in 1985, however, by a friend of his, Tom Johnson, a then-member of the B&G staff, and has

been here ever since. That’s 27 years at Lawrenceville. He’s been assigned to Hamill for the past 11, a tenure, he tells the kids, that has earned him “a Ph.D. in Housecleaning.”

Now 67, Little asserts that this year will be his last at Lawrenceville, and he’s eager to use his retirement as an opportunity to spend considerably more time with his grandchildren. As he reflects on his career at Lawrenceville, he has no regrets.

“I’m glad I stayed as long as I have,” he says. “A good job is like a good woman. If she’s good to you, you should stay with her, you know what I mean?”

To read more Buildings & Grounds profiles visit www.lawrenceville.org/thelawrentian.

Charlie Little Custodial Services

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Harkness and Self-Awareness

By Blake Eldridge ’96*

F

or Socrates, evil was a cognitive failure stemming from a lack of self-awareness. “Know thyself” was the Delphic saying that guided Socrates’s life and made his heroic sacrifice possible. So we have a long tradition of self-understanding serving as the linchpin of living a moral life.

The Harkness table helps our students understand themselves. But, like Socrates, it does so indirectly. Harkness learning requires everyone to first learn about someone else. By asking questions of others at the table, students put ideas into their social context – the histories and beliefs of the people proposing the ideas. That’s not where the learning comes in – it’s the disruptive or dissonant ideas discussed around the table that call out for more analysis. That analysis requires students to ask questions of their own thinking. In learning about why others think the way

Upcoming Harkness Events A March 1, 2012: New York

A May 4-5, 2012: Lawrenceville

Ulysses S. Grant’s Lawrenceville Biographers: Bunting and Porter Josiah “Si” Bunting III H’37 ’88 P’88 ’97

Alumni Weekend: Celebrating 75 Years of Harkness Teaching

A April 19, 2012: Washington, DC

A June 8-10, 2012: Lawrenceville

The Poetry of James Merrill ’43 Christopher Cunningham, Ph.D. P’14 A April 2012: Los Angeles

Harkness Weekend Head Master Liz Duffy H’43 & Lawrenceville Masters

The Poetry of James Merrill ’43 Christopher Cunningham, Ph.D. P’14

Dates subject to change. Please contact the Lawrenceville Alumni Office or check out The Lawrenceville School website for more information about these and other Harkness events.

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they do we’re encouraged to ask why we think the way we do.

Harkness learning creates an opportunity for students to enter each other’s minds. In my disciplines, philosophy and English, this cognitive tourism most often takes the form of talking about immediate encounters or long-term patterns. We start with something that seems transparent, objective, right there for all to see – a story, a picture, a poem, an account of an event. We can all see it, and we all think that we see the same thing, but then we start talking about it. Sometimes, everyone agrees. But often, something someone says strikes us as different, strange, not quite right. We’re forced to look away from the thing and toward the person across the table. “Why?” we ask.

“How?” “What made you say that?” And so it begins.

So our understanding of a text has to develop from a discussion of others’ experiences. We need to know about our fellow

readers to understand the possibilities that a text holds for meaning and significance. To put it another way, to read well requires us to know others. The Harkness table creates that space for discovering in others what’s not immediately apparent. We get to know Harkness learning creates an opportunity for students to enter each other’s minds. This cognitive tourism most often takes the form of talking about immediate encounters or long-term patterns. their history and aspirations for the future.

Provided with that context, we can talk about how their reading emerges from their past. We learn what it’s like to be someone else. Now, we can imagine what it’s like to see the world as they do, to imagine what they want from the future, and to anticipate what they need now.

Harkness also compels us to share. We put ourselves on display, and we’re asked to give an accounting of our own thinking.

Then we become an object of study. Others ask questions about our past, our ideas, and we’re encouraged to see how what we think now is shaped and guided by what we experienced before. What was once hidden, even to ourselves, gets disclosed. We can now better answer “Who am I?” The self-evaluation can now begin.

Should I be this person? What does it mean to live well? Who deserves my care and attention? What do I owe others? We recognize these questions as the central ones, the eternal ones, the human ones. The asking of these questions brings us out of our moral stupidity. The answers may never be complete, but the asking of them unites us with the best who have lived. Socrates would’ve been proud. * Adapted from a Revisit Day talk: spring 2011

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9 Alumni News Dear Lawrentians, This is an amazing moment for me. There was no way I would have predicted, some 37 years ago when I was a third former in Cleve, that I would be the president of the Alumni Association. Mind boggling.

The Alumni Association Executive Committee 2011/2012

President

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

Jennifer Ridley Staikos ’91 Vice President

Ian Rice ’95 Executive Committee

John C. Hover III ’61 P’91 Mark M. Larsen ’72 P’01 ’04 ’06 John C. Walsh ’99 Catherine Bramhall ’88 Charlie Keller ’95 Dallas Heterhington ’80 P’12 Scott Belair ’65 P’08 ’09 Dave Stephens ’78 P’06 Cahill Zoeller ’00 Alumni Trustees

Peter Schweinfurth ’79 P’15 David J. Ballard ’74 Greg W. Hausler ’81 Hyman J. Brody ’75 P’07 ’08 ’11 selectors

The kick is up, and it’s good! My path to Lawrenceville actually began in the 1940s when a Princeton place kicker named Ken Keuffel made a last-minute field goal for a 17-14 upset win over Penn. That kick earned Ken a tryout with the Philadelphia Eagles in 1948. At training camp, Ken met my grandfather, Alex Wojciechowicz Sr., one of Fordham’s legendary “Seven Blocks of Granite” and a future professional football hall of famer. Ken did not make the team, but he and my grandfather developed a lifelong friendship. Dr. K went on to earn a doctorate in English and taught and coached at Lawrenceville, where he perfected his legendary single wing offense.

As my father, Alex Wojciechowicz Jr., neared high school age, Alex Sr. and Dr. K. persuaded him to attend Lawrenceville. Dad graduated in 1957. Lawrenceville has been in my blood from the day I was born, and I am fortunate to be a member of the Great Class of 1978. My wife, Carolyn, and I were married in the Chapel. Our three children are Lawrentians: Kristyn ’06, Rebecca ’10, and Matthew ’12. Carolyn is co-president of the Parents Association. My family has been a part of Lawrenceville for more than a quarter of the School’s 201 years, and the School has played a large role in shaping our education and values.

Thank you to my predecessor, Leigh Lockwood ’65 P’97 ’02. Leigh set a high standard for presidents of this or any alumni organization. Since 1901, there have been 51 presidents of Lawrenceville’s Alumni Association. I am grateful and honored to have this opportunity to give back to the School.

I have the good fortune to be assisted by two terrific officers: First Vice President Jen Ridley Staikos ’91 and Second Vice President Ian Rice ’95. The other nine members of our Executive Committee are listed here. We have a breadth of alumni experience that will help us manage our seven subcommittees and plan over 100 events, including the Aldo Leopold Dinner, the Masters Awards, and Alumni Weekend.

Throughout Lawrenceville’s history, the Alumni Association has played a vital role in preserving important traditions at Lawrenceville and in creating new ones. We are all the beneficiaries of the Alumni Association’s wonderful work, and I trust, with the help of our 15,000+ alumni, that I will continue to pilot the association along the red and black line.

Tim Wojciechowicz ’78 P’06 ’10 ’12 President, Alumni Association

Gregory A. Williamson ’78 P’09 Peter C. Rubincam ’88 Frederick Cammerzell III ’68 Victoria Y. Wei ’89 Charles M. Fleischman ’76 Shannon Halleran McIntosh ’93

Your Smart Phone Can Soon Be a Whole Lot Smarter.

faculty liaison

Timothy C. Doyle ’69 H’79 P’99

A G o to www.lawrenceville.org/ alumni and download the new

Lawrenceville app.

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9 Board Bits

F

our very special events were staged with our trustees on campus. First, with Head Master Liz Duffy H’43 taking the first shovelful, we broke ground on the site of our new six-megawatt solar array. By April, we anticipate meeting almost 90 percent of our power needs from this project. Next, our community celebrated the official opening of our new archival facility in Bunn Library, made possible through the generosity of John Stephan ’59 and his wife, Barbara. That same evening, we presented the Aldo Leopold Award, our School’s top honor, to the Rev. Dr. Wayne Meisel ’78, a renowned leader in national and community service.

The next day, we gathered to thank four wonderful Lawrenceville families, Carter, Corrente, Getz, and Kirby, whose generosity made possible some major renovations for our Crescent Houses.

Over two days of meetings, our trustees heard many reports from the School and deliberated on a number of important matters. Thanks to the impressive generosity of so many members of the School family and the excellent stewardship of our Investment Committee, the School’s endowment closed on June 30 at a record $333.7 million. The investment returns for the year stood at 19.9 percent, and our annualized return of 6.4 percent for the last five years put us as the top-ranked boarding school in our endowment consultant’s large group of schools and universities. Over the last two years, we have seen a significant recovery from the turmoil of 2008, but we know all too well that choppy financial seas may lie ahead.

The Board also gave final approvals for the major renovations to Pop Hall, an $11 million project, which we hope to complete in the next 24 months. Plans proceed apace, too, for ongoing infrastructure work to our steam and water lines over the next two summers as the School prudently continues to address deferred maintenance items.

Trustees heard very encouraging reports from Admissions and Alumni & Development about last year’s strong results in their domains. They learned, for example, that the Lawrenceville Parents Fund set a record of $1.649 million and helped the Lawrenceville Fund sail past its $5 million goal. Trustees also watched a charming video on the history of the Harkness table, which kicked off our yearlong celebration of Harkness’ 75th anniversary. The School is also beginning to lay plans for coeducation’s 25th anniversary next year.

Finally, the Board devoted considerable attention to studying our next round of institutional needs. What do we need by way of financial aid to bring us the most talented and diverse group of young people? What do we need by way of faculty compensation to attract and retain the most talented and devoted faculty? What do we need by way of additions or improvements to our historical and magnificent physical plant? What do we need by way of endowment funds to assure the School of longterm financial strength? And how will we measure our success in these domains?

These were among the important questions our trustees have begun to ask, and their discussions were impressively and predictably vigorous, well-informed, and thoughtful. You should know that Lawrenceville is in the very good hands, indeed, of these loyal and able people who hold our School in trust.

Former Acting Head Master Graham Cole H’87 P’91 ’95

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Bill and Marilyn Hofmann

Bequests

and

Unrestricted Endowment

Bill Hofmann III ’61 and his father, Bill Jr. ’35 (now deceased), started an unrestricted endowment fund in 1982. Bill’s lengthy résumé includes years of service to local and national organizations in the insurance industry, as well as years of direct involvement in community and philanthropic work, including Lawrenceville and the Class of 1961.

“If there’s one thing I learned” says Bill, “it’s the importance of unrestricted funds so that there is flexibility to use dollars where they are needed most.”

Bill recently told Lawrenceville of a bequest intention that will significantly augment the Hofmann Fund.

“I’m proud to be able to do my part to keep Lawrenceville strong – and a bequest intention is right for me.”

“I’m proud to be able to do my part to keep

Lawrenceville strong.”

For more information on leaving a bequest to Lawrenceville or for other planned giving opportunities, or if you’ve included Lawrenceville in your will but not yet informed the School, contact Steve Cushmore, J.D. at the Lawrenceville Office of Planned Giving at 609-620-6064, or go to www.lawrenceville.org/plannedgiving.

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Lawrenceville’s archive is home to a wealth of historical information. Unfortunately, it is also home to hundreds of mysterious photos. If you can provide any insight for the images below, please send us an email at mallegra@lawrenceville.org. First responders will be credited in a future issue of The Lawrentian and will receive some nifty Lawrenceville swag.

by Zoe Vybiral-Bauske

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1. This handsome, military-looking couple seems to be part of a Periwig production. We’d love to know the names of the stars, as well as the show.

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2. I’m sure this was one of those

We continue to be dazzled by the long and detailed memories of the Lawrenceville community. As the images on these pages are mysteries to us, we are always grateful to learn whatever you know about them. Even the merest guesses may be helpful, so please submit any information you can!

moments where “you had to be there.”

Any idea about who this young man may be? Any idea about what happened?

3. What a brave soul! Rappelling over the side of the Field House must have been a real thrill. Can anyone recall when this activity might have taken place? Anyone brave enough to try it certainly deserves some bragging rights if he can be identified from the photo.

4. We were intrigued by the compelling mural painted on the wall of this shot, and we didn’t recognize the space. Surely the carpeting has been

Tron Dave Hayden ’81 was the first to hazard a complete guess about the location of this game room and the identity of the gamers. According to Dave (and several subsequent responders), these arcade games were located in “Jigger East,” a room on the south end of the Irwin Dining Center. Hayden’s best guess is that Jeff Levy ’81 and Roger Dunnaven ’81 are among the gamers. He also posits that “Chances are excellent that ‘Dream On’ by Aerosmith was playing when the photo was taken. That song was always playing in there.”

Balloon As dozens of readers asserted, it appears that hot air balloon rides were a relatively common occurrence on campus for major events and fundraisers. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, tethered hot-air balloon rides were a popular way of providing entertainment for children accompanying parents to Alumni Weekend, for Second Form celebrations, and Halloween parties. Congratulations to all those who responded to this photo. It appears that you may all be right!

updated since this photo was taken, but does anyone remember where this mural was painted or who painted it? We’d also love to know the identity of the student studying on the floor.

5. There's always plenty to celebrate

Ducks Congratulations to Paul Porter ’68, who was the first to correctly identify these rubber ducks as game pieces in the School’s Annual Duck Race. For this event, participants purchased numbered ducks that "raced" in the pond. Proceeds from the race benefited the School Camp. According to Paul, “The first year’s race needed the Lawrenceville Fire Company to generate enough current in the pond to get the ducks moving.”

at Lawrenceville; Hill victories, college acceptances, jobs well done. This miniature ticker-tape parade looks like a lot of fun. Who is celebrating, and what was the big event?

Congratulations to Hayden and Porter for their fast responses and steel-trap memories. Be sure to watch your mailboxes for a highly collectible piece of Lawrentiana!

SPRING

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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 e-mail us at vvanisko@lawrenceville.org with his or her new address. Thank you!