The Pingry Review, Winter 2016-17 by The Pingry School

PINGRY PEOPLE Our Passions Our Purpose Our Stories

PICTURE PERFECT PINGRY theonInner Reunion Commencement JohnUncovering Hanly Lecture EthicsArtist • Teaching Non-Cognitive Skills • Career Day WINTER SUMMER 2016-17 2016

WINTER 2016-17

THE PINGRY REVIEW

Arlyn Davich ’99 and Eric Davich ’02 enlisting the help of three seniors during their Career Day presentation. Read more on page 46.

Pingry People Page 10 The strength and energy of the Pingry community are directly attributable to its constituent members. In this issue, we introduce readers to five, whose unique stories perfectly illustrate the vibrancy of our School. On the cover: Cory Ransom ’15 shares her struggles with—and love of—the sciences, just one example of the Pingry stories in this month’s feature. Visit Pingry.org for many more! With this issue, we introduce a new look for The Pingry Review’s masthead to better reflect the magazine’s title.

Departments

From the Headmaster . . . . . 3 Scene Around Campus . . . . 4 Philanthropy . . . . . . . . . 22 School News . . . . . . . . . 27 Athletics News . . . . . . . . 40

Alumni News . . . . . . . . . 44 Ask the Archivist . . . . . . . 60 Class Notes . . . . . . . . . . 61 In Memoriam . . . . . . . . . 70 Closing Word . . . . . . . . . 72

27 The Ethics of Right Versus Right

During last fall’s John Hanly Lecture on Ethics and Morality, students learned from Dr. Paul Root Wolpe that most ethical decisions are not a matter of right versus wrong, but of right versus right. How is this possible? Dr. Wolpe explained.

32 Can Pingry Teach Emotional Intelligence?

Responsibility, trustworthiness, personal integrity, and concern for others are all virtues espoused by Pingry’s Honor Code. But is Pingry really teaching these skills? If not, how can we teach them? Moreover, how can we be sure we’re teaching them effectively?

46 “And the Moral of the Story Is…?”

When Arlyn Davich ’99 and Eric Davich ’02 returned to Pingry as Career Day Keynote speakers, they decided to use a unique format to share lessons from their experiences as entrepreneurs.

48 Christopher Naughton, Esq. ’73 and the Importance of the Constitution

Committed to spreading awareness of civics and the Constitution, Mr. Naughton hosts a weekly television program, The American Law Journal. Originally intended to help the public understand the law, the show has proven successful in its mission by receiving three Emmy Awards in two years. WINTER 2016-17

Winter 2016-17 | Vol. 73 | No. 2

Opening Shot Rich Freiwald’s ceramics, as seen in the 2017 Art Faculty Exhibition. See more artwork from the exhibit on page 35. Editor Greg Waxberg ’96

Communications Writer

Editorial Staff Kate Whitman Annis P ’23, ’23

Associate Director of Institutional Advancement

Allison C. Brunhouse ’00

Director of Admission and Enrollment

Andrea Dawson Senior Writer

Holland Sunyak Francisco ’02

Director of Alumni Relations and Annual Giving

Melanie P. Hoffmann P ’20, ’27

Director of Institutional Advancement

Edward Lisovicz Advancement Writer

Dale V. Seabury

Director of Strategic Communications and Marketing

Design and Layout Ruby Window Creative Group, Inc. www.rubywindow.com

Photography Camille Bonds Peter Chollick Michael Gunselman Bruce Morrison ’64 Cherilyn Reynolds Debbie Weisman The Pingry Review is the official magazine of The Pingry School, with the primary purpose of disseminating news and information about the School, alumni, students, faculty, and staff. Contact the editor with comments and story ideas: The Pingry School 131 Martinsville Road Basking Ridge, NJ 07920 gwaxberg@pingry.org 908-647-5555, ext. 1296

The Honor Code

Pingry believes that students should understand and live by standards of honorable behavior, which are essentially a matter of attitude and spirit rather than a system of rules and regulations. Decent, self-respecting behavior must be based on personal integrity and genuine concern for others and on the ethical principles which are the basis of civilized society. The members of the Pingry community should conduct themselves in a trustworthy manner that will further the best interests of the school, their class, and any teams or clubs to which they belong. They should act as responsible members of the community, working for the common good rather than solely for personal advantage. They should honor the rights of others, conducting themselves at all times in a moral and decent manner while at Pingry and throughout their lives as citizens of and contributors to the larger community of the world.

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A LETTER FROM THE HEADMASTER

Dear Members of the Pingry Community On January 27, over 60 Pingry alumni from all across the country and spanning four decades, from the Class of 1973 to the Class of 2009, returned to the Basking Ridge Campus for Career Day. Throughout the School, students, who were organized into small groups by profession, engaged in lively discussions with alumni from a wide range of careers. Among the alumni were a digital music entrepreneur, labor relations attorney, music therapist, oceanographer, surgeon, writer, interior designer, real estate analyst, several college professors, a career diplomat, and a mechanical engineer for the U.S. Navy, to name but a few. Looking out at these alumni—who first gathered en masse for a Keynote in Hauser Auditorium—and reflecting on the sheer breadth of their collective interests and expertise, was remarkable. The day perfectly encapsulated a quality I observe in so many Pingry students, current and former: the defiance of categorization. And yet, a few common traits stood out: their strength of character, curiosity, commitment, and desire to make a difference in the world. As I watched alumni and teachers reconnecting after 10, 15, and even more years, I was reminded that our faculty members, too, share these same traits. And, like our alumni, they, too, defy categorization. Indeed, the day is as memorable for the adults as it is for our students.

As a school, we strongly emphasize the importance of community... Recognizing that the strength of any community is derived from the members who comprise it.

As a school, we strongly emphasize the importance of community. Career Day is a rich opportunity for us to step back from the dynamic pace of our Pingry lives and consider the individuals who comprise that community. The chance to hear of the diverse paths that alumni have taken—their inspirations, their aspirations, the challenges they have encountered, and the role that Pingry has played in so many of their lives—is a remarkable affirmation not only of their unique achievements, but of this school as community. Recognizing that the strength of any community is derived from the members who comprise it, this issue of The Pingry Review tells the stories of five such individuals—three uniquely talented students, each representing a different division of our school; a science-loving alumna, currently a sophomore in college; and one of Pingry’s most respected administrators. We hope you enjoy this close-up view. And if you wish to read additional profiles like them, visit our new website, where you’ll find many more. With a few weeks of winter still before us, it is hard to imagine the return of a leafy green campus and the spring sports season, but it won’t be long. So, stay tuned for the next issue of the Review, which will celebrate the latest addition to our campus, the Miller A. Bugliari ’52 Athletics Center, whose official dedication will take place over Reunion Weekend, on May 20. Until then, happy reading! Sincerely,

Nathaniel E. Conard P ’09, ’11 WINTER 2016-17

Scene Around Campus

Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Several activities spread over three days honored Dr. King’s memory. At the Lower School, students learned about Dr. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” and the desegregation of Birmingham. During an assembly for Middle and Upper School students, the Balladeers and Buttondowns sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” often referred to as the “Black American National Anthem,” and members of the Black Student Union spoke about pivotal moments in the Civil Rights Movement. Kiara Smith ’17, a dancer and Pingry golfer, spoke about how the efforts of Dr. King and others like him have made possible her pursuit of artistic and athletic passions. After explaining the African American history of tap dancing (slaves created tap to communicate with each other), Kiara performed a “Jumpin’ Jive” tap number from the 1943 movie 4

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musical Stormy Weather— receiving a standing ovation! On Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, The Pingry School Parents’ Association and Pingry’s Community Service Department coordinated Pingry’s fifth annual “MLK Day of Service,” during which Lower, Middle, and Upper School families came together for a morning of community service that benefited more than 10 charitable organizations, including Bridges Outreach, Bryan’s Dream, and Operation Jersey Cares. “The day gives us an opportunity to engage our community in doing service,” says Director of Community Service Shelley Hartz. “Most of the organizations we partner with for the MLK Day of Service have ongoing relationships with Pingry, and, in many cases, we are reciprocating because they take in our students for our annual Community Service Day in October.”

Lower School Fall Musical A large cast performed Honk! JR., an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Ugly Duckling, on December 9 (the title refers to the sound made by Ugly, unable to quack). Lower School drama teacher Alicia Harabin ’02 directed, with musical direction by Kindergarten teacher Judy Previti and choreography by Cindy McArthur, Director of Summer and Auxiliary Programs. Mrs. Harabin likes the show’s message for children—find a way to be proud of who you are if you feel that you don’t fit in. Assistant Director Mark Mason ’24, who has been acting since Kindergarten, says, “I like to come up with dance moves and help others with their dancing. Some of the girls had to play boy parts, so I coached them. It was fun!”

Avi Shah ’21 Wins Middle School Geography Bee It took five tie-breaking questions with co-finalist Ashleigh Provoost ’22 in the third round of competition for Avi Shah ’21 to emerge from a pool of 18 classroom winners as Pingry’s champion of the 2017 Middle School Geography Bee. This contest is part of the National Geographic Society’s annual National Geographic Bee for students in Grades 4-8. Champions of the School Bees, like Avi, take an online test to determine if they rank among the top 100 students in their state. If so, they advance to State Bees at the end of March. Those state champions then advance to the national championship, held in Washington, D.C. in May. To introduce the Middle School’s contest, history teacher and Geography Bee coordinator Mike Webster P ’24, ’27, ’27 quoted The University of Vermont’s Department of Geography website to help students understand the importance of geography: “Geographers often say that we study the ‘why of where’…we are observers and analysts of space, place, and environment on scales from the local to the global. Geography is a multifaceted discipline that bridges the social sciences, the humanities, and the physical sciences.” Avi Shah ’21 and Middle School history teacher Mike Webster P ’24, ’27, ’27.

Guest Speakers from Celgene

Middle School Hour of Code On the last day of school before Winter Break, Middle School students sank their teeth into computer programming by participating in Hour of Code. An introduction to computer science, Hour of Code, supported by over 200,000 educators worldwide, is a central feature of Computer Science Education Week. For several years, Upper School students have participated in the event, the Lower School joined in 2015-16, and, this year, thanks to Pingry librarian Felicia Ballard’s suggestion, the Middle School jumped on the bandwagon (Ms. Ballard, who teaches Digital Literacy to sixth-grade students, envisioned Hour of Code as a natural extension of her class). Through the use of self-guided tutorials, students learned coding principles as they progressed through the activity. The involvement of Middle School students in Hour of Code makes sense: On both the Short Hills and Basking Ridge Campuses, where technology plays a central role—and where many students already know how to code— computer science is an increasingly important curricular focus.

In December, Jerry Masoudi P ’25, ’27 and Alex Reynolds P ’29 visited with students in Honors Biology 2 (Mechanisms of Cancer). Mr. Masoudi and Mr. Reynolds work for Celgene, a global biopharmaceutical company that researches and develops medications for cancer and immune-inflammatory disorders. As the company’s Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Jerry Masoudi P ’25, ’27. Secretary, Mr. Masoudi (who served as Chief Counsel of the FDA earlier in his career) spoke about legal and regulatory issues that affect drug development, such as patents. Mr. Reynolds, Project Leader for Revlimid® (a treatment for multiple myeloma), works with a team of 40 people, including medical experts, scientists, and data managers, to submit information to the FDA. He explained the “classical model of development” for potential new medications: research, discovery, clinical trials, and FDA review. Alex Reynolds P ’29. Mr. Reynolds made students aware that the FDA has approved 13 new anticancer therapeutics in the past year. What does he consider the strategies for success in drug development? Experienced people working on better ideas and better chemical combinations than their competitors. Prior to the visit by Mr. Masoudi and Mr. Reynolds, students researched and presented on breakthrough cancer therapies, giving them context for and questions about the process. WINTER 2016-17

Lower School Holiday Concert The Lower School sent its students off on Winter Break in high spirits after a wonderful Holiday Concert that showcased every campus ensemble (strings, handbell choir, choruses, and band) and offered some fun surprises. Highlights included Hanukkah Dreams and Everlasting Fruitcake, sung by third-grade students. The second selection humorously recounts the unsuccessful efforts to get rid of a fruitcake (it just keeps coming back...). At the end of the song, a UPS person rang a bell, announced “a delivery for Mr. Corvino,” and handed him “Pingry’s Famous Fruitcake,” to which he responded, “Not this again!” The concert also included The Twelve Days of Christmas for the entire audience, Jingle Bell Rock sung by the Faculty Chorus (complemented by snow and a little bit of dancing—picture a “mini” version of the Rockettes), Kuimba Kwanzaa with the Grade 4 and 5 Choruses, and the Candlelight Finale as the Grade 5 Chorus sang “This Day of Peace.”

Music Demonstration at the Lower School One of the most eagerly-awaited assemblies of the year for the Lower School— one that unites the two campuses and encourages future Upper School musicians—takes place each October when the Balladeers, Buttondowns, and Jazz Band perform on the Short Hills Campus. Among the selections on this year’s program were Fauré’s Cantique de Jean Racine (Balladeers), a medley of songs from Shrek (Buttondowns), and Duke Ellington’s Harlem Air Shaft (Jazz Band). As the Upper School students introduced themselves and told the audience what year they entered Pingry, their young fans cheered wildly. The Balladeers, Buttondowns, and Jazz Band performing for Lower School students.

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Winter Festival An annual event for the entire school, and a wonderful performance opportunity for Pingry’s talented musicians, the Winter Festival, held on December 7 on the Basking Ridge Campus, is one of the most eagerly-anticipated events of the year. It is the only opportunity for all students from Short Hills and Basking Ridge to be together in one venue, gathering for this special concert that marks the holiday season. Seeing all of the ensembles on the Hauser Auditorium stage, as well as students, faculty, and staff filling every seat of the auditorium—a “standing room only” event!—truly makes the event a community celebration. Kindergarten students Wells Kasserman, son of Wyatt Kasserman ’99, and Mae Sartorius, daughter of Kathryn (Iacuzzo) Sartorius ’92, lit the Festival Candle for the Wednesday and Thursday concerts, respectively. The event also included presentations of gifts to Lift for Learning and S.H.I.P. (Samaritan Homeless Interim Program). Music teacher Sean McAnally conducting the strings and choral ensembles.

Seniors vs. Faculty/Staff Basketball Game “One of the best community events ever!” is how several people described this Student Government initiative that took place in early December. Bristol Gym brimmed with energy, full bleachers, and a “standing room only” crowd. Players on both co-ed teams took turns rotating into the game, and the final score was 29-29 after overtime. The idea for the game was suggested to Student Body President Zach Keller ’17 by Brian Burkhart, Director of Educational and Information Technology and Zach’s computer science teacher. Zach and Andrew Cowen ’19 did most of the planning, with assistance from Upper School Dean of Student Life Jake Ross ’96, who helped to recruit faculty and staff.

Selections from Pingry’s Permanent Collection Pingry presented a museum-quality exhibition in late fall in the Hostetter Arts Center Gallery, featuring 32 photographs by six international artists who shaped and defined modern photography: Lucien Clergue (who received the highest honor bestowed by the French Ministry of Culture as a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur in 2003, and was featured in a solo show at the MoMA); Harold Feinstein (who helped define what became known as the “New York School of Photography,” a period after World War II during which serious photographers captured the city); photojournalist and activist Donna Ferrato (who ignited a national discussion about domestic violence and women’s rights); surrealist photographer Ralph Gibson (known for photographic books); Alen MacWeeney (represented in permanent collections at the MoMA, the MET, and the Art Institute of Chicago, to name a few); and Mary Ellen Mark (known for photojournalism, documentary photography, and portraiture). A photograph by Alen MacWeeney, part of the School’s permanent collection.

Boys’ Varsity Basketball Head Coach, Middle School history teacher, and Admission Counselor Jason Murdock playing for the faculty/ staff team.

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Athlete Ally: LGBT Acceptance in Sports

Eighth-grade students at the Community FoodBank of New Jersey in Hillside, organizing flyers for gas stations across the country, encouraging people to donate to the Food Bank.

Community Service Day Every year, on the last Friday of October, also known as Rufus Gunther Day, Pingry students make an impact through community service. Nearly 800 faculty and students traveled to help 32 different area organizations, and three other groups of students remained on campus for a variety of service-related projects. An annual day of community service has been a Pingry tradition for decades, but, thanks to the efforts of Director of Community Service Shelley Hartz, the number of organizations has increased considerably. New service opportunities this year included: A Birthday Wish, an organization started by Jane (Shivers) Hoffman ’94 to support children in foster care; the Greater Brunswick Charter School; the Springfield Rescue Squad; and Newark Collegiate Academy, where the Balladeers and Buttondowns worked with the school’s a cappella group.

For most of his life, All-American wrestler at the University of Maryland and former Columbia University wrestling coach Hudson Taylor was silent about LGBT acceptance in sports, but he became an outspoken advocate for the LGBT community during college and founded Athlete Ally to foster inclusive sports communities. In a wideranging presentation aimed at increasing awareness among K-12 schools, Mr. Taylor spoke to Pingry’s Middle and Upper School students during the annual Diversity Assembly in October, and then conducted a workshop with Pingry faculty and coaches to discuss LGBT acceptance. “To make progress, the majority needs to do their part,” he said. What steps can students take? Be educated, learn how to engage, and speak up, especially about inappropriate language. “You can’t undo social change once it has started,” Mr. Taylor said. “You are responsible to fight for it.”

Hands-On Approach to Aromatherapy Aromatherapist Anjali Shekdar P ’24, whose daughter Annika ’24 is in Cathy Everett’s fifth-grade social studies class this year, introduced the students to the practice of aromatherapy in October. Mrs. Shekdar explained that aromatherapy can be traced to Egyptian Perfumery and told the students how she discovered its power: while trying to study for exams in business school, she came across essential oils as a way to fight a cold. That experience prompted her to further investigate and understand these oils, which are used to promote general health and wellness. Then, in a hands-on activity, students made their own perfumes. From a list of 12 aromatics (such as frankincense, marjoram, and myrrh), they combined a few, aiming to maintain a balance among scents. Anjali Shekdar P ’24 assisting fifth-grade students as they create a perfume from aromatics.

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Hudson Taylor describing the obstacles that prevented him from speaking out against LGBT discrimination in sports (including locker room language, a fear of going against conformity, and lack of awareness), and telling students how they can make a difference.

Upper School Fall Play The Drama Department presented A. R. Gurney’s Scenes from American Life in November. This youthful look at the hypocrisy of adult life is told in a series of vignettes, whose settings range from the 1930s to some unspecified time in the future when America is racked by social unrest caused by a fascist government. It was an evening of laughter, nostalgia, and wry portraits of American life in Macrae Theater. Pingry’s cast included over 30 students and 10 faculty performing under the direction of Drama Department Chair Al Romano. Why faculty? “Necessity is the mother of invention,” Mr. Romano says. “I had always toyed with the idea of involving faculty, but this piece was ideal because each scene was stand-alone. We could work on it in a free period.” A. R. Gurney has received many awards, notably a Drama Desk Award, and is a member of the Theater Hall of Fame and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Grade 8 Environmental Art Students in Nan Ring’s Art and Nature class analyzed the works of earthwork artists, including Teo Parisi and Fred Sandback. Ms. Ring encouraged her students to observe how these artists initiate a dialogue about our relationship with and stewardship of nature, either by placing their artworks in the environment (instead of gallery or museum exhibitions) or by using natural materials indoors. Then, she asked her students to experiment. Using natural materials like

branches, logs, and sticks, they created sculptural shapes and noticed how minimalist structures (primarily geometric and composed of straight lines) exist in tension with the natural environment (primarily organic and curvilinear). Eighth-grade students creating geometric structures, made of bamboo poles, in the Art and Nature class. The sculptures light up with solar-powered LEDs.

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Pingry People

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passions purpose stories OUR PASSIONS OUR PURPOSE OUR STORIES

Like all schools, Pingry is the sum of its many, glorious parts. In any given classroom, budding ceramicists, chemists, coders, musicians, linguists, history buffs, social scientists, and playwrights sit side-by-side with faculty whose interests and passions are every bit as expansive. Our playing fields, courts, wrestling mats, track, and gymnasiums are filled with athletes of every kind and every skill level, who gather for the common goal of improving their game and being part of Big Blue. And spread across this country and abroad, in colleges and universities, and working in myriad professional and personal endeavors, are alumni, who are forever connected by their shared experience of Pingry. In the blur of the school year and the urgency of our own daily routines, we may take note of this sum, but we often forget to pay attention to the details— “to see the world in a grain of sand,” as William Blake longed for. So, every now and then, it is important to zoom in and examine those very “parts,” taking a closer look at who makes Pingry, Pingry. Who are we? Where do we come from? How has Pingry shaped us, and how are we shaping Pingry? Turn the pages to read our stories.* * If you enjoy these profiles, many more can be found on Pingry.org!

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Ami Gianchandani ’18 Ami Gianchandani ’18 was five when she received her first set of golf clubs. By eight, her first year playing in tournaments through U.S. Kids Golf, she qualified for the regional, national, and world championships. She was also named U.S. Kids Golf “Player of the Year” for four consecutive years, 2009 to 2012. Not a bad start to what would become a highly-successful career as a junior player. Along with Mary Moan Swanson ’93—former Princeton player and head golf coach at Yale, now head coach of the women’s team at Bradley University—Ami is one of Big Blue’s most accomplished female golfers. She caught the bug early from her father and grandfather. At the time, she recalls, not many girls her age were playing. Boys were her primary competition. She often ran into Jake Mayer ’17, her Pingry classmate and a formidable golfer in his own right on Pingry’s Boys’ Varsity Golf Team. “I liked playing with boys and against my brother and dad when I was young because they pushed me,” she says. “I think those experiences really shaped my game. I’m pretty aggressive and go for shots. I learned to hit long just to keep up with them.” Keep up she does. In the spring of 2015, as a freshman, she finished second in the Tournament of Champions, a highly-competitive contest in which the best-of-thebest across the state face off. Last spring, with her lowest score ever (66), she won the competitive Skyland Conference Championship, defeating a local competitor who had bested her the year before at the same tournament, and with whom she had been in friendly competition since the age of eight. She also happens to play squash, and has been a member of Big Blue’s varsity team since her freshman year. These are simply Pingry achievements. Outside of school, Ami competes on the highly-selective American Junior Golf Association’s (AJGA) tour, the highestlevel junior tour (for ages 12-18), which hosts tournaments throughout the year (she typically competes in five, at various locations nationwide; her favorite was in August 2016 at her home course, the Montclair Golf Club, where she shot 74-71-71 to finish second in a very tough

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field). In July 2015, she won the 61st annual New Jersey State Golf Association Girls’ Junior Championship. Last summer, she was one of 156 girls across the globe to qualify for the USGA Girls’ Junior Championship, the most prestigious worldwide junior golf event of the year. And, from 2014-2016, she qualified to compete in the USGA’s Women’s U.S. Open Qualifier (the top two finishers advance to the Women’s U.S. Open). Competing in a field of more than 70 competitors, including seasoned professionals like Natalie Gulbis and college players from all around the world, Ami has finished as high as 18th. It goes without saying, Ami’s season is year-round. With the exception of a few “break” days at the end of August, she is always practicing. “The longest family vacation we take is two days,” she says with a smile. “After that, we have to bring golf clubs.” In the spring, she plays every day after school, plus weekends. Summer hours are even more intense: a minimum of six hours for an average tournament, she says, and up to eight hours a day when she’s not competing. A typical “off-season” day: She leaves Pingry at the close of school and heads to the Ben Shear Junior Golf Academy in Scotch Plains. Here, she hits, putts, and works on her technique for an hour, followed by an hour of strength training and conditioning, all geared to improving her golf swing (videos of which she studies religiously). In the cold winter months, she refuses to keep her clubs in the garage, fearing the temperatures might damage their graphite shafts. When her parents aren’t looking, she sneaks them inside to keep them warm overnight. Despite a busy practice schedule, balance—among golf, academics, other interests, like band (she plays the saxophone in the Upper School orchestra), and family and friends—is a priority for her. “I do get tired occasionally,” she admits, “but I never get sick of it. There’s always a drive. I want to constantly get better.” Ami could easily be content with the competition she finds on the AJGA circuit and through the USGA’s Girls’ U.S. Junior Championship series, the largest series of

tournaments for girls under 18. But, in the eyes of this 16-year-old, success outside of Pingry doesn’t diminish the importance of being a part of her school team. “What I do outside of Pingry is so individually focused,” she explains. “I especially love the Pingry golf season because I get to be with such great friends. We all like to help each other improve our game. It’s really great to just be part of a team. You don’t get that opportunity a lot in golf.” It should come as no surprise that Ami is a natural leader on the Girls’ Varsity Golf Team. Captain since her sophomore year, she organized early morning weekend practices for the first time last winter (NJSIAA rules prohibit coaches from conducting training sessions in the off-season, so Ami took up the mission herself). With great pride, she recounts that every single girl on the team attended. “I was surprised by their will,” she recalls, “but it speaks a lot to the character of Pingry student-athletes. They were willing to support me and the team, even during the off-season.” A Pingry student since Grade 3, Ami explains that golf is more mental than physical, and finds parallels between her growth on the golf course and in the classroom. “Through golf, I’ve learned a lot of different ways to approach problems. I know how to analyze every angle: Where’s the pin on the green? Where’s the wind? Am I going for birdie or par? Math problems are similarly analytical, but, even with essay writing, I’ve learned how to see different paths to express a single point. Every year, I feel like I’m developing more sophisticated interpretations of what I read in class.” Over the 2016 season last year, Ami was named to AJGA’s Transamerica Scholastic Junior AllAmerica Honor Roll Team, which requires recipients to demonstrate excellence in golf, academics, and school leadership. In 20 years, when she looks back on her athletics career at Pingry, what will she say about it? “They were some of my best years ever,” she answers, without hesitation. “Being part of a community that values athletics and academics, where you get to be a student and a team member, what could be better?”

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Ben Chaddha ’21 Playing trumpet in a jazz band and creating art are harmonious—even parallel—passions of Ben Chaddha ’21. “Both require improvisation,” he explains. “Both are very creative. You have to follow some sort of guideline, but you really want a mixture of creativity and rule following.”

watercolor of the Cherokee rose—Georgia’s state flower— still hangs in the hallway of his family’s home. In Grade 5, he learned the basics of Chinese artwork and red stamp calligraphy, all part of a much larger school unit on ancient China and Greece.

An environmental art class he took last fall, Art and Nature, provides a salient example. Challenging students to consider their relationship to nature, teacher Nan Ring asked them to break into groups and create their own standing sculptures outdoors, using only natural materials, like bamboo. Their efforts mimicked the human instinct to impose order— boundaries, balance, and rules— on the wildness of nature. But in doing so, their creativity was also put to the test.

A lover of science and the humanities, the visual arts do not come naturally to him, he says. But he credits the fact that Pingry makes art classes for all students in Grades K-7 mandatory as having sparked in him an interest he might not have otherwise discovered. “When I was first exposed to a Pingry art class, I went into it thinking art is just drawing, and it has to be ‘good.’ But now I understand that ‘good’ can be interpreted in so many ways.”

“We couldn’t just throw up bamboo sticks without connecting them. We had to figure out how to tie them down in some way or they would blow away,” Ben observes. In the end, his group tied enough bamboo sticks together to create what he calls a “balance”—a triangle on the ground, topped by two triangles coming out of either side. As a finishing touch, they illuminated it with solar-powered light strips. Collaborating with peers, problem solving, and experimenting were all part of the challenge. An eighth-grade student, Ben easily rattles off memorable art projects from each year at Pingry—he began in Grade 3 —and the teachers who have shaped him. For example, in Grade 3, when students were each assigned a state to research, art teachers Russell Christian and Lindsay Baydin P ’26, ’29 worked with them to recreate their respective state flowers. Ben’s yellow

For Ben, playing jazz is not dissimilar to art—license to invent, combined with the need to follow certain chord changes. His interest in trumpet playing and art were ignited in him simultaneously, in Grade 3, which may account for their easy comparison. He had been a violin player since age 5, but was looking to pick up a different instrument. Then, Hurricane Irene hit, power was lost, and, looking for a diversion, he visited a friend’s house. An older brother happened to be home, playing the trumpet. He was hooked. Classical instruction soon followed (he played in the Lower School band), and, by Grade 5, he was on to jazz. Fast forward four years and he’s playing “Taps” for the entire Upper School at the Veterans Day Assembly. A three-year member of the Middle School band, he is also the first Middle School student ever to have been invited to perform in the pit band for this year’s Upper School Winter Musical, Curtains.

Up until last year, he played with the New Jersey Youth Symphony (time constraints forced him to give it up). His talent and improvement aren’t without effort. Every Tuesday, Ben leaves school at 3:30 p.m. and heads to Jazz House in Montclair, where he practices well into the evening hours, returning home after 9:00 p.m. It is a schedule he has been keeping for the last two years. He has performed at some of the most notable jazz venues in the area, including Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola at Lincoln Center, NJPAC, Hat City Kitchen in Orange, Trumpets Jazz Club in Montclair, as well as the Montclair Jazz Festival. Last year, at a Jazz House event, he met world-renowned trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. Currently, he is auditioning to play in some of the best jazz bands and competitions in the country, including Essentially Ellington, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and NJPAC. One year, he hopes to earn an audition for Grammy Band, in which 30 of the country’s best high school jazz players and singers are flown to Los Angeles to perform during the week of the Grammys. To be sure, the 14-year-old, who plays defensive end on the Middle School’s football team, joined the basketball team for the first time this winter, and also plays Big Blue baseball, is ambitious and open-minded. Next year, when he reaches the Upper School, he would like to give Rich Freiwald’s pottery class a try. Whether he’s at Jazz House, in Pingry’s art studio, or on the playing field, there is one common denominator, he says. Creativity and collaboration.

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Thomas Yanez ’24 Thomas Yanez ’24 was eager for the school day to end, but not for the reasons an average fifth-grade boy would have. He had 20 more pages of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH to read and notate for his language arts class with Dr. Joan Pearlman P ’89, ’92, ’96, and he was impatient to dig back in. He wanted to wrap up a project on conflict dialogue that he was working on for Dana Sherman’s writing class (banter with his older brother Daniel ’22 provided ideal fodder). Then there was an expository essay on character traits that he was ready to dive into, also for Mrs. Sherman’s class. When those assignments were complete, he could settle in to Jon Krakauer’s 1997 bestseller Into Thin Air, the gripping account of the 1996 Mt. Everest disaster. He had begun the 400-page book three days earlier, and only 150 pages remained. Thomas, who began Pingry last year as a fourth-grade student, has always enjoyed reading and writing. But, he admits, if it weren’t for Mrs. Sherman’s writing class—a new offering this year in the Lower School, and part of the students’ comprehensive language arts curriculum— he probably wouldn’t write on his own. (From creative writing, realistic fiction, and persuasive writing, to weekly journal writing and even poetry, Mrs. Sherman covers it all. See “Writers in the Making” on page 31.) It also helps that Pingry teachers collaborate, with intention. So, when Dr. Pearlman began reading Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of

THE PINGRY REVIEW

NIMH with Thomas’s class and discussing the concept of character traits, Mrs. Sherman segued into a related creative writing assignment, asking Thomas and his classmates to describe, in detail, a character of their own imagining. “Every year, with every teacher, my writing improves,” he remarks. “Every teacher is different, and I learn so much.” Each spring, the Lower School’s fifth-grade China unit gets underway, and cross-disciplinary collaboration reaches new heights. Eighteen teachers—nearly half of the Lower School faculty—work together to immerse students in the world of ancient China. In Dr. Pearlman’s class, Thomas is reading Lon Po Po, the Chinese version of Little Red Riding Hood, comparing and contrasting it to the popular American fable. In Mrs. Sherman’s class, Thomas is studying and mimicking poetry from the Tang Dynasty. They are also examining how poets used broad paintbrush strokes in their writing, a common stylistic approach among artists of all types during that time period—students are experimenting with these brush strokes in art classes taught by Russell Christian and Lindsay Baydin P ’26, ’29. Anticipating his upcoming China “immersion,” Thomas says, “It’s pretty cool when all of your classes are doing the same sort of thing and teachers are linking up with each other. It really makes you focus.” For a boy who polishes off, on average, a novel or book

of nonfiction a week, who once spent three straight hours reading the World War II spy novel Projekt 1065, and who remembers seemingly every detail of what he reads, focus—indeed, fascination— does not appear to require his sharpening. Still, at Pingry, Thomas hones the skill, assiduously applying it to all of his reading and writing endeavors. Both in and out of school, he has many. In particular, he recalls, with palpable excitement, an assignment from Jason Haber’s fourth-grade social studies class last year. Students were studying the early history of New York City, including Peter Stuyvesant, to whom they were asked to write a letter, convincing him to either surrender to the British or stand his ground. In a thoughtfullycrafted, persuasive letter, what position did Thomas take? “I wrote to him and told him to fight. You discovered this land, so you should be able to keep it for yourself. You can’t back down!” Come May, Thomas graduates to the Middle School, and the Upper School just three years later. The 11-yearold says he isn’t certain what interests will most capture his attention in those years, or what his future post-Pingry holds. But he is certain that a command of language and writing will help him. As Mrs. Sherman counsels Thomas and his fellow classmates: “Be a camera and pan the scene. Tune in with all your senses. Take risks. Find your voice.” And so he does.

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Jon Leef P ’15, ’18 Last fall, Big Blue’s Varsity Football Team was playing well in a tough game against a formidable opponent. Fourth quarter, Pingry leading by two points, it was down to the wire. For an underdog program, the moment was rife with significance. Despite great effort, the team fell short. Spirits were crushed. A few weeks later, in a speech at the team’s end-of-season banquet, Mr. Jon Leef, Pingry’s Assistant Headmaster and assistant football coach, recalled the efforts of a particular player. Due to a teammate’s injury, he was put in a new position that game— middle linebacker—and had just two practices to prepare. After the loss, he lumbered solemnly off the field, found Mr. Leef, and sobbed in his arms, apologizing. “I can’t remember every game I have ever coached,” he told the room full of student athletes, parents, and fellow coaches, “but I will always remember that one, and the effort that was put forth by every member of this team. The player and I hugged. I told him there is nothing to apologize for. You were glorious.” For Mr. Leef, who wears an impressive array of hats at Pingry—an administrator, math teacher, coach, advisor, and parent (his older son Max graduated in 2015; Clyde is currently a junior on the football team)— the successes and failures, the larger life lessons, whether inside or outside of the classroom, are all part and parcel of the work he loves. He came to Pingry 13 years ago from Rye Country Day School in Rye, New York, where he was assistant principal and head football coach of a program that had been defunct for two years before he was handed the reins. Within a few seasons, he helped to grow the team into a success story. A football player himself at White Plains High School and Bucknell University, he says the game figured prominently in his formative years. He knows what it feels like to be on winning and losing sides, and he understands the personal growth that comes from both experiences. Which is why, in his view, coaching and teaching inform one another. One doesn’t take primacy over the other, he says. “I love coaching because it is an extension of the classroom, the ultimate collaborative laboratory for a group dynamic,” he

observes. “Athletics are an opportunity for adolescents to dedicate themselves to something bigger than they are. This is not a natural condition for them. So for me, coaching is a special opportunity. The opportunity to succeed and fail, win and lose, with something that is so seemingly important but, in the end, probably not all that important, is a great life lesson.” A beloved figure on campus—he is the voice of the School’s much-anticipated “snow day” call—Mr. Leef manages unflagging humor, quick wit, and an avuncular warmth. He routinely provides milk and cereal to his student advisees at weekly meetings, and a cohort of his math students can always be found surrounding the whiteboard in his office, where he provides extra help. He arrived on campus in 2004, two days before the headmaster who hired him, Mr. John Neiswender, announced his departure. Having said goodbye to one of his greatest mentors at Rye Country Day School and having moved his family to New Jersey, he was concerned for his future at Pingry. But his commitment to the School never wavered. Before long, his consistency, honesty, and empathy won him favor and respect among faculty, staff, and students alike. In 2007, he was promoted to Assistant Headmaster on the Basking Ridge Campus (maintaining his original position as Upper School Director for a full year until his successor, Dr. Denise Brown-Allen P’13, was hired). He has taken on many sizeable projects for the School, not the least of which was to co-chair the Curriculum Review, which began in 2009. The need for a thoughtful examination of the curriculum was first raised more than a decade earlier, but it wasn’t until Headmaster Nat Conard P ’09, ’11 renewed it as a priority, asking Mr. Leef and History Department Chair Dr. Jim Murray to serve as co-chairs, that it finally came to fruition. An arduous two-plus years, seven subcommittees, and nearly 120 pages later, a staggeringly comprehensive final report, with detailed recommendations— including an examination of the master schedule—was produced. In 2013, for their efforts, Mr. Leef and Dr. Murray received the School’s Cyril and Beatrice Baldwin Pingry Family Citizen of the Year Award.

“A lot of blood, sweat, and tears went into it,” Mr. Leef acknowledges, “but when you go back now and look at some of the recommendations from the report that were implemented, we’ve made a lot of progress. Many schools nationwide have even reached out to me to ask about our Curriculum Review and the resulting master schedule redesign. We’ve had a positive impact on life at Pingry, and that’s very satisfying.” Four years ago, having survived the first day of the new master schedule, he joked with Headmaster Conard: “If I get hit by an oil truck, at least my tombstone can now say, ‘After decades of trying by the School, he helped to change the schedule at Pingry!’” Lightheartedness aside, Mr. Leef has, indeed, had a great deal of impact at Pingry. In addition to tackling major School initiatives, like the Curriculum Review, he serves as exuberant ambassador and pitchperfect headhunter, having skillfully identified and successfully lured more than 50 faculty to the School. But clearly, for him, the students are everything. Last fall, he even took to the stage, one of 10 faculty members invited to participate in Pingry’s production of Scenes from American Life. His success at Pingry is attributable, he says, to the leadership and professional growth opportunities the School affords, all of which, he argues, is reinforced by a deliberate institutional focus on self-reflection and improvement. “A lasting legacy that [Headmaster] Nat has had, and continues to have, is fostering self-reflection within the School,” he says. “The Strategic Plan, the Curriculum Review, the Self Study are all examples. This dayto-day tendency toward self-reflection is very present, and it permeates the entire School community. All three schools I have worked at look quite similar from a college profile standpoint, but school communities have very different cultural underpinnings, and self-reflection is a big one at Pingry.” And so, it’s a perfect match: A school that fosters self-reflection led, in part, by a devoted Assistant Headmaster and compassionate coach, who teaches Pingry students and athletes the virtues of effort, investment, passion, and improvement, one day at a time.

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Cory Ransom ’15 Just after her second brain surgery, Cory Ransom ’15 had a conversation with her tenth-grade geometry teacher, Davidson Barr. Four years later, now a Harvard sophomore, she still vividly recalls it as a defining moment on a path that gradually led her to pursue a subject she admits is not her strong suit. A history lover at Pingry, she found she really enjoyed geometry (“Math with no numbers!”) and had been doing well in Mr. Barr’s class. But, when she returned to School after surgery to replace a shunt that was draining fluid from her brain (she was seven when hydrocephalus was first diagnosed), she didn’t do well on a test. Upset, she met with Mr. Barr to talk about it. “He told me a story about when he was in college, dealing with a lot of negative things all at once, and performed poorly on a test, too,” she recalls. But it wasn’t just any test—it was a math test, his chosen field of study. Cory remembered thinking, How did you move on from that? You’re a math teacher now! “It was maybe a 10-minute conversation, but I really took from it that failure isn’t necessarily indicative of a need to change your path, or a sign that you’re doing something wrong. It’s like Michael Jordan not making his high school basketball team. For a long time, I was so focused on doing well in school, I assumed that if I wasn’t good at something, it just wasn’t for me. But adversity doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. You should just try harder.”

THE PINGRY REVIEW

So began her self-described paradigm shift, during which she started challenging herself more at Pingry with subjects that didn’t come easily to her, like physics and AP chemistry. Law, history, or government were, she thought, disciplines she would most likely pursue. But, by her senior year, her interest in the sciences, however challenging the subject matter was, began to take root. (Worth noting, Cory was also a star basketball player and track & field athlete at Pingry. In the fall of her sophomore year, she even tried the cross country team for the first time, despite having undergone brain surgery over Labor Day weekend. Recovering, she missed the first two days of school. A month later, she was back running with the team.) Once at Harvard, with her newfound approach to academic risk-taking, she tackled a life sciences course. It was one of the hardest courses she had ever taken. And she embraced it, particularly the unit on the neurobiology of behavior. “I ended up with a C-plus in the class, but, as much of a struggle as it was, I loved it. I just loved the material. I realized that I am willing to struggle if I really enjoy something.” Now, compelled by the connections between the social sciences and hard sciences— not to mention her own medical experiences—she is on a pre-med track at Harvard, considering a neuroscience focus. But don’t ask her to tell you so. “Pre-med feels like such a strict mentality,” she

explains. “Yes, technically, I’m following pre-med classes and would like to go to medical school, but it’s not what drives me. I want to enjoy where I am right now. I want to take classes that interest me, like my Spanish film class. It’s too early to put blinders on. I don’t like labels.” Recently back on the Basking Ridge Campus during Harvard’s winter recess, Cory was greeted by old friends and teachers as if she had never left. As a Peer Group Leader her senior year at Pingry, she was assigned a group of freshmen to mentor; now juniors, many of them approached her in the halls to reconnect. She still fondly refers to them as her “freshmen babies,” and, even two years after graduating, her impact on them is evident. “A few months ago, one of my peer groupies texted me because she was stressing about college. She reached out to me for advice. I was so glad she did. It felt really good. I told her it’s not about the grades, it’s about the growth.” Equally apparent is the impact her younger Pingry peers have had on Cory. She tells about a Big Blue Girls’ Varsity Basketball game she attended over the holidays (her sister Kelsey ’20 is a freshman and promising guard on the team, who wears her sister’s old number). “I looked around and was reminded of how many connections I was able to make while I was here. Today’s seniors were sophomores when I graduated, and they still remember me. It was really touching. Maybe I gave them something that they gave me.”

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Philanthropy Ben Fay ’90, P ’28: Growing the Pingry Tree When Ben Fay ’90, P ’28 arrived at Pingry in 1984 as a seventh-grade student, the doors of the Basking Ridge Campus—and its brandnew facilities—were just opening. In fact, it was a drafting class with Mrs. Margaretta Lear-Svedman in a state-of-the-art studio that first ignited his interest in architecture and design. Ten years later, he would earn a graduate degree in Interior Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design and spend nearly eight years working at Apple, leading the team responsible for the design of the company’s retail stores worldwide. Even 26 years after his graduation, Mr. Fay says, Pingry sits at the epicenter of all his achievements and experiences. In a way, his gifts to The Pingry Fund are gifts to something much greater. “I am compelled by the consistency, the unfailing nature of Pingry to push itself to be better and better, to balance its academic prowess with the people whom it shapes and the character that it develops within its students. My support is for that whole ecosystem,” he says. “It has nothing to do with where the kids might go to college or what positions they might hold in the business world. It’s their collective contribution to American society and global society. To the extent that Pingry shapes future citizens, my hope is that its system of roots and branches extends as far as it possibly can.” And now his daughter Kate ’28 has taken root, as a Pingry first-grade student. 22

THE PINGRY REVIEW

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“I am compelled by the consistency, the unfailing nature of Pingry to push itself to be better and better, to balance its academic prowess with the people whom it shapes and the character that it develops within its students. My support is for that whole ecosystem.”

Ben Fay ’90, P ’28

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Kristen and Ben Fay ’90, P ’28 with their children Kate ’28 and John.

Alluding to her future at the School, and the legacy of his former boss— Apple’s iconoclastic CEO Steve Jobs —he adds, “The day you stop sticking your mind’s toes out over the edge of the cliff is the day you stop pushing yourself to think beyond the comfortable and into the realm of the unknown. And I just think Pingry has the ability to throw open the doors to that way of thinking in ways that other institutions don’t.”

Ryan Family: Part of the Pingry Fabric For Owen and Anna Ryan P ’20, the decision to give was based heavily on their daughter’s five years of experience in the Lower, Middle, and Upper Schools. “Since Jennifer has been at the School, I’ve been so impressed with the mission of the School, the caliber of students I’ve met, the caring nature of the teachers, and the dedication of the administration,” Mr. Ryan says. “Every day when she comes home, Jennifer likes to share what happened during the day. She feels like she’s part of the fabric of The Pingry School, so, if I can give money to help the School or to allow someone else the chance to come here, I relish that opportunity.” The Ryans have a history of philanthropy. Mr. Ryan acts as Chairman of the Board for College Summit, a philanthropic organization devoted to providing college access for low-income and

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“We’ve supported the School through The Pingry Fund, even before the Campaign. When I read the plans for the School, and what Pingry intended to accomplish, it made good sense to support that mission.”

Owen Ryan P ’20

––––––––––––– minority students. When it came to Pingry’s Blueprint for the Future Campaign, he says the decision to give was an easy one to make. “We’ve supported the School through The Pingry Fund, even before the

Campaign. When I read the plans for the School, and what Pingry intended to accomplish, it made good sense to support that mission. Since we’re in a position to be able to support the School, my wife and I made the decision together that we would.” “We decided to make our gift unrestricted because of my meetings with [Headmaster] Nat Conard and [Assistant Headmaster] Jon Leef,” Mr. Ryan adds. “I think they are smart, proven people. I trust that they will spend the money as they see appropriate to further what they think the School’s priorities should be. I was part of the recent strategic plan meetings, and I have a lot of faith in the direction the School is headed in.” “I encourage people to spend a little time with the faculty, with the administration, and with some students besides your own children. You’ll find that your money is going to go to an exceptional, extraordinary use.”

C.B. Newton Society

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The C.B. Newton Society (named for Pingry’s eighth headmaster, who served from 1920-1936) honors those who create a legacy at Pingry through a planned gift, such as a bequest, an IRA rollover donation, or a charitable gift annuity (CGA). All options provide immediate tax benefits, and a CGA can provide extra income for those age 65 and above. Sixty-nine new members joined the C.B. Newton Society over the course of the Blueprint for the Future Campaign, and some of the most generous gifts were planned gifts. We hope you will consider joining the C.B. Newton Society by considering Pingry in your estate or retirement plans.

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During Blueprint for the Future, 69 New Members Helped Plan for Pingry’s Future

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Please contact Judy Brown at jbrown@pingry.org, or 908-647-5555, ext. 1288 if you have any questions or to get involved today. You can also visit pingry.org/plannedgiving.

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Campaign Impact

Middle School Students Make Raspberry Pi, From “Scratch” I walk around supervising and offering suggestions.” “One of our goals as a department was to get kids doing more hands-on activities related to computer science,” affirms Brian Burkhart, Director of Educational and Information Technology. “Giving kids spaces to create was one of the goals of the Blueprint Campaign, and we’re excited to have Josh teaching this unit that aligns so well with what we wanted to accomplish.”

Pingry’s Basking Ridge Campus modifications had a heavy focus on technological advancement as well as collaborative, interdisciplinary learning processes. For Computer Science teacher Josh Orndorff, collaboration and technology are soldered together with molten metal. Mr. Orndorff’s Grade 8 Computer Thinking and Design class recently completed a unit in Physical Computing in which they designed, built, and programmed their own circuit boards using Raspberry Pi, an inexpensive general-use singleboard computer that Mr. Orndorff has described as “what you would get if you reached into your laptop and pulled out just the ‘computer’ part.” The first task the students must complete is to design circuitry that will be applied to the board, printing the design onto transparent film and taping that over the board, which has a layer of copper and a layer of a chemical known as “photoresist.” Through a process called “etching,” all of the copper and photoresist is stripped away, save for what is needed to complete the circuit board. The final stage of construction involves drilling holes and soldering components into place. Once the circuit boards are complete, the students can go about programming 24

THE PINGRY REVIEW

Computer Science teacher Josh Orndorff working with students.

them. Using a program called “Scratch,” students drag and drop pieces of code and fit them together like pieces of a puzzle. “One of the hard things about teaching people how to code is that you have to know the algorithm before you write the code,” Mr. Orndorff explains. “Scratch is perfect for middleschoolers because it provides a visual representation of datatypes—students can literally see how the lines of code fit together, and they start to notice these patterns on their own. Now they know how to program without having to deal with the intricacies of coding syntax, which can be difficult.”

Mr. Orndorff, who also teaches an Electrical Engineering summer course at the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, is thrilled that he was given the chance to combine two different, but related, disciplines in one course. “I usually teach one unit on hardware in my computer science classes. This class is all about hardware and software, and how they work together,” he says, adding, “Even if the students don’t end up making their own computer, they now know what goes into it, how circuits work. They appreciate the work that goes into circuitry and the manufacturing process. They’re simultaneously building two sets of skills: programming and hardware engineering, and recognizing the connection between the two.”

With the boards built and programmed, students were able to use the television setup in the newly-renovated computer lab to test and demonstrate the fruits of their efforts. Each student programmed a game that could be played using buttons soldered directly onto the circuit board, effectively working as a game and controller all in one. “Everything about this class is really hands-on,” Mr. Orndorff says. “I only stand at the board to go over the safety instructions. The students are practicing and using the skills on their own, and

A student soldering components into place for a circuit board.

Campaign Impact

Students “Acting Up” in Lower School’s Art Programs Drama teacher Alicia Harabin ’02 working with students in the modernized Drama Studio.

Faculty support for the success of the play came from tireless efforts by Alicia Harabin ’02, who also teaches drama at the Lower School. Every student passes through her classroom, too, but not in the capacity you might expect. “When I tell parents about the work my students do, they often seem surprised. Most of them expect the class to be performance based, when in reality it’s much different.”

Even before the school year began, Pingry’s Lower School on the Short Hills Campus boasted a fully-modernized campus. “Every square foot of this building has been renovated,” says Lower School Director Ted Corvino P ’94, ’97, ’02, “and all of the spaces have been designed with tremendous input from the teachers.” This is evident in the learning neighborhoods of the third- and fourth-grade students, the large, configurable class spaces, and the common areas built for comfort and study.

space to craft and paint set pieces for the fall musical, Honk! JR. Whether as set designers, actors, stage hands, or even assistant directors, Lower School students worked together to put on a fantastic performance to the acclaim of fellow students and parents alike. “The students are involved in every aspect of what it takes to put on a play, from beginning to end.”

Mrs. Harabin’s day-to-day class is much more than play rehearsal. Students focus on the foundations of drama: bodily awareness, stage presence, voice, confidence, improvisation, and collaboration. Rather than having lessons dictated, students negotiate with one another to solve problems and answer questions. “The students will surprise you,” Mrs. Harabin says. “Even more reserved students really come alive learning and practicing these skills. They’re doing much more than just learning how to put on a show. They’re learning life skills they can take with them into their other classes and beyond.”

The new Art Studio is a standout example of how just one modernized space can benefit the entire community. The room is utilized by students of all grade levels: “Every student in the School comes through this room at least once a week,” informs Mr. Corvino. The attached Maker’s Space provides a STEAM component and allows any teacher in the School to utilize those materials for projects or lessons. Earlier in the year, the Art Studio was reconfigured to give ample floor space—students used the abundant Visual arts teachers Russell Christian and Lindsay Baydin P ’26, ’29 in the modernized STEAM Art Studio.

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â&#x20AC;¢ pingry.org/plannedgiving

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The Ethics of Right vs. Right in John Hanly Lecture Bioethicist Paul Root Wolpe, Ph.D. is the Director of the Center for Ethics at Emory University, among many other credentials. He focused his lecture in November on ethics as a field of study. “What is ethics? How should we make ethical decisions—with the head or heart?” Dr. Wolpe asked the audience, using, as a starting point, a quote by Aristotle that refers to moral excellence being concerned with pleasure and pain. Dr. Wolpe then gave his own definition of ethics: “how we develop, assess, and express our values in the world.” To illustrate his point, Dr. Wolpe gave the audience a hypothetical to ponder: “Imagine you have been shipwrecked and swam to an island. There are no people, structures, or living things; the island is completely deserted. Could you do anything ‘unethical’ stranded on that island?” His first point became evident: ethics is about relationships, and doesn’t apply to one person alone. He then proceeded to dismantle a commonly-held assumption about ethics—that it is about choosing between what is right and what is wrong. “Reallife ethical decisions are almost always about right versus right, or a conflict between two desired values or principles,” Dr. Wolpe explained.

A pertinent example given by Dr. Wolpe was a dilemma involving the recent production of self-driving cars. These vehicles are already being programmed to make ethical decisions. In the event of an impending collision with pedestrians, whose safety should be prioritized—that of the passengers or that of the pedestrians? Many philosophers, who believe that emotion has no place in ethical decision making, might be pleased by an emotionless algorithm that determines ethical behavior, but Dr. Wolpe presented another view. –––––––––––––

“Very few decisions are about right versus wrong. Real-life ethical decisions are almost always about right versus right, or a conflict between two desired values or principles.”

Dr. Paul Root Wolpe

––––––––––––– Returning to Aristotle’s quotation, “People should do what is right not only because they ought to, but because they want to,” Dr. Wolpe said. Cultivating a personal moral virtue—adopting character traits that lead to moral behavior— is the key to ethical decision making. “Don’t focus so much on ‘what should I do?’ but, rather, ‘what kind of person should I be?’” Or, as Pingry’s Honor Code states, students should “understand and live by the standards of honorable behavior, which are essentially a matter of attitude and spirit rather than a system of rules and regulations.”

Dr. Wolpe referenced the ethical quandaries presented in this book.

Students and faculty alike left Hauser Auditorium contemplating the ethical quandaries that Dr. Wolpe had put before them. More important than coming up with an answer was the fact

Dr. Paul Root Wolpe.

that all in attendance were thinking about these problems, and considering the concept of ethics not as a simple tool to distinguish right from wrong, but as a pathway to thinking and learning. Before Dr. Wolpe departed the stage, he left the audience with a single word that easily summarizes the core of what he considers ethical behavior: compassion. Pingry students, who live the tenets of the Honor Code each day, know that no ethical framework can exist without it. Dr. Wolpe’s visit to Pingry included lunch with the Honor Board, Independent Research Team, and Journal Club. Their wide-ranging discussion touched on potential ethical conflicts between roles (such as friend versus boss); decision making at certain ages (based on brain development); and resolution of conflicts among groups with different priorities. ––––––––––––– Established in 1999 by a group of donors on the occasion of former headmaster John Hanly’s retirement, the John Hanly Lecture Series on Ethics and Morality celebrates Mr. Hanly’s commitment to teaching students and other members of the School community how to make tough decisions within an ethical framework. This endowed fund enables Pingry to bring a variety of speakers to campus to address the moral and ethical issues facing all of us in the 21st century. WINTER 2016-17

Pingry Students Commemorate Veterans Day

Miles LeAndre ’17 of the “Contemporary American Issues” class.

As the nation paused on November 11 to honor our veterans, Pingry students took time to pay tribute to the brave men and women who have fought to defend our country. The Lower School’s program included a silent procession of the flag, led by fourth- and fifth-grade representatives of the Student Council—this particular flag was given to the Lower School in October 2014 by Command Sergeant Major Thomas Clark, father of Alivia Clark ’22, who served multiple tours in the Middle East. The flag flew over his base camp in Qatar on September 11, 2014. The Student Council representatives also delivered remarks about the importance of Veterans Day, reflecting on the president’s annual ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery; the Korean War Memorial; members of the armed forces who are currently serving; The Star-Spangled Banner’s reference to the “the land of the free and the home of the brave”; and the fact that we can never fully repay our veterans, but we can salute and thank them. Lower School Director Ted Corvino P ’94, ’97, ’02 emphasized that Veterans Day is an occasion “to honor those who served and are serving…so that we can live in a land of freedom and opportunity.” He went further, though, to tell the students that we can “honor these men and women every day by making a difference and doing something nice for others.” 28

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In a Basking Ridge assembly, seniors who are taking the elective “Contemporary American Issues” described how Armistice Day (honoring those who fought in World War I) became Veterans Day (honoring everyone who has fought in the armed forces), as well as the difference between Memorial Day and Veterans Day. They then honored the 75th anniversary of the Japanese attack on the U.S. military base in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, by sharing stories of Pearl Harbor veterans:

Samuel Fuqua remained calm and rescued the wounded. He ignored gunfire from passing Japanese aircraft and led the efforts to evacuate his sinking ship. After realizing that the ship could not be saved, he directed that it be abandoned, but continued to remain on the quarterdeck and help his fellow soldiers find safety. He then helped commandeer a boat and took on heavy fire while picking up survivors from the waters. Fuqua earned the Medal of Honor.

- U.S. Army Air Corps pilots George Welch and Kenneth Taylor were the first American pilots to be airborne in the attack, and they shot down at least six Japanese fighters. Both received the Distinguished Service Cross, and Taylor received a Purple Heart.

- Radioman Glenn Lane was the only survivor known to be on two U.S. battleships during the attack. He was thrown overboard from the U.S.S. Arizona and treaded bloody and oilslick waters with little hope of survival. Finding a small barge, he managed to steer toward the U.S.S. Nevada in a desperate attempt to escape attack. He received a Purple Heart and other accolades.

- U.S. Navy sailor John Finn dragged a .30 caliber machine gun to an open area with a clear view of the sky, and continued firing for nearly two-anda-half hours. He suffered more than 20 bullet wounds, including one that incapacitated his left arm and another that broke his foot. He received the Medal of Honor. - U.S. Navy cook Doris Miller had been assigned to a ship’s galley and was not trained in heavy machine gun operation. But he reported himself for duty, loaded a .50 caliber antiaircraft machine gun, and fired until the ammunition ran out, after which he carried injured crew members to safety. He saved the lives of many who would have been lost and was the first African-American to receive the Navy Cross. - Amid bombing of the U.S.S. Arizona, U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander

“Pearl Harbor was both a tragedy and a test,” said Brandon Li ’17. “We lost over 2,400 people sworn to protect our country, and, yet, at the same time, from this we learned to not lose hope. We learned that we stand united as a proud nation, one that will not back down in the face of adversity. From the heroic acts seen in George Welch, Kenneth Taylor, John Finn, Doris Miller, Sam Fuqua, and Glenn Lane, we can see the same heroism our armed forces continue to demonstrate. Every day, but especially today, we should give thanks to all the veterans and current servicemen and women, at home and overseas, for what they do for us every day, protecting our freedom.” Lower School Student Council representatives.

Pingry Alumni/ae Who Served and Sacrificed

This list contains additional names that The Pingry Review received following the publication of the Winter 2015-16 issue. As we learn of more Pingry veterans, we will proudly add them to our records. WORLD WAR I Henry Bayard Clark ’11 WORLD WAR II Wallace P. Trapnell ’21 John R. Bates ’24 George L. Kinsey ’27 James Home Harris, Jr. ’29 Kendrick R. Wilson, Jr. ’30 Robert B. Gibby ’31 William E. Buckley ’32 Schuyler Crane ’32 George J. Morgan, Jr. ’32 A. Compton Vail ’32 H. Telfer Mook ’33 John K. Hanrahan ’34 Richard S. Tucker ’34 James R. Carringer, Jr. ’35 Clayton B. Jones, Jr. ’35 William H. Troeber ’35 Norbert A. Weldon ’35 Dexter Bowker ’36 Edward S. Nittoli ’36 William B. Sanderson, Sr. ’36 Prentice C. Weathers ’36 Arthur W. Clothier ’37 Frederick C. Hohnbaum ’37 Thomas F. Lowery ’37 Thomas B. Shrewsbury ’37 Robert E. Brenner ’38 H. Westcott Cunningham ’38 John S. Eldridge ’38 Stephen B. Gremmels ’38 F. Thomson Henshaw ’38 Orville B. Lamason ’38 Paul R. Sloane ’38 R. Stuart Ward ’38 William M. Bristol III ’39 J. Donald Findlay ’39 Robert L. Marcalus ’39 Donald B. Schnabel ’39 Robert A. Brauburger, Sr. ’40 William B. Kaufman ’40 David T. Nutt ’40 William Y. Wallace ’40 Roger C. Ward ’40 Stephen E. Wilson ’40 Nicholas H. Albano, Jr. ’41 John S. Anderegg, Jr. ’41 Robert L. Bundschuh ’41 William G. Critchlow, Jr. ’41 Wade B. Lewis, Jr. ’41 Lynn R. Pitcher ’41 John O. Stoddard ’41 Clark M. Whittemore, Jr. ’41 Hans H. Angermueller ’42 Leon J. Barkhorn, Jr. ’42 William W. Betteridge ’42 William G. Cameron, Jr. ’42 Richard English ’42 George W. Wilmot III ’42 Edmond Louis Garasche ’43 David E. Williams, Jr. ’43 E. Crane Woodruff ’43 Edwin E. Beach, Jr. ’44 Robert Ramsen Hogan ’44 Warren E. Hutchinson ’44 Richard Krementz, Jr. ’44 Donald C. White ’44 Thomas R. Cashmore ’45 John E. Clemence ’45

KOREAN WAR ERA Edwin S. Cramer ’36 Charles K. Rath ’36 William B. Simpson ’36 Robert T. Deming, Jr. ’40 Richard E. Turk ’42 William B. McGinty, Jr. ’43 Peter B. Sperry ’44 John C. McClain ’45 Walter W. Patten, Jr. ’45 Daniel M. Barton, Sr. ’46 Curtis B. Brooks ’46 Marshall R. Cassedy ’46 Robert L. Christensen ’46 Henry Bayard Clark, Jr. ’46 Richard R. Dailey ’46 Robert F. Danziger ’46 Charles H. Hayes, Jr. ’46 Edward T. Kenyon ’46 John M. Lummis, Jr. ’46 Walter D. Miller ’46 Joseph North, Jr. ’46 James B. Peden ’46 Albert L. Register III ’46 Philip N. Robertson ’46 Robert W. Rohn ’46 John R. Alexander, Jr. ’47 E. LeRoy Carey ’47 Frederic R. Colie, Jr. ’47 Drury W. Cooper III ’47 Colin M. Dillon ’47 S. Dawson Embree, Jr. ’47 J. Lloyd Harbeck, Jr. ’47 Richard H. Herold ’47 Elwood W. Phares II ’47 Peyton Miller Pitney ’47 Frederick W. Schmidt, Jr. ’47 Sefton Stallard ’47 Edward D. Thomas ’47 Edward M. Wallace, Jr. ’47 George E. Wendell ’47 Robert H. Westerfield ’47 John R. Whittemore ’47 Theodore C. Alley ’48 William H. Brawley, Jr. ’48 Harry G. Burks III ’48 Denison P. Diebolt ’48 Fredrick J. Gaus III ’48 Henry M. Hicks, Jr. ’48 David D. Hunter ’48 Gerald H. McGinley ’48 Noel S. Siegel ’48 John W. Thomas, Jr. ’48 H. James Toffey, Jr. ’48 Joshua J. Ward ’48 Joseph B. Bugliari ’49 Jeremy Gordon ’49 William F. Hanzl, Jr. ’49 T. Kennady Heston ’49 Peter B. Jones ’49 Peter J.M. King ’49 William T. Moore ’49 Stuart A. Truslow ’49 David S. Roberts, Jr. ’50 H. Duane St. John, Jr. ’50 Charles M. MacDonald ’51 VIETNAM WAR ERA Robert T. Deming, Jr. ’40 John R. Alexander, Jr. ’47 Donald B. Kaiserman ’51

William R. Ledder ’52 H. Franklin Bunn ’53 John J. Onnembo ’53 Stephen P. Reibel ’53 A. Mason Ahearn ’54 E. William Endter, Jr. ’54 Winthrop H. Hall ’54 Thomas C. Davis, Jr. ’55 Anthony W. DePaul, Jr. ’55 Richard C. Auerbach ’56 John T. English ’56 Mark Forrester, Jr. ’56 McClure Hall ’56 F. L. Hewitt III ’56 Robert O. Meyer ’56 Donald R. Pettit ’56 Frederick W. Schweizer ’56 John H. Crawford III ’57 Stuart J. Crow ’57 Lawrence A. Eggleston ’57 A. Harding Ganz ’57 Terry A. Johnston ’57 Robert D. Schweizer ’57 Eugene J. Shea ’57 Paul A. Baiter ’58 Burdette Bostwick ’58 Horace K. Corbin III ’58 Patrick C. Coughlan ’58 Kenneth G. Engler, Jr. ’58 Alan C. Hood, Jr. ’58 Peter Schutz ’58 Arthur D. Ackerman ’59 Robert R. Baldwin ’59 Bruce Brumfield ’59 A. Henry Counts, Jr. ’59 Philip Pierre Drujon ’59 * James I. Dunn ’59 Thomas C. Fleming ’59 Daniel B. Kellogg ’59 John C. Shea ’59 William T. Smith III ’59 P. Lea Talcott ’59 Stephen Wilkerson ’59 David C. Wilson ’59 J. Alan Brewster ’60 Lawrence A. Clayton ’60 Peter Coughlan ’60 James T. Egan, Jr. ’60 ** Everett G. Foster ’60 Frank J. Kaphan ’60 Paul D. Knoke ’60 John Manley ’60 Sterett R. Prevost III ’60 A. John Rush, Jr. ’60 Charles C. Stover III ’60 William L’E. Wertheimer ’60 Donald C. West ’60 Randall W. Adams ’61 Frederick W. Beinecke II ’61 James Chalmers, Jr. ’61 Richard L. Cornelius ’61 * Frederick I. Guyer ’61 Steven S. Hart ’61 Richard H. Hufnagel ’61 Richard C. Ill ’61 John S. Kerr ’61 Walter C. Klein, Jr. ’61 Douglas L. Leavens ’61 John H. Lockwood, Jr. ’61 James T. MacGregor ’61 H. F. Tino O’Brien, Jr. ’61 * Killed in the service of his country

Robert H. Popper, Jr. ’61 Douglas W. Rhett, Jr. ’61 Robert E. D. Roos ’61 W. Theodore Strauss III ’61 William T. Tilden IV ’61 Frank A. Ali III ’62 Richard D. Bates, Jr. ’62 John E. Brown ’62 Thomas C. Curtiss, Jr. ’62 John L. Geddes ’62 Patrick J. Haley ’62 Peter D. Hawkins ’62 Roger C. Herrmann ’62 Joel C. Labow ’62 Martin McLean ’62 David H. Neunert ’62 Robert W. Scott, Jr. ’62 Andrew H. Swain ’62 William A. Tansey III ’62 Richard E. Thomas II ’62 John C. Whitmarsh ’62 Charles B. Atwater, Jr. ’63 Gary L. Baum ’63 Jeffrey L. Belden ’63 Carter L. Colter ’63 Theodore S. Corwin, Jr. ’63 Harold W. Fullilove ’63 David Houston, Jr. ’63 Richard J. Jupa ’63 Richard B. Manley ’63 Duncan La Monte ’63 F. Bronson Van Wyck ’63 John D. Bates ’64 Leslie S. Buck ’64 Geoffrey M. Connor ’64 James L. Gruning ’64 Gregory D. Helsel ’64 Robert B. Ill ’64 Douglas W. Johnson ‘64 Richard C. Kjeldsen ’64 William F. Little III ’64 * Joseph C. Monier ’64 Barclay Morrison ’64 Bruce H. Morrison ’64 Edward T. Savage ’64 William B. Shepard, Jr. ’64 P. Douglas Smith ’64 Kenneth A. Strassner ’64 Charles S. Tracy, Jr. ’64 Carl Van Duyne ’64 Robert M. Weissman ’64 Russell R. Barrett III ’65 Michael J. DePaul ’65 * Donald R. Dixon ’65 John L. Griesemer ’65 James S. Hecox ’65 Harold W. Lord, Jr. ’65 Stephan F. Newhouse ’65 Thomas E. Ulrich ’65 D. William Baker, Jr. ’66 Burchard M. Hazen, Jr. ’66 Erik B. J. Roos, Jr. ’66 Richard B. Shepard ‘66 William S. Stevens ’66 James D. Bates ’67 John C. Zoephel ’69 William D. Bruen, Jr. ’70 George F. Gabb ’71

OTHER ALUMNI/AE AND FACULTY WHO HAVE SERVED OR ARE SERVING IN THE ARMED FORCES William F. Halsey, Jr. ’00 Frederick M. Trapnell ’17 Nicholas C. English ’29 Cornelius Ackerson ’31 William S. Beinecke ’31 Russell R. Barrett, Jr. ’33 Charles C. Pineo, Jr. ’33 Harold L. Crane, Jr. ’36 Macdonald Halsey ’36 Charles E. Keppler ’37 George Knauer, Jr. ’37 David B. Ressler ’37 John J. Blumberg ’38 James St. John Hughes ’38 Wilfred W. Weppler ’38 Thomas C. Wickenden ’38 Edward W. Cissel ’39 Ronald K. MacMaster, Jr. ’39 William C. Schmidt ’39 Martin J. Corcoran, Jr. ’40 Herbert S. Chase, Jr. ’41 Gerald M. Driscoll ’41 Richard L. Hagadorn ’41 Samuel Martin ’41 Myles C. Morrison, Jr. ’41 Nelson F. Newcomb ’43 Charles H. Burkman ’44 Sherman C. Class ’44 Vincent P. Kuhn, Sr. ’44 Donald W. Roth ’44 Francis O. Clark ’45 Albert K. Doggett ’45 Eugene M. Haring ’45 Henry H. Hoyt, Jr. ’45 Richard L. McClelland ’45 Richard McManus ’45 Robert H. Nutt ’45 Alfred S. Pfeil, Jr. ’45 Marshall R. Cassedy, Sr. ’46 Sigurd F. Emerson ’46 James G. Waddell ’46 David M. Baldwin ’47 Galbraith M. Crump ’47 Frank W. DiPillo ’47 Robert Engisch ’47 Robert W. Townley ’47 Jack Walker ’47 Robert N. Chamberlin ’48 George J. Coughlin ’48 William R. Hillbrant ’48 Richard W. Ley ’48 Kimball Marsh ’48 Anatol H. Oleynick ’48 Evan R. Robinson ’48 Robert N. Schutz ’48 Frederick D. Walters ’48 Roger E. Worden ’48 Richard A. Hartkopf ’49 Warren A. Radcliffe ’49 H. Paul Reynolds ’49 Robert B. Rogers ’49 John Strachan ’49 Thomas T. Tucker ’49 Raymond H. Welsh ’49 Robert J. Blahut ’50 Edward W. Corson ’50

Charles P. Day, Jr. ’50 Charles E. McKenney ’50 Roger W. Hill, Jr. ’51 James L. Horning ’51 Herbert H. Moser ’51 Peter Pattison ’51 Frederick W. Rohrs ’51 Robert G. Turton ’51 Miller A. Bugliari ’52 Richard M. Corbet ’52 John L. M. DeCesare ’52 Jay C. Harbeck ’52 Warren S. Kimber, Jr. ’52 Ronald H. Post ’52 Peter Van Leight ’52 Roger K. Schmidt ’52 Frank K. Cameron ’53 Lewis F. Moody III ’53 Philip L. Scrudato ’53 Albert C. Lesneski ’54 Jean-Paul Bert ’55 Robert J. Shippee ’56 Cyrus P. Smith ’56 Peter J. Tutulis ’56 Nils O. Andersen ’58 John R. Brandeis, Jr. ’58 Joseph S. Cornell, Jr. ’58 Horace K. Corbin III ’58 John K. Turpin ’62 Dale Christensen ’63 Thomas H. Clynes, Jr. ’63 David T. Houston, Jr. ’63 Walter D. Long ’63 Christopher G. Westcott ’63 Richard E. Strassner ’65 Eugene R. Mancini ’66 Richard B. Shepard ’66 William S. Stevens ’66 Charles W. Sprague ’67 John Stibravy ’68 Everett Newcomb ’69 Gates W. Parker ’71 Joseph Costabile ’72 Ralph L. Warren ’72 Paul E. Dormont ’73 Thomas W. Thompson, Jr. ’75 Theodore T. Baldwin ’81 Paul McAdams ’84 J. Antonelli ’88 James Luke ’88 William Tansey ’89 Colin Cameron ’90 David Baird ’92 Emily Yorke ’93 Moses Bloom ’96 Andrew Moan ’96 Karlheinz Peter ’96 Rebekah Murphy ’98 Jason Mortimer ’00 Naotomo Gibson ’03 John F. Kolb ’07 Michael Fernando ’09 Antoine duBourg John Magadini William J. Reichle Philip M. Maroney Victor Nazario Albert C. Romano Ernest C. Shawcross Peter S. Thomson Richard C. Weiler

** Listed as missing in action WINTER 2016-17

Growth Mindset Explored at the Lower School If you believe that intelligence and ability are not fixed, but can be developed through dedication and hard work, you have a “growth mindset.” Pingry advocates for this trait in all students and has also worked to instill it in faculty and staff through workshops and reading of Dr. Carol S. Dweck’s Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. At a Lower School PSPA Coffee in January, parents learned how Pingry helps K-5 students develop a growth mindset. Here are highlights:

• Teachers expect academic excellence, but they also embrace confusion, frustration, and mistakes. From the highs and lows, students learn grit (problem solving) and perseverance.

• Students also need “emotional grit,” the ability to manage emotions.

New Staff Camille Bonds

Digital Communications Specialist

Mrs. Bonds is overseeing maintenance of the School’s website, social media channels, online calendar, photography, videography, broadcast emails, and other digital communications. Most recently, Mrs. Bonds served as Marketing Manager of MY M&M’s for Mars, Inc. Prior to that, she worked in marketing for Irving Street Rep., including as Lead Account Executive and MarCom Director for the firm’s McDonald’s account. Mrs. Bonds earned a B.B.A. in Marketing at Howard University and received a Digital Marketing Certificate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Laura Der

Major Gifts Officer

Ms. Der is helping Pingry continue the fundraising momentum from the Blueprint for the Future Campaign. She previously worked as Assistant Director of Development for the Big Green Scholarship Foundation at Marshall University. Ms. Der attended Marshall as a Division I volleyball player, graduating summa cum laude with a 30

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• “Success” is not measured only by

performance on tests. Teachers also evaluate students on how well they collaborate with each other, and how well they problem solve. Teachers encourage students to go beyond their comfort zones so they can reach their full potential. Non-cognitive skills, such as empathy and time management, are also taught. Students should develop a robust skill set that includes grit, social/emotional skills, and academic skills (Pingry spreads these skills through all three divisions via the Decisions co-curricular at the Lower School, taught by Ms. Perlow, Emotional Intelligence in Grade 6, co-taught by Dr. Johns, and Stress Management in the Upper School).

• •

Lower School Social Worker Julie Perlow, Assistant Lower School Director Dr. Sandy Lizaire-Duff, and Middle and Lower School Counselor Dr. Alyssa Johns at the PSPA Coffee.

B.A. in Advertising. She is pursuing a master’s degree in Integrated Marketing Communications at West Virginia University.

Mary Drabich

Mike Saraceno

Ms. Drabich is serving as a fitness resource, primarily for faculty and staff, in the Miller A. Bugliari ’52 Athletics Center. She will continue in her roles as sixth-grade P.E. teacher and assistant coach for varsity field hockey. A former Division I athlete, Ms. Drabich is studying to become a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist® through the National Strength and Conditioning Association.

Assistant Director of Strength and Conditioning

Mr. Saraceno joined Pingry to assist with strength and conditioning efforts in the Miller A. Bugliari ’52 Athletics Center. Most recently, he served as Director of Strength and Conditioning for Olympic Sports at Villanova University, responsible for the physical preparation of over 500 varsity student-athletes. He was also a member of the Sports Performance Council, which discussed topics such as nutrition, sports psychology, and injury prevention. He received a B.S. in Exercise Science with a concentration in Exercise Physiology from William Paterson University.

Staff in New Roles Judy Brown Associate Director of Donor Relations & Stewardship

Ms. Brown has been a member of Pingry’s Office of Institutional Advancement for four years, most recently as Campaign Manager for the public phase of the Blueprint for the Future Campaign, and, before that, as Associate Director of Alumni Relations & Annual Giving.

Morning Wellness Coordinator and Auxiliary Programs Assistant

Cherilyn Reynolds

College Counselor and Coordinator*

Mrs. Reynolds is overseeing a small group of counselees while coordinating the logistics of everything from college visits to college applications and managing the operations of the College Counseling Office. She brings to College Counseling her experiences with the admission process, having worked for six years as a college admissions officer, most recently as Senior Assistant Director of Admissions at Rider University. Prior to joining College Counseling, Mrs. Reynolds spent two years as Web and Social Media Strategist for Pingry’s Communications Office. * Amy Cooperman ’90 has transitioned into a full-time counseling position and will oversee a group of 32 Pingry juniors.

Writers in the Making

Fifteen fourth-grade students file into a bright classroom after recess, open their Chromebooks to a fresh page, and prepare to write. In the next 50 minutes, these 10-year-olds will be asked to read and analyze Ernest Hemingway, articulate their imaginations, and manipulate their thoughts on paper (or, as it were, a screen). They are writers in the making, and their new writing teacher Dana Sherman is nurturing their development. While reading and writing are a focus of all Lower School teachers, a small cadre of language arts teachers work with fourth- and fifth-grade students to improve their reading, writing, and comprehension skills: Grade 4 reading teacher Pat Casey, fourth- and fifthgrade Literacy Specialist Dara Polera, Grade 5 language arts teacher Dr. Joan Pearlman P ’89, ’92, ’96, and recentlyretired Carolyn Gibson P ’03, who served as Lower School Assistant Director and taught a section of Grade 5 language arts for nearly a decade. New to the Short Hills community this year, Mrs. Sherman is the School’s first dedicated writing teacher. In the past, the teaching of writing to fourth- and fifth-grade students was included in their language arts class time, but the School felt it was important to dedicate more class time to the art of writing and its many genres. “Mrs. Gibson, a wonderful writer and teacher, introduced a writing class to fifth graders, and the response from the students was extremely positive,” says Lower School Director Ted Corvino

P ’94, ’97, ’02. “As a result, we wanted to continue the program in fifth grade and expand it to include the fourth-grade students as well. With Mrs. Gibson’s recent retirement, we were thrilled to have someone like Mrs. Sherman join our staff and continue our focus on the writing process. She brings a tremendous amount of knowledge, passion, and teaching experience to our community.” Over her 15-year career in education, Mrs. Sherman has worked with a range of age groups and classes, from Middle School creative writing to AP English, but Grades 4 and 5 are a new cohort for her. Not even three months into the school year, she was quite impressed with how the students articulated and delivered their ideas. “Pingry kids are prolific readers,” she observes, “and that is so helpful to their writing.” Which is why not one of the 15 students in the class batted an eye when a paragraph from Ernest Hemingway’s short story “Hills Like White Elephants” was distributed. Mrs. Sherman asked them to read the paragraph and share their impres-

sions of his writing. She then asked them to underline every prepositional phrase they could find, and circle the object of the preposition. An outsider may have thought a grammar class was underway, but careful reading and an understanding of different writing styles are all part of Mrs. Sherman’s approach. It is also why she sees collaboration with her fellow language arts teachers as key to her own effectiveness. For example, her objectives, which she developed with Mrs. Polera’s assistance, are straightforward: build skills that help kids to be lifelong writers—teach them how to develop a story, understand conflict, create a narrative arc, construct dialogue, be mindful of grammatical issues, flesh out details, persuade, organize, and think. All these skills, Mrs. Sherman points out, are transferable to different types of writing. “It’s such a privilege to teach writing to children because you get access into their minds and hearts and imaginations. It’s a window into their world, their struggles, and how they work to manipulate language at such an early age to describe it all,” she remarks. “I really want to help the students see themselves as writers, as capable, knowing that—no matter what writing assignment they’re challenged with in the future—they’ll be able to take it on. Ideally, I want to give them an appreciation for writing, a deeper understanding of the process and the power of language.” WINTER 2016-17

Can Pingry Teach Emotional Intelligence? Attend a Middle School Morning Meeting and you will often hear Dean of Students Mr. Barry Fulton calling out a list of names of students who have acted honorably —picking up trash in the Commons after Homework Club, without being asked; opening the door for fellow students; or returning a lost item to a student’s mailbox. Responsibility, trustworthiness, personal integrity, and concern for others are all virtues espoused by Pingry’s Honor Code. They can even be found in the School’s Mission Statement. But, is Pingry really teaching these skills? If not, how can we teach them? Moreover, how can we be sure we’re teaching them effectively? Enter Eva Ostrowsky, sixth-grade history teacher and Middle School Dean for Student Culture. For two years, since returning to Pingry from an 18-month sabbatical at Columbia University, where she earned a master’s degree in Social Work, she has been working to answer these questions. Like many independent schools, Pingry places great importance on “non-cognitive” or character skills. But, unlike traditional school subjects, no straightforward approach exists for teaching them. Mrs. Ostrowsky, who is also Assistant to the Chair of Pingry’s Diversity & Inclusion Department, is trying to change that—or, at least, initiate a conversation so that faculty begin to think about teaching respect in much the same way they teach other subjects. Her work is part of a larger collision of disciplines in recent years: At the same time that the field of education is placing increasing emphasis on character development, or “emotional intelligence,” neuroscience research over the last decade has proven that, contrary to the notion that the brain is fixed with specific traits, it can actually grow and change over our lifetime. “I grew up thinking either you are a curious kid or you are not. You are resilient or you are not,” Mrs. Ostrowsky says. “But research is telling us now that you can train your brain to become more curious, more resilient. And that’s where this explosion in character education has come from.” Consider that children today are often more comfortable texting than 32

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conversing face-to-face, and the significance of developing strong interpersonal and character skills in students is only magnified. This notion of “brain change” dovetails nicely with recent professional development training that Pingry faculty and staff received on the benefits of a “growth mindset” (see Mrs. Ostrowsky’s book recommendation by Dr. Carol S. Dweck on page 33). In adults and children alike, it seems, hard work and dedication can lead to improvement in all sorts of seemingly innate abilities; our traits—whether we’re naturally curious,

Eva Ostrowsky, sixth-grade history teacher, Middle School Dean for Student Culture, and Assistant to the Chair of the Diversity & Inclusion Department.

effortless linguists, or imperfect math minds—are far from fixed. Mrs. Ostrowsky readily acknowledges that the importance of character skills in education is not revelatory. Teachers have been doing this work forever, she says. What is different now is the understanding that educators need to be more explicit. “As a teacher, I often have my kids work in groups. But I never used to ask them how they felt about it.

I thought I was teaching them teamwork by simply grouping them into teams, but research is telling us that we have to talk about it in the classroom—name it, process it. Could you imagine if I just assumed that my students were learning how to write without checking in to see where they were with their essays? That would be unheard of. When it comes to emotional intelligence, we need to be similarly intentional.” –––––––––––––

“Research is telling us now that you can train your brain to become more curious, more resilient.”

Eva Ostrowsky

––––––––––––– So, last year she launched a pilot group of 11 volunteer Middle School faculty, asking them to consider how emotional intelligence should fit into the larger curriculum. To do so, the group looked at Pingry’s Mission Statement, the outcomes document from the School’s recent accreditation process, the Honor Code, and the Blueprint for the Future Campaign priorities. They then identified eight skills that they feel Pingry students should be learning, and that fellow faculty members should aim to teach: ethics, empathy, resilience, responsibility, teamwork, time management, creativity, and curiosity. Identifying these eight core character skills is one thing; teaching them is quite another, Mrs. Ostrowsky admits. “We labeled these skills as important, but we do not yet have the research to tell us how to teach them or whether we’re teaching them effectively,” she says. “Right now, it’s a matter of giving teachers different ways to think about the skills and encouraging them to experiment.” Last year, in tandem with the pilot group, she initiated a Critical Friends Group to do just that. Interested faculty gather to process a class lesson—one that incorporates a character skill—before introducing it to their class. Latin teacher Margaret Kelleher ’01, for example, wants to expose her students to sight reading. They won’t

recognize any of the words, but, as they work together in groups, she wants to see how they will figure it out—a lesson in resilience and teamwork. Similarly, English teacher Graig Peterson is incorporating empathy into his instruction of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. By empowering students with choice in their artistic endeavors and having them ask questions of one another’s work, art teacher Jane Kunzman prioritizes curiosity and creativity. Seventh-grade science teacher Debra Tambor also highlights curiosity and creative problem solving when she teaches students about the Human Genome Project. As Mrs. Ostrowsky emphasizes, these are all lessons that may well have taken place before emotional intelligence became a buzzword in education. The difference is that time is being set aside in class to debrief—how did you feel working with your group? When you encountered a problem you couldn’t solve, how did you handle it? Was there a particular character skill that felt difficult for you? This last part—identifying challenges in a certain area—can be tough for Pingry students, Mrs. Ostrowsky says. But that’s okay. “You’re supposed to have strengths and areas where you can improve, as you do in any subject,” Mrs. Ostrowsky says. “The idea is that our kids are growing, learning, and developing, and we can highlight all of that through emotional intelligence skills.” With any new skill set in education comes the need to assess how effectively it is being taught. How well are Pingry kids learning to be resilient? For the last four years, Middle School students have taken the Mission Skills Assessment (MSA), a tool by which to measure their emotional intelligence “IQ,” as it were. Like the ERBs, academic grades, advisor and teacher comments, and student

self-assessments prior to parent-teacher conferences, the MSA is one of many tools that the Middle School uses to gauge student progress. The goal is to provide teachers with a baseline by which to understand how well they are building character in their classes. But children aren’t always reliable selfevaluators, and extrapolating meaningful take-aways from the data is arduous. Quantifying “soft skills,” it seems, is imprecise at best. In addition to data mining, a big part of Mrs. Ostrowsky’s initiative in the Middle School over the last two years has been to work with the Enrollment Management Association (EMA), which puts out the MSA, to try to improve the effectiveness of the assessment. One of the most beneficial aspects of administering the MSA, she is quick to add, is Pingry’s partnership with other independent schools across the country who also use it. Mrs. Ostrowsky attends the MSA’s annual conference, during which a rich community of educators gathers to share ideas. Administrators, program directors, and teachers have all been more than willing to share what they have learned. Assessing and measuring for character skill are always going to be a challenge, she feels, but she also thinks that’s alright. “The important thing is that schools across the nation are really trying to figure this out. There is a great deal of excitement around the work, and that is really wonderful,” she says. As Pingry looks to do more to cultivate character development among its students, Mrs. Ostrowsky imagines a day when learning empathy is every bit as natural as learning fractions…when understanding resilience is as central to a teacher’s lesson plans as mastering verb conjugation…when, during Morning Meetings, Dean Fulton reads out an even longer list of names.

Mrs. Ostrowsky Recommends . . . Books by Martin Seligman, Ph.D., considered the father of “Positive Psychology”: Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, by Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D. The Road to Character, by David Brooks Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, by Daniel Goleman

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Alzheimer’s Research Leads to Siemens Honor research and offered hands-on experiences, contributing to my appreciation of experimental science,” she says. Now, motivated by another family connection, Jessica’s research of Alzheimer’s disease earned her a semifinalist distinction in the 2016 Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology, which took place last fall. She is one of 19 semifinalists from New Jersey.

Jessica Li ’18.

Growing up in a home filled with scientific books and journals that complemented her father’s career as a physician and her mother’s work in medical research, Jessica Li ’18 naturally developed a love of science. “I learned as much as I could by reading, and then Pingry introduced me to scientific

The Siemens Competition, established by the Siemens Foundation in 1999, is the nation’s premier research competition for high school students. More than 400 semifinalists were selected from 1,600 students who submitted individual and team projects (juniors work in teams). With Jessica’s selection as a semifinalist, Pingry’s research program continues its notable success in this competition: semifinalists for eight consecutive years, making Pingry the only New Jersey school with this distinction (specifically, Pingry has had 12 semifinalists and one regional finalist over that time period).

A member of Pingry’s Independent Research Team (iRT) since her sophomore year, Jessica has been studying Alzheimer’s disease since last summer because of how it affected her greatuncle. “It was saddening to see the havoc the disease had wreaked on my great-uncle’s mind,” she says. Her project, for which she led a three-student team at The State University of New York (SUNY Old Westbury) last summer, examined how Alzheimer’s disease might be accelerated by exposure to a chemical found in pesticides (lambda-cyhalothrin, an insecticide registered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency). According to the project’s executive summary, “This study shows that lambda-cyhalothrin…may aid the progression of Alzheimer’s disease and may need to be reevaluated for commercial use.” Jessica received guidance in her work from a professor of neuroscience at SUNY.

The 2017 Pingry Science Research Exhibit The Pingry community is invited to attend an interactive event that showcases our students’ research projects. All research groups will be present. Alumni and parents in the science and research fields who are interested in judging or reviewing AP Biology research projects at the exhibit, or who would like to become involved in the research program (by collaborating on a project, speaking to students, or offering summer experiences) are encouraged to contact Dr. Morgan D’Ausilio in the Science Department at mdausilio@pingry. org or 908-647-5555, ext. 1635.

Sunday, April 9, 2017 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Basking Ridge Campus

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Talents of Art Faculty on Display

Selections from the 2017 Art Faculty Exhibit in the Hostetter Arts Center Gallery

Top: Rebecca Sullivan’s Blue Wilderness. Left and bottom left: Paintings by Peter Delman P ’97, P ’98 that depict a dramatic narrative of humans interacting with the natural world. Bottom center and right: Jennifer Mack-Watkins illustrates how society defines femininity. Above: Two panels out of a series of six by Russell Christian.

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Al Romano’s Dramatic Influence on Pingry “It’s definitely what I was meant to do.” After much speculation, taking into account the other directors he has observed in college and in other independent schools, and the drama courses he took in college and for professional growth, Drama Department Chair Al Romano is unsure of exactly how he acquired his passion, expertise, and instincts for drama. But he realizes that drama is his calling, hence the above statement. His love of theater and working with characters and stories can be traced to his childhood, when he ran puppet shows in his neighborhood. He even directed A Christmas Carol when he was an eighth-grade student. And for the past 29 years, Pingry, and specifically its drama program, has been benefiting tremendously from his sense of purpose. A complete portrait of Mr. Romano’s dramatic impact on Pingry—especially so, considering that Pingry’s drama program as we know it today did not exist before he joined the faculty—includes 36

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“When little kids play, they imagine that things exist. A theater director’s job is to reignite the ability to imagine. It’s genetic in all of us.”

Al Romano

––––––––––––– two factors that led to Mr. Romano’s tenure: mentorship at Trinity School in Manhattan, and the appointment of John Hanly as Pingry’s 13th headmaster. Regarding the first: Mr. Romano (an English major and theater minor at Villanova University) was an English teacher at Trinity with a burning desire to lead its drama program. Trinity nurtured his talents by providing tuition support for courses in creative dramatics, acting, and directing at Kean College; allowing him to teach the

freshman and sophomore drama classes when the full-time theater teacher left unexpectedly; and supporting his first efforts at directing plays. As to the second, Mr. Hanly got to know Mr. Romano while an administrator at Trinity. When Mr. Hanly joined Pingry in 1987 and wanted to start a drama program as part of his emphasis on the arts, he reconnected with Mr. Romano, eagerly hiring him. Scene change! “There has been a lot of serendipity in my life,” Mr. Romano says. “Trinity understood what I wanted to do and took a chance on me. John Hanly appreciated drama and came to Pingry, which had no drama program. And John took the approach that, to build a program, you must wait for growth. You can’t wait for students to sign up for an unknown. He said, ‘If you offer a class and even one student signs up for it, run the class.’” Over the years, success resulted from a variety of factors: word-of-mouth recommendations among students; Mr. Romano taking the initiative to enlist

A “Divine” First Year

support from within Pingry, such as having the Buttondowns sing in the musicals and asking English teachers to recommend students who read plays in their classes well; the additions of Middle School drama courses; the Attic Theater as an additional, specialty venue (used for Drama IV and the Senior Play); access to Macrae Theater in the Hostetter Arts Center (home to Drama I, II, and III and all-school productions); and the hiring of fellow drama teachers Patricia Wheeler, Stephanie Romankow, and Jane Asch P ’04. With Mr. Romano’s shepherding, Pingry went from having no official drama program and sporadic productions to offering drama in the Lower School, three Middle School courses, and five Upper School courses; DramaFest as an extracurricular drama offering; and a yearly schedule of staged productions across all three divisions. The Fall Play, Winter Musical, Middle School Musical, and Senior Play are frequently performed for sold-out audiences. And what about the success of the drama students themselves? Many Pingry alumni are working professionally as actors, directors, costume designers, set designers, and production assistants, among other jobs. “But the larger impact,” he says, “is that kids who take drama bring those skills into whatever they do—by really listening, by being present with the people they’re working with, by reading people. Have we graduated artists? Yes, we have, and that is amazing, and that’s why Pingry’s [Achievement in the Arts] Award is really important, to recognize those people

who started in the arts here and have substantial national and international careers. We are proud of their careers, but we don’t do arts to create artists— we do arts to create interesting people.” It’s that kind of perspective that has made Mr. Romano more than a Drama Department Chair and teacher. Indeed, he shapes Pingry culture as an advocate for the arts. Day-to-day duties are many: he oversees the drama curriculum, teaches three drama classes and a public speaking elective, observes his colleagues when they teach, directs the Fall Play and Senior Play (he selects both plays based on students’ acting strengths, themes that he wants to contribute to the School’s culture, and a rotation of playwrights), and assists with other annual staged productions (lighting for the Winter Musical and tech for the Middle School Play). Mr. Romano even plays arts advocate in his advisory group, challenging his advisees—and their entire grade—to join teams at Pingry, and to think more broadly about team membership, expanding their view of teams as only athletic. Indeed, Mr. Romano makes a compelling argument for the rewards of team membership of any kind, including a speech and debate club, an a cappella group, or a set design crew. He also increases the visibility of the arts by collaborating with other department chairs and speaking at parent and Admission events, and he presented to the Pingry Alumni Association Board as part of the Alumni Office’s effort to connect the PAA with the student body and faculty (in this case, giving the PAA

Students performed The Diviners (pictured here from The Pingry Record, December 1988), Pippin, and A Winter’s Tale during Mr. Romano’s first year at Pingry, the 1988-89 school year. He chose The Diviners as his first Pingry show because of its simple staging needs and a small cast of three men, plus a boy for the lead role. Miguel Gutierrez ’89 played one of the male roles, and Mr. Romano found April Tinari ’90 (daughter of then-Lower School teacher Barbara Tinari P ’90, ’92, ’92) for the lead—in this case, it became a “pants role” (a male character played by a female). The Buttondowns lent their support for Pippin, and Mr. Romano recruited his drama students for A Winter’s Tale, in which Mr. Gutierrez played the lead.

Al Romano’s Favorite Plays “Powerful human stories with the ‘wow’ factor” Angels in America Equus The Grapes of Wrath Nicholas Nickleby War Horse

a closer look at the philosophy and pedagogy of the drama program). “We need creative thinkers,” Mr. Romano says. “Drama has no content. We are teaching skills. We are teaching habits of mind. The arts are not data-driven. One of my favorite quotes is from [arts education professor] Elliot Eisner, who spoke about going beyond the ‘merely measurable.’ The arts are like Pingry’s Honor Code—not measurable, yet a significant part of what we think makes the School special.” WINTER 2016-17

In His Own Words: Daniel Hutt ’17 Daniel Hutt ’17, co-founder of the Pingry Middle School Stock Market Club, is taking his interest in investing a step further. In the summer of 2015, he was one of eight founding members—and one of only two high school students in the group—of a new investment fund, Thessalus Capital Management, which has an impressive $200,000 under management. When former Pingrian Raj Bagaria ’17, who worked with Daniel to co-found the Middle School Stock Market Club, joined forces with the nascent Thessalus, he recommended Daniel to its other co-founders, two of whom are Pingry alumni— Cameron Kirdzik ’13 and Ed Xiao ’12. In short order, the team invited Daniel to join them. Thessalus is run by a team of approximately 20 students from Ivy League colleges, including Princeton, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania. Daniel works as a mediator between investors and the management group, communicating the investors’ needs to his team, and assembling “pitch decks” that explain to investors what stocks the fund is looking to buy and why. He has also raised capital for the fund and helps to market the company. A 2015 Business Today article about the company noted, “Part of what makes Thessalus unique from other investment funds is that it features a diverse management team from top schools, whose members are also engaged in mentoring talented high school students about investment strategies.” First inspired by a sixth-grade Financial Literacy class taught by former Pingry faculty member Tony Garcia P ’06, ’10, and drawing on investment strategies he developed as a member of the Middle School Stock Market Club, the senior has found his niche in the new company. “Daniel is an important part of the team because he brings unique insight about short-selling into our overall strategy of long-short equity hedging,” said Thessalus’ Founding Partner Mitchell Ng, who graduated from Princeton in 2016. Mr. Ng had the idea for the fund from the time he was in high school, but it wasn’t until college that he leveraged his connections to pull together a team of people, like Daniel, whom he felt were smart and reliable, and able to expand the fund by finding investors at their respective schools. Read on to learn more about Thessalus, in Daniel’s own words.

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“Student-run investment funds are relatively rare, due to the significant challenge of college or high school students convincing potential donors that they will perform better than the market-accredited professional investors with years of experience on Wall Street. Only the most talented and dynamic student founders, or funds with the most innovative strategies, manage to raise significant funds. This makes Thessalus something of a rarity. In managing to raise $150,000 within the first three months of its founding, Thessalus is already in the company of Dorm Room Fund, the largest student investment fund in the country, which has raised $500,000 since its founding by Princeton students six years ago. Now that Thessalus is off the ground, we aim to have seven-figure valuation within one to two years. The main sectors of the market that Thessalus focuses on are the technology, media, telecommunications (known as “TMT”), and healthcare industries (hence its name—Thessalus, an ancient Greek physician, was Hippocrates’ son), but the company will also cover the energy and consumer product industries. We want to attempt a multifaceted investment strategy, where we can begin to invest in low-volatility securities in order to have more liquidity to maximize investors’ earnings. Our investment focus is on mid/large market cap stocks ($300-400 million market cap) and exchange-traded funds. After the first few quarters, if the strategy proves effective, the members of Thessalus will increase the portfolio’s risk by incorporating long/short equity hedging strategies. SEC regulations prevent us from advertising in order to attract investors, so, for now, we are using personal connections, but we also make sure that the investors we bring in can contribute a different angle; it’s not about the amount of money they give, but, rather, the experience that they can give us. To attract investors, we have primarily relied on personal contacts who understand how much time and effort we are putting into this endeavor, and are probably reassured by the knowledge that we have help from some incredible faculty from schools such as Princeton and NYU Stern, as well as some other advisors, including the president of a specialist healthcare investment bank, a life science investor, a partner from Bioadvance, and the founder and CEO of a fund called HedgeSPA. With such experienced leadership, potential investors are more likely to invest into the hands of bright Ivy League students. With big goals and a clear vision for achieving them, we definitely have our work cut out for us. If you are interested in learning more about Thessalus, please email me at dhutt2017@pingry.org.”

“Student-run investment funds are relatively rare... Only the most talented and dynamic student founders, or funds with the most innovative strategies, manage to raise significant funds. This makes Thessalus something of a rarity.”

Daniel Hutt ’17

Middle School Students Crush Gender Stereotypes in Sports “Line of scrimmage,” “QB,” and “fourth down” aren’t the vernacular of most sixth-grade girls. But these are sixthgrade Pingry girls, for whom crushing gender stereotypes, whether on the field or in the classroom, is all in a day’s work. Sixth-grade girls playing football is another way in which the School educates its students to challenge a variety of cultural norms. So, on an unseasonably warm, sunny afternoon on The John Taylor Babbitt ’07 Memorial Field, girls fanned over the green turf. Separated into groups of four—center, quarterback, running back, and receiver—they practiced the snap, hand-offs, and pass plays. Sixth-grade P.E. staff, including Nancy Romano P ’19, Mary Drabich, and Director of Middle School Athletics Gerry Vanasse P ’14, ’20, coached the groups through their offensive and defensive formations, instructing the running backs on how to keep a strong hold on the ball.

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“Pingry is very focused on dissolving gender lines... so we thought, ‘Why not apply that same consideration to sixth-grade P.E.’”

Gerry Vanasse P ’14, ’20

New for the girls this year, football is just one unit in the sixth-grade P.E. curriculum, which aims to expose students to a wide array of sports. In Grades 7 and 8, they are able to hone their interests and play on an interscholastic team.

an occasional football game with her brothers, said that she, too, was enjoying learning more about the fundamentals of the game with her female peers.

Maddie Humphreys ’23, who looks forward to playing field hockey for Pingry next year, was, at the moment, assuming the role of quarterback. She liked learning football, enjoying the break from traditionally female sports. Her teammate Gabriella Gibson ’23, a figure skater and tennis player, who enjoys

Pingry girls aren’t the only ones flexing their muscles in this “sport swap.” The following day, when the boys met for P.E., they tried field hockey for the first time. “It was really fun and different to learn field hockey,” says Matthew Marsico ’23. “Going in to the new unit, I thought it was just a sport for girls,

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Under the guidance of sixth-grade P.E. teacher Nancy Romano P ’19, girls practicing their football skills.

but it’s actually not.” While field hockey is dominated by girls at the high school level, the U.S. does have a men’s national team, a fact that impressed the boys. The idea for this “sport swap” arose, in part, when Middle School football coach Mike Webster P ’24, ’27, ’27 mentioned that sixth-grade girls should have the opportunity to learn football. Then, at the 2015 People of Color Conference, the Chair of Pingry’s Diversity & Inclusion Department, Dr. Diana Artis P ’09, ’16, and Mr. Vanasse had a similar conversation. “Pingry is very focused on dissolving gender lines and addressing all issues of diversity, so we thought, ‘Why not apply that same consideration to sixth-grade P.E.,’” Mr. Vanasse explains. Four girls from Grades 7 and 8 are already on Big Blue’s Middle School wrestling team, two play on the coed ice hockey team, and four play on the coed water polo team. Clearly, Pingry girls are already breaking boundaries in athletics—curricularly speaking, the School just had to catch up. “I was thrilled when Mr. Vanasse shared the news about our attempts to bust gender stereotypes,” Dr. Artis says. “Once again, our community is doing more than giving lip service to the skills of cultural competency and inclusion.” Sixth-grade boys practicing their field hockey skills.

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Athletics

BIG BLUE ROUNDUP Fall 2016

Boys’ Cross Country: 4-1

Field Hockey: 10-12-1

NJISAA Prep A Championships: 1st place • Thomas Tarantino placed 4th (16:46) • Jeffrey Xiao placed 6th (17:18) • Thomas Drzik placed 8th (17:20) NJSIAA Non-Public B Championships: 2nd place Skyland Conference Championships: tied for 6th place out of 23 teams • Thomas Tarantino placed 8th (16:31) Somerset County Championships: 4th place • Thomas Tarantino placed 3rd Shore Coaches Invitational: 4th place out of 22 teams Meet of Champions: Qualifier Skyland Conference All-Conference/Valley Division: Matthew Peacock, Thomas Tarantino (1st team), Thomas Drzik, Colin Edwards, Jeffrey Xiao (2nd team) Somerset County All-Star Team: Thomas Tarantino (1st team)

Somerset County Tournament: Finalists Skyland Conference All-Stars/Delaware Division: Mary Pagano, Myla Stovall (1st team), Jennifer Coyne, Lindsey Lubowitz, Amanda Van Orden (2nd team), Meg O’Reilly (Honorable Mention) NJFHCA All-Star Teams, All-Non-Public: Mary Pagano, Myla Stovall (2nd team) Somerset County All-Star Team: Mary Pagano, Myla Stovall (1st team), Jennifer Coyne, Lindsey Lubowitz, Amanda Van Orden (2nd team), Amanda Celli, Meg O’Reilly (Honorable Mentions) Star-Ledger All-State All-Non-Public: Mary Pagano (3rd team)

Football: 3-6 Courier News Mid-State 38 All-Area Offense: Clay Galiardo (2nd team), Thomas Dugan (3rd team) Mid-State 38 Conference/All-Union: Clay Galiardo, Clyde Leef (1st team, offense), Ryan Boylan, Thomas Dugan, Obi Nnaeto, Spencer Spellman (1st team, defense), Jack Baulig, Jason Resnick, Channing Russell (2nd team, defense)

Boys’ Soccer: 12-5-1

The Prep Championship Boys’ Cross Country Team.

Girls’ Cross Country: 6-0 Skyland Conference Championships/Valley Division: 1st place • Nicole Vanasse placed 1st (19:19) • Anna Wood placed 3rd (19:44) • Cathleen Parker placed 6th (20:22) Prep Championships: 2nd place • Anna Wood placed 2nd (19:28) • Nicole Vanasse placed 3rd (20:16) • Cathleen Parker placed 7th (20:54) Somerset County Championships: 5th place Shore Coaches Invitational: 2nd place out of 28 teams Somerset County All-Star Team: Nicole Vanasse, Anna Wood (1st team) Skyland Conference All-Conference/Valley Division: Cathleen Parker, Nicole Vanasse, Anna Wood (1st team) All-Prep A: Nicole Vanasse, Anna Wood Star-Ledger All-State All-Non-Public: Nicole Vanasse (1st team)— qualified individually for Meet of Champions Foot Locker Northeast Regional Freshman Race: Nicole Vanasse (1st team) 40

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Somerset County Tournament: Finalists Skyland Conference: 3rd place Somerset County Coaches Association All-County: Owen Gaynor, Obi Ikoro, Henry Kraham (1st team), Eddie Acosta, Mitchell FlugstadClarke, Owen Wolfson (2nd team), Alexy Alin-Hvidsten, Oliver Martin, Vineil Reddy (Honorable Mentions) Somerset County All-Star Team: Owen Gaynor, Obi Ikoro, Henry Kraham (1st team), Eddie Acosta, Mitchell Flugstad-Clarke (2nd team) Skyland Conference All-Conference/Delaware Division: Owen Gaynor, Obi Ikoro, Henry Kraham (1st team), Eddie Acosta, Mitchell Flugstad-Clarke (2nd team) Courier News All-Area: Henry Kraham (1st team), Owen Gaynor, Obi Ikoro (2nd team), Eddie Acosta, Mitchell Flugstad-Clarke, Owen Wolfson (Honorable Mentions)

Girls’ Soccer: 11-6 Somerset County Tournament: Finalists Skyland Conference: 5th place Skyland Conference All-Conference/Delaware Division: Sarah Moseson, Natalia Ramirez (1st team), Leah Mangold, Gabrielle Obregon, Madisyn Pilla (2nd team), Cameron Campbell (Honorable Mention) Courier News All-Area: Natalie Ramirez (1st team), Madisyn Pilla (Honorable Mention) Star-Ledger All-State All-Non-Public: Natalie Ramirez (1st team), Madisyn Pilla (3rd team) NJGSCA Recognition: Natalia Ramirez Pingry enjoyed a 10-game winning streak, outscoring opponents 36-10 during that time.

The Girls’ Tennis Team with the NJSIAA Non-Public A State Championship trophy.

Girls’ Tennis: 14-3 NJSIAA Non-Public A: State Champions (defeated Kent Place 3-2) • Brooke Murphy and Wesley Streicher won 1st doubles • Jessica Li and Lindsey Yu won 2nd doubles • Mariam Trichas won 3rd singles NJSIAA Non-Public A, South Jersey: Sectional Champions (defeated Red Bank Catholic 5-0) Somerset County Tournament: Co-Champions • Cece Lesnick won 1st singles • Avery Schiffman won 2nd singles • Pingry had players in the finals of all five flights (1st singles, 2nd singles, 3rd singles, 1st doubles, 2nd doubles) Tournament of Champions: Quarterfinalists • Cece Lesnick won 1st singles • Brooke Murphy and Wesley Streicher won 1st doubles NJSIAA Singles/Doubles Championship Tournament • Cece Lesnick and Avery Schiffman reached the singles round of 32 • Brooke Murphy and Wesley Streicher reached the doubles quarterfinals • Jessica Li and Lindsey Yu reached the doubles round of 16 Skyland Conference: 2nd place Skyland Conference “Player of the Year”: Cece Lesnick

Cece Lesnick won the Somerset County Tournament’s Sportsmanship Award. Tournament Director Michael Hoppe wrote in a letter that Cece “continuously displayed sportsmanship and class throughout the tournament. She complimented winning shots, she hugged her opponents after a well-played match, and [she] was one of the first ones on the court congratulating or consoling a Pingry player after a match. She represented [T]he Pingry School, the tennis team, her family, and herself with such dignity and grace… Sportsmanship and positive winning attitudes are contagious. I congratulate Cece for being a good tennis player, but, more importantly, a better person. I salute her for being a positive role model and representing The Pingry School with the highest standards of sportsmanship and professionalism.”

Water Polo: 20-5 Garden State Tournament: State Champions (1st state title in program history) Beast of the East Tournament, Flight IV: 1st place Prep Easterns (Eastern Prep High School Water Polo Championship), B Division: 6th place Prep B Easterns All-Tournament Team: Matt Stanton, Victor Vollbrechthausen WINTER 2016-17

Four Teams Advance to County Finals Ranked #3 in the county and #8 among non-public schools by NJ.com, the Boys’ Varsity Soccer Team (12-5-1) entered the match with an 11-3-1 standing. Having tied with Montgomery for the county crown last year (they also won in 2014, 2012, and 2010), they were hungry for an outright win this time around. Bernards (16-1-1), a program that hadn’t won the county title since 1990, prevailed 3-1, but, in their journey to the finals, Big Blue defeated some powerful teams, including Somerville in the semifinals and North Plainfield in the quarterfinals. As the Girls’ Varsity Soccer Team (11-6) prepared for their match, the upperclassmen summoned memories of facing off against Watchung Hills (11-3 entering the finals, #10 in NJ.com’s Top 20) two years ago in the same county final, and winning. They were hoping for a repeat. But, having lost to the Warriors earlier in the season, 2-1, Big Blue— ranked #12 in NJ.com’s Top 20—was edged out again, by the same margin. Natalia Ramirez ’18 gave the team an early lead with a goal, but Watchung Hills took the win. Nevertheless, like their male counterparts, to even arrive at the finals, the team had to defeat Hillsborough and Mount St. Mary, two much larger schools. Soccer wasn’t the only Big Blue sport to make waves in the county tournaments this fall. The Girls’ Varsity Field Hockey Team (10-12-1) also fought their way to the county finals, their first appearance in several years. Despite a 5-0 loss, it was a loss to behemoth BridgewaterRaritan (19-2), ranked #8 in the NJ.com Top 20, who had captured the Somerset County Tournament title for eight consecutive years heading into the game. The Girls’ Varsity Tennis Team (14-2) was crowned co-champions of the Somerset County Tournament with Ridge High School, one of the biggest in the area. Senior Cece Lesnick took the overall win at first singles after defeating the top-seeded singles player from Montgomery. Two days later, the team went on to clinch the Non-Public “A” state title as well, defeating Kent Place. “In four of our sports this fall—tennis, field hockey, and boys’ and girls’ soccer—we have competed with the best in the county,” says Director of Athletics Carter Abbott. “It’s really a big deal to make it to a county final and compete beside the likes of Bridgewater and Ridge. These are huge programs.”

Malcolm Fields ’18 Competes in USA Fencing Tournament Big Blue captain and sabre fencer Malcolm Fields ’18 placed third in USA Fencing’s North American Cup (NAC) in Richmond, VA in early December. The tournament was a Division I event, the highest level of national competition. Fencing against college and graduate students, Malcolm defeated a Junior Olympics finalist and two Junior World Championship competitors en route to his third-place finish, which earned him an A2016 rating, the highest possible in USA Fencing. He was the youngest finalist in the tournament, and he ranked ninth in the junior national points standings at the time.

Fencing Coach Ted Li Named to S.E.M.I. Commission of FIE

Field Hockey Players on National Academic Squad Eight players were named to the 2016 Keith Waldman-Optimal Performance Associates/NFHCA High School National Academic Squad. The program recognizes juniors and seniors who achieved a minimum cumulative, unweighted GPA of 3.5 out of 4.0, or the equivalent, through the first quarter of the 2016-17 school year. Jennifer Coyne ’18* Josephine Cummings ’18* Lindsey Larson ’18 Lindsey Lubowitz ’17

Sophie Ricciardi ’17* Shruti Sagar ’18 Mackinley Taylor ’17 Amanda Van Orden ’17

* Scholar of Distinction (minimum cumulative, unweighted GPA of 3.9 or the equivalent) 42

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Head Coach of Pingry Fencing for over 40 years, Ted Li has been named to the S.E.M.I. Commission of the International Fencing Federation (FIE), the sport’s international governing body. This prestigious honor occurred not a year after he was named to USA Fencing’s Hall of Fame, among many other accolades he has received over the course of his fencing career. Every Olympic quadrennial, members of various FIE Commissions, including the S.E.M.I., are elected. (S.E.M.I. stands for Signalisation Electrique, du Matérial et des Installation.) Only one representative from any country is permitted, and preference is given

to individuals with engineering backgrounds and degrees. Coach Li, who earned degrees in English and Biology at Wesleyan University and recently retired after 42 years teaching English at Pingry, was nominated by USA Fencing (“It seems that a lack of engineering degree does not negate competence and practical experience,” he remarks.). At the end of the FIE Elective Congress, held in Moscow, he was one of 10 professional fencing experts from around the world named to the Commission. As a member of the S.E.M.I. Commission, Coach Li will study the safety of fencing equipment and its testing procedures, reporting his findings to the FIE’s Executive Committee. His selection to the Commission is one more honor on an already impressive résumé: Over the course of his four-decade career in the sport, he has held many key positions that have allowed him to guide its development, including as a rules interpreter, tournament organizer, referee, and acclaimed armorer for multiple USFA international teams and NCAA National Championships. He has also served as Chef de Contrôle for three Olympic Games (Los Angeles 1984, Atlanta 1996, and Sydney 2000) and for multiple World Championships. As Coach Li explains, his appointment to S.E.M.I. and his knowledge of the material side of fencing allow him to deal with equipment problems in a timely manner, and elucidate certain situations during practices or a match. His new role might also give him access to equipment before it becomes commercially available, or to prototype equipment for evaluation. And no doubt, Pingry athletes will continue to benefit from his vast experience.

End of a 30-Year Era: Judy Lee Retires as Varsity Field Hockey Coach Head Coach of the Varsity Field Hockey Team for three decades, Judy Lee leaves a celebrated Pingry legacy. Her teams won four state championships, 12 county championships, five sectional championships, and 11 conference championships, and the 1988 and 2000 Field Hockey Teams were inducted into Pingry’s Athletics Hall of Fame. Coach Lee’s career record at Pingry is 439-171-76.

Her teams’ accomplishments have earned her many coaching honors, including an NJSIAA Sports Award, honoring her dedication to field hockey and its athletes, her years of service to the sport, and her success as a coach. She has also been named The Star-Ledger “State Coach of the Year,” National Federation of State High School Associations “Coach of the Year,” Courier News All-Area “Coach of the Year,” and The Star-Ledger “County Coach of the Year.” Coach Lee came to Pingry in 1985 to teach Upper School math and coach swimming and field hockey, and shortly thereafter became Head Coach of the Girls’ Varsity Swimming Team—that tenure also included multiple state, prep, and conference championships as well as coaching honors from The Star-Ledger and Courier News. She retired from coaching girls’ swimming and teaching math earlier in 2016. A three-sport athlete in high school, Judy Lee earned varsity letters in field hockey, basketball, and tennis. At East Stroudsburg State College (later named East Stroudsburg University), she earned 11 varsity letters in field hockey, swimming, and tennis, and was named “Outstanding Female Athlete” her senior year. As part of her legacy as an exceptional athlete and coach, she has been inducted into the Halls of Fame at Pingry (coach of the 1988 and 2000 Field Hockey Teams and the 1994-95 Boys’ Swimming Team), Roselle Park High School (field hockey coach), NJSIAA (coach), NJSCA (coach), East Stroudsburg University (athlete), Gloucester County, NJ (athlete), and West Deptford High School (athlete). Three of her colleagues who have served as Pingry’s Director of Athletics—Carter Abbott, Gerry Vanasse P ’14, ’20, and Mike Webster P ’24, ’27, ’27—praise her distinguished career as a teacher and coach. They describe Coach Lee as an excellent role model who made an impact on many generations of young women, as well as a true competitor who shared her passion for field hockey. In bringing Pingry’s program to prominence, she had high expectations for her athletes, many of whom have gone on to play field hockey at top colleges and universities.

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College Athlete Accolades

Field Hockey

Katie Ruesterholz ’13 (Columbia University) scored her 100th career point to set a program record during the 2016 season. Columbia field hockey’s previous record was 99 points.

Men’s Soccer

Henry Flugstad-Clarke ’13 (Yale University) was elected captain of the 2016 team, despite having missed the 2015 season because of injury. During that time, he had remained committed to the team, attending training sessions and other team functions, and offering advice to his teammates when possible (as a sophomore, he had led the team in goals and points and was one of four players to start all seven Ivy League games). At the end of the 2016 season, Henry received the Walter J. McNerney Award for being the team’s most valuable player (he also received this award his sophomore year) and

the Jack Marshall Award for team spirit, loyalty, and dedication to the game. He was also named to the All-Ivy League 2nd Team, his second All-Ivy honor. He was the only player to start all 16 games, playing 1,481 of a possible 1,528 minutes. He led the team with four goals—tied for sixth in the league—and one of those goals was a game winner. In Ivy League play, Henry played every minute of the seven games and scored two of those four goals.

Women’s Soccer

Rachel Corboz ’14, Drew Topor ’14, and Corey DeLaney ’12 played for the third-seeded Georgetown Hoyas, a team that won the program’s first BIG EAST Championship by defeating topseeded Marquette 2-0 on November 6 (Georgetown’s third appearance in the championship game). Rachel scored Georgetown’s second goal early in the second half. With the win,

Jack De Laney ’16, Frank DeLaney ’77, P ’12, and Corey DeLaney ’12 “flashing fours,” a reminder of Mr. DeLaney’s NCAA Final Four soccer trophy in 1977.

Georgetown improved to 16-2-3, tying the school record for wins in a season, and this 13th shutout tied the school’s single-season record. Rachel Corboz ’14 (Georgetown University) was selected to the NSCAA AllAmerican 1st Team, the NSCAA All-Northeast Region 1st Team, and the All-BIG EAST 1st Team. This is her second consecutive All-American honor and second consecutive All-BIG EAST 1st Team honor. Rachel led the team in scoring (38 points) and both the team and country in assists (16).

Drew Topor ’14, Corey DeLaney ’12, and Rachel Corboz ’14. 44

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The DeLaney family had a lot to celebrate at Thanksgiving at the home of Frank DeLaney ’77 and Bobo Mangan DeLaney (Parents ’12). The family boasted two NCAA Final Four soccer participants in 2016 with Corey DeLaney ’12 and her Georgetown teammates earning a semifinal berth in the Women’s

College Cup in San Jose, CA (the Hoyas’ first-ever appearance in the Final Four), and Corey’s cousin Jack De Laney ’16 and the mighty Tufts Jumbos heading to Virginia with the hopes of another Division III title— Tufts would win, securing their second National Championship since 2014. The house was filled with other alumni, including Girls’ Softball Head Coach Chip Carver, Jr. ’77, Anne DeLaney ’79 (Parents ’09, ’11, ’14, ’14), Emma Carver ’09, Chloe Carver ’11, Sean Carver ’14, and Reeve Carver ’14. The family watched the women’s soccer Elite Eight game (including Georgetown players Rachel Corboz ’14 and Drew Topor ’14), which Georgetown won to advance

to the Final Four, from the Morris County Golf Club.

Women’s Swimming & Diving

In a dual meet between Division III teams and NESCAC rivals Amherst College and Middlebury College, former Pingry teammates Ingrid Shu ’16 (Amherst) and Morgan Burke ’13 (Middlebury) placed first and second, respectively, in the 100-yard freestyle. Ingrid’s individual victories in the 100-yard freestyle and 100-yard breaststroke helped propel Amherst to its third consecutive dual-meet win of the season.

NESCAC—New England Small College Athletic Conference NFHCA—National Field Hockey Coaches Association NJFHCA—North Jersey Field Hockey Coaches Association NJGSCA—New Jersey Girls Soccer Coaches Association

Nic Fink ’11 Goes Pro After an impressive showing at the Olympic Trials last summer, during which superstar breaststroker Nic Fink ’11 narrowly missed a spot on the 2016 Rio Olympic Team, he is back in the water, faster than ever, as a professional swimmer. At the 2016 FINA World Championships in Ontario, Canada in December, Nic defeated both the world record holder from South Africa and the American record holder to advance to the finals of the 100-meter breaststroke. In a very close race, in which 0.2 seconds separated the second through seventh places, Nic finished seventh (57.22), just behind American Olympian Cody Miller. In his stronger event, the 200-meter breaststroke, he finished fourth (2:03.79), just shy of the medal stand, but the top American finisher nonetheless. He also competed in the preliminaries of the medley relay (in the finals, although the U.S. was favored to claim gold, the team was unfortunately disqualified for a false start).

NJISAA—New Jersey Independent Schools Athletic Association NJSCA—New Jersey Scholastic Coaches Association NJSIAA—New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association NSCAA—National Soccer Coaches Association of America

Listed are the honors and achievements that the editorial staff of The Pingry Review is aware of as of press time; we are always happy to receive news about our college athletes. WINTER 2016-17

“And the Moral of the Story Is…?”

Arlyn Davich ’99 and Eric Davich ’02 Are First Sibling Career Day Keynote Speakers When it comes to the format of the Keynote remarks for Pingry’s annual Career Day, juniors and seniors usually hear from one person. This year, however, for the first time, the School welcomed two Keynote speakers who also happen to be siblings: Trustee Arlyn Davich ’99 and Eric Davich ’02. Music majors at Bowdoin College, they found their true calling in entrepreneurship. Arlyn, a serial entrepreneur, is currently the Founder and CEO of PayPerks: a start-up that utilizes prepaid or store loyalty card data to promote financial literacy and healthy nutritional habits. For example, users earn PayPerks points for buying fruits and vegetables and participating in an online educational curriculum. “Every point earned is worth a chance to win a monetary prize in one of thousands of sweepstakes conducted every month. The model is based on insights from behavioral economics,” she explains. Arlyn says that her best days are when she can put unexpected pieces together (like facilitate a public/private partnership to drive mass adoption of a new product or draw on insights from the lottery to improve financial health) and days when she can feel her company’s impact (“it is thrilling to see millions of people reached”). Eric is a digital music entrepreneur who currently leads Global Artist Marketing for Google Play Music, Google’s music streaming service. He arrived at Google following the 2014 acquisition of Songza, which he co-founded in 2010. As a member of the Google Play marketing team, Eric says, “My role is to understand music listeners and partner with people in the music industry— record labels and managers—to collaborate with artists to raise awareness of Google Play Music. Examples are a virtual reality music video in collaboration 46

THE PINGRY REVIEW

Arlyn Davich ’99.

Eric Davich ’02.

with members of Queen, an ad campaign with the Beatles, and other creative collaborations that get attention for the artists and our platform.” For Eric, those collaborations can make for a truly exciting day, as can the actual launching of a Google project and receiving feedback from the public. “When I convince important people at Google that something I’m passionate about is worth putting Google’s resources behind, [and] when you get something out the door and real people are using it and giving feedback, it’s an amazingly fulfilling experience.”

development as an entrepreneur. “What I was doing,” she said, “was honing leadership skills. The core skillsets I developed were the ability to form an idea and then lead a group of people to accomplish that goal.”

Before delving into their main presentation, Arlyn and Eric spoke to the anxieties and expectations of Pingry students. “When I was sitting where you are,” Arlyn said, “I thought being good at tests and getting good grades was the only key to a good career path. The way I saw it, becoming a doctor or a lawyer was just a long line of tests away.” However, Arlyn maintained that her Pingry education was crucial to her

She later spoke of how Pingry values leadership and teaches it as a skill: in Peer Leadership, she learned how to make people feel comfortable, respected, and trusted in a group setting; in sports, athletes lead by example and do the right thing. “In a leadership role, you’re looking out for everyone and setting a tone of mutual respect,” she says. Eric expressed a similar sentiment about his path. “I was intimidated by the word ‘career,’” he admitted. At the time, “career” for him meant “growing up,” but he didn’t want to grow up. He wanted to have fun—and that meant something along the lines of being a rock star (which could later become a career!). “But there was no clear path to being a

rock star. The only careers in which there is a clear path to success are very traditional careers like law, medicine, and finance. I was focused on instruments and composing. But what I didn’t realize I was doing—in learning how to record and make music and sell CDs—was building a skillset that was applicable to other kinds of careers as well.”

entrepreneurship, and you have to guess what the moral of the story is,” Arlyn explained.

Like his sister, Eric does not look back at Pingry in terms of academics. Instead, he recalls the School as a supportive environment for trying new things, and remembers the students he knew, and teachers who helped him pursue personal endeavors (current music teacher Sean McAnally immediately comes to his mind, as does former English teacher Dean Sluyter P ’90, ’98, who likes music and encouraged creative work). By the time he graduated from Pingry, Eric had recorded, produced, and sold two albums of his own music. “Thanks to Pingry, I was able to develop skills that I could transfer into my career as an entrepreneur,” he says.

Moral #1: Failure is inevitable in any career. Use that failure to fuel your next success. Fail forward.

Following their remarks, Arlyn and Eric called three volunteers to the stage: Jessie McLaughlin ’17, Parth Patel ’17, and Jimmy Topor ’17. “We’re each going to tell two stories from our careers in

––––––––––––– Story #1: Arlyn’s first company was a fast failure; from that experience, she created PayPerks, a venture that is successful in ways her first was not.

––––––––––––– Story #2: After hearing input from investors, rehearsing a pitch, and meeting with Amazon.com Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, Eric’s co-founders were told that they were “married to the right problem, but the idea won’t last.” They decided to try different approaches to solving the same problem and eventually shifted their focus to developing Songza. Moral #2: Fall in love with the problem, not the solution. Problems stay the same, but solutions change. ––––––––––––– Story #3: While attending an industry conference just days after coming up

with the idea for PayPerks, Arlyn spotted a unique opportunity to announce the launch of her company to a room full of major potential customers. Moral #3: You will be paralyzed by fear, but you need to learn to act anyway. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. ––––––––––––– Story #4: Eric spoke about how he was able to find success by challenging the traditional digital music paradigm. “When we did what the status quo told us to do, it didn’t work,” he said, “but we did something else and—because we understood consumers and were dedicated to serving them—we eventually got it right.” Moral #4: Question the status quo. Always ask why. ––––––––––––– By the time students filed out of Hauser Auditorium to visit alumni panels grouped throughout the School, each knew a great deal more about entrepreneurship—and, hopefully, gleaned enough confidence and know-how from the Davich siblings to succeed in whatever career path they might choose.

Thank You, Career Day Speakers! Engineering/Architecture

Marketing/Advertising

Psychology

Entrepreneurship

Media/Communications

Real Estate

Medicine

Science

Dr. Zack Cordero ’06, Ryan Shrader ’99, Andrew Werner ’04, John Witte, Jr. ’78 Chaz Barsamian ’01, Arlyn Davich ’99, Eric Davich ’02, Craig Limoli ’08, Sumeet Shah ’04, Amanda Wiss ’93

Finance

Dan Buell ’99, Dr. Rob King ’79, Ben Lehrhoff ’99, David Margolis ’95, Adam Plotkin ’94

Law

John Brescher III ’99, Jessica Carroll ’02, Chandra Cain Davis ’89, Jonathan (“JJ”) Jacobs ’01, Kevin Manara ’95, Jonathan Pasternak ’81, Jonathan Short ’96, Kristin Sostowski ’93

Management Consulting Nick Devers ’07, Alison Little ’82, Macaire Pace ’83

Lori Halivopoulos ’78, Lauren (Anderson) Holland ’01, Jeff Ramirez ’04 Jonathan Karp ’82, Alexandra Peterson ’02, Ted Smith ’00 Dr. Arianna Papasikos Austin ’00, Dr. Alexandra Braunstein ’97, Chuck Cuttic ’73, Julia Fallon ’95, Dr. Alison (DeGennaro) Gattuso ’88, Dr. Sanjay Lalla ’85, Dr. Liz Gallo Pope ’07

Non-Profit/Public Service

Commander David Baird ’92, Obinna Eboh ’05, Christopher Shahidi ’94

Performing Arts

Lisa Kleinman ’02, Vincent Morano ’94, Bess Rowen ’05

Maya Artis ’09, Carolyn Crandall ’01, Dr. Brad Fechter ’05, Glenn Murphy ’74 Devlin Murphy ’09, Rob Tulloch ’93, Elizabeth (Kellogg) Winterbottom ’87 Dr. Christopher Cutie ’95, Dr. Chris Edwards ’84, Dr. Anand Gnanadesikan ’84, Craig Ramirez ’07

Technology

Christopher Carey ’00, Lindsay Holmes Glogower ’99, Brian Ramirez ’01

Visual Arts

Peter Allen ’78, Joe Lucas ’91, James Mullen ’81 Look for photos of many of these alumni in Class Notes.

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Where Are They Now?

Attorney Christopher Naughton ’73 and the Importance of the Constitution

“Today, society has a general lack of civic awareness, and it’s costing us. Many people, especially students, have little concept of the three branches of government and the balance of powers. Without the essential knowledge and appreciation of our constitutional roots, our ongoing form of government is no guarantee,” says Christopher Naughton, Esq. ’73, Host and Executive Producer of The American Law Journal, a half-hour feature talk program on the law that has broadcast on the CNN-News affiliate for Philadelphia, WFMZ-TV, for more than 25 years. 48

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Gina Passarella Cipriani (Feature Reporter), Christopher Naughton, Esq. ’73 (Host and Executive Producer), and Valerie Jones (Producer) of The American Law Journal with their 2015 Emmy Award.

It’s a long way from Mr. Naughton’s time on the Hillside Campus in the 1960s and 1970s, or his first job as a Union County Prosecutor in Elizabeth in the 1980s, but the show was his calling. After switching to civil litigation with a New Jersey law firm, and later working as in-house counsel for a broadcasting company in Pennsylvania, a desire to increase civic awareness and the decline in the legal profession’s reputation motivated him to start the program in 1990. “Aside from overarching constitutional issues, we address the legal matters of the day that affect every person’s life,” Mr. Naughton says. “Workplace rights, injuries from defective products, the use of email in custody cases, gay marriage issues, and so on. I tell the guests on the program that the show is

where the lawyer and layperson meet. It’s not fourth-grade civics, but it’s also nothing really arcane. I ask them to put everything in layperson’s terms so that people get it.” In contrast to much of the intense arguing that is often seen on cable news shows, the discourse on The American Law Journal is mostly civil. “We have had some very good arguments, such as when we talked about presidential power and NSA wiretapping. Like a good story, our topics have point and counterpoint. Most legal matters have plaintiff and defense perspectives with distinct differences juxtaposed. In the end, it’s a matter of treating your adversary with respect. You can have differences of opinion, but still be collegial,” Mr. Naughton says.

Christopher Naughton, Esq. ’73 and Kristen Clarke, Esq. of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

That The American Law Journal has won three Emmy awards in two years is testament, Mr. Naughton believes, to the program being true to its mission. “I am grateful to my team for digging down to get at the kernel of issues. We are also proud of our production values and our feature reporting.” These aspects of the show, along with a new, interactive website, represent ways in which The American Law Journal has evolved since its inception. The program also reaches more viewers (originally about 5,000 per show; now, WFMZ-TV accesses about 4.5 million homes), receives 30,000plus views per month online, and formed a partnership with the nation’s largest legal media company ALM (American Lawyer Media), which promotes the show within the legal community. Plus, there are more feature reports, graphics to illustrate stories, judges as guests to help educate viewers, and stories involving the Constitution. This last element, the Constitution, is particularly significant to Mr. Naughton, who cultivated his love of American history and civics

through “exceptional teachers at Pingry, such as Dave Allan and Rick Weiler. History and government courses helped me to excel.” Small class sizes helped Mr. Naughton learn to express himself in front of others, and he credits Miller Bugliari ’52, P ’86, ’90, ’97, GP ’20 with making students “naturally curious in biology class, always prodding us to think…as a moderator [of a program like this], it’s not about having answers, but having an innate curiosity to act as a go-between.” Although he has not practiced law full-time for many years, Mr. Naughton says “I have to stay up-to-date on a wide variety of issues because of the show, which is my first love. I feel like I’m always preparing for the Bar Exam!” He plans to conduct more compelling constitutional conversations on “the rule of law” and issues that confront the country, such as First Amendment protection of trademark, transgender rights, balance of power, and the makeup of the Supreme Court. “I must echo what Benjamin Franklin said a long time ago, that the best form of government is ‘a Republic, if you can keep it.’”

Airs on CNN News affiliate WFMZ-TV, Mondays at 7:00 p.m. LawJournalTV.com youtube.com/LawJournalTV The program is produced for television, with full programs archived and clips available online. The website includes an option to suggest a topic or ask a question, as well as a directory to find a lawyer.

Three Emmy Awards for Interview/Discussion (National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Mid-Atlantic Region) “Wage, Hour & Overtime: What’s ‘Fair Pay’ Today?” (2016)* “Transgender at Work: LGBT Rights at Work” (2016) “Sexual Orientation & The Workplace: ‘ENDA’ of Discrimination?” (2015) * This program includes an interview with Chuck Cuttic ’73, a cardiac physician assistant, who sued Crozer-Chester Medical Center for overtime and won the case.

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Pingry Events

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Pingry Events Los Angeles Reception, hosted by Bonnie and Andrew Solmssen ’90 [ 1 ] Attendees included Chaz Barsamian ’01, Chris Bender ’89, André Birotte, Jr. ’83, David Bugliari ’97, Elizabeth and Miller Bugliari ’52, P ’86, ’90, ’97, GP ’20, Director of Educational and Information Technology Brian Burkhart, Paul Ciszak ’72, Headmaster Nat Conard P ’09, ’11, Meg DeFoe ’92, Joseph Della Rosa ’03, Matt Fechter ’09, Director of Alumni Relations and Annual Giving Holland Sunyak Francisco ’02, Brittany Gildea ’07, Thomas Gustafson ’71, Richard Hadley ’66, George Heller ’97, Director of Institutional Advancement Melanie Hoffmann P ’20, ’27, Charles Iacuzzo ’89, Tamara and Sherwood Kelley ’62, Shelby Luke Rideout ’92, Peter Mindnich ’71, William Parham ’06, Lori Schaffhauser ’92, Dean Sluyter P ’90, ’98, Yaffa Larea, Bonnie and Andrew Solmssen ’90, Emily Strackhouse ’10, Roy Sykes ’66, Brian Weiniger ’10, and Kacey Weiniger ’15.

San Francisco Reception, hosted by Bernadette and Dr. Kenneth Wachter ’64 [ 2 ] Attendees included Elizabeth and Miller Bugliari ’52, P ’86, ’90, ’97, GP ’20, Director of Educational and Information Technology Brian Burkhart, Headmaster Nat Conard P ’09, ’11, Director of Institutional Advancement Melanie Hoffmann P ’20, ’27, Susan and Paul Crooker ’80, Don Dixon ’65, Geoff Dugan ’69, Orianne Dutka ’98, Director of Alumni Relations and Annual Giving Holland Sunyak Francisco ’02, William Hetfield ’01, John Huber ’79, John McIlwain ’79, Ann and David Rapson ’75, Julian Scurci ’99, Louise and Arthur Vedder ’66, Bernadette and Dr. Kenneth Wachter ’64, and Peter Wiley ’60. New York City Reception, hosted by the O’Toole Family [ 3 ] Hosts Polly and Terry O’Toole P ’05, ’08 with Maggie O’Toole ’05 and Leslie Springmeyer ’08. [ 4 ] Alak Mehta ’12, Rebecca Curran ’12, and Freddy Elliot ’12. [ 5 ] Alkesh Gianchandani P ’18 with Jeff and Lynne Pagano P ’17, ’20. [ 6 ] Lori Halivopoulos ’78, P ’23 and Paul Dennison ’80. [ 7 ] David Greig ’98, Ashley Feng ’11, and history teacher/boys’ lacrosse coach Mike Webster P ’24, ’27, ’27. [ 8 ] Rob Williams ’76, P ’06, ’08, ’12 and Charlotte Williams ’06.

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Pingry Events Back-from-College Lunch [ 9 ] Amaka Nnaeto ’16, Taraja Arnold ’16, Klara Deak ’16, and Jessica Foy ’16. [ 10 ] Justin Chae ’16, Brendan Kelly ’16, Charlie Zhu ’16, and Robert Rigby ’16. [ 11 ] Paul Ludwig ’15, Yandely Almonte ’15, Gladys Teng ’15, and Victoria Castillo ’15. [ 12 ] Front row: Abhiram Karuppur ’15, Michael Arrom ’13, Hannah Benton ’16, Zayna Nassoura ’16, Caroline Terens ’16, and Hunter Stires ’15. Back row: Jazmin Palmer ’16, Brian Brundage ’14, Sophia Cortazzo ’16, Claudia Hu ’16, and Gillian LaGorce ’16. Alumni Ice Hockey Game [ 13 ] Front row: Dan Weiniger ’08, Conor Starr ’09, Brian Weiniger ’10, Steve Palazzolo ’11, Brad Zanoni ’07, Dan Ambrosia ’07, Brad Bonner ’93, Mac Hugin ’13, and Steve Friedman ’13. Back row: Boys’ Varsity Ice Hockey Head Coach Scott Garrow, Boys’ Varsity Ice Hockey Assistant Coach Jake Ross ’96, Parker Murray ’00, Chris Franklin ’96, Chris Ulz ’93, Andrew Houston ’00, Chris Christensen ’10, Alexander Russoniello ’10, Josh Creelman ’14, Robert Fowler ’10, Kyle Walker ’14, Peter Martin ’10, Boys’ Varsity Ice Hockey Head Coach Emeritus John Magadini, and Nick Branchina ’12.

Turkey Bowl Soccer Game [ 14 ] Front row: Robert Oh ’03, Seamus McDonald, Michael Gray ’01, Kevin Schmidt ’98, John Stamatis ’05, Brad Fechter ’05, Max Lurie ’15, David M. Fahey ’99, Matt Fechter ’09, and Christian Fechter ’13. Back row: Liam Griff ’04, Dr. Mark Zimering P ’03, ’07, Tom Ellis ’01, K. B. Conlon, Tom Rusen ’89, Jeff Zimering ’07, Will Stamatis ’09, Morgan Griff ’06, Matt Rybak ’09, Brendan Burgdorf ’09, Jim Stamatis P ’05, ’09, Jerry Fechter P ’05, ’09, ’13, Conor Starr ’09, Anthony Tripicchio ’02, Andrew Babbitt ’09, and John Rhodes ’02.

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Pingry History A Brief Early History of John Pingry and the Development of The Pingry School in Elizabeth Mechanic Street (1861-1865), Westminster Avenue (1865-1893), and Parker Road (1893-1953) By Joseph Hanaway ’51, MD, CM

While previous books have been published about Pingry’s history, namely Dr. Herbert Hahn’s The Beginning of Wisdom and Tim Noonan’s The Greatest Respect: Pingry at 150 Years, Dr. Hanaway sought to investigate photos of Pingry’s development and thought readers would like to learn how the School’s campuses evolved in Elizabeth. As resources, he used letters in Pingry Alumni Bulletins by alumni from the 1880s, Dr. Hahn’s and Mr. Noonan’s books, correspondence by Jonathan Townley, references about football and basketball, and his memory. Even though some of the information presented is not specific to Pingry’s early history, it helps to paint a picture of the greater culture at the time, which, in turn, informs our understanding of the School’s development. 54

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JOHN PINGRY’S EARLY CAREER “Dartmouth’s in town again, Team, Team, Team!” (Dartmouth’s football song, “Dartmouth’s in Town Again”) would have been the furthest thought from the mind of this serious student at age 18 on his 1836 graduation from college in Hanover, NH.1 With an education in the classics and a calling for religious study, he sought a teaching job with an opportunity for religious studies as an assistant in a seminary in Elizabeth, NJ. He taught and studied at the Chilton Seminary School for four years, spent two years teaching in New York City, and was ordained in September 1842 2 as a Presbyterian minister. He was then called to a new congregation in rural Fishkill, NY, a community that needed, but could not afford, him. Often his pay was in goods and services, not money. He also helped revitalize a local school that had failed, becoming its director for seven years, but the living was hard for a family of six. He found, however, that teaching young men was more rewarding than he had considered, more than ministering, which upset him because he had only recently been ordained. Guided by faith in his judgement, he reduced his ministerial time, devoting more time to the school.3 His natural oratorical ability, combined with his education in the classics and religion, made him an ideal candidate to be a headmaster. Probably not knowing exactly what he wanted to do with his life, but wanting to live in better circumstances, he moved in 1853 to Roseville, NJ as a pastor of a new congregation and headmaster of a new school. Although he returned to ministering for a while, it was here that he realized that his calling was teaching, and he rapidly developed a wide reputation as an educator.4 In 1861, he was approached by a friend to lease a property in Elizabeth, NJ at 23 Mechanic Street to run a school that had been established by the owner, Jonathan Townley, who wanted to leave the school and join the Union Army. John Pingry renamed the school the same year, the Pingry Select School for Boys.5 There are no pictures and only meager descriptions of this property.

There was a dwelling for his family and a few boarding students who lived far away, a school house on the large grounds, and a barn that children used as a gym in bad weather. There being no playing field on Mechanic Street and no direction, students ran around playing tag, and some did exercises. That was the extent of athletics between 1861 and 1865. When the lease was up in 1865, he decided to move the School and bought a house and large property (50 x 150 feet) at 445 Westminster Avenue in Elizabeth. In the backyard, he had a school building constructed in the summer of 1865, ready for the fall season, and called it The Pingry School.6

b WESTMINSTER AVENUE, 1865-1893 Figure 1 (page 54) may be the only photo of the Westminster Avenue Pingry School. Look to the left at buildings behind the family house.7 From figure 1 and the descriptions, there appear to be two buildings connected by a short, high-roofed passage. The front one, with a flat roof facing the rear of the house, was a 20 x 20-foot single room annex connected to the passage with a highpeak roof and a round window near the apex. The passage was connected at the other end to the main building of the School, with a peaked roof, gabled at each end, and in a north/south direction. Shaped like a “T” with a short stem, Figure 2 is the author’s not-to-scale drawing of the School that provides a sense of its architecture.

Figure 2.

Inside the large building was a 25 x 45 foot room with a raised platform at the north end for the headmaster’s desk and, at the south end, two small rooms that opened into a large room with swinging wooden doors and glass windows.8 The ground-level windows, seen at the south end of the building (figure 1), one facing east with a tree in front of it, and the other facing south, are windows for these rooms. The common room, which seated the entire student body for Morning Chapel, led by Mr. Pingry, also served as an open classroom and study hall. The 12- to 18-year-olds sat in groups at different-sized desks. Mr. Pingry initially taught all the students Latin and Greek,9 at different levels, and had assistants teaching English, math, history, and, eventually, languages, all using the two small rooms, the annex, and the extra classroom in the basement. Access to the basement was via a stairway in the passage between the annex and large room. One of Mr. Pingry’s obligatory exercises was teaching the basics of public speaking.10 Students would read prose works, addresses, or famous speeches, or make up their own topics, and memorize and deliver them to a class or the entire student body. He insisted that this was the only way to gain confidence speaking in front of an audience. Student approbation was not universal, but we learned (the author had to give speeches for six years) that a little duress can motivate students to great things at times. WINTER 2016-17

The curriculum was organized oddly, without grades, years of graduation, or diplomas. Mr. Pingry decided when a student was ready to move on to college or work and, on the final day of each year, he congratulated those who had finished and he said farewell and good luck. This unstructured approach by Mr. Pingry worked because he was an exceptional teacher, and discipline 11 was taught in all his courses. At a time

when fewer than 10 percent of high school graduates went to college, his record was around 50 percent for college attendance. He also offered special Saturday review sessions for those taking college admission tests. These were given by visiting Princeton professors who would come to Elizabeth to review a subject before the exam. The extraordinary accomplishment of a 50 percent college attendance rate won the

Figure 3.

headmaster an honorary doctorate degree from Princeton, in 1868, only seven years after his School opened. After 1868, he was officially called Dr. Pingry.12 Schools at the time were noisy places. Can you imagine sitting in a room with more than 75 students, some reciting out loud, others discussing lessons with the headmaster up front, with a six-year difference in age groups? On the south wall, in old English lettering, was his famous motto, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Fear of the Lord Is the Beginning of Wisdom,â&#x20AC;? which many looked at with hope.

b ATHLETICS DURING THE DR. PINGRY ERA Physical activity was considered important, but was not a priority for Dr. Pingry, who did not include it in the curriculum. Thomas Edison went further and opposed exercise because he felt the muscles of the human body were designed to keep the body upright Figure 4.

THE PINGRY REVIEW

and the brain in its proper position. Since they did such a good job, why was it necessary to make them stronger through exercise? Fortunately, the lads at Pingry were not deterred by this claptrap and developed their own athletics programs. Beyond the rear fence on the Pingry property (very faintly seen way in the back of figure 1), there was a large unleveled field whose owner had no problem with the Pingry boys. Baseball 13 was the team sport that most students could play during the 30-minute lunchtime or after school, which ended daily at 2:30. The students divided themselves alphabetically into groups A-M and N-Z so that teams could be quickly chosen. Baseball was popular and everyone knew how to play. No equipment was needed. No one wore gloves, resulting in broken and sprained fingers which were the Red Badges of Courage. Bats and balls were team purchases or passed on.

b Figure 5.

PARKER ROAD, 1893-1953 In 1891, Dr. Pingry announced his plan to retire after devoting 50 years to the education of young men. He appointed a Board of Trustees consisting of graduates and sympathetic local business leaders to manage the School. One of the first orders of business was to incorporate the School in 1891 to declare stocks to raise money for renovations. The idea with the old guard was to renovate and expand the old Westminster school, but they couldn’t sell it, and, at the end of 1891, only a small amount of stock was sold. The original incorporation allowed the athletics field to be taxed, but, in 1921, the School and grounds were made non-profit. A young well-to-do lawyer and federal representative, Charles Fowler, who was a new member of the Board (his home, “The Fowler Mansion,” became the VailDeane School in 1869) had better ideas. He championed the idea of a new larger building with a proper playing field, which met with resistance. Undaunted, he convinced the Board that his idea

was the only way to get people interested in giving money for the project, and he gave $1,000 of his own money, as did other Board members.14 Once the project was approved, he began searching the area and found a threeacre field (the field the boys played on at the School’s Westminster Avenue location) that was purchased for $9,800. The building plan was to construct two separate, but connected, buildings over a three-year period, for an estimated cost of $15,000. With this momentum, the cornerstone for the first building was laid in November 1892. The building was completed by April 1893. Facing Parker Road, this original structure was the classic front view of the School (figure 3),15 but only half of what was needed. It housed the offices of the headmaster, two 50-student study halls, recitation rooms, and classrooms. The second part of the initial plan, a large additional building (figure 4) east of the main building, was added in 1896.16 This provided a large assembly room on the first floor, an exercise gym in the basement, and

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Figure 6.

study halls, classrooms, and the chemistry/physics lab on the second floor. Figure 5 is a rare picture of the first-floor assembly room17 in the 1896 building, with chairs and a raised platform at the front for speakers. The room, designed to accommodate more than 200 students, also served as an exercise center, as the reader can see from the picture. Note the piano to the right of the raised platform and the infamous old lectern on the platform. To stand behind the dreaded lectern was inevitable in the lives of Pingry students who had to do it annually, like it or not, in the headmaster’s required public speaking program. The ubiquitous use of dark brown stain on all of the woodwork throughout the School, the work of a malevolent genius of Victorian interior design who thought the funereal walls would have a tonic effect on the boys, was hardly noticed by generations of students. Affective thoughts generated by the dreary walls were offset by light streaming through the School’s many large windows (figures 3 and 4).

b 58

THE PINGRY REVIEW

THE BASEMENT GYM AND BASKETBALL The basement gym was designed as an exercise center full of exercise and gymnastic equipment because there was no indoor winter team sport known at that time, or so it was thought. In retrospect, there was an indoor winter team sport developed in 1891 by an unknown Canadian studying physical education in Springfield, MA. As a class assignment “to design a winter team sport,” James Naismith imagined it had to be played in a gym on a court with a large round ball and with a small

Figure 7.

numbers of players. The goals were peach baskets he found in an old storage shed. When asked to name the sport, Mr. Naismith decided on “Basketball” after the peach baskets. By the late 1890s, many colleges were fielding basketball teams. It did not reach the secondary school level until World War I and required substantial construction to build gyms that could accommodate it. Pingry had a basketball team in 1916 and practiced at the Elizabeth Armory, two miles away.

Hahn, H. The Beginning of Wisdom, 4; Noonan, T. The Greatest Respect, 4. Townley, J: A letter (Pingry Alumni Bulletin, April 1915; reprinted in 1955). 2 Hahn, 5; Noonan, 4. 3 Hahn, 5-6; Noonan, 5. 4 Hahn, 6. 5 Hahn, 9. Noonan, 4. 6 Noonan, 6. 7 Noonan, 3-4. 8 Although the doors to the small rooms off the large common room are described as glass by Hahn and Noonan, a letter from Paul Martin published in the Pingry Alumni Bulletin in October 1935 describes the doors as wooden with large glass windows, not all glass (which would have been unusual at the time). The author is inclined to believe this letter from someone who saw the doors. 9 Hahn, 21. He taught these courses by himself until the enrollment reached 100, then hired an assistant to teach the basic courses in both subjects. 10 Hahn, 22-23, 33. 11 Hahn, 26-28. 12 Hahn, 9 (footnote). 13 Hahn, 35-36. 14 Hahn, 57. 15 Photo of the original Parker Road building by itself (supplied by Miller Bugliari ’52). 16 The second part of the original two-building structure on Parker Road was finished in 1896 east of the 1893 building. This two-part structure was used until 1953 when the School moved to Hillside. 17 Photo of the assembly room in the 1896 building, which became the middle school study hall in 1937 (supplied by Miller Bugliari ’52). 18 Noonan, 26. 19 Noonan, 35. 1

THE ATHLETICS FIELD Although out of chronology, figure 6 shows what the athletics field looked like three or four years after the 1893 and 1896 Parker Road buildings were constructed. The field is full length at 300 feet with about 50 feet extra to the north for track and field events. The earliest picture of the field in use was in the mid-1890s (figure 7).18 A baseball game is being played, with home plate in the southwest corner of the field. Note the umpires in black and the measurements to the fence from home plate for right field (220 feet) and 400 feet further down for center field. Because of this fence Figure 9: A 1914 Thanksgiving Day game (an annual tradition at the time) in the Pingry Oval against Battin High, the first public high school in Elizabeth (1889). Note the numberless jerseys on both teams, the small shoulder pads, the baggy pants, the crowd standing two deep on the visitors side, and the helmet (for the helmetless player) on the far left side of the field.

Figure 8.

surrounding the field, the space was called “The Pingry Oval”. 19 There was a 1/6-mile rough-edged track, and, in addition to room for baseball and football, there were three tennis courts. Figure 8 is another early picture from the 1890s of a baseball game, taken from the north end of the field, looking at the north side of the School. Games were played with or without umpires, depending on their availability. In these cases, Pingry staff would substitute. Note the stands on the third- and firstbase lines. Apparently, baseballs would fly over the wooden fence and bounce on roofs or break windows of the houses east of the Pingry property. This was solved by extending the height of the fence to about 18 feet, which is seen in figure 9. This article will continue in the Summer 2017 issue.

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Ask the Archivist 5

2 9

Chess Matches If you recognize any of the boys in this picture, or know when the photo was taken, please contact Greg Waxberg â&#x20AC;&#x2122;96 at gwaxberg@pingry.org or 908-647-5555, ext. 1296. We are still looking for names of students in the First-Grade Classroom photo (Fall 2016), taken circa 1955.

THE PINGRY REVIEW

3 4

11 10

A Wonderful 60th Reunion

Class Notes Share all your news!

By Curt Champlin ’56

Submit your Class Note at pingry.org/classnotes, or mail it to Holland Sunyak Francisco ‘02, Director of Alumni Relations and Annual Giving, The Pingry School, 131 Martinsville Road, Basking Ridge, NJ 07920.

After the fun, entertaining, and tasty 50th-year luncheon, we had time to visit the campus and spend time with our classmates. That night, we collected at a local restaurant. On Saturday evening at the beautiful and spacious home of Bob and Margot Meyer, we had a wonderful buffet. Then, 15 of us and guests laughed and exchanged stories. Each 1956 attendee was allotted up to two minutes to address the group to share whatever they wanted with us, and they did. After each presentation, they received a 2016 silver dollar to remember the occasion. Best Dressed: Stan Stevinson Best Looking (face only): Ted Hauser Best Overall-Conditioned Hair and Body: Bob Meyer Best Santa with Best Laugh: Lou Ruprecht Best Smile: Bob Murphy, Bob Shippee The Most Eye-Poppingly Dressed: Bill Hood The Calmest (?) and Best Money Collector+++: Bob Burks The Richest Looking: Robert Klein The Nicest Guys: Don Van Duyne, Dick Bassin The Overall Smartest Student (3 out of 4 years): Bob Pyle The Longest-Playing Tennis Player: Mark Forrester The Longest Trip to Reunion (from Germany, 5 hours early): Jeff Boehlert Still Class Clown: Curt Champlin The Gentleman of the Class: Walker Lockett The weekend was a blast. Thank you, Pingry and the Meyers.

Sue English, widow of Calvin O. English ’37, with Duane St. John ’50, USMC(Ret.). Read more under 1950.

1950 DUANE ST. JOHN writes, “The birthday of the U.S. Marine Corps is celebrated every November 10 by Marines in every corner of the world. Here at Fleet Landing, Nancy’s and my new home since July 7, I was soon greeted by four other Marines, and the first thing I was told is, ‘We have a birthday party on the 10th of November— be sure to put it on your calendar.’ The 23 attendees of our celebration of the Marine Corps’ 241st birthday consisted of five Marines ranging from 97 with the Silver Star downward to the 50s, a couple of colonels, Dr. Eugene Alvarez (the author of four books about Parris Island), and yours truly—the only Marine in the group who was in the Chosin Reservoir Campaign in Korea. The other 18 people were widows of Marines, including one whose husband was a three-star Marine Lt.

General! In this group of 18 widows was Sue English, a resident of Fleet Landing, whose husband was Calvin O. English ’37 and a Marine fighter pilot in World War II. Who would have guessed there would be a Pingry connection at a small gathering of Marines and Marine widows in Atlantic Beach, Florida?”

1962

1967

John Geddes and Dr. Bill Tansey have been working to plan the Class of 1962’s 55th Reunion! They hope that many classmates will return to the Basking Ridge campus in May to celebrate this milestone reunion. They will be sending around additional information to the entire class, so please be on the lookout for more details, and make sure to save-the-date for Reunion Weekend 2017 on May 19-20!

The Class of 1967’s Reunion Committee—Gordon Cunningham, Bill Engel, Rob Klopman, Dr. Mike Lewis, Vic Pfeiffer, John Plum, and Dr. Aaron Welt—looks forward to spending time with you on May 19-20 to celebrate our 50th Reunion. Reunion Weekend will include a variety of activities, with many that are specific to our class, so please mark your calendars and make your travel arrangements

1957 Jack Angell, Hilton Jervey, John Leathers, and Raymond Londa have been working together to plan the Class of 1957’s 60th Reunion. They hope that many classmates will return to the Basking Ridge Campus in May to celebrate this milestone reunion. The committee will be sending around additional information to the entire class, so please be on the lookout for more details, and make sure to save-the-date for Reunion Weekend 2017 on May 19-20!

Dinner at Rods in Morristown on December 7: Dick Welch ’55, Honorary Trustee John W. Holman, Jr. ’55, P ’79, GP ’09, ’11, ’14, Chuck Wynn ’55, Trustee John W. Holman III ’79, P ’09, ’11, ’14, Bruce Morrison ’64, Miller Bugliari ’52, P ’86, ’90, ’97, GP 20, Phil Burrows ’55, P ’90, and former trustee and former PAA President Bob Shippee ’56. WINTER 2016-17

soon! Please notify Holland Sunyak Francisco ’02 in Pingry’s Office of Institutional Advancement of your current contact information at hfrancisco@pingry.org or 908647-7058. We plan to send many of our communications via email! We are very excited, as we have heard from many classmates who plan to attend this milestone celebration, and we will continue our outreach in hopes of gaining the largest turnout of classmates thus far! We also encourage you to reach out to others with whom you would like to renew a connection. See you in May!

1972

1969

1973

THE REVEREND BRUCE SMITH keeps flunking retirement. In addition to coordinating two ongoing programs for the Episcopal clergy in Columbus, Bruce serves on the Board of Directors of Bexley-Seabury Seminary Federation (Chicago) and Episcopal Retirement Services (Cincinnati). He is also an active member of the Columbus Metropolitan Club and the Columbus Torch Club. Bruce and his wife Susan, a retired Presbyterian pastor, have lived in the Clintonville section of Columbus, OH since 1996. Both Bruce and Susan often preside and preach at Sunday worship in congregations in the Columbus area. Because Bruce missed the 45th Reunion of the Class of 1969, he is looking forward to their 50th Reunion in 2019…but let’s not rush it! 62

THE PINGRY REVIEW

Reunion Committee Chair Guy Geier says, “I can’t believe it. 45 years. What? 45 years ago, we were walking the halls of the Hillside Campus. A lot has happened since, and it would be great to reconnect and talk about the glory days and what we’ve been up to since. Five years ago, many of us got together and had a blast. I am hoping that we can get even more of us together this year. Mark your calendars for Pingry’s Reunion Weekend, which will be held on May 19-20, 2017.”

CHUCK CUTTIC participated in the Medicine session of Pingry’s Career Day. He has been a physician assistant for over 30 years and is CEO of Cardiac First-Assist, Inc. He writes, “I thoroughly enjoyed Career Day, and, although the Basking Ridge Campus wasn’t my ‘home’ for my years at Pingry, the atmosphere was still the same after nearly 44 years! To sit with these juniors and seniors, and be able to give them a sense of what my profession means to me, my patients, and my life, and to observe their reactions, was a priceless giveback that I’ll truly treasure. The bottom line is that,

as a portion of one of the interpretations of the Pingry motto goes: “…you owe the greatest reverence to the young…”, and I hope I was able to show that on Career Day. Kudos to Maureen Maher and the entire staff for making it a day which I will not soon forget.” CHRISTOPHER NAUGHTON, ESQ. is Host and Executive Producer of The American Law Journal, which has won three Emmy Awards in two years. Read more on page 48.

1974 GLENN MURPHY participated in the Psychology session of Pingry’s Career Day. He owns a counseling and psychotherapy practice in Basking Ridge and is a certified Grief Recovery Specialist. He writes, “It was such a pleasure to share my love of psychotherapy with Pingry students at Career Day. I was proud to be paired with three terrific fellow alumni (Brad Fechter ’05, Maya Artis ’09, and Carolyn Crandall ’01) who serve on the front lines, assisting children and adults facing complex life challenges, crisis, and trauma. What an awesome opportunity it was to inspire the next generation to consider the field of psychology!”

1977 This year marks our 40th Reunion! Some of us fondly remember when we roamed the halls of the Hillside Campus. A few of us married other Pingry graduates, some of us have kids who have either graduated from Pingry or are attending the School now, and some of us have not thought about the School very much, nor been back to visit in many years. We don’t care which camp you fall in—we want all of you to come back this year! Our Reunion committee of Frank DeLaney (frankdelaney609@gmail.com), Chip Carver (chipc15@gmail. com), and Grant Smith (ugsmith@ cesi.com) is working together on the plans—please be on the lookout for more details and make sure to save-the-date for Reunion Weekend 2017 on May 19-20!

1978 PETER ALLEN participated in the Visual Arts session of Pingry’s Career Day. He is a self-employed artist and real estate professional who has shown his work in venues including Boston, Lincoln Center, and SoHo, as well as a solo exhibit at the Morris Museum.

Alumni enjoyed their annual dinner with Miller Bugliari ’52 in January at the Short Hills Club. Front row: Martin O’Connor ’77, P ’11, ’14, Frank DeLaney ’77, P ’12, Jonathan Shelby ’74, P ’08, ’11, ’19, Miller Bugliari ’52, P ’86, ’90, ’97, GP ’20, Chuck Allan ’77, and Larry Hallett ’75. Back row: Ted Daeschler ’77, Peter Hiscano ’75, Guy Cipriano ’74, P ’06, ’08, Skot Koenig ’77, Dr. John Boozan ’75, Chip Carver, Jr. ’77, P ’09, ’11, ’14, ’14, Jim Hoitsma ’75, Steve Lipper ’79, P ’09, ’12, ’14, and David M. Fahey ’99.

LORI HALIVOPOULOS participated in the Marketing/Advertising session of Pingry’s Career Day. She leads marketing communications for GfK in North America.

JOHN WITTE, JR. (above) participated in the Engineering/ Architecture session of Pingry’s Career Day. He is Executive Vice President of Donjon Marine Company, Inc., a family-owned business that his father started in 1967. He is also president of the International Salvage Union, a trade organization for the worldwide salvage industry. John writes, “What made the day special for me was that it gave me a brief opportunity to try to give back to a place that was instrumental in making me what I am today. The kids were engaging, interested, and fun to talk to. I tried to stress that Pingry offers an opportunity to become more of a well-rounded person (from both the perspective of a student-athlete as well as social interaction with their peers); all they needed to do was to take advantage of it. I was also impressed with the three young professionals that I shared the room with. Clearly, Pingry made a very positive impression on them all.”

1979

DR. ROB KING P ’07, ’12 (above) participated in the Finance session of Pingry’s Career Day. He is Senior Partner in the Global Healthcare Group of the Investment Banking Division of Goldman Sachs, advising U.S. and European clients on mergers and acquisitions and executing equity and debt financings. He also supervises the healthcare investment banking franchises in emerging markets.

1981

1982

JAMES MULLEN participated in the Visual Arts session of Pingry’s Career Day. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art at Bowdoin College in Maine.

JONATHAN KARP participated in the Media/Communications session of Pingry’s Career Day. He is President and Publisher of Simon & Schuster. ALISON LITTLE participated in the Management Consulting session of Pingry’s Career Day. She is a Principal in the Management Consulting group of KPMG, leading the Life Sciences industry group for KPMG’s Advisory services, and is the lead relationship partner for two major life sciences companies.

JONATHAN PASTERNAK (above) participated in the Law session of Pingry’s Career Day. He is a Partner and Chair of the Bankruptcy and Restructuring Group at the firm of DelBello Donnellan Weingarten Wise & Wiederkehr, LLP in White Plains.

This year marks our 35th Reunion! It’s hard to believe that, 35 years ago, we were walking the halls as students at Pingry—time has flown by, and we are excited to celebrate this milestone and relive and remember our days at Pingry. Reunion highlights will include a Hillside Campus tour on Friday and our Class Party inside the new Bugliari Athletics Center on Saturday night. Our Reunion committee of Amy Bagliani, Henry Klingeman, and Joyce PappasKopidakis has been working together on the plans—please be on the lookout for more details, and make sure to save-the-date for Reunion Weekend 2017 on May 19-20!

1983

James Mullen ’81 (right), with Joe Lucas ’91.

Phil Lovett ’79, Tom Trynin ’79, Leighton Welch ’79, and Miller Bugliari ’52, P ’86, ’90, ’97, GP ’20 met for dinner in New York City.

MACAIRE PACE participated in the Management Consulting session of Pingry’s Career Day. She is a Managing Director at Willis Towers Watson in Manhattan. The firm is a global consulting and insurance company.

Jonathan Karp ’82 and Ted Smith ’00. WINTER 2016-17

1984 DR. CHRIS EDWARDS participated in the Science session of Pingry’s Career Day. He has been teaching oceanography in the Ocean Sciences Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz since 2002. DR. ANAND GNANADESIKAN participated in the Science session of Pingry’s Career Day. He is a professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. His research focuses on understanding the connection between the living world and its physical environment.

1985

ELIZABETH KELLOGG WINTERBOTTOM P ’21, ’23 participated in the Real Estate session of Pingry’s Career Day. She is a top-listing and -selling New Jersey real estate agent. As Head of The Winterbottom Team at Keller Williams, she specializes in marketing homes. Julie Kaufman Betancur, Pat Birotte, Paul Duval, Fred Kaimer, Tracy Kemp, Peter Nicoletti, Katharine Campbell Outcalt, David Padulo, Elizabeth Kellogg Winterbottom, and Thomas Williams have been working together to make the 30th Reunion for the Class of 1987 unforgettable! The committee will be sending around additional information to the entire class, so please be on the lookout for more details, and make sure to save-thedate for Reunion Weekend 2017 on May 19-20!

1988

DR. SANJAY LALLA P ’21, ’22 (above) participated in the Medicine session of Pingry’s Career Day. He is a board-certified member of the American Society of Plastic Surgery and a member of the New York and New Jersey Societies of Plastic Surgery. He is in private practice and has volunteered overseas on medical missions.

DR. ALISON DEGENNARO GATTUSO participated in the Medicine session of Pingry’s Career Day. She is an attending orthopedic surgeon at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia, specializing in pediatric spinal disorders, sports medicine, cerebral palsy, spasticity, and other neuromuscular disorders.

1989 CHANDRA CAIN DAVIS participated in the Law session of Pingry’s Career Day. She is an effective labor and employment law advisor, litigator, and mediator, currently a Partner at The

Employment Law Solution: McFadden Davis LLC in Atlanta. It is the only African-American femaleowned employment law defense firm in the country. Reflecting on Career Day, Chandra says, “It was a great opportunity to look back. Seeing today’s students made me see myself more than 25 years ago. It was a nice walk down a comfortable memory lane, and it was nice to give back to them.”

Dr. Ezra Jennings ’89 and Chip Baird ’89 in Staten Island at the start of the 2016 New York City Marathon.

1990 JACKIE (SCHLOSBERG) PICK writes, “It’s been a remarkable and terrifying two years committing to a new writing career after years in jobs that orbited around writing. Once my first piece was published, people were chock full of suggestions of where I should put my writing. Most suggestions involved publications that focus on humor or parenting (or both). I dipped my beak into those for a while, as parenting is pregnant with humorous situations, but I wanted to move beyond the ‘8 Crazy Things I

1987

Elizabeth Kellogg Winterbottom ’87, P ’21, ’23. 64

THE PINGRY REVIEW

Learned Taking My Kids to the State Fair’ kind of articles. I looked to the writers and artists I admire and saw they did and do not let themselves get pigeonholed in one genre—or even locked into one art form. And because nothing helps a writer more than spending time doing something other than writing, I took courses—the classes were fine, the connections I made were invaluable. I met a lot of authors and editors for coffee and learned about publishing, finding a writing tribe, marketing, and how much writers really like coffee. An essay of mine is featured in the anthology So Glad They Told Me: Women Get Real About Motherhood (August 2016). I was proud to be a part of the critically-acclaimed resource for parents of multiples, Multiples Illuminated, with a piece about the comedy of errors that was the delivery of my twins. And this winter, Here in the Middle, a book about the so-called ‘sandwich generation’ taking care of both parents and children, included my story about being the odd woman out as my kids and parents interact. I will always be grateful to my English teachers at Pingry, including Mrs. Grant, Mr. Li, and Mr. Dufford, for the guidance and support that still inform my work today!”

1991 JOE LUCAS participated in the Visual Arts session of Pingry’s Career Day. He is CEO of the highend residential interior design firm Lucas Studio, Inc. and CEO of Harbinger, a multi-line design showroom.

1992

Dr. Alison DeGennaro Gattuso ’88, Dr. Alexandra Braunstein ’97, and Chuck Cuttic ’73.

COMMANDER DAVID BAIRD participated in the Non-Profit/ Public Service session of Pingry’s Career Day. A Commander and Naval Aviator for the U.S. Navy, he has flown over 3,200 hours and made 760 arrested landings on multiple aircraft carriers throughout the world in support of combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and numerous international exercises. Currently stationed at the Pentagon, he has received numerous personal decorations.

Meg DeFoe ’92 was overjoyed when Shelby Luke Rideout ’92 became her neighbor on the West Coast. Shelby and three of her children, Tensae, Jack, and Luke, attended Meg’s daughter Ada’s 4th birthday party in Santa Monica.

CHRIS PEARLMAN, who has spent years in sports marketing and media, is the new Chief Operating Officer of Swansea City, a Welsh football club that plays in the Premier League. He is the club’s first COO and will oversee day-to-day commercial operations, including stadium and corporate sponsorships, marketing, merchandise, ticketing, media, and public relations. Chris spent the past decade as Partner and Executive Vice President at Van Wagner Sports and Entertainment, overseeing their Media and Properties division and global sales efforts. He has also worked for Premiere Sports & Entertainment (acquired by Van Wagner in 2005), ESPN (during its merger with ABC Sports), and ProServ. Angel Ongcapin Barrios, Todd Hirsch, Tim Lear, Kathy Iacuzzo Sartorius, Lori Schaffhauser, and Christa Tinari can’t believe it is time to celebrate our 25th Reunion and are excited to serve on 1992’s Reunion Committee! We hope you have saved the dates of May 19-20 and will join our class as we return to the Martinsville (now Basking Ridge!) Campus for Reunion Weekend. Please notify Holland Sunyak Francisco ’02 in Pingry’s Office of Institutional Advancement of your current contact information at hfrancisco@pingry.org or 908-6477058 to ensure you receive both our paper and email communications.

1993 KRISTIN SOSTOWSKI (above) participated in the Law session of

Corby Thomas ’92 married Megs Thomas on September 17, 2016, at the Mantoloking Yacht Club. Pictured are Jamie Feeley ’92, Jubb Corbet, Jr. ’50, P ’77, ’78, Miller Bugliari ’52, P ’86, ’90, ’97, GP ’20, Bill Thomas ’88, Sarah Thomas ’90, Corby Thomas ’92, Megs Thomas, Bill Corbet ’77, Woody Weldon ’91, P ’23, Rob Tulloch ’93, Maggie Corbet ’78, Hunter Hulshizer ’91, and Alex Boyce ’91.

JULIA FALLON participated in the Medicine session of Pingry’s Career Day.

Pingry’s Career Day. She is a Director (Partner) with Gibbons, P.C. As a member of the firm’s Employment Law Department, she represents companies in workplace-related litigation and counsels clients regarding compliance with federal and state employment laws. ROB TULLOCH participated in the Real Estate session of Pingry’s Career Day. He is a Managing Partner at Realco Capital Partners LLC, which purchases apartment complexes within close proximity to major U.S. public universities for rental to students. Rob also serves as president of the operating company Soundview Residential. AMANDA WISS participated in the Entrepreneurship session of Pingry’s Career Day. She is the founder of Urban Clarity, New York City’s premier professional organizing company.

1994 VINCENT MORANO participated in the Performing Arts session of Pingry’s Career Day. He is Vice President of Production for PhiPhen Pictures.

ADAM PLOTKIN (above) participated in the Finance session of Pingry’s Career Day. He is a Partner at ff Venture Capital. CHRISTOPHER SHAHIDI participated in the Non-Profit/Public Service session of Pingry’s Career Day. He is a senior political officer in the U.S. Foreign Service, which carries out America’s foreign policy objectives under the auspices of the U.S. Department of State. He has been posted to diplomatic assignments in the Middle East and Europe, and he most recently completed an assignment at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

KEVIN MANARA (above) participated in the Law session of Pingry’s Career Day. As Senior Labor Relations Counsel for the National Football League, his responsibilities include the administration of the League’s collective bargaining agreement with its players, as well as enforcement of the League’s policies.

1995 DR. CHRISTOPHER CUTIE participated in the Science session of Pingry’s Career Day. He joined TARIS® Biomedical as its Chief Medical Officer after more than 10 years of clinical experience as a practicing urologist. Most recently, he was Instructor in Surgery/Assistant in Urology at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School.

DAVID MARGOLIS (above) participated in the Finance session of Pingry’s Career Day. He is an Executive Director at JPMorgan Private Bank. WINTER 2016-17

1996

LINDSAY HOLMES GLOGOWER participated in the Technology session of Pingry’s Career Day. She is Manager of Recruitment for Sailthru.

JONATHAN SHORT participated in the Law session of Pingry’s Career Day. He is a Partner at McCarter & English LLP where he practices intellectual property law.

BEN LEHRHOFF participated in the Finance session of Pingry’s Career Day. He is a Vice President and Client Advisor in Bernstein Private Wealth Management’s New York office, providing investment and wealth planning advice to high-net-worth families and institutions.

1997 DR. ALEXANDRA BRAUNSTEIN participated in the Medicine session of Pingry’s Career Day. She is a board-certified ophthalmologist who specializes in plastic, cosmetic, and reconstructive surgery of the brow, eyelids, and lacrimal system in adults and children. She is also an Assistant Professor of Clinical Ophthalmology at Columbia University, where she teaches residents and medical students on a weekly basis. Alex and her husband welcomed twins this year—a boy named Declan and a girl named Isabel. FRANK MORANO has joined the firm of Purcell, Mulcahy, Hawkins, Flanagan & Lawless in Bedminster, NJ as a litigation associate. Frank has been a criminal prosecutor for the last nine years, first as an Assistant Prosecutor for the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office, and then as a Deputy Attorney General for the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Alicia Bronski, Frank Morano, Alexandra Braunstein, and Aimee Sostowski have been working together to plan the Class of 1997’s 20th Reunion! They hope that many classmates will return to the Basking Ridge Campus in May to celebrate this milestone reunion. They will be sending around additional information to the entire class, so please be on the lookout for more details, and make sure to save-the-date for Reunion Weekend 2017 on May 19-20!

RYAN SHRADER participated in the Engineering/Architecture session of Pingry’s Career Day. He is Engineering Supervisor for General Dynamics Electric Boat, the division of General Dynamics responsible for designing and building submarines for the U.S. Navy. Carl Monaco ’98 and Andrew Leonard ’98 with Andrew’s daughter Eve Leonard.

1998

1999

ANDREW LEONARD writes, “We might be 200-plus miles from Pingry, but the Class of 1998 is well represented in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C. By coincidence, my daughter Eve and Carl Monaco’s daughter Vivian are in the same preschool class (shout-out to the Caterpillars). Incredibly, that small class also has a third Pingry dad— Peter Jeydel ’02. Here is a recent picture of Carl, Eve, and me in the classroom. If Eve looks pensive, it’s only because she’s still grappling with the news that she’s going to be a big sister—Shelley and I are expecting another baby girl in May! My house is suddenly crawling with Leonard women.”

JOHN BRESCHER III participated in the Law session of Pingry’s Career Day. He is an attorney with Glidden and Glidden, P.C. on Nantucket, with a primary focus on real estate law, as well as land use permitting.

Chris Newhouse ’97, Miller Bugliari ’52, P ’86, ’90, ’97, GP ’20, and Michael Blanchard ’96 at breakfast at Sears in San Francisco in January. 66

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DAN BUELL participated in the Finance session of Pingry’s Career Day. He is a member of the institutional sales team at Empirical Research Partners. ARLYN DAVICH, a serial entrepreneur who is Founder and CEO of PayPerks, was interviewed about the company for a November 15 Q&A in Payments Journal. A Pingry trustee, she was also a Keynote Speaker for Pingry’s Career Day. Read more on page 46.

2000 DR. ARIANNA PAPASIKOS AUSTIN participated in the Medicine session of Pingry’s Career Day. She is a specialist in orthodontics and dentofacial orthopedics. CHRISTOPHER CAREY participated in the Technology session of Pingry’s Career Day. He is Co-Founder and CEO of AD LUCEM, Inc. TED SMITH participated in the Media/Communications session of Pingry’s Career Day. He runs the asset management practice group at Dukas Linden Public Relations, a New York-based communications agency focused on brand development and reputation management for the financial services industry.

Jessica Carroll ’02, Chandra Cain Davis ’89, and John Brescher III ’99.

Christopher Carey ’00, Brian Ramirez ’01, and Lindsay Holmes Glogower ’99.

Meiko Boynton ’01, in front of the Shwedagon Pagoda in Myanmar, on assignment as Manager of Special Projects for George Soros.

2001 CHAZ BARSAMIAN participated in the Entrepreneurship session of Pingry’s Career Day. President and CEO of Exit Strategy Productions, LLC, he has negotiated and overseen the management, administration, and deployment of over $100-plus million in capital toward the film financing and music rights acquisition across 300-plus motion pictures and television series. CAROLYN CRANDALL participated in the Psychology session of Pingry’s Career Day. A Learning Specialist, she has worked as a school counselor, and the focus of her current work at the Berkeley Carroll School in Brooklyn is on coaching Upper School students on executive functioning skills. Carolyn writes, “I was excited to share my experiences as a school counselor and learning specialist with current students. It was wonderful to be back on campus and reconnect with my classmates— Chaz Barsamian ’01, JJ Jacobs ’01, Lauren (Anderson) Holland ’01, and Brian Ramirez ’01. It is always

great to see former teachers who had such an impact on me as a student and continue to now as an educator, especially Ananya Chatterji, my all-time favorite. My family and I are relocating to the Boston area this summer and are looking forward to attending some New England Pingry events.” LAUREN (ANDERSON) HOLLAND participated in the Marketing/ Advertising session of Pingry’s Career Day. She is Vice President, National Digital Sales at News America Marketing, a News Corporation company. JONATHAN “JJ” JACOBS participated in the Law session of Pingry’s Career Day. As Executive Agency Counsel at the City of New York Business Integrity Commission, he is the primary attorney issuing and reviewing administrative violations and presenting those at trial. JJ writes, “I had a wonderful time reconnecting with, among others, fellow classmates Charles Barsamian ’01, Brian Ramirez ’01, Lauren (Anderson) Holland ’01, and Carolyn Crandall ’01, not to

mention fellow classmate and current Pingry teacher Margaret Kelleher ’01. It was also wonderful to spend time with Mr. Keating, Mr. Varnes, Mr. McAnally, and Mr. Corvino, and to enjoy lunch with Headmaster Conard.”

LISA KLEINMAN participated in the Performing Arts session of Pingry’s Career Day. She is a comedy writer/producer/performer who is Senior Director of Development, Comedy Division at NorthSouth Productions.

BRIAN RAMIREZ participated in the Technology session of Pingry’s Career Day. He is Chief Strategy Officer and part of the founding team at WiseBanyan: the world’s first free financial advisor.

JESSICA CARROLL participated in the Law session of Pingry’s Career Day. An Associate at McElroy, Deutsch, Mulvaney & Carpenter LLP in the firm’s Insurance Services and Litigation Department, she represents clients in matters related to construction defects, construction site accidents, insurance coverage, general liability, and wrongful death.

JAMIE MARSDEN received a doctorate in Physical Therapy in May, took her boards on July 21 (which she passed), and left on July 22 to hike the approximately 2,200 miles of the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia. She hiked 1,416.6 miles before going off-trail on December 13, when her trail mates got off. She plans to return in March to finish the final 772.9 miles to Springer Mountain in Georgia. Her photographs are on Instagram and Facebook under her name, and she blogs at https:// thetrek.co/author/jamie-marsden (for those of you who are wondering, yes, she still plays hockey and soccer!). She sends her best wishes to all her friends and the Pingry community.

ERIC DAVICH, a digital music entrepreneur, was a Keynote Speaker for Pingry’s Career Day. Read more on page 46.

ALEXANDRA PETERSON participated in the Media/ Communications session of Pingry’s Career Day. She is Senior

2002

Jamie Marsden ’02 and her friend Carrie Yehle at Mt. Katahdin in Maine at the start of their journey in July. WINTER 2016-17

2008

Vice President of GCI Health and leads the firm’s corporate offering. She has more than a decade of experience in marketing communications, public relations, and business development. Alex writes, “It was great to see that the caliber of Pingry students is strong as ever; the students had great questions, which made the conversation fun and meaningful.” Class of 2002! It’s your 15th Reunion year from Pingry! Mark your calendars for Reunion Weekend May 19-20, 2017, and please contact Rebecca Patterson in the Office of Institutional Advancement at rpatterson@pingry.org or 908-647-5555, ext. 1268 if you are interested in joining your Reunion committee!

2004 JEFF RAMIREZ participated in the Marketing/Advertising session of Pingry’s Career Day. In 2014, he opened Denizens Brewing Company, a packaging brewery as well as taproom/restaurant in Silver Spring, MD. SUMEET SHAH participated in the Entrepreneurship session of Pingry’s Career Day. He is a Principal at Brand Foundry Ventures, where he handles sourcing and management of new opportunities. Sumeet writes, “After 13 years away from the campus, it felt wonderful to step back in, even as a seasoned alumnus, and talk to the juniors and seniors at Pingry. I’ve seen a lot within my career, especially within the startup world, and to get a lot of great questions about entrepreneurship from the students was absolutely exciting. I was able to catch up with so many of my past teachers and coaches, but what was so exciting to me as someone who majored in Biomedical Engineering was to see the evolution of the Sciences Wing, particularly the facilities and labs upgraded to university-level status. STEM is such an important area that needs to be fostered among young men and women, and I’m so happy to see Pingry step up to the plate in this way.” 68

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CRAIG LIMOLI participated in the Entrepreneurship session of Pingry’s Career Day. He is Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of WellSheet.

2009

Obinna Eboh ’05 and Commander David Baird ’92, U.S. Navy.

ANDREW WERNER participated in the Engineering/Architecture session of Pingry’s Career Day. He is an Associate Principal at Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, an international architecture practice known for producing some of the world’s tallest and most complex buildings.

2005 OBINNA EBOH participated in the Non-Profit/Public Service session of Pingry’s Career Day. He oversees the administrative, academic, recruitment, and financial components of Regent Bible Institute as Dean of Faculty & Students. DR. BRAD FECHTER participated in the Psychology session of Pingry’s Career Day. He works at the Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation in West Orange, NJ, conducting outpatient neuropsychological evaluations and working closely with the Director of Psychology and Neuropsychology to expand cognitive rehabilitation services across New Jersey. BESS ROWEN participated in the Performing Arts session of Pingry’s Career Day. With experiences in acting, directing, stage managing, and playwriting, she is an Associate Producer with The Fulcrum Theater and has written scholarly reviews for several publications. She is also a lecturer at Purchase College.

2006 DR. ZACK CORDERO participated in the Engineering/Architecture session of Pingry’s Career Day. He is an Assistant Professor of Materials Science and NanoEngineering at Rice University in Houston. ADAM GOLDSTEIN sold the company he started, Hipmunk, to Concur, a division of SAP.

2007 Michelle Aueron, Toreyan Clarke, Dan Davidson, Kate Durnan, Sandra Hough, Emily Lang, Jillian Lubetkin, and Anna Porges have been working together to plan the 10th Reunion for the Class of 2007. Mark your calendars for Pingry’s Reunion Weekend, which will be held on May 19-20, 2017. Reunion Weekend will feature a host of exciting events, including the dedication of the Miller A. Bugliari ’52 Athletics Center, a fantastic food festival, Alumni Lacrosse Game, and a Class Party!

Devlin Murphy ’09 and Rob Tulloch ’93.

MAYA ARTIS participated in the Psychology session of Pingry’s Career Day. With training in music therapy, she has worked at a private school in Manhattan, providing individual music therapy to children with neurodevelopmental delays. She has also completed two clinical rotations at Morristown Medical Center to provide individual and group music therapy. Maya is currently interning at Mount Sinai Beth Israel. DEVLIN MURPHY participated in the Real Estate session of Pingry’s Career Day. She is a real estate analyst in HFF’s New Jersey office.

2012 Class of 2012! Believe it or not, this year marks our five-year Reunion from Pingry. We hope you’ve enjoyed experiencing college, the real world, and everything else that you’ve been up to in the past five years. The four of us have been working together to plan the Class of 2012’s 5th Year Reunion. Mark your calendars for Reunion Weekend May 19-20, 2017, and stay tuned for more details and information from the committee coming soon! We can’t wait to see everyone in May! -- Rebecca Curran, Matt Lipper, Connor McLaughlin, and Marisa Werner.

Neil Holman ’14, far left in the front, with members of AERO.

“Orphaned Girl at Ogi River Leprosy Center” by Ugo Ikoro ’15.

2014

UGO IKORO ’15 was represented in a photography show at 70 South Gallery in Morristown, “Spirit,” celebrating 55 years of the Peace Corps. The exhibit last summer and fall featured images captured by Peace Corps volunteers while serving their missions. Even though Ugo has not served in the Peace Corps, she has volunteered in Nigeria with the nonprofit Bina Foundation’s Free Medical and Charitable Outreach, so Gallery Director Ira L. Black said that her work with the foundation “meshed perfectly with the themes of ‘Spirit,’” according to an online newspaper article. The exhibit included four of her photos.

NEIL HOLMAN, a former member of Pingry’s Robotics team who loves the automobile industry, is a member of a student-run engineering club at The University of Vermont called the Alternative Energy Racing Organization (AERO) that designs and builds hybrid or electric cars from scratch. He writes, “These cars compete in the Formula SAE [Society of Automotive Engineers] Hybrid Competition in Loudon, New Hampshire every year against college teams from all around the world. At the competition, the cars are judged rigorously by engineers from Ford, GM, and Chrysler as there are 180 pages of detailed rules to follow. The electrical and mechanical inspections are where most teams fail and, unfortunately, do not get to race. Of the teams that do race, there are three events: the acceleration run, autocross race (racing through cones), and endurance race. This year has actually been very abnormal for the team—however, incredibly con-

structive. We had built an incredibly-complex hybrid about two years ago and were perfecting it last year. We unfortunately ran into some manufacturers defects with some electric motors and were forced into a tough position. This prompted us to scrap and start fresh with only six weeks before the competition. We designed and built a fully-functional electric race car (Cleanspeed 2) in those six weeks, and, while it was not as complex as the hybrid, it gave the team something to rally around and feel proud of. I spent many long nights in the shop, working to make the car ready, and it’s one of the most incredible experiences I’ve had at UVM. I was also lucky enough to race Cleanspeed 2 in the auto-cross race. We ended up taking second place. We are incredibly proud of this accomplishment and plan to come back next year with a new and improved electric car.” Neil works mostly on marketing and sponsorship for the club, while also helping to build the car and provide input on the design.

Matt Mangini ’14, Julian Greer ’14, and Brian Costa ’13 at an Eagles game at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, PA.

Describing her volunteer work, Ugo says, “It was a great experience. Being Nigerian, I’ve traveled there a few times and have witnessed both the good and bad that come with the country. Poverty rates are high, especially in light of the recent economic downturn that the country is facing. Though there are many organizations that are dedicated to combating the issues that the impoverished face in certain communities, the funding, resources, and staff are often not enough to run them efficiently. When I came to volunteer at my aunt’s foundation, she had been running it for about five years at that point. I was and still am interested in public health, so, when our ISP came along, I thought it would be a great opportunity to explore the field and help others in the process. It exposed me to the many ailments that Nigerians face in the community of Enugu, along with what it takes to run non-governmental organizations as extensive as my aunt’s. Overall, it was a worthwhile experience, and I would recommend it to anyone who is remotely interested in public health, humanitarianism, or medicine, or is just curious about getting involved with advocacy and aid groups. There is a place for everyone to make an impact, and they’re always in need of volunteers as well as donations. To learn more please visit their website: www.binafoundation.net.” Ugo, who took photography for three years at Pingry, was referred to the exhibit by Miles Boyd, who knew that the gallery wanted to include a high school student who best portrayed the Peace Corps initiative.

TanTan Wang ’16 returned to Pingry in January for an appearance with his a cappella group, The Yale Spizzwinks(?). WINTER 2016-17

David Wisner Cudlipp ’45

In Memoriam Edward Tipton “Tip” Kenyon ’46 January 22, 2017, age 87, Westwood, MA

Mr. Kenyon, a member of Pingry’s Board of Trustees from 19711974, and then the Board’s Counsel, was involved with Pingry’s move from Hillside to Bernards Township, especially by helping to sell the Hillside Campus to Kean College. He attended Harvard College and Columbia Law School, joined the U.S. Army Medical Corps, and spent his career practicing law at the firm of Bourne, Noll & Kenyon. Mr. Kenyon devoted tremendous time and energy to public service, sitting on the boards of Overlook Hospital, the Overlook Hospital Foundation, Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, New Jersey Center for the Visual Arts, TrinityPawling School, The Winston School, and Central Presbyterian Church, among others. Mr. Kenyon was honored as the New Jersey Tri-County United Way “Man of the Year” (1990) and the “Distinguished Citizen of the Year” by the United Way of Summit, New Providence, and Berkeley Heights (1993). His wife Dolores “Kit” predeceased him in 2014, six months after they celebrated their 60th anniversary. Survivors include his sons Ted, Jon (Ceci), Jim (Susan), and David (Jone); grandchildren Robbie, Charlie, Martha, Kelly, Sam, Mary, Will, Henry, and Julia; and great-grandchild Wiley. Mr. Kenyon’s brother was Stanwood Kenyon ’38.

Francis Orr Clark ’45 December 17, 2016, age 89, Laurel, MD

Mr. Clark, valedictorian his junior and senior years at Pingry, earned a bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering at Yale University. He entered the U.S. Army at the end of World War II and then earned a master’s degree at Wayne State University. Mr. Clark was Head Urban Planner for the City of Detroit, accepted a position at the Federal Highway Administration in Washington, D.C., and retired in 2007. He was an accomplished pianist and clarinetist. Survivors include his children Debbie, Doug, Pam, Jeff, Chris, Jeannine, and Elaine; brother Don; grandchildren Rebecca, Carissa, Michael, Erin, Logan, Kristen, Oliver, Julia, and Sara; and great-grandson Jack.

THE PINGRY REVIEW

January 16, 2017, age 88, Duxbury, MA

Mr. Cudlipp attended Princeton University and joined J.P. Stevens & Co. in New York, enjoying a four-decade career in the textile industry. He later worked independently for Joshua L. Bailey and Cotswold Industries, Inc. for another 20 years. Survivors include his beloved wife of 38 years, Nancy; first wife Janice; son David ’69 (Nancy); grandsons Todd and Christopher; step-children Leslie (Dan), Amy (Steve), David (Kimberly), and Ellen “Penny” (Rick); step-grandchildren Peter, Matthew, Kellen, Abigail, Victoria, Rebecca, Benjamin, Amanda, Andrew, Hayden, Lindsay, and Allison; and sister Joyce (R. Mitchell).

Dr. Richard Lee McClelland ’45 July 28, 2016, age 89, Charlotte, NC

Dr. McClelland graduated from Princeton University and received a Dental Degree from the University of Pennsylvania with clinical and academic honors. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Navy for two years and chose to remain in the Inactive Reserve at the time of his discharge. Three years later, he was notified of his selection for commissioning as an Ensign in the Reserve, and returned to active duty during the Korean War. As a Lieutenant in the Dental Corps, he served aboard the aircraft carriers U.S.S. Tarawa and U.S.S. Bennington. Following his release from active duty, Dr. McClelland joined the Naval Reserve Research Company 4-1. After his promotion to Commander, he held office as the National Dental Surgeon of The Reserve Officer Association of the United States, representing Reserve dental officers of all three uniformed services. He retired with the rank of Captain after more than 30 years in the Navy Reserve, five of which were on active duty. Concurrently with his release from active duty, he established and operated his dental practice in Princeton, NJ for 30 years. In addition, Dr. McClelland was on the staff of the Princeton Medical Center, served as Chairman of the Dental Department on several occasions, and was the first dentist to serve on the Medical Center’s Executive Committee. He was a Fellow of the American College of Dentists, the

International College of Dentists, and the Academy of General Dentistry, and was recognized by Marquis Who’s Who in America. Faculty members of the University of Pennsylvania School of Dentistry used case histories and photographs of his prosthetic dentistry in publications. Survivors include his wife of 57 years, Elizabeth; sons R. Scott, William, and R. Craig; nine grandchildren; and brother W. Craig ’52.

Dr. Frank W. DiPillo ’47

November 30, 2016, age 87, Warren, NJ

Dr. DiPillo, captain of Pingry’s 1947 Track Team, served in the U.S. Navy, graduated summa cum laude from St. John’s University, and received a medical degree from SUNY Down State Medical School. He served his residency and fellowship at Long Island College Hospital. He then became an attending physician and later served as Chief of Special Hematology/ Oncology (1970-1998) before being promoted to Chairman of Medicine (1998-2012). All the while, he trained and mentored thousands of medical students, residents, and fellows. He was inducted into Pingry’s Athletics Hall of Fame as a member of the 1947 Track Team. Dr. DiPillo was predeceased by his wife Roberta and son Frank. Survivors include his sons Mark (Joyce), Steven (Belinda), and Michael; daughter Danielle (Michael); 10 grandchildren; and one great-grandchild on the way at the time of his death.

Denison Palmer Diebolt ’48 May 28, 2016, age 85, Tolland, CT

Mr. Diebolt, a veteran of the Korean War, graduated from Columbia University and worked as a mechanical engineer for Pratt & Whitney, a manufacturer of aircraft engines and auxiliary power units. He was predeceased by his daughter Gayle. Survivors include his wife Bette Ann; children Richard (Louise), Mark (Karen), Sandra (Donn), Theodore (Carolyn), and Jeffrey (Lynn); and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Robert Nichols Schutz ’48 November 30, 2016, age 86, Manchester-By-The-Sea, MA

Mr. Schutz served for two years in the U.S. Army and was accepted to Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Washington, D.C. He worked as a pharmaceutical sales representative for Pfizer. Offered an opportunity to head a sales team in Argentina, Mr. Schutz moved to Buenos Aires for three years. In the early 1970s, he started a medical records services company, Medical Dictation Associates, which had contracts with major hospitals throughout Long Island and New York City. Mr. Schutz sold the company and decided to return to school, entering Hofstra University Law School full-time. In the mid1980s, he embarked on a second career as an attorney. Mr. Schutz was active in numerous fundraising and preservation efforts that were commemorated via community and Chamber of Commerce awards. He was preceded in death by his youngest brother Thompson. Survivors include his children Roberta, Stephen, Karl, and Erika; grandchildren Karl, Patrick, Peter, Zoe, Theophilus, George, Donald, Angus, and Christine; brothers Peter and Benjamin; and sister Stephanie.

Roger Kent Schmidt ’52

December 22, 2016, age 82, Gloucester, MA

Mr. Schmidt received a degree in history from Williams College. He served in the U.S. Navy and graduated from Officer Candidate School. Mr. Schmidt was a Hospital Administrator at Columbian Presbyterian Hospital for many years. In addition to his devoted wife of 53 years, Trudi, survivors include his children Gregory, Diane, Lauren, and Jeffrey (Leah), and grandchildren Sonya, Justin, and James. He was the brother of the late Harry Schmidt ’54.

Philip Louis Scrudato ’53

Dr. Ann Johnson ’83

Mr. Scrudato excelled in track and football at Pingry and was best known for his abilities in track: four varsity letters; captain of the 1952 Track Team; often the leading scorer in the broad jump and high jump; School record in the broad jump of 21 feet, 2.5 inches; and the Alumni Track Trophy in 1952 and 1953. He completed one year at Hobart College before joining the U.S. Marine Corps in 1954 and competing on its track team. He was honorably discharged in 1962, having attained the rank of Corporal. Mr. Scrudato spent most of his career as an owner and operator of restaurants, but most recently worked as a Range Master. Active in his community, he served on the board of Lions Head Woods and leveraged his love of photography as the community photographer. Mr. Scrudato was inducted into Pingry’s Athletics Hall of Fame as an individual and as a member of the 1952 Football Team. Survivors include his loving wife of 47 years, Susan; older brother Joseph ’47; children Frank (Lori) and Tiffany (John); and grandchildren Jake, Ethan, Lily, Nolan, Owen, and Sam.

Dr. Johnson was captain of Pingry’s 1983 Girls’ Track Team and placed first in discus in the prep states. At graduation, she received the Richard G. Gradwohl Girls Track Award, presented to that member of the girls track team who, during her years at Pingry, “has shown unfaltering team spirit and placed the good of the team above personal ambition.” She earned a B.A. at The College of William & Mary, an M.F.A. at Yale University, and a Ph.D. at Princeton University, and was a Charles Warren Fellow in American History at Harvard University. During her career, Dr. Johnson worked in areas ranging from 19th century American history to 21st century nanotechnology. She taught theater technology at the University of Southern California, history at Fordham University, and history and philosophy at the University of South Carolina. Most recently, she was Associate Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University. Dr. Johnson wrote the book Hitting the Brakes: Engineering Design and the Production of Knowledge; was co-editor of Toxic Airs: Body, Place, Planet in Historical Perspective; and served as an associate editor for the journals Technology and Culture and Engineering Studies. Survivors include her husband Mark, their son Evan, her parents, and her younger sister Katherine. She died from a rare cancer, endometrial stroma sarcoma.

December 27, 2016, age 82, Lakewood, NJ

Jeffrey D. Boehlert ’56

November 23, 2016, age 78, Arlington, VT

December 11, 2016, age 51, Ithaca, NY

WINTER 2016-17

Closing Word

The Listening School In early November, just after the presidential election, Interim Upper School Director Ananya Chatterji P ’25 sent the following email to students. Dear Upper School students, For the last several years, I have lied to my daughter. Not listening in my home is a chronic discussion topic—“Put your shoes on, put your shoes on, PUT YOUR SHOES ON RIGHT THIS SECOND.” (That’s me, every morning.) I’m sure every single one of you has gone through many years of Not Listening. And when parents are stuck in the quagmire of Not Listening, they tend to get desperate. This is horrible, I realize: I made up a place called The Listening School (randomly located in New Providence—far enough away from our home to make it seem mysterious, but close enough to sound like I didn’t make it up) for kids who don’t listen well. There, at The Listening School, students spend all day listening and doing nothing else. My daughter is nine now, so she has stopped believing this place exists. And the truth is that fear of enrollment at The Listening School never helped in the Not Listening department anyway. But The Listening School... What if such a place existed? A place where we could talk and be heard—all the time. A place where people listen to listen, rather than listen to respond. How many times a day do you sit in a classroom, barely hearing the discussion at hand, so busy you are formulating how you would like to jump in? How many times a week are you involved in a heated debate where you are thinking about your response as your friend is sharing her viewpoint? How many times a day do you talk with someone so intently that you feel you could predict how his sentence will end? 72

THE PINGRY REVIEW

What if such a place existed? A place where we could talk and be heard—all the time. A place where people listen to listen, rather than listen to respond. I have spent the last two days talking with—and listening to—students. I am asking you to listen to each other. I am asking you to take some time this evening and think about how you would like to accomplish this well. You have an incredible opportunity right now to support and learn from your classmates. All students have voices, and all voices and viewpoints deserve to be listened to and heard. When you come into the building tomorrow and your friend speaks to you, don’t formulate

your response. First, listen. Really, really listen. Then, you may choose to share. Or you may not. The more you listen, the more others around you will speak. And as you listen to the people around you, be present in the moment. Listen for the sake of listening. Maybe we can all make The Listening School exist in Basking Ridge. I would love it if you were willing to try. With love, Ms. Chatterji

CALENDAR OF UPCOMING EVENTS Monday, March 13

Deerfield Beach Reception

Hosted by Barbara and Joe Wortley ’60 – 6:00 p.m.

Tuesday, March 14

Vero Beach Reception

Hosted by Richard and Lynn Apruzzese Tetrault ’80 – 6:00 p.m.

Alumni Class Notes Send us your latest news! Do you have a new job? New baby? Just married? Recently moved? Or any updates to share with your classmates? We are collecting class notes and photos for the next issue of The Pingry Review. To submit, visit pingry.org/classnotes, or mail your note to Holland Sunyak Francisco ’02 Director of Alumni Relations and Annual Giving The Pingry School 131 Martinsville Road Basking Ridge, NJ 07920

Thursday, March 16

Naples Reception

Hosted by Mary Ann and Bill Smith GP ’16, ’18, ’20, ’20, ’20, ’21 Royal Poinciana Golf Club – 6:00 p.m.

Friday, May 5

Grandparents & Special Friends Day Short Hills Campus – 9:00 a.m.

Friday, May 19 and Saturday, May 20

Reunion Weekend Dedication of the Miller A. Bugliari ’52 Athletics Center Basking Ridge Campus

Tuesday, June 6

Lifers’ Breakfast

Beinecke House – 8:30 a.m.

Monday, June 26

Pingry Golf Outing Hamilton Farm Golf Club

Check Pingry.org/Calendar and your email for information about upcoming events.

Facebook: Pingry School Alumni Twitter: @PingryAlumni LinkedIn: Pingry Alumni Network

Changing Jobs? Trying to Find Fellow Alumni? Download the secure and powerful Pingry School Alumni Connect App today, and instantly connect and network with fellow Pingry graduates around the world. The app includes an online directory of Pingry alumni that is integrated with LinkedIn and searchable by name, class year, college, industry, company, and city. The app is available on both the Apple and Android platforms.

For volunteer opportunities or any additional questions, please contact:

Holland Sunyak Francisco ’02 Director of Alumni Relations and Annual Giving hfrancisco@pingry.org 908-647-7058

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THE PINGRY SCHOOL

The Pingry School Basking Ridge Campus, Middle & Upper Schools Short Hills Campus, Lower School 131 Martinsville Road Basking Ridge, NJ 07920 Change Service Requested