CLASS NOTES

student in her first year at Tower Hill. What an auspicious start to an extraordinary creative career that spanned over five decades and reached far beyond the confines of a Middle School art studio.

’60s

As submitted by classmates: To her fellow Hillers, Shari Church ’66 was a varsity cheerleader, a chorister and a class leader. To the art world, Sharon Church, who died on Christmas day 2022, was an internationally-celebrated metalsmith, studio jeweler and educator who compiled a long list of distinguished awards.

During her time at Tower Hill, Sharon was remembered as the tall, graceful girl, with snapping blue eyes and a vivid personality, often found at the center of a social gathering. “She had the most amazing laugh,” says a schoolmate. “It was like magic.” Still, she had a shy side too, notes classmate, George Ward.

To her peers, Sharon exemplified Tower Hill’s range of academic rigor and its recreational development. She was a high honor student who sang Gregorian chants as part of the school’s Vocal Ensemble under Cal Bourgeault. At the same time, she supported school teams as a member of the school’s cheerleading squad. But it would be her love for jewelry making that would allow her infectious spirit to transverse the globe.

It’s hard to believe that when Sharon hammered out her first aluminum necklace she was merely a fifth grade

Over her lifetime, Sharon’s designs arced from early, somewhat conventional creations of rare stones to works more invested in bones and other natural substances she once reflected “physically embody the cycle of birth, life, death and renewal and speak to the riddle of our existence.” Bruce Roberts, a former classmate, recalls Sharon using the word “chthonic” (relating to the underworld) to describe her mature designs: glistening surfaces barely concealing something earthy, emergent and darkly alive beneath. Today, Sharon’s jewelry pieces can be found in the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Yale, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, just to name a few. Fellow artist and former classmate Anne Oldach reflected that “Sharon strived to express through her art and jewelry both a uniquely personal and a profoundly universal vision.”

Emerita of Craft and Material Studies at the University of the Arts. In the words of Sharon’s daughter, Eliza McNabb, her mother “was fierce… and had a deep conviction and a strong internal compass.” Much like a compass uses a precious stone as its bearing, Sharon’s jewelry, which she once described as “art for the body,” will continue to inspire direction for the next generation of metalsmiths and studio jewelers.

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Both the Tower Hill community and the art world mourn her passing but find solace in the art she left for the world to cherish, as well as the many lives she influenced as Professor

Barbara Streuli ’60 and Bessie Speers met up in New Hampshire. Congratulations to Chuck Durante ’69 on his election as President of the Delaware State Bar Association.

’70s

Writing as Heather Ashby, Heather McClean Nickodem ’71 published her fifth book this year. The Caring Code explains levels of caring to help readers focus on their priorities. When you are juggling to keep all the balls in the air, the Code helps you decide which balls are rubber and which are glass—which people and issues will bounce if you drop them, and which must remain aloft at all costs.

To commemorate the centennial of Jack Kerouac’s birth in 1922, Spencer Rumsey ’71 gave a talk about the celebrated On the Road author’s