The Williston Northampton School Bulletin, Spring 2020

THE ALUMNA BEHIND OUR NEWEST DORM P. 40

LEARNING IN THE TIME OF COVID-19 P. 10

CELEBRATING IDENTITY & INCLUSION P. 12

Earth’s Guardians Meet four alumni who are helping to understand and solve some of the world’s most pressing environmental issues

SPRING 2020

AROUND THE QUAD

5 | CAMPUS NEWS A new crop of Williston Scholars, our innovative girls math competition, Why Not Speak Day, the tale of the Lion, and more

8 | WILDCAT STRONG In the face of a radically different spring trimester, the Williston community found ways to connect and support each other

12

Tomi Akisanya ’21, right, and her sister Temi co-ran a workshop on the power of loving yourself for the fourth annual Why Not Speak Day

10 | A NEW WAY TO LEARN When classrooms turned to Zoom rooms, Williston’s faculty transformed their teaching.

Here’s a peek inside their classrooms.

CONTENTS | VOLUME 106, NUMBER 1

48 24

“My job is to protect the ocean,” says Rachael Miller ’88

PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHATTMAN PHOTOGRAPY, DAX KUEHN PHOTOGRAPHY, AND HEATHER MARTIN

Here’s to the amazing new art bar by Paisley Taylor ’01

ALUMNI NEWS

20 | WILDCAT ROUNDUP The long, strange trip of Ram Dass ’48, Sports Shorts, and other alumni news

22 | A PERSONAL VISION The deep, intense artwork of painter and printmaker Rosemary Feit Covey ’72

24 | SIP & CREATE

28 | WILDCATS TO WATCH Checking in with four recent graduates who are blazing new trails in science, art, community, and policy

30| BUILDING DESIGN Amazing buildings are all in a day’s work for structural engineer Gabriela Garcia ’10

32 | GOOD NEWS ABOUT AGING

How Paisley Taylor ’01 enourages artistic expression, with a twist

In her new book, Katharine Esty ’52 offers strategies for finding happiness in old age

26 | KING OF THE ROAD

34 | PREPARING FOR THE WORST

The rules of the road we follow today lead back to William Phelps Eno ’78 (as in 1878!)

Disaster management expert Jonah Stinson ’00 shares news from the front lines of COVID-19

36 | MOVIE MAN

IN EVERY ISSUE

The amazing career of film producer Michael Nozik ’72

2 | HEAD’S LETTER

39 | ART ENDURES

3 | 5 THINGS

Catching up with former faculty member Marcia Reed

4 | SOCIAL STUDIES

40 | A DORM OF HER OWN Willlston’s newest residence hall honors Emily McFadon Vincent ’49

43 | PIAF & ME For Joan Keefe ’58, Ms. Bement’s French class led to a lifelong fascination with—and expertise in—chanteuse Edith Piaf

44 | PROTECTING THE PLANET Meet four alumni who are helping us understand and solve some of the world’s most pressing environmental issues

6 | WORTH REPEATING 16 | THE WILLILIST 55 | CLASS NOTES 82 | IN MEMORY

i n b ox Head of School ROBERT W. HILL III P’15, ’19

The Emily McFadon Vincent House, which will open this fall

Chief Advancement Officer ERIC YATES P’17, ’21 Director of Alumni Engagement JILL STERN P’14, ’19 Director of Communications ANN HALLOCK P’20, ’22 Design Director ARUNA GOLDSTEIN Assistant Director of Communications DENNIS CROMMETT Communications Writer and Coordinator KATE LAWLESS Please send letters to the editor, class notes, obituaries, and changes of address to: The Williston Northampton School Advancement Office 19 Payson Avenue Easthampton, MA 01027 email: info@williston.com online: williston.com/alumni/ connect

Non-Discrimination Statement: Williston admits qualified students of any race, color, national or ethnic origin, ancestry, gender, religion, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, or mental or physical disability, and extends to them all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school.

The school does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national or ethnic origin, ancestry, gender, religion, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, or mental or physical disability, or any other status protected by applicable law in the administration of its admissions, scholarships, and loans, and its educational, athletic, and other policies and programs.

2 WILLISTON NORTHAMPTON SCHOOL

Head’s Letter

I

n the Williston community and beyond, this has been a spring like no other. Here in Easthampton, the coronavirus pandemic may have closed the physical campus, but it did not dim our community spirit or diminish the rigor of our educational mission. As you’ll read in several articles in this issue, our school quickly pivoted in March to a full roster of classes in the now-ubiquitous classrooms of Zoom, as well as all manner of community activities, such as virtual birthday parties and dorm gatherings, trivia nights and poetry slams, community service projects, even a virtual baseball batting practice with Head Coach Matt Sawyer and squad. Our alumni community has also rallied—through Zoom class events, team get-togethers, and a virtual reunion—as well as amazing work on the front lines of the pandemic. You can read about some of these fellow Wildcats in this issue and find more at the school’s new Wildcat Hub (williston.com/alumni/the-wildcat-hub).

While the online world can never match up to the vibrancy of our in-person community, I have been impressed, but not at all surprised, by the way our students, faculty, and alumni have risen to the moment.

Looking ahead to the fall, much remains uncertain, but as we develop plans for the many contingencies, this much we know: Our community will return even stronger. One sign of our positive future is the completion of the new girls’ dormitory on our Residential Quad. This latest dorm will house 40 students and four faculty families and will cap off a project first envisioned in our 2014 Strategic Plan. On page 40, you can read more about the remarkable class of 1949 Northampton School for Girls graduate whose name will grace the Emily McFadon Vincent House, the first campus building named for a female graduate of either NSFG or the Williston Northampton School. Vincent’s story of pluck and perseverance in the face of adversity offers inspiration now more than ever, and we are so grateful for her amazing legacy of giving back to the school.

FOLLOW ROBERT HILL ON TWITTER AT @HILL3WILLISTON

i n b ox

1.

WAKE UP, WILLISTON! In place of traditional assemblies this spring, student life deans Erin Davey and Kate Garrity created Williston’s own morning show! From a weekly Top 10 list to field reports from students, the show brought everyone together.

Binge watch it on Williston’s YouTube channel.

2.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHATTMAN PHOTOGRAPHY

ACT LOCALLY To help out the surrounding community, Williston donated masks, gloves, a sanitizing “gun,” hand sanitizer, and even a school van to local emergency and community groups.

3.

5 Things We’re Talking About!

THE WILDCAT HUB A new page on our website (williston. com/alumni/the-wildcat-hub) shares stories of remarkable alumni serving their communities, wise words from previous Commencement speakers, performances from talented Wildcats, and more.

5.

WRITERS WORKSHOP Now in its 23rd year, the visiting author series has two heavy hitters kicking off the 2020-21 season: Novelist Colson Whitehead is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, most recently for his novel The Nickel Boys in 2020; Ocean Vuong is a New York Times bestselling author and a 2019 recipient of the MacArthur “genius” grant.

4.

BOYS AND GIRLS SWIM TEAMS UNDEFEATED In an historic end to a monumental season, both boys and girls swimming and diving teams went undefeated, a first in Williston’s storied swimming and diving program.

SPRING 2020

BULLETIN 3

SOCIAL STUDIES

Before the spring musical, Les Misérables, was canceled, cast members welcomed (with open arms) recent alumni to a rehearsal this winter.

Photo teacher Edward Hing ’77 documented the early days of the spring trimester, when campus was suddenly, sadly, empty of students.

At the NEPSAC Championships, it was medals galore for Cam Lawrence ’20 (7th), William Gunn ’20 (1st), and Jack Higgins ’21 (8th). Gunn was our first NEPSAC wrestling champ in 12 years!

Susan Michalski’s French Honors 3 students sign off their Zoom classes each time with this handmade heart sign.

williston.com facebook.com/willistonnorthampton twitter.com/willistonns instagram.com/willistonns flickr.com/willistonnorthampton

Two teams, zero losses for the season, and a lot of hardware. For our storied swim program, another successful chapter and a moment of well-deserved glee!

4 WILLISTON NORTHAMPTON SCHOOL

youtube.com/willistonnorthampton

AROUND THE QUAD “During my research, I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to speak to people from Quebec and Senegal and to learn that French is different depending on where you go in the world.”

Jason Rhett ’20 is one of 54 Williston Scholars this year who conducted in-depth research into a topic of their choosing. As part of his Williston Scholars Language project, Rhett created a glossary that presented English words and phrases, followed by the French equivalent for speakers in France, and then a translation for speakers in Quebec, both in the traditional dialect, and where applicable, a slang variation.

PHOTOGRAPH BY CHATTMAN PHOTOGRAPHY

To see more Scholar projects, go to williston.com/academics/williston-scholars.

around the quad

Worth Repeating “You don’t need expensive tools to be an artist. A leads to B. B leads to C, and then you have a body of work.”

—Kiel Johnson, Grum Project visiting artist

“I was surprised at the direct connections I was able to make between the sociopolitical trends that a deeply impactful event like 9/11 created and the many different political ramifications that came as a result for many years to come.”

—History and Global Studies Williston Scholar Gabe Liu ’20 on his project, “Presidential Powers and Immigration Post 9/11”

“DO go to Dunkin’ with [your beloved], but only once it is dark.

Daytime Dunkin’ runs mean you are just friends. If you go during the day, one of you might think you are engaged to be married by Mr. Hill at Commencement, while the other might have just not wanted to walk alone. Going at night assures that both parties know that you’re not really going for the Dunkin’.

—Penn Cancro ’20 in his inaugural tongue-in-cheek Wildcat Love advice column in The Willistonian, Valentine’s Day “Do’s and Don’ts” edition

6 WILLISTON NORTHAMPTON SCHOOL

“My pain is my gift.

I almost ended my life too soon. I will never take this life for granted.”

—Martin Luther King Jr. Day speaker Mykee Fowlin

“Our tradition is to bring our spray-painted shovel to all of our swim meets because our motto is to dig deep.”

—Nikki Foster ’20, a member of the undefeated girls swimming and diving team, as quoted in a Willistonian article on team traditions

“My job is to protect the ocean. I love my job.

This was the reason I was put on this planet.”

—Cum Laude speaker Rachael Miller ’88 (see full story, page 48)

“It was very stressful, actually. But once I got on stage, everything just sort of disappeared and it was just me and the piano.”

—Nikhil Sierros ’21, who played Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” during a music competition at Carnegie Hall in February

“I try not to focus on the ways in which Type 1 diabetes restricts me as an athlete, and instead I just push myself to be the best teammate and player I can be.”

—Caroline O’Connor, one of 43 seniors recruited to play college sports this year, heading to play basketball at Wesleyan College, where her sister is a Cardinal

“It feels great working during these times, and getting busy is something that can be healthy for anyone.

It’s a good time to help out and use our time to make a difference.”

—Alejandro Ruiz Boughton ’21, who, with his brother Alvaro ’22, has been making face shields for front-line health care workers in Mexico, where they live

around the quad

GIRLS FOR THE WIN Williston launches innovative new math competition—BY KATE LAWLESS

T

PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHATTMAN PHOTOGRAPHY

he Whitaker Bement building was buzzing with excited chatter back on January 21, as one would expect when you gather nearly 90 tween girls from Williston and 10 other schools for a day of team contests and inspirational speakers. But this event was anything but expected—indeed, it may have been the first of its kind: a math competition organized by high school students specifically for middle school girls.

The first WhitakerBement Girls in Math Competition—named for Northampton School for Girls founders Sarah Whitaker and Dorothy Bement—was planned and managed by the Williston math team, whose members

wrote and edited the problems, handled the logistics, and promoted the event. On the day of the competition, 80 volunteers were on hand to register attendees, score problems, and cheer on the teams of female mathletes.

Underlying all the spirited fun was an important message, one that Williston Math Department Chair Josh Seamon hopes the event will help spread: Math is for girls. “Just to be blunt,” he explains, “sometimes girls face a situation where it’s not cool to be good at math. Even if they’re good at it, they start moving away from it. We wanted to create a space for a population that can be underserved.”

Through multiple rounds of competitions, girls puzzled through problems (with the results tracked in real time by a scoreboard designed and built by math

“Seeing a room full of ambitious young women marveling at how higher dimensions work brought me a remarkable sense of unity and hope.”

—Anfisa Bogdanenko ’20

teacher Teddy Schaeffer).

They also heard presentations and were led in hands-on activities by Kim Evelti, Williston’s director of curriculum and a computer science teacher; Beryl Hoffman, a professor of math at Elms College; and Karen Sokolow, a math teacher at Chapel Hill-Chauncy Hall.

The topics ranged from data science, algorithms, and cryptography to coding, fractals, and what would happen if you fell into a black hole (a perennial favorite among middle schoolers).

All of which gave the girls “a different perspective on math—that math

is something that people want to do for fun,” noted Ann Dubie, a math teacher at The Bement School. For math team member Anfisa Bogdanenko ’20, the speakers were the highlight of the event. “Seeing a room full of ambitious young women marveling at how higher dimensions work brought me a remarkable sense of unity and hope,” she said.

However, Seamon’s favorite moments occurred between rounds, when the buzz in the room grew loud and excited. He said that what often discourages students from liking math is a feeling of anxiety that emerges when tasked with a difficult problem. On the day of the competition, however, the environment felt free from that kind of tension. The volume of chatter in the room meant the girls were connecting, creating a community with math at its core. “I think it was a good sign we were doing the right thing,” he said. “I look forward to it being louder next year.”

SPRING 2020 BULLETIN 7

Wildcat Strong

It’s perhaps an understatement to say the spring trimester didn’t end up the way anyone expected. Instead of being together for spring sports, classes, WillyGras, and Commencement on the Quad, we were physically scattered, with students around the world checking in for daily classes via video. But not surprisingly, the Williston community spirit, always strong, in these months thrived, supporting one another through this difficult time. Here are just a few of the ways.— By Kate Lawless

4

2

1

5 3

1. COMMUNITY SERVICE

2. VIRTUAL BATTING PRACTICE

This spring, Wildcats did good well— by making 3D-printed face shields for front-line workers, delivering meals from local restaurants to doctors and nurses, offering free math tutoring for struggling students, and writing letters to seniors in nursing homes.

How do you have BP when you’re not on the same field?

Coach Matt Sawyer used smoke and mirrors (and some tricky video skills) to edit together a virtual batting session, with coach pitching to each player, who then cracked the ball out of the park from home.

8 WILLISTON NORTHAMPTON SCHOOL

3. FUN ADVISORY MEETINGS

4. BIRTHDAY PARTIES

Since advisors couldn’t bring donuts this trimester, they upped their virtual game to make sure students felt connected. Advisory activities included holding trivia and costume contests, singing “Sammy,” donning silly hats, and wearing team gear. Ms. Klumpp’s advisory even taught her how to TikTok one Wednesday!

Many Wildcats marked milestones during the spring trimester, and none passed without happy birthday wishes from Kimmel’s Quads, a daily email to the Williston community from senior Sarah Kimmel. Advisory groups held Zoom parties for birthday boys and girls, who also got a shout out on Wake Up, Williston! (see sidebar).

5. DANCE TEAM VIDEO

Members of the Dance Ensemble (and several alumni!) shared their moves from the beach, bedrooms, basements, and backyards, with dogs and cats, to the Generationals’ “When They Fight, They Fight” during an episode of Wake Up, Williston!

8

MORNING, SUNSHINE! 7

6

7. ISOLATION CREATIONS

ILLUSTRATION BY JOOHEE YOON

6. EVENING GATHERINGS

The Zoom game was strong this trimester. There were Friday night trivia contests, with questions on subjects such as sports, Disney songs, and product slogans. The community also gathered to recite, translate, and listen to poetry (in any language but English) in an event hosted by the Classics Club.

As Art Department Chair Natania Hume reminds us, “Making and creating are great ways to explore new ideas and experiment.”

Each week since remote learning began, she has put out a prompt—food, masks, alter egos—and a call to students, faculty, and alumni to submit photos or videos of their responses. And we have answered the call!

Check out the Williston Arts Instagram for a peek.

8. RECREATING THE MUSICAL

Not to be dramatic, but it completely broke our hearts to miss out on the in-person staging of the spring musical, Les Misérables. However, the cast didn’t miss the chance to perform the soaring anthem “One Day More” together, remotely, from their homes, on Zoom.

The show must go on!

When in-person assemblies became impossible this term, Assistant Dean of Students Kate Garrity and Director of Inclusion and Community Life Erin Davey reimagined the remote gatherings as the morning talk show Wake Up, Williston!. They created seven Emmy-worthy episodes, complete with mugs of coffee, funny banter, and squirts of hand sanitizer.

Student and faculty submissions made up the heart and soul of the show, which was emailed to the community each Friday morning (and is on the school YouTube channel if you’d like a peek!). Segments included birthday shoutouts, field dispatches from students around the globe, a weekly Top 10 list (“What We Miss about the Dining Hall” was our favorite), and inspiring videos from students and teachers. Perhaps the most beloved of these was frowsy-headed Academic Dean Greg Tuleja’s hilarious video about not being able to get a haircut. “My favorite part of making this was receiving videos and messages from students,” says Kate Garrity.

“We have such amazingly creative, funny, and active students, and it was great to see what they were up to.” Erin Davey agrees. “I can’t wait until we can all be back in the chapel, but for now, this really let us give everyone a feeling of togetherness. And hopefully made everyone smile during a challenging time.”

SPRING 2020 BULLETIN 9

A NEW WAY TO LEARN With a mix of technology, innovation, and straight-up amazing teaching, Williston transitoned to online classes this spring. Here’s just a small sampling of the remote trimester that was anything but.

— By Kate Lawless

W

hen the world went into social-distance mode, Williston was ready. As an international institution, we necessarily had been monitoring the coronavirus from shortly after it emerged. While hoping for the best, we began planning for the worst. In place of spring break, administration and faculty worked around the clock to take our robust academic experience completely online. Operating without benefit of a road map—at the beginning of March, relatively few people had ever heard of Zoom and no one at all knew what April or May would look like—we were guided by certain non-negotiable objectives. Advisories would continue to meet, assemblies would take place somehow, and above all, we’d continue to connect with and support students. Lectures, testing, and even the grading system might look different, but we were committed to upholding the quality of instruction. Thanks to Williston’s Curricular Technology Program, now in its seventh year, we were in a strong position to transition to remote learning.

But technology was only part of the story.

What really made the online shift possible were the people—nimble teachers and openminded students, who, putting very real sadness aside, embarked together on a trimester unlike any other. Here are some of the innovative techniques they rolled out in different subjects to bridge the miles.

10 WILLISTON NORTHAMPTON SCHOOL

1

THE HOME LAB

With Scott Hall off limits, science teacher Matt KaneLong instructed his ninth and 10th grade students to turn their homes into personal physics labs. In one grand experiment, they designed and constructed elaborate Rube Goldberg machines in their bedrooms, kitchens, and studies, then recorded the controlled mayhem as the contraptions poured water, opened books, or filled a dog’s bowl with ice cubes.

“Building these machines is the ultimate hands-on application of the physics principle of conservation of energy,” KaneLong says.

“Oh yeah, it’s also a lot of fun!”

Director of Curriculum Kim Evelti also found ways to turn home confinement into a virtue. Throughout the spring, students in her computer science class beta-tested the apps they were writing on captive parents and siblings. The feedback helped them refine their inventions, which include a game where players vie to save endangered turtles by keeping plastic straws out of the ocean and an art program that lets users apply paint strokes and dabs to photographs.

When students couldn’t come to the physics lab, Matt KaneLong brought the lab to them via athome experiments

Computer science students beta-tested their apps at home with siblings

2

DIGITAL MEETS ANALOG

Ed Hing ’77 found ways to bring the darkroom to faraway photography students

In one of the more complex digital-analog mashups of the term, visual and performing arts teacher Edward Hing ’77 enlisted his students in a multi-stage photography experiment. He began by sending each one a film camera (a first for many) and a roll of film. Students took photographs and returned the exposed film to Hing, who developed it and sent the negatives back to students. They then used their laptops to shoot digital photos of the negatives. These they printed onto inkjet transparency film, which they developed by exposing to the sun. The resulting images were contact printed onto cyanotype paper, producing pictures of a deep Prussian blue.

“I’ve gotten some cool results,” says Hing. Department Chair Natania Hume also found ways to mix traditional and digital techniques. In her drawing class, students made pencil drawings of still life scenes they set up in their homes, uploaded photos of their work onto OneNote—Williston’s collaborative notebook program—and took turns giving classmates constructive criticism by sharing their screens during a Zoom meeting. What surprised them about the remote studio critiques, reports Hume, is that “with just a pencil and printer paper, they could learn to draw.” Pencil, paper, laptop, broadband access, file-sharing software, and, it should be noted, a tirelessly dedicated group of teachers.

3

COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

In an extreme form of showing one’s work,

Josh Seamon had students in his advanced Calculus class make instructional videos in which they led classmates step-by-step through homework problems. In order to teach the material, students had to really master it. Playing back the videos during class meetings served the added benefit of injecting a daily dose of variety into the online format. Department colleagues like geometry and pre-calculus teacher Kathryn Hill, meanwhile, became early adopters of Zoom’s breakout room feature, which allows large meetings to split up into smaller sections. The function enabled kids to continue with the collaborative, small-group learning that is a Williston hallmark even as they isolated at home.

Students honed Latin vocab by playing Pictionary with words from Horace’s Odes

4

LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

Ancient met contemporary in the online Latin classroom of Language Department Chair Beatrice Cody, who devised a vocabulary-building version of the game Pictionary that could be played using Zoom’s whiteboard feature. Students would sketch visual representations of words while classmates, playing along at home, took turns trying to decipher them. The uniquely Roman thing: All the examples came from an ode by Horace, the first century B.C.E. lyric poet. Over in the French department, teachers cooked up some unique exercises of their own. MTV met the Académie Française in Susan Michalski’s French 3 Honors class, where students used Flipgrid, a video chat platform, to record responses to moody French poems set to music.

Adeleen Brown kept things lively by bringing in a guest Zoomer from the French-speaking country of Cameroon. “She shared images, music, and personal stories,” says Brown.

Her students finished the trimester with panache, staging a virtual fashion show—a stylish way to practice clothing-related vocabulary.

A virtual fashion show and special guest speakers added panache to this trimester’s French classes

SPRING 2020 BULLETIN 11

Identity and inclusion were the focus during Williston’s fourth Why Not Speak Day. —BY KATE LAWLESS

around the quad

W

illiston’s fourth Why Not Speak Day—a day in January set aside for discussions about identity and inclusion—gave the community plenty to talk about and do, with 37 student- and facultyled workshops, a featured speaker, and activities that encouraged empathy.

The theme for this year’s event was “Proud to Be,” and student and faculty presenters wore T-shirts with blank labels that resembled name tags, saying, “Hello, I’m Proud to Be____.” Community members used markers to fill in the blank with identifiers such as “a girl in STEM,” “unapologetically Black,” and “a daydreamer.”

Morning presentations followed a keynote talk by motivational speaker Jen Croneberger and covered a wide range of topics, including a workshop by Julius Pryor III ’ 73. Students also reflected on the morning’s activities with their advisors.

In the afternoon, the community engaged in a fishbowl activity.

Affinity groups were invited onto stage based on race, gender, and sexual orientation. Participants were asked to talk about how their identity impacts who they are and how they experience the world.

Audience members listened respectfully.

Oluwatomisin (Tomi) Akisanya ’21 organized a workshop with her older sister called “To Self, with Love.” “It was mostly an open conversation where we explained what self-care and love means to us, and allowed each student to reflect.”

All in all, Akisanya said the day was meaningful and educational.

“I learned that every student at Williston has multiple stories and experiences that have affected who they are and the way that they view the world,” she said. “I learned that Williston is a melting pot and I think that that’s what makes our school so interesting.”

“Why Not Speak Day reminds us that each of us has a story.

When students share their experiences, they gain human connection, skills in leadership and self-worth, and the simple joy in knowing their voice matters. The listeners in the room earn the gift of perspective as they practice acts of empathy and respect.” —ERIN DAVEY

A SAMPLING OF WORKSHOPS Hip-Hop Interrogation A critical examination of hip-hop’s past, present, and future Proud to Be This workshop focused on “learning to be proud of our identities so we can make the Williston community truly welcoming to all kinds of people.”

Not My Gumdrop Buttons!

A session about “the genderbread person,” understanding gender fluidity, and supporting the LGBTQ+ community Boys to Men A space for honest and judgment-free dialogue where males challenge the societal concepts of masculinity

SPRING 2020 BULLETIN 13

14 WILLISTON NORTHAMPTON SCHOOL

around the quad

PHOTOGRAPH BY MATTHEW CAVANAUGH

COAT OF MANY COLORS

Resplendent here in school green and blue, the Williston Lion has sported many colors in its time. Major athletic victories, school plays, the national holidays of students’ home countries, and Commencement have all inspired creative paint jobs. It has blushed pink during breast cancer awareness month, taken on candy cane stripes for Christmas, worn a rainbow coat in support of LGBTQ rights, and gone polka dotted just because. Painting the cast iron statue, resident on campus since the 1920s (for a look at its mysterious history, see “The Tale of the Lion” by archivist Rick Teller ’70 at willistonblogs.com/archives), was for generations a covert affair, carried out under cover of darkness. The Lion may have slept at night, but pranksters definitely did not. More recently, redecoration has become a public event—a celebration of important milestones, common causes, and school spirit. This spring, too, it has proudly served as a tribute to the class of 2020, decked out with the names of every graduating senior (see a video of this on Williston’s YouTube channel). Long live the Lion…in all its glorious guises!

SPRING 2020 BULLETIN 15

around the quad

The WilliList A by-the-numbers look at recent school highlights —BY DENNIS CROMMETT

XLVII

Number of students, out of LV, who hit the libri and took the National Latin Exam. (For those who took another language, that’s 47 out of 55.)

The number of chinchillas, end to end, that is as long as one giant python.

How do we know? Both were in the Stu-Bop, along with other pets, for assessment stress relief in February.

20

Pages in a paper by Simon Kim ’19, whose entry was one of two nationally that won the top prize in the Cum Laude Society Paper contest. The subject: the birth of Romanticism after the Lisbon earthquake in 1755. Clearly, it was a work of great magnitude.

16 WILLISTON NORTHAMPTON SCHOOL

1.75mm

Diameter of the filament used by ninth grader Garrette Ondrick, who employed a 3D printer to create more than 40 protective face shields, donated to area hospitals. Brothers Alejandro and Alvaro Ruiz Boughton, a junior and a sophomore, also created and donated about 100 masks to area hospitals in Mexico.

2

Place our We the People team came in, during the statewide competition.

Ruby McElhone Yates ’21 also earned the Claudette M. L. Desrosiers Award for embodying selfless commitment to civic engagement.

PHOTOGRAPH BY CHATTMAN PHOTOGRAPY

25

18

It’s no illusion: Bob Hazen ’81 and his Hazen Paper Company have produced a custom hologram featured in each year’s Super Bowl program for 18 years running.

7:52

Length of our new virtual campus tour video. Take a stroll down memory lane at youtube.com/ willistonnorthampton.

9

Singers from The Doox of Yale, the university’s first all-gender TTBB* a cappella group, who ran a singing workshop in the chapel with 40 students in February *Tenor 1/Tenor 2/Bass 1 (Baritone)/Bass

373

Grand total of all Williston Scholars projects undertaken to date. In the 2019-20 school year, there were 57 projects— the highest ever. Despite distance learning, all Scholars stuck with their projects in T3.

Way to go, Wildcats!

RECORD BREAKERS

0 Number of losses that

NEPSAC wrestling champion William Gunn ’20 had this season

.3

Time left when Billy Whelan ’20 let fly a game-winning 30-foot shot to beat Wilbraham Monson Academy at the UMass Cage

4 Number of boys and girls

basketball wins over rival Suffield as they swept the series

71 Number of three-point

shots made by girls basketball captain Jordyn Meunier ’21 this winter

7 Number of individual

150%

NEPSAC swim titles won by Sam Haddad ’20 during his career at Williston

Factor by which artist Kiel Johnson encouraged students to pursue their dreams, in a speech during his six-day residency as part of the Grum Project

10 Number of shutouts

by varsity girls hockey this winter SPRING 2020 BULLETIN 17

THANK YOU!

YOU exceeded our expectations!

Thank you for coming together to #RingTheBell in support of our students and faculty and helping us exceed our goal of 1,500 supporters to unlock $100,000 for the Williston Northampton Fund.

THE FINAL TALLY—WE DID IT!

1,533

OUR SUPPORTERS

DONORS

GRANDPARENTS AND FRIENDS 3%

FACULTY/STAFF 3%

$389,619

CURRENT AND PAST PARENTS 18%

RAISED

STUDENTS 10%

Our supporters spanned the country and the globe—thank you!

ALUMNI 66%

ALUMNI GIVING BY DECADE 1940-50 5% 1960 9%

1980 16%

2010 34%

2000 15%

#RingTheBell

1990 11%

A special shoutout to our 20 youngest classes, who gave in record numbers (470 gifts)!

PHOTOGRAPH BY CHATTMAN PHOTOGRAPY,

1970 10%

ALUMNI NEWS

SUBMITTED PHOTO

Until recently, Peace Corps volunteer Ashby McCoy ’13 woke up every day in a small, remote village in northern Morocco near the base of the Rif Mountains, surrounded by groves of olive trees. The world traveler has led outdoor expeditions in Alaska, Montana, and the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Read more about Ashby, and three other young alumni making their mark, on page 28.

SPRING 2020 BULLETIN 19

WILDCAT ROUNDUP RECENT QUOTES

“I think it’s very empowering to share your age, and have other people share their age, so they can see that 55 looks like a lot of different things, that 46 looks like a lot of different things. It’s a good thing.”

Kim France ’83, talking about Everything Is Fine, her podcast series for women on life over 40, which covers topics ranging from fashion to menopause to “how to kick ass”

Photo of The Times Chosen as a New York Times 2019 Year in Pictures image, this shot by Ilana PanichLinsman ’02 shows girls preparing for a quinceañera in the Rio Grande Valley.

20 WILLISTON NORTHAMPTON SCHOOL

“Remember that education transcends test scores and curricular continuity. Sing out in your own way—fostering connections across generations, time, and space. We need each other, now, and our joining together is itself a defense—an inoculation—against that which seeks to divide us.”

Brittany Collins ’14, on the importance of using “trauma-informed” remote teaching strategies from her recent article in Education Week

SPORTS SHORTS Michael Dereus ’16 signed with the Baltimore Ravens in April after a strong senior season as a Georgetown Hoya. With 41 receptions for 726 yards and five touchdowns, the receiver earned All-Patriot League first-team honors.

Former college hockey linesman Kendall Hanley ’04 was one of four women to officiate at the National Hockey League level for the first time, working in an NHL Prospect Tournament hosted by the Detroit Red Wings in Michigan last fall. She also officiated at the Elite Women’s 3-on-3 event at the NHL AllStar Game in January.

BY JONATHAN ADOLPH

BE HERE THEN

Ram Dass’ long, strange trip began at Williston Academy According to his infamous origin story, before he became Baba Ram Dass—controversial spiritual teacher, best-selling author of a dozen books including Be Here Now, and enduring ambassador of the counterculture—he was Richard Alpert, Harvard University psychology professor, friend and colleague to LSD-proponent Timothy Leary, and symbol to conventional society of the dangers of 1960s excess.

But before he was even that Richard Alpert, he was Williston Academy student Richard Alpert, class of 1948.

Ram Dass died in December at his home in Maui, Hawaii, at age 88. He had suffered a stroke in 1997 that left him partially paralyzed and hampered his speaking, but through his writing, social media presence, and retreats he continued to teach and promote the benefits of mindfulness, service to others, and opening to the power of unconditional love.

His story and message are the subject, most

recently, of the documentary Becoming Nobody (becomingnobody.com), released this year.

Born to a wealthy family in Newton, Massachusetts (his father, a lawyer, was the first board president of Brandeis), Alpert graduated from Williston Academy as a member of the Cum Laude Society. He went on to earn degrees in psychology at Tufts (B.A.), Wesleyan (M.A.), and Stanford (Ph.D.) before joining the Harvard faculty in 1958.

He and Leary were dismissed in 1963 after conducting research into the mind-expanding effects of psychedelic drugs.

In 1967, Alpert traveled to India, where he met the Hindu guru Neen Karoli Baba, who gave him the name Ram Dass, meaning servant of God, and set him on his improbable life’s journey. “First I was a professor,” he recounted in a 2019 New York Times interview.

“Then I was a psychedelic. Now I’m old. I’m an icon. There are worse things to be.”

Chris Hudson ’16, a Bentley University senior basketball star, surpassed the 1,000-point milestone this winter and was one of two to be named Bentley Male Athlete of the Year.

Boston College Eagle Delaney Belinskas ’16 ranks third in the country in multi-goal games and first in Hockey East. In April, she was drafted by the Metropolitan Riveters with the 10th overall selection in the second round of the NWHL Draft.

Dale Neuburger ’67 is serving his fifth term as vice president (Americas) of FINA, the Fédération Internationale de Natation, which organizes the world championships in water sports. He was technical delegate for swimming for Olympic Games in Beijing, London, and Rio de Janeiro.

SPRING 2020 BULLETIN 21

A PERSONAL

VISION FOR PAINTER AND PRINTMAKER ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY, ‘ART IS MORE IMPORTANT WHEN IT’S MESSY’—BY KEVIN MARKEY

A

rt has brought Rosemary Feit Covey ’72 to many interesting places. A Virginia-based printmaker and painter whose work is held by more than 40 major collections around the world, including Yale University, the Boston Athenaeum, and the National Museum of Natural History, she has observed wildlife in the arctic alongside Norwegian scientists, taught drawing to Chinese students in Beijing after the Tiananmen Square uprising, and painted fragile moths deep in the Adirondack wilderness.

Her multimedia installation The O Project has been showcased on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert. A coveted Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship landed her with a residency at a villa perched above Lake Como in Bellagio, Italy.

But the trip that made the greatest impression was the one she took to Williston Academy as a shy tenth grader at Northampton School for Girls. Feit Covey had come

PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHATTMAN PHOTOGRAPHY

to the Easthampton campus to learn German, which wasn’t part of the NSFG curriculum at the time, and to study art with Barry Moser, longtime Williston teacher and renowned printmaker.

“I didn’t pick up a word of German. I was just so completely overwhelmed at being in a class with all boys,” Feit Covey recalled during a return to campus last winter as a Grum Project visiting artist. “But working with Barry changed my life.” She recounted how Moser, soon to be celebrated for his masterly engravings of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, among other literary classics, sprang a challenge on her when she asked to join his class.

“He took me out to where the bike path runs now and he said, ‘If you were going to draw something, what would it be?’ I was terrified. I knew I had to get it right. I looked and I had the sense to say, ‘Well, I would draw that tiny patch of grass.’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ And then I was in.”

Born and raised in South Africa, Feit Covey went from NSFG to Cornell University and then the Maryland Institute College of Art. Determined to support herself as an artist after completing her formal education (“there was no moving back home and living in your parents’ basement,” she notes), she started doing commissions, mostly finely detailed wood engravings.

The universal motifs she explored— landscapes, portraiture, domestic scenes, mythic imagery—conveyed an intensely personal vision. As she developed as an artist, she remained in close touch with Moser, who one day told her she had learned all he could teach. “Now you’re a professional yourself,” he said, “and must

“Art means going into another world, not your own, and yet it connects to you so intensely and deeply.”

go on your own.” Knowing when and how to say that to students, Feit Covey believes, is an essential part of teaching.

Many of Feit Covey’s current projects are connected to her deep interest in science, including evolutionary biology, entomology, and, presciently, emergent diseases. “I think my interest stems from vulnerability,” she says. “Because things are vulnerable.” She regularly works with scientists and doctors, examining complex ideas and issues that seep into her imagination and find expression not as scientific illustration but in new forms. “For me, art is more important when it’s messy,” she says. “You don’t even know why, but it somehow moves you. It means going into another world, not your own, and yet it connects to you so intensely and deeply.”

Blue Crossing—wood engraving and painting, 27.8 by 42 inches

Fish—wood engraving and painting, 32 by 38 inches

David with Astrocytes—wood engraving, 14 by 18 inches SPRING 2020 BULLETIN 23

SIP + CREATE How one Wildcat encourages artistic expression, with a twist —BY KATE LAWLESS

24 WILLISTON NORTHAMPTON SCHOOL

when you’re feeling the need to craft—

because, let’s be honest, crafting is fun—and you want a drink to go along with it—because sometimes a cold one just hits the spot—you need to get yourself to the cool college town of Missoula, Montana, where Paisley Taylor ’01 opened CREATE art bar last October. There, you and your friends can stitch leather wallets, string beads to make bracelets, pour concrete coasters, or complete any number of done-in-an-evening projects, while imbibing specialty cocktails concocted by expert mixologists. It’s like a sip-andpaint party, only permanent.

And it’s catching on. A recent class titled Snarky Embroidery 101 sold out. Parents have discovered that children’s birthday parties are a lot more fun for everyone when there’s cold beer on tap. Date nights, girls’ nights out—Taylor said many Missoulians are finding reasons to pull up a stool at the bar. “We’re a college town with a rapidly growing population, so we have a wide variety of people and ages that visit CREATE. Montana is also a tourist destination and we’re located inside a new hotel, so we see people from all over.”

PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAX KUEHN PHOTOGRAPHY

alumni news

Taylor, who herself was drawn to Montana for its skiing and outdoor recreation opportunities, grew up in a remote old farmhouse in rural Duxbury in central Vermont. She described a picture-book New England childhood: creating art, making clothes, growing food, spinning yarn, and playing outside. Her father worked in historic preservation and architecture and her mother was an interior designer. “I used to go to work with her as a kid and flip through paint colors and fabric books,” she recalls.

Her artistic awakening continued when she came to Williston—she went by Elizabeth then, and her maiden name was Anderson—and took painting with Marcia Reed (see page 39). “Her class quickly became my favorite part of each day,” Taylor said.

After college at the University of Denver, where she studied psychology, she and her mother opened a fiber arts studio in Colorado.

Convinced that she wanted to focus her career on art, she went back to the University of Denver for grad school, taking art classes and earning a master’s in education. She taught elementary school art until her first child was born in 2010, and then decided to stay home with her daughter, Hattie. Taylor’s craftiness, however, did not stay dormant, and she started making and selling children’s clothing while she remained home with her next two children, Wally, 5, and Georgie, 3. In 2015, she started dreaming up her current project. “I wrote a business plan, ran focus groups, and sought advice from anyone who would listen,” she said.

“No one told me this was a horrible idea, so I keep going!”

CREATE is a family affair. Taylor’s husband, Chase, works in sales

and marketing, and helps with the business. He also stays at home with the kids while Taylor runs evening programs, a newly flipped division of labor that is working fine, she said.

And with the recent social distancing requirements, CREATE has evolved, sending “take and make” kits and wines, ciders, and beer to customers, and hosting online classes with local delivery of supplies.

As she thinks back to her time at Williston, Taylor said she internal-

ized an important lesson from Reed, one that remains with her to this day. “I remember learning that the process of creating was so much more important than the end result,” she said. “Letting go of my perfectionism and embracing the creative expression—this is the part I want my customers to experience, too.

Yes, they usually walk away with a great product, but during the process they become very focused and learn new things about themselves and end up having a lot of fun.”

PAISLEY’S PALETTE Taylor’s favorite drink is a spiked mix of botanicals and sparkle—a creation she calls Paisley’s Palette. Inspired? You can make it at home. Here’s how: Ingredients • 1 heaping tbsp. raspberries • 1½ ounces Tito’s vodka • ½ ounce Chambord • ½ ounce honey shrub syrup, a concentrated mixer made with vinegar • ½ ounce lime juice • A couple dashes rose water • 6 to 8 mint leaves • Splash soda water Method In a cocktail shaker, muddle raspberries. Add vodka, Chambord, syrup, lime juice, and rose water. Fill a highball glass with ice and spanked mint leaves (slapping them between your hands releases the essential oils).

Shake and strain into glass, top with soda water, stir, and serve.

SPRING 2020 BULLETIN 25

26 WILLISTON NORTHAMPTON SCHOOL

SPRING 2020 BULLETIN 27

alumni news

Cornell University sophomore Destiny Nwafor ’17 has been making positive changes in the tech world. In June, the computer science major began a fellowship at Rewriting the Code, an organization that brings together women in tech and offers leadership and networking opportunities.

Nwafor and four other fellows have formed Black Wings, which aims to support black women in tech. The five met in New York City for the first time in January, hosted by the ride-sharing firm Lyft. At the moment, Black Wings is busy engaging new members, mapping out webinars and topics, and meeting with tech recruiters and industry professionals. “I hope we encourage one another to reach our professional and personal goals, serve as agents of change in the tech industry, and make our mark,” Nwafor said.

She appears poised to do just that. Currently a software engineer intern at IBM, Nwafor will begin a new internship at Microsoft in June. In her spare time, she’s the president of the Cornell chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers and is a member of the Atelier 320 dance company. This winter, she and several Cornell student and faculty volunteer mentors traveled to Ghana with a program called CodeAfrique.

They taught classes in the coding language Python to tech-minded high school and university students, and led a workshop on wearable technology. “It was an amazing experience and reminded me of why I wanted to study computer science and change the landscape of the tech industry,” she said.

28 WILLISTON NORTHAMPTON SCHOOL

4 WILDCATS TO WATCH

LIFTING OFF

These young alumni are already making their mark in science, art, and community building

DESTINY NWAFOR ’17

ASHBY MCCOY ’13

CREATING COMMUNITY Until recently, Peace Corps volunteer Ashby McCoy ’13 woke up every day in a small, remote village in northern Morocco near the base of the Rif Mountains, surrounded by groves of olive trees. She lived alone in a cementwalled rooftop apartment above her landlord, who delivered fresh-baked khubz—Moroccan flatbread—and taught McCoy how to wash laundry by hand. The Peace Corps brought its volunteers home in March because of COVID-19. Life in Morocco was not always easy, and McCoy struggled with loneliness and being an outsider in a conservative, tight-knit community.

However, this helped her grow as a human being, she said. She went to the weekly souk (market) and was invited to people’s homes for traditional couscous meals on Fridays. “The biggest lesson I’ve learned so far,” she said, “is that when you open your heart to a community, they’ll open not only their hearts but their homes.”

McCoy worked at a youth center in the village, teaching classes in English, art, music, and movement, and leading an outdoor club with a local woman, who taught her Darija, a Moroccan dialect, and Moroccan cooking.

McCoy grew up on a farm in western Massachusetts, and followed her mother’s footsteps to the Peace Corps and Morocco after first attending College of Charleston in South Carolina, spending a semester in South Africa.

She led outdoor expeditions in Alaska, Montana, and New Hampshire and taught elementary school in Maine and Wyoming.

These experiences have laid the groundwork for her time in Morocco.

Even at Williston, she said, “what I remember most, as cliché as it sounds, was the sense of community and the positive culture it created.” As she forged community in Morocco, she reflected, “Something I’ll undoubtedly take away is how human connection is inextricably linked with our sense of purpose, feeling like we have a place in the world.”

AVA MCELHONE YATES ’17

PHOTOGRAPH BY DANIELLE WINEMAN

ON WALLS

HENRY LOMBINO ’14

THE YEAR OF PROJECTS Since graduating from Wesleyan University in 2018 with an English major and a minor in economics, Henry Lombino ’14 has kept busy. He’s been involved in multiple regional and off-Broadway performances and produced two successful independent productions in New York, a revival of Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman at Access Theater in November 2019, and the following month, an original oratorio, Above the Noise, at Dixon Place.

“This year in particular I made a promise to myself to make this ‘the year of projects,’” Lombino said. “Each one is a new opportunity to learn and grow and make mistakes.”

Lombino ascribes this propensity to be continually engaged to the exponential growth that happens in freelance art work. You do a good job on one production, he said, and you meet people who you admire and worked well with, and then those people reach out to you when they have another project, and vice versa. “The performing arts world can feel shockingly small,” he explained. With that interwoven community, and projects developing quickly, getting asked to work on something new sometimes feels like luck, he said, “but to use a snappy and overused quote, ‘luck is what happens when opportunity meets preparedness.’”

Working on theater projects began at Williston, where he was active in tech theater since seventh grade. “So many of my favorite high school memories happened in that theater,” he said, from learning how act drunk for his first role—the porter in Macbeth—to nailing the blocking and music for Urinetown, to performing his first dance solo. “Every time I was in that theater,” he said, “it felt like home.”

As for what’s in store for Lombino’s future, he’s not quite sure. He’s recently been partnering with filmmaker friends on capturing dance on film. He’s been working with a director on a devised—improvised, unscripted—immersive performance piece. And he remains interested in poetry and prose. “I’m always trying to find time to write or at least read something I haven’t read before,” he said. Ultimately, he would love to be a full-time producer or theater administrator. “Or not,” he said. “Maybe tomorrow I’ll decide I want to be a choreographer.

Or become a tea expert. Or start an ice cream business. I’m a big proponent of figuring life out as you go along.”

Vassar College junior Ava McElhone Yates ’17 should be in Chile right now. She left for Valparaíso in late February to explore social justice topics, only to arrive back in March when the coronavirus pandemic brought students home.

Through online learning, she continues to take the class, studying the Chilean people’s struggles after a brutal dictatorship of 17 years, and how the country plans to move forward after major protests last year.

While her trip was curtailed, her freedom of movement between countries is not something McElhone Yates takes for granted. She spent last summer in El Paso, Texas, researching immigration policy and border communities. There, she co-wrote a report on sanctuary city policy and observed in courtrooms as people sought asylum in the U.S. She also presented Know Your Rights trainings to asylum-seeking families.

“This experience opened my eyes to the many flaws of U.S. immigration policy while simultaneously allowing me to learn from those who are working every day to make change,” she said.

In October 2019, she co-curated an exhibit called “Know Your History, Know Your Geography: Students, Artists, and Activists Respond to the U.S.-Mexico Border,” drawing connections between today’s U.S. border wall and the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

McElhone Yates is interested in a career in advocacy research or public policy once she graduates, she said, “but I am keeping my options open to explore many different paths!”

SPRING 2020 BULLETIN 29

BUILDING

DESIGN

Structural engineer Gabriela Garcia ’10 now works on some of the world’s most unusual buildings —BY MATT LIEBOWITZ

I

f Gabriela Garcia’s career could have been predicted by just one childhood achievement—and, of course, there’s never just one—a strong candidate would be her success building a toothpick bridge in Brock Dunn’s eighth grade science class at Williston.

Fifteen years later, Garcia continues to demonstrate her aptitude for engineering. A structural engineer for the multinational design firm Arup, she is on the ground floor of projects in more than 140 countries.

Particularly remarkable is her current project: a 230,000-square-foot expansion to the American Museum of Natural History, in New York City, where she now lives. Construction began in 2019 on the $383 million Richard Gilder Center for Science, which will house an insectarium and a butterfly vivarium, and provide an elegant new space for the museum’s STEM initiatives.

On this project, Garcia designed the main structural form of the atrium and is currently leading a team through the construction phase of that design. She designed

30 WILLISTON NORTHAMPTON SCHOOL

the thickness of the shotcrete, the sprayable concrete, as well as all the reinforcements, and is heading up the 3D modeling team, which provides models to the contractor.

“It’s kind of been my baby for the past four years,” Garcia says.

Previously, Garcia worked on Solar Carve, a glass tower on Manhattan’s 10th Avenue (shown at right) whose jagged shards, she explained, are “designed to maximize sun exposure” on the adjacent High Line park.

Garcia’s firm is perhaps best known for the iconic Sydney Opera House, designed in the 1950s by the company’s founder, Ove Arup.

The London-based company also designed the Beijing National Stadium (better known as the “Bird’s Nest”), and is involved in the China Resources Headquarters, a nearly 1,300-foot bamboo-shoot-shaped building on Shenzhen Bay. Other Arup projects include Northeastern University’s Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Complex, and Camp Adventure, a spiraling treetop observation tower, with a nearly 2,100-foot ramp made of weathered steel and locally sourced oak, in Denmark’s largest

treetop climbing park.

Garcia, who is the daughter of Williston Spanish teacher Eugenio Garcia and Laurie Garcia and grew up on campus, has worked at Arup for nearly five years. After graduating from Williston, she attended Cornell University, earning her undergraduate degree in civil engineering in 2014 and her master’s degree in structural engineering the following year. She credits Cornell, where many of her class and lab mates were female, with accepting and encouraging more gender diversity in STEM. As early as middle school, Garcia thought she might want to be an architect, but the diverse and challenging math and science classes at Williston led her in a slightly different direction. As a first-year student who “wanted to get ahead in math,” she took both Geometry and Algebra II so she could later take BC and Multivariable Calculus with Dr. Alan Lipp. “Being able to take that gave me a step up when I started at Cornell,” she explains. She also took AP Physics with Amanda Rappold.

In a field still traditionally dominated by men, Garcia said she has come to appreciate the female

engineers and leaders she’s worked with, in particular Michelle Roelofs, her manager on the Natural History Museum project.

“In general, men and women are equally respected in this industry, but I think women have to prove themselves right off the bat in order to be respected,” say Garcia, who notes that her current team is predominantly female. “Every once in a while in a meeting, you can tell some people are like, ‘She’s female, I’m going to talk over her,’” says Garcia.

Michele has been a role model for me of how to stand her ground and command the respect she deserves.”

To students today who may have ambitions like the ones she first recognized back in middle school, Garcia is quick to offer advice. “Don’t be afraid to push yourself,” she says, adding that her parents encouraged her to pursue her passions from a very early age. “Don’t be afraid to go all in on something you love.” Despite how far she’s come, Garcia still has fond memories of where it all started: the toothpick bridge project in eighth grade. “We either won or came in second, I can’t remember,” Garcia says with a laugh.

alumni news

“Don’t be afraid to push yourself. Don’t be afraid to go all in on something you love.”

Garcia often passes the Solar Carve while biking up the West Side Highway or hanging out in the Meatpacking District: “Seeing it reminds me of my hard work paying off, and the support from my family and Williston that made it possible.”

SPRING 2020 BULLETIN 31

Good News About Aging Class of ’52 graduate Katharine Cole Esty’s new book is all about aging well and finding happiness in old age. Here she shares five of her top tips.

—BY KEVIN MARKEY

F

or Katharine Esty NSFG ’52, the moment of recognition came on a hike with her grandchildren not long after her 80th birthday. “It was a little mountain, Mt. Tom-style, that I had climbed many times,” she recalls. “But I just couldn’t make it to the top.” The eighties, she suddenly understood, were going to be different from everything that had come before.

A social psychologist, author, retired business executive, and former Williston trustee who lives outside of Boston, Esty decided to read up on what she could expect. Her discoveries were dismaying. Not the answers, but the very lack of them. “I couldn’t find a single self-help book written for people in their eighties,” a cohort, she notes, that is growing faster than any other old age group. By nature and training a problem-solver (she is a co-founder of Ibis Consulting, an advisor on issues of diversity and organizational effectiveness to Fortune 500 companies and leading educational institutions), Esty decided to conduct her own research.

The result is Eightysomethings: A Practical Guide to Letting Go, Aging Well, and Finding Unexpected Happiness (Skyhorse Press, 2019).

Drawn from more than 120 interviews Esty conducted with octogenarians around the country about their attitudes, activities, relationships, hopes, and concerns, along with dozens of their adult children, the book explores the “strange and uncharted territory of old age.” Writing with compassion and candor, Esty looks at issues of physical and mental health, offers tips on practical matters such as finances, living arrangements, and end-of-life planning, and examines the graceful negotiation of what she calls “upside-down parenting,” when adult children take on increased roles as caregivers.

Her most valuable insight: Cultural stereotypes aside, for those lucky enough to reach them, the eighties are a rich and rewarding decade. “People are happier in their eighties than they were in their seventies and in their seventies than they were in their sixties,” she says. “This is not just my people, who come from all walks of life. Scientists who study longevity are finding that despite health issues and other difficulties, the losses that come with aging, people are happy.” Here, Esty shares five key practices that support graceful aging and late-life happiness. For more on the topic, visit her at katharineesty.com.

32 WILLISTON NORTHAMPTON SCHOOL

5 IDEAS FOR AGING WELL

1

4 Find a purpose.

Stay connected to others.

We are social and emotional beings. In America we have this sense of individualism, the kind of Lone Ranger thing of not needing anybody, but isolation isn’t good. As we age we need to live where we can connect to people easily every day, so staying alone in your house away from the village, as it were, may no longer make sense.

It’s important to be connected where you live.

2 Communicate between and across the generations.

Family remains central in almost everybody’s lives, and regular communication about the difficult topics of aging is incredibly important: what kind of end-of-life care one wants, funeral wishes, estate planning, the tricky transition from being the parent to being the one who needs help. We must talk openly about these things.

3 Ignore negative stereotypes about old age.

They don’t fit any longer.

We were brought up to think that the elderly lose brains cells every day, that old people don’t learn well.

New science shows that the brain continues to develop.

We used to think you grew up to be an adult and then it was all down hill from 40 to 90. As it turns out, there’s this neuroplasticity, this capability of the brain to heal itself and to grow.

We are not doomed. There is a lot of good news. Some research shows that if you maintain a positive attitude about aging, you’re going to live 7.5 years longer than people who don’t.

The people who are happiest are those who are doing something for others.

Whether they’re supporting a cause like climate change or volunteering in a hospital or taking care of a grandchild or a greatgrandchild even. Contributing in some way. There’s a need to do something for others; even as you get very old and don’t have the same physical abilities, you can find something to support, some way to contribute.

5 Embrace the freedom afforded by old age.

There is tremendous opportunity for happiness now that you are no longer striving for personal and professional achievement the way you do earlier in life. There’s a passage in King Lear that I like where he says to his daughter, come with me, we’ll sing and laugh and tell tales.

None of those things have any great purpose in the sense of achievement, but they’re enjoyable. Being older is the time to just do what you really enjoy.

There’s so much freedom not only to do what you want to do, but to become the person that you were always meant to be but never had time to become.

SPRING 2020 BULLETIN 33

Preparing for the

WORST

Managing catastrophes was all in a day’s work for Jonah Stinson ’00. Then COVID-19 came along.

—BY JONATHAN ADOLPH

“Some say the world will end in fire/ Some say in ice,” begins the famous poem

by Robert Frost. To that list, Jonah Stinson ’00 can add a few more possibilities.

A disaster management expert and regional response team leader in Washington state, Stinson has devoted his career to preparing governmental responses to “anything that rocks society, that’s out of the norm, and that we have to deal with,” he explains. In the past, that has meant earthquakes, landslides, floods, wildfires, hazardous material spills, terrorist attacks, and active shooters. But since February, it has meant just one thing: COVID-19.

Stinson, who grew up in Haydenville, Massachusetts, and was a day student at Williston for both middle and upper school, is director of safety and emergency management for the Bellingham Public Schools, a system 90 miles north of Seattle with 13,000 students across 30 sites. He is also an adjunct professor at Western Washington University, teaching disaster risk resiliency and physical geography—the study of processes in the natural environment, such as atmospheric and landscape forces, and their potential impact on society.

For those in the disaster preparedness profession, the COVID-19 pandemic is “a rare opportunity,” says Stinson, who when interviewed in April had been working with his team without a break since the virus appeared in February.

“It’s the Super Bowl of disasters.” Both the global scale of the pandemic and its range of impacts—to public health, social services, the economy—make

ON THE COVID-19 FRONT LINES

As human services director for the Bellingham, WA, region’s inter-agency response team, Stinson oversees the distribution of a million meals a month 34 WILLISTON NORTHAMPTON SCHOOL

At a local high school, boxes are prepared with a week’s worth of food and personal hygiene supplies for students

Local volunteers help distribute food supplies at a mobile drive-through food bank

Jonah Simpson in the Swiss Alps, which he traversed on foot a few years ago to examine glacier retreat

it an unrelenting test of whatever mitigation strategies the planners may have devised. As his team’s human services director, Stinson is focused on the challenge of providing necessities in this newly contagious world: organizing drivethroughs at food banks, assisting schools with meal distribution, setting up child care for essential workers, establishing safe shelters for the homeless, planning quarantine facilities, and preparing medical surge facilities for when hospitals reach their limit.

As stressful as that work has been, Stinson says that on a professional level it has also been instructive. “It’s been rewarding to be able to apply the skills and the lessons that we’ve learned in the past to a real-world scenario, one that has direct impacts to the communities,” he says, “and to see practices in action at a scale like this, that we’ve never seen before.” And for him as an educator, the pandemic has provided an unprecedented case study for the next generation of emergency managers. In his disaster-risk reduction course, taught virtually this spring, Stinson will be giving projects to his undergrad seniors that are directly related to the COVID-19 response. “Opportunities like that, where students are able to be engaged with such important projects, are very rare,” he observes.

Stinson discusses catastrophes with a calm deliberation, perhaps because he has seen his share. Over the years, he has assessed the hazards of landslides in Taiwan, desertification in Mongolia, earthquakes in Turkey, and Whirling Disease (a parasitic infection in salmon) in the Southwestern United States.

He has responded to vehicle accidents that shut down the local interstate, to murder-suicides that shocked his school community, and, perhaps most notably, in 2014, to the Oso Landslide, in Northwest Washington, which killed 43 people and buried some 40 homes and buildings. “It was a saturated slope and basically the whole mountainside came down,” he recalls. “No one anticipated an event like that.”

Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, the most catastrophic event on Stinson’s mind was one that hasn’t occurred for centuries. Bellingham happens to be in the Cascadian Subduction Zone, a long-dormant earthquake and tsunami region brought to national attention by Kathryn Schulz’s award-winning 2016 New Yorker article “The Really Big One,” which vividly documented that the Pacific Northwest was overdue for a devastating seismic event. That article “definitely raised awareness for the average citizen,” Stinson recalls, “but folks here tend to have a more heightened awareness of those issues.”

And that’s a key to being prepared for any catastrophe, he says. In his line of work, “there is no such thing as a natural disaster, there are only natural hazards.”

What transforms a hazard into a disaster is our lack of preparation and response to it. “Flooding is a great example,” he says. “It’s a natural process and we don’t want to necessarily prevent it. What we can do is learn how to live with these

natural phenomena in a nondestructive way. We can’t prevent an earthquake, but we can prevent the disaster that will come if we don’t build and live accordingly.”

The COVID-19 pandemic, he notes, has underscored this point. “I don’t believe many of us were prepared for a situation of this magnitude.”

Stinson’s entry into risk management began with an interest in the outdoors.

A member of the Outdoor Club at Williston, he volunteered one summer in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park through the Student Conservation Association, which in turn got him thinking about studying the environment at a school in the West. After his Williston counselor steered him to the Thoreau Foundation, he received a $34,000 scholarship to pursue that goal, and went on to earn his B.A. in environmental studies and geology at Whitman College, followed by a master’s in geography at Western Washington University. Stinson’s time at Williston also shaped him as an educator. “I had faculty, like Doc Gow, who helped reinforce my appreciation for the sciences,” he says. “He was always running and jumping around, so enthusiastic about teaching. I try to emulate his teaching style. At 8 a.m., for a college course, it can be tricky.”

So what instruction would Professor Stinson offer the rest of us in this time of pandemic anxiety and uncertainty? For starters, take responsibility for your own situation. “We are all first responders,” he says. “Often there is a misperception that federal agencies like FEMA will swoop down and handle everything. But as we see with large-scale disasters, those entities are more designed for coordination and large-scale facilitation. At the end of the day, it comes down to local and household levels of readiness and preparedness, and individual actions.”

In that regard, Stinson has been encouraged by the community responses he has seen to the pandemic, the generosity of neighbors, the volunteering efforts.

“We’re seeing a lot of altruistic behaviors,” he notes. “People do really come together and want to do good things for others.” He also sees the pandemic triggering positive changes to social institutions and lifestyle patterns. “It’s going to drive incredible innovation,” he says. “We are going to see telecommuting on the rise after this is done. We’re going to see new technologies that we’ve never been able to utilize to this extent. A lot of new efficiencies will come out of this in the end.”

Until then, however, there are still risks to manage. Stinson is particularly concerned that once the infection curve is flattened and we begin returning to a more normal state of social activities, disease flare-ups will return, “and how we respond to those will be vital.” He also notes the importance of managing the economic hardships of continued social distancing, should that be required as long as some models suggest—finding ways to keep food on tables, businesses in business, and families equipped with what they need to stay isolated. That’s his new challenge, he says: “Trying to mitigate the mitigation.”

A turn of phrase that Robert Frost might have appreciated.

SPRING 2020 BULLETIN 35

By J

O N AD THA ONA

LPH

P U G N I H C CAT FILM WITH UCER D O R P L E A MICH K ’72 I Z O N

OVER HIS THREE-DECADE CAREER as a

film producer, Michael Nozik ’72 has worked with Hollywood luminaries such as Robert Redford and Martin Scorcese and been the driving force behind more than two dozen movies, winning particular acclaim for Syriana, The Motorcycle Diaries, and Quiz Show, which was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar in 1994. And yet, despite these achievements, the Holyoke, Massachusetts, native says the challenges of his career continue to test his confidence. “It’s hard,” he acknowledges. “There’s a lot of self-doubt.

I’ve been doing this for 30 years, every day, and still asking, OK, what am I doing today? There are balls I have to move down the field, and the field is still very difficult, and doors are shut. It’s a process of always trying to find the fresh, inventive way to keep going forward.”

Nozik had followed his older cousin to Williston— his younger brother would also attend—and witnessed firsthand the school’s merger with Northamp36 WILLISTON NORTHAMPTON SCHOOL

“As a producer, you sort of are at 20,000 feet, looking at all the problems and trying solve them before they happen.”

ton School for Girls. Amid the social and political foment of the times, he discovered photography, contributing to Williston’s yearbook and befriending Mitch Epstein ’70, a photographer and filmmaker with whom he would later collaborate. His time at Williston helped him to develop “a point of view about myself” and “some understanding of the visual impact of images,” he says. “On an artistic level, I

became aware of and sensitized to a certain kind of visual language. I got interested in looking at photographs, looking at art, hanging out with classmates and people like Barry Moser, who was an icon for us.”

After majoring in English at Skidmore College, Nozik managed the Athenaeum Cinema, in Hartford, and the Orson Welles Cinema, in Cambridge, where he made his first key connections in the film

world, then moved to New York to pursue his dream of working in the business. After paying his dues as a production assistant, location manager, and production manager, he eventually got his shot at producing, a transition he attributes to “being in the right place at the right time, maybe a little bit of skill set, and working with other producers who brought me along.” He now lives in Los Angeles, where his latest project is a visual effects movie called Inversion, about the intermittent loss of gravity on Earth, and an adaptation of The Ranger’s Apprentice, a series of young adult books

by Australian author John Flanagan.

PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN DAVIS PHOTOGRAPHY

People know what an actor or a director does, but a producer’s role may be less familiar. What exactly do you do?

I’m what’s called a creative producer. I find stories and develop them as scripts. I don’t finance the movies, but as a producer, you source the financing and you are ultimately responsible for how the money is spent. You sort of are at 20,000 feet, looking at all the problems and trying solve them before they happen.

Often, you’re the reason the movie’s happening.

For example, on Motorcycle Diaries, which I did when I was in a company with Robert Redford, I saw the paperback in a Santa Monica bookstore. It had a really cool cover with Che Guevara on it, and I picked it up and started flipping through it. I thought, Oh, this is kind of cool, and started to pursue where the rights were, which were very complicated. Shortly after that, I saw a movie called Central Station that was directed by the Brazilian director Walter Salles, and I thought, Oh, that’s an interesting director for this. So, I put the director together, we went to get the rights, and then went to get the financing for it.

That’s what a producer does: Pull all the elements together, try to guide the ship forward, and at some point, you pass the mantle to the director, who is the primary creative force. But you stay through the editing process, you take the movie to the distributor, you work on the marketing, and go to the movie theater after it’s opened to see how people are responding. My friend used to say, You’re the first one bringing the furniture in and you’re the last guy taking the furniture out.

Were any of these skills things you discovered about yourself at Williston?

I discovered my interest in, and probably some understanding of, the visual impact of images. I’ve

ROLL THE CREDITS

Highlights from Michael Nozik’s 30 years of producing in Hollywood Quiz Show, 1994 This story of a 1950s gam e show scandal—starring Ralph Fiennes, John Turturro, and Rob Morrow —was nominated for four Oscars, incl uding Best Picture. “Quiz Show was the beginning of many years of collaborati on with Robert Redford,” says Nozik, “an d it was by far our best time togeth er. He’s a really smart guy and a complic ated guy to partner with, but he’s a bril liant artist and I learned a lot from being around him.”

The Motorcycle Diaries, 2004 This dramatization of Che Guevara’s formative road trip won the Oscar for Best Original Song and was nominated for Best Adapted Screen play. “Diaries was just incredibly challen ging to do, but really fulfilling,” Nozik recalls.

“It was a hard movie to ma ke. There were logistics all over the place.”

Syriana, 2005 George Clooney won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his work in this political thriller set in the oil industry (and which also featured Matt Damon and Amanda Peet). Writer Stephen Gaghan was nominated for Best Original Screenplay. Along with the previous two films, Nozik says this is one he is particularly proud of.

Crossing Delancey, 1988 Amy Irving earned a Gol den Globe nomination for her work on this romantic comedy set in Manhattan —and Nozik got his break as a produc er. He had been working with the daught er of director Joan Mickland Silver, wh o in turn had asked him to produce wh at had previously been a play. Silver gave the script to Irving, who at the tim e was married to Steven Spielberg. “Amy really liked the script and wanted to do it,” Nozik recalls.

“We didn’t have financin g. So she gave it to her husband, who rea d it and said, I like this story. And they we’re having dinner as a group with the hea d of Warner Communications, Steve Ross. All it took was Steven Spielberg to say, You should do this. The next day, lite rally, we got a phone call from Warner Brothers.”

Nozik’s production work over the years covers a wide range of film genres and subjects

always been interested in history and literature, and certainly learned that well at Williston. We were at Williston during a time of transition, politically and historically. We still had to wear ties and there were rules, and at times we wanted to rebel against them.

In retrospect, those things gave us some perspective and helped you define yourself, because there was something in opposition—you know, rules. I remember someone said, “OK, we have to wear ties.

They make us better people. Let’s wear three ties.

We’ll be three times better.” And so, in protest, one day, we wore three ties: two on the leg, one on the neck. But those things help to define you, because you have something to clarify yourself against. When there’s nothing there and there’s no rules, it’s hard to define yourself as a young person who needs to rebel. So Williston was helpful to develop a point of view about myself, and that carries on in whatever you do. And I turned it to making movies.

Were any teachers particularly influential?

Definitely Couch, who was very helpful in photography. Couch was my dorm master, my first year at Mem dorm. The darkroom was in the basement.

You do films with a great deal of diversity: international films, action, drama. What is it that draws you to a particular project?

I look for something that somehow affects me, that shifts my perspective on something. I’ve been drawn to stories that are international because I think we learn from seeing things from another point of view.

I don’t have a particular thing that I would identify as my genre, but I’ve often worked with the same directors and that affects the kind of material. In some ways, I think of myself as being like an editor.

Not a film editor, but a book editor. Here’s a piece 38 WILLISTON NORTHAMPTON SCHOOL

of material, how can I make it better, take the best things and bring them out.

Are you ever surprised by which films get the attention, or do you know early on that a project is going to be special?

You always hope, and I’ve been more disappointed than surprised. During the process of postproduction on a film, you’re often putting it in front of an audience, and you get scorecards and comments. In the best of cases, those test screenings are helpful because you get comments about certain areas of the movie. Is it moving slow? Is something confusing? You can get a feel if audiences are really not getting it. I did a movie called The Next Three Days with Russell Crowe, and we never had such good scores. On paper, it should’ve been a gigantic hit, and it turned out to be just, poof, gone. And I don’t know why. Wrong date, bad campaign, who knows? It’s really hard these days. There are all these other factors.

We certainly hear about all the changes in the movie business, with streaming and new platforms. How are they impacting what you do?

Streaming is having a big, big impact. It’s a good thing, ultimately, because it’s allowing for more stories to be told. The theatrical experience is being relegated right now to these big tentpole and comic book movies, though I feel like there’s a glimmer of change coming. Audiences broadly are getting a little tired of that. They want a human experience.

But streaming is here to stay. It’s a big force.

There’s a lot of money in it, and there’s a lot of content being generated. My own tastes, and I’m sure it’s the taste of other people, is I love to binge-watch now. It’s like reading a novel.

And from a film-producer side, I love that a movie doesn’t live or die on its first weekend. You spent three years, five years, working on something, and then it’s gone. That’s really depressing, and it’s happened more than once to me. The audience doesn’t show up, so the studio doesn’t support it anymore.

They don’t want to spend good money after bad in marketing, because marketing’s very expensive.

They just pull back to the ancillary rights of DVD, which now will be streaming.

So if some Williston grad were interested in doing what you do, what advice would you give them? Maybe run the other way?

No, there are a lot of Williston grads out there that are doing well in this business. Like anything, the biggest thing is, do you have the passion? You have to be self-starting and you have to have a passion that is bigger than good sense. Because, especially as you begin, there will be wall after wall. And that can be discouraging. But if you have the passion for it, you should, absolutely. Because the movie business wants and needs fresh and new voices. It’s always looking for the next big thing. Sometimes it’s hard to get your voice heard and believed, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.

Do you still go to the movies yourself?

I used to go every week. In fact, that’s how I met Paul Haggis, who I collaborate with a lot. When I lived in Santa Monica, we would go every Friday night to see whatever was opening. But lately, I get screeners because I’m in the Academy, so I get lazy and watch those. And you can now get a big TV with good sound, so the experience is pretty good. But it’s not like a movie theater. That’s still the best way to see a movie. And I hope it never goes away.

Nothing Ventured The risk-taking artistry of former faculty member Marcia Reed

H

aving taught art for 35 years at Williston, Marcia Reed— beloved by countless Wildcats—retired in 2012. It may have been a risk to leave a familiar environment after all that time, but, as Reed notes, she’s not afraid to mix things up. She moved to Delaware and launched a new career, opening Gallery 37: A Destination for Artful Living, representing 60 artists, from potters to printmakers to painters, in the picturesque river town of Milford, once a shipbuilding center. She continues to lead painting-focused trips abroad (Williston alumni sometimes join her) to locations such as Istanbul, Sardinia, Sicily, France, and the Virgin Islands.

And in March of 2019, she grew bored of what she was painting and decided to completely shift her approach, abandoning landscapes for stylized, colorful abstractions.

Those risks have brought a reward. Her alma mater, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (she earned her B.F.A. and M.F.A. there), asked her to be one of 15 alumni featured in a new juried show, Sun to Cement, at Herter Gallery this spring.

Reed was on hand at the opening, March 5, and participated in a panel discussing the work, which was on display through March 26.

“I’m now back in a place where it is more fun to paint,” she noted. “So to have my new work selected to be in this group show is really exciting.”

PHOTOGRAPH BY ARUNA GOLDSTEIN

—BY KATE LAWLESS

alumni news

SPRING 2020 BULLETIN 39

A Dorm of Her

Williston Northampton’s new residence hall honors Emily McFadon Vincent NSFG ’49

“I can see that today’s students are still very enthusiastic, willing, and involved. The faculty are outstanding, with the right mix of high academic standards and caring offered to students.”

WHEN THE NEW GIRLS’ DORMITORY

now under construction opens to students this fall, it will be noteworthy not merely because it completes the residential quad and fulfills a key objective of the school’s strategic plan. It will also be the first residence hall named for a female benefactor, and the first for an alumna of Northampton School for Girls. Fittingly, the Emily McFadon Vincent House honors a woman who in her personal, professional, and philanthropic life broke her share of new ground as well.

A small-business owner and world traveler at a time when both were considerably more difficult for women, Vincent spent just one year at NSFG, arriving on campus for her senior year in the fall of 1948, after crossing the country on her own by train from her home in Tacoma, Washington.

The school she had been previously attending made the mistake of telling young Emily she wasn’t college material, an assessment that “didn’t sit too well,” she confides, and so she sought

40 WILLISTON NORTHAMPTON SCHOOL

out a more supportive environment. Told by her father not to speak to anyone in the train’s dining car, she says she did not eat for the entire three-day journey.

Fortunately, she found nourishment of another kind at NSFG. “It was just a wonderful year,” Vincent recalled recently from her home in Scottsdale, Arizona, where she now lives with her husband, Bob, whom she married in 1983. “I had to work hard, which was no problem. And there was just this atmosphere at the school. Everything about it was positive.”

Bob Vincent adds that when Emily wasn’t having fun telling tall tales of the West to her credulous New England classmates, she was learning how to be an entrepreneur. She would buy candy in town, he explains, and sell it to the girls in the dorms. “That’s what I thought I was going to do,” Emily Vincent clarifies. “But I didn’t. I ate it. That’s how I gained 90 pounds!”

Vincent would soon demonstrate that she was indeed college material, going on to earn her bachelor’s degree

in sociology-economics and English from Mills College in Oakland, California, and later attending the University of Edinburgh, where she studied psychiatric social work. The twin interests of concern for others and curiosity about the world would come to steer her personal and professional life. Over the next five decades, she served as a social services counselor in Seattle, a Red Cross worker in Australia, a district director for the Camp Fire Girls, and an agent in the American Automobile Association’s worldwide travel department. In addition to living in England, Scotland, and Australia, she traveled throughout the Middle East and Africa. On one trip in 1963, she recalls, she snuck into Israel in the dead of night because she lacked the proper paperwork.

All of Vincent’s interests came together in 1971 when she opened New Horizons Travel, the first travel agency in the then-undiscovered red-rock canyon town of Sedona, Arizona. She would run the business for the next 19 years. “I wanted to help

people,” she explains. “I felt that I could really contribute something to the community. I learned that I could employ the same techniques in the travel business that I used in social work counseling, because you have to know what the problems are to plan trips for people. That was a very valuable tool.”

Vincent sold New Horizons in 1990, just in time to see her industry face dramatic disruption from online competition. She believes there is still a role for travel agents, however, “and that is in their knowledge of other areas of the world, the guidance and advice they can give to clients.”

Vincent traces her own passion for travel to her upbringing. An only child, she was raised by parents who enjoyed traveling—the family would cross the country to visit relatives in Connecticut—and they “instilled that interest in me,” she reports.

As for her confidence to take risks and explore the world, she dismisses that as simply a quality of youth. “The thing about young people is you’re not afraid,” she says.

“You don’t even think about

Own

ILLUSTRATIONS BY JACK MOLLOY

BY JONATHAN ADOLPH

some of these things. You just do them.”

In her later years, Vincent has been similarly bold in her philanthropy, serving as a longtime supporter and board member of Verde Valley Guidance Clinic, in Cottonwood, a treatment facility for women with chemical dependency and mental health issues. In 2007, Verde Valley named a new residential unit Emily’s House in her honor.

She continues to support Mills College and, perhaps most remarkably, the Annie Wright Schools in Tacoma, the very institution that had misjudged her all those years ago. “It’s a much better school than it was when I was there,” she explains.

Ten years ago, Annie Wright presented Vincent with an honorary high school diploma, making her the rare student with two high school degrees.

And, of course, she continues to support Williston.

Over the years, she and Bob Vincent have endowed funds for professional development, instructorships, and scholarships. “I want to continue to help Williston

Northampton, financially and in other appropriate ways,” she said in 2004, on the occasion of funding the Emily N. McFadon Vincent and Bob E. Vincent Scholarship. “I can see that today’s students are still very enthusiastic, willing, and involved.

The faculty are outstanding, with the right mix of high academic standards and caring offered to students.”

As for the new dormitory, Vincent initially resisted the honor of having it bear her name, ultimately agreeing only when she was told how her actions might help others. “The recognition is not something that I seek,” she explains. “But it might inspire other people to be generous.”

LETTERS HOME

Every day while at Northampton School, young Emily McFadon wrote to her parents across the country. Here, we share some of her words, from the school archives.

SEPTEMBER 22, 1948

I think I am going to like it here in the East. And now I have no quandaries about traveling alone on a train! I shall write you when I am settled at school.

SEPTEMBER 23, 1948

We ate at the Wiggins Tavern which was very crowded, then we came to school.

It really is beautiful. I am in Hathaway House, third floor, nice light room. My roommate’s name is Nancy Angell, a very nice girl. I am taking English 4, French 3, practical art, which consists of concerts at Smith, and American history. No chemistry needed!

into college. I know this school makes you work so in college the work isn’t so hard, but French is way over my head!

I can’t understand what the teacher is saying or anything! In reference to the hard work we do here, I found out that Northampton grades 4 pts. harder than Smith College. I will try my best…

OCTOBER 5, 1948

Monday we went on a trip to a lookout and the view was beautiful! One could see N.H.…Everyone here is so interested in baseball except me. I don’t care whether the Braves or the Indians win!

Oh, well, everyone to her own taste.

SEPTEMBER 26, 1948

OCTOBER 20, 1948

I don’t see how I am ever going to get through his school year, much less get

Last night we heard the national orchestra of France. It was the best

SPRING 2020 BULLETIN 41

alumni news

concert I have heard yet! People cheered and applauded for 15 min. after the concert was over. I bought a beautiful red sweater for only $7.50!

As our class colors are red and white, I thought red would be good.

DECEMBER 9, 1948

NOVEMBER 1, 1948

Mrs. Judd told me I did very well in the English exams. I am now in “Scribblers,” the English club in which we really learn to write.

We are having a history test tomorrow and I am petrified! I have studied in every conceivable way for it! If I don’t pass it, I will die!

NOVEMBER 4, 1948

We are having a “field day” with Miss Burnham’s School, and I’m a substitute for the hockey team goalie! Very important job! I am petrified!

NOVEMBER 20, 1948

Last night after I arrived, “E” offered me a Martini cocktail, which I tried and which I disliked heartily!

DECEMBER 1, 1948

Next Saturday is the Christmas Bazaar (I’m cleanup); Monday night is the Christmas pageant. Then exams, then home!! We have two term papers to do during Christmas vacation! Darn it!

I still like all the girls and am having fun! I do so many things with so many people at so many times, it’s hard to mention them in letters.

JANUARY 21, 1949

JANUARY 24, 1949

I hope Miss Whitaker’s letter was favorable. Our assignments are rapidly piling up! Everyone back here is just crazy about “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue,” remember that record I bought? Day and night we hear it.

JANUARY 28, 1949

Yesterday we skied. Never have I had so much fun! My aluminum skis are the best investment I ever made!

When everyone else was having trouble on the sticky snow, I was sailing down very nicely!

FEBRUARY 5, 1949

Yesterday we saw “Words and Music,” a superlative movie. If you

have a chance, see it, ’cause it really is good! “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue,” a dance sequence starring Gene Kelly and Vera-Ellen was the best dancing I have ever seen! We went tobogganing last night in the moonlight. I like it better than skiing, ’cause I can do it better!

FEBRUARY 10, 1949

Yesterday Mike (Marikea) DeJong and I went toboggan jumping; we built two jumps and practically killed ourselves! I’m through with that for a while…Am having a history test tomorrow so wish me luck!

FEBRUARY 17, 1949

Mother, thank you for the nuts and candy in addition to the wonderful cookies! Everybody in the house enjoyed both. Today Mrs. Conkling, a rather famous poet, spoke to us. She made many things clear about poetry and its meaning.

MARCH 1, 1949

The weather is terrible. We had 1 foot and ½ of snow last night!

Last weekend I went home with Sally Davis and had much fun.

Sat. Night we went to a U. of Mass vs. Norwich U. basketball game which was so poor it was funny. The rest of the weekend we just laughed, ate, slept.

MARCH 13, 1949

The Prom weekend was very successful! Thursday night, I learned that David had come down with the German measles so—no date. Everyone started working for blind dates, and Anne Babbitt got her brother’s roommate to come. His name is S. Richard “Ox” Vera—6”2”, 225 lbs.

Tremendous boy! He was nice and we had lots of fun. I also received two corsages, one from David and one from “Ox.” David’s was two camellias.

Dick’s was a 2-gardenia wrist corsage.

Never have I had so much fun!

MARCH 16, 1949

It has been heavenly here. You can see for miles. If my writing sounds odd, it’s because Mrs. Judd (English) makes me write short, pithy sentences. So it goes.

MARCH 18, 1949

Sunday, I am going to Sally Davis’ for dinner. Miss Bement said if there were boys there, she wasn’t going to let me go! Of course, Sally’s brother will be there, but I didn’t tell Miss Bement that. Also, she had to know what we were going to be doing every minute! It won’t be long ’til summer and 3 weeks from tomorrow!

Mother, should I buy the Washington ticket in advance? Write soon, Lots of love, Em.

alumni news

EDITH PIAF: A GIFT FROM MISS BEMENT Headmistress Bement demanded much from her students. But for the author, that class opened the door to French culture—and to a lifelong fascination with one of its stars. BY JOAN KEEFE NSFG ’58

I

like to point out, when I lecture on French singer Edith Piaf, that her songs hit you with a wallop from the first notes. Her rich voice grips you and suddenly you find yourself on the streets of old Paris without really knowing how you got there.

And so it was with my French IV class at Northampton School for Girls, taught by Headmistress Dorothy Bement. We began in September with no elaborate introduction from Miss Bement. No chats or jokes eased us into the material. There were no screens or special effects. Instead, she plunged us headfirst into her rich world of French language, literature, and history.

Four of us sat at a table with her in a small, spare classroom that offered no room to duck from her rigor and high expectations. What did we think, for example, of King Henry IV of France, who had vacillated between embracing Catholicism and Protestantism?

Was he weak, as some of the French thought, or was he, in the end, the ultimate pragmatist? We were asked to give well-reasoned arguments based on historical facts. There was no place to hide. One by one, we answered in the slow, faltering French that formed our arguments. Miss B betrayed no impatience, only a barely concealed pleasure that we were indeed thinking — and in French, at that.

Throughout the year she heaped homework on us in ever-expanding assignments, never seeming to doubt that we would somehow get it done.

And not wanting to shake her faith in us, we somehow did. At the same time, she prodded us, pulled us, even dragged us to the finish line—to a scholarly level that I only witnessed later in graduate school.

While it is true that Miss B was the academic head of the school’s French program, it seemed as if she were really a writer-producer-director who had taken her excellent script and assembled a cast of fine teachers, including herself, to bring it to life.

For example, she brought us the glamorous Mlle Gatti, who arrived straight from Paris, trailing French chic and style and speaking with crisp Parisian pronunciation. And she gave us young Miss O’Connor for French II, a warm and witty example of a native-born American who could be an excellent French teacher. She proved it by our high national achievement test scores.

But surely Miss B’s best production was the successful NSFG Summer School of French that she created and directed every summer on the Northampton campus. Unique on the secondary school level, it offered intensive French classes, French language and cultural immersion, and just plain fun. This rich combination attracted girls from prominent independent schools around the country.

Every day, a beaming Miss B directed her colorful production and all its moving parts, with good humor that would have astonished some in the NSFG winter school who thought of her as a martinet.

Joan Keefe has taught college-level French for many years and is the author of The Student’s Pocket Guide to French Grammar.

The after-class activities she arranged were many and varied, but the most popular was the daily singing session when we were taught traditional French songs. It was usually topped off by the stirring “Marseillaise,” which we learned in all its many and lesserknown stanzas.

Many years later, at the French Embassy in Washington, D.C., I joined in the general singing of the “Marseillaise.” Somebody asked who this American was who knew even the most obscure stanzas of their national anthem. The credit belonged to Miss Bement.

After NSFG, I spent my Smith College junior year abroad in Frenchspeaking Geneva, Switzerland. How grateful I was for the French program at NSFG. Less time struggling with communication meant more time

to absorb European culture. And so, I encountered Edith Piaf—through her magnificent voice that captivated not only her native France, but all of Europe.

Her public knew her story well.

Born in poverty in 1915, she was abandoned by her parents. As a little girl she sang on Parisian street corners for tossed coins, developing a powerful vocal focus that grabbed the attention of passersby. For her fans, her personal history of abandonment and, later, lost loves, addictions, and ill health were intertwined with her musical history. In Geneva, people hummed and whistled her songs as her unmistakable voice drifted out from radios and record players.

In France, they lined up for her concerts and, once inside, sat in silence, as if in church, waiting for a tiny figure in a plain black dress to appear. On stage, there were no special effects.

There was only her voice. With the first soaring notes, she plunged the audience into musical mini-dramas that reflected her own life on the streets. She led them into the open-air dances she had known as a girl, where love flickered and died to accordion waltzes. The literate, romantic storysong had originated in the early 19th century French music halls, and Piaf dedicated her career to preserving this tradition and passing it on through her protégés. She sang these songs with polished, precise diction that made her the envy of those with the musical training she lacked.

When I was teaching French in Washington, D.C., I introduced a few of Piaf’s songs to my students. Some resisted them. “This song has no beat,” said one 18-year-old. Had they been ruined by rock? But then I discovered that a group of my students had formed a small Piaf fan club on campus. There was hope, after all. continued on page 79 SPRING 2020 BULLETIN 43

BY JONATHAN ADOLPH

Climate change. Plastic proliferation. Ocean debris.

Industrialization. Our planet’s environmental problems can seem overwhelmingly complex, but these four Williston alums have devoted their careers to helping us understand these issues and transition to a more sustainable future.

44 WILLISTON NORTHAMPTON SCHOOL

Ken Mankoff rappels into a subglacial conduit near Hornsund, Svalbard, before entering a cave beneath the glacier.

Opposite page: At the site of an expedition in Greenland, flags mark a buried jet engine part— and potentially deadly crevasses.

SPRING 2020 BULLETIN 45

PHOTOGRAPHS BY MATT COVINGTON AND THUE BORDING

MEASURING THE MELTDOWN 46 WILLISTON NORTHAMPTON SCHOOL

As an eyewitness to an unfolding global catastrophe, Ken Mankoff ’96 studies the impact of climate change on polar regions

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JASON GULLEY

ken mankoff has truly seen the world. An earth scientist

specializing in polar glacier hydrology and oceanography, he has given presentations on all seven continents, from the U.N. General Assembly room to the Amundson-Scott South Pole Station, and made some 25 research expeditions to Antarctica, Greenland, Svalbard, Alaska, Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland, presenting his findings in papers with titles such as “Subglacial Conduit Roughness: Insights From Computational Fluid Dynamics Models.” And if traversing the Earth’s surface were not enough, Mankoff would love to see the planet from space: He applied to be an astronaut for both NASA, in 2016, and the European Space Agency, in 2008 (he has U.S., Swiss, and Italian citizenship), advancing to the final NASA round.

Today, Mankoff witnesses the world melting. A senior scientist in the Department of Glaciology and Climate for the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, he uses high-tech sensors and robotic devices to gather data about glaciers and ice sheets, documenting their decline in response to climate change. It’s a process that Mankoff was drawn to in part because of the planetary consequences. “What is the biggest change we’re going to see in our lives?” he asks. “Sea level rise—that’s one. A hundred years from now, when you look down from space, the coastlines will look different.”

And while he notes that, from a societal perspective, the resulting global disruption will be catastrophic, the earth scientist in him wishes he could witness it firsthand. “I don’t like people dying, but I love a good natural disaster,” he explains. “I’ve been in the eye of a hurricane—those things are fascinating. I’m not going to get to see this one, but we all know people who are alive today who will be alive in 80 years. And if there’s a meter of sea level rise, most cities in Florida will be uninhabitable.”

Mankoff, who when not on or under an ice sheet lives with his wife in Seattle, grew up in the suburbs outside New York City, attending a Waldorf school and Burke Mountain Academy before arriving at Williston for his junior year. He recalls racing on Mount Tom as a member of the school ski team, and taking classes in physics—“playing with Slinkies to learn about springs and the mathematical equations that teach you how to determine the wave propagation”—and in English, where he honed the writing skills that he now uses for his numerous scientific papers.

After Williston, Mankoff attended the University of Colorado Boulder, where he studied computer science and was part of the first all-student team to develop and launch a space satellite. After graduating in 2001, he studied microtechnology and robotics at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in 2003 and earned his Ph.D. in earth and planetary science at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 2013.

His career has included positions at NASA, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the American Museum of Natural History, and various universities. “I view myself as basically doing the job I’ve been doing since 1998, which is a scientific programmer working with any earth science data set. It’s changed from space, to weather, to oceanography, to now cryosphere and glaciers. But it’s all kind of the same thing.”

Granted, his work environment has changed over the years: He now spends months at a time in some of the harshest conditions on Earth, making sure his team has everything it needs to accomplish its mission and return alive. “I’m not an adrenaline junkie and I don’t like risking my life, but at the same time, you’re at the edge of where you’re supposed to survive, and it requires really nice teamwork. I don’t like sleeping next to a big gun and having to worry about polar bears. But when you come back, and it all worked out, it’s a really good feeling.”

One recent project left Mankoff with a particularly good feeling. In September 2017, an Airbus A380 en route to Los Angeles from Paris was crossing over southern Greenland when one of its four engines blew apart. The plane, the industry’s largest with more than 500 people on board, landed safely in Canada, but investigators wanted to recover a key missing engine piece—the fan hub—to determine what caused the failure. Mankoff was sent to find it.

Locating a 450-pound chunk of titanium buried in a moving sheet of ice, in one of the planet’s more remote environments, would require inventing a mobile metal detector and developing new exploratory procedures, a process that ultimately took six expeditions, various airborne radar assessments, sensor prototyping in Zermaat, Switzerland, and countless hours of effort by teams on multiple continents.

(Mankoff tells the story in a paper published in April in the Journal of Glaciology.) When the fan hub was finally found, it happened to be in the middle of a field of snow-covered crevasses, where the wrong step could send a person plunging to their death. Mankoff’s team, roped off for safety, used shovels, chain saws, an electric winch, sleds, and a gasoline heater to pull the part from its 15-foot-deep hole—21 months after it had fallen from the sky.

“It was the most fun project I had ever worked on,” says Mankoff, noting that a French team is making a documentary about the project. “Glaciology is all about what might happen a hundred years from now. But this mattered now and today.” Indeed, finding the part helped investigators determine the cause of the engine failure, in turn leading to inspections of the other A380 engines in service. “So it was an important part to find, and hopefully we have saved some lives,” Mankoff says. And, he adds, “I didn’t have to think about climate change.”

ON HOW TO BRING ABOUT A MORE SUSTAINABLE FUTURE…

“I have a really unpopular answer: Have fewer kids.

It’s a really unpleasant topic. It’s also possible to have humans who don’t consume as much. If everything is solar, wind, and hydro powered, and our cars are powered by the sun, then it doesn’t matter as much if there are more people.”

ON TAKING ON ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS…

“We need a new economic system with full cost accounting. Air and water are not free, but we view them as free. If they are used up in a detrimental way, there should be a cost associated with that. If a full accounting were done, then who knows what businesses would survive and what businesses wouldn’t? And maybe a lot of these decisions would just be made for us.”

ON HUMANITY’S FUTURE…

“I think it’ll be difficult— our past behavior is going to catch up to us and cause some problems. But it is never too late to avoid worse problems. We have solved so many societal and planetary-scale problems in the past, including environmental, medical, and geo-political. We need to do that once more.”

SPRING 2020 BULLETIN 47

RESCUING THE in the fall of 2009, rachael miller and her husband took a trip to matinicus island, off the coast

of Maine, to try to figure out their lives. The two had been living on Lake Champlain in Vermont running an extreme water sports school and giving tours of shipwrecks using robotic underwater cameras, but Miller was feeling that something was missing. Matinicus is 20 miles out at sea (the name in Abenaki means “far out island”) and had just been hit by a Nor’easter the day before. The couple dropped off their bags and took a walk. “The beach next to our place was covered in trash, knee deep in plastic and foam and fishing gear, food wrappers and beer cans,” Miller recalls. “We spent the rest of the first day of our little vacation pulling that trash above the high tide line. And then my husband had an epiphany.

‘You hate trash in the water. It’s the one thing that really pisses you off. So let’s do something about it.’”

And thus was born the Rozalia Project for a Clean Ocean. An action-based environmental nonprofit (named for Miller’s great-grandmother), the project combines citizen science, experiential education, solutions-based research, and hands-on cleanup programs to focus attention and action on the problem of marine debris. From a floating headquarters, the 60-foot sloop American Promise (the “greenest sailing research vessel in the world”), Miller and her team

48 WILLISTON NORTHAMPTON SCHOOL

host research expeditions for supporters and scientists, using those same robotic underwater cameras to document the trashing of the marine ecosystem, particularly at the land-sea interface. “Eighty percent of the marine debris problem is from land-based sources,” explains Miller, who captains the ship.

“So we wanted to focus our work where we would have the most impact, and be most cost-effective, instead of waiting until trash is swirling around the center of our ocean circulation systems.” Through its various efforts, supported primarily by sponsorships and grants (from the National Geographic Society, among others), the group has gathered and recorded nearly a million pieces of marine debris.

In addition to prevention, research, and clean-up, Miller also advocates for and employs innovation as a pathway to cleaner oceans. Through Kickstarter, she and her team developed and are now marketing the Cora Ball, a grapefruit-size sphere made of twisted recyclable plastic. Place the Cora Ball in your washing machine, and it can collect about a quarter of the load’s microfibers—bits of material shed from fabrics that can contaminate downstream ecosystems, such as the ocean.

Underlying all of these efforts is Miller’s view that humanity needs to change its relationship with the materials we bring into the world. “If we could collectively do away with the idea of waste, then other activities would fall into line,” she argues. “We would design to keep everything in a circular economy, because everything has value. There isn’t waste.”

Raised in Saratoga, New York, Miller was drawn to Williston for its swimming and sailing teams, discovering only after she arrived that the latter had just been disbanded. Still, she says, the school proved a good fit. “It was a great combination of teacher-led learning and independent learning, which I really appreciated. And that’s the kind of environment in

which I thrive. Ultimately, it set the stage for the kind of work I do now.”

Miller prefaces the discussion of her unusual career path by noting that she has “no hemisphere preference,” explaining that she is drawn equally to right- and left-brained pursuits and “always flipflopped between art and science.” From Williston, she attended the University of Rochester, but after a semester on the ocean with the Sea Education Association and environmental studies programs in Australia and Mexico, she transferred to Brown University to pursue art semiotics. She would eventually earn her degree there, but not before changing her major yet again to underwater archaeology, “which for me ended up being the elusive blend of art and science.”

After Brown, Miller made a bid to compete in the Olympics in singlehanded sailing, training and raising money for the individual small-boat event. She didn’t make the team, but she did meet her future husband, an English sailor, and the two eventually settled in Vermont and opened Stormboarding, their extreme sports center.

Today, 10 years after the couple’s epiphany on Matinicus Island and the launch of the Rozalia Project, Miller says she has begun to see a societal shift in awareness around marine debris issues, and that leaves her optimistic that real change is possible.

“There’s been this sort of mass recognition of the problem, a willingness to actually talk about it, to identify with it, and to identify consumption with marine debris,” she says. “If you go and sit on the street corner in a major city, you will see more people with reusable mugs, reusable bags, less single-use items, than we did five years ago. The Super Bowl was just zero waste! I used to go to ocean protection conferences and they were serving food on Styrofoam. That doesn’t happen anymore.”

PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID SEAVER

Rachael Miller ’88 takes on the problem of marine debris by confronting it at its source

E OCEANS

ON WHAT CONSUMERS CAN DO…

“Make the environment a priority in decision making. Vote with your vote, and vote with your wallet. If you don’t like the packaging, then don’t buy the thing. Find someone who’s doing it better. The reason, in my opinion, that we don’t have filters on washing machines yet is because no consumers are reaching out to washing machine manufacturers and saying, Hey, I’d really like a machine that collects the fibers shedding off my clothes.”

ON DEALING WITH PLASTICS…

“I’m not a believer in banning all plastic. I don’t think plastic is the enemy.

There are some objects that are made of the right material, and objects that are made of the wrong material in the wrong way, without thinking of the big picture.”

ON HUMANITY’S FUTURE…

“It’s hard to believe that the people of the future will let it all completely implode.

But unless everyone who’s not suffering now takes some action, the number of people who are suffering will expand. And the efforts that the non-suffering can make now are not that onerous.”

SPRING 2020 BULLETIN 49

what complicates many of our society’s most pernicious environmental threats—carbon dioxide

in the atmosphere, microplastics in the food chain, harmful chemicals in drinking water—is their invisibility. Nina Goodrich’s issue is just the opposite. Her problem seems to be everywhere we look.

Since 2012, Goodrich has served as executive director of the nonprofit GreenBlue, a coalition of manufacturers, retailers, and environmental advocates working to bring sustainability to the packaging industry, a business sector that has come under increasing scrutiny in an era of swirling ocean garbage gyres, overflowing landfills, and collapsing recycling markets. The Charlottesville, Virginia, group grew out of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, founded in 2002 by architect and sustainability thought leader William McDonough, whose landmark book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way we Make Things argues for the adoption of a “circular economy” where materials are either repeatedly reused or naturally degrade, but never wasted. Through partnerships, advocacy, conferences, and educational programs, GreenBlue works to encourage the innovation needed to move us toward that goal.

“Plastic in the ocean has really galvanized a number of people,” explains Goodrich, who started her career in research and development for packaging giants Amcor and Alcan, and previously managed her own consultancy firm, Sustainnovation Solutions.

“And 95 percent of it we can’t see. So that gives you an

idea of just how huge the magnitude of that problem is. But it’s also fixable. It’s something that we can get our hands around.”

That confidence to take on such a daunting problem was a trait encouraged by Williston, Goodrich says. Raised in Duxbury, Massachusetts, she was in the first class to attend the newly formed Williston Northampton School after its merger with Northampton School for Girls, which three of her aunts had attended. She recalls the science classes taught by Doc Gow, printing classes with Barry Moser, and the athletic programs, particularly tennis, skiing, and Outward Bound. “It really was an amazing place to go,” she says. “There’s no question that the Williston experience informed how I go about problem solving today. It was that blend of strong academics as well as athletics and art. It was those three disciplines, and being able to integrate them, that gave me a perspective in terms of how I problem solve today.”

That first year after the merger was a time of change for the school community, she recalls. “I can remember there was some question as to, did girls belong in the classrooms, but they really came through with flying colors. By the end of the year, we had had a place in those science and math classes and everybody learned together. It was such a positive atmosphere for science and math.” So positive that Goodrich went on to Mount Holyoke and then Wellesley College, earning her degree in molecular biology. She then worked briefly for a management consulting firm before moving to corporate research and development, where she specialized in packaging and food science.

Today at GreenBlue, Goodrich works with an extensive coalition of packaging industry players, reflecting the complexity of our society’s waste stream. The group’s 450 members include raw material suppliers such as paper companies and plastic producers, package manufacturers, major brands and restaurant chains, and retailers like Walmart and Target. The Environmental Protection Agency, waste management companies, universities, and

civic representatives are also involved. “We like to think that we have representation from the whole value chain, and we try to create a safe space for everybody to work together on these issues,” she notes.

One recent GreenBlue program that exemplifies the group’s collaborative approach is the “How to Recycle” label, introduced in 2014, which uses graphics to show consumers how to recycle the specific parts of a package, and points out which parts they can’t. “That’s been a huge success with consumers.

It takes the guesswork out of it,” Goodrich explains.

“But more importantly, as a company applies for a label for something they think is recyclable, a lot of times they’ve found out they have to make tweaks or do things differently.”

Victories like this keep Goodrich positive even when the environmental news about packaging has not been. She notes that China’s recent decision to no longer import recyclables has revealed just how much work needs to be done to bring real sustainability to our waste stream. “The whole North American infrastructure and Europe has had to rethink itself and try to figure out how to process materials at home,” she says. At present, the values of materials have plummeted and recycling remains a patchwork process managed by often over-burdened municipalities. “We have not kept up with the rest of the world,” she notes. “In Europe, because they have extended producer responsibility, they have a lot more money to deal with the situation.”

But as immediate as the recycling problem is today, Goodrich notes that she is more discouraged by what it portends for the future. “One of the huge things that we’re missing is this innovation opportunity,” she explains. “As long as we deny this is happening, we’re going to lose out on the opportunities to develop the technologies for the future. We could be part of the solution. We could be contributing ingenuity to fixing the problem.”

And that’s where GreenBlue comes in, she says.

“We try to bring people with different perspectives together to have that conversation about how we’re going to move forward.”

PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDREA SHIRE

Can consumer packaging ever be sustainable?

Nina Goodrich ’74 brings together the players who could make it happen.

GREENING OUR 50 WILLISTON NORTHAMPTON SCHOOL

ON THE FUTURE OF RECYCLING….

“You’re going to see more things like bottle bills, material bans, proposals for extended producer responsibility. National legislation would make life much easier for everyone.

There isn’t any one system in the world that’s perfect, but we could take elements from other programs. We definitely need to rethink what we’re doing .”

ON SHIFTING OUR WAY OF THINKING…

“We need to think regeneratively as opposed to the whole ‘take-make-waste’ thinking. When we start to think about circularity, what does that mean for business models? One of the areas that scares me is that our whole economy is based on growth. So how do we figure out a way to grow sustainably?”

ON HUMANITY’S CHALLENGES…

GOODS

“I think about the planetary boundaries model.

There are a number of tipping points —whether it’s acidity in the ocean, resiliency of our soils, or our ability to feed people.

The U.N. sustainable development goals are a great model. We’ve still got to bring millions of people out of subsistence poverty living and not breach our planetary boundaries while we do it.”

SPRING 2020 BULLETIN 51

52 WILLISTON NORTHAMPTON SCHOOL

PHOTOGRAPH BY ELODIE GIUGE

BUILDING A BETTER INFRASTRUCTURE

ON THE FUTURE OF ENDANGERED SPECIES IN ENGLAND…

“Because it’s a small, densely populated island, a lot of habitat has been degraded and we’ve seen the loss of large mammals—the lynxes, wolves, and bears, and so on. There is a growing movement to promote rewilding, and in small ways that’s happening.”

ON CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE CHALLENGES…

“When I was born there were 320 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It’s now 400, and coming up to 420 now within a generation or two. In geological time, that’s a blink of an eye. The idea that causing such a radical change would have no effect at all, it’s just not credible anymore.”

ON REASONS FOR OPTIMISM…

“For the most part, we’re still in a deteriorating situation, but there are glimmers of hope. The population is still rising, but it’s moving toward a plateau and our impacts are being ameliorated by all manner of things: better home insulation, more effective recycling, recovery of waste, and so on. The position overall seems dire, but there’s plenty of grounds for hope in the longer term.”

Richard Mackay ’89 helps give England’s large public works projects a smaller ecological footprint as an environmental planner tasked with minimizing the impact of large infrastructure projects in Britain, Richard Mackay is keenly aware of humanity’s toll on the natural world, even as he works to lessen it. Consider his current project, High Speed 2, a proposed multibillion-dollar rail link that would connect London to Birmingham and other cities in northern England. “It’s controversial,” he acknowledges.

“It’s very expensive, carves through a lot of countryside, and disrupts a lot of communities. But it will provide, if it comes off, the backbone of our public transport system for many years to come.”

Through his work at the consultancy firm Mott MacDonald, Mackay is in the rare position of being able to help mitigate the consequences of social progress. “I’m responsible for the full gamut of environmental issues,” explains Mackay, who has a biology degree from Cambridge University and a master’s in environmental science from Brunel University.

“Habitats, flora, and fauna, but also noise, air quality, land contamination, hydrology, and the array of issues that arise whenever an infrastructure project is proposed.” And while he has a biologist’s clear-eyed view of society’s current ecological predicament, he has found cause for optimism in an unlikely place: the very laws and regulations that make his job so complicated.

“In the last few years, the weight given to environmental considerations in the schemes I’m involved in, the amount spent on environmental analysis and on genuine modifications to minimize the impact of it, that’s been encouraging,” he explains. “You can see that, through regulation, a lot of the potential damage of everything we do—from cities, to agriculture, to transportation schemes—is being tempered.

It’s much more transparent now, and some of these new quantitative assessment methods have created ways for coming up with a monetary value of what the overall pros and cons of a scheme might be.” Mackay joined Mott MacDonald in 2008 and has seen this heightened scrutiny on projects as wide-ranging as a water-supply project for southeast England and a plan for a new city quarter in Dubai.

Prior to joining the firm, Mackay authored The Atlas of Endangered Species and The Atlas of Children’s Health and the Environment, both statistic-heavy texts that give context

to complicated issues. Writing those books tested his optimistic outlook, as “much of the data was very gloomy,” he acknowledges. “It led to some quite somber reflections about the future and what the prospects for the Earth would be.”

At the same time, he saw in the data some positive patterns emerging, which continue to encourage him today as he considers humanity’s ongoing struggle with sustainability.

“The root cause of all this is too many people breeding too fast and consuming too much,” he points out. “And you can see that, although the population is still rising, certainly in the last decade or so the rate of increase is beginning to level off. In South Asia for example, it’s very much stabilizing. So there are some encouraging trends.”

As it happens, Mackay traces the beginnings of his environmental awareness to an ecology club he joined at Williston. He had arrived at the school as a post-graduate, having finished his secondary studies at Glenalmond College, a boarding school in Scotland. Rather than start immediately at Cambridge, where he had been accepted, he applied to a program run by the English-Speaking Union that placed students in independent schools in the United States. The Union decided on Williston for him, a choice that “was fortunate because it was just an incredible school,” he says. In the ecology club, he recalls, “I met a number of people who were very committed and looking at environmental impacts and more sustainable living.” That, in turn, “spawned an interest that carried forward to influence what I’m doing now.”

Mackay also found at Williston an academic environment refreshingly divergent from that of Glenalmond, at the time a single-sex institution with an Episcopal church foundation, where his studies in his later years were focused almost exclusively on science and math. Free to explore other topics, he immersed himself in American history and literature, psychology, economics, and more. “It was a fantastic opportunity,” he recalls. “I did drawing and yoga and all kinds of things. Academically, for me, that was precious.”

He was also shaped by the diversity he experienced at Williston, he says, “not only in terms of people coming from far-flung corners of the world, but in terms of a tolerant approach. Like many teenagers, I was foolish and bewildered, and making mistakes. Having an atmosphere where people were very tolerant and accepting— I think that’s a principle that I’ve carried through.”

Now back in Cambridge, England, Mackay lives with his 9-year-old daughter, who has also taken up an interest in the environment. “She’s joined a green team at her school,” he says. “They are looking at the habitats within the school grounds, single-use plastics in the school, all manner of things.” As for High Speed 2, the proposal is still under review, he notes, but “it looks broadly positive.”

SPRING 2020 BULLETIN 53

Looking for an internship, first job, next job, career advice, or industry contacts?

Williston Northampton alumni can be your best connections.

WillistonConnects is a powerful networking platform connecting alumni in meaningful ways. Activate your account at www.willistonconnects.com; your profile has already been set up by the alumni office. Answer a few short questions, enhance your profile with your LinkedIn information or resume, and make updates to your contact information. Raise your hand to be a resource to other alumni and connect immediately with people whose interests match yours. You’ll have access to directory features to help you find alumni who live in a particular city or state.

NEW FEATURES INCLUDE: Alumni Professional Networking Resources bringing together alumni at all levels of experience, in all kinds of careers. (Check the WillistonConnects events page for upcoming career webinars as well as virtual social gatherings.)

Alumni Marketplace for entrepreneurs, business owners, freelancers, and consultants. Join the group and let others know about your business or services by posting in the discussions tab.

PH OTO G R A PH BY JA M I SAU N DE R S

CLASS NOTES

Shea Davies and Dong Kingman ’55 helped paint the town red during the holiday party at the New York Yacht Club. Want to find out more about alumni goings-on? Be sure to check our Wildcat hub for virtual events: williston.com/alumni/the-wildcathub. Recaps of in-person gatherings are on the pages to come!

class notes

WILDCATS COAST TO COAST Remember the days before social distancing? It was wonderful to connect in person with Wildcats across the country, reminding us what makes life sweet. We’ll be together again soon!

BOSTON YOUNG ALUMNI RECEPTION

SAN FRANCISCO ALUMNI RECEPTION

It was great to see everyone who came by the Cheeky Monkey Brewing Co. in Boston this November!

Sophisticated ’cats gathered at Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, SFMOMA Artists Gallery.

Chris Lansill ’16 and Lucas C.

Sandra Shapiro and Sam Levin ’80

Niels Gjertson ’98 and Nidhi Nahar

Emma Sakson ’09 and Michael Snavely

Paul Kirley ’86 and Laura Chin Kirley

Shu-Fung Hsia and Jim Yiao-Tee Hsia ’71

Steve Decker, Adey Adams ’14, and Christie Valine ’12

Nick Herring, David Rahn ’09, Emily Kassis ’08

LOS ANGELES ALUMNI RECEPTION

PINTS & PANCAKES COMMUNITY 5K

The Velvet Lounge of the Culver Hotel was the site of our gathering for Angelinos. Smooth.

Who can resist a fun run down memory lane on campus—with ice cream?

Mikey Lloyd ’16, Rachel Lloyd ’14 and Nick Kioussis ’13

Kathryn Tomaselli ’12 and Sam Goldsmith ’12, Walter McLaughlin ’12

80 WILLISTON NORTHAMPTON SCHOOL

From left: Lindsay Richardson ’14, Adrian Mendoza ’12, Leeanna Albanese ’16

Natalie Aquadro ’17 and Gabby Mercier ’17

NYC ALUMNI PROFESSIONAL NETWORKING EVENT

CHICAGO ALUMNI RECEPTION

Alumni met at the Yale Club, business cards in hand, to socialize, network, and, let’s face it, schmooze.

Wildcats of all vintages raised a glass in the Barrel Room at City Winery Chicago in November. Cheers to you all!

Mark Wei ’17

Takila Oku ’92

Glenn Jones ’95

Terry Martin ’85

Left, from front: Julie Lord ’16, Peter David ’03, Chitra Panjabi, Nicole Bouchier ’02, Bette Jenkins, Jondelle Jenkins ’71, Tim Crowe ’70. Right, from front: Katarina Rosenzweig, David Samuels ’04, Stelios Neofytou, Khrystyna Vatseba ’13, Haoshu Xu ’13, Mary Ellen Bull ’83, Brendan McCartney ’08

Caitlin Mitchell ’98 and Cency Middleton ’07

Malcolm Boyd ’06 and Amadi Slaughter ’08

Haoshu Xu ’13 and Khrystyna Vatseba ’13 (former roommates)

Bob Grenier ’72

Peter David ’03, David Samuels ’04, Nicole Bouchier ’02

BLUES AND BUBBLES BRUNCH

It was balmy and bluesy, not to mention brunchy, under the Tiki Tent at the Fourpoints by Sheraton in Punta Gorda, Florida, when Shawn Amos ’86 and his band rocked the house.

Bonnie Muschett ’92, Marjorie Weiner, Marcella Yearwood ’89, Stephan Hatch ’60, Roy Weiner ’59, Zach Tennant, Chris Mangiapane ’95, Mary Hofstetter Nicotra ’85, Traci Mangiapane, Shawn Amos ’86, Kandy Donnelly, Jory Berkwits ’65, Denny Fuller ’58, Joan Castello, Carlos Castello ’73

Stephan Hatch ’60, Roy Weiner ’59

Bonnie Muschett ’92 and Marcella Yearwood ’89 SPRING 2020 BULLETIN 81

REMEMBERING

SUE CURRY BARNETT over a 43-year career that spanned both

Students and colleagues recall a beloved coach, teacher, and mentor.

northampton school for girls and the williston northampton school,

Sue Curry Barnett coached six varsity sports (tennis, soccer, field hockey, basketball, ice hockey, and softball) and served off the field as Dean of Girls, Student Activities Coordinator, and as a teacher of physical education, psychology, and math. Married to longtime Williston chaplain Roger A. Barnett, Ms. Barnett retired in 2011, and was inducted into the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 2015. She died last October.

Like every beloved coach, Ms. Barnett knew that winning isn’t everything—but trying to win is. “Did I coach to win? You bet I did,” she explained in her Hall of Fame induction speech. “But ’winning’ was about learning, and focus, and giving one’s best. Winning was about teamwork and supporting one another.”

Those values influenced generations of Williston female athletes, such as the Reverend Mary Conant ’75, who played soccer, basketball, and softball for Ms. Barnett. “Getting the most out of each athlete not only won games for the two schools,” Rev. Conant recalled at Ms. Barnett’s induction, “but it also built confidence, created winners, and set young women with great life skills on paths toward successful professional careers.” In return, it was those student-athletes—and seeing the impact she could have on their lives—that gave Ms. Barnett her greatest satisfaction. Asked for her fondest memory of her time at Williston, she answered simply: “The kids. I’m still in touch with hundreds of them. I’ve seen them grow up, fail, pick themselves up again, succeed, raise families. That’s what I loved from start to finish.” Here, we share a selection of memories about Ms. Barnett from those very students, and others who knew her.

“When I look back on the people who were instrumental to my development, who inspired me to try harder, who believed in my potential, Sue Curry ranks in the top five. I remember many evenings just hanging out and chatting, never realizing until later what a positive force she had been. Rest in peace, Ms. Curry, and thank you for your big heart. —Christine Palkhiwala Glass ’84 I arrived at Williston Northampton in the fall of 1973, one of a handful of girls in a class of under 40, nervous and unsure of myself. Sports became the fire that helped forge my love for WNS, and Sue Curry coached me in all three: soccer, basketball, and softball.

I was the only freshman who played on any of these teams.

With Sue’s encouragement, I improved as an athlete, but she also made sure that I was adopted as a friend and teammate by the older, better athletes she coached. The lessons in team building and leadership she imparted over four years were central to my success in college and later throughout my career in public service. —Shannon P. O’Brien ’77

She was a one of a kind. I never remember seeing her angry.

Always smiling and stopping to say “Hello!” and “How are you?” She will be missed.

—Robin LeClaire, former faculty During the merger years, Sue was a steady force in helping to integrate the two schools. She always had a smile, had time for everyone, and was one of the many things I loved about Williston. I talked with her several times over the years and always came away with a smile and a laugh, and a feeling that we had just spoken yesterday when, in fact, it could have been five years. —Owen Mael ’79 Dearest Susie was my closest friend during my years at Williston. She was a true school person with a wise eye and an engaging warmth and smile.

—Alice Purington Ms. Barnett was a joy to be with and to learn from. Her memories live on with us; her letters and holiday greetings are a great reminder of the Williston community’s reach. Thank you for your love!

—Olivia Moses Clough ’09

Ms. Curry played a key role in all three years of my Williston experience. I’ll always remember her encouraging words and warm smile. —Kristina Moskos Garbert ’87 Lady Sue Curry aka Mrs. Barnett aka Curl was the first faculty member I met on my first day of Williston. By the time I graduated I knew her as my friend, too. She had a sharp mind and a quick wit, and was extremely kind. She did so much for so many and never wanted attention. I played softball for her freshman year and, boy, was she serious! I used to get a kick out of her hand signals to girls on base. She was an incredibly honorable person, a true citizen that made the world a better place. —Holly McBurnie Kissane ’87 As Susan’s favorite philosopher, Winnie the Pooh, noted. “How lucky I am to have someone that makes saying goodbye so hard.”

And so we must let Susan go on her journey. She has finished hers—on her terms. We rejoice in her life. We mourn her death.

But we must let her go.

—Reverend Mary Conant ’75, from her eulogy last fall

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