THE WILLILIST

5,452

Meals funded as part of the Community Service Club food drive. Generous Williston students donated food items as well as cash. The class of 2022 topped the leaderboard, with a total of 968 points (a point being a food item or dollar donated).

23,925

Total COVID-19 tests administered on campus between August 2020 and May 2021, part of Williston’s extensive safety protocols for the campus community.

40

Number of times Equipment Manager J.T. Tirrell ’90 drove to the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Mass., during the 2020–21 school year. Each Wednesday, J.T. delivered the school’s COVID-19 PCR tests to the institute’s lab, so that test results would be available the following day. Thanks, J.T.!

30

Number of minutes during which students must answer six math problems in the Whitaker-Bement Girls in Mathematics Competition. 10

Teams competing in the school’s first Broomball Tournament this winter. What’s broomball, you ask? It’s like hockey, but with brooms. The winning team (who ironically did not sweep the tourney) was “Broom Roasted.”

CONNECTING & RESPECTING

17

Student leaders who, along with 11 faculty members, ran this year’s Why Not Speak Day, which featured workshops and speakers devoted to examining identity. This year’s theme: Reflect, Respect, Connect.

15

New student-centered and teacher-supported affinity spaces for all groups of students to encourage interaction and support.

300

Spools of yarn used for UNITY, an interactive public art project on campus during Why Not Speak Day. Students wove green yarn between posts to reflect their identities (see photo on page 13).

172

Number of gifts made as part of the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Challenges this past Founders Day, totalling over $65,000. Thank you!

SNAPSHOTS

These are the moments that defined life at Williston this winter and spring. We took pictures to make them last a little longer.

The spring play—The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time—raised awareness about autism A confetti-filled time was had by all at the Eighth Grade Semiformal

A deep freeze this winter made for a few weeks of spectacular pond hockey on Williston Pond

On Why Not Speak Day, students created a huge web on the Main Quad, which visually demonstrated the way individual identities overlap and connect to make up our community

Science Department Head (and notoriously fun tie-wearer) Bill Berghoff teaching classes in Scott Hall this spring

As restrictions lifted in Massachusetts, AP Studio Art students were able to take a field trip to nearby MASS MoCA

Celebrating Our Seniors!

The class of 2021 saw their junior year move online, then had a senior year marked by masking, social distancing, and COVID-19 testing. Through it all they rallied—and in May, we were thrilled to be able to celebrate these Wildcats in person—and in style.

WILLY GRAS The class of 2021 made a big splash at a special “seniors only” Willy Gras, held on Sawyer Field

SENIOR GALA & BINGO NIGHT It was a night to dress sharp, enjoy time with friends, sign yearbooks, and cry, “BINGO!” Ms. Davey, at left, was our charismatic host. COMMENCEMENT Senior class president Adam Thistlethwaite, bearing a class flag designed by classmate Hannah Cannizzo, led the procession of seniors on the big day

SENIOR DINNER The iconic class photo on the steps of the chapel preceded a dinner, faculty speech, and a cupcake truck

able in light of what he now recognizes as his undiagnosed dyslexia. “I can’t add a column of figures,” he notes, “so I wrote accounting policies and procedures. I don’t look at it as a disability. It just made school very hard.”

After Rutgers, newly married to his first wife, Penelope, Adelmann enlisted as an officer in the Air Force rather than take his chances in the Vietnam draft. He served in Utah, doing procurement, teaching accounting on the side as an adjunct professor at Brigham Young University. After returning to New York, he spent five years at a Big Eight accounting firm before being hired as director of accounting policies for PepsiCo. He later became director of accounting policies at American Smelting and Refining. Penelope, meanwhile, was focused on her own career in finance, achieving success as a Wall Street analyst for a number of prominent firms. But something was missing, Adelmann notes. The couple did not have any children, and “that was always a deficit that I felt.”

And so Adelmann began volunteering, first as a Boy Scout leader (he had been an Eagle Scout himself) and later at the Children’s Village, a New York residential facility for abused and at-risk boys. After Penelope died unexpectedly in 2000, Adelmann met Lucille, a former special education teacher, who began accompanying him on his volunteering visits. Over the next eight years, the couple, who were married in 2001, would spend every Saturday at the Village, driving the 100 miles in a minivan bought specifically so they could take the boys offcampus for bowling, swimming, zoo visits, and other needed diversions. “It was just glorious,” says Adelmann. “We were grandma and grandpa on the weekends. We were loved and we showed them they were lovable.”

Today, Adelmann and Lucille live in Mantoloking, New Jersey, and continue their social activism through Interfaith-RISE in New Brunswick, a multifaith organization that advocates for and assists refugees and immigrants. The volunteer work is the couple’s way of trying “to relieve some of the pain that’s being spread around the world,” explains Adelmann. “We collect furniture and do painting. We wash windows, and we move families in and out, setting up kitchens and buying the first round of refrigerator fillings. And we teach English as a second language.” Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, he and Lucille were making the hour drive to volunteer three times a week, and were considering buying a condominium in the area so they could be closer to the community. “That’s how we plan to spend our final years,” he says. “And hopefully there are 10 or 15 more.”

Assessing Williston, Adelmann hopes his support for diversity through the Adelmann Fellowship Fund will inspire others to take action, particularly “we white guys who were born on third base and think we hit home runs, and have no clue as to how much of an advantage we have.” Just as he has used his own financial creativity over the years, he recognizes “other people will have their own creative ideas about how to give back, how to solve problems, and will have the resources to make some of it happen.” Ultimately, he sees his work as planting a seed, hoping others will say, “If Dick Adelmann can do that, I can do it too,” he says. “We can work through Williston to make this a better world. And that’s all we’re here on the planet for.”

WILLISTON’S NEW EQUITY FUND

Director of Financial Aid Lee Greener ’06 explains how a new fund helps create a sense of belonging What is the Equity Fund? The Equity Fund is a new way that Williston will be able to attract, enroll, and fully support students who have the highest level of financial need. Currently, the school’s largest financial aid package covers 98 percent of tuition and board. As generous as that is, the full cost of attending Williston goes beyond that. It’s not just fees for AP tests, college applications, and laundry, which can add up, but also those invisible costs for things that truly give kids a feeling of belonging—like being able to get a milkshake at the Easthampton Diner, wearing a team sweatshirt, or buying a yearbook at the end of the year. For high-need families, those costs are out of reach. That’s where the Equity Fund will help bridge the gap, allowing us to offer a complete financial aid package that gives high-need students the Williston experience every kid should have. You’ve said the fund will also help Williston enroll the strongest candidates. How so? Every year, we enroll amazing students, but we also lose some of our strongest candidates with high financial need to other schools who are already offering “full experience” financial aid. Since those incidental costs can be in the thousands of dollars, families at this level of financial need have to consider where their child will have the best experience and sense of belonging. In the admission process, students who are applying to other schools tell me, “I’d love to come to Williston, but another school is offering my family additional resources to pay for tuition and other costs, and I can’t turn it down.” How many students will the fund be able to support? Thanks to the initial donors who generously gave the $40,000 in seed money to start this initiative, we have enough money to support four new incoming first-year students, and we’re phasing that in with two ninth graders in the fall of 2021. To sustain this effort on an ongoing basis and reach a goal of having 16 fullyfunded students at Williston, we ultimately will need to endow this fund at $1.5 million. What are you hoping the impact of the fund will be? When families decide to join Williston, I want them to feel welcomed. I want them to feel like they belong and that they are going to be taken care of here. One of the things that causes stress among our highest-need students is that they know what their families are sacrificing. I’d like for them to not have to worry about that as much, and for these kids to be able to just be kids.

ALUMNI NEWS

Blackberry Diva Cake is just one of the many showstoppers in the new cake cookbook by Zoë Neal François ’85. The recipe calls for buttercream, chocolate ganache, and a kitchen blowtorch. “There is nothing like torching something sweet!” she says. Read more on page 34.