Milton Magazine
The Academy’s Mission The Vision for the School
Spring 2002
Milton Academy Board of Trustees 2001–2002
Jean B. Angell New York, New York
Franklin W. Hobbs ’65 New York, New York
Jessie Bourneuf Treasurer Milton, Massachusetts
Barbara Hostetter Boston, Massachusetts
William T. Burgin ’61 Dover, Massachusetts Jorge Castro ’75 Pasadena, California Margaret Bergan Davis ’76 Evanston, Illinois Sara Greer Dent ’77 Chevy Chase, Maryland Edward Dugger, III Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts James M. Fitzgibbons ’52 Emeritus Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts Ronald S. Frank Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts Elizabeth Chatfield Gilmore ’68 Cambridge, Massachusetts
Ogden M. Hunnewell ’70 Vice President Brookline, Massachusetts Harold W. Janeway ’54 Emeritus Webster, New Hampshire David B. Jenkins ’49 Duxbury, Massachusetts George A. Kellner Vice President New York, New York F. Warren McFarlan ’55 Belmont, Massachusetts Helen Lin ’80 Hong Kong Tracy Pun Palandjian ’89 Belmont, Massachusetts Richard C. Perry ’73 New York, New York
Kenneth J. Goldberg ’81 Ex Officio Boston, Massachusetts
John P. Reardon ’56 Cohasset, Massachusetts
Victoria Hall Graham ’81 Haverford, Pennsylvania
John S. Reidy ’56 New York, New York
Margaret Jewett Greer ’47 Emerita Chevy Chase, Maryland
Kevin P. Reilly Jr. ’73 Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Madeline Lee Gregory ’49 Westwood, Massachusetts Antonia Monroe Grumbach ’61 New York, New York Deborah Weil Harrington ’70 Washington, D.C. J. Tomilson Hill ’66 New York, New York
H. Marshall Schwarz ’54 President New York, New York Frederick G. Sykes ’65 Secretary Rye, New York Jide J. Zeitlin ’81 New York, New York
Milton Magazine Front cover The new student-faculty center scheduled for completion, May 2003
Features Adopted by the board of trustees in July 2001
Editor Cathleen Everett
Report to the school community from the board of trustees
Assistant Editor Shannon Groppi Class Notes Editor Sarah Mills Anna Longstaff
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Photography Greg Hren, Tom Kates, Michael Lutch, Martha Stewart
Enhancing the exceptional quality of the Milton boarding program
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Designer Moore & Associates
Why boarding school, and why today?
Printed on Recycled Paper Milton Magazine is published twice a year by Milton Academy. Editorial and business offices are located at Milton Academy where change-ofaddress notifications should be sent. As an institution committed to diversity, Milton Academy welcomes the opportunity to admit academically qualified students of any gender, race, color, handicapped status, sexual orientation, religion, national or ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs and activities generally available to its students. It does not discriminate on the basis of gender, race, color, handicapped status, sexual orientation, religion, national or ethnic origin in the administration of its educational policies, admission policies, scholarship programs, and athletic or other school administered activities.
Promoting excellence in academics and deepening the quality of the student and faculty experience
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Jeremiah D. Newbury ’52 and Anne Willis Hetlage ’52
’ Events and celebrations on May 11 and 12
Departments Achieving a new level of excellence
Cameron Smith ’96 cycles 10,000 miles for cancer research
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A first: studying U.S. history in dynamic relationship with world history
Watching her Tarim Chung and Elisabeth Baker
What is a coach?
News and notes from the campus and beyond
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in a re-accreditation process with the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC). “The two goals of institutional accreditation,” according to the NEASC manual, “are school improvement and quality assurance.” The process begins with a yearlong, campus-wide, intensive self-study, and the first task of that study is revisiting the statement of mission. The Milton Academy Board of Trustees ultimately adopts the Academy’s mission, but crafting it is an effort that includes faculty, administration and trustees working together. The NEASC views the mission as the “basis, the very foundation of the evaluation process;” it is the defining standard against which the NEASC visiting committee will judge the Academy’s activities and programs. Milton trustees, faculty and students are pleased with this new statement of mission, adopted by the board in July . While it honors Milton’s character over time, it also provides inspiration, definition for decision making and direction for the future.
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Milton Academy cultivates in its students a passion for learning and a respect for others. Embracing diversity and the pursuit of excellence, we create a community in which individuals develop competence, confidence and character. Our active learning environment, in and out of the classroom, develops creative and critical thinkers, unafraid to express their ideas, prepared to seek meaningful lifetime success and to live by our motto, “Dare to be true.”
Milton Academy is an independent, college preparatory, ‒ school, boarding and day in grades ‒, located eight miles south of Boston.
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Milton Academy cultivates in its students a and a respect for others. Embracing diversity and the pursuit of excellence, we create a community in which individuals develop competence, confidence and character. Our active learning environment, in and out of the classroom, develops creative and critical thinkers, unafraid to express their ideas, prepared to seek meaningful lifetime success and to live by our motto, “Dare to be true.”
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Milton Academy cultivates in its students a passion for learning and a . Embracing diversity and the pursuit of excellence, we create a community in which individuals develop competence, confidence and character. Our active learning environment, in and out of the classroom, develops creative and critical thinkers, unafraid to express their ideas, prepared to seek meaningful lifetime success and to live by our motto, “Dare to be true.”
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Milton Academy cultivates in its students a passion for learning and a respect for others. and the pursuit of excellence, we create a community in which individuals develop competence, confidence and character. Our active learning environment, in and out of the classroom, develops creative and critical thinkers, unafraid to express their ideas, prepared to seek meaningful lifetime success and to live by our motto, “Dare to be true.”
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Milton Academy cultivates in its students a passion for learning and a respect for others. embracing diversity and , we create a community in which individuals develop competence, confidence and character. Our active learning environment, in and out of the classroom, develops creative and critical thinkers, unafraid to express their ideas, prepared to seek meaningful lifetime success and to live by our motto, “Dare to be true.”
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Milton Academy cultivates in its students a passion for learning and a respect for others. embracing diversity and the pursuit of excellence, we create a community in which individuals develop , . Our active learning environment, in and out of the classroom, develops creative and critical thinkers, unafraid to express their ideas, prepared to seek meaningful lifetime success and to live by our motto, “Dare to be true.”
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Milton Academy cultivates in its students a passion for learning and a respect for others. embracing diversity and the pursuit of excellence, we create a community in which individuals develop competence, confidence and character. Our active learning environment, in and out of the classroom, develops , unafraid to express their ideas, prepared to seek meaningful lifetime success and to live by our motto, “Dare to be true.” 10 Milton Magazine
The Vision for the School Adopted by the Milton Academy Board of Trustees, April 28, 2001
Milton Academy engages faculty and students in intense and challenging preparation for college and for life, in an environment that stimulates and supports extraordinary intellectual and personal growth. Day in and day out, in and out of class, faculty connect vitally with students – setting sights high, bringing opportunities to light, tackling big questions, affirming students’ individuality, and building their confidence and skill. Not only do they succeed at the most competitive universities in the country, Milton graduates’ awareness, creativity and competence empower them to fully commit themselves to meaningful endeavors of all kinds, throughout the world. To further this unique school environment that so successfully integrates academic excellence and personal development, the board of trustees has adopted a strategic vision. The board’s initiative has two major goals: • Assure the continuation at Milton of the most advanced and effective teaching and learning environment • Enhance campus life, that it may be the most educationally rich and rewarding experience possible for students and faculty alike. Over the next five to seven years, these two thrusts of the strategic vision will together invigorate the whole Academy, and deepen the quality of a Milton education. The first component is the master plan to renovate and add to our academic facilities. The second is the plan to strengthen the Milton Academy boarding experience.
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An outgrowth of the 1999 master plan study conducted by Finegold Alexander + Associates with Philip Parsons Consulting Group, the Core Facilities Project will build a new student-faculty center (the Crossroads building), renovate Warren, Wigglesworth, and Ware Halls as well as the Science building, and centralize the visual arts in its own facility. The Project will promote excellence in academics, deepen the quality of the student and faculty experience – in and out of class – and support the development of relationships and community. Specifically, it will: • Dramatically increase classroom space and provide learning places that facilitate the best teaching in each discipline • Provide new spaces where boarding and day students’ lives thoroughly overlap, that help deepen all students’ sense of belonging to Milton • Involve the faculty in inquiry, research and thinking about innovations in teaching methods, curriculum and program • Resolve the challenges posed by older buildings, including accessibility for disabled persons
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Strengthening the Milton Academy boarding experience is integral to the board’s strategic vision. The understanding of Milton Academy as a boarding and day school is an essential component of the Academy’s history and tradition, as well as a key feature of our unique culture today. Whether graduates were boarding students or day students, being a vital part of a sevenday a week, 24-hour a day community has long distinguished and defined the Milton experience. In addition, Milton’s boarding school status contributes significantly to the Academy’s ability to attract strong Boston metropolitan students interested in interacting with bright and talented students from around the country and the world. Based in a 1999 study by the board’s Student Affairs Committee, the board’s strategic vision sets goals and a series of actions that will ensure the ongoing strength and viability of Milton Academy as a boarding school, as well as a day school: • Further enhance the exceptional quality of the Milton Academy boarding program. This aspect of the plan includes fully implementing an innovative closed weekend program over the next two years; extending current character education, both to boarding and day students; and evaluating and continuing the improvement in effective weekend activities – attracting day students to campus, complementing the option for boarding students of visiting day students’ families.
• Secure for Milton wider identity as a boarding school option for parents outside of New England, and further deepen the pool of academically proficient boarding applicants. Use the findings of a Milton Academy marketing study by Mark Edwards & Co, Inc., as well as the recently completed New England boarding school collaborative marketing study, to conduct a campaign aimed at reaching new families with the message about Milton’s unique character. • Bring the numbers of boarding and day students to parity, without enlarging the School, over the next five years. Build two dormitories to house about 60 new boarding students and maintain the highest standards and opportunities for day student candidates. Through this bold and optimistic plan, the board preserves and strengthens Milton’s tradition and core values, and realizes the School’s fullest promise both for boarding students and day students.
• more classrooms • greater access to classroom technology • faculty in the same department are adjacent • new faculty offices, work spaces, a faculty center
: , , • plan exploits the natural campus “crossroads” • student-faculty center • campus commons • student café
• student activities offices • commons areas, one each for Classes ‒ • bookstore, mailboxes • deans’ offices • office of admission
• increased technological resources for students and faculty • greater facility with technology tools • widespread use for learning, communicating and socializing
• accessibility for all disabled persons • light, air, space and adjacencies facilitate learning and convening
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“The first component is the master plan to renovate and add to our academic facilities.”
Fall 2001 and winter 2002 Faculty and students at Milton have excelled in the work of teaching and • Caroline Saltonstall Gymnasium (CSG) learning in spite of a challenging physical environment, documented in was renovated to house the development the 1999 study by Finegold Alexander + Associates with Philip Parsons office and the office of admission Consulting Group. Inadequate classroom space, worn buildings and (both formerly in the Link). Once the unworkable spaces have supported a rich texture of curricular and extracurCrossroads building is complete, admission will return to the center of campus. ricular life. In addition, a study completed by the Student Life Committee of the board identified the need for effective spaces on campus for students • Planning for the Science building renovato gather in order to facilitate the experience of community among boarding tions begins; planning for a centralized visual arts facility continues. and day students, as well as faculty and students.
The is a multi-year plan to build a new student-faculty center (the Crossroads building), to renovate Warren, Wigglesworth, and Ware Halls as well as the Science building, and to centralize the visual arts in its own facility.
June 2002 • The Link is demolished; construction of the Crossroads and renovation of Warren Hall begins November 2002 • Warren Hall renovations are completed May 2003 • Crossroads completed Summer 2003 • Wigg renovations take place
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Classroom space
Student space
Faculty/Office space
Admissions
Down
Head’s Office
Renovations to Warren Hall and Wigglesworth Hall, and the addition of the Crossroads student-faculty center (in place of the former Link building) provide new, effective spaces for life inside and outside the classroom at Milton.
Student space
Student Commons
Faculty Lounge
Faculty/Office space
Bookstore
Student Publication
Kitchen
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Classroom space
Open to below
Student space
Faculty/Office space
Class I Commons
Open to below
Class III Commons
Class II Commons
Class IV Commons
Classroom space
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, was formed in Boston in 1983. The company has completed a large number of projects, ranging from complex urban buildings to college campuses and performing arts facilities to affordable housing. Recent large-scale urban planning projects include an overall campus master plan and architectural design of the west campus residential district for Northeastern University, and the master plan and building design of a new headquarters and studio campus for DreamWorks in Los Angeles. William Rawn Associates has earned a number of design honors including five awards from the American Institute of Architects, four in four consecutive years. Most recently the firm received the Honor Award in Interior Architecture for the Seiji Ozawa Concert Hall at Tanglewood. In the past 11 years, William Rawn Associates has won 27 city, state and regional AIA Awards. The firm’s projects have been featured in Architecture, Architectural Record, The Boston Globe, TIME, Newsweek, The New York Times, and major national and international design publications.
, . is a 40-person architecture and preservation planning firm. Working with clients in the fields of education, business, religion, government and the arts, the firm has experience in recycling historic buildings for new or extended uses and in the design of new structures compatible with historic, urban and rural contexts. The firm has been honored with more than 90 awards for excellence in design and planning, including national awards from the American Institute of Architects, National Trust for Historic Preservation, League of Historic American Theatres, National Endowment for the Arts, Building Design and Construction, and Progressive Architecture. Finegold Alexander believes that campus buildings, whether new or renovated, should foster communication, learning and collegiality among users. Its wide-ranging experience working closely with colleges, univer-
sities and preparatory schools has developed its talent for stimulating dynamic and enthusiastic discussions with students, faculty, trustees, staff and administrators. Among the educational institutions that have hired Finegold Alexander are: Boston Latin Academy, Bowdoin College, Brookline High School, Brown University, Harvard University, National Cathedral School, Phillips Academy, Tufts University, University of Wisconsin, University of Massachusetts, Vassar College and Wesleyan University. For more information, go to www.faainc.com.
Meeting the goals envisioned in The Core Facilities Project for increased and updated academic spaces, as well as a new studentfaculty center to enhance relationships among students and faculty, will require $50 million over a five- to seven-year period. The trustees have decided that implementation of each phase of the Project will occur once funding for that phase has been raised. Individual donors have thus far made gifts totaling $16 million for the Project, enabling the board to move forward with building the student-faculty center and renovating Warren Hall and Wigglesworth Hall. Future phases of the Project include renovations to Ware Hall and the Science building, and building two new dormitories. Please call Gordon Sewall, assistant head for development and alumni relations, with any questions you may have about Project funding.
For more information, go to www.williamrawnassociates.com.
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Renovations to Caroline Saltonstall launched Phase I of the Core Facilities Project. Not only did the construction transform some well-used Lower School spaces, it also created new administrative office space so that the Link could be vacated to make room for the Crossroads building. The “new” Caroline Saltonstall houses the development office on the second floor, and the office of
admission on the ground floor. Admission will move back to center campus once the Crossroads building is complete, and the Academy business office will take up residence in its place. Construction began in May 2001 and by the opening of school in September, Lower School students had a new dining room and a brighter, larger, library.
Lower School students (above) carry copies of “The Ribbon Cutting Song,” a song written by Dottie Pitt (Grade 2) especially for the event. “We have a building big enough for us, big enough for us.”
Renovations to Caroline Saltonstall included merging the two portions of the Lower School library into one large open space with a number of small work areas, extra seating and computer work areas.
Lower School Principal Annette Raphel, Head of School Robin Robertson, President of the Board H. Marshall Schwarz ’54, Vice President of the Board Og Hunnewell ’70 and friends in the Lower School took key roles at the official ribbon-cutting.
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The official ribbon-cutting ceremony for Caroline Saltonstall, on September 28, 2001, drew the Lower School community and members of the Milton Academy Board of Trustees.
“The second component is the plan to strengthen the Milton Academy boarding experience.”
The board’s strategic vision launches actions that will ensure the ongoing strength and viability of Milton Academy as a boarding and day school – “an essential component of the Academy’s history and tradition, as well as a key feature of our unique culture today.” Milton is already well underway in • enhancing the exceptional quality of the Milton Academy boarding program with new policies and programs • undertaking a marketing campaign aimed at reaching new families interested in boarding schools • providing, in the Crossroads building, new spaces where boarding students, day students and faculty easily and frequently gather for work and play • developing plans to bring the numbers of boarding and day students to parity over a five-year period (without enlarging the School) • siting and building two new dormitories
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Architect William Rawn and the Project Steering Committee agreed that the Crossroads building design should meet certain guiding principles: • The new student-faculty center should be a distinct building, not just a link between Warren Hall and Wigglesworth Hall. • It should make a statement but be appropriate and complementary to other Milton Academy buildings. • It should act as a beacon: a warm, lighted center of campus life. • To convey a feeling of openness, it should be nearly transparent (but not a glass box); from Centre Street one should be able to see through the building to the Forbes’ entrance.
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• The design should exploit the natural “desire lines,” that is, nearly everyone on campus passes through this site several times each day. • Gathering places for students should consider teenagers’ patterns and needs, and provide numerous attractive alternatives for easy connections: between boarding students and day students, students across classes, and students and adults . • Common rooms for each Class (I through IV) should replace the current larger home rooms. • Seniors should have distinct space. • Food should be available. • Food and noisy activities should be in proximity to one another and yet distinct from quieter activities. • Nearby faculty space should provide easy supervision for students’ spaces. • Office of admission should be located to show visitors the activity and energy of Milton students.
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Centre Street
Campus green
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: For 20 years, David Torcoletti, dean of students, has lived and worked in boarding schools. He has directed his skills, energy and tender wisdom toward teenagers as they confront their formative challenges: managing thrills and successes along with losses and defeats; coping with loneliness and insecurity along with building deep friendships; making choices and taking risks (both positive and negative); striving for maturity; understanding accountability; and preparing, intellectually, for the future. From a veteran educator after this long, personal investment perhaps you’d expect a seasoned critic of boarding school life. The opposite is true: David is a compelling advocate for the value of boarding school. His own words, excerpted below, best express his strongly-held views. Cathleen Everett
Why do you believe in boarding school, and why today? Now more than ever, boarding schools are important and effective. What we’re experiencing now, and we’ve witnessed developing over the past 20 years, is the reality that all relationships are global – whether they are economic, political or social. The success of those relationships depends utterly on understanding how and why the “other” lives. Studying others helps; a history class offers students a glimpse into how different people approach an idea, but nothing is more useful, in terms of building relationships, than having young people share a bathroom. One of the wonders of boarding school is that it demands that students overcome difficulties that are otherwise presented to them as theory. There’s nothing theoretical about living under the same roof. Nothing in the world will succeed without this kind of training. If you want to prepare adolescents for a new world, rely on boarding school.
Yes, but knowing the value of boarding schools to the world at large is not enough. I’d need to be convinced that boarding school was the best choice for my own child. Mid-career, mature teachers who have had years and years of work and play with teenagers figure prominently among dorm faculty at Milton. They have chosen to stay in the houses well past the point when they could have opted out. The experience that they bring to what, after all, is an ancient process, is immensely valuable.
Their work is akin to coaching. They prescribe a set of skills important to living with others: how to ask questions, how to use your room (music, lights, phone, visitors), how to study, how to be a friend, how to relate to adults, etc. Then the coach watches as someone practices. The coach corrects, adjusts and watches again. Dorm living is always “in play” – you’re living the things you’re talking about. There simply isn’t any time when you can say “I don’t have to be thoughtful now,” and in the houses, the coaches are always there. Coaches have insight, patience, but most important, perseverance. A coach never gives up; you teach, reteach and teach again, and you must be patient with that. There is no such thing as a set of skills that are totally learned. Dorm parents are adults with an advantage in getting close to young people. Adolescents begin their “hiding” from parents at this point. They do less of that with loving concerned adults than they do with their own parents. Furthermore, since adults in the dorm don’t share their students’ DNA,
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What does a school need? Structure, as a tool for learning, is extremely important in a boarding school. Structure includes a set of clearly articulated, consistent standards and the discipline system that applies those standards. This is simply the most effective way of caring for adolescents (harder for parents to uphold).
they can be more objective. It’s easier for a dorm parent to hold a mirror up to a child, because the dorm parent doesn’t have to see himself in the mirror. Holding a mirror so that a child can see him or herself clearly is perhaps the most important thing we do. We help them look at themselves, and know themselves as they appear to others: “This is what it felt like when you said that.” One advantage for young people in boarding school is seeing the same adult wearing a skirt and jacket, carrying a clipboard and whistle, cuddling a baby in her lap, or cruising the hallway in pajamas and bathrobe. Students develop an experiential understanding of an adult as multidimensional. Furthermore, this adult realizes that I (the student), too, am multidimensional. This is a true gift we give our young people – the perception of them as multidimensional human beings.
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Have you seen any changes in students coming to boarding school over time? I’ve seen two great changes in students coming to live at high school. Perhaps because of a perceived lack of safety in the world, children today are rarely thrown together with other children to make their own fun and resolve their own differences. They have been thoroughly programmed and their activities have been highly supervised, refereed and shaped. Students coming to high school today are inexperienced, and have almost a fear of independence or selfreliance – even as they yearn for it. Therefore, they get even more out of boarding school, which, within a safe and dependable structure, helps them to meet reasonable challenges themselves, and therefore, to grow. Students also come having been exposed to more sophisticated language, images and ideas, so they appear to be more precocious. When you live with them, you see that the sophistication doesn’t extend beneath the surface: they’re still children underneath, and dorm parents are good at getting to that layer.
We try to build a vessel, a solid and understandable vessel. A teenager needs to be able to reach up and out and feel the edges. We must make the vessel large enough so the teenager isn’t cramped, but it must nonetheless be firm and safe. Adults like complexity; life is full of grays, but forcing that level of complexity on adolescents is not helpful. One of our jobs is to make the issues they deal with a little sharper, and contrast-y. We need to communicate what’s right and wrong, and why, what’s acceptable and what’s unacceptable. Another of our jobs is to be absolutely consistent – that is, in our handbooks, with our adult talk, in our disciplinary procedures, with our giving of awards, as we build and sustain the palpable culture of the School. Students tolerate and respond to a wide range of personalities and styles, as long as they can discern an integrity of person. People in their teens are remarkably sensitive to hypocrisy or contradiction. They sense it immediately and call us on it. They can deal with a little bit of imperfection in individuals, but imperfection at the core of an institution will drive them mad.
Boarding schools also need facilities that work. The houses need to include places to feel like a small family, and places to feel like a large family. Milton’s houses, which are all scaled to house no more than 45 students, are able to create a warm, homey environment. Parents also have a right to expect that the school’s resources are going to be accessible to their children at boarding school in a broader range of time than it might be available at strictly day schools. That may include time with teachers, counselors or the chaplain, or in the library, practice rooms, art spaces or fitness center. The dorm faculty, then, is the most important place to start. The mature, seasoned teachers in Milton houses who have chosen, because of their own aptitudes and preferences, to live with young people year after year are a critical resource shaping the culture here. These are people with deep experience, who feel enriched by the support they are able to give to young people, and feel expanded by participating in students’ interests and endeavors. Needless to say, adults interested in working in dormitories have special characteristics. They love to teach, not only in the relatively defined role of a classroom teacher, but also in the more amorphous role of a dormitory parent. They have to be flexible, they need a ready and durable sense of humor, and they need to be comfortable with the constant proximity of teenagers. Common walls, after all, guarantee quite a bit of proximity. In my experience, dorm faculty are active folks, fully engaged in life, with remarkable hobbies and avocations of their own. They share these – whether beekeeping, rockclimbing, music or cooking – with their students, and students reciprocate, sharing what matters to them.
A good boarding school should have access to the world outside the school itself. Milton is connected to the outside world in a number of effective ways. Through community service, one of our more outstanding programs, students are able to reach out to the Boston community. For a person from a rural home, or even another city, participating in serving inner-city Boston can be a meaningful, even life-altering experience. We’re also blessed with generous day-student families who have always been eager to welcome boarding students into the at-home world of siblings and refrigerators.
One distinctive characteristic of Milton boarding life is that the houses purposefully integrate students from all four classes. The honored tradition and the culture is that older students take responsibility for the well being of the younger students. The older students are proud of their care-taking, mentoring role. We don’t see “sibling” rivalry, or harassment based on power or age. Students self-regulate, as well; that is, if a pattern arises that goes against the cultural grain, they’ll figure out among themselves how to stop it. Finally, a good boarding school needs a system (and administrators) who advocate for the needs of those adults in dormitories. A boarding staff will give, and give, and give. Checks must be in place to keep the givers intact. The living atmosphere in the dorms – and this includes but isn’t limited to the duty schedule – must allow the dorm faculty to exert, retreat and recover. This respect for the boarding faculty helps them sustain their resilience, energy and sense of reward from their work.
Can you say that boarding students have gained something different by the time they graduate? Students who experience boarding school gain important qualities and life skills at a perfect window in their lives; life and college and beyond will be quite different with these skills. They become tolerant. They understand and enjoy the wide range of who we are as people. They gain a quality of resilience: an ability to strategize and recover from the difficulties that life deals all of us, and to move on. They become stronger, more flexible, more confident and more creative as people. They learn either to ask for help (and they learn who’s helpful), or they learn how to do things themselves. Either path is fine, and a mix of both is perfect. They have gained the deepest kind of lifelong friends, among other students of all ages and faculty as well.
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Lee Coffin
ee Coffin, former dean of admission and vice president for enrollment (and public affairs) at Connecticut College, became the dean of admission and second holder of the Frank D. Millet Chair in Admissions on September 4, 2001.
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past 16 years, Lee’s work has included positions in highly selective college admission and enrollment management, alumni relations and development; in student support, as a counselor and advisor; and in communications.
Lee is enthusiastic about the great possibilities at Milton. “I wanted to lead Milton’s admission effort because I sensed that this was an exciting moment in the School’s impressive history. My career as a college admission officer was characterized by an opportunity to reposition an institution’s admission profile and, in that regard, the boarding initiative carries great promise. I am energized by the chance to create a national recruitment program supported by a comprehensive communications plan, and I am very confident that Milton’s outstanding reputation and academic program offers the platform to accomplish this ambitious objective.”
Lee’s tenure at Connecticut began in 1990, when he joined the college as associate director of admission. In 1995 he became dean of admission, and held that position for six years in addition to assuming the role of vice president for enrollment in 1998, and assuming added responsibilities in 2000 for public affairs and communications. Lee also served on the college’s presidential search committee last year.
I admire Milton’s long history in preparing young people for meaningful and successful lives. Now I see firsthand Milton’s unique educational environment. Students can find here the unusual combination of top notch academics along with the supportive faculty relationships that enable them to stretch, gain confidence and succeed on a wholly new level. I am eager to reach out with this message to prospective secondary school students and their families.” Lee comes to an office that has a strong record and experienced important gains under the leadership of Geoff Theobald. Lee brings a breadth of experience to Milton as he shifts his focus from higher education to independent secondary education. Over the
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This most recent position included responsibility for all aspects of admission and financial aid, student records and institutional research as well as for directing an integrated marketing and communications plan. As Connecticut’s dean of admission, Lee increased applications over 40 percent and improved the college’s acceptance rate from 51 percent to 32 percent. Prior to his years at Connecticut College, Lee was a freshman proctor and advisor at Harvard. He spent his earlier professional years at his alma mater, Trinity College, first as assistant director of alumni and undergraduate relations, and then as director of the parents’ fund. Lee earned a B.A. with honors in history and American government at Trinity, and an Ed.M. in administration, planning and social policy at Harvard University.
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hillip Stice, former vice president for information services and support, and chief security officer at Houghton Mifflin Co., joined Milton Academy as the Academy’s first chief information officer (CIO) in November 2001. Phil comes to Milton from his position at Houghton Mifflin as an accomplished team builder, effective communicator and dedicated project leader; at Houghton Mifflin, he centralized information technology into one entity from nine distinct divisions.
Phil Stice
A collaborative, visionary, dynamic professional who understands the technologies, and knows how to bring people and technology together, Phil served earlier in his career as a teacher and director of computer technology in the Alva, Oklahoma school system. During that time, Phil acted as a resource to teachers and students, developing programs for all grade levels, creating six computer labs and implementing districtwide administrative applications covering finance, grades, attendance, discipline and lesson planning. “I have always been happiest in educational settings, and I think I can be helpful here. It is evident that Milton Academy has a strong foundation for the use of technology. The last four to five years have seen a dramatic increase in the use of technology in both the administrative and educational environments. Going forward, we need to continue to build on Milton’s foundation. In particular, we need to expand our core network
infrastructure (networking, servers and support) to allow for the seamless use of all technologies. This would include expanding our network backbone, creating a server environment that is highly available, redundant and that provides file storage capabilities to the Academy community. We also need to advance the capabilities of our core business systems (finance, development, grades and comments, scheduling, etc.). The ultimate role of the CIO is to continue extending technology to the classroom. We must work closely with the faculty and students to use technology to enhance and supplement the educational experience. Building a strong foundation and framework is not enough for a technology vision with lasting value. We must not lose sight of the need for a major commitment of technology in our academic areas. “What attracted me most to Milton Academy was the reputation for excellence in providing the best possible education for the students. Since my arrival, I have seen the highest degree of excellence in the students, faculty and staff. Making technology an integral part of this excellence is my goal.”
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The Head of School Achieving a new level of excellence
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f you visit Milton, you will notice – in addition to the friendly buzz in the hallways – an intensified level of activity that bespeaks an “agenda.” Administration, faculty and students are at work, today, on a portfolio of initiatives. These initiatives developed from numerous self-evaluative exercises, some that we chose to undertake, and others that were mandated by the reaccreditation process of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC). Taken as a group, those exercises included all the constituencies in our community, from students and faculty through parents, alumni and board members. The exercises reached deep, and drew on the School’s roots and shining traditions. Their goal, overall, was to readdress those aspects of the Academy that have distinguished us in the past, and reset them, to direct the School well into to the future, in a changed and changing world.
The initiatives Milton has undertaken envision our achieving a new level of excellence, a strategically sound position of educational leadership for a new century. The vision: Milton is a distinguished and thriving boarding and day school. It attracts highly capable boarding students, day students and faculty eager to join a vigorous community of diverse individuals, active learners, deeply involved both in top-notch, up-to-date scholarship and in relationships and extracurricular commitments that stimulate extraordinary personal growth. This vision hardly seems new, you think. So what thinking have we done, what have we learned, and what changes are in process?
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Two efforts at reviewing the status of the School were completed before my tenure began. One, a campus master plan (by Finegold Alexander with Philip Parsons), addressed the challenging physical environment in which students and faculty do excellent work: academic buildings seriously in need of renovation, and inadequate classroom space. The second, a study by the board’s Student Life Committee, identified actions to increase the quality of boarding students’ experience at Milton. In fact, as a candidate for the head of school, I learned from the board about their interest in strengthening both the boarding experience and Milton’s identity as a vibrant boarding school, as well as a day school. Then, over the last two years, other efforts helped us articulate what kind of school we would like to be and what is important to us. The Core Facilities Project, for instance, the outgrowth of the master plan, involves renovating the core academic buildings, building a student-faculty center, and centralizing visual arts. Based on five faculty work days over the span of a year, the Common Purpose Project brought focus to issues of our structure as well as the balance we try to achieve in students’ lives. The Common Purpose exercise gave rise to the current Middle School Committee, which will ultimately recommend steps for a newly defined program for Classes V and VI. At the same, Mark Edwards & Co. conducted a marketing study, to determine the public perception of Milton, and to identify what messages about Milton’s reality are wellmatched with prospective parents’ interests.
The board of trustees held a retreat in April 2001, to review research and shape the details of their strategic vision. As described fully on pages 11 and 12, the board’s vision has two components. It seeks the most advanced and effective teaching and learning environment for Milton through implementing the Core Facilities Project, and it seeks to enhance campus life so that it may be the most educationally rich and rewarding experience possible for students and faculty alike. The second component is based on parallel action steps designed to strengthen and further integrate the experiences of boarding and day students, market the school successfully, and bring the numbers of boarding and day students to parity, without increasing the size of the School. The re-accreditation process (NEASC) required a reconsideration of our mission, and in July 2001, the board approved the statement of mission we forged (on page 3 of this magazine). Finally, the institutionwide self-study required by NEASC in preparation for re-accreditation has involved some 10 committees exploring every possible dimension of our institutional reality, seeking areas of commendation, and areas we would like to address in the immediate future. Our evaluative exploration has been broad and exhaustive, as you can see. The list of action steps is long, and we are an academic institution in the midst of significant change. The good news is that the action steps and the changes ahead serve the vision directly. Think of them as intersecting vectors, all intensely focused on the learning environment. They easily organize themselves thematically.
I am fond of describing our five-to-sevenyear Core Facilities Project as “the manifestation of our hopes and dreams,” so greatly will these new spaces affect our action, in and out of the classroom. The new classrooms, offices, common spaces and technological access will inspire imagination and innovation among teachers and students as well as support their needs.
Formative relationships are the hallmark of the Milton experience. Providing more opportunities for relationships that change lives to develop – among peers and between students and adults – is the focus of new spaces as well as new programs. For example, each faculty member will have his or her own classroom, to make meeting places with students for work outside of class easy. The planned student-faculty center is sited on the School’s “desire lines” – the pathways that most individuals use to traverse the campus – and therefore it will likely become a single space that is part of every person’s day-to-day life on campus. Spaces for student activities, faculty-student meetings, faculty offices, workspaces and a faculty center will make connecting with people easy.
Milton’s student activities director, working with students, has vastly improved the weekend activities for boarding and day students. Clarification of the advisor’s role – the key adult facilitating a student’s relationships with the School – has been a crucial priority for the dean of students. New closed weekend programs, that involve both fun and learning – for Classes IV and III, boarding and day students – have begun and will expand. Next year, a special program for new students may use some of the closed weekends, helping students move into the school community – with time management skills, knowledge about Boston, community service events, and preparation for drug, alcohol or sexuality dilemmas.
Enrolling a greater number of boarding students will help shift the School climate so that boarders feel a part of a genuine boarding school, and families interested in boarding school feel comfortable considering Milton. A coherent, broad-based marketing plan will make sure, that beginning in roughly three years, greater numbers of highly capable young people are ready to join the Milton community when we are ready to admit them. Two new dormitories will house the new students and extend the extraordinary family experience our boarders now enjoy. At least two items are among the issues we have “put on the plate” for research and action. One is how we might further our commitment to “embracing diversity,” as our mission challenges us. A second is how we might better help students achieve balance in their lives as they juggle academic and extracurricular demands.
We have affirmed Milton’s identity as a K–12 school, and we are taking steps to act as one school, when appropriate, and to capitalize on the rich opportunities for faculty and students, when we systematically share points of view on pedagogy, innovation, and reaching cognitive and developmental goals. A Middle School Committee has undertaken a holistic consideration of the best possible experience for seventh- and eighthgraders, including curriculum, structure, faculty and extracurricular activities. The Committee’s report is due this spring, when we will consider actions and timetables.
but in addition, our new chief information officer, Phil Stice, has drafted a strategic technology plan that we will implement in the near future. The opportunity to completely renovate the science building, as a result of the Project, has given us the opportunity and the responsibility to research state-of-the-art teaching in science, and to design a space that meets a vision. Physical work conditions for faculty certainly affect their ability to pursue excellence, but support for faculty must go further. While a teacher shortage looms on the horizon, Milton must recruit new teachers with the skill and dedication of our current faculty. Welcoming, mentoring and integrating new faculty members into the professional community is a responsibility we have taken seriously, and with the help of the Lee Family Teaching Chair, have made great progress. Equally important is offering professional development to mid-career faculty, and ensuring that sabbaticals fairly and dependably occur. Paying attention to competitive compensation, including salary and benefits, is another responsibility that we must sustain, continually and systematically. In short, Milton is an exciting action center today. We are grateful for the many hours that individuals, faculty members, administrators, trustees and parents have devoted to gathering information or wrestling with recommendations. Your bedrock work gives me confidence, as we move forward, that we are centered on the prize. Our compelling vision for Milton gives us energy to achieve that new level of excellence for a great school that has always resisted complacency. Robin Robertson
The Core Facilities Project not only centralizes departments, provides faculty members with their own classrooms, and increases departmental office space, it also achieves productive adjacencies. That is, departments with natural opportunities for curricular cooperation are physically close to one another. The Project will make advanced technology more plentiful and accessible,
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Post Script Post Script is a department that opens windows into the lives and experiences of your fellow Milton alumni. Graduates may author the pieces, or they may react to our interview questions. Opinions, memories, explorations, reactions to political or educational issues are all fair game. We believe you will find your Milton peers informative, provocative and entertaining. Please email us with your reactions and your ideas – cathy_everett@milton.edu.
[ ] , , ’ and far between, Smith, a quiet sort, has knocked on doors throughout the land and made a quick plea for pitching his tent in people’s backyards. Lots of folks turned him away.
The Boston Globe Saturday, August 4, 2001 Bella English, Globe Staff Living, C1 – It has been 10 months since Cameron Smith gave his tires one last check, attached a new American flag to the back of his bike, hopped on, and pushed off from his hometown of Milton. When he stopped at a gas station on the South Shore, the mechanic asked him where he was headed. “Boston,” Smith replied. “The long way.” That would be 10,000 miles, more or less. Earlier this week Smith was back in Massachusetts, riding along Buzzards Bay, and last night he rolled into Sturbridge to complete his around-the-perimeter ride of the United States. The American flag is now faded and frayed, the victim of too many days in the desert heat and the mountain sleet. The trip has earned him rock-hard leg muscles, $106,000 for the Jimmy Fund in memory of his sister – and a new respect for dogs. (“You gotta squirt ’em with your water bottle.”) After he addresses the hordes at the Pan Mass Challenge ceremonies, he expects to take off early this morning to ride his last 192 miles – from Sturbridge to Provincetown – with the 3,100 riders. The PMC hopes to raise $13 million this year for the Jimmy Fund.
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Some said go right ahead. Others told him to forget the tent and sleep in the spare room. In west Texas, he was offered an abandoned shack; in Alabama, a luxury condo with pool.
Cameron Smith ’96
The incredible journey has taken Smith from the bayous of Louisiana to the heights of the Continental Divide. Thanksgiving night, Smith was in Oliver, Ga., feasting on leftovers at a stranger’s table. Christmas found him in rural Mississippi, camping out and eating “the usual” – peanut butter and tortillas. He turned 23 on May 5 in Whitefish, Mont., where he treated himself to dinner at a youth hostel. All along the way, he wrote back to the fourth-graders in Milton who were avidly following his trip. Smith started out a devout vegetarian, eating lots of lentils and spaghetti cooked on the tiny stove he packed in his panniers, along with 45 pounds of other gear. But in Pennsylvania a family he met served him some pot roast, “and that was the end of that.” For the past several months, Smith has depended on the kindness of many strangers. Since campgrounds can be few
In one Florida town, he attended a square dance at the American Legion with an elderly couple and then camped in their yard. Most nights, he’d pitch his tent in a church or school or park, with permission from the locals, or find a campground. Smith’s journey began last Oct. 3 at the Jimmy Fund clinic at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where children are treated for cancer. It is where his big sister, Jessica, underwent chemotherapy in 1989. Jessica Smith was 14, a freshman at Milton Academy, when she died of rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare cancer in the muscle cells. He was in the sixth grade, an adoring younger brother. He watched as she went through hospitalizations, chemotherapy, nausea, and hair loss – all the while playing on the tennis team, going to dances, and embracing life. In June 2000, Smith graduated from Carleton College. Before entering the work world, he wanted to combine two of his passions: seeing the world and keeping his sister’s memory alive.
So last year he took his savings, bought a new bike, and headed out. His parents paid only for his health insurance. He funded the rest of the trip for a total of $6,000, including the bike. Smith kept Jessica’s picture in his journal and held her memory close. “Whenever I was low, complaining about the weather, I’d think about what Jess went through,” he says. “It just gives you a lot of perspective.” Says their mother, Sarah: “Jess would have been astounded. She would have been really impressed with her brother. We are so proud of him.” Smith admits the trip was harder than he expected. There were the unexpected freezing temperatures in Florida, the avalanche 6,000 feet up in Washington’s Cascade Mountains, the Texas headwinds that made it feel as though he were barely moving, the tumbleweeds as big as a car. Several times, he had to pack a soaking-wet tent and soggy gear in the pouring rain. Even worse was the loneliness that makes a big country seem infinite. “The trip would have been easier with another person,” he says, packing up his gear on a recent day and heading from the Cape toward Boston, then out to Sturbridge. “I had long conversations with myself.” In fact, he believes the ride has made him less sociable. “I’m used to being alone now,” he says. “I went to a movie theater in New Orleans, and I was surrounded by all these people. It was too weird.” But the thrill of watching America unfold, like a huge carpet woven with various patterns, was more privilege than punishment. “Living on the East Coast, we think of the country as being so crowded,” he says. “But I was amazed at all that space out there.” He averaged 60 to 80 miles a day, though there were times in Texas that he’d have to pedal 100 miles just to get to the next town. The biggest surprise? That the country, while maintaining definite regional distinctions, is so homogenized. “The country is so much the same,” Smith says. “Rolling into Main Street, America.
You’ve either got your fading Main Street or your historic Main Street; you’ve got your cafes, your diners, your strip malls, and WalMarts.” Still, he enjoyed the regional differences: biscuits and gravy in the South; ribs in Texas; avocado and sprout sandwiches in California. And the wildlife varied, from road runners in Arizona, prairie dogs in Montana, elephant seals in California to bears in Michigan – and of course, road kill everywhere. There were other differences, too: the South, with its reputation for hospitality, was the least bicycle-friendly; the Northwest, with its eco-freak image, the most accommodating. Smith says he never felt in any real danger. “The worst thing that happened was some kids threw some licorice at me,” he says, laughing. Then there were the six flat tires and a few broken spokes. The emergency trip to the dentist in New Orleans for a toothache and a bad cold picked up in Tempe, Ariz., that plagued him for a few weeks. But there were also breaks, when his parents would meet him for a couple of days or when he’d stay with friends. Perhaps his best buddies en route were the fourth-graders from Milton Academy and the Glover School in Milton, Smith’s two alma maters – one private, one public. He had “adopted” those classes, and sent back weekly e-mails on the two-pound laptop he hauled in his saddle bags. Each missive contained personal, historical, and geographical accounts of his journey, plus digital pictures. In Charleston, S.C., he wrote about his trip to a plantation and Fort Sumter (“I camped behind a fire department and the fireman even let me take a hot shower.”) In Texas hill country, he saw a wild boar “with the cutest little baby boar running and snorting behind it.” In Florida, he told of the Okefenokee Swamp, sent pictures of gators and said, “I felt like Crocodile Dundee!” In Santa Barbara, he wrote: “It felt so good to be back alongside the ocean again. There is something very reassuring about it.” And when he hit the opposite coast in Maine, he wrote: “I’m practically finished…It has been a long time coming!”
The students reciprocated, plying him with e-mails, plus packages and cards to his various mail drops. At Milton Academy, the children raised more than $4,000 for the cause through bake sales, a kids’ fair, a calendar project, and a “Cans for Cam” drive to collect returnables. Throughout his trip, Smith used an informal network of Milton grandparents and friends for shelter. “He’s an incredible role model, a hero to the kids,” says Carolyn Damp, Milton Academy’s fourth-grade teacher, who taught Smith 13 years ago. “He’d send back cotton from Georgia, a horseshoe from Texas, license plates from all over, just all sorts of treasures. The kids learned that one person can make a difference. They learned about community service and giving back.” Last fall, the students at both schools saw Smith off, and he will return to their classrooms this fall to give a farewell talk. “The kids were great,” he says. “They gave my trip more of a focus and purpose.” For Valentine’s Day, they sent him a care package with candy hearts, cards, and a Boston magazine. Then there’s his “Pedal Partner,” 18-monthold William Parkman from New Hampshire, who was diagnosed with kidney cancer as an infant. Under that program, a Pan Mass Challenge entrant rides in honor of a Jimmy Fund Clinic patient. William and his parents, William and Carolyn, will be near the finish line along with Smith’s parents, Curtis and Sarah. Once home, Smith plans to ask his mother for her homemade pizza and a nice big salad. “I hope never to eat American fast food again,” he says. As Smith crossed the border from New York to Vermont, and then biked through Maine, New Hampshire, and finally into Massachusetts this week, his spirits lightened. He knew he was home. “Everyone,” he says, “was wearing Red Sox caps.” Copyright © 2001, Globe Newspaper Company.
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The Milton Classroom A first: studying U.S. history in a global, dynamic context in a single, two-year course , . .
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ast fall, inescapable evidence proved the relationship of events occurring in the United States to people, governments, and developments in other regions of the world. A raw sense of insufficient awareness, and perhaps vulnerability, caused us to ask big questions and seek new understandings.
At the same time, Class III and Class II students and their history faculty were launching a groundbreaking U.S. history course. This course takes up U.S. history within the context of the modern world. A two-year commitment for students, U.S. History in the Modern World bears out the conviction of its creators, that students will achieve the best understanding of U.S. history, as well as of modern world history, when they consider developments in a global, dynamic context.
Carly Wade, history department chair, notes that this type of course is rare, either in high schools or in colleges. “There’s no textbook, and not much guidance about how to do this.” Four of her colleagues in the department responded to Carly’s offer to join her in spending last summer studying and developing Part I of the course. Of the five members of the department eager for this frontier venture, three were veteran teachers and two were at the beginning of their careers. Over seven weeks, according to a schedule and an outline Carly developed, one faculty member taught the material at hand each day. That person developed the readings for the other members of the seminar, and led the discussion. While the adults read widely,
one of their challenges was to develop the readings (texts and documents) and assignments that would be appropriate for high school-aged students. The goal of the course is that at the close of two years, students will be as thoroughly familiar with the content of the U.S. History course and the World History course as students who have taken those courses separately, but they will understand developments in relationship rather than in isolation. In addition, they should have wrestled with very different questions and developed broader perspectives. The challenge of the summer was both daunting and intellectually energizing. David Ball ’88, and member of the seminar team, reported that “it provided an opportunity to learn about new areas, but also to realize how academic categories and specialties have affected what we had chosen to read or study in the past.We also learned how to integrate long-standing knowledge with new knowledge.” “Our students have the distinct advantage,” David notes, “of coming to the course without a prescriptive mindset or a tendency to think in categories. They’re very openminded. “Most histories have been written in national terms,” Carly explains. “Recently there’s been a movement among historians to write integrated world histories, but typically, the United States is not included in these, at least not in sufficient depth.”
Carly Wade
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Their summer work and new teaching has left Carly and David with residual benefits. “With a change in perspective,” Carly says, “I see things in my reading that are especially relevant that I hadn’t picked up before.” “Preparing for this course requires rereading and considerable reflection,” says David. “With a new and broader range of material, you need to decide what you want students to get out of it. You need to rethink the old storyline, but an alternative meaningful reorganization of the material is really necessary.” Students’ reaction to the course is a key part of Carly’s and David’s analysis and planning. Students who have chosen this course begin with the assumption that they will be studying material that is connected by themes that transcend borders. “Because we need to help them build the context, we start with early modern history (1450), before the United States ‘is,’ Carly explains. They want to know the relevance of everything they’re studying to the goals of the course. “Once we get to the twentieth century, demonstrating the relevance of things will be much less difficult,” David says. “Together with students, we’re asking questions and developing responses to questions that we wouldn’t have pondered before this course. In this situation, students develop the key questions that help organize the material.” “Over time students have started off with different assumptions of the world. When I was a student, for instance, my world was divided along communist and non-communist lines. What would have made sense then, as an organizing principle, does not resonate now. The challenge is to find the place where students are now. We are grounding the course in the major religions, cultures, political organizations, and connections among them. We are trying to make choices – within so much material – that have intellectual integrity as well as an appealing resonance with students. Right now, we define the ‘big ideas’ we put up
front for them. We ask questions about what the questions should be. Our goal is for students to ask good questions, and we do not want them to assume that the United States is entirely unique or that it developed independently. “We’re now looking at the French Revolution, after having just looked at the American Revolution. We’re reading about the attitudes of the American revolutionary leaders toward the French revolution,” David says. “We look at the American constitution, Carly explains, “and the development of the French constitution – considering alternative frameworks of government back to back. Here we had the Federalists and the anti-Federalists; in France there were the liberals and radicals. These groups were asking lots of the same questions, but coming to quite different conclusions.”
create the Part II of the course, and be joined by others from the department. “One unanticipated aspect of this endeavor has been a closer look at how we teach U.S. History and Modern World History,” Carly reflects, “so teaching throughout the whole curriculum improves as a result of this joint intellectual exercise.”
Already the authors are planning to rewrite the first section of the course, based on what they’ve learned, and perhaps choose different texts. During spring break they will begin consolidating what they’ve learned thus far as well as plan how to organize the coming summer’s study. Carly hopes the same faculty members will gather again to David Ball ’88
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Faculty Perspective “Small moments of close examination seem all the more essential in this new world.”
Watching her
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ur daughter Malia, born in our third week at Milton, has discovered her hands. She swirls and jerks them before her eyes, fanning her fingers to examine each. Her gestures are inimitable to adult hands: she points with her pinkie, not her index finger; her hands jump with unexpected speed. With arm extended, she examines a fist as big as a plum. We watch, entranced, as she continually studies something so near and so new. We arrived at Milton just five months ago from a very different life of teaching at The American School in Switzerland. We had left teaching lives at Groton School (Tarim) and the University of Massachusetts / Amherst (Lisa) to spend two sumptuous, challenging years in the Italian-speaking Swiss canton of Ticino, an hour north of Milan. We knew we wanted upheaval then, eager to know how living abroad could translate to humility and invigoration. But the imminent arrival of Malia sparked an urge for home.
Indeed, Malia’s hand motions are not new to her. She was all limbs in utero but now relearns motions in her new gaseous, not fluid, world. Her discovery of her hands is self-consciousness in the purest sense, an awareness of her body’s ability to move concurrent with physical development. We realize that we, too, are repeating old motions. We had unpacked a house before. We had bought a car. We had sat through opening faculty meetings at other schools. Yet in a new setting, every motion is inflected with newness. And then there is the baby, who gives all old life processes – sleeping, showering, eating – new definition. But we find, as the nation post 9/11 too discovers, that repetition of old movement (focusing on the familiar) eases acclimation to the new. Slowly, through daily rehearsals, we have slid happily into the rhythms of crossing Centre Street and dodging the rugby scrum
that is known as “lunch time” in Forbes, as well as the nocturnal tides of bedtime, bleary-eyed changings and feedings. Small moments of close examination seem all the more essential in this new world. So we learn from Malia to take stock, to study something – even the obvious – hard and well. Malia is preparing her interaction with the world around her. When her hand successfully grabs an object and moves it to her mouth, all that intense examination pays off. There is a huge grin. She would like to try that again. Life does not depend on close examination. But perhaps the last year has taught us that focused study forges more deliberate, careful connections within this complex world, allowing us to move on, to grow up. Tarim Chung and Elisabeth Baker (English Department)
For us, 2001 ushered wholesale changes: new jobs, new school, new home and new baby. We have found a comfortable fit at Milton with its warm faculty and cosmopolitan campus. Maybe best of all, Malia was showered with gifts and good wishes when she was born. Our favorite pastime, as an anodyne to all this change, is watching Malia watch herself. These are sweet moments, which have allowed us to adjust to the cultural landscape of Milton Academy as well as displace the images of the catastrophic tumbling Towers that infiltrated our lives just five days before she was born.
Tarim Chung, Elisabeth Baker and their daughter, Malia
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Sports “In my opinion, coaches get far too much praise for winning, and far too much blame for losing. Maybe because the public understands so little of what a coach does, the emphasis ends up being incorrect.”
What is a coach?
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Juan is happy when the strong discipline code he sets during the playing season becomes a benchmark for athletes during the off-season. He is often able to parlay his relationship with a player to give direct advice and counseling about behavior in another season. “I stand for certain things and they remember. My expectations will precede players’ experience on the team; if they want to play they meet the expectations.”
uan Ramos’s four years at Milton follow 19 years of coaching at Sandia Prep School in New Mexico. After 12 years in the Air Force, Juan chose to teach, because he knew he would be able to coach.
Juan coaches boys’ first soccer and girls’ first basketball. His coaching meets a professional standard that Juan defines readily and forcefully. “If you’re coaching for a lifetime, and you’re taking it seriously, and you want to be successful, your coaching must evolve.” Juan has followed a focused approach to professional development. “I read, I watch people playing, I watch games on television, and one season I coach an outside team at a different level. My goal is to learn something new every year. If you view my championship team (soccer) in 1984, and my Milton team last season (11-2-4) you would see entirely different playing. My set of ideas, strategies and approaches all evolve.” For Juan, the transition from the field or court to the classroom is seamless. “You are completely yourself in both places: that’s what you have to give. Your connection with students breaks down the barriers so that the environment is no longer ‘you’re the student, I’m the teacher – you do your job and I’ll do mine.’ In the classroom I depend upon the same relationship, the same connection that I rely upon in the field.” “With my New Mexico teams, the challenge was to help students avoid making behavioral choices that ended up excluding them from teams. The challenge here is making a group of individuals into a team – primarily with boys rather than girls.” Juan speculates that students now come to high school having had years of training and plenty of focus
Juan Ramos
and praise. These athletes sometimes find it difficult to accept guidance, and they can disrupt the task of building a positive dynamic in a team. Once again, establishing a relationship and eliminating barriers is the key to progress. When a coach succeeds, athletes learn to set high expectations, to drive hard, to learn how to count on and give to teammates. They share an earned pride – knowing what they’ve accomplished and how they did it. They learn to deal with adversity. Boys focus their energy and learn to cooperate, and girls learn to compete. Their work on the field carries over into the classroom and vice versa. In addition, “the girls I coach learn how to trust a middle-aged man as a teacher and a resource. That’s not necessarily a natural thing for them to do, and it’s a valuable experience,” says Juan.
What does it take to coach well? “You have to know the game; you have to know what’s going on. That’s essential if you expect to be a source of respect, a developer of skills, a leader of teamwork. Fairness and consistency are critical. You need to be organized. I have a written practice plan every single day – every practice plan is saved in the computer, and I even have former students who are coaching now emailing me for these practice plans. It’s important to create a culture and a structure – doing certain things the same way each time. My wife, MaryJo, who teaches at Milton but does not coach, calls these routines rituals. She feels these rituals anchor the athletes.” Support from the School for coaches, and for athletes is extremely important, Juan believes. “We coaches can create team spirit, but we cannot create school spirit. Scholarathletes and successful athletic teams can add tremendous life, spirit and pride to a school. We should all be involved in pursuing excellence – excellence in all fields.”
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OnCentre Dick Griffin named to Wrestling Hall of Fame
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ick Griffin, well-loved wrestling coach at Milton for more than two decades, will be inducted into the Massachusetts Chapter of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame this spring in recognition of years of dedication to the development of leadership and citizenship in young people through the sport of wrestling. Dick was head coach from 1974 to 1997 during which Milton’s teams sustained a storied history in the prep-school wrestling world. From 1979–1988 Milton’s record was 114-3-1. During that stretch the wrestling teams won or shared
10 straight league dual meet championships and won seven Graves-Kelsey Tournaments, as well as the New England Prep Tournament in 1986. Dick came to Milton from Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School where his teams won three consecutive Cape Ann League championships. Dick retired as a head wrestling coach at Milton Academy in 1997, with a career record of 265-78-9, 14 dual meet championships and 11 tournament championships, but he continues to teach history and coach fourth team wrestling.
The 1986 Milton wrestling team included three Griffins, Captain Matt ’86, Cub ’88 and Coach Richard. Also captained by Chris Perry ’86, the squad captured Milton’s 8th consecutive ISL dual meet title.
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Although justifiably proud of this outstanding record, Dick values his relationships with his athletes most. Perhaps his biggest gratification is receiving letters from former wrestlers that cite the importance of wrestling in their lives. The Massachusetts Chapter of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame is three years old. It is a real tribute to the Milton Academy wrestling program that four of the 18 inductees are from Milton Academy: Coach Louis Andrews, Peter Fuller ’42, Coach Dick Griffin, and John Harkness ’34.
A young Richard Griffin gives advice to captain Jide Zeitlin ’81 between periods.
New Trustees Kevin P. Reilly Jr. ’73 Since February 1989, Kevin has served as president and CEO of Lamar Advertising in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. After graduating from Harvard College, Kevin began his career with Lamar in 1978, as an account executive in Baton Rouge. He served as president of the company’s outdoor division from 1984 to 1989, as assistant and general manager of the company’s Baton Rouge region, and vice president and general manager of the Louisiana region before assuming the president’s position. Kevin is chairman of the Outdoor Advertising Association of America and a member of the board of directors of Alliance Bank of Louisiana, New Orleans Publishing Group and Ruth’s Chris Steak House. He is also active in the not-forprofit community as a board member of Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center, the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, the General Health Foundation, and the Wilbur Marvin Foundation. Kevin resides in Baton Rouge, Louisiana with his wife, Winifred Ross Reilly, and his two children, Ross ’04, and Hayden.
Kevin Reilly ’73, Barbara Hostetter and Tracy Pun Palandjian ’89
Tracy Pun Palandjian ’89 Tracy is a principal at the Parthenon Group, a strategic advisory and principal investment firm located in Boston. Prior to joining the Parthenon Group, Tracy was associated with both Wellington Management Company and McKinsey & Company. Tracy came to Milton from Hong Kong and lived in Faulkner House during her Milton years. She was a member of the Boarding Council, the Magus/Mabus editorial staff, and participated in community service. From Milton, Tracy attended Harvard and graduated in 1993, and then Harvard Business School, earning an MBA in 1997. Tracy has stayed close to Milton during the years since her graduation, especially during the time her two broth-
ers, Ted and David, attended; they graduated in 1996 and 1999 respectively. She has served as an area admissions representative, and at the time of her election to the board was a class agent for the Annual Fund. Tracy is married to Leon Palandjian, M.D. who is partner and co-founder of Applied Genomic Technology Capital Funds (AGTC). They have two small children, a daughter, Te Sheila, and a son, Charin. The Palandjians live in Belmont, Massachusetts.
Barbara Hostetter Barbara is trustee and manager of the family foundation, the Barr Foundation in Boston. She is also a member of the boards of the New England Aquarium and the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum. Barbara is a member
of the Guardians Circle of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and of the Collectors Committee for the Ellis Memorial Antiques Show. At the time of her election to the board, she also served as a member of the Milton Academy Head of School’s Council. Barbara’s husband, Amos Hostetter, is co-founder of Continental Cablevision and chairman of Pilot House Associates, an organization which invests in Internet-based communication companies. Barbara and Amos live in Boston with their three children, Caroline ’04, Elizabeth ’07 and Amos (“Tripp”).
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Alumni Authors The presses are running: Graduates from the classes of ’68, ’70,’78, ’83 and ’87 have recently published work
The Close: A Young Woman’s First Year at Seminary Chloe Breyer ’87 Chloe Breyer ’87 grew up in a liberal, secular household with a Jewish father. She is now an Episcopal priest. Chloe’s memoir, The Close: A Young Woman’s First Year at Seminary, is in part, an attempt to answer her own question as to why she sought the seminary. “Most people who ask ‘What made you want to do this?’ are not merely wondering why I like the sound of Anglican chant or when I became interested in fifth-century pilgrims’ journeys to the Holy Land.” Chloe says many of her friends couldn’t understand why she, a woman, wanted to attend the seminary, a very patriarchal institution. “Occasionally I detect a hint of judgement: ‘Why are you wasting that first-class education that has prepared you for success in the real world?’ or ‘Why do you want any part of a hierarchical, patriarchal institution that historically has resisted social change and is hostile to women?’ As I complete the final year at General Theological Seminary, I have often pondered these questions myself.”
ing towels. Mark this down— she’s petted one, two, three, four of them so far. She just checked the price tag on one. Mark that down too. Careful, her head’s coming up – blend into the aisle.”
Preparing for priesthood in the Protestant Episcopal Church, Chloe shares her first-year experiences in 1997 at New York City’s General Theological Seminary by taking the reader along on a number of journeys, both in and out of the classroom. Chloe’s book not only describes her heavy academic workload, which included learning Greek and studying the Bible, but her role as chaplain at Bellevue Hospital and life with her husband, Greg. Her writing is honest, spiritually reflective and even humorous. Chloe organizes her book into chapters based on the liturgical seasons, beginning appropriately with Advent and moving through the cycle to Pentecost. No stranger to literary ventures, Chloe founded the magazine Who Cares – a publication focused on social and community activism – in the mid-1990s. In her latest work, The Close, Chloe gives a clear and touching picture of the ups and downs of her first year as a seminarian.
Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping Paco Underhill ’70 Paco Underhill ’70 has spent more than 20 years interviewing and watching consumers in order to teach merchants how best to serve and sell. Paco and his band of researchers follow, in person and on videotape, thousands of shoppers each year, recording every move as they peruse videos, choose clothing and buy makeup. Founder and managing director of Envirosell, a behavioral market research and consulting company, Paco Underhill, is the author of Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping. His book, published in North America by Simon & Schuster, is now available in 11 foreign editions. “The subject of the study is the fortyish woman in the tan trench coat and blue skirt. She’s in the bath section. She’s touch-
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An entertaining read, filled with real-life examples of what retailers do right and what they do wrong, Why We Buy describes Wells Fargo’s most important selling tool – a lollipop. A lollipop can buy a loan officer a few minutes of uninterrupted time with parents. Ever wonder why you move away from items you were interested in? The reason could be what the book describes as the buttbrush factor which Paco and his gang discovered while watching videotapes of a tie rack situated near the front door of Bloomingdales. People moved away from the tie rack when brushed from behind by other customers. Why We Buy offers insightful tips on how retailers can adapt to the needs of their customers, alerts consumers to traps that retailers set for them, and attempts to explain our shopping behavior. Why We Buy will change the way the average consumer approaches shopping.
gifts. Markedly different in tone and intent, the two stories display an assurance and insight that are rare traits anywhere, especially in much of contemporary American fiction. Messud’s literary heart has the old-fashioned sorrow and generosity of the 19th-century Europeans, with a cheerful melancholy almost uplifting in its realistic assessment of the world.
The Hunters Claire Messud ’83
The two novellas of Claire Messud’s “The Hunters’’ unveil the powers of mind and imagination The Boston Globe Sunday, August 5, 2001 by Gail Caldwell The transcontinental experience offers everything and guarantees nothing, though it seems to have endowed author Claire Messud with a global sensibility as deep as it is refined. Born to a French father and a Canadian mother, raised in the States as well as Canada and Australia, she has written two previous novels – “When the World Was Steady” and “The Last Life” – that travel easily from Bali and London to French Algeria and New York. More important, the narrative consciousness behind these settings possesses a wisdom startling from a writer so young (she was born in 1966). “The Hunters” confirms those
The first novella, “A Simple Tale,” is reminiscent of William Trevor, unfolding in a straightforward way that underscores its quiet urgency. Nearing 70, Maria Poniatowski has been a housecleaner in Toronto since the end of World War II; her oldest client, the reliably formidable Mrs. Ellington, hired her in 1947. Excepting the six-month hiatus after her employer threw her out in a fit of temper, Maria has shown up every Tuesday since – cleaning what now hardly needs much of a hand, accepting the sandwiches and tea that have become staples of the unspoken affection between the two women. A minor accident signals Maria that Mrs. Ellington, who is 92, can no longer care for herself, and this portent – this ending, or perceived end – becomes the linchpin of memory for the entire story. For who are we, really, outside our perceptions of one another? Is there an essential self that floats free and above the crossed wires and misunderstandings of human relationships? Or are we merely the sum of our projections, doomed to be whomever others want or fear us to be? “A Simple
Tale” provokes such questions without being weighted down by them, for Messud uses (with precious sparseness) history and metaphor to evoke memory and its dangerously mutable allure. Rounded up as a girl by the Nazis occupying her village in the Ukraine, Maria spent most of the war in labor camps until she fled across the war-torn countryside with a fellow detainee. Hiding from the Germans in a town cemetery, the girls “darted among the broken tombstones and flattened themselves in the long grasses of the town’s untended Jewish graves.” This small moment evokes irony and tragedy at once, as two girls find shelter on hallowed ground – protected there by the overgrown consequence of German desecration and neglect. Finding her way to a displaced persons’ camp where she will meet her husband, Lev, Maria eventually builds a life and family in Toronto. Still, Messud’s fiction is not about the stuff of dreams, but rather the more complicated fare of endurance. A construction worker, Lev dies an early, laborer’s death; Radek, their son, is an engineer who marries a woman so thoroughly unseemly that Maria can only mutter, in her heartsore, broken English, “She is not a nice girl.” Disappointment is by now the most familiar atmosphere of Maria’s life, and when Lev dies, she covers the furnishings of her small house in plastic – preferring the stillness of memory to the risk of change.
The second half of “The Hunters,” its title story, is a far cry from the sweet transcendence offered at the end of “A Simple Tale.” Instead its firstperson narrator, an academic looking back on a three-month research stint in London, is someone with the chilly composure of a protagonist out of James or Poe. That Messud never reveals her character’s gender only enhances the story’s ominous overtones: the manipulation of truth into a workable fiction, where a self-serving interpretation of fact can override and even threaten life itself. Her academic has a tough, reserved, and analytical sensibility, and a few clues point toward maleness, but our not knowing for certain makes the character even more isolated, the story haunting and oddly masterful. Ensconced in a flat in Kilburn, on the rough outskirts of London, “Dr. Death” (academic specialty: death and romanticism) is spending the summer mourning a lost love and trying to avoid the creepily unpleasant downstairs neighbor, Ridley Wandor. And Ridley, at least, we know is female: a garish, sycophantic woman of indeterminate age who smells of bunnies (she and her mum keep rabbits) and bothers her co-tenant every chance she gets. Ridley is an end-stage caregiver, and soon enough the recalcitrant scholar is imagining all sorts of Kevorkian notions: that Ridley is murdering her patients, or that she is simply willing them to die, in much the same way our protagonist longs for her to disappear. We know something
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possibly worse but equally inexplicable is bound to happen (those ominous offstage bunnies promise that much), and the meticulous tone of “The Hunters,” so resolutely maintained by its narrator, makes us fear the truth as much as the delusions. The story is a triumph of voice, and of voids and presences – of unrevealed corridors and untold secrets, so that by the end it’s hard to trust anyone at all. That may be the worst of it: In rendering so thoroughly her solitary scholar, as static and cocooned as “a boat becalmed in fog,” she has revealed to us the monstrous powers of the imagination, whether pathological or literary. If “A Simple Tale” is about the promise and fortitude of memory, “The Hunters” is about the human ability to invent and maneuver those components into a life narrative. There are moments when Messud becomes a victim of her own cleverness (she overdoes a Goddog palindrome, and you can’t get away with using the word “protuberant” twice, maybe even once). But the writing and the reach of these novellas are admirably resonant and mature. And the stories they tell – about loss and suffering, about that agonizing “hideous superfluity” every life has glimpsed – are as old and hard-boned as literature itself. Copyright © 2001, Globe Newspaper Company.
According to Tom, who grew up in Pittsburgh admiring the dinosaurs at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, “Bone Wars is not just about dinosaurs and fossils. The story is much more about people driven by money, politics and ambition.”
Bone Wars: The Excavation and Celebrity of Andrew Carnegie’s Dinosaur Tom Rea ’68 A freelance writer covering politics, education and science for Wyoming’s Casper Star-Tribune, Tom Rea ’68 has written Bone Wars: The Excavation and Celebrity of Andrew Carnegie’s Dinosaur, published by The University of Pittsburgh Press. Twenty years after E.D. Cope and O.C. Marsh were hunting any and all fossils they could find, a team of paleontologists and amateur bone hunters uncovered the most complete fossil of one of the largest dinosaurs (named Diplodocus carnegii in honor of Andrew Carnegie, the expedition’s patron) discovered to date. Bone Wars focuses on five men: fossil hunter Bill Reed, paleontologist Jacob Wortman, the expedition’s boss; paleontologist John Bell Hatcher, William Holland, director of the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh; and Carnegie himself.
With the help of archival materials housed in the Carnegie Museum’s bone room, museum annex and library and the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, Tom weaves what may be the first complete story of the excavation of Diplodocus carnegii. Beginning with the unveiling of a plaster-of-paris model of the dinosaur at the natural history museum in South Kensington, London, Tom moves the reader through the process, both political and scientific, of unearthing the fossils in the badlands of Wyoming in 1899 and he explores how this event gave birth to the public’s fascination with prehistoric animals. Kenneth Carpenter, Denver Museum of Natural History says, “Finally! A break from the usual story about Marsh and Cope. A long overdue look at Andrew Carnegie’s dinosaur, which made ‘dinosaur’ a popular word all over the world.” Christopher Beard, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, writes, “Rea weaves a tale that goes well beyond anything else in the genre.”
What’s Happening to Home? Balancing Work, Life and Refuge in the Information Age, Maggie Jackson ’78 Working after her two young daughters slept had always seemed to Maggie Jackson a “guilt-free bargain.” When she found herself hurrying their coveted bedtime rituals in order to get to work and meet her deadlines – scrambling to fit more work into her private life – Maggie began to question what she formerly had considered “flexibility,” and “balance” between home and work. “During these rushed moments at the end of the day, I felt the old rules of work were gone, but I was having trouble making up new ones. Even more, my domestic life had changed dramatically, and I wondered what I’d gained and what I’d lost in the process.…Today our ways of work, marriage and communication are so different from he past. Our definition of family has been transformed. What about our definition of home?” Maggie set out to write her book because she realized that we
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Web site airs graduates’ stories sharing visual and oral histories of 9/11. needed to pay more attention to home. “Home isn’t just the absence of work, or an afterthought of life. Home shouldn’t be snatched on the fly, between more ‘important’ agenda items.” Her insightful book, What’s Happening to Home? Balancing Work, Life and Refuge in the Information Age, reports on how a wide variety of people are redefining home. Since 1995 Maggie has been observing Americans’ work habits and lifestyles as the national workplace columnist for The Associated Press. She is familiar with the dilemmas that face society as the 21st century blurs the lines between work and home. What’s Happening to Home? examines the new mobility of home, the evolution of private life and domesticity, and the social impact of technology in our lives. Maggie writes that we are leaving behind the Industrial Age ideal of home as a private retreat, and remaking home into a public, work-centered place. But she argues that while we should not cling to past ideals, we should preserve the home as a refuge. Maggie lives in New York City with her family. She has contributed to The New York Times, The Boston Globe, National Public Radio and other publications. In 2001, Maggie was honored with the Third Annual Conference Board/Families and Work Institute Award for Outstanding Work-Life Journalism. She has received three Front Page awards from the Newswomen’s Club of New York, and a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to research and report on Centers on Working Families across the country.
T
he events of September 11 shocked and saddened the world. With thousands living in the New York and DC areas not able reach loved ones and friends via telephone, the Internet once again showed its ability to connect people. Milton Academy used the power of the Internet to disseminate information to alumni throughout the world. Using email addresses from the alumni database (many of which were submitted online through the Web site), the administration quickly got word to thousands of alumni on the state of activity at Milton Academy.
Given the significant number of alumni at the locations of the terrorist attacks, alumni and friends contacted the School seeking information about their classmates. Milton established a section of the Web site in which alumni in the New York and Washington, DC areas could send messages about their own safety and whereabouts of classmates and friends. Thirty-six members of the alumni community posted information to the Web site letting others know of their well-being, while countless others wrote to individual members of the administration and faculty upon receiving the email update from the School, for news about fellow alumni and students. Michael Gitlitz ’86 brought the images of Ground Zero to alumni computer
screens throughout the world with his Web posting and a link to his digital-photo album. John Reidy ’55 shared his reactions to the scene in New York with the Milton community via the Web site: “I am sitting in my office in New York City at 11:30 am (the safety director let me stay, if I agreed to walk down the 37 flights). I face the former North and South Towers of the World Trade Center, which are a half mile away. About 50,000 people work there at peak times. I heard the roar and saw the immediate aftermath of the first plane running into the 90th floor of the North Tower around 9 am: flames, horrible flames and smoke. While looking out the window at the devastation in the North Tower about 20 minutes later, I saw a second plane appear between the two towers. I thought it was a mirage or a misfire in my mind. But then that plane which was all too real, hit the 50th floor of the South Tower. More flames, flames, smoke. Horrible. But next, the most awful things happened. First, there was a boom and the South Tower (hit second) just collapsed in front of my eyes. Then, a few minutes later, the North Tower, which is less than half a mile away from my direct-view 37th floor office, also collapsed with a huge roar. Incredible smoke and ‘nuclear dust.’ No more landmark World Trade Center and countless people dead. There is still a huge amount of smoke and dust. As the radio man said, it is like nuclear winter. No one can really comprehend the enormity of
what has happened. I think many thousands will be dead. This is the most awful day of my life. Say your prayers.” The Community continued to band together throughout the fall, organizing and participating in blood drives, moments of silence, candle-light vigils, fundraising projects, and special assemblies. Following the attacks, the Milton community collected donations for the New York Times Neediest 9/11 Fund. In just a few weeks student, faculty and parent volunteers raised $10,390. Several of Milton’s student organizations, including Common Ground and the Public Issues Board held discussions all fall among faculty and students about political, social and cultural issues as questions arose. Students invited Tamara Kirdar, a parent of three Milton students,to discuss notions of Islam, and her relationship to Islam. In a November Upper School ceremony, the Student Government Association (SGA) dedicated two London plane trees in remembrance of September 11. Their intent was that the tall, straight trees, planted along the Centre Street fence, serve as living memorials. The SGA will plant bulbs around the bases of the trees, so that the flowers will bloom and contribute to the life that the trees symbolize. A plaque located between the two trees, will read simply “September 11.”
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Reunion Profiles .
process can indeed create a kind of burning odor; I was then too shy, however, to come to the rescue of my classmate.
Vision – forward and backward – is not always about “seeing.”
M
y days at Milton were my brightest days, in more than one way. While visual problems began to manifest themselves while I was at Milton (I literally ran full tilt into a phone pole on the way to Wigglesworth one night), my vision did not really suffer until later on. Why do I burden this piece with this unhappy and very personal matter?
One of the questions I was asked to ponder in preparing this piece was: Did your Milton experience influence the shape of your life? The answer is most assuredly yes. The greatest wish of every disabled person is to be productive and independent. While I have only recently come to realize it, the wonderful teachers and others at Milton, along with my dedicated parents, did more than I knew to prepare me for an independent, modestly creative, mostly happy and reasonably productive life, while my vision grew ever dimmer year after year until almost none is left. I am not sure how they did it! Upon reflection, I believe it was by nourishing creativity in mind and spirit through education, while at the same time instilling traits of character by example. Nonsense was little tolerated at Milton; one was expected to do one’s best, and excuses fell on deaf ears. Can anyone
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Jeremiah Newbury and his wife, Anne
who knew J. Braddock (the “Sturge”) Sturges believe that even a good excuse was acceptable, or that he would be satisfied with anything less than the best job one could do? Yet he had compassion for those who did not always excel: “Some will do better than others.” I must say that his other favorite expression, the sheep will be separated from the goats, was a little less compassionate, and I was never sure if I were a sheep or a goat. Johnston Torney was our floor master at Upton House in his first year of teaching. We of course did not realize it at the time, but he was only a few years older than we were. Perhaps it was because of this that he understood us so well; with the Sturge, Mr. Torney had an enormous influence on my teenage years. I tremble as I write these words as to what he would say about the style of my writing. I remember with timidity his rebuke of the best writer in our class who wrote of “the sweet smell of hammering nails.” I thought Mr. Torney was not entirely correct in noting that the hammering of nails makes noise and not smells, for I knew from workshop that the hammering
The teacher other than the Sturge and Mr. Torney who had the greatest influence on my development was A. Howard Abel. I studied music throughout my Milton and Harvard College days. Nothing beat my enjoyment of Mr. Abel’s glee club practice and concerts, where I could pursue the sound of music and the sight of girls at the same time; Mr. Abel’s sessions were one of the rare moments when the boys were together with the girls. I will never forget his production of the Mikado, where I fell in love with every female who sang in solo or in chorus. I was inspired by the Chapel and its beautiful Casavant organ; to study that instrument, which I regularly play even today although with my loss of the ability to read music, I had to give up my regular church organist and choir master avocation, and I had to turn to the slow and difficult process of reading Braille music. I was privileged in my First Class year to play the organ for chapel services several times. I can now acknowledge that on each occasion I was so nervous that I feared for the behavior of my stomach. My chapel privileges also permitted the climb through the spiral staircase in the tower to the roof, which was a quiet place suitable for reflection and other pastimes, a hard place to find in a boys’ school. While my abilities lay in music and academics, Milton’s emphasis on the “whole man” brought this four-eyed “brain” into athletics, where I generally performed poorly. For this reason it was a bright and unforgettable day when I won the 880 in my first class year
and earned my orange letter. This achievement, because it was hard to come by, meant more to me than most any other. My greatest days at Milton Academy were actually not in the Town of Milton; they were in London during my four months as the first exchange student to attend Westminster School after World War II. Every day in proximity to Westminster Abbey was bright and special. It would be difficult indeed to be in daily contact with one of the world’s greatest religious institutions without “getting religion.” The organ and choral music to which I was daily exposed was truly awesome. Whenever I start feeling sorry for myself I remember the days at Westminster, and the true privilege bestowed on me by Milton Academy in sending me there. Following Milton, I of course went to Harvard College, and almost of course to Harvard Law School. I owe a great deal also to my Harvard Law School experience, which taught me how to really think, and landed me with the best beginning law job in Maine (law clerk to the late Judge Edward T. Gignoux), which in turn persuaded me to stay in Maine, where I have been associated with Pierce Atwood, the biggest and I dare say the best law firm in northern New England. After a very busy career in corporate law, especially corporate reorganizations in Chapter XI, I am now semi-retired, and doing what old lawyers do, handling my long-time flesh and blood clients’ trusts and estates. My Harvard classmates chided me for moving to a practice which they said could not be more challenging than replevying lobsters and attaching trees; they could not have been more misinformed, and they sang a different tune in the ’70s and ’80s when it seemed that every lawyer in the Nation wanted to relocate in Maine! After my first year at Harvard law School I married my one-and-only-wife, Anne, who has been a real brick as she has watched her super-educated, type-A personality husband go blind. We have produced two children
The “village organist”
and five granddaughters all with the brightest of eyes, who are the apples of their grandfather’s malfunctioning eyes. Clearly grandparenthood is one of the richest prizes of life. Anne and I divide our time now between our condo on the Fore River in South Portland, Maine and our beloved Squirrel Island (where I remain a kind of chief legal cook and bottle washer as well as village organist) and a modest condo in Sarasota. Perhaps the most fun of all, we try to bring the entire family to Bermuda for one week in the fall. My civic activities have involved in major part the Episcopal Church, music and the Iris Network, Maine’s only state-wide nonprofit agency for blind and visually impaired persons, which I have been privileged to lead for several years. Portland is the home of a huge 1912 Austin organ with the unpronounceable name of “The Kotzschmar Memorial Organ” which I and other organ buffs have supported over the years. The Portland Symphony Orchestra, just a community organization when I first became involved, is now a darn good ensemble with a multi-million dollar budget. It was a lot of fun participating in the management of this growth.
For intellectual activity, I listen to talking books, and of more importance, I use a “talking” computer; I do not talk to it; it talks to me and tells me what is on the screen and other things going on in its miraculous innards. The talking computer, with its speech access program and voice synthesizer is a miracle and the most important development for the blind since the invention of Braille, and I now spend a good deal of my time directly and indirectly promoting its use in the blind community in Maine. This profile has been typed by me on my talking computer (which I affectionately refer to as my “brains”) in order to prove the truth of this paragraph. With the assistance of a talking computer there is no reason that a blind or visually impaired person who suffers no other disabilities cannot be productive. My law firm is quite unique in that we have two blind lawyers, one of whom is a very productive partner, and the other of whom, now “of counsel,” remains decently productive, active and involved, thanks to, among others, Milton Academy.
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– to care for our young children. We immersed ourselves in volunteer and community work: seeking to better our schools, foster the arts, sustain our neighborhoods and protect our environment. Yet we sensed there was perhaps something more and speculated about what we would do when we “grew up.” Thus, as we and our children aged, we charted new paths – going back to school and launching new careers.
Thoughtful inquiry, openness, exploration – a legacy
I
came from a Navy family. Sailors sing of weighing anchor. For my family, which had moved from pillar to post during World War II, Milton was about putting down an anchor.
Anne Hetlage and her husband, Bob
Unlike many of my classmates, for me attending Milton Academy was not a given. If anything, it was an afterthought. When my father came to Boston in the summer of 1944 to take command of a newly-commissioned destroyer, he and my mother hoped to find a “good school” for my older brother. Good fortune introduced them to friends who introduced them to Milton where, they thought, we could live until the end of the war and then my brother could continue as a boarder. It was mostly family logistics that put me at Milton Academy – in the fifth grade – as well. With my father’s death in Okinawa in April 1945, this proved to be a permanent move.
Milton and Milton Academy remained “home” for me long after we graduated in 1952 and long after I had left the nest. During my last year in college, my mother married Jim Carter – of Robbins House and Latin fame – thus our family life continued to be anchored by the School community; the Perrys, the Tourneys, the Norrises, John Pocock, Frank Millet and many other Milton faculty were part of my visits home. In the meantime, I chose a path that took me a long way from Boston, but as I realized later, never far from the legacy of our school days. Much that was important then remains so today.
Milton was, for my family, much more than a school. It was an anchor: a welcoming community of friends, neighbors, surrogate parents, teachers and mentors. Through the lens of more than 50 years, it is easy to be nostalgic about the good (and not-so-good) times: the glee club concerts and singing at Symphony Hall; parties at the Burgins; skating on the Harding’s pond; gab sessions in the Stokys’ kitchen; field hockey games; road trips for away football games; the dreaded “talks” in Ware Hall, struggling with Caesar’s exploits in Mrs. Jaeger’s Latin class; soaking up history from Miss Adams – and much more. In those pre-TV days, the world seemed much less complicated.
It was suggested that in this essay, we speak of decisions that were significant in our lives. But what decisions? It didn’t seem like a terribly momentous decision in 1956 to head to the Midwest – after four years of college in Virginia – to teach history at Mary Institute, a private girls’ school in St. Louis. It never occurred to me that I would stay for more than a couple of years. Nor did it seem significant at the time to accept a blind date with a young St. Louis lawyer, Bob Hetlage, recently returned from a stint with Army JAG at the Pentagon. But I did and here I am more than 40 years later, having long since transferred my loyalties from the Red Sox to the Cardinals. Coming of age in the so-called “quiet” ’50s, neither my friends nor I were trailblazers. We stayed home – almost without question
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In 1980, with graduate work completed and my youngest-of-three-offspring about to enter high school, I went to work at Washington University in St. Louis. Initially I coordinated a new graduate interdisciplinary liberal studies program, designed for adult students who wanted to study art, literature, history, politics on a part-time basis. This position evolved to include oversight of the whole academic program in the University’s liberal arts evening division. From this vantage point, I was a daily witness to the power and excitement of higher education for adults as well as for the young. I also came to appreciate what a true gift it is to be able to work at something you really care about. It never ceased to be interesting, challenging…and fun! Now, in my recently retired state, I audit art history classes, take short courses, and participate in the University’s Lifelong Learning Institute – all programs my office helped establish. We had a slogan posted in our office that said, “When you are through learning, you’re through!” Yes! The importance of thoughtful inquiry, of openness to new ideas, of exploring other lands and cultures certainly guided my career in higher education and, I hope my life. This is surely a Milton legacy, for which I am enormously grateful. Even after 50 years, Milton remains an anchor. For me our 50th reunion will be a kind of “coming home,” an opportunity to renew connections, perhaps to renew a sense of who we are – and to pay tribute to the institution that anchored my life, far more than I ever imagined possible.
2002 Graduates’ Weekend May 10 – May 12, 2002
Schedule of Events Friday, May 10 8:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. Registration & Hospitality Center Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium Event locations? Registration? Late-breaking details? Classmates? Refreshments? Find them all at the Hospitality Center. 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. “Women in Education at Milton” photography exhibit Ware Hall, mezzanine An archival photography exhibit highlighting the women who shaped Milton’s history. 9:15 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. 10:15 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. Classroom Visits A complete schedule of courses, faculty and locations will be available at registration. 9:30 a.m. Student-led tour of campus Departs Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium Tour dormitories, labs, performing arts facilities and the athletic center. Tours available at other times by request. 12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. “Dare to be True” Luncheon – Tent on the quad Lunch with Head of School Robin Robertson and remarks from Mary Ann Hopkins ’81, a member of “Doctors Without Borders,” the organization that received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999 for extraordinary contributions to medical care throughout the world.
2:00 p.m. Student-led tour of campus Departs Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium 2:10 p.m. – 2:55 p.m. The Milton Classroom Milton’s faculty lead classes for graduates and friends. Topics include: • DNA Fingerprinting Diane Gilbert-Diamond, Science Department • Technology Transforms the Artist’s Eye Bryan Cheney, Visual Arts Department • Freedom Fighters? Eighteenth-Century Revolutions in the Atlantic World David Ball ’88, History Department 3:00 p.m. – 3:45 p.m. The Milton Classroom Milton’s faculty lead classes for graduates and friends. Topics include: • Technology Transforms the Artist’s Eye Bryan Cheney, Visual Arts Department • Post-Modernism – Disassociation? Larry Pollans, History and Visual Arts Department 3:30 p.m. Interscholastic athletics Cheer for Milton. A full schedule will be available at the Registration & Hospitality Center. 6:00 p.m. Class parties See class events for details.
Saturday, May 11 8:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. Registration & Hospitality Center Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium Event locations? Registration? Late-breaking details? Classmates? Refreshments? Find them all at the Hospitality Center. 8:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. “Women in Education at Milton” photography exhibit Ware Hall, Mezzanine An archival photography exhibit highlighting the women who shaped Milton’s history. 8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. Bird walk Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium Join Ben Jesup ’82, attorney for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and past participant in the World Series of Birding, and Chris Dalton, Class I, an avid birder since third grade, for a leisurely stroll siting birds at the peak of spring songbird migration, and discussing current issues in bird conservation. 9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. Annual Memorial Chapel Service Apthorp Chapel Honor classmates whom we have lost and dedicate a plaque in memory of Arthur and Emilie Perry.
10:15 a.m. – 11:45 a.m. The Milton Academy Eighth Distinguished Alumni Seminar Ruth King Theatre, Kellner Performing Arts Center “Tending to the Life of the Soul” Are we experiencing a resurgence of personal spirituality, or identity with religious institutions? What demands are members of congregations putting on their clerics today? • Father David Ajemian ’79 – Vicar in a Massachusetts parish • Reverend Chloe Breyer ’87 – School chaplain in New York, and author • Reverend Corey Brennan Grabar ’92 – Associate minister for youth and young adults in Raleigh, North Carolina • Rabbi Elana Kanter ’78 – Rabbi and educator in Arizona • Mohamed Fazal Yameen ’02 – Senior from Mt. Vernon, New York, and house monitor of Wolcott House • Mark Hilgendorf – Moderator, member of the Milton Academy History Department since 1982 11:00 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. Children’s program Stop by the yellow and white tent with your children to enjoy face painting, arts and crafts, storytelling and animal balloons. A schedule of activities will be available at registration. Children must be accompanied by an adult.
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12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. Milton Medal Presentation Ruth King Theatre, Kellner Performing Arts Center Presented to the individual who is the embodiment of the Milton spirit demonstrated through extraordinary service to the School. The 2002 recipient is: Francis D. Millet Sixty years at Milton Academy: teacher, advisor, coach, floormaster and administrator. 12:30 – 2:00 p.m. Reunion luncheon under the tent An informal lunch on the quad. 2:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. Campus Crossroads Ground Breaking Join Robin Robertson and President of the Board, H. Marshall Schwarz ’54, to celebrate the launching of construction for the student-faculty center. Learn about the scope and scale of the exciting architectural project. 2:00 p.m. Interscholastic athletics Schedule of games will be available at the Registration & Hospitality Center. 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. Alumni Glee Club sing Thacher Room, Ware Hall Sing along, with Jean McCawley, to many of your old favorites. 3:00 – 4:30 p.m. Roll your own sushi Forbes Dining Hall Learn to roll sushi with student members of the Asian Society. Vegetarian options will be available.
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4:00 p.m. Athletic tea Athletic & Convocation Center lobby A post-game gathering to congratulate our athletes and coaches. 5:30 – 7:00 p.m. Clambake registration Tent on the quad If you didn’t pre-register for the clambake, please stop by to purchase a ticket. Meal selection tickets are distributed on a firstcome, first-serve basis. 7:00 –9:00 p.m. 4th Annual Clambake on the Quad Classes of 1942, 1947, 1957, 1967, 1977, 1982, 1987, 1992, 1997 Put the finishing touch on a fun-filled and memorable weekend at an authentic New England clambake under the tent with classmates and faculty. Find your classmates easily at reunion class tables. 9:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. “SHOES” Tent on the quad Seven characters, 32 pairs of unoccupied shoes, and one performer to channel them all. Bennett Schneider ’82 improvises seven pieces based on shoes selected by audience members…from poetry to Post-PostModernism to Bhutto. An evening of spontaneous absurdity and rambunctious footwear.
Sunday, May 6
Class Events
12:00 p.m. Alumni Baseball Game Nash Field Cheer for the alumni team as they take on the Milton varsity baseball team, lunch immediately following. Please contact Tom Flaherty directly at (617) 898-2140 or tom_flaherty@milton.edu, if you are interested in participating.
All events include both the Girls’ Class and the Boys’ Class unless otherwise noted.
Reminder: Have you seen Milton Academy’s Web site: www.milton.edu? While online, please be sure to check your class page (password is: centre) to update your mailing address, add your email address to the searchable database, and share any news for posting in class notes both on the Web and in the Milton Magazine.
Friday 1:30 p.m. Class Photo Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium Following “Dare to Be True” Luncheon
Friday 1:30 p.m. Class Photo Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium Following “Dare to Be True” Luncheon
Friday 1:30 p.m. Class Photo Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium Following “Dare to Be True” Luncheon
Friday 6:00 p.m. Dinner Straus Library Spouses and guests welcome Cost: $20 per person Saturday 12:45 p.m. Boys’ Class Lunch The Country Club 191 Clyde Street Brookline, MA Tentative speaker: George Park Jackets and ties required Spouses and guests welcome Cost: $45 per person 6:00 p.m. Class Cocktail Reception Ware Hall, Mezzanine
6:45 p.m. Class Photo Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium 7:00 p.m. 4th Annual Clambake on the Quad Cost: $40 per person
Friday 7:00 p.m. Dinner at the home of Fred & Libby Eustis 1426 Canton Avenue Milton, MA Saturday 1:30 p.m. Class Photo Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium 6:00 p.m. Class Cocktail Reception Straus Library, Terrace 7:00 p.m. 4th Annual Clambake on the Quad Cost: $40 per person
7:00 p.m. Dinner at the home of Jim & Janet Fitzgibbons 40 Norfolk Road Brookline, MA Spouses and guests welcome Cost: $30 per person Saturday 6:10 p.m. Class Photo Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium Saturday 6:30 p.m. Class Cocktail Reception Head of School Robin Robertson’s Home 7:30 p.m. Dinner Straus Library Cost: $55 per person
Friday 6:30 p.m. Dinner at the home of John & Martha Damon Marshall 215 Village Avenue Dedham, MA *Hosted by John & Martha Damon Marshall and Prentiss & Polly Higgins
Friday Watch your mail for details
7:15 p.m. Class Photo Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium
Saturday 6:00 p.m. Class Cocktail Reception Under the main tent on the quad
7:00 p.m. 4th Annual Clambake on the Quad Cost: $40 per person
6:45 p.m. Class Photo Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium
Sunday 11:00 a.m. Brunch at the home of Alexis Belash & Kate Sweetman 1466 Canton Avenue Milton, MA Cost: $5 per person
Saturday 3:00 p.m. Class Photo Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium 6:00 p.m. Class Cocktail Reception Caroline Saltonstall Building 7:00 p.m. 4th Annual Clambake on the Quad Cost: $40 per person
Friday 7:00 p.m. Dinner at the home of Tack & Katty Davisson Chace 15 Conant Road Weston, MA Cost: $30 per person Saturday 1:30 p.m. Class Photo Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium 6:30 p.m. Dinner at the home of Dudley Ladd 198 Randolph Avenue Milton, MA Cost: $45 per person Sunday 10:30 a.m. Brunch at the home of Bob ’56 & Dina Roberts Bray 354 Brush Hill Road Milton, MA Cost: $15 per person
7:00 p.m. 4th Annual Clambake on the Quad Cost: $40 per person
Friday 6:00 p.m. Class Gathering Black Rose (near Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market) 160 State Street Boston, MA Saturday 3:00 p.m. Class Photo Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium 7:00 p.m. Dinner at the home of Cam & Eve Roberts (near Boston College and Longwood Cricket Club) 61 Gate House Road Chestnut Hill, MA Cost: $50 per person (children complimentary)
Friday 6:30 p.m. Dinner at the home of Oliver & Beth Haffenreffer Scholle 114 Clyde Street Chestnut Hill, MA Cost: $25 per person 6:00 p.m. Class Cocktail Reception & Celebration of the Works of Classmate Helen Gamble Nesto Gallery
Friday 6:30 p.m. Class Gathering Sophia’s (roof deck) 1270 Boylston Street (near Fenway Park) Boston, MA Cost: $30 per person Heavy tapas provided Cash bar Saturday 1:00 p.m. Class Photo Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium 6:00 p.m. Class Cocktail Reception Ware Hall Patio 7:00 p.m. 4th Annual Clambake on the Quad Cost: $40 per person 9:00 p.m. “SHOES” Tent on the quad Seven characters, 32 pairs of unoccupied shoes, and one performer to channel them all. Bennett Schneider improvises seven pieces based on shoes selected by audience members…from poetry to Post-PostModernism to Bhutto. An evening of spontaneous absurdity and rambunctious footwear.
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Sunday 10:30 a.m. Brunch at Ward’s Berry Farm (Hosted by Jim Ward) 614 South Main Street Sharon, MA Cost: $15 per person, $5 per child
Friday 6:30 p.m. Cocktails & Dinner Ware Hall Patio Spouses and guests welcome Cost: $20 per person Saturday 1:00 p.m. Class Photo Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium 6:00 p.m. Class Cocktail Reception Kellner Performing Arts Center, Pieh Commons 7:00 p.m. 4th Annual Clambake on the Quad Cost: $40 per person Sunday 10:00 a.m. Brunch at the home of Alexander Mathews 19 Electric Avenue Somerville, MA
Information
Friday 8:00 p.m. Class Gathering Sonsie 327 Newbury Street Boston, MA Spouses and guests welcome Cost: $20 per person Light fare provided
Registration & Hospitality Center Please be sure to stop by the Registration & Hospitality Center when you arrive at Milton. We will be located in Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium all weekend, Friday and Saturday, May 10 and May 11, from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. When you register, you will receive an updated schedule for the weekend that includes the locations and times for each event. The hospitality center is the perfect meeting spot for classmates or a place to relax and enjoy some refreshments throughout the weekend.
Saturday 5:30 p.m. Class Photo Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium 6:00 p.m. Class Cocktail Reception Under the tent on the quad 7:00 p.m. 4th Annual Clambake on the Quad Cost: $40 per person
Friday 7:30 p.m. Class Gathering The Kells 161 Brighton Avenue Allston, MA Cost: $20 per person Light fare and two drinks provided Saturday 5:30 p.m. Class Photo Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium 6:00 p.m. Class Cocktail Reception Under the tent on the quad 7:00 p.m. 4th Annual Clambake on the Quad Cost: $40 per person
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Parking Watch for signs and directions as you approach campus. Thank you in advance for your cooperation. Where can I stay? Many out-of-town guests stay with local classmates. If you would prefer a hotel, we have reserved a block of rooms at the Holiday Inn in Randolph ($119 single/double occupancy 781961-1000). This group rate is only available for a limited number of rooms; please make your reservation early! In addition, we have arranged a special rate with the Radisson Hotel in downtown Boston ($119 plus tax per night until May 1, 617482-1800). Reservations are being held under Milton Academy. Local bed and breakfast accommodations are available through Greater Boston Hospitality: A Bed and Breakfast Service, 617-277-5430 (www.bedandbreakfast.com).
Alumni Family & Children Spouses, friends and family members are encouraged to join in the fun throughout the weekend. Childcare will be available on Saturday, May 11, from 5:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. in the Milton Academy Day Care Center, for children 3–12 years old. The program will include activities and dinner. Parents are responsible for providing any necessary blankets or bedding for their children. The cost is $25 per child ($10 each additional child) for the evening. Parents must mention any food allergies at the time of registration. Registration is required; space is limited. No walk-ins are allowed. For childcare on Friday night, we recommend calling Parents in a Pinch, Inc., a highly reputable company with over 17 years of experience, directly at 617-739-5437 between Monday and Friday 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (EST). They will provide qualified childcare providers in your own home, at a friend’s house or in your hotel room. For further information, please contact the Office of Alumni Relations at 617-898-2421. Bookstore Hours Pick up a new Milton cap, T-shirt, coffee mug or other memorabilia at the Milton bookstore located inside the Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium. The bookstore will be open, Friday and Saturday, 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. Lost and Found Items can be turned in or claimed at the Robert Saltonstall Gymnasium reception area.
, Ruth King Theatre Kellner Performing Arts Center
Tending to the Life of the Soul Are we experiencing a resurgence of personal spirituality or identity with religious institutions? What demands are members of congregations putting on their clerics today?
Reverend David J. Ajemian ’79 David Ajemian is a parochial vicar at St. John the Baptist Parish in Peabody, Massachusetts. A graduate of Harvard and the John XXIII National Seminary, David was ordained in May 2000. David describes his life as “more challenging and fulfilling than I could ever have dreamed.” Rabbi Elana Kanter ’78 Elana Kanter is an instructor of Bible and Rabbinic Literature at the Jess Schwartz Jewish Community High School in Phoenix, Arizona. Elana was a member of the first class of women at the Jewish Theological Seminary’s Rabbinical School in New York, where she was ordained in 1989. She has been involved in Jewish day school education for 20 years, having served for a brief period as an intern chaplain at Memorial SloanKettering Cancer Center in New York.
Reverend Chloe Breyer ’87 Chloe Breyer serves as an Episcopal priest at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, chaplain at the Cathedral School and director of the Cathedral’s Forums on Religion and Public Life, a conference series covering topics ranging from religion and conflict in the Middle East to fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Since September 11, Chloe has volunteered regularly as a chaplain for the Red Cross. Before entering seminary, Chloe helped co-found the magazine Who Cares: A Tool Kit for Social Change. A 1997 graduate of the New York General Theological Seminary, Chloe has recently authored the book, The Close, about the first year in the seminary.
Mohamed Fazal Yameen ’02 A senior from Mt. Vernon, New York, Fazal Yameen is the house monitor of Wolcott House, co-head of Onyx (student cultural support group), a peer leader (trained to provide student counseling), and a MAC Ranger (resource person in the computer lab). Active in the School community, Fazal enjoys being involved in community service and boarding life.
Mark Hilgendorf Mark Hilgendorf, the seminar moderator, has been a member of the Milton Academy History Department since 1982, Mark teaches U.S. History, African-American History and Senior Seminar. He is the faculty advisor of the Self-Government Association (SGA) and a dorm parent in Hathaway House.
Reverend Corey Brennan Grabar ’92 Corey Brennan Grabar is as an associate minister for youth and young adults at a Presbyterian (PCUSA) church in Raleigh, North Carolina. A graduate of Princeton University and the Duke Divinity School, Corey has worked with a local hospice, served as an interim youth pastor, and as a chaplain at a youth camp. While at Duke, Corey was a youth ministry intern in two churches and upon graduation, became an associate minister at a church in Southern Pines, North Carolina.
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Class Notes Herbert Stokinger writes: “Eye surgery has given me 20/20 vision again and I shall be 96 in March 2002.”
The international-style house that Henry Miller and his wife, Maria, built in 1949 at 30 Derby Avenue, Orange, Connecticut, became, on April 25, 2001, one of only three Connecticut houses of its style listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Millers welcome visits by classmates traveling in the New Haven vicinity.
Mary de Caradeuc Bartholomew writes: “Being an octogenarian has its limits but watching my five great-grandchildren grow isn’t one of them.”
Daphne Withington Adams was one of 14 women in Rye, New York to receive an unsung heroism award for the work she did in the American Red Cross, South Pacific between 1944 and 1947. Marion Chester Read won the bronze ball in the National Senior Tennis Tournament for thirdplace singles. Marion and her husband, Verne, are active with Bats Conservation International and National Tropical Botanical Garden Boards.
Marjorie Handy Nichols is beginning to see the United States. Marjorie spent a week traveling in Michigan and four days in Chicago for the spectacular
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Van Gogh/Gauguin exhibition. Marjorie spends the rest of her time trying to keep deer out of her garden.
Warren Arnold is “recovering from a quadruple bypass and doing very well. We’ve downsized to a much smaller house nine miles away from our larger house.” Over a year ago, Cecil Drinker and his wife bought a small house in the town of Victoria, British Columbia and renovated it to suit them. The house is within walking distance of restaurants, theatres and all other cultural amenities of Victoria. The Drinkers sold their big house, closed the B&B, and moved to the new house in August. In September 2000, Ned Handy and his wife, Margaret, retired. As it turned out, they just continued working, consulting and writing a book about World War II events.
Joan Simpkins Clarke writes: “We’ve downsized from our twoacre property and house, to our dollhouse-size condominium, but everything fits in! Always room for guests, gardens, grandchildren and children.” Joan’s last trip was to the Crystal Cathedral and then through the Panama Canal. Ellen Fuller Forbes is finding inspiration in studying and working on Buddhist practice. Margaret Hinchman Slawson takes piano lessons and continues to spend a lot of time with her only grandchild, Lydia Rose (8). “Music is the center of my life now,” writes Alice Van Buren. “My ensemble of eight musicians,
(Left to right) Peg Twitchell Jones ’38, Marjorie Handy Nichols ’38, Doris Ritchey Walker ’38, Kay Warner Cooke ’37 and Annabel Eshleman Barrows ’38 gathered in May 2001.
Allegretto, visits elementary schools to show our instruments and inspire the young students. Besides the piano, I play the mandolin at an Irish pub and for contradances. My husband, children and grandchildren are fine.”
Former Chittenden County state senator and representative Sallie Thompson Soule received the Champlain College Distinguished Citizen Award at Champlain’s Commencement on May 5, 2001. Champlain College presents the award to a member of the community who has displayed exceptional personal and professional achievement and dynamic leadership.
Brad Richardson writes: “Regretfully, I must report the deaths of two classmates this past year. Phil Uzielli died in August at his home in Florence, Italy. We shall remember Phil for his jovial nature. Stephen Moulton died in September. Steve was one of Milton’s outstanding athletes. He was awarded the Saltonstall Prize, won 11 varsity letters, and captained both football and baseball. Steve was the day school monitor
and sang in the glee club. He continued his interest in music at Yale where he sang in several undergraduate groups.”
“More cows – more milk – more cheese – more profit,” writes Powell M. Cabot. John Hewett is now in his third year as adjunct instructor for the College of William and Mary’s School of Education, English Teacher Division and his third year as a trustee of the Williamsburg Symphonia. Whiting R. Willauer married Julie McConibe of Washington, D.C. on March 15, 2001. The ceremony was performed by the Nantucket town clerk in front of the flagpole at the Nantucket Yacht Club.
Harold ‘Hal’ Butts writes: “Our most recent grandchild, Hatch Hamton, was born October 24, 2000. We now have a coed football team of 11. We will take on all challengers.” Philip Nash is retired but keeps the books for his son’s restaurant, The Atherton Café & Grill, Route 101 Amherst, New Hampshire (Saltzburg Plaza).
Oakes Plimpton still runs a model farm at the old Waltham Field Station, 240 Beaver Street, Waltham, Massachusetts. The farmstand is open Fridays and Saturdays, August through October.
Andrew Ward writes: “Thanks to early guidance and encouragement through weekend bird trips orchestrated by our biology teacher, Tom Morrison, remnants of the Milton Academy Bird Club of the 1950s, still enjoy an annual fall outing. This year’s trip to Prince Edward Island in early September provided an opportunity to watch part of the Maritime Fall Migration. Alumni participants included Oliver Wadsworth, Andy Ward and Ted Raymond ’54.
Emery Bradley Goff has a second granddaughter, Gwenllian Carhart, which brings her grandchildren to four. Emery’s life in the antiques trade is entertaining and reasonably rewarding. Last winter she and her husband, Bill, cross-country skied from October to April, which is the reason they moved to Farmington, Maine.
Hugh W. Marlow enjoys living and working at Middlebury College. “It’s a great part of the world and an excellent college with a number of wonderful Milton grads here.” Penelope Starr and her husband, Bill Ollinger, have lived in Marin County, California for the past 28 years. Since 1999 she has waged a successful battle against breast cancer, while continuing to work in glass and other media. In her business, Sculptures in Light and Glass, she produces meditative pieces in forms abstracted from nature for a variety of private and
corporate sites. She had a solo show at the San Francisco Zen Center, a piece in Milton Creates, and was a panelist at the Glass Art Society Conference in Japan. She also continues to row competitively and travels extensively with Bill, who recently retired from his architectural practice.
Jean Worthington Childs writes: “Over the years a few of our classmates have passed away. It’s always a surprise when a contemporary dies. Obviously it’s premature. We remember with fondness Peggy Fairbanks, Buff van der Gracht and Joanie Benson Baker. It is with great sadness that I write you of Helen Partridge Burlingame’s death on August 7, 2001. Helen courageously fought cancer for 18 months. We remember her with admiration for her academic ability to tackle languages and foreign cultures, especially Finnish and Russian. In recent years she worked with Amnesty International to help promote “ideals of tolerance, empathy and justice.” Helen will be missed, but her spirit continues within the hearts of her family and friends (sister Elizabeth Worthington Linsenmayer ’57 and brother Jack). Notes or anecdotes to Helen’s family would be appreciated: Kenneth, Stephen and Olivia Burlingame, 475 Saint Brides Court, Severna Park, Maryland 21146 C. Stephen Heard Jr. founded his second law firm, Sullivan & Heard, LLT on June 1, 2000, one day before his 64th birthday. Stephen says Milton helped mightily with the basic training. Milton classmate and Harvard roommate, John Ames, and new wife, Sarah, celebrated their honeymoon with Stephen, at the New York Yankees playoffs in October.
Francis Welch Jr. married Linden Aalfs on June 24, 2001 in Acton, Massachusetts.
Daphne Abeel feels fortunate to be working as a journalist as she can discharge some of the horror and anxiety over current events through words. Daphne took a horseback-riding trip to Ireland this past summer. She continues to play chamber music and keep up with Milton friends, especially Bella Halsted, Ba Jones Guetti and Llewellyn Howland. The Germantown Friends School’s baseball field was recently named in honor of Harry Gratwick. The Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania resident is retiring after 30 seasons as GTS’s baseball coach. Harry and his wife bought a house on Vinalhaven Island in Penobscot Bay several years ago where they plan to spend four to five months.
Deborah Dunham Gershon married Arnold Gershon on June 8, 2001 in New York City, New York.
Anita (Tita) Hayes Gratwick’s oldest son, Philip, was married in St. Petersburg, Russia in October. Philip teaches in the Peace Corps in Pskov, near the Estonian border. Philip, his wife, Marina, and her 9-year-old son will return to the U.S. in July 2002. Publication is expected of a chapter in a book from a paper Philip Rand gave at the University of Leiden, Holland several years ago. Philip has also submitted an article on the French II Empire for publication. Henry P. Rogerson travels eight months of the year, six months in the motorhome and the balance in Europe or visiting U.S. relatives. Henry’s mobile retirement
suits him and has facilitated the strengthening of family ties. Two grandchildren and many nieces and nephews keep him busy and marveling at the “grand” generation.
Elizabeth Farnham Blair writes: “Our big news this year was the birth of two more grandchildren. Brooke Hathaway Foreman, Anne and Patrick’s second daughter, was born on April 8, 2001 in St. Louis, Missouri. Henry Crawford Sparkman, Palmer and Julia’s second son, was born on October 18, 2001 in Darien, Connecticut. We are so thankful that Palmer survived the September 11 attacks as he works for Aon and was on the 100th floor of the South Tower. When he heard the explosion from the North Tower and he saw the huge fireball and billowing smoke he immediately got on the elevator. He was out of the building and on a subway headed up town when the second plane hit.”
Charles Lyman spent the holidays in Costa Rica. Charles will retire in five years from his position as a professor in the art department at the University of South Florida.
Douglas Kinney spent April 2001 in Vlaanbaatar, Port Moresby, Manila and Canberra on crisis management exercises.
Susan Cheever is a weaver. For the last five years she has been a co-owner of a small business, Peninsula Weavers, in Blue Hill, Maine. The business specializes in fine hand weavings in the Swedish tradition, mostly in cotton and linen. Susan also sells weaving supplies and gives classes.
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Thomas Rea’s new book, Bone Wars: The Excavation and Celebrity of Andrew Carnegie’s Dinosaur, is just out from the University of Pittsburgh Press.
Colin Maclaurin writes: “It was great to see so many old friends at our 30th reunion gathering. My wife, Jeannie, and I are living in Swampscott, Massachusetts with our daughter, Sarah (10). I am in charge of fundraising at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge. Life is good most of the time.”
There are no major changes in Amy Mackintosh’s life. Her children Lucy (10) and Triona (6) are growing and changing. Amy enjoys her work as a landscape architect, Tom, her husband, builds and repairs violins. They have enjoyed discovering the wealth of flowers in their garden, which were planted by the former owners. Frank Plimpton and his family moved back from Tokyo this September. Frank is at Credit Suisse First Boston. His group manages a Global Distress Fund. Molly (20), a junior at Georgetown, strokes lightweight varsity crew and spent the fall term in Argentina. Andy (17) is a senior at Milton and C.J. (12) is in the sixth grade at Greenwich Country Day School.
Christopher “Kip” Gould and his wife, Joan, welcomed Blythe Mairead Gould Dineen on August 9, 2001.
Eleanor Crow Blake writes: “I have been happily married for 18 years as of Valentine’s Day. I feel lucky just to be alive. I’m on kid-
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ney dialysis for three days a week, three and half-hours at a time. I have quite an extended personal family: a stepson, stepdaughter and spouses; both couples each have two girls so I have four step-granddaughters. They are all healthy, intelligent and talented, and I am proud of them all. This past May I won the Central Massachusetts Mental Health Consumer of the year award from the Department of Mental Heath (DMH). I am the publicity director and am active on the DMH Local Citizens Advisory Board, too. Despite getting older, my weight and eyesight are good. Would love to hear from classmates.” Sarah Ferguson will retire from the Air Force on October 1, 2001. She moved to the Chicago area in July. You can email her at snursferg@hotmail.com. Mary Anne Sgarlat was married to Michael von Arx Baumgartner of Zurich, Switzerland on November 18, 2000 in Zurich. On January 13, 2001, there was a ceremony and reception for their American relatives and friends at Milton. The ceremony was held in Apthorp Chapel; the organist was Milton’s Louise Mundiger. The music included a piece composed by the groom, a composer and publisher, especially for Mary Anne. The music at the reception was provided by members of the Milton Jazz Combo, and Nathan Bliss ’01 and the Harvard Krokodiloes. Guests included Mary Anne’s cousin, Christopher Karlson ’88. Mary Anne and Michael live in Cambridge, Zurich and Provence.
Rich Barbour took a new job with Alabama Shipyard as head of the electrical engineering department last May. Rich’s wife, Charlotte, is doing well with her monogramming company. She has to expand and move to a big-
Mary Anne Sgarlat Baumgartner ’74 and her husband, Michael Baumgartner
ger place. Rich and Charlotte just enjoyed their 19th wedding anniversary on September 25, 2001. Rachel (12) and Annie (9) are doing very well at Bayside Academy in Daphne, Alabama. Henry Heyburn and his wife, Alicia, welcomed a beautiful baby girl, Caroline Holliday Heyburn, on June 28, 2001. Jeanne McCulloch’s son, Sam, is getting ready for kindergarten. Jeanne is editing a piece for the music issue of Tin House on West Side Story, which makes her think of the artful production in the spring of 1975. Julia Rabkin married Richard Lappin on October 29, 2000 in Boston. Richard is the CFO of a hedge fund in Cambridge. Julia is working at Fleet Bank, managing the banking relationships of notfor-profit organizations.
In August, Macy Lawrence Ratliff participated in a three-day, 60-mile walk to raise money for breast cancer research. Macy is busy with part time audiology work and “full-time” volunteer work at her daughter’s school. Katherine (11) is still passionate about drama, student government
and swimming, and will soon be making her semi-professional debut. Hilary (8) is an origami and architecture buff and loves soccer and swimming.
Christopher West writes: “Baby number two is headed our way in February 2002.”
Renata C. Belash spent the last four years watching her dot.com go from less than 20 people to nearly 1,000. Renata also participated in her first studio exhibit, showing painted ceramics. Susie Morrill would like to announce the arrival of her son Alexander Morrill Richardson, born July 15, 2001. Susie runs her farm outside Eugene, Oregon where she raises long-distance endurance horses and Labrador retrievers. Jacob Michael Mushatt was born on April 27, 2001, to David Mushatt and his wife, Mary Anne. Ellen Starbird is busy with her three-year-old son, Frank. Ellen works for US AID in the Bureau for Global Health.
Reverend David J. Ajemian writes: “I entered the Catholic Church just over six years ago and was ordained a priest last May. I am enjoying my new life as parochial vicar at Saint John the Baptist Church in Peabody, Massachusetts.”
Albert M. Creighton III lives in Manchester, Massachusetts with two active boys, Sam (5) and Andrew (5). Albert is busy with work, growing the company he founded in 1993.
Anne Jay and Erich Vieth adopted their second daughter, Charlotte, from Hunan, China in March 2001. Big sister, Ju-Ju (3) thinks all airplanes carry people to China to get babies. The JayVieths live in the city of St. Louis. Sophia Nicole Lobkowicz was born on October 19, 2001, to William Lobkowicz, and his wife, Alexandra. After years in the international television and entertainment industry working for HBO, 20th Century Fox and MGM, Douglas Schwalbe was named head of Splendid Television, LLC. A unit of Splendid Medien, a German indie distributor and film financier, Splendid Television, will acquire, cofinance and sell high-end TV movies and mini-series. Doug says Splendid Television will produce four to five new mini-series or television movies per year.
William, Ileana and Sophia Nicole Lobkowicz, children of Alexandra and William Lobkowicz ’79
Adam Naddaff-Slocum was born on December 4, 1999, to Andrea Naddaff and her husband, Bill Slocum ’79.
Wrenn Flemer Compere is a children’s librarian in Warren, Vermont’s tiny library. Wrenn finds the world of children’s literature to be both vast and exciting and wonders what the next step will be, now that her two children are both in grade school. Wrenn stays in touch with Julia Shepard Stenzel and Judi Ohlson Schultze ’85 and their families. As of January 2001, Leslie Latady Couper switched careers from basic research in vascular biology to becoming an investment representative with Edward Jones investment company. Jonathan Davis writes: “Susan and I live in Oakland, California in a sweet little abode. I am a plaintiff ’s attorney representing construction workers and their families in catastrophic injury cases; my office is in San Francisco. Currently, I am the chairman of the board of the AACWA, an affordable-housing organization based in the East Bay. Marathons, gardening, golf, skiing and good wine take up the rest of my time.” Bonita Billingsley Harris’s experience on the speech team with Dale DeLetis helped prepare her for her career in television. Bonita is now a reporter/anchor at WVEC-TV in Norfolk, Virginia. Bonita is married to Elisha Harris III. The couple has one daughter, Courtney (13).
In May 2001, Elizabeth Bergan Altman ’71, John Bergan ’81 and Margaret Bergan Davis ’76 gathered at Milton to celebrate their reunions and the Milton graduation of Margaret’s daughter, Caroline.
Isabelle Hunnewell Stafford teaches piano and recently had a baby girl named Georgia (March 31, 2001). Isabelle also has a twoyear-old named Thomas.
Harold Edwards and his family recently relocated to Atlanta, Georgia following three very interesting years in Manila, The Philippines. Harold joined Fisher Scientific as vice president and general manager, Latin America and global export and enjoys developing new markets in a new region. Jim Griffin and his wife, Kathy, are delighted to announce the birth of their daughter, Anne Margaret, on June 13, 2001.
Pamela Jimenez Parizek is associate managing director and counsel to Kroll, a global risk consulting company specializing in investigative, intelligence and security semics. Pamela lives in McLean, Virginia with her husband, George Betzelos Parizek, and her daughter, Amelia (1).
Tim Driver is a senior vice president at Salary.com. Salary.com, located in Wellesley, Massachusetts, is a top-tier Internet career destination and provider of Web-based recruitment and employee valuation products.
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national law firm and the president of a transportation-related professional organization. Kevin Shea married Marlene Buckley on July 7, 2001 in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.
Charles Cheever and his wife, Susan, announce the birth of their son, Oliver, born on August 28, 2001.
Jacob Michael Mushatt, son of David Mushatt ’78 and his wife, Mary Anne
Moira Driscoll ’80, Kate Pingeon ’80 and Emily Benton Morgan ’80 (back row left to right) visited in Wareham, Massachusetts last June. Front row, left to right, Mabel Pence (13 months) Clara and Alice Pingeon (3 1⁄2) and Owen Pence (5).
Simon Woodruff Sprague Horan was born on September 14, 2001, to Daniel Horan and his wife, Julie.
Napier Rodgers arrived August 11, 2001. We had to move to fit our army. The University of Denver continues to build and I have the pleasure of leading the design of the architecture.”
In 2001, Jennifer Jewell and her husband, Erik Simchuk, finished a one-year fellowship in England and gave birth to their second daughter, Flannery Jewell Simchuk. The couple’s first daughter, Delaney Jewell Simchuk, was born in Seattle in 1999. Jennifer and her family live in Loveland, Colorado. Henry Pierpont Gould was born on May 31, 2001; he is the son of Adam Gould. In November, Evelyn Swett Miller and her husband, Donald, welcomed Sarah Sewall Miller into their family. Chanler (20 months) is adjusting to being an older brother.
Arlo Stevens Henrikson, Christopher Henrikson’s second child, was born August 9, 2001. His sister, Olivia Grant Henrikson, was born July 22, 1999. Doris Kim married Stephen Koelbel in May 2001. The couple enjoyed a great party and saw some old friends. Mary Beth
Flynn Monks married Jennifer Norris on June 30, 2001. Milton graduates in attendance included Kate Saunders Hodgson, Seth Kaufman, Rob Sheffield, Ian Lapey ’85, and Peter ’49 and Suzanne ’49 Runton. Mark E. Rodgers writes: “Isabelle (5) and Christopher (3) now have another hand to hold: Lindsay
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Simon Woodruff Sprague Horan, son of Dan ’84 and Julie Horan, was born September 14, 2001.
Martin Kerrigan and Stephen Kagan attended the wedding and Doris’s old piano teacher, Susan Hadfield, played during the ceremony. Blyth Taylor Lord lives in Newton, Massachusetts. Blyth’s eldest daughter, Taylor (4 1⁄2) is at the Park School and daughter, Eliza, was born in February 2001. Blyth’s second daughter, Cameron, died in May of TaySachs disease, five days after her second birthday. “Cameron was our beautiful angel girl who taught us tremendous things in her short, but love-filled life. She lived and died beautifully. While we miss her terribly, we feel blessed to have loved her and had her with us. We have started a foundation in her and her cousin’s name (Hayden Lord died of TaySachs in December 2000), The Cameron and Hayden Lord Foundation. The foundation’s mission has two prongs: to fund medical research for prenatal universal testing for genetic diseases, and to provide coping resources to families with terminally ill children.” Jamie Palter Rennert has a daughter (3 1⁄2) and a son (15 months). Jamie is a partner at a
Wendy Millet-Trice and her husband, Rob, moved to Menlo Park, California and are both doing well. Rob started a new job at Nokia Partners. Wendy works at The Nature Conservancy looking after her projects in Southern California from San Francisco and the road. The travel allows her to keep up with friends in both places. Her first property in her LA/ Ventura project was preserved last month and she is hopeful for more soon. They encourage friends to come visit as they are 20 minutes away from both the San Francisco and San Jose airports. Peggy Fluhr Terhune and her husband, Dick, are delighted to announce the birth of their son, Colin Brue Terhune, on April 29, 2001.
Falcon Press will publish Benjamin Ames’s guide to hiking trails in Massachusetts in spring 2002. Elizabeth Georgia Smith was born on September 18, 2001 to Christopher ’85 and Claire Smith. Sarah Conrad White married Dr. Stefan Spiro Bournakel on August 4, 2001 at the Panagia Platsani Church in Oia, Santorini, Greece.
Ia (Elizabeth) Andrews and Eliot Merrill ’89 welcomed their daughter, Maggie Merrill, on
Milton grads pose together at the wedding of Sara Conrad White ’87 on August 4, 2001 at the Panagia Platsani Church in Oia, Santorini, Greece. From left to right, Samara Watkins, Julia White Watkins ’83, Robert White, Lara Shapiro ’87, Dr. Stefan Bournakel (the groom), Sarah, Jennifer White ’85 and Robert G. White ’48.
A number of Milton alums living in the San Francisco area gathered at Amanda Herman’s apartment. Back row, left to right, Anna Weymouth ’89, Michael Nicholas, Dena Silver, Jake Upton ’89, John Notz ’89 and Basak Aydin. Front row, Amanda Herman ’89 and “Z” Donahue ’89.
June 8, 2001. Maggie weighed 7 pounds, 2 ounces. Maggie, Ia and Eliot live in Brooklyn, New York.
or so they get together for dinner at someone’s house, make dinner, talk and catch up.
Bruce A. Barry is now managing the Ceramic Studio at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts: teaching, keeping the studio in order, handling the firing of the kilns, “throwing” his own work when he has time, exhibiting his work and selling all he wants to sell.
the past several years and was downtown at City Hall, when the two buildings fell two blocks away. We eventually were evacuated to safety, but friends were among the over 300 NYC firefighters lost that day. It’s sobering to realize that the total losses appear to be greater than Pearl Harbor, D-Day, and all three days of fighting at Gettysburg.
Kristin J. Barry opened a new restaurant, Crossroads Café, in Joshua Tree, California (January 2000). Anne Louise Elliot married John B. Williams in June 2001 in Washington, DC. Jonathan Yusen recently moved back to the East Coast from Minneapolis. Meredith, Alex (2 1⁄2), Noah (6 months) and Jonathan are living in New Canaan, Connecticut.
Lygeia Ricciardi married Eric Eversmann last summer. The couple lives in New York City. Anna Weymouth lives in San Francisco, as do a bunch of her Milton classmates. Every month
Roxana Alger married Daniel Geffen on June 9, 2001 in Katonah, New York. Danny and Roxana live in New York City, where she is painting (pictures, not houses) and he is working on a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia. David Bergan will graduate from Columbia Law School in May, and will work in New York with the intellectual property firm Fish & Neave in the fall. John Costello married Katharine Pacella on July 2, 2000, in Longmeadow, Massachusetts. They honeymooned in Paris and Italy and are now residing in Charlestown, Massachusetts. Kimberly Ann Langworthy married Marc Harrison Blair on August 26, 2000 at Turner Hill in Ipswich, Massachusetts.
Fipp Avlon writes, “I’ve been working as the head speechwriter and deputy communications director for Mayor Guiliani for
Linda Harrison Biederman writes, “Hi, everyone! I’ve returned to my California roots and have relocated to the Central Coast with Joel. I’m also devoting almost all of my time to art this year – taking a break from teaching. (Joel and I still have no children.) If you’re in San Luis Obispo, look me up. Emily Lungstrum and her husband, Justin, are expecting a baby girl. The couple lives in Brooklyn Heights. Bryan Shirley passed the Minnesota Bar Exam in October 2001 and is practicing Municipal Law at a firm in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Jennifer Simon graduated from NYU Law School in 2000. She married Fred Phillips in April
2001and is working as a field attorney for the National Labor Relations Board. Jennifer writes: “Sorry to have missed the reunion – I hope to make it to the next one.” Leonora Zilkha lives on Beacon Hill in Boston and works for the Boston Consulting Group. Leonora see tons of Milton folks around here, including Kate Allen who owns a boutique down the street, Courtney Drohan Monnich, Sarah Millet, Spencer Hoffman, Matt Williams, Henrik Brun and Molly Merrill ’92.
Caleb Dewart writes: “On August 25, 2001, Lisa Bingham and I were married in Portland, Oregon. We met during college, survived a two-year, bi-coastal relationship while she finished up a master’s degree in decorative art history in New York City, and we have been living together in Los Angeles for almost three years. Lisa is an assistant curator at the Huntington Museum in Pasadena. I produce commercials and music videos.”
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Phaedra Saltis ’92 and Patrick Yachimski ’92 were married on September 30, 2001. Phaedra received her MBA from Boston College spring 2001 and is currently working as an associate marketing manager at Gorton’s. Patrick is completing his fourth year at Harvard Medical School. Margaret “Daisy” Wademan will graduate from Harvard Business School in June 2002.
A number of Milton alums attended Roxana Alger’s wedding to Daniel Geffen on June 9, 2001. Back Row, from left to right, Kimberly Langworthy Blair ’90, Lily Batchelder ’90, Aisha Harris Cofield ’90, Emma Jacobson-Sive ’92, Dierdra Reber ’90, Beka Sturges Harris ’90, Roxana Alger Geffen ’90, Meika Neblett ’90 and Sarah Bynum ’90. Back Row, from left to right, Marta Hummel ’90, Simon Clark ’92, Kenneth Maclaurin ’85, Christopher Cheever ’98, David Alger ’62, and Fred Alger ’52.
Yeng Felipe writes: Shanon Kearney just began classes at the Harvard Graduate School of Design while Eliza Mahony just graduated from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and is now living in Washington, D.C. Cristina Courey received her MBA from UCLA this past June and is now enjoying life in Los Angeles. Jen Carpenter, who did a fabulous job as one of Phaedra’s attendants, is an attorney at Hale and Dorr in Boston. She will be clerking for a judge next year. Carolyn Mansfield is back from Europe and is now in Boston while Phil Belfer is now practicing law at a New York firm. Claire McNamee Poole and her husband, Tom are expecting a baby girl in January 2002. “Nadia Boulos just returned from a whirlwind tour of Southeast Asia this summer and is starting her second year at Harvard Business School. She is hoping to stay in Boston upon graduation. Nadia sees Daisy Wademan often at the Harvard Business School campus. Jhoanna Aberia and Gurpreet Kanwal have relocated from
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Williamsburg, Virginia to California. Reed Johnstone and Eliza Mahony were present at Jeff Courey’s ’91 housewarming party in the Back Bay. “As for myself, aside from enjoying the routine of seeing old friends such as Enrique Colbert who is an attorney at Goodwin and Procter in Boston, I’ve been busy working at Merrill Lynch Investment Managers in Boston’s financial district as vice president in sales and marketing. In April, I completed my first olympic distance triathlon in Florida and I am absolutely hooked! This summer, I became engaged to Christopher Cho (Groton ’92) whom I met while at Dartmouth. Christopher was Enrique’s freshman year roommate at Dartmouth and Enrique continues to try and take full credit for the introduction. “We’re planning a wedding in Captiva Island, Florida for the Fall of 2002 when Nadia Boulos and Tina Courey will stand with me when I say ‘I do.’ Looking forward to the 10th year reunion.”
Tyler Joseph Langlois was married on November 10, 2001. Erika Mikkelsen moved from Berkeley, California to New York, where she now practices law at Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler. Timothy Pieh finished his second year of medical school at Dartmouth. All the snow there last winter was great for snowshoeing and skiing.
Ned Roberts lives in Tampa, Florida. He reports for the CBS News affiliate. Angela Saltonstall moved back to Boston after completing her master’s in architecture and landscape architecture at the University of Virginia. Angela accepted a job with a landscape architecture firm, Richard Burck Associates. Angela sees Alison Burnes often. Alison is living in Boston and working for Wyman Gordon in Grafton. Kate McGuin says she loves Chicago so far, where she is working on her MBA at the University of Chicago. Kate is getting married Labor Day of 2002.
Kimberly Ann Langworthy married Marc Harrison Blair on August 26, 2000 at Turner Hill in Ipswich, Massachusetts. Milton alums in attendance included, (from left to right) Caroline Bell ’90, Roxana Alger Geffen ’90, Kimberly Langworthy Blair ’90, Marta Hummel ’90 and Colin Rowan ’90.
Milton graduates Phaedra Saltis ’92 and Patrick Yachimski ’92 were married on September 30, 2001. Attending the wedding were (from left to right), Claire McNamee Poole ’92, Jennifer Carpenter ’92, Phil Belfer ’92, Carolyn Mansfield ’92, Tiny Courey ’92, Phaedra Saltis ’92, Patrick Yachimski ’92, Eliza Mahony ’92, Yeng Felipe ’92, Shanon Kearney ’92 and Bruce Stewart ’91.
Tim Morningstar has moved to New York City, and is enjoying school; Tim is working on his MBA at Columbia.
John Collins married Laura Hardman, a Princeton classmate, on August 11, 2001. Jon Kohen ’99 was a groomsman and Jeff Bergan ’96 also attended. Caroline L. Cornish married Michael J. Kmack on October 20, 2001. Caroline is a television reporter for WPTZ in Plattsburgh, New York. After spending the last two years in San Francisco, Nat Nennigar moved back to Massachusetts in June and lives in Somerville.
Ali Stumm Pogorelec married her college boyfriend, Jason Pogorelec, last August and now lives in Boston. Among those in attendance were Lauren Dwyer, Caroline Richards, Kerry Bystrom, Andreas van der Goltz, Erin Steimle and John Collins ’94. Ali is at Harvard Business School and Jason is a lawyer at Ropes & Gray.
Milton alums gathered for a photo at Caleb Dewart’s August 2001 wedding. From left to right, Phil Belfer ’92, Shanon Kearney ’92, Mac Dewart ’66, Caleb Dewart ’92 (groom), Lisa Bingham (bride), Nate Dewart ’97, Kathleen Lintz ’92, Jon Rein ’92, Carolyn Mansfield ’92, Liz Mueller ’79 and Richard Kornbluth ’66.
Jean Scott graduated from Princeton in June and now teaches high school math in Philadelphia. Also in Philly are Jay Haverty and Eve Manz. Jean misses Milton and can’t wait for the fifth reunion.
David Huoppi, a Trinity College freshman, was the recipient of the 2001 Bantam Men’s Lacrosse Hazelton Award. The Hazelton Award is given annually to the team’s top freshman performer.
Sara Shaughnessy is enrolled at the Stanford University Graduate School of Mechanical Engineering. Yale track star Yetsa TuakliWosornu won a Fulbright award this year and received a NCAA postgraduate scholarship.
Nicholas Harlow is living in Poland.
Hee Jin Bang was awarded a modern language prize by St. Hilda’s College Tutorial Committee, in recognition of her excellent work.
Katherine MacCluggage is a theater major at Wesleyan. “I’ve been cast in a senior thesis show of the adaptation of the Little Prince. I’m also researching for a one-woman show I’ll be writing and performing. I hope to hear from Miltonites (particularly Avers, speechies and Hathawayans)!”
September 8, and a week later he scored the only goal of the game in Princeton’s 1–0 victory over Fairleigh-Dickenson.” Amanda Bruskin works at an animal hospital in Colorado and will be attending Cornell in the fall.
“I’m having an awesome time at Yale!” writes Shannon Gulliver “I’m majoring in molecular and cellular biology, meeting lots of great people, etc., though I miss my Milton peeps! I have moved to Hyannisport, Cape Cod.”
Per his parents, “Adrian Melville is off to quite a start on the Princeton men’s soccer team. As a freshman, he scored the first goal of the season in the Tigers’ 5–0 win over Monmouth on
Ali Stumm Pogorelec ’95 married Jason Pogorelec in August 2001.
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In Memoriam
Emilie Stuart Perry November 25, 1900 – September 7, 2001 Emilie Stuart Perry died peacefully on September 7 at the Milton Health Care nursing facility in Milton, Massachusetts. She is remembered by her loving family and her many friends in the Milton Academy and Greensboro, Vermont communities.
Edward M. Lintz Edward M. Lintz died on December 2, 2001. With his wife Louise, Ed was awarded the Milton Medal in 1995. “We award the [Milton] medal to Ed and Louise,” the citation notes, “for their work as parents, as givers and fundraisers, as enthu-
siastic fans and hosts, but primarily for touching the lives of so many students and faculty with their generosity and good will.” The Lintz children attended Milton: Ed ’89, Kathleen ’92 and Phil ’95.
Deaths 1929 1930 1931 1933 1936 1939 1941
1942 1943 1945 1946
John Quinby Lucy Dominick Wilson Elizabeth Pratt Larkin James Hunnewell Jacqueline Winslow Payne Leonore Amory Sawyers Faith Bremer King Dorcas Whitney McGoodwin Leonard Wright Francis Peabody Lincoln Kinnicutt Jack MacNider Henry Ashforth
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1948 Stephen Moulton Philip Uzielli 1950 Karl Gundersen Sanford Williams 1951 Mary North French Emily Morison Faulkner Stevens 1954 Helen Partridge Burlingame 1962 David Alger 1963 Sarah Crapo Traettino 1964 Robert Bradley 1970 Thomas Wales 1977 Nina Boden Edward Lintz Emilie Stuart Perry
Born November 25, 1900, Emilie Maynard Stuart was the oldest of five children born to Emilie Meddaugh Stuart and Duane Reed Stuart. A 1918 graduate of Miss Fine’s School in Princeton, New Jersey, Emilie went on to receive a B.A. from Vassar College in 1922. She became a teacher of Latin, and in 1924 she married Arthur Bliss Perry, whom she had known since childhood; their fathers were both professors who summered in the small community of Greensboro, Vermont. Emilie’s life from 1924 until her
recent death was devoted to the Milton Academy community, where Arthur Perry began teaching English in 1921 and where he ended his career as Headmaster from 1947 until 1963. She and her husband forged an effective team, understanding the importance of small gestures in creating and sustaining the sense of a caring community. She was at the heart of Milton Academy’s life and spirit during her husband’s tenure. After Arthur’s death in 1978, she continued to enliven and enrich life at Milton Academy over the next quarter century, charming and welcoming new students and their families, offering stories, encourage- ment and a sage perspective to administrators, faculty, students and graduates. Until very recently, when the constraints of age and health intervened, she continued to come to the many school events,
“She Loved Life Itself ” A Remembrance of Emilie Perry Kay Herzog performances, and athletic contests that she had delighted in all her life. Jim Fitzgibbons, Milton Academy class of ’52 and then president of the board of trustees, captured Emilie’s profound impact on Milton Academy when he awarded her the Milton Medal in 1986 with these words: “Emilie came to Milton in 1924. She has never left, and we are the better because of that. As a mother, wife, friend, maker of tea, healer of wounded spirits, hostess, grandmother, graceful leader, lover of literature, and generous spirit, her life is woven into the hearts of thousands of Milton students, parents and faculty members.” Emilie had an equal impact on the community of Greensboro, Vermont, where every summer she was able to indulge her love of tennis and golf, gardening and walking, with her loving family and numerous friends. She was a tennis legend, winning several tournaments and continuing to play well into her eighties. Emilie survived the deaths of not only her husband but also her two sons, David Reed Perry and Philip Stuart Perry. She is survived by her sister Alison Norton, six grandchildren, five great-grandchildren, and many loving nieces and nephews and friends who will all miss her greatly.
In 1959, when I first came to Milton, Arthur and Emilie Perry were firmly established as the revered and beloved joint heads of the school. Of course Emilie’s role was unpaid and carried no official title or involvement, but that actually enhanced rather than diminished the part she played in the Academy. Her selfimposed duties included learning the names of every boy in the School, of looking after boys in the infirmary, communicating with parents and of attending every concert, every athletic event, every chapel service and every play. There was nothing part-time about any of this, but Emilie never in her life did anything by half measures. I rapidly grew to know Emilie better and to love her more and more in my first bewildering year in America. I realize, looking back on it now, that I began to think of her as my surrogate mother. In fact, during the sixties and seventies Emilie and my mother met and became fast friends. They were much the same age and they shared many interests. In particular, they both had the same passion for literature, especially poetry, the same love of mountains, flowers and trees and the same deep unsentimental empathy for children. Both were motivated by an unselfconscious, totally unselfish altruism. I never heard either of them utter a single unkind word about any human being.
When, in the spring of 1960, Brad and I decided to be married in a private ceremony, Emilie immediately offered us the hospitality of her house – Centre Street. We were married in the sitting room which Emilie had decked out with lovely white flowers and greenery; she, Arthur, Vivian Pomeroy who performed the ceremony, and Mrs. Pomeroy are the only witnesses of our vows. From that time and on for the next forty years, we met often at the Perry’s little house on Hillside Street, at our house or at the home of John and Joan Torney for wonderful evenings of talk, good food and poetry reading. Those poetry evenings, sitting around a blazing wood fire and each taking turns reading two or three favorite poems were shaped and initiated by Emilie. She was our guiding spirit, possessing to the very end of her long life, the amazing gift of being able to bring out the best in every single person’s life she touched. She loved life itself, she loved to laugh, and her emotions were invariably deep and true.
Anchored For the ship with her sails furled on her squared yards, reflected from truck to waterline in the gleaming sheet of a land-locked harbour, seems indeed, to a seaman’s eye, the most perfect picture of slumbering repose. In the picturesque phrase of Dutch seamen ‘lying asleep upon her iron.’ Joseph Conrad The Mirror of the Sea Anchored Far to the west she lies her voyage done. Her sails are furled at last her anchor down, unseen, gripped to the Rock. Swaying a little under her squared yards she lies at ease; swinging so slightly to the singing sea she rests for sure. Indeed, she lies asleep upon her iron.
During the last weeks of Emilie’s life I happened to be reading Conrad’s Mirror of the Sea and came upon this passage which inspired the poem I wrote in honor of Emilie.
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In Memoriam
Thomas Crane Wales, ’70 1952–2001 Thomas C. Wales, Milton graduate, community leader, and Justice Department lawyer, died on October 12, 2001 of gunshot wounds from an unknown assailant. He was 49. He leaves a son, Tommy, 24, and a daughter, Amy, 22. My brother, Tommy, as he was called until he was well into his twenties, was actually the sixth in an unbroken line of Thomas Crane Wales’s. The first T.C.W. was a Boston merchant in the boot and shoe trade whose business failed in the early 1800s. Despite having settled with his creditors in 1837, by 1866 he had saved enough to voluntarily pay the principal he had been unable to pay almost 30 years earlier, along with interest. In his letter advising his former creditors of this action, he said, “But now having the means, as I always had the desire to make it all up to you, I feel a great satisfaction in doing so, as an act of justice.” Justice, in the sense of fairness, was a recurrent theme in Tommy’s life as it had been for his namesake. Tommy was born in Boston in 1952 and grew up in Southborough, Massachusetts, where our father taught at St. Mark’s School. He went to Fay, a local elementary school, and then after a year at Winchester in England where our father taught on an exchange program, he came to Milton in the fall of 1967 as a sophomore. (He was the third Thomas C. Wales at Milton, after our grandfather, ’17, and our father, ’44.) For someone with such an acutely tuned sense of fairness and moral right and wrong, Tommy had a refreshing, and 62 Milton Magazine
entirely benign, skepticism of institutional rules. On my second or third night as a new freshman at Milton, long after lights-out, there was a knock on the outside of my dorm window on the third floor of Robbins House. It was Tommy, and he came in and we talked for half an hour or so in whispers, and then he left the way he came. Not only was it a comfort to talk to him, but being known as the brother of such an artful renegade greatly increased my standing in the alcoves. In those days, perhaps as today, students were allowed to put their beds up on stilts, allowing more room for a desk and chair underneath. Tommy took this as an opportunity for ambitious architectural expression. He raised his bed and enclosed it with a wall like a sealed loft, and then he painstakingly built a little window, complete with crosspieces. He bought himself a small TV (TVs in rooms were illegal), and installed it in the loft, wired so that the sound stopped if his door was opened.
“Justice, in the sense of fairness, was a recurrent theme in Tommy’s life…” Tommy was not all fun and games though. He worked hard both inside and outside the classroom, and he made close friendships that lasted the rest of his life. In his senior year at Milton he was captain of the football team, Forbes House monitor, and head monitor.
He went on to Harvard and then to Hofstra Law School where he was editor-in-chief of the law review. After a clerkship for a federal judge and a brief stint at a corporate law firm in New York, Tommy went to work in Seattle in 1983 for the Department of Justice as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, where he specialized in complex fraud cases. His record as a litigator was impressive; in over 18 years, he never lost a case he tried. He became the first and longestserving professional responsibility officer at the Seattle U.S. Attorney’s Office As his colleague, Bob Westinghouse, put it, “His ethical meter seemed to be calibrated just a bit finer than anyone else’s.” On seeing a steady stream of prosecutions of bank employees and the ensuing harm to their lives and careers, he set up a program to prevent the crimes before they could occur. Under the program, Tommy, along with people convicted of bank fraud, would address groups of new bank trainees to warn them of the consequences if they gave in to temptation. It is interesting that a person who had such a sensitivity for fairness and such compassion for defendants would pursue a career as a prosecutor, but it actually makes perfect sense; he never had to defend a guilty person, and he never had to prosecute an innocent one. He could use the discretion available to him as a prosecutor to bring more fairness to justice. A defendant he successfully prosecuted wrote him years later as she was about to graduate from college: “Despite the circumstances, you adamantly spoke in my favor with both candor and
eloquence, for which I am eternally grateful… Thank you for believing in me at a pivotal moment in my life, for looking at me as an individual and not a statistic, for understanding me when I did not understand myself, and for giving me a chance to succeed. When I receive this diploma you will be receiving one too, so congratulations in advance! You are forever in my thoughts.” In addition to his work at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Tommy did volunteer work, and the number and breadth of these activities were extraordinary. He was on the board of trustees of the Federal Bar Association, and served on or chaired a number of committees of the state and county bar associations. He was a member of the Seattle Planning Commission, the Design Review Board, and the Mayor’s Citizen Advisory Committee, among others. He chaired his local community and district councils, and was president of the statewide gunsafety organization, Washington CeaseFire. People invariably have two questions when they hear of Tommy’s ubiquitous civic involvement: Why was he so active in public service, and where did he find the time? With respect to the first question, he simply felt it was part of the deal, part of every citizen’s responsibility to chip in and do those necessary things that would otherwise be left undone. But, he also liked to do these things. He knew his involvement would make a difference – he didn’t lack confidence – and it gave him satisfaction to see
“Tommy was the person to whom any one of us could go when something was wrong either with the world or with ourselves.” that difference, to see things running a little better because he had been able to help. Then there is the question of time, and this is still somewhat of a mystery to me, given the demands of his job, and given that he was extremely active and engaged as a parent and uncle. But the short answer must be that he simply made the time. He had the discipline to make his volunteer activities a priority and he found the time by weaving together the little scraps of time most of us just toss away. One of the things people have told me repeatedly since Tommy’s death was what fun he was to be around. He was energetic, athletic, and adventurous, interested in many subjects, a good listener, and uncannily adept at drawing others out to talk about themselves. Although generally a serious guy, he often showed a dauntless, deliberate goofiness. It wasn’t just that he was funny; it was that so many things seemed funny to him, particularly his own daily life which he invariably described as an ongoing cascade of hilarious calamities. Tommy was gleefully, defiantly eccentric in some things. He wore a fedora. He wore bow ties. For a long time he shaved
with a barber’s straight-edge razor. He wore old-fashioned rimless glasses. He wrote with a fountain pen.
amused confidence you get when you make a bet you know you’re going to win. He knew he could change minds.
He was a phenomenal cook, imaginative and fearless about trying new things. This translated to such treats as roast goose for Christmas, hand-made bread baked on stone, turkey marinated in brine, jalapeño muffins, beets with garlic aioli, and of course, fruitcake. These were always served to a skeptical, but ultimately appreciative audience. He could whip cream by hand using a pair of forks, and he routinely dried the lettuce by going outside with the lettuce in a dish towel and whirling it around his head. No wonder he was so much fun to be with; he always seemed be having fun himself.
Steve Kidder ’70 knew Tommy from their Milton days. “Tommy was the person to whom any one of us could go when something was wrong either with the world or with ourselves. He was always available when someone was down. His presence and companionship were a sanctuary for me and for all his friends – he would cock his head, look you in the eyes with that wry smile on his face and respond in a way that made you know he was not only listening, he also understood. Tommy Wales never left anyone behind.”
Ralph Fascitelli, who served with Tommy on the board of Washington Ceasefire, said, “Tom was unlike anyone I’ve ever met. He seemed to have no personal agenda. He only pushed for the common cause. He had these refined sensibilities for music and food and wine, and yet he was also tough as nails, intensely competitive, and fearless.” He also had a knack for getting people to do things they didn’t think they could do, whether it was climbing a mountain they didn’t think they could climb, or supporting a gun-safety measure they had sworn to oppose. I remember going with him one time to speak to a group about gun safety. He moved into the center of the circle of people and started his spiel. He rattled off statistics and anecdotes and showed an impressive ease with the crowd. He had that look of
Sadly, he has now left us all behind, all too soon. His early death leaves many tasks unassigned. There is much to be done. If there is anything positive to be found in the aftermath of the tragedy of Tom’s death, it is the motivation of those who knew him to try to be a little more fair, to be a little more generous, to try to live up to his standard to help others, our communities, and in doing so, ourselves. “Life is not a dress rehearsal,” Tommy said. “It’s the main event; don’t waste your time on the stage.” A foundation has been set up to promote and sustain the ideals in which Tom believed. More information is available at www.walesfoundation.org. Richard Wales ’72
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David Alger Is Dead at 57; Manager of Mutual Funds
By Douglas Martin The New York Times, September 25, 2001 David Alger, whose approach to investing in stocks propelled the mutual funds he managed to the top of the 90’s bull market, died in the collapse of the World Trade Center, his wife, Josephine, said yesterday. He was 57 and had homes in Manhattan and Tuxedo Park, N.Y. Fred Alger, left, and his brother, David, who was lost in the World Trade Center attack, pictured on the back cover of the book, One Way Up Wall Street: The Fred Alger Story, by Dilip K. Mirchandani.
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According to Gregory Duch, the executive vice president and chief financial officer of Fred Alger Management Inc., none of the 35 employees in the firm’s 93rd-floor office in the north tower at the time of the disaster appear to have escaped. Mr. Alger, a frequent guest on television shows about Wall Street investments, was known as one of the more prominent opponents of so-called value investing, most famously practiced by Warren E. Buffett. He rejected Mr. Buffett’s emphasis on underlying corporate values, relying instead on such factors as his own intricate analyses of future earnings potential. He became a leading proponent of technology stocks.
“He saw things that others didn’t,” said Don Phillips, managing director of Morningstar Inc., a Chicago firm which tracks the mutual fund industry. “He produced spectacular results.” When David Alger took over the firm’s operations from his brother, Frederick, in 1995, it managed $3 billion in assets and 82 employees. At his death, it managed $15 billion and had 220 employees, Mr. Duch said. Mr. Duch said that Frederick, who had remained as chairman, would return to serve as president and chief investment officer. Frederick’s son-in-law, Dan Chung, who previously worked at the firm, will be chief investment officer. The company has continued to do business at its offices in Jersey City and Morristown, N.J. David Dewey Alger was born on Dec. 15, 1943, in California, and grew up in Grosse Pointe, Mich. He graduated from Harvard where he majored in history, and earned an M.B.A. from the University of Michigan. In 1968, he began his career as a securities analyst, and in 1972 joined his brother’s firm. He ultimately owned 20 percent of the firm, with his brother retaining ownership of the remainder. Frederick moved to Geneva in 1995, leaving David in day-to-day control of the
business. David Alger became known for training analysts in the rigorous research methods he practiced. His elaborate computer-modeling techniques were accompanied by a reliance on old-fashioned legwork. He once dispatched a group of analysts disguised as graduate students to observe the holiday traffic at Toys “R” Us stores. In addition to his wife and brother, Mr. Alger is survived by a sister, Suzette Howard of Aiken, S.C.; and daughters Cristina de Marigny Alger of Cambridge, Mass.; and Roxana Geffen of Manhattan. Copyright © 2001, by The New York Times Co. Reprinted by permission.
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