Oak Leaves Spring 2014

oakleaves Spring 2014

Where are they now?

We catch up with alumni, from Texas to Trieste

Six Month Scrapbook Alumni Notes

THE AFS

annual fund Help us meet the AFS Challenge!

Together we can reach our goals of $525,000 and 1,000 donors

EVERY GIFT MATTERS Help us surpass last year’s successful $502,209 campaign by giving online at http://www.abingtonfriends.net/giveonline

in this issue 2 8

Letter from Head of School

Alumni Faculty Staff Alliance

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Where are they now?

Life at AFS:

Six Month Scrapbook

Oak Leaves is a publication of the AFS Communications and Development Offices.

Richard F. Nourie Debbie Stauffer Jon Harris Judy Hill Gabrielle Giddings Jordan Bastien

Head of School Associate Head of School Assistant Head for Institutional Advancement Director of Communications Director of Marketing Director of Alumni Relations

Peapod Design

Publication Design

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Alumni Notes

In Memoriam 1

letter from the

head of school In this issue of Oak Leaves, we share the stories of 24 alumni, each showing glimpses of how lives become lives, particularly as begun in the lively and powerful community of Abington Friends School. The pathways followed, and more often created, are many and unfolding, few according to a master plan and more often marked by continual searching for meaning, fulfillment and contribution. They are stories of exploration, resilience, of uncertainty at times, and yet they show remarkable clarity about what matters over time.

As educators we set our sights on the whole lives of our alumni, well beyond their years at AFS. While we live immersed in the day-to-day busyness of learning in the classrooms, art studios, creek walks and basketball courts, our true mission and hoped for contribution is in the quality of lives lived and the goodness created by our alumni out in the larger world.

What we see clearly in the 24 stories in this issue is that education is not for an orderly world in which people are well prepared to meet the clear expectations of others in order to be successful. It’s amazing how much of the field of education seems to have this outcome in mind. In the reality of lives lived, we see that it is the ability to navigate uncertainty, imagine possibilities and be authentically motivated that allows good things to happen. Courage, a clear sense of what is truly valuable and persistence are reflected in these stories. And creativity, joy and playfulness also seem to be common ingredients.

As educators, these stories inspire us to continue to value an education that is deeply

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human at its heart, rooted in relationships where students are noticed, known and guided to experiences that will stretch, grow and inspire them. They encourage us to value the time spent in reflection, in grappling with ethical dilemmas and challenging each other to deeper understanding. And they remind us that an education focused on a full vision of who we are as human beings, intellectually, spiritually, artistically, and relationally is one that best readies our students for the journey of life ahead, uncertain as it most certainly will be at times.

I am grateful for all those who generously shared their stories with us in this issue and to Judy Hill for so beautifully capturing them in her interviews and in her writing. All over the world, in disparate fields and disciplines, AFS alumni are sharing the light of their lives beautifully, and that is something to be truly thankful for!

life at AFS:

Halloween

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month scrapbook

Once again, our faculty and students entered into the playful spirit of our annual Halloween Parade with a dazzling array of costumes ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous, and just about everything in between.

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Homecoming

»

november Since the soccer fields were drenched with rain, the traditional Homecoming soccer game took place in the Hallowell Gym. The turnout was great, nonetheless. The theater crowd gathered for a second year in the Black Box theater and Muller Lobby for a lively afternoon of improv theatre and jazz served up by Megan Hollinger and Alex Woods ’14.

Bianca Adams ’14 and Marissa Cotroneo ’14 signed National Letters of Intent to accept partial scholarships to play intercollegiate athletics next year. Bianca put her signature on a letter for Chestnut Hill College, where she will become a member of the Division II Griffins’ women’s basketball team. Marissa signed to play women’s lacrosse at Division I Central Connecticut State University. AFS alum Jesse Balcer ’92 is the Men’s Coach at CHC.

»

YoungArts Finalist

Collegiate Athletes

»

More than 100 alums returned to campus for Homecoming on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. New this year was a kick off breakfast for former faculty and staff in the Short Stable (see article on page 8). Alum students gathered as always in the John Barnes Room to reconnect with friends and former teachers before joining the Upper School students in the Meetinghouse for a special Meeting for Worship.

Diversity Summit

»

Out of more than 10,000 applicants, sophomore Lucy Silbaugh ’16 was named a 2014 YoungArts Winner and invited to participate in YoungArts Finals Week 2014 as one of 170 winners who traveled to Miami, Florida in January.

The YoungArts Foundation is a national scholarship program that honors and awards high school and college students, for their talents in the performing, visual and literary arts.

Upper School students (including Austin Levin ’15, Meqai Herder ’14, Jeremy Goode ’14, Morgan Burrell ’15 and Erica Groomes ’15) organized a high school Diversity Summit that drew students from 12 area schools to AFS. The summit was a follow-up to last spring’s Mid Atlantic Regional Diversity Conference, which AFS students organized in collaboration with the Perkiomen School.

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LIFE AT AFS : SIX MONTH SCRAPBOOK

Winterfest »

Winter Program

»

We gathered to celebrate the season with music, song, performances, holiday decorating and the telling of the traditional Winterfest poem.

Upper School students served as masters of ceremony as the Upper School chorus sang, the Jazz Band played and students from all divisions sang songs celebrating our rich cultural diversity.

The title of this year’s Lower School winter program was “El Dia y La Noche: The Day and the Night.” The entire program was bilingual, with singing, dancing, music making and movement featuring all of our Lower School students, from 3 years old to 4th grade.

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Out of the Blue «

MLK day of Service

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Yale University a cappella group Out of the Blue visited campus and treated students in every division of the School to their spirited, instrument free renditions of a wide variety of popular pop and rock songs.

National Merit Finalists

»

Our day of service in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. drew more than 400 people to AFS on January 20. Following a moving program in the Meetinghouse, we began a busy morning of volunteering. Together we decorated cookies, cooked meals for Aid for Friends, put together winter care kits, made scores of hats and scarves and teddy bears, sorted library books and created “theater in a box” projects.

A dozen seniors in this year’s class of 72 were recognized by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, three as finalists (Tom Gurin ’14, Rachel Adler ’14 and Mini Racker ’14) and seven as Commended Scholars. This placed a full 15% of our senior class in the top 3% of PSAT test takers nationwide.

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LIFE AT AFS : SIX MONTH SCRAPBOOK

»

Blood Drive

Members of the AFS Community Service Council and the American Red Cross are grateful to the students, faculty and parents who came out to support the AFS Blood Drive and collectively donated 53 pints of blood, potentially saving as many as 159 lives. Students Maddie Vouros ’14, Jenna Blum ’14, Julia Shepard ’15 and Lily Roth ’14 served as all-day volunteers.

Letter of Intent » AFS 12th grader Joey Harding ’14 signed a National Letter of Intent indicating his decision to attend Fairfield University on an athletic scholarship to play Men’s Soccer.

We congratulate Joey as he celebrates this significant milestone.

february 7

Alumni Faculty and Staff Alliance At our last Homecoming on November 27, 2013 we added a new event that we hope will become a regular addition to the AFS calendar. In the Short Stable of the Meetinghouse, we welcomed more than 20 former faculty and staff to a kick off breakfast for the newly formed Alumni Faculty and Staff Alliance (AFSA).

Cyndi Silverman, who retired last June after 32 years teaching at AFS, sees it as “a way to stay in contact with AFS and to give back to the community we love and cherish so much.” It’s easy, says Cyndi, for those who have retired to feel disconnected. “Some people who had retired told me they felt that they weren’t in contact anymore with activities at the school and they really wanted to be.”

Lynne Mass (left) with Bruce Brownell and Liz Mosley

The brainchild of four former AFS faculty, Cyndi Silverman P’01 P’05, Barb Handler P’08, Lynne Mass G’20 and Bev Green P’85 P’88, AFSA was formed to help former faculty and staff maintain a connection both to AFS and to each other.

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2014

“We really valued the time we spent at AFS and we don’t want to be forgotten,” adds Barb, who retired in 2012 after 23 years teaching art at AFS. “We want to be included in activities where it would be appropriate. Last year I went to every concert, every play and the senior art opening. I still know those students and want to stay connected. We don’t suddenly stop being interested in the kids. I’d like to know when a kid wins an award or does something amazing.”

“I always thought there needed to be more of a connection for people when they left,” says Lynne Mass, who taught science at AFS for many years. “The School works hard to build connection and community but there needs to be a connection after you’ve left, too.”

a book club and visits the gym regularly.

She recently had prints accepted in the annual Abington Art Center Juried Exhibition and the Cheltenham Art Center Members Show, where she won the Richard Nexom award. “It makes me feel like a real artist again. That more than anything has helped me make the transition from being a teacher to being an artist,” says Barb.

Cyndi Silverman (left) with Barb Handler

“Walking in the door as a teacher again was like coming home,” she says. “You can leave AFS but AFS doesn’t leave you.

It stays in your heart.”

As well as finding ways to bring former faculty and staff back to campus for school events, AFSA is also interested in exploring how they can become a stronger resource to the School, sharing their gifts and experience through workshops, mentorships or other avenues. “We’re looking into all kinds of ways the School could tap into those many years of teaching.”

One area of experience retired teachers could offer each other helpful advice on is the subject of retirement itself. “If you don’t have a plan you’ll wake up and say, ’Now what will I do?’” says Lynne, who thought through her retirement carefully before taking the plunge. As well as relocating geographically (to Florida, for half of each year), she pursued a long-held interest in photography. She has since won numerous awards, and her photographs have appeared in many exhibits, including the All Florida Artists Juried Art Show.

Cyndi’s first year of retirement has been busy helping her daughter, Jenna Silverman ’01, who recently opened a coffee shop in Center City Philadelphia called I Am Coffee.

For Bev, who retired 13 years ago, “it took about a year for me to realize what I missed and what I didn’t miss. I didn’t miss taking home the piles of papers, but I did miss teaching writing.” Bev has gone on to do private tutoring, as a way to keep teaching.

Recently, she spent time on campus working with our Chinese students.

“Walking in the door as a teacher again was like coming home,” she says. “You can leave AFS but AFS doesn’t leave you.

It stays in your heart.”

For Barb, the first year of retirement was tough. “I think it would be great if recently retired faculty could meet with faculty thinking of retiring and talk to them about making that transition,” she says. “You may have a grand plan but implementing that plan is a whole different thing. For me it felt like I had cut off an arm. For teachers, you are what you do.”

Now in her second year of retirement, Barb has figured out how to make it work. She takes print making classes (“Though I could teach the class it allows me to use a studio”), plays bridge once a week, attends

From left, Barb Handler, Cyndi Silverman, Lynne Mass and Bev Green.

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Where are they now?

We catch up with AFS alums from Texas to Trieste

For this issue of Oak Leaves, we tracked down a couple dozen AFS alums to find out what they’ve been up to since their days in Jenkintown.

A peripatetic bunch, these adventurous folks are making their mark in Houston, Peking, Seattle, Ghana and the wilds of Wisconsin (to name just a few). We talked to a VP at Amazon, a grilled cheese guru, a transplant surgeon and a rabbi (again, to name just a few) and what we heard fascinated and inspired us.

These are doctors and lawyers, screenwriters and techies, engineers and educators, chefs and TV reporters who are passionate about their careers. They are also humble, grateful for the opportunities they’ve had and eager to reflect on the role that AFS played in shaping their lives and career paths.

We thoroughly enjoyed getting to know these amazing alumni a little better. We hope you do, too.

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in Technology Still, says Bill, many who knew him at AFS, where he was a lifer, might be surprised at where he is today. “I wasn’t a very mature kid in high school. In fact I was a substantial underachiever at AFS,” says Bill. “I didn’t get good grades and I didn’t study very hard. I was selective in the sense that I would engage in topics that were interesting to me.”

One of those topics turned out to be English.

Bill remembers Larry Wilkins AFSA looking at the courses he’d signed up for one semester and urging him to take a course in Romantic poetry. “He said, ’Bill I really think this is a course you need to take.’ Luckily I had the good sense to take his advice.”

Bill Carr ’85 Vice President of Video and Music at Amazon Seattle, WA On a typical workday, Bill Carr’s meetings start around 7 am and continue back to back until after 6. By the time he leaves work he will likely have connected with colleagues in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and London. Frequently he’s on the road, too, traveling to Europe, Asia and the East Coast.

As VP of Video and Music at Amazon, Bill, 46, is responsible for the company’s entire digital music and video business. His team includes software developers and engineers, as well as marketing, licensing and business development managers.

When Bill joined Amazon 15 years ago, the company looked quite different. “We were really just in the business of selling books and music and videos and we’d just gotten into consumer electronics. Now we have 46 product categories and 25,000 employees in Seattle alone.”

Amazon’s Instant Video business occupies much of Bill’s attention, since it’s growing by leaps and bounds. Amazon recently created its own studio and began developing original TV shows (Alpha House and Betas, for starters) as well adding hundreds of series to the lineup.

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Bill’s road to Amazon began in Waterville, Maine, where he attended Colby College.

“When I was 18 being in a really small, isolated New England town seemed like a great idea,” says Bill.

That course led to another on modern American fiction taught by Liz Mosley AFSA. “And then I got into books that sparked my interest and began to be engaged in the subject matter.”

Playing soccer at AFS also boosted Bill’s self-confidence. Coached by Bruce Brownell P’97 P’02, AFSA, Bill’s team won the Friends Schools League championship for the first time. Bill was the goalie, and not a single goal was scored on his team. “That experience of having been a middling performer and then becoming a higher performer and having some success was pretty meaningful to me. Bruce really helped me figure out how to play that position well and helped me grow an awful lot.”

After a couple of years selling cars and office equipment back in Philadelphia, Bill enrolled in business school at Emory University and went on to work for Proctor & Gamble before meeting up with a Colby classmate who had begun a financial/tech startup in Boston and persuaded him to join the company. Another Colby alum working for Amazon lured him to the West Coast.

All that time focusing on becoming a good writer, says Bill, has served him well at Amazon where every meeting is conducted with a no-longer-than-six-page document rather than a PowerPoint. Everyone reads the document, and then a discussion ensues. “It forces people to be detailed and specific. A big part of my job is coaching people how to write well.”

“It turned out to be a good fit,” he says, “because with my experience at P&G and the startup I understood the retail and consumer packaged goods market as well as what it was like to work in a tech startup.”

Bill feels he got a good math education at AFS, too. “I do quite a bit of math in my job today. Though I do think if you spoke with some of my math teachers they might be surprised to hear that.

in Medicine “I spend a lot more of my time making sure human interactions move forward in a way that’s supportive of the overall organization.” don’t have a very high EQ [emotional intelligence] and I have this.”

David Leeser MD, FACS ’88 Associate Professor of Surgery, Chief of Kidney and Pancreas Transplantation, Director of Fellowship in Transplantation University of Maryland Medical Center, Baltimore, MD Playing sports. Being a Quaker. Singing in the choir. Studying theater in college. All of these experiences, says David Leeser, have made him a better surgeon.

David currently manages the entire kidney and pancreas transplant program at the University of Maryland. Prior to that he was a surgeon and program director at Weill-Cornell Medical College and before that he spent several years in the Army, running the kidney program at Walter Reed and serving two tours of duty as a combat support surgeon in Iraq.

“I really enjoy surgery,” says David, 43.

“That’s a really big drive for me, but I also like taking care of sick patients. Transplant combines a lot of medical issues with interesting and challenging surgical issues.

When you’re taking living donors into the operating room that’s a fairly stressful event because you can only hurt them.”

Majoring in both Chemistry and Theater at Swarthmore was one of the best decisions he could have made, David says.

“I frequently tell people the theater major was more important to what I do now than the chemistry major. I spend a lot more of my time making sure human interactions move forward in a way that’s supportive of the overall organization. Also, surgery in general tends to attract personalities that

AFS played a role, too. “The interpersonal skills I have are partly a result of the varied experiences I had at AFS.” A “bit of a renaissance person” at school, David was involved in choir, technical theater, acting, student government and the athletics program.

Though he had wanted to be a doctor since the age of five (Dan the Bandage Man was his favorite book), and science was always a favorite subject (“Emily Paar was a huge influence”), David says he was able to “do all kinds of stuff and have a very balanced experience” at AFS.

Born into a Quaker meeting, David is still involved with Byberry Meeting as well as Abington Quarter (a group of 11 Quaker monthly meetings). That’s how he connected with Hannah Schorsch ’13, who asked him if she could shadow him at the hospital for her SIP project last year.

“I told Hannah when she was coming down, bring your roller skates because it’s pretty busy,” says David. “One night we rolled into the house at 1 in the morning and were up at 5 and heading out again. I have to give her credit, she never wavered, and she just kept pushing. A lot of kids today don’t realize to achieve something takes a lot of hard work and it’s not always glamorous.”

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in Sports off emails. “When Tracy McGrady, who played in the NBA, announced his retirement last summer I had gotten a phone interview.

A week and a half ago I shot him an email and got him to come in on the show.”

Cristin knew that news and sports was where she wanted to end up before she left high school. An enthusiastic soccer player at AFS (with team mates Rebecca Arnold Seltzer ’99 and Amber Tyson ’99, among others), Cristin did her SIP project with Clear Channel Y100 in Miami working in production, marketing, sales and on-air with Matt Chord.

Largely as a result of her SIP project, Cristin landed a job as sportscaster for the campus radio station U92 while she was a student at West Virginia University. Back in Philadelphia after graduating she worked for Comcast SportsNet as a sales coordinator. Hankering to get back to the newsroom, she successfully pursued the job in Houston.

Cristin Dunn ’99 Booking Producer for Comcast SportsNet Houston, TX

“If it wasn’t for AFS, I know I wouldn’t be here today,” says Cristin Dunn.

“Here” is Comcast’s Houston-based sports network, where Cristin, 34, works as a booking producer tracking down guests for a show called SportsTalk Live as well as booking exclusive interviews for other shows on the network.

The work is fast paced and deadline driven.

And Cristin loves it. “I reach out to anybody and everybody and try to sell the network

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and pitch them the interview requests and hope to wrangle in some guests and stories and interviews with celebrities and famed athletes.”

Being up to date on what’s going on in the Houston area sports scene is a given.

And when a story comes up, Cristin hits the ground running, working the phones, reaching out to her contacts and shooting

“AFS is the reason I am what I am today,” says Cristin, who joined the School in 11th grade after suffering from an eating disorder as a teenager and switching from her public school. “It was much smaller than I was used to, and it was a lifesaver,” she says.

“It was great preparation for college, and it helped me develop self discipline. In my career I know exactly what I’m doing. AFS tries to teach you to be well rounded. If I’d been there for longer I think I would be a more well rounded person now. I tend to be very driven.”

Though women have broken a lot of barriers in the sports industry, says Cristin, “people are still going to judge you, and it can be a cutthroat business, but you just have to push through that and be yourself.” Some in Houston find her abrasive and too “Northeast,” To Cristin, it’s about getting the job done. “I’m very laid back out of the office, but when I’m here, we have a job to do. When it hits 5 pm Central Time, the show starts.”

in Law didn’t want to be a lawyer after all because the work wasn’t that interesting to me.

It was too much about finance and corporate operations.”

Several more moves in rapid succession led him, 14 years ago, to his current job.

“When I landed here I realized it wasn’t the law I disliked but I needed to be in an area of law I was interested in, and technology holds my interest.”

Brent Whitman ’80 Associate General Counsel, Capgemini New York City If Brent Whitman, 51, could imagine an alternative career for himself, it might be as an editor, he says, “because I really like working with expression and making words flow and making them clear.”

Not that he’s looking to change his job anytime soon. “Right now I can say I really like my job. I find it a very engaging intellectually challenging way to spend the day.”

As in-house counsel to the global technology consulting firm Capgemini, Brent negotiates consulting contracts between the company and its clients. “In these deals, which are usually in the millions of dollars, people really want to negotiate the contract,” says Brent, who also negotiates alliance agreements between Capgemini and other partners such as Hewlett Packard and Microsoft. Another component of his work is giving advice within the company about intellectual property issues.

Brent didn’t always know he wanted to be a lawyer, and even when he

realized that he did, it took him a while to figure out which facet of law intrigued him.

A strong all-around student at AFS, Brent, whose father was a doctor, was on the pre-med track at Harvard when he realized how much he enjoyed reading history.

Switching to a combined major in history and literature took him on a different path but, as Brent says, “It would be a shame to go to Harvard and not study something you’re passionate about.”

Going to law school (at NYU) after Harvard made sense to Brent as a way to keep his options open. His first job out of law school, at a big corporate law firm, was high pressure and high prestige, but not what Brent was looking for. “I started to think maybe I

When Brent is not on the phone negotiating the finer points of global contracts, he’s likely to be sitting at his desk word crafting.

“Ambiguity is the thing to always be avoided.

I’m always striving to write things as clearly and simply as possible. I have the challenge of taking something the client wrote and changing as little as possible to make it into something that states clearly something we can live with.”

Brent credits AFS, and specifically his classes with Mary Helen Bickley, for helping him become a good writer. At the end of his first year at law school, when he entered a writing competition to join the Law Review, Brent used Miss Bickley’s system for research and essay writing. “I followed it very precisely and did exactly what Miss Bickley taught us to do, and I wrote an excellent paper and sure enough I was taken onto Law Review. I’d had a good undergrad education but in that situation I was very consciously reaching back to something I learned in high school.”

Another enduring legacy from AFS (where he was a lifer) is his love of music.

A member of the Harvard Glee Club, Brent now belongs to a concert choir in New York City, and music continues to be his most important sideline. “I got a great musical foundation at AFS starting in Lower School, and by the time I was in Upper School I was being introduced to really advanced music history and theory concepts.

I appreciate that very much about my AFS education.”

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in Engineering theme. “One year I looked at the effects of rock salt on grass and another year I looked at water hyacinths and their ability to extract heavy metals from the water and whether they could be used as a means of pollution control.”

Alexandra Sullivan ’98 Technical Development Manager, ENERGY STAR Commercial Buildings Program, Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC Last time you shopped for a new washing machine, you probably looked for models with the ENERGY STAR sticker indicating high energy efficiency. There’s also an ENERGY STAR program for buildings, administered by the Environmental Protection Agency, and one of the people in charge of that program is Alexandra Sullivan, a Brown Chemical Engineering graduate who also has a master’s degree in Public Administration from Columbia University.

As well as overseeing the programming of the online software tool that tracks the energy efficiency of buildings, Alexandra also develops the metrics used in ranking performance. Much of her time is spent doing statistical analysis of building data and writing detailed documents for her programmers to follow as they update and refine the software.

If that sounds technical, it is, but as Alexandra explains, “I like that there’s a direct relationship between what I’m doing and what people in the real world are doing.

I don’t feel I’m behind the scenes or isolated from people who use what I do. There’s

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a lot of opportunity to get feedback and explain the technical aspects and really engage them.”

She also gets to escape from her Excel spreadsheets to go to conferences and talk about the methodology her team uses.

She has traveled to Italy and Japan to discuss energy efficiency tracking and is currently in a partnership with Canada developing metrics specific to that country.

Environmental work has always appealed to Alexandra, who remembers presenting at science fairs throughout her high school years at AFS, always on an environmental

After graduating from Brown, Alexandra stayed on in Rhode Island for a couple of years doing onsite environmental assessment and remediation. “It was valuable to do that kind of hands-on sampling of the soil and water, and it’s a part of what led me to grad school. Being in New England I was struck how there are different laws in each of the three states I worked in and a different process for how you report cleanup and such. I was interested in how and why the laws were different and how policies get set.”

Though engineering has been at the center of Alexandra’s life since her undergraduate days, her wide variety of interests (sports, PRIDE, Latin and Greek) made her something of an anomaly in her hyper focused field. “One of the reasons I chose Brown was because professors I’d met with at other universities told me it wasn’t worth my time studying classics or studying abroad. Brown is more similar to AFS in the sense of valuing a broad background and pursuing all your interests, even if they seem disparate.”

At Brown there were more women than men in Alexandra’s group, but now she frequently finds herself outnumbered. “When I go to a meeting about data center efficiency I’m often the only woman. One conference I spoke at recently I was the only woman on the agenda. Not everyone assumes a young woman with a mass of curly hair will know what she’s talking about. Knowing that you have a degree in engineering changes people’s opinion. You can sense there’s a shift when they’re like, ’Maybe we should listen.’”

in Entertainment majored in English but took media and news classes at nearby Morehouse and Park Atlanta, as well as participating in a summer newsroom academy at NYU.

Kalia Baker ’09 Reporter/Anchor NBC Rhinelander, WI “Today is minus 10 degrees here, with a wind chill of minus 30,” says Kalia Baker, 22, as she talks about her life as a reporter/anchor for WJFW TV12, an NBC affiliate in Rhinelander, Wisconsin.

That’s an hour from the nearest big town, Wausau, two hours from Madison and three hours from Milwaukee.

It’s a far cry from the bustling metropolis of Atlanta, where Kalia attended Spelman College and held an internship with CNN. But Kalia is okay with that. Here in tiny, remote Rhinelander, Kalia is getting “really good hands on experience.” As writer, producer and cameraman, she’s pretty much a “one-woman band,” finding her own story ideas, writing her script, shooting her own B roll and editing her own video.

Right now, as morning reporter, Kalia’s shift is 3 am to noon. “When I get in at 3,” she says, “I’m looking for national stories and state stories folks should know about.”

The job is fast paced, but that’s part of the appeal. “You have to think on your feet.

You exercise all your senses.”

Kalia describes herself as “precocious and energetic” in high school. AFS, she says, gave her a voice. “Actually I think maybe AFS gave me too much of my voice,” she laughs.

“I tended to be very vocal about things that bothered me. I talked a lot in good ways, too, though, and I think I was an active member of the community, very involved with PRIDE and very social.”

A lifer at AFS, Kalia describes her time at the School as a “very honest growing time,” when she learned a lot about herself and grew in maturity in high school thanks to teachers like Cyndi Silverman P’01 P’05, AFSA, Mary Lynn Ellis P’01 P’03 and Renie Campbell P’02 P’04.

Now, with a clear eye on her goals, Kalia budgets her time and energy carefully.

“I’m either at home, at work or at the gym,” she says. After all, “You’re only as good as your last story.”

While she used to think she just wanted to be an anchor, Kalia finds she enjoys the rush of reporting and finding something new every day. “I get to do live shots and interview people. Last week for a local live interview I got on roller derby skates.

This week I’ll be trying out ice skates for the first time!” So now her five-year plan is to land in a top 50 market like Philadelphia, Atlanta or somewhere in Texas or the Carolinas, both anchoring and reporting.

With several family members in the media business, a career in TV was always something Kalia had considered, but “I didn’t nail it down until maybe my junior year of high school.” At Spelman, she

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in Sports

When the team travels, Josh goes with them.

“A typical road trip like the one I have coming up we’ll fly to LA and then have an off day there on Saturday and then on Sunday we’ll play the game and then fly to San Francisco. We’ll play Golden State on Monday, leave on Tuesday and go to Utah. Then back to Philly.”

Josh Schrager ’06 Associate Producer, Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia, PA Josh Schrager, now 26, knew from the age of 15 or 16 that he wanted a career in sports. As a sports fan and an athlete, as well as an enthusiastic participant in AFS theatrical productions, he assumed that meant being on camera, as a sports anchor or a reporter. Through a series of internships while earning his degree in Broadcast Journalism at Temple University, Josh got to see what goes on behind the scenes.

“I fell in love with the behind-the-scenes aspect and all the preparation that I had no idea went into it,” he says. “You can really put your own spin on what the viewer sees.”

As Associate Producer for the Philadelphia 76ers games on Comcast SportsNet, Josh is in charge of all the graphics that appear onscreen during the game. “I talk to the producer and we come up with the graphics package we want to build,” he explains.

“I’ll pre build a lot of different stuff, and then

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there’ll be in-game stuff, too. It’s all stats based. I have a bunch of computers in front of me, one with graphics, one with stats, and I also have to make sure all the sponsors get in there. It is complex. But once you get the hang of it, things kind of flow.”

The hours are unconventional—1pm to 10 pm on a typical day—and so is Josh’s workplace, a stationary 18-wheeler in the Wells Fargo truck bay with a control room set up inside.

For the most part, players and coaches don’t intersect too much with the production staff. “Players tend to hang out with fellow teammates,” says Josh. “They have a job to do and we have a job to do. It depends on the player, though. This year’s coaches are very friendly they’ll stop and say hello, and [76ers Center] Spencer Hawes waved goodbye to me yesterday, which was kind of nice.”

In his downtime, Josh sings with KeyStone, a part-time professional six-voice contemporary a cappella group. During the summers he works on the score bug—the little graphic that displays the score and other statistics—for the Phillies.

Though the pace can be grueling, Josh likes having days that are “jam packed and busy.”

It reminds him of his senior year at AFS when after a full day of school he would have varsity baseball practice and then rehearsal for She Loves Me, the Upper School musical that year.

“I was stretched thin, but I like life that way. I like having multiple facets of life.

You can’t do it day after day but I enjoy having a busy day where everything is in there. At the end of the day I’d be tired, but it helped me figure out that I loved sports and I loved music. AFS was good to me in that way.”

in Entertainment Mike

’99

Lighting Designer New York, NY

Though he’s worked in theater on and off Broadway, lighting designer Mike Grabowski, 32, found his true calling in the television studio. For the last 12 years, Mike has been lighting a wide spectrum of TV productions including ABC’s Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, The Jenny McCarthy Show, and AMC’s Comic Book Men. Regular clients include NBC, ABC, CNN, MTV, Bravo and Comedy Central and more.

The work involves an aesthetic component, working with a production manager and set designer, producers and the director to get the desired visual effect, and also a technical aspect, determining the appropriate lights and fixtures and working with a team of electricians and gaffers to put them up and figure out how to manipulate them during a program to build different looks while being sure to hit a deadline for a live broadcast.

Favorite projects have included working for Total Request Live (aka TRL) a celebrity show on MTV. Mike designed the lighting for its finale in 2008, where 50,000 to 80,000 packed into Times Square. Working on CNN is always interesting, says Mike, because you’re working on live, breaking news. Just in one summer there was the bombings in the London subway, the death of Terry Schiavo, the passing of the Pope and the capture of Saddam Hussein. “I remember getting a call from CNN at 4:30 in the morning. ’Mike we need you to come in. Saddam Hussein got captured. We’re going live.’”

In that kind of situation Mike will work out the logistics with the cameraman and the

director. “Maybe if the typical show is two anchors sitting at a desk, we’ll come in and relight them for doing a roundtable discussion. It’s a fun energy if you’re on a team with great people.”

Mike knew by the time he graduated from AFS that he wanted to be a lighting designer, enrolling in the SUNY Purchase Design Conservatory specifically to concentrate in lighting. After working in theater, including a stint in Philadelphia with the Arden and 1812 Productions, Mike stumbled into doing some TV work for a friend of a friend. “It fit my personality, my style and the way I work, and it just snowballed from there.”

Coming to AFS in 7th grade, Mike studied magic for his EGIS project and ended up being friends with a group of boys in high school who shared his passion for magic tricks and juggling.

“I ended up doing some street performing on South Street and in my senior year as a way of giving back to the scholarship fund and the Arts Department, we put on a magic show to raise some cash and show our appreciation.”

Much of Mike’s free time in Upper School was spent building and lighting shows, under the tutelage of Technical Theater Director Fran Brookes. Mike was impressed that Fran and others in the Arts Department were working professionals. “On weekends and nights they were going out and actually practicing their craft and teaching us about it. It gave more weight to what they were saying.”

By the time he graduated, Mike had been picking up odd jobs in theaters for a couple years. And when there was some trouble with the PA system on Commencement Day, they knew just who to call on to fix it.

“I remember getting a call from CNN at 4:30 in the morning. ’Mike we need you to come in. Saddam Hussein got captured.

We’re going live.’”

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in Food watercress, pickled green tomatoes and barbecue potato chips (that’s right, you guessed it, the chips are in the sandwich). The plain grilled cheese sandwich also does really well, confides Rebecca.

That Rebecca is thriving as a chef should come as no surprise to her AFS contemporaries. A chili cook-off winner at the age of 12, Rebecca was teaching cooking classes at Chestnut Hill’s Water Tower Recreation Center by the time she was a teen, and for her Middle School EGIS project, she took on a comprehensive study of the eggplant.

Rebecca Foxman ’07 Chef Philadelphia, PA and Brooklyn, NY When AFS teachers Kristina Denzel ’93 P’28 and Andrew Bickford P’28 feel like having some comfort food with a twist, they often zip down to the Reading Terminal with daughter Stella and head over to Meltkraft, a stall in the market that serves some of the best grilled cheese sandwiches you’ll find anywhere.

AFS alum Rebecca Foxman, 25, is the chef at Meltkraft, and, as company chef for Valley Shepherd Creamery, in Moorestown, New Jersey, she also helps run a similar restaurant in Park Slope, Brooklyn. “I design the menu and run the culinary side for both places,” says Rebecca. “I act as managing chef in Philadelphia, and in Brooklyn I have a team I’ve hired to run the place when I’m not there.”

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WHERE ARE THEY NOW ?

The focus for both restaurants is to showcase the 35 or so varieties of cheese the creamery produces, and what better way to do that than with a grilled cheese sandwich. Rebecca’s most popular creation is the Valley Thunder, made with sharp cheddar, brisket and macaroni and cheese (yes, mac and cheese, in the sandwich).

Another favorite is the Melter Skelter, made with raclette cheese, jalapenos,

“I’ve always liked history and food anthropology,” says Rebecca, “and just the history of the eggplant in America alone was fascinating. I also came up with my own challenge to make 15 dishes using the eggplant. I remember I did roasted eggplant soup, eggplant with goat cheese and crostini garnish, eggplant napoleon...”

Rebecca also started an AFS culinary club for both students and teachers, with cooking classes held in the kitchen at the Meetinghouse. On graduating from AFS, Rebecca attended the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, and took advantage of their partnership with Cornell University to also earn an accelerated bachelor’s degree in hospitality management at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration.

“I really like food and I like eating,” says Rebecca as she explains her career choice.

“It’s hard work, but it allows you to interact with food and be artistic and express yourself. It’s nice to get a lot of instant gratification, too. I like the community of people that are in it and I like a job where I can be creative and not sit at a desk.”

in Technology Alex, now 25, relocated to Seattle for a brief stint as a program manager on Windows user experience at Microsoft before heeding the siren call of Brown once more and returning east. Brown professor and computer graphics pioneer Andries Van Dam, for whom Alex had been doing research since his sophomore year, invited him to jump back into the fray to consult on his user interface and user experience work.

Independent Consultant, Computer Science Providence, RI

Alex’s research group is currently working on issues related to touch technology and bringing software that is generally difficult to combine with touch, such as complicated drawing programs, into the touch world.

For Alex, the enduring appeal of computer science, both as a student and now as a consultant, is that as with the visual arts, “with every single piece of homework, every single project, there’s a tangible result. You create a piece of software that does something. There’s instant gratification.”

Alex Hills likes tangible results. As a budding artist in Barbara Handler’s Upper School art class getting those results meant creating strikingly inventive 3D works and sculpture. Alex was also exceptionally strong in science and math as a high school student, though, and when it came time to pick a college and a possible major, Alex headed to Brown intent on pursuing a degree in mechanical engineering.

Alex has also found time to co-found Green Heron, a tech startup in Providence that has created Glance, a tool that helps researchers track wildlife sightings and collect data digitally using an app on their cell phone. With a prototype of the app in hand, Alex and co-founder Jessica Herron are now in the selling phase, garnering support for their software.

Alex Hills ’06

That plan changed when he took his first computer science class, a requirement for his engineering major. “I took one class and loved it, so I took a follow up, and by the end of my first year I’d dropped engineering and switched to computer science.” In his sophomore year he took an honors visual arts class (“Thanks to Barb”) and by 2011 had earned both a B.A. in Visual Arts and a B.S. in Computer Science.

By his senior year, Alex’s artwork had evolved to combine engineering, computer science and electronics knowledge, and he was creating complex digital installations where, for example, the act of someone moving in a room would cause images to change on the walls.

After staying on at Brown for a fifth year to complete an MS in Computer Science,

At AFS, as well as being a gifted artist and scientist (“Honors physics with Jordan was one of the funniest classes I’ve ever taken!), Alex says the English track taught him to think and write well. “When I took English and Art History classes at Brown, I could write circles around everyone else, and we’re talking an Ivy League school with a liberal arts focus. AFS really got my writing skills up to par.”

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in Technology sitting down with my mom and going through different careers that would still have some connection to basketball.

I figured something in the financial industry could work where I could reach out to players and help them stay financially afloat.”

After an AFS connection led him to New York Life Insurance Company, he told his future manager he wanted to work with athletes. “It turned out, his primary business is athletes,” says Brandon. “It’s weird how it all worked out.”

Brandon Williams ’07 Financial Services Professional Philadelphia, PA Anyone who was in the AFS Upper School from 2005 to 2007 likely remembers Brandon Williams’ prowess on the basketball court. During his two years at the School he helped lead the Kangaroos to a 20-1 record and the Friends Schools League Championship in 2006.

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Brandon, 25, went on to play basketball for Chestnut Hill College, where he earned a BA in Business Administration. Again, he was a star on the court, achieving the program’s fourth best rookie campaign, helping the Griffins reach their first Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference Semifinals, and leading the team during his senior season, during which he recorded his 1,000th career point.

one February day in his senior year, Brandon underwent a slew of medical tests that kept him away from basketball until he was finally cleared in June. Brandon had planned on going out to California to train and get ready for overseas combines taking place that summer. With just two weeks to catch up on months of missed play and having also discovered arthritis in both hips, Brandon faced a new reality and an uncertain future.

Having toured with an exhibition team in Italy during his junior year, a career in professional basketball seemed reachable.

Then fate intervened. Passing out on court

“It was pretty scary,” says Brandon. “I didn’t have internships or anything lined up. All I knew was basketball and I needed to figure out fast what I wanted to do. So I ended up

WHERE ARE THEY NOW ?

Brandon works with clients on every aspect of their financial portfolio. The learning curve has been steep and time management, says Brandon, is key, since he has to find time to do paperwork, make calls and cultivate new clients.

Being an athlete has helped. “Athletes know what they need to get done,” he says. “Not every athlete has the same work ethic or drive, but the majority of successful ones do.

In college it was like, ’I’ve got two papers due and a playoff game. I’ve got to get it done.’ And you do.”

Navigating and organizing his resources is a skill he honed at AFS, too. “It was a wake up call,” says Brandon, of entering AFS from public school in 11th grade.

“I struggled, but it was a good shock for me. People like Don [Kaplan] and Janet [Frazer] put such an emphasis on writing, and that was what gave me a foundation.

Writing is arguing, being able to put together an argument. Don and Janet showed me you have to look at the background, not just the surface.”

Brandon still has the time management skills of an athlete, clocking in at the gym every morning at 6 a.m. to get two hours of exercise in before his workday begins and coaching Team Nelson, a 7th grade Amateur Athletic Union basketball team after work.

in Entertainment that actually work. Sometimes I enjoy it, sometimes it’s hair pulling.”

Andrew Pritzker ’78 Screenwriter, Kansas City, MO “When I was growing up my mother always drilled it into my head that I should be a doctor,” says Andrew Pritzker, 39, now a screenwriter in Kansas City. “And anytime someone would say, ’What do you want to be when you grow up?” she would jump in and say, ’He wants to be a doctor.’”

Andrew went along with the program, he says, until one Thanksgiving. “I saw a bag of giblets burst open in the sink and there was skin and blood everywhere. I said ’I do not want to be a doctor, or a chef either.’ My father is a lawyer, so that was the next logical step.”

Even though he loved comedy, film and theater and was, “the kind of guy who sits in the library and reads the collective works of Neil Simon and laughs out loud,” it wasn’t until his senior year at AFS that he began to see a different future for himself.

“I was going around to college fairs and checking out prelaw and various law schools,” he says. “I was just sort of walking along like a zombie until I got cast as the lead in Death of a Salesman at AFS. That was a life changing experience. My eyes opened up to something I really loved. I felt a surge of energy, devotion and joy and I thought, ’I do not want

to be a lawyer.’ Not that I wanted to run out and be an actor either, but I wanted to do something creative.”

After AFS, Andrew attended Boston University’s School of Communication, later transferring to the creative writing program at Emerson College. A gig producing comedy and jazz concerts in New England was followed by a brief career in advertizing copywriting before Andrew was accepted into film school at the University of Southern California.

For the next 17 years, Andrew lived in Los Angeles working as a script doctor, work that he still does today. “The script is like the blueprint of a building,” he explains. “If there are weak points, the building might collapse.

Often a script has problems, and when the writer can’t figure it out they pass it on to somebody else who can rewrite part of the script or tell them exactly where the problems are or how to develop the parts

Since moving to Kansas City six years ago, Andrew has taught screenwriting (at Avila University), written a novel and a screenplay, started a production company (Qikfinger Films) and is working on a short film that he plans to shoot in June and take out on the festival circuit.

Though he learned film making the “old school” way at USC, with film, Andrew says that technology has now caught up with his ambitions. “You can basically shoot and cut a professional grade film on a laptop now, so I invested in all the photographic gear I needed and launched into this venture. The short, which is called Perk, is already cast and I have a production team together. I’m having an editor in LA cut it for me.”

Writing, says Andrew, is at the heart of everything he does. “You can separate the various categories of writing, but if I’m writing prose or satire or a sketch or a script it still all comes down to the craft of writing.” His love of that craft was stoked at AFS, where he was particularly interested in English and history.

“We had teachers that brought those subjects alive and made them vibrant.”

Andrew’s novel, which is currently being shopped around to agents, is a female driven comedy western based on a Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship winning screenplay he wrote in 2007.

Andrew’s time at AFS, he says, helped him to discover an amazing array of opportunities.

“As a kid you don’t really know who you are. The school didn’t just develop you academically. They asked you to look inside yourself and figure out who you were. I’m still doing it. Still trying to figure it out.”

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in Education Jeremy Sullivan ’96, P’27 History Teacher, Youth Soccer Center Academy

Wayne, PA

“Sometimes you wind up where you’re supposed to be. I was a lifer at AFS for 14 years. I never thought I’d wind up living back in the Philadelphia area and sending my daughter, Avila, to AFS,” says Jeremy Sullivan, 38.

Jeremy’s journey home came after more than a decade away, during which he got his bachelor’s from Oberlin College, tried his hand at advertizing in San Francisco, worked in academic accreditation, earned his PhD from the University of Maryland, developed a history program for DC public schools and bounced back to the West Coast for a couple of years to teach history as an adjunct professor at Long Beach State University.

When his wife, Amy Widestrom, a professor of Political Science, landed a tenured faculty position at Glenside’s Arcadia College, the family happily settled back in the area.

Jeremy is now the history coordinator for the Youth Soccer Center Academy in Wayne. “A long and winding road led me back home,” says Jeremy, “and I feel really fortunate.”

While the Youth Soccer Center (which is affiliated with the area’s professional soccer team, the Philadelphia Union), has been around for a number of years, the Academy is brand new. The idea is based on a European model, where young soccer talent is developed in academies that have both soccer training and academics. Soccer phenom

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WHERE ARE THEY NOW ?

David Beckham went to one such academy, as did Barcelona star Lionel Messi.

Students at the grade 8-12 school train before classes start and continue after school, with academic classes in between.

Each discipline—English, math, science and history—has just one teacher (the school currently serves 35 students in all), and Spanish and the other electives that fill out the curriculum are taught online.

“I teach all the history in the school,” says Jeremy, “from the Greeks and Romans up to Obama’s State of the Union.” Classes meet twice a week for an hour and a half, allowing for plenty of flexibility in the teaching. “At a small school there’s a lot of opportunity to mold the education based on what the students need. We adapt on the fly with new ideas to meet students’ needs. Our Head of School [Nooha Ahmed-Lee] is really open to that kind of flexibility, in the tradition of John Dewey.”

Jeremy’s largest class has 13 students, his smallest five, and the students come from far and wide—one from Africa, one from Mexico, from both public and independent school backgrounds. The learning is active,

with independent research projects and written and oral presentations designed to develop the students’ analytical and critical reading skills more than their ability to memorize. “They all have smart phones.

They can find out who the president after Lincoln was in an instant.”

For Jeremy, the study of history is endlessly fascinating because “it incorporates everything—government, politics, art, culture, the natural world, weather and science. It all comes together to create what we call history.” He knew as soon as he graduated from AFS that he would major in History at Oberlin. Part of that had to do with his history education at AFS. “Michael Woods, now at Sidwell Friends, was a really influential teacher and Janet Frazer [Upper School History Teacher] was a great mentor for me.” He also will never forget a field trip to coal country with Middle School Social Studies teacher Tom Fleming.

Jeremy strives to give his students at YSC Academy a sense of ownership in their work. “That idea of ’Let’s build it together.’

That’s something I learned at AFS and again at Oberlin and made a part of my own pedagogy.”

“He knew as soon as he graduated from AFS that he would major in History at Oberlin.”

in Law His time in South Korea, says Michael, was transformative. “Teaching was fantastic. The country really embraced me. I became editor of a newspaper, started a basketball program, became a coach.” When he had an opportunity to extend his scholarship, he did so. “It was just one of the finest times of my life. And another example of someone pushing me to do something I didn’t know about and didn’t know I was capable of doing.”

Michael Athy ’04 Graduate Student, Harvard Law School Cambridge, MA Michael Athy’s young life has seen its share of laudable accomplishments: After winning a Fulbright Scholarship to live and study in South Korea for two years, he dedicated himself to another year of public service with City Year Philadelphia, an organization that works to keep at-risk kids in school.

Now, Michael is in his second year at Harvard Law School.

But as Michael, 27, tells it, it’s less about his own “intellect or determination or wit” and more about “the people in my life who have looked out for me.”

For starters, there was Sister Rosemary, who ran the afterschool program he attended in middle school. Though Michael was set to go to Germantown High School, Sister Rosemary insisted he visit AFS and, says Michael, lobbied for him tirelessly, telling the AFS Admission Office, “You need this kid.

You have to let him take the test.” Without her intervention, “regardless of how smart or determined I am,” says Michael, “I don’t know if any of this would have happened.”

Fast-forward a few years, and there was Jane Morris, director of undergraduate research and fellowships at Villanova University, where Michael pursued his undergraduate degree. She saw a spark in Michael and urged him to apply for a Fulbright. “She told me in Korea they have a great teaching program,” says Michael. “I’d never heard of Fulbright. It sounded prestigious but I had no interest in going to South Korea. I’d never even been outside of the country, and to live with a family I didn’t know for a year seemed overwhelming.”

Michael applied anyway, and made it through the rigorous selection process.

Watching an Eagles game in South Korea, Michael happened to see a commercial for City Year. “They were talking about impacting communities and doing powerful service.

I liked what they stood for, so I looked them up and applied,” says Michael, who spent the next year planning community service events with City Year, and working with an after school program twice a week. “It was a hard year,” concedes Michael, with long hours and little pay, “but it was definitely worth it and it further solidified that I wanted to do service in some sort of way.”

For Michael, law school is a stepping-stone to public service. He sees himself going into local politics. “Being a lawyer gives you credentials a lot of people respect within politics, and the law is still one of the most powerful ways to effect change.”

Harvard, he says, is “a great place to be as far as always being surrounded by people with great ideas who keep you on your toes and push you to want to do more, think more, be more critical.”

AFS, says Michael, “opened me up to a whole new set of experiences and perspectives about what it was possible for me to do. Where I came from there was a limited understand of what you could do. It was overwhelming to see all those options, but the school lets you know you can take advantage of those same opportunities.”

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in Finance I have plans for you.’ He put me in his car and we drove to Beaver [now Arcadia] College. He knew the head of the business program and he said, ’I want her in here.

What’s the fastest way for her to get a business degree?’”

Christine McPeak P’12 P’14, AFSA Owner, The Bean Counter Cheltenham, PA Christine McPeak’s first job was as a bank teller. Now she owns her own accounting company, The Bean Counter, in Cheltenham.

Between those two roles, though, Christine’s life has taken myriad twists and turns, and for much of it AFS has been right at the center. “This place,” says Christine, “has been a godsend to me.”

The mother of an AFS alum (Anna ’12) and a soon-to-be AFS graduate (Isabel ’14), Christine, 54, grew up in Jenkintown but never imagined her life would intersect with the School as both a parent and an employee. “I went to Immaculate Conception school in Jenkintown and we never crossed over Old York Road. We just never came over here.”

That changed when Christine, after several years living and working in New York City, returned to the Philadelphia area and, newly single after the breakup of her first marriage, went to live with her mother in Elkins Park.

Looking in the paper, she came across a job listing at AFS. Though it offered significantly less money than she had been earning, when then Head of School Bruce Stewart interviewed her and showed her around the

26

WHERE ARE THEY NOW ?

school, she was convinced. “I had an epiphany. I realized I wanted to get married again, I wanted to have kids and I wanted them to go here.”

As an administrative assistant in the Business Office, Christine soon began making her mark, including suggesting that the School hire an onsite maintenance staff instead of farming all the campus work out to outside companies.

Eating lunch in the cafeteria one day, Christine happened to mention how embarrassed and angry she was that she had never completed her undergraduate degree at Kutztown University (she had left to get married and move to New York City).

“Bruce Stewart, who was sitting at the table, said ’That’s really unacceptable, because

Christine recalls how she would leave work at AFS, attend classes at Beaver, and return to school to work on the computer.

“This was the late ’80s, nobody had computers then. I lived here and at Beaver for six years. Bruce was the best. If it hadn’t been for him my life would have taken such a different turn.”

When future husband Chris came on the scene, the pair began attending Meeting for Worship on Sundays and in time joined the Meeting. When Anna was born Christine began helping out with childcare at the Meetinghouse and since then she has held “every position under the sun” within the Meeting.

After a stroke in her mid 30s left her with a depleted energy level, Christine reduced her hours at the School and for a couple of years worked with Rusty Regalbuto P’02 P’11 running the summer camp program.

Having helped an AFS parent who was an architect with his accounting needs, Christine began to see that maybe she could start her own business. The Bean Counter came into being, and now counts several architects, a landscaper, an artisan painter and an educator among its growing client list.

As business picked up, Christine scaled back her work for the Meeting. “I said, ’Please don’t put my name in the hat for a couple of years.’ Next year, when Isabel is in college I’ll get back to doing more again.”

in Engineering Peter Handler, and he went on to do his SIP project with him, learning how to enamel and machining an aluminum beer stein in Peter’s studio to which he minted enameled copper plates.

At the medical device company in Providence, Jon is working on early stage product development for medical robotics.

That involves designing with CAD, then going to the machine shop and building prototypes. Working on a team with six other people, Jon says, “I’m really lucky to be on a pretty experienced team and they’re great on giving me guidance when I need it and letting me make mistakes and learn from them.”

Jon Hills ’08 Mechanical Engineer, Venture for America Fellow Providence, RI “I’m learning a crazy amount right now,” says Jon Hills. A recipient of a Venture for America Fellowship, Jon, 23, is currently working as a mechanical engineer for a medical device firm based out of Providence, Rhode Island. What has him so excited is the sheer amount of designing and building and breaking and “going through lots of iterations to try and make stuff work,” that he’s getting to do.

Venture for America, modeled after Teach for America, recruits the best and brightest college grads to work for two years at emerging startups in lower-cost-of-living cities (such as Detroit, Providence and New Orleans). The idea is to provide a path to entrepreneurship for graduates who want to learn how to build their own companies and create jobs.

Jon studied mechanical engineering at Brown, but that’s not the whole story.

Enrolled in a dual degree program, he also earned a BFA in Furniture Design from Rhode Island School of Design. “Applying to college I had initially planned on going to engineering school and pursuing art or

Reflecting on the similar paths he and his brother (Alex Hills ’06, see page 21) have taken, Jon attributes that at least partly to the household they grew up in. “My mom was always interested in art and textiles and stuff. My dad was a big science junkie, so we had periodic tables hanging in our rooms before we could even read.

I think the biggest thing was we had so much support from our parents. The message we got was, as long as you’re working your butts off and are happy that’s all that matters.”

design later in my career. My mom found this dual degree program and it seemed like a perfect fit, the best of both worlds.”

Even in high school Jon had a good idea of how he liked spending his time. “I liked physical problem solving and mental math problems. So I knew what the actual processes I liked to do were. A big part of what I like doing would have been missing if I’d just majored in some design field.

I love the really calculated, analytical aspect of engineering.”

In the summer of his junior year, Jon got a job building furniture for Upper School Art Teacher Barb Handler’s former husband

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in Medicine Damon Pryor ’06 Therapist Brockton, MA

Damon Pryor, 26, is used to long days. As an athlete and an actor at AFS he was one of those kids hanging out in the lobby at school long after most had left. Now, as a staff therapist with the South Bay Mental Health Center in eastern Massachusetts, he spends long workdays seeing clients in the clinic and traveling to their homes and schools as part of the child and adolescent trauma team.

“What I love about being a therapist,” says Damon, “is how different every person is, and trying to help them have the best life they can possibly have.” Being an AFS lifer made a difference, he says. “I got that whole service thing.”

In many ways, Damon describes himself as a rebellious high school student. “I wasn’t a prototypical student in any way,” he says, remembering challenges in the classroom and experiences both good and not so good.

“If I didn’t agree with things I would just walk into [Head of School] Woody’s office.

In retrospect I could’ve done it better. “ An active PRIDE member, Damon ran the group in his senior year, working to bring back Diversity Day and organizing the first group of students to attend the Students of Color Conference in several years.

“AFS allowed me to do a lot of things, to push for things and get things done. Being there so long and having teachers know me from so many aspects I didn’t get away with anything. Teachers pushed me into doing things to the point where I just started doing things on my own.”

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WHERE ARE THEY NOW ?

Originally an Engineering major at Rochester Institute of Technology, Damon switched to Psychology when he realized that’s where he was getting all his A’s and that’s where his passion lay. Boston College, with its strong social justice program, seemed a good fit for graduate school, and while pursuing his master’s degree in Clinical Psychology he was able to take advantage of opportunities to be a community advocate and engage in service work.

“I’d been to a Quaker school, a tech school and now a Jesuit school. I was interested in getting as much as I could from each different environment.”

For his second year internship at Boston College Damon created a group therapy program with another clinician for an older boys’ group home. “It was a unique challenge and a great experience,” says Damon. “I wanted to work with boys and adolescents and men, and this gave me a lot of what I wanted. My first client was a gang member who had just been taken away from home. I was like, ’OK, I have no idea what I’m doing, let’s figure this out.”

“Originally an Engineering major at Rochester Institute of Technology, Damon switched to Psychology when he realized that’s where he was getting all his A’s and that’s where his passion lay.”

Abroad It didn’t even feel like the Italy she’d read about and seen in movies. “There’s a lot of Eastern European influence in Trieste. They even have their own dialect, called Triestino.

It doesn’t look like anywhere else in Italy, either. It was part of the Austro Hungarian empire and it’s filled with these majestic, solid buildings. So it doesn’t look like Italy or sound like it, and it doesn’t even taste like it. You can’t find lasagna or cannoli, that’s all southern Italian food. We have things like meat and potatoes and lots of onions and strudel. I was completely confused when I got here.”

Erin

’05

Business English Teacher Trieste, Italy Many have nurtured daydreams of living and working in Italy.

The romance of the idea is hard to resist. Erin Russo acted on her dreams and made the move soon after graduating from Smith College, accepting a job as an English teacher in Trieste, a town she had never visited and knew next to nothing about.

Now, four and a half years later, Erin, 27, is living a busy and fulfilling bona fide Italian life, with an exploding teaching business, an Italian husband (Federico) and a spot on a regional women’s soccer team.

A typical day goes like this: Erin wakes up at 7 and heads out for a cup of coffee at a local bar. Then it’s off to work at the headquarters of Generali, Italy’s largest insurance company, where Erin recently landed a contract to teach business English to its employees. After three back-to-back classes in the morning, Erin checks in at The Hub, a community space and startup incubator in Trieste. Her role there is to help people who need English expertise writing and translating emails or perfecting their business pitches. Evenings find Erin at the Italian American Association, where she

gives English classes to the community and teaches scuola maternal (Italian preschool).

“It’s an emotionally and intellectually dynamic day,” says Erin.

“It was pretty harsh in the beginning,” confides Erin. “When you move to Italy you have all these ideas about how romantic it’s going to be, but when you’re working all day and you don’t know anyone, and you don’t really speak the language, you’re in this little bubble.” With scant teaching experience she found herself heading up eight classes of middle and high school journalism, computers and communication.

“I remember sending mom [Upper School Photography Teacher Donna Russo] emails asking for advice. She would always reply, ’It’s going to be alright. You can do it.”

Soon enough, though, Erin had made some Italian friends and begun to appreciate the charms of Trieste, a city of 250,000 people where, says Erin, “It’s like the TV show Cheers. Everyone knows your name.”

She also found a soccer team to play on. An athlete at AFS and always an active person, Erin was at a friend’s volleyball game one day when she saw a girl dribbling a soccer ball and asked her if she played for a team.

“There are so few women who play soccer here,” says Erin. “When I called up and said I was interested in playing, they said, ’OK, you’re on the team.’’’

As for her thriving English instruction business, Erin says, “It’s just networking.

There’s such a high demand because English instruction here is so poor. Companies are realizing their managers really need to know English. The networking is unbelievable.”

Working in Italy had been a dream of Erin’s in high school, when she took private classes with John McCabe, Upper School Language Department Chair. “I think that as a teenager, when you’re in a space where you feel safe and have a community around you that encourages you to do new things and explore, it helps you when you’re an adult to know who you are and what you’re capable of. You’re allowed to open up, try new ideas.”

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Abroad Brittany Botts ’11 Junior, Spelman College Atlanta, GA

“It was a very humbling experience,” says Brittany (known as Reeci) Botts of the four months she spent recently in Ghana. As an African American student, she says, “I went there thinking I was going to be embraced.” Instead, she says, “They thought I was a white person. I was seen as so ’other’ from them. As much as I identified with Africa before going there, I realized how different I was. That was one of the biggest lessons for me.”

And being Reeci, what began as a lesson ended up as a poem. At AFS, Reeci’s poems and spoken word performances had riveted all who witnessed them, and in Africa it was no different. Reeci performed at an open mic event and before she knew it she was invited to perform her poem, “African Amnesia,” on Ghana’s Radio Univers.

A Spelman College junior majoring in Sociology and Anthropology, Reeci traveled to Ghana through New York University’s Accra program and while there took classes on Ghana’s culture, hierarchies, socio economic status, racial ideology and such.

She also taught spoken word classes to middle school students and ran a girls’ empowerment group while she was there.

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In Ghana I was white. And in South Africa, I was colored, which means lighter skinned.”

Entranced by the beauty of South Africa, while also shocked at the poverty of so many of its black residents, Reeci hopes to return to South Africa on a Fulbright Fellowship to work with the black population.

“I have so much respect for black people there and how much respect they have for their land,” she says. “In South Africa people are ready to fight for what’s theirs and what was taken from them. That’s what makes me want to go back and provide inspiration.

I want to work with the young people there.”

Home for two weeks in December, Reeci then headed off again to South Africa, where she participated in an intensive institute for students of color examining what it means to transform the academy as people of color.

Long term, Reeci plans to pursue a PhD in African American studies and become a professor. “A lot of the things we know as true come from our predominantly white culture. I’m passionate about breaking that.

Every class I teach I let everyone have a voice in the classroom and I let them know what they have to say is valid and needs to be heard.”

For Reeci, this was another eye opening experience. “I feel like my racial identity has changed three times. In America I’m black.

Meanwhile, Reeci’s life is a whirlwind. In March she presented at the National Council for Black Students in Miami on the Impact of

WHERE ARE THEY NOW ?

Colorism Among Black Women, and this summer she will take part in a program at UCLA on African American studies.

Back in Atlanta she is busy working with high school students through the Peace + Love chapters she has founded at Howard, Spelman, Morehouse and Clark Atlanta. Through the program, college students travel to local high schools every other month and perform 90-minute assemblies focused on non-violence.

With so much going on in her life, Reeci sometimes misses the reflective space of Meeting for Worship. “I used to stand up so much and I was always mad about something,” she recalls, “but people listened to me. And I think I learned from that I don’t have to take no for an answer.”

“I always say I wish we could have Meeting for Worship here. Everything is moving so fast and at Spelman we have so many high expectations for ourselves. We’re trying to make stuff happen as powerful black women. If we could just have Meeting for Worship and have a moment to breathe…”

in Engineering Evan, now 23, chose Lehigh for his undergraduate degree partly because of its integrated business and engineering program. When he graduates this spring, Evan will already have some real life business experience under his belt. Since July of 2013 he has been at the helm of the Valkyrie Truck Company (http://valkyrietruckco.com), which makes adjustable base plates for skateboards.

A skateboard “truck” is the metal piece that connects the wheels to the board and determines how maneuverable or stable it feels. The truck has two parts, a hangar with axles and a base plate. Valkyrie’s base plates allow the rider to change the angle of the hangars using their existing trucks. “We’re ultimately allowing them to get more out of an already successful product,” he says.

Evan Aamodt ’09 Owner, Valkyrie Truck Company Graduate Student, Lehigh University Bethlehem, PA Even in eighth grade it was clear that Evan Aamodt had the mind of an engineer and an inventor.

That was when Evan, whose mother, Alysse Einbender, had become partially paralyzed as the result of a spinal arteriovenous malformation, designed an aftermarket add on for her wheelchair for his Eighth Grade Independent Studies project. The device allowed Alysse to pick up a lever on one side and propel it easily with one hand if she was holding a cup of coffee or carrying something in the other.

“I’ve always been someone who likes to tinker,” says Evan, who is currently completing his masters’ degree in Mechanical Engineering at Lehigh University. The EGIS project involved

a little more than tinkering. After making copious detailed sketches, Evan contacted Callahan Bearings in nearby Colmar to help him figure out which parts to use for his product, and worked with a machine shop for the final prototype.

Since kindergarten, Evan says, he had been making cardboard cars for fun with his father. “We had benches full of crazy looking cars. I was very fortunate in that my dad involved me in a lot of hands-on projects.

I failed a whole lot on a lot of projects, so by the time I started eighth grade, it was just another thing I tried.”

The idea came to Evan when he began skateboarding with his hallmate of freshman year. “We tried out a lot of different stuff and the biggest headache was dealing with those angles. That’s what prompted this product.” Ever the pragmatist, Evan tested out his idea exhaustively, setting up forums and seeking feedback until he had the design just right. “People liked the idea but other companies weren’t doing it right.

Their bases were making the board over an inch taller, which people didn’t want. Our base keeps the trucks at the right height.”

Made in Allentown by “an incredibly capable shop,” the bases are “a beautiful product,” says Evan who sees his niche product as a way to establish credibility in a market where there are many similar products.

Evan, who took every math class offered at AFS, as well as all the advanced physics and chemistry classes he could muster, calls the School “an absolutely phenomenal learning environment.” It was a disappointment, he says, “to come to college and find the quality of teaching so far below what I had at AFS. It just was not of the same caliber.”

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in Religion Kim Blumenthal ’96 Rabbi Ann Arbor, MI

There was no sudden revelation or pivotal moment.

Kim Blumenthal just always knew she wanted to be a rabbi.

And when she came to AFS at the age of 16, after a bad experience in public school, her conviction was not questioned. “People had always said to me, ’Oh, you’ll grow out of it.’

But at AFS it was like, if that’s what you want to do, then that’s what you need to do.”

Bruce Stewart, Head of School at the time, was particularly supportive. When Yitzhak Rabin was killed in 1995, the School held a special Meeting for Worship to address the intensity of the situation. “I’d never spoken in Meeting for Worship, but this time I did and through that I got to know Bruce. He was fantastic, and so helpful when I was looking at college and deciding on college.”

Kim, 36, earned her BA from Columbia University in Sociology and received Rabbinic Ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, where she also earned an MA in Jewish Education and a BA in Rabbinic Literature.

Since her high school days, Kim, 36. has spent time in many houses of worship and still finds Friends Meeting to be one of the most comfortable forms of worship, “because it’s such an easy environment to adapt to.”

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As one of two rabbis at the Beth Israel congregation in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Kim is involved in all aspects of synagogue life.

She works closely with the synagogue’s religious school and spends time making hospital visits, volunteering alongside the congregation’s students and visiting in the community.

“This is a really wonderful young vibrant town to be in,” says Kim of Ann Arbor, where she lives with her husband and two small children. “It’s a very academic community and the congregation was just what I had been looking for.”

“When she came to AFS, Kim says, she had never been in a challenging academic environment or one where students were valued for who they were.”

Being a rabbi “you have to love what you’re doing,” says Kim, “or you won’t be successful at it.” Other prerequisites for the job include strong writing and communicating skills—for writing sermons and articles, teaching, leading discussions and speaking from the pulpit—and the ability to be an active listener.

When she came to AFS, Kim says, she had never been in a challenging academic environment or one where students were valued for who they were.

“When I was switching to AFS there was a question from some people in my family about why I was going to a Friends school, but I couldn’t have asked for a more supportive environment.”

Kim gravitated in particular toward English. “I’d never had an English class that delved into literature the way AFS does, and I’d never worked on my writing skills in any productive manner.

I got so much out of the writing program. Bev Green [AFSA] was my writing teacher senior year and I still think the tools she gave me have made me a better reader and a better writer today.”

in Education helping me become a good teacher.

What AFS does for kids in terms of being nurturing is something they do for adults, too. It’s part of the ethos.”

When Eddie left AFS, it was to become program director of a Philadelphia nonprofit called Steppingstone Scholars, which works with low-income students and places them in college prep schools, including AFS. The program identifies talented students in public schools who are underserved and looking for stronger opportunities.

Eddie Mensah, AFSA Former AFS Faculty, Head of Middle School Charlotte Preparatory School Charlotte, NC Eddie Mensah’s new professional home, at Charlotte Preparatory School, where he has been Head of Middle School since last July, reminds him in many ways of his teaching days at Abington Friends School.

A small K-8 independent school in Charlotte, North Carolina, Charlotte Prep is a close knit community, says Eddie. “It’s similar to AFS in that respect. There’s a real strong familial feel to it and it’s also very dynamic and vibrant. The relationship between the adults and students is very cordial and the kids feel very comfortable talking to teachers in the hallways.”

Eddie, 40, taught Middle School math at AFS (1996-2001) and also coached JV and Varsity soccer. “AFS is where I cut my teeth.

I was fresh from college, but there was a

great culture of mentoring young teachers and that allowed me to hone my craft, to be a better teacher, decision maker and connector with kids. Bruce Brownell P’97, P’02 [AFSA], Ray Schorle [AFSA], those guys had so much experience but were also willing to learn from less experienced folks.”

People took care of each other, says Eddie, recalling how Upper School Math Teacher Carol Palmer nurtured his teaching talent.

“Carol, oh my goodness! She was so patient with me, she encouraged me, she pushed me. She really was very instrumental in

Brought into the program in 4th grade, the students attend summer school for two years and Steppingstone staff then help to identify one of several independent schools that might be a good fit and work with them through the application process.

The program continues with Saturday classes during the school year as the students move through middle and upper school. “The ability is there,” says Eddie, “but there’s a content gap. We help bridge that gap. It’s the kind of work that feeds your soul.”

After a decade of running summer school for middle school age kids every summer, Eddie felt he knew how to run a middle school program. “Here’s the thing with middle school kids,” he says. “It’s the period of time when the most change is happening and it’s the kind of change they themselves haven’t figured out. If you’re going to help them with that process you have to be ready for all the moods. In the morning they’re happy, at lunch they’re sad. They hate you and then they love you again. You also have to keep them interested and motivated.

You have to be really flexible.”

Ready for the next challenge after Steppingstone, Eddie decided to “try something more traditional in a school setting.” At Charlotte Prep he found just what he was looking for in terms of school size, structure and culture. “Plus, the weather is better!”

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Abroad enough Chinese to do certain things within a year and I did just that,” he says. The following year Daniel was a visiting student at Peking University studying development economics.

Back in the US for a year he worked in real estate investment, development and investment brokerage and then returned to Peking last fall to start a master’s in finance at Guanghua School of Management.

Daniel Singer ’06 Graduate Student, Peking University Guanghua School of Management Peking, China It takes an adventurous spirit to head off on a 3-month internship in Shanghai as a college student. It takes something more to return to China, teach yourself Mandarin, enroll in graduate school and become a foreign investment consultant and economics think tank editor. Daniel Singer, 25, has done all of these things, and his adventure is still in the making.

Long-term, Daniel aspires to work in bilateral/cross-border investment and possibly join the US Treasury Department, focusing on China policy. For now, Daniel is living and studying with Chinese students, working with Chinese colleagues and socializing with an international group including diplomats from Africa and Asia-Pacific and students from around the world.

When Daniel decided to go to China, he was studying finance at the McEntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia and had internship opportunities at financial services companies in both the US and in Shanghai. “The financial crisis had just

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WHERE ARE THEY NOW ?

passed us and the hot topic of the day was China, which had emerged unscathed more or less. So I said. ’I’m putting my feet where there’s an interesting story.’”

The internship whetted Daniel’s appetite, and he made plans to return after graduation to learn the language. Staying with a Chinese family in an urban apartment in Hebei province, Daniel had an up close and personal view of Chinese domestic life. “One day the son brought a rat home in a cage and accidentally let it loose in the house, so I was able to observe the father yelling at him.”

Instead of taking classes, Daniel found tutors and studied on his own. “You can learn

Daniel’s year of work experience back in the US, combined with his command of the language, helped him get a foot in the door with Chinese real estate investment. He also became editor for an economic think tank at Peking University.

As many inroads as Daniel has made, “I’ll never be Chinese,” he says. “There isn’t really yet a culture of diversity and inclusiveness and China is not at the point where foreigners that come here can be integrated. It’s very different from an AFS mindset where everyone is equal. I’m dating a Chinese girl and when we’re walking around I see people staring at us. I’m having to learn how to live as a minority in society.”

Daniel credits his ability to understand and appreciate this complex society partly to his poetry training at AFS. “To be someone with a command of the art in their own language has helped. Looking at what I’m able to do in Mandarin and in cultural understanding, a lot of it comes back to language. I read literature and poetry in Chinese as often as I can.”

One trait that AFS encouraged has proved tricky for Daniel in China. “At AFS I viewed some of my teachers as real friends. AFS taught me how to view people of a generation above me as peers. In China I’m reaching out to all sorts of people and a lot of Chinese just wouldn’t do that. It’s a problem.”

And just one more way in which Daniel is distinctly out of his comfort zone, and having the adventure of a lifetime.

in Medicine changed in the early 2000s, Sindy was involved in a multistate CDC study that showed that if you could do a rapid test and give the result then and there, you didn’t need a follow up counseling session and could get people into care more quickly.

The daughter of physicians, Syndi enjoyed the sciences as a student at AFS and went on to major in Biology at Bryn Mawr College.

From there she attended medical school at Temple University, and became interested in public health after doing her clinical residency program.

Sindy Paul ’75 Medical Director for New Jersey Department of Health Division of HIV, STD and TB Trenton, NJ Sindy Paul’s curriculum vitae is long and impressive. For the past 25 years she has worked at the New Jersey Department of Health, where she is currently the Medical Director for the Division of HIV, STD and TB Services. She has also worked extensively in the prevention of infectious diseases and has held leadership roles in many statewide organizations.

Sindy, 57, was the first woman to be elected president of the New Jersey Board of Medical Examiners, has been on the board of the Journal of Medical Regulation for many years, is currently President of the Infectious Diseases Society of New Jersey and is past president of the New Jersey Public Health Association.

The author of countless reports and articles, she has also written several books.

Within that dense resume are a couple of initiatives that stand out for Sindy. One has to do with reducing mother to child HIV transmission. “We know at this point that

you can use medications to reduce the risk of transmission,” says Sindy who worked on a multimedia educational campaign to get the word out to physicians and patients about the importance of testing and treatment. Throughout the country, there has been a 95 percent decrease in mother to child transmission.

As a youngster, Syndi was a serious horsewoman, becoming a champion her first year of competing at the Devon Horse Show in 1966 with her pony Moon Comet.

Numerous other championships and awards followed. “My grades at AFS were all really good,” she says, “because in order to keep the ponies and horses, I had to keep my grades up.”

More than particular classes or teachers, Syndi remembers the underlying love of learning and working with people that AFS instilled in her. “That lifelong desire to continue learning and always striving to do your best and to work as a team. I did that at school and with my horses and now here at work where I collaborate with a group of people. I’m in public health so a lot of the Quaker values translate into what I do every day in terms of helping people.”

Another major project Syndi has worked on involves HIV testing itself. “The problem we had,” she explains, “Is that when you had to draw blood and send it to a lab, a lot of people didn’t come back to get their results.” As testing technology

35

in Music

selected through rigorous auditions and portfolio reviews. For her graduation concert, Raven got to perform in a concert with some more of her songwriting heroes, Carole King, Willie Nelson and Annie Lenox.

Though nobody goes to Berklee unless music is their focus, Raven found herself also thoroughly enjoying the college’s liberal arts offerings. “And coming from AFS,” she says, “I was very, very prepared. I certainly felt like I could write a great paper right off the bat because of the stuff I’d learned at

Raven Katz ’09 Singer Songwriter Philadelphia, PA When Raven Katz was a high school student at AFS, she was the girl who sang. Tall and pale with long brown hair and a stunning, ethereally beautiful voice, Raven commanded rapt attention whenever she took to the Muller stage.

At Berklee College of Music in Boston, she was just Raven, one of many students with exceptional voices. What had made Raven stand out at AFS, made her part of the crowd at Berklee. And she was fine with that.

“I found people I had common ground with very quickly,” she says. “We all loved this thing so much. Actually it was less loving it and more like needing to do it. That was our common denominator. Berklee felt like home.”

Raven started out focusing on vocal performance and technique, but also fell in

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love with songwriting and song craft. Now she returns to campus during the summer to help run the one-week musical theater intensive program for high school students.

“It’s a great foot in the door for learning how to teach,” says Raven. She also was invited back to the college last fall as a visiting artist in a freshman songwriting workshop.

Raven, 22, took to songwriting quickly at Berklee, and was able to study with American Idol judge Kara DioGuardi and renowned songwriter Patty Larkin, who both came to Berklee as visiting artists and worked with a small group of students

“Tall and pale with long brown hair and a stunning, ethereally beautiful voice, Raven commanded rapt attention whenever she took to the Muller stage.”

AFS. Liberal arts classes were more interesting than a struggle for me, whereas for some kids who’d spent all their time in high school practicing and didn’t have as great a college prep school, it was tough for them.”

Now that Raven has had a little time to decompress from the full immersion experience that was Berklee, she says she has plans to make an album. First, though, she wants to figure out who she wants to be “out in the world,” and how she wants to be perceived. “I want to make sure I have the right persona. It needs to be sure and genuine and something I can stand by.”

in Technology As Ely Manstein, currently majoring in Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University, explains, they proceeded through trial and error. “We would have Ziggles [Daniel] mock up something and we’d look at it and play with it. We tried to minimize the number of clicks to get from one thing to the next to make it fast and easy to use.”

Daniel Gorziglia ’12, Ben Feldman ’12, Ely Manstein ’12, Julien Schremmer ’12 The team behind AssignLink Gone are the days when students scribbled down their homework assignments in a planner. Now an array of online tools exists for teachers to post homework and for students to keep track of assignments, quizzes and deadlines. At AFS the tool of choice is AssignLink, a handy online planner that students and teachers use daily.

With its easy to use interface, AssignLink was clearly designed with the students’ needs in mind. And that’s not surprising, since it was created by AFS student Daniel Gorziglia ’12, now a sophomore majoring in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.

The idea for AssignLink took shape when Daniel attended Drexel University’s Computing Academy the summer before his senior year. There he developed an iPhone app where students could input their classes and homework. Back at school Daniel mentioned the concept to friends Ben Feldman, Ely Manstein and Julien Schremmer, and that’s when things got serious.

The students were eager to develop a product that focused more on the end user than what was currently available. Daniel was the self appointed programmer, having taught himself programming skills in 7th grade.

Over three months, meeting every day during lunchtime, the students hashed out the design. “We tried really hard to think about what students would want,” says Daniel. “We started with the concept of creating an online organizer and came up with the idea of timelines with colored boxes. The fact that students can see their work a week ahead really helps them organize themselves.”

The students held focus groups with students and frequently sought teacher feedback. “A lot of times it got pretty heated,” says Julien Schremmer, a Boston University Engineering student currently on an internship in Argentina, “because we were so passionate about how it would work.”

By the time the students returned from winter break, they had a version ready to present to the faculty. “[Upper School Director] Martha Holland was very receptive,” says Ben Feldman, now an undergraduate at Babson College. “We faced very few barriers from a hierarchical point of view. In another kind of school it might have been hard to ask the faculty to do this on a whim.”

Within two weeks all but a handful of teachers were using AssignLink, and the four students breathed a sigh of relief. “It was really nice to hear that all the students liked it as much as we thought they would,” says Ely. “And teachers who didn’t start using it initially eventually succumbed to peer pressure from their students,” adds Ben.

Although the AssignLink team is now scattered geographically and they are all busy with college life, they still meet (virtually) almost every week to talk about bringing the product to other schools.

Daniel is working with an entrepreneurship incubator facilitator at Carnegie Mellon called Project Olympus to develop a pilot project for schools to try AssignLink for a year for free.

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in Sports

Tim and Jesse have both parlayed their passion for sports into new ventures.

With two others (Nikolas Regalbuto and Tim’s brother, Kevin) they began a sports website called Stoop Sports that was such a runaway success they had to put the brakes on if they were to continue their academic careers.

At its height, in the fall of 2013, says Jesse, they had about 150 student writers from as far afield as Nigeria, England and Spain covering every sport imaginable. Each day up to 20 articles would come in and there would be “a mad scramble” to get everything edited and turned around.

Jesse Dougherty ’12 and Tim Israel ’12 Friends since middle school, Jesse Dougherty, 19, and Tim Israel, 20, shared a love of sports and of hanging out together. For their SIP project they decided to combine those interests and embark on a sports road trip together, visiting nine minor league baseball parks and writing up their experiences as they went along.

“It was the greatest two weeks ever,” says Tim of their baseball odyssey, which took them to ballparks in Wilmington, Reading, Harrisburg, Pawtucket, Manchester and a few other places besides. It was hard work, too, they both concede.

“We’d get to the ballpark about seven hours before game time and interview the fans,

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WHERE ARE THEY NOW ?

GMs and other people in the organization, and then stay through game time,” says Jesse. “We’d get home around midnight and Tim would be up all night typing out all the quotes and creating an outline until about 5 in the morning. Then I’d wake up at 8 and write the chapter. The idea was that we’d write each chapter before leaving the next morning for the next ballpark.”

“It was a learning experience,” says Jesse, “and we got to meet a lot of interesting people.” And though they both think it was smart in terms of their college workload to back off, neither of them regrets the time they invested in Stoop Sports. “It would have been easy for us to have lost touch our first year in college, but we all stayed connected,” says Tim. “It forced us to do that, and it was really rewarding.”

Tim has started taking journalism classes at Wesleyan University, where he’s majoring in Economics, and recently launched a new website about soccer called On the Laces. “This will be easier,” says Tim, “because there won’t be as many articles a day. I’m working with our soccer staff from Stoop Sports.”

Jesse, now a sophomore at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, writes about sports for the campus newspaper, The Daily Orange, where he was recently appointed Assistant Sports Editor.

in Entertainment inebriated throughout the course of the narration. “If you can imagine a story about George Washington with everyone in powdered wigs lip synching to a drunk narrator, that’s Drunk History. It’s actually really funny,” says Jody. “It’s also a good in between point between reality and fiction for me. I’m trying to get toward the goal of being able to write and direct or at least work on narrative projects, bigger projects.”

Jody

’01

Television Editor Los Angeles, CA At AFS Jody, now 31, was the kind of kid who was always making videos. “Every chance I had,” he says, “My friend Colin Ellis and I were always playing around with acting and making little movies on camcorders. We’d do a Spanish project as a video if we could. We wrote stories, too, that we’d enter into local libraries’ competitions.”

A graduate of the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, Jody now works in Los Angeles as a television editor. His credits include Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (“pretty hokey”), an MTV show called Caged (about a group of mixed martial arts fighters in small town Louisiana) and the now infamous Duck Dynasty. “The editing on that was very heavy,” says Jody, “so we kind of as a team created the style of that show. People

To that end Jody is in the final stages of editing Echo Lake, a feature film of his own that he shot the summer before last. “It’s kind of like my SIP project, but on a much larger scale,” says Jody, who worked with playwright Michael Hollinger (husband of Upper School Theatre Teacher Megan Hollinger) to fine-tune the story structure and dialogue for the mini film he made for his senior independent project at AFS. For that early foray into film making, Jody borrowed a camera, used an office chair as a dolly and for sound used a boom made from a broom stick with a taped on microphone that his mother (AFS English Teacher Jane McVeigh-Schultz) used for recording kids in class. Jody enlisted his dad to play one of the main characters.

A Temple student got him access to the campus facilities to edit his 12-minute film.

assume it’s a show about weird rednecks, but it’s actually a series of really tightly constructed jokes.”

“In some ways that inspired my editing career,” he says, “because when I was working with all my footage I learned very quickly how much you can do in the editing room, with intercutting, time lapse and other techniques.”

Jody’s reality TV work has snowballed to the point where he can now pick and choose projects. Currently he’s working on the unlikely sounding Drunk History, a show on Comedy Central where each week an A-list actor narrator tells a story from American history and gets progressively more

Working with Chris Buzby in the AFS midi lab was an influential experience, too, says Jody, teaching him to sequence elements together and give a piece meaning through digital editing. “I still use those skills on a daily basis. When you’re editing 50 percent of it is sound.”

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alumninotes

Reflecting the remarkably cohesive nature of our community, the AFS Alumni community includes all former students, both graduates and non-graduates, as well as alumni parents, alumni staff and alumni faculty. Once a Roo, always a Roo!

Alumni Faculty & Staff In case you haven’t yet heard, the Alumni Faculty & Staff Alliance (AFSA), a new chapter of the AFS Alumni Association, kicked off this fall with an AFSA Homecoming Breakfast.

Over 20 Alumni Faculty & Staff attended, the event was enjoyed by all, and we plan to repeat it next year. If you would like to be part of AFSA, please be sure to let us know by emailing alumni@abingtonfriends.net. And be sure to send in your Alumni Notes to let your former students, parents, and colleagues know what you’ve been up to!

On behalf of Barry Bedrick, Faculty Alumnus, Susan Bedrick reports, “Barry retired in June 2012 and now splits time between Snowmass, CO, and Tucson, AZ. We think of you all with great fondness.”

Lynne Koolpe Mass, G’20, Faculty Alumna, writes, “After retiring in 2006, my husband and I have been wintering in Florida where I became involved in the craft of Fine Art Photography. I studied at the Boca Raton Museum Art School and then at the Delray Beach Cultural Center Art School for five years and now participate in two Fine Art Photography Critique groups in Florida, one in Elkins Park and am a member of the Cheltenham Camera Club. My work has been juried into several museum shows and art galleries. In April I have been invited to be one of two featured artists at the Abington Hospital Centennial Celebration Art Show.

It is truly joyful sharing this hobby with “other wonderfully creative and talented photographers and artists. To me, there is deep pleasure in being a lifelong learner, for it is not the destination but the journey that matters.”

Barbara Handler P’08, Faculty Alumna, writes, “I had a monotype print, ’Autumn’ accepted into the Abington Art Center juried show in December, and won the Richard Nexom prize for another print, “Cosmic Cataclysm,” which was in the Cheltenham Center for the Arts members show in January.

Liz Mosley, Faculty Alumna, writes, “Hello all of you former students now living such busy lives. I told all of you once long ago, that you are the school’s and my future.

Abington Meeting keeps me busy as ever, and it is a joy to hear and to observe how the school keeps growing in depth and in values thanks to a remarkable faculty and head master.”

Alumni Parents & Grandparents Did you stand on the sidelines and cheer for the Roos in all seasons? Were you a dedicated Book Fair volunteer? Have you seen every single play in Muller Auditorium?

Did you watch alumni students grow up, graduate and come back home? Alumni parents and grandparents, AFS is richer for your contributions to the community, and we want to hear from you! Please let your fellow alumni parents know what you’ve been up to since your last child graduated.

Submit your Alumni Notes to alumni@abingtonfriends.net.

1941

photo credit: Betsy Townsend

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ALUMNI NOTES

Lynne Mass with ’The Old Farm,’ which won Best in Show at the Abington Hospital Art Show.

Anita Scott Duke shares, “We had quite a year in 2013: 70th wedding anniversay, 95th birthday for my husband and 1st birthday for great-grandson #20. We are mobility challenged but live comfortably in our retirement community and manage well with our walking frames. Keep up the good work!

I’ve never forgotten what AFS gave me.”

’44 70th Reunion Class of 1944, please join us on Saturday, May 3, 2014, for Alumni Day at AFS and the celebration of your 70th reunion.

’49 65th Reunion Class of 1949, please join us on Saturday, May 3, 2014, for Alumni Day at AFS and the celebration of your 65th reunion.

’54 60th Reunion Class of 1954, please join us on Saturday, May 3, 2014, for Alumni Day at AFS and the celebration of your 60th reunion.

1955 Linda Hano Weintraub writes, “I have wonderful memories of AFS! I get together with Jane Jordan Schmitz twice a year. It’s always fun and laughs! Here’s to the Class of 1955!”

’59 55th Reunion Class of 1959, please join us on Saturday, May 3, 2014, for Alumni Day at AFS and the celebration of your 55th reunion.

1963 Alice Atkinson Christie offered classes on social media, digital story telling and digital photography as a faculty member on a Semester at Sea (University of Virginia) Enrichment Voyage through the Caribbean and the Panama Canal, to Ecuador and Peru, then north along the coast of Central America, ending in San Diego. Alice especially enjoyed the lectures of fellow faculty member, Retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Alice is a Founding Fellow of the Arizona State University’s Distinguished Teaching Academy and consults in schools across the country.

Linda Friedrich Fogel is serving as Chair of the Lower Moreland Planning Commission and sitting on the Board of Directors of the Pennypack Ecological Trust.

The Trust now protects over 800 acres of wetlands, creeks, woods and trails in Philadelphia’s inner suburban ring. Along with other Land Conservancy organizations, the goal of the Trust is to protect, preserve and restore land for future generations.

Linda encourages locals to visit the main site at Edgehill and Terwood Roads; Trust lands are open to the public dawn to dusk.

’64 50th Reunion Class of 1964, please join us on Saturday, May 3, 2014, for Alumni Day at AFS and the celebration of your 50th reunion.

1969 Robin Becker’s seventh collection of poems, Tiger Heron, has just come out from the University of Pittsburgh Press. This is Becker’s fifth book in the Pitt Poetry Series. She is a Liberal Arts Research Professor of English at Penn State.

’69 45th Reunion Class of 1964, please join us on Saturday, May 3, 2014, for Alumni Day at AFS and the celebration of your 45th reunion.

1970 Elizabeth Rech writes, “I am now coming up on 40 years in the workforce and counting on another 10, at least! It’s been a great ride, so far. The journey has been from Philadelphia, to Madison Avenue, to Chicago, to Boston, and to over 50 countries around the world. I am now at Cigna, doing what I really love–teaching and facilitating the development of new thoughts, words and deeds in a very complex world of health care. Thanks AFS for giving me the tools to do all of the above. By the way, my 5 sisters, who are also AFS alumnae, are all doing fine, too!

’74 40th Reunion Class of 1974, please join us on Saturday, May 3, 2014, for Alumni Day at AFS and the celebration of your 40th reunion.

1977 Cliff Hudis shares, “I am delighted to report that, as its President, I am getting ready to lead the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO, www.asco.org) through its

Alice Atkinson Christie

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50th Annual Meeting in Chicago in June.

This is the largest gathering of experts (about 30,000 attend the meeting) in the treatment of cancer and there will, as always, be a large number of exciting new scientific and clinical advances presented to the world.

Serving as President has been an honor and opportunity that I could never have foreseen when I began my career in medicine in 1979 as a medical student in Philadelphia. It was AFS that focused my attention on science but also on societal responsibilities and led me, 35 years later, to identify my Presidency with the the theme of “Science and Society”.

I would never have reached this position without the education and opportunities that AFS afforded me.

’79 35th Reunion Class of 1979, please join us on Saturday, May 3, 2014, for Alumni Day at AFS and the celebration of your 35th reunion.

1979 Scott Peirce writes, “Since graduating from AFS I lived locally, mostly in the Manayunk area, until the mid 90’s. Work as a Construction Superintendent took me to Houston, TX and San Francisco, CA. I’ve returned to Abington, PA , and am now living pretty close to AFS. I’ve been back for about 12 years and have now changed careers and am working in the IT department for a PA bank. I’ve been back to AFS recently and can’t believe the changes to the school and campus. Quite a change from 1979. Hard to believe it’s been almost 35 years since graduation!”

1981 Jim Slade shares, “The musical collaboration Andy Rosenau and I established in Larry Wilkins’ creative writing class refuses to die, as a new Nixon’s Head CD comes out in March. Last October, our old friend and

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ALUMNI NOTES

bandmate Mike Fingeroff ’83 capped off a joint surprise 50th birthday party thrown by the wives of four of us hitting the half-century mark by flying in from Portland, Oregon to join us onstage for the first time in 20 years! There’s more to an education than reading, writing and arithmetic.”

’84 30th Reunion Class of 1984, please join us on Saturday, May 3, 2014, for Alumni Day at AFS and the celebration of your 30th reunion.

Courtney Tomko Horrigan writes, “I am practicing law as a Partner in the Insurance Recovery Group of Reed Smith LLP and am in charge of Recruiting for Reed Smith’s Pittsburgh office. I am about to send off my oldest, Matt, to the College of William and Mary as a freshman next fall. His sister Caroline, 16, is not far off from making her college choice, which will leave Frank and me with our youngest—Jack, 11—at home.

Kathy Alter Hazen is still one of my closest friends, and one of the highlights each year is the opportunity to get our families together on Long Beach Island during the summer.”

things with the independent Philadelphia film Festival which he founded as well as his many other endeavors.

My younger daughter Libby is a freshman at Putney School and my older daughter Hannah, who just climbed Mount Kilimanjaro raising over $11,000 for cancer, will enter Middlebury College next spring.

I am also involved in an upcoming Ken Burns documentary scheduled to air in the spring of 2015 based on the book Emperor of all Maladies, a Biography of Cancer.

Emperorofallmaladies.org is the website and in the trailer you can see my big old body being slid into the MRI for my scan. I never thought my 15 minutes of fame would occur in this manner but the project has been a fascinating experience.

I continue to write a blog which can be found by googling moosevt. I’m always happy to hear from friends teachers and classmates from the Abington Friends community.”

1985 Mark Green writes, “Hello friends/Friends.

I continue to work for Accelerate Brain Cancer Cure based in DC and work from home in New Hampshire when I’m not traveling. I keep fighting the fight of my own brain cancer and raising money for the cause, having just brought in a $1 million private gift to fund new research.

My mother Beverly has returned to teaching at Abington Friends where she’s very happy, as are we, to continue to be a part of the AFS family. I keep in touch with Bill Carr, who continues his rise to the top of the Amazon.com mountaintop, and Ben Barnett, who continues to do wonderful

Hannah Green, second from right, daughter of Mark ’85 atop mount Kilimanjaro in a fundraising climb for cancer honoring her dad.

’89 25th Reunion Class of 1989, please join us on Saturday, May 3, 2014, for Alumni Day at AFS and the celebration of your 25th reunion.

1992 Molly McDonald Foley writes, “What a gift to be able to go home again to AFS and share our family’s joy as we welcome our fourth angel. Elizabeth Virginia and I visited our AFS family recently and were surrounded and welcomed with the same love and pride family members have when they meet their new addition for the first time!

AFS was more than my high school, it was where I grew up and spent my summers.

My mom worked at AFS throughout my childhood and young adulthood and we both worked at AFSEP in the summer. So for us, AFS was home. Seeing so many of my Mom’s friends and my teachers, coaches and life influencers made for a wonderful and very special visit!

Though the building continually changes and grows, the AFS culture of openness, togetherness and kinship remains very much the same and I find this to be such a comfort and joy after all these years. I look forward to visiting in the spring with the entire family and for many years to come.”

my second book, Keeping Up the Kardashian Brand: Celebrity, Materialism, and Sexuality, was published by Lexington Books. Jasper, Jordan and I live in South Philly, and I teach at Holy Family University.

’04 10th Reunion Class of 2004, please join us on Saturday, May 3, 2014, for Alumni Day at AFS and the celebration of your 10th reunion.

2005 Fall 2013 saw the release of Andrew Repasky McElhinney’s scholarly book about 20th Century Cinema. Published by McFarland and Company, Second Takes: Remaking Film, Remaking America presents the history of English language cinema by focusing on cinematic remakes and on how cinema has been replaced by new forms of “media.”

For more info visit: ARMcinema25.com.

On September 1, 2013, Kerri Benner became engaged to Daniel Tavares on the beach in Sea Isle City, NJ. The proposal was in front of Kerri’s parents, Mary Anne and Frank Benner (AFS Facilities Manager), and her sisters, Danielle (AFS Early Childhood Teacher) and Christine Benner ’09. They are currently planning a Spring 2015 wedding, also in Sea Isle.

’99 15th Reunion Class of 1999, please join us on Saturday, May 3, 2014, for Alumni Day at AFS and the celebration of your 15th reunion.

2001 David Ahl shares, “I am delighted to share that I married Molly Catchen on September 21st, 2013. We are happily living in Washington D.C.: she is a lawyer clerking for judges in the district and I am getting my MBA at Georgetown University. I’ll have my degree in May.”

2008

’94 20th Reunion Class of 1994, please join us on Saturday, May 3, 2014, for Alumni Day at AFS and the celebration of your 20th reunion.

1997 Amanda Scheiner McClain writes, “2013 was a great year. In May 2013, my son Jasper Elliott McClain was born. In November 2013,

Jackie Kahn McQuiston, writes, “This past year has brought lots of change for us. My husband and I have moved to Philadelphia this Winter! We are now living in Chestnut Hill with our two little pups, Nala and Oreo.

I hope all is well at AFS, and since we are locals I look forward to hearing about and being a part of more opportunities through the community. Sending my very best.”

’09 5th Reunion Class of 2009, please join us on Saturday, May 3, 2014, for Alumni Day at AFS and the celebration of your 5th reunion.

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2010 Mariah Dillard is enjoying her senior year at the University of Maryland. She is a resident assistant in the on-campus residence halls and a research assistant in the School of Public Health at UMD. She is currently applying to graduate programs in Marriage and Family Therapy and hopes to continue her education right after graduation.

2011 Alexandra Harley writes, “I wish everyone at Abington Friends a happy new year from the twin cities in Minnesota! I just completed my study abroad in Perú where I conducted research in an Amazonian migrant community within the country capital of Lima, as well as lived in the historical capital of Cusco and attended seminars related to Indigenous Peoples and Globalization.

While I begin the spring semester of my junior year at Macalester College, I have been reflecting on the motivation that led me to pursue a major in Latin American Studies and Cultural Anthropology. If it weren’t for the ECCO program and Marnie Christian’s help with discovering and applying for the Experiment in International Living, I don’t believe my college career would have gone in the same direction that it is headed today.

I owe a lot to the faculty and staff of AFS and I encourage everyone to pursue their goals and dreams and always ask about opportunities instead of assuming they’ll fall in your lap. I look forward to what the future will bring for us all.”

Bijan Sosnowski writes, “I was admitted into the Phi Lambda Pi chapter at St John’s University. During the summer I stepped in the sports world by becoming a game day operations intern with the Philadelphia Union. My tasks involved overseeing mobile marketing events, help with the Union soccer camp trips to our facilities, and selling 50/50 raffle tickets or as stretcher crew during games. I learned what goes into getting the stadium ready for game days, how the team markets itself to the targeted fans, and to correctly manage situations within the organization.

On August 19 I moved to Paris, France to start my semester abroad. I lived in Paris, Rome, and Sevilla, Spain, living in each city for 5 weeks. The opportunity to travel around Europe was priceless. During the four months, I was fortunate to travel to 10 countries in total: France, Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium, Italy, Poland, Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. From standing atop Acropolis Hill in Athens, visiting the homeland of Poland for the first time, seeing FC Barcelona live in Sevilla, making friends at the local tabaccheria in Rome, riding camels in Africa, attending mass with Pope Francis at the Vatican, and morning jogs by the Eiffel tower the experience was unbelievable.

As an AFS alum I was always reminded to keep an open mind during my time in middle and high school. I used those teachings to my advantage while studying

abroad as I opened up to new foods and different cultural lifestyles. I gained a larger appreciation for art, as I was lucky enough to see original paintings by Seurat, Monet, Braque, Caravaggio & Van Gogh. This once in a lifetime trip allowed me to experience different cultures and inspired me with a new determination to work toward a successful future. It’s hard to believe that I only have 3 semesters left at St. John’s University but I shall take full advantage of all the opportunities afforded to me.

I want to thank the staff at AFS for always looking beyond my shortcomings, and believing in me. As I will be jumping into the real world soon, I will always use the tools and skills I learned from the wonderful school on Washington Lane. Always remember to keep laughing and smiling.”

2013 Ivan Glinski has been accepted to a spring internship with the Institute for Humane Studies at George Washington University.

Class Notes are compiled by the Alumni Office. You can submit a class note by contacting Jordan Bastien in the Alumni Office (215-576-3966 or alumni@abingtonfriends.net).

Please submit photos as .jpgs at a resolution of 300 dpi or higher.

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ALUMNI NOTES

in memoriam Maria Dehn Peters, AFSA Maria Dehn Peters, AFSA, passed away Saturday, Oct. 5, 2013, at Chandler Hall, Newtown. She was 98. She was born July 22, 1915, in Breslau, Germany. She held a diploma from Swanley College in Kent, England, a National Diploma in Horticulture from the Royal Horticultural Society and a B.S.C. from London University.

Maria and her sister were sent to England during World War II by her parents. In England, Maria taught Basque refugees by conversing in Latin and later worked at a school for physically handicapped children.

She also worked at Bunce Court School, from which she had graduated.

She came to the United States to teach at the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women (now Temple/Ambler), where she taught for five years and contributed to publications. Then, she taught biology, chemistry and general science at Friends Select School, where she was head of the science department. She retired from 24 years of teaching chemistry and general science at Abington Friends School.

Maria lived her life with a strong and abiding passion for her faith, the people she loved and her values and convictions. She was a passionate educator and a devoted friend, sister, daughter, wife and aunt. Her influence on many people’s lives was profound. She will be missed and remembered with love.

The Alumni Office is honored to share just a few of the many fond memories her former

AFS students shared in remembrance on the Alumni of Abington Friends school Facebook group:

biology student, but she kept me on my toes–just barely. My 3 enduring memories are as follows:

Cynthia Russell Hyland ’80 P’08 P’12 P’14

Late arrival to her class resulted in her briefly muttering, “Better late than never, better never late.”

“I ran into her in the parking lot at the local grocery store a few years back. She was wrestling a shopping cart free from a stack.

The shopping cart lost! Then she scurried away with that same quick pace that I remembered, and she remembered me right away. She was by far the best science teacher at AFS back in the day!”

Vicki Vaniver Winter ’72 “I learned a lot from her not only in the classroom but outside the classroom.”

Conni Anderson Huntley ’67 “I always respected her as one tough but fair lady.

Our class was considered so “challenging” that she ended up our homeroom teacher twice in a row, rather than placing a brand new teacher in charge of us.

To be totally honest, we were just as challenging the day we graduated. Ah, the late sixties......”

Carrie Matez Kanner ’81 “My most memorable times in school were with Mrs. Peters!! Ecology class as well as driving down the Schuykill Expressway to go to Friends Meeting in town to pack up clothes for needy families every Tuesday afternoon!

We all ducked in the back seat while she made record time into town. She taught so much to so many of us about life and about science. She will be missed by many.”

Jim Slade ’81 “Great picture! That’s just as I remember Mrs. Peters. I was a terrible

Every once in a while, if she really needed to demonstrate something to the back of the class, she would pull out the bottom drawer of her desk and stand in it for elevation.

Once, while seated in the front of a class while Mrs. Peters was discussing penicillin, she suddenly thrust a metal bowl with a moldy orange into my face. I got nauseous and had to excuse myself. What a wimp!”

Laura Gross Rosenberg ’80 “That’s where I learned that drawer trick! I have used it many times myself... very handy! That wonderful picture evokes such vivid memories of Mrs. Peters, arms laden with books or folders stacked taller than she, rushing down the hallway to class.”

Sindy Paul ’75 “She was always so full of energy. I can still hear her saying ‘oopsti’.

I think my class was a challenge for her as we were the first co-ed class.”

Steven W. Taylor ’81 “I was a math geek, but loved her...”

Susan M. Yannessa ’71 “She was full of energy. Good thing, because I think I drove her crazy... actually, I think I drove all my teachers a little crazy.... Great picture!”

Carol Paschall DelCorio ’71 “I really loved her! So much energy and kindness!!!”

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in memoriam Virginia Masland Stetser ’38 P’66 P’75 Virginia Masland Stetser ’38, AFSA, was born December 25, 1920, and passed away at her home in Vero Beach, FL, on January 18, 2014. Virginia was a long-time member of Abington Monthly Meeting, and a former editor of Oak Leaves. While at Abington Friends she was President of her class as well as Editor-in-Chief of the school magazine. After graduation she attended Wilson College and became a published poet. Her senior yearbook quote was “The charm that in her spirit lives, no change can destroy.” She will be missed.

Lynn Davis Fox ’50 Lynn Davis Fox ’50 passed away peacefully on October 26, 2013, in Issaquah, WA. Born July 11, 1932, in Philadelphia to parents Merle E. and Louis D. Davis.

Lynn attended Abington Friends School from kindergarten through her senior year. She graduated with her class of 1950 with honors. Lynn had many dear friends at Abington Friends and had many wonderful memories of her childhood spent there. She

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IN MEMORIAM

was an athlete and lettered in three sports, including tennis and field hockey, and was the captain of the basketball team. She was crowned May Queen her senior year. Lynn happily returned to join her classmates for their 50 year reunion in 2000, and helped lead the graduating class in their processions.

She was very proud to be associated with her beloved Abington Friends School.

Lynn went on to graduate from Mount Holyoke College in 1954 and later received her master’s in Education from the University of Washington. Lynn was a counselor in the field of addiction recovery and worked in several treatment centers before starting a successful private practice in the Seattle area, where she resided the past 44 years.

Lynn was also a proud member of Alcoholics Anonymous for over 38 years.

Donations in Lynn’s name can be made to The Humane Farming Association or The American Alzheimer’s Association. Friends are invited to view pictures, share memories and sign the family’s on-line guest book at www.flintofts.com

then the University of Miami (FL). She married and began working for Eastern Airlines, a job that would begin a much-loved career in the travel business that would take her all over the world.

After moving back to the Philadelphia area she worked at the Keystone Automobile Club and then McGettigan’s Travel agency, which led to being offered the position of head of worldwide travel in the AAA office in Orlando, FL. In 1973 she returned to Melrose Park having decided she would like to join the family business, and so went to mortuary school and began working at the Wildey Funeral Home, which was started by her grandfather.

When asked why she wanted to do this, her stock answer would be, “I just went from selling round trips to one-ways”!

Barbara Allan Redman ’56, passed away peacefully on July 16, 2013, after a nearly 6-year battle with esophageal cancer.

After her retirement in 2001, Barbara returned to her beloved Florida, settling in Naples. She kept busy championing various causes, keeping up with the latest technology, spending time with her friends and her Yorkshire terrier, Fiona.

After her graduation from AFS, Barbara attended The University of Delaware and

She is survived by her daughter, Ellen and a sister, Susan Rowland.

Barbara Allan Redman ’56

Joan High Putney ’57 Liz Cobourn Cole ’57 wrote the following personal memories of her classmate:

“Joan Putney came to Abington Friends School in fifth grade. Always vivacious, she had a gift of telling stories about incidents in her life and people we knew, ending them with a giggle that let you know she didn’t take herself too seriously.

Over the years, Joan and I have stayed in close touch. I couldn’t have hoped for a better friend. As we moved around in our separate lives, I would call her and she would immediately say, ‘Where are you? Are you coming to see me?’ I believe she said that to everybody, maybe even a telemarketer or two. Joan taught school for a while but as her kids were growing up, she and high school sweetheart Paul Putney entertained friends, business associates and just about anyone else with her wonderful cooking skills and southern hospitality. At one time she worked at Strawbridge and Clothier in Philadelphia, cooking with a mirror overhead, Julia Childs-style, to show what she was cooking on the stove. When street people came in, she would give them an extra-large serving of her recipes, along with a hug.

Joan and her beloved Bernese Mountain dogs paid visits to many hospital and hospice patients over the years, including one man who would not eat or even talk to his caregivers. Joan was called. She walked in his room and asked what his favorite food was. He grumbled, ‘Apple pie’. She said she’d be back the next day and she was, with a whole homemade pie and a fork. It worked; he felt cared about and began talking. The event made the newspaper, and it’s only one of the many stories I could tell.

Joan and Paul bought the home that another classmate, Shirley Pearson Goldsmith had grown up in. Year after year Joan entertained classmates in that oh-so-familiar house when we returned to AFS for Sue Rudin’s lecture series and reunions each year.

Joan’s husband Paul Putney was killed by a drunk driver in 2004 and her daughter Joanna died of cancer at 47 in early 2012.

She left a son, Andy, and four grandchildren, her brother Gilbert High and extended family. For me, 64 years is a long time to have such a dear friend. I miss her.”

Gaby Tubach ’57 shares, “We all miss Joan and her sweet smile will remain forever in my heart. Joan was so immensely generous.

Sometimes I think she cared more about others than about herself. Her warm disposition and her caring attitude made her a very special friend. Her place was always open for classmates to meet or stay overnight if needed. She also was a listener and the kind notes she dropped showed that she really cared about you.

That’s why we love her so much and we surely will never forget her.”

Gaye Evo Cooper ’66 Gaye Evo Cooper ’66, of Fort Lauderdale, passed away on January 29, 2013.

Gaye is survived by her husband, Ken Eisenhart; her sister, Joy Evo, brother-in-law Carl Davis and cousin, Jack Holt; her two dearest friends, Judy Gordon of Brooklyn, New York and Donna Semprazik

Susan Salesky Rudin ’57 writes of Joan, “Where does the time go? It feels like yesterday we were sitting in the cafeteria.

I can see Joan eating baby food from a jar, saying, in her southern accent, that it was the new diet she was on. I see her wearing her gym tunic all day. I remember her many Shetland sweaters that she wore buttoned down the back. Her constant smile and infectious laugh brought positive energy to all around her. She was always up for fun and was an enthusiastic, ever willing volunteer for just about everything around school. We were teenagers together in the 1950s and we will always be teenagers together in my mind. To me, Joan will forever represent the innocence of youth in a time gone by.”

of Fort Lauderdale; and her cherished Yorkshire Terrier, Scooter.

She was dearly loved by countless friends not only in the South Florida area, but throughout the country. Gaye was an alumna of Penn State University where she majored in Interior Design and worked for numerous affluent clients all over the country. She was a passionate reader and was multi-talented in the art of design and jewelry-making.

Her infectious personality and sense of humor will be sorely missed by all who knew her.

Published in Sun-Sentinel on Feb. 1, 2013

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in memoriam Jonah Meadows Adels ’02 His brilliance inspired and occasionally bewildered. Jonah took the time to study, read, and think about ideas with the same sort of deep intellectual curiosity, wonder, and purposefulness that drove all his interactions…. Everywhere he went he brought humor, life, silliness and song.

His eyes were full of the beauty of the world; his feet were solidly grounded, and very muddy….

The following was excerpted from a memorial written by Jonah Meadows Adels ’02’s fellow students in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale: On October 2nd, [we] lost an incredible visionary and dear friend. Jonah Meadows Adels died peacefully, surrounded by his family, after suffering injuries from a car accident this past June.

Jonah was about to enter his second year in the Forestry School as a Master of Environmental Science candidate, working to integrate urban ecology and systems design.

His vision was to catalyze “a just and abundant human society that reveres life in all forms.” …. [Jonah] was a talented teacher, an incredible musician, and an inspired farmer, filmmaker, and leader. Before starting his masters, he served as the Education Director and Perennials Manager at Jewish Farm School in Philadelphia, where he designed and built a mixed vegetable farm and community orchard, and directed the Anafim Environmental Leadership Fellowship for High School Seniors. He founded and directed the Rare Earth Project, a nonprofit that used documentary video as a medium of environmental communication, with projects in Portland, Oregon and Kathmandu, Nepal. As a core crew member of the upside-down veggie-oil powered Teva Topsy Turvy Bus, Jonah led community workshops throughout the East Coast on renewable energy and ecological design.

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IN MEMORIAM

As a social organizer and community member he stood up for his beliefs, visiting politician’s offices to talk about the damaging impacts of fracking, and being peacefully arrested in front of the White House during the 2012 Keystone XL Pipeline protest. His deep spiritual sense and fundamental drive to create a better world moved him throughout his life.

Jonah was … a towering creative force— one of our true outside-the-box thinkers, whose own syncopated rhythms constantly created new melodies, real and metaphorical, for all of us to follow.… He sowed community the way some people plant carrots—broadcast, but deeply rooted.

Trust poured out of him. Generosity was his default.… He was incapable of superficial interactions. His warmth is irreplaceable….

Even as we grieve, though, we have much to be thankful for in our too-brief time with Jonah. He’s left us with so much to do Thank you, Jonah, for your trust and generosity. Thank you for your intelligence, for your leadership…. for your costumes and musical gifts. Thank you for pushing all of us to be better, inside and outside the classroom, in work and in fun…. Most of all, though, thank you for packing so much life into your 29 years that we are left breathless and wondering, with no choice to but to keep reaching for that standard of joy.

Please submit obituary announcements of the greater alumni community to the Alumni Office. Submissions are welcomed with or without a photo (at 300 dpi or greater). Electronic submissions are preferred and may be sent to alumni@abingtonfriends.net.

Abington Friends School

Alumni Day

Saturday, May 3, 2014 Abington Monthly Meetinghouse Alumni who graduated in class years ending in 4’s and 9’s observe their milestone reunions in 2014, and we’d like to celebrate!

Abington Friends School invites our alumni and their families to gather at Abington Monthly Meetinghouse for a luncheon, meeting for worship and class photographs, followed by opportunities to take a campus tour, join in a play date at our new Nature Explore classroom or watch a Varsity Baseball game.

11:30 am Reunion luncheon with Rich Nourie, Head of School Please join us for a luncheon at the Abington Monthly Meetinghouse. The cost is $10 per individual or $15 per household. Please see below for registration and RSVP information.

2:00 pm Campus activities (pre-registration required) Family playtime We invite alumni with young children to meet and mingle on our new Nature Explore classroom at the Lower School.

12:45 pm Alumni Meeting for Worship We are pleased to offer childcare for those who pre-register using the Eventbrite website.

Please contact the Alumni Office directly for details.

Campus tours We invite all alumni to tour our campus, visit old familiar places and learn about exciting new developments at AFS.

1:30 pm Class-by-class and all-reunion photographs Cookies & lemonade served

AFS Varsity Baseball Game Beginning at 1pm, the AFS Varsity Baseball team will play Academy of the New Church (coached by Gavin White ’06). Stop by to cheer on the Roos!

NON-PROFIT ORG. U.S. POSTAGE PAID Bellmawr, NJ Permit #280 575 Washington Lane, Jenkintown, PA 19046

Calendar Highlights Arbor Day

Friday, May 2, 2014

Alumni Day

Saturday, May 3, 2014

Middle School Choral and Instrumental Concert

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Lower School Spring Program

Friday, June 6, 2014

Baccalaureate

Sunday, June 8, 2014

Commencement

Wednesday, June 11, 2014