Lasting Gifts from Senior Funds By Anne Adler
Brunswick for many years and, for half of them, both husband and wife are Brunswick employees. Easy access to campus life and sporting events allows faculty to support our boys—whether at athletic events or afterschool—while still logging quality family time with their own children and faculty neighbors. The gift of faculty houses was so well received that the Class of 2007 Senior Fund (chaired by Trustees Matt DeSalvo and Charles Paternina) was inspired to raise a generous amount of money to build another faculty house. Although the new house on Maher Avenue campus will not be built for several years, it, too, will enrich the lives of faculty and their families for years to come. Moving from bricks and mortar to academic and intellectual pursuits, the Class of 2005 Senior parents (chaired by Trustees Nell Otto and Peer Pedersen) conceived a lecture series. This endowed fund will generate income in perpetuity to enable Brunswick to attract nationally and internationally renowned speakers to address the Upper School boys. In April 2006, we hosted former president of Poland Lech Walesa, who spoke about his role in the fall of the Iron Curtain and how one man can make a difference. Our following guest speaker in September 2006 was Paul Rusesabagina, the hotel manager depicted in the film “Hotel Rwanda,” who recounted the horrors of ethnic cleansing through his firsthand account of the atrocities, and how he saved more than 1,200 refugees. This past spring, the Class of 2005 Lecture Series sponsored football Coaches Herman Boone and Bill Yoast, who inspired the acclaimed film, “Remember the Titans,” which tells the story of the 1971 Titans football team in Alexandria, VA. These two remarkable coaches—thrown together with the integration of an all-black and an all-white school—overcame generations of prejudice and segregation to build, in one short season,
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Faculty housing
a championship football team. The success and colorblind unity they forged within their team paved the way for a foundation of trust and understanding within the larger school community. “The Award for Excellence,” gifted from the Class of 2006 (chaired by Trustees Charles Paternina, Ted Virtue, and Simon Williams), gives a three-year grant to an academic department or division for developing a new curriculum area or enhanced course offerings. The first “Award for Excellence” was granted to the modern language department in the spring of 2006 to launch an Upper School Arabic language and culture program. Ali Al-Maqtari, from Yemen, was hired to teach both Arabic I and II classes. A third level will be added next year and one of the students in last year’s Arabic II class plans to continue his studies at Yale. The Brunswick Arabic language program is being funded for three years, at which point another department can bid for the next three-year grant. At the annual graduation ceremonies, the oft-spoken words, “Your class will not be forgotten,” are sincere. The generous class gifts to Brunswick, be they in the form of buildings or additional programs in the curriculum, continue to impact our School year after year. Brunswick thanks its past Senior class parents for their generous efforts and initiative to continue creating remarkable, and most appreciated, Senior Fund gifts. . Performing
Arts Center rendering
Summer 2007
It has become an honored tradition at many independent schools for Senior class parents to give parting gifts to the school. They run the gamut from flowering trees and outdoor benches, to more substantial expressions of appreciation for enriching years of education. Over the past five years at Brunswick School, our tradition has evolved. We have been fortunate to have an extraordinary group of Senior class parents who have made a big difference in the lives of Brunswick faculty and students. In the fall of 2001, with the Middle School beginning its second year at the Edwards Campus, the Upper School was rapidly approaching 320 students, a number that could no longer fit in Durkin Auditorium. Simultaneously, a parent survey, conducted every five years, identified the need for a performing arts center at Brunswick. Class of 2002 parents (chaired by Trustee Jimmy Lee) dedicated their Senior gift as seed money to build a new auditorium in the space then occupied by Burke Gymnasium. In order to pave the way for construction to begin, remaining Varsity athletics were relocated to King Street. In fall 2004, Burke Field House and Cosby Memorial Field opened to great fanfare, and this summer 2007 the final piece of the puzzle, a new Varsity baseball field, will be completed on Edwards Campus. Construction has begun to convert Burke Gymnasium on Maher Avenue into a state-of-the-art Upper School performing arts center. The space formerly occupied by basketball courts and locker rooms will accommodate a 400-seat auditorium, black box theater, lobby art gallery, music and fine arts classrooms, a scenery shop, and a ceramics studio. The opening of the new Brunswick School Performing Arts Center is scheduled for September 2008. Parents and alumni from the Class of 2002 will be invited back to celebrate and dedicate the auditorium that their foresight helped bring to fruition. Faculty housing was the focus for Senior class gifts from the Class of 2003 (chaired by Trustees John Macfarlane and Maggie Smith) and the Class of 2004 (chaired by Trustees Jeff Boyd, Larry Haertel, and Tim O’Neill). From the beginning, Brunswick sought to provide ten Deerfield Village-style faculty homes on Edwards Campus. Two of those architecturally striking houses were made possible by Senior class parents. In a community like Greenwich, where affordable housing for teachers is scarce, the King Street “neighborhood” is a dream. Each of the families in these homes has been at
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