Remarks From the Head of School Letter From Alex Curtis
On Christian & Elm News About the School
Alumni Association News
Reunion Recap, and Q & A with new Alumni Association President David Javdan ’86
Classnotes
Profiles of Hilary Bertsch ’84, Principal and Executive Director, Perkins Eastman; Anna Cheung ’86, Independent Non-Executive Director, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited; and Matt Kokoszka ’99, Founder and CEO, Global Education Sports Partners
In Memoriam
Remembering Those We Have Lost
Scoreboard
Recap of Spring ’25 Sports
Bookshelf
Reviews of Works by Lauren Markham ’01, Alan Felsenthal ’99, and James P. Lenfestey ’62
End Note
Practical Wisdom: Leading in Complex Times
FEATURES
A Little Becomes a Lot Community Service at Choate
Building Sustainably Raising the Bar to Platinum
Unique Traditions
Choate Rosemary Hall Bulletin is published fall, winter, and spring for alumni, students and their parents, and friends of the School. Please send change of address to Alumni Records and all other correspondence to the Communications Office, 333 Christian Street, Wallingford, CT 06492-3800.
Choate Rosemary Hall does not discriminate in the administration of its educational policies, athletics, other school-administered programs, or in the administration of its hiring and employment practices on the basis of age, gender, race, color, religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, genetic predisposition, ancestry, or other categories protected by Connecticut and federal law. Printed in U.S.A. CRH201201/17.75M
Cameron and Edward Lanphier Center for Mathematics and Computer Science integrates brise-soleils into the facades in a way that speaks to both tradition and technology.
Corrections
The photo caption (pg. 9) for the Spring 2025 Bulletin feature “Teaching Doesn’t Stop at 3. p.m.” incorrectly identified Coach Stephanie Neul as Coach Katie Childs ’95. Our sincere apologies.
Dear Alumni and Friends of Choate Rosemary Hall,
As I write this, the familiar energy of a new school year is all around me. Campus has come alive once again, filled with the joyful buzz of returning students and the excitement of those experiencing Choate for the very first time. Last evening, we welcomed our newest students at Matriculation, and in just a few hours, we will gather as a full community for Convocation — two of our most beloved traditions that frame the start of each academic year. These moments of ceremony and celebration remind us of the deep sense of continuity at Choate, where time-honored customs connect generations of students, alumni, faculty, and staff. I hope you’ll enjoy this Bulletin’s feature that takes a closer look at some of these special rituals that give shape and meaning to our school year.
If it has been a while since you walked these paths, I hope this is the year you’ll return — whether for Reunion, a performance at the Paul Mellon Arts Center, or simply to say hello. When you do, you’ll notice Carr Hall, our striking new welcome center and admission building. Designed to achieve LEED Platinum certification, Carr Hall reflects our deep commitment to sustainability (which you can read more about in this issue’s feature “Raising the Bar to Platinum”). More than a beautiful new building, Carr Hall is a space intentionally created to greet every visitor with warmth and hospitality, capturing the sense of belonging that defines Choate from the very first step on campus. With flexible gathering areas and a sunny patio overlooking campus, Carr Hall will not only welcome prospective families but also host events, receptions, and opportunities for our entire community to come together.
Alongside Carr Hall, the newly expanded servery in the Dining Hall offers another place where students, faculty, and staff gather daily — a vibrant reminder that connection often begins over shared meals. Together, these new spaces speak to our ongoing investment in fostering community, collaboration, and joy, while ensuring our historic campus continues to evolve to meet the needs of today’s students.
As much as we celebrate change, walking these grounds also offers countless reminders of what has remained constant: the values, character, and spirit of Choate Rosemary Hall. That enduring essence is what draws us together and makes this place feel like home, generation after generation.
I hope you will visit us soon — explore these exciting new additions, take in a performance or athletic event, reconnect with old friends, and experience the magic of campus once again.
Warmly,
Alex Curtis Head of School
School Celebrates 135th Commencement with Seth Meyers Address
Emmy Award-winning writer and New York Times bestselling author Seth Meyers, host of NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers, delivered the School’s 135th Commencement address on June 1. Head of School Alex Curtis and the Board of Trustees conferred diplomas and certificates upon 237 graduates.
President of the Student Council Robert Haik ’25 introduced Meyers as “someone who has used his sense of humor to illuminate the truth.” Meyers is renowned for his TV career with Saturday Night Live, where he was a cast member for 13 seasons, head writer for nine seasons and Weekend Update anchor for eight. He has released two critically acclaimed stand-up specials, Lobby Baby (Netflix) and Seth Meyers: Dad Man Walking (HBO/Max). Meyers has garnered 33 Emmy nominations.
This was Meyers’ second time as Choate’s Commencement speaker. He called it “one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen,” while also poking fun at the sound of the name “Choate.” Speaking to the graduates, he urged, “Find the thing you have passion for and chase it for the rest of your life.” He told them not to “let anyone pin the failures of the world on you. Your generation is not the problem, but I encourage you to be part of the solution.” Meyers also encouraged the graduates to try everything and to know, “You’ll learn more from failure than success.”
Dr. Curtis and Head of Student and Academic Life Jenny K. Elliott also shared parting words with the graduates. Curtis invited the graduates to “live with kindness and intellectual curiosity,” and Elliott said, “Delight, astonishment, and awe — I hope they invigorate you always.”
Choate Shines in Robotics Competitions
Choate’s robotics team wrapped up its seventh year of competing in the FIRST Robotics Competition with an extraordinarily successful 2025 competition series.
The team, FRC Team 7407: “The Wired Boars,” consisting of the 30 students in the Advanced Robotics Concentration Signature Program, dominated their first two district events, ranking first after qualification rounds and captaining the winning alliance at each event: Waterbury and Hartford. In addition, The Wired Boars were recognized with the Excellence in Engineering Award (Waterbury) and the Autonomous Award (Hartford) for their outstanding technical achievements. At the New England District Championship, despite some tough qualification rounds, the team was the first pick of the #4 alliance and went on to upset both the #1 and #2 seeded alliances to win their division. The Wired Boars swept the finals, winning the District Championship and automatically qualifying for the FIRST World Championships.
In April, the team traveled to Houston, Texas to compete at Worlds, finishing the qualification rounds ranked 3rd and eventually eliminated as a Semi-Finalist in their division with a record of 11 wins and 3 losses. Overall, the team finished the season ranked #1 in Connecticut, #2 in New England and in the top 1 percent in the U.S.A. and worldwide.
Economics Team Wins Prestigious International Competition
This past spring, Choate’s Economics Team won the Harvard Pre-Collegiate Economics Challenge, a prestigious international competition for high school students passionate about economics and its role in the world.
The winning team comprised Sam Bae, Jason Cao, Xiu Lim, and Arjun Pathy, all members of the Class of 2025. This year is the second time that the Choate team has won the competition, in the more than a decade that the competition has been held (it was not held for a couple of years during the COVID pandemic); Choate’s earlier victory was in 2013.
The competition requires students to take a 60-question multiple-choice test and participate in team Quiz Bowl-style matches. Students are tested on their knowledge of a wide range of economics topics (including content typically on the Macro and Micro AP exams but also including current events and economic history). Based on the scores on the multiple-choice test and the preliminary rounds of the Quiz Bowls, the top 8 teams were seeded for the playoff Quiz Bowl tournament.
The Harvard Undergraduate Economics Association organized the event, which was held on Harvard’s campus.
Outstanding Community Service Students Receive
2025 John Kirby Simon ’79 Community Service Award
In May, the School recognized three students for their dedication to service, leadership, and community engagement with the prestigious John Kirby Simon ’79 Community Service Award, which recognizes students whose actions reflect a commitment to helping others, fostering education, and inspiring change. Director of Community Service Melissa Koomson presented the awards.
Rhema Woolcock ’28 has actively contributed to school life through Love Your Locs, celebrating diversity, and excelling in varsity wrestling, earning the James Baker Cornish Wrestling Award. Beyond campus, she has made an impact through various service initiatives, including tutoring at New Haven Reads, supporting seniors at the Elim Park retirement community in Cheshire, mentoring children at the Ulbrich Boys and Girls Club in Wallingford, and others.
Lara Amer ’27 is a member of Girl Up Choate, UNICEF, Interact, and Model UN, and works to uplift voices and foster meaningful conversations. Her involvement in The Brief as Academics and Club Editor has helped amplify student achievements. Lara’s service commitment reaches beyond borders — she has volunteered with the Art Therapy Section at 57357 Hospital in Egypt and participated in the Global Travel Program: Peace is a Process in Northern Ireland.
Linda Elizabeth Porter ’25 was recognized for her dedication to civic engagement and remembrance. A member of the Debate Team, Modern Agriculture Club, and Sociology and Anthropology Society, she has also worked with Connecticut Foodshare and the American Red Cross, addressing community needs. On campus, she was Project Leader for the Choate Veterans Support Group.
Beyond the Block: Seven Summits
This past spring, rising sixth former Emma Schwerin became the youngest American female to reach the summit of Mount Everest and the youngest-ever woman to complete the Seven Summits challenge (the highest mountain on each of the seven continents). Samuel Lawrence Schwerin accompanied his daughter for each summit, and for Everest, they were guided by Tendi Sherpa, an accomplished high-altitude guide who marked his 18th Everest summit with the climb.
It was an eighth-grade class unit on the topic of Mount Everest that set Emma on her mountaineering journey. She talked to her parents, and they planned a family trip to trek 100 miles round trip to Everest Base Camp. That experience changed her life. As a student at Choate, she decided to go for the record when she realized she was young enough to make history. A member of her guiding company asked if she was “going for the record.” She committed to the goal after doing a mountaineering prep course and exploring how she could manage the climbs and her schoolwork. Emma says, “I love Choate, and didn’t want to repeat a year or delay graduating.” She credits her teachers and deans for helping her.
She climbed Mt. Koscuiszko, Australia in November 2023; Mt. Kilimanjaro, Africa in January 2024; Denali, Alaska in June 2024; Mont Blanc in the Alps in July 2024; Aconcagua, Argentina, in November 2024; Mt Vinson, Antarctica in December 2024, and Everest in May 2025. In preparation for the Denali climb, Emma could be seen dragging a tire around campus, as she had to carry more than her body weight for that grueling, sixteen-day climb.
Though many have asked Emma what’s next, she says she’s looking forward to being back at School, seeing her friends, and enjoying her sixth form year. She aims to inspire young girls to dream big and use fear to challenge themselves.
Retirees and Service Honors
The 2025 Year-End Celebration marked 25 years of service or retirement for many Choate faculty and staff. Those honored for 25 years of service included Joel Dominguez, groundskeeper, Facilities; Mejrema Duracak, Coordinator of Student Services; Carol Jones, Manager of Art Center Operations; Katie Levesque, Dean of Faculty, Teacher; Kevin Rogers, Department head, Teacher; and Kathy White, Administrative Assistant, Dean of Faculty’s Office.
Retirees honored (years of service) included Peter Dupont, Supervisor, Mail Room (17 years); Fran O’Donoghue, Teacher (41 years); John Paleski, Assistant Equipment Room Manager, Athletics (27 years); Amy Salot, Teacher (39 years); Neal Salzillo, plumber (31 years); David Seitlinger, Plumbing Supervisor (38 years); and Neal Shimmield, Teacher (41 years).
National Merit Scholarship Winner
Peyton (Peisong) Li ’25 has won a National Merit $2,500 Scholarship.
Such winners are the finalists in each state judged to have the strongest combination of skills, accomplishments, and potential for success in college studies. By the conclusion of the year’s competition, more than 6,930 students won National Merit Scholarships, worth approximately $26 million. The number of winners named in each state is proportional to the state’s percentage of the nation’s graduating high school seniors.
Pictured left to right: Kathy White, Fran O’Donoghue, Amy Salot, and Kevin Rogers
A LITTLE BECOMES A LOT COMMUNITY SERVICE AT CHOATE
By
Katie Jewett P ’14, ’17, ’24
In this Community Service Club partnership between the Choate Veteran Support Group and House of Heroes, students helped with yard work for a widow of a veteran.
“Twenty-six dollars a day,” answered Megan, co-founder of Fostering Family Hope, when Karina, a Choate third former, asked how much foster parents receive to care for children. The 9-monthold baby on her hip had already charmed us Choate volunteers with his wide eyes and two-toothed grin. But we knew caring for him couldn’t be easy — or cheap.
Debriefing on the ride back to campus, we did the math. Twenty-six dollars a day barely covered diapers, food, clothes, and the occasional babysitter. One student put it into perspective: earlier that morning, he had spent more than that on snacks at the Choate Store.
As part of the Choate Community Service Seminar (CSS), students like Karina dedicate their time after school three days a week to volunteer at nonprofit organizations across Wallingford and New Haven. On this Tuesday, while we sorted clothing donations at Fostering Family Hope, other Choate students were tutoring Spanish-speaking children at the Spanish Community of Wallingford. Still others traveled to New Haven Reads, a literacyfocused nonprofit, where they helped younger children learn to read. By the end of the week, CSS participants had stocked food bank shelves, organized clothing supply drives, and even given piano lessons to senior citizens at a local nursing home. “And they actually practice!” Karina exclaimed when asked about her elderly students’ keyboard skills.
Beyond the pride and confidence that CSS brings to Choate students, it also offers them what research has shown are the benefits of volunteering: improved mental and physical health, a sense of purpose, skill development, and deeper community connections.1
REFLECTION AND GROWTH
At Choate, however, service isn’t just about logging hours for unpaid work — it is about addressing real-world challenges and striving to make a meaningful impact in the vulnerable communities in and beyond our area. Choate’s Statement on Character encourages all students to foster “a commitment to improve the welfare of others.” The written reflections that all students write after their volunteering efforts reveal that many students find that these powerful educational opportunities shift their own perspectives about complex community problems. One student, after working three hours at a food bank, wrote:
“My supervisor told me that people had lined up since 5 a.m. for fresh produce. I was shocked — and felt guilty about my own complaints of having to wake up early.”
Another student, after assembling hygiene kits for a women’s shelter, shared a more personal realization:
“I was embarrassingly unfamiliar with women’s health products. I couldn’t tell the difference between a package of pads and tampons. The branding made it all seem obscure to me. Later, I educated myself. This experience showed me two things: we’re often ignorant of things that don’t affect us, and we can’t help others if we don’t understand their needs.”
These moments of self-awareness prepare students for lifelong reflection — whether on college essays, job applications, or in relationships and careers. Choate prides itself on preparing students to take on leadership roles in addressing the challenges of the future; community service can be a transformative experience in opening eyes and inspiring hearts and minds.
I truly enjoyed my experience with community service last winter. One of my most meaningful memories was teaching two senior residents at Masonicare, a nursing home, how to play the piano. Having played piano for more than eight years, I found it incredibly fulfilling to share both my knowledge and love for the instrument with the senior citizens. I used some of my old ‘Piano Adventures’ sight-reading books to guide our lessons, and over the course of the term, I saw real progress in my students’ playing. Watching their growth not only made me proud of them, but it also made me proud of myself as a teacher. I am grateful to have been a part of community service and to share my passion for music with others to make a positive impact.
The most visible demonstration of Choate’s commitment to service happens each October when more than 1,000 faculty, staff, and students disperse across New Haven County to assist local nonprofits on Choate’s Community Service Day. On that single day, Choate contributes more than 2,000 hours of labor and support to more than 25 local organizations ranging from food pantries, refugee resettlement agencies, and women’s shelters, to community farms, nature preserves, and senior centers.
But that’s just the beginning. Over the course of the year, students collectively dedicate more than 10,000 hours to service in our communities. Weekend volunteer opportunities add to afternoon and evening opportunities and together Choate students have contributed to more than 40 local organizations since the diploma requirement was revised in 2017.
It brings me so much joy every time I walk into a room full of Choate student volunteers — whether they are being ‘Reading Buddies’ to young elementary school students or mentoring middle schoolers, they always bring energy and positivity to their projects. Seeing children’s eyes light up when they see their ‘Buddies’ tells us everything we need to know about the impact Choate volunteers have on the community — the children in Wallingford are being given positive role models at pivotal moments in their lives, and we are so grateful!
– Sunnie Scarpa, Wallingford Public Library Director
A MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE
When my own child was at Choate, I occasionally grumbled about the requirement of 10 hours of service each year. Wasn’t it too much for a young student already balancing so many responsibilities and commitments?
A wise colleague offered this simple reply: “It’s all about perspective and the collective.” He continued: “Ten hours might feel like a significant burden to an individual, but it’s just over 0.1% of a person’s annual waking hours. More important, what students learn by working with real people in caring organizations dedicated to addressing real community challenges is invaluable. And when each of our 850 students gives 10 hours, Choate as a collective offers the world more than 354 full days of service. That’s the power of community engagement — many small efforts add up to something much greater.”
As the Tanzanian proverb goes, “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”
Today, Choate’s robust community service opportunities ensure that, little by little, our students are doing a lot to make a difference and grow the next generation of thoughtful compassionate leaders who will be ready to tackle the challenges of tomorrow.
My fifth form year, we went to help with field work on public land in North Branford. It was a welcome relief from the classroom — a day spent out in the sun, pulling out invasive species, engaging with the local land.
The steward of the land, a Choate parent, invited us across the road for a break and some homemade banana bread. I was struck, immediately, by his house. Old and dramatic, the site of a former lumber mill, sitting directly on the edge of a dam. He gave us a tour of the fish ladder he had constructed and spoke emphatically about local preservation efforts.
Five years later, the summer before my senior year at Wesleyan University, I was beginning work on my thesis, a
documentary film. I wanted to tell a local, environmental story and thought of the ‘guy in the mill.’ I reached out to Choate Community Service Director Melissa Koomson, who was immediately responsive and put me in touch with Lindsay Suter. He and I spent an afternoon together and spoke for hours with ease. A step off Choate campus, a day of community service, turned into a year of work and over 50 hours of footage for my film: Guy in the Mill. That day meeting Lindsay made such a lasting impression, and the resulting film was luckily incidental. Largely though, the School community service days were for stepping outside of the Choate microcosm. They were an opportunity to confront local ecological challenges and to apply myself in ways that I could be functionally useful.
– Eliza Marovitz ’21
COMMUNITY SERVICE AT CHOATE: A CALL TO CHARACTER AND JUSTICE
By Director of Community Service Melissa Koomson
My work with community service has shifted over the years, but in hindsight I know that the Quaker value that there is God in everyone, in conjunction with my interest in community, has been my north star. Be it access to education, food, housing, healthcare, or the environment, everything is intersectional and connected by systems of inequity and oppression. And people. Storytelling is a key practice of understanding our own humanity so that we can better understand that of others around us. It brings us closer together to build a more connected society, which I believe will ultimately lead the world to greater kindness, wellbeing, and justice for all.
At Choate, community service is more than meeting a requirement — it’s an invitation to act with empathy, humility, and purpose. Through thoughtful engagement with local and global communities, students learn to connect academic learning with real-world challenges, developing the character, awareness, and civic responsibility that define a Choate education.
Service must go beyond charity. It asks students to understand the deeper social, historical, and systemic roots of inequality — whether tied to race, class, gender, ability, or the environment — and to approach these issues with curiosity, care, and a willingness to grow. True service involves partnership, reflection, and a commitment to building a more just and equitable world.
Our programming aims to center human dignity, foster authentic understanding across differences, and uphold the School’s values in action — not just in principle. As a community, we are called to examine our responsibilities, use our privileges wisely, and ensure our work contributes to lasting and transformative change.
By Peter Morris Dixon
The campus of Choate Rosemary Hall, with its great variety of buildings thoughtfully organized across 458 acres of rolling Connecticut landscape, is the ever-evolving physical representation of the School’s unwavering values. Early expansion, the return of Rosemary Hall to Wallingford in 1971, followed by the adoption of coeducation in 1977 have all left their marks on the campus and its architecture. In the twenty-first century, as concerns about the effects of modern culture on the environment have come increasingly to the fore, the imperative to mitigate resource depletion and climate change has been addressed with considerable planning, and Choate Rosemary Hall has committed to leadership in environmental sustainability both in its curriculum and in its operations — including an extraordinary five buildings LEED-certified at the Gold or Platinum level by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), with a sixth expected to be certified later this year. In the words of Head of School Alex Curtis, “sustainability is a necessary component of our contemporary values-based education. If you think of education as an investment in our collective future, you must think about ensuring that our future is secure.”
The School’s 2012 strategic plan called for the School to achieve net-zero energy consumption by 2050, an objective that, as Dr. Curtis remembers, “I could have punted to my successor, but I don’t think you get to say, on sustainability goals, ‘not my problem.’” Accordingly, the School’s 2021 strategic plan identified the goal of becoming an acknowledged secondary school leader in environmental sustainability by operating with a reduced carbon footprint and by creating a climate-changesolutions curriculum. It also committed to achieving net-zero energy consumption by the tighter deadline of 2033 — meaning action must be taken now — and, as part of this accelerated dedication to environmental responsibility, raised the bar for all major construction projects from LEED Gold, as specified in the 2012 plan, to LEED Platinum.
“We
realized that doing more meant doing better, and LEED Platinum made that distinction,” says Dr. Curtis.
The USGBC’s LEED rating system — LEED stands for “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design” — gives points for such criteria as environmental impact reduction, water conservation, energy efficiency, materials selection, and indoor air quality. Despite the appearance of other rating programs for sustainable design, the LEED program, updated several times since its introduction in the late 1990s, remains the standard for both new construction and renovation projects. The USGBC currently requires a minimum of 80 points out of a possible 110 for Platinum certification for new buildings, and 60 points for Gold. Critically, LEED certification is earned not on intent but on actual performance, with buildings receiving certification only after demonstrating their success in operation. In addition to the cost of building sustainably, there is a modest cost for taking a project through the LEED certification process. Dr. Curtis believes that LEED certification is important to ensuring buildings function as intended, and because not all sustainable design strategies are visible, that the plaques that announce this respected third-party affirmation are valuable tools for communicating the School’s commitment.
The Kohler Environmental Center (KEC), the first building to be realized with Choate’s commitment to environmental responsibility top of mind, was designed in tandem with the groundbreaking new curriculum it houses: the Environmental Immersion Program, conceived as a “year abroad” for a cohort of 16 students to focus their studies on environmental responsibility. Its home, on a site a short bike ride from the center of campus, was designed by New York-based Robert A.M. Stern Architects (RAMSA); the design team was led by Robert Stern and his partners Graham Wyatt and Kevin Smith. The Kohler Center was completed in 2012 and certified LEED Platinum in November of that same year. The building takes advantage of environmentally responsible strategies both traditional — balanced daylight in the classrooms, operable clerestory windows and a tower for natural ventilation — and state-of-theart, including geothermal wells for heating and cooling, rooftop arrays for solar water heating, and a high-performance building envelope. Materials were chosen for their durability. The building wears its technology lightly, its facades of rubblestone and fiber-cement siding blending comfortably into the woodland setting, its profile recalling traditional New England farm buildings. The adjacent field of photovoltaic panels produces more electricity than the building requires over the course of each year. The success of the KEC encouraged changes on the main campus, where, under the leadership of Dr. Curtis, four buildings have since 2012 been LEED-certified Gold. Notably, the buildings at Choate Rosemary Hall certified under the LEED rating system do not adhere to a single visual identity constrained by “green” building techniques; rather, they present an impressive variety of architectural expression appropriate both to their location on campus and to the programs they serve.
Photovoltaic panels
Ground-sourced heating and cooling
Natural light
The Cameron and Edward Lanphier Center for Mathematics and Computer Science was the first building on the main campus submitted for LEED certification. Designed by the New Haven firm Pelli Clarke & Partners and completed in 2015, the building was sited to showcase a magnificent 150-year-old beech tree. The building defines a new campus quadrangle; the pitched roof profiles of the two classroom wings recall those of Choate’s red-brick Georgian Revival buildings. Reflecting the expansion of STEM to STEAM — with the integration of the arts into the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics curriculum — the Lanphier Center reinterprets the campus’s historic materials palette with white brick facades addressing the campus and glass-clad entry towers.
“ This building is about technology, and it’s about our vision for the future — which is very much a sustainability question,” says Fred Clarke, who led the design team.
“Pursuing LEED Gold certification was simply the right thing to do; we wouldn’t have considered any other option.” Surrounding the new courtyard, glass facades provide labs and classrooms with sweeping views across the landscape and offer passersby glimpses into the creative exploration taking place within.
“The building’s solar orientation led us to integrate brise-soleils into the facades in a way that speaks to both tradition and technology,” says Clarke, “but the real sustainability work is done by the building’s mechanical systems, and none of that is visible.” Among these are low-velocity displacement ventilation and sensors to adjust light levels during the day, both reducing energy consumption, and operable windows that automatically shut off mechanical ventilation when opened. The building was designed to use less than 35 percent of the energy of a conventionally engineered building and was certified LEED Gold in 2017.
St. John Hall, Choate Rosemary Hall’s student center, was designed by Baltimore-based Bowie Gridley Architects under the leadership of principals Bill Gridley and Richard Salopek and completed in 2017. (Bowie Gridley is now part of DLR Group and moved into that firm’s Washington, D.C. office in 2022.)
Replacing an inefficient 1950s building that proved intractable to renovation, the new St. John Hall is connected to Hill House and complements its Georgian Revival architectural expression. Inside, the building’s flexible daylightflooded spaces — lounges, a snack bar, a game room, a media room, and the Choate Store — foster interpersonal engagement and social learning; the building also provides rooms for student clubs, lockers for day students, study rooms, conference rooms, and deans’ offices. Sustainable design strategies, including geothermal wells that minimize energy consumption for heating and cooling, helped earn the building LEED Gold certification shortly after it opened. When a few years later a fire led to significant water damage at Hill House at the heart of the historic campus, the School decided to rebuild, rather than start anew. Originally designed by Francis Waterman and completed in 1911, Hill House established the red-brick Georgian Revival vocabulary that continues to characterize much of the campus today. The centrality of the building in the School’s architectural heritage was doubtless one motivation for the decision to save what remained; another,
certainly, was the fact that preservation and adaptive re-use are among the most resource-efficient strategies in facilities design. The renovation and restoration project, again designed by DLR Group / Bowie Gridley, was completed in 2021 and certified LEED Gold in April 2022.
“It is an inherently responsible strategy to preserve existing buildings so you’re not sending a massive amount of masonry and concrete and steel to a landfill,” says Salopek. “Though the water damage to the wood and drywall inside Hill House had led to untenable environmental conditions, the solid masonry facades were not damaged. Nonetheless we substantially improved the building’s envelope by putting in new windows with highly energy-efficient glass and applying spray-foam insulation to the interior face of the masonry to reduce air infiltration.”
The renovated building now also features low water-use plumbing fixtures and LED lighting. Overcoming the challenge of the building’s modest ceiling heights, which did not allow for floor- or ceiling-mounted air-conditioning units, the architects developed an innovative strategy using radiant gypsum board to transmit heating and cooling through the walls.
“With both of our buildings at Choate,” says Salopek, “we worked to reinforce the character of the historic campus, concealing sustainable strategies within a Georgian architectural framework, while creating environmentally healthy modern interiors where kids can be kids, whether for living, at Hill House, or for coming together, at St. John Hall.”
Ann and George Colony Hall, RAMSA’s first contribution to Choate Rosemary Hall’s main campus, picks up on a different strain of the School’s architectural heritage: it complements the Paul Mellon Arts Center, designed by leading Modernist architect I.M. Pei and completed in 1972, extending its geometries and adapting its material palette of board-formed concrete and large expanses of glass curtainwall. Again designed under the leadership of RAMSA partners Stern, Wyatt, and Smith, Colony Hall takes advantage of technology not available to Pei in the 1970s, such as highly insulative stateof-the-art glass that allows plenty of daylight into the lobby while minimizing heat gain and wind intrusion, reducing the need for air conditioning and heating. In addition to an auditorium sized to accommodate Choate’s weekly allschool meetings, and tunable to all sorts of artistic performances from spoken word to full orchestra, the building is also home to studios, rehearsal rooms, and support spaces for the School’s music and dance programs. A rooftop photovoltaic array supplies a significant portion of the building’s power needs. Completed in 2019, Colony Hall was certified LEED Gold in January 2020.
Accompanying the accelerated goals of the School’s 2021 strategic plan was Dr. Curtis’s decision to commit to LEED Platinum certification for all future major construction projects. “When I arrived five years ago,” says Patrick Durbin, Choate’s Chief Financial Officer, “our standard was LEED Gold. Our strategic plan committed the School to leadership in environmental responsibility, so the question was asked, why aren’t we building at the top of this world-recognized standard today? After all, the Kohler Center had been certified LEED Platinum in 2012. I expected a substantial premium, something like 20%, to take a project from Gold to Platinum. But when I looked into it further, I learned it was only just north of 5%,” says Durbin.
“And that’s only part of the calculus. For one thing, there is payback: we’re using less energy, we’re generating more energy, and we’re choosing materials that last longer. Second, it’s where the young people are headed. They are ultimately our clientele, and they are much more environmentally aware than older generations — so looking toward the future, and how we remain competitive, we really don’t have a choice.”
Stepping up to meet this upgraded commitment is Carr Hall, Choate’s new welcome center and admission building — the first building many new visitors to campus will experience. “With the jump to LEED Platinum, the admission building will communicate immediately the School’s commitment to environmental responsibility — not in a show-offy way, but as a demonstration of how deeply embedded this commitment is in the life of our School,” says Dr. Curtis.
The team at RAMSA, led by Partner Kevin Smith and Associate Partner George de Brigard, designed Carr Hall in the spirit of a historic New England village farmhouse that had been added to over time and then converted to institutional use. “Carr Hall is the latest chapter in the continuing story of Choate’s commitment to a sustainable campus. At first glance, the new building looks like a beautiful 19th-century white brick house, at home among the collection of historic houses along East Main Street,” says Smith. “But there’s a twist. The roof is actually photovoltaic panels, and instead of a lumbering oil furnace, high efficiency heat pumps provide an all-electric solution to heating and cooling. RAMSA is delighted to be a part of this story and salutes Choate for challenging us to reach LEED Platinum certification.” De Brigard adds, “As is the case with all LEED Platinum projects, we had to pursue the full gamut of credits in all of the categories: a whole-building life-cycle assessment for embodied carbon guided the selection of materials inside and out; modeling during the design process for daylight and views reduced the need for artificial lighting; and advanced metering at all panels will help keep the building operating at peak efficiency.”
The Carr Hall project also creates a new 70-car underground visitors parking lot topped with a green roof to serve as a new campus lawn overlooking the School’s playing fields. By providing electric-vehicle charging stations, and by avoiding the disadvantages of surface parking lots such as runoff from oil, the underground lot will not only contribute to the project’s LEED Platinum status but also achieve Parksmart certification in a program developed and administered by GBCI / Green Business Certification that recognizes projects for innovative parking strategies, increased energy efficiency, and better lighting and ventilation.
The improvements to the campus continue with projects large and small. The annual over-the-summer renovations of some of the School’s faculty houses will now include, for example, the installation of rooftop solar tiles that resemble traditional metal roofs. The School is embarking on the first phase of a project that will provide each of the campus’s four quadrants with its own geothermal field. “The cost,” says Durbin, “is not always in dollars; it’s more a mindset change. Planting native species,
whether trees or wildflowers, doesn’t necessarily take more money or effort. It’s a decision that requires intention.”
Katrina Linthorst Homan, Choate’s Director of Sustainability, leads the School’s C-proctor program — “C” stands for “conservation” as well as for “Choate” — the student arm of the School’s sustainability committee that constitutes an on-the-ground environmental task force, supporting programs such as school-wide food-waste composting, which was initiated in the dining hall in 2008 and expanded to the dorms during the pandemic. There’s also demonstrable success in the collection for charitable donation that takes place at the end of each school year: so significant is the reduction of waste, says Homan, that “we haven’t needed to get dumpsters in years.” Homan and the C-proctors have worked to make recycling visible on campus, enhancing prominent tripartite bins for compost, recycling, and trash with engaging hand-drawn signage; still, she says, “the most prominent visual representations of our efforts to be sustainable are our buildings — and it’s visibility, things people can see, that keeps sustainability front of mind. It keeps students very conscious of what our footprint is, how we can reduce it, and how we can lead by example.”
Dr. Curtis emphasizes that all this commitment to environmental responsibility is not an individual effort, but rather the result of “a team of people making it happen. Patrick Durbin, who didn’t blink when I proposed moving from Gold to Platinum, has been a remarkable partner. Katrina Homan’s approach — not goading or nagging, but encouraging and enlightening — has changed the very culture of our school. Our entire facilities team have retrained themselves, especially Steve Cahoon, our
assistant director of energy management, who has absolutely reinvented himself to be an expert. Joe Scanio continues to lead the Environmental Immersion Program he helped initiate. And our Board has never hesitated.”
But ultimately, it’s the students who will change the world. In the course in the architectural history of the campus he co-leads in the spring term, Dr. Curtis discusses how his predecessor George St. John conceived the original master plan for the “School on the Hillside,” with its four quadrants, its vistas, and the way the campus lives in harmony with the landscape. As a model for how students act today can bring about a better future, he points to how, on hills that had earlier been stripped for agriculture, students in the 1910s and 1920s replanted the trees that still enhance the campus today. As today’s students move forward into the wider world, says Dr. Curtis, “I hope they’ll ask the right questions — and that when they’re decision-makers, they’ll make the right decisions.”
“I don’t want the students to think of sustainability only in some classes or in some buildings,” emphasizes Dr. Curtis. “I want it to be the air they breathe.”
UNIQUE TRADITIONS BOOKEND SCHOOL EXPERIENCE
By Rhea hiRshman
The Choate Rosemary Hall academic year is bookended by a series of unique traditions that add both celebration and gravitas to the student experience.
Matriculation and Convocation
Since 1992–1993, all incoming Choate Rosemary Hall students at the beginning of the academic year sign their names to the matriculation book, pledging themselves to personal growth, integrity, self-discipline, and caring for others. During dinner with faculty, students are called in groups to the Chapel, where they sign the book and then return to finish dinner and conversation. Born out of the old Choate tradition of “signing the register,” which earliest record shows beginning in 1924, this formal ceremony enfolds new students — whatever form they enter in — into the school community.
Convocation marks the ceremonial opening of the School’s — this year being the 136th — academic year. The community is welcomed back to school by the Head of School and faculty are recognized with chair citation honors. Each year, the Student Council President offers positive words and sometimes advice to all students to set the tone for a great year. For years, Convocation was held on the tartan court of the Worthington Johnson Athletic Center; since 2019 Convocation has been held in Ann and George Colony Hall.
Garden Party
Garden Party — a Rosemary Hall tradition — began with the gifting of a real garden all the way back in 1911. The gift-giver was Janet Ruutz-Rees, the mother of founding headmistress Caroline Ruutz-Rees, who presented the sixth form girls with a flowering garden on the Rosemary Hall campus in Greenwich.
Later that spring, near graduation time, those sixth formers handed over the garden “with all due ceremony” (to quote the yearbook) to the class behind them. Garden Party was born.
Over time, Garden Party morphed into a dinner to which each sixth former invited a fifth former (via often highly creative invitations). Other Garden Party traditions included performances by the Whimawehs (Rosemary Hall’s a cappella group), skits, spoof awards, and the announcement of the yearbook dedication. At some point, another feature was added: a sixth former was dunked in the courtyard fountain. If everyone in the class had passed her final exams, it would be the tallest girl; if someone failed, the shortest girl received the dubious honor.
While some Garden Party traditions from Greenwich did not make the transition to Wallingford, many did. The current holder of the athletic scarf still chooses its next recipient on the basis of athletic ability and sportsmanship. The banner, a Rosemary Hall relic from the 1890s (when a winning team took the losing team’s school banner to hang in the gym), symbolizes school spirit, and the whistle (that was at one time given to the Student Council President), represents leadership. And, although there is no longer a Sixth Form garden, each sixth form girl gets a yellow rose, and each fifth form girl gets a white rose.
Last Hurrah
Resplendent in their most elegant apparel, the Class of 2025 gathered days before graduation for The Last Hurrah, their final dance at Choate Rosemary Hall.
This formal dance, a highlight of Senior Week, evolved from the two schools’ dance traditions. From Rosemary Hall’s earliest days, students eagerly anticipated “The Mid” — so called because the formal dance took place in the middle of the year, usually in February after Mid-year Examinations. The girls prepared for weeks, inviting boys from nearby schools and colleges, planning outfits, and decorating the gym and nearby classrooms in lilacs and laurel. In 1937, The Mid even made the pages of Life magazine, with a four-page spread of text and photos detailing the elegant event.
At Choate, an 1899 junior dance was held to honor the neighboring Rosemary Hall girls who were departing the following year for their new Greenwich campus. In 1902, Choate held a prom just before graduation and, from 1915 on, all the dances, which were then labeled Festivities, were held both in February and near commencement. These weekend-long events,
to which the Choate boys invited girls from schools all over New England, included sock hops, tea dances, winter sports competitions, and, of course, the highly anticipated formal dances. On Friday and Saturday nights, Japanese lanterns lit the way around the campus. During these weekends, the third form boys camped out at the Winter Ex so that the girls could sleep at the school.
During the 1970s, after Rosemary Hall’s 1971 return to Wallingford, the two schools held nearly weekly dance events ranging in style from “greaser dances” to sock hops to Christmas dances. The spring of 1980 saw the first edition of The Last Hurrah, combining the traditions of The Mid and Festivities.
An added attraction of The Last Hurrah is the dance competition, where sixth formers showcase the variety of moves they’ve acquired (think everything from foxtrot to salsa) through participating in senior dance lessons taught by volunteer faculty members. In 1982, in keeping with both schools’ traditions of mid-year dances, a First Hurrah was added to the calendar.
Prize Day and Commencement
“’Time gallops withal’ between Easter and June” wrote the editorial staff of the June 1900 issue of The Question Mark — Rosemary Hall’s literary magazine — “and Prize Day is here and gone before it seems possible.”
Since the school’s founding in 1890, Prize Day and graduation day were one and the same. In the early years, the day’s activities stretched from before dawn — when the daisy chains were strung — to the evening, when prizes for all manner of accomplishments were awarded.
In the earliest years of Choate, through 1908, graduation was held on the morning of May 30 and called “Decoration Day,” aligning with the name of the holiday. (“Decoration Day” became “Memorial Day” in 1967.) Prizes were awarded that afternoon. From 1908 to 1947, when George St. John was headmaster, and from 1947 to 1973, when his son Seymour St. John was headmaster, the scheduling of Prize Day and Commencement varied.
After Rosemary Hall’s move to Wallingford in 1971, the coordinated schools held separate graduations until 1977, with a joint Prize Day
(separate from graduation) in that final year of coordination. On May 28, 1978, the first single-school diplomas were awarded during the fully consolidated Choate Rosemary Hall commencement ceremony, with Prize Day for all held the day before graduation.
That year, the graduates and their guests heard from author and commentator Sander Vanocur P ’78. Other notable Commencement speakers have included astronaut Dr. Mae Jemison, former vice president Richard Cheney, former New Jersey governor Christie Todd Whitman, poet laureate Billy Collins, civil rights attorney Vernon Jordan, and athlete and activist Billie Jean King. Often, alumni and alumnae have addressed the graduating class, including former Minnesota governor Arne Carlson ’53, playwright Edward Albee ’46, and Olympic hockey stars Angela Ruggiero ’98 and Hilary Knight ’07.
Other events leading up to Commencement include the presentation by sixth formers of their Capstone projects to peers and faculty, never letting them forget that while having fun, academics define the journey.
REUNION 2025 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
The Choate Rosemary Hall Alumni Association’s mission is to create, perpetuate, and enhance relationships among Choate Rosemary Hall alumni, current and prospective students, faculty, staff, and friends in order to foster loyalty, interest, and support for the School and for one another, and to build pride, spirit, and community.
OFFICERS
President
David Javdan ’86
Vice Presidents
Jaques Clariond ’01
Justin Graham ’98
Lena Sullesta Jessen ’92
Dewey Kang ’03
Members
Sam Chao ’04
Marisa Ferraro ’92, P ’27
Chris Herzog ’99
Ashley Holt ’11
David Kestnbaum ’00
Lambert Lau ’97
Brad Mak ’96
George Ramirez ’11
Will Gilyard ’98, Faculty Representative
Additional Executive
Committee Members
Chief Advancement Officer
Anne Bergen
Director of Alumni Relations
Andrea Solomon
Alumni Association
Past Presidents
Susan Barclay ’85
David Hang ’94, P ’25
Chris Hodgson ’78, P ’12, ’14, ’17
Elizabeth Alford Hogan ’82
Parisa Jaffer ’89
Woody Laikind ’53†
Patrick McCurdy ’98
REGIONAL NETWORK LEADERSHIP
Boston
Gabby Rundle Robinette ’06
Chicago
Maria Del Favero ’83
Jacqueline Salamack Lanphier ’06
Connecticut
David Aversa ’91
Katie Vitali Childs ’95, P ’24, ’26
Los Angeles
Wesley Hansen ’98
Alexa Platt ’95, P ’29
New York
Conrad Gomez ’98
Leah Lettieri ’07
Rosemary Hall
Anne Marshall Henry ’62
San Francisco
Albert Lee ’02
Washington, DC
Dan Carucci ’76
Tillie Fowler ’92
Olivia Bee Moore ’10
Beijing
Matthew Cheng ’10
Gunther Hamm ’98
Hong Kong
Jennifer Yu Cheng ’99
Lambert Lau ’97
Sandy Wan ’90
London
Tatiana Donaldson ’13
Elitsa Nacheva ’08
Seoul
Rae-Eun Sung ’97
Shanghai T.C. Chau ’97
Thailand
Uracha Chaiyapinunt ’13
Isa Chirathivat ’96
Natapitt Sethpornpong ’14
Tokyo
Kirk Shimizuishi ’96
Miki Ito Yoshida ’07
Reunion 2025: A Joyful Return
Alumni from across the decades gathered for a festive weekend celebrating connection, achievement, and school spirit. Highlights included a keynote from Head of School Alex Curtis offering a window into campus life today and the School’s current vision and priorities, as well as alumni-led panels on leadership and entrepreneurship. The Athletics Hall of Fame welcomed two outstanding athletes: Caitlin Farrell ’15, a three-sport varsity standout in soccer, basketball, and lacrosse; and David Guernsey ’05, a record-setting swimmer and water polo captain. The weekend also honored the Class of 1965 with the Distinguished Service Award, recognizing six decades of steadfast volunteerism and enduring loyalty to Choate and one another.
† = deceased
with David Javdan ’86
New Alumni Association President
“You are students for a few years. Alumni forever. The main goal of my time in this role is to make being a Choate alum an active part of who you are, not a way of describing who you used to be.”
BULLETIN: Tell us a bit about yourself and your path since graduating from Choate Rosemary Hall. What drew you to a career at the intersection of law, public service, and business?
DAVID JAVDAN: I was born in Iran and immigrated to the U.S. as a baby. My siblings, one of whom is my brother Ray Javdan ’89, and I were always taught that everything can be taken from you except your education and relationships. Our parents instilled this value in us. During the Iranian revolution, we probably had around 200 people stay with us at some point — right in
our home in rural upstate New York. They all should have been crushed, but somehow most not only survived but thrived. There was a profound sense of loss and disconnection, which led many of us to engage in charitable work as a way to rebuild purpose and connection.
My career has taken a lot of interesting turns, mostly because every time I was asked to serve, I said yes, even if it was inconvenient or if I was not good at it. Many people think pro bono or volunteer work, charity, etc., is a distraction. In truth, it made my career.
When I was a young lawyer, a senior partner — himself a Holocaust survivor — asked me to assist a polarizing U.S. Senator with pro bono work aimed at securing justice for Holocaust survivors. I accepted, despite disagreeing with the Senator on many issues. On this cause, he empowered me to do the right thing.
That experience led to representing the Jewish Community of Austria in Holocaust restitution cases. We won a 6–3 decision in the U.S. Supreme Court, secured a multi-billiondollar settlement, and inspired a movie starring Ryan Reynolds and Helen Mirren. That, in turn, opened doors: I led Jewish outreach for a Presidential campaign and, at 33, became General Counsel of a federal financial agency overseeing 450 people — at a 90 percent pay cut my father begged me not to take.
When it was time to move on, I nearly returned to law — the safe path — but being a Choatie, I figured I could take a risk. I turned down a DOJ job and joined a scrappy turnaround firm where Ivy League credentials were almost a liability. A year later, Lehman Brothers collapsed. We stepped in to run it. Nineteen years on, the firm has grown from 500 to 12,000 professionals, nearly all organically. It’s been an extraordinary journey — one built on taking the road less traveled.
There are countless stories like this. I’ve accepted appointments from both political parties. I’ve served pro bono as General Counsel for what became the nation’s largest college suicide prevention nonprofit and served on boards of adoption and refugee organizations. Many colleagues dismissed this work as distractions — but it’s shaped who I am today.
BULLETIN: What’s one lesson or value from your time at Choate that has stayed with you throughout your career?
DAVID JAVDAN: Just show up. Any success I’ve had comes from saying yes to the opportunities in front of me. Some of the most life-changing roles I’ve taken on were ones others passed up.
BULLETIN: What motivated you to get involved with the Alumni Association?
DAVID JAVDAN: Two things. First, a friend asked me to get involved. I kinda rolled my eyes, but I said yes — for him. Then I ended up loving it — and kept doing it for me.
The second was my kids. They started asking about my time at Choate, and it made me reflect. It brought back all these memories I hadn’t really thought about — how unique and formative the experience was. It felt like unlocking a major suppressed memory. Looking back, I was just like, “Wow.”
That reflection made me more open when my friend asked.
So now, I’m the one asking — get involved! We’re here to serve you
BULLETIN: Why do you think it’s meaningful for alumni to stay connected to Choate?
DAVID JAVDAN: I always say the greatest gift is the gift of each other. It may seem trite but in the end it’s people who make the world go round. And our alumni are such a gift. Where else would you get such a wide diversity of experience and expertise? And we all have such a unique shared background to connect us. Very few people have this shared experience. It’s a gift to connect and see how Choate has impacted others and by doing so, see how it impacted — and continues to impact — us.
BULLETIN: What would you say to a fellow graduate who is curious about reconnecting with the School but hasn’t yet found a way to engage?
DAVID JAVDAN: Be the spark. Don’t wait for us to reach out — you are the Alumni Association. Want to host a Choate event? Reach out — we can help you make it happen. Planning something that isn’t strictly Choate but want to include Choate alumni? Let’s do it. The Association isn’t here to hand out assignments; it’s a resource for you. And if it’s your Reunion — or even close to your year — just come. You will be amazed.
BULLETIN: What role do you think alumni play in shaping Choate’s future?
DAVID JAVDAN: Alumni play a vital role. For any institution to thrive, it must evolve — and that evolution is strongest when it’s shaped by people who care deeply about the place. As alumni, we bring perspective, experience, and commitment.
You’re students for a few years, but alumni for life. My goal in this role is to make being a Choate alum an active, meaningful part of who you are — not just a way of describing who you used to be.
Only alumni can truly bring that concept to life. There is so much to be gained by remaining connected to Choate and to the broader alumni community. The School can support us, but it can’t do it for us. By strengthening our alumni network, we increase the value of a Choate education — for ourselves and for future generations.
In a world of constant growth, recent grads offer fresh insight, while more seasoned alumni bring long-view perspective. We need both. Share your vision — there’s always an open door. You can reach me at aaec@choate.edu.
The Celebration of the Decade!
MAY 15-17
Classes ending in 1s and 6s: it’s been 10 years since we’ve all been together. Much has changed both on campus and in your lives, but the important things remain the same. Meaningful connections. Transformative education. Lifelong friendships.
It’s time to reconnect with your school, your classmates, and your friends! Mark your calendars and start making plans to attend. You don’t want to miss this epic weekend!
CALENDAR OF EVENTS
SEPTEMBER 2025
15 – Bangkok – Reception with Head of School
16 – CT – Young Alumni Networking Event
19 – Seoul – Reception with Head of School
OCTOBER 2025
16-18 – Family Weekend
22 – New York – Reception for 1890 Society members
NOVEMBER 2025
8 – Deerfield Day Away
16 – LA – Reception with Head of School
17 – SF – Reception with Head of School
20 – Seattle – Reception with Head of School
DECEMBER 2025
4 – Hong Kong – Holiday Party
4 – New York – Holiday Party
TBD – London – Reception with Eight Schools Alumni
JANUARY 2026
11 – Tokyo – Reception with Head of School
14 – Singapore – Reception with Head of School
FEBRUARY 2026
26 – Boston – Reception with Head of School
MARCH 2026
15-17 – Reunion Weekend See you there!
For more information, visit the Reunion Webpage: choate.edu/reunion
14 – Seoul – Choate Symphony Performance and Reception
MAY 2026
For more information, to see the complete list, and to register:
Forever True. Always Connected.
Choate’s alumni mentoring program is more than networking — it’s meaningful connection with impact. The Forever True Mentoring Program pairs young alumni with experienced mentors for 12 weeks of focused, personalized support.
Real advice. Real outcomes. Lifelong community.
» Scan to email Alumni Relations to express interest. The next season starts in January. Join the 2026 cohort today.
Forever True MENTORING PROGRAM
CLASSNOTES | News From Our Alumni
1940s
’49 C Lynn Parry writes, “Still getting around at 94! It is fun to watch my grandchildren (all 8) come to grips with their careers!”
1950s
’52 C Miguel Suarez writes, “On April 6, my wife, Yolanda, and I flew to Spain. We stayed at Mijas Pueblo overlooking the Mediterranean. It’s a white village. We also drove 3,000 km to Asturias, Galicia, and Portugal. We returned to the USA on June 22.”
’53 C Benjamin Heckscher writes, “I just celebrated my 90th birthday with family! Parkinson’s has controlled most of my life now. I miss the tennis and squash, but my balance is better than might be expected. I have 9 grandchildren; one is calling games for Harvard, another is doing volunteer work for the Mass. Railroad getting more east-west runs and to NYC! Choate is a special place and is one of the best boarding schools, which resulted in my development both academically and athletically in squash and tennis, which paved the way for my success both at Harvard and Scott Paper Co.”
’54 C Bert Habgood writes, “This spring, my wife, Carol, and I went on a grand Lewis & Clark Expedition out West. Then we flew to Victoria, Canada, where we had a wonderful overdue reunion with Dr. Alfred Hocker and his wife Pat. Al and I were roommates at Choate for three years. We spent several fun days together and ended it all at a great local French restaurant with toasts to our 75-year friendship and to Choate.”
’54 RH Isabel Wien Malkin writes, “Peter and I have celebrated our 70th wedding anniversary. It has been even more years since we met in a parking lot at a golf club when we were awaiting the return of our fathers from a meeting. I was 8, and was told to stay in the car … and I did. Peter, at the advanced age of 11, was cruising the parking area and came across this mousy little girl sitting with her puppet theater in the back seat of a car. We have been together ever since … I knew a good thing when I saw it! So did a lot of other gals, but I was the fastest runner. We are incredibly fortunate and have a family collection of three married children, who have produced 10 children, seven of whom are married, and those seven have produced eleven great-grandchildren. The best part is that they are all a stellar group. I cannot remember all the names, but I know that we two were born under a lucky star. We are beyond grateful. I hope that life has treated classmates of ’54 well and that life has been good to you. We have all been fortunate to live in the best of times in our country, though we might not have known it, but now we do.”
’57 C Peter Sipple writes, “I continue to get pleasure from singing. Overly involved in instrumental music at Choate, I did not sing under Duncan Phyfe, but encountered that delightful choral director while in the freshman glee club at Yale. He influenced my love of singing, as did my Choate roommate Doug Griswold, who encouraged me to audition for his small singing group, the Baker’s Dozen. I ended up spending three years in the Yale Glee Club and, in my senior year, the Whiffenpoofs. Over the past 50 years, I have sung with my wife, Margaret, and directed four small choral ensembles, and continue doing so today. Happily, the voice holds out!”
’58 C Peter Goldmark writes, “I’m continuing my work in advising foundations and others on their spending and initiatives in the climate change area. With others, I had a big surprise when the JPB Foundation, which had given me a contract to explore innovative new strategies in the climate area, announced that they would no longer fund in the climate area. (They were one of the U.S.’s biggest climate area funders.) I advise a very promising Climate Venture Capital Fund run by the team that founded the enormously successful Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator — there are a lot of opportunities for decarbonizing existing procedures and using AI and other new tools to help design and manage sustainable business practices. My generation has done a lousy job in the climate area, and I will use my last few years on the only planet we will ever have to help young leaders get ready to do the far better job that this huge challenge requires.”
Donald Yates writes, “Sad to say, my wife of 58 years, Mary Elizabeth ‘Penny’ Yates (née Kelly), passed away in early April. As the love of my life, she will be sorely missed. Contributions in her honor should be made to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital.”
’59 C Morris Everett Jr. writes, “I have not retired. I have a store called The Last Moving Picture Company that has the largest stock of movie posters and lobby cards (150,000) and movie stills (2,000,000) for sale in the United States and is open Monday-Friday 9-5. I have a photo leasing company, The Everett Collection, which leases photos all over the world. We are an entertainment digital archive. I play tennis twice a week. I have visited classmates Scotty Low in Maine and Fred Garner in Florida.”
Mike Heath writes, “We just got back from six days in Paris and four on the Amalfi Coast in Italy. The dream continues.”
LEFT Miguel Suarez ’52 on his trip to Asturias, Galicia, and Portugal
RIGHT Choate Class of 1954 roommates Bert Habgood and Al Hocker
1960s
’60 RH Heather Ellison Browning writes, “It’s hard to believe that Rosemary Hall was 65 years ago! I had a difficult year recovering from back surgery with rods and screws. I’m loving living in Florida, except for the hurricanes. I have continued to weave Nantucket baskets, organizing and running classes for them once a year. I still keep in touch with my old roommates Martha Stewart and Tisha Lincoln. It’s a shock to realize how quickly the time has passed. Would love to hear from classmates.”
’61 C Maurice Heckscher writes, “I’m still happily living near Bethany Beach, Del. Playing lots of pickleball and keeping busy with the upkeep of our property. Fifteen grandchildren come to visit (not all at once!) and they keep me young. Would love to hear from classmates (mheckscher@comcast.net).”
Sadaaki Numata writes, “LL.B., Tokyo University. M.A. (PPE), University College, Oxford, where I preceded Bill Clinton by 2 years. 41 years as a diplomat, including of 8 years in Britain (Oxford/ London), 4 years in the U.S. (Washington, D.C.), 2 years in Australia, 2 years in Switzerland (Geneva), 2 years in Indonesia (Jakarta), 2.5 years in Pakistan as Ambassador, and 2 years in Canada as Ambassador. Acted as the interpreter in English for Japanese Prime Ministers and Emperor in their meetings with U.S. Presidents (Nixon, Carter, Reagan and Clinton). Since retirement in 2007, I have engaged in volunteer work to foster global communicators in Japan and am currently Chairman Emeritus of the English-Speaking Union of Japan.”
’61 RH Susan Mountrey writes, “After 30 years in Hilton Head, I moved back to assisted living in Farmington, Conn. I am now closer to my children and grandchildren. Please come visit!”
’62 C Deaver Brown writes, “In my publishing and writing Simply Media business, Choate had a bigger impact on our work than even Harvard College. We just completed the audiobook version of the Homer Trilogy with thought of John Joseph having chanted some of the hymns, Mr. Lincoln discussing the Iliad and the Odyssey, and Mr. David Rice discussing all of it, as we used AI to simplify our audiobook production to be able to sell each at $3.99.”
’62 RH Georgia Brady Barnhill writes, “I have been enjoying the Zoom gatherings organized by Anne Marshall Henry. Even after a dozen years of retirement, I continue to be active professionally and have published two essays recently on the American artist Fitz Henry Lane and on a 19-century lithograph printer and publisher, Charles Hart. My husband and I are enjoying Amherst, Mass., where I volunteer at the Amherst Historical Society.”
Ashford Family — Left to Right: Frank Ashford ’57, grandkids Frankie and Holly, daughter-in-law Kimberly, and son Edmundo
Class of 1959 — Left to Right: Bill Bryant, Mike Heath, Sandy Morehouse, and Jeff Faigle got together with their wives at Sandy’s farm in Georgia.
’63 C Richard Bole writes, “Though now 80, I exercise every day, including cardio, drink black or tart cherry juice added to water all day, go out in the morning and let the sun shine upon my face for a time, and when there is fresh air around me, take a series of deep breaths. Have a good life at present and have goals: write two books, a memoir, and how all countries will try democracy eventually. This will involve visiting some Asian countries where I have never been. Also, I have a motorboat to go out on Lake Erie, which I hope to change to about a 27-foot sailboat. Also, I have a goal to reform the city of Cleveland to make it welcoming of new businesses and not suspicious of them. I have a wife of nearly 50 years who was a professional tennis player when we got married, which has resulted in a tennis juggernaut where three grown children and six grandchildren all play tennis at a very high level.”
Bob Keller writes, “In April, Carol and I traveled to Spain for my 80th birthday. I was first there in the summer of 1962 with George Cushman and the Choate summer program in Spain. (He did not enforce Choate’s rules on smoking and drinking!) I stay in touch with classmates Dave Escher and Fred Wilson. They are both hanging in there.”
’63 RH Tina Close writes, “Being ‘new’ (2016) to Bozeman, Mont., I am just not motivated to do the things I did for 42 years in Jackson, Wyo. Being on boards and volunteering is a nightmare if you are profoundly deaf, and the frustration is not worth it. That being said, there is still plenty to keep one interested in life, family, and the state of the
country. The family keeps growing, and we have 8 under 10! Both my sisters live here, and my brother as well. Having spent the bulk of our years way far apart from each other, it is so surprising and lots of fun to all be in the same town now. I’m going to try and see if I can still paint. Having been a natural history painter for years, I have not picked up a brush for 10 years and really miss it. Both hands have what is called a benign essential tremor. Nothing bad, just a nuisance, and I don’t know if it will stop me from painting — maybe it will be the birth of a new style?”
Rozzie Chubb Davis writes, “Life is rolling along. I went to the NC mountains for July and traveled up the Mississippi with friends in May. It was interesting, and we had a great lecturer on board who prepped us for the coming day’s history and options. My grandchildren are wonderful, as are their parents. I am still on several boards and am involved with raising funds for a very important Black history museum.”
Donna Dickenson writes, “My husband, Chris, and I made our annual pilgrimage to Scotland in May and encountered our usual remarkably good weather, despite the stereotype of the country as being cold and wet. We spent time on both the east and west coasts, hiking both the cliffs of St Abb’s Head overlooking the North Sea and the fjordlike inlet of Loch Linnhe on the west, adjoining the evocatively named Linn of Lorn and the less romantically termed Minch. After 20 years, we still find new places to explore and continue to feel at home in the craggy Highlands.”
Penny Griffith Dix writes, “A trip to Crystal Bridges with my children (all in their 50s) was terrific. The museum is under construction, which we knew, but didn’t expect the closure of so many galleries. A disappointment, but they have so many sculptures out on the walking paths that were wonderful and new since I was last there six years ago with my daughter Ellie. A trip to Italy two weeks later was awesome. Our small hotel in Sorrento looked out on the Mediterranean. We loved our guided tours of Herculaneum and Pompeii. Cooking school was such fun. The Amalfi Coast and its towns were not crowded, so we enjoyed walking and exploring. We went to the Finger Lakes of New York for July and August, where we rented a cottage through Airbnb.”
Chris Murray McKee writes, “About 18 months ago, I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. It has been, and continues to be, a period of learning about the disease and how to cope with it. It is a movement disorder with many associated symptoms caused by a drop in the normal production of dopamine. So far, I have reacted well to the dopamine meds, and the most notable side effect I have is wobbly balance. But the good news is that my daughter, Rachel, and her family are moving from Ohio, where they’ve been for 6 years, to Marion, Mass. (less than 3 hours away from us). Her husband will be the head basketball coach at Tabor Academy. I am involved in several activities here in New London (N.H.): waste reduction committee, Lake Sunapee Protective Association, docent at Sunapee Historical Society Museum, Food Pantry, and, last but not least, teaching knitting at the retirement home here in town.”
Heather Ellison ’60 with grandson Evan Clark.
Judith Banzhaf Kruse ’61 visits satellite branches of Lancaster General Hospital every December.
Mimi Morris ’66 holding the publication she edits with the new logo she designed for Community Festival, while wearing a shirt with a previous winning design.
Margo Melton Nutt writes, “I’m busy with a number of committees at my church — nominating, publicity, library, aesthetics, hospitality. Living near a college town means there are plenty of cultural activities to attend. And I have a wonderful group of women friends, all of whom are older than I, but still very active; they provide inspiration to me. So I manage to keep happily busy.”
Reeve Lindbergh Tripp writes, “We are still here and pretty much still healthy as we enter our 80s. Nat, kindly, is exactly a year older than I am, so he’ll be 81 in October when I turn 80. He is annoyed with his aching knees, but unwilling to have knee surgery. He says he just wants to hobble around and be an Old Codger like most older Vermonters, and he likes not going to meetings or parties. We sold the sheep some years ago because he was the one who wrangled them for shots and other treatments, while I did the bottle-baby things in the spring. Now we have chickens and dogs, the latest a 5-month-old Labrador puppy named Wilbur. I feel pretty much just like me, which seems both inevitable and absurd. Drifting into the 80s is also a bit absurd, but what did I expect?”
’64 C Jeff Gould writes, “Enjoying life in Saint Petersburg, Fla., and still doing a bit of consulting in the energy sector. My wife, Laurie, and I will celebrate our 57th wedding anniversary, my Festivities date sixth form year, along with welcoming our great-grandson and granddaughter. We are so fortunate to have such a great family and will be catching up with our son Pierce, Class of 1987, shortly. My very best to my Choate classmates and others.”
’65 C Sperry MacNaughton writes, “Nick Cook and I decided to attend our 60th Reunion. The question was, how to get there; so we drove. Nick, from California, picked me up in Utah, and we headed east. Seeing the country once again from Route 80 was wonderful, but the best part was having three or four days to talk with Nick in depth on all kinds of issues. We have both lived all over the country in different jobs and endeavors. Nick followed his passion for antique firearms and started a trading company while he was active in the stock market. He built a house in the Hamptons while his son was in school. From there, he moved to Pennsylvania and, eventually, California. With dreams of becoming a gentleman rancher and providing for his growing collection of cars (Nick likes to go fast), he bought 100 acres on top of a coastal mountain. I ended up back in Hawaii, producing rock concerts and surfing. I got the rights for the rock musical Hair and produced it in Las Vegas and San Francisco. Then moved to NYC, worked on the street, and got an MBA from Columbia University. Advertising in the City before joining Coca-Cola USA in Washington, D.C. I moved to Cox Cable Enterprise in Atlanta and eventually Tucson. Cox sold the operation, I moved to Los Angeles, and started an executive search company, which I ran for 30 years. My wife, Mary, who was a professor of art history at Scripts College for 33 years, and I retired and moved to the Salt Lake City area to be next to our grandkids. Nick and I loved seeing all the ’65 classmates at the reunion. Thanks to John Callan for his follow-up gathering at the Essex Yacht Club on the Connecticut River.
Three days later, we were back home. It is no secret that my Utah house is an hour away from five of the best skiing resorts in the country (world?). Y’all come visit! Aloha!”
’66 RH Ann Whipple Marr writes, “Family highlights this year have included a Passover trip to Mexico with my older daughter’s family and a granddaughter’s Penn graduation in May — it was wonderful to celebrate with her. Despite the horrifying situation in Haiti, which prevents me from traveling there, I’ve tried to maintain my connections in the schools where I used to volunteer. Currently, that takes the form of weekly Zoom meetings with educators there, on topics of their choosing. As much as I enjoy our sessions, they feel like a drop in the bucket. Alas.”
Mimi Morris writes, “For the third time, my design won a public vote to select the logo for Columbus’ favorite annual festival. I’ve worked with Community Festival (aka ComFest) since its founding in 1972, contributing to this all-volunteer production by leading the editorial staff of the Program Guide and recruiting performers and speakers. I have also been active in organizational development initiatives, helping to write the group’s process guidelines for working by consensus, and serving for the last 30 years on the General Planning Committee. The Community Festival organization aims to demonstrate how much can be accomplished through collective action for the common good. For this project, I worked with my longtime friend and collaborator, artist Paul Volker, who also illustrated my other two designs that won in 2009 and 2020. The inspiration for this year’s design came from my husband, Michael Weber, who pointed out that diversity, equity, and inclusion are part of Community Festival’s DNA. The festival organization aims to produce an event that exemplifies progressive values at every step, so the theme was a perfect fit for this year. All people of goodwill are welcome, so some of you should make plans for June 2026!”
’67 RH Penny Heald Whitehouse-Vaux writes, “Anne Brower DuBosque and Toni Wiseman visited me here in London for three days in May. Besides a very jolly, almost three-hour High Tea at Fortnum and Mason, Anne came with my husband and me to a day of cricket the following day at Lord’s cricket ground, the home of cricket (opened in 1814). She even survived the full day of cricket. A wonderful visit.”
’69 C Malcolm Ferguson writes, “We have had some fun Zoom meetings for the Class of 1969, starting with those who attended the 55th Reunion, with additional classmates being added as we go along. If you would like to be included on the quarterly invite, please send an email to Malcolm-Ferguson@comcast.net.”
Doug Bryant ’67 (right) and his wife, Cammie, now spend six months of the year in Vero Beach, and this past winter, he ran into Jan Endresen ’65 (left), who was his brother Steve’s fourth form roommate at Choate. If you’re ever passing through Vero Beach, Doug would love to see you!
Rob Snyder and Greg Hooker, both Class of 1969, on the Choate campus for Reunion Weekend 2025. Not pictured: Rob’s brother Phil Snyder ’68
David Hill writes, “I entered medical school 52 years ago and have been working in academic medicine almost every day since. I have had a wonderful career that put me in the front line caring for HIV-infected persons at the beginning of the pandemic in the early 1980s, teaching generations of medical students at the University Connecticut and Quinnipiac University, living for a decade in the U.K. directing a national public health program, and traveling to many countries as I helped to develop global public health partnerships and opportunities for our students. I have been supported by my wife of 48 years, Tudy, and our family. The capstone to my career has been to film (with the expert help of a Kenyan documentary film team) a documentary of the Nanyuki district hospital in the central highlands of Kenya. We are in the editing phase, and I look forward to sharing this widely once it has been completed. I credit Choate and its faculty with recognizing my potential and encouraging my lifelong pursuit of excellence.”
1970s
’70 C Peter Robinson writes, “I had a great 55th with Jim Berrien, Chip Clowney, Chip Ryan, Bruce MacDougal, Sport McMurray, Charlie Miner, Jay Moorhead, Chip Ryan, and Win Simone.”
’72 C Jeffrey Townsend writes, “While I was still teaching content creation at the high school level in Walla Walla, I wrote a song and short film to honor the students who were struggling the hardest with the 1-2 punch of distance learning and then the surprisingly difficult return to in-person classes. I retired in 2022 and produced the one-song musical short in 2024. The film, Not Invincible, has played and competed in 16 film festivals so far, winning a Best Director award for Tyson Kaup and a Best Actress award for the film’s lead actress and singer, Megan Linh. The song has been gaining momentum on Spotify and other platforms, and it has been a sweet aspect of retirement to watch this project reach so many audiences. Patrice and I moved to Bellingham, Wash., in 2023, and enjoy living close to our daughter, Sadie, and son-in-law, Andy. Our son, Wiley, is an animation supervisor in Montreal. Returning to Wallingford to play with so many talented alumni in “The Dean’s List” at our 50th reunion was a real treat.”
George Whipple and his eight-year-old daughter, Elizabeth Marie Whipple, are completing their restoration of the 1881 national historic landmark, Castle Rock, in Garrison, N.Y., a property that overlooks iconic West Point and the Hudson River from an aerie of 620 feet above. The castle is also the Whipple family home. Elizabeth is attending the Garrison Union Free School, located on a 100-acre campus at the base of the hill of Castle Rock, where she is in the second grade. She
loves gymnastics, swimming, skiing, and especially art, taking after her great-grandfather, a noted watercolorist (and founder of Avon products). George is a partner and a member of the Board of Directors in the employment-law boutique Epstein Becker Green, headquartered in NYC, with 21 offices around the country and 1,000 employees, 350 of whom are attorneys, half of whom specialize exclusively in employment law. Although life is hectic, George takes time out for his family and friends, spending many weekends with his 94-year-old mother at her home in Boca Raton, Fla. Continuing to run his grandfather’s farming property, Pine View Farm, in Putnam County, he raises critically endangered early American farm animals like the Randall Lineback cattle and American Mammoth Jackstock donkeys, along with a wide and varied collection of endangered chickens, geese, and ducks. Elizabeth delights in the baby chicks and in collecting the eggs.
’73 C Jamie Campbell writes, “Recently I did an interview in front of the New York Stock Exchange, for the No. 1 network show in Germany, that will also air
in Austria and Switzerland, on my book: Madoff Talks: Uncovering the Untold Story Behind the Most Notorious Ponzi Scheme in History (McGraw-Hill). Now also a Netflix series from the top true crime director at Netflix — Joe Berlinger — based on the book, where I am Co-Executive Producer and Featured: Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street.”
Stanley Ross writes, “I’m still living just outside Portsmouth, England, and am still volunteering three days a week in the Portsmouth Historic Naval Dockyard, along with quite a number of other grayhairs, maintaining and restoring the fleet of ex Royal Navy small craft owned by the Portsmouth Historic Quarter Trust. 3-dimensional problem solving in complex curves keeps the grey synapses firing. My younger daughter is living with me and has begun her training to become an expert in the U.K. tax code (some 22,000 pages for this country of 66 million) before manning the HJMRC tax hotline for taxpayers seeking consultation for their situations. Should you be visiting the U.K., Portsmouth is but a 90-minute train ride from London Waterloo.”
1 Paul Carty and Rick Cella, Class of 1972, attended the recent alumni Reunion in May.
2 Chip Underhill ’72 with son, Ethan ’11, and grandson, Eli, at the latest grandchild’s almost one-year birthday. He says, “It took me a while to enjoy retirement, but no time at all to enjoy four grandchildren!”
3 The cast and primary crew members of Not Invincible, including Jeffrey Townsend ’72, second from left
’74 C John Steinbreder writes, “Greetings from Carnoustie, Scotland, which I am visiting with my wife, Cynthia, on a trip that combines business and pleasure and includes a few rounds of golf on the historic links in this village. Just prior to traveling here, I took delivery of the first copies of my 26th book, a coffee-table tome on the Westchester Country Club that commemorates its centennial. I recently played in a golf tournament in Watch Hill, R.I., along with several of my Class of ’74 colleagues, among them Peter Vogt, Peter Prentis, Sid Smith, and Drew Casertano. As for the next big event on the schedule, that was the mid-August marriage of my oldest daughter, Exa, to Nick Tesoriero, a wonderful lad who shares with me a passion for the Grateful Dead. The fact that my future son-in-law helps run a rather stylish marijuana dispensary in Portland, Maine is an added bonus that would no doubt amuse some of my former teachers at Choate, to say nothing of my dearly departed mother and father.”
4 Jamie Campbell ’73 being interviewed, in front of the New York Stock Exchange, by the #1 network show in Germany on his book on Bernie Madoff.
5 Choate Class of 1973 classmates George Whipple, John Glanville, and David Polite at David’s Carleton Hill Winery in Oregon.
6 John Steinbreder ’74 and his wife Cynthia Crolius enjoying an early evening outing in Scotland
’75 C Bruce Cooper writes, “Amazing 50th reunion with many Choate/Rosemary Hall classmates showing up. Became better friends with good friends and good friends with some I barely knew. Highlights were John Geoghegan’s presentation from his book on White Elephant Technology; the visits by Tom Yankus; music at the PMAC, and late nights at the Marriott hotel.”
’76 C Robert Cranston writes, “My wife, Debbie, and I have retired to the beach in Hilton Head Island, S.C.”
’78 Greg Hurwitt writes, “In June, I retired from BASF Corp. in Houston, where I was Senior Expert in instrumentation and control systems. I was with BASF for 43 years and completed projects at many different U.S. locations, mostly on the Gulf Coast. My wife, Judi, and I will be staying in the Houston area, at least in the short term.”
Francisco Martínez-Alvarez is touring the “5 Stans” in Central Asia. He lives in Sarasota, Fla., with his spouse, Joe. This year they celebrate 40 years together.
’79 Rob Hirschfeld writes, “This year I will celebrate 35 years of marriage to former Choate Rosemary Hall teacher Polly Ingraham. Nope, our times in Wallingford did NOT overlap. We were introduced after we had both left Choate by faculty members-turned-cherished-friends Barbara and David Webb, who thought we would be a good match. Well, good enough. Polly has just published her first book about our marriage, entitled Unconverted: Memoir of a Marriage. It’s her account of being religiously unaffiliated and married to me, a member of the Episcopal clergy. It’s a bit like the bumper sticker you see about rescue dogs: ‘Who saved who?’ (Or shall I say to my beloved English teacher spouse, Who saved WHOM?).”
Greg Hurwitt ’78 retired from BASF Corporation in Houston, Texas.
Paco Martínez-Alvarez ’78 and his spouse, Joe at Charyn Canyon in Kazakhstan in June
Thor Orndahl and Bill Braden, both Class of 1976 at the “I Love Kailua” street fair. Bill is in front of his triptych that he painted of Lahaina as it looked before the fire.
Class of 1975 — Don Tansill, Bruce Cooper, Gus LaLone, and Jay Remsen at the 50th Reunion.
Rob Hirschfeld ’79 and his spouse, Polly Ingraham, a former Choate Rosemary Hall faculty member who published her first book, Unconverted: Memoir of a Marriage
Hilary Bertsch
The Future
She’s Created
’84
creative vision. Although Hilary recalls being drawn to Choate after finding inspiration in the design of the Paul Mellon Arts Center, designed by famed architect I.M. Pei, she went on to pursue degrees in computer science and economics at Brown University. With plans to enter a related career, Hilary experienced a moment of clarity.
“I started interviewing for jobs in finance, and got knots in my stomach,” she recalls. “That felt like a pretty clear sign.”
After realizing a finance career was not the right path, she taught computer science at an Islamic school in Alexandria, Va. During a summer break, she attended Harvard’s Career Discovery Program in architecture — and it turned out to be a seminal moment. After completing prerequisite courses and working as a studio assistant at a Boston-based architecture firm, Hilary pursued a master’s in architecture at the University of Texas at Austin.
“In many ways, computer science and architecture are similar in that they’re very time-intensive,” she explains. “In computer science, I would be up at 2 a.m., hunting for a missing semicolon. In architecture, you push yourself until you know the design is right.”
After beginning her career at Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn in New York, Hilary spent a few years in California working on the L.A. waterfront. The firm merged in 2011 with Perkins Eastman, and in 2021, she jumped at the chance to return to Austin to open a new office, where she’s now the managing principal.
Over the past few decades, Hilary has built expertise in mixed-use developments that integrate the public realm, residential living, and retail spaces with a passion for waterfronts. The Wharf is perhaps the best example of that affinity. Hilary is particularly drawn to large transformative projects with an urban context that can be experienced by entire communities. But those long-term projects also come with challenges. The Wharf project began in 2006 and faced significant challenges during the 2009 economic downturn. Hilary also noted that the project — and its architects — had to adapt over time.
“When we started, Uber didn’t exist and Hurricane Sandy hadn’t happened yet, so project requirements changed,” she explains. “It takes tenacity to get things built. Transformative projects require time and resilience.”
It was evening, but lights illuminated what would come to represent nearly two decades of work for Hilary Bertsch ’84. She recalls sitting out at the end of the pier in 2017, the night before the grand opening of The Wharf, a 3.2-million-square-foot redevelopment project along the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. The mixed-use space is now home to four hotels, dozens of restaurants, and thousands of residents and workers.
“We realized we’d never have it to ourselves again,” Hilary says of the moment of reflection before sharing her team’s creation with the public. “By morning, it would belong to everyone else, and we only could imagine what a meaningful impact it would have.”
That moment perfectly captures Hilary’s mission as an architect; creating spaces and places that will endure. In addition to The Wharf, her projects include the restoration of Union Station in Kansas City, Mo., which opened as the third largest rail station in the country (the first project of her career) and Canalside in Buffalo, N.Y., a waterfront recreational and entertainment district built in coordination with the Erie Canal Development Center to support economic growth for western New York.
While she’s certainly found her calling as an architect, Hilary’s journey to the prestigious College of Fellows in Architecture and becoming an executive director at Perkins Eastman based in Austin, Texas, is the result of a thoughtful evolution guided by her blend of analytical thinking and
Her other efforts have included designing master plans for academic medical centers, for which she carefully considers how different communities, from staff to patients to students, intersect. Among the projects on which she’s worked to create environments that serve multiple stakeholders are a revitalization of downtown Rochester, Minn., to match the prestigious Mayo Clinic brand, and reimagining the University of Miami Medical Center in Florida. Hilary is also working on an integrated transit facility, Union West in Raleigh, N.C., building residential units on what she calls an “underutilized asset” above a new bus facility (set to open this year) adjacent to the train station. The goal there is to expand the multi-modal location and integrate the transportation hub as an anchor of the downtown.
Hilary’s work has recently taken her back to Kansas City, where she’s working on another vision for a mixed-use development along the Berkley Riverfront, anchored by America’s first women’s professional soccer stadium. Her love for her work endures, as does her hope that the places she creates will be enjoyed by the public for years to come. For Hilary, these architectural ventures represent her legacy and an approach defined by meticulous attention to detail and unwavering persistence.
“You have to be all in, and you have to keep focused,” she explains, noting that countless small yet impactful design decisions go largely unnoticed by the public but collectively create spaces that “feel well designed. In a way, each of these projects is a piece of the future I’ve helped create.”
By Jana F. BRown Jana F. Brown is a New Hampshire-based writer and editor.
’82 Francesca Vietor is visiting all 280 State Parks in California to assess their condition and make recommendations on climate resiliency and ways to improve public access and visitation. To date, she has visited 181 parks.
1980s
’80 Darcy Chappel Ahl writes, “I enjoyed working on the Class of 1980’s 45th Reunion, though I was unable to attend. I heard it was wonderful, and I was sorry to miss it. I did, however, have a great catch-up Zoom with John Lowry recently. It was fascinating to discuss his career and service to our country. All is well with me and my family. We are enjoying our three grandchildren and our respective careers (mine in executive search).”
Michael Lewyn writes, “I’ve had a busy year; I finished my year as chair of the Association of American Law Schools property law section, watched my stepdaughter get married in Israel (not to a Choate alum, alas), and wrote numerous articles, which you can find online at Tuoro Law. My wife and I still live in midtown Manhattan.”
’81 Corina Salas-Römer Alvarezdelugo continues her work as both an artist and a visual arts educator. She teaches upper school foundation through AP art and design and loves guiding students as they develop their creative voice, several of whom have earned regional and national recognition. She also presents workshops for fellow art educators at professional development conferences and recently served as a Reader and Scoring Leader for the AP Art and Design exams. Corina is the Independent School Representative for the Connecticut Art Education Association and remains passionate about the power of art to connect people and spark reflection. This summer, she completed a mini-residency in collaboration with another artist at Gallery RAG in Gloucester, Mass.
Tom Colt writes, “I’ve lived in China for the past eight years, working as a college counselor at Shanghai American School. My wife, Megan, and I have traveled recently to Cambodia, Nepal, Bhutan, and Uzbekistan. I’ve been to two Choate events in the past year in Shanghai: a reception hosted by Jeff Beaton (Admission) and another one with Alex Curtis. Great to see such a strong alumni/parent presence here!”
’82 John Milliman writes, “After 34 years of active duty in the Marine Corps and DoD Civil Service, I retired recently and Peggy and I have settled onto a 21-acre farm near Scottsboro, Ala. I am enjoying getting out and exploring the highlands of Alabama.”
Francesca Vietor writes, “I am a California State Parks Commissioner and I am visiting every one of our 280 State Parks to assess their condition and make recommendations to Governor Newsom on their climate resiliency and how to improve public access and visitorship. I have visited 181 parks so far.”
Mark Wilcox writes, “I married Mary Rentoumis on June 7 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., attended by family and friends. We relocated here from California in January and are now both entering retirement.”
’83 Christopher DeOrsay writes, “I recently purchased the architecture firm from the founder who is retiring. I am now the sole owner and principal at DeOrsay Campbell Smith Architects in Duxbury, Mass. I have been with the firm for 27 of the 45 years in business and hope to continue for many more.”
Peter Schulman was recently named Officier des Palmes Académiques by the French Ministry of Education.
’85 Edward Cannon writes, “I was really sad to miss our 40th Reunion, but I’m close to a group of friends from college, and we had a competing event that weekend. In personal news, my daughter, Blake, just got engaged! We’re anticipating a wedding in the U.K. next year. In career-related news, I am excited to announce my retirement from the University of Colorado in May 2026. I hope to see some of you around the way.”
Christopher Winston reports he is involved with a fast-growing leader in cloud-based revenue lifecycle management solutions with funding from a growth equity investor. He and his wife, Sally, went to this year’s Wimbledon tennis tournament and have long-term plans to attend all four Grand Slams. His daughters had a busy summer as Caroline, a 2024 graduate of Wake Forest, runs the junior sailing program at the New York Athletic Club, along with her sister Caitlin, who is a rising 4th year at UVA. Shannon, an incoming 1st year at UVA, is a sailing race instructor at Riverside Yacht Club in Greenwich. All three grew up sailing competitively at Larchmont Yacht Club.
’86 Jerry Farrell was recently awarded the Saint Joseph Medal by the Archdiocese of Hartford for his service to Holy Trinity Church in Wallingford. Awarding the medal was Archbishop Christopher Coyne. Saint Joseph is the patron saint of the Archdiocese, and the Saint Joseph Medal is one of the highest honors given by the Archdiocese. Jerry has served in various capacities at Holy Trinity for many years. Currently, he serves as the parish trustee of Holy Trinity, a member of the Parish Council, and a member of the Finance Council. He has served as a lector since 1982. His family have been members of Holy Trinity since arriving in Wallingford in 1904.
Peter Finfrock writes, “I experienced the nightmare of having a deep-brain stroke in the Pons area of my brain. I had to take a private jet back home from Ohio, where I had the stroke. Thanks to my loving father for rushing to my assistance. Then I had to endure nine months of sleepless nights as I waited for my ever-attentive lover to take me back into our home, where I finally got two visits per week from the therapist. Ian was traumatized by the whole experience. But now I’m at home and loving life. My right side is disabled, which is my dominant side, so my art is a little solace to me, and so is my writing. Though I can still write my Patreon page, True Southern Gothic Tales.”
Francesca Vietor ’82 overlooking Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park.
Anna Cheung
Taking Leaps
’86
By 1996, China had begun to open up and was in a major growth mode; there were good opportunities in Hong Kong, and Anna was ready to return home. There she pivoted to private equity, a field that combined her computer science and finance experience, initially working for Intel Capital.
Over the next 15 busy and satisfying years, Anna worked at several private equity firms. At 3i, where Anna spent 12 years and made partner, she learned Mandarin on the job, an experience parallel to developing her English at Choate. “I was lucky that I was brave enough,” she says. “Because you have to speak, and you have to not mind if you say the wrong word or wrong tone.” Anna traveled to China frequently, where she would visit both cities and small towns, meeting with fledgling companies. During this time, she met her husband Canny, an interior designer.
When 3i consolidated and left Hong Kong in 2012, Anna reassessed. Private equity had changed during her tenure, from a time of huge opportunities to a lot of money chasing fewer deals; Anna missed the entrepreneurship of the early days. In this shifting landscape, it was time to try something new. Anna advised PE firms while considering her next career move; she then made the leap to management and operations as CEO of Jardine Pacific.
At Jardine, Anna managed seven private businesses in construction, engineering, IT, airport, and food services. She thrived on meeting different people and getting to know the businesses. “In the morning I’d be talking chicken, and in the afternoon it’s construction and then tomorrow it’s elevator,” she says. “It was not easy, but it was just what I was looking for.”
The most important skill Anna learned at Jardine was how to manage people and stakeholders. In private equity, relationships were shorter term; as CEO she was deeply invested in the future of her businesses, and the partners who made up those businesses. “When a business is in trouble, a lot of the time, the first thing you need to do is manage the people,” Anna says. While each relationship required a different approach, her role involved listening and trying to help while acknowledging each CEO’s expertise. She found this managerial position richly rewarding.
Anna was Jardine’s first female (and Asian) senior executive. Once at an annual offsite, Anna’s husband had to join what was then called “the lady’s program.” “After me, they had to start changing the names,” Anna recalls, laughing.
When Anna Cheung ’86 came to Choate Rosemary Hall from Hong Kong, she lived in Pitman and played on the junior varsity volleyball team. She enjoyed taking the bus into New Haven on weekends, for restaurants and shopping. However, joining Choate as a fifth former, the learning curve was steep. Though her English was good, she wasn’t familiar with American slang and pop culture. The educational style was also different: Choate required a more proactive, hands-on approach with projects and discussion. There were only a handful of Chinese students on campus at the time, which forced Anna to integrate and improve her English rapidly. “I always say Choate really was the turning point, setting me on a very different path … much more international, much more worldly, much more agile, much more independent,” Anna says. She embraced the changes and adapted quickly, graduating from Choate as a member of the Cum Laude Society.
After graduating from Choate, Anna attended University of California, Berkeley, where she majored in computer science and minored in business, both male-dominated departments at the time. Anna then worked at Oracle in California, first as a programmer and then a product manager. After gaining some work experience, she attended Penn’s Wharton business school, and then took a job in investment banking at Salomon Brothers in New York. Entering the finance field was another steep learning curve, with grueling hours, but what Anna described as good fundamental training.
Since leaving Jardine in 2019, Anna has served on three boards, all different. At Hong Kong Stock Exchange, her first board experience, Anna says she feels humbled to be among the most experienced directors in the city. She described the HKEX board as a blueprint of top-notch governance. She is also on the global board of LGT Capital Partners, an investment firm owned by the Princely Family of Liechtenstein. More recently she began her tenure on the board of the Hong Kong Broadband Network (HKBN) during a volatile period. She joined two other women as Independent Non-Executive Directors “who actually can’t stand things not working,” and they rolled up their sleeves. She is proud to report that HKBN is back on a growth trajectory.
You can’t plan everything, Anna says, when reflecting on the twists and turns of her career. “When you read case studies — IBM, Apple — it looks like the whole thing is planned, but it’s not; you need to have a leap of faith and the confidence to try new things … you look back, and then you piece together the story.”
A silver lining of Anna’s recent more flexible schedule has been spending time with her son, who is nine. Like Anna, her son attends local school in Hong Kong, developing his Chinese as well as his English, but she would love it if he attended Choate for secondary school, benefiting from the international experience as she did. “No one education system is perfect,” she says. “So you kind of try to mash them together and hopefully you get the best out of everything.”
By Joanna CantoR ’01
Joanna Cantor is a novelist and freelance writer based in New York.
1 Enjoying the 2025 Players Championship at Ponte Vedra, Fla, in March: Chris Sulavik ’82, Steve Sulavik ’75, Bill Layton ’81, Andy Sulavik ’81
2 Alexander von Cramm ’82 lives in Munich, Germany, and is enjoying watching his family get larger. Pictured here with the grandkids — Choate Class of 2044??
3 Ayako Tsuruta ’89 visited Choate with her family and saw former faculty member Phil Ventre and his wife, Antoinette. Left to right Peter Miyamoto, Antoinette, Ayako, and Phil.
4 Choate 1980 classmates (left to right) Jim Sherman, John Duncan, and Laurie Spengler at their Stanford reunion last year.
5 On May 31, 2025, friends from the Class of 1989 met in Philadelphia to explore the city and to watch a Phillies game. Pictured are (from left to right) Mark Serencha, David Chrzanowski, Brian Newberry, Trevor Day, Jason Melillo, and Scott Regan.
6 1982 classmates Kate Klemmer Terry, Eleanor Commander Lock, and Sue Conroy Frith reunited at the wedding of Eleanor’s youngest daughter in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. Eleanor lives in Jacksonville, Kate is in Bedford, N.Y., and Sue is in Bermuda. Sue’s son is attending Choate.
7 Laura Machanic (middle) and Lisa Anderson Hill (right), both Class of 1986, enjoyed a mini-reunion in Aix-en-Provence in June, with their husbands and Lisa’s daughter, Alice.
8 Jerry Farrell Jr. ’86 (left) receives Saint Joseph Medal from Archbishop Christopher Coyne (middle), and is joined by his father, Jerry Farrell Sr., P ’86, ’87 (right).
’88 Jack Schneider married Aura Reinhard on April 14. Jack’s son, Will, graduated from Choate on June 1. It was a happy spring in the Schneider home.
Andrew Taylor launched Taylor Burke Communications, a boutique luxury communications consulting firm, with industry veteran Robert Burke. With headquarters in New York City, the firm’s roster of clients includes Assouline, LALO Tequila, Hotel Esencia, and Cesare Attolini, among a number of others.
’89 Robert Rubey writes, “After our youngest graduated from high school, we moved full time to Aspen. We have daughter at the University of Texas and a son at CalPoly (SLO). 2025 will be our 25th wedding anniversary. Wishing everyone the best.”
Ayako Tsuruta writes, “In March, my family and I took our first college trip and our first time back to the East Coast since the pandemic. As the Odyssey Chamber Music Series’ executive and artistic director for 22 years, I was invited to speak at ‘That’s What She Said’ (She Said Project), held in April in Columbia, Mo. Preparation for this event surfaced deep emotions and revelations about myself. Nostalgia prompted me to bring my husband, Peter Miyamoto, and our daughter, Lauren, to see Choate and meet Antoinette and Phil Ventre. I look forward to visiting the East Coast more often, especially as I consider Connecticut my home state and Lauren attended Harvard’s pre-college program in July.”
1990s
’91 Shannon Clare writes, “I’m the manager of The Citizenship Project at The New York Historical Society. We help legal permanent residents prepare for their citizenship test. Using pieces from our collection, we teach a civics and history course covering the 100 questions for the exam. We also partner with other museums and presidential libraries to train them on our inquiry-based curriculum so they can run their own citizenship classes using their collections.”
Yvette Janine Jackson received the 2025 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts in the music category, given annually to risk-taking artists. The music panel honored her for “the imaginative ways she synthesizes ideas that give shape to lived human experience, for her cinematic dramaturgy, and the deep relationship between research and expression always beautifully troubling and passionately felt, providing a pathway for understanding the complexities of our nation’s history.” Yvette was promoted to Associate Professor in the Department of Music at Harvard.
’93 Hannah Sears reports that she is working, volunteering, and reading in Washington, D.C.
’96 Pete Mayer writes, “Our family recently moved from the Bay Area to Scottsdale, Ariz. While we miss running into Hayley Vaughan ’95, Geoff Hazard ’93, Sarah Halsell Nutting ’95, Dave Crisp ’94, and other Choate kids at the soccer fields and farmers markets of Marin County, we are enjoying the laid-back pace of desert life. Hope everyone is doing great, and give a shout if you are out this way.”
Hugh O’Kane writes, “Our son Hugh is a third former (Class of ’29) starting this year, and our son Jack attended the Summer Program this year.”
’97 Joseph Hocking writes, “My first book about game development went well, so I signed with Jettelly to write some more.”
’99 Jennifer Yu Cheng was Columbia’s School of Engineering and Applied Science graduation speaker in May. Leading innovations in K-12 education as Board Member and President of Hong Kong-based CTF Education Group for the past 5 years, Jennifer exhorted the Class of 2025 to be “engineers for humanity”, a goal that defines her own work at the intersection of education, entrepreneurship, and social impact. In the audience of cheering attendees were Yena Kim P ’27 and Diana Beste, former faculty.
2000s
’01 Alexander McMahon aka Xander Duell, aka Pegg, released a music project in June with one of his heroes from his Choate years, Van Dyke Parks, available as a puzzle. He and his wife, Emma Claire Anderson McMahon ’01, live in Brooklyn with their two children, Fox and Oona.
’06 Lis Hulin Wheeler ran a fundraiser for trans kids in the South that raised more than $110,000 this spring, inspired by her own trans daughter. She’s still working for the Postal Service, which leaves her plenty of time and energy to volunteer for causes close to her heart.
Kaitlin Kunkler Wright has been working as a camera operator at the infamous Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado for almost a decade, and this past year she has been promoted to Video Director. She directs nine cameras for the IMAG screens next to the stage, as well as occasionally live-streaming the concerts to the web. Some of her favorite acts so far to direct have been The Revivalists, Greensky Bluegrass, STS9, Zedd, Deadmau5, Wiz Khalifa, and Widespread Panic.
’08 Lauren DiMatteo DeSimone was recently married and welcomed her first son, Nico, on June 18. She is currently working as a nurse in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in New Jersey and is looking forward to spending her maternity leave with family at the Jersey shore and in Rhode Island.
’09 Tyler Makepeace and Eva Hines have spent the last decade living in Washington, D.C., and married in Wallingford on the Makepeace family farm in 2019. They learned within the same week late last year that Eva was pregnant, and that they would move to Beijing this summer for Tyler to take up a new position as the U.S. Treasury Department’s financial attaché to China. Eva and Tyler welcomed their first child, Silas, into the family on May 22, and all three look forward to traveling across China following their move in August.
LEFT John Milliman ’82 took a winter hike to the Walls of Jericho
CENTER Andrew Taylor ’88
RIGHT Robert Rubey ’89 with his wife, Meaghan, and one of their four rescue dogs, Toast
1 Samantha Carney ’00 (left) and Jen Barry Jomier ’03 at Jen’s 40th birthday party in Chapel Hill, N.C. They recently met through a book club and their kids, who were in the same class in Chapel Hill, N.C.
2 Columbia University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science welcomed Jennifer Yu Cheng ’99 as its Undergraduate Class Day graduation speaker on May 19, 2025. Left to right: Yena Kim P ’27, Former Faculty Diana Beste, and Jennifer Yu Cheng ’99
3 Mara Mellstrom ’10 on Arizona’s Camelback Mountain at sunset.
4 Caroline Collins ’13, Senior Production Coordinator in the Story, Layout and Editorial Production Unit, at the World Premiere of DisneyPixar’s ELIO at the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood on June 10
5 Ilene Goldenberg Heller ’91 is happy to report that her son, Andrew, graduated from Lakeside High School at the end of May. He will be attending Georgia Institute of Technology in the fall. Pictured at the post-graduation celebration at their home, left to right: Ilene, Perse, Andrew, and her husband, Matthew.
6 Classmates of 1996, Pete Mayer, Alex Ullman, Matt Kaye, and up-and-coming shredder/prospective Class of 2030 Tyler Ullman, enjoyed getting together in Aspen, Colo. for some ski and apres-ski.
7 Delaney Dill ’20 playing professionally in the inaugural season of Women Elite Rugby (WER).
2010s
’10 After leaving Capitol Hill where she served as a congressional Chief of Staff, Mara Mellstrom recently relocated to Phoenix, where she manages advocacy accounts at the leading voter data company, i360 (when she isn’t outside enjoying Arizona’s splendor).
’12 Catherine McClure writes, “In March, I married Timothy Hackett at the top of Beaver Mountain Ski Resort near Logan, Utah. We currently live in Fort Collins, Colo., while I complete my postdoctoral research at Colorado State University, working with the USGS and National Park Service.”
’13 Caroline Collins celebrated the release of Disney-Pixar’s ELIO June 20. Caroline was a Senior Production Coordinator in the Story, Layout, and Editorial Production Unit. After two years on the project, she is thrilled to finally be able to share the movie with her friends and family.
Ashley Kim writes, “My poem ‘Housewarming,’ was published in Nimrod International Journal’s Summer 2025 issue, and my poems, ‘Full Stop,’ “Intimacy,’ and ‘Anglerfish’ was published in Pembroke Magazine’s 57th issue. This summer, I participated in Kearny Street Workshop’s Interdisciplinary Writers Lab.”
2020s
’21 Dey Wallace-McKinstry writes, “I recently graduated from Pitzer College of the Claremont Colleges, and this fall I have started at Howard University School of Law.”
Matt Kokoszka
A Field of Opportunity
’99
soccer coach, and Darlenia taught Spanish. At Kiski, Matt recruited students from Nigeria, Mexico, and Brazil to the soccer team, as well as many local kids from the Pittsburgh area who might not have been considering Kiski. Matt did not come from an affluent family, and received significant financial aid to attend Choate. Soccer had opened doors for him, and he felt compelled to help other kids seek out similar opportunities. When these international students could not afford plane fare or other expenses, Matt and Darlenia would cover the costs themselves. “So many of my teammates at both Choate and St. Lawrence came from … [not] the best economic situations,” Matt says. And yet teamsmanship was a great equalizer. “Nobody would know the difference, really, unless you had a full conversation.”
Through recruiting as a coach, Matt gained an understanding of boarding school admissions, and in 2016 he transferred out of the classroom to work in Kiski’s Admissions Office. When Darlenia got a new teaching job that took the family to a junior boarding school, Indian Mountain School in Lakeville, Conn., Matt founded two organizations, capitalizing on his knowledge of admissions, athletic expertise, and passion for helping high school kids succeed: Global Education & Sports Partners, and Thrive League.
Global Education & Sports Partners (GESP), Matt’s educational consulting firm, founded in 2019, places international student athletes at American boarding schools. GESP has placed 330 kids from 20 countries in the last year. It is a business of relationships, and some of Matt’s partners have become his best friends. He recently hosted a showcase in Madrid; boarding school coaches were invited to watch coed students compete in soccer, volleyball, and basketball.
Thrive League, Matt’s nonprofit founded in 2018, connects talented, high-need international athletes with life-changing opportunities at American boarding schools and colleges. Thrive, Matt says, is about trying to identify kids who are a “triple threat” — talented enough to be impact players at a boarding school, very strong students, and of exceptional character. “We’re not all born with equal opportunities,” Matt says. Thrive League is about “trying to identify amazing kids who have everything that it takes to be a super- successful person but might lack the opportunity or pathway to get there.”
Life changed on the soccer field for Matt Kokoszka ’99. Specifically, it was the varsity field at Choate Rosemary Hall, the summer before he was planning to matriculate at his local high school in Meriden. A serious soccer player, Matt was participating in TWIST, a regional tournament; Choate was hosting the semifinals. Choate’s soccer coach watched the game and then approached Matt and his parents. Matt joined Choate as a third former just weeks later. After some initial resistance (he had been looking forward to attending high school with his friends), Matt fell in love with Choate. “It completely changed the direction of my life,” he says. Matt played varsity soccer and basketball until his fifth form year, when he gave up basketball to focus exclusively on soccer as a midfielder. Being on a team was transformative, especially at Choate, where the bonding and shared experiences were not limited to the field. “A lot of people talk about when they go to college as their coming of age,” Matt says. “Mine was at Choate.”
Matt then attended St. Lawrence University, where he played soccer, majored in biology with a focus on ecology, and minored in education. He also met his wife, Darlenia, there; they have been together for 24 years and have two boys, Ayden, 18, and Tristan, 16.
After he graduated from St. Lawrence, Matt taught biology and coached at Meriden’s Maloney High School before moving to a boarding school, the Kiski School in Saltsburg, Pa., where he was a biology teacher and the head
While GESP takes up the majority of Matt’s time, Thrive League is his passion project, and is sustained primarily through the generosity and commitment of Matt and Darlenia, who have hosted six or seven students at their home over school vacations when the kids can’t afford to travel home. To date, Matt has worked with approximately 50 kids through Thrive. Two have graduated from college and three more will graduate this year. In 2024, Matt placed a Thrive League kid at Choate, a third-former from Kenya; there is also currently a GESP student from Spain on Choate’s varsity soccer team. Donors generously support Thrive League and Matt’s efforts. Matt and Darlenia have raised their boys on boarding school campuses; Ayden and Tristan are now enrolled at the Williston Northampton School, where they have lived since 2020. Both are soccer players. Matt, who longed to be a boarding student at Choate, describes this as an ideal childhood; his boys essentially are growing up with many older siblings.
Matt and Darlenia are only a few years away from being empty-nesters. They dream of traveling to Senegal and Ghana, two places where Thrive League has partners. They would love to help build academies for younger athletes in these countries, providing kids with support, infrastructure, and good nutrition. Part of the reason Matt started Thrive League is that he was given an opportunity at Choate that he never expected. “Now that I have a platform to change other people’s lives,” he says, “I want to do that.”
By Joanna CantoR ’01 Joanna Cantor is a novelist and freelance writer based in New York.
CLASSNOTES
1 Jack Schneider ’88 married Aura Reinhard on April 14.
2 Catherine McClure ’12 and Timothy Hackett skiing down Beaver Mountain Ski Resort after their wedding ceremony at the top of the mountain
3 Eva Hines and Tyler Makepeace, both Class of 2009, welcomed Silas Lloyd Makepeace into the family. He will soon be racking up airline miles, after the family moves from Washington, D.C. to Beijing in August.
4 Lacey Tucker ’92 married Mark Weinstein on April 5, 2025, at the PUBLIC Hotel in New York City. From left to right: Samantha Coleman, Onna Houck, Mark Weinstein, Lacey Tucker, Kristen Zeitzer, Sara Glenn, H. Brooke Perkins
5 Amy Mascunana ’04 welcomed a baby girl in March named Madison Alexandra Jimenez.
6 Arvind Kadaba ’03 and his wife, Shreya, welcomed a baby boy, Arya, in May 2025.
7 Lauren DiMatteo DeSimone ’08 and her husband, Joseph, welcomed a son, Nico Joseph, on June 18, 2025.
IN MEMORIAM | Remembering
Those We Have Lost
Alumni and Alumnae
’44 C Warren K. Watters, 97, a manufacturing executive, died April 12, 2025. Born in New Orleans, Warren came to Choate in 1941. He lettered in tennis, was Secretary-Treasurer of the sixth form, was on the Student Council and in the Cum Laude Society. He served in the Marine Corps in World War II, and in the Navy in Korea. After graduating from MIT, he concentrated on producing fiberglass and foam insulation products for ships and submarines, first for Owens Corning and then as President of Reilly Benton Co. He was a trustee of the University of the South at Sewanee, Tenn., and was active in the civic life of New Orleans. He leaves his wife, Chastine Watters; two daughters; seven grandchildren; and two great-grandsons.
’46 C Sumner F. Bissell, 96, President of an insurance agency, died February 11, 2025. Born in West Hartford, Conn., Sumner was at Choate one year; he lettered in football, hockey, and baseball. After earning degrees from Nichols Junior College and the Wharton School at Penn, he served two years in the Navy, attaining the rank of Lieutenant JG. Sumner spent many years in insurance, becoming president of the Goodwin, Loomis, and Britton Agency in Hartford. He was active in the town of Suffield, Conn., serving as Chair of the Board of Fire Commissioners and a member of the Board of Finance. He leaves four children, nine grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. He had five cousins who also went to Choate.
’48 C Edward C. Felton Jr., 95, a retired financial adviser, died March 20, 2025 in Needham, Mass. Born in Boston, Ted came to Choate in 1946; he played league sports and was in the Mineral Club. After earning degrees from Denison University in Granville, Ohio, and Penn, he served two years in the Army. Ted then spent his entire career in the investment industry, at Rhode Island Hospital Trust, Boston Insurance Co., and Woodstock Corp. in Boston. He enjoyed deep sea fishing,
golfing, and gardening. He leaves his wife, Judith Felton; two children; and two grandchildren.
’49 C Sherman G. Andrews, 94, an executive of paper companies, died March 12, 2025 in Santa Rosa, Calif. Born in Kalamazoo, Mich., Sherm came to Choate in 1946. He lettered in cross country (captain), basketball, and golf, and was on the Student Council and in St. Andrew’s Cabinet. After service in the Army, he graduated from the University of Michigan and began a lifelong career in paper pulp sales with International Paper in Chicago. Sherm later worked for Leaf Paper in Mississippi, Nekoosa Edwards Paper in Wisconsin, and elsewhere. He enjoyed golfing and world travel. He leaves three children; five grandchildren; and a great-grandchild.
’50 C George “Jerry” Campbell III, 93, an executive of a chain company, died February 15, 2025 in Healdsburg, Calif. Born in York, Pa., Jerry came to Choate in 1946; he was on the staff of The Brief, in the Press Club, and a Campus Cop. After serving two years in the Army in France, he joined Campbell Chain Co., which had been founded by his grandfather. After moving to California, Jerry headed the firm’s West Coast operations and, with his wife, ran a bed and breakfast. He enjoyed traveling, swimming, snorkeling, and raising King pigeons. He leaves his wife, Mary Jane Campbell; two sons; and four grandchildren.
Lee M. Clegg, 93, a marketing consultant, died April 16, 2025. Born in Cleveland, Lee came to Choate in 1946; he was on the board of The Choate News and won School prizes in speaking, photography, and manual arts. After earning degrees from Lehigh and Harvard, Lee was vice president of marketing for Solbern Corp. of Fairfield, N. J. He was then a self-employed consultant to smaller manufacturers. He leaves a nephew, Jonathan Moffly ’80. A brother, the late Michael Clegg ’56, and a child, the late Jan Clegg ’80, also attended Choate.
John R. Leu, 92, a business owner, died April 14, 2025 in Phoenixville, Pa. Born in Boston, Jack came to Choate in 1947; he was in the Automobile, Camera, and Radio clubs.
’53
Richard Nichols “Nick” Cowell taught graduate and undergraduate students at Harvard, Wheelock College, Portland State University, and Pacific University; high school students in Massachusetts, Oregon, and Turkey; and marginalized teens in Portland. He was also an educational consultant for the Ford Foundation, the World Bank, and other organizations, setting up schools worldwide, from Guatemala to Nepal and Zambia.
At one point he wrote for the TV program Sesame Street.
After graduating from Penn’s Wharton School, he served in the Army in Germany, attaining the rank of First Lieutenant. Jack operated businesses in North Adams, Mass., including an auto dealership and an ambulance service; he was a longtime member of the Northern Berkshire Chamber of Commerce. A park in North Adams was named for him. A sailor and private pilot, he also enjoyed gardening. He leaves his wife, Edith Leu; seven children; and several grandchildren.
’52 C George M. Gregory, 90, an executive of silver companies, died April 27, 2025 in Brunswick, Maine. Born in Providence, George came to Choate in 1947; he sang in the Glee Club and the Maiyeros. After graduating from Brown, he served in the Army, then joined the family business, Goodwin & Gregory Silversmiths. George later worked for Reed & Barton Silversmiths for 30 years as a sales executive. A lifelong member of several church choirs and glee clubs, he also enjoyed fly fishing and ran a fishing camp, Trout Run, on Kennebago Lake in Maine. He leaves three children, seven grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.
John E. Houx, 90, a retired stock and bond broker, died May 27, 2025. Born in New York City, John came to Choate in 1949; he was in the Altar Guild and the Automobile Club. After graduating from St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., he served in the Navy on one of the last wooden minesweepers. John worked for the CARE nonprofit in Turkey before returning to the United States, where he was an independent day trader in the stock and bond markets. He later moved to Vero Beach, Fla., where he became involved in local theater productions. He enjoyed world travel and writing poetry. He leaves his longtime companion, Anne Brooke; a son; and three grandchildren.
’53 C Richard Nichols Cowell, 90, a retired educator, died May 23, 2025 of complications from dementia. Born in Denver, Colo., Nick, as he was known, came to Choate in 1950; he was in the Cum Laude Society and was Managing Editor of The Choate Literary Magazine. He then earned bachelor’s,
master’s, and doctoral degrees from Harvard, and after serving in the Army, was a lifelong teacher. Nick taught graduate and undergraduate students at Harvard, Wheelock College, Portland State University, and Pacific University; high school students in Massachusetts, Oregon, and Turkey; and marginalized teens in Portland. He was also an educational consultant for the Ford Foundation, the World Bank, and other organizations, setting up schools worldwide, from Guatemala to Nepal and Zambia. At one point he wrote for the TV program Sesame Street. He leaves a son, two grandsons, and a half-brother.
Arthur R. Lowell, 91, an accountant, died February 15, 2025 in Canton, Conn. Born in Canton, Arthur came to Choate in 1950; he lettered in football, golf (captain), and wrestling, winning a School award in that sport; he was also President of the Chess Club. After graduating from the University of Hartford, he served in the Army. Arthur first worked for the accounting firm of Massa and Hinsley, then opened his own accounting business in Canton. He was also part of the family that owned the Canton Public Golf Course. He leaves his wife, Bette Lowell.
’54 C Michael H. Sherman, 89, a financial analyst, died February 13, 2025 in Greenwich, Conn. Born in Springfield, Ill., Mike came to Choate in 1952; he was in the Bridge and Weather clubs and was a Campus Cop. After earning degrees from Yale and Columbia, he had a long career in finance, holding senior positions at Bankers Trust, Oppenheimer, Lehman Brothers, Omega Advisors, and elsewhere. He later started his own company, Capital Investments International, and founded Sierra Global Asset Management. Mike enjoyed golf, sailing, and watching old movies. He leaves three children and three grandchildren.
’55 C Launce E. Gamble, 88, a rancher and investor, died February 9, 2025 in San Francisco from pneumonia. Born in Palo Alto, Calif., Launce came to Choate in 1952; he was in the Press and Western clubs. After studying at Stanford,
he completed a farming economics program at UC Davis, then assumed management of family ranches in Napa County. Launce then moved to San Francisco, where he established an investment office. Active in the community, he was a trustee at his children’s schools and the Bancroft Library. He enjoyed hunting, fishing, dogs and horses. He leaves his wife, Joan Gamble; three children; five grandchildren; a great-grandson; and a brother, George Gamble ’56. Other relatives who attended Choate are the late James Gamble ’40, the late David Ritchey ’60, and David Gamble ’61 and Foster Gamble ’66.
’56 C Oliver T. Cook, 86, an attorney, died July 1, 2025 in Beverly Farms, Mass. Born in Pittsburgh, Oliver came to Choate in 1952. He lettered in golf, was a Campus Cop, and was in the Press and Western clubs. After earning degrees from Washington & Lee and the New England School of Law, he was a partner for decades in the Peabody, Mass., firm of Pearl, McNiff & Crean. He was later in private practice. Oliver enjoyed golf — in 1994 he won a Ford Thunderbird by scoring a hole in one in Danvers, Mass. — and he rescued and raised dogs and cats. He leaves his wife, Sharon Cook; two children; a granddaughter; and two sisters. His father, the late H. Calvin Cook 1925, also attended Choate, as did his brother, the late H. Calvin Cook Jr. ’54.
Graeme H. B. Forrester, 86, a retired economist, died October 12, 2024. Born in Vancouver, B.C., Canada, Graeme came to Choate in 1952. He was in the French, Rod and Gun, and Western clubs. After earning degrees from Stanford (where he was a champion boxer) and UC Berkeley, Graeme was an economist in the Finance Department of the Canadian government. He later was a private lender. He enjoyed playing many sports, from tennis to rugby, and was an avid reader. He leaves his wife, Catherine Pietrobon; three children; two grandsons; and two siblings.
’57 C William J. Tingue, 85, a manufacturing executive, died May 8, 2025. Bill came to Choate in 1953; he was Sports Editor of the Press
Club and in St. Andrew’s Cabinet and the Altar Guild. After graduating from Brown, where he co-founded the Brown Rugby Club, he joined the family business, Tingue, Brown & Co. The firm is a supplier to industrial laundry concerns. Bill became its CEO in 1992. He received many honors in the textile industry and was a founding board member of the American Reusable Textile Association. He enjoyed golf, fly fishing, and hiking. He leaves his wife, Diane “Dookie” Tingue; three sons; and four grandchildren.
’58 C Stanley B. Sprague, 85, an attorney, died May 20, 2025. Born in Norwalk, Conn., Stan came to Choate in 1955; he played club sports. After graduating from Middlebury, he served in the Marine Corps as a pilot in Vietnam, attaining the rank of Captain. He graduated from the North Carolina Central University School of law, then spent his entire legal career advocating for the less fortunate, working in legal clinics and for North Carolina Legal Aid. In retirement, Stan authored books on Pakistan and Afghanistan. He leaves his wife, Celine Sprague; two daughters; and five grandchildren.
’60 C Edward T. Harrison Jr., 82, a retired cattle rancher, died March 29, 2025. Born in Kansas City, Mo., Tom, as he was known, came to Choate in 1957; he was Vice President of the Auto Club and Vice President of the German Club. After graduating from UC Berkeley, he operated the Devon Acres cattle ranch in Eagle Point, Ore. In 1989 he founded Oregon Opportunities, a real estate brokerage specializing in farms and ranches. He enjoyed hunting and fishing. He leaves his partner, Patricia Wintemute; three children; five grandchildren; a greatgrandson; and a sister.
David S. P. Hopkins, 81, a healthcare executive, died February 21, 2025 in an ocean accident in Hapuna Beach, Hawaii. Born in Pasadena, Calif., David came to Choate in 1957; he was on the board of The Brief, was in the Cum Laude Society, and won a School prize in mathematics. After earning degrees from Harvard and Stanford, he improved clinical operations at Stanford Hospital and later held
senior roles at the Pacific Business Group on Health, advising on healthcare performance and national policy. David was a longtime supporter of Planned Parenthood and enjoyed traveling and playing tennis. He leaves his wife, Rosemary Hopkins; four children; and 11 grandchildren.
’61 C James N. T. Silin, 82, a farmer, died June 10, 2025 in Whitefield, Maine. Born in Erie, Pa., Jim came to Choate in 1956; he was on the Sixth Form Tutoring Committee. After attending Brandeis, he pursued commercial farming and gardening, including promoting organic subsistence agriculture. He raised and cared for an assortment of farm animals over the years. He also performed music as “Jimmy Midnight.” He leaves his wife, Ann Silin; a son; and a brother.
’63 C Wallace F. Jarvis, 79, President of an airfoil company, died January 31, 2025 of cancer. Born in Hartford, Conn., Wal came to Choate in 1959. He lettered in soccer and lacrosse, was President of the Camera Club, and was on the board of The Choate News. After graduating from Boston University, he headed the fourth generation of the family business, Jarvis Airfoil, Inc., in Portland, Conn., expanding it into the field of medical implants by starting Jarvis Surgical Inc. He retired in 2015. Wal enjoyed world travel, driving race cars, and boating. He leaves his wife,
Hedy Jarvis; two sons, Jason Jarvis ’87 and Clayton Jarvis ’89; a stepdaughter; 10 grandchildren; two greatgrandchildren; two brothers, Penfield Jarvis ’57 and Marshall Jarvis ’60; and a nephew, William Woolfson Jarvis ’15. A niece, the late Elizabeth Jarvis ’83, also attended Choate Rosemary Hall.
Paul S. Van Nice, 79, an anesthesiologist, died May 13, 2025. Born in Chicago, Paul came to Choate in 1959; he was in the Art, Astronomy, and Rod and Gun clubs. He then earned a B.A. from Northwestern University; a Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico School of Medicine; an M.D. from George Washington University; and an M.A. in bioethics from the Medical College of Wisconsin. He served in the Army in Vietnam, and was awarded the Bronze Star. He practiced at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital in Rockville, Md. (where he chaired the Ethics Committee), as well as Holy Cross Hospital and Montgomery General Hospital. He leaves two sons and five grandchildren. A brother, Peter Van Nice ’60, also attended Choate, as well as a nephew, Anthony Van Nice ’93.
’65 C David C. Iglehart, 78, a tennis professional, died May 22, 2025 in Okeechobee, Fla. Born in New York City, David came to Choate in 1961; he lettered in tennis and was in the Current History Club. After graduating from Florida Atlantic University, he became a tennis pro. David also
played hockey and golf. He leaves two sons and two grandchildren. His stepmother, Rosalind L. Brown ’37, attended Rosemary Hall.
Robert S. Johnson, 77, a manufacturer, died March 1, 2025 in Phoenix, Ariz. Robb was born in Syracuse, N.Y. and came to Choate in 1961. He was co-captain of varsity soccer and captain of varsity golf, winning School awards in each sport, and was President of the Choate Athletic Association. He graduated from Trinity College, where he was captain of tennis, and later worked for Midwest Steel, a structural steel manufacturer, in Portage, Ind. He leaves two daughters and several grandchildren.
’66 C Philip J. Boswell, 75, active in opera, died November 8, 2024 in Toronto, Canada. Born in Paris, France, Phil came to Choate in 1962; he was in the Cum Laude Society and the Current History Club. After graduating from Harvard, he went on to pursue a lifelong passion for the opera, working in Santa Fe, Italy, Boston, San Francisco, and Toronto, where he was Artistic Administrator of the Canadian Opera Company for 33 years. Phil enjoyed travel, cooking, and participating in the Toronto Pride Festival. He leaves four brothers.
’67 C Jeffrey T. Norton, 75, a retired Army officer and a Christian missionary, died February 5, 2025.
Born in Meriden, Jeff came to Choate in 1962; he was Advertising Manager of The Choate News and in the Ski Club. After graduating from the University of Vermont, he joined the Army, retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel. He then led nine English teaching teams in the Czech Republic and was one of the founders of the Philippian Fellowship, a Christian outreach into Hungary, Romania, and the Czech Republic. More recently, he supported displaced Ukrainians. He leaves his wife, Rebecca Norton; three children; 13 grandchildren; and a sister, Ellen Peters ’73. His father, the late John Norton C 1935; an uncle, the late Austin Norton ’40; and a brother, the late John “Tuck” Norton ’64, also attended Choate.
’68 C Wesson S. Anderson, 74, who spent many years in the hospitality industry, died December 25, 2024. Born in New York City, Wes came to Choate in 1965; he was the Manager of the Debate Society and President of the Republican Caucus of the Political Union. After graduating from the University of Virginia, he spent 44 years in diverse positions at Loews Hotels, the Penn Club of New York, the Monticello Plaza Hotel in Charlottesville, Va., and elsewhere. Wes was also the New York President of the Club Management Association. He enjoyed dancing and dogs. He leaves his wife, Maomi Anderson; a daughter; a granddaughter; and a sister.
Paul S. Van Nice earned a B.A. from Northwestern University; a Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico School of Medicine; an M.D. from George Washington University; and an M.A. in bioethics from the Medical College of Wisconsin. He served in the Army in Vietnam, and was awarded the Bronze Star.
’68 RH Anne McMillan Thompson, 75, a writer, died May 11, 2025. Born in Cincinnati, Anne came to Rosemary Hall in 1964. After graduating from Lake Forest College, she traveled to Belgium and San Francisco before she settled in Burlington, Vt., where she was an editor at the University of Vermont before devoting herself full-time to motherhood. She later worked with patients at Timber Lane Allergy & Asthma Associates and Hope Lodge in Burlington. She leaves two sons and two siblings, including Christie Summer ’64.
’69 C Hendrix F. Niemann, 73, a television executive, died March 27, 2025. Born in New York City, Drix came to Choate in 1966; he was in the Gold Key Society and was Editorial Chairman of The Choate News. After graduating from Princeton, he founded and published New Jersey Monthly magazine and was then Executive Director of New Jersey Public TV. Moving to Annapolis, Md., Drix became President of Potomac Television. He later moved to Wilmington, N.C., where he founded a women’s lacrosse team. He enjoyed reading (five newspapers a day) and trips to New York to see his son act in Broadway shows. He leaves his wife, Judi Niemann; five children; and three siblings.
’69 RH Frances Carr Tapp, 73, the owner of a racetrack, died March 14, 2025. Born in Corpus Christi, Texas, Frances came to Rosemary Hall in 1966. After graduation, she opened Manor Downs racetrack in Manor, Texas, which involved not only horse racing but popular music. Frances contributed to the launch of the careers of the Grateful Dead, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and others. She leaves her husband, Felix Tapp.
’70 RH Patricia Hartman Boutan, 72, died March 19, 2025. Born in Greenwich, Trish (known as “Tissy” at School) came to Rosemary Hall in 1966; she was in the Glee Club, the Choir, the Whimawehs, and the Shakespeare play. After graduating from Peabody College in Nashville, Tenn., Trish married and returned to Greenwich as an orthodontist assistant. The family later moved to Maine, where she worked in a bookstore. She enjoyed calligraphy.
She leaves her husband, Marc Boutan; two children; and two sisters, including Katherine H. Thornblade ’66.
’73 C Leif W. I. Larsen, 69, a production designer for TV commercials, died of ALS March 18, 2025 in Watertown, Mass. Born in Armonk, N.Y., Leif came to Choate in 1969; he was Captain of the ski team, Senior Editor of The Brief, and in the Ecology Club. He then graduated from Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. Leif enjoyed all sports, including skiing, soccer, tennis, and windsurfing. He leaves three siblings, including Rikk Larsen ’65 and Peik Larsen ’67; and cousins Pike Talbert ’67 and Peter Talbert ’70. Another brother, the late Per Larsen ’71, also attended Choate. Jay T. McCamic, 69, an attorney, died April 18, 2025 in Wheeling, W. Va. Born in Charlottesville, Va., Jay came to Choate in 1970; he lettered in football and was in the Press Club. After earning degrees from the University of North Carolina and West Virginia University, he served in the Marines, attaining the rank of Captain, then entered legal practice, concentrating on criminal defense, plaintiff’s civil litigation, and civil rights. An adjunct professor at the WVU College of Law, Jay was honored for his legal work many times. In Wheeling, he received the Good Samaritan Award in 2017. He leaves his wife, Jimmie Ann McCamic; two sons; his father; and two siblings. An uncle, Joylon McCamic ’50, attended Choate, as did a cousin, Jeffrey McCamic ’76.
’76 C Michael E. Hagan, 66, a lawyer and business executive, died April 24, 2025 of cancer. Born in Natchez, Miss., Mike came to Choate in 1973. He was Vice President of the Gold Key Society and in the Chemistry Club. After attending Texas A&M, he earned a law degree from Loyola Marymount Law School in Los Angeles. He later worked in politics in Oklahoma and practiced law in California, Texas, and South Carolina. In 2021, Mike became an executive with FedEx Corp., working in Hong Kong and Memphis. He enjoyed public speaking, singing, golf, and good food. He leaves his wife, Katherine Hagan; four children; three grandchildren; and a sister.
’79 Leslie Cobb Swiacki, 64, a chef, died March 20, 2025 in Fairhope, Ala. Born in Southbridge, Mass., Leslie came to Rosemary Hall in 1976; she played guitar in the Chapel Band, sang in the choir, and organized a pep squad for football. After graduating with a degree in culinary arts from Johnson and Wales University in Providence, she was a chef with highly rated restaurants in Boston; Anchorage, Alaska; West Palm Beach, Fla.; and Point Clear, Ala. Leslie volunteered for many charitable organizations, including local animal shelters and humane services. She leaves a brother, William Swiacki ’74.
Our sympathy to the friends and family of the following, whose death are reported with sorrow:
Bradlee H. Shattuck ’64 December 29, 2024
Ashley A. Taft ’86 January 27, 2025
Staff, Faculty, Trustees
A. Lee Campione, who was a School Trustee in 1974 and 1975, died March 14, 2025 in Wallingford. She was 91. Born in Montreal, Lee Scowen spent several years in Quebec before marrying Dr. Matthew Campione and moving to Connecticut. She was the founder of the Meriden Day Care Center and Meriden Community Vision, and was the first chair of the Neighborhood Preservation Commission. Lee served on the boards of trustees of several organizations besides Choate’s, including the Meriden Chamber of Commerce, the Curtis Home, and St. Andrew’s Church; and she won several community awards. She leaves four daughters, including Annis Campione ’75 and Martha Maksym ’78; nine grandchildren; nine great-grandchildren; and a brother.
Nanette M. Cannata-Pardew, a nurse at Choate Rosemary Hall for 20 years, died of cancer June 19, 2025. She was 68. Born in Meriden, Nanette graduated from Lyman Hall
High School and worked for Precision Trim before returning to school and becoming a nurse. She worked for several years at Gaylord Hospital in Wallingford and at Choate from 2003 to 2023. Nanette leaves a son and three siblings.
Gary R. Gruber, for six years Choate Rosemary Hall’s Chaplain and teacher of psychology and religion, died in Henderson, Nev. on July 10, 2025. He was 88. A graduate of Miami University of Ohio, Gary attended Princeton Seminary before moving to Michigan, where he was an Associate Pastor in the Presbyterian Church. He earned his Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Studies from Penn State in 1972 and transitioned into private practice as a therapist, counselor, and graduate school teacher. In 1979, Gary came to Choate, where he taught courses in psychology and religion while also serving as Chaplain. When he left in 1986 to become Head of the Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, Pa., Choate President and Principal Charles F. Dey told that school “You have deprived Choate Rosemary Hall of one of our most experienced, versatile, and beloved colleagues.” Gary subsequently was the founding Head of the Bosque School in Albuquerque, N.M. He is remembered for his sense of humor, remarkable energy, and spirit of adventure. His advice to others was often simple, direct, and always heartfelt: “Tell the truth. Be kind. Always say thank you.” He leaves his wife, Susan Richardson, three children: John Gruber ’81, Martha Gruber ’81, and James Gruber ’86; four stepchildren; 14 grandchildren; and a great-grandchild.
Charles A. Hinners Jr., an electrician at Choate Rosemary Hall for 25 years, died April 6, 2025 in Meriden. He was 76. Born in New Haven, Charlie graduated from Wilcox Technical High School, then worked in construction and at Ryerson Steel. From 1998 to 2014 he was an electrician at School. He enjoyed traveling and sports. He leaves his wife, Wendy Hinners; three children; four grandchildren; and three siblings.
Connie Matthews, Choate Rosemary Hall’s first Coordinator of Multicultural Affairs, died March 1, 2025, in Hartford, Conn. She was 84. Born in Helena, Ark., Constance Johanna Bracey, whose mother was a professor at Howard University in Washington, D.C., grew up on the Howard campus with her mother and brother, who also became
a college professor. She skipped two grades in elementary school. According to family legend, her greatgrandmother was a formerly enslaved woman who started a school in Mississippi for the children of freed slaves. After earning degrees from Oberlin College and BaldwinWallace College in Ohio, Connie taught English in public schools for 28 years. In 1989, she answered an advertisement seeking a Coordinator of Multicultural Affairs at Choate. “I knew nothing about Choate,” she told an interviewer when she was hired, “except it was one of those ritzy, rich schools in Connecticut. I think people hear the term ‘multicultural’ and tend to think you’re talking about everything that is Latino, Black, or Asian. To me, it includes everybody.” In addition to her coordinator responsibilities, Connie taught English. “I think of my students as my children,” she said in 1996, “and I try to teach them the way I’d want my children to be taught — with care, with respect, with very high expectations, and with much joy.” Her supervisor noted “the energy, enthusiasm, and intensity of her students.” Former President and Principal Charles F. Dey called Connie “a wonderfully able woman.” In 1997, she was named Adviser to Students of Color and Coordinator of the Icahn Scholars Program, created the Choate Afro-Latino Student Alliance and, in 2004, was awarded the Hubert Sawyer Packard Chair. Outside of Choate, she was on the board of the New England Foundation for the Humanities. “I just love the kids here,” she said in 2004. “Not just the Black and Latino kids, but all the huge rainbow of kids that I have come to know.” Connie demonstrated that love in the many roles she filled for her advisees: surrogate mother, mentor, advocate, protector, role model, friend, confidant, psychological counselor, and when necessary, candid critic. On the occasion of Connie’s retirement in 2016, Sheila Adams ’01 said, “she believed in me and my potential to achieve long before I believed in myself.” In her little spare time, she knitted scarves for hospitalized children and local unhoused persons. Connie leaves two daughters, four grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.
Edward S. McCatty, who taught English at Choate Rosemary Hall for 28 years, died June 14, 2025, in Keene, N.H. He was 71. Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he attended Wingate High School, Ed earned a bachelor’s degree in English and biology
from Amherst College. He went on to earn a master’s degree from Yale Divinity School in 1979 (during which time he was an Assistant Minister at New Haven’s United Methodist Church and taught at a school for children with autism) and a master’s in literature from University College London in 2005. After briefly working for a marketing firm, Ed taught for seven years at Brentwood School in Los Angeles, then returned to the East Coast in 1992 to join the Choate faculty. He was a dorm adviser, rowing coach, Adviser to Students of Color, and Faculty Adviser to the Judicial Committee. Ed was the consummate teacher, described by a faculty colleague as “both a teacher and a student: someone well equipped by virtue of his learning and his ability to communicate, to lead others to the discovery of, and excitement for, ideas.” Throughout his career at Choate, Ed received numerous awards from students and the administration for his teaching
and contributions to the school community. He was named to the Johannes Van Straalen Chair in 2013 and to the Independence Foundation Chair in 2001. One student observed: “Mr. McCatty is passionate and devoted to bringing literature to life.” After she interviewed him for the Choate job, Coordinator of Multicultural Affairs Connie Matthews had a threeword recommendation: “Hire this guy.” Known for his insistence that students adhere to the School dress code, Ed set an example by being generally regarded as the best-dressed man on campus. After he retired, he moved to Walpole, N.H., where he remained an active member of the Amherst College Alumni Association and joined St. Michael’s Episcopal Church of Brattleboro, Vt. In addition, he served on the board of the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center. He once proclaimed in a speech in the Seymour St. John Chapel, “I am not a self-made man … having received loving gifts from God, and love and nurture from my family and from the communities in which I have been fortunate to live … And if I am not alone, neither are you.” He leaves a brother.
Connie Matthews REMEMBERED
Edward S. McCatty REMEMBERED
The Wild Boars closed out the academic year with another strong term in the pool and on the fields, on the courts, and in the water. Girls Varsity Water Polo led the way, claiming their first New England Championship since 2015 after defeating Andover, 20-3, in the championship game. Girls Varsity Golf went undefeated (15-0) during the regular season and clinched its first Founders League title in program history. Also bringing home Founders League titles were Boys Varsity Tennis and Varsity Softball. Advancing to and competing in the Founders League Championship games this year were Varsity Boys and Girls Lacrosse, as well as Varsity Baseball, which qualified for the league playoffs. While team dynamics are the most important aspect of Choate Athletics, those dynamics were bolstered this spring by individual accolades that included Bryce Privateer ’26 being named a USA Lacrosse All-American (first boys lacrosse player since 2015), and Maddy Childs ’26 being named Girls Water Polo New England Player of the Year.
Highlights: Qualified for the Founders League Playoffs for the third straight year as the #3 seed. Won eight of their final nine games heading into the playoffs. Earned wins over Deerfield, Loomis Chaffee, Taft, Hotchkiss, and Kingswood-Oxford.
BOYS VARSITY CREW
Record: N/A
Captain: Julian Paul ’25
Highlights: A strong showing at the Founders Day Regatta, with the 1v finishing third in the petite final, beating Brewster, Gunn, and Canterbury for a ninthplace finish overall, and the 2v boat finishing 10th overall. The 1v boat had its best race of the season at the NERIAs, finishing 10th overall and beating their seed by six spots.
Highlights: The Wild Boars finished fourth overall at the NEIRA Championships, with the 4v boat and 2v boat both placing fourth, as well. At the Founders Day Regatta, the 3v and 4v boats each won gold, while the 2v squad placed second.
BOYS VARSITY GOLF
Record: 6-4
Captain: Ernie Mok ’25
Highlights: Placed third at the Suffield Invitational Tournament, and fifth at a tightly contested Founders League Championship. The Wild Boars finished sixth out of 26 teams at the end-of-year Kingswood-Oxford Invitational.
GIRLS VARSITY GOLF
Record: 15-0
Captain: Elle Kim ’25
Highlights: In an undefeated season, won first Founders League title in program history, defeating Loomis Chaffee by nine strokes at the championship match. Choate also had an individual medalist, Aida Tepe ’28, who shot a incredible 35 (-2). The Wild Boars also finished fourth overall at the Pippy O’Connor Independent School Girls Golf Tournament.
BOYS VARSITY LACROSSE
Record: 11-4
Captains: George Hawley ’25, Gordie Leary ’25, John Markley ’25, Oliver Nappi ’25
Highlights: Advanced to its first-ever Founders League Championship game after defeating Taft at home in the semifinals. During the regular season, the Wild Boars beat nationally ranked Belmont Hill while also earning big wins over Andover, Avon Old Farms, and Berkshire.
GIRLS VARSITY LACROSSE
Record: 11-6-1
Captains: Alex Buterbaugh ’25, Rita Tunney ’25 Highlights: Earned four more wins than the previous year while advancing to first-ever Founders League Championship game after upsetting Loomis Chaffee in the semifinals. Finished the season 6-0-1 before heading into the playoffs.
VARSITY CO-ED SAILING
Record: 2-4
Captains: Charlotte Flynn ’25, Holden Buchbinder ’26 Highlights: Named Connecticut League Fleet Champions for the first time in program history. Also earned two regular season wins over Daniel Hand High School.
VARSITY SOFTBALL
Record: 16-2
Captains: Gioia Segui ’25, Maggie Swanson ’26 Highlights: Undefeated in Founders League play to claim their third title in four years. Advanced to the Western New England “A” Division Championship for the fourth straight year after defeating Kimball Union Academy at home.
BOYS VARSITY TENNIS
Record: 9-5
Captains: Rodrigo Chon Him ’25, Will Henderson ’25 Highlights: Claimed the Founders League title on the final day of the season after defeating Avon Old Farms, 7-0. Qualified for the New England Team Tennis Championships. Placed second overall at the Kingswood-Oxford Invitational. Captain duo of Rodrigo Chon Him ’25 and Will Henderson ’25 won the New England Doubles championship.
GIRLS VARSITY TENNIS
Record: 5-9
Captains: Leah Covey ’25, Caroline Kim ’25 Highlights: Earned regular season wins over Loomis Chaffee, Greens Farms Academy, Ethel Walker, Westminster, and Miss Porter’s.
BOYS VARSITY TRACK & FIELD
Record: 0-6
Captains: Nick Malcolm ’25, Andrew Fazzone Chettiar ’26, Kino Liu ’26
Highlights: Finished sixth overall at the Founders League Championships and 12th at the New England Championships. Jeremiah Washington ’25 won the Founders League title in the 200-meter and finished second in the 100-meter race.
GIRLS VARSITY TRACK & FIELD
Record: 5-3
Captains: Mia Bratti ’25, Dominique Welcome ’26
Highlights: Regular season wins over Hopkins, Miss Porter’s, and Northfield Mt. Hermon. Had great showings during championship meets, placing third overall at the Founders League Championships, and eighth overall at the New England Championships.
CO-ED VARSITY ULTIMATE
Record: 9-11
Captains: Lila Gizzie ’25, Sophie Park ’25, Paxton Zerega ’25, Leah Harder ’26
Highlights: Competed in numerous regular season matches as well as championship tournaments throughout the spring. Finished fourth at the Connecticut Championships and eighth at the New England Division I Championships, while also finishing Runner Up for the coveted “Spirit of the Game” Trophy.
BOYS VARSITY VOLLEYBALL
Record: 0-10
Captain: Owen Holbrook ’25
Highlights: Competed in very close contests throughout the spring, with their season culminating in the NEPSAC Championship semifinals.
GIRLS VARSITY WATER POLO
Record: 11-1
Captains: Lily Thomas ’25, Maddy Childs ’26
Highlights: 9-1 during the regular season with only one overtime loss. Claimed the program’s first New England title since 2015, after defeating Hopkins and Andover during the NEPSAC playoffs. Maddy Childs ’26 was named MVP of the tournament with Emily Scandrett ’26 named Outstanding Goalie.
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1 Co-Ed Sailing teammates Charlotte Flynn ’25 (left) and Everett Royall ’27 navigate tough waters and high winds during a regional race.
2 Rebecca Huang ’27 keeps her eye on the ball as she drives her first shot off the tee.
3 Erin Kim ’26, Cawthra Burns ’25, Jessica Lin ’27, Kate Tortorella ’26, Vuyisa Kahla ’25 (right to left) are all smiles before departing for a workout on the water.
4 Captain Gordie Leary ’25 (#2) evades a defenseman and heads upfield.
5 Cody Bershtein ’27, Camdyn Naficy ’28, Aiden Cho ’28, Morgan Chen ’28, and John Durbin ’28 (left to right) work together to glide across the water during practice.
6 Captain Paxton Zerega ’25 works around a defender to fling the frisbee down the field.
7 The Girls Varsity Water Polo Team claimed its first New England title since 2015.
1 Softball player Hope Giammatteo ‘26 (#22) works on defense during warmups before a home game.
2 Boys Volleyball Mason Kwee ‘27 (#15) delivers an ace.
3 Alexandra Horowitz ’27 (#6) looks to take a long-range shot on goal during a home game.
4 Girls Track & Field Dominique Welcome ’26 displays her strength while throwing the shot put.
5 Boys Track & Field Jeremiah Washington ’25 sprints to the finish line to win the 200-meter title at the Founders League Championships.
6 Covey sisters Leah ’25 (front) and Carly ’28 (back) make a formidable duo in a doubles tennis match.
7 Boys Varsity Tennis Captains Rodrigo Chon Him ‘25 and Will Henderson ‘25 show off their hardware after winning the New England Doubles title.
8 Paul Stearns ’26 (left) and Luke Britton ’26 (right) gather on the fairway to strategize their next shot.
9 Shaun Flannery ’26 (#11) delivers a strike from the mound.
In this issue, we review three works that celebrate a language of poetic constructs, each offering a distinct yet resonant voice. Two poetry collections navigate the delicate terrain between grief and joy, while a speculative essay investigates the role of language itself in the face of climate catastrophe, challenging us to rethink how we speak, write, and remember in a world on the brink.
Immemorial
By Lauren Markham ’01 | Reviewed by Lena Nicolai
Immemorial by Lauren Markham seeks to find or to invent words that overcome the failure of language to acknowledge and memorialize the destabilization and strife of living in a time of ecological collapse and climate breakdown. Her wayfinding explores the multitude of dimensions of the crisis. Her approach is simultaneously absorbing and expansive with a non-linear form involving multiple interlaced sections that induce the reader to pause and reflect, or to read passages multiple times. The impact, delivered lyrically, is alternately weighty and cathartic. For Markham, nothing is moving fast enough to cope with the consequences of our dysfunctional relationship with the planet — not species themselves nor the evolution of species’ traits, not political will or human behaviors, not logistical or spiritual responses, not human values or human languages. Hence, the desire to memorialize. Markham considers the value and types of memorials, be they personal or public, permanent or impermanent. She introduces the reader to numerous physical memorials such as the hurricane-damaged Atlantic white cedars of Maya Lin’s Ghost Forest in Madison Square Park and the empty coffins at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala. She is drawn to rituals and performance memorials such as the funeral for the Ok glacier in Iceland or the building of mud cities in Switzerland or the collaborative project by Cara Levine to dig a hole into which people could place expressions of their grief. She teaches us of artists who transformed a military prison into the Hostel Celica in Ljubljana, Slovenia, or who won the Memorial for the Future with Climate Chronograph, or who visualize the lost voices of endangered and extinct birds with Sound Columns. It is both comforting and unnerving to learn of so many expressions of profound emotion.
Understandably, Markham contemplates the words and works of writers, historians, and philosophers as she grapples with the conundrum of memorial-building and parses the intention, function, and symbolism of memorials. She helps us ponder the selective memory-making that we call history and does not soften the inquietude and queasiness of thinking about “the future gone.” More than once, she consults with the Bureau of Linguistical Reality when confronting her desire for the words needed to bear the emotional complexity of being alive in a time of vanishing and loss. Her need to memorialize leads her to consider futurists such as the Future Cities Lab, now Future Forms, and how planning for the future, instead of thinking about the future, tends to make humans happy. “To plan toward the future is to believe that good memories lie in wait up ahead.” Though there can be no real resolution to Lauren’s desire to understand her longing for memorial spaces; she maintains that “Memorials are forms of spatial storytelling about the past, but they can also be mandates to face the future and attempt its ethical redesign.”
The honesty with which Markham expresses grief, considers one’s own complicity, and wrestles with uncertainty make Immemorial unforgettable. Also notable are the intricacy and clarity of the linkages she weaves throughout the text as she draws upon years of experiences and reflections as a journalist and author. And there is what I imagine as the fortitude that enables her to pepper her work with powerful questions that need and should be read multiple times. In a time of upheaval, Immemorial asks us to make language purposeful, to reconcile our connection with the Earth, and to forge a memorial space by which “grief needn’t be a terminus but a portal.”
IMMEMORIAL
Author: Lauren Markham ’01
Publisher: Transit Books
About the Reviewer: Lena Nicolai is a science teacher at Choate Rosemary Hall.
In Praise of Survival: Hereafter and Time Remaining
By Alan Felsenthal ’99, James P. Lenfestey ’62 | Reviewed by Mark Gosztyla
“the many change and pass; Heaven’s light forever shines, Earth’s shadows fly; Life like a dome of many-colour’d glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity” – Shelley, “Adonais” While the ode (Hello, Keats!) and elegy (Hello, Shelley re: Keats!) are familiar poetic containers of joy and grief, and joy and grief are feelings familiar to even those who don’t think of themselves as poetically inclined, recent books by two Choate poets, Alan Felsenthal ’99’s Hereafter (The Song Cave) and James P. Lenfestey ’62’s Time Remaining: Body Odes, Praise Songs, Oddities, Amazements (Milkweed), make new with these formal poetic spaces, proving them places of possibility capable of performing personal transformation.
Felsenthal’s Hereafter begins with “Elegy,” a poem that examines the unseen elements necessary for life, both the physical ones, like electrolytes, and the metaphysical ones, like the soul. Through frequent jump cuts, the poem progresses through seven unnumbered sections and an imagescape that juxtapose the stark realities of hospice-care within a semi-bucolic scenery, before concluding with rumination:
“ Through the shadow of the Earth the soul wafts.
I will pay the debts.
Is there anything else?”
Leaving a reader to wonder about all still owed (to whom? for what?) after someone passes.
Lenfestey’s Time Remaining also begins with elegy. In “Where Poets Go,” a recitation of the final resting places of well-known poets, including Keats’s Rome, becomes personal when the speaker adds his recently passed friend’s assisted living community to the list. From there the poem descends, considering a fragment of Sappho recently discovered in an ancient Egyptian dump, before ending on a higher note, and maybe an answer to Felsenthal’s question, with advice to poets, close to their ends or otherwise, to:
“cobble up a shrine before you die, a dogged hole entangled in the roots of words, in-spire, to fill the mind with grace; ex-pire, breath out a final song.”
From these tangential gestures, Hereafter and Time Remaining tack their ways through grief and joy. Frequently, Lenfestey invokes a Nerudian-like capacious ode, singing praises to the peculiar and frail human body, highlighted by “Ode to the Belly,” “Ode to My Excellent Teeth,” “Ode to Groaning,” and the excellent “The Tongue Is a Smart Muscle,” which shows Lenfestey, like Neruda, knows to shut up when enough’s been said. Felsenthal, meanwhile, meditates through dream and memory, lyrically exposing the line between the two to be porous and prone to puncture, just like the skin
that contains human capacity for both (see Lenfestey’s “Integument” for details). The natural, supernatural, and plastic are curated, like a montage in a feature film, in “Of Climbing Heaven and Gazing Back on Earth,” “Memory of the Deeps,” and “Happening Upon a Scavenger Hunt at the Museum”, to dizzying effect. Then things still, in “The Hawk at Washington Square Park,” with the poet trying hard to notice that which is trying hard not to be noticed; it’s an idea that lands with avian-sourced advice:
“be noiseless, unseen, not behind or under us — you belong to your times — but above, commit to spirit, yours. And then a gentle wind comes.”
It’s a moment that — to be honest — could find a place in either of these two poets’ work, with a breeze of selfcritique that shows the way their Romantic, with a big R (remember: Keats! Shelley!) tendencies are tempered by their speakers’ lived selfhood.
Toward the end of his “Praise Songs,” Lenfestey delivers another elegy. “What I Am Looking For,” a beachside rhapsody for his friend George Morrison, begins with description of Morrison’s hundreds of failed attempts to paint Lake Superior as a narrative launching point into the nearby depths, to encounter a deep-sea creature, “It is luminescent, / its shape ravenous and terrible. / And it is singing,” that proves almost muse-like, encouraging the speaker to look past his own “failure after failure, / the shells of the living and dead.” The speaker then emerges from the surf and encounters a mother and children on the strand, “digging their way back toward the darkness. / They are glistening. And I am singing.” Here Lenfestey presents the music of the moment in full, proving song a vehicle to transport both writer and reader to heightened states of being.
Felsenthal concludes with a similar exhibit of transformation (or transmutation). Reading through the heavily fragmented “Is my Higher Soul Speaking?” is like what I imagine walking on the moon feels like for a first-time astronaut — there’s gravity, yes, but never like this before, it’s never been so hard to put your foot back down on solid ground. It’s here that earlier themes — of childhood and adulthood, of wonder at the natural world versus wanting to know how it all works — work like strands of barbed wire woven together as a banister for the winding and poorly lit staircase called life. If language is used mostly in the service of “making sense,” it’s here the poem transforms language, for poet and reader, to serve the heart.
These books remind us that the language we’ve inherited is the substrate for the necessary creation of a language for personal and public survival. It’s a good and timely reminder. So, get out there. Keep surviving.
HEREAFTER
Author: Alan Felsenthal ’99
Publisher: The Song Cave
TIME REMAINING: BODY ODES, PRAISE SONGS, ODDITIES, AMAZEMENTS
Author: James P. Lenfestey ’62
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
About the Reviewer: Mark Gosztyla is head of the English department at Choate Rosemary Hall.
Practical Wisdom: Leading in Complex Times
By FRank FRievalt ’80
Chief Frievalt (ret.) holds a M.S. from Oklahoma State University in Fire and Emergency Management Administration and is an SME for the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Wildfire Advisory Council. His work is grounded in aligning key stakeholders around a core set of parcel and community level mitigations that will disrupt the fire pathways which lead to conflagration. He is pursuing the actuarial valuation of risk mitigations, for both the public and private sectors, because we share the same desired outcome, minimizing property loss to the peril of wildfire.
I arrived at Choate in 1979 from California after visiting the year before to play in some exhibition hockey games and was fortunate enough to be invited back. Since then, I have worked nearly exclusively in fire and emergency services at the special district, city, county, state, and federal levels in positions from firefighter to fire chief.
Presently I am Director of the Wildland-Urban Interface FIRE Institute at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. Our institute is working to solve two problems: unacceptable levels of life and property loss in the Wildland-Urban Interface (where land with combustible vegetation meets communities), and an impending national financial crisis that will cascade from the insurance markets to the realty, mortgage lending, and general obligation municipal bond markets as we start to price climate change induced risk into society. These escalating and ubiquitous risks place environmentalists and capitalists, albeit awkwardly, on the same side of the discussion because we are (re)discovering that the environment is the economy. Seizing this alignment opportunity is essential for adapting through sustainable resilience as we face an extreme climate trajectory. The work requires transdisciplinary dexterity that appeals to me naturally, but which was also nurtured far beyond any natural ability.
Simply, attending Choate Rosemary Hall changed the trajectory of my life; subsequent opportunities were generated from neither good fortune nor connections, but from the inevitable wake created when one is propelled by the gift of learning how to learn.
Only later in life would I appreciate the miracle of my admission and financial support. The strenuous selection process that plucked me from obscurity had taken a benevolent risk but knew through decades of experience the transformative power of its educational approach. A faculty member, accurately, dubbed me the trudging plodder, making up through curious tenacity what I lacked in natural academic ability. Choate gave no quarter for confusing level of effort with level of efficacy, enabled through academic excellence. This immutable truth prepared me for the fire service, which I started while at Choate, and still contribute to, though from a desk these days. Fun fact: classmate Pete Geddes joined me one summer with the California Division of Forestry as an adventure, and promptly had his fire engine get burned over. Pete was unharmed and had earned a fine tale, but my credibility with his mother was irreparably damaged. I had convinced her he would never be in any real danger; my sincere apologies, Mrs. Geddes.
What separates the Choate Rosemary Hall educational experience is its extension beyond epistemic and technical knowledge, into phronesis, a word lost in antiquity but whose context dependent wisdom we, perhaps unconsciously, hope for in our leaders. It is the intellectual virtue beyond knowing about a thing (episteme), or about how to do a thing (techne) but, rather, knowing when to do, or not do, a thing, even if we can. In the Wildland-Urban Interface, especially when homes are so densely arranged, they become the primary fuel propagating urban conflagration. This means balancing our “right” to manage our property as we see fit against our “responsibility” to mitigate our property risk to benefit our community. A colleague recently said it best; we need to replace “my home is my castle” thinking with “my community is my castle” thinking. The civility of balancing our rights with our responsibilities is a fully transferrable behavior.
Our call to action is adaptation through sustainable resilience from the consequences of a new climate trajectory. Our strategy is built on science informed policy, guided by phronetic leadership, enabled through civility.
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Every year thousands of alumni, parents, and friends come together with gifts of all sizes to support Choate’s educational program. These individual contributions add up to make a significant impact on the School.
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