Colorado Academy Journal - Fall 2020

J urnal

Fall 2020

Volume 48

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Issue Number 1

Colorado Academy Mission Statement

Creating curious, kind, courageous, and adventurous learners and leaders.

About the Cover Much has changed in 2020, but there has been one constant on campus—the wearing of masks.

What might have once seemed a burden has now become a habit for everyone at Colorado Academy. “I thought the hardest thing about teaching would be wearing a mask,” says Second Grade Teacher Jessi McCoy. “Now I don’t even notice it.” Living the CA mission, students, faculty, staff, and administrators wear masks to protect themselves and everyone in their community.

Colorado Academy Journal

J urnal Contents

Fall 2020 n Volume 48

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Issue No. 1

The 2020 Journal is published by the Colorado Academy Office of Advancement. Every effort has been made to ensure that the information included in this report is accurate and complete. If you note any errors or omissions, please accept our apologies and notify the Office of Advancement at 303-914-2510 or chris.barnard@coloradoacademy.org.

PARENTS OF ALUMNI: If this publication is addressed to a child who no longer maintains a permanent address at your home, please send an updated mailing address to our Alumni Office at sue.burleigh@coloradoacademy.org.

Dear CA Community...................................................................................................................................................2

CORRESPONDENCE: Colorado Academy, 3800 S. Pierce Street, Denver, CO 80235, 303-986-1501

Boys Golf Team Makes History...........................................................................................................................20

WRITERS AND EDITORS: Chris Barnard Jan Beattie Sue Burleigh Vicki Hildner Jacque Montgomery Natalie Newcom Ralston ’99 Becky Risch Renée Rockford Amy Ventura Gravely Wilson

The Gifts of Gary Dwyer ’62.................................................................................................................................22

DESIGN: Cindi Sherman Publication Design, Inc. Alison Harder PHOTOGRAPHY: Cyrus McCrimmon Marc Piscotty Becky Risch Renée Rockford Kathryn Scott HEAD OF SCHOOL: Mike Davis, PhD

A Year Like No Other....................................................................................................................................................4 Living Our Mission During Challenging Times.........................................................................................8 Looking Forward to the Leach Center for the Performing Arts................................................16

Preston DuFauchard ’74: ‘A Lucky Break’....................................................................................................24 Petra Jans Pederson ’11 and Thomas Pederson ’11: ‘I Found One of CA’s Best’..................................................................................................................................26 Alec Devereaux ’07: ‘Millions of People Living in Space’.................................................................28 Audra Robb ’87: ‘The Most Important Job’...............................................................................................30 CA Parent Brings ‘Genius Boxes’ to Horizons..........................................................................................32 Alumni Association Highlights.........................................................................................................................35 Class Notes ......................................................................................................................................................................37

Colorado Academy 3800 S. Pierce Street Denver, CO 80235

In Memoriam.................................................................................................................................................................48 Alumni Calendar of Events..............................................................................................Inside Back Cover

Printed by a Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Certified Printer

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Dear CA Community:

N

ot to state the obvious, but 2020 has been a tough year. Schools across the nation are managing pandemic response, focused on how to operate safely. It is an immense challenge, one that is coupled with the division that exists in the United States. We find ourselves asking, what is our responsibility in this moment?

As a historian, I never imagined that we could witness a similar type of unrest that the nation felt in the late 1960s and early 1970s. While teaching my Vietnam class, I often reflect on experiences of college and university presidents during the Vietnam War era. I have a great sense of empathy about the challenges they faced. Indeed, every era has been tested. These challenges have been met with conviction and courage. That part of the history lesson is what gives me hope and optimism that we will come through this current era stronger and more committed to one another.

What guides me as Head of School at Colorado Academy is our mission: creating curious, kind, courageous, and adventurous learners and leaders. It is so clear and provides the guidance we need to be focused during these complex times. CA must remain true to its values. One of our goals is to create critical thinkers.

We are not in the business of creating ideologues. We have a responsibility to raise multiple perspectives with students. Teachers must not shy away from talking about complicated, and even controversial, issues and ideas.

When I assign a book, I actually want my students to argue with that author, rather than just accept his or her words at face value. At CA, students are asked to question the world around them. When I visit classrooms or drop in on Zoom lessons, the question I hear teachers asking the most is, “Why?” We do this so students grapple with their own thinking and logic. We, as educators, want them to re-evaluate their assumptions about the world. When we do this, students grow in profound ways. Many times, this growth can happen in the moment, as a student’s facial expression gives instant indication that a new idea or understanding has taken hold. Other times, we are planting seeds that might take months, or even years, to sprout. I find the key to driving these moments of illumination is helping students to see connections across academic disciplines.

An important consideration for this year is supporting our students’ collective and individual emotional well-being. The pandemic weighs on all Americans, but the impact on young people cannot be ignored.

That is why we have worked so diligently to support in-person learning. Our students need each other, they need their teachers, and they need community. A strong community is one that supports all of its members. We share in each other’s triumphs, but we also need to be supportive when we have members who are hurting. At CA, we strive to be a welcoming, kind, and inclusive community. Because we are human, we won’t be perfect. But, we can be guided by our shared commitment to each other to ensure that all of our students feel supported and cared for.

I ask that we do our part this year to live up to our mission. I want us to continue to strive to be the best people we can be. I ask that we try to see the best in each other and to engage respectfully, as we support the young people of a school we love so much.

Sincerely,

Mike Davis, PhD Head of School Colorado Academy

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Read my blog here: coloradoacademy.org/about/head-of-school

Letter from the Head of School

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Colorado Academy 2019-2020 Timeline

A Year Like No Other

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he 2019-2020 school year began like all others, with treasured traditions, academic, artistic, and athletic accomplishments, and events that brought us together to celebrate the Colorado Academy community.

It was also a year that tested the strength of our commitment to be courageous and

resilient, as we mourned the death of a beloved teacher and faced the threats and challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

SEPTEMBER 2019

Here are some memories from a year like no other. n

Colorado Academy proudly unveiled its new nine-word Mission Statement, the culmination of a year of collaborative discussion designed to create a succinct and straightforward message: “Creating curious, kind, courageous, and adventurous learners and leaders.”

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The CA Field Hockey team capped off its undefeated season with a State Championship title, defeating Regis Jesuit 2-1 at All-City Stadium.

To the delight of students from all divisions, the Reading Platform made its debut. It’s a treehouse learning space, where students can enjoy books and the breeze.

Lower School Principal Angie Crabtree launched Mustang Mentors, giving Fifth Graders the opportunity to mentor younger students and assist throughout the Lower School.

Back-to-back snowstorms and subzero temperatures closed school and postponed the Field Hockey State Championship. But one day later, students returned just in time for a chilly, snowy Halloween parade.

Middle School Advisory leaders implemented a new program with an emphasis on social and emotional competencies to help students grow into leaders, learn to respect diversity, achieve, collaborate, and develop mindfulness.

Thanks to the efforts of Upper School Spanish teacher Lisa Todd, CA received permission to award the new Colorado Seal of Biliteracy Diploma Endorsement, honoring students who are proficient in speaking, reading, writing, and listening in both English and a second language.

DECEMBER 2019

OCTOBER 2019

NOVEMBER 2019

Year in Review

Young artists invited guests to the Fall Kindergarten-Grade 6 Art Show, “The World Through Our Eyes.” Students displayed their works in the Ponzio Arts Center Main Gallery.

CA welcomed perfect weather and more than 500 grandparents to campus for Grandparents Day—a record number of visitors and an incalculable amount of love.

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Upper School students performed Proof, the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning play about fathers and daughters, the nature of genius, and the power of love.

The Middle School Future City team took second place overall at the Regional Competition of sustainable engineering projects, bringing home awards for Best Presentation, Best Physical Model, and Most Sustainable Infrastructure.

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MARCH 2020

FEBRUARY 2020

JANUARY 2020 As part of the Colorado Academy SPEAK series, Temple Grandin spoke to a record-setting crowd of nearly 600 people about living with autism.

Actor, singer, and songwriter Bryan Terrell Clark, who played George Washington in Hamilton on Broadway, brought his talents and inspiring message to an All-School Assembly.

Middle School students presented The Pirates of Penzance. Although no one knew it at the time, the COVID-19 pandemic would cancel all future productions for the year.

With record-setting attendance, Colorado Academy families honored the strength that lies in differences at Taste of CA: A Celebration of Cultures, enjoying home-made food, a “Parade of Nations,” and enthusiastic international dancing.

More than 1,300 people—children, parents, colleagues past and present, family, and friends—filled the CA Field House to honor the life and legacy of beloved Kindergarten Teacher Leslie Webster.

Sophomore Grace Trembath earned a National Gold Medal in the 2020 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards for her photography. Her work was chosen from nearly 320,000 works of art and writing for excellence in originality, technical skill, and the emergence of a personal voice or vision.

On March 24, students returned from Spring Break, but they did not return to campus. Classes resumed remotely, as CA, quickly recognizing the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic, became the first school in Colorado to sign a contract with the Zoom education platform.

JUNE 2020

APRIL 2020

MAY 2020

Year in Review

Senior Walt Jones was named a Boettcher scholar, one of just 42 Colorado students to receive the honor.

Mariko Okazaki pivoted, changing her Senior Community Impact Project in response to increasing cases of COVID-19. She began sewing masks for health care workers, family, and friends.

CA celebrated 20 Seniors who had committed to playing Division I and Division III college sports with a virtual ceremony, filled with pictures of the student-athletes in action.

A group of outstanding alumni athletes, including Justin Bassey ’16, who was in his final year playing basketball for Harvard, met with CA student-athletes virtually to talk about what to expect from college competition.

Upper, Middle, and Lower School students and their families gathered for the All-School Assembly ending the year. It was held virtually but still included the traditional reading of the Senior names and their class cheer!

Senior Portfolio Shows, a valued tradition at CA, continued despite the pandemic, with virtual presentations of outstanding student art created by members of the Class of 2020.

Middle School Student Council President Domonique Megginson spoke at the Eighth Grade Continuation which, along with the Fifth Grade Continuation, was held virtually and included personal tributes to each student from their teachers.

Students, faculty, and alumni met with Director of Inclusivity Sarah Wright via Zoom to discuss their thoughts about systemic racism, Black Lives Matter protests around the world, and the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and others.

A CA first! The wildly successful Diploma Parade brought the Class of 2020 back to campus for the first time since March to see their friends from a distance and to receive their CA diplomas from Head of School Dr. Mike Davis.

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Second Grade Teacher Jessica McCoy greets her first student with an air hug.

Living Our Mission During Challenging Times

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Creating curious, kind, courageous, and adventurous learners and leaders.

he ink was hardly dry on Colorado Academy’s new Mission Statement last fall when the CA community was stunned by the death of beloved Kindergarten teacher Leslie Webster. People were still grieving, still wearing yellow ribbons to honor her, when in-person school closed, and students transitioned to remote learning because of the dangers posed by COVID-19. By

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late spring, COVID-19 remained a daily threat at the same time the country experienced a resurgence of the national movement protesting systemic racism.

It is one thing to say that students will be kind and courageous leaders on school days with ordinary challenges.

But how would CA fulfill its mission under the dual clouds of COVID-19 and racial reckoning?

With grace and action, as is very evident in these stories told by faculty, administrators, and students of all ages. n

Creating

Living the Mission: CURIOUS researching, demonstrating my own curiosity. The students can see that, like them, I am also a lifelong learner.”

need an external force outside their control to kickstart them into action.

“REDI Lab gives you the time to dig deeply into a subject,” Ehrman says. “More than you ever have before, you can let your curiosity run wild.”

Woody’s Pond Look for Lower School Science Teacher Diane Simmons, and most likely, you will find her in the classroom built over Woody’s Pond.

COVID-19 has not changed that. In her own words, Simmons talks about how she is keeping her students curious during a pandemic.

“Students are just naturally curious. As they walk to Woody’s Pond, they are looking around and they want to know ‘Why is there fog over the water? What are those bubbles in the water? What kind of bird is that? What are cattails? Why did the duck dive under the water?’

“Before they even enter the classroom, I am answering questions they are curious about, and that sets the stage for the classroom curriculum. Curiosity is part of our mission as science teachers, and COVID has not changed that. We want students to be curious, and we do things to encourage it. We regularly do experiments, and we analyze the results: ‘Why did that happen?

Why did it work? Why did it not work?’ We are always trying to get to the ‘Why?’ “During COVID, we have to find the best way to do experiments, because they can’t touch things like they did before. I use materials that I can either wipe down or replace. In some cases, I demonstrate the experiment, and they observe me, but they still must do the analysis. My curriculum has not changed during the pandemic. Whether they are learning in person or remotely, students are getting the same material, so they will not have gaps in their learning.

“I learn every single time I teach something.

I am always changing, updating, and

REDI Lab When Senior Sam Ehrman began his selfdirected trimester-long learning project in REDI Lab during his Junior year, he thought he might want to spend the trimester doing actual lab research, but that plan would not have been possible during a pandemic.

Instead, Ehrman met with REDI Lab Coordinator Tom Thorpe, who asked him questions designed to redirect his curiosity.

“In REDI Lab, they want your project to be not just an ‘idea,’ but it has to be something that is very important to you,” Ehrman says.

“They want you to figure out your ‘Why,’ and everyone’s ‘Why’ is different. For me, I wanted to find what would drive people to make progress and change.”

Ehrman did some self-reflection and came to the conclusion that he was more easily motivated by activities that demanded short bursts of high energy with an immediate result. When it came to activities that demanded long engagement, he had a tendency to procrastinate. Could he break that habit, he wondered? His research led him to the famous study done by Pavlov, pairing a stimulus with a conditioned response in dogs.

Ehrman’s curiosity led him to develop a stimulus for himself (flicking a rubber band on his fingers), which was designed to condition him to start working on a project he had postponed. Then he widened his research to fellow students who had various bad habits they wanted to break or good habits they wanted to create.

His final conclusion was that even when people have good intentions to have good habits, they

curious,

The Libraries How can you keep curiosity and community alive when the libraries are closed? That was the challenge faced by CA librarians in the spring of 2020. Their answer evolved into the very popular “Books and Bedtime” series, as each librarian—Allison Peters Jensen, Allie Bronston, Mary Leyva, and Becci Marzonie— took turns reading a bedtime story over Facebook to CA students.

“It was a strange time, so we wanted to surprise the kids with funny stories,” Peters Jensen says. “We hoped those books would make them curious about other books in the library.”

As the summer evolved into a time of national racial unrest, the librarians had another request from parents: “Can you recommend books that will help us educate ourselves and talk with our children about systemic racism?” In response, CA’s team of librarians collaborated with Director of Inclusivity Sarah Wright and drew up a list of books that examined racial issues for all ages and audiences—parents, children, faculty, and staff.

With Peters Jensen, all Third Graders are reading the book, It’s Okay to be Different.

“We put all 56 of the library’s stuffed animals together, and we talked with students about what makes them different,” Peters Jensen says. “Because we have so much rich content in the library, we often talk about how a community is stronger because of its differences. Our students are so ready to have these conversations.”

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Living the Mission: KIND Kindergarten Teacher Lindsey Owens

this year is to make sure that we talk about being inclusive all the time. It’s easy when someone is like you to be kind. When they are not like you, it may be harder. That’s where the teaching and foundation-building come in.

Kindergarten is such a loving, positive experience, and being kind is something we can all have in common.”

at introducing me to everyone and showing me how things work. I think CA is a great school. The academics are good, the campus is so pretty, and the people are so nice. I already have a great group of friends.”

All Are Welcome When Kindergarten students received their letter of welcome during August, they also received a book that had been suggested

by Kindergarten Teacher Christine West: All Are Welcome. Here are some excerpts from the book, paired with comments

by Kindergarten Teacher Lindsey Owens on how she is incorporating messages of kindness and inclusivity in her classroom every day.

No matter how you start your day.

What you wear when you play.

Or if you come from far away.

All are welcome here.

“In CA Kindergarten, we wanted to set the tone from the first day of school. It doesn’t matter what your background is, if your skin looks different, if your religion is different, if your family is different, you are welcome at CA.” In our classroom safe and sound.

Fears are lost and hope is found.

Raise your hand, we’ll go around.

All are welcome here.

“School may be the first place where Kindergartners see differences, and we want to show them it’s positive to talk about what they see. All subjects are fair game. They are so open and naturally curious at this age, and so we say, ‘If you are wondering, ask!’”

Gather now, let’s all take part.

We’ll play music, we’ll make art.

We’ll share stories from the heart.

All are welcome here.

“Through books and spontaneous conversations, one of my main goals

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Peter Carpenter, Senior Caroline Haley, Grade 7 If there is ever a tough year for a Middle School student to move across the country and change schools, it’s the Seventh Grade. And doing it with the disruptions created by a pandemic could make it even worse. That’s what Seventh Grader Caroline Haley feared until she arrived at CA and, as she describes in her own words, encountered some very kind strangers.

“I was disappointed to leave all my friends and school behind in Chicago, but I’m so grateful to be at CA. Of course, I was really nervous to start school. In fact, I was very terrified, because it’s an odd year to come into a new school.

“I knew a few people from the day that I shadowed last year, but I was worried they wouldn’t remember me. And people may not realize it, but when you come as a new student during the pandemic, you are wearing a mask, so people can’t see half your face! And you have to social distance! I thought it would be hard to meet new friends.

“But it turned out that the girl I shadowed, Khloe Brown, was my neighbor. I reached out to her before school started, and she introduced me to her friends. ‘Here is this person, and this person, and this person!’

It was so cool, and everyone was so sweet.

They went out of their way to make me feel welcome.

“The teachers have also been so good

Senior Peter Carpenter had not even started his Freshman year at CA when he experienced an act of kindness that has stayed with him, as if it happened yesterday.

He was an incoming Freshman soccer player, hoping for a slot on the Varsity Soccer team when, during a preseason summer scrimmage, Coach Gabe Bernstein put him into the game.

“I actually scored,” Carpenter remembers.

“But it was an ‘own goal,’ meaning I scored a goal for the other team. I was full of dread.

All I could think was, ‘How will I ever make the Varsity team?’”

Instead of being blamed or ostracized for his mistake, Carpenter experienced the opposite.

“The amount of overwhelming support that I received from my teammates, whom I barely knew, and from the coaches, whom I also didn’t know, was just incredible,” he recalls. “I think CA values making mistakes and learning from them. And I think that everyone—students, faculty, and teachers—all understand that’s something that makes us, ‘us’.”

“This is an example of what makes our coaches great,” says Director of Athletics Bill Hall. “Coach Bernstein took that moment and turned it into a learning experience that Peter never forgot.”

kind,

Living the Mission: COURAGEOUS that these challenges will make life that much better down the road.”

says she is “excited to see where it will go.”

“In an ideal world, we wouldn’t need an Affinity Group,” she adds. “But even when things get better in the world, I hope we still have it.”

Chloe Brants, Senior Even during a normal year, stepping to the podium at an Upper School Town Hall to deliver the year’s first Senior Speech takes a bit of courage. During a year when the pandemic has split the Upper School in half to reduce class density, and there is no possibility to gather in a group, no audience to speak to, no podium to lean on, it takes a great deal of courage to raise your hand, go first, and truly engage your classmates.

And yet, when Chloe Brants finished her speech delivered over Zoom, sitting at a computer in Senior Dean Gabe Bernstein’s office, this is what she heard through the closed door—clapping. Behind closed classroom doors throughout the Upper School, students were applauding.

The nucleus of her speech stemmed from Brants’ self-directed REDI Lab project during her Junior year, when she researched religious theory and examined how COVID-19 had changed her peers’ attitudes toward God. She found people who were angry at God, but she came to a different conclusion, one she shared in her speech, excerpted here: “The pandemic has brought me to notice that you can’t truly appreciate something until you know what life is like without it.

“Once all of this is over, no masks, no social distancing, no Zoom school, we will love and be so thankful for our way of life on a whole different level than before. It’s this feeling that we have to look forward to. It’s a beacon of hope that will help us into the future. No matter how dark and horrible things might be right now, just remember

Abby Alem, Sophomore Last spring, during COVID-19 remote learning, Abby Alem found herself feeling particularly disconnected—distant from her school and church community, “at a loss trying to be safe.” Freshman Dean Meg Hill suggested she enroll in a week-long advocacy institute with the ACLU. Normally, she would have traveled to Washington, D.C., but because of the pandemic the institute was held online. Nonetheless, through this experience, Alem found a new sense of connection.

In particular, at the ACLU institute, Alem had more experience with Affinity Groups, gathering opportunities for people with a common identity. Alem was part of an Affinity Group that met every day at the institute and that got her thinking. Could she introduce the same idea to CA? In an act that she sees as a part of her own personal learning process, Alem wrote a letter to Director of Inclusivity Sarah Wright and explained her proposal.

“I knew my experience was unique and part of who I am,” says Alem. “As great as CA is, I think CA still has room to grow supporting students who are traditionally marginalized.”

In Wright, Alem found a sounding board, and she made connections to other Upper School students who felt the same way she did. The process of forming Affinity Groups is still in the early stages, but Alem

Middle School Math Teacher Jason Koza

CA Faculty Ask Middle School Principal Bill Wolf-Tinsman about where you can find courage in the Middle School, and he answers without hesitation: the Middle School faculty. His words reflect not just on the Middle School, but also on CA’s Lower and Upper School faculty during 2020.

“As teachers, we are always modeling, trying to show students different ways they can be a positive force in the community and make good decisions. During COVID, we have also had to be models. Just as we ask students to be courageous, put themselves out there, and receive feedback, we have had to be courageous with our teaching.

“None of us ever thought we would be teaching solely online. We love teaching in person! All of a sudden, that was not possible, and very quickly we had to create an online version of school.

The whole Middle School faculty rose to the occasion. They worked very hard, took risks, learned from mistakes, and continued to deliver high-quality education to our students.

“We are always asking our students to demonstrate different types of courage.

Our teachers have been modeling courage for students every day, but never more impressively than during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

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Living the Mission: ADVENTUROUS Being around people who speak the same truth was wonderful.

“Finally, after three weeks, the subject of Ida B. Wells came up. I had written an essay about her, so I spoke up for the first time. I felt so courageous in that moment and was so proud of myself. I’ve learned that you don’t have to be the person who speaks all the time, but when you speak, make it a watershed moment.

JJ Moore, Junior In fall of 2019, Sophomore Dean Emily Perez urged JJ Moore to apply to the Telluride Association Sophomore Seminar (TASS) which would be held in the summer of 2020 at Cornell University and the University of Michigan.

Students accepted into the highly selective sixweek college-level seminar study topics related to Black and ethnic studies. Moore was one of 56 students chosen for the program from across the country. Here, in her own words, she describes a summer of unexpected adventure.

“When Ms. Perez suggested I apply, I never really expected I would be chosen. I heard they had 15,000 applications from students all over the world! But then I decided, ‘Why not just give it a try? The only way you fail is if you don’t even try.’ So I wrote the application essays and sat back to see what they thought about me.

“I felt incredibly lucky to be chosen and really excited, because I was headed to live on campus at Cornell, and I had never been to Ithaca. And then during spring, I started receiving emails that made it pretty clear that we were not going to be able to have TASS on campus, but we would still be able to meet on Zoom.

“My group was all students of color from around the world, and our seminar examined history “From Slavery to #BlackLivesMatter.” The crazy thing is that the professors had settled on that topic a year in advance, but it couldn’t have been more timely, because of heightened awareness about racial issues around the country. The other students were very bright, articulate, and had so much conviction. For once, I was the quiet person in the room, because I felt they were at a different level from me. It was scary, but it was the best experience.

“An adventure asks you to try something new, something you have never done before. Even though I couldn’t travel, the opportunity to do this program, meet new people, learn about myself, and have an experience I had never had before—that’s what made this an adventure.”

students have a similar set-up with their own buckets, filled with personal instruments that only they use. Not being able to share supplies in a group studio space is a challenge that art and music teachers have rarely, if ever, had to face.

They spent their summer months on their own adventure, wrapping their brains around ways to continue educating during a pandemic and then creating individualized kits for each student.

“We saw so much joy and pride in the faces of our students when they realized that they had their own supplies,” says Hills. “We’ve witnessed a new level of independence and adventurousness in our artists and musicians, as they feel a sense of ownership and comfort in materials that are theirs.”

But what does a Theater Department do during a global pandemic when the Froelicher Theatre has been torn down to make way for the Leach Center for the Performing Arts?

Art Adventures For CA artists, the COVID-19 pandemic has produced an unexpected silver lining.

“We’ve given our students more autonomy with their creative work,” says Director of Visual & Performing Arts Katy Hills. “As a result, children can go on their own artistic adventures.”

Visit a Lower School art classroom this year, and you will notice that every student has their own oversized bag filled with art supplies. The art bags serve a dual purpose.

In class, students don’t share materials, minimizing personal contact. And if students need to return to fulltime remote learning, they can take their year’s work and supplies home with them. In Upper School, artists were also given their own supplies to take home.

What might have seemed an insurmountable hurdle served to bring out the creativity in CA’s technical theater class. Faced with the need to create a shop where they could build sets, they found an empty space in the back of the Field House.

Theater and Dance Department Chair Steve Scherer tasked the advanced level technical theater students with the job of designing the important and necessary functional features of the space.

The students designed a tool bench, rolling carts that hold all their storage cabinets, and a moveable table that doubles as storage. Middle School and Upper School technical theater students used the plans to build the shop furniture together as a group, demonstrating again that uncertainty can lead to creativity.

“Sometimes the most creative people have the most limited resources,” Hills says. “This is a year that’s demanded imagination and determination from our students and teachers. Stepping up the way they have has led them on a special creative adventure.”

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In Lower School music classrooms,

Living the Mission: LEARNERS “I got through it,” she remembers. “But I had made about 20 mistakes in a lesson about making mistakes.”

doing, we stay positive-minded, and we are supportive of each other, we will get everybody back to school someday.”

By the next day, she had figured out how to share visuals with the students at home.

She celebrated with a well-earned cheer, because after 17 years, she, just like her students, is still learning.

“We’ve learned that we are stronger than we thought we were,” she says. “We can practice learning new, hard things.”

Hannah Krueger, Senior Hannah Krueger is a leader in STAMP (Students Taking Action and Making Progress) which organizes peer-to-peer workshops on equity, action, healing, and inclusiveness.

‘Miss Take’ A veteran of 17 years in the classroom, Second Grade Teacher Jessi McCoy candidly describes herself as a “markers and paper kind of teacher.”

“Sometimes teachers get into their routines and don’t try new things,” she says. “But I have learned since COVID started that even as I am saying ‘I can’t do that,’ all of a sudden, I’ve learned to do it.”

Still, returning to school this fall—with the CA Flex system that had half her class in the room and half online at home— brought new challenges, and McCoy admits, new anxiety.

“How could I teach students online at the same time I had them in person, wearing a mask, and social distancing?”

On her first day with a divided class, McCoy decided to jump into teaching with the Owl camera. She had created a picture of a teacher named “Miss Take,” a teacher who occasionally makes mistakes, like spelling a name wrong, or forgetting the schedule for the day. Almost immediately, she realized her well-intentioned lesson on how it’s okay to make a mistake had become a self-fulfilling prophecy. All she heard from her students learning remotely was a chorus of, “We can’t see it!”

Collin Mielke, Grade 6 In his first year of Middle School, Collin Mielke is thrilled to be back at CA learning.

“I love being on campus, and I would much rather go every other day than not go to school,” he says. “Even though there are challenges, social distancing is much better than staying home.”

He describes learning at home on the Owl camera as “better than I thought it would be.” And he praises his teachers, whom he calls “supportive and kind.”

“They have done a great job of adjusting to everything being new to them,” he says.

“And they have kept everyone calm.”

Collin’s teachers say he is an enthusiastic learner, and he is eager to talk about what he is studying this fall. In math, he is learning order of operations with exponents, in science, he is learning the metric system and studying water quality issues, and in Core English, he is learning a lot of vocabulary. His favorite new word is “sage.”

“I love people who are sage,” he says. “They are wise, and they give good advice.”

learners

He has his own sage advice for the CA community.

“If we keep doing the routine we are

Here, in her own words, is what she has learned from her experiences with STAMP. “I first went to STAMP as a Middle Schooler, and the experience sparked my interest in diversity, equity, and inclusivity work. I like the idea of getting everyone involved and having important discussions on DEI. I want to be a teacher eventually, and this felt like a way to inspire future generations to make this world a better place.

“Going to STAMP in Middle School gave me the tools and trained me to lead others and help other people who want to make a difference. It’s how I became a leader today.

“This fall, we started remote training sessions to decide what topics we will discuss during a series of six workshops for high schoolers across Colorado. I can see that people want to get involved and learn more, and that’s a good thing.

“People’s opinions are often determined by the way they were raised, but you can help people change their perspectives and form their own opinions. That’s why this work is so important to me. Not all issues are simple. Through STAMP, I have learned strategies to discuss different points of view. We need to learn from each other to create a world where everyone feels included and accepted.”

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Living the Mission: LEADERS exciting and gives me hope for the younger grades at CA and incoming students of color, so that they know they are loved and represented and can experience all the amazing things CA has to offer.”

Even though she is only 17, Wagner is already talking about her “legacy,” a sign, perhaps, of the weight young leaders carry during dual crises.

Mackenzie Wagner, Senior Mackenzie Wagner has the unenviable task of serving as Co-President of the Class of 2021 (with Catherine O’Halloran and Ryan Gaghen) during a Senior year like no other.

“When I leave CA, I hope the work I did on inclusivity will still stand and will empower other students to step up and make change,” she says. “At CA, a lot of change is student-led. It’s not over yet.”

“Right now, we are trying to be optimistic,” she says. “Acknowledging that this is really tough, and sometimes overwhelming, helps everyone grow and not get trapped in negativity.”

Wagner praises the support she receives from her two co-presidents, but she also gives particular credit to the presidents of the Class of 2020: Jasmine Bilir ’20 and Matt Robinson ’20.

“They set a great precedent as leaders in the ways they dealt with the coronavirus,” she says. “They looked for ways to boost spirits, be creative with the situation, and make the best of it.”

Wagner believes Bilir and Robinson distinguished themselves as leaders because they “listened first,” asking students how they could help. In that vein, the leaders of the Class of 2021 have created a committee of Seniors who are brainstorming ways to keep spirits up. They have also paired with the leaders of the Freshman, Sophomore, and Junior classes, one Co-President for each class, in a new mentorship program.

Wagner also finds herself leading CA students during a time of national racial reckoning. She is President of the Asian Culture Club and is leading a new inclusivity committee within FACES, which is an umbrella group where students of color and from historically marginalized backgrounds can find a second home at CA. “We are in a formative time of our lives, and that is running parallel with a formative time in the country,” Wagner says. “It’s

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“I remember in one of Dr. Davis’s assemblies, he said CA’s mission was to create courageous, kind, curious, adventurous learners and leaders. That mission statement is important to me, because it gives me a goal. It tells me how I can be the best person I can be in the CA community.”

Fernando Prieto Lin, Senior

Edie Esposito, Grade 6

Fernando Prieto Lin says he was more flattered than surprised when Walt Jones ’20 sent him a job application to become a Student Activist Coordinator for Amnesty International. Jones had been active in Amnesty International before graduating, and now he was passing the torch.

Sixth Grader Edie Esposito’s teachers say she is a leader who does not realize that she is leading. Here, in her own words, is what Edie believes it means to lead during the challenges posed by a pandemic.

“Human rights have always been important to me,” Prieto Lin says. “Being able to make meaningful change around the world, not just around CA, sealed the deal. I didn’t think twice. I feel like my voice is finally being heard on a much larger scale.”

“I remember when I was in Fifth Grade, and we had to start Zoom learning, my teacher, Ms. Ohly, said, ‘You should just try to be the best person you can be every day.’ That stuck with me, and it’s what I’ve tried to do since then.

Amnesty International, which won the 1977 Nobel Peace Prize, is a nonpartisan grassroots organization that works to preserve human rights and dignity around the world through protests and activism.

“Learning to be a good person started all the way back in Pre-K at CA. It meant being inclusive and sharing. It’s hard to learn sharing right now, because we can’t share anything! But I try to be caring, respectful, and engaged in the learning environment. I try to be a friendly and approachable person.

“I think for some people it may be hard to wear a mask all day, but if you keep doing what you are supposed to be doing and try not to be anxious about things you can’t control, it will clear your mind and make it easier to relax. I really appreciate that everyone at CA is working so hard to get us through this.

“Since we are living with COVID, we have had to find many detours to achieve what’s important to us,” Prieto Lin says. “But what’s important hasn’t changed.

“My job is to rally people in the community against different injustices that Amnesty brings to light. The goal here is to take action and create good, impactful change.”

and

Prieto Lin says CA has helped him “cultivate leadership traits.”

Partnered with fellow Seniors Sofie Rossman

and Ryan Gaghen, he presented at the 2020 PlatFORUM on the subject of climate change, seen through the lens of human rights. He is working to bring the ACLU to CA to discuss the Black Lives Matter movement, police brutality, and human rights.

“Especially in times of COVID when people cannot see each other, a leader unifies people,” he says. “A leader doesn’t cause panic, but instead demonstrates essential goodness and encourages others to do the same.”

Third Grade Buddies On a warm September Friday morning, Third Grade teacher Stephanie Stone led her class on a walk from the Lower School to the Pre-Kindergarten Casita. At the end of their journey they reached a milestone.

The Third Graders lined up and, one by one, were matched as a Third Grade Buddy with a Pre-Kindergartner. For the Third Graders, this was a magical moment—their first opportunity to be official leaders at Colorado Academy. Not even a pandemic could stop it.

Third Grade students met their Pre-Kindergarten buddies.

despite COVID-19, the buddy tradition will continue, with many opportunities for CA’s youngest students to learn from its youngest leaders.

“They have been asking every day since the beginning of school, ‘When do we get our buddies?’” says Stone. “This is their chance to become a caretaker, and they take their responsibilities very seriously.”

Once matched, the small groups scattered with a writing activity, but before long, they were just having fun with the big blue blocks on the playground. Particularly for a Third Grader who is the youngest child in a family or an only child, this is an opportunity to mentor a younger child, but for all Third Graders, it’s the beginning of their role as CA leaders.

“That’s the big deal I make about it to them,” Stone says. “I ask them to remember what they liked when they had Third Grade buddies. We talk about making good choices and being role models.”

With the pandemic, this year’s buddies will not go on field trips together. But

Oliver Dean, Junior Oliver Dean has been a student at CA since Pre-Kindergarten. That was a year he does not remember, but in his own words, he describes how it altered his life forever.

“At CA, kindness is integral in the way students, faculty, coaches, everyone, treats each other. It starts in Pre-Kindergarten, when CA instills certain values in four-yearolds, teaching them that everyone deserves dignity, respect, and kindness.

“When I was in Pre-K, my father died. I don’t have memories of being in school, but I have been told about how supportive and curious my classmates were at the time. They wanted to know how I was feeling, and how my mom was coping.

Looking back on it, those

leaders

were exactly the right questions to ask.

In a time of grief, loss, and sadness, CA was a support system—and then some— for my family. Even from a young age, students at CA are taught to be respectful of others, even if they don’t have a shared experience.

“I would not say that my life has been defined by loss, but it has been shaped by loss. Being raised by a single woman has shaped my view of gender, sexuality, and driven me to seek equality for all, no matter their race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, or religion. The deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and the shooting of Jacob Blake renewed my motivation. I remember learning about Emmett Till in the Fourth Grade when Ms. Kolsun Jackson had us read The Watsons go to Birmingham. She talked about how this very young boy was killed, even though he had done nothing wrong.

“I feel connected to people from diverse backgrounds, because I am Jewish. For generations, my family has sought a just and equal society. I feel I should stand shoulder to shoulder with Black Americans who are fighting for equal rights.

“I don’t have to fear walking out of my house and being shot for no reason, I don’t fear being denied access to education, health care, or civil rights, so I feel it’s my obligation to bridge the gap between different worlds.” n

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Looking Forward to the Leach Center for the Performing Arts

I

t stood for 43 years, providing a home for countless plays, musicals, meetings, concerts, assemblies, recitals, and Town Halls, but it did not take long for Colorado Academy’s Froelicher Theatre to come down to the ground. On a hot August afternoon, a small group of faculty, staff, students, and even alumni, gathered to watch the demolition. “This theater has had a great run,” said Steve Scherer, recording the moment on his phone.

“Now we’re ready for Act Two.” Construction of the Leach Center for the Performing Arts began immediately.

Scheduled to open in fall 2021, the Leach Center will include two performance spaces, a place to design and build sets, room to rehearse, instructional classroom space, a theatrical rigging system, up-todate lighting and sound, updated heating and air conditioning, and seating for more than 500 people.

Generous donors have made gifts to support the new Leach Center for the Performing Arts, the fourth and final building in CA’s See it Through capital campaign. Already completed are the remodel of the Welborn House, construction of the new Ponzio Arts Center, and construction of the Field House and Athletic Center.

CA continues to seek philanthropic support to raise the $4.5 million needed to complete fundraising goals and add the Leach Center—which will be one of the most public spaces at CA—to the roster of beautiful, functional buildings on campus. As the CA community watches renderings become reality in the next year, here is what they are looking forward to in the new Leach Center for the Performing Arts:

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Colorado Academy Journal

I am looking forward to redesigning our theater program to match the new building.

The Leach Center will offer us a Broadwaylike setting to do theater. It’s a big, open, professional space with professional lighting, projection, and sound systems. And on top of that, I am really looking forward to heating and air conditioning, so students and audiences can feel comfortable!”

Steve Scherer, Chair of the Theater & Dance Department “If you are a student who just wants to give theater a try, the Leach Center will fill your needs. But if you are looking for a place which will provide a springboard into a life pursuing any aspect of theater professionally, now we will have a building which will propel students into professional careers.

And if you want to learn to act on screen, we will have studio-like spaces for students to explore on-screen techniques and fully realize their potential. There is an element of discomfort in acting, so it’s important to provide a safe and efficient environment for students to imaginatively explore their craft.

Now we will have that place.”

James Meehan, Middle & Upper School Theater and Theater Tech “Every building has a personality, and to discover the personality of the Leach Center will be exciting. It’s an open, inviting space, and I think that will attract students. It’s always exciting to discover how theater works in a new space, and this one has been so painstakingly designed to mount the kind of productions we want to do. Our creativity won’t be limited. I can go in any direction I want to try, and the Leach Center for the Performing Arts can accommodate that.”

Maclain Looper, Middle & Upper School Theater

“I’ve been in New York City for the last six years acting, but also writing, directing, and producing short films and music videos. The way the industry is going, it’s not enough to be just an actor. I hope the new performing arts center acknowledges that reality and leans into the development of a student’s potential to wear as many creative hats as possible! The career of an actor entails a lot of waiting for opportunities. A student who has the ability to write, act, shoot, and edit content will never be at a loss for expressing their creativity.”

Luke Slattery ’09 “It is because of the spark that was ignited in Froelicher Theatre that I have dedicated my life to light. I have had the opportunity to work in theaters around the world and have seen the inner workings of some of the most complicated and advanced stages. In the new Leach Center, students will have a fly loft and walkable catwalks that will enable them to change scenery quickly and safely hang lights and speakers.

The improved lighting, audio, and video capabilities will be more like a professional theater complex and provide state-of-theart education for performers, technicians, and designers.

“It is wonderful to see CA focus on the performing arts, and the expanded programming that will be available to future students. I am grateful for the opportunities that I had at CA, and I am excited to know that, going forward, there will be students learning in a modern theater complex.”

Travis Sawyer ’04 “I must say that the feature I might be most jealous of in the new performing arts center would be air conditioning!

Also, comfortable seating would be a vast improvement from those rock-hard risers.

Leach Center for the Performing Arts

Leave your legacy as part of the Leach Center for the Performing Arts. Every student will experience the new stage and classrooms. If you are interested in joining other donors who are making this new space possible, send Gravely Wilson an email at gravely.wilson@coloradoacademy.org.

View from Mezzanine in Theater; preliminary rendering by Shears Adkins Rockmore Architects, September 2020

Just thinking about sitting through a long Town Hall makes my back hurt!

“It will be great to have a building that can accommodate a larger portion of the CA community, so we would not have to resort to the gym for major functions. I’m sure that the Leach Center will have fantastic up-to-date technology and resources that will help students create art at the highest level, but I also hope that it maintains some of the homey quality I so loved in Froelicher.

Every theater is a space where personal identities form and shift and grow—and where strong communities and friendships form—so I look forward to a new space that is built with this in mind.”

Chloe Nosan ’16 “Hundreds of former CA students left their own unique mark on Froelicher. The walls in the Basement Theater were littered with autographs and memories documented in sparkling silver Sharpie. So I think if I had to choose what I was most excited about in the new theater, it would have to be the fact that it will be something that is completely ours. For the first time in what seems like forever, we will be the inaugural

acting class. I’m really looking forward to being the first of many CA acting students reciting monologues or practicing improv on the brand-new stage.”

Annelise Agelopoulos, Grade 11 “A theater is a place like no other. From the performers, to the techies, to the teachers, to the audience members, everyone plays an important role in the success of this department. I am so grateful to be a part of CA’s theater community, and I know that gaining a new home next year will bring this program to new heights.”

Abigail Shapiro, Grade 11 “It will be wonderful that in the new theater, the facilities will match the quality of the instruction going on inside.

All of the arts teachers are so good at their craft, and to have the new space actually enhance the excellent work being done there will be a validation to students and faculty that their time and effort are worthy of a top-notch complex.

“We have so many special memories tied to Froelicher, so it’s a little sad to see it go, but at the end of the day we know it’s the people in the building that make the

difference. We hope many CA generations to come will experience the same type of magical moments within the Leach Center for the Performing Arts. Break a leg!”

Renée Ducnuigeen, parent of Eliza Ducnuigeen ’17 “Everyone involved in the theater and the arts has so many ideas, so much love, and so much passion to put into their projects. I think the new theater will give us the space we need to push those ideas and projects to their full potential. While I will miss the charm and memories of the old theater, I’m looking forward to all the incredible new things we’ll be able to try. And, emotional words aside, I am really, truly, incredibly excited to be able to use the bathroom during a show without the entire audience hearing a resounding ‘flush.’”

Claire Kenney, Grade 11 “I am most looking forward to having a new space in which to be creative and explore the arts. The increased and updated theater not only will allow for larger productions filled with impressive sets and more performers, but also will provide a variety of spaces for different types of >>>

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<<< performances. I also think that the Leach Center will benefit the audience as much as the performers. There will be more people attending performances, while the overall quality of the lighting and sound will increase as well, allowing the audience to enjoy the performances even more. In the end, having this improved space will allow the teachers to help their students reach their full artistic potential.”

Andrew Koclanes, Grade 10

Entrance Lobby; preliminary rendering by Shears Adkins Rockmore Architects, September 2020

“I am looking forward to the new Leach Center being fully accessible to everyone in all aspects, including an elevator and accessible restrooms. I’m glad I’ll be able to take advantage of the new theater before I graduate!”

Casey Myers, Grade 11 “I am looking forward to experiencing a new and unique space that will be there long after I graduate. I’m excited for the entire experience of figuring out a whole new building. I can’t wait for the season next year to give the Leach Center a proper opening!”

Christian Barnard, Grade 10

View from Main Stage in Theater; preliminary rendering by Shears Adkins Rockmore Architects, September 2020

“The biggest thing that I am looking forward to will be just getting back to performing with my peers on our stage. The CA theater community is something really special, in a different way than everything else at CA. I know that no matter what the new theater is like, that community will still be as fun and inclusive as it always has been.”

J.T. Timmers, Grade 10

Performance Space and Black Box Theater; preliminary rendering by Shears Adkins Rockmore Architects, September 2020

“I am so looking forward to having a dedicated space to help develop our brand-new Speech and Debate program.

Speech and debate is so important, because it develops students’ communication skills, builds confidence, allows students to become comfortable in diverse situations and learn to think quickly on their feet. Also, it really helps students develop excellent knowledge of contemporary events.

The Leach Center is a natural home for this program, because students who are interested in theater often migrate to speech and debate. Now they will have a place to focus on brainstorming and rehearse as they dive deeply into this new area.

Dr. Jon Vogels, Upper School Principal

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Leach Center for the Performing Arts

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Overhead view of the Leach Center for the Performing Arts; preliminary rendering by Shears Adkins Rockmore Architects, September 2020

The Leach Center for the Performing Arts will be located on a similar footprint and orientation to the old Froelicher Theatre. Main features of the new building include:

1 2

Entrance Plaza

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Restrooms

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utdoor Performance Space O and Classroom

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T heater with seating for more than 500 guests

P erformance Space and Black Box Theater

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Main Entrance

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Main Stage

R ehearsal Room/ Multi-Purpose Space

Entrance Lobby

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Control Booth

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West Entrance

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Theater Office

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C lassroom for Speech and Debate

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allery Walk to Performance Space G and Black Box Theater

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Scene Shop

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E levator to Lower Lobby and Dressing Rooms East Stairway to Lower Lobby and Dressing Rooms

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Boys Golf Team Makes History

I

f the 3A Boys Golf State Championship had been broadcast on television, the ratings for play on the final hole would have been through the roof, as the Colorado Academy boys took State for the first time in the school’s history.

“I still haven’t processed the 18th hole,” laughs Sophomore J.T. Timmers. “It was the most suspenseful finish to any sporting event I’ve experienced, which is hilarious, because people don’t think of golf as super intense.”

The two-day, 36-hole tournament was held at Dos Rios Golf Club in Gunnison, a course notable for water as a factor on 16 of the 18 holes. With Coach Beth Folsom and Assistant Coach Jeff Freebury (who has been the PGA pro at Foothills Golf Course since 1997), the Colorado Academy four-person team scouted the course for two days before the tournament started.

For the first time in CA’s history, the boys held the State Championship banner aloft.

“When it came down to it, we realized how much this would mean to Beth,” says Pashel. “I’m so happy that she finally got a State Championship with the men! And Jeff deserves a lot of credit for helping me with my swing, and just talking to me about everything during the tournament— including fishing—to help me relax.”

“It’s a very tight course, and you aren’t able to pull driver,” says Junior Jack Pashel. “But 18 is a really demanding hole off the tee, because it’s blocked by trees, and to make things worse, at the tournament everyone is sitting there watching you.”

“Beth and Jeff give good feedback while we are on the course, and they are very good at strategizing,” says Turnage. “They know the pressure of the second day, and they also knew it would come down to the final hole.”

“With so many holes having water, I knew one bad shot would result in a double bogey,” adds Sophomore TJ Giordano. “But that 18th hole was misleading, because it looked like a hole you could go for.”

“Golf is often seen as an individual sport,” adds Timmers. “But Coach Beth really helped us make sure our shots were in the best interest of the team.”

By the end of the first day, the CA team was sitting in second place and feeling positive.

“We knew we had a good team that could compete and do well,” says Folsom. “We didn’t change our strategy the second day, but we knew we had to manage the last several holes better.”

And that’s exactly what the team did. At

20

the 13th hole, they were 6 strokes back, and by the 17th hole, they were 3 strokes back. Junior Bo Turnage birdied 3 of the last 4 holes, which really put pressure on the other teams. Pashel came up with a much-needed birdie on 17 to keep CA in contention. Timmers got up and down for a clutch par on 18, which ended up securing the win. And on that tricky 18th hole, where the team had been four over par on day one, they ended the second day at one over par.

Colorado Academy Journal

The coaches and players are already looking ahead to next year, when all four players from this triumph will return to a team that has a lot of depth. “We have great kids coming up from Middle School and an excellent group of underclassmen,” says Folsom. “This team is a reflection of what we have worked on for the past several years, and we should be strong moving forward, as well.” n

Boys Golf Championship

Standing (L to R): Coach Beth Folsom, Bo Turnage, Jack Pashel, Coach Jeff Freebury Kneeling (L to R): J.T. Timmers, TJ Giordano

Fall 2020

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The Gifts of Gary Dwyer ’62

A

mong the many gifts Gary Dwyer ’62 gave to Colorado Academy was this—we do not have to wonder what he would think about the ways his three

sculptures are embedded in the life of CA. We know the answer, because Dwyer, who died in August, and his wife, Odile Ayral, came to CA in 2016 to revisit his early works, 42 years after they were dedicated.

“He was so happy when we went to CA and saw that his work was still there, and that it had blossomed with more sculptures on campus,” says Ayral. “Having children on the sculptures was exactly what he wanted, because it makes them come alive.”

The original three sculptures Today, the Sculpture Garden is such a fixture in the lives of CA students that it’s hard to imagine what the area looked like in 1969. Where some people would have seen a flat, barren field outside the old Hamilton Music Building, Dwyer saw potential. He approached former Head of School Chuck Froelicher with an idea.

Dwyer would create three sculptures and design landscaping which featured the new works of art to fulfill his thesis requirements for an MFA at the University of Denver.

(Dwyer earned his undergraduate degree Gary Dwyer ’62 with Solidification

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Colorado Academy Journal

Gary Dwyer ’62 in Landscape Architecture and Fine Arts from Syracuse University.)

The sculptures, created 50 years ago in 1969-1970, illustrated what Dwyer considered the three elements of the educational process: search, connection, and solidification. Search conveys the aimless wandering associated with the quest for knowledge. “The piece,” Gary told Froelicher, “is stainless steel with three long curving piles that look like the branches of a tree—free, openended, wandering.”

Gary Dwyer ’62 with his wife Odile Ayral

Connection, a large black form much favored by CA students as a place to sit and enjoy a hot dog at the annual Backto-School Picnic, signifies the connection in the educational process where the spark ignites direction. The final piece, Solidification, shows the final phase of learning where organization occurs.

The three works reflect Dwyer’s personal experience with the education he received at CA. “He loved the place,” says Ayral. “He often talked about former faculty Alex Rode and his wife, Meredith, and how they introduced him to reading and literature.

And he never stopped reading.”

‘It has to do with seeing’ Dwyer was a lifelong learner who, by his own confession, tried many careers to pay the bills so he could pursue art.

He worked heavy construction, landscape architecture, city planning, and taught at universities. Eventually, discouraged by his experiences creating public sculptures which were often altered or even removed to make way for development, he turned his fulltime creative drive to photography.

In his long career, he photographed climbing expeditions in the Himalayas and World Heritage Sites in Vietnam. His work was exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Oakland Museum in California, and is in the collection of La Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris.

In a California Public Radio interview, he talked about his philosophy of photography. “One of the questions I am often asked is what kind of camera do you

CA Students enjoy Connection.

use,” he said. “It’s not about the camera. It has nothing to do with the camera. It has to do with seeing.”

‘Hoping for beauty’ Dwyer, who held dual citizenship from the U.S. and Ireland, had traveled the world— visiting at least 60 countries. But he had a particular affection for French culture. In 1994, he decided to learn the language and called a French teacher at California Polytechnic State University to ask if he could audit her course.

After two quarters sitting in the back of the room, he asked the teacher out on a date.

They discovered they had a shared love for art, literature, and traveling the world.

“I guess he decided he liked the French

teacher better than the French language,” laughs Ayral. She and Gary would have celebrated their 25th anniversary in August.

But of all the places they visited, their trip to CA remains a special one.

“I think coming back and seeing the sculptures was perhaps one of the highlights of his life,” Ayral says. “CA treated us like royalty.”

A lover of words since his days at CA, Dwyer composed his final words in the days before he died. Think of what he wrote the next time you see a student enjoying the three sculptures that are his legacy at CA. “We are all holding on to the parts of the raft that are still floating and hoping for beauty yet in this storm.” n

Fall 2020

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Preston DuFauchard ’74: ‘A Lucky Break’

O

ne day, Preston DuFauchard ’74 was living in public housing on the South Side of Chicago, afraid to walk two blocks to get a haircut because the neighborhood was so tough.

Virtually overnight, he found himself living in the dormitory of a boys boarding school in Colorado, seeing the Rocky Mountains for the first time, and discovering that the nearest grocery store was more than a mile walk through fields of cows and horses.

“It was certainly eye-opening, because I had never been outside Chicago’s South Side,” he says. “And a lot of the people I interacted with never knew anything but the South Side.”

It was 50 years ago this fall that DuFauchard made that life-changing journey to Colorado Academy, thanks to “A Better Chance.” Since 1963, this national nonprofit organization has served talented students of color by placing them in the country’s premier college preparatory schools.

Graduates of “A Better Chance” boast notable success—83 percent earn a bachelor’s degree and 50 percent earn a master’s or other professional degree.

DuFauchard earned his BA at Stanford University and his JD at the University of California Berkeley.

“For me, CA was a lucky break and a great, great academic experience,” he says. “It gave me all the academic tools I needed and the knowledge of how to learn.”

‘I could adjust to anything’ Most young people who wanted to escape from the neighborhood where DuFauchard grew up chose the military. But sharp-eyed and caring Chicago public school teachers

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Colorado Academy Journal

intervened on his behalf, introducing him to the scholarship program that would change his life. His parents were not convinced.

“They were skeptical about the whole thing, because it was free,” he says. “The way they saw it, no opportunity that good could be free.”

DuFauchard arrived as a Ninth Grade student at CA when it was still an all-boys boarding school. To him, the campus was “beautiful.” When the school began admitting girls and the dorms closed, he had another lucky break—he could move in with an aunt and uncle who lived in Littleton.

A natural artist, he worked on the school newspaper with classmate Susan Boxer ’74.

Stanford made it onto his radar when another fellow student, Jeff Kleiner ’74 , attended a summer program there and raved about it. He was accepted by both Princeton and Stanford, and he chose Stanford because of the better financial aid package.

“Coming from CA really helped me get through the beginning years of college,” he says. “Knowing that I could come from the inner city of Chicago to CA and make that adjustment gave me the confidence that I could adjust to anything.”

‘I am learning on the job’ DuFauchard has been a leader in the San Francisco Bay Area legal community for his entire career and has served on numerous boards, but, true to the CA mission, he is a lifelong learner and has recently taken a new position where, he says, “I am learning on the job.”

He started his career handling litigation, trials, and appeals, including mass tort

cases, environmental insurance coverage litigation, securities litigation, and civil rights cases. He went on to join the in-house legal department for Bank of America Corporation, where he was Assistant General Counsel.

In 2006, he was named Commissioner for the California Department of Corporations, which is essentially the SEC for the state of California. He worked to regulate non-bank lenders in the business of making home loans during the Great Recession foreclosure crisis. The experience gave him new insight. “When you are a lawyer, you represent one party, but when you work for the state you can create policy that helps a broader group of people,” he says. “In that job, I began to understand the importance of helping people who were less well off.”

Today, he is the CEO of the West Oakland Health Center, a “radical departure” from his previous positions. He joined the board in 2015, because he wanted to give back to the community where he lives by helping the organization handle some challenges and find a new CEO. As circumstances evolved, the best choice for the CEO position was—Preston DuFauchard. In this new position, he runs a group of safetynet community health clinics serving the health, behavioral, dental, optometry, and pharmacy needs of 10,000 unique patients—adults and children—in the midst of a pandemic and racial protests.

“It’s very demanding, and the pace is breathtaking,” he says. “In a company, you answer to the CEO. At the state, I answered to the governor. Here we have so many constituents—patients, the city, the county, state officials, the board— multiple stakeholders. But my strength is

Preston DuFauchard ’74

problem solving, so we are seeing some good results.”

‘It’s knowledge’ DuFauchard remembers his days at CA with great fondness. He enjoys

returning for reunions. He remains close with several classmates, including Rob Tallmadge ’74. Several years ago, he had lunch with his CA English teacher, Renee Ruderman, and was surprised when she presented him with a box of his drawings,

dating back to the early 70s, which she had saved for decades.

But the greatest gift that CA gave him, he says, is one that no one can take away. “It’s knowledge,” he says simply. “CA taught me to have intellectual curiosity.” n

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Petra Jans Pederson ’11 and Thomas Pederson ’11: ‘I Found One of CA’s Best’

I

t was December 2009, right before Winter Break—that time when the holiday season, looming vacation time, and some fresh snow can give everything a feeling of sparkle and magic. Petra Jans Pederson ’11 and Thomas Pederson ’11 went on their very first date— and it must have gone well.

The two high school juniors fell in love. They graduated from CA the next year, stayed together long-distance through college, and got into the same medical school. Now, a decade later, they are married, pursuing careers as physicians, and still as in love as ever.

“I found my best friend and someone who I was never afraid to be myself around,” Petra says. “I was drawn to Thomas’s humility and academic drive, as well as his kindness

toward everyone. CA certainly fosters these qualities in its students, so I am not surprised that we met at CA, and I am so thankful that we did.”

Thomas agrees: “I found one of CA’s best!”

Two doctors under one roof Thomas is a second-year resident physician in Emergency Medicine, and Petra is entering her sixth year of an MD/PhD program with a focus on pharmacology and cancer biology. They’re both at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

So, what’s it like being married, living together, commuting together, and sharing the same highly rigorous professional field?

“I love being married to another physician,”

says Petra, who has completed her PhD and anticipates earning her MD in 2022. “I learn so much from Thomas, especially now that he’s further in his clinical training than I am. We are always challenging each other to excel in our work, but we are also each other’s biggest supporters.”

Thomas says he loved having a live-in study partner—“more like tutor!”—on the long journey of medical school. And now, he appreciates having an empathetic ear after a long shift in the emergency department.

Their home is a literal powerhouse of medical knowledge and skills.

“During my PhD, I soaked up all Thomas’s stories from the wards and the ED,” Petra says, “and now that I am returning to medical school for my clinical years, I feel incredibly lucky to have him as my builtin coach who knows exactly what I’m going through.”

Where to find mentorship, inspiration, and pure joy Petra and Thomas connect deeply, not only through their burgeoning medical careers, but through what got them both there.

“My teacher-mentors at CA—Andres Roblero and Richard Kelly, to name a couple—definitely propelled me toward a successful medical career by helping me realize the importance of humility, lifelong learning, and attention to detail,” Thomas says. “Keeping these values in focus during medical residency has helped me avoid costly medical errors, develop rapport with my patients, and

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Petra Jans Pederson ’11 and Thomas Pederson ’11

excel in the chaotic environment of the ED.” And it was a CA program that helped Petra find her specialty in oncology. She shadowed a CA parent who is a pathologist and got to examine cancer cells under a microscope for the first time.

“That was the first time I really got a sense of the complexity of this disease,” says Petra, who was initially drawn to the field because her grandmother had cancer. “I knew that I had to learn more.”

Thomas feels grateful for the independent and critical thinking that CA faculty demanded from students.

“Soon, I will be responsible for independently managing critically ill patients,” he says. “In a work environment where there are no sure answers, I am thankful that I was taught how to think for myself.”

On top of all that, CA provided them sources of lifelong joy and stress relief— through athletics and the arts.

“Music was always there for me at CA, and I am forever grateful for that,” says Petra, who began singing in choir in the Fifth Grade with Vocal Music Director Cindy Jordan and continued to sing through college and med school. “Music has kept me grounded and given me joy during times of stress, and I believe that this part of myself will also make me a better doctor.”

A love that runs deep Petra and Thomas have more than just their own connections to CA. Thomas’s twin brother, John Pederson ’11, and Petra’s sister, Jasmine Jans ’13, are also CA alumni, and Petra’s mom, Kimberly Jans, is a teacher at CA.

They credit this close relationship with the CA community—and the genuine caring and support that came with it—for the lives they’re leading now, as medical experts who not only practice medicine, but seek to improve the field with their own knowledge and expertise.

them feel “like ships passing in the night.”

But when the work is grueling, they take a break with their beloved pets: a shepherd mix named Stella, whom they rescued during their second year as med students, and a Siberian cat named Milo (who steals Stella’s food).

Their lives are busy, and as Thomas says, sometimes their intense schedules make

And they are anchored by their love for each other, a love that began at CA. n

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Alec Devereaux ’07: ‘Millions of People Living in Space’

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o put it mildly, Alec Devereaux ’07 likes ambitious projects. The mechanical engineer from Evergreen, Colo., designs rockets.

He currently works for Blue Origin—the business undertaking of Amazon Founder and President Jeff Bezos—where the company mission includes “millions of people living and working in space.” Before that, he worked on creating a space plane as part of the Dream Chaser project at Sierra Nevada Corporation Space Systems in Louisville, Colo.

“I want to challenge what people think of as the space industry,” he says. “And I want to challenge myself and push the next frontier.”

When your job really is rocket science While space travel is not new, the goal now is to make that possible for many, many more people, including those

without formal training. Devereaux and his colleagues at Blue Origin are creating reusable launch vehicles to reduce costs and make space travel more accessible.

As Systems Engineering Manager on the Test and Flight Operations team, Devereaux designs engine test stands and launch sites. The sites include the launch pad the rocket sits on, the fueling systems, and the towers the astronauts go up in to enter the spacecraft.

He and the rest of the over 2,5000-strong Blue Origin staff are currently working on two rocket-powered space capsules (named for the first American astronauts to achieve sub-orbital and orbital space flight): the New Shepard, which lets people experience suborbital space travel after a single day of training; and the New Glenn, which will “build a road to space” with its capacity for carrying people and freight to Earth orbit and beyond.

When the space capsules launch, only a

small group of space travelers and rocket scientists will be on site. Devereaux may not be one of them, but he knows that he and his colleagues will stop work in their labs and huddle together in teams to watch the big event. “[During space launches,] I always feel a sense of extreme nervousness, but also confidence,” he says. “As soon as that thing launches, it’s exuberance and excitement.”

What happens when you put a banana in liquid nitrogen For the successful launch of his career in engineering and aeronautics, Devereaux feels excitement and gratitude—to CA, which he attended from Fifth to Twelfth Grade.

“Starting at CA with a group of supportive science teachers and college counselors has ultimately led me to my dream job,” he says.

With CA’s STEM support and resources, he wasn’t surprised when, shortly after moving to Seattle in January, he discovered that classmate and fellow engineer Colin Patterson ’07 also works for Blue Origin.

Devereaux remembers performing science experiments in CA’s wellappointed STEM labs and going to space camp for an Interim program in Middle School. He feels grateful for science faculty members whose classes had a big impact on him. And he has clear memories of a CA chemistry teacher demonstrating the properties of liquid nitrogen by putting a banana in it. The fruit froze so solid that the students could smash it into pieces.

Alec Devereaux with his wife Madeline

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“I loved high school at CA,” he says.

“The support that the CA community

Alec Devereaux ’07

provides professionally and emotionally is phenomenal.”

The difference between a vacation itinerary and a space rocket launch plan Like most big, long-term goals, sending humans to live in space requires a lot of organization and planning. This has allowed Devereaux to tap into a skill some of his CA classmates may remember in him: event planning.

“I was known among my friends as a cruise director,” he says. “I was always planning parties and weekend getaways. I’d create spreadsheets for who was bringing what and riding in which car.”

Instead of birthday bashes and road trips, he’s now applying his organization and detail management skills to planning the creation, week by week, of space rocket launch stands.

“I can make something huge and massive into something tangible,” he says. “It’s a matter

of figuring out how you go from ‘millions in space’ to ‘what am I doing on Monday?’”

So, how many more Mondays before there will be real human space cities?

“It will take a while for us to get there, but we’re always looking toward the horizon,” Devereaux says. “I believe in the next 50 years, thousands will be up there.”

In the meantime, Devereaux’s shorter-term, but no less ambitious, project is a joint venture: Mae Harper Devereaux was born on October 9, 2020. n

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Audra Robb ’87: ‘The Most Important Job’

I

t’s an incredible time in the world. It’s a complicated time to be working in education. Nevertheless, Audra Robb ’87 feels lucky to be there.

A curriculum specialist for the United Nations International School (UNIS) in New York City, Robb believes her administrators and colleagues are working hard to do right by students and families—in the midst of a global pandemic and a national racial justice crisis.

“As educators, we’re trying to navigate a new world,” says Robb, who has worked in education for more than 20 years. “Teaching is not a job that people take on for the glamour or glory, especially right now.”

The most important job there is One thing Robb loves about being an educator is the feeling that she’s doing meaningful work with people

who share many of her beliefs and values.

“Teaching is something that comes from the heart,” says Robb, a former New York City public school teacher. “And it is arguably the most important job there is.”

After teaching middle school, she worked for years as an education consultant with the Teachers College Writers Project of Columbia University. In January 2020, she moved to UNIS, an internationally recognized independent school founded

by United Nations parents and guided by UN ideals.

isolate teachers from one another and help them work together as a team— something that studies show leads to sustainable school growth.

“When you work with teachers on their teaching, it gets very deep,” she says.

“You’re discussing what should be better in the world, what you believe about kids and how they learn, what it means to grow humans.”

How teachers can help end systemic racism

At UNIS, she develops curriculum and works with teachers on pedagogy development.

She demonstrates lessons and teaching techniques and coaches teachers on applying them in their classes.

One way Robb and many of her colleagues believe the world could be better is through an education system that serves black and brown students consistently in the way it has served white students.

“I love teachers,” she says. “My focus has been teachers for 16 years.”

“Systemic racism has been around a long time,” she says, “but there is a new insistence on looking at it. And educators are right there in the mix of that.”

She works to break down walls that

She says those in her education circles are engaging in productive conversations around race to prioritize the issue in a professional field with competing demands.

“You just can’t ignore it right now,” she says.

Even at diversity-focused institutions like UNIS, she says it’s important to continue working to end racism.

“It’s easy to become complacent with the demographics of your school,” Robb says.

“We need to think about messaging and be intentional about it.”

With her background in English and literature, she believes one entry point for anti-racism work is the texts students are assigned to read—and how those texts represent race.

“A lot of English departments are trying to

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Audra Robb ’87

Audra Robb with her family at Riverside Park in New York City

think about what our canon is today,” she says. “In many cases, it looks the same as it did in 1970, and that’s a problem. America has changed, and it didn’t even look that way then. It’s a heavily fought battle in some places to get new books on lists and get some books off lists.”

First, there was Colorado Academy Head of Upper School and English teacher Fran Scoble.

Robb believes it’s also critical to examine the teacher’s role in the classroom, including their language and any implicit bias that affects their students.

And then there was Vocal Music Director Cindy Jordan—“a hugely important person to me.” Thanks to Jordan, Robb has incorporated music into her life to this day.

She and her husband both sing in a choir, and her teenage son attends a school focused on music and the arts.

“It’s a lot to wrestle with as educators, but it’s where we’re at,” she says. “And I think educators are uniquely privileged to start making changes that make a difference right away.”

Where you never feel boxed in So, how did Robb end up in this privileged professional field?

“She was my hero in life,” Robb says. “She made a really huge impact on me, so it feels natural that I became an English teacher.”

“All my teachers at CA made an impression on me,” says Robb, who also played field hockey and tennis, worked on the literary magazine, and served as Class President for two years. “They were people I really looked up to and thought were important in my life.”

And when the opportunity arose for the long-time public school educator to move to an independent school, her experience at CA led her decision-making.

“I looked at all the interesting things that my CA classmates ended up doing in life,” she says. “And I remember the way CA treated students as individuals and allowed them to be many things: a good student, an athlete, an artist, a musician.

You didn’t get locked into one part of your personality.”

Those memories helped her feel good about switching from a public to independent school milieu. And now, as an educator herself, she tries to provide the same experience for students that CA gave to her.

“At other schools, you can feel boxed in, but not at CA.” n

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CA Parent Brings ‘Genius Boxes’ to Horizons

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t’s a warm July morning, but the Horizons at CA Fourth Grade students don’t seem to notice. Following the directions of Lead Teacher Veronica Cruz and Assistant Teacher Piper Bittman ’16, they are busy creating “hoop airplanes” and engaging in a friendly competition to see how far their planes will fly. To the students, it feels like they are playing with a new toy, but they are actually having a lesson in aerodynamics, with a little physics thrown in for good measure.

Students move out of the classroom on to CA’s campus, and new discoveries follow.

“The best way to make your airplane fly is to move outside!” exclaims Jesus Balderrama.

“They are learning the beginning steps of becoming a scientist—create a hypothesis and do an experiment,” Bittman says. “This is great, because all the studies show that the earlier children are introduced to STEM, the more apt they are to incorporate it into their career paths.”

For more than 20 years, Horizons has brought underserved children from the community—Pre-Kindergarten through high school—to the CA campus for a robust enrichment program that focuses on the development of the whole child during the summer, as well as year-round programming. In summer 2020, the Horizons curriculum was augmented by a “Genius Box,” which was the source of the hoop airplanes. The Genius Box is the brainchild of CA alumni parent Toi Massey, and she was delighted to have the opportunity to enhance the Horizons curriculum with STEM-related activities.

“These students have been doing engineering and science all their lives, whether they know it or not,” Massey says.

“If they build with LEGOs, sand castles, or blocks, they are engineers. In the kitchen, they are doing math and chemistry. If they turn up the heat on the stove, they are thermal dynamic heat transfer experts!”

‘I have to go get them’ Massey is the mother of recent CA graduate Kennedy Massey ’20. She remembers taking Kennedy to her alma mater, Howard University, when she was a three-year-old, and photographing her in front of the Engineering building. Now, Kennedy will follow in her mother’s footsteps and begin at Howard this fall. Toi Massey earned a bachelor’s degree in Physics and a master’s in Nuclear and Mechanical Engineering, which led to a long and distinguished corporate career.

Massey’s job with Raytheon Technologies brought her to Denver for what she thought would be a one-year assignment in 2008. One year turned into 12 years.

In 2011, she accepted a new position as Executive Director of Business Process Innovation and Customer Experience at Level 3 Communications, managing teams on three continents. She describes her job as “creating measurable, repeatable, and sustainable processes.”

Alternatively, she explains what she did with a favorite family saying: “If you don’t have time to do it right, you will find time to do it again.”

At Level 3, Massey looked around and saw a familiar scene. “I was the only Senior Executive of color on the campus,” she says.

“I realized that, if I want to have girls in these positions, I have to go get them.”

Changing the face of technology

Horizons student tries out her hoop airplane.

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Massey began her STEM initiative around the kitchen table in 2010. She named the nonprofit JEKL, using the names of her daughter, niece, and nephews (John, Eric, Kennedy, Lauren). The name honored the family’s multi-generational commitment to

Horizons at CA

Horizons Assistant Teacher Piper Bittman ’16 helps her student create a hoop airplane.

service and education—Kennedy is a fifthgeneration college student.

“Kennedy’s grandmother has always said, ‘In the end, it will only matter what you have done for others,’” Massey says. “The mission of JEKL was to embrace the uninitiated child and change the face of technology forever.”

In 2012, Massey left corporate America, and within two years, launched her first STEM program with Girl Scouts of Colorado and

watched it “take off.” Since the program’s inception, JEKL has served more than 5,000 students, including children in West Africa.

“Oobleck shows you the difference between solid and liquid,” Paola says. “And it’s fun to do with your hands!”

When students run up to embrace Massey, she greets them by calling them “doctor.”

She is sending a message to them about equity in STEM. “I’m planting the seed with them,” she says. “They say ‘Oh, I could be a doctor!’ I hope they will remember me calling them doctor and believe they can be anything they want.”

“From Kindergarten through Eighth Grade, our students and teachers loved the lesson plans and activities that came with the Genius Boxes,” says Horizons at CA Executive Director Daniela Meltzer. “They were age-appropriate experiences that got students super excited about STEM.”

Science, technology, engineering, and math With remote learning in place due to COVID-19 restrictions, the “Genius Boxes” turned into “Genius Backpacks” and traveled home with Horizons students. In addition to the hoop airplanes, students discovered they had the ingredients to make slime, a spectroscope, a Morse code harmonica, and Oobleck, made famous by Dr. Seuss and loved by Horizons Fourth Grade student Paola Hernandez.

After Meltzer mentioned the Genius Boxes to Horizons National, Massey and her team found themselves working around the clock to fulfill an order for 1,000 more Genius Boxes to be shipped to Horizons affiliates throughout the country. Thanks to Massey, a CA parent who is passionate about the future of the next generation, and Meltzer, a local Horizons leader who spread the word, Horizons students across the country could fly their hoop airplanes and themselves into the future, better equipped to conquer science, technology, engineering, and math. n

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Alumni Association Highlights

Stay Connected Colorado Academy Connect coloradoacademyconnect.org

A secure online networking resource for CA Alumni. Connect with classmates, lend expertise, mentor others, or share job opportunities.

CA Alumni Facebook Page f acebook.com/ColoradoAcademy-Alumni-Association Alumni Association Board at their summer Retreat, First Row (L to R): Emma Harrington Kane ’07, Winnie Ellsworth, Elsa Woolley ’11. Second Row: Jared Harding ’97, Karl Koch ’05, PJ O’Neil ’07, Zach Tucker ’01, Katie Cordes ’03, Aimée Nieuwenhuizen ’06. Third Row: Kyle Rajaniemi ’07, Lisa Harrison Ellsworth ’79, Isabel Gary Harper ’09, Terrie Dickinson Warren ’73, Austin Carpenter ’05, Max Shaw ’08. Not pictured: Chris Bailey ’02, VJ Brown ’11, Caroline Cramer ’11, Brian Fisher ’02, Georgia Grey ’08, Ben Hock ’07, Brian Parks ’96, Ashley Peterson ’06.

T

he 2020-2021 Alumni Association year picked up right where 20192020 left off, with cancelled events and quarantine. Because Colorado Academy wants to be a good community neighbor and not part of the problem, even events held outdoors with more than 10 guests cannot happen in 2020. An annual favorite, which hosts 175+ guests, The Alumni Skating Party, will not take place until December 2021.

To move forward, the Alumni Association Board looked to its Mission Statement for guidance: The mission of the Alumni Association is to promote alumni involvement in the advancement of CA, while providing alumni significant opportunities for intellectual and social enrichment.

Perhaps this is the year to provide significant opportunities for intellectual, over social, enrichment.

This year is also a good time to focus on the diversity, equity, and inclusion in our

Alumni Community and to create a place where all feel welcome.

For these reasons, Alumni Association events will look different this year. n

Alumni/Former Faculty Virtual Book Club

LinkedIn CA Connection: Colorado Academy Alumni & CA Community

linkedin.com/groups/117744 Join the 780 CA Alumni already registered!

Quarterly Alumni Newsletter

P

aul Krajovic, Linda Plaut, and Anne Strobridge will lead book club talks during this year. Two additional former faculty members will join the book club in the spring. Look at the calendar on the back inside cover of this magazine for the dates. The sessions will be held in the evening.

Sign-up will be by former faculty member and book. Read the title(s) of your choice, and join the discussion on Zoom. Each book talk will have a separate link. Invitations will be sent to alumni who were in the Upper School when the faculty members were teaching at CA. Enjoy a fun and thoughtful evening with some of your favorite teachers and your friends! n

If you don’t currently receive electronic communications from CA, send your email address to the Alumni Director, sue.burleigh@coloradoacademy.org, to receive the Alumni Newsletter delivered via email. You’ll also receive important alumni news and advance notice of alumni events.

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Alumni Association Highlights

Let’s Be Optimistic About May 2021!

C

A graduating classes ending in 0s and 5s have some catching up to do! Reunions in 2020 were postponed and have been rescheduled for May 21-23, 2021. This is the same weekend for graduating classes ending in 1s and 6s.

We are also hopeful we can gather the entire Alumni Community on Giant Relay Day, Friday, May 21, 2121, when we hope to enjoy all the traditional activities which kick off Reunion Weekend.

So, SAVE THE DATE, and let’s celebrate! n

Alumni Multicultural Meet-Up with Current Students

A

steering committee of alumni announces the first AlumniStudent Multicultural Meet-Up with our host, Sarah Wright, CA’s Director of Inclusivity. The goal is for Alumni to empower students, creating a support for them as they navigate CA and the college process. The hope is that these connections will last past CA and college.

Ultimately, our goal is to develop a multicultural network for CA Alumni.

The Meet-Up will take place on Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2020. Alumni will receive an invitation in their inbox, so make certain

Legacy Giving

Top Row (L to R): SunHee Seo ’17, Sarah Wright, Brooklyn Batey ’12. Second Row: Anshu Bhatia ’06, VJ Brown ’11, Ulysses Estrada ’13.

the Alumni Association has your current email address.

Thank you to Brooklyn Batey ’12, Anshu Bhatia ’06, VJ Brown ’11 (Alumni Board Member), Maya Carter ’13, Ulysses Estrada ’13, and SunHee Seo ’17. n

Make an impact that lasts beyond your lifetime.

Leave a legacy gift to CA. Legacy donors are recognized as members of CA’s Musil Society, which was created in 1992 in memory of former CA teacher A.J. Musil, who left his estate to the school. Like Mr. Musil, you can make a gift to CA as part of a will or trust. Other possible legacy giving options include charitable trusts, charitable annuities, and beneficiary designations of IRAs and insurance policies. Blended giving allows you to give now—and be recognized now— but also contribute in the future.

If you are interested in learning more about legacy giving and the Musil Society, please contact Gravely Wilson, Advancement Officer, 303-914-2543.

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Colorado Academy Journal

Class Notes Be Connected Class Notes is one of the most popular and well-read sections of the CA Journal. It provides a forum for alumni to share their news from professional accomplishments and accolades to marriages, births, and anything else fellow alumni might find interesting. Thank you for sharing your updates. We love hearing from you!

Don’t See Your Class Year?

If your year doesn’t appear in the Class Notes, it means we didn’t receive any notes from your class. We really (really!) want to hear from you. Your news and photos are always welcome.

1961 60th Class Reunion May 21-23, 2021 Rory Donaldson writes, “Dear Classmates, since reading Cito’s somewhat touching note in the last edition, I’ve been inspired to write something that doesn’t sound too syrupy. What can one who is turning 79 possibly say—except I’ve many positive memories—many from my two years at CA. My family and I are well. Louisa and I are still isolating in Central Park, the old Stapleton renamed. What I mostly do is maintenance, cleaning, and exercise. We too have gotten into Ancestry.com and have uncovered some fascinating stories.

I’m still reading, writing, and intent on using my “mail-in ballot.”

No plans for tomorrow, or the next.

Doubling down on staying low and listening to tons of music (jazz and punk largely).

I wish you all well. Next year is our 60th reunion—Wow! Maybe I’ll be lucky enough to see a few of you then—although I’ll need a map to find my way around campus. Until then, Rory” Kent Drummond rode his fat tire e-bike in the Pikes Peak Cycling Hill Climb. The e-bike portion is just an exhibition, so

Kent Drummond ’61 at the summit of the Pikes Peak Hill Climb

there weren’t any classes or prizes, but Kent reports it was a lot of fun. He rode a borrowed bike last year and was first to the summit. This year he was riding his own bike. Kent says, “I rode a more powerful bike last year and made it to the summit in 1:04. This year I wanted to see if I could do it on my own bike, complete with monster tires. I made it in 1:30, so I am pleased with the result.”

1962

John Ragsdale still teaches at the University of Missouri Law School in Kansas City. Classes in environmental law, historic and cultural preservation law, water law, and Federal Indian Law are held online at the moment, but the subjects are fascinating. John spent July in Breckenridge, Colo. with his wife Lisa, daughter Sydney, and her boyfriend. Sydney and Lisa are both UMKC law graduates. Sydney currently works for the Innocence Project. The family enjoyed hiking, golf, tennis, and social distancing and plan to return for skiing during the winter break.

Read about Gary Dwyer on pages 22 and 92.

1964 Bob Keyser was honored to have one of his photographs included in the release of the book, Remembering Cheetahs, a new and special coffee table book. He had two images of the final 100 chosen from nearly 3,000 pictures entered into the competition for the final ten needed for the book. Bob writes, “I am so very proud to have one picture chosen, along with some

Photo by Bob Keyser ’64

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amazing worldwide well-known wildlife photographers who will also have pictures in the book.” This is the fifth in the series of books, “Remembering Wildlife.”

In addition, Bob and his wife Sarah spent nearly 30 days at their home in Glen Ridge, N.J. They drove so they could stay in their “bubble.” Bob says, “It had been about five months since seeing the now 18-month-old granddaughter on Sarah’s side. We never went in her daughter’s home but always visited in the backyard with masks. But now, we are recognized and part of her growing vocabulary. We have a lot of miles etched on our bodies, but it was well worth the trip.”

1965 Greg Lewis marked the end of his 56th summer in Aspen, where he has lived year-round since 1969. While involved in a couple of entrepreneurial business endeavors, his primary focus is writing.

Greg is completing a novel in rhyme called Chasing Wonder, which will be published before the end of the year. In addition, he is several months into a memoir of a legendary Aspen and Baltimore personality, Leonard “Boogie” Weinglass, who grew up poor in Baltimore, was a star athlete, feared street fighter, and who started Merry-Go-Round retail fashion stores and grew the business to almost 1,500 stores across the U.S. Greg writes, “I’m in a fabulous relationship with an inspiring

woman, and I look forward to my 66th year of skiing in Aspen.”

Joel Schulman retired from the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center of Ophthalmology after 32 years of dedicated service to residents, medical students, and patients. Following his graduation from CA, Joel received a BA from Goddard College in Chicago. He received his medical degree from the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, did his internship at the Devers Eye Clinic, Good Samaritan Medical Center in Portland, Ore., and completed his residency in 1979. Joel received a retina disease fellowship at the University of Illinois Eye and Ear Infirmary. Following two years in private practice, he entered a second fellowship program at University of Illinois in vitreoretinal surgery. Joel served as an assistant professor at the University of Texas in Galveston before joining LSU as an associate professor of ophthalmology with tenure. His responsibilities included resident teaching, clinical duties, and mini-rotation for third year medical students. In addition, Joel has authored numerous chapters in books and articles. Joel’s philanthropic endeavors in the Shreveport community include co-founding the Red River Lions Club, Hope House Homeless Outreach, Essilor Vision Foundation, Eye Care America, and Pool of Siloma Medical Ministry. He was honored for his work with the Louisiana Volunteers in Action Program.

1966 Guy Modica reports the only change in his life is that his son Jesse and family moved to Boulder, where Jesse is a Doctor of Physical Therapy. His company is Fullswift. Jesse trains athletes of all type to perform at their very best. Jesse’s son Kai is an amazing lacrosse player. Guy says, “I’m good, despite all the insanity, fires, and poisonous smoke in our lives, not to even mention this deadly virus that is trying hard to find us all, YIKES!”

1968 Joel Schulman ’65

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Steve Gordon writes, “I thoroughly enjoyed the last normal weekend, March 8, eating, drinking, and having merry conversation with my Yale classmates at a mini-reunion

in Miami. COVID-19 stalked the gathering unrecognized. While exposed, I didn’t get (very) frsick. The incident holds an existential message. When the pandemic closed the Canadian border, I didn’t show up for work in April, and reneging on a commitment wounded me. Since age is a major risk factor for severe infection, I avoided work until starting telemedicine in July. Though most docs my age have retired, I found myself unexpectedly on unemployment. Remote medicine, just starting to ramp up when the virus hit, will remain part of the clinical landscape. It holds the promise of improving the efficiency of a wasteful system.

Still, I used my free time to good advantage: tending my garden and my beloved fruit trees; bicycling in the cool of the mornings; target archery in the afternoon; occasionally bow fishing invasive jumping silver carp on the weekends; and reading pestilence literature: Love in the Time of Cholera, A Journal of the Plague Year, Martin Arrowsmith, The Great Influenza, The Plague, The Masque of the Red Death. With the exception of The Great Influenza, the authors get the disease details wrong and the human details right. In particular, Martin Arrowsmith’s depiction of how plague comes to ravage a Caribbean island has frightening parallels to our own government’s mishandling of the current viral outbreak. The pandemic will change everything.”

1969 Don Dodge and Jana still enjoyed traveling and learning in the summer of COVID-19.

Their driving trips included states with less COVID-19 infection. First trip was a golf and gallery tour of historic Santa Fe, N.M. Later they drove to Cody, Wyo. to tour the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. From there, a sobering visit to the Heart Mountain Japanese Internment Camp in Powell, Wyo. Finally, Don and Jana headed to Montana and the Little Big Horn Battlefield and the battle of the “Greasy Grass.”

1970 Rescheduled 50th Class Reunion May 21-23, 2021

Class Notes

1971 50th Class Reunion May 21-23, 2021 Peter Theodore has a new Goldendoodle pup. Peter reports since he’s pretty much house-ridden, she gets all the attention she deserves. In Virginia, everything is virtual, and Peter continues to teach music one-onone, although via Skype.

1974 Read about Preston DuFauchard on page 24.

1975 Hugh Alexander is preparing for an exhibit of his automotive artwork at Pacific University in Oregon. Thirty images will be presented. He continues to hike, ski, and bike throughout Colorado.

Linc Jackson and his wife Casey are biking through COVID-19. Thailand was shut down very tightly for several weeks. Residents were only allowed to leave their house for necessities. Police roadblocks prevented them from traveling out of their own small county. Because they live right by the mountains, they did lots of mountain bike riding every day for two months. Linc reports Thailand has been COVID-19-free for the past 90 days, and so in Phuket, most local stores are open with safety procedures. Unfortunately, many, many businesses have closed permanently and the tourist spots are all empty—empty

beaches, empty restaurants, empty stores.

One diversion for Linc has been Zoom calls with classmates.

1976 Sarah Boxer continues to write for the New York Review of Books. Her most recent article in the September 2020 issue is “Back to the Drawing Board,” a review of Lynda Barry’s Making Comics. Sarah calls the graphic book, “the perfect tonic—part doodle, part manual, part therapy.” Check it out while sitting at home!

Gary Coombs was among the many university faculty who transitioned to online teaching during spring and will be fully online again in the fall semester. He is a professor at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.

Gary reports, “It was not a goal of mine to do so, but life throws curveballs! I am considering an early retirement at the end of spring. My son, Garth III, just completed his PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience at Harvard and has a post-doc fellowship there for the coming year. Younger son Kenny is now a homeowner in Portland, Ore. and riding out the COVID pandemic. Amy and I have spent the summer at our Delaware Beach house, where I am writing this as storm Isaias rages outside, shaking the house. We are with my 91-year-old father and our son, Garth.”

Peter Theodore ’71 with his puppy Coco

1978 Kass Patterson is happily living in Greenwood Village, Colo. Kass is in her fifth year operating her own tutoring service,

A recent pen and ink drawing by Hugh Alexander ’75

Class of 1975 Zoom visit, Top Row (L to R): George Looms, Linc Jackson, Peter King. Second Row: Tom Woolley, Reed Myer, Peter Sherwood

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DenverReadingSpecialist.com. Fortunately, the COVID-19 crisis has not had a negative impact on her business; in fact, tutoring is in high demand to help students navigate the new world of virtual learning. Kass is an avid bicycler on her cruiser and loves vinyasa yoga.

1980 Rescheduled 40th Class Reunion May 21-23, 2021

1981 40th Class Reunion May 21-23, 2021

1983 In October of 2019, Paul Wylie took a new job as Director of Sport for the New York State agency, called ORDA (Olympic Regional Development Authority) in Lake Placid, N.Y. His role is to work with various sport entities to bring events and training athletes to the facilities in the North Country of New York. Paul writes, “It’s been quite a change, to say the least, from Charlotte, N.C., where my family and I have been living for the past 14 years, but we are thoroughly enjoying life in a small mountain community where hiking, biking, skiing, and skating are a way of life.

My wife Kate and our three kids, Hannah (16), Emma (14), and Caleb (12) moved up after the end of May, so now we are ensconced in this place as a family. Since N.Y. state had the most cases of COVID-19 early on, and I work for the government, the lockdown and restrictions have been a way of life from the beginning. In fact, a large part of my role entailed making plans for

Paul Wylie ’83 with his family, From Left: Kate, Caleb, Hannah, Emma, and Paul

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how to practice social distancing in the wide variety of sports settings in Lake Placid.

The hardest part for us is that N.Y./N.J./ Conn. now have a list of states travel from which requires 14 days of quarantine, so we aren’t able to get across the country to see my sister Clare (Wylie Patton ’79) and my mom and dad who are living with her in Spokane. I do hope that by fall/ winter the cases decrease, so we can travel more readily, and people can travel here.

Oddly, the Canadian border, just about 60 miles away, has been closed since March.

Lake Placid is also scheduled to host the World Bobsled/Skeleton Championships in February, among other events, and I re-upped my IKON pass in a moment of wishful thinking of getting back to Colorado for skiing.

Hope everyone is staying healthy. Come visit us in Lake Placid!”

1984 Gretchen Smith Kneen is jumping and fox hunting with her wonderful horse and enjoying lots of skiing in the winter.

Gretchen reports she misses CA now that her children have graduated.

1986 After many years at Girl Rising, Marty Ostertag Adams is now President of Rebel Girls Entertainment. Some of the CA community might know the organization.

campaign that launched the Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls book series and today the media company is expanding in all directions.

The Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls podcast has won numerous awards including the Webby People’s Choice 100 Immigrant Women Who Award. In Changed the World October 2020, there was a live, online Rebel Girls Rally and the release of the new book 100 Immigrant Women Who Changed the World. Marty hopes the next venue will be TV and stage. On a more personal note, her eldest “rebel girl” just graduated from high school and will be attending Rollins College.

Not content to let Garret Zallen maintain the class record for newest parent, Marc Friedman and his wife Mana welcomed their daughter Kyla. Mommy, Daddy, and baby are all doing wonderfully.

Chuck Hornbrook is running for school board in his little town of Tiburon, just north of San Francisco. Check it out chuckhornbrook.com.

1987

It began in 2016 with a Kickstarter

Che Prasad is proud of his 13-year-old daughter Indigo, who has used her time sheltering in place to create a website for her art. The site includes watercolors based on histologic sections of umbilical cords that look like faces. Che comments, “a pathologist’s daughter indeed!”

Read about Audra Robb on page 30.

Gretchen Smith Kneen ’84 and Gordon Smith ’79 after hunting with English hounds and a huntsman

Marc Friedman’s daughter, Kyla

Class Notes

From Left: TJ Giordano (10th Grade), David Kimball (7th Grade), and Tom Kimball ’89

1989

Tom Kimball and his son David vacationed this summer outdoors at Lake Tahoe, Calif. with CA friends.

Christy Polumbus has taken a new job in Whitefish, Mont. She is working at North Valley Hospital as the Marketing & Community Relations Manager.

1990 Rescheduled 30th Class Reunion May 21-23, 2021 Katherine Henschen Hauff met her husband Eric in July 2017, and since then, there has been a whirlwind of change. The couple married on June 30, 2018, and Kiki

1990 alumna Katherine Henschen Hauff’s family, First Row (L to R): Jeremiah, Brynna, Ashley. Second Row: Lucy (charcoal lab), Eric, Kiki, Murphy (golden mutt)

Memories from the wedding of Abby Wadsworth Serfass ’94, From Left: Former faculty member David Wadsworth, Kristine Martin (who attended CA through 5th Grade), Adam Serfass, Abby Wadsworth Serfass ’94, Alissa Nostas ’94, Lodi Siefer ’94, and David Wadsworth II ’86

gained two stepdaughters, ages 16 and 15, and two dogs. She worked her way into a layoff package in the fall of 2019, which she reports was a total blessing, given that Eric travels the world for work and she was traveling the country, and the girls live in Georgia. The family’s last international trip was to Kenya. After that, there were monthly trips to Atlanta until the pandemic. With national travel finally opening up in June, Eric’s youngest, along with her two friends, hopped on a plane and everyone had, as Kiki says, “a not bummer summer” at Camp H2, their Colorado home. For three kids from Georgia, Colorado did not disappoint. Every day was a new adventure, SUP, hiking, Red Rocks, Wax Trax, and a four-day road trip to Durango.

1991

From Left: Alisha Elliott and Norm Harris ’94, holding their daughter Emory

Phoenix Lawson, daughter of Lauri Keener ’94

30th Class Reunion May 21-23, 2021

1994 Norm Harris and his partner Alisha Elliott were thrilled to have a baby girl on January 14, 2020. Norm reports Emory is a bright, spunky, energetic, healthy, and loving baby.

Lauri Keener has been busy painting and raising a little social justice warrior with her husband David.

Abby Wadsworth Serfass and her husband Adam celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary in June. Since they couldn’t host the big party they had been planning,

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Tucker Ladd ’99 at his new Trouts Fly Fishing location

Abby and Adam emailed snapshots of photos from their wedding album to friends and family far and near. Abby writes, “It was a great way to reconnect with people we haven’t seen in ages.”

1995 Rescheduled 25th Class Reunion May 21-23, 2021 Nathan Reed writes, “Greetings! Wow, what a weird time we are experiencing.

As far as an update goes, I am living in the Chicago area but am in the final quarters of my online MBA through the University of Denver. Both the location and pivot in degree came as a result of an unexpected

Aaron Goldhamer ’99 and Tess Vigil Goldhamer ’00

and traumatic departure from academia.

Though the journey has been difficult and anything but linear, I believe my cumulative experience affords me the ability to make some unique contributions to the space of Diversity & Inclusion.

That is what I’m hoping will come of my degree from DU. Am I completely done with school after that? Stay tuned....

Hope things are as well for you as can be expected during this pandemic.”

1996 25th Class Reunion May 21-23, 2021

1997 Megan Young worked long hours at Boom Supersonic to prepare for the October 7 rollout of the supersonic demonstrator, XB-1. It is the first independently developed supersonic jet in history and proves key technologies for the future Boom commercial airliner, Overture. The rollout was live-streamed and can be seen at: boomsupersonic.com/xb-1. Megan is the VP of Marketing at Boom and has gotten to know fellow CA alumna Erin Fisher Young ’09, who is the lead of mechanical systems at Boom.

1999 From Left: Sarah and Nat Robinson ’99, Ginny and Chris Robinson ’99

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In July, Tucker Ladd moved his Denver business, Trouts Fly Fishing, to 1025 Zuni St. in Lincoln Park, in a building

that backs up to the South Platte River.

Out back, the store has installed a 60-foot wooden deck, where Tucker said he plans to set up picnic tables, folding chairs, fire pits, and coolers. The fly shop teamed up with Denver Beer Co. to have kegs installed and local beer on tap at all times.

Nat Robinson married Sarah Rauenhorst on July 17, 2020. The couple had a small and socially distanced family wedding. Nat says, “It all worked out.”

2000 Rescheduled 20th Class Reunion May 21-23, 2021 Tess Vigil married Aaron Goldhamer ’99 on September 12, 2020, just over two decades after their CA Prom date in 1999. The couple had planned to celebrate with many family and friends from across America. Due to the pandemic, only immediate family members were in attendance at the Vigil home and garden in the Highlands. Shane Boris ’00 officiated and was joined by Tess’s parents and former faculty members Angel Vigil and Sheila Olson, Laura Goldhamer ’02, and Matron of Honor Sarah Vigil Wilkinson ’05. Tess and Aaron plan to celebrate with friends in 2021.

2001 20th Class Reunion May 21-23, 2021

Class Notes

The children of Caroline Hollis ’01, Anton and baby Julian

Laura Goldhamer ’02

Ali Frick ’03 and her family on a recent trip to Colorado, From Left: baby Leo, Ali, Drausin Wulsin, and Lyra

Caroline Hollis, husband Gernot Zacke, and son Anton welcomed the newest member of their family in May 2020, Julian Hollis Zacke. The family still lives in San Francisco, but spent July in Colorado so the boys could enjoy the mountains and great weather.

Year Older, Another Year Wise’!” Laura can be found on Instagram, Facebook, and Bandcamp.

Charlottesville, Va. from the Bay Area after Kelsie accepted the Associate Head Rowing Coach position at UVA, her alma mater. She had been at Stanford as their Associate Head Coach for the last few years. Corey was supposed to begin a two-year vocational school to obtain his 1600-ton license to operate tugboats, but that was postponed due to COVID-19.

Fortunately, he was offered a job with Norfolk Tug Company as a deckhand and is currently working in Jacksonville, Fla. on a dredging project. Corey’s work schedule is 14 days on and 14 off, so he writes that it’s totally doable to travel back and forth from Norfolk, Va., and the company will get him to where he needs to go.

2002

2003 In April, Ali Frick joined three friends in starting a law firm in New York City.

Kaufman Lieb Lebowitz & Frick LLP, kllf-law. com. The firm specializes in civil rights litigation from police and prison abuse to housing discrimination to employment discrimination, and more. Ali writes, “It’s been a crazy and exciting time to be starting a business, while working from a tiny desk in my bedroom and also taking care of my two children, Lyra, age 3, and Leo, age 1. We’re counting down the days until daycare reopens!”

Alec Norton has launched his new endeavor for college-age students, a gap program for 17-22 year-olds. DownWest Semesters inspires and educates the next generation of leaders by offering thoughtful adventures rooted in the stories, histories, mountains, rivers, and deserts of the West, focused on backpacking, biking, and leadership.

Laura Goldhamer released a perfect COVID-19 birthday song, “Another Year Older, Another Year Wise” into the world on September 4, 2020. Laura says, “It’s been a good while since I released any music, and this song feels like the best way to kick it off again. I have been sending this recording to friends and family to celebrate the many strange flavored birthdays happening during COVID, and I’m hoping that others will do the same. It seems high time to provide a catchier alternative to the boring old happy birthday song (which is also heavily copyrighted), and I would love to have this tune be in the public domain/creative commons and available for anyone to use.

Please lend your help by sharing my social media posts, making it available for immediate enjoyment far and wide, and spreading cheer to all the b-day party Alec Norton ’03 people who are turning ‘Another

2004 Corey Hennegan and his fiancée, Kelsie Chaudoin, moved to

Corey’s ultimate goal is to become a tugboat operator. He had gotten pretty burned-out, working his sales job for a startup in the Bay Area and was looking for something different. Corey says, “I had a commercial fishing job in college and had forgotten how much I enjoyed working on the water. I also have, almost by coincidence, a lot of friends who work in the maritime industry, and they really encouraged me to make the transition.

The majority of them work on tugboats, and they guided me through the whole process. It’s a really fascinating, heavily regulated industry, that really requires a lot of credentialing and work to advance, which is what I was looking for. It’s cool to be an integral part of the global supply chain. So, long story short, I left my sales job a year ago and started working on

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Corey Hennegan ’04 with his parents and fiancée, From Left: Kelsie Chaudoin, Barry and Cheri Hennegan, and Corey

boats, first dinner cruises and ferries, and now tugs. I couldn’t be happier. I hope to have a license in the next 3-5 years.

Charlottesville is a great little town, and I’m really enjoying it so far. If any CA students or alumni are looking for advice on the maritime industry, feel free to contact me.”

2005 Jake Roper won the Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Educational/Informational Series.

Will Simmons and his fiancée Jasmine are pleased to announce the birth of their son Cannon William Simmons born on

Cannon William Simmons, son of Will Simmons ’05

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Jake Roper ’05

June 13, 2020. He weighed 4 lb. 6 oz.

Adrian Green and his family are still enjoying life in the San Francisco Bay Area.

addition to the family. With Will’s baby boy born in June, it’s been baby season all summer for our family!”

2006

2007

Sarah Robinson Elkins and Brian Elkins ’02 are thrilled that their daughter Emmylou started Pre-K at CA this year. She’s in the Class of 2034! Sarah graduated with a Masters in Social Work from the University of Denver in August.

Evan Simmons and his wife Gisa McCray Simmons are the proud parents of Taylor Rosalyn, born on August 6, 2020, weighing 5 lb. 10 oz., and 19 in. long. Evan reports, “We are just so in love with our new

On February 28, 2020, Jake Corkin and his wife, Amber, welcomed their third child, Virginia “Vinnie” Brooks. The five of them live in Southern Utah, where Jake works remotely as the Product Manager for a technology startup. They enjoy all the outdoor activities that St. George has to offer, including hiking, mountain biking, and pickleball. Jake writes, “It is a really happy place for our family.

My parents actually retired here, so we

Adrian Green ’05 with his family, From Left: Marley, Chanel, and Adrian

Taylor Rosalyn Simmons, daughter of Evan Simmons ’06

Class Notes

Jake Corkin ’07 and his family, First Row: Johnny.

Second Row (L to R): Charlie Marie, Amber, Jake, and Vinnie.

have the great blessing of being close to grandparents too!”

Read about Alec Devereaux on page 28.

Taylor Garrett and his wife Sarah welcomed Miles Ellsworth Garrett on April 14, 2020. He was born in San Francisco; however, the family moved to Milwaukee in July to be close to family and escape the extreme heat and unlivable air quality of the Bay Area.

Ben Hock and his wife Andrea are happy to announce the birth of their first child, Lily Genevieve Hock, born September 3, 2020.

2008

Jon Davis continues to write, produce, and release new music, despite the ups and downs of the pandemic. He released his first single on March 26, 2020 in the first week of the shutdown in New York City. Three releases later, and just over 200,000 streams internationally, Jon is humbled and grateful for all of the support he received on this journey.

September marked the announcement of his extended play (EP) album, featuring seven tracks that preview the full studio album set scheduled for 2021. Jon’s request, “Please help me spread the word by listening, enjoying, and sharing this music with your friends and communities.

Jon Davis ’08

Thank you for believing in me and empowering me with the courage to follow my dreams.”

Find Jon’s music on his website, officialjondavis.com, or Spotify.

Courtney Engle had a busy spring despite the pandemic. She was hired by Titleist as an intellectual property and aerodynamic engineering researcher and moved to Massachusetts in June. She scrambled to get her home listed for sale and as Courtney writes, “to improve my fluency with a coding language they use, but I haven’t touched in almost a decade.

Haha!” Courtney is enjoying her new job.

2009

Daughter of Ben Hock ’07, Lily Genevieve Hock

2007 alumnus Taylor Garrett’s family, Miles and Sarah Garrett

Katarina Niparko made a big move in her career. She is now an attorney for Fisher Phillips, a national labor and employment law firm representing employers. Katarina is one of the attorneys in the Denver office. Her practice focuses on representing and counseling clients in a range of complex issues, including trade secret protection and covenants not to compete, employee defection, employment discrimination claims, employment termination, and employment policies, handbooks, and HR training.

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2010 Rescheduled 10th Class Reunion May 21-23, 2021

2011 10th Class Reunion May 21-23, 2021 VJ Brown is the Director of Fellowship Programs at an incubator, Moonshot Edventures, moonshotedventures.org.

Petra Jans Pederson received her PhD in Biomedical Sciences.

Read more about Petra and her husband Thomas Pederson on page 26.

2012

Lauren Dungan Dunbar ’12 and husband Marc Dunbar

2012 classmates, From Left: Alexandra Sadler, Lauren Dungan Dunbar, Tessa Bell

Lauren Dungan and Marc Dunbar married on August 7, 2020, in Colorado Springs. CA alumnae in attendance included Tessa Bell and Alexandra Sadler. The couple met at Texas Christian University and have been together since January 2016. Lauren works in international education, and Marc works in wealth management. In addition, Lauren is pursuing an MA in Spanish at Texas State University, and Marc is pursuing an MBA at the University of Texas. They live in Austin, Texas.

Brad Klump was promoted to a new position at the University of Northern Colorado as the Director of Men’s Basketball Operations. For the past two years, he served as the team’s Director of Player

Nick Bain ’16 is on the ground, flying his electric plane on MIT’s campus.

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Development. Brad will oversee the functioning of the men’s program, including day-to-day business operations, team travel, and management of the program’s student managers. He will also coordinate the annual summer basketball camps at UNC.

2015 After graduating from the University of Edinburgh, JP Kneen has found a job doing UI (user interface) and UX (user experience) for a Denver Tech Center company.

2016 Nick Bain graduated from MIT in May 2020 with a BS in Aerospace Engineering.

His main interest is vertical takeoff and landing electric planes, which is one reason he is currently living in rural Kansas about 3½ hours from Denver. Nick is working on a small (~20 lbs.) vertical takeoff and landing electric plane designed to fly over agricultural areas with a few cameras imaging at relevant wavelengths. The project is intended to provide imagery at an extremely low cost and high overflight frequency. Nick has been working on the plane for about three years and hopes to commercialize it by doing agricultural imagery. The end goal is to show the possibility for in-flight battery swapping for electric planes to alleviate the range constraint. Nick explains, “Theoretically, the plane as it is now should be able to provide lower imagery costs by increasing the acres imaged per hour (cruising at around 60 mph compared to around 20 mph for a drone) and landing on a robotic platform that swaps out batteries without the need to have a human pilot/operator.”

Alex Medema is starting his PhD in Aerospace Engineering at CU Boulder this fall. He is studying upper-atmospheric physics at the AE lab. Boulder was Alex’s first choice, because CU is one of the best places in the country for that line of research, thanks to all of the atmospheric science facilities nearby and the multiple departments at CU that are involved.

Alex was a research intern at NASA in the summer of 2019 and has an upcoming paper under review with a physics journal. Alex credits CA faculty members Steven Hammer and Holley McBroom for inspiring him to be where he is today.

Class Notes

Cassie Kneen ’17 walking on the Scottish coast of St. Andrews with her roommate Becca

David Schurman graduated from Brown University and is the Co-Founder of Cloud Agronomics, which provides data to farmers that has never been seen before, imaging around 300 different wavelengths to have extremely sophisticated image analysis.

The company offers a full suite of analytical capabilities to customers throughout the agribusiness industry. Cloud Agronomics can aggregate data on a county level or simply a few acres of farmland. The analytics are delivered through a single digital platform. Anna Krutsinger ’18 joined David as an intern in machine learning engineering at Cloud Agronomics.

2017 Cassie Kneen has returned to Scotland for her senior year at St. Andrews University. She was required to do a two-week quarantine before classes began. Golf and fishing

provided some normalcy during that period.

2018 Lauren Fossel worked as a cybersecurity intern for the US Air Force. The internship was originally going to be in New York, but with COVID-19, it changed to remote work. Lauren writes, “Though the circumstances were less than ideal, I greatly enjoyed being home in Colorado for the spring and summer. There’s nothing like the Colorado sunshine! I loved getting to run and train in the beautiful Colorado scenery, and also went on a few hiking and rafting adventures!”

Lauren is a computer science and astrophysics major at Williams College.

Lauren Fossel ’18 with her certificate from the US Air Force

2020 Alex Foreman is attending the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. n

Make Your CA Fund Gift Today!

Now, more than ever, your support is critical to our success. Your gift to The CA Fund ensures that CA has the vital resources it needs to protect the health and safety of our students, faculty, and staff; support families who may have new or increased needs for financial aid; and help us continue the important work of building an inclusive, diverse, and empathetic community. Thank you!

coloradoacademy.org/TheCAFund To learn more about The CA Fund, please contact Natalie Newcom Ralston ’99, Director of The CA Fund, at natalie.ralston@coloradoacademy.org.

Alex Foreman ’20 at plebe training at the US Naval Academy

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In Memoriam Gary Colburn Dwyer ’62

G

ary Dwyer passed away on August 9, 2020 at French Hospital in San Luis Obispo, Calif. Born in Colorado on October 1, 1943, he graduated from Colorado Academy in 1962 and from Syracuse University and SUNY with a double degree in Fine Arts and Landscape Architecture. Immediately after graduation, he formed a construction company and participated in the master plans for Telluride Valley and Franconia College. Dwyer then earned an MFA in Sculpture from the University of Denver, where his first project was the creation of three sculptures and the Sculpture Garden in the center of the CA campus. Gary donated the sculptures to the school, as well as his time and effort.

Gary Dwyer ’62 as pictured in the 1962 Telesis

Alex Witherill ’87

By Andrea Witherill

M

eatball, Alcon Cornelius, A Dub, 006, Baby Bull, AWOL, Al, Sizzly, Mayhem, Al Pal. You know you have lived a full life, when your list of nicknames is longer than most lists of close friends, and when those who call you a friend consider you one of their best. With family at the center, his global tribe grew exponentially throughout his life. He left us all too soon. Alex was one of a kind. Many may be defined by career, but Alex was so much more. His interests could not be contained. Equal parts James Bond, John Wayne, and Hunter S. Thompson, he lived life with verve in all directions. He traveled voraciously, attacking each continent with vigor. He golfed, hunted, and played chess, but also dared himself to do anything requiring fearlessness: heli-skiing, dirt biking, and car racing kept his adrenaline level at the optimal Mach 10.

A lifelong MENSA member, his mind was

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Colorado Academy Journal

Dwyer had a prominent career as a sculptor, photographer, and author and was an inspiring, demanding, unconventional, and beloved professor and mentor at California Polytechnic State University until he

retired in 2010. While teaching, he created numerous works in sculpture and landscape architecture in the United States, France, Germany, and the former Yugoslavia.

Over the course of time, his career turned to photography, a field that combined his passion for travel, art, and poetry. He published many books of his photography and writings.

Gary is survived by his wife Odile, daughters Heather and Chelsea, stepdaughter Celia, five grandchildren, and numerous friends and former students.

A celebration of his life will be held some time down the road, when the world is a little safer. Donations may be made to the World Monuments Fund.

Condolences may be sent to: Odile Ayral 300 Ferrini Rd. San Luis Obispo, CA 93405-1149 Read more about Gary on page 22.

equally never at rest. Armed with a political science degree he broke into the highly competitive world of investment banking in San Francisco, eventually earning a place on Barron’s Top 1000 Advisors list.

Alongside investing, film making was his passion. He produced and executive produced many films, including the latest, Give Me Liberty, which earned a spot in the National Board of Review’s Top 10 Independent Films.

He never left an argument on the table, a shot in the glass, or person in need. He donated generously, debated heatedly, joked endlessly, and lived passionately.

Alexander J. Witherill was born on October 30, 1968 and passed away May 11, 2020.

He is survived by his mom, Carol Pike, and his sister, Andrea Witherill, alongside a tribe of dear family and friends. He was deeply loved and will be profoundly missed.

Editorial note: Despite only attending CA for Grades 8 and 9, Alex had many friends and attended numerous reunions and events, including CA’s Centennial Celebration in 2007.

Alex Witherill ’87

CA Alumni Association Important Dates 2020-2021 Thursday, December 17, 2020 College Alumni Lunch* Sculpture Garden, 12:30 p.m.

Wednesday, January 13, 2021 Alumni/Former Faculty Virtual Book Club with Linda Plaut, Their Eyes Were Watching God Thursday, February 11, 2021 Alumni/Former Faculty Virtual Book Club with Anne Strobridge, 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World Wednesday, March 3, 2021 Alumni/Former Faculty Virtual Book Club with Paul Krajovic, Dandelion Wine April 2021 Alumni/Former Faculty Virtual Book Club, TBD Friday, May 21, 2021 Giant Relay Day* BBQ Lunch, Carnival for Children, The Race, Alumni-Faculty Party, Alumni-Varsity-Faculty Games Saturday & Sunday, Reunion Weekend* May 22-23, 2021 1970, 1971, 1980, 1981, 1990, 1991, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2010, 2011, 2005, 2006 *Subject to change due to Social Distancing Orders Please check the Alumni Home Page on the CA website, coloradoacademy.org, for Updates and New Events.

Senior-Kindergarten Buddies, Then and Now

2008 Kindergartner Griffin Stevens with his Senior Buddies (L to R) Connor Abernathy ’09 and Spencer Devereaux ’09

2020 Senior Griffin Stevens (on left) with his Kindergarten Buddy, Charlie Barnes, and Senior Levi Pinkert (on right)

Fall 2020

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