CELEBRATING FOUR LEGENDS

SAYING FAREWELL TO AO, MARK, LYNN & GEORGE

KATIE HYMAN

MARK CLARK has been working at this project for much of his adult life. With the end of the most recent school year, Mark concluded his 43rd year at CRMS. Despite the intervening years, he remembers being hired in 1978 with Crystal River clarity.

About to depart on a multi-day river trip on the San Juan River in Southeastern Utah, he found the lone payphone in the town of Mexican Hat and made a call back to Carbondale. “I’m launching on the river, and I’ve got to know if I’ve got the job.” students and an advisee of the past four years, Willa Schendler, describes him as being in the prime of his career. “Having honed his craft for decades, Mark knows how to make complex philosophical analysis accessible, hilarious, and germane to our teenage lives.”

Willa noted that, in particular, Albert Camus’ essay on the myth of Sisyphus, a text Mark describes as “potent and forever timely,” resonated with her and her classmates. Willa explained, “it is such a human thing to be overwhelmed by personal tragedies and the world’s problems. It’s just so daunting. Life is difficult but beautiful, and the point is to keep working, keep pushing the boulder up the hill.”

Mark, who concludes his philosophy courses with a look at Existentialism (including Camus’ essay), impels his students to examine their own lives and their sense of purpose in the world.

Department. AO’s connection to CRMS goes back to 1966 when he entered CRMS’s 10th grade (it was not until 1984 that CRMS added the 9th grade).

Four of Colorado Rocky Mountain School’s long-time and beloved faculty members retired at the end of this academic year. Mark Clark, AO Forbes ‘69, George Weber, and Lynn Pulford have collectively devoted 130 years to teaching at CRMS.

It would be near impossible to calculate a similar tally of c-chords strummed, soccer balls kicked, rapids paddled, Camus passages studied, ethical dilemmas discussed, and silver rings soldered under the tutelage of Lynn, George, AO, and Mark. Together their devotion to the CRMS community has nurtured the intellectual, artistic, and moral growth of generations of students. To celebrate their collective impact, the CRMS community came together on a sunny Friday afternoon this May. Students, alumni, faculty members, administrators, board members, family, and friends perched on hay bails or sat in the grass on the quad, oriented as ever toward the majesty of a snowcapped Mt. Sopris, listening to the gentle trickle of ditches and the occasional gust of spring wind.

Jennifer Ogilby, Lenny Henderson ‘12, Kayo Ogilby and Jim Gaw ‘64 shared stories and words of gratitude for Lynn, George, AO, and Mark respectively. Mags Miller

‘90, Vice President of the Board of Trustees, imparted the final words, lauding Mark, AO, George, and Lynn, “[their] presence, time, dedication, and passion has helped strengthen the very roots of John & Anne [Holden’s] initial guiding vision. [They] have helped ensure not just that CRMS will survive but that it will thrive and continue to inspire students to become their very best for decades to come.”

Indeed, Mark, AO, George, and Lynn have carefully tended to the Holdens’ “roots,” helping CRMS to grow and blossom each year.

Randy Brown, the Head of School at the time, was pleased to offer Mark a position at CRMS. Later that summer, Mark and his wife, Jeanie, moved to campus.

Mark joined Dutton Foster in team-teaching 10th grade Western Civilization. Mark recalls how inspiring it was to watch Foster teach, think, and interact with the students. Mark explains, “Dutton knew everything about everything. It was such an education in humanity, listening, creativity, and close reading.”

These accolades for Dutton Foster can just as easily be applied to watching Mark teach his 12th grade philosophy students. One of Mark’s

This emphasis on a sincere examination and pursuit of meaning and purpose is, of course, accompanied by Mark’s legendary sense of humor. Dutton Foster describes Mark’s teaching style as including “high voltage energy, explosive laughter, a super-acute BS detection system [and] a boundless love of certain kinds of foolishness.”

One has to imagine that in Mark’s version of Camus’s story, Sisyphus produces a loud guffaw each time he places his shoulder on the boulder or turns to walk down the hill.

Though it was not for another handful of years that AO FORBES began his teaching tenure at CRMS, joining Mark in the History

After leaving CRMS as a student, AO moved to Boulder to complete his undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of Colorado. He remained in Boulder and began teaching first at Fairview High School followed by Casey Middle School. But in the mid-‘80s, AO and his wife, Janice, had an epiphany while sitting over a plate of grits at Two Rivers Café in Basalt. They had just enjoyed a hut trip in the upper Frying Pan Wilderness, not far from the CRMS campus in Carbondale (and the location of many current-day Wilderness Orientation trips), and they realized that they needed more wilderness travel and adventure in their lives.

Chris Babbs, the Head of School at the time, invited AO to join the CRMS faculty, an opportunity for AO to return to Carbondale and combine his passion for teaching with his love of the outdoors.

In 1986, AO took on the 9th grade geography and geology classes at CRMS, later adding 12th grade Geopolitical Studies.

AO explains that his approach to geography has never been about the memorization of facts, figures, or maps, but rather about using geography as a springboard to explore the relationships between humans, resources, values, and actions.

Informed opinions and kind debate rule the day in AO’s classroom. The material in AO’s class matters to his students because he makes the learning personal, urging students to define and refine their notions of global citizenry, asking students to reflect on how they might better align their actions with their values.

In Kayo’s May tribute to AO, he mentioned having sat in on one of these classes. According to Kayo, “AO had his class wrestling with the existential angst that comes with the search for congruence between our values and our actions.

I knew I was watching a master at work watching those classes. I was humbled, awed, floored, and frankly quite intimidated.”

AO insists that the power of the CRMS experience is about connection and relationships. In a time when it’s often easier to connect with a device than another person, AO interprets the Holdens’ founding vision of creating a school as an “antidote to easy modern living” to be about living a life of connection to people and place.

GEORGE WEBER was drawn to Colorado Rocky Mountain School for precisely this sense of connection. George’s first encounter with CRMS was in 1986 when he performed for the student body in the Barn after an invitation from Bob Campbell (then Spanish teacher and kayak coach at CRMS). For the next decade or so, George stopped over at the school on his way to the Telluride Jazz Festival and played with his band, The Medicine Bow Quartet, for the students. He was blown away by the reception he received from the student body, and when a job became available at CRMS in the mid- ‘90s, George was eager to join the school. giving the concert the exuberant feel of an outdoor festival. To mark the return of an in-person Coffee House, George and Lynn sang Bruce Springsteen’s, “Tougher than the Rest,” backed by George’s senior music class. weren’t afraid to try new things, make mistakes, and learn from them.” She models her 2nd and 3rd year silversmith classes in this vein of experiential learning and epiphany through exploration. they know that they can always come in for a hug from her.” As one of Lynn’s student’s put it, “her hugs spread so much warmth in our hearts.”

Thanks to George’s guidance, CRMS concerts have always been a safe venue for students to showcase their developing musicality. If a student struggles on stage, the CRMS audience bolsters the performer with cheers and applause.

Like George, Lynn was eager to join a community that emphasized student creativity and artistry. Photography and silversmithing, of course, require technical knowledge, so Lynn begins by introducing and reinforcing technical skills, but what she relishes most is moving her students to a place of exploration and discovery.

There was no formal music program at the time, so George began teaching a handful of students who had expressed a desire to learn to play the guitar.

The first coffee house was composed mainly of faculty musicians, though George and AO persuaded a few students to join the mix. The Bar Fork tables, draped in white tablecloths and laden with dessert, helped to entice the first audience.

Coffee House gained lightning popularity. The set lists and performers multiplied. The Bar Fork thrummed with concert goers, and so the biannual event was moved to the Barn.

In recent years, COVID restrictions put a damper on these large indoor gatherings, but this past fall, Coffee House made a triumphant return. The event was moved from inside the Barn to outside on the graduation lawn, and from an evening program to the afternoon,

George has shaped this culture. As Lenny recalled during his May tribute to George, “I distinctly remember sitting at the piano bench, frustrated with my inability to play a simple pattern. My eyes were welling up, but just as I felt I was about to burst George paused, smiled, and began clanking away on the piano with his elbows making faces only George could make.

George is somehow the weirdest, coolest, grooviest, dorkiest person I know.”

George has a special knack for polishing nascent talent, a process that can span a student’s four years at the school and culminate at the Senior Music Recital or the final Coffee House of the year just before

If the students are going to take pictures for class on campus, she reminds them, “I’ve seen campus before. I want to see it in a new way!” She encourages the students to pursue subject matter that they care about and to find their voice and their own way in the process.

When Lynn speaks of the power of discovery and collaboration, she references her own experience with silversmithing. Her first year at the helm of the jewelry Hogan, Lynn herself had had just three days of formal silversmithing instruction. She said that the first year was a beautifully collaborative endeavor, “hands on, learning together. We

Lynn notes that when students enter the Hogan for class their phones go into a basket by the door. They break away from their screens and they start using their hands.

A paradigm once again central to advancing the Holdens’ effort to provide an antidote to easy, modern living.

Jennifer’s tribute to Lynn highlighted Lynn’s penchant to tease her students as well as her general magnetism. Jennifer said, “this is Lynn’s super power: drawing students in. And even though she has recently learned the phrase “yo odio los jóvenes” (I hate teenagers), and uses it liberally in front of teenagers, [in reality] Lynn loves teenagers and they know it! They know that her teasing comes out of love and care for them, and

The school’s philosophy states that CRMS “believes in teenagers – their ideas, their opinions, their sense of adventure, and their potential.” This is a belief upheld by each and every teacher at CRMS, but fostered with unique passion and longevity by Lynn, George, AO, and Mark. Though other teachers will be hired in their absence, Lynn, George, AO, and Mark are irreplaceable members of the CRMS community and teaching faculty. They are part of the school’s spirit. They have helped to shape pedagogical practices at CRMS and make it into a community that prioritizes connection and compassion. Their legacy will be feld in the hearts and minds of the many students whom they’ve cared for and taught.

LYNN PULFORD made her way to the Roaring Fork Valley in 1990, moving from Bozeman, Montana. Before joining the CRMS faculty, Lynn was working in CMC’s Carbondale office and teaching photography classes for the college.