CM Summer 2018

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Also in this issue: A Vision of the Future Letters to Our Founder Graduation 2018

Commonwealth School Magazine Spring/Summer 2018

To Build a

BETTER WORLD C H A R L E S M E R R I L L’ S L E G A C Y

The Bright Side of Life A L I S I A YA N I S H E VS KY ’ 1 9

He squats over the stone ledge of a statue in the park, Cheetos and a Redbull by his side.

Fumbles with his old iPhone 4, presses a button on his speaker so feeble the sound might knock it over

Always look on the bright side of life Rocking back and forth, side to side drunkenness or dancing?

Musty blue flannel army green backpack collapsing at the seams poster board and a Sharpie He whistles the tune

Always look on the bright side Bag of Cheetos crinkling, leaves in the wind wheezing, lungs running on exhaustion rocking, rocking swaying, swaying and then he Stops.

Always look Face is taut, wrinkles forming and glasses sinking into tired valleys of skin. No song left for the iPhone to play moves his Redbull crumples his Cheetos slumps onto his side, a half inch of cardboard between graying head and stone, and lays down to rest

Always.

W HY I MA DE IT The Bright Side of Life A L I S I A YA N I S H E VS KY ’ 1 9

S

ometimes, when I’m deeply immersed in a story I’m writing or a passage I’m close reading, I stop and think, why am I doing this? With math and science you can invent useful tools, cure diseases, and build machines, but when someone asks me why I love words so much, I can’t quite give them a reason. I wrote this poem, “The Bright Side of Life,” while sitting on a bench on the Commonwealth Mall. It wasn’t an assignment; I just saw an interesting man sitting by a statue a few feet away from me, and I decided to capture the scene. Rather than let the words flow in my usual lyrical style, I kept it short, making sure that every verb, every line break, every article had a distinct purpose.

Strictly speaking, this poem has no purpose at all, no message to share with the reader. It simply invites you onto that park bench with me and gives you the view that I had. You don’t know whether that man is drunk, on drugs, or just taking a moment to himself on a nice fall day. He’s not branded as pitiful or misunderstood or immoral; he’s just there.

Last year, in Short Story, Ms. Tyson gave us an article arguing that writing makes you a more empathetic person. It didn’t refer to stories with morals or slam poetry with profound messages. No, this article declared that seemingly useless writing about uneventful scenes in the everyday lives of perfectly benign people makes you more empathetic. The author wrote that to make a sentence stronger, you have to make it more specific, which forces you into your character’s head. I saved that article, and I read it every now and then to remind me of the value of my craft. I find it soothing to think that even the tiniest details can have an effect on the reader.

A piece of writing doesn’t have to make a statement to be powerful; it can be an observation of something small, like a strange man playing music in a park.

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FROM THE HEADMASTER

Charles E. Merrill, Jr. with Bill Wharton after he spoke at his last Assembly in 2016.

A

fter Charles Merrill’s passing last November, I reread Charles’s writings; we helped the Merrills put together the memorial service in Back Bay; we hosted for an assembly, Bernat Rosner, an Auschwitz survivor whom Charles, then a 25-year-old soldier, met in Italy, befriended, adopted, and raised in the U.S.; and I attended a memorial service at Thomas Jefferson School in St. Louis, the school Charles helped found over a decade before purchasing 151.

What I learned amazed me. As Polly Chatfield writes in this issue, many of us had only a partial take on the depth and range of Charles’s background and commitments. Hearing from Marian Wright Edelman and Henryk Wozniakowski at the January memorial brought home the reach of his engagement in promoting education and civil rights in this country and freedom of thought and expression in his beloved Poland. Charles served his various causes quietly; he was much more likely to ask you about your thoughts than he was to tell you his. Such modesty was grounded, I think, in his unflinching honesty about the forces he was up against and about his own capacity for addressing them.

Charles’s vision for the Commonwealth School was grounded in his experience of the Second World War—the devastation and misery he witnessed firsthand—and his experience of segregation and repression in the Jim Crow South. Founding Commonwealth was, by his own admission, a gesture toward preservation of civilized values and human decency in the face of forces of cruelty and barbarism.

It was an act that aimed to right in a small way the deep-seated wrongs of his own country’s legacy of racism. Charles sought diversity before that word had any connection to race or class. Though the scale was modest, the effort was sustained by the belief that a small number of exceptionally taught young people could do good well beyond their numbers.

While the faces and challenges have changed (and challenges there are), Charles Merrill’s vision continues to inform our work. Commonwealth remains a school committed to teaching students to read closely, to write cogently, and to think for themselves. It treasures intellectual inquiry, asks its students to consider what deeply matters in the community and in life, and pushes students to learn the depth of their own resources. And Commonwealth remains a school that includes students from communities that have been ignored and left behind. The student profiles in this issue will, we hope, convey a sense of the shape that our new graduates give to that vision.

Bill Wharton Headmaster

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Commonwealth School Magazine

Issue 14 Spring/Summer 2018 Editor Melody Komyerov Design Jeanne Abboud Photography Tia Ann Chapman Melody Komyerov Assistant Editor Sasha Watson ’92 Class Notes Editor Carly Renshaw Contributing Writers Mara Dale Miranda Nolan Sasha Watson Printing Hannaford and Dumas

CM is published twice a year by Commonwealth School, 151 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02116, and distributed without charge to alumni/ae, current and former parents, and other members of the Commonwealth community. Opinions expressed in CM are those of the authors and subjects, and do not necessarily represent the views of the School or its faculty and students.

We welcome your comments and news at info@commschool.org. Letters and notes may be edited for style, length, clarity, and grammar.

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CONTENTS

Commonwealth School Magazine Spring/Summer 2018

Why I Made It The Bright Side of Life

By Alisia Yanishevsky ’19

1

From the Headmaster

2

10

News 4

14

Graduation, Capstone, COMMUN, and More

Letters to Our Founder: Charles Edward Merrill, Jr. 1920–2017

10

Former Commonwealth teachers reflect on one man’s vision and impact

Student Profiles: Iman Ali ’18, Alexander Dalton ’18, Bryca Song-Weiss ’18

20

14

A Vision of the Future: Three Seniors who Bring Charles Merrill’s Ideas to Bear on Today’s Commonwealth

Changing Lives Through Art and Friendship

20

Kyla Toomey and Salvador Jiménez-Flores forge new paths through Commonwealth arts

Remembering Charles

25

Teaching for a Better World, One Human at a Time

CWSAA 38

25

Commonwealth School Alumni/ae Association

Reunions 39 Class Notes

40

In Memoriam

43

On the cover: Portrait of Charles E. Merrill, Jr. circa 1983. Artist unknown.

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Graduation

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NEWS | Of Commonwealth

From left to right: Johnny Saldana ’18, Tristan Edwards ’18, Kevin Fang ’18, Tarang Saluja ’18, and Tony Wang ’19 celebrate graduation for the class of 2018.

Photo: Tia Ann Chapman

2018 O

n the warm, sunlit morning of June 8th, the Commonwealth community gathered inside the Back Bay’s First Church to celebrate graduation for the Class of 2018.

The opening hymn, “O God, Our Help,” was followed by performances by the Commonwealth chorale and chorus, with Joy Ding ’19 and Nevan Suntareja ’20 on accompanying violins, Jonah Covell ’20 on cello, and Darryl Hollister on piano.

After a welcome from Chair of the Board of Trustees, Therese Hendricks, Headmaster Bill Wharton paid tribute to departing teachers Salvador Jiménez-Flores, Alex Lew, and Elena Cruz López. In the Headmaster’s address he spoke about lessons to be drawn from the difference between playful irony and pointed sarcasm. While sarcasm is too often rooted in self-righteous certainty, he argued, irony at its best “can open up space to see our surroundings and others afresh,” helping us to “engage nimbly and creatively with the world.”

“The wider and freer your view,” he said, “the less you take yourself too seriously, the more interesting you and the world will become, and the readier you will be to respond to whatever demands life puts before you.” He noted that this willingness to see ourselves from a distance and to step free of our usual perspective stands at the center of the educational enterprise. Mr. Wharton shared a quote from the school’s founder, Charles Merrill: “It is only by distancing yourself from what you used to take for granted, from the measurement and values of the world you grew up in, that you become free enough to learn anything of importance.”

Johnny Saldana ’18, one of the two senior speakers, followed with an account of his Odyssean voyage through Commonwealth. He spoke of his moment of epiphany after months of struggle, “I realized that slogging through work just to make time for enjoyment would always position the work before my happiness,” he said. “But if I found enjoyment in my work, then I was forcing myself to prioritize my happiness.”

Johnny spoke (with gentle irony) not only of his own transformation from an intimidated, overwhelmed underclassman to a self-proclaimed “weapon of intellectual firepower,” but also of the transformation that took place within his class as a whole. He noted that by the end of junior year, they had grown from a collection of individuals into a true family: “Common experience had cemented us together into something that was greater than the sum of its parts.” He thanked his friends for the journey completed and wished them the best for the new one ahead.

Continued

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Photos: Tia Ann Chapman

NEWS | Of Commonwealth His classmate Bryca Song-Weiss followed with a thoughtful, reflective address. She asserted: “Arguably the most important thing we learn at Commonwealth is how to express ourselves.” She spoke of the ways in which a Commonwealth education cultivates within its students a strong voice and encourages them to express it unabashedly.

Yet, she asked whether we slowed down enough to listen to those who may be quieter. It was a question she came to ask herself in a class in which, as an auditor, she did not play a leading role and in extracurricular pursuits that required her to attend to the needs of those who depended on her.

Bryca exhorted her classmates to be aware of voices that deserve to be heard. “Commonwealth has given us the tools we need to speak efficiently enough to leave space for others, and to really take in what they have to say,” she noted. “There are so many things out there to hear.”

After a performance of a classical Indian raga by senior Tarang Saluja (accompanied by his father, Rajesh), Mr. Wharton called the seniors forward one-by-one to receive their diplomas. The audience then rose to its feet for the closing hymn, “The Spacious Firmament,” and the Commonwealth graduates filed out amid celebratory applause and cheering.

Congratulations, graduates of the Class of 2018.

Clockwise from top left: Emma Connolly, Chiara Tasso, Anissa Dallmann, and Sumin Hong, Noah Powell, Julian Alvarez and Emil Polakiewicz, Noam Bizan, Josh Bernardo and Duncan Lamont, Catherine Brewster, Georgia Adamson, Bill Wharton, Polly Chatfield and Iman Ali.

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CLASS OF 2018 COLLEGES Bates College Boston University Brown University (2) Case Western Reserve University Colby College Columbia University Cornell University Fordham University Georgetown University Haverford College Johns Hopkins University New York University (2) Northeastern University Oberlin College Princeton University Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Swarthmore College (2) Technical University of Munich Tufts University (3) UMASS Amherst Honors University of Chicago (3) University College London University of Oxford Wake Forest University

Photo: Melody Komyerov

NEWS | Of Commonwealth

On April 20th, this year’s Commonwealth students, organized and led by ninth grader Alan Plotz, took to the streets of Boston in protest of gun violence as part of the National School Walkout, which sought to advocate for safety in schools and remember those lost in the Columbine shooting 19 years prior. Many students shared poetry and reflections that touched on the issues of gun violence and race.

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NEWS | Of Commonwealth

current system is composed of an Arduino microcontroller and an electronic compass to drive along a user-selected course. Creating an inertial navigation system from a pile of sensors, duct tape, and hot glue sticks has been a great experience.”

Three Capstone projects have been selected for the 2018-2019 school year. Bridget Corcoran will write a partial narrative history of Holyoke, Massachusetts. Bridget’s sense that “thinking about history

CAPSTONE

Speeds Ahead

T

he Capstone program saw an increase in applicants this year, with eight rising seniors proposing detailed projects for next year’s program. This number is the highest since the program’s inception four years ago and speaks, in part, to the excitement generated among the student body by the work of this year’s three senior Capstone participants, each of whom described his work to the school in May. Jason Vanger presented a project on the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and its relationship to early 20th century analytic philosophy. In the words of Jason’s mentor, English teacher Aaron Kerner, Jason’s research addressed “the question of whether or not this philosopher’s picture of the nature of language qualifies him as a behaviorist—that is, how relevant he takes the exploration and illumination of mental states to be when thinking philosophically about language.” Jason offered the school a primer on analytic philosophy and introduced Wittgenstein’s ideas about language and the self in a way that engaged philosophical neophytes while keeping the philosophers in the audience on their toes. The following week, Alex Dalton presented his study of two novels, The Trial by Franz Kafka and We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, in a paper titled “The Sun Will Go Through Everything: Religious Authority in Zamyatin’s We

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Photo: Google Images

Human papilloma viruses

Photo: Getty Images

and Kafka’s The Trial,” which he completed under the mentorship of English teacher Sasha Watson. As Alex himself noted: “With the erosion of 19th century religious norms that had previously made sense of the universe, a profound spiritual malaise began to bubble up. Kafka tackles this sensation in his novel, depicting one man’s desperate search for meaning in a world that refuses to provide it. We, on the other hand, depicts the manner in which humanity’s thirst for cosmic validation can pave the way for its subjugation.”

Josh Bernardo worked with Physics teacher Chris Barsi to design and build a self-navigating robot. Josh concludes: “After experimenting with several combinations of algorithms and electronics, my

narratively allows me to tell it with more tenderness and emotion” has led to her desire to explore deeply the history of a place close to her own life: “Holyoke is my mother’s hometown, and is full of people who know me, my family, and my history. It seems to live and breathe community. I want to delve deeply into the history that is personally significant.” Sophia Weil and Lizzie McGarry will complete an in-depth study and review of variants of the HPV virus that cause cervical cancer. They were drawn to the subject by both the abundance of research available and broad range of questions they would have to address, including “the cell cycle, viruses, cancer, vaccines, and critical thinking about experimental procedure.”

Finally, Alisia Yanishevsky will read widely and then write a

Photo: Google Images

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Holyoke, Massachusetts

collection of short stories with the aim, as she writes, of “learning how to create a set of seemingly disconnected human voices and compile them into a meaningful piece.”

The school community looks forward to seeing three new projects unfold over the coming academic year.

NEWS | Of Commonwealth

COMMUN

Strikes Again

O

ver 100 eighth-graders arrived at Commonwealth with position papers in hand on April 29, prepared to debate and achieve consensus on major international and, for the first time, intergalactic issues. It was the third Commonwealth Model United Nations Conference (COMMUN), and this year’s effort was led by over forty of our students, headed up by Secretary General Bryca Song-Weiss ’18 and faculty advisor Will Holub-Moorman.

Massachusetts State Senator Will Brownsberger ’74 and headmaster Bill Wharton addressed the crowd of young participants. The middle schoolers then went on to take part in a World Health Organization debate on air quality; the Security Council’s discussion of the South China Sea; and Crisis committees addressing the historical events of the Vietnam War and the Great Northern War, as well as the fictional crisis within the intergalactic authority.

Enthusiastic participants in this last committee, some of whom dressed in fitting futuristic style, debated responses to the ongoing rebellion on Kylok-7, with delegates representing the major autonomous planets and intergalactic companies of a universe built out of ideas from Dune and Blade Runner. Enthusiasm was so high that next year’s conference might require a larger venue than the building at 151 Commonwealth Avenue.

Photos: Melody Komyerov

Top: From left to right, Ella Markianos ’20, Mason Granoff ‘18, and Jake Rast ’20, and Bryca Song-Weiss ’18 in the war room for COMMUN III.

Pamina Falk, “Famine”

Winning

Big

with the Scholastic Awards While Commonwealth students regularly earn awards in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, this year saw an unusual number of our students placing in the national awards. These awardees are selected from among the winners of the regional awards and make up about 1% of the overall participants. This year’s national winners are listed below: n

Nathan Carmichael ’18, Silver Medal in Ceramics & Glass for “Chattered Vases with Blue Glaze”

n

Alex Dalton ’18, Silver Medal in Photography for “Magnifying Orb #1”

n

Pamina Falk ’20, Gold Medal and Best in Grade Award in Film & Animation for “Famine”

n

Ella Markianos ’20, Silver Medal in Short Story for “Saturday Morning”

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Alisia Yanishevsky ’19, Gold Medal in Poetry for “Boston” CM Spring /Summer 2018 9

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LETTERS TO OUR FOUNDER Charles Edward Merrill, Jr. 1920–2017

POLLY CHATFIELD Former English, Renaissance history, and art history teacher Humility is not thinking less of yourself.

It is thinking of yourself less.

—C. S. LEWIS

Charles E. Merrill Jr., founding headmaster of Commonwealth School, poses with sophomore students in 1958.

Photo: Steven Trefonides

M

ost of us at Charles’s memorial service learned more about him that afternoon than we had ever known before. His generosity was so quiet, his modesty so great, his concentration on the things at hand so focused that those who worked daily with him at school had only a partial sense of how large were his interests and how magnificent his aims. When he articulated his educational hopes in The Walled Garden and Letters to a Young Teacher, we found we had breathed them in and made them our own just by working with him and listening to his talks in Chapel and his comments in faculty meetings, or by the occasional quiet moments in his office when we went to him with a question or a piece of happy news.

Charles simply was what he pointed young people toward.

In the first decades of the school’s existence all Commonwealth students had a job caring for the building— emptying waste baskets or cleaning blackboards at day’s end, doing dishes after lunch, dusting the stair railings or the intricate woodwork in the headmaster’s office. Since my office/classroom was on the Dartmouth Street side of the building, I would often see Charles trudging quietly up those “back” stairs at the end of the day with an armful of toilet paper for the third floor girls’ bathroom. Whether that was the job he assigned himself or whether he was afraid that our janitor would neglect the girls’ needs, I don’t know, but that particular sight of him was, to me, a special gift, and I’ve never forgotten it. It seemed all of a piece with his being head of the Board of Trustees at Morehouse College, and our never knowing about it until one Monday morning in the late ’60s when he was not at school and it turned out that the Morehouse students had taken the Board hostage and Charles had missed his plane back to Boston.

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Sometime in the ’70s he gave me one of his small watercolors. The lower part depicts some ruined columns above which are some abstract shapes. Despite the fact that the painting is almost 50 years old, the blues and oranges are still brilliant. I have always believed that there was a certain symbolism in his gift. I believed that the ruined columns were because I taught Latin. He had hated Latin when he was at Deerfield, and no wonder. When he and I were young, Latin consisted of grammar, more grammar, Caesar’s Gallic Wars and Cicero’s Orations Against Catiline—fighting and anger, no poetry, no beauty, no thought. So when he hired me, he told me that he “wanted to stamp out Latin.”

I didn’t really believe him, and went about creating my own Latin curriculum with the autonomy he offered to all his teachers. What the abstract shapes in the painting were meant to imply I have never known, but I have imagined them as his ideas, his thoughts, his dreams in a class that seemed impossible to bear, ideas which were derived from exposure to the very subject he couldn’t stand, an image of the discipline he knew must underlie any life of purpose and accomplishment. The painting hangs in my study as a very special reminder of his humanity, his affection, and his greatness of mind.

made phone calls. I got a huge billboard image to hang on the barn: a segment of that tough guy, The Marlboro Man. I learned how to make energizing announcements. To sound like I was running the show.

And then it was over. The last of the buses disappeared down the road to the lower barn, leaving behind it a silence. For what seemed a poignant moment Charles and I stood there where the buses had been, looking down the road. Then he turned to me: “You have set a new standard for Hancocks,” he said, and shook my hand. It was my turn to go.

It’s that moment of silence that strikes me now. A drama was over: the stage was empty, its actors gone. Charles knew perfectly well that he was the one who had made it all happen. From a certain distance he saw it all, and his genius lay in letting us take up roles and invent our own lines. That’s how Hancock became our Hancock, just as Commonwealth became our school.

In his post-headmaster years, you could see the same sort of drama awaken in Charles himself when he came to make his annual appearance before the whole school, down in the lunchroom at Assembly time. Lately, this wasn’t an easy matter: Charles began to arrive looking worn, bent over, in need of help. Once on stage, however, and introduced––facing Charles Merrill, Jr. at his farm in Hancock, New Hampshire. the kind of audience he’d known so well––an amazing transformation occurred. His presence grew upright, forceful, alert; his voice took hold; his pithy style ERIC DAVIS made difficult thinking seem a challenging game. He stopped talking Former English teacher quite soon, too, to provoke discussion. He spoke, in short, with the authority of the Charles of old. If he sometimes lost track of where was still an enthusiastic novice at Commonwealth––in my third he was in his list of topics, it didn’t matter. Like the rest of us, he was year of teaching, I think––when Charles gave me the job of having a wonderful time. running a Hancock. This terrified me. What I liked most about The finale? Every time, in those last years, the kids sent him off Hancock was playing baseball, and now . . . this thing upon with a standing ovation. me was more like a mob. So much to foresee, so many to mobilize!

A useful panic. I made lists––a way to imagine what had to happen.

Colleagues and older students told me where things were kept. I

I

JUDITH SIPORIN

Former English and art history teacher

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harles distrusted rigid rules that would turn the school into, in his words, “a well-run jail.” Any position he took involved an acute awareness of ambiguities and contradictions. His own character was full of contradictions. His generosity in bestowing a fortune upon many great social causes, the arts, and worthy individuals was legendary. Yet he could be extremely frugal. I recall him on more than one occasion at a restaurant pocketing packages of crackers from the breadbasket. In the 1970s he kept the thermostat so low that in classrooms students huddled together in their puffy down coats and you could see your breath in the air.

He wasn’t really kidding when he said to me when I first embarked upon teaching, “It is better to be feared than loved.” Indeed, in his own classes he could be terrifying when he stopped mid-sentence and, pointing at an unwitting student, put him on the spot to finish it. And yet he spent many hours in one-to-one conversations with

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students about what they had at heart and their aims in life, and many recall his acts of kindness that changed their lives.

He inspired love and devotion in many of us who worked for him. Our wonderful cook, Ila Moore, in her apron would approach Charles at the coffee machine with a huge bowl of whipped cream so that he could have “kaffee mit shlag,” her gesture of love.

When I (just out of college, inexperienced, and tongue-tied) applied in the early 1970s for a job at Commonwealth, Charles unnerved me by looking out of the window during the entire interview. But the way he ran the school was nothing like the averted gaze. Some who knew him well have called him “shy,” but he was a most compelling public speaker. Ironical, anecdotal, imparting wisdom about life’s great questions, his speeches took unpredictable paths and made surprising leaps. Only occasionally, to get his bearings, he glanced at a note in the small red leather book he kept in his pocket. Miraculously in the conclusion all the disparate pieces fit together. Written down, these speeches became mere ghosts—their power depended entirely on his living presence and voice. He was intensely engaged in every aspect of the school, from grand to mundane. How did he manage all his commitments in Mr. Merrill coaches the boys’ the world at large and still make it his business to run his fencing class in 1958, the founding finger over the woodwork to check if the student duster had year of Commonwealth School. shirked his job? After Charles retired, advisors shared the job of writing the letters that accompany each student’s grades Those years of working for Charles were for me a time of tremenand comments—a maximum of eight or nine per advisor can be dous growth, and his influence carried through my entire working quite taxing. But Charles wrote them all himself. As school secretary life.

It is hard to believe that in the forty-three years I taught at (my first job), one of my duties was, along with Ellen Cole, to take Commonwealth, Charles was headmaster for less than a decade. dictation from Charles for most of a Saturday in the silent, empty school. He had tremendous stamina and such vivid recall of each student’s struggles and achievements that in the course of the day he MARY KATE BLUESTEIN composed impromptu over a hundred letters.

Charles used to leave teachers notes of appreciation in their Former English teacher mailboxes from time to time. When I began to teach English these messages banished the feelings of isolation and self-doubt that can harles wrote and spoke in vivid anecdotes and ironic turns overtake a young teacher. He appreciated things that I thought no of phrase. He described himself as “trying to look like an one would ever notice—how did he know about them? Though eraser” in tough classes at Deerfield. He invented two reprejust a few lines usually on a corner torn from a used envelope, these sentative Commonwealth students, Imogene and Ignatz, notes from Charles remain precious. Although he tended to think whose contrasting, often ludicrous behaviors he described with relish, abstractly about literature, favoring philosophical and moral quesin order to illustrate desirable and damnable conduct. He spoke of tions, while I was devoted to the close reading that was the English three tiers of students: “gold kids,” “silver kids,” and “zinc kids.” department’s mission, he had a rare gift for respecting a person with The comical thud of that last category tempered the disapproval it whom he didn’t agree. The freedom he gave me to follow my own conveyed. Like the paraphrase of “No Roller Skating in the Halls”— convictions, even as a novice, seemed like a declaration of faith. He “Don’t be a damn fool”—the briskness of Charles’s admonitions wanted to run a school in which, as he put it, “teachers would grow implied a certain respect for students, who could be counted on to as colleagues and not remain employees.” know what being a damn fool was.

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Photo: Steven Trefonides

“His generosity was so quiet, his modesty so great, his concentration on the things at hand so focused that those who worked daily with him at school had only a partial sense of how large were his interests and how magnificent his aims....

Charles simply was what he pointed young people toward.”

a

VISION

of the future

Three Seniors Bring Charles Merrill’s Ideas to Life

BY MARA DALE Photography by Melody Komyerov

Up until 2016, Charles Merrill came to Commonwealth every year to speak to students at a Thursday all-school assembly.

He loved to describe the founding of the school and especially relished fielding questions from the students. Did he see any differences between them and his original students? Why did he choose the mermaid as the symbol for the school?

Through all of his answers ran Charles’s sustained commitment to his original vision: a school where all kinds of students learn to read, write and think with passion and compassion and to grow into thoughtful, active citizens of the world. That vision lives on in our students—three of whom we profile below.

A Voice of Her Own: Iman Ali

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uiet by nature, Iman Ali ’18 has always been a good listener. But over her four years at Commonwealth, she has found her voice as a poised and ardent activist for diversity, equity, and social justice.

Iman grew up in Malden, the daughter of Ethiopian, Muslim immigrants; she wears the hijab.

Determined to become the first college graduate in her family, Iman heard about Commonwealth through family friends and chose to attend because she felt drawn by its “homey” feeling. She recalls settling happily

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STUDENT PROFILES

In sharing her own experience as a first-generation black hijabi, Iman has worked to bridge what she calls the “empathy gap” between her and other students.

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into our discussion-based classes, feeling “acknowledged and encouraged regardless of whether I was listening or speaking.”

In Melissa Haber’s U.S. History class, Iman “learned a lot from participating in debates, in which I had to take the position of someone I might not agree with.” Similarly, Barb Grant’s Modern East Asia class featured “fascinating, challenging” debates—“for instance, a partner and I had to argue that human rights violations are okay when used against communists.”

Along with the pleasures of classes, though, came challenges. It has always felt important to Iman “to embrace my family’s culture.” Doing so felt natural in Malden, a multicultural town of recent immigrants where “sixty different cultures were represented in my public middle school.” But at Commonwealth, Iman found herself asking, “How do I fit in? How do I see myself in this space? It could feel uncomfortable.”

Gueinah Blaise ’16 encouraged Iman to attend Diversity Committee meetings, where Iman discovered “a space to talk, to find my voice.” She became a regular attendee and quickly stepped into the role of leader.

Another turning point came when Iman attended the Student Diversity Leadership Conference, where she and other high school students from around the country engaged in discussions and workshops focused on identity, cross-cultural communication, and the implementation of social justice practices at their schools.

Iman has devoted herself tirelessly to passing on what she has learned. She has been instrumental in revamping Commonwealth’s annual Diversity Day. As a Boston Mobilization Youth Leader she helped design a workshop on combating Islamophobia. She is a City School Youth Board Representative and has headed up a Community Action Group on education. Iman was awarded a Shining Star Award for her work in the City School’s Environmental Justice Seminar. She received a Princeton Prize and Race Relations Certificate of Accomplishment and was featured in a short video, “Muslim Students in America,” produced by the Teaching Tolerance program of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

On top of all this, Iman has spent hundreds of hours on community service projects inside and outside of Commonwealth.

Iman is a Chatfield Scholar, an honor reserved for students of sterling character and intellect. Along with Tarang Saluja ’18, she serves as a student representative to the Board of Trustees. In that role, she has been a clear-eyed, passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion at the school. (According to Faculty Representative to the Board Sasha Watson, “There’s always a crowd around her after the meetings are over!”)

Grateful for “many mentors,” Iman now feels “equipped with language to discuss issues of social justice and equity.” After the November 2016 election, Iman bravely stood up at recess and read out Facebook posts from family members who feared for her safety in the wake of anti-immigrant sentiment—moved, many classmates finally understood why she works so hard to bring issues of social justice to the fore.

Nearing the end of her senior year, Iman rattles off a list of things learned at Commonwealth. “Research papers and close reading are huge.

I can now write an essay efficiently. I’ve learned it’s okay to be wrong, that you aren’t always, can’t always be, perfect. I’ve learned to advocate for myself, to ask for help, and I am stronger and more resilient than I was.”

In her modesty, Iman fails to mention what we have learned from her. After four years as Iman’s faculty advisor, Audrey Budding appreciatively sums up this remarkable young woman: “Iman combines qualities that we often think of as opposites. She is passionate and reflective, unfailingly gracious and unflinchingly determined, highly competent herself and sympathetic toward human failings. She is one of the most mature people I know—of any age.”

16 CM Spring /Summer 2018

STUDENT PROFILES

Words, Words, Words: Alex Dalton

W

hether read on the page or spoken in the courtroom or on a stage—words fascinate Alex Dalton ’18.

Visiting Commonwealth as a prospective student, Alex was “struck by all of the interesting conversations, in class and out, about things that I wanted for myself: curiosity, obscure or ‘niche’ interests, and a specific kind of passion you get from the location in and integration into the city.” (He wryly notes, too, that having grown up in Marblehead, for “a suburban kid who had been driven everywhere,” taking the train into the city seemed “very attractive.”)

Once enrolled at the school, Alex quickly realized that, given its size, “you’re forced to get to know everyone. You develop friendships that are multifaceted; you can’t withdraw into a single area of interest.” He especially enjoys daily announcements at recess— “the jokes we share and enjoy as an entire community, notices of club meetings. When people make announcements about policy decisions, marches, political responsibility, you gain an awareness that Commonwealth is a privilege and should be wielded to improve the world.”

At Commonwealth, Alex experienced “an expanded willingness to sign up—to join things.”

In tenth grade, he became involved with the MIT Model UN conference. Alex greatly enjoyed the experience: “I love parliamentary procedure!” He has participated every year since then and has won a gavel award. Alex has also been an enthusiastic member of Commonwealth’s mock trial team, relishing “the rhetorical gymnastics involved.” The team competed as part of a special district court committee at Harvard’s Model Congress and went undefeated this year; judges commended its collaborative spirit. Winning, says Alex, felt “immensely satisfying, a direct payoff for all our work.”

Political responsibility matters to Alex, as does “losing a sense of powerlessness.”

Commonwealth classes have provided him with the facts and methods to shore up his convictions. In Audrey Budding’s course Empires and Nationalism, “We are looking at the history of nationalism and ethnic violence through the history of ideas and principles. We can develop fairly sophisticated intellectual responses: What influences how people think in these situations, and by extension, how can we create more positive outcomes by studying these grisly cases?” In Melissa Haber’s Politics and Policy, “We’re gaining tools to confront the political reality in both political and intellectual terms.”

Alex’s engagement doesn’t stop at policy and theory, however. A four-year stalwart in Commonwealth’s theater program, he produced and acted in the senior play, Sam Shepard’s True West—another opportunity to think about nuances of language, to build on Commonwealth’s focus on close

“When people make announcements about policy decisions, marches, political responsibility, you gain an awareness that Commonwealth is a privilege and should be wielded to improve the world.”

CM Spring /Summer 2018 17

reading and what he learned while working with acting teacher Susan Thompson on a production of The Seagull. “We went over how Chekhov uses pauses—every beat has an intention.” And Alex is one of three seniors who completed a Capstone Project.

Exploring Kafka’s The Trial and Zamyatin’s We, two dystopian novels he found “especially interesting in the current political climate,” Alex finished a piece of criticism that “re-contextualizes We and its spiritual siblings as a response to a Kafkan crisis of institutional and individual faith.”

Now graduated, Alex leaves a legacy: two book clubs. His advisor, Melissa Haber, recalls that he approached her his sophomore year to ask how to form a successful book club. “I told him to lower his expectations. He did that, being willing to meet with two, then five, then a growing number” to read and discuss,

among other texts, John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. Not content to limit himself to a single club, Alex founded a second, which meets “in cafes, wherever people are,” to read through plays (Death of a Salesman, A Streetcar Named Desire), poems, short stories, and excerpts of longer works. Key to the experience? Reading aloud: “It helps to have a character in mind and then really get into it. Everyone’s on board, in suspense: ‘Is the salesman gonna die?!’”

Reflecting on how he has changed, Alex says, “Commonwealth feels smaller. I feel that I’ve lived out the experiences that are mine to have here—like closing the last chapter on a good book.” Of course, Alex has not turned the final page on his education: he will embark on his next chapter at the University of Chicago in the fall, where he will likely study political science and policy.

Getting it Done: Bryca Song-Weiss

I

f you want to find Bryca Song-Weiss ’18 at lunchtime, don’t look in the lunchroom, but in one classroom or another, where she will be attending, often heading up, a club meeting. Look for her at recess, and she’ll be front and center in the gym, announcing those meetings, rallying her peers to step up and participate at school and beyond.

In what may be the understatement of the century, Bryca says, “I enjoy accomplishing things.” She entered Commonwealth after three years of homeschooling, drawn by the “exceptional people” she met during visits, as well as the school’s biology sequence, as she hopes to become a doctor. (She laughingly recalls her preconceived notions of what a high school should look like—“even though Commonwealth didn’t really feel like a school to me, I kept wanting to come back.”) The transition from homeschooling to high school proved to be “not as difficult as I’d expected. . . although I was not used to nightly homework!” Bryca dived in with gusto. One example: Bryca completed Spanish through the AP level, then took up Mandarin. She worked intensively the summer after her junior year so that she could move from Mandarin 2 to Mandarin 4. Curious about Arabic after a sophomore history research paper on Islamic scholarship, she studied at the Arabic Summer Academy. And she joined groups: Knitting Cult and Pokemon Club (“quirky”); the newspaper’s editorial team; the debate, math, and science teams; Diversity Committee; and a slew of others. She became a peer counselor her junior year as “an official way of saying here are people to turn to and work with.”

The number of people who turn to Bryca, and work with her, can be dizzying. She, though, keeps track, skillfully shepherding her fellow students in the service of the causes she cares about so deeply: public policy, social justice, and community. Almost eerily organized—as well as tenacious, resourceful, and dedicated—Bryca has played a central role in Model Congress and on Commonwealth’s Model UN team. Building on the vision and work of Allison Stillerman ’16, she has been instrumental in organizing and expanding COMMUN, a Model UN conference for middle-school students

18 CM Spring /Summer 2018

hosted by Commonwealth. For her independent project last January, she devised a system to improve outreach to Boston middle schools to increase participation in COMMUN. This year, Bryca worked with students from nearby Snowden International School in Copley Square; she also recruited nearly a quarter of Commonwealth’s students to participate, earning a commendation from the United Nations Association of Greater Boston for her leadership.

There’s more. Bryca has encouraged girls to join her on Commonwealth’s often boy-heavy debate, math, and science teams. She has been an active, passionate member of the Diversity Committee. And she somehow finds time for extensive community service outside of school, including internships with at the office of State Representative Elizabeth Malia and at City Life/Vida Urbana, a social justice organization that helps working families facing eviction.

A veteran of roughly a dozen conferences over her high school years, Bryca has been an invaluable partner to faculty advisors.

According to Melissa Haber, Bryca’s academic advisor and advisor to Model Congress, “She not only assists teachers with logistics— sign-ups, permission forms—but helps train first-timers, going over position papers and teaching parliamentary procedure and strategies for working within committees.”

Why does Bryca do all that she does? “I enjoy spending time with people, hanging out, accomplishing things together. You just get sucked in—and it’s so cool that everyone comes to meetings and is there because they want to be.” She recalls that as a freshman, she “idolized older kids, seniors.” Now a senior herself, she has “a lot to do with freshmen. It’s exciting to be involved in clubs and to know that they will go on to do great things once I’m in college.” She and other “elders” in the school have purposefully enlisted younger students to succeed them—“especially juniors, so that they overlap with us our final year.” Bryca acknowledges that she feels “a bit sad to think I won’t be here to see what they do. But that’s what makes a successful leader—knowing that clubs will survive when we’re gone and that the trajectory of growth will continue.”

STUDENT PROFILES

The number of people who turn to Bryca, and work with her, can be dizzying. She, though, keeps track, skillfully shepherding her fellow students in the service of the causes she cares about so deeply. . . .

CM Spring /Summer 2018 19

H I S T O RY O F A F R I E N D S H I P

20 CM Spring /Summer 2018

Changing Lives Through Art & FRIENDSHIP Kyla Toomey and Salvador Jiménez-Flores forge new paths through Commonwealth arts

BY SASHA WATSON ’92 Photography by Melody Komyerov

T

he arts at Commonwealth have long drawn a particular kind of creative, inquisitive student to the school, students who can still be found in the fourth and fifth floor art studios during class and their free periods, throwing pots or leaning over a tray of developer in the darkroom. Some are deeply committed to their work and spend Project Week painting in the studio or, as Pamina Falk ’20 recently did, cutting out paper figures of humans and birds to make stunning stop-motion animation. Others spend time in the studios as a way to step back from the inevitable pressures of academic and social life that swirl downstairs. To all of the school’s student artists, the studios offer a space in which to learn and create, to talk and laugh, to play and experiment as they work side by side.

It is the art teachers, of course, who create the space for this work.

Charles Merrill’s commitment to the visual arts meant—and still means—a number of things: each student is required to take at least one art class each year; the community lives amidst art, which hangs on the walls of classrooms, stairways, and halls; and every art teacher is a working artist. To accomplish this, Mr. Merrill set the standard of hiring part-time teachers, full-time artists. Those visual artist-teachers, consistent for so long, have changed in recent years, and the coming years promise even more change.

The arts as lifeblood of the school, however, and the ideal of the working potter, painter, photographer, or printmaker, who both teaches and models the life of the artist, continues.

CM Spring /Summer 2018 21

H I S T O RY O F A F R I E N D S H I P

Kyla Toomey, an accomplished potter, joined Commonwealth’s faculty in the fall of 2016 to teach ceramics. In the past year, she has developed a Sculpture course, enthusiastically received by her students, and next year, she’ll co-teach a course in the Science and Art of Materials with John Wolff, who began teaching chemistry this year. Kyla also brought a new teacher to Commonwealth, Salvador Jiménez-Flores, who taught Drawing and Painting and Printmaking this past year, and who will move on to a tenure-track position at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago next year.

At an assembly in January, Kyla and Salvador presented their work to the school, showing slides of work and describing the ideas and methods behind it. Kyla is gregarious, bubbling over with enthusiasm, responding to and urging on her students and her colleagues amidst jokes and laughter, while Salvador exudes a grounded attention in his quieter instruction. In their assembly, the pair showed slides of pots, sculptures, and paintings, and they also demonstrated the nature of artistic conversation, each referring to the other’s work as they described points of connection and contrast.

Kyla’s introduction to Salvador was a photograph that accompanied his application to be 2015 Artist-in-Residence at Harvard.

Kyla taught in the Ceramics program in Harvard’s Office of the Arts that year, while also working as a consultant to Harvard’s Graduate School of Design faculty. In a recent conversation, Kyla laughed, recalling, “you had these huge dreadlocks!” and the now shorthaired Salvador grinned. It was when Salvador began his residency that, as Kyla says, “Slowly, we got to know each other, the way you do when you work side by side in studios.”

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Photo Courtesy: Salvador Jimenes Flores

Graphite, charcoal, acrylics and gold transfer on paper, 2012.

Kyla’s cups, with their upholstery-like indentations and creases, her stacks of plaid patterned plates, and her bowls, intricately incised with tiny circles, reveal an attention both to the practical object and to its theoretical grounding. At assembly, Kyla spoke of her love affair with the grid, noting artists Sol LeWitt and Eva Hesse as influences, and telling the crowd, “We need grids in our lives to create a sense of structure.” Her work also finds its origins in the crafts associated with the traditionally female domain of home. “I grew up in a small New England town,” she says in a later conversation, “and the reference points in my work are baskets, weaving, quilts.

These patterns are rooted in my childhood and history.” She is most interested in how people interact with the objects they live with dayto-day, and how to invest these objects with greater beauty and energy. Kyla culminated her assembly presentation with images of the settings of her wedding, which took place in a Vermont field in 2013. “I decided to shift the value of the centerpieces from flowers to objects,” she says. “I made planters, plates, and vases that had multiple surface textures and patterns, so that it was the objects that captured guests’ attention rather than the flowers… I did everything I could to activate the space of the table.”

Surprisingly enough for this artist of three-dimensional space, Kyla’s life as an artist began in two dimensions. She took drawing and painting classes for three years of high school, and only in her senior year did she approach clay. “I’d always known I was an artist,” she says when speaking of her first ceramics class, “but when I sat down at the wheel, I knew right away: This is it. It just made sense.” After high school, she attended Alfred University in upstate New York, the top art school for ceramics in the country. There she worked with teachers and students in a foundations program that was rooted in the Bauhaus ideal of investigating unfamiliar materials in order to unlock the potential of those materials and of one’s own work. This is an idea that she brings to her teaching today. In her new Sculpture elective, Kyla presents a variety of materials to students, showing them examples of how others have used materials, and then allowing students to discover the possibilities of wire mesh, plaster, polymers, or alginate (often used to mold teeth at the dentist’s office). With this group of enthusiastic experimenters, she conspired this spring to take over the art cabinets outside the library and to fill them with a cabinet of

curiosities, the varied results of the experimentation with materials that had gone on all year.

Students revel in the process of discovery, and also in developing a relationship to the material world. “Some people can sit down and render beautifully and others can’t,” Kyla says, “but making a lump of clay into a vessel changes the way you relate to the world around you.

Everyone should experience that.”

Salvador, too, works in clay in his sculptural installations, which rely on an interweaving of history and culture to create what he calls “a timeless timeline.” He’s begun recently to describe his work as Rasquache Futurism, a reference to the Mexican artistic movement that emphasizes the use and re-use of everyday objects and that plays on the idea of the “ghetto” from which the word is derived. Salvador’s own collage of influence draws in references to Pre-Columbian art, the history of colonial and post-colonial Mexico, Sun-Ra, African futurism, and contemporary music and comics. Perhaps most central to his work, though, are themes of inclusion and exclusion, and his installations often respond, in direct or indirect ways, to the immigration debates so alive in this country today.

When he was 15, Salvador moved from Jalisco, Mexico, to Chicago. There, as an apprentice in an afterschool program, he took his first art class in photography. He says now that he grabbed onto the medium as a way of attempting to understand the new culture he was immersed

Charles Merrill’s commitment to the visual Arts meant— And still means— A number of things: each student is required to take At least one Art class

Porcelain Canister.

Photo Courtesy: Kyla Toomey

each year; the community lives amidst Art, which hangs on the walls of classrooms, stairways, And halls; And every Art teacher is A working Artist.

in, and he worked to capture the different worlds he saw around him, taking portraits and producing documentary photography.

After graduating from college, he taught mural painting, printmaking, and curatorial classes in those same afterschool programs.

Before moving to Grand Rapids, Michigan, for graduate school, he agreed to teach a mosaic and ceramic mural class. “I had no idea about clay,” says Salvador, adding, to Kyla’s amusement, “I fired it and said, ‘Oh, it shrinks!’”

That mural for Children’s Memorial Hospital of Chicago was, as he says, his “first ceramic interaction,” but it was quickly followed by more. He had already enrolled in an MFA program in drawing at Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, when he made that first mural, but he changed his schedule to include a ceramics elective at the last minute.

As he developed as an artist, Salvador also developed his commitment to working with underserved youth and communities.

During his time in Boston, he has been Artist-in-Residence for both the city of Boston (2016-2017) and the Urbano Project (2016-present), where he has created an ongoing community event called Tortilla Social, which brings people together through food and printmaking in public spaces. “It’s important to me to share knowledge,” he says of this aspect of his work. “This idea of an unbroken chain that gets passed down” is, he says, what motivates him as a teacher.

“I want to tell students that art is more than a picture on the wall, that it can change lives and have an impact on communities, especially in times like these.”

Kyla, too, reflects on the role of history and community in her teaching of ceramics, noting that, “with students, I notice color choices, imagery, how they choose to make the images.

There are consistent threads for everyone and part of teaching for me is helping people identify these things. What are the histories you can look back to and identify so that you can move forward in a more aware way?”

At the end of the assembly that day in January, Kyla and Salvador threw their arms around one another and smiled out at the school, their work and their friendship illuminating the room. It was a demonstration of their own work as artists, of course, but also, in some deeply rooted way, of the idea that Charles Merrill planted for all of us at Commonwealth: that the visual arts should live and breathe among us, should animate and add to our experience of the world, and should light our understanding in provocative and beautiful ways.

CM Spring /Summer 2018 23

Remembering CHARLES

24 CM Spring /Summer 2018

Teaching for a Better World, One Human at a Time

M

CHARLES E. MERRILL, JR. ore than 350 people braved the cold and snowbanks on Saturday, January 6th, to attend the memorial service for Charles E. Merrill, Jr., at Emmanuel

Church in Boston’s Back Bay. The service, officiated by former faculty member and current trustee Polly Chatfield, P’71,’79, included remarks and music that represented the full scope of Charles’s commitments, achievements, and interests. Music ranged from a sing-along of a favorite Hank Williams song, Low and Lonely, to a moving performance of the Polish national anthem, to the Commonwealth Chorale’s rendition of Palestrina’s Sicut Cervus, under the direction of music director David Hodgkins. Speakers included Charles’s children Amy ’64, Catherine, and Paul ’72, Krakow publisher Henryk Wozniakowski, and Marian Wright Edelman, each of whom evoked an aspect of Charles’s life in family, school, politics and writing, and civil rights. Bill Wharton, Headmaster, described the enduring vision and passion with which Charles founded the school. The accounts of Charles’s advocacy for Polish writers and intellectuals in the Soviet era, of his rescue and adoption of a 14-year-old camp survivor after the Second World War, and the ways in which his support and friendship liberated the spirits of Ms. Edelman and others at Spelman and Morehouse Colleges, conveyed the richness and depth of a life well lived. The service was followed by a lively and well-attended reception at Commonwealth School. There, many members of the Commonwealth community continued to share memories of the ways in which Charles Merrill shaped their lives and educations in the rooms of 151 Commonwealth Avenue.

Photography by Tia Ann Chapman CM Spring /Summer 2018 25

A Mentor’s

GIFTS

BY M A RIA N WRIG H T E D E LM A N

C

harles E. Merrill, Jr. died in November at age 97.

A son and heir to the founder of Merrill Lynch, he endowed a scholarship that opened up the whole world to me as a young 18-year-old Black girl from a small segregated South Carolina town—a priceless gift. For the first time in my life, in Europe as a Spelman College Merrill Scholar, I felt what it meant to be free, to explore and savor new places and cultures, and learn that I could comfortably navigate the world and connect with human beings of all races and cultures and faiths. His influence will live on in my children and grandchildren who already are exploring the world and questioning barriers to justice. Equally priceless was his caring friendship, mentorship, and example over the years. I thank him from the bottom of my heart for his commitment to empowering the young and for his modesty and capacity for friendship that lasted a lifetime. I prayed for his peaceful passage, knowing that the many seeds he planted live on in gratitude.

Impressed with the confidence and pride of Morehouse men he’d met in the army, Charles Merrill sought out Morehouse College and Dr. Benjamin E. Mays and eventually chaired Morehouse’s Board of Trustees. His lasting contributions include establishing Merrill Scholarships for a year’s travel and study abroad for Morehouse students which he later, thank goodness, extended to one Spelman student in 1957 and then two in 1958.

I was 18 years old and a sophomore at all women’s Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, when I was summoned to President Albert Manley’s office. I’ll never forget my fear as I wondered what infraction I’d committed, or my elated disbelief at being told I’d been chosen to be one of two Merrill Scholars. This greatest campus honor provided a year of study and travel abroad. I ran back to my dorm in tears to call my Mama to share the exciting news, which spread like wildfire throughout my hometown of Bennettsville, South Carolina.

The first morning I woke up in freedom in a Paris hotel across from the Luxembourg Gardens, I jumped up and down and yelled and pinched myself again and again. Having no one, parent or teacher or chaperone, to prescribe the day was a miracle. That’s how I learned I could travel the world without losing my moral compass or common sense, and not to fear, indeed to enjoy, being alone.

Charles Merrill did not just give a scholarship; he gave himself in long conversations, letters, and visits. He became a lifelong friend whose confidence and expectations I wanted to live up to and reciprocate. I still do. He shared time and Marian Wright Edelman listens advice and books including Orwell’s 1984 and The Road to to the memorial service for Wigan Pier that remain on my bookshelves. He responded Charles E. Merrill, Jr. regularly to my long, excited ramblings during my year abroad. Painfully shy but keenly interested in my youthful

26 CM Spring /Summer 2018

REMEMBERING CHARLES E. MERRILL, JR.

“Charles Merrill did not just give a scholarship; he gave himself in long conversations, letters, and visits.

He became a lifelong friend whose confidence and expectations I wanted to live up to and reciprocate. I still do.” perceptions and experiences, he multiplied his investment in sending students abroad.

After graduating from Spelman, I would visit Charles and Mary Merrill’s home on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, their farm in New Hampshire, and occasionally Commonwealth School. When I was in law school, he visited me in New Haven, treated me to a play and dinner, and came to Mississippi where he applauded my ability not just to try civil rights cases but to competently cook an egg sunny side up for breakfast. He later served on the Children’s Defense Fund’s board and made me as proud as a child by attending every one of my five W.E.B. DuBois lectures at Harvard in the 1980s and coming to hear me in Boston when my book, The Measure of Our Success, was published.

Children and adults never cease needing the approval of our mentors. In opening up the whole world to me–an 18-year-old

Black girl sixty years ago—Charles Merrill also opened it up to my three sons and grandchildren who travel comfortably all over the world today, and recognize the common humanity of God in all peoples, regardless of language, geography, color, ideology, or nationality.

Many ask today whether Black children and youth can benefit from role models and mentors of other races. Of course they can. While children certainly need mentors with whom they can identify personally from common experiences of race, gender, culture, and economic circumstance, they also need to be shown and taught that human values and caring know no racial or gender boundaries; that all people have something to teach and learn; that race and class need not prevent sharing and helping; and that every person is our neighbor and every child our charge. Charles Merrill enabled me to learn these lessons, and I thank him from the bottom of my heart.

Finding A

FAMILY

BY BERNAT ROSNE R

I

was born eighty five years ago in rural Hungary. My family was Jewish. During World War II, in 1944 when I was 12 years old, the Holocaust overwhelmed the Jews of Hungary. On a day in early July 1944, I and the rest of the Jews of my town ended up on the train platform of the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp. The rest of my family, my father, mother, and kid brother, perished in the gas chambers before the day was over. I managed to survive and was liberated by the Americans in early May of 1945.

With the war in Europe over, and with no one to go back to in Hungary, I ended up in a refugee camp in Italy in the town of

Modena. I was alone, just over 13 years old, ragged and hungry.

One day a Jeep drove up, with four GI’s and their duffle bags inside. With sign language, I offered my services as a porter. One of the soldiers smiled and pointed to his bags. After I delivered the bag to his room, the soldier gave me a chocolate bar and we attempted to make conversation. In broken German, I told him about my situation, and he was visibly moved. For the next five days he spent all of his free time with me, taking me to the movies and restaurants, walking and talking with me. Five days after I met him, the soldier was transferred. Shortly thereafter I, too, was moved to a more humane setting in an orphanage in Northern Italy.

CM Spring /Summer 2018 27

“What he did for me and for so many others shows that a single human being can make a difference.”

After the GI was demobilized and returned to the States he wrote me a letter saying that he could not get me out of his mind, and that after talking it over with his wife, he wanted to bring me to the States and to take me into his family. I believe by now you can guess that the name of this American soldier was Charles Merrill.

I believe you will agree that this is a story of much more than

just incredible charity and compassion. It is, of course, both of those things. But it is also that of boundless courage, the courage to take into his home and family a homeless urchin wandering through the wreckage of post-war Europe who could have been a totally damaged human being. What he did for me and for so many others shows that a single human being can make a difference.

The Quality of

MERCY

BY HENRYK WOZ NI AKOWSK I

C

harles Merrill was a legend to me and my siblings when we were children. In 1958, when the window of post-Stalinian thaw opened and passports became available, my father was invited to the United States by the State Department as an independent intellectual from a communist country. It was his first trip abroad after the war, and when he returned he couldn’t stop talking about an unusual American he’d met at some Harvard seminar. What made the man unusual was his fascination with Poland, which he had visited in July 1939, shortly before the war.

Charles Merrill soon appeared in person, first accompanied by his wife, Mary, then by his children, and became a fixture of our life. His visits, his unquenched interest in Polish affairs, witty postcards sent from all over the world, and his unfailing, regular help in times of the worst economic crisis, all gave us the strongest sense of his friendship and support. Later, a six-week language course in Dublin, sponsored by Charles, enabled me to achieve a level of English necessary for my editorial work and essential for my later political activity. My brother owes Charles his chance to study at Harvard Divinity School, which gave him the knowledge and skills he later deployed in creating the Museum of the History of Polish Jews.

In addition to my family’s debts of gratitude towards Charles are the many efforts he undertook on behalf of Polish students whom he supported with scholarships; his generosity towards Lublin Catholic University; his help to private schools; and his aid to Polish artists. Listed among his beneficiaries in the ’50s are Czeslaw Milosz, the future Nobel prize winner, and the Paris publishing house Kultura, at the time the most important center

28 CM Spring /Summer 2018

of Polish culture and political thought outside of Poland.

It has to be said, however, that Charles also owed a lot to Poland and the Poles. For years he started each of his visits with a little ritual, stating how inspirational to him were two of his Polish best friends, the old aristocrat colonel Grocholski and my father. Charles’s book The Journey: Massacre of the Innocents helped me to grasp the nature of this strong friendship between two such different people. Charles pondered the mechanisms behind power and violence, the functioning of totalitarian systems, historical paroxysms and changes, but above all, he was concerned about man ground by the powerful mill of history, his ability to confront reality and to survive in a physical, but primarily in a moral, sense. For Charles, Remigiusz Grocholski and Jacek Wozniakowski became the embodiment of characters who not only survived two totalitarianisms, but who dared to oppose them with a gun or a pen in hand, and when that proved impossible, passed their moral and cultural capital on to those who could still persevere, could still fight, and in some yet unknown, undefined future stood a chance of creating new reality. “Poland has not yet perished as long as we still live…”

Charles loved this beginning of the Polish anthem. According to Charles, “If a nation is to acquire any self-confidence, than it has to build a sense of honor out of respect for truth.” The same applies to individuals. A man must be both open minded and rooted in his culture, for only then he is able to cooperate with others for a good cause.

Democracy was a good cause for Charles Merrill.

He wrote, “democracy starts with the way you act in whatever community you are dropped into.” That is why he believed in small, meaningful projects.

REMEMBERING CHARLES E. MERRILL, JR.

From left to right, Headmaster Bill Wharton, Marian Wright Edelman, Henryk Wozniakowsik, and Bernat Rosner participated at the memorial service for Charles E. Merrill, Jr.

“Yet, I believe that the value he placed at the top of his list, although he seldom or never named it, was mercy—the mercy, which does its best with the full awareness of helplessness.”

“Will they save Poland?” he asked. He saw the risk of big social designs, underpinned by ideology, which too often becomes the instrument of fanaticism and violence. With his attempt to see things as they were, and with his unbiased curiosity about the world, he never succumbed to ideological opium and used to mock left-wing intellectuals who turned a blind eye to crimes committed by Mao or Stalin.

Yet, I believe that the value he placed at the top of his list, although he seldom or never named it, was mercy—the mercy which does its best with the full awareness of helplessness.

My first visit to the U.S. and to Charles Merrill in Boston left me with the memory of his desk strewn with petitions, imploring letters, and cheques that he kept filling and sending to numerous poor people. He admitted that “this level of arbitrary charity is meaningless” but then added that “in a country as callous as ours, where are the alternatives?”

According to Pope Francis “the name of God is mercy.”

So discreet when it came to revealing his own religious convictions, Charles Merrill proved with his whole life that he had a deep knowledge of that name: the name of God.

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A

FATHER’S Journey

BY AMY ME RRI L L ’ 6 4

I

would like to welcome you to Boston’s stormy blast and today’s service in memory of Charles Merrill, teacher, headmaster, World War II veteran, writer, painter, world traveler, father, husband, grandfather, great-grandfather, uncle,

father-in-law.

Dad believed in a person’s potential. He didn’t just believe in you, he’d back up his faith in you with a Commonwealth School education, scholarships, travel opportunities. In a YouTube interview, he speaks about the “narrowness” of his upbringing, and the rest of his life was a struggle to break away from that narrowness, to live in a bigger world that was in keeping with his humanistic commitment to education and creativity.

Dad’s journey to realize his own potential began with his marriage to my mother, Mary Klohr, a proud daughter of Chicago, but there were other milestones: the 1939 trip to Poland; his military service, which began, like that of so many men of his generation, right after Pearl Harbor; his work that same year at a socialist co-operative farm in Mississippi; the chance encounter in 1945 with Bernat Rosner, a Hungarian teenager in a refugee camp in Modena, Italy, that led to Dad’s inviting Bernat to come and join our family in St. Louis; the Fulbright grant that brought him, my mother, and three children to Graz, Austria, in the early 1950s.

Another turning point took place in late 1950s Paris, where we had moved so that Dad could write novels and mingle with French intelligentsia. As he and Catherine were going over a poem, Dad realized that what he really wanted to do was teach.

Dad used to say that he had been completely independent during his twenty-three years of running Commonwealth. From my experience there, from 1959 to 1964, I have concluded that he must have been having a wonderful time. Not only did he run the school, handle admissions, and make college visits, he also taught Bible, U.S. history, and fencing. If a teacher was out, he subbed.

That crash course in Mexican history. Mr. Merrill’s sex ed class.

Dad could teach anything.

After Charles retired from Commonwealth, he wrote, painted, and traveled a lot with my mother, who, freed from her responsibilities was concentrating on her masterpieces, colorful tapestries, many of them inspired by their travels in Central and South America. Both of my parents have taught me that getting older doesn’t mean slowing down. My mother did her best weaving work in her sixties and seventies, and Dad just kept on going.

After my mother died in 1999, Charles found great happiness in his second marriage to Julie Boudreaux, who shared his

30 CM Spring /Summer 2018

passion for Poland. The day after Charles died, peacefully, in their apartment in Nowy Sacz, a cozy place filled with his paintings, from their travels, and many, many happy photos of them objects together, Julie turned to David, Paul, Emma, Meg, and me and said: “We had a lot of fun together.”

David once said that Charles told him that he wanted to live an exciting life. And that’s exactly what he did. Thank you.

Amy Merrill ‘64 at the memorial service for her father, Charles E. Merrill, Jr.

REMEMBERING CHARLES E. MERRILL, JR.

For more photos and remarks from the memorial service visit: commschool.org/ rememberingcharles

BY POLLY CH ATFIELD

I

Polly Chatfield (left) and Catherine Merrill share a moment after the memorial service for Charles E. Merrill, Jr.

n saying goodbye to a good man, both extraordinary and unassuming, I bless you twice, first with the words which the Lord gave to Moses that he might bless the Israelites.

“ The Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, And give you peace.”

And finally with the words Charles used in closing any memorable occasion at school:

“If I am not for myself, who will be?

But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when? Amen.”

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MEMORIES OF CHARLES MERRILL Since his passing last November, Commonwealth graduates around the world have shared memories of Charles Merrill’s impact on their lives.

Here is a sampling of what the Commonwealth community had to say. ;

Mr. Merrill entered my life in the summer of ’64 while I was working at Camp Lakeside near Northampton, Massachusetts with my brother Arthur, who, years older, was already living on the East Coast. I was invited to interview at Commonwealth and I expressed to Mr. Merrill my dissatisfaction with the quality of education I was receiving in Atascadero, a very small town on the central coast of California, where we had moved the year before. At the local high school, I felt more valued for my basketball skills than for the A’s I earned in classes and as one of a few black families residing there, my five siblings and I felt socially isolated. After the interview, Arthur and I left to drive back to Camp Lakeside. About 8:30 that evening, Charles Merrill called to tell my older brother that I was in. Just like that, life changed in an instant, not only for me as it turned out, but also for three brothers, Michael, Mark, and G.A., and my son, Kemit, all of whom matriculated at Commonwealth. The first-rate education rooted in academic rigor, social consciousness, and decency so changed me and my brothers that we actually think of our lives as B.C. (Before Commonwealth) and A.C. (After Commonwealth).

I would later serve as a teacher there for one year before going to medical school, and my brothers (two physicians and an attorney) and I have served on the Board over the years. My friendship with Charles deepened over time, and I saw him fairly often on his visits to Morehouse and Spelman. Mr. Merrill occupies a very special place in our family, and we think and talk of him a lot. My mother in particular felt a tremendous indebtedness to the man who had opened his school to her sons, thus offering wider educational vistas than the family thought possible. She insisted from the time we graduated from high school that we send $10 to Commonwealth every year even though we were financially strapped college students. Our small contributions grew to much more later, but the debt we owe Mr. Merrill and Commonwealth can never truly be retired.

—Charles S. Finch III, ’66

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;

;

I have strived for 40 years to NOT be a zinc kid...

Thank you, Mr. Merrill.

—Conrad Feininger ’77

When I first entered Commonwealth, Charles Merrill seemed like a curiosity. Wearing his customary suits, pacing around his office with his head bowed, or lecturing those assembled in the lunchroom, he set himself apart from the more casual, approachable faculty members.

To enter his darkened office was to cross over into an exalted chamber where mysterious deliberations occurred.

His well-documented reluctance to make eye contact reaffirmed that feeling of distance, but he came alive for me when he sprinkled his U.S. History and Bible class lectures with anecdotes from his days as a soldier driving a truck through France, or other impromptu stories from his time in Europe after the war. Suddenly this odd, even crusty, gentleman would light up, his voice and face growing more antic and animated as he brought a past world to life for me and my classmates.

—Joshua Berlin ’82

; You made me think, you pushed me to think, and I will never forget you.

—Audrey Thornton ’77

Commonwealth School Photo Archive

REMEMBERING CHARLES E. MERRILL, JR.

Charles E. Merrill, Jr., (right) connects with students at his farm in Hancock, New Hampshire.

People ask me, “What was your favorite year from your childhood?” Without hesitation, I answer, “My freshman year at Commonwealth.” When I struggled in my classes, Charles Merrill would talk with me as a mentor to a protégé. Over the years, I learned to appreciate the care and concern he had for me.

That, as well as many other experiences that year at Commonwealth, made me the person I am today. I regret not having sent a letter to him telling how my life forever changed because he took a chance on a 13-year-old kid from Detroit with sagging white socks and a cheap squash racket. I am forever grateful to him.

Thank you, Mr. Merrill.

—Kent Williams ’83

; He changed my life immensely by accepting me into the school and financially supporting my being there.

Coming from a working class neighborhood into a highly privileged school was a major culture shock for me. My eyes were opened to class and to racism while I was there, and I loved that place despite, or perhaps in part because of, all the challenges I encountered there.

It was just 50 years ago this fall that my life was forever changed by the generosity of this man. I am eternally grateful for this experience.

—Liza King ’69

He was one of the greatest persons I have ever known.

—Robert Johnson ’67

; I arrived at Commonwealth in 1979 as a “dexter,” teased in junior high for being curious and interested in school.

I walked in the door and discovered that there were a lot of other kids like me, interested in burrowing into the details of whatever caught our interest. Commonwealth demanded a lot of its students. I paled when Mr. Merrill’s finger pointed my way for an answer in class, or when I had to meet with him each time grades came out. But he brought all of us together, adults and teenagers, into a very tight community where sharp minds could flourish. He gave us leeway to do things like letting me put on a rogue musical revue. I was a mediocre student, but despite my difficulties, Commonwealth and my teachers taught me how to think; how to take apart a puzzle, understand how the pieces worked, and then put it back together again. This was equally true for Hamlet, the Symphony of Psalms, and mitochondria. It was hard work, and not always happy work, but it was important to me both at the time, and also in how it set the stage for me to succeed as a writer, editor, and communicator, once I figured out it was what I wanted to do. Charles Merrill did so much to shape my life and the lives of many others, and I am terribly sad to think that he is no longer in the world.

—Tristan Davies ’83

CM Spring /Summer 2018 33

Photo Courtesy Julie Boudreaux

“He thought deeply, and spoke of ethical responsibility. He let us sleep in the hay in the barn

Photo Courtesy Julie Boudreaux

of his farm in New Hampshire.”

Charles in Leon, Hiszpania, 2013.

When I was a junior at Commonwealth in 2011, Mr. Merrill funded my two-week trip as an exchange student to the school he was affiliated with in Nowy Sacz, Poland.

My relationship with Poland was, and continues to be, complicated: I was raised by a single mother and my absent father was Polish. I retained the language, albeit in a childish format; but the language and the cultural elements I kept hold of were tied up in tangled family history.

Mr. Merrill and his wife, Julie, took a chance on me and fully funded my trip to Poland setting me up with a host family there. This process was facilitated by my adviser, Judith Siporin, and by Mr. Wharton; it was with their help that I met with Mr. Merrill and raised the ghost of an idea: what if I went to Poland? Back then my family history felt particularly agonizing to explain to strangers, and I remember bumbling around for explanations. Mr. Merrill and Julie listened. Without qualifications, they gave me the money. The generosity of the gesture surprised me then, and it occurs to me now that not very many would have been so generous in the face of the complicated relationship with Poland I presented. I went on the trip and learned that I was both more and less Polish than I had thought. But the gesture stayed with me: Mr. Merrill was willing to invest, without thought, in a complicated story, and that was precious to me.

He was kind to me and believed in me and funded much of my education but made me work hard for it, too. At Commonwealth, I found my voice. And I found friends.

Thank you, Mr. Merrill.

—Ann McLellan Lardas ’81

; Like so many others, my life was enriched by knowing Mr. Merrill. In ninth grade I struggled both socially and academically. What the outcome would be was far from clear. One day, Mr. Merrill called me into his office and quietly, awkwardly, took an interest. I began to do better. I wanted to justify his interest and live up to his expectation and his example. When he retired he gave me a small picture that I still have. Years later I was a young doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital and bumped into him in the corridor. I tried to tell him what he meant to me, and that I appreciated the interest he took in me as an obnoxious 15-year-old. I’m not sure he knew who I was. Like an Old Testament god, he was inscrutable and mysterious, but I still think about his example of intellectual and moral clarity. I hope he knew what he meant to so many of us, and that it gave him pleasure.

—David Altshuler ’82

; When we were teenagers, he introduced us to Homer and to the Bible as literature. We read Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. He asked us to imagine a Utopia. He thought deeply, and spoke of ethical responsibility. He let us sleep in the hay in the barn of his farm in New Hampshire. I felt he appreciated the way I thought back then, when I needed intellectual friends so badly. I can hear his voice in my ear.

—Judy Raiffa ’73

—Eva Mooney ’12

;

;

Charles was a complicated guy and I’m lucky to have had his friendship. Even luckier to have had him for a teacher.

I think I took my writing style from him. What an example he was for living a full life!

You might say that Commonwealth gave me access to a different world. This is possible only if someone who already lives there opens a door for you, and Mr. Merrill did this for many of us—with a flourish.

—Patricia Woodruff ’68

—Barbara McDonough Gaski ’73

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REMEMBERING CHARLES E. MERRILL, JR. This is the person who imagined, created, and ran the high school I went to. His hands-on work and wide-ranging philanthropy with so many young people bent the arc in a way that will continue far beyond his passing.

—Nick Nyhart ’73

; It must have been 1980. I was the “Green Dean,” working for the legendary Amherst College Admission Dean, Ed Wall, and intent on embarking on a career in independent schools. I asked my boss about people who might advise me.

He directed me to Mr. Merrill and Commonwealth. What I recall is a conversation in a setting akin to an educational alchemist’s laboratory, a place where something precious was being forged. I recall how Mr. Merrill charmed and inspired me with the requisite answer to my question about the “No roller skating” rule. More than 35 years later, in a career entirely in independent schools, I found myself back on Commonwealth Avenue visiting the school to assess its proposal for a grant from a foundation I lead. I am pleased to say that the spirit of the school Mr. Merrill founded continues to thrive in this walled garden.

—John C. Gulla Executive Director of the Edward E. Ford Foundation

;

The Boston Globe published an article about Charles Merrill after his death, that read, in part: "Life is one defeat after another’ he said in a farewell graduation speech at Commonwealth School. 'The youngest person in this church knows that. But we pick ourselves up, we regroup, we try to learn from our mistakes, we test ourselves and the friends who stand by us...We are always ninth-graders shaking our fist at the silent sky and demanding that life be fair. We do the best we can with the job that has to be done and we have a good time." Well, if ever the influence of Commonwealth on me was in question….

—Zach Beigun ’04

; I grew to appreciate Mr. Merrill rather as I did my own father; he was rarely wrong about anything, even if he was not always pleasantly right. I also became all the more impressed with Commonwealth School, having started a much smaller organization myself and learned about what it takes to create something in this world. Charles Merrill was a man who influenced many of our young lives quite profoundly. Amidst all the trials, tribulations and rewards, he tipped the scales as an impressive person who did a whole lot for a whole lot of people. That is not something I have seen all that often in my almost seventy years.

—Steven Bloomstein ’66

A bit about this wildly interesting man. Charles's act ran counter to many currents of the time: he located the school in the heart of a city, and he determined that it would be coeducational, decidedly intellectual, and committed to including students from underserved communities, particularly African Americans. The problems that Charles targeted in founding Commonwealth—persistent ethnic and socioeconomic discrimination, anti-intellectualism in American public life, and gender inequities—persist today, and Commonwealth remains committed to his vision of making available to young people from all backgrounds an education that will turn out sharp, informed, and generous leaders committed to promoting justice.

Charles celebrates his 97th birthday at Cap-Lumière in New Brunswick, Canada in August 2017.

—Erika Righter ’96

We always believed that the high school years could be the most powerful in defining character and values.

Charles Merrill’s clarity of purpose succeeded in creating positive citizens of the world. They believe in themselves, in what is good, and in their responsibility to make this a better world. Brother Thomas wrote: “We are not really whole until we take on responsibility for others, and for the whole World.” And today’s Commonwealth has well met that amazing challenge and opportunity!

—B.H. Pucker P ’79, GP ’15, ’17

Photo Courtesy Julie Boudreaux

;

CM Spring /Summer 2018 35

“I loved that he shared Hancock

I loved Mr. Merrill. He was gentle and treated me like an adult, with respect and consideration, even though his history class put the fear of God in me. I loved his vision of the school and his anti-disciplinary stance (I had been to a very rigid boarding school before Commonwealth).

I loved that he shared Hancock with us, treating us like a family. I read W.E.B. Du Bois because of him, and am indebted to him for countless other eye-opening intellectual encounters. His respect for Poland has remained with me throughout my life. He showed us humility, dignity, and wisdom, and I always thought of his school not as an institution but as a personal gift.

with us, treating us like a family.

I read W.E.B. Du Bois because of him, and am indebted to him for countless other eye-opening intellectual encounters.”

—Priscilla Hunt ’65

; I went to a small private high school in Boston, founded by this amazing man. When I think about a life well lived I think about the impact he made and the legacy he left.

My high school experience was unique, transformative, and truly special, and Charles Merrill gets a lot of credit for that. Twice a year we traveled as a school to Hancock, New Hampshire and spent the weekend on his farm. Even though he was “retired” by the time I was there, he was a regular sight on campus, and always had time to talk with us and listen. The impact he has had on the world is beyond measure; his legacy is still unfolding as the school continues to educate and shape the next generation. I am deeply grateful.

Photo Courtesy Julie Boudreaux

—Natasha Lee Kolehmainen ’90

I learned integrity during my time at Morehouse College, and as a Merrill Scholarship recipient at Sophia University in Japan. My most significant lesson on integrity centered on how Mr. Merrill managed a Fall Meeting of the Morehouse Board of Trustees in New York, following a pivotal event that took place during the Spring meeting in Atlanta. The College President, Hugh M. Glosser, Sr., decided to skip over the student members’ items on the agenda and adjourn the meeting early to allow Trustees to get to the airport and other scheduled activities. This proposed action stunned Chairman Merrill. After pausing he struck his forehead with an open palm and reminded the Trustees that this was the first gathering of Trustees since the spring student occupation had occurred and that it was imperative that the elected representatives of the student body be allowed to address the Board. Not a single Board member left and the meeting continued until he adjourned it.

—Al-Farabi Ishaq

;

Charles at his home office in Boston in 2001.

In 1969, I received from Morehouse College, a Merrill Scholarship to study in Spain. In April 1970 my father died unexpectedly, and here I was a Merrill Fellow in Europe needing a high-cost airline ticket to return to the U.S. for the funeral. I did what a 20-year-old might have the courage to do: I wrote Mr. Merrill and shared the circumstances with him. Not only did Mr. Merrill cover the cost of the round trip ticket so that I could attend the funeral, but he and I began to exchange several letters concerning my experiences in Europe, including his reflections on his time in Tito’s Yugoslavia and my experiences in Dubrovnik. Mr. Merrill not only gave, but he also shared. It’s easy to give, but it is magnificent to share.

—Dr. William Berry

36 CM Spring /Summer 2018

Photo Courtesy Julie Boudreaux

REMEMBERING CHARLES E. MERRILL, JR.

Charles Merrill (center) with his wife Julie Boudreaux (left) and his granddaughter, Lottie Howard-Merrill (right), at a pro democracy protest in Krakow, Poland, days before his passing in November 2017.

Charles Merrill founded a school that gave me the greatest education I have received in my life. Thank you for all your work, Mr. Merrill. Rest easy.

—Will Sanna ’09

; From his annual Thanksgiving Assemblies, I remember his presence, his insistence on humility and on the need to challenge ourselves continually, his awareness of how much hardship there was in the world, his self-deprecating jokes, and, finally, his rebellious, almost anarchistic, streak.

—Masha Shpolberg ’06

; Mr. Merrill had a real love of Central Europe. He always talked about the imaginary student named Ignatz — a real name in the Austrian school where he taught after the war. He often traveled to Poland and Czechoslovakia and knew many people there. When I told him that I was going to be traveling there on my own as a teenager before the wall came down, he gave me the names of his friends and letters of introduction. I met many wonderful people, some of whom I am friends with to this day, forty years later. I am grateful to him for his encouragement and inspiration.

—Randal Baron ’76

Many of you will remember how Mr. Merrill would point to elicit a response to one of his questions in Bible class; I was so frightened that he would call on me because I was really a shy person then. But he also encouraged, supported, and believed in me before and after I graduated. He gave many of us a chance to find our voices and be heard.

—Elaine Gibson ’72

; Mr. Merrill founded the school I went to and that my mom taught at for forty years; he shaped my family and my intellect in ways that are indescribable. He set a bar of how hard to work, how to cultivate generosity, how to ask moral questions—and say when the answers are unacceptable— and importantly, how to have a thick skin and appreciate irony and a rueful joke. He hired Jonathan Kozol, supported intellectuals including Michael Lomax and Alice Walker, and chaired the board of Morehouse College. Over this last challenging year I have thought so much about the choices he made as he tried to serve his community well. He chose as the school’s symbol the mermaid, the city symbol of Warsaw, and always reminded us: “Poland is not yet lost while we still live.” Indeed. The week before he died, at 97, he joined protests against ascendant right-wingers. Goodbye, CEM; thanks for everything (especially Meg).

—Jen Bluestein ’90

CM Spring /Summer 2018 37

CWSAA

Commonwealth School Alumni/ae Association

FROM THE PRESIDENT

U

pon arriving at Emmanuel Church on January 6 for Charles Merrill’s memorial service, I was a bit nervous and didn’t know what to expect. Attending Commonwealth in the late 2000s, I had only known Mr. Merrill through his annual assemblies at the school. Hearing about his life, work, and philanthropy through the speakers at the memorial, I learned so much about his impact and came to the realization that Commonwealth’s core value of building a strong community was his vision. I was in awe of the stories told about the strong-willed students and emphasis on diversity at the time of the founding of the school, which continued throughout my years as a student and I believe still hold true today.

Furthermore, I was impressed to learn about his influence outside of Commonwealth. In particular, listening to Children’s Defense Fund Founder and President Marian Wright Edelman, who received a Merrill Scholarship while attending Spelman College, I understood that Mr. Merrill’s passion was for more than just education, but for enriching the lives of others and inspiring them to be active members of society. Hearing firsthand how Charles Merrill spread his enthusiasm for education across generations and borders was a powerful experience. It became clear to me throughout the memorial that his definition of education was not limited to what you learn in a classroom between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. Through Hancock, the exchange programs, projects and more, his legacy of teaching young people the importance of being a member of society was clear, both within the School and outside of it.

At Commonwealth, we learn to balance focusing on our individual goals with our contributions to the goals of the community.

From spending hours alone working on a calculus problem to being part of a chain of students passing the clay up to the Ceramics Studio, the School was founded on the importance of teaching the value of both the individual and the collective. This feels extremely relevant to today’s society on a national and global scale. Right

Laura Pedrosa ’10, CWSAA President

now, there is such an emphasis on being an active citizen and the influence one voice can make. Commonwealth instills in its students that you can and should be an active contributor for the greater good of the community. When sitting in a class of eleven students or when planning a meal at Hancock with five other people, it is very difficult to be silent. As students, we were encouraged to speak up and participate in the discussion because we could inspire others, but more importantly, ourselves. This has stayed with me as an alumna, positively impacting my college experience and professional growth.

Finally, congratulations to the Class of 2018 and welcome to the alumni/ae community! You are now all officially members of the Commonwealth School Alumni/ae Association (CWSAA). If you are interested in joining the CWSAA board, which meets four times a year to organize and coordinate the Association’s work, please email Director of Annual Giving and Alumni/ae Relations Carly Renshaw at crenshaw@commschool.org.

Connect With Commonwealth! commschoolalums commonwealthschool commonwealth-school This painting, by Charles Merrill, hangs outside the headmaster’s office.

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Alumni/ae of color reunion from left to right: Jessica Francois ‘10, Armani White ‘10, Sandra Melo ‘10, Laura Pedrosa ‘10, Camille Inge ‘10, Marielena Toro ‘10, Adriel Hsu-Flanders ‘07, Bouchra Danielkebir ‘11, Symone Williams ‘09

Alumni/ae of Color Reunion

REUNIONS

This Spring, over fifty alumni/ae and friends gathered for reunions in Boston. Many graduates from a wide range of classes joined us for the first Alumni/ae of Color Reunion at the school.

10th Reunion—Class of 2008 Back row from left to right: Rebecca Jackman, Guest of Natasha Haradhvala Bailen, Guest of Amelia Bronder-Giroux, Guest of Alexandra Boehmke, Alexandra Boehmke, Gabriel Frieden; Middle row from left to right: Catherine Brewster, Natasha Haradhvala Bailen, Sarah Gulick, Carol Moraff, Guest of Ryan Morrow; Front row from left to right: Meg Short, Alice Kaufman-Cumming and Oliver, Max Ehrman, Ryan Morrow, Amelia Bronder-Giroux Above: Meg Short hugging Rebecca Jackman

5th Reunion—Class of 2013 Above: Helen Mayer, Sam Jiang Back row from left to right: Carin Papendorp, Keller Scholl, Sam Shapiro, Helen Mayer, Jay Husson Front row left to right: Ruth Hanna, Tahmid Rahman, Seth Hanselman, Gabe Seltzer

CM Spring /Summer 2018 39

CLASS NOTES Summer 2018 1964

1966

1968

David Freidel: “My wife, Carolyn, and I are on research leaves in Paris for the spring.

She is in a long-term National Science Foundation (NSF) funded study of immigrant women coping with cancer and the French medical system. I am working on a book and other writing projects. I will go to the site of El Peru-Waka’ in northwestern Petén in May for a short stay in the field as a continuation of a fifteen year project. We vowed to the Guatemalan government that we would indefinitely maintain a science presence in this endangered mature rainforest and we have.

I have turned over directorial responsibilities to the rising generation of professionals, American and Guatemalan, who have trained and researched at the site.

Steven Bloomstein: “I continue my work as president of the Turimiquire Foundation (turimiquire.org) in crisis stricken Venezuela.

Our​mission is to improve public health and education in impoverished rural areas in the northeastern Caribbean state of Sucre​, and ​ we have a very challenging year ahead. In the photo provided, I am with some of our graduating rural high school scholarship students (and several staff) who have come to our internet computer center to enroll online in the state college program. These youngsters walked over an hour down rocky mountain trails and waited for sporadic public transportation to join us here in town. They come from semi-literate families, they want to go to college, and we want to give them every opportunity to do so. I often wish they could have the opportunity of a Commonwealth School education that we all had!”

Rob Goldston: “I am continuing to teach and do research on fusion energy, arms control, and non-proliferation. However this is a terrifying time to be doing this sort of work. The present U.S. Administration seems to have no interest in non-carbon energy sources or international agreements.

My daughters, Jen and Alayne, live in the Boston area and we look forward to moving back to Boston in the future. I look forward to involving myself in Commonwealth when we do. I was saddened by the passing of Mr. Merrill. I reread the handwritten, thoughtful, and kind reports that he sent to my father when I attended. His integrity and moral compass have always inspired me.”

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My favorite pastime is sailing, as it engages all of me: spiritual, intellectual and physical. I recently climbed the rigging to the top of the mast of the Tall Ship Liberty Clipper. Wonderful.”

1971 Chris Havens joined TerraCRG as Managing Director of Office Leasing one year ago and reports that he is doing well there. He also writes: “Brooklyn is changing so fast! My daughter, Hazel (29), got married and moved to Austin, TX, to write video games after turning in an English literature PhD thesis. So goes the world.”

1965 Cynthia Read: “2017 was a year of change in which I crossed two thresholds hard to have imagined in my Commonwealth days. I turned 70. I found a new home in a retirement community 450 miles from the New York area where I had spent most of my adult life; sorted, packed, and sold my house; and moved to near Bangor, Maine, to begin my new life. I am happy to be back in New England and near the ocean and grateful to be in a small, friendly community where I already had good friends. Now, who do I want to become? In the center, I know, are nurturing my artist self (primarily fabric and mixed media) and my spiritual practice, becoming grounded in the natural world around me, and exploring how in this new place I can make a difference in some corner of the world’s suffering.”

On the other hand, I have a wonderful family, including a loving wife, and two boys who have grown up to be menschen. We also have a bright and creative daughter-in-law and two grandsons that are bright lights, not too far away on the horizon in Baltimore. My older son is currently living and working in Western Australia.

1973

Cynthia Read ’65

Lise Fried, Executive Director for the Institute for Community Health, came back to Commonwealth in the fall to serve as a panelist for the 2017 Merrill Series: Obamacare, Trumpcare, Single Payer...What’s Next? She was joined by Alexandra Schweitzer ’70, Health Care Systems Strategist, and Mariana Glusman ’84, President-Elect of Illinois Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The panel was moderated by David Kravitz ’82, Assistant State Solicitor for Massachusetts State Solicitor Maura Healey.

Top: Steven Bloomstein ‘66 with graduating Turimiquire Foundation scholarship students and school staff.

Bottom: Students enrolling in state college program.

1974 Chris Boutourline: “Three years after moving, my wife, Beth Ann Fischberg, and I are still enjoying Portland, Oregon. Portland has a slower pace than Boston with fantastic natural beauty in both city and state. I volunteer at a middle school where I assist with the art program. I read a lot, write, joined a book club, swim, garden (the environment makes it impossible not to have a green thumb). I also play a lot of pool and, last year, won a trip to Las Vegas to play in a national tournament (tied for 31st out of 155).

Apart from some years spent in realty and moving businesses, I primarily worked as a waiter in Boston restaurants (Le Bocage, Il Capriccio, and Hamersley’s Bistro provide the fondest memories). One of my earliest jobs was at the Jazz Workshop/Paul’s Mall Club around the corner from Commonwealth. The club was a musical mainstay during the ’70s Nick Nyhart ’73, Allie Bledsoe ’73, and I still reminisce about the Bob Marley show we saw there with 300 others for $7!”

Tom Loeser presented a solo exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design (January 20-May 20, 2018). The exhibition included more than twenty furniture pieces as well as many new two-dimensional prints.

life-limiting illnesses. She lives in Kennebunk, ME, in a farmhouse built in 1753.

1975

Anne McCabe is happy to announce that she is currently working on a new HBO show, Succession. She is also proud of the editing work she did for Can You Ever Forgive Me?, a Fox Searchlight movie starring Melissa McCarthy. The movie will come out in October 2018.

Rebecca Moore became a grandmother in August 2016 when her daughter welcomed a baby girl, Sylvia Reitzel Moore. Rebecca writes, “Sylvia and her parents live in Middletown, CT, while her uncles live in Seattle and Rome. I feel so lucky when we all get a chance to be together as we did during Thanksgiving 2016.”

1976 Susan Storey Frank works at York Middle School in York, ME, teaching music, drama, and running the musical. She also sings in a hospice singing group, which performs for those at the end of life or dealing with

1978

1979 Susan Shifrin: “I’ve been meaning to send notes for years, but have finally been inspired to do so by the fact that I have been collaborating recently with one of my greatest chums from Commonwealth, Margie Oettinger. I am so grateful to still be in touch with several lifelong friends from high school, and several of them are deeply involved in what I am currently doing professionally.

Continued

CM Spring /Summer 2018 41

C LA SS N OTES

Rebecca Moore ’75 and her family in 2016.

Susan Storey Frank ’76 with her three grandchildren: Olive, 6, April, 3, and Adair Sybil, 1.

ARTZ Philadelphia (artzphilly.org)—the organization I founded in 2013 to provide opportunities for interactions around arts and culture to people living with Alzheimer’s Disease and other dementias—will be in its fifth year in July 2018. It’s been the adventure of a lifetime, scary due to a few exceptionally lean years in the personal and household budget area, but also the most rewarding work of my life. I am living proof that you can remake yourself and change careers in your early 50’s. When my mother was diagnosed with dementia in the early 2000s, I was the epitome of the scared, self-deluding family member who simply can’t deal with the realities of a parent with a dementia diagnosis. Sixteen years later, I am inspired and my life is enriched every day by our program participants, some living with dementia, some who are care partners.”

1981 Jonatha Brooke: “It’s a bit of a whirl here. My husband and I moved to Minneapolis about a year ago and we’re embracing this community.

42 CM Spring /Summer 2018

I have a regular residency at the Dakota Jazz Club, and I just opened my one woman show, My Mother Has 4 Noses at the Jungle Theater in February. I am still working on two other new musicals and I am ever grateful that I still get to do what I love every day.”

1983 Laurence Bouvard appears as Cecile Jabon in the feature film, 7 Days in Entebbe, released in March 2018. She can also be heard as Colonel Adams in Alien: Sea of Sorrows released by Audible Drama in April 2018, and as Detective Jenny Chang in Shape of You: Shadow Man 1. She is currently Chair of the Screen and New Media Committee of Equity UK trade union and has just been made a full member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) for her work in the British film and games industry.

1987 Nick Campbell: “I’m entering my sixth year as a founding partner of Velocity Entertainment partners, a talent management company in Los Angeles representing actors and writers in film, television, theater, and new media. Some of our clients include: Finn Wolfhard (Stranger Things), Eliza Scanlen (to star opposite Amy Adams in the upcoming HBO miniseries adaptation of the novel Sharp Objects), Joe Minoso (Chicago Fire), Violett Beane (The Flash), Danny Pudi (Community), Mousa Kraish (American Gods), Cameron Britton (Mindhunter), Noah Bean (Nikita), Brandon Jones (Pretty Little Liars), and Elle McKinnon (Wonder).

This is not what I thought I’d be doing when I was feverishly studying math and physics at Commonwealth—but it’s turned out pretty well (and I still get to use my math skills in the administration of the company). I also like living in LA—I do not miss Boston winters at all!”

Jeremy Mumford reports that he and his wife Sohini are doing well. Their daughters, Anarkali and Neerja, are five and one and a half, respectively.

1990 Theo Davis, Professor of English at Northeastern University, was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Awarded to only about 175 scholars and artists each year, Guggenheim Fellowships are 6-12 month grants providing Fellows with a dedicated block of time to work with creative freedom within their field of study.

Professor Davis will focus on the connection between language and emotional, mental, and bodily behavior. One of her hopes for the project is to connect literary studies with body-oriented therapies, such as somatics and sensorimotor trauma treatment.

1993

2003 Jack Kotin: “I just started a new position this January as a business data analyst and business strategist for the food delivery operations division of Meituan Dianping in Beijing, and plan to spend the Chinese New Year in Tianjin, Sanya and Haikou. I hope everyone in the Class of 2003 is doing well, and I wish everyone a great Year of the Dog!”

2004 After four years in Mexico, Bree Zucker moved back to New York City to open a project space for the Mexican contemporary art gallery, Kurimanzutto.

2005 Joanna Rifkin lives in Toronto with her partner Matt Dougherty. They are really enjoying Canada, and invite everyone to come visit their awesome new hometown.

Liz Pease: “My little family and I are doing well. Our baby, Jason, joined us a year ago in January 2017, and he and big sister Arianna (3) keep us on our toes. I left my job as Executive Director of the Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society in November 2017, and am now pursuing a freelance writing and editing career. For more information, You can visit my website at lizpease.com. So far, it’s going pretty well, and it’s wonderful to be my own boss—but a bit stressful, as my husband is a freelancer as well (graphic design).”

2008

1994

Russell Weiss-Irwin got married in October of 2017. Daniel Moraff was one of his best men and gave a very “Moraffian” toast at the reception. Russell and his new wife, Shekeima Dockery, moved back to Boston, and now live in Dorchester. Russell is pursuing a masters of education at UMass Boston and plans to make his career teaching ESL in the Boston Public Schools. He spends his free time on political organizing, particularly with the Boston Democratic Socialists of America.

Sonya Del Tredici and Ben Kennedy: “We are doing well in Gettysburg, PA. Our two sons are now nine and twelve years old, and we are happy and busy with work, school, and kids’ activities. We had fun hosting a student (Wesley Curl ’19) for a project week about the Gettysburg Battlefield. It brought back lots of Commonwealth memories. Ben continues as chair of the math department at Gettysburg College, and I am about to have my 10-year anniversary at my practice as a general internist in York, PA.”

In September 2017, UC Berkeley PhD candidate Julea Vlassakis won a $100,000 grant for her work in actin complexes. Her research aims to accurately quantify F- and G-actin in single cells to help with the evaluation of cancer therapies and understanding of underlying disease.

2010

2011

In Memoriam a We are saddened by the loss of two young Commonwealth alumni this year.

Michael Cohen (1989–2018) graduated from Commonwealth in 2008 and went on to earn a degree at Pomona College before moving to China. There, he worked in Chinese companies while also pursuing his love of travel, ultimately visiting twenty-seven countries and making a hobby of advising others on the best and most economical ways to see the world. He returned to the Boston area in 2016, where he worked as a translator. The Commonwealth community mourns his loss.

a Alex Vance (1988–2017) was a student at Commonwealth for one year, before leaving in 2004.

In recent years, he worked as a front-end web developer in Boston and Cambridge, while also writing and performing his own poetry in the local slam poetry scene.

The Commonwealth community offers its deepest condolences to his family.

Caleb Weinreb was part of the team on a major study on cell biology and development at Harvard and the study was featured in both Science and Nature.

CM Spring /Summer 2018 43

Save the Date November 10, 2018 When Charles Merrill founded Commonwealth in 1957, he sought to provide a first-rate education, to create opportunity for students from underrepresented communities, and to do so in the heart of Boston.

To recognize Mr. Merrill’s life-long achievements and to honor all that he envisioned for the School, we are launching

The Power of a Vision: a Campaign for Commonwealth

This campaign will support three essential components of the Commonwealth experience:

The Power of Place recently completed significant renovations to our school building

The Power of Opportunity essential financial aid and student scholarships

The Power of a Teacher competitive compensation and grants for faculty development

We hope you will join us on Saturday, November 10, to launch this important campaign. The event will include master classes with current and former Commonwealth teachers, musical performances from students, and other uniquely Commonwealth activities.

k Details and formal invitation to follow For more information, please contact Alisha Elliott ’01, Director of Development

aelliott@commschool.org 44 CM Spring /Summer 2018

The COMMONWEALTH FUND

Thank you!

We are grateful for our alumni/ae, parents, grandparents, faculty and staff, and friends who contributed to The Commonwealth Fund this year.

Your generosity supported two all-school trips to Hancock, eleven John Hughes Grants for faculty development, student exchange trips to Spain and Peru, and many meaningful opportunities for students and faculty.

Photo of Hancock taken by Adrianna Brusie, ’19

For more information, contact Carly Renshaw, Director of Annual Giving and Alumni/ae Relations 617-266-7525 ext. 291 or crenshaw@commschool.org.

Commonwealth School 151 Commonwealth Avenue Boston, Massachusetts 02116 www.commschool.org

Non-Profit Organization US Postage PAID North Reading, MA Permit No. 211

Class of 2018 Yearbook Dedication

D

Charles Edward Merrill, Jr., 1920-2017

uring our four years at this school, we have all come to realize that Commonwealth is only one among many of Mr. Merrill’s accomplishments. He not only created a place where we have felt at home to develop our own independent sense of justice as we move into the adult world, he also set an example as to what we can all hope to achieve as we begin to make our own way out into the world. —Class of 2018