IN MEMORY
CLASS NOTES
BY DAVID MADEIRA ’84
Sandy Foster pops in and out as do Alec Walsh, Caleb Mason, David Corkery’s wife, Nancy, and Lou Ann Wright. Lou Ann posted sweet pictures of her family and her dogs down in Florida. Sandy Foster seems to be a very dedicated teacher at the Harley School in upstate N.Y. and Sandy has two beautiful twin daughters. ■ Anne Jenkins is still working hard blowing things up in a mine way up in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado and she does not come back to Newport as much as she used to after her mother died last year. Anne told me when she has free time she visits her daughters, Hillary Jenkins ’08 and Abigail Moates ’11, in Oregon where they are both in school. ■ Craig Fitt and Bruce Shostak got in a bad car accident in Nantucket in August and Craig told me it really knocked the wind out of them. Fortunately, they are OK. ■ Our 1973 and 1974 tennis teams were
inducted into the SG Sports Hall of Fame on Nov. 9. Peyton Fleming, Andy Vermilye and I were on those teams playing back-to-back undefeated seasons. Also inducted was Matt Corkery ’73, who many of us know
well. ■ Mary Gooding reported in an email, “Just wanted to let you know that Jerry Kirby was in the social pages of this morning’s Providence Journal. Nice picture of him and his wife, Kim.” ■ The only email from Jerry Kirby this
SPRING 2015
Top to bottom: Ben Eshleman ’74, David Corkery ’74, Nancy Corkery (seated left) and Nancy Eshleman (seated right) share an evening in Maine. / Anne Jenkins ’74 visits her daughters Hillary Moatz ’08 and Abi Moatz ’11 in Eugene, Ore. / Gerry Lauderdale ’74 and his wife, Jo, spend a vacation in Tuscany, Italy. / Doug Dechert ’74 takes in the art at a gallery in New York.
St. George’s is paying its final respects to Lewis Madeira ’39, an alumnus who loved the school with all his heart. He was also one of my heroes, in addition to being my grandfather. It is hard to write honestly about a man I looked up to since birth; my admiration for him only grew as I matured. As a member of the class of 1939, my grandfather came to Newport in the fall of 1932 and his heart never left the campus. I have joked that Pops had three children: my father (who was in the class of ’62), my aunt and the school. While this is a joke, it’s true that St. George’s has his DNA running through it as much as I do. Current students know of my grandfather through his financial support, which made Madeira Hall possible. However, all of us (myself included) have walked by his acts of love for SG and never noticed them. He was the largest donor to Merrick House, and helped to design it (right down to its built-in dressers— something he included in each of his houses), to the weight room (because I complained about our strength program after starting at Penn) and to countless yards of pipes for the school’s plumbing. These are select examples of how he wanted to do what was needed for the school he loved. My favorite gift he gave was the Main Common Room as it shows so much about my grandfather’s personality. As a freshman at SG, I made a comment about
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Editor’s note: On Feb. 21, St. George’s dedicated a chapel memorial stone for Lewis N. Madeira ’39, longtime member of the Board of Trustees, devoted Dragon and one of the school’s most generous benefactors, who died Sept. 14, 2009. Following is a remembrance by Mr. Madeira’s grandson.
how I did not like the decorations in the Common Room to my father and was immediately scolded. “Don’t you know your grandfather gave it?!” Obviously, I didn’t and who would have expected me to realize that the plaque that simply reads: “Given by an Old Boy in honor of his father who went to Middlesex” was referring to the man I knew as Pops? Yet, this vaguely worded plaque was the most public credit he took until Madeira Hall because he gave gifts out of the desire to help instead of for his ego. This is a lesson he learned at St. George’s: Getting the job done is more important than who receives the credit for it. He also learned loyalty at SG. There are countless examples of his dedication to friends and family, but my favorite story was told only once in my presence when we ran into a St. George’s classmate of his. The floodgates opened at this unexpected reunion with an old friend, and he spoke lovingly about a former teacher of theirs who had been captured in Manila’s fall to the Japanese. After MacArthur fulfilled his promise to free the Philippines, my grandfather’s Army unit was responsible for cleaning up the captured island. Somehow he talked his way off duty one day to search out a former SG teacher. The Rev. Alfred Griffiths—who had taught “Sacred Studies” one year at St. George’s from 1935-36 and helped coach the middler football team—had been a Japanese captive. After finding his old teacher, my grandfather brought him back to his camp to be nursed back to health on half my hero’s rations. If I had not seen the tears in his eyes as he told this story, I would assume it was embellished over time but even if slightly exaggerated, this memory speaks to my grandfather’s amazing levels of love and dedication to those who changed his life. We can all reflect upon my grandfather’s love for St. George’s, think of ways it changed us for the better—and maybe even think of our own ways to give back to our old home.
st. george’s school
Lessons from Pops
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