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THIRTY YEARS OF COEDUCATION
THE FIRST 48: On Being Pioneers, Living With Courage, and Finding Blazers
In the fall of 1991, 48 girls — 16 freshmen, 16 sophomores, and 16 juniors — arrived on The Holy Hill for the first year of coeducation, joining the Old Boys and making history. To celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of that historic day, we reconnected with some of “the First 48” to talk about their past at Episcopal and how the School helped define their future.
Heather Collins ’93
Dr. Heather Collins ’93 learned Episcopal was going coed on a phone call with Adrienne Werner Roughgarden ’93, an elementary school friend whose brother was already at the School. Both Collins and Roughgarden were from Alexandria and attended St. Agnes together, before it became St. Stephen’s and St. Agnes. Collins hung up and started her application. “I’ve always thanked her [Roughgarden] for that.”
The concept of boarding school was a foreign one to Collins, although she was familiar with Episcopal through athletics and social events. “It wasn’t even in my frame of reference,” she said of attending herself. Her mother, a librarian, took a rare day off to take her to the interview, and Collins entered Episcopal that fall as a new junior. “I was pretty much ecstatic that I was going.”
Collins spoke of the initial competition between the Old Boys and the First 48. “There was definitely an adjustment period at the beginning.” She remembered the feeling of being a young woman in a male-dominated world and having to fight for a seat at the table. “There was a little bit of boys against girls at first.” But after that first year of settling in, she was the one girl elected to the Honor Committee, an accomplished track athlete, and a happy, healthy teenager.
The lessons Collins learned as one of the First 48 still define who she is today. “It was the first independent endeavor that I accomplished, and it ingrained a lot of confidence in me.” She learned how to speak up for herself and how to go after what she wants.
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The confidence Collins gained at Episcopal came in handy when she decided to apply to medical school after working as a speech pathologist at the start of her career. Her academic strengths didn’t necessarily lie in the sciences, but her experience at EHS taught her that if she went after something, she could achieve it. She took pre-med courses for two years before going to medical school and is now a pediatrician in D.C., working with acutely ill children.
Over the last two years, Collins has helped significantly with Episcopal’s Black Alumni Network (BAN), a collective of Black alumni whose mission is to support all students and alumni of color. She hopes that her work with the BAN will reinforce to current Black students that they have a big network of support from people who have walked in their shoes.
“We don’t want anyone feeling alone,”Collins stated. She wants students and young alumni of color to know that "there are so many people who've come before you who can serve as mentors."
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Collins spoke of the deep love she has for her time on The Holy Hill, sentiments woman in the world.” she also shares within the Black Alumni Network. She hopes the BAN will “allow Black students and alumni to feel safe in being more vulnerable.” To Collins, the network is about ensuring there is always representation on campus: “We [alumni of color] don’t need to agree on everything, but there’s a collective voice” both on and off campus. “I’m so proud of what we’ve done,” she said.
Callie Gautreaux Killebrew ’95
A native Oregonian, Callie Gautreaux Killebrew ’95 found herself a long way from home when she started at Episcopal. While the School was not entirely unfamiliar, as her grandparents lived in Virginia and her grandfather and uncle both attended EHS, she remembered feeling like “a fish out of water” when she first arrived.
Killebrew had a modest and happy childhood between the backwoods of eastern Oregon and the city of Eugene, where she lived with her mother and three siblings. While the Pacific Northwest had always been home, she felt a yearning for a new experience. “I really wanted to study and play sports and do very traditional things,” she said of her desire to apply to an East Coast boarding school, far from home.
A shy teenager, Killebrew worked to get out of her comfort zone on The Holy Hill. As one of the First 48, she knew there was extra attention on her and her female peers as Episcopal navigated the world of coeducation. “There were a lot of people keeping eyes on me,” she said of the many teachers who checked in and supported her throughout her four years. From social dynamics to socioeconomic differences, “it was definitely a culture shock.”
It was at Episcopal that Killebrew suspected she would be a fluent Spanish speaker as an adult. She threw herself into learning the language with the help of teacher Chris Page.
Her love of Spanish, combined with her passion for volunteerism, would define her career. “I’d always had this interest in working with the Latino community,” she said. For her senior externship, she volunteered at a bilingual preschool in Adams Morgan. “When I look back at my career path, I do think I was enamored with learning Spanish really well.”
After graduating from Episcopal, Killebrew returned to Oregon to attend Lewis & Clark College in Portland, where she majored in international affairs and Hispanic studies. “I knew Oregon was home,” she said of her decision to head back to the Pacific Northwest. She then served in the Peace Corps in Paraguay, attended law school at the University of Oregon, and now works as an immigration attorney in Bend, Ore., where she helps people working to get residency, requesting humanitarian visas, facing deportation, or seeking asylum.
A career in public service wasn’t unexpected for Killebrew. Her mother was a longtime public servant to the state of Oregon, working for Senator Ron Wyden, and Killebrew grew up watching her advocate for underserved communities. Killebrew also credits Episcopal’s commitment to the Honor Code as particularly formative in her career journey. “It took me a while to come around to being a lawyer… but I think it’s hard for anyone to leave Episcopal without a strong sense of the importance of justice and fairness.”
Comer Shuford Wear ’95
Comer Wear comes from a long line of Old Boys, including her grandfather, father, uncles, and brother. Her brother, Alex ’91, graduated the summer before she arrived on campus, and it was mostly a friendly sibling rivalry that ultimately brought her to Episcopal. Her brother didn’t think she would attend, so she lovingly set out to prove him wrong.
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Wear’s legacy status was comforting in some ways: the teachers knew her family; she was familiar with campus; and she had seen firsthand the benefits of getting an Episcopal education. But it also came with a lot of pressure. “I felt a real need to prove that I was there because of me and not because of my family,” Wear remembered.
Wear spoke of the universal challenges of one’s high school years. She knew the attention was on the First 48, but she also felt like every other male student at Episcopal, committed to doing her best to make the most out of high school — despite the unusual circumstances. “It’s such a tough point in your life, no matter where you are. We were just there, surviving, like any other teenager at the time.”
Wear credited the Episcopal faculty for making the transition smooth. After 152 years of exclusively educating boys, Episcopal had to adapt thoughtfully, and doing so wasn’t easy at the beginning. “They were certainly working hard in the background,” she said of the teachers who helped shepherd the First 48 into the School.
“There were so many things that you couldn’t prepare for,” Wear mused. “I remember trying to pack that summer, and the dress code was blazers and skirts below the knee. It wasn’t too far from the ’80s, but to find a blazer for a 14-year-old girl…that was a challenge.”
The effects of coeducation resounded in some surprising ways for Wear over the years. One of her peers signed up for Russian, and a teacher asked more girls to join as there was purposeful interest in creating equitable classrooms across disciplines. Wear and herroommate decided to switch from Spanish, and Wear ultimately went on to minor in Russian at Princeton University.
After working in investment banking, and for the non-profit United Way, Wear eventually made her way back to North Carolina and joined her family-owned company, Century Furniture. She began as a sales representative and now works as the vice president of marketing. In true family tradition, she works for Alex, the same brother who inspired her Episcopal journey.
While the furniture industry has a “lack of female representation in the upper levels of companies,” Wear’s experience forging the path of co-education at Episcopal prepared her for the challenge. She wants her two children to see her working hard and making a difference. “When it gets tough, you don’t throw in the towel,” said Wear of the important lesson she wants to teach them — a lesson she learned as one of Episcopal’s First 48.
We checked in with the rest of the first 48 to ask how they are, where they've been and what they hope the future holds.
WHAT IS YOUR ADVICE TO EPISCOPAL STUDENTS?
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WHAT DO YOU HOPE FOR THE FUTURE AT EHS?
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WHAT WAS THE BEST PART OF BEING ONE OF THE FIRST 48?
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