Chronicling A
entries for the Young Poets Competition for D.C. area high school students, sponsored by The Word Works, publisher of my own poetry book, “Nothing Happened” (2010). The following EHS students have been co-winners of the competition over the years: Michelle Gil-Montero ’98, who attended Brown University, received her M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and has just published a volume of poetry, “Attached Houses” (2013); Pilar Andrus ’00, daughter of former chaplain Marc Andrus and his wife, Sheila, who wrote an unforgettable elegy to her piano teacher, Sarah Lisanick, and went on to pursue her B.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Virginia and an M.F.A. in poetry at Indiana University; Will Frazier ’10, who won the Young Poets Prize as a sophomore and again as a senior, and is now in his fourth year at the University of Virginia; and Kathryn Matheson ’14, who won the prize last spring and right now is still improving by leaps and bounds. I can also mention Ted Dodson ’03, whom I did not teach but who has since received an M.F.A. from Brooklyn College and is working as a poet and editor in New York. I plan to invite him to EHS as a visiting writer later this year. A friend suggested that I could cap these reminiscences by taking a walk around Episcopal in my mind’s eye to see what memories different places evoke. I’ll start with the house on the corner of Quaker Lane and Bishop Lane, right opposite the middle gate between Episcopal and the Seminary, where I lived until I was six (so the quip that I still live on the street where I was born is only slightly exaggerated). Occasionally, I could hear muffled roaring from up the Hill long before I understood the clamor of football games or even what the School was. Next, I’ll imagine continuing my walk through the Seminary, where Gail and I used to sneak off bounds for quiet strolls when I was a student, little knowing that The Holy Hill would continue to be at the very center of our lives. Back on campus, I’ll stop outside Centennial Gym, where I leaned to kiss Gail during a break from the Finals Dance in May of 1965, right when Headmaster Richard P. Thomsen happened to walk by. He snapped at us that “This sort of thing just ruins a good evening,” and we giggled as he walked away, for we thought this was precisely what the evening was all about. But let me end with tribute to Dick Thomsen ’30, a great educator who was always very kind to me and could rightly have punished me far more for all the demerits I collected. Instead, he taught me with the simplest statement – “You need to think about whether this is the right school for you” – and then he stepped back to let me decide, for the rest of my life, as it has turned out. Last night, I was working late with the student editors of The Chronicle to finish up the layout for the first Parents Weekend issue in this year of the 175th anniversary of Episcopal High School. The dedication of Townsend Hall is featured, of course, but also it is the 125th anniversary of the very first issue of The Chronicle in November 1888. In the time I have served as faculty advisor, starting in 1997, I have been impressed by the increasing editorial sophistication of the paper, which received a distinct impetus under the editorship of Eamon Coy ’04, son of my friend Peter Coy. I think it is safe to say that we are fulfilling the founding editors’ hope that, “the breadth of our paper will render our School life interesting to those outside the community as well as those within.”
Life at Episcopal High School
BILL HANNUM
FRASER HUBBARD ’68
JOHN WALKER, JR.
God bless The High School that blesses us.
EHS The Magazine of Episcopal High School
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