Hallways Spring 2020

HALLWAYS A PUBLICATION OF THE HARPETH HALL SCHOOL

SPRING 2020

Moonstruck

THE MOON ARRIVES AHEAD OF AN UNLIKELY SPRING

Museum of the Moon P. 34

Distinguished Alumna Award P. 46

Spirit of Service Award P. 48

— PLANNED GIVING —

Leslie Matthews HARPETH HALL FACULTY

Take time on your journey

Leslie Matthews said to her Saturday morning adult yoga class full of Harpeth Hall alumnae, current and retired faculty, and devoted friends. A teacher at Harpeth Hall since 1977, Leslie has a lot of wisdom to share from her own journey. Our second Head of School, Idanelle McMurry, wisely hired Leslie to begin a dance program at Harpeth Hall just as the Center for Arts and Athletics that bears Miss McMurry’s name opened. Over the 43 years of Leslie’s career as an educator, she has helped thousands of students discover their creative talents through dance and find a mind-body connection through yoga.

Leslie’s own foray into dance began at the University of Tennessee where she was a physical education major. One of the class requirements of the major was dance, which she took the fall of her freshman year. Her teacher, Dr. Carolyn Byrum, noticed her physical strength, kinetic energy, and gracefulness and encouraged her to pursue a dance major, which the university was in the process of establishing. This encouragement changed Leslie’s life, and in turn, shaped girls’ lives at Harpeth Hall. A lifelong learner, Leslie retooled her dance skills and gained her 1,000-hour certification in yoga instruction with the support of Head of School Ann Teaff. She then introduced yoga into the physical education curriculum at Harpeth Hall in 2009.

Following two years as a dance teacher at Mayfield High School in Las Cruces, New Mexico and one year with the Nashville Metro Parks dance program in the 1970s, Leslie has made teaching at

Harpeth Hall her life’s work.“There is a strong sense of community at Harpeth Hall that nurtures the faculty and students during difficult as well as good times.

That, combined with teaching in a beautiful environment with brilliant colleagues, makes Harpeth Hall an extraordinary place to teach,” Leslie said. To show her belief in the power of an all girls education at Harpeth Hall, Leslie has joined The Founders Society by including the school in her will. “Since the fall of 1977, I have been given the opportunity to create and develop two programs that bring growth and balance to amazing students that they take beyond the studio doors into their lives. It is important to help the school maintain and continue that growth!”

As your journey on the faculty of Harpeth Hall comes to an end, thank you, Leslie, for faithfully serving each Head of School who followed our founding Head Susan Souby and for channeling your passion for dance and your belief in the power of yoga into decades of Harpeth Hall students.

Thank you also for your wish to see the tradition of educational excellence for girls continue for future generations. Namaste — the light in us honors the light in you.

If you are considering a planned gift to Harpeth Hall, please contact Emily Gianis, Associate Director of Advancement at 615-301-9295 or emily.gianis@harpethhall.org.

CONTENTS

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In This Issue: FEATURES

42

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14

Faculty News Recognition and Announcements

22

Retiring Faculty I’ll Be Seeing You

26

Winterim 2020 47th Year of Winterim

31

Center for Civic Engagement The Importance of Civic Engagement

34

Moonstruck The Moon Arrives Ahead of an Unlikely Spring

42

Distinquished Alumna In Memoriam Anne Dallas Dudley, Ward Seminary

46

Distinguished Alumna Julie Cox Kennon ’83

48

Alumna Spirit of Service Tallu Schuyler Quinn ’98

50

Career Day Eighth Grade Students Learn from Alumnae

48

DEPARTMENTS

16

2

Observations

3

Academics

4

Accolades

6

Around the Hall

16

Athletics

20

Performing Arts

54

Alumnae Events

59

Class Notes

HALLWAYS STAFF Suzannah Green, Editor Lauren Finney, Designer Photographers: Elizabeth Floyd ’09, Peyton Hoge, Michael Strasinger, and Uchida Photography Hallways is published twice a year by The Harpeth Hall School 3801 Hobbs Road, Nashville, TN 37215 HarpethHall.org

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This magazine is printed on FSC certified paper made up of 50% recycled content including 25% post consumer waste.

SPRING 2020

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HEAD OF SCHOOL OBSERVATIONS 2020

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ll schools are given challenges to overcome and mountains to climb throughout their histories. We encounter moments, days, and weeks when we become so focused on the issues at hand that we forget to step back and see the bigger picture. We can safely say that the 2019-2020 school year has catapulted us into seeing the big picture as well as our entire planet in new ways. Our school, our city, and our nation were united with every other school and region across the world as we encountered the same experience and the same foe: COVID-19.

Our mission has never been more vital as we work to solve the many new challenges facing our world. Each day I am reminded that our capacity for learning, ingenuity and creativity is vast. Our students are inspired to learn because they will be the generation digging in and solving these problems with new and creative solutions. As we developed a new way to deliver a Harpeth Hall education in a matter of days, our faculty displayed tremendous flexibility in transitioning almost seamlessly to distance learning. In addition, we have become increasingly appreciative of our school’s early emphasis on technology by launching our one-to-one laptop program over 20 years ago.

Our encounter with the Museum of the Moon this spring was incredibly well timed as it implored us to take a breath before the realization that it would be one of our last experiences on campus this year. Its presence over the Leigh Horton Garden was one of those, perhaps not so subtle, messages reminding us that when we encounter something beautiful and wondrous together, we are moved and connected through the experience. It shouted to all of us to take a step back and savor the wonder of a symbol that has spoken to all cultures across the centuries. Our young scientists, writers, and artists experienced the awe of the moon in their unique way, and we are forever grateful for the gift of that creation by British artist, Luke Jerram, landing on our campus on March, 1, 2020.

We began this school year with a remembrance of the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. During our convocation we harkened to President Kennedy’s resounding words from 1962, when he proclaimed, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, and because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.” Indeed, this message provided a call for courage before we realized the urgency of that call.

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The image on the cover of Hallways will always symbolize a sense of wonder, and it will remain our clarion call to do something hard together.

As we embark on a new decade with energy and strength, our school continues to innovate and create, always moving toward what is better, never satisfied by what has been done. In this new decade, we have determined the best way for our students and teachers to learn alongside each other. By using a framework for learning called a “center”, they will contemplate the global and national issues of today. Our first center being the Center for STEM Education for Girls was the perfect way to begin this platform. It has been successful in bringing STEM education into focus both internally and externally for ten years.

In general, a “Harpeth Hall Center” will build on what has been done and will continue to address priorities in girls’ education today. As our new definition states, these centers will “transcend the scope of a single discipline and engage our students and faculty in research, innovation, and collaboration as they seek solutions to the challenges facing our world.”

In this issue of Hallways, you will encounter our faculty’s excellent work in designing curriculum that transcends the classroom walls through these nascent, yet promising areas of concentration.

Additionally, you will find our commemoration of true bravery and progress 100 years ago, as our alumna, Anne Dallas Dudley, helped bring the women’s right to vote into reality. Finally, we will say good-bye and thank you to five faculty members who will retire after a combined 159 years of teaching our students and former students. They have truly “transmitted our school better, greater, and more beautiful than it was transmitted to them.”

Here’s to the bravery of our students, the innovation of our teachers, and the strength of our school, in the midst of adversity!

Jess Hill Head of School

ACADEMICS

The eight National Merit semifinalists scored in the top one percent of 1.6 million juniors nationwide who took the PSAT in the fall of 2018. Approximately 16,000 National Merit Semifinalists were recognized in the annual National Merit Scholarship Program. Semifinalists are the highest scoring entrants in each state. National Merit Semifinalists in the Class of 2020 are: Katie Dovan, Melissa King, Evy Knouse, Sarah Parks, Meghna Ramaiah, Nisha Ramanna, Ellie Seehorn, and Maggie Sullivan.

Commended Students scored in the top five percent of entrants. About 34,000 students throughout the nation were recognized for their exceptional academic promise.

National Merit Commended Students in the Class of 2020 are: Margaret Bone, Reese Graves, Margaret Kirchner, Ingram Link, Isabel Long, and Alex Massey.

National Merit Scholars

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ourteen students in the Class of 2020 were recognized by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation this fall, eight National Merit Semifinalists and six National Merit Commended Students.

“Congratulations girls! We are so proud of your hard work,� Head of School Jess Hill said in an all-school assembly. She also recognized the faculty and expressed appreciation for their help preparing students to feel confident about their abilities going into the PSAT.

Scholastic Art and Writing Awards

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he Scholastic Art and Writing Awards competitions offer students in grades 7-12 (ages 13 and up) a chance to submit an unlimited number of their creative works for judging at the regional and national levels.

Regional winners are awarded honorable mentions, silver keys, and gold keys, while national winners receive honorable mentions, silver medals, and gold medals.

In 2019, students from across the nation submitted nearly 340,000 works of art and writing to Scholastic Awards. In the art category, a total of 30 Harpeth Hall students were awarded 42 awards: 6 Gold Keys, 10 Silver Keys, and 26 Honorable Mentions.

In writing, 39 Harpeth Hall students were awarded 55 awards: 11 Gold Keys, 17 Silver Keys, and 27 Honorable Mentions. The 6 Gold Key winning art works and the 11 Gold Key winning written works will move forward to the national competition this spring.

We are very proud of our artists and writers who created and submitted their personal works. Congratulations!

Sixty-three Harpeth Hall students were recognized by the regional Scholastic Art Awards and Writing Awards. Five students were recognized in both categories. In total, Harpeth Hall students won 97 awards and were recognized at an all-school assembly in March.

Please see pages 4-5 for highlights of the

award winners’ works. A comprehensive list of award recipients is available at HarpethHall.org SPRING 2020

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ACCOLADES

Kate Miller ’21, On The Hunt, Gold Key

Sarah Hinds ’24, Siblings on the Coast, Silver Key

Ashley Tirrill ’22, Lost in Transition, Photography, Gold Key

Lucy Callen ’25, Swordfish Compass, Silver Key

Katie Dovan ’20, Innocence, Gold Key

Grace Scowden ’20, Inverted, Silver Key

Scholastic Art Highlights

Sabrina Russell ’22, Ambition, Silver Key

Congratulations on your Scholastic Art Awards! The Visual Arts Department is proud of you for having the courage to put your creative work out into the world. Our whole community celebrates you.

— Carmen Noel, Harpeth Hall Visual Arts Department Chair

ART AWARDS

BY CATEGORY Painting Personal Still Life Drawing & Illustration Comic Art Ceramics & Glass Printmaking Photography Digital Art Film & Animation Mixed Media Art Portfolio 4

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9 1 4 1 2 8 8 2 1 3 26

Ava Claire Williams ’21, A Gray Reflection, Honorable Mention Walker McKnight ’20, Runaway Palette, Honorable Mention

Olivia Majors ’23, Foilage In the City, Honorable Mention

ACCOLADES

Scholastic Writing Excerpts rekindle WRITING AWARDS

BY CATEGORY Critical Essays 12 Flash Fiction 1 Novel Writing 1 Humor Writing 1 Journalism 5 Personal Essay & Memoir 9 Poetry 26

even if only for a moment

I jumped up, my palm

a sense of the wholeness of being .

clenched over my mouth

— Gaby Viner ’20 Poem: “Rumination on Being” Honorable Mention

in disbelief.

— Lydia Beachum ’20 Personal Essay: “Roots and Wings”

You were Atlas, and I was the world . . .

The weight you could not bear.

— Ramsey Bottorff ’22 Poem: “The Dreams from Gates of Ivory and Horn” Gold Key

TOTAL NUMBER OF AWARDS

BY GRADE 7th Grade 8th Grade 9th Grade 10th Grade 11th Grade 12th Grade

I have eight siblings!”

3 3 7 16 26 42

The sugar, the oh so sweet and

a mossy bench to

precious crystals that allow the

rest my tired feet. . . a

treat to heal the soul. A little sugar

symbol of a world bigger

never hurt anyone. It fixes pain.

than myself.

— Sabrina Chandra ’21 Poem: “Grandma’s Fruitcake”

— Sophia Baldwi ’25 Poem: “Haven”

The thing about those creeper vines is that we all hate them . . .You can take those rusty, heavyduty garden cutters and behead all of them and tear their resistant carcasses off your wall, but those suckers will rise from the grave like they made a deal with the devil.

— Nora Wang ’21 Humor Essay: “Ode to Creepers”

She was — The antithesis of Peter-Pan A tattered blankie Sewn to her stubby hand With an insufferable urge To fly into adulthood.

— Keona Dordor ’20 Poem: “Her Evolution” Gold Key

Social media has allowed thousands to share and promote the ongoing fight for racial justice, and will only make a greater impact as technology advances.

— Lily Wilmoth ’20 Critical Essay: “Social Media, Police Brutality, and Racial Profiling” Silver Key SPRING 2020

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AROUND THE HALL

Southern Word Residency Week

BY EMY NOEL SANDERSON ’98, UPPER SCHOOL ENGLISH TEACHER

Last September, sophomores were immersed in poetry during the annual Southern Word Residency Week at Harpeth Hall.

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outhern Word is a Nashville-based spoken word program that offers creative solutions for youth to build literacy and presentation skills, reconnect to their education and to their lives, and act as leaders in the improvement of their communities.

Spoken word poetry is unique because it is written to be performed, much like a conversation with an audience, connecting personal experience to the human experience. Through spoken word, students choose each word, follow a metaphor, experiment with structure, and engage their listeners in exactly the ways they choose. They are refining the skills of writing as much as they are asserting their voices.

The courage the Southern Word poets ask Harpeth Hall students to find mirrors the confidence we hope to build in our girls. Finding our voices through sharing stories that are uniquely ours is a tremendous exercise in building character, and spoken word poetry proves to be a powerful medium for our students, year after year.

Each Fall, Southern Word conducts a week-long residency at Harpeth Hall primarily in sophomore English classes. Each class meets with the poets for two full blocks — the first for drafting short pieces of writing for a variety of prompts, and the second for meshing them into

a single, cohesive piece. As writers, the students often find that returning to a work after time away allows them to see it with the “fresh” perspective the poets encourage them to find. As editors, the girls are pushed to think critically through keen observation, stylistic choices, and understanding their audience.

The culmination of this residency is a poetry slam open to all Upper School students and faculty. Here, student poets become performers, discovering untapped ease with public speaking in a supportive, creative venue and hidden confidence in their work.

In the five years of Southern Word’s residency at Harpeth Hall, Haviland Whiting ’20 won the distinction of Nashville’s Youth Poet Laureate, an honor awarded by Southern Word and Nashville’s Mayor. Carter Hyde ’20 and Bucky Fuchs ’18 were also named semi-finalists for the honor.

To join Southern Word’s effort building literacy and a

young writer community around the city, go to www.southernword.org or reach out to benjamin@southernword.org.

Student Artist Reinvents Junior Lobby

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xtending the popularity of murals in Nashville to the halls of Harpeth Hall, Senior Camryn Lesh created a large art installation on the walls of the Junior Lobby. During Winterim, Camryn participated in an independent study under artist, alumna, and this year’s Carell Artist in Residence, Tess Erlenborn Davies ’10. The result of her study is a triptych mural, inspired

by Harpeth Hall students and created with the assistance of the sixth grade. Camryn devoted more than 105 hours to the creation of the mural and the result is an outstanding, unique piece of art for students to see and be inspired by every day.

ARTIST STATEMENT:

That Girl with Blue Hair, Camryn Lesh, 2020, 49.5 x 97.75, Acrylic on Canvas In this triptych, artist Camryn Lesh expresses the connection between the analytical and artistic sides of the brain while addressing how these sides can play into the way society views women.

Camryn uses the contrast of geometric and organic lines to represent the left and right sides of the brain. The blue hair creates an easy flow between the three panels, showing the simplicity of the relationship between the arts and sciences. This work was a collaboration with local artist Tess Davies and the Harpeth Hall sixth grade. Shapes were designed by the sixth graders and laser cut. These shapes inspired by geometry and biology further demonstrate the sciences and the arts.

The purpose of this composition is to address connectivity and draw parallels between dualities.

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7th Grade Bridge Project

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eventh grade students became engineers for the annual “Bridge Project” at Harpeth Hall. This exciting and highly anticipated project asks students to explore their creativity and apply scientific principles. Middle School Science Teacher, Elsa Davids, shared an overview of the unit: The seventh grade bridge project is our first major foray into engineering. In our class, we like to say that we have been “hired” to build a bridge for the town of “Needabridge.”

We conduct research about bridge history and bridge types, and we follow the engineering design process throughout the project. Additionally, students must consider the town’s needs and maintain a budget as they design their initial bridge in a 3D software called Tinkercad.

The girls test their bridges until they break, and then analyze and rebuild their bridges using their new knowledge. The hands-on bridge project provides the girls with opportunities to think like engineers and to develop a deep understanding of force and cooperative exploration.

— Elsa Davids

Lego League Robotics

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arpeth Hall’s Lego League Robotics teams had winning performances at the State Robotics Competition. The girls demonstrated an ability to communicate their research, program effectively, and have fun! The Robotics team was awarded the Inspiration Core Values Award. This award is given to a team that is “empowered by their Lego League experience and demonstrates extraordinary enthusiasm and spirit.”

Both teams embodied the spirit of Lego League in their actions and teamwork.

Congratulations to our teams, our first-year Robotics Coach, Ms. Elsa Davids, and veteran Coach, Dr. Stephanie Zeiger.

HH Robotics Team: Tara Howard, Ashley Maliakal, Brenna Paisley, Kate Linley, Kate Franklin, Lily Anne Thompson, Sari Shaffer, Fields Livingston and Elizabeth Lefler HH Coding Bears: Michelle Ikejiani, Sophia Baldwin, Natalie DiMaria, Grace Kingree, Jenna Peterson, Libby Coltea, Britton Staley, and Annabelle Thomas SPRING 2020

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AROUND THE THE HALLHALL AROUND

In the Footsteps of Anne Dallas Dudley

As

we near the centennial anniversary of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment this summer, Harpeth Hall students are learning more about the role our state and our city played in the women’s suffrage movement. The 7th grade class researched the story of Anne Dallas Dudley, Ward Seminary graduate, and our Distinguished Alumna In Memoriam featured on page 42.

The 7th grade project began with a review of secondary sources related to Anne Dallas Dudley. Students used this information to identify topics related to suffrage and to Anne Dudley’s life that they thought were significant to history. These topics were then divided and researched by individual students who used sources collected by a team of classroom and library teachers. Finally, the research was pooled together and used by teams of students to create items for the Middle School display case and an impressive online “Story Map” site that artfully pulls together their research with a sitemap and visuals.

To celebrate the completion of their research project, the Class of 2025 visited the Tennessee State Museum and traveled to sites in Nashville that were central to Anne Dudley’s story, including the State Capitol building, Hermitage Hotel, and the suffrage statue at Centennial Park.

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AROUND THE HALL

This museum and memorial served as a natural culmination of what we have discussed in the contemporary issues class. Being able to interact with the exhibits in the museum and to see personal stories of those affected emphasized the impact on individuals during these stages of Civil Rights history in America. The experience has empowered me to look more into our justice system and continue to follow the work of the Equal

”

Justice Initiative.

— JANET BRIGGS ’21

Global Contemporary Issues: Trip to Montgomery

The

Upper School Global Contemporary Issues class is an elective taught by beloved teacher, Mr. Tony Springman. The class is designed to provide students with the historical context and intellectual framework to better understand the world in which they live. Students link past events to current policy decisions that affect them today as well as in the future.

To further explore these topics, Mr. Springman and fifteen students

traveled to Montgomery, Alabama this past fall to visit some of the historic landmarks of the Civil Rights Movement. Through trips to The Legacy Museum, that displays the history of slavery and racism in America, and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, commemorating the victims of lynching in the United States, students spent a day immersed in some of the topics they studied in class.

SPRING 2020

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AROUND THE HALL

SUNDAY ON SOUBY

HALLOWEEN CARNIVAL

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GRANDPARENTS AND SPECIAL FRIENDS OPEN HOUSE

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MOTHER DAUGHTER SPECIAL FRIEND COFFEE

ove and gratitude were the themes of the day at the annual Upper School Mother Daughter Special Friend Coffee and assembly. Student speakers shared touching and humorous stories about their mothers, as well as poetry penned in honor of their moms. The keynote speaker was Dr. Nancy Graves Beveridge, Class of 1980, parent of two Harpeth Hall graduates, Betsy ’03 and Glory ’08, and former Harpeth Hall Board Chair and current Honorary Trustee.

Dr. Beveridge is a respected pediatrician who has supported countless families in the Nashville community while raising her four children — her two daughters, along with her sons, Stockton and Henry. Please visit our website for the news story and video of her speech.

“We are genetically programmed to take care of one another and honestly that idea is no better illustrated than in the relationship that happens between parents and children, and specifically today, mothers and daughters.” — Dr. Nancy Graves Beveridge, Class of 1980

“Everlasting Love”

by Taylor Nesbit, Class of 2022

She smiles Brighter than the gym lights Her face a ray of pride A constant In my always changing life Forever by my side Forever there to catch me when I fall And cheering me on When I get back up Her scent of picnics in fields of flowers Envelops me in a comforting hug Home.

SPRING 2020

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AROUND THE HALL

MLK Day of Service

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large group of Harpeth Hall community volunteers came together in January for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service. Joining forces with the Nashville Diaper Connection, a local nonprofit that strives to ensure every baby in Davidson County has enough diapers to stay clean, dry, and healthy, Harpeth Hall students, MBA students, parents, siblings, faculty, staff, and alumnae assembled emergency diaper kits. The completed kits contained more than 38,000 diapers, which means the families of 760 babies in Nashville will receive a month’s supply of diapers.

Thank you to all who served!

George Washington Day

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CELEBRATION

he George Washington Day Celebration at Harpeth Hall is a long-held tradition that dates back more than 100 years to Ward-Belmont, Harpeth Hall’s predecessor school. When the tradition was renewed at Harpeth Hall in 1954, freshman girls were the main participants. This year, the George Washington Day Celebration was performed in the Athletic and Wellness Center by the Class of 2025 prior to President’s Day. The seventh grade students presented the patriotic tableau depicting soldiers crossing the Delaware River among other scenes. Students were cast as soldiers, sailors, or guests at the birthday celebration.

The eighth graders, Class of 2024, selected as George and Martha Washington were Josey Beavers and Mason Hart, respectively.

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Special thanks to Middle School Music Teacher, Matthew Pyles, as Director of the performance, and thanks to Director of the Middle School, Judi O’Brien, and the many other teachers, parents, facilities team members, and others who made the morning a success.

ASSEMBLY SPEAKER

SERIES

FRANCES CUTLER HAHN

In September, Holocaust survivor, Frances Cutler Hahn, shared with students the story of her harrowing childhood. She was born in Paris in 1938 as “Fanny” Lindenberg Kahane.

Her parents made the agonizing decision to put her in a children’s home in Paris to keep her safe after the Nazis invaded Paris in 1940. Her story spans moving to live with a Catholic family on a farm in the French countryside; her mother’s deportation and murder in an Auschwitz concentration camp; her father’s injury in battle with the French Resistance; and her difficult transition to America at ten years of age to live with distant relatives she did not know, and who spoke a different language.

Frances Hahn grew up in Pennsylvania, married, had a daughter, and eventually moved to Nashville to be closer to her daughter. She joined a Holocaust Child Survivors’ Group and together they published a book, Children Who Survived the Final Solution,

edited by Peter Tarjan.

Her story is included in the book. The opportunity to hear Frances Hahn’s first-hand account of her experience as a Holocaust survivor is a gift to our Harpeth Hall students that the next generation will not hear in person. ____________________ Each year, the Harpeth Hall community celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month by educating students in a variety of ways about Hispanic heritage, culture, and Nashville’s Hispanic community. The assembly guest speaker was Juliana Ospina Cano, Executive Director of Conexión Américas, the leading Latino-serving non-profit in Tennessee whose mission is “to build a welcoming community and create opportunities where Latino families can belong, contribute, and succeed.” Juliana immigrated to the United States from Colombia when she was fifteen. She shared her path through high school, college, and into her career which led

Harpeth Hall hosted a variety of leaders and role models on campus this school year who shared their unique stories and gifts.

ELAINE WEISS

her to Washington, D.C. and eventually Nashville.

“I didn’t know how completely my life would change,” she said of her experience moving to the United States. ____________________ As we near the centennial anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment, Harpeth Hall was honored to host award-winning author, Elaine Weiss, in October. Weiss’s recent book The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote has been hailed as a “riveting, nail-biting political thriller” with powerful parallels to today’s politics.

The Woman’s Hour chronicles the dramatic weeks in the summer of 1920 as Tennessee lawmakers determined whether to ratify the

DEBBY IRVING

amendment. Students also heard about leading suffragists in Nashville and from Tennessee—“Some of the leading Tennessee suffragists were once sitting where you are sitting today. Your city played a very important role in winning the right to vote for all American women.”

She also connected female suffragists and male allies with our predecessor schools—Ward Seminary and Ward-Belmont. ____________________ In January, Harpeth Hall celebrated Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in an all-school assembly that included a special speaker.

Debby Irving, author of Waking Up White, and Finding Myself in the Story of Race, offered fresh perspective on bias, stereotypes, belief systems, optimism, and tolerance.

As a racial justice educator and public speaker, as well as a community leader and classroom teacher for 25 years, Debby Irving “grappled with racial injustice without understanding racism as

DR. SHREE WALKER

a systemic issue or her own whiteness as an obstacle to it,” according to her book.

Her presentation, “I’m A Good Person! Isn’t That Enough?” was shared not only with faculty and students, but also in a separate evening event for the community. ____________________ To honor and celebrate Black History Month, Harpeth Hall invited Dr. Shree Walker, Director of Section 504 and Special Populations for Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools and an Adjunct Professor of Education at Belmont University, to share how she persevered through her challenging childhood in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California.

She eventually moved to Nashville, Tennessee after being accepted to Fisk University. Dr. Walker is the author of Resilient Walker, a powerful memoir about her refusal to be a victim of circumstance and living through and overcoming trauma.

JULIANA OSPINA CANO SPRING 2020

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FACULTY NEWS

BARBARA BELL DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR STEM EDUCATION FOR GIRLS

Veteran Vision: Barbara Bell uses knowledge gained in a 28-year Navy career to help launch girls into STEM disciplines.

Reprinted with permission from Vanderbilt Magazine Written by Jan Read, Photo by Susan Urmy

As director of the Center for STEM Education for Girls at Harpeth Hall School in Nashville, retired Navy Capt. Barbara Bell, Ed.D. ’18, wants to give girls the confidence and knowledge to excel in technical careers long dominated by men.

A 28-year veteran and one of the first women graduates of both the U.S. Naval Academy and the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School, Bell is uniquely positioned to deliver on that promise.

“My goal is for girls to know that they are good at math and science, that they can code, and that they can learn the engineering design process and employ it to design a project,” she says. Bell recently led the STEM Summer Institute programs at Harpeth Hall for middleand high-school girls from across Nashville, allowing them the hands-on experience to do just that.

Undaunted, Bell was accepted as the only woman in her class and graduated in the top three. She later returned to the school as its first female instructor.

The younger students developed concepts for safe lighting that would allow girls in rural Kenya to study after dark. The high-school students worked to design safe, environmentally friendly ovens for the same population.

She is sharing the lessons she learned in her military career in a new book she’s writing, Flight Lessons: Learning to Fly.

“It was exciting to see them understand the problem and work together to develop solutions, and also understand that the failures along the way were learning opportunities,” Bell says.

Bell charted a path to the U.S. Naval Academy in high school. She graduated in 1983 with a degree in systems engineering—among the first wave of women admitted into the academy—and received her “wings of gold” as a naval flight officer a year later.

Buoyed by her success, she set her sights on the elite Test Pilot School. Despite Bell’s outstanding record, her career adviser was less than enthusiastic about her chances.

During her Navy career Bell earned a master’s in astronautical engineering, held a wide range of positions, and flew more than 1,600 hours in 35 types of aircraft.

After retiring in 2007, Bell was consulting in the aerospace industry when she realized she was ready to do something different. She earned a master’s in theology in 2015. But she had long considered herself an educator, often visiting classrooms to demonstrate the science and technology behind an aviator’s flight gear. Research into leadership and education programs led her to Peabody, where she enrolled in the Ed.D. program.

“Most of the students in my 22-person cohort flew in every other weekend for classes,” Bell says. “I was impressed by their dedication and their willingness to pursue their degree. We learned a tremendous amount from each other.” One focus of the cohort’s research was on helping underrepresented populations up and over the bridge from high school to higher education, especially in STEM fields.

“I feel exceptionally fortunate at this stage in my career to be in the position to help launch the next generation of women STEM leaders,” Bell says. “They are the gateway to the future.”

ALICE BRYANT MIDDLE SCHOOL LIBRARIAN

Harpeth Hall is proud to share that Middle School Librarian Alice Bryant was asked to co-chair the 2019 American Association of School Librarians Conference which took place in November in Louisville, Kentucky. In her distinguished role as co-chair, she helped organize over 100 exhibitors and 200 speakers and presenters. She contributed a tremendous amount of time and work that helped create an informative and well-attended conference, and helped elevate Harpeth Hall on a national level. Ms. Bryant also published an article about the conference in the September/October 2019 issue of the Journal of the American Association of School Librarians. Thank you, Ms. Bryant, for representing our school and our Library so well!

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LEADERSHIP TEAM

Several members of our Leadership Team will be pursuing new opportunities in the 2020-2021 school year. We are grateful for their time at Harpeth Hall and wish them well!

JENNIFER ADAMS DIRECTOR OF COMMUNITY SUPPORT AND INCLUSION

Jennifer Adams joined Harpeth Hall in 1999 as Middle School Counselor and was named Director of Counseling in 2006. Through the years, she has helped countless students and families. Jennifer was named Director of Community Support and Inclusion in 2016. Jennifer’s belief that connecting faculty across disciplines in our school and with peers across the country strengthens our community and enriches our curriculum. We are a better school because of her work on our anti-bias curriculum and her leading role in our equity and inclusion initiative. Jennifer has set a high standard for our community’s approach to tolerance and worked every day to support fully all underrepresented students and families in their Harpeth Hall experience, particularly in integrating all newcomers, students, parents and faculty, into our school. Jennifer is excited about her next chapter and the opportunity to use her many skills in counseling and school administration to continue to help students, teachers, families, and schools. We are deeply grateful for all that Jennifer has given to Harpeth Hall for the last 21 years.

SUZANNAH GREEN DIRECTOR OF STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS

Suzannah Green joined the Harpeth Hall community in 2016 as Director of Strategic Communications. In her time at Harpeth Hall, she and the Communications team greatly increased the annual content produced for Harpeth Hall audiences. She updated and re-tooled Hallways, and redefined the school’s newsletter communications and processes. She also created Inside the Hall to provide parents a glimpse into our Middle School and Upper School classrooms each month. She grew the website, increased our use of video, and created a social media strategy for Harpeth Hall. Most recently she has worked with Admission and Advancement on a branding and messaging refresh that includes the redesign of the Admission viewbook and supporting materials for the 2020-2021 school year.

Suzannah’s creativity and contributions can be seen in each aspect of our Communications materials. From the website to newsletters to videos, our content has been updated and made fresh. Suzannah has helped our school communicate well through many crises and emergency situations in the past four years.

Her contributions and leadership are greatly appreciated. Suzannah looks forward to a quiet summer with her husband and two small boys.

She will be pursuing a new opportunity at the end of the year.

KAREN SUTTON DIRECTOR OF ATHLETICS

Karen Sutton joined the Harpeth Hall community in 1997 as a Middle School English teacher and varsity volleyball and basketball coach. She led teams to win the school’s first volleyball state championship and the school’s first of two basketball state championships. She was named Director of Athletics in 2005, and during her time as director, she instituted a no-cut policy for Middle School Athletics, implemented a Strength and Conditioning program, and increased the overall participation of athletics in all grades. During her tenure, Harpeth Hall athletic facilities improved greatly with the addition of the turf field, the Athletic and Wellness Center, the new tennis courts, and the new softball and practice fields. For 23 years, Karen has been the representative of our school and athletic program both internally and externally in the independent school community in Nashville, and we are grateful for all of her good work to advance our program. Karen has recently accepted a new position for the next school year at her alma mater, Brentwood Academy. She will assume a role in Advancement as Major Gifts Officer, she will assist in Athletics, and she will serve as the Head Varsity Volleyball Coach.

FACULTY NEWS

WELLESLEY WILSON DIRECTOR OF ADMISSION AND FINANCIAL AID

Wellesley joined the Harpeth Hall community in 2015 as Director of Admission and Financial Aid. Under her direction, we have increased our overall enrollment numbers, and more specifically, we have increased our number of students of color each year. In addition, under her direction, we have moved to a paperless admission process and have broadened the list of schools from which we admit students.

Wellesley’s understanding of the power of a girls’ school is reflected in her commitment as an advisor. She has shepherded freshmen and sophomores with humor and an even perspective. A highlight of her time at Harpeth Hall was her great success as chair of the People of Color Conference in 2019. She has led the Admission and Financial Aid team with a strong sense of purpose and an ability to balance the many facets of a selective admission process. Her broad-mindedness has expanded Harpeth Hall’s reach and has encouraged more families to consider Harpeth Hall as the best option for their daughters.

Wellesley has recently accepted a new position as Director of Admission and Financial Aid at the Lakeside School in Seattle, Washington.

While we are sad to see Wellesley go, we also wish her the very best with this new opportunity. Lakeside is a 100 year-old, well-respected 5-12 school.

FACULTY RETIREMENT

There was an addition to the list of beloved retiring faculty, and we wanted to include the notice here.

ANNE RIEGLE Anne Riegle has decided to retire from Harpeth Hall at the end of this 2020-2021 school year. While Anne’s enormous contributions to the Middle School during her fifteen-year tenure are impossible to fully detail, her legacy remains as a champion for middle school girls and a highly respected colleague and teacher.

A consummate educator, Anne inspires a love for literature and writing in her students and serves as an esteemed mentor to others in her department and grade-level team. In 2014, Anne was awarded the Lulu Hampton Owen Chair in recognition of her “excellence in scholarship, unusual ability to communicate with students, excitement about teaching and learning, and commitment to the moral and intellectual development of students and dedication to the life of the school.”

We will all miss Anne’s incredible sense of humor, tireless work ethic, and passion for learning.

We are grateful to Anne for all she has done to strengthen our program.

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ATHLETICS

HONEYBEARS IN 2020 ACHIEVEMENTS Honeybear athletics enjoyed fall and winter sports seasons full of celebratory moments of teamwork and success.

1. The cross country program had a standout season at

all levels. The 5th/6th Grade Team won the HVAC Jr Championship, the Middle School team placed 2nd in the HVAC Championship, and the Varsity team finished as state runners up.

2. The Varsity Volleyball Team won the DII-AA Middle

Region Championship and went on to the state semifinals.

3. Rowers Evelyn Trost and Grace Lebo won their Youth 2 event at the Music City Head Race.

4. The Middle School Swimming and Diving Team won

the HVAC Championship and the MTHSSA Championship for the second year in a row.

broke the national high school record in the 50 free and 100 free, earning her TISCA Swimmer of the Year. The team combined to win 6 events and coach Polly Linden was named TISCA Coach of the Year.

5. The Upper School Swimming & Diving Team won their

6. The Upper School Rifle Team took home the silver team medal

23rd consecutive region championship and shined in the TISCA State Championships, finishing in 2nd place. Gretchen Walsh

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HALLWAYS

in the Tennessee State High School 3 PAR match.

ATHLETICS

SPRING 2020

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PARTICIPATION

ATHLETICS

The Harpeth Hall Athletic Program has soared into the new decade with an all-time high in student participation. According to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association State of Play 2018, only 37% of children ages 6-12 play team sports on a regular basis. Harpeth Hall aims to be countercultural in this regard, encouraging students to participate in multiple sports throughout the school year as well as offering year round strength and conditioning opportunities. Athletic Director Karen Sutton elaborates:

“

Athletics is an

important part of the overall educational experience at Harpeth Hall, and it plays a vital role in our vibrant school atmosphere. While our program is steeped in tradition and success, we also value the importance of affording our students the opportunity to be a part of a team. Athletics is optional for our students, and we are thrilled that more than 65% of our Upper School and 91% of our Middle School students play one or

”

more sports.

— KAREN SUTTON, ATHLETIC DIRECTOR

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ATHLETICS

Scholar-Athletes to Compete at the College Level Harpeth Hall proudly recognized seven student-athletes who signed a National Letter of Intent (NLI) on National Signing Day. Seven outstanding student-athletes and their families were recognized on November 13th, the first day of the early signing period.

Director of Athletics Karen Sutton welcomed the students, families and all in attendance at the special assembly. “We are so proud of our senior student-athletes who signed letters of intent today,” she said.

“These seven girls are game changers, record setters, trail blazers, and while they are all impressive athletes, they are equally impressive students and teammates.”

Congratulations to the following Harpeth Hall seniors who are committing to play their sport at the Division 1 college level.

Leelee Denton U.S. Naval Academy • Lacrosse Emari Frazier Louisiana State University • Softball Grace Lebo University of Virginia • Rowing Annie Taylor U.S. Naval Academy • Track & Field Alex Walsh University of Virginia • Swimming Jamison White University of New Hampshire • Volleyball Chloe Wilson Wake Forest University • Volleyball We are so proud of our student-athletes and wish them all the best!

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PERFORMING ARTS

Performing Arts

Fall Dance Concert

Fall Dance Concert

Harpeth Hall Playmakers The Laramie Project

Middle School Musical Mary Poppins 20

HALLWAYS

Big Love

Mary Poppins

Mary Poppins

PERFORMING ARTS

at Harpeth Hall

Fall Dance Concert

Winter Choral Concert

Winter Orchestra Concert

Senior Dancers

Winter Choral Concert

Winter Orchestra Concert SPRING 2020

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I’LL BE SEEING YOU PAUL TUZENEU • TONY SPRINGMAN • LESLIE MATTHEWS • SCOTTIE GIRGUS

BY MARY ELLEN PETHEL • DEPARTMENT CHAIR – UPPER SCHOOL SOCIAL SCIENCES • SCHOOL ARCHIVIST

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B

illie Holiday, Jimmy Durante, and Frank Sinatra popularized the tune, “I’ll Be Seeing You,” in the 1940s. Combining sentimental lyrics with a soulful melody, the chorus begins: I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places That this heart of mine embraces all day through In that small cafe, the park across the way The children’s carousel, the chestnut trees, the wishing well

We may not have a carousel or wishing well on campus, but Harpeth Hall is without a doubt a singular place—a place with a strong gravitational pull that connects and inspires. For the last 30+ years, Leslie Matthews, Paul Tuzeneu, Tony Springman, and Scottie Girgus have remained central, not only to the school’s sense of community but to its very identity.

Ordinary words fail to capture all that they mean to us as students, alumnae, and faculty. And so, we turn to their words. Sit back and relax as these four extraordinary faculty members take us on a retrospective journey through time and “all the old familiar places.”

fame—she worked directly with Patty Chadwell, longtime chair Leslie Matthews was hired by Head of School Idanelle of the Physical Education “Sam” McMurry, in 1977. Matthews credits McMurry Department. Miss Patty was a (1963-1979) with creating a “vision that has blossomed a founding faculty member of into an incredible reality. . . . [as] the school evolved Harpeth Hall following the 1951 from a small college prep girls school to an institutional closure of Ward-Belmont’s high power house.” Named in McMurry’s honor, the school. In 1977, on her way to McMurry Center for Arts and Athletics opened in student registration in the old Matthews’s first year. Whether fate or serendipity, dining hall (located in the Leslie Matthews would call this building her Leslie with colleagues Pat Moran and Susan Russ basement of the former middle professional home for 37 of her 43 years at Harpeth school building), Matthews popped in a piece of bubble gum. When she Hall. Ever the spirited and energetic educator, Matthews taught dance, walked in, Miss Patty spotted her, walked over, and asked with an air physical education, and wellness. In 2009, she developed a yoga of incredulity, “Are you chewing gum?” Leslie quickly swallowed it and program with support from Head of School Ann Teaff. That same year, said, “No Ma’am!” Matthews has not indulged in gum since.

McMurry passed away. Matthews also maintains a historic claim to

LESLIE MATTHEWS

Leslie Matthews, 1985

PAUL TUZENEU Five years after Leslie Matthews joined the Harpeth Hall faculty, Paul-Leon Tuzeneu was hired by Head of School David Wood in 1982. Affectionately known as Señor Tuz, he remains the ultimate linguist—teaching Upper School Spanish and French for 38 years. He fondly recalls the original Leigh Horton Garden, located between the former Middle School and the McMurry Center. He

spent many quiet moments relishing in the sights and sounds of nature while sitting in the garden’s gazebo. Listening to the water’s gentle flow from the fountain, he also thought about Leigh who was “always gracious, always smiling, always humble.”

The garden was dedicated in May 1985 with words of special remembrance and enduring relevance, “For every joy that passes something beautiful remains.”

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RETIRING FACULTY

Over these many years, Paul Tuzeneu has often provided comic relief— whether making noises that resemble a seal or standing on furniture in true “O Captain, My Captain” form. Most (in)famously, Señor Tuz made good use of tree climbing skills he developed as a young boy.

Before the 2007 renovation of the Wallace building, his room was on the first floor at the front of the building. Outside there were a number of trees that became “the locus for many hijinks and moments

of inspiration.” On more than one occasion, Tuzeneu leaned out of his classroom window to reach the tree and “proceeded to climb up to the upper floors of Wallace.” He recalls, “During one of Tony Springman’s classes (much to his dismay), I climbed up the tree and waved through the window—generally disrupting the engaging Socratic discussion in progress.”

Paul Tuzeneu, 1985

TONY SPRINGMAN Tony Springman may have had a class interrupted by Señor Tuz, but he stands alone as the commander-in-chief of the Social Science Department.

In 1987, David Wood lured Tony to Harpeth Hall from Christ the King. Mr. Springman quickly gained a reputation as a master teacher, and his early days were also spent coaching multiple sports. Basketball was played in Morrison Gym, which gave the Honeybears “the greatest home court advantage in Nashville.” Meanwhile, the softball team had no home field at all—driving to Percy Warner Park to practice. When the first field was built in 1991, next to the Hobbs Road entrance, there were no bleachers or dugouts. Teams and fans sat on hay bales, which stayed wet because of rain and frequent flooding. Speaking of rain, it was on the steps of the Annie Allison Library, where the Ann Scott Carell Library now stands, where Tony first asked his wife, a former English teacher, to go on a date with him. Months later, in the same exact spot, he “proposed at midnight in a pouring rain storm!”

The world changed on September 11, 2001, and Springman remembers that day vividly: “Because we did not have computers everywhere, students and teachers came to my room because I had the only television on our floor.

Throughout the day we watched and cried together as the news unfolded.”

Art Echerd, Jim Cooper, and Tony Springman who taught together for 25 years.

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Scottie and Derah Myers, 1995

SCOTTIE GIRGUS Hired in 1990 by Head of School Leah Rhys, English teacher Judith Scot-Smith “Scottie” Girgus began her Harpeth Hall career in the Middle School and moved to the Upper School in the mid-1990s. The first laptops arrived on campus in the immediate post-9/11 landscape, and Scottie quickly saw the impact of the laptop program on student learning. One morning she “booted up [her] computer. . . . and opened an email from a student [that] read, ‘There are workers in Florida who harvest tomatoes for Taco Bell. . . [who are] paid a tenth the minimum wage. I have the address of the company president and have started a petition. Can I bring it to class?’” Girgus asked how she learned of the pickers’ plight; the student replied, “On my computer.” In that moment, she realized the power of technology as a tool that sparked not only learning but social responsibility.

But as we all know, technology can notoriously fail in the classroom. Scottie’s colleague and friend, “Derah Myers had no love nor talent for computers.” In 2002, Derah’s computer crashed, and Girgus went to her room on the first floor

Knitting Club Officers Lindsay Turner and Claire Henry, along with Scottie Girgus, Jacquie Watlington, and Caroline Winsett, 2007.

of Wallace to help. As Scottie worked to restore the files, Derah was teaching The Great Gatsby. She read aloud, and became each part, giving Daisy “a voice rich with the sounds of the South” and “found just the right tenor for Gatsby and Nick.” Girgus was spellbound and returned to Derah’s class everyday “until Gatsby was buried and Tom and Daisy were off to Chicago.”

In the early 1990s, the middle school was comprised of two white brick, red-roofed buildings with a connecting covered walkway. On a crisp fall morning, Girgus came across a “teary-eyed, petite girl with raven hair standing in the middle of the walkway.

She was lost.” They made their way to a room in the Middle School where Scottie, “found a tissue so she could wipe her eyes and blow her nose.” Girgus recalls, “Years later, I was having coffee with a friend. I looked up and there she was—the lost little girl all grown up. I knew her immediately and, despite the years, she knew me too.

She is now a doctor at Vanderbilt Medical Center.”

For Scottie and for Leslie, Paul, and Tony—this is the very ethos of Harpeth Hall—helping young women find their way.

The physical campus has changed, but these and other faculty members provide the continuity. Following the 2019-2020 academic year, these incredible educators, mentors, and colleagues will move on to life’s next chapter. We seek to thank and honor them for what poet Mary Oliver called “our joyous, endless, and proper work.” Their institutional memory runs deep and wide. Their contributions to the school are too numerous to count. Their legacies will live on in the hearts and minds of generations of students. As for the rest of us? Well, we’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places.

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SADDLE UP!

FACTORY PR

HATCH SHOWPRINT

MAC PRESENTS

VANDERBILT HOSPITAL INTERNSHIPS

UNITED STATES CAPITOL

CONGRESSMAN JIM COOPER

VANDERBILT MILLER LAB

EDIBLE NASHVILLE

WINTERIM 2020

For 47 years, Winterim at Harpeth Hall has been affording girls the opportunity to step out of the

traditional classroom to broaden their intellectual horizons. This innovative three-week program in January provides a wide-variety of hands-on learning experiences across the globe. This year, freshmen and sophomore students chose from 76 different, project-oriented courses offered by our exceptional faculty, alumnae, and other professionals from around the country. Students explored the field of neuroscience, designed robots for use in medical applications, contemplated gender roles in history and literature, discussed the Supreme Court and civil liberties, and studied everything from Jane Austen to Forensic Science among other engaging topics.

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THE COLOR BLUE

U CAN UKULELE

MATHEMATICIAN AS ARTIST

FORENSIC SCIENCE

CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION

TEXTILES OF THE WORLD, TOOL TIME

FIELD TRIP TO THE RYMAN

FENCING

With more than 100 companies and organizations participating in our internship programs, juniors and seniors have the opportunity to explore career interests, to develop decision-making skills, and to experience working in a professional environment, which can ultimately inform their future career choices. Environments ranged from hospitals to financial firms to television stations. This year, students completed internships in Washington, D.C., Nashville, and New York City as well as in Ethiopia, Lithuania, London, and Tamworth, Australia. Placements include Blackbird Studios, Nashville Predators, Penguin Random House, BMI, NASA, National Parks Service, and more! Beyond dynamic classes and internship opportunities, students also participated in academic travel to France, Italy, Spain, and Kenya. In traveling abroad, students are immersed in cross-cultural experiences and deepen their understanding of the world and the world’s needs.

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ITALY

SPAIN

ITALY

ITALY

ITALY

KENYA

KENYA

TAMWORTH, AUSTRALIA

SPAIN

For me, Winterim has been a really amazing opportunity to try things I never would have before and broaden my perspectives on many issues in our Nashville community and the nation as a whole. This year’s Winterim has been more interesting and

”

impactful than I could have imagined, and I am so grateful for this opportunity.

— MALLORY THOMAS ’22

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HALLWAYS

WINTERIM

WINTERIM HOSTS FROM THE HARPETH HALL COMMUNITY NAME ROLE

Gigi Hudson Grimstad ’85 Alumna, Host Liaison Alison Smith ’79 Alumna, Host Marcie Allen Van Mol ’92 Alumna and Current Step-Parent, Host Senator Lamar Alexander Past Parent, Host Senator Marsha Blackburn Past Parent, Host Tess Fardon ’10 Alumna, Host Beth Rather Gorman ’90 Alumna, Host Liaison Melinda Higgins Former HH Teacher, Host

Murray Benson ’07 Alumna, Host Nancy Graves Beveridge ’80 Alumna and Past Parent, Host Judge Joe P. Binkley, Jr. Past Parent, Host Charles Robert Bone Current Parent, Host Dr. Lola Blackwell Chambless ’97 Alumna, Host

Christy Crider Current Parent, Host Michelle Cudd Past Parent, Host Donna Darnell Past Parent, Host Dr. Joseph DeLozier Past Parent, Host Dr. Tom Dovan Current Parent, Host Dr. Georgia Yowell Ferrell ’98 Alumna, Host Sara Morris Garner ’03 Alumna, Host Dr. Mary Gingrass Past Parent, Host Jose Gonzalez Past Parent, Host Liaison Liza Graves Current and Past Parent, Host Dr. Oscar Guillamondegui Current Parent, Host

Dr. Jeff Herring Past Parent, Host Ed Higgins Current Parent, Host Jennifer Harrison Hutton ’01 Alumna, Host Liaison

Diane Lance Past Parent, Host Liaison Dr. Dora Sztipanovits Mathe ’98 Alumna, Host John McBride Past Parent, Host Joanna McCall ’11 Alumna, Host Margaret McRedmond ’97 Alumna, Host

Dr. Rick Miller Past Parent, Host

Dr. David Miller Past Parent, Host

Campbell Mobley ’11 Alumna, Host Dr. Anna Morad Current Parent, Host

Dr. Huck Muldownay Current Parent, Host Dr. Mike Pagnani Past Parent, Host Amy Seigenthaler Pierce Current Parent, Host Rob Pittman Current and Past Parent, Host Scott Potter Past Parent, Host Rena Clayton Rolfe ’13 Alumna, Host Brooks Smith Current Parent, Host Kate Steele ’06 Alumna, Host Ashley Strobel Current Parent, Host Millie Wert ’13 Alumna, Host Christopher White Current Parent, Host

BUSINESS LOCATION Tibi BMI MAC Presents Office of Senator Lamar Alexander Office of Senator Marsha Blackburn Brady United FOX 5 WTTG DC Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy, Office of the Assistant Secretary Percy Priest Elementary The Children’s Clinic of Nashville Fifth Circuit Court, Judge Joe P. Binkley, Jr., Bone McAllester Norton Vanderbilt University Medical Center Department of Neurological Surgery Baker Donelson BMI St. Thomas Pediatrics/PICU DeLozier Cosmetic Surgery Center Elite Sports Medicine + Orthopedics St. Thomas Medical Partners - OBGYN Center DeLozier Cosmetic Surgery Center Plastic Surgery Center of Nashville Conexión Américas StyleBlueprint Vanderbilt Medical Center, Division of Trauma and Surgical Critical Care Tennessee Orthopaedic Alliance Vanderbilt Athletics Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt Occupational Therapy Department Jean Crowe Advocacy Center Vanderbilt Eye Institute Blackbird Studios Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center, Pediatric Amplification Program Vanderbilt Medical Center, Division of Trauma and Surgical Critical Care Vanderbilt University Miller Lab, Cell and Developmental Biology Cheekwood Museum of Art Newborn Nursery, Vanderbilt University Medical Center Division of Cardiology at Vanderbilt Nashville Knee and Shoulder DVL Seigenthaler | Finn Partners Hanger Clinic: Prosthetics & Orthotics Metro Water Services eMD Alliance Research Bradley H Three Events Percy Priest Elementary MP&F Strategic Communications Thompson Research Group

New York, New York New York, New York New York, New York Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C. Washington, D. C. Washington, D.C. Washington, D. C. Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN Nashville, TN

The Winterim Travel Fund provides academic travel scholarships for students demonstrating financial need.

To make a gift to The Winterim Travel Fund, please give online at HarpethHall.org/Winterim or mail your contribution to the Harpeth Hall Advancement Office, 3801 Hobbs Road, Nashville, TN 37215.

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Each Harpeth Hall Center is a mission-driven area of concentration established to address priorities in girls’ education with agility and creativity. Transcending the scope of a single discipline, these centers engage students and faculty in research, innovation, and collaboration as they seek solutions to the challenges facing our world.

Since

the days of John Dewey’s educational philosophy, schools and teachers have

examined the best ways to integrate learning across disciplines. We inherently know that life is not sectioned into silos of subject areas. Yet undoing centuries of discrete disciplines can be a challenge. From the open classroom movement of the 1960s, to the backlash growth of more standardized testing in the 1970s, to a push for higher-order thinking skills in the 1980s, we keep trying to get it right.

In 2020, Harpeth Hall girls are hungry to begin solving real-world problems. Here they learn the analytical skills to dive into almost any 21st century issue or challenge and study it from all sides. Equally important, our students master the written and oral communication skills necessary to express their thesis clearly, while basing it on research and fact. Whether they are designing a better bridge or deliberating on American foreign policy, they have what it takes to contemplate the issues at hand and develop a deeper understanding.

By pushing our students to think critically about modern themes and topics across a wide range of disciplines, they can begin to apply the knowledge they have. It allows them to move beyond the classroom assessment or transcript grade to a fuller capacity for learning. Our students are highly motivated, and our teachers are newly engaged with the collaboration they experience across disciplines.

Today, we are broadening our concept of a Center at Harpeth Hall. By defining what this framework means to us, we are embarking on a more flexible approach to the inevitable educational changes that are coming our way. Within a shifting educational environment, we strongly believe that one thing holds firm — when students recognize a purpose to their study, they develop a love and respect for learning that will carry them throughout adulthood.

We established The Center for STEM Education for Girls in 2011. Now, we are pleased to announce our second center, the Center for Civic Engagement.

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SPRING 2020

CIVIC ENGAGEMENT

THE IMPORTANCE OF

CIVIC

ENGAGEMENT

Open and informed dialogue is a critical component of the civic engagement initiative at Harpeth Hall.

BY BONNIE MOSES • UPPER SCHOOL SOCIAL SCIENCE TEACHER

Each

spring, the annual voter registration drive at Harpeth Hall is a day of excitement and anticipation for Upper School students. During the 2019 drive, 102 enthusiastic new voters were registered on campus. Visitors to the third floor of the Wallace Wing will see an entire wall devoted to “I registered” and “I voted” photos that bear witness to the passion Harpeth Hall students have for civic engagement.

To build on this enthusiasm and provide greater civic leadership opportunities for our students, the Faculty Committee on Civic Engagement (CCE) was created in the spring of 2019. In addition to encouraging active citizenship, the CCE initiative emphasizes the importance of information literacy, civic dialogue, and civic education.

Recognizing that this effort transcends individual disciplines and requires the commitment of the entire Harpeth Hall community, the idea for the Harpeth Hall Center for Civic Engagement was born.

Much of the foundational work related to the Center began with the work of the Civic Engagement Committee this past summer. In July, Upper School teachers Joe Croker, Tony Springman, and Bonnie Moses continued on page 32

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CIVIC ENGAGEMENT

We need more women at the leadership table, and Harpeth Hall ensures our graduates are ready to take a seat. HEAD OF SCHOOL, JESS HILL attended the “Sphere Summit: Teaching Civic Culture Together,” a conference for educators sponsored by the CATO Institute in Washington, D.C. Joe Croker describes CATO’s visionary work which “brings together conservatives, progressives, and classical liberals who, despite their many philosophical differences, share a fundamental faith in democracy, respectful dialogue, and the rule of law.” To provide a glimpse into the Sphere Summit experience, Peter N. Goettler, president and CEO of the CATO Institute, was the featured speaker for the Upper School faculty in-service day in October.

Open and informed dialogue is a critical component of the civic engagement initiative at Harpeth Hall. To support this objective, 32

HALLWAYS

the history and English departments implemented an enhanced and specific difficult dialogues protocol in the classroom.

These guidelines have since been shared with the entire Upper School faculty and student body. In addition to this work, a team-taught English course, “Writing, Rhetoric, and Civic Engagement,” was introduced at the junior level. In this course, teachers Joe Croker and Dr. Ben Fulwider model respectful deliberation as well as healthy disagreement for their students. Beginning in the fall of 2020, the history department will offer a new semester elective, “Democracy and Leadership,” which provides an opportunity for students to learn about the role of citizenship, the importance of civic engagement, and the foundations and

CIVIC ENGAGEMENT

The Center for Civic Engagement empowers young women to become active and informed citizens, and to appreciate — through action and reflection — what is required for civil societies to thrive.

mechanisms of government at the local, state, and national levels. With an emphasis on experiential learning, students will engage with the Nashville community and discover how citizens can partner with public and private institutions to enact change.

Head of School Jess Hill and Upper School Director Armistead Lemon have worked tirelessly to support the civic engagement initiative and to create a Center that will bring all members of the Harpeth Hall community together as partners in this work. Harpeth Hall is excited to announce the creation of The Center for Civic Engagement which will empower young women to become active and informed citizens and to appreciate — through action and reflection — what is required for civil societies to thrive.

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The moon has long been a symbol of the passage of time. Its ever-evolving appearance in the night sky reminds us that the only constant is change. When Luke Jerram’s Museum of the Moon was installed at Harpeth Hall in early March, we were not aware of how this experience with the Moon would mark a defining moment.

Looking back on the unlikely spring of 2020, the “Moon Landing at Harpeth Hall” was a beacon that united our community ahead of the historic COVID-19 global pandemic, during the March 3rd tornado, and before the straight-line wind storm that knocked out power for most of our community on May 3rd. Museum of the Moon inspired our students and teachers to gather beneath it for interdisciplinary learning and artistic expression. The artwork drew our parents and alumnae together for educational and celebratory events, reinforced the strength in our community, and reconnected us to the moon and the world we share.

We are most grateful for the generosity of our patron of the arts donor, and for the vision of our Main Event Co-Chairs and Harpeth Hall Parents Association volunteers who provided this extraordinary week-long experience for everyone on our campus — students, faculty, parents, alumnae, and visitors.

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Moonstruck

THE MOON ARRIVES AT HARPETH HALL AHEAD OF AN UNLIKELY SPRING

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FEATURE

Long an inspiration for artists, scientists, and explorers alike, the Moon enchanted Harpeth Hall girls when it landed in the Leigh Horton Garden for a week of academic exploration and cultural celebration in early March.

Museum of the Moon, the internationally-acclaimed art installation by UK artist Luke Jerram, graced the Harpeth Hall campus thanks to an unsolicited gift from an anonymous patron of the arts. The gift of this touring exhibition to our school community served as the focal point for the 30th Anniversary of the Harpeth Hall Parents Association’s fundraiser, The Main Event.

Measuring seven meters (23-feet) in diameter with each centimeter representing 5 km of the Moon’s surface, the internally-lit, striking sculpture features high-resolution, detailed imagery of the lunar surface. The imagery was

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FEATURE

Photo cutlines

taken by a NASA satellite launched in 2010 that carried the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera. Created by Jerram in 2016, Museum of the Moon has been exhibited around the world, attracting more than a million visitors across Europe, Asia, and Australia. “The Moon has always inspired humanity, acting as a cultural mirror to society and reflecting the ideas and beliefs of all people around the world,” said the artist. The installation at Harpeth Hall was among the first in the United States and the first in Tennessee.

During the week-long “Moon Landing”, Harpeth Hall and the Parents Association hosted a series of student, parent, and community events to complement the installation of Museum of the Moon. The Harpeth Hall faculty incorporated the study of the Moon into curricular and

co-curricular activities across all disciplines.

The Upper School Social Sciences Department planned a lesson about the Space Race and the Cold War in Advanced Placement U.S. History.

In the Middle School, each 5th grade science student chose a planet and, using the school’s Design Den maker space, designed and built an alien to live on that planet. In 7th grade science classes, students incorporated the Moon into their study of electromagnetic waves. Yoga classes, the Middle School orchestra, and art classes found inspiration under the Moon as well. “To be able to marvel at Luke Jerram’s extraordinary work of art up close was a remarkable experience,” said Head of School Jess Hill. “We are immensely grateful to our generous donor, to HHPA President Mary Helfrich, to our Main Event Co-Chairs Jackie Daniel and Louise Kohler, and to our faculty who helped our girls explore the many facets of the Moon through science, literature, and the arts.”

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FEATURE

We always see the same side of the Moon because the Earth is “tidally locked” with the Moon. One day on the Moon equals one month on Earth.

Moon Phases Outer Circle = view from the Earth Inner Circle = view from an extra-terrestrial 38

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On March 5th, the school hosted a community lecture entitled “Moon Waltz: Unveiling Earth’s Dance Partner” presented by Harpeth Hall parent, Dr. Susan G. Stewart, an Astronomer with the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. and Adjoint Assistant Professor of Astronomy at Vanderbilt University. She addressed the Moon-Earth System, Moon Exploration, and other interesting moons in the Solar System. The evening opened in the Frances Bond Davis Theatre with the debut of a newly commissioned arrangement of “Ballade to the Moon” by Daniel Elder sung by the Harpeth Hall Chamber Choir. This commissioned arrangement was made possible by a grant from the Hays Foundation in support of Harpeth Hall’s performing arts program. As Harpeth Hall parent and Professor of Cello at Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music Felix Wang expressed following the event, “I particularly appreciated that not only was there a musical performance before the lecture, but that this beautiful piece was a work commissioned by Harpeth Hall for this event.

It was wonderful to see the emphasis of interdisciplinary education at play, and I really appreciated the inclusion and emphasis on the arts.”

The Museum of the Moon moved indoors to the Athletic and Wellness Center for the week’s culminating event: “Moon Dance” on Saturday, March 7th. With entertainment by Harpeth Hall parent and celebrated musician John Hermann and the swing band Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, parents, patrons, corporate sponsors, and other guests enjoyed a unique and ethereal evening in the moonlight. After months of intense planning, the extraordinarily talented Main Event Co-Chairs and their devoted volunteers could enjoy their success in bringing our community together in celebration of art, all girls education, and philanthropy.

The proceeds of The Main Event will enable the Harpeth Hall Parents Association to make a gift to the school in support of innovation in and out of the classroom.

The week after Museum of the Moon was safely stowed for shipment to its next location, the need to protect our community from the COVID-19 pandemic became urgent. On March 13th, Jess Hill announced that Harpeth Hall’s campus would remain closed following Spring Break, and distance learning would begin. With that swift change to our lives, we treasure the time we spent enjoying Museum of the Moon together as one community even more.

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39

One of my favorite parts

I loved incorporating it into our classes. For

of having the Museum of the

example, we sketched it in art, and in French, we

part of having the

Moon on campus is that our

learned new vocabulary relating to the moon.

Museum of the Moon

teachers reinforced it in our

My favorite

on campus was seeing the reactions of students when they saw the Moon for the first time. I loved witnessing their faces light up with excitement. It made the whole school happier.

— Ruthie Gaw ’24

— Kiki Christopher ’25

learning! For example, in I learned that 1 cm on the art installation

math we calculated how far we would be able to jump on

was equivalent to 5 km on the actual moon.

the moon and other planets.

It was such a breathtaking experience and it was

In English we wrote legends/

so cool to think that the Moon had been all over the world. Overall, it was out of the world!

stories about the dark side of the moon. These activities

— Josey Beavers ’24

were fun and mixed up the normal agenda in classes!

I liked doing the math project and playing orchestra by it!

— Reed Logan ’27

— Annabel Farringer ’27

STUDENT REFLECTIONS

I liked just looking outside and seeing it and being able to tell people who come on campus about

I love the art and science connection of the Museum of the Moon. My students enjoyed drawing the full moon up close­— they were able to see the details on the lunar surface they otherwise would have to imagine.

to share such a

My favorite part about the Moon was how it brought joy to

beautiful piece of art

everyone who saw it. It felt like I had truly seen the moon for

with people in our

the first time. Seeing the faces of people who saw it for the

community!

first time made me happy. I could see the pure excitement

HALLWAYS

opportunity to experience it at

in their eyes. I loved the Moon and was sad to see it go, but I now know it is traveling to good places for happy faces.

40

beautiful! I’m so grateful for the

— Susie Elder, Visual Arts Teacher

it — I felt really lucky

— Betsy Rogers ’22

It is incredibly

— Sara Paige Dale ’27

night this past week. Seeing its glow was amazing!

— Elise Ikejiani ’21

“MOON SHINE” PATRONS PARTY AND MAIN EVENT

“MOON DANCE”

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FEATURE

REMEMBERING

Anne Dallas Dudley

I

BY MICHELE O’BRIEN • MIDDLE SCHOOL SOCIAL STUDIES TEACHER PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE TENNESSEE STATE LIBRARY & ARCHIVES

n May of 1886, Dr. W. E. Ward addressed the audience of the twenty-first commencement ceremony at Ward Seminary for Young Ladies with a message not terribly distant from that delivered on Souby Lawn each May. In his The Coming Woman address, Ward implored graduates to embrace the opportunities of a rapidly advancing and complex world without losing reverence for tradition. They were to confidently explore their world with curiosity, communicate articulately, honor their families, and appreciate the wisdom of certain traditions. In words wholly unfamiliar to today’s Harpeth Hall students, Dr. Ward then cautioned that the modern woman ought to prioritize motherhood and avoid “the political arena, where the rougher man contends, quarrels, and fights. She ought not,” he continued, “to want the ballot.” Dr. Ward died the following year, so he would have no idea that his school educated many of the confident and articulate women who contended, quarreled, and fought to win that ballot years later.

Notable among those burgeoning suffragists, and enrolled in Ward Seminary in 1886, was Annie Dallas. Miss Dallas was, as were her mother, aunts, and two sisters, trained by Dr. Ward and his teachers to be confident, articulate, and well-mannered women who could handle public scrutiny and social pressure.

Whether as a debutante navigating the many social events of Nashville’s elite or as the wife of Mr. Guilford Dudley volunteering for civic improvement efforts, Anne Dallas Dudley proved to have mastered those lessons. She was a charter member of the Centennial Club of Nashville and was selected to serve as chairwoman of the Kindergarten Project in the West End. She was also one of nine women who met at the Tulane Hotel, on the corner of Church and 8th Street, in September of 1911 to found the Nashville Equal Suffrage League (NESL).

Anne Dudley served as its President for four years and played a central role in its public speeches, social events, and parades.

In May of 1914, she helped to organize an event that would propel her into the

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national spotlight. The Tennessean boasted “Today is Suffrage Day” and Nashville was “dressed in its best bib and tucker for the occasion.” And what an occasion it was. A line of fifty festively decorated cars rumbled from the downtown headquarters of the NESL to Centennial Park with men, women, and children riding along to wave at spectators. Mrs. Guilford Dudley and her family were first in line followed closely by her fellow suffragists and friends Catherine Talty Kenny and Maria Thompson Daviess. All three women would speak on the steps of the Parthenon that day, but Dudley was the first in what was the first open-air speech given by a woman in the south. Flanked by her children and supported by her husband, she argued that women held a moral duty as care-takers to support the public efforts of husbands and the health and growth of children. “[T]he affairs of the government are, after all,” she noted, “the affairs of the home.” Thus, she argued, the federal amendment for suffrage honored and protected the natural duties of

Anne Dallas Dudley on the steps of The Parthenon, 1915

FEATURE

Left: Copy of TESA, page 1, TSLA Right: Christening the “Anna Dudley”

womanhood. Surely, Dr. Ward would have appreciated the sentiment and skill if not the ultimate conclusion.

The success of Nashville’s Rally Day was followed quickly by another feat of organizing talent as three hundred and eighteen National American Woman Suffrage Association [NAWSA] delegates and eighteen news agencies descended on the city for a three-day convention in November. For the pro-suffrage Nashville community, it was all hands on deck as they welcomed national leaders like NAWSA President Dr. Anna Howard Shaw and Hull House founder Jane Addams. For Nashville generally and Tennessee Equal Suffrage Association [TESA] specifically, the convention proved a successful dress-rehearsal for the dramatic events of 1920. And for Anne Dallas Dudley, as the distinguished organizer and charming President of the Nashville Equal Suffrage League, it garnered national praise and recognition.

Anne Dallas Dudley led the state constitutional amendment efforts as Legislative Chairman for TESA and was the first woman to address the Tennessee state legislature from the speaker’s podium. During World War I she was appointed by the United States Treasury Secretary to direct the sale of bonds across the state of Tennessee and the southern Federal Reserve District. This she did, to great acclaim, until the war’s end in 1918.

In 1915, Catherine Talty Kenny described Dudley’s leadership and character in terms familiar to aspiring Harpeth Hall students today. “[B]ecause she is sure of herself, she is sure of other women, and her faith in them, and in herself, is her real cornerstone of suffrage .…

Unselfishly, and untiringly, she has worked, nor has she asked any woman to do what she would not do herself.” Mrs. Guilford Dudley, confident in her abilities and in the justice of her cause, led confidently, without hubris or insincerity. She gained trust and admiration as a result.

Years of organizing efforts by the pro-suffrage women and men of Tennessee created a challenging battleground for anti-suffragists in 1920. A year earlier, the U.S. Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment and sent it to the states for ratification. By July, thirtyfive of the thirty-six states required had done so. A complex battle was waged in the corridors of the Capitol and the halls of the Hermitage Hotel, where anti-suffrage leaders like Josephine Pearson attempted to convince legislators to wear the red rose with forecasts of denigrated womanhood and racial overthrow. Carrie Chapman Catt, Anne Dallas Dudley, and their allies, lobbied for the yellow rose, countering arguments by Pearson and her National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage in press releases, speeches, flyers, and polite but persistent lobbying. Ultimately, the vote for suffrage lay in the hands of one man from the Appalachian foothills, Harry Burn. And he, the youngest representative in the Tennessee legislature, did as his mother asked and voted for suffrage.

In the years leading up to 1920, Anne Dallas Dudley accepted more responsibility and wielded more power as a national figure. Within TESA and, later, as Vice President of NAWSA under Carrie Chapman Catt, she attended several national conventions and spoke frequently on behalf of southern suffragists in several states. Closer to home,

After the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, Mrs. Dudley remained active in the politics of her nation and city. She served as the first female delegate-at-large to the 1920 Democratic National Convention, was a distinguished member of the League of Women Voters, and volunteered for the Red Cross in World War II. Her name appeared less SPRING 2019 2020

43

Left: Women’s suffrage ratification in the Tennessee Senate chamber Below: Suffrage scenes at the Capitol when the Senate ratified Aug. 13

frequently in the papers despite her participation in the Garden Club, Centennial Club, Christ Church congregation, and the Association for Preservation of Tennessee Antiquities. She died in Belle Meade at the age of 78 and is buried in Mt. Olivet Cemetery between her husband Guilford and her daughter Trevania. No statements of achievement were chiseled into her stone. But scattered across Nashville today sit monuments and markers acknowledging her work and impact on the history of this city and the nation. Through her experiences, both intentional and coincidental, Anne Dudley cultivated an extraordinary knack for organizing people and convincing them to bend toward moral courage and make a more honorable choice. Ultimately, she upheld the vision of “The Coming Woman” so long ago espoused by Dr. Ward and echoed across Harpeth Hall’s campus today: “The coming woman must have moral convictions. She must do right and believe in its reward.”

1 “Ward’s Address,” W.E. Ward’s Seminary for Young Ladies Annual (Nashville: Ward’s Seminary, 1886), n.p.

Many thanks to Leigh Mantle for finding this gem of a speech and providing a copy.

2 Ikard, Robert W. “The Cultivation of Higher Ideals: The Centennial Club of Nashville.” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 65, no. 4 (2006): 342–369. JSTOR, jstor.org/stable/42628597; “Mrs. Guilford Dudley Appointed Chairm’n of Kindergarten Project for West End.” The Nashville American, May 19, 1909: 7.

ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

3 “Services for Mrs. Dudley to Be Held Thursday.”

Nashville Banner, Sept. 1955. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

4 “Rally Day for Equal Suffrage.” Nashville Tennessean and Nashville American (1910-1920), May 02, 1914, pp. 1.

ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

5 “Notable Rally of Suffragists.” Nashville Banner, May 4, 1914, 2. Newspapers.com.

6 Harper, Ida Husted, editor. History of Woman Suffrage.

E-book, Vol. V, National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1922.

7 “Handbook of the Tennessee Equal Suffrage Association (Incorporated) and Proceedings of the Eighth and Ninth Annual Conventions” Tennessee Equal Suffrage Association, 1916: Tennessee Virtual Archive, teva.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15138coll27/ id/999.

8 Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, 1922.

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9 “Handbook of the Tennessee Equal Suffrage Association,” Tennessee Equal Suffrage Association, 1916.

10 Gilmore, Rose Long. Davidson County Women in the World War, 1914-1919 (Nashville: Foster & Parkes, 1923), archive.org/details/davidsoncountywo00gilm/page/n5/ mode/2up.

11 Weiss, Elaine. The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote (New York, Penguin Books, 2019): 299 - 300.

12 See Weiss for more on the tumultuous months of 1920.

13 “Services for Mrs. Dudley,” Nashville Banner, n.p.

14 “Ward’s Address,” W.E. Ward’s Seminary for Young Ladies Annual, n.p.

FEATURE

Above left: August 28, 1920, letter from Anne Dallas Dudley Middle: 1897 Centennial, Sumner County Right: Mrs. Guilford Dudley Above left: July 21, 1920, telegram from Warren G. Harding Below right: Letter from the League of Women Voters CCC Papers SPRING 2020

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2020 HARPETH HALL DISTINGUISHED ALUMNA

Julie Cox Kennon ’83

Most of us with three children

by Varina Buntin Willse ’95

ages six and under are making sandwiches, tripping license through Stevens Aviation and commemorated over toys, and savoring what little sleep we can find. her graduation from Stanford by taking her parents Few of us are flying missions into Baghdad. Even fewer and grandmother on a flight over the Bay Area. still are flying missions into Baghdad then returning “It’s one of the best office views in the world,” Julie says home to a day job as a radiologist. The exception to that of flying, but it was also the aerodynamics of flight that rule would be the recipient of this year’s Harpeth Hall appealed to her. “It’s amazing how you can break the Distinguished Alumna Award, Julie Cox Kennon. Julie bonds of gravity,” she marvels, still taken with the is a highly respected diagnostic radiologist specializing concept after all her years in the cockpit. Though in women’s imaging. Her “second job” of 22 years, She has helped flying was fun for Julie, she wanted more purpose for before retirement as a Lieutenant Colonel in 2012, was her newfound skill. She was two years into medical pave the way not as a pilot in the Air National Guard. She was, in fact, school at Vanderbilt when she learned that she could the first female pilot in the 105th Airlift Squadron in only for all women in join military flight school through the Air National the Tennessee Air National Guard and among the first the military but for Guard and still retain a civilian job. At that time, in women to fly combat missions. To say that Julie is a all women who 1990, women were allowed to fly KC-135 tankers but trailblazer is accurate but somehow feels inadequate. not C-130 turboprop transport aircrafts, and so Julie She has helped pave the way not only for all women in have been told you applied to the air refueling squadron in Knoxville. the military but for all women who have been told you can do this or that The rule changed roughly a year later, however, and can do this or that but not both. Julie has demonstrated, when it did, Julie promptly registered to fly C-130s. but not both. with grace and humility, that one can achieve excellence Speeding her way through medical school by in two disparate fields at the same time, while also raising overloading her schedule, Julie was ready when an young children. officer slot was made available to her. She took two years off between This ability to navigate between different spheres manifested itself medical school and residency to complete pilot training in Texas, early in Julie’s life. In her freshman year at Harpeth Hall, she was an where she was the only woman in her class of twelve, and to alternate for the mile relay team that won the state championship. complete survival school in Washington, where the percentage of Not long after, Julie was hit by a car while riding her bike, and the women capped at about five per cent. Returning to Nashville, Julie damage to her leg was such that she couldn’t run competitively again. spent the daylight hours focused on her residency and nights and Julie responded by taking up theater, singing and dancing in the weekends focused on flying. Her first overseas mission was in 1992 ensemble for such performances as South Pacific and Oklahoma. when she flew a C-130 Hercules into Bosnia to deliver pallets of She jokes that she still knows all the words to those songs, though food and water. her story reveals values that run far deeper. Resilience for one.

Julie’s career as a C-130 pilot has since taken her to every continent Multidimensionality for another. except Antarctica and Australia. Her most dangerous missions have Graduating Harpeth Hall, Julie attended Stanford University where she initially studied to be an engineer but gravitated instead toward medicine. Neither of her parents were doctors, but she had worked one summer at a pediatrician’s office and had felt at home within that community and setting. She decided to pursue radiology as a specialty primarily because the practicing radiologists she knew had high rates of job satisfaction, but the fact that radiologists work in shifts would also prove conducive to Julie’s second career—as a pilot.

Whereas medicine was uncommon in Julie’s family, flying was not.

Her grandfather was a B-25 pilot who served in World War II. His plane was shot down over the Adriatic Sea in 1943 with no survivors.

Julie’s father, who was only seven when the crash occurred, went on to fly in the Marines before becoming a commercial pilot for American Airlines. Julie was eager to take up wings as well. During her freshman year in college, she went to the Nashville airport where they were offering first time flights for only $10. One time up and Julie was hooked. She spent the next two summers earning her 46

HALLWAYS

been into Iraq, though her plane was hit by a bullet in Bosnia. She claims that it “doesn’t count because we didn’t know we had been hit until we landed.” (One could argue otherwise.) During these missions, her responsibility was to transport goods and, in many cases, U.S. officers, some of whom were wounded. She jokes that she was the “Army’s taxicab service.”

The missions, some of which lasted as long as six months, did not detract from Julie’s success as a medical practitioner. As a medical student, she was the recipient of the Roentgen Ray Award for Excellence in Radiology in 1991. In 1996-1997 she served as Chief Resident at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and has since served as Site Chief at St. Thomas Hospital, Tristar Women’s Imaging, and now at Centennial Medical Center. She has published articles in medical journals and continues to see patients when performing biopsy procedures. Throughout all of this, she has been an active community member, friend, and mother to her three children: Cole, Will, and Isabel, who is a Harpeth Hall class of 2015 graduate.

Scanning images at Radiology Alliance

DISTINGUISHED ALUMNA

2526.4 Total flying hours

1132 Number of C-130 sorties (aka dispatches)

21 Years practicing medicine so far

22

Julie with sons Will, Cole and daughter Isabel

Years flying for the 105th Airlift Squadron, Tennessee Air National Guard

13 Now, as an empty-nester, retired Air National Guard pilot, and experienced radiologist, Julie is keen to live in, and be thankful for, the present moment. The ambition she felt in her youth isn’t gone—she just climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro in February—but she now feels less impelled to get everything perfect and is inclined to “give myself a break.” After a lifetime managing the demands of two high-stress careers and three children, she most certainly deserves the break. She also most certainly deserves our recognition as this year’s Harpeth Hall Distinguished Alumna Award recipient.

Months in pilot training

6 Years as a student at Harpeth Hall

2 Number of sisters at Harpeth Hall

150 Miles hiked in the Warner Parks to prepare for Mt. Kilimanjaro

25 Years in same book club

too many to count Number of honeybear Christmas ornaments

105th Airlift Squadron SPRING 2020

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In

by Jessie Morris Adams ’00

the midst of the 2008 financial crisis, Tallu Schuyler Quinn ’98 found herself living in Boston, educated and eager, yet unable to find a job—in any field. Like so many young people at that time, she wrestled with the realization that her degrees and ambition were no match for the reality of the economic landscape. Ultimately, she secured employment at a national grocery chain, working third shift well into the late-night hours.

Part of her job was to clean out the meat case after closing, putting all the unsold meat in a black garbage bag and taking it out to the dumpster behind the store. Seeing good food treated as trash was difficult to witness for employees making less than ten dollars an hour, and highlighted for Tallu how much edible food is wasted in our food economy. People all over the country were struggling to find work, yet businesses were egregiously throwing away usable food.

The next year, Tallu landed back in Nashville and leveraged that experience to found The Nashville Food Project, with a mission to “bring people together to grow, cook, and share nourishing food, with the goals of cultivating community and alleviating hunger in our city.” Since 2009, she has driven impressive growth in the organization and transformed the way Nashville understands, talks about, and addresses hunger and food insecurity in our midst. The Nashville Food Project currently employs 23 staff members and boasts a legion of over 500 volunteers

each month who work in their gardens and kitchens, prepare and distribute meals, and recover food from local farmers, grocers, and restaurants. Tallu says of her grocery store days, “it felt like a job to nowhere . . . but that ‘job to nowhere’ has been one of the experiences that informs my work the most. Without that difficult experience, I’m not sure I would have known to consider that resource [of discarded food] as something we could beautifully turn into community meals for people to share.”

Today, The Nashville Food Project runs two community kitchens where staff and volunteers cook hot, healthful meals from recovered, donated, and garden-grown food.

Food distribution vehicles share approximately 5,500 meals across the Nashville area each week in partnership with over 35 community organizations. An ambitious $5 million capital campaign recently raised funds to expand operations and further their reach, projecting growth from 175,000 meals distributed in 2018 to over 500,000 in 2022. By those metrics, it would be easy to claim victory—but Tallu notes that success is not linear, inevitable, or complete. She reflects that while feeling like she was sitting in failure in Boston, the experience became something meaningful, for which she carries deep gratitude.

Tallu and her family at the groundbreaking for the new Nashville Food Project headquarters

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Finding value in struggle is one of the life skills she connects to her experience at Harpeth Hall, along with searching for creative solutions to multi-faceted problems.

She loved photography and art as a Harpeth Hall student and went on to earn her undergraduate degree in studio art, and believes that much of art is essentially about solving problems: “I’ve got this idea that I need to communicate to a wider audience, and these tools, and this medium . . . how am I going to share this idea that I have in a way people will understand?” Similarly, tackling day-to-day challenges in her work, thinking about the big-picture dimensions of starting and growing a nonprofit, and working to address community need are all, at their core, about problem solving.

SPIRIT OF OF SERVICE ALUMNA SPIRIT SERVICE

She notes that one of the most transformative aspects of her Harpeth Hall experience was an emphasis on the belief that students can be agents of change, and they are encouraged to think about how they can contribute to solutions, big or small.

”

She also reflects gratefully on having received encouragement from faculty to simply be herself, and to dive deeply into her varied interests.

In her case, she has always enjoyed cooking, learning about agriculture, social justice, and people. She is also passionate about eradicating poverty and notes, “for me, that was a bunch of things that turned into a career I love, and I’m lucky for that.”

Her affirmative experiences at Harpeth Hall are reflected in her hopes for current students and young alumnae looking to build a better world: “When we have the privilege of piecing together or finding a fit in the world to make us come alive and affect the community around us, that’s a gift.” She emphasizes that today’s students have multiple avenues through which to effect change, because “any big lasting positive social change requires effort from every angle. You can do that in industry, through research, in education and teaching, with on-the-ground activism, by writing influential books or starting a podcast.”

In fact, her sense is that it will take all of us working together to solve critical problems facing the next generation in Nashville and beyond. Tallu acknowledges that those who work the front lines can become overwhelmed with the enormity of large-scale social challenges, but it is imperative to remain galvanized rather than paralyzed. We can lose sight of how to move forward when we are inundated with so much information, and “it can be easy to wonder how our work matters in the context of big sweeping issues of our time, like climate crisis, gun violence, or disease.” We know we cannot fix everything, so there are days when it feels easier to just do nothing. Tallu and her team at The Nashville Food Project discuss the threat of burnout often, and challenge each other to recognize the signs in themselves and know when to take a break. They ask one another, “what do you do when you’re starting to feel hopeless?”

As Chief Executive Officer, she is acutely aware that her team members might become worn down by the nature of their work, so living honorably has also meant deconstructing what it looks like to lead confidently. If we are going to lead well, “we can be courageous about speaking up when something is wrong. We can talk about injustice and privilege and power. We can use our microphones. We don’t have to do it perfectly, but we can be brave in talking about it. Those of us entrusted to do the teaching, educating, and parenting of the next generation, we can model it.”

Most of all, we need to “show young people that leadership is not about force and power. It’s about being true, equitable, and brave. It’s about showing our vulnerability.” In the end, Tallu says, she is convinced that the answer is to not let perfect be the enemy of good. “Show up, speak up, and remember that we’re here to keep the light on for other people.”

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MIDDLE SCHOOL CAREER DAY

Eighth Grade Career Day FEBRUARY 2020

I

n early February, 33 alumnae representing a multitude of career paths volunteered to spend the afternoon at 8th Grade Career Day. Middle School Dean of Students, Traci Keller, and the Student Council Officers kicked off the afternoon with a competitive alumnae trivia game highlighting twenty alumnae from around the country with interesting careers ranging from directing the hit sitcom Modern Family to clerking for a Supreme Court Justice of the United States. Next each eager 8th grader attended three of the ten different professional category panels. Following the panel sessions, students and alumnae engaged in informal tabletop discussions in the dining hall.

When asked what they learned throughout the afternoon, the students reflected, “work hard for your dreams, your future is never set in stone, be openminded, try new things, always be true to yourself, trust your education, and make connections with alumnae because they can help you in your future career.�

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If you are interested in participating in a future Career Day, please contact Director of Alumnae Relations Scottie Coombs at coombs@harpethhall.org.

MIDDLE SCHOOL CAREER DAY

PARTICIPANTS Maddie Teren Adams, 2008 Owner, Smudgepot Creative Services Tori Tucker Alexander, 2003 Owner, Alexander Interiors Clare Harbison Ashford, 2003 Kindergarten Teacher, Poplar Grove Elementary School Holly Meadows Baird, 1997 Workplace Strategist and Senior Project Manager, Milepost Consulting

Blair Carter, 2007 Software Engineer, Asurion Jamie McGee Chenery, 2001 Business Reporter, The Tennessean Sophie Cudd, 2015 Contemporary Department Associate/Assistant, William Morris Endeavor (WME) Sarah Baker Daugherty, 2005 Associate General Counsel, LifePoint Health

Murray Benson, 2007 Kindergarten Teacher, Percy Priest School

Kelly Diehl, 2005 Co-Owner and Artist, New Hat Projects, LLC

Laura Lea Bryant, 2004 Certified Holistic Chef and Cookbook Author, Laura Lea Balanced

Allison Dowdle, 2007 Senior Manager Financial Reporting, Silicon Ranch Corporation

Hannah Menefee Dudney, 2004 OB/GYN Doctor, Centennial Women’s Group

Emy Noel Sanderson, 1998 Upper School English Teacher, The Harpeth Hall School

Leigh Fitts, 1991 Architect Associate, Hastings Architecture Associates, LLC

Molly Saint Sung, 2010 Senior Experiential Marketing Manager, Chainalysis, Inc.

Ellen Green Hoffman, 2004 Vice President, Financial Advisor, First Horizon Advisors

Jessica Turk, 2002 Program Manager, Nashville Public Television

Katie Geer Hutto, 2006 Manager of Insurance Programs, HCA Healthcare

Abby Gallagher Vann, 2003 Customer Marketing Manager, The Coca Cola Company

Lindy Johnson, 2005 Large Casualty Broker, Willis Towers Watson

Diana Wallace, 2006 Casting Director/Producer, Diana Wallace Casting and Media

Berry Kennedy, 2004 Vice President of Operations, Built Technologies, Inc.

Kristine West, 1996 Senior Operations Counsel, HCA

Margaret Riley King, 2003 Literary Agent, William Morris Endeavor (WME) Caroline McDonald, 2007 Owner and Farm Manager, Sounding Stone Farm Mamie Nichols Murphy, 2007 AVP, Growth Strategy, Premise Health Mary Lucille Noah, 2008 Associate Attorney, Stites & Harbison, PLLC

Varina Buntin Willse, 1995 President and Founder, Willse Ink Emily Whitson, 2010 Marketing Coordinator, Acadia Heathcare Brooke Worthington, 2007 Owner and Designer, Brooke Worthington Jewelry Campbell Markham Wouters, 2012 Director of Content, Apto Global

Hayley Phipps Robinson, 2004 Associate Veterinarian, Belle Meade Animal Hospital SPRING 2020

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National Advisory Council

The

fall and winter

months were filled with HHConnectHER events and meetings designed to foster connections between alumnae and the school.

The Alumnae Office is thankful for our alumnae leadership within the National Advisory Council, the Head’s Young Alumnae Council, and the Alumnae Board. Many of these volunteers took part in our inaugural “Internship Workshop: Alumnae Mentoring Students for Workplace Success” in November. This is a new partnership between alumnae and students to prepare the girls for their Winterim internships, job opportunities, scholarship applications, and future professional success. Other HHConnectHER events included an author event with Anne Byrn Whitaker ’74 featuring her new book Skillet Love: From Steak to Cake: More Than 150 Recipes in One Cast-Iron Pan, fall and winter book club meetings facilitated by guests and faculty members, an Alumnae of Color Social, Winterim for Adults classes led by alumnae, faculty, and staff, 8th grade Career Day featuring 33 alumnae and their professional career paths, and the Alumnae Art Exhibit highlighting 58 alumnae artists. We encourage you to look for future HHConnectHER events and to stay connected to your alma mater through the monthly Alumnae Newsletter, HarpethHall.org, and the Harpeth Hall social media channels.

For more information about HHConnectHER visit HarpethHall.org/alumnae/connecther

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Harpeth Hall

Connect

HER

Head’s Young Alumnae Council

Alumnae Board

CONNECTHER

Internship Workshop

Book Club

Alumnae of Color Social at Kirkman House

Anne Byrn Book Event

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ALUMNAE EVENTS

SWEET SUMMER SEND-OFF FOR THE CLASS OF 2019

COLLEGE AGE HOLIDAY BRUNCH

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ALUMNAE EVENTS

ALUMNAE HOLIDAY PARTY

2019 SPRING 2020

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ALUMNAE EVENTS

NEW YORK CITY

NEW YORK CITY

NEW YORK CITY

NEW YORK CITY

DALLAS, FORT WORTH DALLAS, FORT WORTH

DALLAS, FORT WORTH 56

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ALUMNAE EVENTS

WASHINGTON, D.C.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Alumnae Outcomes Panel

O

n November 19, the Admissions Office welcomed four alumnae to campus to share their experiences with prospective families interested in Harpeth Hall. The panel discussion allowed attendees a glimpse into life beyond Harpeth Hall and the preparation our students received to create their path in the world. Alumnae spoke of their lasting friendships, deep ties to faculty, formative Winterim experiences, and the confidence they gained from an all-girls school environment.

Ellen Green Hoffman ’04, Certified Financial Advisor, Amanda Norman ’00, owner artist at Amanda Norman Studio, Jennifer Harrison Hutton ’01, Physical Therapist at Vanderbilt Outpatient Pediatric Rehabilitation, and Caroline Kiesling ’18, current sophomore at Vanderbilt University.

Ellen Green Hoffman ’04, Amanda Norman ’00, Jennifer Harrison Hutton ’01, and Caroline Kiesling ’18 SPRING 2019 2020

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2020 HARPETH HALL

alumnae

exhibit 2020 Alumnae Art Exhibit

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he 2020 Alumnae Art Exhibit opened February 9 with a festive reception in both the Marnie Sheridan Gallery and the Patton Visual Arts Center. There were 58 artists participating in the exhibit showcasing over 130 pieces of art ranging from oil, sculpture, and acrylic to jewelry, photography, and mixed media. These artists represented 34 Harpeth Hall classes, ranging from 1953 to 2013. The Alumnae Art Exhibit is one way our school can demonstrate the lifelong love for the visual arts instilled through the Harpeth Hall experience for all students. Thank you to our alumnae co-chairs Beth Porter Lawrence ’96, Amanda Norman ’00, and Anne Hightower Trainer ’89.

THANK YOU TO OUR PRESENTING SPONSORS

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HALLWAYS

Lisa Morrissey LaVange ’71 highlighted in New York Times Square

Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle ’75 with Gray Oliver Thornburg ’72 and past parent Deborah Tate

Class Notes

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Kathy Clark Lord ’60 published a cookbook Out of the Frying Pan after 17 years of catering with her company, The Traveling Skillet. Kathy also received a Lifetime Achievement Award before retiring from the Executive Director position of the Bayou Preservation Association and Trees for Houston.

Lenis Hopkins Northmore ’62, a retired art historian and world traveler, has downsized from her 6,000-square foot home in Newark, DE to a smaller home in Williamsburg, VA. Her home was filled with artwork, artifacts, and mementos she collected over the years, and her story was featured on the PBS show Legacy List.

Jeanie Nelson ’65 was one of three women to spearhead a new exhibit at the Nashville Public Library honoring the legacy of the women’s suffrage movement in Tennessee and the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920 as part of the 100th anniversary of its passage.

Judy Quinn ’69 who lives in France, enjoys hosting her classmates and others for trek-hiking around the base of Mont Blanc.

70

Susie Andrews ’70 still practices family medicine with her husband in Murfreesboro, and she delivered one of her own grandchildren in August 2019.

Dr. Lisa Morrissey LaVange ’71 joined the Board of Directors of SimulationsPlus.

Lisa is a Professor and the Associate Chair of the Department of Biostatistics at the University of North Carolina. She also was the recipient of Harpeth Hall’s Distinguished Alumna Award in 2010.

Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle ’75 accepted the 2019 Outstanding Community Service Award on behalf of the Davidson County Chancery Court Part III from the Southeastern Association of Area Agencies on Aging. The Association bestowed this award in recognition of a $36 million court program aimed at helping senior citizens that arose out of the settlement of two cases in Davidson County. In its first year, that court program delivered dental, transportation, housing, and legal services to over 17,174 elderly Tennesseans. It also has resulted in the production of senior-focused

programs on Nashville Public Television that have attracted over one million viewers.

Congratulations to Beth Porch Scruggs ’75 and the Nashville Dolphins on receiving the 97th Daryl Waltrip’s Hometown Heroes Award.

Capitol Christian Music Group (CCMG) gave a surprise award to Amy Grant Gill ’78 for surpassing one billion global music streams.

Amy also received the Outstanding Achievement Award from the T.J. Martell Foundation at their annual gala on February 24. The T.J. Martell Foundation is the music industry’s leading foundation that funds innovative medical research focused on finding treatments and cures for cancer.

For the fourth time, BMI’s Executive Vice President of Distribution, Publisher Relations and Administration Services, Alison Smith ’79, was named to Billboard’s 2019 Women in Music Top Executives list.

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CLASS NOTES

Jacqueline Saturn Dakar ’86

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After spending most of the last 18 years in the northeast, Karen Dondanville Weatherbee ’80 moved back to Tennessee in March to be closer to family.

Penelope Logan Furry ’83 was appointed Chair of the Development Task Force for the new Coppell Arts Center in Coppell, TX, outside of Dallas. The $20 million facility opens in May 2020.

Katie Quillen Miller ’85 lives in Durham, NC, with her husband and three children.

Katie works at Duke University and is Executive Director of the Health Management Certificate Program, working with Duke MBA students at the Fuqua School of Business.

Jessica Reynolds Pasley ’85, a Senior Information Officer with the News and Communications Office at Vanderbilt

University Medical Center, was named the New Media Relations Manager at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt.

She is the main point of contact for media on behalf of Children’s Hospital.

Congratulations to Jacqueline Saturn Dakar ’86 for being named to Billboard’s 2019 Women in Music Top Executives list again in 2019. Jacqueline is the President of Caroline/Harvest Records, the indie distribution and label services arm of Capitol Music Group.

Carolyn Fischer ’86 was just named one of twenty “celebrities” to watch in Canada this year, as the go-to resource in the country’s climate crisis. Carolyn is a senior fellow with Resources for the Future and currently holds joint appointments as a professor of environmental economics at Vrjie Universiteit—Amsterdam and as a Canada 150 Research Chair in Climate Economics, Innovation, and Policy at the University of Ottawa.

Nancy Brown King ’86 became the Executive Director of Nonprofit Housing Corporation, which develops affordable housing in Middle Tennessee and neighboring areas. She retired from the US Bankruptcy Court Middle District of Tennessee, where she served as an Attorney and Judicial Law Clerk for 25 years.

Mont Blanc trek with Jane Gwinn Stumpf ’69, Mary Louise Linn ’69, Katherine Sheridan Crocker ’69, Betsy Malone, Emmie Dillon Thomas ’76, Allison Thompson ’69, and Judy Quinn ’69 60

HALLWAYS

CLASS NOTES

Bonita Doss Owens ’09

Kelleigh Bannen Grossman ’99

Marcie is the Founder and President of MAC Presents and celebrated the 15th anniversary of her music partnership and experiential agency with programs for Citi, Uber, and Swisher Sweets. One of her latest ventures was ATLive, a three-day veterans’ benefit concert at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium in November with headliners Keith Urban, Blake Shelton, Eric Church, Sam Hunt, Luke Combs, and others.

Carolyn Fischer ’86

Holly Sears Sullivan ’90

Catherine Mayes Knowles ’88 received the Homeless Liaison on of the Year Award from the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth (NAEHCY). Catherine has been the Homeless Education Program Coordinator for Metro Nashville Public Schools for 22 years.

Bonita Doss Owens ’89 wrote and published her first book entitled Who Stole My Significance? Bonita is a life coach, and in her book, she shares her struggles, challenges, and lessons that helped her to align herself to the woman that she was born to be. Her book will help you to overcome what has held you back so that you can live a life that you deserve.

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Marti Russ Jeffords ’90 received her National Board Certification of Teachers in December 2019. The National Board Certification of Teachers develops,

retains, and recognizes accomplished teachers and generates ongoing improvement in schools nationwide. It is the most respected professional certification available in K-12 education.

Holly Sears Sullivan ’90 received the 2019 Alumni Professional Achievement Award from the University of Tennessee in September and was named to the Nashville Business Journal’s 2019 Power 100: Disruptors list. Additionally, Holly was named one of “The Most Powerful Women in Washington” by the Washingtonian magazine. Holly also joined the board of directors at the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce & Industry, a key business lobbying group at the Tennessee General Assembly.

Marcie Allen Van Mol ’92 was named to Billboard’s 2019 Women in Music Top Executives list for the 10th year in a row.

Classmates Mary Pillow Kirk Thompson ’94 and Halle Hays ’94 launched FOH&BOH (which stands for front-of-house and back-of-house). It is a tech platform designed for the hospitality industry that matches job seekers with employers in response to Nashville restaurants’ worker shortage. The platform rolled out in January 2020.

Congratulations to Reese Witherspoon ’94, the 2019 winner of the Sherry Lansing Leadership Award, given annually to a woman who is a trailblazer and philanthropic leader in the entertainment industry.

Brianne Frazier ’96 is the new Senior Strategist for Policy Communications at Amazon.

Kelleigh Bannen Grossman ’99 was named one of Nashville Lifestyles’ most beautiful people of 2019. She also hosted the first country show for Apple Music, #TodaysCountry, and made her national TV debut in October on the Today Show.

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CLASS NOTES

00

Amanda Norman ’00, a selfemployed artist, returned to campus on November 19, 2019 to participate in an Alumnae Outcomes Panel Discussion. The panel allowed prospective families a glimpse into life beyond Harpeth Hall and the preparation these alumnae received to pursue their path in the world.

Tricia McWilliams Ward ’00 was recently promoted to Senior Campaign Manager of the Students of the Year campaign at The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s (LLS) Tennessee Chapter. She was recognized at LLS’s National Conference in July 2019 with the Budget Achievement Award for growing her campaign by 166 percent from the previous year and contributed to the Tennessee Chapter’s receiving of the Transformational Growth Award for 84 percent year-over-year growth and of the Triple Crown Award for three consecutive years of growth.

Michelle Gaskin Brown ’01 made Nashville Business Journal’s 2019 “40 Under 40” list as Amazon’s Manager of Public Policy in Nashville. Prior to Amazon, Michelle worked as both a legislative attorney and lobbyist for the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce and played an active role in advocating for Amazon to bring its operations headquarters to Nashville.

After seven years as a librarian at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, Leah High ’01 relocated to Hamburg, Germany in the fall of 2018. She is working as a graphic designer and copywriter for the British company, Oliver Agency, while also continuing her work as a visual artist and developing community programs that connect children, literacy, and the arts.

Jennifer Harrison Hutton ’01, a physical therapist at Vanderbilt Outpatient Pediatric Rehabilitation, returned to campus on November 19, 2019 to participate in an Alumnae Outcomes Panel Discussion.

The panel allowed prospective families a glimpse into life beyond Harpeth Hall and

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HALLWAYS

Outcomes Panel Discussion.

The panel allowed prospective families a glimpse into life beyond Harpeth Hall and the preparation these alumnae received to pursue their path in the world.

Helen Rankin Willsey ’05 now leads a scientific research group at the University of California, San Fransico studying the function of autism risk genes in brain development.

Reese Witherspoon ’94

the preparation these alumnae received to puruse their path in the world.

EA Manier Homans ’02 returns to Harpeth Hall as the Controller in the business office.

Jessica Turk ’02 is a Program Manager at Nashville Public Television (Npt) and was instrumental in the production of the documentary BY ONE VOTE: WOMAN SUFFRAGE IN THE SOUTH as the Associate Producer. She was assisted by fellow Harpeth Hall alumnae, Caroline Scudder ’16, Dasha Didier ’16, and Sara Emma Kahane ’19.

Mary Stengel Bentley ’03 recently completed a two-story, 1,600 sq. ft. mural in the lobby of a brand new office building in Waltham, MA for tenants Simpson, Gumpertz, and Heger. The building, also known as 20 CityPoint, was developed by Boston Properties.

Allison Oldacre Griffin ’03 graduated from the Doctor of Nursing Practice program at Vanderbilt University School of Nursing in August 2019. She continues to work in the Developmental Medicine clinic at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt.

Ellen Green Hoffman ’04, Vice President, Financial Advisor at First Horizon Advisors, returned to campus on November 19, 2019 to participate in an Alumnae

Olivia Burd ’07 graduated from the University of San Francisco in 2019 with a Master of Education in a Clinical Counseling and School Counseling dual degree. Olivia is currently studying for her Tennessee state licensing exam.

StyleBlueprint featured Mary Fowler Howell ’07 and Evan Gibbs ’11 in an article about their design company Pfeffer Torode entitled “The Pfeffer Torodo Design Duo is Our Current Interior Designer Crush!”

Ann Ralls Niewold Brown ’08 and Courtney Vick ’08 were named one of “Nashville’s Top 30 under 30” by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Nashville’s “Top 30 Under 30” showcases the community’s top young professionals for their business, civic, and philanthropic achievements while benefiting the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation’s work to develop ways to control and cure cystic fibrosis.

Willa Fitzgerald ’09 stars as Colette French in USA Network’s new show “Dare Me.” It premiered on December 29, 2019. Willa also was included in a Town and Country Magazine’s August edition on “The Ultimate Town and Country Guest List.”

Caroline Mack ’09 finished Physician Assistant school at Trevecca Nazarene University with a Master of Medicine in August 2018. She is working as a Dermatology PA at Retief Skin Center in Green Hills and is accepting new patients.

10

Tess Erlenborn Davies ’10 had an exhibition in the Marnie Sheridan Gallery November 14 – January 17. Her

CLASS NOTES

exhibit, “Off the Canvas”, explored how two disparate things exist together in a space on — or off — the canvas. Tess is also this year’s Carell Artist in Residence at Harpeth Hall and worked with the sixth graders and senior Camyrn Lesh as part of her independent study for Winterim. The result of the collaboration of Tess, Camryn, and the sixth graders is a new triptych mural in the Junior Lobby in Massey Center.

Guatemala, Leah Shaw ’12 is now a data manager at Boston Health Care for the Homeless.

Hannah Claybrook Gibbs ’10 was promoted to the rank of Captain in the Tennessee Army National Guard and now serves as the Executive Officer for the 208th Area Support Medical Company.

Abbey Butner ’13 graduated from American University with a degree in Biology in 2017 and has been accepted into Elon University’s Master of Physician Assistant Studies.

Wrenne Evans ’12 served as the tour photographer for singer Maggie Rogers on her “Heard It in a Past Life” fall tour in 2019.

Caroline Hoffman ’13 is working as an English Language Assistant with Meddeas (Multilingual Education Development & Support) in Madrid, Spain.

After earning a Master of Public Health from Tufts University and spending a year working with the NGO mayahealth.org in

Emily Stewart ’14 performed in “It’s a Wonderful Life” at the Larry Keeton Theatre in Donelson, TN as Violet Bick.

Rebekah Webster ’12 is currently working in research at Vanderbilt, started an information postbaccalaureate at Tennessee State University, and works as a songwriter for a children’s music education company.

Also, her worship team, Nashville Life Music, recently signed to Integrity Music.

Brianna Bjordahl ’15 worked as a biology intern at St. Mark’s National Wildlife Refuge in Florida. One of her projects is working with artificial cavities in pine trees to establish a new population of the federally endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers in part of the refuge.

Shelby Potter ’15 graduated from Auburn University in May 2019 with a degree in Aerospace Engineering. As a senior, Shelby was awarded an Undergraduate Research Fellowship and conducted research within the College of Aviation. Her research, titled “The Effects of Severe Weather on Commercial Aviation Accidents and Incidents,” culminated in a paper and poster presentation at the Auburn Research Student Symposium. Shelby is now employed as an aerospace engineer at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida within the 96th Test Wing. continued on page 65

SPRING 2020

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CLASS NOTES

Alexis Hawkins Holland ’13

Tess Erlenborn Davies ’10

Caroline Tanner Everett ’07

Becca Jacques Smith ’12

Kelly Bonau Jones ’04

Tobi Lee Erwin ’08

Leah High ’01

Lauren Quinn Barnacastle ’08

MARRIAGES Catey Vander Naillen Carter ’70 to Stephen Cumley in May 2018

Lauren Bounds ’09 to John Anderson Gallagher on July 13, 2019

Wende Hall Stambaugh ’85 to Craig Fry on August 10, 2019

Emily Carpenter ’09 to Michael Douglas Hellman on November 9, 2019

Marci Rosenblum ’88 to Gregory Carl Adams on November 30, 2019

Paige Cahill ’09 to Mike Yastrzemski on November 10, 2018

Leah High ’01 to Stefan Hilgenkamp on October 26, 2018

Kara Earthman ’09 to Harrison Tucker on October 5, 2019

Grace Brock ’02 to John Bevington Bearden, Jr. on October 5, 2019

Bradley Moody ’09 to Conner Mims on September 14, 2019

Katie Atkins ’03 to George Ritzen on October 5, 2019

Tess Erlenborn ’10 to Barton Davies on September 14, 2019

Kelly Bonau ’04 to Matthew Jones on May 18, 2019

Molly Saint ’10 to Max Sung on October 5, 2019

Mary Ramsey ’04 to Trey Moore on November 16, 2019

Jean Broadhurst ’11 to Brandon Schoeneweis on September 1, 2019

Anna Trotter ’04 to Justin David Yonkelowitz on September 14, 2019

Grace Cummings ’11 to Michael Bay on October 20, 2019

Kelly Diehl ’05 to Kyle Hamlett on January 4, 2020

Abby Henry ’11 to Justin Gray on August 31, 2019

Liza Darwin ’06 to Joseph Mueller on October 5, 2019

Julia Ann Meadows ’11 to David Simmons on November 2, 2019

Amy Dixon ’06 to Jesse Knutson on Demember 7, 2019

Molly White ’11 to Joseph Michael Viola on February 1, 2020

True Claycombe ’06 to Michael Pfeifer on April 6, 2019

Molly Claybrook ’12 to John Newell on September 20, 2019

Lauren Riegle ’07 to Trevor Mitchell on January 18, 2020

Ellen DeWitt ’12 to Colin Quinn on August 10, 2019

English Taylor ’07 to John Cowgill on November 16, 2019

Tori Dickerson ’12 to Taron Foxworth on November 9, 2019

Annie Tipps ’07 to Gardner Beach Bell on January 4, 2020

Taylor Heinze ’12 to Mac McManus on January 18, 2020

Octavia Obolensky ’07 to Thomas Banks Melly on September 22, 2018

Becca Jacques ’12 to Banks Smith, Jr. on September 7, 2019

Lindsey Rollins ’07 to Charles Webb on November 23, 2019

Katie Neal ’12 to Clay Sullivan on August 31, 2019

Caroline Tanner ’07 to Thomas King Everett on November 9, 2019

Alexis Hawkins ’13 to Zack Holland on September 28, 2019

Allie Carver ’08 to Raymond Rufat on October 12, 2019

Alexandra Thornton ’13 to Shane Hopkins on September 14, 2019

Tobi Lee ’08 to Spencer Erwin on September 14, 2019

Abbie Jennings ’14 to Wilson Hays on August 31, 2019

Lauren Quinn ’08 to William Jonathan Barnacastle on January 18, 2020 64

HALLWAYS

CLASS NOTES CLASS NOTES

Hastings Scott Ryan

Michael Andrew Ryan

Minor Vance Kerrigan

Benjamin James Sanderson

BIRTHS Kelli Dunaway ’96 son, Matthew Stephen Schneider on March 16, 2019 Alissa Swearingen ’97 daughter and son, Charlotte Clifton Alexiou and Henry Nicholas Alexiou, on July 5, 2019 Katie Kaminski Cowan ’98 daughter, Charlotte Claire Cowan, on October 30, 2019 Emy Noel Sanderson ’98 son, Benjamin “Benji” James Sanderson, on September 20, 2019 Katie Beesley Douglas ’00 son, James Thomas Douglas, on November 16, 2018

Margaret Riney Hoffman

Diana Jane Hannon

Hunter Schoenfeld

Haley Anne Cendrowski

Scottie Gambill Ryan ’02 daughter, Hastings Scott Ryan, on November 4, 2019

Claire Nuismer ’06 daughter, Olivia “Carr” Nuismer, on December 17, 2019

Tori Tucker Alexander ’03 daughter, Roberta “Birdie” Carson Alexander, on October 16, 2019

Kathryn Harvey Moore ’07 son, Tyler “Clarke” Moore, Jr., on October 21, 2019

Sara Rodriguez Ludlam ’03 son, Michael Samuels Ludlam, on January 3, 2020

Mary Julia Bressman Hannon ’08 daughter, Diana “Jane” Hannon, on October 15, 2019

Ellen Green Hoffman ’04 daughter, Margaret Riney Hoffman, on December 20, 2019

Bethea Patterson Schoenfeld ’08 son, Hunter Patterson Schoenfeld on December 26, 2019

Gracie Wachtler Sanders ’04 daughter, Eleanor “Ellie” Fort Sanders, on August 23, 2019

Alex Bryant Bars ’10 son, Bradley Joseph Bars, Jr., on July 12, 2019

Laine Evans Striegel ’04 daughter, Mary Evans Striegel on November 8, 2019

Allison Stark Walker ’10 son, Henry James Walker, on August 10, 2019

Sarah Baker Daugherty ’05 son, Leon Baker Daugherty, on October 19, 2018 Rachel Lowe Host ’05 daughter, Nora Keylon Host, on November 6, 2019 Helen Ramsey Rominiecki ’05 daughter, Miller Ramsey Rominiecki, on February 6, 2019 Maddie Martin Waud ’05 son, Williamson “Wills” Edward Ward, on October 9, 2019 Molly Campbell Downing ’06 son, Andrew “James” Downing III, on October 12, 2019 Taylor Parrish Grisham ’06 son, Odin Thomas Grisham, on February 20, 2019

Michelle Marie Hutto and Kathleen Louise Hutto

Alyssa Abkowitz Cendrowski ’00 daughter, Haley Anne Cendrowski, on December 16, 2019 Allison Stewart Hearon ’06 daughter, Elizabeth Hart Hearon, on January 31, Mimi Mayo Beaver ’01 daughter, Evelyn 2019 “Evie” Victoria Beaver, on September 27, 2019 Katie Geer Hutto ’06 daughters, Michelle Sally Jackson Ryan ’01 son, Michael Andrew Marie Hutto and Kathleen Louise Hutto, Ryan, on August 31, 2019 on May 2, 2019 Abi Markham Houseright ’02 son, Jacob Denton Whitson Kerrigan ’06 daughter, “Jack” Housewright, on October 12, 2019 Minor Vance Kerrigan, on June 11, 2019 Katie Adams Pittman ’02 daughter, Margaret “Mae” Adams Pittman, on July 2, 2019

Callie Kestner Myers ’06 son, Louis Kestner Myers, on December 7, 2018

Mary Evans Striegel

James Downing

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CLASS NOTES

IN MEMORIAM Frances Wilkerson Rodenhauser ’36 of Nashville, Tennessee, passed away September 4, 2019. She was a life-long member of West End United Methodist Church and a graduate of Vanderbilt University. Frances is survived by one daughter, two grandsons, her granddaughter Ellen Crawford True ’87, and five greatgrandchildren.

Mildred Jarman Daugherty ’51 of Nashville, Tennessee, passed away January 3, 2020. She is survived by her brother, nieces, nephews, and grandchildren.

Dorothy “Dot” McCracken Hindman ’41 of Nashville, Tennessee and Marietta, Georgia, passed away October 31, 2019. Dot had a career in finance as an accountant and CFO and owned several publishing companies. She is survived by her daughter, Jane Hindman Kyburz ’64, five grandchildren, and fifteen great-grandchildren.

Mary Jane Heine Fair ’51 of Witchita, Kansas, passed away November 17, 2019. She is survived by her husband, two daughters, two grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.

Elsa Killingstad Davis ’44 of Brownsville, Texas, passed away August 3, 2018. She is survived by three daughters, one son, her step-children, four grandchildren, step-grandchildren, and a great-grandchild.

Joan Hooper Vollmer ’46 of Nashville, Tennessee, passed away October 13, 2019. She is survived by one daughter, two sons, six grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.

Eugenia “Gene” Pierce Young ’47 passed away October 19, 2019.

She is survived by three sons, one daughter, four grandsons, and three granddaughters.

Mary Catherine “Sis” Woolwine Vander Naillen ’47 of Houston, Texas, passed away on February 3, 2020. Sis enjoyed golf, gardening, and volunteering and was a member of the Episcopal church. She is survived by one son, two daughters including Catey Vander Naillen Cumley ’70 and Vicky Vander Naillen Davis ’74, three grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

Jean Puryear Dennis ’48 of Atlanta, Georgia, passed away January 29, 2020. She is survived by one son, two daughters, ten grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Nancy Dee Hearne ’48 of Louisville, Kentucky, passed away October 14, 2019. She spent her entire career teaching at-risk students and owned a gift shop. Dee is survived by one nephew and two nieces.

Marie “Dicy” Pender Morrow ’48 of Durant, Oklahoma, passed away in September 2019.

Jane Wilkerson Yount ’49 of Nashville, Tennessee, passed away November 18, 2019. Her father was founder of the Middle Tennessee Hearing and Speech Center, now the Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center, and Jane had a career in speech and hearing.

She is survived by her three daughters, three granddaughters, two grandsons, and five great-grandchildren.

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Nadine Eastin Reaves Hammons ’51 of Memphis, Tennessee, passed away August 4, 2019. She is survived by her husband, a half-sister, and several nephews.

Harriet Provine ’51 of Cambridge, Massachusetts, passed away August 8, 2019. She had a career researching infectious diseases and taught part-time at Harvard Medical School. Harriet’s father was the last President of Ward-Belmont. She is survived by her brother, sister Tina Provine Johnson ’53, and several nieces and nephews.

Nancy Frederick Shuker Weyr ’52 of Bronxville, New York, passed away July 31, 2019. She had a career in journalism and publishing. Nancy is survived by her husband, sister, brother, son, two daughters, five grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

Caroline Hilton Woodard ’59 of Nashville, Tennessee, passed away on December 7, 2019. She taught math at Harpeth Hall from 1978–1981. Carol is survived by her daughter Julia Perkins Calkins ’86, one son, her sister Martha Hilton Nolen ’64, six grandchildren, and her brother former Harpeth Hall Board Chair Robert Hilton.

Patricia Sanders Johnson ’64 of Franklin, Tennessee, passed away October 19, 2019. She is survived by her daughter, son, two grandsons, one granddaughter, her brother, sister, nieces and nephews.

Lynn Comer Doramus ’72 of Nashville, Tennessee, passed away September 25, 2019. She was passionnate about the Humane Society and Children’s Hospital. Lynn is survived by her mother, her sister Lori Comer Canale ’74, daughters Nicoll Doramus Hannaway ’00 and Victoria Doramus ’02, and two granddaughters.

Celeste Griscom Oxford ’75 of Nashville, Tennessee, passed away on November 5, 2019. She owned Oxford Interiors. Celeste is survived by her two daughters, sister Carrie Griscom Nygern ’73, and two nieces.

Kerri Brazelton Parker ’75 of Cocoa Beach, Florida, passed away December 1, 2019 after a long battle with breast cancer.

Lisa Green Brock ’83 of Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, passed away September 18, 2019. She was devoted to her friends, family, community, and girls education. Lisa is survived by her husband, her mother, three daughters, and one brother.

CLASS NOTES

CLASS NOTES continued from page 61 Dasha Didier ’16 graduated early in December 2019 from Tulane University with a Bachelor of Arts in digital media production and communications.

She also assisted Jessica Turk ’02 on the documentary for Nashville Public Radio (Npt) entitled BY ONE VOTE: WOMAN SUFFRAGE IN THE SOUTH. Also interning on the project were Caroline Scudder ’16 and Sara Emma Kahane ’19.

Mary Blake Graves ’17 studied abroad in Paris at Université Dauphine.

Nava Shaw ’15 graduated in May with a degree in Visual Studies from George Washington University and is now working for the Cultural Department of UNESCO in Dakar, Senegal. She will pursue a Master of Studio degree in English at the University of Oxford, as well as a Master of Studies degree in film studies at the University of Edinburgh.

Congratulations to Kristen Barrett ’16 for being selected as the University of Virginia’s 15th Marshall Scholar. She will pursue a Master of Studies degree in English at the University of Oxford, as well as a Master of Studies degree in film studies at the University of Edinburgh.

Harpeth Hall internship opportunities

stay connected!

More than 12,000 Reasons to Stay in Touch Harpeth Hall’s social media sites have more than 12,000 participating members. Join us and stay connected with alumnae from around the globe.

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For questions about an Advancement/Alumnae Relations internship contact coombs@harpethhall.org.

For questions about a Communications internship contact elizabeth.floyd@harpethhall.org.

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A

Harpeth Hall is offering two different volunteer internship opportunities for college or graduate school alumnae this summer: The Advancement/Alumnae Relations Office and the Communications Office. Days and times can be flexible, but in general the expectation would be Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., for a pre-determined amount of time/weeks during the summer. Please send your resume and cover letter to the Alumnae Relations Office at alumaneoffice@harpethhall.org. Indicate in which internship you are interested or the type work you wish to accomplish.

Caroline Kiesling ’18, a sophomore at Vanderbilt University, returned to campus on November 18, 2019 to participate in an Alumnae Outcomes Panel Discussion.

The panel allowed prospective families a glimpse into life beyond Harpeth Hall and the preparation these alumnae received to pursue their path in the world.

K

Sophia Howard ’17 with author and advocate Bryan Stevenson

Sophia Howard ’17 interned at the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, AL last summer. She worked closely with many fascinating people including Bryan Stevenson, the founder and Executive Director and author of “Just Mercy”.

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SPRING SPRING 2020 2019

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AS SEEN IN

Fortune, Entrepreneur & Bloomberg Businessweek LEADING WOMEN IN BUSINESS ■ NASHVILLE

Leading Edge Warner Tidwell Photography

always be evolving,” Hill notes. “More and more families move to Nashville every year. We want them to know that Harpeth Hall offers this kind of worldclass education for their daughters.”

Winter + Interim

Every January since 1973, following winter break and before second semester begins, Harpeth Hall Upper School students embark on a learning adventure: the three-week-long “Winterim”—one of the school’s most innovative and popular educational offerings.

Ninth and tenth grade students enroll in a variety of on-campus, project-oriented classes with topics as wide-ranging as The Beatles, Dylan, and The Stones; mental illness and film; fencing; mindfulness yoga; medical robotics; finance; contemporary Africa; and textiles of the world. Eleventh and twelfth grade students expand their experience and explore their interests by pursuing internships in hospitals, law firms, businesses, and organizations throughout Nashville and all over the country; participating in academic travel to Europe, Asia, Africa, and Central and South America; participating in international school exchanges; or pursuing an independent study of a specific interest. Winterim is an immersive and often life-changing experience that allows students to attain early professional experience, explore potential career paths, and most of all, develop wonder in learning, independence of thought, and joy in community.

The Power of an All-Girls Education

For more than 150 years, Harpeth Hall’s innovative approach to education has inspired girls and young women to think critically, to lead confidently, and to live honorably.

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cross the expansive 44-acre Nashville campus, they walk to and from classes, in groups and alone, pondering what they’ve just learned and—more importantly—what they will do with that knowledge. Although they may dress alike in solid shirts and “magnolia green” plaid skirts, don’t let the uniforms fool you. The 717 girls and young women spanning grades 5 through 12 spark with individuality, curiosity, and confidence.

These are Harpeth Hall students.

“We are a community,” says Jess Hill, who joined the faculty in 1985 and today serves as Head of School. “Harpeth Hall is much more than a place to hold classes. It’s a vibrant, diverse community of girls from different races, religions, and economic backgrounds studying with highly skilled faculty who believe in the benefits of an all-girls education.”

While maintaining highly creative, department-based curricula in math, English, history, science, world languages, and fine arts, Hill is leading the school as it moves towards a “centerbased” approach. “Our centers for STEM [science, technology, engineering, and math], civic engagement, global perspectives, and more challenge young thinkers to ask big questions and engage in real-world research,” says Hill. Positioning the school to lead in innovative curriculum design and teaching are Hill’s top priorities for the school and its students. “Our school began with a vision to offer girls equal academic experiences to boys, which at the time was revolutionary. Those progressive and innovative roots are still present today. We must

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HALLWAYS

“I’m often asked why Harpeth Hall is committed to all-girls education,” says Hill.

“The answer is simple; this approach fosters confidence, and confidence empowers learning, healthy risktaking, and leadership. Our younger girls continually see the older girls in positions of leadership—editor of the school paper, president of the student body, and so much more. We are preparing girls to go out and make a difference in the world. And they do.”

HARPETH HALL AT A GLANCE Student body: 717 students Faculty: approximately 100 full- and part-time teachers, with 80 percent holding advanced degrees Median class size: 14 AP/Honors courses: 21 AP and 14 Honors classes Athletics: 62 teams in 13 sports with state-of-the-art facilities Scholarships: 17 percent of students receive financial aid Percentage of Harpeth Hall graduates who attend college: 100 percent

I was surrounded by students, teachers, and mentors who had a wealth of talent and passion and who did not shy away from being brilliantly and unapologetically themselves.”—a Harpeth Hall graduate

3801 Hobbs Road, Nashville, TN 37215 ❘ 615-297-9543 ❘ HarpethHall.org

Supporting the Young Women of Harpeth Hall 2019-2020 ANNUAL FUND

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hen Greg and I were asked to serve as the 2019-2020 Annual Fund Chairs, we quickly said yes. We care about Harpeth Hall, the girls, and the people who bring the mission to life, and we welcomed the opportunity to recruit a team to help us secure financial resources needed to support them.

Five years ago our daughter, Elizabeth, entered Harpeth Hall as a sixth grader, and we were confident in the quality of the education she would receive. Since then, our experience has exceeded our expectations. We have tremendous respect for the dedication shown by teachers, administrators, and coaches. The faculty are as invested in their students’ well-being as in their learning. They take time to really know each girl and her strengths — they take the time to write encouraging personal and insightful comments on report cards, are available before and after hours, they cheer at sporting events and attend performances, and they check in just to see how the girls are doing.

The students are challenged and stretched by adults who believe in and inspire them. We see our daughter, now a sophomore, studying hard and often well into the night. Like her classmates are, she is learning to juggle academics with sports, clubs, and social activities.

Through this process, these girls are acquiring vital organizational skills and confidence.

both of which provide students invaluable experiences and unique learning opportunities beyond the curriculum. Those experiences further open students’ hearts and minds and broaden their perspectives in ways they could not have imagined.

The power of a Harpeth Hall education as seen through a different lens came to us last fall while talking with friends who have two alumnae daughters. Both girls are currently in college, one on the east coast and one on the west. We talked about the academic rigor of Harpeth Hall and the work ethic that it requires. They said that both their girls were extremely well prepared for college and able to balance academics and social life. They also spoke fondly of their daughters’ strong friendships and many happy memories. Our conversation that evening was a nice reminder that this education is worth the girls’ hard work and is worthy of our support.

We are also impressed by the Upper School’s renowned Winterim program and the Middle School’s SEEK program,

As parents and as Annual Fund Chairs, we appreciate this community’s generosity in supporting Harpeth Hall. Over 700 students will benefit from gifts to The Annual Fund this year! They will soon become Harpeth Hall graduates — capable, confident, compassionate, and independent young women who thrive when they leave this school and their homes.

Please join us in supporting the mission and young women of Harpeth Hall with a gift before the 2019-20 school year ends in June.

Jane and Greg Allen Chairs, 2019-2020 Annual Fund

Jane and Greg with sons Ty, Clarke, and Gaines, daughter Elizabeth, and their dog Apollo.

Click the Giving tab at HarpethHall.org or call Tracy Campbell, Director of Annual Giving, 615-346-0083.

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PAID Nashville, TN Permit No. 1857

The Harpeth Hall School

3801 Hobbs Road Nashville, Tennessee 37215

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REUNION WEEKEND 2021 FOR A DOUBLE REUNION Sharing some GOOD news . . .

Reunion Weekend 2020 Will be Rescheduled!

We are excited to invite Reunion 2020 Classes (0’s and 5’s) to join Reunion 2021 Classes (1’s and 6’s) to celebrate a double Reunion!

HONEYBEAR HOMECOMING REUNION 2020 RESCHEDULED TO APRIL 30 – MAY 1, 2021!

SAVE THE DATES FRIDAY, APRIL 30 SATURDAY, MAY 1 2021