Alumni in the News
COMMUNITY
A
S AN IDEA,
“DIVERSITY” is something
like an elephant in a room—much too
Jerome Thomas ’95, who grew up homeless in NYC, returns to talk about class & privilege.
big to be ignored, but something that
can be regarded from as many different angles
in 1993) prepare him for admission to Holderness as a junior. Here Jerome marked his name on the honor and high honor rolls and so quickly
as the room affords. One such angle is that of
earned the respect of his peers that he was
class and privilege, which happens to be the
voted school president for his senior year. It
focus of this year’s work of the school’s
was an ascent so dramatic and meteoric that it
Diversity Committee.
drew CBS Today Show anchor Ann Curry to
Arguably there is no greater authority on the subject within this community than Jerome
Rung by arduous rung.
Thomas ’95, who
campus for a nationally televised feature on Jerome. That climb up the ladder rungs of class
grew up fre-
and privilege continued at Columbia
quently homeless
University, and then the Harvard Business
in New York
School. These days Jerome is a managing
City, who never
director at Babson Capital. But the journey has
knew his father,
never been anything but difficult and lonely,
and whose ador-
precisely because the young man who now
ing mother was
stands among our topmost rungs is the same
crippled by her
person as the boy who grew up among drug-
heroin addiction.
dealers in New York’s most crime-ridden
Jerome bounced
neighborhoods—and Jerome’s task continues
in and out of city
to be to unite not just those identities, but the
schools until he
family and friends who span those rungs.
became involved
That struggle was the subject of a moving
with a social pro-
talk to the community that Jerome gave one
gram called
night last October. He described what it was
SCAN—the
like to arrive at Holderness from such a place
Supportive
so different from this, and how hard a task it
Children’s
remains not only to sustain his own confidence
Advocacy Network. Jerome’s mother had
in these different worlds he has moved in since
taught her son a love of books and a respect for
then, but also to deal with the expectations—
learning; SCAN helped stabilize Jerome’s
and social blind spots—of others. At the same
school attendance and (after his mother’s death
time he noted that he had been extraordinarily lucky, and that it’s a myth that all it takes is
THE OUTDOORS
gumption and elbow grease to overcome barriers of class and privilege. The evening was capped by a standing ovation for a remarkable first-person narrative from someone who—in respect to class and privilege—has literally seen it all.
Nick Martini ’08, Iceland, & Freeskier magazine: together.
Chasing waterfalls, monuments, stairways, and more. 46
Holderness School Today
N
ICK
MARTINI
CAN BE
seen having fun all
over the pages of the October issue of
Freeskier magazine. He’s the skier with
ski poles raised exultantly in the opening spread of the feature article “Chasing Waterfalls: Teton Gravity Researches Perfection and Finds Iceland.” Nick was there with writer/photographer Mark Fisher and some other freeskiers—Rory Bushfield, Andreas Hatveit, and Byron Wells— to ski some of the high points of that island nation. And of course the beauty of freeskiing is that these high points include not only