Holderness School Today, Spring 2012

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H OLDERNESS S CHOOL TODAY Spring 2012 Also Inside:

Catching up with Walt Kesler A visit from author Bill McKibben An Oscar for Nat Faxon ’93 Evidence of conspiracy from Peter Janney ’66 A life mystery solved by Justin Orr ’59

Sacred Studies Today’s students arrive more religiously diverse than ever before, and also knowing less about religion. What’s an Episcopal Church school to do?

This page: The pews of the Trinity Chapel, only the second Episcopal Church built in New Hampshire, and the site of the school’s opening sermon in 1879. It is still used each year for several school events. Photo

by Art Durity.

Front cover: Language teacher Lew Overaker, who is only semi-retired, serves as lay eucharistic minister during this spring’s confirmation service in the Chapel of the Holy Cross. Photo by Emily Magnus ’88.

Back cover: The chapel choir performs during a winter service.

Photo by Emily Magnus ’88.

Holderness School Board of Trustees Holderness School Today

Jonathan R. Baum

Volume XXVIII, No. 1

Grace Macomber Bird Frank Bonsal III ’82 Elizabeth Bunce F. Christopher Carney ’75 Russell Cushman ’80 The Rev. Randolph Dales (Secretary) Nigel D. Furlonge Tracy McCoy Gillette ’89 (Alumni Association President)

Charlie Day ’15 was one of our spiritual leaders at Girls JV Hockey Superstar games this winter.

Douglas H. Griswold ’66 Robert J. Hall James B. Hamblin II ’77 (Treasurer) Jan. R. Hauser Paul Martini Richard Nesbitt Peter Nordblom Susan L. Paine ’82 R. Phillip Peck

Features

Thomas N. Phillips ’75 Tamar Pichette William L. Prickett ’81 (Chairperson)

4

Sacred Studies The school’s affiliation with the Episcopal Church has

Jake Reynolds ’86

never been up for debate, but how we teach and practice

The Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson (President) Ian Sanderson ’79

religion has always been argued about. Today’s students

Jennifer A. Seeman ’88

are more religiously diverse than ever, and also less

Harry Sheehy

knowledgable about religion itself. It’s an interesting

Gary A. Spiess

situation.

Jerome Thomas ’95 Ellyn Paine Weisel ’86

12 Headmaster Emeritus

Vehicles of the spirit Former chaplain Walt Kesler grew up with dreams of

The Rev. Brinton W. Woodward, Jr.

commanding a submarine. On the threshold of that command, he abandoned the Navy for the Episcopal

Honorary Trustees Warren C. Cook

ministry and Holderness School. We catch up with Walt

Piper Orton ’74

to find out how that worked out then, and since leaving

W. Dexter Paine III ’79

Holderness.

The Rt. Rev. Douglas Theuner

Holderness School Today

Departments 2

From the Schoolhouse

Editor: Rick Carey Editor Emeritus: Jim Brewer

3

Stopping By Woods

3

Letters to HST

15

Honor Roll

16

Around the Quad

30

Special Programs

32

Sports

36

Update: Faculty & Staff

38

Update: Former Faculty & Staff

41

Alumni in the News

50

Alumni & Parent Relations

52

At This Point in Time

Assistant Editors: Dee Black Rainville, Robert Caldwell, Emily Magnus ’88, Jane McNulty, Phil Peck, Judith Solberg, Melissa Stuart, Julie Walker, Amy Woods Photography: Emily Magnus ’88, Steve Solberg, Art Durity, Phil Peck HST is printed on recycled paper three times each year by the Springfield Printing Corporation. Please send notice of address changes to Julie Walker, Advancement Office, Holderness School, P.O. Box 1879, Plymouth, NH 03264, or jwalker@holderness.org. Julie may also be contacted at 603-779-5220.

Winter Carnival, the lipsynch part: page 24.

Schoolhouse From the

Phil Peck speaks to graduating seniors at the Trinity Chapel.

A little school with

Head of School Phil Peck notes that there are a lot of different things—in addition to the chapel and our spiritual leaders—that fit under the umbrella of spirituality at Holderness.

A

soul

LONG-TIME HEAD OF

school who

knows Holderness well recently told an alum-

build; the service orientation of our community outreach; a diversity program that helps in

nus that what distinguishes our community is

many ways to "build community across and

the fact that "Holderness is a school with a

among differences"; the communal nature of

soul."

There is no greater compliment

we

could receive than those simple words—“a

family-style meals; an outdoor program that is more than just climbing mountains; and athlet-

school with soul." Yes, we have terrific courses,

ics that focus more on sportsmanship than

superb athletics, great college placement, and

championships.

attractive facilities. But all those are for naught

Of course you can see this soul in the fac-

unless we are living the final words of our mis-

ulty who freely give of themselves to

sion statement, "to work for the betterment of

Holderness, and who find Holderness a calling,

humankind and God's creation."

a lifestyle, not a job. Or in our trustees, many

In this issue of HST you'll read about the

of whom are not alumni or parents, but friends

formal spiritual components of our community.

of the school who see something unique and

You’ll read how Pete Woodward in the late

special in this community's soul. You can also

1970's took us back to our roots by reinstituting

see this quality in guests like environmentalist

chapel twice a week, similar to the program in

Bill McKibben, who ultimately sees his work

place today.You'll also read about the spiritual

as an outreach of his deep Christian faith.

life strategic planning retreats we hold to keep

Finally, perhaps the best test of whether we are

us a dynamic spiritual community.You'll read

living our mission is what our alumni do with

about long-time chaplain Walt Kesler, and

their lives, and in this issue you'll read not only

about Bishop Dallas and the active role he

about the accolades our alumni have achieved,

played in the daily life of the Holderness com-

but also about their calling.

munity, and about the nature of

the theology

requirement.You’ll learn how the Episcopal

This calling has been in place since Bishop Niles helped establish a little school in

faith helps support the multifaceted nature of

the White Mountains with the motto Pro Deo et

spirituality at Holderness, and about the differ-

Genere Humano. My sense and hope is that in

ent services and locations where chapel occurs.

But being a "school with a soul" is more

133 years that same sacred calling will be evident in this little "school with a soul."

than the formal spiritual programs. Having a soul has to do with what students and faculty do every day: the leadership and job programs that stress service leadership; the Special Programs and the qualities of character they

2

Holderness School Today

Phil Peck

Stopping By Woods

by Rick Carey

Something of a change at the top is in the offing for HST.

W

OW, HAS IT BEEN MORE THAN

two decades already? In 1991 I

was looking to move from the Alaskan Bush back to New Hampshire. I loved teaching in the Bush, but I wanted my

children to grow up in a more mainstream environment and within

have to skim over them with sound-bites, as many editors must do elsewhere.

Starting on July 1, however, I’ll only be one of HST’s editors.

Since 2007 I’ve also been teaching in Southern New Hampshire

reach of their relatives. Headmaster Pete Woodward, meanwhile, had

University’s low-residency MFA creative writing program, and on that

created a new half-time position—Director of Public Relations—and

date I’ll be assuming as well the duties of assistant director of that pro-

made my move possible by hiring me for the job. It wasn’t a lot of

gram. I’m hoping that this will also provide me more time to finish a

money, but within a few years my children were attending Holderness,

book project that has absorbed the last eight years of my nights and

a richer environment than I had dreamed possible for them. I much

weekends.

appreciated that.

Many employers would wish me good luck at that point and col-

One of my first job duties involved learning from Jim Brewer how

lect my keys. Phil Peck and this school, however, have proven flexible

to assemble and publish his tabloid-newspaper version of Holderness

enough to let me keep working here on a part-time basis. I’ll continue

School Today. During the 1990s, of course, with the arrival of desktop

to write and edit portions of this magazine. The balance will be turned

publishing and the internet, communication between the school and its

over to someone else.

constituencies got to be a much bigger job. Soon I was working fulltime with a new job title—Director of Communications—and in 1995 expanding HST from a tabloid to a magazine.

It’s time for a change of gears, and I look forward to doing just that in July. I’ll regret, however, having less than a full draught of this plum assignment. And I haven’t yet mentioned one of its greatest pleas-

The flow of information continued to expand, and in 2005 I

ures, which has been correspondence with the magazine’s readers and

stepped aside as Director of Communications to concentrate (mostly) on what I loved best about the job: writing and editing and assembling this magazine. And as Director of Publications (i.e., editor of this magazine) I really had a plum assignment.

the subjects of many of its articles.

Sometimes, of course, this happens for unfortunate reasons. Once you publish a print-media magazine, you can’t pull it up on the website later and change something. Whatever it is, it’s just there. Therefore I

First, I got to tell stories about a school and a community with a

try to be careful in the first place about facts and names and typos and

treasure-chest of stories to tell. The history of Holderness—with its

everything else, but inevitably—even with a cadre of good proofread-

fires and financial crises and legendary heads and schoolmasters—reads

ers—something slips through.

like a good PBS miniseries. The school’s present era over two decades has been populated by more heads and schoolmasters on their way to

And so it happens that in our last issue US Marine Stephen Martin ’07, who returned from Afghanistan last fall to speak with our students,

being legendary, and alumni who do things that are even better than

was handed the wrong first name in his photo caption and the wrong

impressive—they’re interesting and varied, and reporters love that.

military affiliation in the accompanying article. That’s no way to treat

Second, I got to explore those stories at a length and complexity

an alumnus and a hero, but the gentle correction sent me by Diane

rare among even university magazines. This issue’s story on the

Martin, Stephen’s mother, is typical of the generosity, warmth, and

school’s spiritual life is typical in its matrix of history, biography, real-

grace of the community that this magazine serves.

world sociology and current events, educational philosophy, and school

It’s been a great pleasure. It will continue to be so.

planning. I’ve loved being able to dig deeply into these stories, and not

letters To HST Send letters about HST to Rick Carey, Director of Publications, Holderness School,

03264 WE

LOVE GETTING THE

P.O. Box 1879, Plymouth, NH 03264, or via email to rcarey@holderness.org.

HST and are delighted

to see it grow and become better with each issue. A lot has changed since our son Stephen Martin was a student. The “oops” I refer to is in respect of the nice story you included on his presentation at school last fall on page 45 of the winter issue. Great picture of him with Nick Schoeder but Stephen is identified as Kevin—wrong name—and the story talks about him serving with the Army. With no disrespect to that branch, Stephen is very proud of being a Marine. Thanks and best regards for great work.

Diane Martin

That would be STEPHEN Martin ’07, a member of the US Marine Corps, standing with photography teacher Nick Schoeder ’06 last fall.

Holderness School Today

3

The stained glass windows of the Chapel of the Holy Cross were made by Boston’s famed Connick glass studio in the 1940s.

S AC R E D

STUDIES

It’s not easy being a church school in a diverse and secular society. History tells us that it was never easy. But Holderness remains committed to serving the mind, body, and spirit in all its students. It’s a three-legged stool. So how is that third leg doing these days?

E

VEN IF YOU’RE

running an

independent school—as

was hearing different things about the future of religious practice and instruction at

opposed to the United States

Holderness.

of America—there are acts of

matter, Pete was careful, though he did say,

Congress, and then there are

“If you’re not really interested in being an

what we might call executive

Episcopal school, and having the chapel as

orders. Most of the time it’s

When asked himself about the

part of the school, then I’m not your guy.

good to work through Congress—which is

But if you’re at all warm to that idea, I

to say, to build consensus for a certain poli-

would consider the position.”

cy or practice by obtaining the support of the Board of Trustees and also the faculty,

Of course this wasn’t the only hot iron in the fire. Once the board decided that

students, parents, and alumni. We all agree,

indeed Pete was their guy, the new head

or at least a preponderant majority of us,

joined a community more in an uproar

and we all march whistling in that direction.

about co-education than religion.

There are times, however, when the

Pete had

been explicitly noncommittal about co-edu-

matter is so powerfully charged, and per-

cation during the search process, promising

haps so divisive, that the prospects for con-

he was prepared to lead in either direction.

sensus are dim. But you have to decide.

That fall, however, the board asked him to

That’s when a head of school sometimes

make a statement on the matter. Pete cast

just has to wave his or her hand and make it

his lot for co-education, and then he began a

so, one way or the other. For example:

testy process of consensus building that

Holderness School, the fall of 1977.

resulted in 1978—through an act of

The Rev. B.W. “Pete” Woodward had

Congress, as it were—in the Holderness

just succeeded the retiring Don Hagerman.

School for Boys becoming simply the

Don had been the first lay head of school in

Holderness School.

Holderness history, and among the three finalists in the search for his successor, only

During that same fall of ’77, however, Pete made another sort of statement, one

Pete was a clergyman, at that time chaplain

obscured somewhat to the larger community

at the Kent School in Connecticut.

by all the hoopla about girls on campus, but

During that search phase, all parties

one that had a more immediate impact on

were a little cagey on certain issues.

campus. He made chapel required twice a

Traditional chapel attendance had been

week for all students and faculty, Sundays

well-nigh curtailed in the wake of the cam-

and Thursdays, and later made theology a

pus turmoil of the 1960s and ’70s, and Pete

required subject for graduation.

Holderness School Today

5

“There are certain things that you don’t want to put up to a vote in running a school,” says Pete, “and things

it’s over’ at the conclusion of a service,” Weld wrote.

that if they’re going to be done, need

“And schoolmasters realize that adolescence, in

to be done quickly during a certain

school and often more markedly in college, is a time

opportunity in time. So I took that

when some boys go through periods of feeling

opportunity of transition at the top to

responsible to no one but themselves, and the fact that

reaffirm our relationship to the

religion is social does not enter their consciences:

Episcopal Church, and no, it was not a

there’s nothing in it for them, no need and no obliga-

popular decision in some quarters.

tion.”

Chief among the dissenters was my assistant head, Bill Clough ’57, but

Nonetheless there was no doubt in The Rev. Weld’s mind that it was worth it, at least in terms of

once the decision was made, Bill stood

the challenges of adulthood. “But it is our hope as we

by me and supported it. I’ll always be

watch boys slip into it, either in or after school, that

grateful to him for it, though I’m not

this stage is only temporary,” he continued, “and that

sure how he felt about it personally.”

with new responsibilities will come not only a return

So perhaps we weren’t all

of the old idealism, but also a return of the old habit

whistling, but we were all in the

of saying their prayers, and turning to the Church for

chapel singing hymns again, albeit at

strength.”

various levels of enthusiasm. But this is, has been, and probably always will

The Rev. Pete Woodward in the early 1980s.

prayers are being said, or that there are not at times boys who have no thanks to offer beyond ‘Thank God

be the situation at a broad-based church school in a nation of widespread religious

That “healthy debate” took on a much more strident turn during the tenure of Edric Weld’s successor, Don Hagerman. In some respects, the last two decades of the Hagerman years, the ’60s and ’70s,

diversity and an ethos of personal liberty and the con-

represent a high-water mark for American idealism, at

stitutional separation of church and state. The fact is

least of the political variety. The civil rights and

that there are always going to be complaints. The

women’s movements both benefited from the energy

question is whether it’s worth it.

of high school and college students who felt responsi-

THE OLD IDEALISM

and empowered, and who dared to challenge authori-

ble not just to themselves, but to those less privileged

A

T THE FOUNDING OF

Holderness, in 1879,

equality that Holderness enjoys today has its roots in

question was inconceivable. Church schools

that turbulence, both here and at large.

were founded, after all, to teach not only

reading and writing, but also a specific spiritual practice. So if you came to Holderness in those early

best in the question posed on the cover of the April 8, 1966 issue of TIME magazine—“Is God dead?”—and

own practice—though the school has never made that

that issue’s feature article by theologian William

a requirement for admission, and has always enrolled

Hamilton, who found in the Holocaust suffering that

students of other faiths. Whatever your faith, though,

he could not reconcile with faith in all-knowing, all-

you arrived at Holderness prepared to be immersed in

powerful deity. In those years many churches—even

the Book of Common Prayer.

the Episcopal—found themselves grouped with insti-

At the same time, writes school historian Judith

tutions held guilty of racism and sexism, and both the horrors of the world wars and the accelerating pace of

healthy debate between students and the administra-

scientific discovery made progressive thinkers won-

tion about what religion’s role should be in the cam-

der if religion might be outmoded.

pus experience.” For decades that experience was shaped like this: students applied themselves in the

At Holderness students raised these questions and rebelled against the church strictures that Don

classroom to Sacred Studies—which is to say, the

Hagerman had largely kept in place since the retire-

liturgy and theology of the Episcopal Church—

ment of Edric Weld in 1951. “The headmaster did his

attended morning and evening service on Sunday in

best to hear and address the concerns of the students,

the Chapel, and then two more services during the

hoping to minimize the students’ perception of the

week. Each evening after dinner students and faculty

generation gap as best he could,” writes Judith

also gathered for prayers in the Livermore mansion,

Solberg in This Tender Vine, her history of the school.

and then the buildings that replaced that mansion:

“In 1971, Hagerman acknowledged that ‘compulsory

Knowlton Hall, and then Livermore Hall.

attendance at chapel cannot assure worship or a stu-

The school’s sixth rector, The Rev. Edric Weld, was not surprised to find many of his boys restless

Holderness School Today

Those same decades also represent a high-water mark for American secularism, perhaps summed up

days, you were almost certainly Episcopal in your

Solberg, “there has been a recurring tradition of

6

ty on their behalf. The enhanced diversity and gender

and for much of its subsequent history, that

dent’s commitment.’”

Subsequently Sacred Studies disappeared from

during these exercises. “No head of a Church school

the curriculum, and eventually mandatory chapel

deludes himself into thinking that all boys pray when

dwindled to once per week. And students could attend

“The great majority of students earn their high school diplomas and their undergraduate degrees without ever contending with

A LIVE RELIGIOUS IDEA.”

— Warren Nord, does god make a difference?

that service in the Chapel of the Holy Cross,

University of New Hampshire and finished his

or in a Plymouth church, or in an “approved

Bachelor’s in economics. Then, during a sum-

alternative format”—which is to say, a discus-

mer that he worked at Rockywold Deephaven,

sion group, or by attending a concert or per-

the family camp on Squam Lake, he attended

formance mounted in the chapel. “Eventually,

a service on Church Island presided over by

as the tensions of the 1960s and 1970s began

The Rev. Guthrie Speers, a man whose own

to ebb,” continues Judith, “[Hagerman] rein-

faith had withstood his experience as an

stituted a regular Monday morning chapel

artillery officer in World War I. Many of the

service.”

men under Speers’ command had been from

Still, it was a time when the relationship between the school and the Episcopal Church

Kansas, and after the war the minister had walked on foot through much of that state,

had grown tenuous at best. Then came Pete

visiting the families of each and every soldier

Woodward and the opportunity he saw for

who had died.

restoring it. At the end of that first school year, in May, 1978, the Board of Trustees

Speers’ sermon that day was based on Romans 5:1-5, which links faith, grace, joy,

voted to adopt this policy statement, authored

and suffering: “And not only so, but we glory

by Pete:

“Holderness School is an Episcopal

in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation

Church school by virtue of its direct relation-

worketh patience; and patience, experience;

ship to the Bishop and the Episcopal Diocese

and experience, hope: And hope maketh not

of New Hampshire, and by virtue of its one-

ashamed; because the love of God is shed

hundred-year long practice of liturgical cele-

abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which

bration according to the Book of Common

is given unto us.”

Prayer and the Doctrine and Discipline of the

Rich returned from that island powerfully

Episcopal Church.”

moved. Later that day he found himself talk-

THE SERMON ON THE ISLAND

grandfather of his girlfriend (and now wife,

ing about the sermon with Sid Lovett, the

S

CHOOL CHAPLAIN

Rich Weymouth ’70

was a student in the midst of those tur-

and Assistant Head of School) Kathy Lovett.

Sid was a minister in the Congregational

bulent years. His grandfather had been

Church, a man who had faced his own sort of

an Episcopal bishop and he had grown

tribulations as a conscientious objector during

up in New Canaan, CT, in a family very active in the church. Rich himself was relatively so as a student here, singing in the choir

World War I. Sid asked Rich if he had ever thought about being a minister himself. Well, no, Rich

and serving occasionally as an acolyte for

told him. Sid told him that he should think

then-chaplains Whitey Hogan or Bill Judge. “I

about it: “You’re a person of faith, and you

was a person of faith,” Rich says, “but I didn’t

care about people. You’d do well with that.”

attach much importance then to the ritual side of things.”

His plan after Holderness was to study

Sid encouraged Rich to apply for a Rockefeller Brothers Fund scholarship, which would finance a year at seminary while he

economics in college, and then to consider

considered the ministry. Several months later,

options that ranged from business to law

during a long walk on a drizzly October night,

school to Officer Candidate School in the mil-

Rich felt what he describes as “a strong sense

itary. But then things happened, the most pro-

of God’s call. I swept all the other possibili-

found of which occurred while Rich was

ties I was thinking about off the table.”

attending Denver University, an incident that he describes simply as “a conversion experi-

He applied for a Rockefeller scholarship, but was denied. At this point, however, there

ence, an inbreaking of the spirit of God in my

was no denying him. He paid his own way

own soul.”

into the Andover-Newton Theological

Rich subsequently transferred to the

The Rev. Edric Weld

Seminary, where he could prepare for ministry

Holderness School Today

7

Chaplain Rich Weymouth ’70 speaks to entering students last fall in the Trinity Church, which the Livermore family helped build in 1797.

in any of several Protestant denominations. He had actually grown apart from the Episcopal

Peter formally offered Rich that job. Rich asked St. George’s if they were flexible on any of

Church since his Holderness years. He considered

the issues he was concerned about. They weren’t.

serving in either the Congregational or Baptist

“So here I am at a place that’s very comfortable

churches, but conversations with New

for me, philosophically,” Rich says. “A small co-

Hampshire’s Bishop Philip Smith steered Rich

educational church school with a theology pro-

back into the Episcopal fold and to finishing his

gram, a Job Program, a service requirement, and

training at the Yale Divinity School.

both appreciation and respect for what we do in

Rich was ordained in 1981, six years after

the chapel.”

that night in October. There were tribulations along the way, which required considerable

THE STORM HAS ABATED

patience. He served four years as a curate in

R

Exeter’s Christ Church, and in 1984 became chaplain of the Salisbury School.

Eventually, though, he and Kathy agreed that

journey. In effect, both the school and its current chaplain evolved to a point

where they could be comfortable with each other.

Blair to grow up on the campus of an all-boys

Pete Woodward had grown up in a part of Kansas

In 1994 the family moved to St.

that harbored various forms of bigotry—against

Christopher’s School in Virginia. Four years later

blacks, women, gays, etc.—and he had been

they saw an opportunity to return to New England

drawn to the Episcopal Church by its traditional

thanks to an opening for a chaplain at St. George’s

ecumenicalism and tolerance. Then he was

School. The interview process went well enough

inspired in the 1960s by the pioneering work of

for Rich to be offered the position, but Rich saw

California Bishop James Pike, who argued force-

that he and that school’s head shared certain dif-

fully for a place for all those groups in the church,

ferences about religious curriculum and the role of

and the ordination of women.

the chaplain.

At Holderness Pete not only pushed for more

At the same time, while mulling the job at St.

diversity—including religious diversity—but artic-

George’s, Rich got a call from Pete Woodward,

ulated a vision of spirituality that went well

whose roots lay in that same Kansas soil Guthrie

beyond what happened in the chapel. He revived

Speers had walked.

“I heard you’ve been inter-

viewing at St. George’s,” Pete said.

the student-run Service Committee, fortified the Job Program, initiated an association with Habitat

“How did you know that?”

for Humanity that grew into today’s Project

“Well, the tooth fairy told me.”

Outreach program, and emphasized the spiritual

Pete wanted Rich to come up to Holderness,

Holderness School Today

journey of faith that

they didn’t want their daughters Channing and

school.

8

ICH’S IS A PERSONAL

in some ways mirrors this institution’s

growth that accompanies any sort of service for

look around, and consider the job opening Pete

others. He pointed as well to the spiritual aspects

had. Rich made sure that St. George’s had no

of Out Back and other outdoor experiences, writ-

objection. He flew up on the evening of Good

ing in one of his “From the Schoolhouse”

Friday. “I never imagined I’d wind up back there,”

columns, “When we fully embrace nature for all

Rich says.

that it is, then we embrace and discover God as

2012 SPIRITUAL LIFE STRATEGIC PLAN well.”

Pete took the school back into a tighter orbit with the Episcopal Church, and indeed there was much “healthy debate” within the campus community in the wake of that shift. But as early as the spring of 1978 he was able to report to the board that “the storm created by instituting chapel twice a week seems to have abated. I do not feel that chapel is under particular assault. Many of the services are filled with great singing and positive response.”

And response continued to improve as in subsequent years both prospective students and faculty members were apprised of the practice, and arrived prepared—in general—to support and participate.

Forty years after that realignment, however, healthy debate— and some amount of tribulation—continues. These days it has less to do with the fact that Holderness is a church school, and that chapel is mandatory, and more to do with the mere fact that this is

VISION STATEMENT A spirituality of connectedness—to others, to that which is greater than oneself, and to the breadth of God’s creation—is at the core of the Holderness Experience. We embrace our Episcopal heritage.

We are respectful of others and appreciate our responsibilities to both the immediate community and the human family. Students play an active leadership role in our spiritual community and in our practices of worship. The chapel is a daily center of community life, drawing together the sacred and the secular, sheltering every member of our community, and fostering an ethos in which spirituality is not only respected, but celebrated.

religion we’re talking about, and with all the passions that this entails in an era of diversity, globalism, political and religious extremism, and also—well, let’s just say it—widespread ignorance.

A KNOWLEDGE VACUUM

D

ANIEL

R. HEISCHMAN

CALLS

it “the R-word.” Writing in

the spring 2012 issue of Independent School magazine

(“The Great Uncomfortable: Religion in the Sectarian and Secular Independent Schools”), Heischman says,

“Religion does not seem to be fading away in modernity. Indeed a

case can be made that religion’s place in world events is growing

OBJECTIVE 1: FACILITY As soon as possible enlarge the chapel into a multi-purpose facility that accommodates the entire community.

OBJECTIVE 2: WORSHIP Continue the transformation of the worship life of the school to reflect both the school’s Episcopal heritage and the diversity of religious experience.

larger, not smaller—and thus requires that we consider its place in our school communities and curricula.”

Heischman is the executive director of the National Association of Episcopal Schools, and he says that this discomfort is the result of a great disjunction: between broadly held assumptions about religion in America and their true reality in our culture.

As religion’s place in world events grows, Heischman writes, students in American schools are growing less familiar with religious terminology and with what various religious traditions actually believe and practice. Much of what they think they know comes from popular media, and there exist huge gaps “in knowledge about the subject matter among the most educated Americans.”

OBJECTIVE 3: CONNECTION Intentionally integrate and articulate the school’s spirituality of connectedness in all aspects of the life of the school.

OBJECTIVE 4: STUDENTS Provide not just the opportunity, but the expectation that students will assume greater leadership and a degree of ownership in the worship and spiritual life of the school.

Why? Because schools in general have abandoned the subject entirely. Says Warren Nord, author of Does God Make a Difference? (Oxford University Press, 2010), “The great majority of students earn their high school diplomas and their undergraduate degrees without ever contending with a live religious idea.”

Nor is this ignorance confined to atheists and agnostics.

Heischman cites some facts from Timothy Beal’s The Rise and Fall of the Bible: “For example, fewer than half of all adult Americans (many of whom, no doubt, consider themselves highly religious)

OBJECTIVE 5: FACULTY Ensure that faculty support and honor the centrality of the spiritual life at Holderness.

OBJECTIVE 6: MESSAGE Create a mission statement for the spiritual life of the school.

can name the first book of the Bible or any of the four Gospels.

More than eighty percent of born-again or evangelical Christians believe ‘God helps those who help themselves’ is a biblical phrase.

More than half of all graduating high school seniors (among them both believers and non-believers) guess that Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife, and that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife (Joan of Ark?).”

In general, says Heishchman, we just aren’t comfortable talking about religion, whether in the classroom or at the supper table, and the result is a knowledge vacuum: “Sadly, fanaticism and reli-

Holderness School Today

9

Assistant Chaplain Bruce Barton gious extremism—the very things that so many in the academic world most fear—prey upon such vacuums.”

At the same time, though, many believers who practice their faith in organized churches have grown more flexible in that practice: “According to a recent poll from the Public Religion Research Institute, an increasing number of Americans believe that it is possible to disagree with their religion’s official teachings and still remain in good standing in their faith.” Similarly, more believers are attending services in traditions other than their own, marrying persons from other traditions, and strongly supporting the separation of church and state.

These trends have largely escaped the notice of the media and would surprise many of us. “This new fluidi-

I find meaning in my life and what I do? We tend to

ty,” adds Heischman, “is certainly reflected in the reli-

emphasize substance over form, though of course there

gious makeup of the sectarian school of today. For exam-

are some aspects of form that you really can’t fiddle

ple, only about twenty percent of students in Episcopal

with.”

schools, nationwide, come from Episcopal backgrounds.”

That scaffolding, that substructure of form, is built from the timbers of the Episcopal liturgy, but it’s the sort

THE SCAFFOLD OF LITURGY

that stays open, that by design is never quite closed in.

I

“Our mission in part is to proclaim the faith, but it’s also

N

2001,

EXACTLY NINETEEN

percent of Holderness stu-

dents were Episcopal, and three fourths were either

to hear, to respond to, and to respect other religious tradi-

Christian or Jewish, with the rest professing no faith.

tions,” says Rich Weymouth. “That’s the balance we have

Today some twelve percent are Episcopal, and sixty-

to find—between embracing our own spiritual heritage

five percent come to school without a religious background. That remaining portion of believers may be small-

and also being open to other realities.”

Balance is also a pressing concern to Phil Peck, only

er, but it’s also wider: Christians, Jews, Buddhists, and

Holderness’s second lay head of school in 130 years, and

Muslims.

himself a practicing Presbyterian. “I would never want to

So Chaplain Rich Weymouth finds himself minister-

run a school that wasn’t faith-based,” Phil says. “It’s such

ing to all varieties of religious experience. He also finds

an important part of my own life, and at first what was

himself busier than ever, partly due to his pastoral respon-

merely an attraction to me about Holderness has risen to a

Weld’s “idealism” is another word for that BASIC HUMAN TILT

TOWARDS THE SPIRITUAL.

Robert Frost

called it “innate helium” in his poem of the same name.

sibilities beyond this campus: the baptisms and marriages

sense of calling. I’ll go even farther and say that I would

and funeral services he performs, and the counseling he

never want to run a school that wasn’t Episcopalian.”

provides, to alumni and others in the larger community. In 2005 English teacher Bruce Barton—who was raised in an Episcopal family, had majored in religion at Hamilton

Character of Episcopal Schools, 2010), Phil defends that

College, and then did a year of advanced study at the

preference.

Dominican University of California—was hired as an

Douglas Theuner, then bishop of New Hampshire,

assistant to Rich.

Now they’re both busy dealing with how generally

10

In his article “The School as a Spiritual Community” (published in Reasons for Being: The Culture and

“I remember when the Right Reverend

explained to our students that any number of languages may be used to approach the divine,” Phil writes, “but

unschooled today’s students are in any aspect of religion.

each community must agree on one, and language of

“We presume nothing,” Bruce says. “We spend a lot of

Holderness was Episcopal—a language that I know to be

time erecting scaffolding so we can begin to talk about

distinguished for its inclusiveness, its tolerance, its will-

these things from an adolescent perspective: What is my

ingness to question, and its readiness to challenge the sta-

place in the world? What are my responsibilities? How do

tus quo.”

Holderness School Today

By virtue of that inclusiveness, Phil believes that an Episcopal school is uniquely capable of maintaining a dynamic balance between mind, body, and spirit, where “spirit” is truly as long and sturdy as the other legs in that three-legged stool. He

and in the opportunity to spend a lifetime extending that welcome.

Neither of these men was cast in that mold when he finished high school, Rich here and Pete in Kansas. But they had a

also believes that striking that balance needs to be part of the

scaffolding, a grasp of religious ideas, what Edric Weld might

school’s formal process of strategic planning, and he has made

have described as an “old idealism.”

enhancing the spiritual life of the school the object of two spiritual retreats attended by a broad cross-section of community

Weld’s “idealism” is another word for that basic human tilt towards the spiritual. The poet Robert Frost called it “innate

members—one in 2007, the other last January—and its own

helium” in his poem of the same name. He describes faith as “a

evolving strategic plan.

most filling vapor” that swirls compressed inside us:

One point of that plan—the necessity of expanding the Chapel of the Holy Cross—illustrates both the joy and the tribu-

“As in those buoyant bird bones thin as paper,

lation of serving a spiritually diverse community. Pete

To give them still more buoyancy in flight.

Woodward and his chaplain held services and celebrated the

Some gas like helium must be innate.”

Eucharist each Sunday of the month. Phil Peck, chiefly after a process of consensus building, moved that service back to Monday morning so that the entire community, day-students and

Whether idealism or a buoyant vapor or something else, Edric Weld felt that Holderness had to recognize and serve it. In

boarders and faculty, could attend. But at the chapel’s present

1950, during his last year at Holderness, and in response to a

size, staff members still cannot attend. Phil, Rich, Bruce, and the

student editorial in The Dial critical of the chapel requirement,

Board of Trustees want not only a larger chapel, but one with a

Weld wrote that ignorance is not one of America’s basic free-

performance space and basement rooms—in other words, a

doms. “Schools have considerable latitude and equal responsibil-

building that can be used throughout the week, rather than just

ity in selecting the knowledge to which they choose to expose

Mondays and Thursdays, and that can be both a geographic and

American boys and girls during school age,” he continued. “This

curricular center on campus.

This, when it’s accomplished, will be the most literal

school has adopted the principle that as exposure to Shakespeare, mathematics, science, history, language, and physi-

expression of the Church’s inclusiveness. But Phil hears com-

cal education will probably result in an enrichment of personali-

plaints from one side of the spectrum that services are not held

ty, so will exposure to Chapel, prayers, and courses in Sacred

on the Sabbath, and that the Eucharist—in deference to other tra-

Studies.”

ditions—is now celebrated just once each month. Thursday night chapel—as it was during the Woodward years—remains a point-

Consider the effect of just a small exposure at a school that has no religious affiliation. Jay Stroud, a former faculty member

edly ecumenical service, one that welcomes speakers from a

and assistant head here, has recently retired as head of Tabor

wide palette of traditions and perspectives.

Academy. Last January, shortly after announcing his retirement,

In the words of one critic, this practice, in sum, amounts to “watered-down Episcopal mush.” From the other side of the spectrum, Phil hears what Holderness school leaders have

Jay wrote as follows to his old friend and colleague Phil Peck: “We had our Lessons and Carols—a very Episcopal service for this very non-religious school. Seeing all the kids, maybe a

always heard, though now in new terms—that this “mush” is

hundred of them, arranged in the chapel—kids from every cor-

Eurocentric, Christian-centric; that a focus on any one tradition

ner of the world, every race and most religions—is the most

is an insult to all others; that no sort of “requirement” should be

moving moment of Christmas for me.

attached to spiritual practice in the first place. Responding to

is some hope, with a common purpose, with some sense that we

Don Hagerman’s concession that “compulsory attendance at

are, in fact, all in this together; that

chapel cannot assure worship,” Rich Weymouth replies, “Nor

we can sing hymns that we may not

does its absence.” That old “healthy debate” lives on.

understand and likely wouldn’t

The school’s strategic plan for the spiritual life is aimed

believe in, but in the singing of

towards that balance that Rich and Phil endorse. This is part of

them the message is more real than

what informs the objectives that emerged from that most recent

the words of the hymn itself.”

retreat: first, to enlarge the chapel; otherwise, to continue in a

Always has been. There

At Holderness, of course, the

worship that reflects both the school’s heritage and the whole

medium and the message blend

diversity of religious experience; to integrate dimensions of spir-

together into an article of faith that

ituality into all aspects of school life; to nurture student leader-

we are all, indeed, in this together;

ship in this sphere of school life; to ensure faculty support; and

that “tribulation worketh patience,”

to create a mission statement for the school’s spiritual life. The

and then its corollaries: faith, hope,

other part is simply love of God and of this earthly Church.

and love.

Rich Weymouth’s own plan is, he says, “to remain faithful to the Gospel, exercise concern for all persons, and affirm the spiritual journeys of those of other faiths, as well as those of a no-faith background.”

Of course that was Pete Woodward’s

mission as well. Pete gravitated to that spirit of welcome that

Bible in arm, Rich Weymouth walks back to campus from a spring service at the Outdoor Chapel.

this particular church extends to the whole breadth of humanity,

Holderness School Today

11

Catching up with...

Walt Kesler Perhaps the most promising young submarine officer in the Navy, Walt Kesler left that for the Episcopal ministry—and Holderness School.

Vehicles of the spirit

A

S A BOY,

WALT KESLER read voraciously, and he

particularly liked books about submarine war-

fare during World War II. This included Edward L. Beach’s Run Silent, Run Deep, a story about American sub Captain E.J.

Richardson’s duel with Tateo Nakame, a brilliant Japanese

sub hunter. In the end, the U.S.S. Eel sinks Nakame’s flag-

In 1963 Walt was the Naval Academy’s top student. He joined the best from the other military academies in being honored by President Kennedy just weeks before the assassination. Walt is the second from the left.

ship. Richardson then sights Nakame and his officers in a lifeboat, and on the verge of rescue. Richardson pilots the Eel into the lifeboat.

It’s a thrilling, but also vaguely troubling, conclusion.

Beach had been a sub commander himself during the war, and he knew how to capture the moral ambiguities of warfare. He knew how to capture as well the adrenaline charge of men and fantastic machines tested to their limits. “I grew up thinking I would really like to drive a submarine,” says the school’s former chaplain.

Which is exactly what he set about preparing to do. He grew up at and attended Phillips Exeter Academy, where his father—over a forty-year career there—taught German and served as a dean and then vice-principal. The whole family was active in Exeter’s Episcopal Christ Church (where current chaplain Rich Weymouth ’70 would serve as a curate in the 1980s), though Walt’s father, when he was a boy, had had a very practical reason for gravitating to the Episcopalians. “That was the one church that paid its choir boys,” laughs Walt. “Twenty-five cents each Sunday, an extra twenty-five if he sang a solo.”

But Walt wanted to drive submarines, and in 1960, at the height of the Cold War, he earned an appointment to the US Naval Academy. There he posted the highest academic record in the history of the academy, and was its Brigade Commander in his senior year. His subsequent rise through the ranks was, well, meteoric. He served first aboard the Polaris-class ballistic missile submarine Thomas Jefferson, and then the Sturgeon-class attack submarine Guittaro.

Then he became the youngest executive officer (second in command) in the Navy aboard the attack sub Pollack.

So there he was at the helm of a machine much more fantastic than Edward L. Beach’s fictional Eel. These nuclear-powered vessels were bigger and more comfortable

12

Holderness School Today

than their World War IIera counterparts. They could run underwater as long as food supplies could last, more than two months, and their combination of stealth and weaponry made them—arguably—the deadliest vehicles ever devised by man.

And there was plenty of adrenaline. The cat-andmouse games that Richardson and Nakame had played in Beach’s novel were unfolding throughout the world’s oceans between two potent submarine fleets, ours and the Soviet Union’s, both maneuvering for first advantage in the war that could break out at any second.

And yet the Navy’s fair-haired boy, poised for his first full command, resigned his commission in 1976 in order to enter the Virginia Theological Seminary. “Well, there were a couple things involved in that,” Walt explains. “First, I was becoming more deeply involved in the Church, to the point where I had begun to feel a calling to the ministry.

That had been building for years. Second, I had frankly become disenchanted with the Navy.”

Well, there was Vietnam. Submarines weren’t involved much in what was happening there, but they could be if the war spun out of control, and Walt was frankly angry about the moral—and tactical—ambiguities of that whole enterprise. Also, he had climbed high enough up the ladder of command in the military to see how self-serving—and careless of the interests of their men or their country— officers could be, sometimes, as they jockeyed for promotion. “There was a lot of blatant hypocrisy,” Walt says, “and I knew I’d get in trouble if I stayed.”

It was a sharp turn, from the conning tower of the Pollack to a theological seminary, but one made with Walt’s customary deftness. No surprise, Walt became student body president at VTS, and he was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1979. That spring Walt heard from New Hampshire Bishop Phil Smith—who had been the rector of Exeter’s Christ Church when Walt was a boy—that there was an opening for a chaplain at Holderness, where a new headmaster, Pete Woodward, was looking to expand the role of the Church in the life of the school.

By then Walt was married with three children. He and then-wife Martha came up to

Holderness and decided that it would be a wonderful place to raise children and have them eventually attend school, just as he had at Exeter. Martha took charge of the school’s drama program, where she mounted some legendary productions and trained such actors as Derek Richardson ’94 (TV series Men In Trees, American Horror Story, Anger Management) and Oscarwinner Nat Faxon ’93 (see page 41).

Meanwhile Walt presided over not only the Chapel of the Holy Cross, but also the Trinity Episcopal Church in Meredith.

This was essentially two full-time jobs in one. On top of that he was Director of College Counseling, a math teacher, a dorm parent, and the coach of JV baseball. It begs the question of how murderously busy the chaplain must have been in this new career. “It’s been my experience that anybody who works at a boarding school is very busy,” Walt says.

O

N CAMPUS

Above left, Cadet Kesler at Annapolis with his brother Andy. Above, Walt at Holderness in the 1980s. Immediately above, the Kesler family then: Martha Ellen, Stefan, Martha, and Drew.

WALT ministered to a stu-

dent population that had a larger Episcopal segment than today’s—

thirty percent in the early ’80s, as opposed to twelve percent now—but was nonetheless largely ignorant of religion, Episcopal or otherwise. “I was lucky, though,” Walt says. “I was given the freedom to design my own theology courses, and I used those to build bridges between what I did and what happened elsewhere in the curriculum.”

Walt’s rise through the ranks was, well,

METEORIC.

One such course was “The Bible and the New York Times.” Assigned readings consisted of books from the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the front and editorial pages of the Times. Students could find common elements in the sociology and politics of all

Holderness School Today

13

1999: At Cape May with brothers Jim, left, and Andy, middle.

those readings, and also evidence that humanity’s moral and spiritual dilemmas have changed little in two millennia. Another course focused on medical ethics—issues such as abortion, end-of-life care, and the allocation of scarce medical resources—while a survey course on religion (built around Huston Smith’s masterpiece, The World’s Religions),

It was like being handed command of the Eel halfway through Run Silent, Run Deep. “Yes, I

asked students to write biographies of historical fig-

arrived at an interesting time,” Walt admits. This K-

ures who were also people of faith in various tradi-

12 day school of 750 students and growing, a school

tions.

not affiliated with any church, had just sold all its

“What did I love most about Holderness?” Walt

buildings to a local high school. In no time at all Walt

says, speaking over the phone in May from the front

had to raise $30 million, design a new campus for the

porch of an old farmhouse on the shores of Cape

school, and get it built.

May, New Jersey. “That would be the sacrificial way the whole faculty lived on behalf of the students. This

It was a whole new version of “murderously busy,” but with higher stakes. By 1998 the money had

was a community of adults who truly cared about

been raised and the school relocated in entirety to a

every child in their midst.”

handsome 75-acre campus in the Dutch Branch sec-

B

Y

tion of Fort Worth. That provided the space for 1994

THIS COMMUNITY

had helped care for

and educate all three of the Kesler children:

Trinity Valley to keep growing to its present enrollment of 940.

Martha Ellen ’85, Andrew ’88, and Stefan ’91.

That was when Walt felt like driving something

On the porch at Cape May with Drew’s daughter Tess.

It was a big victory, one fought only on behalf of human possibility, and Walt retired from education at

new—not a submarine, not a chapel program or

the end of the ’98-99 school year. He worked for five

church, but rather an independent school. Like many

more years as the associate rector of the Trinity

other members of the Woodward faculty, he left to

Episcopal Church in Fort Worth before retiring entire-

become a head of school elsewhere—in Walt’s case

ly in 2004.

the Trinity Valley School in Fort Worth, Texas.

These days Walt splits his time between Fort Worth and this old family farmhouse on Cape May, a house handed down on his mother’s side of the family. Its kitchen dates back to the 1700s, and generations through Walt’s great-grandparents had worked the land. It became a summer place after that, with the farmland sold off in 2004. The gardens remain, though, and on this cool, cloudy day in May, he’s thinking that he should be getting those in soon.

Walt wonders if independent school teaching might be a “genetic disease” in the Kesler family.

Martha Ellen is teaching English at the Wayland Academy in Wisconsin, and Andrew is a physics teacher at Newark Academy in New Jersey. Only Stefan has been immune, so far—he’s working happily as an architect for the City of Dallas.

Meanwhile their brilliant father has gotten to drive a lot of different things over the course of his life, but it’s been these vehicles of the spirit—schools and chapels and churches, and the sacrificial lives they require—that have transported him the farthest.

14

Holderness School Today

Grade 9 Miss Sarah Pendleton Alexander Miss Nikkol Lillian Blair Mr. Youngjae Cha Mr. Thien Thuan Chau Miss Emily Edge Clifford Mr. Parker Adams Densmore Miss Elizabeth Ruth Duffy Mr. Charles Hagen Harker III Miss Hope Elizabeth Heffernan Miss Rebecca Margaret Kelly Miss Seo Jung Kim Mr. John B. Kinney Miss Thao Phan Thu Nguyen Miss Cayla Anne Penny Miss Paige Elizabeth Pfenninger Mr. William Fletcher Prickett Miss Hannah Elizabeth Stowe Miss Qianyi Zhang

Grade 10 Miss Rebecca Ann Begley Miss Tram Ngoc Dao Miss Hannah F. Durnan Miss Racheal Marbury Erhard Miss Sarah Elizabeth Garrett Mr. Zihan Guo Mr. Perry Khalil Kurker-Mraz Miss Eliana Howell Mallory Mr. Thorn King Merrill Miss Danielle Elizabeth Norgren Miss Tess Margaret O'Brien Mr. Samuel Foster Paine Miss Lea Jenet Rice Mr. Young Soo Sung Mr. Matthew Davis Tankersley Mr. Parker Johnson Weekes Mr. Chance Jackson Cretella Wright Mr. Shihao Yu Mr. Ziang Zhou

Grade 11 Mr. Dylan Michael Arthaud Mr. Jacob Cramer Barton Miss Sarah Renard Bell Miss Elena E. Bird Miss Nicole Marie DellaPasqua Mr. Daniel Do Mr. Tyler David Evangelous Mr. Michael Laurence Finnegan Miss Jeong Yeon Han Miss Macy Winslow Jones Miss Mackenzie Reid Maher Mr. John Franco Musciano Mr. Caleb Andrew Nungesser Mr. Francis Parenteau Miss Celine Pichette Miss Kathryn Jane Sanger Miss Reeta Raquel Shrestha Miss Iashai Dominique Stephens Mr. Fabian Stocek Mr. Kangdi Wang Miss Yi Ling Wang Miss Ximo Xiao

Grade 12 Mr. Nathanial George Alexander Mr. Austin Geoghan Baum Mr. Keith Michael Bohlin Miss Ariana Ann Bourque Miss Josephine McAlpin Brownell Mr. Owen Tomasz Buehler Miss Marguerite Cournoyer Caputi Miss Samantha Regina Cloud Miss Eliza R. Cowie Miss Benedicte Nora Crudgington Mr. Ian C. Ford Miss Abigail Kristen Guerra Miss Hannah Morgan Halsted Miss Yejin Hwang Mr. Nathaniel Ward Lamson Miss Samantha Anne Lee Miss Haley Janet Mahar Miss Carly Elizabeth Meau Miss Kristina Sophia Micalizzi Miss Sara Parsell Mogollon Mr. Oliver Julian Nettere Mr. James Ornstein Robbins Mr. Justin Demarr Simpkins Miss Abagael Mae Slattery Miss Erica Holahan Steiner Miss Molly Durgin Tankersley Mr. Brian Alden Tierney Miss Isabelle Eden Zaik-Hodgkins

Grade 10 Mr. Kaelen Thomas Caggiula Mr. Reed Joseph Carpenter Mr. Joseph Patrick Casey Mr. Benjamin Dawson Coleman Mr. Perry Frank Craver Mr. Ezra Thomas Cushing Miss Margareta Evarts Davis Miss Hedi Barbara Droste Miss Hailee Christine Grisham Mr. Matthew Francis Gudas Mr. Mike Patrick Hogervorst Miss Eleanor Celeste Holland Mr. Oliver Lion Johnson Mr. Max Robert Lash Mr. Connor Jonathan Marien Mr. Scott Thomas Merrill Mr. Matthew Ford Michaud Miss Sarah Elizabeth Michel Mr. Adam Pettengill Mr. Amos Henry Pierce Miss Caroline Bridges Plante Miss Elizabeth Grace Powell Miss Emily Benoit Rasmussen Mr. Charles Shelvey Sheffield Miss Hannah Rae Slattery Mr. Jonathan E. Swidrak Mr. Mathew Benjamin Thomas Mr. Noah R. Thompson Mr. Nam Hoai Tran Mr. Edward Robert Wassman III

Grade 11 Miss Abigail Elizabeth Abdinoor Mr. Christian Robert Anderson Mr. Alexander James Berman Miss Hannah Susan Foote Mr. Jeffrey Michael Hauser Mr. Aidan Cleaveland Kendall Miss Olivia Grace Leatherwood Miss Choa Lim Mr. Oliver Turner Lowe Mr. Tyler Mitchell Mathieu Mr. Francis Gray Miles Miss Kendra June Morse Miss Saro Ntahobari Mr. Jesse Jeremiah Ross Miss Jacqueline Morgan Sampson Mr. Peter Pesch Saunders Miss Emily Irving Soderberg Miss Lauren Louise Stride Mr. Robert Patrick Sullivan Miss Danielle Lynn Therrien Miss Olivia Voccola Mr. Charles Norwood Williams Mr. Andrew Timothy Zinck

Grade 12 Mr. Jonathan Perkins Bass Miss Pippa Bancroft Blau Mr. David Kenneth Bugbee Mr. Christian Haynes Daniell Mr. Thai Trong Dao Mr. Peter Michael Ferrante Miss Lily Woodworth Ford Mr. James Blair Fredrickson Miss Rachel West Huntley Mr. Preston Jerome Kelsey Mr. Matthew Neville Kinney Miss Katherine O'Connor Leake Mr. William Marvin Miss Molly Brown Monahan Mr. Andrew Joseph Munroe Miss Patricia Porta Barbarin Miss Julia Baldwin Potter Mr. Nicholas Anthony Renzi Mr. Ryan Michael Rosencranz Mr. Reed Rowan Spearman Miss Stephanie Rachael Symecko Mr. Tino Andy Tomasi Mr. Alex Lee Trujillo

High Honors: Fourth Quarter

Grade 9 Miss Claire Michelle Caputi Mr. Nicholas Nye Conner Miss Leah Elizabeth Curtis Miss Sawyer Wen Gardner Mr. Peter Stanley Hastings Mr. Kevin James Horner Miss Lindsey Rose Houseman Miss Abigail Sargent Jones Miss Rhyan Leatherwood Mr. Luke Kai Lin Mr. Liam Appalachian O'Reilly Miss Margaret Emlen Peake Miss Christina Carson Raichle Mr. Jake Douglas Rourke Mr. William Whitmore Tessier

Honors: Fourth Quarter

Holderness School Today

15

Around the Quad

Academics Derek Eaton: geologist, grounds worker, and consultant to AP Comp.

T

HERE ARE SEVERAL GOOD

ways to approach

a rock. There is a poet’s approach—as in “Stone,” by Charles Simic, for example, or

“Oh, Lovely Rock” by Robinson Jeffers, or “Silica Carbonate Rock” by Fred Berry—or there is a geologist’s approach.

In February, after John Lin’s AP Composition class had familiarized themselves

with those poems, they heard from a geologist, and one who works conveniently right on campus: Derek Eaton, now a member of Dick Stevens’ buildings and grounds crew, was also a geology major at Skidmore College.

Derek spoke specifically about the rocks— and the geology—of the White Mountains. This not only provided a scientific context for those poems, and the rest of the nature writing that class has read about the region, but it prepared them for yet another way to approach a rock—as a hiker in winter.

The class was composed of juniors looking forward to Out Back in March, and Derek’s visit

Derek in his other job, and as he appeared on the fall, 2010, cover of HST.

helped weave together not just Out Back and English literature, but history and science as well.

Lovely rock? You bet.

The anatomy and physiology of human athletic performance.

I

N

APRIL

A NUMBER

of students

in Dr. Maggie Mumford’s

Anatomy and Physiology class

took a rigorous test—a physical

runner and Nordic skier. In the photo at left he’s taking the VO2

They went to Plymouth State

Holderness School Today

max test. “That’s a classic stamina test that measures one’s capability

Lab. There Dr. John Rosene, an

to deliver and use oxygen,” says

associate professor at PSU,

Maggie.

explained how the lab’s equipment

16

Junior Fabian Stocek is an endurance athlete, a top distance

performance test, actually.

University’s Human Performance

Dr. John Rosene, left, assists Fabian Stocek ’13 with the VO2 max test at Plymouth State University’s Human Performance Lab.

logical demands of each.

Fabian had VO2 max meas-

works and what its battery of tests

ured at being in the high 70s. “For

measures. He also took the time to

all you sports buffs,” added

discuss with students their various

Maggie, “that’s pretty darn good.

sports of interest and the physio-

G

reat essays about values and convictions—“This I Believe” essays—continue to come out of Peter Durnan’s AP English class. The form dates back to a 1950s radio series hosted by Edward R. Murrow, and it was revived in 2005 by National Public Radio. That network ran new essays for four years, and it was such a popular series that it continues on a website hosted by a non-profit organization dedicated to keeping the form going, This I Believe, Inc. “Each day [in the 1950s],” explains the organization’s website, “Americans gathered by their radios to hear compelling essays from the likes of Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Robinson, Helen Keller, and Harry Truman, as well as corporate leaders, cab drivers, scientists, and secretaries—anyone able to distill into a few minutes the guiding principles by which they lived. These essayists’ words brought comfort and inspiration to a country worried about the Cold War, McCarthyism, and racial division. “ In reviving the series, executive producer Dan Gediman said, “The goal is not to persuade Americans to agree on the same beliefs. Rather, the hope is to encourage people to begin the much more difficult task of developing respect for beliefs different from their own.”

In our last issue of HST, we reprinted an essay by Haley Mahar ’12 about kickwax—an essay that was published on the website of FasterSkier, a ski news organization. In this issue, we have an essay by Maggie Caputi that has been published on the website of This I Believe itself—and also recorded there for your listening pleasure. You can also read and hear it on our website.

And if you like the essay, write Maggie a letter about it—a real one.

BELIEVE IN LETTERS.

I

THE handwritten kind, to be

specific; the kind sent in envelopes, marked

with postage stamps.

It’s too bad that they’re so rare

these days. The communication mediums of Facebook, Twitter,

email, and text messaging almost always prevail over this more

romantic and delicate art, which is generally considered obsolete. Most people prefer the speediness and convenience that accompany modern technology, as well as its promise of social safety. It’s easier—less scary—to write something on Facebook, where you can either delete

Maggie Caputi ’12 believes in letters— real, hand-written letters, on paper.

shelter on a slight hill… that I discovered AFTER I had tied my tarp down. The frustration of this whole endeavor was already unbearable, and it had only just begun. I was so unhappy, and when I crawled into my sleeping bag that night and opened my letters, I began to sob. I think I actually started to cry at the sight of my mom’s handwriting alone, before I had even started reading her letter. In it, she said the same loving and supportive things that she always says to me, but they were reaching me at the perfect time in my life.

She and my dad both wrote things that helped me to feel stronger and less alone during my experience, and I will cherish their letters for-

your comment or just immediately correct yourself, or maybe rely on

ever. I will also cherish my brother’s, which affected me in a slightly

another user to abet your argument and support you even if you’ve said

different way. To put it simply, his letter surprised me. It possessed a

something stupid.

When it comes to writing letters, things work a little differently.

certain tenderness that I had never seen in him. It was short, yet it conveyed a kind message of familial love and support, and it made me see

Our trusty U.S. Postal Service is without delete buttons. You send a let-

him in a better light. I connect this letter to the aforementioned Samuel

ter and it’s gone, and that’s that. There are no edits, no re-dos. That’s

Johnson quote that essentially describes a letter as a pure reflection of

why writing letters is such a special, unique practice. It requires discre-

character.

tion, creativity, and total attention. Letters are the perfect vehicle for expressing paramount thoughts and emotions, because the components

The art of letter writing is timeless and valuable, yet it has grown to be nearly nonexistent. Seldom does anyone ever consider picking up

of privacy and affection are so strong and apparent. A letter is, quite

a pen and paper to fill a page or two with a personalized, sincere mes-

possibly, the most personal interaction that can occur between two peo-

sage. Regardless of its fading prominence in the world of communica-

ple. As Samuel Johnson once said, a man’s soul “lies naked” in his let-

tion, I believe that letter writing is the best way to say the most impor-

ters, where “nothing is inverted, nothing distorted; you see systems in

tant things. Throw a compliment into a conversation with someone and

their elements, you discover actions in their motives.”

This winter, when I spent three lonely days in the woods, the let-

you’ll see it go in one ear and out the other, but say it artfully in a letter with a little more detail, and your message will surely manifest itself.

ters that I brought kept me sane, as did my peanut butter and animal crackers. I spent the first hours of my little adventure setting up a pitiful

Holderness School Today

17

Around the Quad

A worldly Student Academic Committee reports to us all on what’s

happening around the world.

O

NE MORNING

in February

they all came together for

the first time: the African

Cup of Nations, neutrinos, Vladimir Putin, and PFC Bradley Manning, who allegedly delivered secret US military documents to Wikileaks. All on the stage at Hagerman.

They were there thanks to the student Academic Committee, which—on its own initiative—has assumed the task of reporting on events in the larger world to the school community. And with so many international students now on campus, events anywhere in the world often have personal import here in this community.

The reporting began at an all-school assembly in January with two correspondents from the Academic Committee: Fabian Stocek and Zihan Guo. A month later, the bureau had doubled, with additional reports from

From the left: committee members Vincent Guo ’14, Fabian Stocek ’13, Olivia Leatherwood ’13, and Olayode Ahmed ’12.

Olivia Leatherwood and Olayode Ahmed.

They all came together for the first time: the African Cup of Nations, neutrinos, Vladimir Putin, and PFC Bradley Manning. All on the stage at Hagerman.

P

OETRY

OUT LOUD

IS

a national con-

something that happens just for love of the

more expertise in poetry among

subject matter and a desire to improve.

American high school students. But if someone says “14,” do you think, “Oh,

In the photo below, buckling down to that test, are Paige Pfenninger, Dylan

that’s the number of lines in a sonnet?” Or

Arthaud, and Jake Barton. Also taking the

do you think, “Oh, that’s our third discrete

test were Zihan Guo, Fabian Stocek,

semiprime number”?

Young Soo Sung, Kangdi Wang, and

If the latter, then the American Mathematics Competition is for you. The annual contest not only seeks to enhance the mathematics capabilities of our high school students, it serves as an entrance test for the even more strenuous American Invitational Mathematics Examination.

The AMC test is tough enough on its own terms, though: 25 multiple-choice questions that grow progressively harder, all to be done within 75 minutes.

This winter eight Holderness students assembled on their own time after dinner to help each other prepare for the AMC test in February. It was a great example of

18

what educators call “intrinsic motivation,”

test that includes among its goals

Holderness School Today

Qianyi Zhang.

The American Mathematics Competition— if you dare.

Rover’s master —as in the

Scientist John Callas

Mars Rover—takes us on a spin around the universe.

A

FRIEND IN A

high place

is always good to have, and Dickson

Smith—the father of Dickson

he swung down this way on Parents’ Weekend to speak to the community in Hagerman.

Mr. Callas began with an

Smith III ’12—has one such

attempt to suggest the size of

friend in John Callas, who

the universe and how little we

works at NASA’s jet propul-

know about it.

He then moved on to the

sion lab in Pasadena, CA, and is the scientist in charge of the

frontiers of what we do know,

space agency’s Mars Rover

and the prospects for life in

Project.

places other than earth. He

In February Mr. Callas

concluded with an exhortation

had a speaking engagement at

for us all to take better care of

Dartmouth. As a favor to Mr.

the one planet that is friendly

Smith and also to Holderness,

to life as we know it.

. . . a process where nearly 10,000

Salamarie Frazier ’12

poetry students in the state are winnowed down to ten.

Our state finalist in the audible, and very competitive, sport of poetry. which was when Salamarie Frazier—who had previously won as a sophomore in 2010—emerged as our winner once again.

I

T’LL ONLY BE TRUE FOR THIS YEAR,

but it’s fun while it is

true—half of all Holderness School’s Poetry Out Loud

champions have been Salamarie Frazier ’12. And she is

the only Holderness student so far to make it through the

On March 20 Salamarie joined six other school champions from northern New Hampshire in the regional semifinals. “In the first round, Salamarie wowed the crowd with her rendition of Gwendolyn

wringer of regional competition to the state finals, a

Brooks’ ‘A Song in the Front Yard,’” said English teacher

process where nearly 10,000 poetry students in the state are

Peter Durnan. “She finished equally well with a recitation

winnowed down to ten.

of John Donne’s ‘The Canonization.’”

Poetry Out Loud is a nationwide recitation contest

Those performances punched her ticket as one of ten

sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Arts

eligible for the state finals in Concord on March 26. There

and the Poetry Foundation. Holderness has been taking part

she placed fourth, leaving her one step short of the national

for four years, and it begins with high school contestants

finals in Washington. But it was a brilliant effort, and the

choosing poems they love—and then, in English class and

community was reminded of how brilliant when Salamarie

as homework, analyzing the poem, memorizing it, and

finished her POL season by reciting “The Canonization”

finally developing a polished spoken performance of the

again during an April all-school assembly. That was good

poem.

enough for a standing ovation.

At Holderness dozens of contestants went through several rounds of competition in performing before panels of judges. The school’s finals were held on February 17th,

Holderness School Today

19

Around the Quad

The Arts

On guitar, Alex Trujillo ’12.

On keyboards, Dave Lockwood and Kangdi Wang ’13.

How good was that?

At the mic, Shihao Yu ’14.

T

HE SWEETEST

gar-

nish to Winter

On drums, Hannah Slattery ’14.

Parents’ Weekend

is concert mounted by music teacher Dave Lockwood’s band and chorus. Talent, skill, enthusiasm, and charisma: it’s all present in these well-rehearsed performers, a few of whom are seen here.

Drawing as an From the left, Michael Swidrak ’14, Caroline Plante ’14, Nicholas Conner ’15, and Sarah Garrett ’14 discuss their collaborative piece.

interactive process—it can be done, and done really quite well.

A

Holderness artists

created a second collaborative piece

worked together on drawings

that contains two drawings by Andy

COTERIE OF

that went on exhibit at the

Rey Center Gallery in Waterville Valley in February. We’ll let fine arts

Wu and Perry Kurker-Mraz—assisted

teacher Kathryn Field explain how it

in drawing the areas surrounding the

all worked: “The Drawing 1 students—

end product, but the process of draw-

Nicholas Conner, Sarah Garrett, and

ing as well.”

The exhibition was titled

laborative drawing which focused on

“Community Colors: An Interactive

the study of structure in the human

Community Art Exhibit.”

head and hand. The Drawing 2 class

Holderness School Today

pieces, making it a collaborative process that celebrates not only the

Michael Swidrak, Caroline Plante,

Jess Osuchowski—worked on a col-

20

Munroe and one by Momo Xiao.

Other members of the class—Jingyi

E

ERIE PHOTOGRAPHS THAT

explore the concept of

mortality in a unique, multidimensional way were on display at the Edwards Art Gallery throughout

January and February.

The name of the exhibit was “Darkroom Flowers,”

and in it prize-winning photographer Adam Gooder

Adam Gooder’s Darkroom Flowers: spooky, beautiful, and “somewhat magical.”

twined together subject, process, and medium in haunting images that—in the words of Edwards curator Franz Nicolay—ride “the thin edge of superrealism and abstraction.” They also provided an almost forensic examination of the stark beauty hidden in the workings of time and death.

Gooder begins with his subjects— flowers picked at various stages of decay.

“Flowers, like the prints I make of them, are organic, textured, and— when one gets close enough—unique,” says Gooder. “Dead or dying flowers are a particularly good match for the antique look of these prints, and the way the grain makes some of them seem to dissolve into the ether.”

The photographer talks about his work with students in the Edwards Gallery.

The process is the nearly extinct procedure of Lith printing, which involves a different set of chemicals than standard darkroom printing. Lith printing takes longer and yields unpredictable results as the strength of the chemicals wanes over time. The result is that each print is

“Daffodil,” a Lith print.

one-of-a-kind.

“What you end up with in the print is not necessarily what you might expect from the negative,” says Gooder.

“But it matches my vision for this work: antique-looking, unique, and somewhat magical.”

That antique look is abetted by the papers used by Gooder, which are extinct papers as much as thirty years old. “Some of these prints spent as much as an hour in the developer, until it was murky and exhausted,” says Gooder. “The combination of grainy film negatives, old paper, and worn-out chemistry makes these new prints feel like antiques.”

He adds that the subtle browns, yellows, and pinks brought out by the Lith processing allows the prints themselves to “seem like they are moldering, dissolving, or decaying in some way.”

Gooder lives in Cambridge, MA, and has exhibited his work throughout the Northeast. He teaches at the New England Institute of Art and the Art Institute of Boston.

In January he attended the opening of the Edwards show, spoke to the whole school community about his work, and spent a day working with Franz Nicolay’s photography students on the art of printing lithographs in the

The images provided an almost forensic examination of the stark beauty hidden in the workings of time and death.

darkroom.

Holderness School Today

21

Around the Quad

The Arts

Dearly Departed, the winter drama class presentation—when the departed really, ahem, wasn’t so dear.

W

HEN THE

patriarch of the south-

ern Turpin clan keels over dead in the first scene, the struggle to

get

him buried—in David Bottrell and

Jessie Jones’s play Dearly Departed—

Holderness School Today

production of scenes from this play during a winter all-school assembly. The Turpins

involves the whole family, and it’s a strug-

manage to pull together at the end of the play, but this well-schooled group of

extended family don’t really work so well

drama class students worked together

together. Trouble starts with the not-so-

impressively all the way through.

and Surly” on the tombstone, and builds

22

The fun and laughter started right away with Monique Devine’s drama class

gle because the eccentric members of this

grieving widow, who wants to put “Mean

Among the undeparted, clockwise from above: James Fredrickson ’12; Isabelle ZaikHodgkins ’12 and Connor Smith ’12; Dickson Smith ’12 and Connor Loree ’12; and Molly Madden ’13.

from there.

Just a underpass? No, an art gallery now as well.

H

ALF THE

fun now

is getting there, at least if you’re get-

The new murals are assemblies of tile and mir-

ting to or from the main

rors and custom-made

campus and the new

ceramics put together by

dorms on Mt. Prospect

So Hee Park, Addie

Street. Thanks to an Arts

Morgan, and Hannah

in the Afternoon project

Foote.

It’s the sort of art that

headed up by fine arts

Derek Eaton and Bob Thibeault do the honors of hanging the murals.

Isaiah Zagar.

teacher Kathryn Field, the

brings a new dimension of

pedestrian underpass

light to the underpass. So

under Rt. 175 is hung with

take your time the next

a series of mosaics

time you stroll through.

inspired by the work of

Enjoy.

Service

Haley Marhar’s service project

Thanks to Haley Mahar ’12, a child in Uganda owns

this year

his or her first book. And many more are in circulation.

involved—

S

ENIOR

HALEY MAHAR’S service project

of the books have become part of the school’s

this year involved—among other

lending collection, and others have been

things—a lot of heavy lifting. But if

given to students to keep. “In many cases,”

you consider all the great lives that have

says Service Committee Director Janice

begun with a child’s love for a good book,

Pedrin-Nielson, “this will be the first book a

then there is more lifting to come, albeit of a

child in Kampala has ever owned.”

different sort.

The seed of this particular project was

in Rumney for foster children not yet placed into foster homes. The rest went to Mount

Khan Primary School in Kampala, Uganda—

Prospect Academy, a residential school for

and forged a friendship with that school’s

children who have suffered trauma in their

librarian. So this year Haley Mahar solicited

lives. “In both cases,” said Janice, “the

donations of books for that library not only

schools are partially funded by the state, and

from the Holderness community, but also

there is never enough money for all they

from Holderness Central School and the

need. So by offering books, we have support-

which were mailed to Uganda in December, and two more in March. Since each heavy

heavy lifting.

And the remaining books? Three boxes

began a year teaching first grade at the Aga

The yield was ten big boxes, two of

things—a lot of

went to the Salem Trust, a residential school

planted in 2010, when Maresa Nielson ’06

Plymouth Elementary School.

among other

ed their students, their classrooms, and their libraries.”

So they’re not easy to collect and move, these physical paper-and-binding artifacts that

box cost $140 to mail, Haley and other mem-

don’t require the use of a Kindle, but in them-

bers of the Service Committee were selective

selves they can move lives and change histo-

about the books for Uganda: a variety of read-

ry—and just about always, it’s interesting to

ing levels, from primary to high school. Some

note, for the better.

Holderness School Today

23

Around the Quad

Service

The Memory Project: The privilege of being seen, recorded, remembered.

O

NE OF THE

richest aspects of

along with letters from the artists. So

its benefits are shared by all

far 30,000 portraits have been drawn

who participate. Fine arts teacher Kathryn Field has seen this in action since she asked her drawing students

of youths from 33 countries.

This winter fifteen of those portraits came from Holderness. And as

this winter to participate in the

they were composed, the hearts of

Memory Project.

their artists opened just a little bit

The Memory Project began in

A portrait by Jingyi Wu ’14, and below, by Ximo Xiao ’13.

finally delivered to their subjects

public service work is the way

wider. “Because I’m painting her, I

2004 when an American college-age

truly want to make her smile,” said

volunteer, Ben Schumaker, resolved to

Abby Guerra ’12. “I want to make

find some way to build personal con-

sure the painting is the best it can be,

nections between Americans and the

because the last thing I want to do is

Guatemalan orphans he was serving—

disappoint her.”

connections that could also enhance the orphans’ sense of identity and selfesteem.

That resolve has grown into a

Jingyi Wu ’14 considered the way in which her work addresses the mystery of identity. “Photos remind us of who we are,” she wrote in a per-

process that begins when photographs

sonal reflection after finishing her por-

are taken of children at orphanages

trait. “We are less aware of our exis-

throughout the world. The photos are

tence when we don’t know what we

then sent to high school art students in

look like. The child who receives this

the USA, Canada, and the United

portrait may start to think more about

Kingdom. Next, these students draw

who he or she is, and hopefully he or

portraits from the photos as they study

she will go deeper and find a self

the history and culture of their sub-

through someone else’s interpreta-

ject’s native country. The portraits are

tion.”

Community Winter Carnival brightens the dark hours of winter once more.

W

INTER

CARNIVAL is

Of special note, perhaps,

a many-splendored

is the “Dress Like a Faculty

thing: the Human

Member” contest. This year

Iditarod, the Barton

it coincided with an Asian

Olympics (marshmallow toss,

meal prepared by the kitchen

M&M roll, pie-eating con-

staff, served in a dining hall

test), a dodge-ball tourna-

decorated with items cele-

ment, a lip-synch contest, an

brating the Chinese, Korean,

ice-sculpture competition,

and Vietnamese New Years.

and several other weird com-

And some of the imitations

binations of competition,

were just spot on. The real

sport, art, and silliness. It

Mr. Solberg is the second

arrives at the end of January,

from the right. But you could

just in time to relieve the dol-

be forgiven for guessing

drums of winter.

wrong.

24

Holderness School Today

The Dress Like a Faculty Member Contest: Can you tell the real Mr. Solberg from Tyler Evangelous, Will Marvin, and Reed Carpenter? We didn’t say it’d be easy.

Martin Luther King Day: The intersection of class and privilege.

T

HE BENEFITS AND

trials of diversity

American society—race, gender, age,

diverse, and each year the Diversity

wealth, sexual orientation, religion, cul-

Committee focuses on one single dimen-

ture, and language—and suggested that

sion of that property on which to focus

action on behalf of the less privileged was

their educational efforts. This year’s theme

a much healthier response than guilt over

was class and privilege, and also the

the status quo.

organizing principle of the school’s cele-

Guest speaker Mariama Richards of the Georgetown Day School.

ways people experience privilege in

within any community are, well,

Then students broke into workshops

bration of Martin Luther King Day in

that in various ways explored the effect of

February.

privilege. School counselor Carol Dopp,

The day’s guest speaker was Mariama

for example, supervised several groups

Richards, Co-Director of Diversity at the

competing to create the best poster on

Georgetown Day School in Washington,

“fairness.” Unknown to participating stu-

DC. Ms. Richards defined the various

dents, though, was the fact that some groups had much more resources (markers, premade letters, posterboard, etc.) than others.

“We had no idea how illprepared we were,” said a student in one of the less privileged groups.

Exactly.

Katie Leake ’12 at work on her fairness poster.

A drawing by Gary Romaine ’60, a needlepoint by his mom, and an heirloom for Holderness.

S

OMETIMES OLD

memories come

visitors/staff/students could see it.

back to you unexpectedly. It

Holderness is, was, and always will be a

works that way sometimes at

truly unique experience. I trust this piece

Holderness too, and it happened in

of art work will become a part of the

February when an email from Randy

school and those who are fortunate

Romaine ’62 arrived on the desk of

enough to be a part of its world.”

archivist Judith Solberg.

“I have a framed needlepoint of

Phil Peck with seniors Thany Alexander and Keith Bohlin, the house leaders of Niles and Webster, and the art work in the background.

During a season in which our new dorms won an important architectural

Niles and Webster,” Randy wrote. “The

award, it was all the more pleasurable to

picture was drawn by my brother Gary

see our oldest dorms receive this sort of

’60 and needlepointed by my mother.

artistic recognition. And that needlepoint

Both Gary and I dormed in Niles and

is now on display in the Head of

Webster in different years. It is very well

School’s office. Stop by any time to

done, and I thought it might be some-

have a look.

thing the school would like to have for permanent display in some area where

Holderness School Today

25

Around the Quad

Chapel Haroon Rahimi ’14 marks out common ground between Christianity and Islam in Thursday chapel.

O

NE OF THE YEAR’S

most memo-

rable Thursday night chapel talks was delivered in early

February by sophomore Haroon

time pilgrimage to Mecca. Haroon described each of these principles in considerable detail, explaining the meaning behind each, and all the while

Rahimi. Haroon is a Muslim from

stressing the history and beliefs that

Afghanistan, and he provided a very

Islam shares with Christianity.

personal introduction to the Muslim tradition by means of a series of ques-

Haroon emphasized common ground not just between these spiritual

tions posed to him by Chaplain Rich

traditions, but between us all as human

Weymouth ’70.

beings. “There are many more similar-

Rich asked Haroon about the five

ities than differences between us,” he

pillars of Islam: the creed, daily

said. “It is our duty to recognize that

prayers, fasting during Ramadan, giv-

fact and act on it in all that we do and

ing to the poor, and the once-in-a-life-

all that we are.”

At dinner after chapel: Sam Paine, Nicole DellaPasqua, Emily Rasmussen, Chaplain Rich Weymouth ’70, Haroon Rahimi, and Kathy Weymouth.

Residential Life An AIANH Excellence in Architecture Award for the school’s new dorms.

L

AST FALL THE NEW

WOODWARD Faculty dorm opened on Mt.

buildings are the first step in a campus-wide initiative to provide a low

Prospect Street. This winter that dorm and its companion facility

8:1 student-faculty ratio in all Holderness School residences. They are

were honored with a 2012 Excellence in Architecture Design

designed also to teach students the benefits of energy conservation.

Award from the American Institute of Architects New Hampshire Chapter (AIANH).

“The site plan and building design were developed to resemble a small New England neighborhood with the visual aspect broken into

The dorms were one of six projects singled out this year by the AIANH. According to Executive Director Carolyn Isaak, the Design

smaller components,” said the AIANH citation. “The LEED Gold-certified project serves as a template for sustainability programming at

Awards convey “the highest recognition of works that exemplify excel-

Holderness School, with student involvement in setting energy conserva-

lence in overall design, including aesthetics, clarity, creativity, appropri-

tion goals, exploring sustainability options, job site recycling, and ongo-

ate functionality, sustainability, building performance, and appropriateness with

said the jury in its comments. “The staff houses give the faculty families a sense of their own space, while being near the student residences. We

The facilities pro-

note the thermal performance, sustainability features, economy, and appropriateness of the project. The project demonstrates that LEED and

vide housing for 48

Energy Star set an appropriate standard. The massing and scale was well

students and resi-

resolved. Faculty houses have great proportions.”

dences for six faculty families. Segmented

“Our school was founded in 1879 with a charter that specifies ‘the highest degree of excellence in instruction and care-taking,’” said

into three-room pods

Holderness Head of School Phil Peck. “These dorms represent a mile-

around a central com-

stone in sustaining that charter, and we rejoice in an honor that belongs

mon living room, the

Plant Manager Dick Stevens, second from left, joined architects and builders in accepting the award.

Holderness School Today

The AIANH’s jury was composed of members of the Seattle, WA, architectural community. “This project has a quality that feels right,”

regard to fulfilling the client’s program.”

26

ing monitoring of electricity, propane, and water.”

to many people in this community, and to the donors and contractors who made our vision a reality.”

Ward D’Elia of Samyn-D’Elia Architects worked with members of the Holderness School community in designing the buildings. They were built by Milestone Engineering and Construction, and the landscape architecture was done by Pelletieri Associates, Inc.

Sustainability A “professional bummer-outer”: Author, journalist, and environmental gadfly Bill McKibben speaks at the Hagerman Center.

“M

Y ROLE IN TALKS LIKE

these is that of

professional bummer-outer,” said

author and environmental activist

phere during the Holocene. That number is now much higher over most of the globe, and climbing.

“I’m not by nature an activist, but I’ve found that mere

Bill McKibben in an all-school

logic and scientific fact don’t get the job done,” McKibben

address last January. “But unfortu-

said. “On one hand, we have all our best scientists speaking

nately, you have to know the scale of the problem as it exists now in order to understand the scale of

the change that’s needed to fix it.”

That problem is global warming, an issue that McKibben defines as the most important issue of this century. The former New Yorker staff writer is the author of a dozen books on environmental affairs, including—most famously—The End of Nature, a 1989 best-seller recognized as the first book written for a general audience about climate change.

McKibben is also the founder of 350.org, a grassroots campaign against climate change that has mounted 15,000 rallies in 189 countries since

“In your lifetime, you have witnessed the end of the Holocene, a ten thousandyear period of benign climatic stability.”

1989. Time Magazine has named McKibben “the planet’s best

calmly and logically into one ear of our political leadership

green journalist.”

about what needs to be done. On the other hand, you have the

“In your lifetime, you have witnessed the end of the Holocene, a ten thousand-year period of benign climatic stability,” McKibben told his audience. “Within just the past thirty years, we have seen ice decline by forty percent in the

fossil fuel industry—the most profitable industry on earth— bellowing into the other ear.”

The talk concluded with a standing ovation at the school’s Hagerman Center. “Students and adults both learned

Arctic, and seen our oceans grow thirty percent more acidic as

much from McKibben's blend of facts and figures, basic sci-

a result of fossil fuel consumption.”

ence, political discourse, and documentation of activism,” said

Though mean global temperature has risen only by one

science teacher Maggie Mumford.

degree, he added, that has been enough to make our atmos-

Ms. Mumford also coordinates efforts toward environmental

phere four percent wetter—and to trigger a much increased

sustainability at the school. “Here at Holderness we are in the

incidence of flood, drought, and other extreme weather events

process of asking important questions,” she added. “How

across the globe. These have also triggered crop failures, and

should we heat our buildings in the future?

there are more to come, warns McKibben. Then beware of

our own electricity with renewables? We are also teaching our

famine, disease, and war.

350.org takes its signature number from the number of

Can we generate

students to become global citizens, and this visit couldn't have been more timely.”

parts per million that carbon compounds existed in the atmos-

Holderness School Today

27

Around the Quad

Sports Two Holderness athletes sign letters of

T

his winter two Holderness

athletes who helped lead

intent to NCAA Division I programs.

their respective teams to

berths in the NEPSAC championship finals signed letters of intent to play for NCAA Division I programs.

Senior Olayode Ahmed was co-captain of the boys’ soccer team, and he’ll be playing next fall at IUPUI—which is to say, Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis. This is a new urban campus, and therefore a new sports program, managed jointly by these two Indiana Universities. The head coach there is Isang Jacob, who—like Olayode—is from Nigeria.

And junior Gavin Bayreuther, an assistant captain of the boys’ hockey team, has committed early to play at St. Lawrence University in 2014.

Olayode Ahmed ’12, above, will play soccer at Indiana in the fall. Gavin Bayreuther ’13 is destined for St. Lawrence.

Gavin is a high-scoring defenseman who will be an even more important part of next year’s Holderness team. Then he will play a year of junior hockey before enrolling at the school

Ski Racing magazine at the J3 Junior

where his Holderness coach, Allie Skelley, once starred.

Olympics: “Slattery toasted the field.”

I

T’S GOOD TO

get some in

Ski Racing magazine. It’s

even better when the

word “astonishing” is used

heat. When Steffey exited

to Logan Slattery this

the course it left Slattery,

March, and the following is

Franconia NH and the

from Ski Racing’s report on

Holderness School, well

the J3 Junior Olympics in its

ahead of Spencer Smith in

March 20 edition:

second.

Holderness School Today

“Smith, Woodstock,

Eva Shaw claimed the final

Vt., and the Stratton

victories, in slalom, at the

Mountain School picked up

Marriot J3 Junior

the silver medal with bronze

Olympics—East at

going to Jonathan Schwartz

Sugarloaf, Maine.

28

George Steffey when he left the start house in his second

in that entry. That happened

“Logan Slattery and

Logan Slattery ’15, second from left, at the medal ceremony.

seconds, but then he was behind first run leader

“Slattery toasted the field by an astonishing 2.73

out of Brookline, Mass., and the Killington Mountain School.”

The weather was odd, but Holderness winter athletes did well all over the map and in all sorts of different sports.

Junior Olympic National Championships in Soldier Hollow, Utah.

There was some thrilling news on the alpine side as well. No less than six Eastern Team members qualified for the

Boys hockey enjoyed a 20-win season and took a #3 seeding into the New England School Athletic Conference championships.

Fabian Stocek ’13, on the right, after finishing 3rd in the 10k freestyle, JO Nationals.

J2 Nationals at Mammoth Mountain, CA, where junior Kelly DiNapoli finished 9th in the slalom, and Elena Bird finished 16th. And at the J3 nationals at Sugarloaf,

I

T MAY NOT HAVE

been much of a winter

ME, Logan Slattery ’15 became national

in terms of cold or snowfall, but it was

champion in the slalom. “Slattery toasted

a great season in general for

the field by an astonishing 2.73 seconds,”

Holderness’s winter athletes.

Boys hockey enjoyed a 20-win season and took a #3 seeding into the New England Prep School Athletic Conference

reported Ski Racing magazine in its March 20 issue.

Meanwhile sophomore Racheal Erhard took third in the final race of the

championships. There they defeated

M.J. LaFoley Spring Series, and in so

Kent’s Hill 4-3 in the quarterfinals and the

doing won the series championship by a

Brooks School 5-3 in the semifinals. In

slim two points.

the finals they fought gallantly against

New Hampshire GS championship, fin-

She also claimed the J2

top-seeded Kimball Union Academy

ished second in the slalom, and helped her

before falling 3-2 in overtime. The end

team win the state’s Macomber Cup series

was heartbreaking, but the ride was won-

again. And at the British National Ski

derful for a team that Athletic Director

Championships three Holderness sopho-

Lance Galvin ’90 called “the best boys

mores—Henry Tomlinson, Max Lash, and

hockey team we’ve had since we became

Clark Macomber—finished in the top 25,

a Division I program at the end of the

with Henry finishing first among J2s.

Snowboarders? A raft of eight quali-

1990s.”

The news was just as good in snow sports.

In February the girls Nordic ski

team won the Lakes Region champi-

fied for the USASA Nationals, with six making the trip to Copper, CO, and posting many top-ten finishes. Ryan

onship, with the boys placing third. Both

Rosencranz raced in his second World

Haley Mahar ’12 and Fabian Stocek ’13

Cup event, while Peter Ferrante competed

won the individual championships. Two

with distinction on the FIS Freeflow

weeks later the girls claimed the NEPSAC

Tour—that includes a sixth in the

championship after all five girls finished

Brighton, UT, Slopestyle.

in the top 20 at the 6.2k skate race, and then took first and third in the 12k relay.

Meanwhile Fabian Stocek won the boys’ skate race. In March Fabian went on to place third in the 10k freestyle at the

Holderness School Today

29

Special Programs: A Photo Gallery

Artward Bound

Project Outreach

30

Holderness School Today

Out Back Senior Colloquium Holderness School Today

31

Sports

Spring 2012: The Season in Review

There were a lot of celebrations like this one during the boys’ varsity ice hockey season.

In various sports, on various surfaces, it was simply a remarkable winter for the Bulls.

Basketball The boys varsity basketball team started the season with many new faces, including four of the five starters. In addition, this Bulls team was young, starting two sophomores and three juniors. All this contributed to the team’s struggles during the season and to a disappointing record.

With wins and losses put aside, this team made large strides and improved on a daily basis.

Some players adapted to a more physical game, while others elevated their skills to a new level.

The coaches want to thank seniors, Keith Bohlin and Mike Gassman, for all their efforts. Both coaches are confident that the returning players will dedicate themselves to hard work in the off season, and they look forward to seeing this group mature together as a basketball team next season.

Post-season recognition went to Josh Joyce, the team’s only freshman, who received the Most Improved Award, and Mike Gassman, a threeyear varsity player, who received the Coach’s Award.

by Randy Houseman

The JV boys basketball team had a season full of growth. Starting 0-4, the young Bulls had to find their identity in order to come together as a team and improve. That is exactly what this team

Roland Nyama ’13, unimpeded to the basket.

did. The Bulls grew as individual players and as a team, and they learned what was needed to compete and be successful.

Players such as Ryan Shumway, Noah Thompson, and Charles Harker, came into the season trying to find their way. They ended the season with enormous improvement in both skill and confidence. Steady upperclassmen like Dan

32

Holderness School Today

Do, Kangdi Wang, Andy Zinck, Will Marvin, and Caleb Nungesser helped shape this team as the season went along. The Bulls went on to have a winning record of 8-7, which made this season one I will always remember as a coach.

by Mike Barney

In our inaugural season, the boys JV2 basketball team found ways to win, lose, and have fun along the way. Starting with five players, who were more comfortable kicking the ball through the hoop than shooting it, the boys quickly learned the rules and figured out the basics of the game.

By the end of the season they looked like any other team—setting picks, rebounding, and draining threes. Although none of the players will be moving up to varsity next year, they learned a tremendous amount, and we look forward to many pickup games throughout the year.

by Thom Flinders

Another rewarding season has ended for the girls varsity basketball team. If you watched the girls play this year, you witnessed how committed they were to each other. Our team had two seniors leading the charge, Patricia Porta and captain Abby Slattery. They will be missed next year!

Captain Migle Vilunaite was a consistent leader who scored in double digits during most games; she also earned the honor of NEPSAC All-Star. Migle had plenty of help from her teammates Marissa Merrill (a junior) and Hannah Slattery (a sophomore), who also scored in double digits regularly. Captain Xajaah WilliamsFlores also played well and contributed on both ends of the court each game. Caroline Mure, Sarah Michel, and Saro Ntahobari all played with

year as one of the top goaltenders in New England, and junior defensemen Gavin Bayreuther, who was a first-team All-New England selection. Both Gavin and Andrew were co-recipients of the Coach’s Award.

Senior forward Nick

Renzi collected the Most Improved Award, and Junior forward Gordie Borek took home the Weston Lea Spirit Award.

Along with Renzi, fellow seniors Connor Loree, Drew Walsh, and captain Shawn Watson all made excellent contributions throughout the season.

With many players

returning next year, the future looks bright for the skating Bulls. Thank you, seniors!

by Allie Skelley

The boys JV hockey team relied on a combination of both new and experienced players to register one of our most successful and enjoyable seasons in recent years. Net-tender responsibilities were effectively shared by Matt Kinney,

NEPSAC All-Star Migle Vilunaite ’13.

John Musciano, and

T.J. Ajello. An

able group of forwards that included Thany Alexander, Will Tessier, Charlie Day, Carter Miller, Parker Weekes, and Matt Gudas led our offensive rushes. Treat Hardy, Steve

a lot of heart and contributed to the overall success of the team. At the end of the season the Coach’s Award was given to Abby Slattery, and the Most Improved Award went to Hannah Slattery.

by Lance Galvin ’90

Although there was no JV girls basketball team the previous winter, this season we had a solid nine players commit to the team.

Because the majority of the students had

never picked up a basketball before, much of our focus this season was on fundamentals. By the end of the season, each girl was able to dribble with both hands, score a righthanded and left-handed lay-up, and accurately and aggressively play a man-to-man or 2-3 zone defense. The team was led by co-captains Iashai Stephens and Katie Draper.

While we were unable to win a game this season, the girls made huge strides every game both on the offensive and defensive ends. This year’s Coach’s Award recipient is Iashai Stephens, and the Most Improved Award goes to Thao Nguyen.

by Melissa Stuart

Hockey The boys varsity hockey team finished the 20112012 season with one of the best records—23 wins, 10 losses, and 2 ties—in program history. The Bulls continued their successful campaign all the way to the NEPSAC small-school championship finals where they lost to KUA in a tightly contested overtime game.

The Bulls were led by senior goalie Andrew Munroe, who ended the

Page, Jonathan Bass, and Connor Smith also added some offensive punch along the way. Matt Tankersley, Connor Marien, and Sam Paine earned more ice time this year as well.

A strong contingent of defensemen—Max Sturgis, Oliver Lowe, Christian Anderson, Jake Barton, Preston Kelsey, Amos Pierce, and Jules Pichette—combined their skills to regularly keep our opponents in check. Preston Kelsey earned the Coach’s Award, and Matt Kinney was recognized as our Most Improved player.

by Reggie Pettitt

Julia Potter ’12 claimed hockey’s Most Improved award.

This year’s girls varsity hockey team showed that working as a team can lead to greater success than rallying behind a few leaders. Although this squad had a depth of leadership—from two-year captains Abby Guerra and Ari Bourque to their fellow seniors, Carly Meau, Julia Potter, and Sam Lee—this team prioritized team goals over any personal accolades.

After a winless start to the season in the first semester, the Bulls went on to dominate at the St. Paul’s Tournament and to eventually avenged a controversial OT loss to St. Paul’s. The team’s performance continued to crescendo; by February they were 6-1-2, which included a 20 shutout over the eventual NEPSAC champions.

Congratulations to Julia Potter for earning the Most Improved Award for her develop-

Goalie Andrew Munroe ’12, where the puck almost always stopped.

Holderness School Today

33

Sports

ment over four years on the team, and

Macomber series, and Rachael Erhard put together some great fin-

to Abby Guerra and Ari Bourque for

ishes in the Lafoley Spring Series to take the ladies’ title. Sadly we

sharing the Coach’s Award as the

were forced to cancel MJ’s Race for the first time in its twenty-year

team’s MVPs and incredible captains.

history. Coach’s Awards went to Lily Ford and Jeff Hauser. Our

by Susie Cirone

Most Improved skiers were Rachael Erhard and Harrison Alva.

At the beginning of the season, the

the kitchen and maintenance departments, as well as the business

outlook for the girls JV hockey

office, for keeping us fueled, funded and mobile. More thanks to the

Superstars was uncertain; the team

staff: Georg, Ben, Lori, Jeff, Eric, Jake, Chris, and all the folks at

graduated a slew of seniors in 2011

the Franconia Ski Club. We’ll be hoping for a good old fashioned

and introduced many new skaters at

real winter next year.

the beginning of the year. The early

by Craig Antonides ’77

Thanks to the faculty for supporting the effort. Thanks also to

part of the season was a little tough,

School alpine cocaptain Miguel Arias.

as so many were just learning how to

This past season began slowly, but as the man-made snow accumu-

skate and how to play the game. In

lated, conditions got better and better; our school alpine racers had

addition, going up against Exeter and

ample opportunity to improve their racing technique in gates and

St. Paul’s twice each to start the sea-

enjoy lots of free skiing as well. Coaches Christian Herzog and

son was hard.

Molly Rice appreciated the consistent efforts of all of the athletes

The second half of the season

regardless of the conditions and the weather.

proved to be vastly different, as the team’s record ended at 7-2-1. Each line figured out their system of play

and all were scoring in varied approaches and methods. Highlights

There traditionally has been a broad range of racing experience on the team, and this year was no exception. This year we even fielded a women’s JV team at the races in addition to men’s and women’s varsity teams. Notable team results included the boys’

for the season included the I-93 grudge match against New

first place finish at the Lakes Region GS championship and the

Hampton, and the tie game against KUA. The entire team should be

girls’ second place finish at the Lakes Region GS qualifying race.

commended for their dedication and enthusiasm for the team and the game.

Graduating school team lifers include Mitch Shumway (captain and recipient of the Coach’s Award) and Chris Daniell (captain, previous winner of the unofficial “fearless” award, and now official

by Margot Moses

winner of the four-year Most Improved Award). Captain Miguel

Alpine skiing

Arias is also graduating this year.

This year’s Eastern alpine squad had another fine season, despite Mother Nature declaring this “the winter that wasn’t.” With very little snowfall, the season started slowly and ended much more quickly than usual. There were many cancellations on both ends of the season, preparation for competitions was difficult, and establishing any momentum a challenge. But despite all the problems with the season, the team worked hard for results, and in the end, we had a quite successful season.

Highlights included qualifying six skiers to the J2 Nationals at Mammoth Mountain, CA. Elena Bird, Kelly DiNapoli, Henry Tomlinson, Jesse Osuchowski, Max Lash and Jesse Ross represent-

The Nordic team got more than their usual amount of dry land training.

ed the Bulls on the East Team. Tomlinson and DiNapoli each had a 10th-place finish, and Bird had a 16th. We also had two boys make

Another outstanding individual effort was put in by Hannah Stowe (Most Improved Award), who steadily moved up in results each week in both slalom and GS to become a consistent scorer.

Sookie Liddle was our top girls’ finisher each week, typically scoring in the top five, and she has set her sights on joining the Eastern Team next year.

We wish her well!

Luke Randle, Jack Kinney, and Jingyi Wu deserve special mention for their determination to keep up with the more experienced racers. We look forward to all returning and new athletes on this team in which improvement is part of the enjoyment of the sport.

by Maggie Mumford

the J3 Olympics. Logan Slattery and Liam O’Reilly went to

Freestyle skiing

Sugarloaf, where Slattery won the SL.

Bobby Wassman anchored the Holderness USSA mogul team, and

Nikkol Blair made the J3

did so single-handedly. Well, almost—Mr. Chapuredima played a key role, transporting Bobby through ice and snow (mostly ice) and providing the support necessary for Bobby to accomplish his competition training schedule.

The Holderness mogul training program requires an athlete to step up to many responsibilities, athletic and academic. Bobby's accomplishments include competing in 16 USSA mogul events during a shortened competition season between January 7 and February 17. While little time between starts makes gains difficult, Bobby lifted his USSA points by 45 FSP. Bobby's focus on strengthening his technical base allowed for significant improvement in his course tactics and aerial skills. His energy for skiing moguls never waned amid icy courses, tough weather, and frustrating results.

Perseverance has its rewards, as Bobby skied his two best results in his two final events at Stratton and at the Eastern Championships in Sugarloaf. His goal to execute Finals at Killington, while Rachael Erhard and Lea Rice went to the NJR FIS Finals at Whiteface.

Once again we managed to defend the team title in the

34

Holderness School Today

consistent top-to-bottom competitive runs was achieved.

For Bobby's dedication, participation, improvement, and energy, and for his outstanding friendship to all on the Waterville Valley

mogul team, the coaches proudly

Parker Densmore, who not only was a jump-

award Bobby the Holderness team’s

ing veteran, but also arrived on campus with

Most Valuable Skier Award.

his own custom jumping suit.

For his commitment and proselytizing efforts

by Nick Preston

on behalf of the program, Parker was the

Nordic skiing

recipient of the Coach’s Award. The Most Improved Award went to two jumpers, each

It was a banner year for the Nordic ski team.

following a different path to success: the fear-

Led by senior team captains

less high-flying Jeffrey Hauser, and a persist-

Haley Mahar and Reed Spearman, the

ent and determined Chris Daniell. Thanks to

Nordic team numbered in the mid-

all for another fun season.

thirties - the largest team in memory

by Doug Kendall

at Holderness. A vigorous mix of seasoned skiers and enthusiastic rookies, the team hunted with enthusiasm for

Snowboarding

early snow, practicing in thinly cov-

Despite some early season weather chal-

ered parking lots in Franconia Notch

lenges, the Holderness snowboard team con-

and rejoicing when snow finally cov-

tinued to excel in all levels of competition.

ered our home trails.

Zachary Harmon, Kevin Horner, Oliver

The boys’ team welcomed the arrival of Czech phenom Fabian Stocek, a junior who dominated the race courses in our league, winning

Johnson, Ben Grad, Nam Tran, Joey Casey,

FIS finalist Paul Pettengill ’12

virtually every race he entered. Rising

and Tyler Moffa all made great contributions in the boys’ Lakes Region competitions. The girls were anchored by Zoe Grant, Haley Michienzi, Rachel Huntley, Molly Tankersley,

star sophomore Drew Houx also had a break-out season, earning

Christina Raichle and Yazhi Li. Both teams finished near the top in

top-ten finishes consistently in our league. Other skiers were sen-

both Giant Slalom and Slopestyle competitions.

iors Brian Tierney and Thai Dao; juniors Axi Berman, Aiden

Six of the eight riders who qualified for the USASA

Kendall, G.P. Lee, Francis Miles, and Charlie Williams; and a pas-

Nationals traveled to Copper, CO, for that event. Leah Curtis,

sel of ninth- and tenth-graders.

Hannah Halsted, Peter Ferrante, Justin Simpkins, Ryan

Fabian and Drew both raced in the

Eastern High School Championships, and Fabian earned a third-

Rosencranz, and Paul Pettengill made Holderness proud with sev-

place finish at Junior Nationals in Park City, the best result for a

eral top-ten finishes.

Holderness skier in over a decade.

On the girls’ side, Haley finished consistently at the top of

2012 was also a great year for our FIS Alpine Snowboarders.

Ryan, Hannah and Paul often found themselves qualifying for

the result sheet, culminating her season with a stunning win in the

finals against some of the best racers in the US and Canada. Ryan

Lakes’ Region Championship race. Seniors Bee Crudgington,

then went on to compete in his second World Cup, which was held

Pippa Blau, and Maggie Caputi all had great seasons. Joining them

this year in Telluride, CO.

was a strong core of skiers including junior Emily Soderberg,

into uncharted territory by competing in the Freeflow Tour, where

sophomores Celeste Holland, Eliana Mallory, and Hannah Durnan,

he finished sixth in the Brighton, UT, Slopestyle.

and ninth-graders Lizzy Duffy and Cayla Penny. The girls ran

Peter Ferrante also brought Holderness

This year our Most Improved rider was Yazhi Li , and the

away with the Lakes Region title and look to be a powerhouse

Coach’s Awards went to Peter Ferrante and Ryan Rosencranz.

team for seasons to come. Haley, Celeste, and Hannah all repre-

by Alan Smarse

sented New Hampshire at the Eastern High School Championships.

Most Improved Awards went to Cayla Penny and Qianyi Zhang on the girls’ side, and to Drew Houx on the boys’ team.

Coach’s Awards honored team captains Haley Mahar and Reed Spearman.

by Peter Durnan

Ski Jumping Despite the scarcity of natural snow this year, the ski jumps at Proctor, were kept in excellent condition, and the ski jumping team made a record number of visits to the hill. Adding to the attraction of fine facilities was the coaching expertise of Proctor’s Tim Norris (only nominally retired) and our own Walter Malmquist ’74, who continues to volunteer countless hours, deep knowledge, and boundless enthusiasm to Holderness jumpers.

Many students tried out the sport this year, some just once, others over several trips. Veteran Steph Symecko was joined by some of her senior classmates who finally got around to trying the sport late in their Holderness careers: Brandon Marcus, Ian Ford, Josie Brownell, and Justin Simpkins. Juniors psyched to return next season include Macy Jones, Perry Kurker-Mraz, Fabian Stocek, and Aidan Kendall. Ninth-grader Gibson Chushman, with his powerful springs, showed much promise for success in the

Hannah Halsted ’12 also made the FIS finals.

years to come. Our most faithful participant was ninth-grader

Holderness School Today

35

Update: Faculty & Staff

Words of our fathers Writing and speaking from a national platform, Robert Caldwell begins at the beginning, with his father, who made shirts.

I

T’S A GOOD THING

for Holderness

School that Robert Caldwell’s father made shirts. “From the day I was able

to understand concepts, my father told

me that he would prefer a customer

popular presentations: “New Age

who bought from him every season over one

Philanthropy,” about new models for

who made one big-time purchase,” Robert

fundraising in nonprofits; and “Insights and

writes in “The True Measure of Loyalty,” an

Stories About the Motivations and Attitudes

article published in the February, 2012, issue

of High Net Worth Individuals.”

of Currents magazine. “His successful career

Two more important speaking engage-

in shirt manufacturing was based on an

ments are on the horizon: one for the

important objective: building lifelong rela-

Independent School Association of Northern

tionships with customers. He cared about

New England in October, and another for the

these relationships and created loyal cus-

Association of Fundraising Professionals in

tomers in the process—people who helped

November.

his business grow in good times and weather bad times.”

Head of School Phil Peck admires Robert’s ability to combine a command of

That was a valuable concept for the boy

the latest data on donor behavior and goals

who would go on to become this school’s

with new ways to apply all that to the

Executive Director for Advancement and

specifics of the Holderness community.

External Relations. At Holderness he devotes

Collins, in his recent book Great by Choice, talks about the need for leaders to apply

loyal community members—alumni, parents,

empirical creativity,” says Phil. “That seem-

and friends who wear their Holderness shirts

ingly paradoxical blend of data and creativity

for a lifetime, and who provide support to the

is part of Robert's DNA, and his leadership

school because of what it represents in terms

in advancement at Holderness and on a

of relationships, values, and aspirations, in

national scale is based on this quality. I love working and learning from Robert because

Robert has done so well at this—and at such previous posts as St. Andrew’s School,

he is a learner, someone who is always seeking to make himself and Holderness better.”

Bucknell, Dartmouth, St. Lawrence

We might add that it’s also because he

University, and Hebron Academy—that he’s

he likes his work and the people it involves.

making even more of a name for himself in

“The informal education I unknowingly

the field of advancement. Besides that

received from my father expresses itself in

February publication on how a school best

my own career each day,” he writes in

cultivates and maintains that critical sense of

Currents. “The word that best describes him

loyalty, Robert served this winter on the

is ‘philanthropist.’ Not by the standards of

planning committee for a national conference

today’s definition, but rather the deeper

mounted jointly by the Council for the

meaning derived from the word’s original

Advancement and Support of Education

Greek roots: deep love of humanity. He

(CASE) and the National Association for

demonstrated an altruistic concern for human

Independent Schools (NAIS).

36

“Jim

himself not to loyal customers, but rather to

good times and bad.

This

welfare in the lifelong relationships he nur-

San Francisco event was attended by 1200

tured. Not a bad lesson to learn and pass on.”

professionals, and there Robert provided two

Holderness School Today

Robert Caldwell speaks at the CASE/NAIS conference in San Francisco.

“The word that best describes my father is ‘philanthropist.’

Not by the standards of today’s definition, but rather the deeper meaning derived from the word’s original Greek roots: deep love of humanity.”

A

SSISTANT

HEAD of

school in January. “Today the

Macomber has been

Downhill, tomorrow the

living in Switzerland and

Super Combined (which is a

trotting the globe during his

run of Super G and Slalom in

year on sabbatical—all by

the same day). We got to see

way of learning how schools

the crowds, and meet her

across the world build both

friends and teammates. After

community and a sense of

the race Julia took a couple

globalism among their

runs with us and joined us for

diverse populations, and

lunch (I have never seen

speaking on the subject at

Anna ski so fast!). Julia was

such events as the the

gracious, funny, and thought-

Association of Boarding

ful as always, a great ambas-

Schools global symposium in

sador for Holderness School

Washington, DC, this spring.

And if you live in Switzerland, you get to see some great World Cup ski

Jory Macomber speaks at a TABS global symposium and catches up with Julia Ford ’08 at a World Cup race.

Cup,” Jory wrote to the

School Jory

and the United States on the world ski racing stage. GO, JULIA!” We suspect Jory and his

racing. These days that also

family have been pretty good

means that you get to see US

ambassadors on their own

Ski Team member Julia Ford.

sort of stage, and we look

“We are here in St. Moritz,

forward to welcoming them

Switzerland, lucky enough to

back this summer.

Jory Macomber in Washington, DC., above, and to the right, with Julia Ford ’08 and his daughter Anna in St. Moritz.

get to be fans for Julia Ford as she races in the World

Pete Hendel and some Holderness parents test themselves against the best at the Masters World Cup Nordic Ski Championships.

B

USINESS

DIRECTOR Pete Hendel—

who is on sabbatical this year as

part of the Henderson/Brewer

Chair program, but who has been spend-

ranging from thirty to over eighty, from thirty nations. Among those athletes, besides Pete, were John Brodhead and Gina Campoli, the parents of Luc

ing a lot of time in the office anyway—

Brodhead ’06; and Frank Hurt, the father

met up with several past parents in March

of Demian Hurt ’90.

while competing in the Masters World Cup Nordic Ski Championships.

Held in Oberweisenthal, Germany, the MWC drew 1200 athletes, their ages

Racers competed in four races over eight days. Pete and John both raced in 10k, 15k, and 30k events, along with the relay race.

Welcome, young Matthew Cirone!

M

ATTHEW

HARTLEY Cirone—the son

of math teacher Frank Cirone and

history teacher Susie Cirone—

officially and physically joined the

John Broadhead and Pete Hendel in Oberweisenthal.

Holderness community on April 26, 2012.

Among the welcomers, of course, are his brothers Nico (3) and Cam (5).

Holderness School Today

37

Update: Former Faculty & Staff

As Jay Stroud calls it a career at Tabor, he shares an old newspaper clipping and a Christmas thought with colleague Phil Peck.

“There is some hope, with a common purpose . . .”

I

N

DECEMBER TABOR Academy Head of

School—and former Holderness faculty

member—Jay Stroud was cleaning out

standards of achievement, accountability, and

his files. He came across an old newspa-

discipline that Anderson described as “elite” in

per clipping, “yellow with age,” says

Jay—a

May, 1977, Boston Globe column by

every aspect of his job, Jay’s uncommon grace

Holderness.” Jay made a copy of it and mailed

and characteristic humility have been his hall-

it to Phil Peck, saying, “I remember Don [then-

marks,” writes Tabor Dean of Faculty Richard

Headmaster Don Hagerman] wasn’t too happy

Roller in an announcement about the retire-

“This private school has no litter prob-

his profound respect for every member of the

are no cigarette butts outside buildings because

Tabor community has been universally appreci-

boys may smoke only in a certain corner

ated.”

important part of the explanation for that lack

at six, but instructors wear jackets despite the

of litter or cigarette butts at Holderness in the

It was unfashionable because it was so different from what was going on in public

the balance of his December letter to Phil. Here we’re getting into something spiritual, and it

Anderson. At Holderness he saw students who

matters even at a non-denominational school

were hard-working and inquisitive, and who

like Tabor.

could be dismissed from the school if they cre-

newspaper piece about Holderness.

who taught challenging material, and who

school. Seeing all the kids, maybe a hundred of them, arranged in the Chapel—kids from every

measure up.

At last Anderson applauds what he sees as the “elitism” of a good independent school, and

Christmas for me,” Jay wrote. “Always has been. There is some hope, with a common pur-

Of course Don Hagerman bridled at the

pose, with some sense that we are, in fact, all in this together; that we can sing hymns that we

use of the word “elitism” in a newspaper piece

may not understand and likely wouldn’t believe

about Holderness. Don ran a school that took

in, but in the singing of them the message is

pride in just the reverse, that liked being a

more real than the words of the hymn itself.”

down-to-earth and unpretentious sort of inde-

That sounds just about right, and it sug-

pendent school, and in succeeding years so

gests one important reason—besides pride—

have Pete Woodward and Phil Peck. And

why people use the recycling bins around here,

Holderness was founded in the first place as a

and no doubt at Tabor too. Jay Stroud is closing

poor clergyman’s alternative to more “elite”

out a career as a great New England school-

Episcopal schools.

In January we would discover why Jay

master, a smart man with elite standards and the common touch, and how fortunate we are

was cleaning out his files. That was when he

that seventeen years of that career were devoted

announced his retirement from Tabor at the end

to Holderness.

of this school year, relinquishing his place in

school heads in New England.

Holderness School Today

corner of the world, every race and most religions—is the most moving moment of

concludes “that with more elitism there would

June as one of the most senior independent

38

“We had our Lessons and Carols—a very Episcopal service for this very non-religious

could be dismissed themselves if they didn’t

be less mediocrity.”

word “elitism” in a

’70s, and the same general lack of litter today.

Jay touches on just this sort of thing at Tabor in

schools at the time—at least according to

ated discipline problems. He saw instructors

at the use of the

In fact that word “community” may be an

boys don’t wear jackets to class, only to dinner

warmth. It’s all so unfashionable.”

Hagerman bridled

ment, “Jay’s joy in working with adolescents has served as a model for his colleagues, and

lems,” Anderson begins. “At Holderness there

behind a wooden fence. Because it is May,

Of course Don

1977, but without the severity and sense of exclusion that can give elitism a bad name. “In

Peter Anderson entitled “About class at

about this piece, but I thought it was terrific.”

Jay, left, retires with the Tabor Day trophy his school won last fall. Is that what he was waiting for?

For twenty-four years, Jay has burnished the reputation of Tabor and upheld those same

By all means, let us sing.

M

Y APOLOGIES FOR THE

mass message, but this seemed the

easiest way to let a core group of people important to

me know some of my news: however, my reason is

thrilling, and has just gone public.

I am leaving New Hampton School to become the Head of School at the Beacon Academy just outside Manila, Philippines!

My husband Paul and I have been speaking of working

Former Holderness teacher, coach, Director of College Counseling, Dean of Girls, and Dean of Students Marty Elkins will be starting a new job this summer. After leaving Holderness in 2001, she became Director of College Counseling at the Groton School. In 2009 she assumed the same responsibilities at the New Hampton School, but now she’s got a bigger job ahead of her. We’ll let her explain in an email she sent to her friends in February.

somewhere else in the world for a long time. This opportunity fell into our laps when several folks on the founding board of this endeavor contacted me. They were all either graduates of Phillips Exeter, Groton, or St. Paul's, or currently had children at those schools. I will be the head of the high school part of a K-12 program (the Beacon School) on a campus thirty minutes outside of Manila—starting July 1, 2012. The academy currently has 85 students, will have 120 by next August, and a growth plan to hit 300 in five years. The school hopes to start a boarding program as well.

The Beacon Academy vision—to be the finest independent school in Asia, with the curriculum of the International Baccalaureate and the pedagogy of Phillips Exeter's Harkness system—is certainly lofty, but it also resonates deeply with me, as I have been an administrator, taught, coached and lived in independent schools for more than thirty years; attended Exeter with Harkness; and saw how it transformed my own child. My husband Paul is a 33-year independent school man, and will become the academy's first Dean of Students.

I cannot express—yet—how much I will miss my time with many of you at various times past, current, or future. Do not doubt

Marty and Elk caught up with former history teacher Pete Rapelye at the dedication of the Woodward Faculty dorm last fall.

that my thoughts will be with you all, and I hope I can find some way to stay in touch via email, iChat or Skype! Better yet, anyone traveling to Asia better come see us—an hour by plane from Singapore, 2 hours from Hong Kong, and 3-plus hours from Tokyo!

I believe we will be leaving the States in mid-June or so; we are NOT selling our house in New Hampshire because we want to come home for some of the breaks each year—usually June and December—and because our daughter Cordy wants to be able to go there to escape Boston. When we have a new address in the Philippines, I will send it along.

Best wishes to you; perhaps you will soon hear of our fabulous students and of our outstanding new school in the coming years!

Love to all,

An announcement from Marty Elkins, the latest former Holderness hand to become a head of school. She and Elk are off to Manila.

Marty

Ms. Marty T. Elkins Director of College Counseling New Hampton School

Holderness School Today

39

Update: Former Faculty & Staff

“Inspired Leadership”

California’s Midland School, headed by Will Graham ’72, steps to the fore of the sustainability movement.

T

HE

MIDLAND SCHOOL of Los

Olivos, CA—which is headed up

by former faculty member Will

another three percent of our campus electricity use. They write technical reports and become community teachers

Graham ’72—continues to build a

at Santa Barbara’s Earth Day. The

national profile for its work on behalf of

Midland Model—three percent per

a national education problem: the crucial

year—demonstrates the viability of tak-

importance of renewable energy.

ing cumulatively consequential steps

Midland is one of two schools—

toward grid neutrality over a generation.

along with Hotchkiss in Connecticut—

As of 2011, twenty percent of our cam-

featured in a spring Independent School

pus electricity needs are met with grid-

Magazine feature on renewable energy

tiered, student-installed arrays.”

programs: “Changing the Story: Making

Of course the value of the program

Renewal Energy Central to Learning,”

in terms of energy savings is amplified

by Lise Goddard and Joshua Hahn.

by what the students learn as they first

“Midland School has taken a holistic

install the program’s components, and

approach to achieving carbon neutrality:

then write and teach about it.

make it educational and spread it out over many years,” the authors write.

The article describes the ethos of environmentalism bound into the

Students heat their own cabins and showers with wood fires, tend the

by 2020 in its energy use, and toward that end has acquired a 280-acre farm

school’s founding in 1932. Students heat

near its campus and is building a bio-

their own cabins and showers with wood

mass central heating facility.

fires, tend the school’s organic gardens,

Paul Chapman, author of The

and participate in the same sort of Jobs

Environmental Sustainability Movement

Program that Will experienced at

in K-12 Education (NAIS, 2012), likes

Holderness.

what he sees at both schools, and he

Midland students are also supplying

school’s organic gardens.

At Hotchkiss, meanwhile, the school has vowed to be carbon-neutral

likes at Midland what Will and

the engineering muscle for the school’s

Environmental Program Director Lise

gradual shift to solar power. “Every year

Goddard are accomplishing personally.

since 2003,” writes Ms. Goddard, “our

“What makes both schools stand out,” he

tenth-grade chemistry students have

writes, “is their inspired leadership.”

worked alongside a solar electrician to install a 3-kW PV system that meets

Former Development Director Doug White is now a Columbia professor, and is still a busy author and consultant.

C

OLUMBIA

University

announced this winter

that Doug White, this

school’s former Director of Development, has been named

ors include receiving the 2002 ‘Distinguished Service Award’

Continuing Education’s

from the National Capital

Master of Science in

Planned Giving Council

Fundraising Management pro-

(Washington, DC).”

“Doug has led organizations in developing ethics and

Holderness School Today

have raised more than $800 million dollars. His many hon-

to the faculty of its School of

gram.

40

announcement. “He has been responsible for efforts that

Doug is also the author of books on planned giving and the ethics of philanthropy.

strategic planning policies,

He is teaching a seminar at

donor relations, planned and

Columbia on the work of non-

major giving, and capital cam-

profit boards in the fundrais-

paigns,” said the university’s

ing arena.

Alumni in the News

The Arts

Legging it out with Angelina.

W

HO WILL RISE AND WHO

will fall in

the Hollywood film industry has

currently under development at Mandate Pictures, and its script generated enough buzz in the film

always been notoriously hard to

industry to prompt Alexander Payne (director of

predict, but give credit to Variety

About Schmidt, Sideways, and other hits) to ask the

magazine, which four years ago

tabbed an unknown writer named Nat Faxon ’93 as a “Screenwriter to Watch.” Then, one Sunday last

January, millions were watching as Nat stepped on to

actor buddies to write the screen adaptation for The Descendants.

“Nat and Jim are rare among today’s screenwriters for the humanity with which they write and

Hollywood’s biggest stage to accept an Oscar for

their lack of interest in gimmick or contrivance,”

“Best Adapted Screenplay.”

Payne told Variety in 2008.

The screenplay—co-written with Jim Rash— was for the hit film The Descendants. Adapted from

After the Oscars, Payne told the Los Angeles Times that he was grateful for all the different

a novel of the same name by Kaui Hart Hemmings,

approaches Nat and Jim gave him for capturing the

the drama was directed by Alexander Payne and stars

novel. “They paved a path for me because they’d

George Clooney as a land baron in Hawaii who tries

been through the book quite a few times,” he said.

to reconnect with his two daughters after his wife is

“They gave me the luxury to pick and choose what I

injured in a boating accident.

responded to.”

So Nat Faxon is now one half of the hottest

On stage at the Oscars, the two comedy vets

screenwriting team in Hollywood, though he also

provoked something of what passes for much ado in

remains what he was on his arrival in Hollywood—a

Hollywood. Their Oscars were presented by actress

working actor, comedian, and producer. After per-

Angelina Jolie, who wore a Versace black velvet

forming brilliantly in Martha Kesler’s stage produc-

gown with a hip-high slit in one flank. On the red

tions during his Holderness years, Nat went on to

carpet outside, and on stage within, Jolie posed with

Hamilton College to major in theater.

one long leg thrust entirely out of the gown. Nat and

Then he con-

tinued his training as a member of The Groundlings,

Jim then struck the same pose in

the company that performs at the Los Angeles

their tuxes as they cradled their

improvisational comedy club of the same name. It

statues.

was there that Nat struck up a friendship with another unknown aspiring actor, Jim Rash.

Nat worked his way into the main company of The Groundlings by 2001, and since then he’s had

It was funny. Was it also mockery? Gasp! The debate raged for some time on the internet. “I had just seen her pose and I

starring or supporting roles in such films as Orange

thought it was bold and fun,” said

County, Slackers, Club Dread, The TV Set, Beerfest,

Jim to the Hollywood Reporter.

and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story; and on such

“And you know what? We have

TV series as Grosse Pointe, Reno 911!, Joey, Navy

exactly the same legs.”

NCIS, and Mad Men. He’s also appeared in commer-

Nat also denied any disre-

cial campaigns for Holiday Inn and Blockbuster. You

spect. “Angelina’s supremely

can catch him on sports channels these days in a Kia

hot,” he said. “There’s no way to

commercial featuring basketball star Blake Griffin.

do anything but honor her.”

There were always long stretches of disappoint-

In a different sort of way,

ment and not much money between such jobs, how-

Nat Faxon is also supremely hot.

ever, until—wrote Variety in 2008—“the two actor

His phone should be ringing a lit-

buddies decided to take matters into their own hands

tle more steadily, and whether it

and write parts for themselves. The result: a handful

involves acting, writing, produc-

of high-profile film and TV sales that may well turn

ing, or even directing, he’ll prob-

the two comedy vets into leading man material.”

Their first feature-length film script—entitled

One day, waiting for his phone to ring, actor Nat Faxon ’93 decided to try writing as well.

Now he owns an Oscar for “Best Adapted Screenplay,” and a little tabloid controversy as well.

ably have plenty of options—as well as good-looking legs.

The Way Back—is a comedy/drama centering on the relationship between a boy and his mother against the backdrop of a summer water park. That film is

Holderness School Today

41

Alumni in the News

The Arts

Statue #2: Casey Carroll ’04 is becoming a regular member of Oscar-winning film teams.

T

HIS WAS A VERY

good Oscar season

for Holderness. We want to lead off with Nat’s Oscar, of course, but

we should also mention the Oscar that

Casey, right, on Oscar night with producer Glen Zipper.

enced by the Manassas Tigers of Manassas, Tennessee—and by the businessman, Bill Courtney, who volunteered countless hours to coach and invigorate a

was won with some in-the-trenches help

dormant program in the heart of the ghet-

from Casey Carroll ’04.

to that had 17 players and had gone 6-54

Casey works for Exclusive Media— a film production company based both in Beverly Hills and London—which took

the previous six years before he arrived.

It looks like it’s good to have Casey on your team, since he was also part of

home an Oscar in February for Best

the coalition of independent producers

Documentary Feature. That film, The

and artists assembled to make The Hurt

Undefeated, is the story of the 2009 high

Locker in 2008—a film that won six

school football season as it was experi-

Oscars that year.

A

MONG THE ARTISTS WHO

performed at Artward

“Magical”

Bound this spring was Kyle Carey ’03, whose

2011 CD of original songs (in the Celtic

Americana mode), Monongah, made a lot of year-end

is the mot

best-of lists. These include Top Album of 2011 from Illinois’ “Celtic Connections” radio show; Best of 2011 from Florida’s “The Waking Hours” radio show; Top

juste.

Five of the Year from “The Celtic Show” in Alberta, Canada; Patricia Herlevi’s Top Ten from World Music Central; and #8 in the year’s Top Twenty from the “Johnny’s Garden” music blog.

At Holderness Kyle was accompanied by noted

Kyle Carey ’03 performs at AB, makes year-end “best” lists.

Boston guitarist Jordan Tice. She performed songs from Monongah, as well as a few that she plans to include in her next CD. Reviews continue to appear for Monongah. “Finally released in Europe after an autumn launch in the US and Canada, the debut album from Alaska-born but extensively traveled Kyle Carey is, quite simply a delight,” writes Jeremy Searle of Britain’s Rock ‘n’Reel magazine. “Drawing from both the American and British folk traditions, the songs, including some very fine originals, are beautifully crafted and performed. . . .And ‘magical’ is the mot juste for this album. Assured, confident, enchanting, and irresistible, it sticks to the CD player like glue, as does the finger to the Repeat button.”

After Artward Bound, Kyle left for a successful two-week tour of the Netherlands. During the rest of the spring she and two band-mates toured the Northeast, and made radio appearances on New Hampshire Public Radio’s The Folk Show and WMUA’s Celtic Crossings. Stay current at her website: www.kyleannecarey.com.

42

Holderness School Today

With Jordan Tice, left, on guitar and harmony vocals.

Books

“Closer to a reckoning.”

I

N

1964,

THE FALL OF HIS

junior year, Peter

Janney ’66 went home for Thanksgiving and learned that his best friend’s mother— Mary Pinchot Meyer—had been

Mitchell, who claimed to have witnessed Crump killing Ms. Meyer, was not the Georgetown math professor he claimed to be. Rather he was a well-known figure in

murdered, gunned down while

CIA covert operation circles,

she walked along the C&O Canal

and a man whose home

towpath in Georgetown. A day laborer

served as a CIA safe

named Ray Crump was arrested near the

house. And Peter finds

scene and charged with the murder, but

that his own father,

Crump was later acquitted. The case

Wistar Janney, may

remains perhaps Washington, D.C.’s most

have been among

troubling unsolved murder.

those complicit in

Among its disturbing aspects is the constel-

what happened that

lation of figures connected to Ms. Meyer, which

November afternoon.

include her brother-in-law, the journalist Ben

Film director Oliver

Bradlee; her former hus-

Stone says that Mary’s

band, CIA officer Cord Meyer; and her lover,

Mosaic is “a fascinating

President John F.

story . . . . Peter Janney’s

Kennedy, whom she had

unsparing analysis moves us

first come to know when

closer to a reckoning.”

The book’s introduction

they were both students at

is written by Dick Russell,

Choate in 1936.

whose 1992 opus The Man

Peter himself is the

Who Knew Too Much is one

son of a CIA officer, a man who could never dis-

of the classic texts contest-

cuss the nature of his

ing the conclusions of the

work at home. Peter went

Warren Commission Report.

on to a career in clinical

And Russell is as much

psychology after his

moved by the book’s emo-

schooling, but after 25

tional power as he is by its

years he shifted gears. He

revelations. “Mary’s Mosaic

went to the Duke business

is a story about intertwined

school, and then to

destinies, about human

Hollywood to work as an

strength and weaknesses,

independent film produc-

and finally about the forces

er. He remained troubled

of good and evil,” Russell

himself by that 1964 mur-

writes. “The book makes a

der, however, and now

reader consider those possi-

he’s also an investigative

bilities within each of us,

journalist and author—

even if what unfolds is on a Shakespearean stage.”

and another advocate for the belief that JFK was killed not by a lone gun-

A May article in the Boston Globe recognizes

man, but by the machinations of a conspiracy, one

why Oliver Stone, for one, would like this book

that later saw the need to also eliminate the

(“Peter Janney on JFK confidante Mary Pinchot

President’s mistress and destroy the diary that she

Meyer’s death,” 5/26/12). “Janney’s 584-page tome

kept.

reads like a John Grisham thriller crossed with an Peter’s book, Mary’s Mosaic: The CIA

Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary

Peter Janney ’66 has a personal link to an unsolved 1964 murder.

His new book argues that there is a dark connection between that killing and the Kennedy assassination.

“Janney’s 584-page tome reads like a John Grisham thriller crossed with an Oliver Stone movie.”

—Boston Globe

Oliver Stone movie,” says the Globe. “Its sprawling narrative offers spies galore, missing docu-

Pinchot Meyer, and Their Vision for World Peace,

ments, a sprinkling of Georgetown glitter, Cold

was published by the Skyhorse Press in April and

War geopolitics, and even a role for LSD guru

benefits from the author’s many family connections

Timothy Leary.”

to the CIA and Washington insider communities.

He discovers, for example, that William L.

Holderness School Today

43

Alumni in the News

Roots

A Heart-of-America Story Justin Orr ’59 digs through tangled family roots to fill a vacancy in his heart and confirm his Native American heritage. It was all so unexpected.

I

N HIS EARLY TWENTIES,

Justin Orr ’59

spent a summer doing something he

visit to his sister and an aunt in Portland, OR. In casual conversation his sister dropped a

wouldn’t have thought he was qualified

comment about some event that had happened,

to do—manage a teen-aged Native

she said, “around the time you were adopted.”

American dance troupe, and occasional-

ly perform with them.

His father, Clifford L. Samuelson, had

Say what?

Oh, you didn’t know?

“It was just a tremendous sort of shock,

arranged that job for him. He was a high-rank-

and rather a cruel one at that,” Justin says.

ing clergyman in the Episcopal Church, an

“You spend your entire life thinking you’re

official who oversaw all the church’s rural

one person, and suddenly you find that really

parishes and Indian missions. “That was fun,”

you’re someone quite different. It wasn’t real-

Justin says. “And you know, when you’re

ly handled very well by my parents—my

young, you take opportunities as they come

adoptive parents.”

and don’t necessarily think things all the way through.”

He did a lot of thinking, though, once he

The young man Justin thought he was had lived a quite different life from the other children of his birth mother, a woman of the

learned about his qualifications—not as a

Snohomish and Cowlitz nations of the Pacific

dancer, but as a Native American—during a

Northwest. Mary Sanchez, a reporter for the Kansas City Star, summed it up this way in her story, “After a half-century of doubt, KC-area man solves ancestral mystery” (1/9/12): “While Orr practiced for violin recitals, lived in a spacious apartment in Gramercy Park in Manhattan, and attended a prep school, [his half-siblings] were climbing to the tips of fir trees and then roaming, tree to tree, high off the ground. They spent every day outside, swimming and rowing from one small island to the next, stuffing newspapers into the cracks of a rickety rowboat so it wouldn’t sink.”

For Justin it was a sheltered life of privilege that became more complicated once Justin’s adoptive parents divorced in 1946. Justin took the last name of her mother’s second husband, Robert Orr, and the reconstituted family moved to a fixer-upper in Plymouth, a Cape built in 1775: “No doors or windows in place, a ladder to the upstairs, an outhouse in the back, fifty acres, all for $2,400,” Justin says. “Then it was just a given

Gramercy Park, 1940s: Justin stands in front of Clifford and Rosamund on the right, with his sister to his right.

Family friends fill out the photo.

44

Holderness School Today

San Juan Island, mid-1950s: Agnes Burr Jameson and her children. default—found himself with a new job as executive director of that center.

The Heart of America Indian Center is flourishing once again, and pulling in grants from foundations throughout the Midwest, but in a culture where so much depends on proof of tribal membership, Justin began wondering hard about that I’d go to Holderness when I was old enough.

My dad became great friends with Herb Waters, and we used to go to all the Gilbert & Sullivan shows in Carpenter.”

Robert Orr was an architect, cartoonist, illustrator, and landscape designer. Rosamund Orr became a teacher in one of the state’s last oneroom schoolhouses, and Justin attended Holderness as a day boy. “Of course the more I look back, and the farther away it becomes, the more important and meaningful those years become to me,” Justin says. “There was just a great faculty there, all pulled together from the tag-ends of the war.”

Justin went on to the University of New Hampshire, but his years there were interrupted by two years of service in the US Army. In Germany he taught GED courses to other servicemen. After college, and a short stint in politics working behind the scenes for then-Governor Walter Peterson, Justin went to work for the Citizens Conference on State Legislatures, which was based in Kansas City. That was 1969, and Justin became a permanent resident of that city, raising a family and going to work for various federal agencies with offices there—such as Health & Human Services—after three years with the Citizens Conference.

At Health & Human Services, Justin had charge of the “Indian Desk,” and one of the urban non-profits he funded was the Heart of America Indian Center, an agency that provides food, shelter, job referrals, and alcohol counseling to needy Native Americans. The organization was badly mismanaged at the financial end, though, and after retiring from federal service, Justin—almost by

His sister dropped a comment about some event that had happened, she said, “around the time you were adopted.”

Say what?

Oh, you didn’t know?

who he really was in terms of that culture, and what proof existed.

He approached the question with some trepidation. “Perhaps his story was among the many tragic efforts to ‘help’ Native Americans,” wrote the Star. “Would he find that he was one of the babies essentially stolen from their mothers? Sent away under the pretense of ‘schooling’ or for ‘medical’ checks when the infants were actually offered up for adoption to more ‘civilized’ white families? The practice was prevalent in the Northwest, where Orr knew his birth parents had lived.”

T

HE ANSWER

required a lot of

detective work and a little good luck. “A volunteer at the

National Archives in Kansas City spent hours working with Orr, tracking down documents and retrieving

the paperwork that outlined his mother’s life,” continues the Star.

“Her first marriage license, a maiden name, and her death certificate led Orr to call a [San Juan Island, Washington] library to get the obituary. He was encouraged to also check with the San Juan Historical Museum.”

San Juan Island, and its town of Friday Harbor, is nestled in Washington’s Puget Sound. The day after Justin called that museum, a

Plymouth, 1960: Robert and Rosamund Orr

Holderness School Today

45

Alumni in the News

Roots

Friday Harbor resident named Jerry Jameson hap-

them know. They can handle it. I think my mother

pened to walk into the building. The museum

was afraid I wouldn’t love her if I didn’t think she

director told an astonished Jameson that he had a

was my birth mother. When I learned the truth,

half-brother in Kansas City.

this suggested to me a vulnerability in her that I

So Justin knows now that he is among the sons of Agnes Burr, who became Agnes McKay and had five children before her husband died in 1938 of tuberculosis. Justin, born in 1940, was the

Nothing has ever changed Justin’s sense of good fortune, though. “I got a real opportunity in

result of an out-of-wedlock relationship. He was

life,” he says. “I know that, and I’ll always be

delivered in secrecy at home by his grandmother,

grateful for it. My adoptive parents were two bril-

given up for adoption, and never mentioned again.

liant people who did something very brave—and

His mother remarried, and—as Agnes Jameson—

very Holderness-like, I think—in adopting a

had six more children, with one dying in infancy.

minority-race child way back in 1940.”

San Juan and the surrounding islands are beautiful, but life there was hard for this family.

Justin Orr

never knew was there. Nonetheless it changed my relationship with her, and not for the better.”

And what about his birth father? Justin knows only that his name was Alan Hall, he was

“The Jameson family had lived meagerly, often

34 in 1940, hailed from South Dakota, and listed

surviving off deer, rabbit, fish, and clams gathered

his occupation as “laborer.” Justin is trying now

at low tide,” says the Star. “The house did not have electricity or plumbing until the mid-1950s. And those improvements only followed the military death benefit when one son died.”

“She was a warrior,” Jerry Jameson told the Star about their mother. “She saved our life many times. It was about survival, just putting food on the table.”

She died in 1994, at

Don Latham ’58 once taught art and music at Holderness. Inspired

by Justin’s story, Don did this painting of a Snohomish warrior as a gift for Justin.

the age of 85, six months after her second husband died.

B

ESIDES

JERRY, JUSTIN has found another

half-brother and two half-sisters. These days Justin is battling emphysema and it’s

San Juan Island, late 1980s: five grown Jameson children with their mother Agnes. Jerry is the second from the right in the back row.

become difficult for him to travel, but he has

shared letters, photographs, and hours of conver-

to learn what became of him. “I may not suc-

sation on the phone with his birth family. He has

ceed,” he admits.

learned, for example, that his mother grew to be

he’s found on his mother’s side, and the welcom-

being Native American. “Here she is rejecting her

ing siblings he’s found as well. In his original

Native side, and I’ve spent my life running full

petition for help from the Bureau of Indian

bore toward it,” Justin says. “It’s just how we

Affairs, Justin wrote, “As with many adoptees,

move as human beings.”

there is a vacant place in my heart, soul, and

He has also learned—curiously enough—that each of Agnes’s sons, all eight of them, along with one of her daughters, served at one time or

That vacant place, painfully open for some fifty years since the summer he became an Indian

another in the armed forces, including himself of

troupe manager and dancer, has now been filled— right there in the heart of America.

And Justin has advice for adoptive parents.

“Be honest right from the start,” he says. “Let

Holderness School Today

being—and a need to complete who I am.”

course. All five branches of the military are represented.

46

But he’s immensely grateful for the success

ashamed of her heritage, preferring not to admit to

Service

E

VEN IF YOU’RE A

managing director at a big

vated to its early 20th century grandeur and con-

investment firm like, say, Babson Capital,

verted into supportive housing, complete with a

it’s good not to forget where you came

spectacular event venue. SCAN’s 2012 Spring

from. And Jerome Thomas ’95 is particularly

Gala brings that child (today an accomplished adult) back into that building’s now regal ball-

“Imagine a child who once begged on the streets . . . .”

room to celebrate the resilience of the human spirit and the transformative power of love.”

Jerome was known as Peewee back in those days. He was one of the many children and their families in desperate circumstances and receiving

mindful that way. Last fall he came back to

support from SCAN. His mother succumbed to

Holderness to talk to students about issues of class

AIDS when he was 14, but thanks to SCAN

and privilege in a school community and in socie-

Jerome was able to go to Holderness instead of

ty at large. This spring—besides returning to

into a foster home, and here he maintained a B+

Holderness again, this time to help lead a group

average, starred in two sports, became school

on Out Back—he lent his star power to “Inspiring

president, and went on to Columbia before attend-

Potential,” a major fundraising event for SCAN,

ing the Harvard Business School.

the Supportive Children’s Advocacy Network, the social service organization that helped get him into Holderness twenty years ago.

“Imagine a child who once begged on the

Jerome Thomas ’95 keynotes a fundraiser for SCAN.

Resilience, love, and potential are bound up in the fabric of that story, and so is commitment.

That homeless child called Peewee was not only the main draw to an event in the refurbished

streets beside his drug-addicted mother growing

Prince George Ballroom on Manhattan’s 27th

up and obtaining his MBA from Harvard Business

Street in May, he also now sits on SCAN’s Board

School,” read SCAN’s flyer for the event.

of Directors. He’s taking a hand himself in finding

“Imagine a notoriously violent homeless shelter

bright futures in the city’s most disadvantaged

(where that child once lived), meticulously reno-

youngsters, and also never forgetting the past.

Jerome, second from the left, on OB in March.

Business

The only Dominican “to sell out a corporate venue in Boston without playing baseball.”

I

F YOU’RE A FAN OF

Improper Bostonian maga-

zine, then surely you’re a fan of its annual “Singular Sensations” feature, its winter

“roundup of the city’s most desirable

and promotions company that leverages social media in community building.”

BostonTweetUp, jokes Joselin, has made him the only Dominican “to sell out a major cor-

bachelor/ettes.” To be included in that roundup,

porate venue in Boston without playing base-

it’s not enough to be single and to have soulful

ball.” But his chief line of work continues to be

eyes. You also need to be successfully doing

LITBeL Consulting, an operation that special-

something interesting. So it’s just inevitable that

izes, the founder says, “in wrapping marketing

Joselin Mane ’91 would be considered such a

around technology to help grow my clients’ busi-

sensation.

The bio doesn’t hurt either. “The youngest and only son in a Dominican family of five, he

nesses in more efficient ways.” His success there landed him on the cover of Mass. High Tech magazine in April, 2010, for a feature story

was raised by a single mother in Lawrence,

titled, “Big names in on-line marketing also

meaning he knows how to relate to a busy

thrive face-to-face.”

woman,” says the Bostonian. “After a full schol-

Joselin Mane ’91 is a “singular sensation,” applying social media to building community.

The Bostonian agrees about the face-to-face

arship to Holderness School, he studied engi-

part: “A master at networking, he’s full of charm

neering at Northeastern and climbed the corpo-

and intelligence, along with boundless enthusi-

rate ladder until IBM featured him in a full-page

asm and energy.” You can be part of that net-

ad praising his work helping the furniture giant

work yourself by following Joselin on either of

Herman Miller save a million dollars a year

his two twitter accounts:

through e-learning. From there, he went on to

http://twitter.com/JoselinMane or

start LITBeL Consulting in 1999, but his latest

http://twitter.com/BostonTweetUp.

endeavor is BostonTweetUp, an event planning

Holderness School Today

47

Alumni in the News

Sports

T

Champ twice over: Julia Ford ’08 wins the national downhill AND the NorAm Cup series.

O WIN AN

overall series

title in international alpine racing, you need

place standing, forty-one points behind Ford.”

The NorAm Cup series is

not only versatility—podium-

held at mountains in the

level skills in a variety of dis-

United States and Canada, and

ciplines—but also consistency.

attracts up-and-coming young

You have to finish at or near

ski racers from all over the

the top from week to week,

world. It’s a training ground

from mountain to mountain.

for the elite World Cup circuit,

In the NorAm Cup series, Julia Ford ’08 has demonstrat-

where Julia has already made several starts as a US Ski

ed that consistency not just

Team member. Julia, in fact,

week to week, but from year

notched her first World Cup

to year. After finishing second

points in January this year

overall in the final NorAm

with a Super G 25th at Bad

Cup standings for three con-

Kleinkerchim, Austria.

secutive seasons, she wrapped up her first overall champi-

This year Julia also won her second straight national

onship on March 23 in a race

downhill championship at

at Mont-Sainte-Anne, Quebec.

Aspen, CO, in February. She

“American Julia Ford

dominated the five-race Aspen

solidified her first overall

series with five consecutive

NorAm Cup title after finish-

first-place finishes: two in

ing twelfth in today’s [slalom]

Super G and three in down-

race,” reported Ski Racing

hill.

magazine. “Teammate Abby Ghent grabbed the second

I

N

APRIL NINA Cook Silitch

’90 made a little bit of history in the town of Tromso,

Norway—she became the first

Depending on how fast you can manage all that, it’s two to four minutes of lungbusting frenzy.

though, that Nina’s first-place time was better than that of 16 of the 28 world-class male athletes who participated in the

North American to win a

sprints. She lives in Chamonix,

World Cup event in the

France, with her husband

demanding (and Eurocentric)

Michael Silitch ’79, one of the

sport of ski mountaineering.

This was a sprint race that

world’s most accomplished mountain guides, and Nina is

actually took place in Tromso’s

currently second in France’s

central square, once truckloads

ski mountaineering rankings.

of snow had been brought in,

She is also founder and presi-

and was conducted over a

dent of the Chamonix Ski

series of elimination heats.

Alpinisme section of France’s

Each heat involved a straight

Club des Sports.

uphill climb, followed by a series of kick-turns, and then a

In an email to Phil Peck about her win, Nina thanked

portage on foot, and then

her former Nordic coach for

another uphill climb, and at

“helping me get started in the

last a descent involving both

love of kicking and gliding.”

skating and travel over uncom-

Phil’s reply: “Awesome, Nina!

pacted snow (off-piste).

I am so proud of you, and

Depending on how fast you

pleased for you. Talk about

can manage all that, it’s two to

achieving a dream!”

four minutes of lung-busting frenzy.

It’s interesting to note,

48

Holderness School Today

Nina raises her skis on top of the standings in Tromso.

The first American to win a World Cup ski mountaineering event? The answer is Nina Cook Silitch ’90.

photo Mark Washburn

Gabas Maldunas ’11 enjoys an attention-grabbing rookie season for Big Green.

A

T THE BEGINNING

of April,

English teacher Peter Durnan happened to be on vacation and

I

VY

LEAGUE basketball is pret-

ty good these days, as Jeremy

Lin, lately of Harvard, now

rebounds led the Big Green in

you. And this year the Dartmouth

both categories as he knocked

men had a rough time in that

down seven field goals, including

league, finishing at 1-13. But the

his first career three-pointer. He

Big Green is a young team, and

also led Dartmouth with 33 min-

the future is bright in Hanover if

utes on the floor while making

you consider all the Dartmouth

two steals as well. On Saturday,

freshmen who won Ivy League

he nearly duplicated his numbers

Rookie of the Week honors this

at 21st-ranked Harvard with a

season. Three different players

team-high 15 points and 9

won that honor more than once

rebounds, five coming at the

over the course of the season,

offensive end. His performance

and none more often than Gabas

helped the Green enjoy a six-

Maldunas ’11, a forward who

point lead with 15 minutes to

won it four times.

play before the Crimson rallied

Here’s what Gabas did in early January, for example, as described on Dartmouth Big

Next year we think Dartmouth is going to be holding

Green, the college’s athletic web-

more of those leads, thanks to that recruiting class led by

by registering his third double-

Gabas.

ing to another US Ski Team member. It was an awesome comp and lots of fun.

I’m glad you and Emery managed to

’12 now attends Dickinson College.

Want to see how well this girl can soar

They were eating dinner at a restaurant

and do moguls? Check out these clips

with booths and with TVs tuned to

from the 2012 Nationals on Youtube:

sports channels. Peter happened to

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZy

notice that a freestyle skiing event was

Bxf7K2M0.

That would be “Sophia” as in

for a 63-47 lead.”

site: “Maldunas began the week

catch it!”

look—it’s Sophia!”

Tuesday. His 15 points and 10

of the New York Knicks will tell

in Carlisle, PA, where Emery Durnan

on. Suddenly Emery announced, “Papa,

double of the season in a 67-59 home loss to Bucknell on

Sophia also placed seventh in the moguls, and she was one of two Holderness athletes competing at the

Sophia Schwartz ’09, and that day, on

Nationals. Also present was Scott

NBC network channels, were the USSA

Nelson ’10, who had a pretty good

Freestyle National Championships—and

weekend himself, taking seventh in the

Sophia was being interviewed after hav-

dual moguls and ninth in the moguls.

ing won a quarterfinal heat in the dual moguls. Actually it was a delayed broadcast, since the Freestyle Nationals had already been concluded at Vermont’s Stratton Mountain during the fourth weekend in March.

Sophia now attends Dartmouth, and Peter emailed her there about that sighting. “I’m so glad you saw the Nationals broadcast!” Sophia wrote back. “That’s so funny because I happened to watch the broadcast with my

Sophia Schwartz ’09 soars (yes, we mean both senses of the word) at the USSA freestyle nationals.

Frisbee team in a pizza restaurant also in Pennsylvania! Nationals went really well, and I ended up fourth (my best result ever!). I received some TV time because I managed to take down the third-ranked girl in the world before los-

Holderness School Today

49

Alumni & Parent Relations

A

WELL-MADE BOOK IS

a work of art

travel books). And there was his family life,

you’ll find that some of the books

which gave him two sons, one of whom—

in the Alfond Library are adorned

Peter—is a Kenyon alumnus, Class of ’83.

with some bonus art—a hand-

in enough history to know the importance of

how that book was purchased for the library:

honoring the past, and he’s puzzled when the

“From the Bequest of Michael E. Goriansky,

past is neglected. “You can go through the whole city of Lowell, and you won’t find one

The words frame a woodcut of a New

model of or tribute to the Lunar Command

England winter scene: a sentinel pine, a lone

Module,” he says. “What’s wrong with the city

house with smoke rising from its chimney,

and state government there? And the voters?”

snow-blanketed hills, a night sky pricked with stars. The woodcut is signed “MG 47,” and

Mike came to Holderness as something of a connoisseur of independent schools, and he par-

betrays the influence of Holderness School’s art

ticularly liked—besides the mountain trails—the

teacher in those days, the brilliant Herb Waters.

way this school was run. “We students were

It’s an outdoor scene executed by a young

pretty much in charge of our own activities, and

man who came to love the outdoors during his

I liked that,” he says. “I feel very strongly about

three years here—after one year at Philips

the school.”

Andover, and another at St. George’s—and who began to nurture another lifetime passion, a love

Mike has donated two report cards signed

by Edric Weld to the school archives, and his

of books, during that same time. And Mike

endowment of the Goriansky Book Fund is

Goriansky has made room for both in a life that

another way of honoring the past. It’s also a way

has been full of much else besides.

of getting more of these books he loves into the

Mike’s father was an architect who practiced in Manhattan but raised his family first in

The book plate on volumes bought by bequest of Mike Gorianski ’48 is a window into an extraordinary life.

By now Mike has been personally involved

somely designed book plate that specifies just

Class of 1948.”

MG47

for photography and book collecting (especially

in and of itself, but these days

Queens, and then Brooklyn, before the family

hands of ongoing generations of students.

These days Mike lives in rural Boxford, MA, in a setting perhaps less mountainous, but

moved to Chestnut Hill in Massachusetts. After

otherwise not so different from that picture he

Holderness, Mike went on to Kenyon College,

carved into wood almost seventy years ago. In

where he majored in psychology, but he wasn’t

that picture a road goes by that lone house and

able to graduate from Kenyon until 1956—

curls over the hills. A road can take you to some

thanks to a hiatus of four years service in the US

pretty distant places, but it can also bring you

Navy. He was part of the ground crew for a

home again.

Lockheed P2V-2 Neptune, a plane that flew out of the Atsugi air base in Japan and conducted

Holderness Summer Outings

reconnaissance missions along the coast of Korea.

That was in wartime, and Mike earned both

Mid-July: Join us for a Baseball Game Location & Date TBD.

Thursday, July 26th: Join us on Nantucket hosted by Dexter ‘79 P ‘14 and Susan ‘82 P ‘14 Paine.

Mid-August: Holderness Golf Outing Location & Date TBD.

Thursday, August 16th: Join us on Martha’s Vineyard hosted by Jeffrey and Nancy Randall P ‘06.

a UN Service medal and a Republic of Korea War medal for service at Atsugi. After the war Mike went with a different surveillance plane, a UP-29, to Enewetak Atoll, in the Marshall Islands, to play a role in Operation Castle. That was a series of hydrogen bomb tests exploded on Bikini Atoll in 1954.

In civilian life, and after Kenyon, Mike found himself to be much more an engineer and executive than a psychologist.

He worked ten

years for the Avco Corporation in Lowell, MA, helping to make heat shields for ballistic missiles and for the Apollo Lunar Command modules. It was a time in which he met and talked with many of the Apollo program’s astronauts.

Later he worked in Cambridge for American Science and Engineering, designing and building the x-ray equipment used to protect against terrorism in airports around the world.

At the same time there was the outdoors— long public service on the trails and open space committees for North Andover, MA, and four trips to the Himalayas; a trip to Kharkov, his father’s birthplace in the Ukraine; and passions

50

Holderness School Today

Friday, September 28 – Sunday, September 30th: Homecoming & Reunion Weekend.

For more information please visit: www.holderness.org Melissa A. Stuart Director of Alumni Relations 603.779.5228 mstuart@holderness.org

Holderness School Today

51

At This Point in Time...

by Judith Solberg

E

ACH COMMENCEMENT,

the school gives

an award in the name of the Rt. Rev.

Dallas were almost legendarily committed to the school. Bishop Dallas was instrumental in the

John T. Dallas, who served as the

board’s decision to keep the school open after the

Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire

1931 fire; he remained so integral to the board

from 1926-1948. As we come to the

that he was one of the first to receive the title of

end of the tenure of our current bishop, our com-

“Honorary Trustee” in 1960. He kept an active

munity has been reflecting on his service to the

interest in campus life, and became a charter

Church and to our school, with immense grati-

member of the school’s Cum Laude Society (he

tude. It seems a fitting time to remember the serv-

thanked Don Hagerman for the honor by com-

ice of another man who served us all, and to

menting that “You have a wonderful sense of

acknowledge the impact that he had on our

humor”).

school.

And of course, Dallas is remembered with

Bishop Dallas’ tenure almost mirrored Edric

great affection and respect by the Holderness

Weld’s term as headmaster. Weld, who had

alumni who knew him. Some remember climbing

described himself as “a senior at boarding school

by his side on Mountain Day, and afterward going

who, casting about for a vocation, had declared

to his home in Bethlehem for refreshments. Sixth

‘The last thing I want to do is to teach school,’”

formers recall their spring dinner, hosted by

credited Dallas with bringing him around to a

Dallas either in Bethlehem or at the Bishop’s

willingness to serve at Holderness. He recalled:

House in Concord – although during wartime, the

“[I] acted on the supposition that if a bishop asks

bishop made a point to come to the Holderness

“We popped popcorn, played 78 rpm records of the latest hit tunes on a wind-up Victrola, and even designed, built, tested, and raced several kinds of paper airplanes while using the Diocesan stationery.” you twice, you ought to

campus for the event instead.

say yes… Such is the

Other alumni simply recall the man as a caring

power of bishops, espe-

friend. As students, several got into “a fair amount

cially of such a one as

of mischief” at the Bishop’s House, at his indul-

Bishop Dallas.”

Bishop Dallas had his

Bishop Dallas wasn’t so sure about getting involved with Holderness, notes archivist Judith Solberg.

But he came around.

gence: “We popped popcorn, played 78 rpm records of the latest hit tunes on a wind-up

own hesitation about

Victrola, and even designed, built, tested, and

becoming involved with

raced several kinds of paper airplanes while using

the local Episcopal schools.

As is true today, the

the Diocesan stationery.” But as these boys

bishop served as ex officio President of the Board

became men, they fished with the Bishop, were

at Holderness School and a few other institutions.

married by him, and had him baptize their chil-

Some years into his tenure, Dallas wrote to James

dren. He became family.

Godfrey, the Chancellor of the Diocese of New Hampshire, to protest this fact: “It seems unfair

As a longtime friend and support to the Welds, Dallas wrote a poignant letter to them on

and unbusinesslike […]. If any one of these insti-

the occasion of their retirement. It culminated in

tutions wants my help, whether it be big or little,

the assurance that “Everywhere your lives have

the institutions should be allowed to say so and I

touched, you have brought life.” When the Dallas

should be (or my successor) allowed to acquiesce

award is presented to “the senior who clearly

or decline in the same way as you or any other eli-

exemplifies loyalty and dedication to the Judeo-

gible citizens.”

Initial reservations aside, of course, Weld and

Christian ideals of the School,” we are declaring that Bishop Dallas touched all of us as well.

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