Holderness School Today - Fall 2019

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The Magazine of Holderness School

HOLDERNESS SCHOOL TODAY The Magazine of Holderness School | FALL 2019

English Department Chair and International Student Coordinator Marilee Lin shares her love of learning in one of her classes.

| FALL 2019

Inside:

Rip Richards and his daughter, Sara ’80, contemplate the rigors of Out Back.

»

COMMENCEMENT 2019

»

WHAT THE LORD SAID UNTO CLOUGH

»

CATCHING UP WITH DOUG KENDALL

»

PREPARING FOR THE RIGORS OF OUT BACK

BOARD OF TRUSTEES Sandeep Alva Karyn Campbell

THE OUTDOORS. IT’S WHO WE ARE.

Katie Crumbo Carolyn Cullen ’87 Bob Cunha Cecily Cushman ’11 Chris Davenport ’89 Andrew Davis Paul John Ferri Tracy Gillette ’89 The Right Rev. Robert Hirschfeld Burgie Howard ’82 Chris Keating ’81 Rob Kinsley ’88 Alex MacCormick ’88 Kevin Mattingly Joe Miles ’82 R. Phillip Peck Nell Reynolds, Chair Andrew Sawyer ’79 Harry Sheehy Matt Storey Sander van Otterloo ’94 Richard Vieira Chance Wright ’14 Sung You ’01

HEADMASTER EMERITUS

Please send notice of address changes to the Advancement Office, PO Box 1879, Plymouth, NH 03264, or advancement@holderness.org.

GUEST CONTRIBUTORS: Max Paro ’17, Kelsey Berry, Suzanne Dewey, Franz Nicolay

The Rev. Brinton W. Woodward, Jr.

©2019 Holderness School.

DESIGN & PRODUCTION: Tessa Magnuson, Align Graphic Design, LLC

HONORARY TRUSTEES

EDITORS: Emily Magnus ’88, Andrew Herring, and Greg Kwasnik

PHOTOGRAPHY: Neal Frei ’03, Emily Magnus ’88, Max Paro ’17, Gil Talbot

EDITORS EMERITI: Jim Brewer and Rick Carey

Holderness School Today is printed

by R.C. Brayshaw and Company on sustainably produced, chain-of-custody stock certified to Forest Stewardship Council ® (FSC ®) standards.

Warren C. Cook Bob Hall Jim Hamblin ’77 Piper Orton ’74 W. Dexter Paine III ’79 Will Prickett ’81

ASSISTANT EDITORS: Patrick Buckley, Suzanne Dewey, Neal Frei ’03, Stacy Lopes, Darren Moore ’99, Phil Peck, Mark Sturgeon, and Kelly van Lingen

Our setting—New Hampshire’s White Mountains—inspires us every day in every season. At Holderness, we learn, live, play, and pray in the outdoors.

Your gift makes our transformative outdoor experiences possible.

DONATE TODAY AT WWW.GIVETOHOLDERNESS.ORG

Thank you for your support!

FEATURES COMMENCEMENT 2019

WHAT THE LORD SAID UNTO CLOUGH

CATCHING UP WITH DOUG KENDALL

PREPARING FOR THE RIGORS OF OUT BACK

DEPARTMENTS From the Schoolhouse.................................................................. 2 From the (not quite) Editor......................................................... 3 Around the Quad......................................................................... 14 Athletics....................................................................................... 36 Employee & Trustee Updates..................................................... 42 Alumni Profiles............................................................................50 Small Gatherings......................................................................... 56 Class Notes..................................................................................60

YEARS OF OUT BACK BONUS CONTENT Out Back Insights.................... 23 Recommended Booklist......... 47

At This Point in Time................................................................... 76

Fall 2019 | 1

FROM THE SCHOOLHOUSE

OUT BACK AS METAPHOR

F

or ten years, I taught a philosophy class for the Summer Klingenstein program at Teachers College Columbia University. My philosophy statement that I used to frame effective teaching drew on Out Back as one of two Holderness models for exemplary education. Some of those qualities evident are: ▪ Being successful depends as much on attitude as one’s skills.

▪ To have a positive experience, students and teachers must work together; there is risk taking, often supported by the group.

▪ Learning is not made easy; it is a constant struggle.

This disequilibrium promotes growth and learning.

▪ The teacher models struggling and effectively working through the same problems as the students; thus, the learning process is constantly modeled.

As I ref lected on this issue of Holderness School Today and the 50th anniversary of Out Back, I realized that Out Back is not just a model for effective teaching, it is also a metaphor for Holderness School and the people and programs that make our school unique. In this issue, you’ll read Rick Carey’s insightful history into the program, especially the early days when Holderness boldly and courageously embraced this mission-appropriate program. While the program is still bold and courageous, one of the changes over time has been the training of our leaders. Some of our outdoor leaders share how the protocols have evolved over the last 50 years to ensure greater safety. In addition, we hear an insightful perspective from the wonderful educator and outdoorsman Doug Kendall, who continues to be active in the program after almost 40 years. Just like Bill Clough and Fred Beams before them, our profiled community members remind us that the program is only successful and transformative because of the leadership of amazing Holderness educators.

The second Holderness experience I used to frame the philosophy course was international travel with students.

This issue highlights two exciting and perspectivealtering international travel opportunities that Holderness offers our students and colleagues. We also highlight Holderness Symposium, a transformational learning experience that addresses relevant issues in teaching, learning, and wellness to better serve our students.

YEARS OF OUT BACK No question, I think you will agree that our programs continue to be on mission while dynamically evolving.

Throughout this HST are stories about truly remarkable members of the Holderness family. We learn about two new exceptional female leaders, School President Abby Vieira and Board Chair Nell Reynolds. There is information about some iconic departing trustees as well as dynamic incoming teachers and administrators. We also feature many inspiring professional, intellectual, and athletic accomplishments by our colleagues and alumni, including Don Henderson being inducted into the U.S. Ski Hall of Fame.

Also in this issue, we celebrate our 140th graduating class and read about this past spring’s Commencement festivities. We also learn about recent construction updates, including the early phases of the new Math and Science Building and the new Henderson House. Without a doubt, campus continues to be an exciting atmosphere in which to live, learn, and grow.

Finally, we hope that this HST shows that Holderness remains deeply connected to its mission while moving forward. Holderness is more than a school; it is a lifelong journey, a calling that is in our blood and allows us to joyfully serve others and live a life to “work for the betterment of humankind and God’s creation.”

Phil Peck, Head of School

ppeck@holderness.org

2 | Holderness School Today

FROM THE EDITOR

A LETTER FROM THE (NOT QUITE) EDITOR

I

was first introduced to the tradition of the Hail and Farewell when I was a young second lieutenant stationed in Germany. I arrived to my unit several days after they had returned from a year-long deployment.

There was no shortage of transition; soldiers and families headed to new units while others arrived to take those very same positions. Amidst all this chaos, we paused. We gathered both to say goodbye and hello.

While Holderness isn’t fighting a war, it would be foolish to say that the work we do and the bonds we seek to form are less impactful. The people and the relationships are real, bound by a commitment to the mission of our school: to serve for the betterment of humankind and God’s creation. In the spirit of the hail and farewell, then, let us pause and say goodbye to Emily Magnus ’88 and welcome Greg Kwasnik, the outgoing and incoming editors of Holderness School Today.

Holderness School Today would be just another straightto-recycling magazine if not for Emily Magnus. It’s how she started in communications at Holderness, skillfully balancing her time as our registrar and editor of the HST. And, it’s how she finished her final days on campus, trying to get the HST in such a good space that even the greenest of communications directors could get the magazine into production.

If you’ve read any recent HST, you’d feel a true love for Holderness. Thematically, each issue connected deeply to the school. And, the articles had the uncanny ability to ref lect on the school’s mission while projecting its vision. On each page and in each sentence you could see Emily’s fingerprints, her edits carefully adjusting articles to be more Holderness and her photographer’s eye setting a uniquely Holderness frame.

Emily is more than a great colleague, neighbor, and friend.

She was why I applied to join the Communications Team.

There was simply so much to learn from her. The tens of thousands of photos her camera captured and the countless words she wrote showed both the daily happenings around campus and the meaningful, life-changing work of the school.

Emily wasn’t just a storyteller; she was our storyteller. We are beyond grateful for all that Emily has done and wish

Andrew Herring takes a break from not-quite-editing Holderness School Today.

her well as she tells the Cardigan Mountain School story.

Although it’s a difficult task to follow Emily, Greg Kwasnik has already shown to be a thoughtful and quite capable Associate Director of Communications and Marketing.

Greg comes to Holderness from Loon Mountain, where he was the Communications Manager. In this capacity, Greg served as the managing editor of Loon Magazine and produced most of the mountain’s written, photo, and video content. His deeply technical background will no doubt support our ability to share our story. And, true to Holderness fashion, Greg loves the outdoors and is comfortable on both mountain bike and ski trails.

And so, we say goodbye and hello. Thank you, Emily, for sharing the Holderness experience. May you continue to find inspiration along the paths, in the classrooms, and on playing fields. And, a hearty welcome to Greg. Now let’s tell some stories.

Andrew Herring

aherring@holderness.org

Spring 2019 | 3

CONGRATULATIONS CLASS OF

2019

“AS WE SET OUR STONES TO THIS WALL, REMEMBER THE LIFE OF THE STONE—FROM MOUNTAIN TO CLAY. REMEMBER THE LOVE OF STONE—AS A SYMBOL OF REVERENCE FOR THE PROTECTION OF THIS EARTH, IN YOUR TIME OF STEWARDSHIP IN ITS BEHALF. REMEMBER THE WISDOM OF THE STONE, AS KEEPER OF THE RECORDS OF TIME. REMEMBER THIS STONE AS YOUR MARKER OF THIS TIME, THIS PLACE. YOU WERE HERE. AND YOUR PRESENCE HERE MADE THIS TIME AND THIS PLACE AT HOLDERNESS BETTER BECAUSE OF THE LOVE YOU SHARED, AND THE CARE YOU GAVE.”

–Franz Nicolay Stones Chapel Speaker and Retiring Photography Teacher 4 | Holderness School Today

ATTE ILMARI AALTO

DREA LEE CHIN

Heinola, Finland

Laconia, NH

OLIVER BUZBY FISHER

ZI YAN HUANG

Beijing, China

Unionville, PA KEENAN BASSEM ALNAHAS

Manchester, NH

CHARLES PATRICK CUNHA

Plymouth, MA

ANASTOS

FITZGERALD

Hingham, MA CONNOR MICHAEL ANDROLEWICZ

Fenton, MO

HAYDEN STIENER DAHL

Plymouth, NH STIAN ELSTUN DAVENPORT

Snowmass, CO

PANIER

AVERY DENISON REYNOLDS

Winchester, MA

Deer Isle, ME

LILLIAN GOLD

MORGAN LEIGH

BRYCE CHRISTOPHER SOFIA SIGRID

JOHNSON

Weare, NH

Sudbury, MA THALIA LYNN

MEGAN ALISON

PATTERSON

SISSON

Cohasset, MA

Concord, NH

JOSEPH SAMUEL

JOHN MCGRAW

WILLIAM ROBERT ISAIAH WILLIAM FOX

Pierrefonds, Canada SIWAKORN FUANGKAWINSOMBUT

Bangkok, Thailand

KEATING

Winchester, MA

PELLETIER

SPENCE

Gorham, ME

Easthampton, MA

EMILY ROSE PELTIER

MIKAYLA ANNA

SHAUN ZHI QIAN KWAN

Azzuro, Singapore

Waterville Valley, NH

STOLAR

Hampden, MA JAMISON THAYER BAYHA

DYLAN JON DE VRIES

IZAK DAVID FUREY

ZIQING LIN

Marblehead, MA

Stowe, VT

Wuhan, China

Kennebunk, ME BECKHAM JOHN

QUANG MINH DO

LILY PAIGE GILLETTE

Hanoi, Viet Nam

Vail, CO

GRIFFIN EDWARD

Hull, MA

GILLIS

Branford, CT

Eagle, CO

BRYN CAROLYN DONOVAN

Plymouth, NH JOSEPH RIDEN BIDDLE

Andover, MA

GOMEZ

ABIGAIL ANNE BOES

Philadelphia, PA

Tustin, CA

BUNTING

San Francisco, CA

Dover, NH

Wilson, W Y

CARLEENA CARTER

Long Pond, PA

NAKPRASERT

GLASCOCK

NGUYEN

Coral Gable, FL

Ho Chi Minh

POLLAK

Farmington, CT

POLLAK

ALEXANDRA

YEONGHWANG GWON

SAMUEL ANDREI CATHERINE DELINGS

LINH KHANH NGUYEN HOANG

POLLINI

CONNOR STEVENS BRIDGIT APPLEYARD

HÄMÄLÄINEN

ADAM NOVÁK

Hollola, Finland

Ostrava, Czech

POTTER

HEFFERNAN

ANDREY W. YAO KATHRYN ELIZABETH

CECILIA COLE O’MARAH

HENDRICKS

Winchester, MA

ALEXANDRE ROBERT

Beijing, China Shanghai, China

HARGRAVES

Dover, MA

ELIZABETH DOTY REED

Rye, NH

HOEFFNER

New Hope, PA

SERGIO JIA QI YAP

KELLY HUI-LEE QIAN

OLIVER COLIN JACKSON

Shenzhen, China

POTTER

Dover, MA THOMAS PATRICK

WOOLLEY

Fayston, VT

Winchester, MA

Republic PATRICK WILLIAM

WALZAK

North Hampton, NH

Kennebunk, ME

Hanoi, Viet Nam VIIVI SOFIA

DER LUFT

Hingham, MA

Franconia, NH

City, Viet Nam

ALEXANDRA GRACE FERRI

KAHLYRIAH

URDANG

LAUREN VON

Westport, CT

CANTIN

Gilford, NH

Stamford, CT

JOSEPH ANTHONY

NICHOLAS ROBERT FENN

CLAUDIA VIOLETTE

ANNA MARGARET

HA TRAN GIA

Boston, MA

BUTCHMA

Manhaset, NY

AUKKARWIT

SPENCER LATIMER

SYDNEY ANNE FASCETTA

MATHIEU DANIEL

KATHERINE SARAH

Franconia, NH

TANNER JAMES ENSIGN

HENRY PAXTON

Pointe Claire, Canada

Bangkok, China

Wilmington, NC

BOOKER

East Burke, VT

KEVIN PATRICK PITTS

Iaval, Canada

ALLEGRA FRANCES DRISCOLL

JEAN BEN MCNULTY

GINGRAS

TRASK

Bourne, MA SEBASTIAN ALEXANDER

MICHAEL JOSEPH

North Attleboro, MA

JAVIER DORADO

Teguise, Spain Marblehead, MA

PILARO

VICTORIA BRIDGIT MICHIENZI

TEICH

ANTHONY FINNEGAN

Southampton, NY

MEGHAN FRANCIS

MACTAGGART BELLOWS

MADIGAN

TAYLOR PATRICIA

Moultonborough, NH

JAKOB WALTER

North Andover, MA DOHERTY

YARMONY

PHILLIPS

Westwood, MA

MERZ BAYREUTHER

Canaan, NH

JULIA CATHERINE

DARBY GAGE PALISI

Concord, NH

Fall 2019 | 5

“SO AS YOU LEAVE, HERE’S MY WISH FOR YOU: IN YOUR LIVES, I WISH YOU ALL MANY MORE EXPERIENCES, MANY CHALLENGES, MANY HARD CHOICES, AND MANY OPPORTUNITIES TO BE OTHER-CENTERED. IN OTHER WORDS, I WISH YOU LOVE AND HAPPINESS ALWAYS.”

–Janice Pedrin-Nielson Commencement Speaker and Retiring French Faculty

Fall 2019 | 7

“AS SENIORS, YOUR WHOLE YEAR HAS BEEN ONE BIG COUNTDOWN. WITH 217 DAYS TO GO, YOU ALL CAME IN HAVING EXPERIENCED YOUR LAST HOLDERNESS MOVE-IN DAY. WITH 148 DAYS TO GO, YOU RAN AROUND THE BONFIRE ONE LAST TIME. WITH 112 DAYS TO GO, YOU DID YOUR LAST LIP SYNC DANCE, AND WITH 37 DAYS YOU SAW YOUR LAST SPRING PLAY. NOW, TODAY IS YOUR FINAL DAY. THOSE WHITE DRESSES AND BLAZERS YOU ONCE ADMIRED AS FRESHMEN WITH 651 DAYS TO GO ARE NOW BEING WORN BY YOU.”

–Abby Vieira ’20 President-Elect

8 | Holderness School Today

“When we first showed up to campus a few years back, we had no idea what we would be getting ourselves into. Forced out of our comfort zone, we learned more about the world we live in and more about ourselves as individuals. On Project Outreach when we travelled down to Philadelphia, we helped those in need by working in food banks, playing with the children at a homeless shelter, and cleaning up different parts of the city. Through this we learned how truly lucky we really are and that we should not take anything for granted. Our motto over Artward Bound was “Disrupt Your Peace,” and I believe the different art forms we were allowed to try truly disrupted the peace for many of us. Though, because of this, we each learned new things about ourselves.

Eleven days in the woods is never easy, but eleven days in the woods during the harsh New England winter was truly a daunting task. For most of us, this was a monumental step outside of our comfort zone, but through this we were stripped of the extra things in life and learned how to live without them.”

– Dylan de Vries ’19 School President

Fall 2019 | 9

THE PEACE OF GOD IS TO BE FOUND IN SUFFERING, IN CONFLICT, NOT IN TRANQUILITY AND QUIESCENCE. WHAT THEN IS THE PEACE OF GOD? THE PEACE OF GOD IS PARTICIPATING WITH GOD IN THE SUFFERING OF THE WORLD. IF WE ARE TO FIND TRUE PEACE IN THIS LIFE, THE CENTER OF LIFE’S MEANING, WE MUST ENTER INTO GOD’S WORLD, NOT OUT OF IT. WE MUST EXPECT, EVEN WANT, SUFFERING. THERE WE WILL FIND AND KNOW THE PEACE OF GOD. IN ACTION, IN GIVING, IN SACRIFICING FOR OTHERS, WE WILL EXPERIENCE AND KNOW THE PEACE OF GOD.

–The Rev. B. W. Woodward, Jr. Baccalaureate Speaker and Headmaster Emeritus

2019

COLLEGE

DESTINATIONS

American University

Franklin & Marshall College

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Babson College

Gettysburg College (2)

Trinity College (3)

Hobart and William Smith Colleges

University of Colorado at Boulder (4)

Indiana University at Bloomington

University of Denver (3)

Bates College Berklee College of Music (2) Boston College Boston University

Ithaca College

University of Glasgow

Bryant University

Lafayette College (3)

University of Maine

Bucknell University

Maine College of Art

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Carleton College

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Brandeis University

Castleton University Chapman University Clarkson University Colby College (3)

Northeastern University

University of New Hampshire at Durham (5) University of Pennsylvania

Oberlin College of Arts and Sciences

University of Richmond

Occidental College

University of St Andrews

Salve Regina University

University of Utah

Santa Clara University

University of Vermont (3)

Seattle University

University of Virginia

Colorado College Columbia University Concordia University— Montreal Cornell University (2)

Sierra Nevada College

Davidson College

Southern New Hampshire University

Endicott College (3) Fairfield University

University of Wisconsin, Madison Williams College (2)

St. Lawrence University

Fall 2019 | 11

ALUMNI AWARDS

THE MARSHALL AWARD

For outstanding

THE WEBSTER CUP AWARD

THE ELEMENTARY SPANISH PRIZE:

THE PHOTOGRAPHY PRIZE:

contributions to the

For excellence in athletics

Nicholas George

WOODWARD, JR.

life of the school

Joseph Samuel Pelletier

Spanos ’21

Ziqing Lin ’19

AWARD

Dylan Jon de Vries ’19

’19 and Morgan THE ADVANCED SPANISH

THE FIORE CUP FOR

THE REV. B.W. “PETE”

For exceptional leadership,

Leigh Sisson ’19

academic achievement,

THE HASLAM AWARD

and service in the

For excellence in

junior year of college Maggie Cunha ’18 THE DISTINGUISHED

highest standards

Bridgit Appleyard

Izak David Furey

athletics, sportsmanship,

For contributions to

Potter ’19

’19 and Catherine

and scholarship

the spirit of Holderness

Claudia Violette

on and off the field

Cantin ’19

Beckham John Merz Bayreuther ’19 and

THE BOB BROOKS

For making Holderness feel

Don Whittemore ’78

like home to ninth graders Izak David Furey ’19

Delings Pollini ’19 THE ELEMENTARY CHINESE PRIZE:

Eleni Welsh Spiliotes ’20

Darby Gage Palisi ’19 THE M.J. LAFOLEY AWARD

For outstanding character

THE THEOLOGY AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES PRIZE:

THE ADVANCED CHINESE

AWARD

of the school

Bryn Carolyn Donovan ’19

PRIZE:

Viivi Sofia

THE SCIENCE PRIZE:

Hamalainen ’19

Aukkarwit Nakprasert ’19

THE CONNOR HISTORY

THE SPARGO AWARD

and integrity in the

THE RIGHT REV. DOUGLAS E. THEUNER

THE CLARKSON AWARD

third or fourth form

AWARD

For persevering no matter

William Scott Clouse ’21

For increasing and

the circumstances

furthering the mission

Kathryn Elizabeth

of Holderness School

Potter ’19

MEDAL:

Linh Khanh Nguyen

ACADEMIC AWARDS

Bob Hall HENDERSON AWARD

FOR SCIENCE:

Andrey W. Yao ’19

Hoang ’19 THE RENSSELAER THE ASHWORTH AWARD

THE DON AND PAT THE TRACY

THEATRE:

THE COACH’S AWARD

ALUMNI AWARD

For exemplifying the

PRIZE:

THE HARRY G.

FOR EXCELLENCE

ANDERSON,

IN UNITED STATES

MEDAL:

Rodolfo Scott Beer ’20

MCCOY GILLETTE

For contributions to the

JR. MEMORIAL

DISTINGUISHED

welfare of the community

SCHOLARSHIP FOR

Isabel Grace

Claudia Violette

SERVICE AWARD

Bryn Carolyn Donovan ’19

EXCELLENCE IN MATH

Thompson ’20

Cantin ’19

THE ASHWORTH AWARD

THE WRITING PRIZE:

(given at Reunion on June 1) For significantly

THE NED GILLETTE SPIRIT AWARD

Pieter Elias Kooistra ’20

the health and well-

For leadership,

being of the school

competitive attitude, and

Andrew Sawyer ’79

a spirit of adventure

Matthew David

Jamison Thayer Bayha ’19

Pollini ’22 and Leon

THE ELEMENTARY MATH PRIZE:

Carsten Thiel ’22

Given to a senior girl for

THE ADVANCED MATH

Claudia Violette

For reaching the highest

participation in sports

Cantin ’19

standards of the school

and extracurricular

Andrey W. Yao ’19

activities, and love of life

THE ELEMENTARY

Thalia Lynn Anastos ’19

FRENCH PRIZE:

For loyalty and dedication to the Judeo-Christian

THE RICHARD C. GALLOP

Urdang ’19

Griffin James O’Neil ’21 THE ROBERT CREELY THE SEAN GLEW HISTORY PRIZE:

For creative and

Atte Ilmari Aalto ’19

community leadership Ziqing Lin ’19

THE HARVARD BOOK THE DAVID LOCKWOOD MUSIC PRIZE:

PRIZE:

Rodolfo Scott Beer ’20 THE KENYON COLLEGE

THE WILLIAM BRADFORD WHITING PRIZE FOR ART:

Howard ’22

Xinyu Guo ’20

THE ADVANCED FRENCH

THE CERAMICS PRIZE:

PRIZE:

Claudia Violette Cantin ’19

12 | Holderness School Today

von der Luft ’19

Fuster ’22

AWARD

ideals of the school

POETRY PRIZE:

Alexandra Lauren

Emilija Jakumaite ’20

Annika Lillian

THE DALLAS AWARD

Katherine Sarah

EUROPEAN HISTORY:

PRIZE:

academic achievement,

FROST AWARD

FOR EXCELLENCE IN

Alyssa Makaylyne

THE DANA H. ROWE MEMORIAL AWARD

THE WALTER ALVIN

THE ENGLISH PRIZE:

AND SCIENCE

and positively affecting

COMMUNITY AWARDS

HISTORY:

Bryn Carolyn Donovan ’19

PRESIDENTIAL BOOK AWARD:

Macy Grace Arsenault ’20

CUM LAUDE CLASS OF 2019

CLASS OF 2020

Atte Ilmari Aalto*

Rodolfo Scott Beer

Thalia Lynn Anastos*

Angus Alistair Christie

Claudia Violette Cantin*

Carolyn Marie Fernandes

Siwakorn Fuangkawinsombut

Pieter Elias Kooistra

Lily Paige Gillette

Eleanor Lee Page

Viivi Sofia Hamalainen

Eleni Welsh Spiliotes

Ziqing Lin*

Abigail Vieira

Aukkarwit Nakprasert

Andrew Chixiao Yang

Linh Khanh Nguyen Hoang*

* Asterisk indicates a senior inducted as a junior in 2018

Lillian Gold Patterson Joseph Anthony Pollak Avery Denison Reynolds* Taylor Patricia Teich Katherine Sarah Urdang*

2019 COMMENCEMENT

AWARDS

Alexandra Lauren von der Luft Andrey W. Yao*

AROUND THE QUAD

REFLECTIONS FROM STUDENT TRAVEL

BY EMILY MAGNUS ’88

S

ummer is a great time for taking epic adventures that stretch one’s sense of what is possible and transform one’s identity. Two groups of Holderness students started the summer of 2019 off right—one with a trip to Europe and one with a trip to China. What makes the trips even more powerful and memorable is the generosity of the Holderness families who have welcomed the travelers into their homes and shared their food, stories, and culture.

We asked both students and faculty to share some of their reflections with us, and here’s what they had to say:

REFLECTIONS FROM CHINA Director of College Counseling Bruce Barton Flying over the top of the world and landing in China is a transformative experience. Not only does the plane need to bend over the globe, but the individual, at least this one, needs to have their sense of place and identity bend as well. One is constantly impressed with the volume and scope of what you see in China. Let’s take Beijing, for example. In so many ways, Beijing is bigger than one’s imagination. Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City dwarf and delight at the same time.

While visiting these places, it’s hard not to feel in the presence of something powerful and meaningful while at the same time recognizing one’s complete insignificance and powerlessness.

The size of these places alone will take your breath away.

And then, to step into the stream of humanity, as we did, and walk through these places is to be regularly reminded of just how many people there are in the world and how utterly

14 | Holderness School Today

microscopic one human being really is. To be among the few and not the many is also equal parts exhilarating and unsettling. To be stared at, to be asked to pose for a picture, to be smiled at by young children who see you in a funny hat—these experiences simultaneously give you a feeling that we are all alike and that we couldn’t be more different.

Wondrous, amazing and dizzying all at once, that is China.

Director of Senior Thesis Sarah Barton The pace at which people in China move has taken me by surprise. With such an enormous population, I expected hustle and bustle, maybe even a little jockeying for position on the streets and in museums. What we’ve encountered, however, is a pace that is delicious. It is geared for families with children who are adored. They are often together with both their parents and grandparents and are a focus, never a burden. And I see why. Sturdy, satisfied, confident, spectacularly beautiful children have distracted us at every turn. They draw the eye away from ancient bells and dramatic cityscapes by peeking around corners and sleeping blissfully over a lucky shoulder. This visit has made clear the enormous gift parents of international students have given to Holderness by sharing their precious children with us.

Colin ’21 Upon visiting China, the prominent ideas of style, especially demonstrated through architecture and layout, immediately served as a gateway to understanding Chinese culture, despite the absence of words. Each aspect of

AROUND THE QUAD

the ancient architecture was carefully chosen for both function and form. For example, the Forbidden City holds 9,999 rooms because 9 is a lucky number in China. The number 10,000 feels full or at maximum capacity and feels almost as though you are at the minimum again rather than the top; therefore, 9,999 allows room for growth.

The carefully-chosen style of architecture is not limited to the ancient but has modernized heavily over time.

The city of Beijing is different than US cities both in its immense size, but also the diversity of the buildings in an area. It is not unusual to see an ancient monument next to an extraordinarily modern building next to what seems to be a less expensive apartment building.

Alia ’21 We are more than halfway through our two-week China trip, and I continue to think about the life and culture in the different parts of this diverse country. Having been adopted from China when I was only 10 months old, I keep finding myself thinking about and asking what my life would have been like. As we travel further south to areas such as Pingyao, Xi’an, and Guilin, and closer to my birthplace, I feel myself asking those “what if” questions even more.

However, while all of that has been enjoyable and I have created fond memories visiting some of the world’s greatest wonders, for me, this trip is much more than a learning experience. I consider this trip a milestone, finally returning to my birthplace after 17 years. I have been welcomed into a culture that could have been my own, which personally, is complicated, exciting, and bittersweet to think of. I would never change anything in the big picture of my life; those events and outcomes have shaped my life into what it is now, and I am eternally grateful for everything and everyone that is a part of my story. Coming back to my birthplace, however, makes me wonder what could have been and what would have been.

REFLECTIONS FROM EUROPE Malin ’20 I enjoyed going to the top of the spire at the Dom cathedral in Cologne. For one, I thought that it was amazing just to be able to climb a spiral staircase through such an old structure. You could see and feel how old it was through the worn out steps and these little doors that went off on the sides of the staircase. Getting to the top was also amazing, you could walk all the way around the top of the spire and get a 360 view of Cologne.

Kitt ’19 I loved the walking tour of Florence because the guide really immersed us in the history of the place and helped us see it as it would have stood so many years ago. In addition, Ellie and I stumbled into a street market in Munich, and it had amazing fresh fruit that we got to eat in the middle of the city!

Charlie ’21 I liked when Louis, Michael, and I climbed up the clock tower next to the Santa Maria De Floria Church to get a 360-degree view of Florence and the surrounding suburbs.

At the highest vantage point within the city, the apartments and other districts of the city fascinated me and gave me a sense of how differently cities in Europe have remained true to their original looks, styles, and architecture.

Spencer ’20 The highlight of my trip thus far was going to Munich.

I had never been before, so I was interested to see what the city had to offer. I thought that going to Dachau was the highlight of the trip. It was a learning experience for the whole group, and it was definitely worth the bus ride.

Seeing the camp for myself really put into perspective how poorly Jewish people were treated. I enjoyed it because it enhanced my knowledge about the Holocaust in Germany. n

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A CONSPIRACY OF ADULTS: Taking Stock of Our Relationship with Technology

BY KELSEY BERRY

E

very year, after graduation and final exams, the Holderness faculty gathers around a large table in the East Wing of Weld. This is the most tangible representation I can think of for the phrase “conspiracy of adults.” While conspiracy connotes some sort of ill-will, we use it with a smile and it is more akin to the phrase “it takes a village.” As a full faculty, over four days, we talk about every single returning student. The advisor for each student leads this conversation, beginning by sharing some highlights from the year and asks for more information from the community of adults. These conversations inform the end-of-year summative advisor letters but also play a key role in helping the faculty to collectively “know” each student.

Increasingly, however, a large part of a student’s life is nearly invisible to faculty. What does it mean to “know” a child who spends six to nine hours each day online in a world we can’t see? We see them, perhaps, on their computers, or on their phones (although, hopefully not in public spaces); we may have a sense that they are Snapchatting; or we can see them playing video games. But what does their world feel like? A hurtful comment can be overheard in a common room, and an adult can interject or advise a senior leader to step in; the number of “likes” a student receives on an Instagram photo, however, is invisible to faculty—who, by the way, are largely digital immigrants.

To that end, we need to do more than talk about our students as a full faculty each year in order to get to

16 | Holderness School Today

“know” them properly. As teenage culture changes and teenagers live significant parts of their lives online, the cultivation of that knowledge requires learning.

We need to be learners in order to best serve them.

The Holderness Symposium (formerly known as Holderness LEARNS), at least in part, facilitates that learning. It is a three-day, on-campus learning experience for faculty (after those four days of faculty meetings where we discuss each student). It is a new tool, empowered by a generous gift for teaching and learning, to help Holderness faculty not just know our kids, but work to best serve our kids. This year’s theme was “Technology and Learning.” The faculty embraced this topic in August 2018 during opening faculty meetings, crafted essential questions during a faculty meeting, discussed it with advisees after a community viewing of the documentary Screenagers , and learned some new tools in our April 2019 in-service. These snippets of learning, however, were not enough to thoroughly digest and respond to such a complicated topic. The three-day, immersive experience in June—which aspires to be like a graduate course we take together as a faculty—allowed us the space as an adult community to really ponder this topic.

The most recent history of Holderness was published in 2004 and it ends by describing a new and innovative “faculty laptop program.” The world has changed drastically since then.

Fifteen years after the first faculty laptop program, almost all students have a device, all teachers have a device, we have

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Holderness faculty engage in important conversations during the Holderness Symposium, a three-day on-campus learning experience.

interactive whiteboards and Apple TVs in our classrooms, a variety of software supports student learning, and dorm logs are kept on Google docs. We have the infrastructure, and we have learned how to use the tools. But should we use them?

How do we decide between screen time and face-to-face time? This year’s Holderness Symposium gave us the space to take stock of our relationship with technology and our students’ relationships with technology, ultimately allowing us to craft a philosophical position that helps us to engage new resources and understand the challenges we face.

Speakers during the conference included Wendy Wolfe, the director of instructional technology at the Breck School in Minneapolis, MN; Jim Taylor, PhD, an internationallyrecognized authority on the psychology of sport and parenting; Jean Twenge, PhD, author of “ iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy—and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood—and What That Means for the Rest of Us”; and Reshan Richards, EdD, the director of studies at New Canaan Country School and chief learning officer at Explain Everything Inc. Reshan facilitated the last two days of the symposium, guiding us through different exercises that attempted to process all of our learning and answer the question: What does this mean for Holderness?

After hearing from these experts, faculty worked in groups to identify what different constituents need—i.e. students need sleep so they can learn effectively; faculty need email protocols and guidelines so they can model and have better tech hygiene. We also ref lected on the different types of technology we have to use, that we choose to use, and that we choose not to use. Then we did that same exercise for our families and then for our students. Later, we broke into eight groups to confront and design solutions to different challenges regarding technology on our campus.

The eight different challenges identified were: ▪ Why is it that sub-varsity sports don’t seem to have the same emphasis as varsity teams?

▪ How do we support and sustain our phone policy?

▪ How can we better model good use as adults?

▪ How can we better structure our technology policy in the evening hours during study hall and free time?

▪ How might we organize our schedule so there are fewer places to check the increasing stream of emails?

▪ Where and how might we support tech-free zones on campus?

▪ We are increasingly seeing kids on their phones in hallways. How might we support a shift away from this trend?

▪ We ask our students to go online to find their assignments. This passive reception doesn’t lead to the development of organizational skills, and it adds screen time. How might we reimagine how we use our learning management system?

Groups then prototyped solutions and offered suggestions on ways this work might be measured. These eight prototypes are now being considered by the administrative team for thoughtful piloting and implementation next year.

We are honing in on a philosophical statement as a school on the role we want technology to play in the formation of our community. We have several different ideas and strategies to solve a variety of technology-related issues on campus. We may not have a tidy solution to answer the questions about technology, community, and teenage mental-health, but we are three days closer, and more importantly, we have a shared language, dialogue and resources to reference as we conspire together. n

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The new 35,000 squarefoot science and math building (artist’s rendering) will be completed in winter 2021.

To date, site work has included construction of a perimeter road and new campus entrance; driving steel pilings to stabilize the Plymouth-facing slope; and digging and pouring the foundation.

CONSTRUCTION UPDATES

BY ANDREW HERRING

C

ampus has played home to a symphony of construction sounds since June. Heavy machinery provides a steady bass note while the staccato of jackhammers keep time with the beep-beep-beep of dump trucks. And, the occasional controlled detonation makes for quite the cymbal crash. While one construction project often makes for a busy summer, we felt that a handful of major construction efforts would keep us reasonably occupied during these slower days. And occupied we were; here are some photos to prove it.

Academic Facility ▪ 35,000 square feet ▪ Wet & dry labs ▪ Flexible classrooms for science and math

Henderson House Replacing a quite outdated dorm on The Hill, the Henderson House is named in honor of Holderness icons Don and Pat Henderson.

▪ Collaborative breakout spaces

▪ New, best-in-class modular construction

▪ Enhanced faculty planning spaces

▪ Housing for eight students

▪ Winter Garden with views of Stinson Mountain and surrounding landscape

▪ Includes kitchenette, laundry facilities, and a spacious common area

▪ Winter 2021 expected completion

Trinity Chapel Built in 1797, Trinity Chapel was the school’s first house of worship and holds the distinction as New Hampshire’s second-oldest church. Now under the care of the Trinity Churchyard Cemetery Association, the historic chapel is undergoing significant preservation efforts.

▪ Raising the building to replace rotted beams ▪ Pouring a new foundation ▪ Improving drainage ▪ Resetting granite blocks ▪ Replacing siding and roofing shingles n

18 | Holderness School Today

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Students enjoy the view of Crawford Notch from Mount Willard on Mountain Day.

OUTDOOR PROGRAMMING

BY MAX PARO ’17

T

he Holderness experience is shaped by interactions with the outdoors where the natural world serves as a tool to enhance and further the learning experience of its students.

From their first moment on campus, Holderness students are thrust into nature. To Director of Outdoor and Climbing Programs Erik Thatcher ’08, a threeday, two-night Orientation Hike with members of the faculty and student leaders is the perfect “opportunity to ease into life at Holderness in an intimate group of new peers. The hope is that the activity and setting wipe away opening-of-school-anxieties, and the intimacy of a small group facilitates open dialogue among students”.

While initially intimidating for many students, O-Hike lays the foundation for countless friendships that last well beyond a student’s time at Holderness.

A short trek up the Holderness trails is the Outdoor Chapel, where the community steps away from the hectic tempo of everyday life and spends a morning breathing fresh air and enjoying the view of the hills west of campus. “The scenery is grand, which invites a particular humility in response,” says School Chaplain Josh Hill. “With heightened awareness, an inspiring view, a break from the schedule grind, and the structured group ref lection, I think we have found a formula for spiritual questions to take root and thrive.” Given its serene yet inspiring setting, the Outdoor Chapel is the natural location to mark moments of transition in Holderness life, such as the Out Back and Senior Stones chapels.

Often confined to the four walls of a classroom, Holderness believes that teaching should not only engage students in the outdoors but also encourage them to be active learners.

Alexandra Disney’s Snow Science class is a prime example of this belief in action: “Many high school students see scientific research as only indoor lab work. Especially for our student body, I think it’s important for them to see the possibilities of a career doing research outside. Rather than teach students about science, I prefer to teach students how to do science. Whether doing avalanche research or going on a ski trip, students practice skills of a professional or outdoor enthusiast. I think they emerge more active learners with honed skill sets that are applicable in many settings.”

Emphasizing the significance of Mountain Day, Eric Thatcher says simply “better people and better community equal a better world.” On Mountain Day, the entire school community engages in a variety of outdoor adventures ranging from hiking Mount Washington to f ly fishing on the Ammonoosucc River. Originally a shoolwide hike, then a fall and winter community service clean up day, Mountain Day took a twodecade hiatus before returning to Holderness last year. Now, it looks to continue as an annual event. Rooted in preserving and celebrating the beauty of the White Mountains, this latest iteration of Mountain Day hopes to instill an appreciation for the land that surrounds our campus.

By embracing these programs, Holderness strives to help students develop a connection with the outdoors that pushes them to explore and enjoy the natural world, follow their curiosity and be at ease in the beauty of nature. n

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Board Chair Nell Reynolds P’18, ’20, ’22 presides over her first meeting as chair in October.

HOLDERNESS WELCOMES NEW LEADERS HOLDERNESS WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP

BY SUZANNE R. DEWEY

G

lobally, the percentage of women in leadership roles is declining. According to Catalyst in 2018, women hold only 24% of senior leadership roles.

In the United States, only 5% of Fortune 500 CEO roles are occupied by women. And yet, a Harvard Business Review study examining gender in leadership discerns that women “are rated higher in fully 12 of the 16 competencies that go into outstanding leadership.” Holderness School looks at leadership differently. This year, we have two incoming female leaders: Board Chair Nell Reynolds P’18, ’20, ’22 and School President Abby Vieira ’20.

Holderness selects leaders by what they do. The entire school votes (students and adults) on every rising tenth and eleventh grader to determine the student leaders for the next year. Voting is a rating system on four leadership values: fairness, initiative, dependability, and empathy.

This voting system has been in place since 1951 and results in self less and remarkable leaders. Often, the leaders chosen by this process are female. Head of School Phil Peck says, “Nearly half of the presidents and vice presidents chosen during my tenure as head of school have been female.” For the 2019–20 academic year, in addition to Abby, Holderness elected Macy Arsenault ’20 (Vice President), Emilija Jakumaite ’20 (Weld Hall Supervisor), and Tim Manning ’20 (Weld Hall Supervisor).

20 | Holderness School Today

Holderness is honored to have our guiding leaders for the year be females.

Each brings something unique to their roles, but they also represent the best of Holderness.

Abby Vieira ’20 will be the first to tell you that she loves to ski.

She has served on several admission panels and often relates that the Board Chair Nell Reynolds reason she chose and School President Abby Holderness was Vieira ’20. the opportunity to excel in both academics and athletics. “One of the things that I love about Holderness is the sense of family and acknowledgment.

It feels good when someone you haven’t had the chance to meet says hello to you, just to be friendly,” Abby says.

“Many schools don’t have the emphasis on friendliness and community…I feel like that’s what sets Holderness apart from other schools, big and small.” Head of School Phil Peck has been impressed with the energy and commitment of these

BY EMILY MAGNUS ’88

“ Senior leaders Abby Vieira, Macy Arsenault, Emilija Jakumaite, and Tim Manning pose for a picture after the Leadership Chapel in May.

leaders, and he chuckles as he proudly shares that Abby has brought forth several proposals already. “We are fortunate to have such leaders and it is our process that chooses so well!”

Nell Reynolds P’18, ’20, ’22 has been on the Holderness Board of Trustees since 2016. She brings a solid parent perspective, but she is also an educator and coach. As Phil Peck states, “Nell has substantially contributed to every conversation on the board-level because of her broad educational experiences.” Nell has also served as a trustee of Fay School. Nell is a graduate from Choate Rosemary Hall and Dartmouth College and has a Masters in English Education from SUNY Cortland. She worked as a high school English teacher and coached various levels of field hockey and lacrosse. She tells us, “Holderness is a school that can bring out the best in students. My three children are very different and yet the school has been able to meet their needs and challenge them in important ways. I feel fortunate to be working with Phil and the board to help steward Holderness in this time of altering demographics and prospective students’ quest for personalized and rewarding experiences while maintaining the cultural posture that is an emblem for Holderness’ core values.”

WE SALUTE OUR NEW LEADERS FOR THE ACADEMIC YEAR AND ARE PLEASED THAT WE ARE BUCKING THE CURRENT DOWNWARD TREND OF WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP! ONWARD!

The magic is in the process, the excellence of the everyday, those moments that are the most authentic expression of Holderness and its beliefs,” wrote one of the candidates for the Director of Strategic Marketing and Communications in his cover letter. His understanding of the position for which he was applying was clear; moments of celebration and accomplishment at Holderness are often the focus, the points at which we acknowledge our pride in our school. But there is so much that has to happen behind the scenes, in the process, in the everyday. There are countless individuals at Holderness who work behind the scenes and labor tirelessly to make the school run efficiently and effectively.

THIS SUMMER HOLDERNESS HIRED TWO NEW CHAMPIONS OF THE EVERYDAY— BOTH A NEW DIRECTOR OF STRATEGIC MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS AND A NEW CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER. In April, Director of Strategic Marketing and Communications Suzanne Dewey chose to return home to Williamstown, MA, where she will be working at the Emma Willard School as the new director of strategic communications. Her capable leadership and efficient running of the Communications Office at Holderness was invaluable, and the school worked quickly this spring to select her replacement so that no traction was lost in the transition.

As the process to fill Suzanne’s shoes commenced, we received over 30 qualified applicants from a number of different industries and backgrounds. Ultimately, after an extensive review and interview process, the search committee chose an inside candidate, Andrew Herring—who also happened to write the introductory quote of this article.

Since 2012, Andy has worked as the assistant to Holderness School’s Head of School Phil Peck. Growing the position and taking on new responsibilities throughout the past seven years, Andy has been a faculty advisor to the student newspaper, The Picador, established a faculty online forum for critical reflection, The Lamp, and acted as a faculty advisor for senior

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NEW LEADERSHIP BEHIND THE SCENES

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thesis students. Andy has also participated in four NEASC accreditation teams for The Putney School, St. George’s School, St. Johnsbury Academy, and Kents Hill School.

These last experiences came in handy in 2017 when Andy cochaired the NEASC accreditation of Holderness with Director of Teaching and Learning Kelsey Berry. Through a comprehensive and Andrew Herring with inclusive accreditation his two daughters. process, Andy worked with his colleagues to hold a mirror up to Holderness and expose both its beauty marks and its blemishes. As a follow up, he has been co-leading the 2019 revision of the school’s strategic plan, putting in writing the school’s plans for the future.

“I’ve had the great opportunity to understand Holderness as it is and plan for the Holderness that can be,” says Andy.

“Holderness has made commendable progress, yet we seek to climb higher, to gain elevation. In this new position as director of strategic marketing and communications, I am looking forward to working toward that vision.”

Andy received unanimous support from the hiring committee as well as from Phil Peck, who said he will miss having Andy as his assistant. “The search committee wanted an appropriate balance of strategic thinking, cultural awareness, independent school experience, communications and marketing experience, and relationship-building skills,” says Phil. “Andy has an excellent blend of all these skills; we are fortunate to have his leadership in the Communications Office.”

A second champion of the everyday has been hired to replace CFO Peter Hendel in the Business Office. It is impossible to truly fill Peter’s shoes, but we are pleased to be hiring a replacement for him who will bring many of Peter’s strengths. Peter, who officially retires in January,

22 | Holderness School Today

spent his final months on the job working with his successor, Walt Schaeff ler, who started in early August.

“I most hope to continue to serve the Holderness community as well as Peter did for so many years,” says Walt. “Community and character have been central values in my life, so to be able to serve an institution that puts them at its core is enormously gratifying. My experiences on campus so far have matched the comments made to me about Holderness by friends that attended years ago—which is to say very, very positive.” Walt comes to Holderness from Choate Rosemary Hall School, where he served as the CFO. Prior to Choate, Walt was the associate CFO and treasurer for Amherst College. He will be joined on campus by his wife Amy and children Ella and Johnny.

“Walt has a wealth of finance and investment knowledge and the hard and soft skills to thrive in the Business Office and at Holderness,” says Phil Peck.

Treasurer of the Holderness Board of Trustees Bob Cunha agrees. “I was initially impressed by Walt’s passion to come to Holderness; he ‘gets’ us and will be a valued member of the community,” Cunha says. “And, in his professional role, he will support Holderness as we face unprecedented opportunities and challenges—everything from tuition affordability to cash f low maintenance to preparation for an economic downturn.

Peter Hendel is a tough act to follow, but if anyone can do it, Walt can.”

As a new school year begins, we are grateful to have both Andy and Walt working behind the scenes. They both bring unique skill sets with them that will serve the community well and help us to accomplish all that we are and aspire to be in the coming years. n

Walt Schaeffler

OUT BACK INSIGHTS We recently asked alumni to share how Out Back has impacted their lives. Here’s what they had to say.

“ “

YEARS OF OUT BACK

Frankly, nothing is as miserable as solo was, I hate being alone. But it has taught me I am able to be alone and get through it. It pushed me to realize my independent potential. The whole experience also pushed my physical and mental determination and whenever I face similar challenges I know I can do it because I did Out Back.

-Madde Burnham ’11

OB forced me to become a stronger person.”

-Erika Ludtke McGoldrick ’88

“

I was never an outdoors hiking type person. Out Back helped me appreciate the outdoors. The older I get the more amazed I am with how the landscape looks and appears. Out Back was my first experience in this realization.”

-Adam Sullivan ’95

“

Out Back made me realize that I could do anything that I set my mind to. I was really nervous before embarking on the journey, but being able to go through it is an experience unlike any other and no one can ever take away from me. I also feel Out Back is something that automatically bonds Holderness alumni. It’s an adventure unlike any other.”

-Elise (Steiner) Hacker ’10

“ “

I realized that I could accomplish something that was daunting, and that I wasn’t sure I could complete.

Every time I face hurdles in my life that seem insurmountable, I tacitly draw upon the strength and revelation that was bestowed upon me during my OB experience.”

-Biff Gentsch ’76

It was miserable, it really was. During solo I even asked my leader to send me home because I was miserable. Instead she just came and sat with me for a while, got my fire going again and gave me an extra chocolate bar. I completed the trip and looking back I now recognize it was one of the best individual learning experiences of my life.”

-Josh Hoar ’07

“

It taught me to be organized, thorough, and prepared.

I put my trust in my classmates as they expected the same from me. Not a day goes by where I do not recall the experience.”

-Matthew Kinney ’12

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FROM UKRAINE TO CHINA, NEW FACULTY BRING THE WORLD TO HOLDERNESS

BY EMILY MAGNUS ’88

W

hat happens when you get a satellite systems engineer, international conflict photographer, and a renowned cheese critic in the same community? An unmatched educational experience from our new faculty! Read more about the six amazing educators we’ve welcomed to campus this year.

It’s no secret that amazing teachers, coaches, and dorm parents are an integral part of the Holderness experience.

With the retirement of four long-serving and tremendously impactful faculty members, Dean of Faculty Kristen Fischer knew she had to find an equally committed and accomplished group of new faculty members to start the year. Her search began in January with visits to recruiting fairs and countless interviews and tours on campus. By early summer, her diligent attention to finding the right candidates for Holderness paid off; we are excited to welcome this new crew of Holderness Bulls to campus.

We’ll start off introducing a veteran to Holderness who taught here in the mid-2000s. Joseph Kennedy returns to teach two sections of AP English Literature and two sections of English 9. Mr. Kennedy comes to Holderness from Northfield Mount Hermon School, where he taught World Literature

24 | Holderness School Today

and American Literature as well as a senior elective: The Future-Utopian and Dystopian Literature. Mr. Kennedy has a bachelor’s degree in English from Duke University and a master’s degree in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard University as well as in Teaching and Curriculum in the field of English from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. In addition to teaching English, Mr. Kennedy will oversee the student community service program, support the ski program, and live in the Bean House annex.

Joseph Sywenkyj, who graduated from the School of Visual Art in New York City with a fine arts degree in photography in 2002, will join the Art Department; he will teach two sections of Photography, two sections of ninth grade Seminart, and one section of Digital Video Recording. A practicing artist, Mr. Sywenkyj is originally from the United States but was most recently living in the Ukraine, where he directed and shot three immersive video documentary films about wounded Ukrainian soldiers in collaboration with Hromadske.UA. The films have been presented at conferences in Warsaw and Riga and at the XV International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival Docudays UA in Kyiv, Ukraine. Currently, Mr. Sywenkyj is working with New Cave Media—a Ukrainian VR studio

Holliday Shuler is traveling all the way from the West Coast to join us at Holderness. Graduating from Northwestern University in June 2016, Ms. Shuler went directly to work for Boeing, where she was a satellite systems engineer.

Ms. Schuler has traveled extensively, including to Peru in 2015 when she and eight other Northwestern students built houses for local residents. Ms. Shuler will use her extensive knowledge of multiple computer programming languages to teach Robotics, Computer Science, and AP Computer Science; she will also coach soccer and live in Upper Pfenninger.

In the Modern and Classical Languages Department, there are three new faces. Jiabao Mei has most recently been living in Quincy, MA, where she was working at Quincy Asian Resources as an outreach specialist. Prior to arriving in Quincy, Ms. Mei lived in Guangzhou, China, where she taught first at ISA International School of Guangzhou and later at the Canton Global Academy.

At Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, where Ms. Mei received a Bachelor of Arts degree in cross-cultural management in 2016, she also played volleyball and was a member of the Writing and Poetry Club. Ms. Mei will teach Mandarin, advise students, and live in the Cottage.

French and history. Her real passion, however, is for cheese.

Through a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, Mrs. King was awarded $30,000 in 2015–16 to independently study cheesemaking in Norway, England, Switzerland, Italy, South Africa, Brazil and Mongolia over the course of 14 months. Her senior theses at Middlebury both focused on the making of cheese in France from 1880–1900. Most recently, Mrs. King has been a contributing author to Culture Cheese Magazine in Fairlee, VT. In addition to teaching French, Mrs. King will coach cross-country running and girls’ JV hockey.

Also teaching French will be Michelle Taffe. Ms. Taffe was a substitute teacher at Holderness last year, and we are excited that she is joining us as an official member of the faculty this year. Ms. Taffe is a graduate of the University of New Hampshire and has a Masters in French from Middlebury College. She has been working in boarding schools since 1990 including the Cate School, Phillips Exeter Academy, and St. Paul’s School. Most recently she was the dean of residential life at Woodside Priory in Portola, CA. Ms. Taffe will teach French 1, French 3, and French Culture.

Ref lecting on this year’s cohort of new faculty, Kristen Fischer shared, “this year’s group of new teachers has an impressive set of experiences, and they are all really excited to share their expertise with our students. They quite literally bring the world to our corner of New Hampshire. I’m thrilled to welcome them and to start working with them.”

We, too, are thrilled to welcome these amazing teachers to Holderness! n

Teaching French 2, French 4, and AP French Language will be Linnea King. Mrs. King graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Middlebury College in 2015, majoring in both

Joseph Kennedy

Joseph Sywenkyj

Holliday Shuler

Jiabao Mei

Linnea King

Michelle Taffe

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and recipient of a Google Journalism 360 Grant—as the producer of an immersive documentary experience about the bloodiest day of the Euromaidan Revolution in 2014.

In addition to his teaching responsibilities, Mr. Sywenkyj will run the Edwards Art Gallery, lead one season of Art in the Afternoon, and live on the Hill in Henderson Dorm.

WHAT THE LORD SAID UNTO CLOUGH

BY RICK CAREY At a time when the Holderness community was fraying, English teacher Bill Clough proposed a radical solution. Fifty years later we call it Out Back.

YEARS OF OUT BACK

I

n late November, 1970, Holderness School English teacher Bill Clough ’57 mailed a letter to current parents about a young program that answered to either of two names then: Outward Bound, or Holderness School Project #2.

spend ten days in as primitive a situation as we can safely put them,” Bill wrote. “The program will resemble very closely the one we used last year, which by all evaluative criteria must be considered a success.”

Bill went on to describe the structure of HSP #2: a day of woodland orientation, a two-day training expedition with students split into groups led either by faculty members or Dartmouth Outward Bound Center instructors; three days (two nights) of solitary camping, i.e., a solo period “presented not as a survival experience, but as an opportunity for the boys to see themselves in an emotionally trying situation for which each individual draws up his own rules and lives by his own standards as free as possible of any outside authority structure”; and finally, a four-day cross-country expedition by groups unaccompanied by adult leaders but hitting safety check-points along their routes.

By either name, Bill explained, this program fell under a larger umbrella—the December Studies Program—that would involve the suspension of regular classes for ten days in favor of various mini-courses for all students: “such as film-making and a trip to Quebec City.”

All students, that is, except the juniors. “On December 5 our group (sixty strong) will be issued equipment, including insulated boots and down sleeping bags, and will travel to a remote woodland area where they will

“The Project at Holderness is not intended as a period during which boys will drop out of school to do ‘he-man things,’” Bill concluded. “Rather it is intended to enhance the total educational effort of the school. Through shared experiences under extremely difficult conditions, teachers and students will come to know each other more intimately than is likely in other situations. By facing and overcoming anxietyproducing conditions both as individuals and as groups, students develop a better appreciation of their own abilities and problems and an appreciation of the needs of others.”

A few days earlier a letter signed by Bill and five other faculty members had been delivered to all the juniors.

1969

YEARS OF OUT BACK

»

Bill Clough ’57 does the Dartmouth Outward Bound Center’s (DOBC) 6-week program.

»

Bill is re-hired to teach English at Holderness School and proposes that the school mount its own 10-day version of Outward Bound.

»

HSP #1 is mounted in the Sandwich Range Wilderness in December with equipment rented from DOBC.

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1970 »

HSP #2 is mounted in the Dartmouth Land Grant in December.

1971 »

Fred Beams is hired to teach math and direct Outward Bound at Holderness.

»

Fred and Bill resolve to keep OB close to school and move it to later in the year.

This year OB happens in January. Later it moves to February, then March.

This concerned ways to prepare for HSP #2, such as reading stories “about man meeting stress or challenge in an elemental form.” Suggested titles: “Look To the Mountain,” LeGrand Cannon’s novel about the hardships experienced by the local area’s first white settlers; and “Endurance,” Alfred Lansing’s account of the agonies suffered by Ernest Shackleton’s marooned Antarctic expedition.

Bill’s co-authors did not include Fred Beams, who would not arrive at Holderness until the next fall.

Fred was then already a veteran of the Peace Corps and an experienced instructor in the international Outward Bound outdoor education program, and he would take over leadership of this new program from Bill. Retired now from decades teaching at Holderness and then the Groton School, Fred shakes his head in amazement to consider all that has ensued since HSP #1 and HSP #2.

“I can’t believe that the program has lasted this long, that it’s become the sort of institution that it has,” Fred said. “And that it evolved into something so terrific.”

By all evaluative criteria today the program—now known as Out Back—is indeed terrific, and has much enhanced “the total educational effort of the school.” In many ways Out Back now is very different from HSP #2, and also in many ways the same.

“Either way,” said Fred, “there is no way you could start something like that today. It wouldn’t be possible.”

1972 » “The Ballad of OB” is published anonymously in The Dial .

1973 » Girls are included for the first time. » Modified jumping skis are issued to the group that includes girls. » Solo is extended to three nights.

Bill Clough, now and then.

GLOWING RED LIGHTS It was miraculous, actually, that there ever was an HSP #2, given how close HSP #1 had come to failure. And even more miraculous that there was ever an HSP #1, given the circumstances that had to improbably fall into place.

In 1968 Bill Clough was teaching at a public high school in New London, NH, when he saw an ad on that school’s faculty bulletin board. The ad’s provenance was unspecified and unknown, but somebody wanted some volunteer teachers, male, to participate in an outdoor education program being considered for a role in public education.

1975

1978

» A grant from the DeWitt Wallace Foundation allows the school to purchase its own equipment.

» Bill Clough dislocates his shoulder but finishes OB with his group.

» Ki Clough becomes the first faculty wife to go as a group leader on OB. » An orange plastic toboggan is issued to each group.

Fall 2019 | 29

So it was that Bill found himself enlisted—or shanghaied— into Outward Bound, the international franchise that got its start teaching survival techniques to British merchant seamen during World War II. For six weeks that summer Bill and some twenty other young men hiked, canoed, and portaged 140 miles from the Dartmouth Land Grant in Clarksville, NH, to Hurricane Island in the Gulf of Maine.

At the time, Outward Bound had two schools in New England (one based at Dartmouth, the other on Hurricane Island), and the organization’s New England executive committee thought a modified form of their program might be a good fit for New Hampshire or Vermont public schools. So they began by luring public school teachers

1979 » Nordic skis are first issued to selected groups. » Rain and widespread flooding endangers all groups and requires their early return. » At the request of Outward Bound, Holderness relinquishes that name for its own program. The new name, suggested

by Spanish teacher Jim Hammond, is Out Back. » Artward Bound is implemented as an activity for students in other classes remaining on campus.

30 | Holderness School Today

into experiencing the program first-hand. But only at an independent school would that plan bear fruit.

When Bill fortuitously began teaching at Holderness the next fall, he rejoined a school that—like colleges and schools across the nation in the late 1960s—was in disarray. The Vietnam War and the social turbulence of the times had opened a chasm of distrust between youth and their parents and teachers. At Holderness, remembers Will Graham ’72, “The chapel was mostly empty, the Job Program lacked energy, and except for skiing, not even the sports programs were working. We were too anti-authoritarian.”

Headmaster Don Hagerman was at wit’s end and ready to try something out of the box. Meanwhile Bill was still

1980

1981

» A report by Robert S. MacArthur of DOBC recommends more extensive training for group leaders and more comprehensive safety procedures.

» Senior Colloquium is implemented for seniors on campus.

» The Solo Surprise is a Big Mac and a serving of French fries.

on what he described as “a terrific high” from his hike to Maine. “And I thought the Outward Bound experience might be replicable at an independent school,” Bill said.

His original idea—as Bill described it in his proposal for HSP #1—was that the program would be open to any who applied, with preference to older students. Before it was put into practice, however, Bill and Don Hagerman resolved instead that this would be available to juniors only, and mandatory.

“It is doubtful that we will see many of the dramatic changes in self-confidence and self-perception that often result from full-length Outward Bound courses,” Bill wrote in that proposal, “but it is reasonable to expect a certain shift in patterns of behavior, particularly as regards

interactions between teachers and students involved in the Project.” Juniors, they believed, would be part of the community long enough to display this shift, and maybe even show some brotherhood before they left. And Don preferred not to run the risk of no one signing up.

Students would be divided into groups of nine led by a combination of faculty members and instructors from the Dartmouth Outward Bound Center. Outward Bound’s usual four-to six-week term would be compressed to ten days split between bushwhacking to the Beebe River in the Sandwich wilderness, soloing in that area, and then group solo expeditions into the White Mountains.

1982

1983

» Each group is issued a gas-fired camp stove for the first time.

» Tom Armstrong ’76 succeeds Fred Beams as program director.

» The Solo Surprise is a frozen brook trout.

1984 » Belle Traver is the first female faculty member to serve as a group leader. » The first OB for parents is mounted in January.

Fall 2019 | 31

Don Henderson had been out in bad weather too, and such was the fate of HSP #1. It rained, and then bitter cold turned wet lumps of goose down in the schoolissued sleeping bags to icy pebbles and jagged stones.

Bill’s most vivid memory was leading his group on a night hike in the rain and looking back to see a string of glowing red lights trailing behind him. “One of the boys had a pack of cigarettes and he had passed them around,” Bill said. “They were all convinced they were about to die and wanted one last smoke.”

And this will happen when? In consultation with the faculty, it was decided that early December would occasion the least disruption of academic and athletic schedules—but HSP #1 remained a significant disruption, and it took all of Bill’s powers of persuasion, and all of Don Hagerman’s muscle, to elicit a measure of consent from the faculty.

History teacher and ski coach Don Henderson, already a faculty icon as well as a combat veteran of the 10th Mountain Division in World War II, was among those who remained opposed. Said Duane Ford ’74, now a math teacher and Job Program director at Holderness, “I heard that Don said something to the effect that he had been to war and we didn’t need to replicate it for our kids.”

Bill himself had a feeling that his new program was about to die—until they returned to school.

“All the boys who had been on campus came out to meet the busses, and it was an exciting time with all the hollering and celebrating,” he said.

“At that point there was enough high energy and good feelings for me to think the program might be viable again next year. All the doubts I had during the trip were washed away by that welcome.”

VALLEY FORGE A year later, still buoyed by that eleventh-hour energy, Bill decided to run HSP #2 in an area farther from campus—in the Dartmouth Land Grant, where he had received his own rough initiation.

And this time the groups—referred to then in lumber camp terms as “gangs”—were untroubled by rain. Instead, and in deep snow, it was cold all the time, with temperatures that ranged from zero to 25 below. “Because the weather was severely cold and the traveling difficult, the gangs returned from their training expedition in misery, and

1985

1988

1990

1997

» Mike Henriques ’76 succeeds Tom Armstrong as program director.

» The orange toboggans are eliminated.

Ski groups subsequently use polks.

» Sophomores join construction projects funded by Habitat for Humanity.

» Chris Little ’81 succeeds Mike Henriques as program director.

» The Solo Surprise is a live lobster.

32 | Holderness School Today

» A letter from the U.S. Forest Service prompts a shift to leave-no-trace camping on OB. » Fred Harbison ’89 returns as an alumnus and leader for the first of many OBs.

there was an immediate morale problem,” Bill wrote in a report later that month. “Our beautiful Balsam Grove base camp resembled Washington’s army at Valley Forge as we regrouped. Many talked about leaving the expedition, felt that the game wasn’t worth playing in this cold weather…”

And this from Mitch Perry ’72: “I was also surprised to see that some people who are what I consider physically weak can function as well as most of the jocks. It is inconceivable to me how I could ever take my family, home, and good fortune for granted again.”

The trip went largely as planned and without injury beyond some minor instances of frostbite. Yet portions of Bill’s subsequent report were almost despairing. “As group morale broke down under it, both the students and faculty leaders were forced to make individual decisions that were much more demanding than the easy generalizations made in the comfort of the school surroundings,” Bill wrote. “‘Why should I suffer this way?’ and ‘What is Outward Bound trying to prove anyway?’ were questions that pushed us towards honest answers when asked in the context of putting on frozen boots at 25 below.”

Another sort of endorsement would appear in the 1972 Dial: the good-humored satire of “The Ballad of OB,” which begins: “One day the Lord said unto Clough/You shall get each junior off his duff…”

So HSP #1 had proven arduous, and HSP #2 a good deal more so. In spite of that—and perhaps because of that—the program became in 1971 no longer an experiment referred to vaguely as “the Project.” Instead it became a cornerstone of the curriculum, referenced from that point simply as Outward Bound.

Once more Bill had returned to campus feeling that his experiment had failed. But when the students’ written evaluations were collected, and then their parents’, once more he was surprised.

On the whole, both sets were astonishingly positive. “Most were marked by a strong sense of personal achievement,” Bill found.

For example: “By inf licting physical stresses I was able to prove to myself that I was alive, and I knew that if I wasn’t careful I could seriously damage or end that life,” wrote an anonymous student. “To me, finding that I am alive, like Doug Spaulding in ‘Dandelion Wine,’ is just too much for words. It’s a great feeling, and I found that feeling on HSP, though there were times I felt like bagging the whole deal.”

2000

2002

2007

» Chris Little composes “The OB Song” and first performs it at a faculty OB training session.

» History teacher Wilson Everhart introduces the “Wilson lid” as a portable base for outdoor fires.

» John Teaford succeeds Chris Little as program director. » Project Outreach is implemented as an off-campus activity for freshmen. Sophomores remain on campus for Artward Bound. » Vapor-barrier boots and collapsible tents become standard-issue equipment. » All group leaders become either WFA- or WFR-certified.

Fall 2019 | 33

RICH IN DEED AND EXPERIENCE The next year Fred Beams arrived. By then Bill Clough had been named Director of Studies by Don Hagerman, and Bill was happy to yield stewardship of Outward Bound to someone whose zeal for the program equaled his own and whose expertise was even greater. Bill remained very much involved. Together he and Fred resolved to never again venture so far from campus and to shift the timing of the program to another window in the sports calendar: early March, when the days were longer.

Fred would lead the program through 1983. During his tenure girls would be integrated seamlessly into the program, and

a number of faculty wives—most frequently Bill Clough’s wife Ki—would go out into the woods. The program would quietly become optional, given that nearly all students eagerly chose to go, including the girls. It would declare its independence from the Dartmouth Outward Bound Center in 1971 by using school faculty members as leaders for all groups, and in 1980 Spanish teacher/outdoorsman Jim Hammond would win the school’s contest for a new and proprietary name for the program: Out Back.

Meanwhile the “December Studies Program” described

by Bill Clough in 1971—which was largely busy-work for the rest of the school while the juniors were away—began to evolve into the rich array of Special Programs, all experiential in nature, that now accompany Out Back: Project Outreach, Artward Bound, and Senior Thesis.

Only once more would hikers encounter such “anxiety-producing conditions” as to put the program itself at risk. In 1979, days of torrential rain caused streams to overf low. A number of students suffered hypothermia, and groups were brought in early.

There were no serious injuries, but those near misses provoked a sharp acceleration of what had already been put in motion during the 1970s: better and safer equipment, codified emergency procedures, and improved training for faculty leaders. Changes around the composition of groups were made, too. The first female students joined Out Back in 1973. Belle Traver became the first female group leader in 1984. In the intervening years, the number of female group leaders has increased and these women have made an indelible mark on the success of the program.

2009

2011

» Parent and former Green Beret Jim Steiner volunteers for his first of many OBs. Jim contributes snow machines and sleds to this and subsequent events.

» A Kifaru tipi with stove is raised at base camp by Jim Steiner.

34 | Holderness School Today

2013 » Lance Galvin ’90 succeeds John Teaford as program director. » Lance and Fred Harbison collaborate on a faculty handbook of OB protocols and procedures.

2014 » An Arctic Oven tent with stove is raised at base camp.

And over its five decades, Out Back would more than deliver on Bill Clough’s promise that students would “develop a better appreciation of their own abilities and problems and an appreciation of the needs of others.” It would accomplish as well what Bill thought impossible in just ten days: “dramatic changes in self-confidence and self-perception.”

mean something to you. Sure, as the ads say, we learned selfreliance and how few material things a human needs to exist.

But canning that corn, as Steinbeck said, ‘They were long full days in the sun; days rich in deed and experience.’” n

Such empathy and changes would heal that broken sense of community in the late ’60s, and thereafter unite students, faculty, staff, and parents in a shared sense of reverence for an educational experience that was once seen as a desperate measure.

And for all who go out into the woods, there would be radiant memories and twice-told tales.

In fact, fifty generations of Out Backers still tell stories that hardly differ from that of Ged Smith ’70, who went out on HSP #1 with what seems to have been just a dash of Holden Caufieldstyle cynicism, but who then wrote about his conversion experience for The Holderness Bull: “Final Expedition was a four-day bushwhack either north or south from the Tripoli Road… Some people came through like you never thought they could, and others that you expected more out of failed.

People fell in the water, got lost, and walked. We got angry, upset, scared, tired, and disgusted. We also saw many beautiful scenes, crossed streams we didn’t think we could cross, and climbed up and over mountains we thought insurmountable. We also got to know people on Final. We saw people in conf lict with nature and other people, and they weren’t afraid to say things they wouldn’t say in the closed atmosphere of Holderness School. People began to really

FROM THE AUTHOR I owe a debt of gratitude to all who pitched in with interviews for this history, and to Suzanne Dewey and Andy Herring in the Holderness School Communications Office, and especially to archivist Joanne Wernig, who—under f lood conditions—was perfect in ferreting out every original document we have.

2015

2018

» Randy Houseman succeeds Lance Galvin as program director.

» Erik Thatcher ’08 serves as interim director during Randy’s sabbatical year.

2019 » Randy Houseman resumes his duties as program director.

Fall 2019 | 35

ATHLETICS

HOLDERNESS ATHLETES AT NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS

BY MAX PARO ’17

W

hile most Holderness students were competing on the freshly-thawed playing fields this past April, some had unfinished business in their winter sports and hit the rink and slopes one last time to compete for national championships.

Six members of the girls’ varsity hockey team competed at the 2019 Chipotle USA Hockey Nationals. Olivia Branch ’20, Drea Chin ’19, Sydney Fascetta ’19, Darby Palisi ’19, and Morgan Sisson ’19 played for the Concord Capitals while Katrina Grzeszczuk ’20 represented the St. Lawrence Steel.

The Concord Capitals made it all the way to the championship game but ultimately fell to the Boston Jr. Eagles 6–1.

Katrina was the second leading goal scorer for the Steel.

The Eastern Alpine Team was represented by Claudia Cantin ’19, Hayden Dahl ’19, and Andrea Reynolds ’20 at the US Senior and Junior National Championships, where they competed against top racers from around the country, including some members of the US Ski Team.

At Copper Mountain in Colorado, Jamie Bayha ’19, Jared Carr ’20, Bram Hikmate ’22, Charlie Morris ’21, Jack Spence ’19, and Ian Switzer ’21 competed in the 2019 USASA National Championships as members of the Eastern Freeski Team. Three Holderness students finished in the top ten of the Freeski Junior Men competition. Ian Switzer claimed a spot on the podium, finishing third, and Jamie Bayha and Jared Carr finished sixth and eighth respectively.

GIRLS HOCKEY: Morgan Sisson: “Our team had an unforgettable experience at the

36 | Holderness School Today

National Tournament this year. After a disappointing loss in a shootout to open the tournament, I don’t think any of us imagined ourselves making it all the way to the championship game. From there on out, we played every game with heart and determination. Our tenacity and hard work earned us a position to play for #1 in the nation. Although we came up short to a tough Boston Jr. Eagles team, #2 in the nation is a great feat. Our run in Buffalo was an experience we will never forget.”

EASTERN ALPINE: Hayden Dahl: “Nationals was a really cool experience. To ski against kids who have raced in the World Cup was really awesome, especially at Waterville, which is a place where I have been racing since I was a kid. It was also great to ski the Super G race at Mittersill, where we have skied all year and where I have been skiing since I was four years old.”

Andrea Reynolds: “I had an awesome experience at Nationals. It was a unique opportunity to not only race against but also get to know the best ski racers in the world—some of whom I have only seen on a TV screen before. To be able to have the race out here in New Hampshire made it that much sweeter.”

EASTERN FREESKI: Charlie Morris: The whole trip was a blast, even though I fell in my first run, and it opened my mind to the aspects of a great team environment and how our team really embodies all the characteristics of a friendly yet competitive team.” n

ATHLETICS

NEXT STEPS FOR HOLDERNESS ATHLETES

BY MAX PARO ’17

A

fter four years of dedication, growth, and competitive spirit, the Class of 2019 looks to the future. For some classmates, this means pursuing their athletic dreams at the next level. Three members of the class of 2019—Connor Androlewicz ’19, Beckham Bayreuther ’19 and KC Carter ’19—committed to play Division I athletics.

sophomore year, the team won back-to-back NEPSAC Class D championships, with KC claiming the MVP trophy both times.

Beckham Bayreuther’s decision to play lacrosse at Lafayette College was an easy one. Beyond the school’s small community that reminded him of Holderness, a conversation with Head Coach Patrick Myers convinced Beckham Lafayette was the right choice. “[Coach Myers] talked a ton about building the program,” Beckham says. “I loved the idea of being a part of that. He believed in me a ton.”

It wasn’t until the final horn of the NEPSAC Boys’ Hockey Small School Championship that Connor Androlewicz knew the University of Maine might be an option.

“After the finals, they came up to me and said, ‘Hey, we’re interested. We want to get you up for a tour.’ As soon as I got on campus, I felt really welcomed; that was the biggest thing. Their staff is really invested in their players and want to get the best out of them.”

Beckham’s goal for his final season was to have fun. The Bulls met this objective, beginning the season with a victory over Exeter, a feat unseen since 2001. The team rode that momentum to a Lakes Region Semi-Final appearance and saw five players (including Beckham) named All-Northern New England All-Stars.

Connor will spend this coming year playing junior hockey for the North American Hockey League’s Maine Nordiques.

Joining him will be Holderness teammates Isaiah Fox ’19 and Kevin Pitts ’19, also taking gap years before college.

When it came time to make a decision about her future, KC Carter chose Cornell University because, according to KC, “the coaches and the team made [her] feel at home.”

Cornell’s academic reputation also factored into her decision.

“The education you get there is like no other,” KC says.

KC played a major role in the turnaround of the girls’ varsity basketball program. “After my freshman year we lost basically the whole starting lineup, and it was like, alright, it’s time to rebuild.” And rebuild they did. Following a 2–17 season her

“What made this past year’s team special is that we had a lot of chemistry. It made it easy. We all played with heart throughout the whole season, and it paid off.”

After some early-season struggles, the boys’ varsity hockey team returned from Parents Weekend to beat Tilton and tie KUA. The Bulls truly found their stride in the second half of the season. “That turned our season around,” Connor says. “We came together as a team and played more fiveman unit hockey. Everyone played for each other.”

We wish Beckham, KC, and Connor the best of luck as they prepare for their upcoming seasons and are excited to see what the future holds. n

Fall 2019 | 37

CATCHING UP With Doug Kendall

BY EMILY MAGNUS ’88

As Holderness celebrates 50 years of Out Back adventures, there’s only one faculty member who has contributed to its success for four of those decades. Doug Kendall isn’t just a legendary teacher. He’s an Out Back legend.

The author (pictured far left) with Doug Kendall (sitting, front right) and her 1987 Out Back crew.

YEARS OF OUT BACK

MADE FOR OUT BACK

L

ike most graduates of Holderness, I can claim that I survived Out Back. By the winter of 1987, the program was well established, the gear was standardized, and the trips, while not easy, at least felt well designed and well supplied. We bagged countless peaks, learned how to navigate by compass, experienced several nights below zero, and completed Solo in Sandwich Notch near Kiah Pond.

My leader was Latin teacher Doug Kendall. He would wake us early in the morning by bellowing the lyrics to a Monty Python song or some other inappropriate ballad, his voice echoing through the trees and assaulting our eardrums no matter how deeply we had burrowed into our sleeping bags. With moans mixed with laughter, we crawled out from under our tarps and ate oatmeal around the fire he had started while we slept. His knowledge of the woods was deep, and I remember being in awe of his experience and embracing his quirky, light-hearted approach.

Surviving in the wilderness was serious business, but it didn’t mean that you couldn’t have fun at the same time.

While my trip with him took place during the early years of his tenure at Holderness, Doug now holds the distinction of participating in the most Out Back experiences. Since 1984, he has only missed two years of Out Back—once when he was on a chair year and once when he was waiting for his first child to be born.

“You could say I was made for OB,” says Doug. Truth.

Doug’s experience in the wilderness began long before Holderness. He grew up in Connecticut but hiked in the White Mountains as a kid and went to summer camp in Vermont. He began college as a music major at Boston University but finished as a Latin major at the University of Montana. For many summers he worked for Challenge Wilderness Camp in Vermont as a counselor, leading multi-day canoe trips throughout New England.

When Doug graduated from college, jobs were still often filled by word of mouth, and in the summer of 1983, Doug received a call from a friend who knew someone who knew someone who was looking for a Latin teacher. In August Doug interviewed at Holderness School, and the rest is history. He has remained at Holderness for 36 years, raising four children with his wife Diane Roberts. In addition to teaching all levels of Latin and leading Out Back, Doug has been an advisor

40 | Holderness School Today

for the yearbook, coached JV2 soccer, led and organized countless Orientation Hikes, accompanied students on his cello in school concerts and chapels, and led numerous trail crews. He has also had the unique privilege of introducing three decades of students to ski jumping. A quiet presence on campus, Doug’s inf luence on the school’s programming has resulted from hard work and conscientious planning behind the scenes. He has been both a steady voice of reason and a counterpoint of humor when either one was needed.

Doug’s first year on Out Back was under the leadership of Fred Beams, who was finishing up his last year.

Doug remembers back then that faculty carried 60–80-pound packs; cast iron skillets, whole frozen chickens, and coal shovels were standard issue. They carried all their food and equipment for the entire trip—groups now resupply at Basecamp after Solo—and all cooking was done over a campfire. Tarps overhead and pine boughs beneath were used for sleeping.

“IT WAS DEFINITELY OLD SCHOOL, THERE WAS A LOT MORE BRAVADO AND PUSHING STUDENTS TO THE LIMITS. HIKING AT NIGHT WAS COMMON, AND GROUPS COMPETED FOR MOST MILES AND MOST PEAKS BAGGED.” One of the strengths of the Out Back program was, and remains, the leadership of the faculty, especially when the leadership comes from faculty like Doug. While the general goals and structure of the program are the same, the faculty can shape their group’s experiences and determine the challenges they face. Doug’s leadership on Out Back trips has evolved with the changes in technology, but many things remain the same. Yes, stoves have been a helpful addition, and the tents and satellite phones have increased the safety of the program significantly, but for him many of the skills he wants students to learn haven’t changed. Learning to build a fire is a life-long skill he still makes sure every student can accomplish—think zombie apocalypse when all your

Whether on Out Back or in the classroom, Doug Kendall has left his mark on Holderness.

supplies are gone and you are alone in the wilderness. Fire also provides a gathering spot and a place to bond as a group.

“Among my favorite memories,” says Doug, “is sitting around a blazing fire on a bitterly cold night on the shore of a frozen mountain pond listening to two students, Sam Bass ’94 and Jamie Gibbs ’95, reciting from memory the ‘The Cremation of Sam McGee,’ an epic poem about just such a night set somewhere ‘on the marge of Lake Lebarge.’ Neither could remember every word, but trading verses back and forth between the two of them, they put the whole thing together. What were the chances of such an out-of-the-blue performance?”

Doug also still enjoys bushwhacking with students, teaching them to rely on a compass and a map. Then there’s the group solo experience for which he leaves time during the last three days of the program; he and his co-leaders trail behind the group by 300 yards and leave all the decisionmaking up to the group. It is a chance for students to test their survival skills, but it is also an opportunity to learn first-hand how to work together toward a common goal when the stakes are higher and quitting isn’t really an option.

During one group solo Doug remembers from the mid1980s, the students had just summited Mount Tecumseh in Waterville and were headed back down to set up camp; it was getting dark and the group chose the wrong path.

Only one student, Chris Cripps ’87, realized the mistake and stood alone in his decision to turn around and return to the summit. By then Doug had joined the group but chose to let the scene play out without interference. After much debate and a long standoff, Chris convinced the rest of the students to retrace their steps. “That was one of the best experiences for the kids,” he recalls, “because I stif led my desire to interfere and shape the experience.”

And that perhaps is the one change to the Out Back program that Doug worries about. The more safety conscious and

risk averse the world becomes, the less things are left in the hands of novices to figure out. Failure, discomfort, trial and error, and improvising, while still a part of Out Back, don’t occur as often, and students sometimes come to depend on the adult leaders to tell them what to do.

“It’s hard to argue against safety,” says Doug, “but it does change the experience and what students get out of it.”

Whatever the changes and concerns for the future are, however, the school still sees the benefits of Out Back when students return to campus. “Solo and the group experience still get them outside their comfort zone,” says Doug, “and their actions and the decisions they make still follow them. The timing of the leadership voting shortly after spring break sees to that. Some kids rise from obscurity and become really strong leaders their senior year because of Out Back.” Preparing for the zombie apocalypse and learning to lead are both skills that will last a lifetime.

A year ago, I climbed Mount Whiteface with my father.

It was the first time I had visited the summit since the winter of 1987 with my Out Back group. The sense of accomplishment and joy were still with me 30 years later; thanks to Doug Kendall, my love of wilderness trails and remote mountain peaks are strong and have led to a lifetime of outdoor adventures.

For many, including myself, Out Back and Doug Kendall are synonymous; memories of an Out Back campfire blazing at the center of a well-engineered snowpit and surrounded

by Holderness students hunched over bowls of oatmeal and sausages always include Doug Kendall weaving tall tales and passing on his wilderness knowledge. His 36th Out Back will most likely be his last, as Doug is planning to retire from Holderness in May of 2020, but his legacy will live on—both in the Monty Python lyrics that still echo in the memories of many Holderness students as well as in the joy of getting lost, and found, in the wilderness. n

Fall 2019 | 41

EMPLOYEE /TRUSTEE UPDATES

SEVEN DEPARTING BOARD MEMBERS FILL OUR BUCKET

BY ANDREW HERRING

M

y daughter and I will often read a bedtime story called Have You Filled a Bucket Today? It’s a simple story—certainly simple enough for my beginning reader—that comes with a powerful message: we start each day with an empty bucket, and the good work we do and how we treat one another fills our buckets. If we were to somehow find the Holderness School Board of Trustees on the pages of this story, we’d most definitely see a bucket filled to the brim.

Each and every trustee fully commits to serving our school.

And when a board member fulfills their bylaw-mandated obligations and must retire, we feel that loss; however, their departure is made all the easier because they have helped to fill our bucket. Still, this past year, we said goodbye to many such bucket fillers: Neale Attenborough P’17, Susie Hayes P’15, ’18, Peter Kimball ’72, Sue MacGrath P’18, Tom Phillips ’75 P’11, ’14, Bob Hall P’13, ’16, and Gary Spiess P’87, ’89, ’94 Behind Neale Attenborough’s broad smile is a remarkably caring and savvy businessman. Ref lecting on Neale’s tenure, Board Chair Nell Reynolds said he “added charm, wit, energy, and humor to every meeting as he accurately identified the crux of board conversations and debates and often provided the simple answer of how to move forward.”

In addition to contributing to important discussions, Neale also helped better position the school in a competitive market. “Serving on the Holderness Board of Trustees has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career,” Neale said. “I am a true believer in the wonderful place that is Holderness and am grateful to have been able to serve.”

According to Head of School Phil Peck, “Susie Hayes was able to gracefully wear both her parent ‘hat’ and board ‘hat’ during her tenure. The questions she asked, the keen insights she shared, and her self-effacing sense of humor made meetings more enjoyable and productive.” This mother of two Holderness alumni is quite well-versed in nonprofit management and was able to offer her expertise on everything from student life initiatives to board governance. “I value the opportunity,” Susie shared, “to give back, even a little, to a school that has given so much to my children. We feel lucky to have found a place that nurtures both the character

42 | Holderness School Today

and intellect of students during these formative years. It was my honor to be part of the Holderness community.”

Peter Kimball offered a wealth of expertise when it came to wealth. As the Executive Director of Planned Giving at Harvard and having returned to the board for a second stint, Peter’s understanding of the philanthropic landscape proved invaluable. Phil Peck commented that Peter’s behindthe-scenes servant leadership was a model of living our motto pro deo et genere humano. “Serving on the Board of Trustees for 12 years has only deepened my respect for all that Holderness represents,” Peter said, ref lecting on his time on the board. “The school’s leadership and its dedicated faculty do so much more than promote the school’s core values of character, community, and curiosity—they live it in every dimension of school life. Helping to promote the school’s way of life, its mission and values—while proactively charting a course through an ever-changing future—has been a thoroughly rewarding experience.”

Sue MacGrath asks good, hard questions. Both Phil Peck and Nell Reynolds applauded Sue for helping us more thoughtfully consider issues around health and wellness and supporting the student experience. When reviewing her time on the board, Sue shared, “Serving as a trustee on the Holderness Board was a great experience. Not only is the board extremely talented and professional, it is also very thoughtful in assessing how best to move the school forward in these rapidly changing times while remaining true to the school’s mission, being respectful of its traditions, and keeping the best interests of students at the very core of everything it undertakes. I have served on many boards over the course of the last 30 years and cannot think of one I more enjoyed being a part of.”

Tom Phillips’ love for Holderness is palpable. Get him talking about what the school stands for and you’ll reveal an energy that could power half the state. All of the construction, the completion of the Elevating Academics Campaign, and a growing donor base are evidence of Tom’s hard work and success as Chair of the Advancement Committee. According to Nell Reynolds, “Tom displayed an unending passion for

Much of the success of the board and the school over the past few years can be attributed to outgoing Board Chair Bob Hall.

“THE ONLY WAY I CAN SUM UP MY EXPERIENCE ON THE HOLDERNESS BOARD IS BY SAYING YOU RECEIVE SO MUCH MORE OUT OF THE CAMARADERIE, THE THOUGHTFUL PERSPECTIVES AND THE UNIFIED DEDICATION THAN ANY WORK ONE DOES ON BEHALF OF THE SCHOOL.” With a commanding presence and thunderous voice, graceful might not be the first word you use to describe Bob, but as Nell Reynolds shared, “Bob led the board with grace, earnest effort, and a genuine love of and belief in Holderness.” As part of the campaign efforts, Phil Peck and Bob were never too far apart. “Bob epitomized a humble confidence in every task he undertook as our Board Chair,” Phil said. ”Bob was able to encourage both collaboration and task completion. He facilitated new ways of communication and truly partnered with me to lead the school.”

If Holderness were to have a sage grandfather, it would most definitely be Gary Spiess. Having served on the board for nearly 20 years in various capacities—including board chair—Gary knows a thing or two about Holderness. He is wise, articulate, and pragmatic yet optimistic. Recounting his time with Gary, Phil Peck said, “I feel blessed to have had Gary as my first board chair when I became head of school. And, Holderness was equally blessed to have Gary come back on the board to be a calming and wise resource for us. When Gary spoke, we all listened; and we will continue to benefit from his wise counsel.” Gary’s impact on the Board of Trustees and the school is beyond measure; he’s seen the school through leadership transitions, economic disasters, and a constant march toward growth. “I served on the board for about 20 years off and on,” Gary said.

“Over time, I absorbed the core Holderness values of service, caring about others, and athletic competition, as if I had been a student. I always left a Holderness Board meeting feeling better than when I came. I’ve received a great deal more from Holderness than I could have possibly contributed.”

The story of Have You Filled a Bucket Today? ends with the notion that your bucket will fill more quickly if you help others fill theirs. Holderness School has had the great fortune of being led by some incredibly caring and thoughtful people, who feel that they have received just as much, if not more, than they’ve given. It’s no surprise, then, that our buckets are overf lowing. n

DON HENDERSON INDUCTED INTO THE US SKI AND SNOWBOARD HALL OF FAME Over 250 industry advocates voted to determine the US Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame Class of 2018. The pool included over 70 nominees.

Don Henderson, a longtime Holderness history teacher and alpine ski coach, was among the nominees and was selected for the Class of 2018. A ceremony inducting the new members was held in March.

The following description appears on the US Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame website: “Don Henderson was a pioneer in the field of ski racing, a veteran of WW II and the Tenth Mountain Division, a collegiate star at Middlebury in the late forties, the head coach for the US Ski Team on several occasions, and an outstanding teacher at Holderness School for four decades. He put great effort into teaching students about world history, ski racing, and life. His ethics were impeccable, his students all respected him, and he will be remembered for many years to come.”

Don also nurtured the careers of numerous US Ski Team members in Nordic and alpine, including Dick Taylor, Gordie Eaton, Ned Gillette and Tyler and Terry Palmer. He passed away at the age of 94 in May of 2018. n

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the school and for his role in achieving any and all goals that the board put forth. He is incredibly loyal and dedicated to all things Holderness.”

For Tom, his work was about empowering the administration. “I wasn’t an educator; hence I focused on the administrative side of the school,” Tom said. “From my lens, the school has retained a good amount of pride and respect for its roots. The world has changed and the school with it. It remains a place that allows young people to develop.”

EMPLOYEE /TRUSTEE UPDATES

CHAIR YEAR REFLECTIONS: Randy Houseman’s Year of Learning

BY EMILY MAGNUS ’88

Q

uick question: Where does fat go when you lose weight? This is a question science teacher Randy Houseman calls a “misconception probe.”

It allows him to do formative assessments throughout his classes, making sure students are understanding material as they are learning it rather than waiting until the end of a unit or even the end of a course.

Methods of formative assessment were one of several topics on which Randy focused during his Chair Year.

The Henderson Brewer van Otterloo Chair Year Program is a yearlong endowed program that provides faculty with the opportunity to pursue intellectual and academic interests and is often used to pursue advanced degrees. For Randy, this meant pursuing a Master’s of Science in science education from Montana State University. While some of his courses took place on the school’s campus in Bozeman, MT, other courses allowed him to travel and spend time with his family.

throughout the learning process rather than using just summative assessments that occur at the end of a course or unit. But, Randy explains, during his Chair Year he wanted to intentionally put more effort into closing the loop: “For me, I’m realizing how important it is to go back to students after a formative assessment and show them what I’m seeing and ask them how I can help them learn better.”

In order to test out the different kinds of formative assessments that he was learning about in his classes at Montana State, Randy enlisted the help of his colleagues on campus and asked them to implement some of the strategies. Take, for example, an assessment method he asked physics teacher Mike Carrigan to use with his honors students. Using Documented Problem Solving, students were asked not just to solve a problem mathematically but to also explain each step in the process with narration.

“There were two things I wanted to accomplish last year,” says Randy. “First I wanted to take the time to develop curriculum for several new classes for the Science Department. Second, I wanted to learn more about formative assessments and how the information I collect from them can make me a better teacher.”

Misconception probes are another form of formative assessment in which a teacher asks a question that tests students’ ability to apply the knowledge they have just learned. Where does fat go when you lose weight is one such question. In a CNN study, 98% of health professionals could not explain how weight loss works, so it’s a great question to ask biology students.

Formative assessment is actually nothing new to Randy and the Science Department. He and his colleagues have always used them to evaluate student understanding

“One of the things that I’ve relearned this year is what it feels like to be a student,” says Randy. “I have to admit that I’ve seen in myself the things that I like least in my

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students; I guess none of us are as removed from our 14-year-old selves as we would like to think. Being a student has given me more empathy for my students. Formative assessments will give me a way to go back to students when they are struggling and figure out how I can help them learn and understand what I am trying to teach.”

Randy’s capstone for his degree is also related to helping students. He hopes to develop a curriculum that combats first-year science students’ crippling cries of “I don’t get it.”

“In the sciences, no matter the course or level, there are certain things you have to do to solve a problem,” Randy says. “If I can get students to recognize those steps early on and teach them a pathway to follow, they’ll have a start, somewhere to go, even when they don’t understand the entire problem.”

In addition to his theoretical classes, Randy also enrolled in several classes that he plans to adapt into a new science course for Holderness. While still in the development stage, Randy hopes to teach a class on nutrition in the fall of 2020. As part of the course he plans to use case studies to debunk the myths students fall prey to on social media and look at biochemistry and metabolism and how they relate to the nutrition of athletes.

Other courses in which he enrolled inspired him to think about how Out Back might be linked to the classroom.

Two of his final courses at Montana State focused on Yellowstone National Park—one on biodiversity and one on the ecosystems within the park. While the courses can definitely inform the biology curriculum, they also helped Randy see the possibility of teaching kids while on Out Back. “If faculty are willing to learn a little bit of ecology themselves,” says Randy, “there are a lot of things we can teach kids that would get them to pick their heads up and get them thinking about why things are the way they are in nature. On Out Back we can ask them about the sounds they are hearing. What are they seeing? Why do certain things grow only on the north-facing slopes of the mountains?”

A last indirect benefit of the Chair Year program is the time faculty often get to spend with family. Randy spent time in Texas with his sister and two months in Arizona with his family. In the fall Randy and his wife Meredith also relocated to Lake Placid, NY, a short drive from St. Lawrence University, where both of his children attend college. From there he was able to cheer on the sidelines of all the Saint’s soccer and field hockey games in which his

Randy Houseman, in the classroom.

son and daughter played. “I was able to go to more games last year than I have in the last seven years combined,” Randy says. “It was a really special time for my family.”

So what does happen to fat when you lose weight? Many assume that it is converted into energy, but that would defy the laws of conservation of matter (matter is neither created nor destroyed). The correct answer is that it is released from the body as water and carbon dioxide. CNN backs up Randy’s misconception probe with this answer: “You exhale the carbon dioxide and the water mixes into your circulation until it’s lost as urine or sweat. If you lose 10 pounds of fat, precisely 8.4 pounds comes out through your lungs and the remaining 1.6 pounds turns into water.

In other words, nearly all the weight we lose is exhaled.”

It’s an answer that Randy and his colleagues hope students will get the first time around. If not, they have the tools to assess their teaching methods and adjust the way they are approaching a topic. It’s a reciprocal type of teaching in which students are part of the process and not just the receivers of information, regardless of its accuracy and application. For Randy, that’s a much more exciting and effective way to teach.

The Henderson Brewer van Otterloo Chair Year is indeed an opportunity for faculty to learn, ref lect, and develop teaching skills. But ultimately it is so much more. It is a chance to reconnect with family, pursue passions, and travel to unexpected places. Furthermore, the skills, the lessons learned, the new ways of seeing affect not just the individuals lucky enough to take a Chair Year but often the community as well, as the knowledge and skills are shared. n

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RECOMMENDED BOOKLIST If this edition of Holderness School Today has whetted your appetite for adventure, it may be time to crack a book on our Out Back reading list. Hopefully these titles will spur you to plan your next outdoor trip—or inspire your next armchair adventure.

YEARS OF OUT BACK

Vantage Point: 50 Years of the Best Climbing Stories Ever Told Compiled by the Editors of Climbing Magazine (2018) NOLS Soft Paths: Enjoying the Wilderness Without Harming It by David Cole (2011) The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel (2018) Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors by Carolyn Finney (2014) Nature, Love, Medicine: Essays on Wildness and Wellness by Thomas Lowe Fleischner (2017) Where You’ll Find Me: Risk, Decisions, and the Last Climb of Kate Matrosova by Ty Gagne (2017) NOLS Wilderness Wisdom by John Gookin (2012) The Songs of Trees: Stories from Nature’s Great Connectors by David George Haskell (2018) Not Without Peril: 150 Years Of Misadventure On The Presidential Range Of New Hampshire by Nicholas Howe (2012) Deer Hunting in Paris: A Memoir of God, Guns, and Game Meat by Paula Young Lee (2013) The Nature Principle: Human Restoration and the End of Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv (2011) The Adventures of Mother Nature: Essays and Etiquette from an Outdoor Woman by Traci Saor (2018) The 4000-Footers of the White Mountains by Steven D. Smith (2008) Critical Hours: Search and Rescue in the White Mountains by Sandy Stott (2018) More Readings From One Man’s Wilderness: The Journals of Richard L. Proenneke, 1974–1980 Published by US Department of the Interior (2018) Wilderness Ethics: Preserving the Spirit of Wildness by Guy Waterman and Laura Waterman (2014) The Nature Fix by Florence Williams (2017) No Limits But the Sky: The Best Mountaineering Stories From Appalachia Journal by Christine Woodside (2014)

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Faculty leaders prepare for Out Back with at least 16 hours of Wilderness First Aid (WFA) training.

PREPARING FOR THE RIGORS OF OUT BACK 48 | Holderness School Today

BY EMILY MAGNUS ’88

W

hen Head of School Phil Peck expresses gratitude to the faculty and staff for all the hard work they do throughout the school year, he often cites Out Back as one of the many programs they take on without complaint; at the end of a long winter term, with grades and comments and championship games barely completed, they leave their families and the comforts of home for ten days in the wilderness.

And it’s true that Out Back in and of itself is impressive, especially when you consider that many faculty have led Out Back groups for decades. But what’s more impressive is the time faculty spend preparing. Indeed, for many leading Out Back is more of a way of life than it is an isolated ten-day trip.

Sit with faculty at lunch or listen in on their conversations in the faculty mailroom and it’s not unusual to hear them talk about their adventures in the wilderness. Climbing Welch and Dickey or any number of local peaks after classes in the fall is common. During Head’s Holidays, faculty may sleep in an extra hour or so, but then they’re off, seeking long runs on wooded trails and punishing switchbacks on mountain bike singletrack. Early mornings in the spring leave just enough time for a few casts into the Pemigewasset River before class. Invitations to pick up hockey, soccer, and basketball attract countless faculty as well.

These adventures are the result of their passion for the outdoors and a love of physical activity, but they also allow the faculty to take on the rigors of Out Back without much training. The preparation they put in throughout the year means they are physically ready in March to shoulder their packs and help students learn what it means to be self-sufficient in the wilderness.

Being physically ready, however, isn’t enough. The faculty also spend countless hours in first aid training as well.

All Out Back leaders have at least 16 hours of Wilderness First Aid (WFA) training that has to be renewed every two years—usually during the last few precious days of their vacation in January; many have gone on during spring and summer breaks to complete the 64 hours of training to become Wilderness First Responders (WFR) (a three-year certification). While a little less common, some faculty have taken avalanche rescue courses as well, not so much because avalanches are a risk in the White Mountains—although in some areas they are—but because the risk management skills and group dynamic lessons are very transferable to Out Back.

Work with the local wilderness search and rescue teams is also transferable. Alexandra Disney, Randy Houseman, Maggie Mumford, Nick Laurence, Erik Thatcher ’08, and Elizabeth Wolf collectively volunteer for the Pemigewasset Valley Search and Rescue, the Lakes Region Search and Rescue, and the Androscoggin Valley Search and Rescue.

They receive calls at any time of the day and night and are part of a crew that assists lost, injured, and missing persons get to safety throughout the White Mountains.

“It’s hands-on training for what we might have to do on Out Back,” says Out Back Director Randy Houseman. “On every rescue mission, we manage limits, assess difficult situations, and figure out what we can do better next time.”

The reverse is true as well; Out Back is great handson training for search and rescue. Spending ten days in the White Mountains every winter, Out Back leaders cover a lot of ground and are familiar with many of the trails and wilderness areas.

“It’s also a way for us to give back,” says Director of Outdoor Programming Erik Thatcher. “It’s a karma thing. We’re part of a larger outdoor enthusiast community, and while I hope that I never have to call on them to rescue me, I feel better knowing I have helped other members of the community in the past.”

Science teacher Maggie Mumford agrees. “I first went on Out Back two years ago,” she says. “It’s motivated me to stay in shape, and being part of the search and rescue team has been an added incentive.”

In January and the months leading up to Out Back, preparation reaches a more practical level; lunch conversations begin to gravitate to the weather and outdoor clothing purchases, and veteran OBers share their wisdom with first-timers. As leaders are paired, they begin to compare their routes, making sure their paths will not overlap or interfere with other groups.

Recon missions are planned for weekends and their preparation both mentally and physically ramps up.

If you ask the faculty, most will tell you that they are teachers first; it’s their day job after all. But for many, they listen to a second calling just as frequently, one that gets them outside beyond the pavement and into the deep woods. It helps them with their day job ten days out of the year, but that’s just an added bonus. n

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“FULL CIRCLE” FEATURES ALUMNI ARTISTS IN EDWARDS ART GALLERY

BY FRANZ NICOLAY

T

he creative life is an imperative for human beings.

It adds challenge, joy, fulfillment, and purpose to one’s trajectory in this physical plane. Recognizing this at an early age, our artists made the decision to embrace bold exploration and cultivate their commitment to working with materials of engagement and expression.

In each case, our alumni directly responded to the culture, dynamic life, and environment surrounding them.

Full Circle: 2019 Alumni Art Exhibition features the work of five artists: Nate Hicks ’98, Lizzie Legere ’11, Tara Hamer ’98, Carlie Bristow Febo ’06, and Amanda (Simms) Arlington ’92. It is worth noting that this is the last exhibit curated by Edwards Art Gallery Director Franz Nicolay.

Nate Hicks embraced the region that shaped his view of the world and the industrious, inventive lifestyle that is Maine. With an education in goldsmithing and jewelry design from the University of Vermont and a background in welding and metal fabrication, Nate began his jewelry business in 2008 with the Original Keepah cuff, a bracelet made from an official gauge lobstermen and women use to determine if a lobster is of legal size—or “a keepah.” The honesty of handwork and Nate’s love of metal transformed into beauty is evident in the work he presents in the exhibit.

Franz Nicolay enjoys his final show as gallery director of the Edwards Art Gallery.

Likewise, Lizzie Legere’s intimate photographs of the winter landscape surrounding her rural home in Waterboro, ME, is a hyper-observant meditation on place and its quiet, lasting impact on our consciousness. “The forest acts as an open curtain to the winter,” she writes in one observation. “The land feels exposed and clear, but somehow still concealed underneath a departing white veil.” Lizzie’s reflective spirit slows the pace of our own lives, asking us to use these images as a reminder to look closely and long, in every moment—and see the real beauty and value of all life within arm’s reach.

Photography allows Tara Hamer to explore the dynamic vitality of lives in transitional moments—the coming together of individuals in a committed relationship, the pregnancy and birth of a child, and the reawakening to life as a family.

In addition to photographing weddings, Tara is a newborn photographer for Wentworth Douglass Hospital in Dover, NH. “Everything that I capture is in an environment that requires me to think on my feet and photograph meaningful moments at the same time,” she says in her artist statement. “I strive to blend classic light posing intertwined with messy, joyful moments so that my clients see themselves in such a way that they feel empowered as well as emotional.” Poignant and

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profound, those moments in the arc of life are chosen, and Tara’s photographs mark the portals of transformation.

Carlie Bristow Febo turns her eye to another moment of change in our development. After taking a break from photography for five years, Carlie felt compelled to pick up her camera this past year to create portraits of the teenage girls with whom she was working. In collaboration with her subjects, Carlie supports young people in their own awakening self-identity.

“This work centers the subject’s vision and voice, and I look to them as equal collaborators,” says Carlie. “I start planning for each photoshoot by asking how they want to be portrayed and talking through what makes them feel valued. I believe that real change can happen when you give young people agency and a space where they are taken seriously.” These portraits are testaments to the process of emergence and the nascent power of understanding and recognition.

Amanda Arlington’s photographs are equally striking in her depiction of strident protest within our country. Working in stop-motion design, video, and photography, Amanda has attended as many protests as possible “to see how Americans are reacting to policies that many see as hateful, violent, and dangerous.” In her bio, she writes: “I cannot say this work is objective as this is no time for objectivity. To be clear, I have

editorialized this moment in American politics.” You can almost hear the sounds of the street as Amanda’s images reflect the intensity of protesters’ emotion and purpose. Her photographs become the voice of movement in the present struggle for oppressed, marginalized, and victimized people in our land.

This circle of creative alumni has demonstrated with their lives, in both quietly personal and overt public means, an honest response to their world, based on seasoned experience over the years, post-Holderness. We are fortunate they are in this world making a difference and that they honor us by freely sharing their lives and collective passion with us.

Our creative alumni have come back home, full circle. n

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THE HOLDERNESS BOOKSHELF

BY RICK CAREY

THE BRAVE TEACHER

I

n her third book, Krissy Pozatek ’92 recommends that classroom teachers try what Holderness parents have always done with kids on OB: let ‘em go.

“Well, it rained a lot,” said Krissy Pozatek, who in April, 2018, published her third book, “Brave Teaching: Bringing Emotional Resiliency Skills From the Wilderness to the Classroom” (Lantern Books). She was describing Out Back 1991, an event characterized by “brutal weather,” she said, but life-changing in the sense “that it gave me an environmental focus, and made me an environmental studies major at Middlebury.”

Between that and—many years later—the fan letter she received one day from a reader came another sort of life-changing experience: an Association for Experiential Education conference that she attended after Middlebury.

“I didn’t really know what to do with this major, since I wasn’t much excited Krissy Pozatek ’92 by options like environmental law or education,” she said. “But it was at this conference that I first heard about wilderness therapy, this bundling of things that really did excite me—psychology, emotional development, self-regulation, et cetera—and in its practice, nature plays a role as co-therapist. I saw that and said, ‘Sign me up.’”

52 | Holderness School Today

And sign up she did, beginning as a guide for Utah’s Aspen Achievement Academy, which offers wilderness therapy for troubled adolescents; then earning her Master’s in social work; then working again as a guide and a wilderness therapist out west until returning to Vermont in 2005 and transitioning into parent coaching.

Her first book—“The Parallel Process: Growing Alongside Your Adolescent or Young Adult Child In Treatment”—came out in 2010 from Lantern Books and provides a blueprint for parents to respond constructively to the troubled older children of the sort she had taken into the woods.

“Then I heard from so many readers that they wished they had a book like that fifteen years before things got so bad,” Krissy said. “And I saw that there weren’t any books out there, really, about how parents can help a child build emotional resilience in the first place.”

That was remedied with her second book: “Brave Parenting: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide to Raising Emotionally Resilient Children” (Wisdom Publications, 2014). And this was the book that provoked a fan letter from the reader who would become the co-author of her third.

Sarah Love was a Colorado mother driven to distraction by the tantrums and meltdowns of her eight-year-old son. “I was desperate for help and came across ‘Brave Parenting,’” Love writes in the introduction to “Brave Teaching.” ”Krissy’s philosophy is that we parents need to let children sit with their emotions, allow them to feel, and then teach them how to develop their own problem-solving skills. Her philosophy encouraged me to be brave enough to let my son handle decisions on his own and take ownership of them.”

Essentially, this is a philosophy that rejects the “helicopter” model of parenting, where the parents swoop in to do all the problem solving for children who eventually feel both confined by and dependent upon such help. Love

“It said, ‘I want to do a book with you,’” Krissy said, “’about how to get these ideas into the classrooms of other teachers.’”

Yes, these are ideas that in some part have been tested at Holderness through 50 years of Out Back, but they apply to the whole gamut of child development and learning.

“Krissy Pozatek and Sarah Love’s book ‘Brave Teaching’ meets us at the intersection of academic success and emotional regulation,” wrote J.P. Hemingway, head of the Altamont School in Birmingham, Alabama, in the March, 2019, newsletter of the Southern Association of Independent Schools. “Pozatek and Love know it takes faith and courage to let go. As educators we have to learn to be brave in the classroom so that parents and students can be brave there too.”

Besides her parent coaching and writing, Krissy has returned to Middlebury to teach a winter session class in wilderness therapy. Indeed, she has become something of a national authority of how the lessons of independence, risk, responsibility, and resilience that come to the forefront in the woods can help people blossom in school, work, and family settings.

Meanwhile, Krissy’s daughter Jasmine Whittaker ’22 is attending Holderness and looking forward to her own Out Back experience in two years. The long-range forecast looks good, but if it happens to rain, Jasmine will be ready.

You can follow Krissy on Instagram at @theparallelprocess.

YOU NEVER HEAR IT COMING That’s what Kirkus Reviews says about the plot twist in a debut novel by Cambria Brockman ’07.

The same might be said of her overnight success as a writer.

Usually—and especially if you have no track record as a writer—getting a

debut novel into print at a major publishing house

ALUMNI PROFILES

is also a fourth-grade classroom teacher, and Krissy’s book not only rescued her and her son, it opened her eyes to the extent that she had been a “helicopter teacher” with her students. So she backed off there as well, and to such success that she sent Krissy an email.

is really, really hard. Typically it involves several failed manuscripts, a trunkful of rejections by literary agents, and an undetermined number of creative/ existential crises.

In other words, a lot of strikeouts.

Or you can just Cambria Brockman ’07 hit it out of the park in your first turn at bat, as Cambria Brockman has done.

“I just wanted to see if I could finish a story,” said Cambria. “All my life I had loved writing and had written stories, but I’d never finished any. I had gotten a successful business up and going, though, and I think that gave me the confidence to try this other thing.”

With parents who both worked in the oil industry, Cambria came to Holderness from Houston by way of the British Isles. “I was interested in sports and the outdoors, I was in a small middle school in Scotland, and I liked a smallschool setting,” she said. “Holderness was perfect.” She took one creative writing course while she was here, and she took one more at Bates, where she majored in English literature and wrote a thesis on Shakespeare.

And then business—specifically, wedding photography in and around Boston, which went very well, but which never quenched her interest in story. So she set an ambitious goal of finishing a story scaled to novel size.

While at work at that—and through a friend who wrote for Sports Illustrated—she met a Boston-based agent.

“So I sent her the early stages of the story I’d been writing for a year,” Cambria said. “We worked on it together for another two years. She sent the finished manuscript to several houses, put it up for auction, and it sold in one day.”

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The winning bid came from Ballantine Books, and the finished product, “Tell Me Everything,” was published in July. Cambria described the origin of the story itself in an interview that appeared in an April issue of Publisher’s Weekly: “I had always been interested in the popular cliques. Going to a small liberal arts college, I had noticed it was similar to high school. You would find your group within the first few weeks and stick with it for all four years.…I conceived of a girl who was part of one of those cliques and who was not who she said she was.”

Indeed, when protagonist Malin Ahlberg’s father drops her off at the fictional Hawthorne College, he whispers one word of advice—“Pretend.” Malin soon becomes part of an insular group of six, all of whom have secrets.

In a starred review, Kirkus Reviews said, “Brockman successfully builds each character in fragments, preventing us from seeing the full context until the end.”

Comparing the novel to Donna Tartt’s “The Secret History,” Kirkus adds that “Brockman’s Malin draws riveting attention to humankind’s vulnerability to evil.” In conclusion: “A truly chilling thriller with a twist so quiet you never hear it coming.”

Publisher’s Weekly was no less enthusiastic: “Brockman perfectly captures the insecurities that plague young adults, as well as the intense relationships that form in the crucible of college. Deliberate pacing complements the sinuous structure, with anxiety and dread mounting as the story lines coalesce.”

Perhaps the best endorsement, however, was the preemptive sale of film rights, long before the book was published. According to the April 18 issue of Deadline, a Netf lix film version of “Tell Me Everything” will be a joint project of the production companies Sugar23 and Anonymous Content. The former is run by Michael Sugar, whose previous production credits include “Spotlight,” which won the 2016 Oscar for Best Picture.

THE WRITE STUFF Krissy and Cambria are not the only alumni to have published books within the past year. Let’s see who else is in print.

Recently Holderness School authors have been filling up the bookshelves. Besides a debut novel, besides the educational guide, we have a very high-end sort of how-to manual, and an equally high-end sort of art book. Starting with the more recent.

YOU TOO CAN BE IN THE LOOP A top-ranked snowboarder at Holderness, Brian Friedman ’10 went on to study engineering, first at Lehigh, then at Draper University. And it was at Draper where Brian joined forces with the two other young co-founders of Loopd, a Silicon Valley start-up that quickly made a splash as an advanced event engagement platform.

Which means? Well, this is how Loopd was described in a 2015 Draper University alumni profile of Brian: “Loopd is a relational analytics platform that measures proximity-based human interactions and engagement for corporate events. Loopd is the industry’s only bidirectional solution that enables attendees to exchange contact information, collect marketing materials, and passively check in to speaker sessions.”

Got that? In more basic terms, people wearing Loopd’s Bluetooth-equipped badges at a corporate event can use them rather like business cards to make contacts and also

“I won’t be involved in making the film version,” Cambria said. “Which is okay, since that’s all new to me.”

Writing fiction that works at this sort of artistic level, however, was once new to her as well. “I never really thought it was possible to write for a living,” she said, but that’s what she does now instead of wedding photography.

And Ballantine will want her very soon to set a goal of finishing a second story.

54 | Holderness School Today

Brian Friedman ’10

Now Brian’s first book—“Takeaways: Secret Truths From Leading a Startup,” published in May by Rolling Thunder Ventures—is a business manual written for entrepreneurs who would like to follow a similar path. “For a startup targeting major corporations, the most strategic task is finding the right person inside a company with the authority to buy your products,” Brian writes. “In our case, we were looking for early adopters willing to buy new, unproven products with a five-figure price tag over the phone.”

And find such adopters they did. Regarding “Takeways,” Kirkus Reviews said, “Friedman offers insights in the key areas one should consider in developing a startup.

From planning on how to grow the company—which includes everything from formulating a business model to ‘subordinating arrogance and myopia’—to considering various exit strategies, the author breaks down the necessary steps while delivering anecdotes from his personal experience.”

It all works, said Kirkus: “Friedman’s presentation is clean and easily digestible. While no book can guarantee readers a multi-million dollar sale, the author’s advice will surely be of use to those who find themselves with hot ideas and the will to get them off the ground.”

THE ART OF MR. BRAINWASH And then there is a writer whose name doesn’t necessarily appear on a book’s spine, but who is an author nonetheless.

Perhaps you write under a pseudonym, as does Ghia Szwed Truesdale ’79, who has had four novels for young adults, all thrillers, published by Bantam Books under the name G.G. Garth.

Or perhaps in your official role as editor, you also function as the ghost-writer for the credited authors, as does Ghia

for a series of fine arts books published within the past three years by Scala Arts Publishers, which is based in London.

ALUMNI PROFILES

to volunteer and garner behavioral data. It was an idea sound enough for the founders to sell Loopd within three years to a larger corporation for millions of dollars.

The most recent, appearing last February, is “Mr. Brainwash: Franchise of the Mind.” The titular Mr. Brainwash is Thierry Guetta, a French-born, Los Angelesbased filmmaker and pop/graffiti Ghia Szwed Truesdale ’79 artist who rose to fame following his starring role in “Exit Through the Gift Shop.” This was a 2010 film documentary directed by a man acknowledged as the world’s most prominent graffiti artist, Banksy.

Ghia not only contributed a portion of the copy to this handsome monograph of the artist’s work, but she oversaw the development, content, photography, and design of this and its predecessors with Scala: “Stephen Wilson: Luscious Threads” (2018) and “Robert Mars: Futurelics, Past Is Present” (2017).

“Each of the titles is 12x12, sized like a vinyl album cover,” said Ghia, who is also a screenwriter and playwright. n

SHARE YOUR NEWS! Have you recently encountered a milestone in your life? Share your news with your classmates! Please contact us at alumni@holderness.org.

Fall 2019 | 55

GATHERINGS

SMALL GATHERINGS The Holderness School Alumni Association includes over 7,000 people worldwide, and throughout the year there are plenty of reasons to get together and celebrate! The Holderness Alumni Relations team plans events throughout the country, and sometimes even internationally, so check the Holderness School website calendar of events often and make plans to attend an event.

ALUMNI PINNING é This spring we welcomed the class of 2019 into the Holderness Alumni Association. As part of ushering the seniors toward Commencement, we dedicated an evening in chapel celebrating these future alumni and what it means to be alumni of Holderness. Lily Ford ’12 was their faculty-alumni speaker this year and during the chapel the seniors received a Holderness alumni association pin. Pictured here is the class of 2019 following chapel, pinned and with their brand new 2019 class banner. Congratulations!

56 | Holderness School Today

NEW YORK CITY é There was a festive gathering of Holderness alums in Manhattan on November 5. Old friends and new spanning generations of the Holderness family gathered at the watering hole Beer Culture to trade stories of OB and memories of beloved teachers and advisors.

GATHERINGS

SMALL GATHERINGS

DARTMOUTH PIZZA PARTY MARBLEHEAD é Special thanks to Stu Wales ’92 and his wife Karen, who opened their Marblehead home to alumni last August.

We couldn’t have asked for a better spring day as we enjoyed a fun picnic in Central Park with our friends from Cardigan Mountain School. ê

é Alumni at Dartmouth. All is well with this group of Bulls who are enjoying the school.

Jack Kinney ’15, Michael Beutner ’15, Peter Reynolds ’18 and Abby Wiseman ’18.

On July 11 Flip Kistler ’85 and his wife Marion graciously opened their home to all Holderness family living on or visiting Martha’s Vineyard. ê

PICNIC IN THE PARK NYC Holderness Alumni and friends pictured: Michael and Elise (Steiner) Hacker ’10, Gerald Carter ’05, John McCoy ’10, Carson Houle ’11, Arielle Kanner, friend of Meredith Peck ’09 and Jessie Morton ’95

HOLDERNESS ON MARTHA’S VINEYARD

In attendance on Martha’s Vineyard were (top, left to right) Marion and Flip Kistler, Serena (Jackson) Martin ’91, Peter Rapelye PEM P’92 P’93 P’97, Tom Speers, Nannie Clough, Robin Peck EM P’08 P’09, (middle, left to right) Kathryn (Lobrano) Robinson ’87, Kara Cole P’20 P’21, Nancy Randall P’06, Lucy (Randall) Archibald ’06, Kathleen Kime ’99, Janet Rapelye P’92 P’93 P’97, Bill Clough ’86, (front, left to right) John Cole P’20 P’21, Isabel ’20 and Abigail Cole ’21, Phil Peck EM P’08 P’09

Fall 2019 | 57

GATHERINGS

SMALL GATHERINGS

PROUTY 2019 SEADOGS 2019 é We thought we could get away from the rain, but it managed to find us again this year at the Portland Sea Dogs game in Portland, Maine. We still had a fun night with the hardy group that joined us and endured the rain. Looking forward to sunshine for next year’s trip to the ballpark!

é As we all know, the Holderness motto “Pro Deo et Genere Humano” asks us to live our lives for others. The Prouty cancer ride provides a unique opportunity for many of us to do something for others while enjoying the beautiful White Mountains of New Hampshire on our bikes. This past July, several Holderness colleagues, alumni, and current and past board members enjoyed another Prouty.

HOLDERNESS 100 – 2019 éê What do you do on your days off in the summer? If you are one of our very active board members, alumni, teachers, or parents, you may want to do a 100-mile century ride in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The “Holderness 100,” now a summer tradition, brings together avid cyclists of all ages and abilities. Pictured here are the riders from the 2019 edition of the Holderness 100.

58 | Holderness School Today

Every summer for the past six years, Holderness students have traveled to China as part of a cultural immersion trip hosted by our Chinese families. Among the many activities they sponsor, current Chinese parents always join together and treat the group to a big dinner in both of the major cities they visit. This year in Beijing was the largest gathering of Chinese families to date—so large that we had to take two photos: one of just students and faculty and one with parents and faculty. This year, Director of College Counseling Bruce Barton and Director of Senior Thesis and college counselor Sarah Barton joined the trip. They were happy to take time out of their busy travel schedule to meet with our families in both Beijing and Shanghai to discuss the college counseling office—and the college application process at Holderness and in the United States. ê

BEIJING

SHANGHAI

Fall 2019 | 59

GATHERINGS

SMALL GATHERINGS

CLASS NOTES

CLASS NOTES Milestones DEATHS

IN MEMORIAM | JOHN WILSON CAMERON

Bob Keating ’52: January 1, 2019

John Wilson Cameron died peacefully at home on Thursday, October 11, 2018, with his wife, Judith Dunbar Cameron, of 60 years, by his side.

Born on January 8, 1936 to Philip Joseph Cameron and Alicia Madeiline (Sweeney) Cameron in Winslow, Maine, John graduated from Lawrence High School in 1953. He attended Colby College, graduating with a BA in history in 1957. John met his wife, Judith, at the Newagen Seaside Inn, in Southport, Maine in the summer of 1957, and they were married the following summer on June 7, 1958. John attended Fletcher’s School of Diplomacy for a year before deciding being an educator was his true calling. He began his teaching career at Marshfield High School in Massachusetts. From 1964–1976, John taught English and served as Department Chair at the Holderness School in New Hampshire with the exception of a one year appointment from 1969–70 as a Fulbright Teaching Fellow at Eltham College, Mottingham, England. John received his MA in English from Wesleyan University in 1968. For twelve summers early on in his career, John taught at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.

He then moved to the Dana Hall School in Wellesley, Massachusetts where he served as Head of the English Department from 1976 until he retired in 2004 to Chapel Hill,

North Carolina. John is survived by his wife, Judith; son, Christopher and his partner, Kirste Johnson of Seattle, WA; daughter, Heather Cameron Ploen and husband, Sean Ploen of Saint Paul, MN; grandsons, Peter and Miles Cameron; and granddaughter, Poppy Ploen; and brother, Philip Cameron of Damariscotta, Maine.

Epworth Moulton ’38: April 17, 2017

John was a revered and beloved teacher of English for 46 years. He was a master teacher, and a lover of the written, sung and spoken word. His awards and honors were numerous – from the White House to Buckingham Palace—and his beginnings humble.

One often would pass by his classroom and hear music playing on his turntable—everything from the Beatles to Bach to Bobby Short. He found ways to incorporate music and art throughout the courses he taught, and although he was a demanding teacher, in the end, he got the very best out of his students. While his career was marked by notable public accolades such as being a Klingenstein Fellow in 1982–83 to the Reader’s Digest Teacher of the Year 1989, his pride and satisfaction with his profession came from seeing his students excel as communicators no matter their choice of career or path. He was devoted to his wife and family, a friend to his peers and the very young, spreading small treats or special notes wherever he went. Vale, John Cameron!

MARRIAGES AND UNIONS

60 | Holderness School Today

Benjamin Adams ’53: January 15, 2016 Robert Deeley, Jr. ’82: September 24, 2018 Daniel Duguay (PEM): March 30, 2019 Paul Deacon ’53: April 22, 2019 Patricia Dupuis (PEM): April 25, 2019 Berton Chillson, Jr. ’54: April 28, 2019 Elizabeth (Merrill) Burnham ’74: June 17, 2019 Morgan Nields ’63: June 18, 2019 Peter Eastman ’45: September 13, 2019 Robert Fiore ’59: 2019

Aris Garrison ’99 and Jessica Garrison: June 24, 2017 Colin Edge ’06 and Katelyn (Sullivan) Edge: August 12, 2017 at Saybrook Point Inn in Old Saybrook, CT Hannah (Hallock) Vennochi ’06 and Nicholas Vennochi: November 17, 2018 in Holderness, NH Casey Carroll ’04 and Megan (Doros) Carroll: April 6, 2019 at the Seagate Hotel and Beach Club in West Palm Beach, FL Alex Simes ’08 and Toni (Cook) Simes: April 26, 2019 James Wallace ’05 and Stephanie SatyaMorrissey: April 27, 2019 at Corinthian Yacht Club, Marblehead, MA Akira Murakami ’92 and Sara (Martin) Murakami: May 4, 2019 at Hotel Commonwealth in Boston, MA Madeline (Baker) Petry ’08 and Ryan Petry: June 29, 2019 in Crested Butte, CO Reed Cooley ’05 and Ines Zarrad: June 29, 2019 in Bradford, NH Erin (Simes) Daigneault ’01 P’23 and Joey Daigneault: June 30, 2019 in Jackson, NH Nicole (Glew) Shedd (PEM) and Scott Shedd: June 30, 2019 at Squam Lake in Holderness, NH Luke Urban ’08 and Sally (Ogilby) Urban: July 6, 2019 in Franconia, NH Nate Glenney ’02 and Hillary (Casson) Glenney: July 20, 2019 at Alnoba in Kensington, NH

July 25, 2019 at St Mark’s School in Southborough, MA Joshua Corrigan ’08 and Jennie Gavrich: August 3, 2019 at Grand Isle Lake House in Grand Isle, VT R.C. Whitehouse ’00 and Daniel Gensel:

Brian Gamble ’06 and Caroline Gamble: Cora Frederick Gamble on April 6, 2019

Anna (Lockwood) Kelly ’03 and Ryan Kelly: Quinn Lockwood Kelly on September 13, 2019

Keith Tyler ’02 and Brianne Tyler: Benjamin Avery Tyler on April 6, 2019 Will Richardson ’96 and Devon Richardson: James William Richardson on April 14, 2019 Blair (Weymouth) Monaco ’04 and

’45 Want to connect with your classmates?

Consider becoming a class correspondent

August 10, 2019 at Mt Arab

Greg Monaco: Channing Lovett

and encouraging your classmates to

Lake in Tupper Lake, NY

Monaco on April 16, 2019

reconnect in the HST class notes.

Aubrey Tyler ’10 and Dan Malecha: August 10, 2019 at Lake Ida in Alexandria, MN Kristin Keohan ’06 and Lloyd Miller: August 17, 2019 at Governors Island in Gilford, NH Kelsey Smith ’07 and Richard Hultberg: August 17, 2019 at Church Island in Holderness, NH Christopher Roche ’07 and Erica Roche: September 7, 2019 at Oyler Ranch in Eagle, CO Jake Manoukian ’09 and Meredith Savatsky: September 14, 2019 2019 at 1 Hotel in Brooklyn, NY Laney Hayssen ’09 and Max Forton: September 14, 2019 at Stratton Mountain in Stratton, VT Linnea (Burnham) King (EM) and Jordan King: September 14, 2019 in Wentworth, NH Jenn Reilly ’04 and Bobby Gorman: September 21, 2019 at the Stage Neck Inn, York Harbor, ME Nicole Morrison ’03 and Christian Moore: Sept. 28, 2019 in Jackson, W Y

Brianne (Keefe) Healy ’05 and Michael Healy: Lydia Jeanne Healy on April 24, 2019

Contact us at alumni@holderness.org for more information. Thank you!

Nathaniel Campbell ’97 and Jennifer Campbell: William Henry Campbell on May 1, 2019 Sarah (Stride) Bloomingdales ’11 and

’46

Andrew Bloomingdales: Andrew

Want to connect with your classmates?

Butter Bloomingdales on May 8, 2019

Consider becoming a class correspondent

Salamarie Frazier ’12 and Javone Murrell: Azriel “AJ” Javone Murrell on May 11, 2019 Colin Edge ’06 and Katelyn Edge: Connor Joseph Edge on May 15, 2019

and encouraging your classmates to reconnect in the HST class notes.

Contact us at alumni@holderness.org for more information. Thank you!

Ramsay (Hill) Chodounsky ’02 and David Chodounsky: Larkley Taylor Chodounsky on May 23, 2019 Peter Schlech ’05 and Emily Schlech: Ruby Jane Schlech on June 4, 2019 Nick Payeur ’03 and Christa Ramsey:

’47 CLASS CORRESPONDENT Bill Briggs magdalenabriggs@ymail.com

Pierce Samuel Payeur on June 19, 2019 Aris Garrison ’99 and Jessica Garrison: Kelvin Bradford Garrison on June 14, 2019 Moselle Pope Abear ’08 and Matt Abear: Riley Elizabeth Abear on June 24, 2019 Hun June “Bobby” Lee ’05 and Hyun Jung Kim:

’48 CLASS CORRESPONDENT Rik Clark capeclarks@aol.com

Tae-ri Lee on July 1, 2019

BIRTHS AND ADOPTIONS Frederick “Field” Pickering III ’96 and Emma Pickering: Frederick Butterfield Pickering IV on February 2, 2018 Jeff Meyers ’06 and Grace Kitchings: Levi Meyers on February 17, 2019 Kory Himmer ’07 and Kristina Himmer:

Matt Tomazewski ’07 and Stephanie

2019, telling Sandy and me that he had

Tomaszewski on July 4, 2019

suffered a stroke around Christmas 2018 and

Kelsey Berry (EM) and Michael Carrigan (EM): Josephine “Josie” Berry Carrigan on July 12, 2019 Crosby Nordblom ’08 and Greta Nordblom: Simi Nordblom on August 9, 2019

Ella Rae Himmer on February 18, 2019

Whitney Connolly ’02 and Kevin Phoenix:

Julie Barnes (PEM) and David Vieten:

Ridley Francis Phoenix on August 14, 2019

Rush James Barnes-Vieten on February 28, 2019 Jaime (Dusseault) Roberge ’07 and Graham Roberge: Miles Louis Roberge on March 11, 2019 Sara Roitman ’99 and Benjamin Whiting: Alice Virginia Rae Whiting on March 20, 2019 Seth Aronson ’04 and Meghan Aronson: Ellie Carroll Aronson on April 5, 2019

J. Paul Wilson telephoned us on May 30,

Tomaszewski: Aubrey Ava

was hospitalized in RI. While in the hospital, he had fallen and cracked vertebrae in his neck. He has recovered well from the stroke and the fall, hoping to shed his neck brace soon. Paul’s attitude and spirits are the best and he remains a passionate Boston Red Sox

Kara (Herlihy) Young ’03 and Ry Young:

fan. Paul does not do e-mail so telephone is

Parker Grace Young on August 14, 2019

the best way to communicate with Paul. …

Ben Hicks ’99 and Alicia Hicks: Cruz Arthur Hicks on August 22, 2019 Reed Laverack ’06 and Emily Pendergast: Scout Pendy Laverack on September 6, 2019 Rebecca (Hildreth) ’09 and Robert O’Hanley: Quinn Maeve O’Hanley on September 9, 2019

William “Bart” Chase sends a fond hello to all classmates and hoping life goes well for each one of you. “The years go by too fast.

We’re all much older than in 1948, and I’m personally just making #90 and I don’t know where the time has gone. My wife, Bunny,

Fall 2019 | 61

CLASS NOTES

Colleen Finnerty (PEM) and Holly Lorms:

CLASS NOTES

and I are managing quite well. Doing well and enjoying time with the family here in the

’52

Portland area. Our only great-grandchild

Want to connect with your classmates?

lives but a mile away. Seeing all the family,

Consider becoming a class correspondent

frequently, is very special. I spend time on

and encouraging your classmates to

the golf course outside our condo basically

reconnect in the HST class notes.

trying to stay active. I know that Rik has done

Contact us at alumni@holderness.org

a masterful job keeping our class together,

for more information. Thank you!

and do thank him for this. Everyone take care and do have a full life.” … As for me, although there are the usual health hiccups in the

’53

aging process, good health continues to be

Want to connect with your classmates?

enjoyed with energy for travel, reading, heavy

Consider becoming a class correspondent

duty yard work, golf, and limited nonprofit

and encouraging your classmates to

volunteer work. I keep in mind the quote my

reconnect in the HST class notes.

Dad repeated often, “Growing old is not for

Contact us at alumni@holderness.org

sissies.” My recent May 2 and 3, 2019, visit

for more information. Thank you!

Palmer ’59. I still ski and run a lot and with

to Holderness was very special, mainly for events involved in the groundbreaking for

Glen Dudley ’55

’54

the exception of a bout with the f lu last year

the new academic building with the capital fundraising successfully completed. The 24

Want to connect with your classmates?

fun thinking and writing about the so-called

hours on campus provided insight for me

Consider becoming a class correspondent

mind-body problem and its biblical solution,

into the quality of life of students, faculty,

and encouraging your classmates to

not to mention the finer nuances of spiritual

and staff with support from the remarkable

reconnect in the HST class notes.

warfare. The older I get, the more I miss my

Board of Trustees. This insight reinforced

Contact us at alumni@holderness.org

old Holderness buddies. Hi to you all and

for me why Holderness is such a fine and

for more information. Thank you!

God bless!! And be sure not to miss out on

respected school. Best regards, Rik Clark

I am enjoying excellent health. Having lots of

the coming Rapture (1 Thessalonians 4:17.)”

Kim Mason reports he and his wife have

… Stanley Shalett writes in that “recently

’49

“downsized once again” and are now living

I did some extensive traveling through the

at Blueberry Cove in Yarmouth, ME. “Still

country and Israel. In May of this year, I was

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

active luckily – f ly fishing, golf and hunting.”

in Yorba Linda, California to attend a veterans’

Bill Baskin

Kim and his wife “will be celebrating our

reunion. There we visited the Nixon Library,

william_c_baskin@sbcglobal.net

60th wedding anniversary” this fall.

the birth place of Richard Nixon, and had our lunch breaks at nearby Mexican restaurants.

’55

It took me six days to drive out to California

Want to connect with your classmates?

stopped off at several Indian trading posts

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Consider becoming a class correspondent

where I bought some turquois-embedded silver

Frank Hammond

and encouraging your classmates to

jewelry and blankets similar to the sarapes

f hammond64@comcast.net

reconnect in the HST class notes.

made by the Mexicans. The scenic route was

Contact us at alumni@holderness.org

exciting but the driving was exhausting.

’51

for more information. Thank you!

Anyway, I enjoyed driving through 13 states.

Want to connect with your classmates?

Glenn Dudley writes “Jean and I are

Jewish War Veterans’ group. There we were

Consider becoming a class correspondent

enjoying our new condominium lifestyle on

briefed by members of the IDF (Israeli Defense

and encouraging your classmates to

the side of Mt. Sunapee here in Newbury,

Forces) and also by their civilian counterparts.

reconnect in the HST class notes.

NH, having moved across town this past fall.

The trip also included a stay in Jerusalem

Contact us at alumni@holderness.org

We love being close to our three children

as well as to other places of historic and

for more information. Thank you!

and eight grandchildren and friends like

religious interest. This was not my first visit

Don Stephenson and Don Hinman. The

to Israel. I was there in 1966 and 1967 while

memorial service for Don Henderson was

stationed in Germany with the US Regular

just perfect, especially to see Pat Henderson

Army. Because Israel is a home for those who

again and schoolmates such as Donald

don’t have a home because of Anti-Semitism,

“Dave” Douglass ’53, Nat Pulsifer, and Chris

its population has nearly doubled, mainly

’50

62 | Holderness School Today

from New Hampshire. On the way back, I

May of 2018, I f lew to Israel with the US

Cessna 180 on straight f loats in the summer

and elsewhere. Together with their skills,

and wheels in the winter. A friend and I own a

’57

Israel has advanced into the 21st Century

Canadian wilderness fishing camp in northern

Want to connect with your classmates?

with an infrastructure of high technology

Quebec and f ly up to fish and always work on

Consider becoming a class correspondent

and institutes of higher learning. Due to its

the camp several times a summer. I know there

and encouraging your classmates to

unique talent for science and research, I think

are not too many arrows left in the quiver so

reconnect in the HST class notes.

many countries can learn a great deal from

I keep trying not to let the old man in! If you

Contact us at alumni@holderness.org

Israelis. This is being put to use in Africa,

come to the mid-coast of Maine please get in

for more information. Thank you!

where the latest advances in medicine and

touch.” … Dick Endlar is still in Naples, FL

irrigation technology are already making a

but planned to return to Massachusetts in

Ron Crowe reports: “July 1st will mark

big difference to the people who live there.”

June to visit his children and grandchildren.

20 years since I moved to Campton; the

Dick is looking forward to meeting his new

nicest town I’ve ever lived in. I make and

’56

great-granddaughter, who is due this summer.

sell applesauce at the farmers market in

… Dick Meyer continues with a personal note

Plymouth, run a lovely area B&B in my log

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

and the continuing story of happenings at the

cabin, play a lot of golf, and watch too much

Dick Meyer

railroad: “On May 1 Daphne and I traveled to

TV in the winter. Over the years people have

richard419@roadrunner.com

Michigan for our grandson’s graduation from

asked me what’s so special about Holderness.

Michigan Technological University with a BS

Without a doubt it was the faculty. Just to

Philip “Brud” Folger was the first to respond

in computer science. His summer internship

mention a few: Mr. Waters, Coach Hinman,

to my request for class notes, so he gets to go

had turned into a co-op in the fall semester, a

Archie Stark, Wen Stephenson, and

first. In case you have forgotten, Brud and

subsidized final semester, and a job offer upon

Mr. Wiles. We were so blessed and barely

Al Lamson were roommates at Middlebury

graduation, which he gladly accepted. The

knew it. I also have such warm memories

College. All three of us live in Maine, and Al

first night in Michigan we were awakened at 5

of Marshall House, Tom Anthony’s ’56

is a member of my Restoration Team at the

a.m. with a real fire in the hotel. Everyone got

musical voice and my dear friend Andy

Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad where we

out safely, but it produces a strange sensation

Smith. My best to all my classmates.”

restore antique wooden coaches and box cars;

with the alarm going off and you’re putting

so Al and I see each other a couple of times a

on enough clothes to keep from freezing when

week. Al and Brud ski together occasionally

you step outside. Throughout the winter my

’58

so info gets swapped. Brud wrote: “I brief ly

restoration crew at the Maine Narrow Gauge

CLASS CORRESPONDENTS

caught up on you from my Middlebury

Railroad kept busy with mostly small, inside

Bill Biddle

roommate and your co-worker, Al Lamson,

jobs. The museum not only has historic

williambiddle@myfairpoint.net

who works with you on the narrow-gauge

narrow-gauge rail cars, it has an historic

Randall “Brooke” Thomas

railway in Portland. Interesting for me, my

steam engine plus a child’s size (big enough for

rbthomas@anthro.umass.edu

grandfather Dr. Charles Bell bought the parlor

children to enter) train set with luggage, and

car Rangeley when the railway went out of

two tables, one with Thomas, and the other

As you know, we two, Brooke and Bill, are

business, and donated it to the museum. It

with BRIO trains which are very popular.

in fairly regular dialogue, as we spend a good

is still preserved in the museum. This past

Then another set of wooden train tracks and

deal of time in neighboring towns here in

winter my two daughters, their husbands, and

cars was donated. We built another child size

northern Vermont, and hence find it easier

five grandchildren all skied Sugarloaf every

table, 3’x8’x18” high. My artist team member

than most of us in the class of 1958 to see one

weekend and school vacations. We all stay

created a layout (he screwed the track in

another and to get back to Holderness from

in my Sugarloaf ‘camp’ which is the original

place), and then he drew and painted roads,

time to time. By now you’ve received your

Franklin and Megantic Bigelow Narrow

streets, river, pond, grass, even a parking

spring 2019 number of Holderness School

Gauge Railway Station with original ticket

lot with cars. To top it off, he obtained the

Today with news we’re delighted to pass on

windows and station master’s office still

children’s names of frequent visitors and

to you from or about several of us you haven’t

intact. My grandmother, Dr. Bell’s wife, gave

painted their names on the streets and parking

heard from in a long time (thanks, you guys!).

me the station as a wedding present in 1962!

lot. Many of the children are too young to read

We continue to miss Charlie Kellogg who

The railway serviced the area and brought

their name, but they understand their name is

used to stop by when he came up to school

passengers to Bigelow from 1900 until 1939.

on the table and it has become very popular,

from Massachusetts, particularly when he was

I am in contact with Gordi Eaton ’58 and

to the abandonment of the other tables.”

involved in his life-long participation in, and

George Pransky ’58 when we gather for a

support of cross-country skiing and biathlon

biennial Middlebury CSF reunion. Fun to see

competition. We find ourselves talking about

Holderness friends. I am still trying to locate

other classmates we’ve lost touch with, or like

Josh Edgerley and John Reynolds. Anyone

Charlie, lost altogether. How do you feel about

know their whereabouts? I continue to f ly my

this: Should we print a list of all our departed

Fall 2019 | 63

CLASS NOTES

through immigration from Eastern Europe

’60

the advice. Practicing a profession part time

Holderness School Today, or both? How can we remind you that time f lies, that maybe you

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

not cash f low, etc. Pearl is well and smiles

should write to us before time runs out, before

Gerry Shyavitz

always. We are having our 53rd anniversary,

you forget those stories, and long unvisited

g.shyavitz@comcast.net

but she says “Don’t push your luck.” My

CLASS NOTES

classmates, or a list of those of us still reading

memories. Think on Denny Blouin, Charlie,

means practicing for the love of the law and

grandson Bradley will be in Germany for a few

George “Bernie” Morrill, Fred Wies,

This edition is rather bare of information

weeks this summer visiting a friend and my

David “Beef ” Boynton, Sam Christensen,

from my fellow classmates, but, “I SHALL

granddaughter Aurora is achieving wonderful

John McCandless, Peter Beaudette,

RETURN” to encourage better participation.

results in swimming competitions. Londynn

James Johnston! Brooke just wrote to me

A few have replied and their news follows. …

and Mia round out my grandkids and are

of remembering Harry Gersten who, he

John Despres writes: “Shy, I was reminded

doing great, as well as my daughters Abby,

writes, “I played soccer with and discovered

to respond by June 1. I am still an active

an attorney, and Sara, a marketing specialist.

sleeping in a soccer field (no room in the

traveler, moving from our winter to our

Well, now I can look forward to sitting on

inns) in Pamplona, Spain, to attend the Fiesta

summer home in Florida and California. I’m

the rocks in upper Maine this summer for a

de San Fermin, the most renowned week of

now enjoying a three week vacation with Gina

while with my family, watching the lobster

bull fighting in the world. I need to see his

in the UK and France, which I first visited in

boats come in to retrieve their traps. Gerry

name on a list to remind me of his nice smile

1956. We planned a family trip in August to

and humble spirit.” Do you remember any

Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Montreal.

adversities in your younger life that toughened

We often go to Washington, DC for visits

’61

your inner spirit, sharpened your competitive

with old friends and family and meetings of

Want to connect with your classmates?

edge, whatever? Unexpected kindnesses

our charitable and public interest boards.

Consider becoming a class correspondent

(for me, tea and scones in Mr. and Mrs.

So, I keep busy.” … Don “Soko” Sokoloski

and encouraging your classmates to

Cayley’s apartment as we did the layout of the

shares: “Hi Shy, well I guess this is news, my

reconnect in the HST class notes.

Holderness Bull newspaper on the Cayleys’

daughter Jennifer is coming to visit me for

Contact us at alumni@holderness.org

dining room table in Upper Hoyt)? “Butt

three months, starting June 1. She has been

for more information. Thank you!

Room” anecdotes? Apple cider chemistry?

living in England for almost 20 years now,

Interminable team rides to other schools to

currently in West Sussex. Her hubby will join

play tennis, hockey, whatever, and grinding

her some time later, when he can get away

’62

up endless hills in those VW vans at 20 mph?

from his job at Honeywell. It will be nice to

Want to connect with your classmates?

Write us. Our email addresses are at the top of

have someone around for a while, besides my

Consider becoming a class correspondent

this column. Brooke Thomas and Bill Biddle

boys Flipper and Topper; my cats!” … “Gerry, I

and encouraging your classmates to

am still here—no serious issues—still working

reconnect in the HST class notes.

’59

in the aviation business,” writes Rick Bullock.

Contact us at alumni@holderness.org

“Hoping to be around for our 60th next year.

for more information. Thank you!

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Best regards to my classmates. Appreciate your

Jerry Ashworth

efforts on behalf of our class. All the best.” …

ashworth.kemah@gmail.com or

There’s not much new with Alan Dewart: “Hi

’63

jashworth617@gmail.com

Gerry, You have a thankless job! Seems to me

Want to connect with your classmates?

that I sent you something not too long ago for

Consider becoming a class correspondent

Charles Murphy was recently on a duck

an earlier edition, and not a lot has changed

and encouraging your classmates to

hunt at the Piney Point Gunning Club on the

since then. Wish I could help. All the best.” …

reconnect in the HST class notes.

Chester River near Queenstown, MD on the

Ross Deachman notes: “Shy, not much news.

Contact us at alumni@holderness.org

Eastern Shore near Chesapeake Bay: “We

We got back from Florida on April 12 and as

for more information. Thank you!

had a great shoot. The action was fast and

you know the weather in New England has

furious, and this old man was challenged

been cold. Warming up now and the campus

just getting on and ahead of all the birds

had some color for graduation. Folks should

’64

dive-bombing our decoys. It was a great

start planning for the 60th reunion next

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

morning with a great bunch of guys.”

year. A lot of changes since the 50th. Best to

Sandy Alexander

you.” … As far as myself, I have a full plate

salex88@comcast.net

but do not want it any other way. Keeps the

64 | Holderness School Today

brain functioning. My small estate planning

In the last issue I brief ly mentioned the

practice, part time, is f lourishing, and so

Induction Ceremony for the 2019 US Ski

very rewarding, especially when I lecture in

and Snowboard Hall of Fame. For a bit more

front of appreciative people who really need

Sam Stout adds the following: “In 2017 I

decided to pursue the possibility of getting Don Henderson into the Ski Hall of Fame in Michigan. In my mind there was no question

CLASS NOTES

that he deserved to be inducted there. All of us who knew him agreed that he was a great teacher and an excellent coach. I asked Bill McCollom to help me with the application because he’s a great writer and knows lots of people in the ski world. Unfortunately, our application was turned down for the incoming class of 2017; it was a big disappointment to me but I was told to try again next year so I did and Don got into the class of 2018.

Unfortunately, he died before he could be

John Coles ’68 and Cardinal Sean O’Malley.

John is explaining to Cardinal O’Malley that he gilded the angels for the Holy Cross Cathedral in Boston.

Robert Johnson ’71

notified; his death made it more meaningful to me that he get into the Hall of Fame. So

we found our way over all sorts of terrain. Bill

in April last spring I headed to Park City for

was our tour guide, as he has visited Park City

’68

the festivities. I was joined by my wife and

many times over the years and is very familiar

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

my two daughters. Also joining me were Bill

with the mountain. On Saturday, April 6, we

John Coles

McCollom and Sandy Alexander. We had

moved our base of operations into Salt Lake

johncolesart@gmail.com

some great skiing and Bill and Sandy had

City. The dinner was held at the Little America

a hard time keeping up with my daughters

hotel with the approximately 600 attendees

but they had some great skiing together. At

filling the grand ballroom. There I had the

’69

the evening ceremonies, Jack Henderson

chance to meet Jack Henderson ’74 and his

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

’74 gave a wonderful acceptance speech

wife Marnie. (The last time I saw Jack he was

Jon Porter

which brought the 450 people there to a huge

about six years old.) Jack accepted the award

jwoodporter@cox.net

standing ovation. Phil Peck gets the award

for Don and gave a warm and reverent speech.

for the best effort, he came out and got there

Phil Peck had f lown out to help bolster the

just in time for dinner and had to turn around

Holderness presence and honor Don’s legacy.

’70

at 6 o’clock the next morning to get back to

It was great to see Art Sleeper ’63 again

Want to connect with your classmates?

school, what a trooper. Joining our group

and share memories. Sandy Alexander

Consider becoming a class correspondent

were Art Sleeper ’63, Amanda Black ’89 and Billy Kidd showed up for a while. I have

and encouraging your classmates to

’65

reconnect in the HST class notes.

to give thanks to Bill McCollom who did an amazing job of putting all the paperwork

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

for more information. Thank you!

together. I couldn’t have done it without him,

Terry Jacobs

thank you so much. Thank you also to Dennis

haj3@jacobswyper.com

’71

’66

Want to connect with your classmates?

thank you to Holderness School for supplying the pictures and notes to help make the video

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

and encouraging your classmates to

for Don’s induction. I have included a link to

Peter Janney

reconnect in the HST class notes.

the ceremony for those that are interested; it’s

pj@apllon.com

Contact us at alumni@holderness.org

Donahue ’62, Gordi Eaton ’58, and Terry Morse ’64 for their letters of support and

Consider becoming a class correspondent

for more information. Thank you!

quite a tribute to Don. https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=hnRwDARvDYE Sincerely,

Contact us at alumni@holderness.org

Sam Stout … Sandy Alexander adds a

’67

Robert Johnson shares: “I have been an

few thoughts as well about the Induction

Want to connect with your classmates?

electrical engineer working in both telecom

Ceremony. To start, there were several days

Consider becoming a class correspondent

(Bell Labs and elsewhere), and in aerospace-

of skiing and other meetups held at Park City.

and encouraging your classmates to

related design roles. My wife Patricia and I

This was the high point of my ski season this

reconnect in the HST class notes.

have raised three girls who are good to their

year, as I got to ski again with Bill and Sam

Contact us at alumni@holderness.org

core and successful in their chosen directions.

for the first time since 1964, along with Sam’s

for more information. Thank you!

My hope is that some of my inventions pan out

wife Donna and two daughters, Sheldon and

and allow me to live comfortably. My greatest

Annie. Spring conditions were excellent, and

hobby is photography which is rooted in the

Fall 2019 | 65

darkroom work I enjoyed in the basement of Niles (back in the day). Check my LinkedIn

CLASS NOTES

profile for more details. www.linkedin.com/ in/roberteverestjohnson/.” … David Taylor just became a grandfather for the second time; Soren Norris Taylor was born on May 8. David notes, “Our granddaughter Ainsley will turn two years old in June. My son Joshua and daughter-in-law Tyler are both well.

He is finishing his second year at Columbia Law School and she has completed her PhD in history. She’s already landed a research

Edward McElhinny ’75 at 35,000’ in my Airbus 321 flying up to the alumni get together in Boston last winter.

assignment which will have them moving to St. Paul this summer.” … Will Parish reports:

stays active with walking or cycling. He and

“My son Mac, age 32, lives in Culver City and is

his wife Leslie cycled down the Danube from

starting a company. Check out www.playhooky.

Passau to Vienna last year. Jim recommends

io/. Nate, 28, is a credentialed science teacher

the trip highly—physically easy, not too

currently tutoring students. Julie continues to

strenuous, with lots of rewarding cultural

down to various gigs” as they experiment with

advocate for people to have open space within

landmarks en route. I suspect one might

retirement. Their two families have learned

a 10 minute walk, through Trust for Public

be able to forage for some beer and Rhine

and enjoy all of the winter sports we enjoyed at

Land. I work toward environmental literacy

wine without too much effort. Jim’s boys are

Holderness. Where is that sweatshirt I wonder.

in the public school education of all California

working and supporting themselves in Austin

… As for my news, not much comes to mind for

K–12 students.” Here is a great article:

so they are finally empty nesters and able to

a change (cue the cheering). Holderness did

www.baynature.org/article/schools-outside/.

travel where and when the mood hits them. …

ask me and others from the past decades to

And finally, John Lord weighs in with some

participate in a survey of what we remember

’72

nostalgia. He remembers back 33 years ago

of the day-to-day life on campus during our

that he was wearing my Holderness sweatshirt

respective eras. They promised complete

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

when he and his wife moved to their present

discretion on our answers about social life

Dwight Shepard

home in Yarmouth, ME. A neighbor offered

and extracurricular campus activities. I’m

shepdb@comcast.net

to help them drag furniture to the first f loor

hoping this is not some type of sting operation.

since nothing would go up a circular staircase

Anyway, the statute of limitations has probably

’73

until John later “blew out” a second f loor

run out. Look for the article in a future

window. (I hope John will elaborate in future

edition of Holderness School Today. Have a

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

notes what he did to “blow out” the second

great summer! Best to all, Dick Conant

Dick Conant

f loor window. Sounds in line with some of

rconantjr@msn.com

Jamie Kirkpatrick’s and my “experiments”

A three way tie in the first annual HolderCup. Tom Phillips ’75, Bob Hall TR ’11–’19 P’13 ’16, Alex MacCormick ’88

with low yield explosives outside the Hinman

’74

Dear classmates, I was heartened to hear from

house back in the day! Coach Hinman would

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

quite a few of you after my most recent call

occasionally come out and watch as we tried to

Walter Malmquist

for class notes. Geoff Klingenstein writes

get Bic pen casings packed with black powder

wmalmquist@kingcon.com

of a slow start to spring over in Vermont. As

off the pad. Most exploded on ignition and

of early May the nearby slopes of Suicide Six

made a rather startling explosion. I believe

still had some snow. Geoff and his wife are

Coach’s interest, in descending priority were

’75

moving to a bit more southerly location and

1) idle curiosity, 2) concern that we would

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

taking up a new residence in New London,

burn down his house, and 3) the possibility

Mac Jackson

NH. Given the damp cold spring weather he is

that we would blow off a finger or put an eye

skifarmer@live.com

wondering why they didn’t look much farther

out and have to go over to the infirmary and

south! … Peter Terry writes that he has

bother “Nursey”. But I digress. John goes on

Ed Cudahy reports he and his wife Susan will

landed a new (“and hopefully final”) teaching

to say that only later did the neighbor reveal

be celebrating their 39th soon and still live

job in Spartanburg, SC. He and his wife will be

himself as John Duncan ’70. John and his

in the Denver area. Ed notes: “All of our four

moving there from Winston-Salem, NC later

wife Barbara Barhyte have been wonderful

kids and six granddaughters are here as well.

this summer. … Jim Sargent checks in from

neighbors to the Lords since moving day.

Still not sure when I will ever retire as it costs

down Texas way. Given back surgeries and the

Although their respective kids have grown

a ton to manage this family of 15. Hope to see

normal course of aging that aff licts us all, Jim

and “f lown the coop,” John and John are “still

any of our class if they make it to Colorado.”

66 | Holderness School Today

Jess Tucker ’76 and his daughter visited Holderness to check on the blacksmith shop he helped build back in 1976.

Ghia Truesdale ’79 and Nicole (Marshall) Watkins ’80 at reunion

for the N.Y. Rangers and I will be playing center. Our team did so well at the Lake Champlain Pond Hockey Tournament this winter that we have become quite famous, and as desirable as any over-60-year-old can get. My son Ian is milking here full time, Caleb is making cheese full time, Lindsey is a chef in Bath, ME, Andrew is recovering from a near dead-end crash in Tahoe on a tricked out sled, which included a trip over a cliff, and Janine and I are still full time doing whatever needs to be done. The milk business is hard, and selling our Tarentaise is a chore, but we have received the highest quality organic milk award for Horizon nationally, and even with the ‘Amazon cram down effect’ our cheese keeps selling, so all good for now. Any visitors welcome anytime.”

Ham Boynton’s ’77 national book contest award … Ted McElhinny reports: “All is good, living

’76

Tucson. Good to catch up. I have six children’s

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

A Halloween Adventure with Sly the Fly. They

Biff Gentsch

are a series of books with a f ly that likes to

biffgentsch@gmail.com

have adventures. The latest one received a

in Easton, MD. If I’m not f lying I’m sailing

books on the market with the latest one being

top 100 in a national book contest in which

my boat or working on it so I can cruise long

Jess Tucker and his daughter visited

distance when I retire in two years.” … John

Holderness to check in on the blacksmith

Putnam writes: “Our lousy weather started

shop and the forge that Jess helped

here in Pomfret, VT in October and with a

build as his senior project in 1976.

few brief reprieves has continued since. We managed to get one field off and baled this

Holderness Reunion with Hratch Astarjian ’79 , Ghia Truesdale ’79, Bill Clifford ’79

there were about 1,200 books entered.”

’78 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

weekend, June 8th, which cut deeply into my

’77

Middlebury 40th reunion. I did make it over

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

there one beautiful night which was really

Peter Grant

great. We had an unofficial cocktail party

pete@grantcom.us

of 40 or more. There are so many crossovers

Luther Turmelle lturmelle@sbcglobal.net

’79 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

from Holderness to Middlebury that I can’t

George “Ham” Boynton writes: “Married

Hratch Astarjian

keep them all straight, but so what. I missed

childhood friend Ginger Ingels at our house

hihratch@gmail.com

Scotty Morrison ’73, Chris Fraker and

in Tucson, AZ in 2018. Also had Jim Murray,

George Fox, but if I keep sailing, and George

Jody Collins, and Jef Sharp down to cheer on

Ghia Truesdale writes, “What a splendid

keeps riding, I will see them both soon. Perry

and surprise fellow classmate Olin Browne in

40th reunion weekend! Great job! And,

Babcock is recruiting a new starting line

the Champions Tour event held every year in

yes, a good time was had by all!

Fall 2019 | 67

CLASS NOTES

Holderness Reunion with Ghia Truesdale ’79 and Hratch Astarjian ’79. The shot in upper Schoolhouse captures an elusive “First”: The FIRST time I ever put my feet up on a desk!

CLASS NOTES

’80

Jeffrey and I celebrate 17 years together this

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Engel & Völkers here in Incline Village, Lake

Greg White

Tahoe, Reno, and Washoe Valley. Reno, NV

GgNH@aol.com

is becoming a new Silicon Valley with an

June. We are luxury real estate advisors with

economic boom since Tesla, Google, Apple,

’81

and Starbucks arrived. Any Holderness Bulls

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

give me a shout. There will be mountain

Bill Baskin

biking, hiking, boating, et al this summer.”

william.baskin.law.90@aya.yale.edu

… George “Chip” White reports: “Summing

in the Tahoe area living, playing, or visiting

things up—the end of 2018 summer brought a

Kimberly Gannett ’89 and her son during their travels in Japan.

’82

new challenge. I was diagnosed with appendix

’88

cancer. Surgery and some complications

CLASS CORRESPONDENTS

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

landed me in the hospital for 23 days. That was

Alex MacCormick

Chris Pesek

followed by three months of chemotherapy.

amaccormick@centerlanellc.com

cpesek@yahoo.com

The plan for another large and unusual

Steve Walker

surgery called HIPEC was scheduled at John

stevewalkeremail@gmail.com

’83

Hopkins early March. Unfortunately, HIPEC surgery did not go as planned. Surgery was

Alex MacCormick’s daughter Molly graduated

Want to connect with your classmates?

scheduled to be 11 1/2 hours. They probed

from St. George’s this Spring and will be

Consider becoming a class correspondent

with cameras, and took samples, for two

attending USC beginning January 2020. …

and encouraging your classmates to

or three hours before waking me. A small

Matt Schonwald writes: “Going to Peru with

reconnect in the HST class notes.

growth cancer that was not seen in a CT scan

Charlotte for a month. Got a Malamute who

Contact us at alumni@holderness.org

existed in a way that could not be cut out.

is a cross between Chris Stewart and Owen

for more information. Thank you!

They needed me to go back to chemotherapy

“Brett” Jones, life of the party, girls love

with an added component for six months in

him, guys want to be him.” … From Lauren

’84

an effort to melt away the cancer. I’m still

(O’Brien) Smith: “All is well in Duxbury, MA.

playing tennis once every two weeks around

My son Jack will be a junior at Kenyon this

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

my chemo schedule. We have a lot of fun. I

fall. Tague, my ten year old, is off to Camp

Fred Ludtke

stand around in one place and let my partner

Kiev in Maine this summer for his first time,

ludtke4@gmail.com

do all the running! I’ve had some great visits

and I’m working full time with my coaching

from Greg Redmond and Freddy Paxton

practice, traveling for work, having a blast,

’85

’85. My oldest, Allie, is an aspiring singer

and my f lock of chickens are doing great.

in Nashville. Not sure if we have any music

Stew is well and my step daughter Linsin

Want to connect with your classmates?

industry Holderness friends out there.” …

is still in Chicago pursuing her PhD. If any

Consider becoming a class correspondent

Owen Hyland reports in: “We had another

of you are ever nearby, our invitation still

and encouraging your classmates to

busy winter ski racing at Gunstock. I now

stands to come and visit us on Clark’s Island

reconnect in the HST class notes.

refer to my kids’ ages by their USSA category.

this summer. I would love to see you all.”

Contact us at alumni@holderness.org

Martha is a U14, Henry a U12 and Charlotte

for more information. Thank you!

a U10. Every year I run into at least one Holderness parent from my era at a race. This

’89

’86

year it was Angus Christie ’85! I had lunch

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

with Clarence “Clay” Dunn on a recent visit

Jen (Murphy) Robison

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

to San Francisco. I’m currently busy launching

jennifermrobison@yahoo.com

Chris Zak

a new rum brand, Faraday West Indies Rum.”

chriszak@gmail.com

Wow!—the Class of ’89 was well represented at

’87

our 30th reunion. We missed many folks but

Kirstin Burbank-Corman reports: “I have three boys who are going to be a junior,

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

goes to the alumni and advancement teams

freshman and (gulp) third-grader this fall!

Kathryn (Lubrano) Robinson

and to the staff who worked so hard to take

Their ski racing, lacrosse, and equestrian

kathryn.robinson@gmail.com

care of us during our stay and keep campus

had a great group in attendance. A big thanks

activities keep me on the go. And they’re

looking so beautiful. The weekend was full of

musicians… look out ladies! My husband

great conversation, meals, and reconnecting.

68 | Holderness School Today

Reunion dinner gathering with Todd Maynard, Robert Frost, and Ben Spiess.

Michael O’Keefe ’91 and Jenny Culver ’05 playing tennis at Quechee CPI daughter Kathryn will be a senior next year at Purnell and son Will enters ninth grade. … Kimberly Gannett writes that she is in her 19th year as college and school counselor at Peak to Peak Charter School. She’s sorry she missed the big reunion but was traveling with her 13 year old son all over Japan! …

As for me, I continue to enjoy Marblehead and get up to school as much as possible to watch Addy’s ’22 games and other various

Brad Greenwood ’89 catches up with Lew Overaker (PEM) and Sarah (Trainor) Pflaum ’89.

Northfield Mount Hermon next year. … Tracy

performances. I am so very grateful for my 34 years and counting of connection to our little school in the NH mountains and its amazing people. Please stay in touch! Jen Robison

(McCoy) Gillette joyfully watched Lily ’19 graduate (she is off to Colby next year).

Daughter Wells ’22 will be a sophomore at

’90

Holderness. … Fred Harbison retired after 27

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Definitely one of the highlights of the weekend

years as a firefighter in Fairbanks, AK. He will

Nina Cook Silitch

was the chapel Convocation where Phil Peck

be working in the guiding industry with his

ninasilitch@gmail.com

announced that the Distinguished Alumni

new boss, Henry “Te” Tiffany, and is looking

award has been renamed the Tracy McCoy

forward to coming back to Holderness for his

Kate Arecchi reports: “I just finished

Gillette ’89 Distinguished Service Award, in

27th OB trip this winter. In addition, Te just

my 13th year on the faculty at James

honor of her inspiring and relentlessly positive

moved with wife Amanda and kids to a new

Madison University in VA, where I am the

work for the school. We love you Tracy! Here’s

homestead in Ashland, NH. He continues to

Associate School Director and Musical

the “spoken word” updates I gathered from

commute to Alaska to run his guiding business

Theatre Coordinator in the School of

those who were able to attend reunion. …

and supervise new employee Fred Harbison.

Theatre and Dance, and was honored as

Christy Donovan’s second daughter Sophia

… Todd Maynard gets up to Vermont often

the College of Visual and Performing Arts

graduated from National Cathedral School

and is getting back to studying the violin

Distinguished Teacher for 2018–2019.”

and is off to row at Princeton next year. Older

(who knew?). … Matt Mole travels the globe

daughter Emily will be a sophomore at UVA

in his role directing sourcing for the Vermont

and boys Clark and Burke are still home in DC.

Teddy Bear Company. He just came back from

’91

… Brad Greenwood has his boat in the water

an amazing Africa trip … Sarah (Trainor)

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

and is prepping for another great summer in

Pf laum ran into Chris Davenport this winter

Want to connect with your classmates?

Kittery, ME. … Rob Frost and his heartthrob

in Big Sky, MT and continues to love living

Consider becoming a class correspondent

dog, Angus Beefcake, are enjoying Jackson,

in Newburyport, MA. Daughter Lily will be a

and encouraging your classmates to

NH in between Rob’s far-f lung shooting

sophomore at Brooks and Will enters eighth

reconnect in the HST class notes.

(photography) assignments. … Jennie (Legg)

grade. … Emily Raabe is living the city life

Contact us at alumni@holderness.org

Gabel will be cramming in graduate school

in NYC, teaching English at Parsons School

for more information. Thank you!

in between her full-time job as a high school

of Design and keeping up with three year old

guidance counselor and driving in circles

Wren. … Ben Spiess continues a fulfilling

Peter Christensen writes: “I don’t know the

around Sudbury, MA getting her kids to sports

law practice in Anchorage and finds lots of

last time I submitted notes, but I have been

activities. … Alix (Rosen) Hong and husband

outdoor time with his wife and two sons. …

living in Green Bay, WI since January 2011. I

Tom love their NH lifestyle. Their younger

Sara (deLima) Tansill continues to get after

love living in the northern part of Wisconsin

daughter, Lydia, joins her sister Amelia at

it in the Wilton, CT real estate world. Her

with my wife and two daughters, who are 8

Jen (Murphy) Robison ’89, Fred Harbison ’89, and Jennie (Legg) Gabel ’89 at Biederman’s Pub.

Fall 2019 | 69

CLASS NOTES

Reunion fun with the class of 1989. Pictured left to right front row: Sara (deLima) Tansill, Emily Raabe, Tracy (McCoy) Gilette, Alix (Rosen) Hong.

Back row: Todd Maynard, Jenny (Legg) Gabel, Brad Greenwood, Robert Frost, Sarah (Trainor) Pflaum, Matt Mole, Jennifer (Murphy) Robison, Ben Spiess, and Angus Beefcake.

and 10. I am the Materials Director of Packer Fastener (a fastener distributor), and we

CLASS NOTES

theoretically have the largest nut in the world (outside our facility) since our slogan is ‘We have the biggest nuts (and bolts) in town’. I think it weighs five tons. I have continued my endurance sports and always think back to my days with Phil Peck and Mike Henriques ’76 when I think I can’t do something in endurance. I tear up the Ironman/triathlon

Field Pickering’s ’96 son Frederick B. Pickering IV

Sachie Hayashi ’97 and her 10 year old daughter, Hana

circuit as much as I can. I have been to the

’96

Ironman World Championships twice now and

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Plymouth Planning Board at a time when the

this September is my third trip to the Ironman

Heather (Pierce) Roy

area is badly in need of her imaginative but

70.3 World Championships in Nice, France.”

heatherbpierce@hotmail.com

steady and thoughtful leadership. I also caught

’92

Kirsten (Tilney) Behling reports “I just

last summer when he passed through his home

published my first book! It’s designed to

town and sold out a local venue. Tarun recently

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

help faculty and universities as they think

published his first novel, Laughing in Hell,

Kelly (Mullen) Wieser

about the diversity of the student body

and I can tell you it was a page-turner from

up with actor/comedian/writer Tarun Shetty

in their work. Reach Everyone, Teach

start to finish! He’s been performing far and

Everyone: Universal Design for Learning

wide, in person and across the social media

in Higher Education , Thomas Tobin and

landscape, with a range that’s somehow both

Kirsten Behling, West Virginia Press.”…

really personal and unique, and just universally

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Frederick “Field” Pickering and his

hilarious. I’ve really enjoyed and been

Lindsay (Dewar) Fontana

wife Emma report from Singapore with

sobered by Gabe Sherman’s dispatches from

linds_dewar@yahoo.com

the news of the arrival of their first child

Washington, DC and it was a trip to hear him

Frederick B. Pickering IV on May 2, 2018.

talking with Terry Gross on NPR last July (not

kelly@wiesermail.com

’93

’94

his first time on that show, I might add). Half

’97

the time I’m reading Gabe’s work I’m equally as

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Ramey Harris-Tatar

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

and stories he keeps getting! Thank you Dennis

rameyht@yahoo.com

Putney P. Wendell

Roberts for helping inspire class giving of

putneypyles@gmail.com

late. He even made a surprise appearance on

Uli von Blumencron writes that “I thought

intrigued by how he manages to get the sources

campus in a snowstorm to pitch in! Hope this

a lot about Holderness when I was in the

Shannon Mullen reports: “I’m trying to

finds everyone doing well wherever you are!”

area from May 21st until May 28th. That was

remember what’s new since the last time.

… Dennis Roberts reports he’s working like

when I realized that I would miss reunion by

I spent most of the past year working on a

crazy and getting ready for his son Connor

a week because I could not change my travel

screenplay in mid-coast Maine and getting

’23 to head to Holderness! “My kids continue

plans. The last five years have been crazy

to know (and falling in love with) the area.

to get older as much as I try to stop that.

busy with f loods and droughts on the farm

That gave rise to my first story for The New

Watching Monty Python and other classics

but everyone in the family is healthy and so

Yorker, about the art of Andrew Wyeth and

on the Holderness baseball field seems like it

we are fine.” … Beth Lambert wrote to say

all the people who still visit a house from

wasn’t that long ago, but now it will be my son

“I just recently moved to Charlotte, NC. I am

his most famous painting, near where I was

having similar experiences. Who knows what

definitely enjoying all the sunshine but I did

staying. I found myself thinking a lot about

movies have replaced the classics of the mid

miss seeing snow this past winter. Would love

Norm Walker in the writing of it, and missing

90’s. I’m so excited for Connor to have his own

to connect with any Holderness alums in the

him as much as ever. His diagnosis that I’m a

Holderness experience!” … Andy Humphrey

area.” … As for me, Ramey, I was disappointed

writer—way back then—seems to have been

writes: “We’re a very busy family; Drew is now

to miss reunion and hope everyone is well!

right all along! My slate of movie projects is

15, Phoebe is 13, Winnie is 10, and each enjoys

full, so I’m developing a play and a podcast,

different sports and activities. It can be tough

’95

now, too. I’ve been enjoying watching all my

to stay organized and my amazing wife keeps

nieces and nephews grow up now and being

everything in check for us. I’ve been traveling a

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

near enough to three of the five that I can see

lot, and was able to spend time in Hong Kong

John Farnsworth

them often in person! I get together with Becca

and China this spring sourcing products for my

jpfarns@yahoo.com

Hanson often—she’s the Chairwoman of the

eCommerce brands and I’m excited for my first

70 | Holderness School Today

Meg Rapelye ’97 being appointed a Foreign Service Office with the US State Department Chris Day’s ’97 Rock Stacker Kombucha

the hill skiing and are now getting the biking legs back with a family Kingdom Trails trip

public speaking gig, at the Modern Distribution

coming up. This winter I ran into the always

Management Conference, where I will share

popular Timmy Barnhorst ’00 and did some

my story about starting SprinklerSupplyStore.

skiing with the Goldsmith girls (Courtney

com. I need to be better at connecting with

Goldsmith Broadwater ’98 and Sage

Holderness alumni. Let’s meet up!” … Putney

Goldsmith Tremaine ’95). I just returned from

Pyles Wendell reports: “At the time of writing

a week long canoeing trip from the Boundary

our needs. Our farm recently made the feature

this update, Spring has only recently arrived

Waters of Northern MN up into Quetico Park,

story in “Edible Alaska” in the spring and we

in New England. Yet we will be opening this

Canada. Awesome fishing, camping, black

continue to strive to move fast enough to avoid

issue of the HST as the leaves are beginning

flies, and so many stars. When I am out in

the mosquitoes and catch the salmon when

to fall. Where is time going? My son Peter will

the wilderness I always smile remembering

they’re running. Every day is an epic adventure

be turning two in just a few short months,

solo and our outdoor adventures.” … Sachie

living in this part of the woods—sometimes

and it feels like the days are evaporating; he

Hayashi writes in: “Nothing much to report!

just avoiding the moose! I work too hard to stay

was born just a few weeks before our 20th

I live in Superior, Colorado with my husband,

in touch with y’all but welcome visitors and

reunion. Hold on…we are over 20 years out

two daughters and a dog. We moved here seven

would love to connect with Holderness grads.

from our Holderness graduation—wow! We are

years ago but nothing really exciting other than

It’s impressive to hear what our class is up to—

all so busy with our families and professional

we love sunny Colorado and thankful for our

kids and jobs are keeping us busy!” … Thanks

lives, and I so appreciate the time folks took

health.” … Last fall, Meg Rapelye-Goguen

again for sharing your news. I look forward

to send over news for the HST. Over the past

accepted an appointment with the U.S. State

to more updates in the future. Best, Putney

few issues, a number of different classmates

Department as a Foreign Service Officer and

have written in and it really makes these notes

will be serving her first assignment in Haiti for

more fun to read (and to write!).” … Andrew

two years starting this September. … Moving

’98

Miller wrote in with the following: “I am still

further west, Chris Day emailed over this

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

in the Boston/South Shore area and traveling

news: “I am still living in Flagstaff, AZ. I have

Tara (Walker) Hamer

the country for work so I’m always looking for

opened and run a Kombucha brewery here

taraphotography@gmail.com

Holderness alumni events to attend. I get out

in town. It’s called Rock Stacker Kombucha.

west regularly. My three girls are now 13, 11, 9

I have two flavors right now: lavender and a

and the oldest is looking hard at Holderness.

ginger/juniper berry. I’m the only employee

’99

I’ve been lucky to live through some neighbors

and have been open for about 1.5 years now.

Want to connect with your classmates?

kids’ who have been through the school in

My 9 year old son helps me at the brewery and

Consider becoming a class correspondent

the last six years with more to follow. I hope

when we are done working we go ski, bike and

and encouraging your classmates to

everyone is well I will try and get to an alumni

adventure hike around Flagstaff.” … Last, but

reconnect in the HST class notes.

event soon.” … Further north, Davison “Tad”

not least, Allie Barker sent me this update:

Contact us at alumni@holderness.org

Davis shared this update: “Greetings from

“News from Alaska! Winter brought more

for more information. Thank you!

Stowe VT. I had the pleasure of writing a

rain than we like but enough snow to keep

recommendation this year for Alex McNabb

us busy working as avalanche forecasters for

Aris Garrison reports: “My wife and I were

’22, who will be attending Holderness next

the Hatcher Pass Avalanche Center. I’m still

married two years ago this June and we are

year as a sophomore; a great kid who will be ski

living the good life off grid, running a human-

expecting our first child, a baby boy, Kelvin

racing and playing lacrosse. It’s exciting to see

powered organic farm on our homestead in

Garrison, at the end of June. Things are going

so many talented kids from our town headed

the Matanuska Valley. We’re using pigs to turn

well and we are enjoying living in Southern

to Holderness. My family and I (Maura, Faye,

forest to farm, raising chickens and ducks, and

California. I’m currently working as an

9, Gwen, 6, and Teddy, 6) spent the winter on

still striving to “hunt, fish, gather, grow” for all

architect for Stantec and I’m the lead project

Aris Garrison ’99 and his wife Jessica in a recent trip to Great Guana Key, Bahamas

Fall 2019 | 71

CLASS NOTES

Work by Emilie Lee ’99 – Indian Creek Canyon, 12x6 oil

architect for the country’s largest net-zero student housing development, The Greens

CLASS NOTES

at West Village, located at the University of California at Davis.” … Emilie Lee writes: “Hi there! My life has been full with travel and painting over the past few years, and I’m excited to announce that I’m sharing some

Christopher Nielson ’02 presenting at Wentworth Elementary school

of this work in a show that I’m curating at

and classes to those looking to pursue a

Eleventh Street Arts Gallery in NYC. It will

sober lifestyle. Going back to the subject

be on view from June 27 through September

of arts and theater, this summer I will

5 featuring landscape paintings made by

be playing Norma in Victor Victoria and

adventurous artists who paint outdoors

Adelaide in Guys and Dolls . If anyone is in

around the world. A portion of the proceeds

the Reno/Tahoe region, come see a show!”

Dave Campbell ’04, his wife Audrey and their daughter Matilda on a Mother’s Day hike in San Francisco

will be donated to The Nature Conservancy.

For more info go to eleventhstreetarts.com.

Thanks for checking it out!” … Robbie King

’02

notes: “I graduated in May from Columbia

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

University medical school, and am beginning

Betsy Pantazelos

residency in psychiatry at Maine Medical

b.pantazelos@gmail.com

Center. In other news, come ride with me, Tim

Brie Healy’s ’05 daughter Lydia Jeanne Healy, born April 24, 2019

Barnhorst ’00, and other Holderness alums

Joe Sampson writes: “Recently I was

this (and every) October at the King Challenge

fortunate enough to host Christopher

in Stratham, NH! www.kingchallenge.org.”

Nielson at Wentworth Elementary School

I’ve been working down on the beautiful

(where I am principal) to do a presentation

island of North Captiva. It is paradise. I’m

’00

to the whole school on architecture! He even

still in contact with Dave LaPointe and

learned a dance or two from the kids during

Casey Carr and hope to visit them and

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Friday morning dance time. Good fun!” …

their families this summer. I heard Mrs.

Andrew “Sully” Sullivan

Kerry Douglas Pearce reports: “After 12

Weymouth retired. She was unbelievable. I

MyIreland20@gmail.com

wonderful years in NYC, my husband Andrew

was voted to come back as Mrs. Weymouth

and I have relocated to Boston. I couldn’t

in our superlatives but those are hard and

deny my New England roots and am thrilled

wonderful shoes to fill. I have an amazing

to be back in the Northeast!” … Ally Keefe

pup named Ducky and life is good. I attended

took the trip of a lifetime to British Columbia

my roommate Mary “Krissy” Weatherbie’s

CLASS CORRESPONDENTS

in February. “It was a week long, all female

’04 wedding on Prince Edward Island,

Karyn (Hoepp) Jennings

backcountry ski trip, and needless to say,

Canada and saw some other fellow Holderness

KarynPJennings@gmail.com

it was amazing. I even got to catch up with

crew. It was absolutely beautiful and a total

Adam Lavallee

Teddy Hincks and Tim Barnhorst ’00 in

blast. Heading to Spain in September where

a.l.lavallee@gmail.com

Lake Louise afterward! I also recently met my

a beautiful soul I know, from Trinity, is

Sophie Moeller

first niece, Lydia Jeanne, and we are all very

getting married. Excited for the future!”

sophmoe@gmail.com

much in love with her. As for my fall plans,

’01

I’m heading to grad school to become a nurse Sophie Moeller reports: “Life out in Reno is

practitioner and hope to promote within the

’04

treating me well. I am still working for STEP2,

emergency department I currently work in.”

Want to connect with your classmates?

a non-profit dedicated to stopping the cycle of addiction in women and their children. I have

Consider becoming a class correspondent

’03

and encouraging your classmates to

been developing an expressive arts program called “Finding Your Voice” and VOICES

CLASS CORRESPONDENTS

Contact us at alumni@holderness.org

(Voices of Intelligent, Confident, Empowered,

Nick Payeur

for more information. Thank you!

Survivors) in collaboration with Reno Little

ndpayeur@gmail.com

Theater. We use performance, movement,

Neal Frei

and music as a therapeutic tool to help heal,

nealfrei@gmail.com

connect, and build confidence. I have also

reconnect in the HST class notes.

’05 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

started working with Reps4recovery, a non-

Brenna Fox reports: “I have been traveling a

Brie Keefe Healy

profit which gives free gym memberships

lot and am starting my own hemp oil business.

healey.brie@gmail.com

72 | Holderness School Today

Krista Glencross ’06 at her University of New Hampshire graduation

An early 30th birthday celebration for Baird (Meem) Anderson ’08. Back row: Haley Wilich ’08, Julia Ford ’08, Brett Phillips ’08, James O’Leary ’09, Annie Carney ’08. Front row: Jack Dings ’09, Baird (Meem) Anderson ’08, Jessi White ’08 We are happily settled in Cambridge, MA and frequently see Anne Richardson. This spring my artwork was included in an alumni photography exhibition at Holderness as Franz Nicolay’s last exhibition before retirement.” …

Casey Gilman got engaged to Matt Trainor while skiing in Alaska this past spring. They are looking forward to their wedding next year! … Jeff Meyers and wife Grace are excited to announce the birth of their son, Levi

Emma (Schofield) Phipps ’05 and her daughter Sloane Marie Phipps

Hannah Hickok ’05 and Krista (Glencross) Officer ’06 in Paris

Meyers, on February 17. … Krista (Glencross) Officer writes: “I graduated in May with my

have a baby girl, due June 4. I f ly as a pilot

MBA from UNH’s Peter T. Paul School of

Brie Keefe Healy reports: “My husband Mike

for Delta Airlines full-time, and part-time

Business and Economics. I was really excited

and I welcomed our daughter Lydia Jeanne on

with the Air Force reserve. Hope all is well.”

to wrap up grad school and decided to book

April 24, 2019! We’re enjoying learning from her and spending time with our little family

a trip to celebrate. I went to Paris to catch up

(including the pup, Rosie, of course). Other

’06

than that I’m still teaching middle school

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

science in central Vermont and enjoying the

Casey Gilman

changing seasons of New England!” … Jaime

Clgilman5@gmail.com

Pauley is currently living in Plymouth, NH,

with Hannah Hickok ’05 and she showed me everything her new city has to offer.”

’07 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

right next door to the Holderness School

Annie Muse Kearney says: “Hi everyone! In

Annie Hanson

campus, with her boyfriend Ben Cronin.

2017 I got my doctorate in health education

annie.e.hanson@gmail.com

“I have been spending quite a bit of time

and promotion from Teachers College

outdoors: hiking, skiing and spending time

Columbia. My main focus is in research/

on the lakes. I recently just finished up the

advising on community health evaluations

’08

10,000 Small Business program that was a

and youth development. I work remotely as my

CLASS CORRESPONDENTS

collaborative effort between Goldman Sachs

husband plays professional hockey in Europe.

Baird (Meem) Anderson

and Babson College. Professionally, I am in

We currently call Grenoble, France home.

bairdmeem@gmail.com

my sixth year of ownership of my jewelry,

Last year I got to celebrate Thanksgiving with

Jessi White

accessory and gift shop, Simply Sunf lowers,

Eliza ’07 and Reed Cooley ’05 in Paris. In

white.jessica.madigan@gmail.com

located on Main Street in Plymouth! I would

the off season, my husband and I are building

love for any and all alumni to stop in whenever

our own home in Stowe, VT. We get to see

you visit Holderness—it would be great to see

my brother John Muse ’05 since he lives

you and catch up! Or feel free to visit us online

in Burlington completing his neurosurgery

at www.simplysunf lowersnh.com—we just

residence at UVM. Let me know if you are in

’09

launched an e-commerce platform!” … Emma

either place; we love visitors!” … Carlie Febo

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Schofield Phipps writes: “We gave birth to

reports: “This first year of marriage has been

Allison Stride Lloyd

our first child—Sloane Marie Phipps, class of

full of changes! I took the leap into freelance

stride.ally@gmail.com

2037?” … Peter Schlech notes: “My wife Emily

work. I am doing mostly photography and

and I live in Philadelphia. We (by the fall) will

creative youth development consulting.

Morgan Frank just completed his PhD at MIT.

Fall 2019 | 73

CLASS NOTES

Ashley Saba-Winders ’05 Wedding: Kit Henderson-Adams ’05, Susan Taylor ’05, Ashley Saba-Winders ’05, Hannah Hickok ’05, Jaime Pauley ’05, Jenn Calver ’05

CLASS NOTES

Jeff Wassman ’10 and Jack Hyslip ’10 Satchel Summers ’09

The wedding of Aubrey Tyler ’10 to Dan Malecha on Lake Ida in Alexandria, MN. Ben Tyler ’07, Marion Thurston ’10, Dan Malecha, Aubrey Tyler ’10, Tizzy Brown, Wes Mitchell-Lewis ’10, and Emily Pettengill ’10.

Nathan McBeath ’10 proposes to Kelsey in Santorini, Greece.

Nathan McBeath ’10 and his fiance Kelsey Arizona, got engaged, and got a dog. More Satchel Summers graduated from UC Davis

importantly, got to hang out with Jack Hyslip

this past June. He received an MBA and

while he was on a business trip in Phoenix.

was number one in his class. He specialized

He is still an interesting and hilarious guy.

in technology finance. He accepted a

People in Phoenix still talk about him.”

Emily Hayes, ’11, Emily Starer ’11, Margaret Thibadeau ’11, Madde Burnham ’11, and Nick Renzi ’12 in Aspen this past winter

position as a Senior Financial Analyst with Intel and began his new career in July.

’11

’10

CLASS CORRESPONDENTS

CLASS CORRESPONDENTS

cncushman@gmail.com

John McCoy

Amanda Engelhardt

johnsmccoy92@gmail.com

amanda.engelhardt29@gmail.com

Elise Steiner Hacker

Jamie McNulty

elisehsteiner@gmail.com

jamcnulty20@gmail.com

Brian Friedman reports: “I’ve spent the past

Amanda Engelhardt writes: “I’m still

Cecily Cushman

Salamarie Frazier’s ’12 baby boy Azriel two years writing my book, Takeaways, and

living and working down in Boston and

Stephanie Symecko reports: “I graduated

finally launched it on June 11. While running

see Holderness friends as often as I can!

from BAE Systems Operations Leadership

my startup LOOPD in Silicon Valley, I learned

We had a fun reunion in Aspen this past

Development Program, and will continue to work

a lot of insider secrets. I ended up collecting the

winter with Emily Hayes, Emily Starer,

for BAE in Austin, TX. Recently Chris Bunker

best stories and turned them into actionable

Margaret Thibadeau, Madde Burnham,

(a classmate our freshman and sophomore years)

guidance for anyone operating or starting a

and Nick Renzi ’12—it was a blast!”

moved to Austin. I always do a double take when

business. I’m also finishing my undergraduate degree in materials science and engineering

he walks into the gym with his old Holderness

’12

Bulls football t-shirt on! I also started working

at Lehigh University.” … Nathan McBeath currently lives in Boston and works as a

CLASS CORRESPONDENTS

MBA program. I had the opportunity to meet

financial consultant for Deloitte. Outside work

Alex Leininger

my new classmates from all over the world at the

he is still staying active and globe-trotting

leiningerbalex@gmail.com

program kickoff week at the school in Madrid,

with his fiance Kelsey. … Scott Nelson will be

Kristina Micalizzi

Spain. While in Madrid I was able to catch up

attending business school at Dartmouth this

kmicalizzi08@gmail.com

with Pancho Apraiz Calderon ’10. Love how

fall. … Jeff Wasson writes: “I just graduated

Steph Symecko

strong the Holderness bond can still be even

from law school at Arizona State, accepted

ssymecko@gmail.com

if you haven’t seen someone in nine years!”

a clerkship with a court of appeals judge in

74 | Holderness School Today

towards my MBA in IE Business School’s Global

Will Starkey is spending the semester in Auckland working at the Royal New Zealand completed the Newport to Bermuda sailboat race along with five friends. The race was

Maggie Roberts ’15, Nikki Blair ’15, and Leah Curtis ’15 A great snapshot of the Holderness crew at Colleen Finnerty (PEM) and Holly Lorms’ wedding at St. Marks School. Pictured left to right top row: Ari Bourque ’12, Randy Houseman, Nick Lawrence, Carol Dopp, Meredith Houseman, Tyler Cabot, Leigh Anne Connors, Ian and Kelly Casey, Julia Ford ’08. Bottom row, Conor O’Meara, Colleen Finnerty, Holly Lorms, Hal Gardner (PEM).

historic as they completed the race with the youngest female skipper in history.

minor. I will begin working at Fenway Sports Management as a sales associate in June.” …

Charlotte Freccia reports: “I just graduated

’18

magna cum laude from Kenyon College,

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

where I spent four blissful years. I spent my

Stuart Clifford

senior year as an honors candidate in English,

stugclifford@gmail.com

collaborating with Kenyon faculty to produce

Sarah Rogers

’13

research on first-person narratives of trauma

sarahro524@gmail.com

and embodiment in the emerging literature

Luke Valentine

CLASS CORRESPONDENTS

of the hookup culture and simultaneously

lukevalentineoms@gmail.com

Kelly DiNapoli

producing a debut novel about sexual and

kelldinap@gmail.com

cultural politics on the campus of a small,

Chloe Dawkins and Jenny Herrick both

private liberal arts school. I received Highest

took a gap year and were ski instructors in

Caleb McDermott reports: “I’ve been working

Honors in English, a rank reserved for the top

Beaver Creek, CO. They report that it was

in Boston as Head of Growth of Involved, a

1/3 of honors projects at Kenyon. Currently, I

a really great experience, but are looking

survey software for government, advocacy

am at home in Columbus, OH reading Didion

forward to attending the University of Denver

and education I co-founded while at Boston

novels, learning Italian, looking for work

and College of Charleston next fall. … Quinn

University. I’m still active with my music

in the publishing and cultural sectors, and

Berube writes: “After finishing my first year

agency, too. Excited for Summer 2019!”

anticipating grad school in the next few years.”

at Clark University, I’ve found an interest

… Austin “Michael” Beutner plans to move to

in sociology. Outside of academics, I spent

’14

San Francisco after graduation to start work.

a lot of time with the softball team, at the

… Maggie Roberts, Nikki Blair, and Leah

Worcester Art Museum, and searching for

CLASS CORRESPONDENTS

Curtis graduated from Colorado College.

cool spots on campus. I’m looking forward

CoCo Clemens

to spending my summer in Worcester while

’16

working at Clark!” … Lila Schibli shares: “I

Tess O’Brien tmobrien@uvm.edu

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

University where I alpine ski race and have

AJ Chabot

developed a passion for psychology.”

coco@americanrhino.com

Clark Macomber reports that he’s

ajchabot@gmail.com

graduated from SLU and is moving to Salt Lake City to work for Goldmen

just completed my first year at St. Lawrence

’19

Stanly in their skiing powder and

’17

ripping bikes department! Booyeah!!

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Lilly Patterson

Elizabeth Johansson

lpatterson19@nobles.edu n

’15

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

ecjohansson17@gmail.com

CLASS CORRESPONDENT Hope Heffernan hopeheffernan@gmail.com Alexandra “Sasha” Jones graduated from St. Lawrence University with a degree in business and economics and started work at PitchBook Data in NYC in June. … Hope Heffernan writes: “This past May I graduated cum laude from Villanova University with a BA degree in

SHARE YOUR NEWS! Have you recently encountered a milestone in your life? Share your news with your classmates! Please contact us at alumni@holderness.org.

communication, accompanied with a business

Fall 2019 | 75

CLASS NOTES

Yacht Squadron. This past summer he

AT THIS POINT IN TIME

HOLDERNESS SCHOOL TODAY THE EDITOR (13 JUNE 2019)

I

t’s true: even Holderness School Today hits an off-note now and then. We’d like to thank Richard (Dick) Floyd, MD ’59 for pointing out a recent error—and for keeping us all in tune.

After 1959 graduation I believe the Octet folded but before graduating we did cut a 33 1/3 recording entitled “Caught In The Oct”. That disc should be on file in the school archives.

The Octet is shown in the 1959 yearbook on page 49.

I always read with interest the happenings at the “old” campus. In the Spring edition you carried an article about “The Holdernotes” stating that it was the first ever a cappella group at Holderness.

Many of us have gone on to enjoy music throughout our lives. I, for example, am a card-carrying 43 year veteran of the Barbershop Harmony Society with six International Competitions under my belt. I also formed a 14-member a cappella men’s group called SOUND INVESTMENT. We have been together for 14 years and continue to perform all over the Boston Metro Area.

I want to point out that long ago (1959) Holderness did have an a cappella men’s octet called “The Holderness School Octet”. This was a classic 4-part octet under the direction of Mr. William Rice but organized by the seniors of the day —mainly Dick Floyd, Peter Coughlan, Ray LaFrance, Chris Hoyt, Jay Gerard, and Justin Orr. We had a grand time singing on campus and performing when visiting girls schools.

–Richard (Dick) Floyd, MD Holderness ’ 59 n

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU! What’s happening in your world? Holderness School Today wants to know! Have you: ▪ Changed your mailing address or email?

▪ Had an addition to your family?

▪ Volunteered for an important cause?

▪ Embarked on an exciting professional or personal adventure?

▪ Experienced a chance encounter with another Holderness alumnus or alumna?

Send your photos, updates, and news to alumni@holderness.org. We look forward to hearing from you!

76 | Holderness School Today

BOARD OF TRUSTEES Sandeep Alva Karyn Campbell

THE OUTDOORS. IT’S WHO WE ARE.

Katie Crumbo Carolyn Cullen ’87 Bob Cunha Cecily Cushman ’11 Chris Davenport ’89 Andrew Davis Paul John Ferri Tracy Gillette ’89 The Right Rev. Robert Hirschfeld Burgie Howard ’82 Chris Keating ’81 Rob Kinsley ’88 Alex MacCormick ’88 Kevin Mattingly Joe Miles ’82 R. Phillip Peck Nell Reynolds, Chair Andrew Sawyer ’79 Harry Sheehy Matt Storey Sander van Otterloo ’94 Richard Vieira Chance Wright ’14 Sung You ’01

HEADMASTER EMERITUS

Please send notice of address changes to the Advancement Office, PO Box 1879, Plymouth, NH 03264, or advancement@holderness.org.

GUEST CONTRIBUTORS: Max Paro ’17, Kelsey Berry, Suzanne Dewey, Franz Nicolay

The Rev. Brinton W. Woodward, Jr.

©2019 Holderness School.

DESIGN & PRODUCTION: Tessa Magnuson, Align Graphic Design, LLC

HONORARY TRUSTEES

EDITORS: Emily Magnus ’88, Andrew Herring, and Greg Kwasnik

PHOTOGRAPHY: Neal Frei ’03, Emily Magnus ’88, Max Paro ’17, Gil Talbot

EDITORS EMERITI: Jim Brewer and Rick Carey

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by R.C. Brayshaw and Company on sustainably produced, chain-of-custody stock certified to Forest Stewardship Council ® (FSC ®) standards.

Warren C. Cook Bob Hall Jim Hamblin ’77 Piper Orton ’74 W. Dexter Paine III ’79 Will Prickett ’81

ASSISTANT EDITORS: Patrick Buckley, Suzanne Dewey, Neal Frei ’03, Stacy Lopes, Darren Moore ’99, Phil Peck, Mark Sturgeon, and Kelly van Lingen

Our setting—New Hampshire’s White Mountains—inspires us every day in every season. At Holderness, we learn, live, play, and pray in the outdoors.

Your gift makes our transformative outdoor experiences possible.

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The Magazine of Holderness School

HOLDERNESS SCHOOL TODAY The Magazine of Holderness School | FALL 2019

English Department Chair and International Student Coordinator Marilee Lin shares her love of learning in one of her classes.

| FALL 2019

Inside:

Rip Richards and his daughter, Sara ’80, contemplate the rigors of Out Back.

»

COMMENCEMENT 2019

»

WHAT THE LORD SAID UNTO CLOUGH

»

CATCHING UP WITH DOUG KENDALL

»

PREPARING FOR THE RIGORS OF OUT BACK