Harvard-Westlake: A History

HARVARD-WESTLAKE A HISTORY

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H A RVA R D SCHOOL

HARVARDWESTLAKE A HISTORY

Text by Susan Wels.

Design and typesetting by Debbie Berne Design.

Text and images copyright Š 2017 Harvard-Westlake School unless otherwise noted.

Additional credits are listed on page 144, which constitutes a continuation of the copyright page.

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

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HARVARD SCHOOL: 1900–1991 CHAPTER TWO

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THE WESTLAKE SCHOOL FOR GIRLS: 1904–1991 CHAPTER THREE

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CREATING HARVARD-WESTLAKE: THE FIRST YEARS CHAPTER FOUR

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PURSUING EXCELLENCE: 1996–2016 CHAPTER FIVE

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BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE CHAPTER SIX

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PASSION AND PURPOSE: HARVARD-WESTLAKE TODAY CHAPTER SEVEN

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A COMMIT TED COMMUNITY: ALUMNI OF HARVARD-WESTLAKE INDEX ACKNOWLED GEMENTS PHOTO CREDITS

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CHAPTER ONE

HARVARD SCHOOL 1900–1991

In its early years, Harvard School offered students college preparatory classes, military discipline, and practical training in machine shop, forging, and carpentry skills.

Young Harvard School cadets, 1912.

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The original Harvard Hall, on the Western Avenue campus, housed a gymnasium, locker room, tailor shop, lunchroom, and armory.

O N A B A R E T E N - A C R E S T R E T C H O F B A R L E Y F I E L D , I N T H E FA S T- E X PA N D I N G C I T Y O F

Los Angeles, the Harvard School—a military academy for boys—opened its doors on September 24, 1900. Its aim was to bring the scholastic standards and traditions of the East to the raw, rough-edged West Coast metropolis. Its founder, Grenville C. Emery, a Maine native, had taught for years at the venerable Boston Latin School. At the age of fifty-four, he had journeyed west in the footsteps of his father, who had gone to California for the Gold Rush. Los Angeles was a young city at the beginning of the twentieth century, “untried, rough, and awkward,” a columnist observed. Yet it was also “a phenomenon,” with a population that had grown fivefold, to more than fifty thousand, since the 1880s. In this booming urban center, filled with newcomers from the East and Midwest, Emery hoped to provide a “decent” alternative, as he put it, to the two public high schools in the city—a respectable, strict, classic education that would prepare boys for college and technical schools or for careers in business.

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Grenville Emery, Harvard’s founder, was a graduate of Bates College in Maine, a former teacher at the Boston Latin School, and an author of algebra textbooks.

The 1906–07 Harvard School prospectus.

Located on Western Avenue at Venice, the school promised students the benefits of California’s stimulating air, endless sunshine, and “all that goes to make life worth the living.” The name “Harvard” was a natural choice, the founder noted, since he had spent years preparing boys for Harvard University and had permission from Harvard’s president, Charles W. Eliot, to use the name. With its opening enrollment of forty-two boarding and day students—outfitted in stiff, high-collared blue coats—Harvard School was an immediate success; by 1905, its enrollment had swelled to nearly two hundred cadets. The school’s traditional curriculum focused on staples such as English, mathematics, science, history, and classical and Romance languages. In addition, boys learned manual arts, including wood- and metal­ working, and gained business skills in typing and bookkeeping. Boarders, comfortably housed in single rooms, were looked after by “two motherly and Named headmaster of Harvard School in 1912, Bishop Robert B. Gooden (right) was a native of Bolton, England, and a graduate of Trinity College in Connecticut. In 1931, he was named suffragan (assistant) bishop of Los Angeles.

sympathetic women.” On Sundays, boys polished correspondence skills by writing home—presenting drafts of letters to their instructors for “inspection and criticism.”

Athletics, too, were a prime focus. Tennis was the school’s most popular sport, but the spacious campus also featured football and baseball fields, handball courts, and a track for running and cycling. There was ample room for Harvard’s four companies of cadets to drill three days a week, led by young captains who were “great strutters-around,” recalled mathematics teacher Clarence Barnes.

By 1908, Harvard School boasted four grand sandstone buildings, including two

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built since 1906 to meet demands for space. “School history is in the making,” its prospectus promised; Harvard was on the verge of “a new era.” But the sixty-five-year-old Emery found his appetite for new challenges waning. Three years later, in 1911, he approached the Episcopal bishop of Los Angeles, Joseph Johnson, with a proposal to sell the school. The bishop welcomed the chance to acquire a new church school for boys, and the Episcopal Diocese purchased T H E H A RVA R D PA L M

Harvard for $80,000, retaining the school’s name and incorporating it as a nonprofit institution.

The old palm sways in the gentle breeze • With shaggy head

Bishop Johnson’s first, most pressing challenge was to find a

and criss-crossed trunk, •

new headmaster to replace Emery. To seek out candidates, he

Hoary with age ’neath

dispatched the Reverend Robert B. Gooden—a British-born

the silver moon • A

Episcopal priest keenly interested in education—to visit pre-

symbol of strength and fortitude.

paratory schools around the country, from Saint Paul’s and Phillips Exeter Academy to Groton and Taft School. After meet-

He dreams of the days when first a mite • He was

ing the reverend, Groton’s founder, Endicott Peabody, persuaded

planted by some Spanish hand, •

the bishop that Gooden himself was the ideal man to head Harvard

When the State was young and

School. The thirty-seven-year-old clergyman had no interest in the

the cattle roamed • Far and wide

job, but Johnson prevailed. “The bishop was my boss,” Gooden later

o’er this sunny land.

explained, “and there was nothing but to go.”

He has seen the adobe casa fall,

In 1912, Gooden left his parish in Long Beach for his new

• He has seen his master’s wealth

assignment as a boys’ school headmaster. Good-natured and tough-

decline, • He has lived through

minded, he set out to transform Harvard into a predominately

trouble, toil and strife, • Yet he has grown throughout it all.

religious residential institution. For the first time, the school’s curriculum included formal courses in religious studies. Gooden

And now we have him here with

even persuaded Harvard’s trustees to construct a chapel instead of

us • To watch us in our work

a planned swimming pool, threatening to resign if they refused.

and play, • His massive brow in glory raised • A landmark of the

Boarders began each day with a Bible reading and concluded it with

former days.

a brief religious service. Gooden, too, lived on school property with —JACK MACFARLAND, 1903

his family and aimed to run Harvard “as much like a home, and as little like an institution, as is possible.” There were few rules. While the school admitted boys from nine years of age to twenty-one—

The Harvard palm tree was a towering landmark on the school’s original Western Avenue campus.

boarders as well as some “day dodgers” who lived off-campus—it would not enroll “boys of bad character,” he declared, or those who had cultivated “the tobacco habit.”

Despite Harvard’s new religious emphasis, it retained its military character. In 1917, Harvard became the first school on the West Coast to be named a Junior Unit of the Reserve Officers’ Training

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Corps (ROTC). Still, America’s entry into World War I had little day-to-day effect on Harvard life. Although several faculty members left for the armed forces, and some older students volunteered to drive ambulances for the International Red Cross Brigade, most Harvard cadets experienced the war mainly through the patriotic glow of poems and songs. Much more tragic and immediate were the effects of the deadly 1918–19 flu epidemic, which “hit Harvard very hard,” instructor Clarence Barnes recalled.

Two students died, and at times more than twenty boys, some gravely ill, lay sick in bed in the gymnasium, which functioned as a makeshift hospital.

By the early 1920s, Harvard School was growing swiftly from a small boys’ school, the prospectus declared, into an academy “of worldwide distinction.” Enrollment had jumped to 268 students. The campus now included eleven buildings, and tuition for boarders had climbed from $500 at the school’s founding to $1,100. Responding to the rising prosperity of the times, Gooden cautioned Founded as a military institution, Harvard was the first West Coast academy to be named a Cadet School of the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC).

parents to limit sharply the amount of weekly spending money they gave their sons, to 35 cents for sixth graders and $2.50 for seniors. The emphasis on military discipline, too, was even greater. “Life at Harvard,” a teacher observed, now largely consisted of “bugle calls, formations, roll calls, and inspections.” Cadets drilled five days a week, and those who were physically unable to take part were no longer admitted.

The boys had their distractions, however, including school dances with live orchestras in halls festooned with pennants, flags, rifles, field artillery, and machine guns. And Harvard teams, dubbed the “Saxons,” regularly competed against rival schools—until a printer mistakenly recorded the team name as the “Saracens,” and the new moniker stuck.

The Saracen became the Harvard School mascot in the 1920s.

The 1920s were also a boom time for the city of Los Angeles. Its population jumped to more than a

Girls from Marlborough, Marymount, and Westlake attended Harvard’s dances and military balls.

million, and floods of new arrivals grabbed land and opportunities. Suddenly, the open fields that had

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Harvard School athletes originally competed against other schools as the “Saxons.”

H A RVA R D SCHOOL

Theatrical productions were among the distractions from military life at Harvard.

surrounded Harvard disappeared, replaced by a noisy commercial neighborhood that was less fitting for a country boarding school. Harvard’s trustees began searching for a new site, and in 1926, the school took out a loan to buy a sylvan twenty-five-acre property in Westwood. Before Harvard could complete the move, however, the nation’s economy collapsed. By 1930, the value of the land had plummeted, and Harvard lacked the funds to pay the property taxes and interest on the site.

The school’s financial crisis was compounded by leadership changes. In 1931, Gooden was elected suffragan (assistant) bishop of the Los Angeles diocese. According to church law, he was no longer permitted to serve in other positions, so he stepped down as Harvard’s headmaster. He was succeeded by Reverend Harold Kelley, a pastor with no educational experience. Kelley’s tenure at Harvard was short-lived. In 1934, he resigned from his position, and the church permitted Gooden to return part-time as “acting headmaster.” Meanwhile, Harvard’s financial troubles were deepening.

Enrollment plunged—by 1936, it had only 120 students—and its continued survival was in jeopardy. The next year, the Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Company foreclosed on the Western Avenue campus, and parents were told that the school would not

Before Harvard School opened in 1900, another Los Angeles boys’ school briefly used the Harvard name.

Founded in 1889, the Harvard Military Academy existed for only one year before all records of it disappeared.

reopen in the fall.

By August, however, the trustees saw a chance to save the school. Donald W. Douglas, Sr.—president of Douglas Aircraft Company and the father of Will Douglas ’38—agreed to lend Harvard $25,000, interest-free, for a down payment on another foreclosed site, the former Hollywood Country Club on Coldwater Canyon. Over the

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next month, faculty, parents, and students frantically transformed the twenty-twoacre club into a school—moving furniture, cleaning, painting, sewing curtains, and making classrooms out of locker rooms and dorms out of club buildings. “The paint was barely dry when the boys moved desks and chairs into the classrooms,” a teacher

In August 1937, Harvard took over the foreclosed site of the Hollywood Country Club and moved its campus to the club’s property on Coldwater Canyon.

recalled. With no athletic facilities on the property, students played basketball on the club’s seventeenth green and practiced football on the fairway of the second hole.

The chemistry teacher held classes in the Turkish bath, and the nineteenth-­hole coffee shop functioned as an auditorium. The new Coldwater campus, though, did have a proper chapel. The school had disassembled its original Saint Saviour’s Chapel on Western Avenue, transported it across the city in pieces, and rebuilt it on the new school property.

The move was a turning point. Within four years, Harvard had repaid the loan from Douglas and was on its way to financial recovery. The school’s track coach, Kinter Hamilton—a man “who could say no in

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In 1940, students packed a study hall inside Rugby Hall, which formerly contained the locker rooms and Turkish bath of the Hollywood Country Club.

A podium ornament from Saint Saviour’s Chapel.

five thousand words,” according to former teacher and Assistant Headmaster Marion

In the 1930s, many students loved driving their Model A Fords along the twists and turns of Coldwater Canyon Drive.

a fraction of the students lived at home, many of them commuting to Harvard in a

Hays—shared the school’s day-to-day responsibilities as associate headmaster. Only school bus known as the “Yellow Peril” or rocketing in Model A Fords over the twisting curves of Coldwater Canyon Drive. Most students—more than ninety—boarded in Harvard’s six dormitories, enjoying lavish fare including lobster Newburg and friendly visits from neighbor Clark Gable, who liked to cross the campus grounds on horseback.

The onset of World War II, however, meant sacrifices. Food rationing and the departure of the school’s beloved chef resulted in budget-stretching meals and grim experiments like marshmallow-topped eggplant. The campus was affected more seriously by emergency preparations and coastal blackouts in the first years of the war. The Army also reclaimed Harvard’s rifles, replacing them with wooden “Victory Trainers,” and provided gripping situation maps and training films for the cadets. By the end of the war, more than 350 Harvard School alumni had served in America’s armed forces, and fifteen had been killed in action. The Class of 1942 alone lost four graduates; their

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names, with those of all of the school’s war dead, were inscribed and commemorated in Saint Saviour’s Chapel.

The end of World War II was celebrated, by many students, behind the wheel.

With no more gas rationing, boys hit the road, driving “for the pure joy” of wasting fuel. The country, and Harvard School, again looked forward. By 1949, Bishop Gooden—now seventy-four years old—decided to retire. The task of leading Harvard in the postwar years now fell to its charismatic new headmaster, Reverend William Scott Chalmers. The former head of Kent School in Connecticut, Chalmers was a commanding presence, affectionate and stern, and nurtured warm relationships with students and faculty. “There was almost nothing Father Chalmers couldn’t forgive you for, if you were sorry,” a student remembered. Chalmers introduced Harvard’s system of prefects, as well as foreign exchange programs with British schools. By the early 1960s, he had also increased enrollment to 355 and organized committees of parents to raise money for an audacious $3.5 million master building plan. Chalmers boosted Harvard’s academic profile, too, although its curriculum was rather narrow.

With crusty but beloved instructors like James McCleery—a Latin teacher known for threatening pupils with an electric cattle prod—Harvard was strict and traditional, remembered Ernie Wolfe ’68. It was also “monochromatic,” another alumnus said, with students who were predominantly white and Protestant.

Some aspects of school life, however, were changing. After 1940, government support for Junior ROTC programs waned, and their quality dropped as a result. At Harvard, student enthusiasm for the military program gradually diminished, along with traditional standards and discipline. Over time, uniforms grew unkempt, and military parades were increasingly ragtag. As pressure rose for students to focus on academics, many at Harvard began questioning the value of time-consuming military instruction. By 1967, during the Vietnam War, even conservative students

Marion Hays—teacher, dorm head, and assistant headmaster from 1944 to 1970—played a central role in the school community with his wife, Carolyn. In 2004, their sons, both Harvard alumni, endowed the annual Carolyn and Marion Hays Award to recognize the service of Harvard-Westlake faculty to the school.

F AT H E R C H A L M E R S Born in Scotland, Father William Scott Chalmers was named Harvard’s headmaster in 1949. A Princeton graduate, Chalmers had served as headmaster of Connecticut’s Kent School for a decade. With his new wife, Grace, and their bulldog, Jiggs, he drove across the country to Los Angeles in his new Oldsmobile convertible, a going-away present from Kent. Called “Boss” by the faculty at Harvard, he was known throughout his two decades at the school as an approachable and understanding leader.

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Two years after Reverend Gooden arrived as headmaster of Harvard in 1912, the school constructed and dedicated Saint Saviour’s Chapel.

In 1937, Saint Saviour’s was cut into sections and moved from the Venice and Western campus to the school’s new site on Coldwater Canyon. There, the chapel was seismically strengthened and reassembled.

Determined to make religious education as much a focus of Harvard life as military training, Headmaster Robert Gooden threatened to resign if the school’s trustees did not approve construction of the chapel.

S A I N T S AV I O U R ’ S C H A P E L Dedicated in November 1914, Saint Saviour’s Chapel was originally erected on the Western Avenue campus of Harvard School. Modeled on the chapel at Britain’s Rugby School, it derived its name from Saint Saviour’s Cathedral in Southwark, England, where John Harvard, the founder of Harvard University, was baptized. In 1937, when the school moved to its Coldwater location, the chapel was taken apart, transported over Sepulveda Boulevard, and reassembled at its present site. The chapel’s twelve stained-glass windows—designed by Father John Gill, a legendary Harvard chaplain and history teacher—illustrate the school hymn, “For the Brave of Every Race,” and feature depictions of Father Gill, his dog, an astronaut, and an atomic submarine.

In the early 1960s, Father John Gill designed twelve new stained-glass windows, fabricated by Judson Studios in Pasadena.

Harvard’s shield, designed in 1956 by history teacher and chaplain Father John Gill, featured the sword of Saint Paul and two pairs of angel wings above a crowned lion.

rebelled against the school’s military focus. Two years later, in 1969, Harvard’s board of trustees voted to end the program. For the first time in its history, Harvard School was a civilian institution. Nearly three-quarters of the students welcomed the change. “No more sabers to stick little kids with . . . or ridiculous drills,” cheered the school’s news­ paper, the Sentinel Bulletin. Harvard’s focus now, more than ever, was “to graduate scholars,” Chalmers declared.

But it was Chalmers’s successor, Christopher Berrisford—Harvard’s first lay headmaster in more than half a century—who shaped it into one of the top academic institutions in the country. The energetic, Oxford-educated Berrisford succeeded Father Chalmers in September 1969.

When he arrived, he found a school that was “heading downhill,” recalled longtime English Department Chairman Robert Archer. “Discipline was breaking down,” he said.

“There was curricular chaos, and the school’s fund-raising wasn’t up to snuff.” But led by visionary trustees such as Charles Munger, the board gave Berrisford “the support necessary to do the job,” Archer remembered. The new

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Pennants festoon a Harvard  

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H A RVA R DSchool dormitory room.

SCHOOL

headmaster worked quickly to raise the school’s standards and performance. One of his first steps was to eliminate a crumbling Harvard institution—its boarding program, which drew only a handful of boys—and focus instead on improving the quality and breadth of the school’s students, teachers, arts, and academics.

“Chris Berrisford knew exactly what he wanted Harvard to be—” recalled Spanish teacher Tom Donahue, “the leading prep school west of the Charles River.”

With its ties to the military cut, Harvard now attracted a larger, more diverse pool of families. As a result, enrollment jumped from some 450 in the fall of 1969 to 660 in 1973. The school’s curriculum also expanded to include courses in calculus, advanced computer programming, CHRISTOPHER BERRISFORD

studio art, television, Russian language, and wilderness

Christopher Berrisford, a London native, succeeded

survival skills. “Chris Berrisford attacked the job of head-

Chalmers as the school’s headmaster in 1969. After

master of Harvard School head on,” noted the alumni pub-

earning degrees in modern history at Queen’s

lication Sons of Harvard School, making it “one of the most

College, Oxford, and a master’s in education from Harvard, Berrisford headed to Saint Mark’s School in Dallas, Texas. In his eighteen years at Harvard School, he raised academic standards and expanded the size and diversity of the student body.

respected preparatory schools in the nation.”

During Berrisford’s time, the school “grew rapidly in many directions,” including physically, said John Amato, who became Lower School head in 1978. Its new facilities included the Mark Taper Athletic Pavilion, the Zanuck Swim Stadium, and the Seeley G. Mudd Library.

Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, Amato added, “we were building the firm structure of an outstanding school.”

When Berrisford stepped down as headmaster in 1987, his successor, Thomas C. Hudnut, continued the school’s upward momentum. Gregarious and intellectually demanding, he built swiftly on the foundation of excellence laid by Berrisford. Hudnut energetically “upped the ante, from academics and the arts to sports,” Amato said, “and got everybody to work together.” As Hudnut deepened the school’s commitment to team teaching— an approach that Berrisford had pioneered—the faculty became more organized and focused, and students

Students crossed the old Harvard Hall walkway in the 1970s.

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in every grade acquired a common body of knowledge.

Under Hudnut’s leadership, Harvard School became increasingly rigorous, dynamic, and intense, with a focus on challenge at all levels and a constant willingness to improve and innovate.

One option increasingly under discussion was coeducation. “People at Harvard had been talking about going coed forever,” faculty member Tom Donahue recalled,

Under headmasters Chris Berrisford and Thomas Hudnut, Harvard School offered students an increasingly rigorous and challenging academic program.

and the student body was more and more in favor of the change. In 1970, a merger with the Westlake School for Girls was briefly considered, but there was not enough support to make the change. By the late 1980s, however, Harvard’s board was firmly in favor of coeducation, at least in principle. The difficulty was how to engineer it.

Doubling the size of Harvard to accommodate an equal number of girls would be impractical, given the size of the Coldwater campus. A second strategy—going coed while keeping total enrollment constant—would mean having to eliminate some boys who were already enrolled.

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Gregarious and focused on innovation, Headmaster Tom Hudnut (right) announced Harvard’s merger with Westlake in 1989.

For years, Harvard Tower was exclusively the domain of Harvard seniors.

Underclassmen who were caught inside the tower were traditionally subject to a spanking. Today, students use it freely.

In the spring of 1989, however, a solution suddenly appeared. Westlake’s trustees approached the Harvard board and proposed a merger of the two single-sex schools.

The advantages seemed extraordinary, Hudnut said. By maintaining two campuses, there would be no problem with overcrowding. The combined school would also appeal to a new and wider pool of applicants, enabling it to compete successfully for the very best students in the region.

Hudnut’s announcement of the merger was welcomed on the Harvard campus— although students admitted to reservations. “To be honest,” John Fogarty ’91 conceded, “if our school were coed, I’m not sure whether I’d be studying most nights, or trying to . . . get a girlfriend.” Despite the suddenness and drama of the news, however, there was little surprise. “We’d heard rumors about Harvard going coed for years,” recalled Steve Shaw ’71, who was then the school’s alumni director. “Most people knew,” he stated, “that it was simply a matter of how.”

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CHAPTER TWO

THE WESTLAKE SCHOOL FOR GIRLS 1904–1991

Westlake emphasized physical culture as well as a classic college preparatory curriculum.

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THE WESTLAKE SCHOOL FOR GIRLS

Westlake’s original school building was located on Alvarado Street, facing Westlake Park.

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Westlake established a Lower School to instruct young girls in their “impressionable years.”

T H E T U R N O F T H E T W E N T I E T H C E N T U RY WA S A T I M E O F N E W P O S S I B I L I T I E S F O R

women, who were stepping outside the bounds of domestic life. For most, the route to opportunity was education. By 1900, girls far outnumbered boys in high school classrooms, and ranks of female graduates were entering colleges and universities across the country. To equip aspiring young women in Los Angeles for the scholastic challenges of college life, two university-educated women who had earned master’s degrees—Frederica de Laguna and Jessica Smith Vance— set out to establish a preparatory academy for girls. Their hope was to inspire a passionate pursuit of knowledge, “life’s great adventure.” Education, according to de Laguna, was not only essential for a useful life, but was nothing less, for women, than “the power to make the most of ourselves, intellectually and spiritually.”

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THE WESTLAKE SCHOOL FOR GIRLS

Boating in the park was a favorite activity of Westlake girls.

Moved by those scholarly ideals, Vance and de Laguna founded the Westlake School for Girls in 1904. Housed in a small building across from Westlake Park (now MacArthur Park), the school aimed to nurture self-reliance and “intelligent womanhood.” Westlake offered a classic college preparatory curriculum, including courses in advanced mathematics, Latin, Greek, chemistry, and physics. Girls who did not aim for college could study cultural courses “of more general scope.”

The two founders of the Westlake School for Girls— Jessica Smith Vance (above) and Frederica de Laguna (below)—were close friends and former professors in the English department of the University of Southern California.

All students, of course, enjoyed “the delightful climate of Los Angeles,” walking and playing on park grounds and rowing on the lake in the company of their chaperone, Miss Stott. Physical culture classes—from club swinging to freehand movements—were mandatory. Outdoors, students practiced archery, rode horseback, and played tennis on a makeshift court—with the help of spectators, who gamely held the net up during matches. Genteel indoor pursuits included readings, afternoon teas, china painting, and making confections for charity bazaars. In the evenings, boarders enjoyed games, musical performances, and kimono parties. All looked forward to the annual Washington’s Birthday celebration—“the event of the year,” a student reported—when girls, “prettily gowned in quaint colonial costumes,” danced minuets in a hall draped patriotically with stars and stripes.

Collaboratively headed by the approachable Vance and the volatile, sharp-witted de Laguna, Westlake rapidly outgrew its parkside home and moved nearby to a more spacious three-acre location at Alvarado and Sixth. The school soon acquired two more buildings on Sixth Street and established a Lower School to instruct young girls during their “impressionable years.” By 1917, however, the expanding city of Los

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Angeles was infringing on the school’s once-tranquil setting, and Westlake found itself again seeking a new home. The founders purchased a large, secluded eightacre site on Westmoreland Avenue, and the school moved west, “with the drawing room settees . . . and a wisteria vine,” to the Wilshire District. The new, expansive campus featured a Tudor-style building where boarders slept in homelike, pale-painted rooms with connecting baths. Formal rules were “unnecessary,” the founders declared; students were simply expected to conduct themselves like “young ladies from well-­ regulated families.”

The girls pitched in with zeal after America’s entry into World War I—knitting and rolling bandages for the troops, adopting war orphans from France, and organizing a school chapter of the Red Cross. After the war ended, though, they turned their attention to sharpening their skills for social, domestic,

Frederica de Laguna (left) and Jessica Smith Vance broke ground for Westlake’s new campus on North Faring Road on April 19, 1928.

and academic success. Westlake in the 1920s combined “the best features of the college preparatory and finishing school,” the founders promised. Teachers provided regular instruction in deportment, and students, dressed in blue and brown serge dresses, practiced the art of entertaining guests at stately teas in formal drawing rooms.

The city’s explosive growth, however, was again threatening the sanctuary of the Westlake campus.

Vance and de Laguna searched, once more, for a suitable location for the school, purchasing a ten-acre lot in the leafy new residential subdivision of Holmby Hills.

The spacious property had wide lawns, and bridle paths crisscrossed the surrounding landscape. Ground was

The first Ring Ceremony, recognizing the seniors as leaders of the school, honored the Class of 1934.

broken in April 1928, and by autumn, the Westlake School had reopened at 700 North Faring Road.

It was here that many Westlake traditions took root.

The school had long celebrated cherished events such as Poet’s Day and Ditch Day, and the first May Fete, in the 1920s, was held at the Westmoreland campus. But it was at North Faring that Westlake’s student newspaper, Pi, first debuted in 1931. And two years later, the school celebrated its first Ring Ceremony; seniors descended the double staircase into the Great Hall, moving to a march

by Mendelssohn between aisles of juniors holding aloft

School Bell: In Westlake’s early days, girls were summoned to their studies by the ringing of this classroom bell.

wreaths of flowers.

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THE WESTLAKE SCHOOL FOR GIRLS

A telephone installed at Westlake in 1929.

Other favorite Westlake practices carried over to the new campus. Divided into two teams, White and Gold, students competed throughout the year in baseball, basket­ball, field hockey, and other sports. Girls still pursued Westlake’s demanding course of study—from Latin composition and medieval history to plane trigonometry and physics. But they were also carefully instructed in household arts, including nutrition and cookery, and every Sunday spent an hour mending garments under a teacher’s guidance.

Westlake’s focus on usefulness and self-reliance grew increasingly serious after the outbreak of World War II. Helen Jeanne Jewett ’43, a student in 1941, remembered hearing about the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7.

“The radio blared all Sunday evening with the news as I sat studying,” she wrote; from that night on, the war “affected our lives deeply, . . . in many cases irrevocably.”

Westlake students worked hard for the National Junior Red Cross—collecting games, magazines, and sheet music for wounded soldiers and crocheting squares for comforters that would be shipped to sailors. The theme of the 1941 May Fete was “A Salute to America: A History

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Westlake students practiced their diving skills in 1940.  

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THE WESTLAKE SCHOOL FOR GIRLS

A Westlake commencement in the 1940s.

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in Flags.” Westlake’s ringleted drill sergeant—Shirley Temple ’45—led after-school drill classes, and committees of “Minute Maids” hustled through the hallways selling bonds and defense stamps.

In 1942, the school endured another blow—one close to home—with the death of Frederica de Laguna.

Carol Mills arrived at Westlake in 1933, where she taught English and served as the school’s vice principal.

Mills had previously taught at the Girls’ Collegiate School and the Flintridge School for Girls. At left, Shirley Temple talks to the 1947 May Queen.

Jessica Smith Vance had passed away in 1939, and now, with both founders gone, it was a diminutive English teacher, Carol Mills, who stepped in to preserve the fabric of the school. A graduate of Wellesley College, Mills had first arrived at Westlake in 1933, “her hornrimmed spectacles barely visible above the steering

Westlake’s yearbook, Vox Puellarum, chronicled the launch of Pi, the new school newspaper, in 1931.

wheel of her black Studebaker car.” A demanding and inspiring instructor, she quickly became a beloved figure on the campus, reading Winnie-the-Pooh to board-

An embroidered Westlake pillow from the 1980s.

ers after “lights out” and listening sympathetically to students’ confidences. “She was a feminist before her time,” remembered Reva Berger Tooley ’50. “Mills always encouraged us to be the best we could, to go out in the world and do something. She breathed ambition into every girl.”

But in 1945, the official stewardship of Westlake passed to an alumna, Helen Temple ’31. Her parents had purchased the school from the estates of Vance and de Laguna, and the charming and rigorous Temple took the reins as Westlake’s headmistress. Until she married Malcolm Dickinson in 1959, Temple shared a

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THE WESTLAKE SCHOOL FOR GIRLS

Westlake’s May Queen Candice Bergen took the throne in 1963.

Westlake taught social and homemaking skills in addition to nurturing minds and talents.

Melinda Fee (now Harrison) was crowned May Queen in 1960.

Sixth-graders dance around the maypole on Westlake’s North Faring campus.

M AY F E T E One of Westlake’s most colorful, enduring traditions was the annual May Fete. In 1920, students crowned their first May Queen and wound the maypole on the old Westmoreland campus. As the tradition evolved, so did the international flavor of its activities. In 1932, the fete took the form of a Greek festival and the next year featured Swedish gymnastics. During the war, the festival often featured patriotic themes, including “A Salute to America: A History in Flags” and a spirited tribute to the United Nations. Throughout the 1960s, the event—capped by the crowning of the May Queen and her court—remained a highlight of the year, despite the fact that Westlake girls, wearing diaphanous gowns, were sometimes shivering in unseasonably foggy and cold weather. In 1963, May Queen Candice Bergen held court beneath a majestic crown of pink and white flowers, while students in international swim costumes performed an aquacade, “Across the Seven Seas.”

Westlake boarders slept in homelike, pale-tinted rooms with connecting baths.

campus home called “Nido” with Carol Mills. Together, the two women ran Westlake as a prim, proper, and challenging preparatory school. “Mills was loved and respected, while Temple was loved and feared—she was in charge,” said Barbara Jacobson, who arrived at Westlake in 1964 as a math and science teacher.

Both leaders were committed to a high standard of academic performance.

“On the outside, Westlake looked like a finishing school, but on the inside, it was much, much more,” Tooley explained. Although girls learned to pour tea properly, studied homemaking skills, and wore white gowns with long white gloves at dances, the school “was devoted to nurturing our minds, talents, and expectations.” Temple, Tooley added, “truly believed in women’s education,” that women “should speak out, be articulate, and take an equal place in the society.”

With an average of twelve pupils per teacher, from kindergarten through twelfth grade, Westlake emphasized individual attention for each student, along with a dose of friendly competition. In addition to Gold and White intramural sports, teachers and students comHELEN TEMPLE DICKINSON ’31 Helen Temple, a Westlake alumna, returned as

peted in wildly costumed Westlake “Olympics.” Other rituals gradually emerged, among them a military cer-

headmistress in 1945 when her parents purchased

emony with Harvard School: on the first Friday morn-

the Westlake School. Known to many as “Misty,” the

ing of every month, uniformed Harvard cadets would

energetic Temple also taught biology and coached

arrive, rifles on their shoulders, to raise the flag beside

athletic teams. In 1959, she married Dr. Malcolm Dickinson, the headmaster of Flintridge School for Boys, and the couple often hosted school events at their weekend home at Lake Arrowhead. In 1967, she retired from Westlake, following her husband’s death.

the Westlake girls.

Dances with Harvard—and other boys’ schools in the area—were also major events, recalled Lucy Abeel Billett ’63. Harvard Day, she said, “was a big deal in the spring,” and musicians from the Beach Boys to Nat King

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Cole and Jan and Dean would play at Westlake dances. “For many of us,” she said, “life at Westlake in the early 1960s was a lot like an Annette Funicello movie—all about boys, bands, and the beach.”

Changes were coming, though. By the middle of the decade, Helen Temple

Students at a Westlake dance after World War II. Westlake cheerleaders added spirit to Gold and White intramural sports.

Dickinson decided to retire, and the leadership of Westlake—now a nonprofit institution—passed to its trustees. Then, in 1966, Nathan O. Reynolds ’51, the first male headmaster in Westlake’s history, took on the task of energizing the aging school. Reynolds, thirty-two, had been a popular teacher and chairman of the English department at Harvard. Running a girls’ school, he acknowledged, was disarmingly different—“Lanz nightgowns and teddy bears” instead of crew cuts and military parades. But he saw a chance to lead a school “where teachers were passionate and involved—a rigorous college prep school, with a strong arts program, that developed and celebrated students’ talent.”

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THE WESTLAKE SCHOOL FOR GIRLS

Nat Reynolds ’51— shown with Westlake alumna and parent Joan Davey Bird ’47—was named the school’s headmaster in 1966. A graduate of Harvard School, Reynolds had been a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at UCLA before he returned to Harvard as head of the school’s English department.

At Westlake, Reynolds raised academic quality, increased student diversity, and cultivated a strong sense of spirit and community.

S A L LY R I D E ’ 6 8 Westlake alumna Sally Ride ’68 carried this school banner into space in 1983 aboard

There were, however, obstacles ahead. Enrollment had been dropping, and

the Space Shuttle Challenger.

“the school was a physical shambles,” Reynolds said. “There were bright kids

The first American woman in space, she held degrees

learning good stuff, but Westlake was worn at the edges.” He set about reinvigo-

in physics and English from

rating the school—bringing in new faculty members, replacing morning chapel

Stanford University, where

with student-run assemblies, and eliminating admissions quotas that for years

she also earned a Master of Science and doctorate

had excluded many girls who were not white and Protestant. He also began

in physics. Ride, who died

phasing out Westlake’s elementary school to reduce pressure on limited facil-

in 2012, was a professor of

ities. The move would also allow higher Upper School enrollment to increase

physics at UC–San Diego and

diversity and improve the depth and breadth of the curriculum.

flew a second mission aboard

Reynolds also decided to end boarding at Westlake. The school turned dorm

Challenger in 1984.

rooms into offices for teachers and transformed the kitchen and dining room into an art center, with a photography lab and eight studios for painting, pottery, lithography, and crafts. “From one watercolor class, the school built an incredibly rich art program,” said Elizabeth Gregory, who arrived in 1970 to teach photography. Academics were thriving, too. The curriculum was more challenging, ambitious, and experimental, with new independent study programs that enabled students to explore subjects from French literature and legal research to ballet. “Westlake’s founders had believed deeply in education,” noted Vicki Goddard ’60, Middle School community service coordinator. “Academically, the school needed to move forward, as women’s education was undergoing great change. When Nat came, Westlake started growing by leaps and bounds.”

Reflecting the social changes of the late 1960s and ’70s, the character of the school community changed, too. Westlake celebrated its first “love-in”—“Gentle

A Westlake student in the 1970s.

Thursday”—in 1967, and support for the women’s movement quickly took

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In the 1960s and ’70s, the school’s curriculum became more challenging, ambitious, and experimental.

THE WESTLAKE SCHOOL FOR GIRLS

In 1971, Westlake students celebrated the traditional Ring Ceremony.

hold. In 1979, Joannie Parker, who had served as president of the California National Organization for Women Foundation, arrived to teach English at Westlake. She soon launched a hugely popular women’s studies program, one of the first in the nation at the high school level. Westlake students packed her classes on feminist theory and literature. “People sat on the floor because there weren’t enough chairs for everyone who wanted to be in the class,” Parker recalled. A spirit of feminism surged through the school that was “unabashed, unashamed, and unquestioned,” a student recalled, especially during the Women’s History celebration in March. During the annual event, students covered hallways with posters promoting feminist themes and enjoyed visits and speeches by a roster of feminist pioneers, including Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique; U.S. Representative Bella Abzug (D-NY), a vigorous advocate for women’s rights; U.S. Representative Shirley Chisholm (D-NY), the first African American woman to serve in

Joannie Parker (right), founder of Westlake’s popular women’s studies program, hosted school visits by feminist leaders, including U.S. Representative Bella Abzug (D-NY).

Congress and run for the presidency; U.S. Representative Pat Schroeder (D-CO), a women’s rights champion; and Gloria Steinem, founder of Ms. magazine. “Meeting and listening to these exceptional women inspired many of us to feel we had the right stuff to go forward in life and do what we wanted to do,” recalled Juliette Kayyem ’87.

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In Westlake’s relaxed atmosphere, students, faculty, and administrators forged close bonds, nurtured by class retreats at Cedar Lake. There was something about Westlake, a student commented, “that fostered friendships” and individual success.

“Nat Reynolds walked among the students and knew each one by name,” a parent recalled, and the school regularly honored their achievements in scholastics, athletics, arts, and community service. It was “a wonderful school for a great education,” observed English teacher David Coombs, who arrived at Westlake in 1968. But what set it apart, he said, was its environment of “people caring about people.”

That sense of community, however, was sorely tested in the early 1970s. After a major earthquake, an engineer inspected the school’s newly remodeled classroom building and found that it dangerously lacked reinforcement. So in June 1976, bulldozers demolished the structure.

For the next two and a half years, classes were held in portable trailers while construction began on a new thirty-one-thousand-square-foot facility. “The walls were so thin in the trailers that if

Westlake’s motto, Possunt quia posse videntur, means “They can because they think they can.”

you said ‘boo’ in your room, three other rooms heard it, too, but the teachers never complained,”

In the 1970s, Westlake classes were held in portable trailers following the demolition of seismically unsound facilities.

Reynolds remembered. The new building finally opened in January 1979 and was followed over time

In Westlake’s relaxed atmosphere, students, faculty, and administrators forged close bonds.

by more school construction, including a new library and the Marshall Center auditorium and gymnasium.

The rigor and depth of academics grew, too. Westlake “prided itself on giving women an education as good and full of opportunities as any man could have,” recalled Lisa Handler Doherty ’87. “The school was hard and competitive, with an emphasis on being the best that you could be. At Westlake, you could take Advanced Placement exams in your senior year without having taken AP classes because the standards of teaching were so high.”

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THE WESTLAKE SCHOOL FOR GIRLS

At the same time, Coombs noted, Westlake created a culture of “going beyond yourself to help other people.” Led by program director Sallie Reynolds, the school introduced a pioneering community service graduation requirement. Seventh-graders took time out from their classes to tackle an extensive project for a Head Start program, making illustrated nursery-rhyme books and storybook character wall art for the school. And, recalled art teacher Marianne Hall, “I watched in awe as one of our tenthgrade students began to do something about hunger and homelessness,” at a time when few adults or agencies were taking on the challenge. The student, Justine Stamen ’88, helped serve homemade soup out of a car and soon organized the whole Westlake community in efforts to provide meals for the homeless. “Westlake clearly realized,” Hall said, “how important it was to get students out of the privileged environment of Bel Air”—and, Westlake alumna Dara Torres ’85 is the first American swimmer to have competed in five Olympic Games. Torres raced in the 1984, 1988, 1992, 2000, and 2008 Games, claiming a career total of twelve medals—four golds, four silvers, and four bronzes.

Stamen noted, “that students would get so much more out of community service than anything else.”

From 1972 to 1986, Reynolds reflected, “Westlake had a great sense of spirit and kindness, and the school was about as good as it could be.” But as one chronicler noted, no school is ever “finished.” Dramatic changes were just over the horizon. As Reynolds began to contemplate retirement, he and Westlake’s board saw troubling challenges ahead. More and more, statistics indicated that single-sex schools were losing their appeal. The trend could threaten Westlake’s enrollment and financial viability, especially when Harvard School, as expected, opted to admit girls. “Harvard would be a serious competitor,” Reynolds explained—one that could potentially siphon away many talented students from Westlake. As a result, he said, “we would have been hard-pressed to maintain the first-rate quality of our programs and student body.” If Westlake could not realistically remain an all-girls’ school, he and the board wanted to make sure that any change produced an enriched academic environment for young women. “I saw coeducation as the next great challenge that Westlake had to face,” Reynolds reflected. “I wanted to help face that challenge so that when I left the school,

Sneakers worn by Westlake cheerleaders in the 1980s.

I could leave it in the best shape possible.”

One solution would be a potential merger with Harvard, but Westlake’s board decided to proceed with caution. The trustees had once briefly considered merging with another college preparatory school, but the news provoked such an outcry that all discussions ceased. This time, Westlake’s board members opted to conduct the negotiations in private. In the fall of 1989, with the support of the headmasters of the two schools, they quietly reached an agreement to merge with Harvard. In October, Reynolds announced the decision to a school assembly.

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“Everyone was stunned and surprised,” a student remembered. More than a few

Students gathered for the 1991 Ring Ceremony.

were confused, nervous, and bitter. Many parents, too, were furious at the decision, worried about the wisdom of coeducation, and outraged at the confidentiality of the merger. “Their anger was volcanic,” a trustee recalled, and it was reported in the local

A button protesting the merger reflected the feelings of many students and parents.

and national press. At one school assembly, a mother displayed a sign equating the merger to a rape, and three Westlake mothers initiated legal action to block the move.

After they won the support of a board member who was a Westlake alumna, the lawsuit had the legal standing to go forward—entangling the trustees in time-­consuming depositions and very costly legal preparations. After a quick hearing in late December, however, a superior court judge ruled that the lawsuit was invalid and denied the plaintiffs’ request for an injunction.

Obstacles to the move were now set aside, and gradually, “as the shock of the merger decision faded and reality started to sink in,” a student wrote, many at Westlake began to focus on “the challenge of preserving the past and creating a sound future.”

Thomas Hudnut, Harvard’s headmaster, compared the coming merger to the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. “Excitement will replace despair,” he predicted, because “the opportunity we have is an extraordinary one.” After all, agreed one twelfth-grader, Ashley Rosson ’90, “time calls for change,” and it was time for Westlake, she asserted, “to rise to the challenge.”

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THE WESTLAKE SCHOOL FOR GIRLS

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CHAPTER THREE

CREATING HARVARDWESTLAKE THE FIRST YEARS

Teacher Pat Whiting coaches students in a Middle School science lab.

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65

BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE

Harvard-Westlake students on the Middle School campus, circa 1995.

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Most students adjusted quickly to the combined school’s coed environment. “The merger was not,” one senior observed, “a great leap of educational faith, but a small step toward a normal social scene.”

B Y J A N U A RY 1 9 9 0 , A F T E R T H E L E G A L H U R D L E S H A D B E E N C L E A R E D AWAY, I N T E N S I V E

planning could begin to knit together two very different schools, cultures, and educational philosophies. It was a time “unlike any other in my experience,” reflected Thomas Hudnut, who spearheaded transition planning as headmaster of the soonto-be-combined schools. Emotions were still high—in those days, he recalled, there were some who thought the merger “would be the ruination of civilization as they knew it.” Although the process of combining Harvard and Westlake was often “harrowing,” it was buoyed by the excitement of “building a new enterprise—a new school—on a shared foundation,” recalled Assistant Headmaster John Amato.

Physically, that foundation would include the luxury of space afforded by two campuses. Middle School students in grades seven through nine would have their classes and activities on Westlake’s pastoral North Faring property, while Upper School students in grades ten through twelve would occupy Harvard’s Coldwater

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site, with its more ample sports facilities and parking. A $1.75 million construction program was quickly put in place to adapt and upgrade the athletic, artistic, and academic facilities on both campuses, and a new administrative structure rapidly emerged.

The boards of the two schools were combined. Nathan Reynolds ’51, who served as provost until he retired in 1992, worked with Hudnut to foster an equitable, student-­ focused approach to the transition. The “palpable goodwill expressed by the two headmasters,” recalled Harvard teacher Tom Donahue, went far to create a positive faculty environment for the change, bolstered by a pledge that no teachers would lose their jobs due to the merger.

To manage transition details, Rebecca Upham, a merger coordinator who was unaffiliated with either school, contributed her insights to the planning team.

With her guidance, committees of Westlake and Harvard faculty and staff tackled the complex task of blending the curricula and strengths of the two schools. The result was a broader, more interesting, and more demanding range of courses than either school had ever offered—including classes from the Harvard curriculum in logic, world religion, and psychology; Westlake programs in video, studio art, and THOMAS HUDNUT Thomas C. Hudnut had been headmaster of Harvard since 1987 before stepping into his new role as

women’s studies; and innovative new courses such as environmental ethics.

Other steps facilitated the shift to coeducation.

headmaster and chief executive officer of Harvard-

Assisted by two experts on sexism—Myra and David

Westlake. A Princeton graduate with a master’s degree

Sadker from American University in Washington,

from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts, Hudnut had previously served as head of the

D.C.—faculty members, some of whom had spent

Branson School in Ross, California, and the Norwood

years teaching in single-sex educational environments,

School in Bethesda, Maryland. In 2007, Hudnut was

examined gender issues that frequently arise in coed

named president of Harvard-Westlake. He retired in 2013, after establishing its foundation and reputation as a world-class school.

settings. Research showed, for example, that teachers in coed schools typically encourage boys more, ask them more thought-provoking questions, and call on them three times more frequently than girls. A central goal of the new school was to arm faculty members

with a thorough understanding of these issues and create an academic environment that would be equally enriching and encouraging for both sexes—recognizing, as Hudnut noted, that girls “deserve to be pushed” as much as boys.

Equality between the genders was a high priority in all aspects of campus life.

Planning for the combined school included equal physical facilities for boys and girls.

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Student leadership, too, would be shared between the sexes, with equal numbers of male and female prefects, class co-presidents, and co-coaches of all sports teams that were open to athletes of both genders. Transition planners took other steps, too, to balance the cultures and concerns of the two schools, including issues of religious affiliation.

While Harvard had traditionally been associated with the Episcopal Church, Westlake was a nonsectarian institution. To ensure a religiously diverse atmosphere, a rabbi, Jacqueline Ellenson, was brought on to serve as the new school’s co-chaplain.

Harder to address was the sense of loss and anger expressed by many in the Westlake community, especially recent graduates. “That was the group that was hardest hit by the merger,” acknowledged Vicki Goddard. “For many of them, losing the Westlake they had known was wrenching.” To involve graduates of Westlake and Harvard in the changes and nurture their ties to the new school, the merger team launched a new quarterly publication that celebrated alumni memories, encouraged their continuing connection, and kept them up-to-date on plans and progress.

Meanwhile, hectic physical preparations were underway to meet the school’s opening-day dead-

WINNING SPORTS After the merger, coed sports programs set new standards for excellence. In 1994 alone, the school

line—equipping the campuses with new bathrooms;

captured the Mission League’s Sportsmanship Award;

photography, art, and dance studios; refurbished locker

eight varsity teams won league championships; girls’

rooms; an expanded bookstore; and improved science

tennis and girls’ swimming won California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) championships; and every team but

laboratory facilities. “There was so much to do, on such

one earned CIF recognition for academic achievement.

a tight schedule,” recalled Chief Financial Officer Rob

Girls’ varsity volleyball captured the school’s first

Levin. “I don’t think students ever realized how down-

state championship in 1995, followed by boys’

to-the-wire the whole thing really was.”

varsity basketball state championship wins in 1996 and 1997.

But on the bright morning of September 3, 1991, after eight months of work and planning, the brandnew, coeducational Harvard-Westlake School welcomed students and faculty on both campuses for the first time. The merger, “ingrained deep in our minds for the past twenty-three months,” a student wrote, was now no longer just an idea but a reality. For many students, it meant moving from one campus to another, and some—especially twelfth-grade girls who had spent years on the Westlake campus—found the shift to the new setting distressing. “Many felt uprooted, like they’d lost their school,” recalled art teacher Marianne Hall. But soon, most girls got used to trekking up Coldwater’s steep stairways, and excitement overtook regret, a student reported, as “guys [met] girls (oh, my gosh, what a concept) and vice versa.”

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New school symbols helped students forge a sense of community and identity.

There was also the excitement of knowing that they were, in a real sense, inventing a new school every day. “Everything is new,” Reynolds observed at the time. “I look out of the window at the North Faring campus, and I see the boys practicing football.

I go to the Harvard facilities and see the girls’ volleyball team.” Above all, he said, “I see that what we have [created here at Harvard-Westlake] is extraordinary.”

Teachers saw an energizing new dynamic in the classroom as well. On that first day, and throughout the first year, “the kids brought the faculty together,” Amato said.

Adding girls, noted Harvard art history teacher Karl Kleinz, “meant having another tribe of real brainy people in the classroom; it immediately increased the quality of the student body.” The change to coed classes was “like dynamite,” Donahue agreed. As a former Harvard teacher, he observed that “women improved the whole operation of the school. We had had art and drama before—but what a difference there was after the merger. The school got deeper, wider, richer, and class conversations took different directions. Girls’ perspectives stimulated much more conversation. I found myself doing a lot less lecturing,” he remembered, “and a lot more listening.”

Outside the classroom, too, it was the students who, bit by bit, forged a new, shared identity for the school. In the beginning, it was a struggle. Boys were protective of Harvard’s legacy, and “girls defended their Westlake heritage with equal vigor,”

Harvard-Westlake students published the first edition of the school’s yearbook, Vox Populi, in 1992.

With its separate campus on North Faring Road, HarvardWestlake’s Middle School offered enriched programs and leadership opportunities for younger students.

remembered Michael Borden ’95. For much of that first year, he said, it was a “true battle of the sexes.” But under Hudnut’s guidance, committees of students gradually resolved sensitive sticking points, such as the new symbols of the Harvard-Westlake School. Deliberating together, students chose a new school mascot, the Wolverine; adopted Harvard’s colors; and retained the Westlake motto—Possunt quia posse videntur

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Cheerleaders boost school spirit at a Harvard-Westlake Homecoming event.

In the 1970s, the Harvard Saracens played their Homecoming football games on the field at Birmingham High School.

HOMECOMING WEEKEND A Harvard tradition since 1977, the annual fall Homecoming celebration was prized for more than football games, carnivals, and dances. The halftime highlight of every Homecoming was the famous Egg Drop—a competitive event in which science students dropped raw eggs from thirty- to fifty-foot heights and tried to prevent them from breaking by swaddling them in a creative array of protective materials. During one Homecoming, eggs were dropped from a helicopter that circled 150 feet above the field; during another, they were hurled from a hot air balloon. Most often, however, the launch site was the top of Harvard’s lofty Taper Gymnasium. After Harvard merged with Westlake, the Homecoming celebration continued, combining the Egg Drop and other favorite Harvard events with Westlake’s Olympic Games. In 1991, the first Harvard-Westlake Homecoming was named Wolverine Weekend, in honor of the new school’s mascot.

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A 1999 Upper School production  

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Brigadoon.

C R E ATof ING H A RVA R D-W E S T L A K E

Students celebrate Senior Ceremony, Harvard-Westlake’s adaptation of Westlake’s traditional Ring Ceremony.

(“They can because they think they can”). In the process, Borden said, students found a balance that “made the merger easier to digest.”

Part of that balance was preserving longtime traditions, refashioning some of them to reflect a new identity. Soon after Harvard-Westlake opened, the combined school gathered to celebrate the fifty-eighth Ring Ceremony, an honored, annual Westlake School event. The rite signaled continuity for many former Westlake students, who worried that the merger would erase their school’s heritage. “After this year Harvard-Westlake’s Veritas Award—originally a Westlake honor—is presented annually to the outstanding female student in the senior class.

of immense change for both the Harvard and Westlake schools,” one said, the Ring Ceremony “brought ease to students fearful that the merger would result in a loss of fond, standing traditions.” Harvard students found continuity in Harvard-Westlake’s Homecoming—an event that featured a tug of war, a pie-eating contest, and a barbecue and was renamed, for that first year, “Wolverine Weekend.”

Despite the fear, Kleinz said, that boys would lose the brotherhood an all-male environment creates and girls would lose their customs and traditions, neither of those worries came to pass. “So many issues turned out to be so much less important than we thought,” said Board Chair Dr. Norman Sprague ’65.

Although the first year “could have been a disaster,” acknowledged Dean of Students Harry Salamandra, the reality was fairly uneventful. “We survived it,” Kleinz declared. “At the end of that year, everyone kind of expressed a collective ‘Whew, we did it.’ From that point on, things just took off.”

From her busy office, Director of Admission Elizabeth Gregory saw clear signs of new momentum. Applications for the 1992–93 school year reached

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record levels, and the percentage of accepted students who committed to attend Harvard-Westlake, she reported, was better than at most Ivy League colleges. As new families entered and existing students forged a new community, the school “slowly integrated,” recalled trustee Vera Guerin. After the first two years, added Amato, “it was clear sailing.” Harvard-Westlake was coming together in all aspects of student life.

With “the checks and balances of the opposite sex,” students moderated their behavior, a teacher noted, and

This commemorative stained-glass window hangs in the Middle School’s Westlake Staircase.

they reached out to one another more and more across the lines of gender and school affiliation. In 1992, the

Students sketch outdoors in a Middle School art class.

Ring Ceremony—renamed the Senior Ceremony—included girls and boys for the first time. And suddenly, reflected English teacher David Coombs, “I saw boys wearing Harvard shirts hugging girls wearing Westlake shirts, so that their logos read, together, Harvard-Westlake. That’s when I knew that we’d turned the corner.”

Harvard-Westlake’s Bishop’s Medal—part of Harvard’s heritage—is presented each year to the outstanding male student in the senior class.

But on January 17, 1994, the strength of the new school was tested when an earthquake—6.8 on the Richter scale—shook the city of Los Angeles. A dozen teachers and some fifty students lost their homes in the disaster. Three days later, Harvard-Westlake reopened its doors to help the school community regain a sense of normalcy. The scope of damage was evident—students and faculty members were under stress, tens of thousands of books had spilled from library shelves, and a huge crack scarred the back wall of Saint Saviour’s Chapel. But families, faculty, and staff of Harvard-Westlake rallied, offering interest-free loans for teachers and volunteering to restore order on the shaken campus. “The way we pulled the school together so quickly,” Hudnut reflected, showed more than anything that “school spirit is alive and flourishing.” The crisis tested the community’s resolve and showed students how important it is “to get on with the business of life.”

A month after the earthquake, Harvard-Westlake was “more or less back to normal,” according to one student—and that state increasingly meant exceptional performance. In 1994, the school reported record numbers of nationally recognized

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students and programs, scholarship winners, applications, annual giving, and financial support. The next year, Harvard-Westlake produced more National Merit semifinalists than any other school in California. The level of academic excellence was matched by the enrichment of its programs and facilities. In October 1995, the school dedicated the new Munger Science Center, named after Harvard-Westlake trustee Charles Munger.

The forty-thousand-square-foot Upper School science facility included twelve laboratory classrooms, a computer center, and a theater-style auditorium. The following year, the Upper School broke ground for the Feldman-Horn Center for the Arts—a spacious new cutting-edge facility named for trustee Janis Horn and her father, Leonard Feldman.

Athletics, too, were thriving and increasingly competitive. In 1993, the girls’ tennis team won the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) championship. The next year, record numbers of HarvardWestlake students competed in a record number of championships. Eight varsity teams captured league titles, and two—girls’ tennis and girls’ swimming—

COMMITMENT TO THE ARTS With more than fifty concerts a year and dozens of

won top CIF trophies. The upwelling of school spirit

student recitals and dance programs, the performing

and achievement reflected the successful union of

arts flourished at Harvard-Westlake after the merger.

the schools and the underlying strength of Harvard-

The school’s music program alone included orchestras, concert bands, string ensembles, jazz bands, chamber

Westlake, according to former Upper School Head

groups, choruses, and a cappella and popular

Mimi Flood.

music groups.

By June 1996, when the last students who attended the original schools graduated, Harvard-Westlake had moved on, Hudnut reflected, from the contentious early days of the merger announcement and transition. There were times during the first years “when we all wondered whether it would work out as we hoped,” he said.

Harvard-Westlake cheerleader pom-poms.

But slowly, the school outgrew its separate, inherited identities and took on its own unique strength and qualities. “Hands down,” Coombs added, “it’s a better school than either of its predecessors. We took the best of both traditions and went through fire. The result,” he said, “is an incredible school.”

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The Class of 1998 celebrates commencement.

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CHAPTER FOUR

PURSUING EXCELLENCE 1996–2016

Upper School students at the Feldman-Horn Center for the Arts.

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PURSUING E XC E L L E N C E

Middle School students compete in a Field Day game of tug of war.

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An Upper School student at work in the classroom.

IN THE WAKE OF THE MERGER, THOMAS HUDNUT AND HARVARD-WESTLAKE’S LEADERSHIP

team focused on building a secondary school that would be exceptional in all ways—from outstanding academics to sophisticated arts and world-class athletics. Blending the demanding scholastics of a small private academy and the extracurricular breadth of a large public school, Harvard-Westlake would encourage cooperation, competition, and the pursuit of excellence in every area.

Academically, the school was quickly known as a powerhouse. “Tom Hudnut spent money to acquire great faculty,” explained John Amato. “When you have talented teachers, very capable students, and supportive parents, the result is a phenomenal learning environment.” From robotics, Mandarin, and Middle East studies to biotechnology, playwriting, journalism, and debate, Harvard-Westlake forged a singular identity around excellence, opportunity, and academic distinction. Regularly ranked as one of the best independent prep schools in the nation, it

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An Upper School visual arts class.

attracted students, observed Leily Arzy ’15, with “a hunger for knowledge, a ferocious desire to challenge themselves.”

Arts education flourished, too, after the merger. By investing in inspiring faculty and facilities, Harvard-Westlake soon offered the best visual and performing arts programs of any school in the Los Angeles region. Its depth and breadth—in subjects ranging from classical drawing to photography, videography, glassblowing, and digital manipulation—equaled that of a college-level art school. Tom Hudnut was equally determined to build a distinguished Performing Arts Department, including a world-class choral program and one of the first middle ­school symphonies in the United States. “HarvardWestlake takes a serious, professional approach to the arts, while ensuring a place for every student at every level,” explained Ted Walch, who arrived in 1991 as director of the theater program and head of Performing Arts. “In music, theater, dance, and all the artistic disciplines, it rivals any independent school in the country.”

Athletics also became a center of excellence. In the late 1990s, Harvard-Westlake’s soccer and volleyball teams brought home championships for the first time, and the talents of future NBA players Jarron ’97 and Jason ’97 Collins vaulted its basketball team to a No. 5 national ranking. Building on that success, Harvard-Westlake hired Audrius Barzdukas in 2003 as its first head of athletics. As associate director of coaching for the U.S. Olympic Committee, Barzdukas had helped set high professional standards for elite athletes and coaches.

At Harvard-Westlake, he created a coherent coaching curriculum for each middle and upper school sport.

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Middle School students in an acting class in 2015.

 

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Girls’ soccer practice (top left); girls’ basketball practice (center left); girls’ track and field meet (center); fencing practice (top right); boys’ track and field meet (center right); and girls’ water polo (bottom right). Boys’ basketball game.

“Previously,” he explained, “each sports team was on its own, and there were no learning progressions—like there are, for instance, from algebra to geometry to trigonometry. To strengthen the sports program, we brought athletics at both campuses together and began working smarter, planning strategically, and doing things that other schools weren’t doing—like hiring a full-time strength coach and building a robust sports medicine program. We created a culture.”

A year later, Barzdukas hired Terry Barnum—former captain of USC’s 1995 Rose Bowl championship football team—as the school’s first athletic director of communication. Barnum helped vertically integrate athletics from grades seven to twelve, with program heads and professional coaches in every sport. With state-of-the-art systems and facilities in place, winning Wolverine teams became the standard. “Since 2003,” Barnum said, “the school has won at least one California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) championship every year, and the rise of girls’ sports has been exceptional. We’ve built a program,” he noted, “where kids, regardless of what talent they come in with, can reach their full potential when they graduate.”

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Athletics also became a way to unite the Harvard-Westlake community. Given the school’s demanding academics and geographically far-flung student body, it had

Students pack the bleachers at a Friday Night Lights football game.

always been challenging to get students to attend weeknight sports events. Football, moreover, had never been a focal point in the merged school. All that changed on a night in September 2007, when the Athletics Department switched on new, powerful eighty-foot lights on the Upper School’s Ted Slavin Field. Hundreds of students, parents, alumni, and teachers packed the bleachers for Harvard-Westlake’s first Fridaynight football game under the lights. From then on, Barzdukas said, “students, players, parents, and fans started coming out to watch the games. Friday Night Lights has been a great experience at Harvard-Westlake. It’s brought the whole school together in a new way.”

Other physical changes elevated the quality of life and educational experiences at Harvard-Westlake. The biggest, most significant project was the modernization and renovation of the nine-acre Middle School campus. Demand had long been straining outdated facilities on North Faring. The Administration Building, originally a girls’

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Completed in 2008, the new Middle School campus features large, state-ofthe-art classrooms, a new athletics field, and a spacious performing arts center.

dormitory, lacked adequate heating, air conditioning, and electrical wiring. The Middle School’s small, nonstandard field was unsuitable for sports, and demand for space in the Marshall Center for Performing Arts and Athletics caused scheduling nightmares.

Basketball and volleyball teams shared the facility with theater and performing arts classes. “When you needed to rehearse with practices going on, you couldn’t,” Amato

Prop from the new Middle School theater.

recalled, “and when you needed to practice with rehearsals going on, that was impossible.” It was clear, Hudnut concluded, “that the deficiencies could only be corrected with major surgery.”

To address these challenges, Harvard-Westlake embarked on a seven-year, $125 million campus modernization program, led by Board Chair Christine Hazy. “Christine is a monumentally good fund-raiser,” Amato stated.

“She envisioned an entirely renovated campus that’s exceptionally beautiful and meets the needs of today’s and tomorrow’s students and academic programs.”

Faculty members were involved from the beginning. The architects, Kalban & Associates, launched the project by asking

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faculty what they wanted and needed for the best teaching environments. “From there,” Amato said, “we crafted the rooms.” Construction never disrupted teaching, and the architecture, he added, honors the old buildings that were emblematic of Westlake.

Completed in 2008, the expanded thirteen-acre campus features large, state-of-the-art classrooms; a new athletics field; and a spacious performing arts center with one of the best theater facilities in Los Angeles.

“The first time I saw it in the evening, with the sun going down and the stars coming up, it took my breath away,” Hudnut recalled. “The new Middle School campus is a beautiful place that represents many years of planning, hard work, and collaboration by the architects and Harvard-Westlake teachers.”

Inside the classrooms, Harvard-Westlake expanded the boundaries of education. In 2012, the school opened the Kutler Center for Interdisciplinary Studies and Independent Research on the Upper School campus. It was named for the late Brendan

THE CHRONICLE

Kutler ’10, a student who was fascinated by the con-

Harvard-Westlake’s Upper School newspaper, The

nections between multiple fields—from computer

Chronicle, was founded in 1991 to provide the school’s

science and Japanese culture to filmmaking and

community with accurate, responsible, thought-

astrophysics. The new center breaks down boundaries

provoking, and timely journalism. The Chronicle is in the High School Journalism Hall of Fame. It has been

between academic subjects and gives Upper School

honored locally and at the state and national levels,

students the chance to study intersections among

earning 14 Columbia Press Association Gold Crowns and

disciplines. “Its goal,” according to Kutler Center

8 Silver Crowns as well as 7 National Scholastic Press

Director Jim Patterson, “is to let teachers experiment

Association Pacemaker awards.

with new ways to teach and to educate students for a complex and globalized world.”

The school’s physical and curricular expansion, however, created its own challenges. By 2007, sixteen years after the merger, Harvard-Westlake was an educational enterprise with two campuses, a budget of more than $50 million, 1,600 students, 200 teachers, and nearly 500 employees. The job of headmaster of Harvard-Westlake had become too unwieldy for one person. For twenty years, Tom Hudnut had served as the school’s public face and handled all the day-to-day needs of students and faculty. “It was becoming too much,” he said. “I thought it was time for somebody else to begin stirring the pot of curricular change.”

That year, the board of trustees approved dividing the headmaster’s job into two positions. Following a collegiate model, Hudnut became the president of Harvard-Westlake, and Middle School head Jeanne Huybrechts became the head of

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Harvard-Westlake School. Since joining the Westlake faculty in 1989, Huybrechts had taught Middle School science classes and Advanced Placement Chemistry at Harvard-Westlake and served as director of studies. As Harvard-Westlake’s new academic leader, she would oversee its day-to-day operations, like a college provost. Hudnut, as president, would manage the school’s external affairs, fund-raising, construction projects, and community outreach.

“I think it has worked out splendidly,” Hudnut reflected in 2008. “The curriculum and faculty have received more high-level attention now than they did before. And I think that the school’s national and international involvements have also gotten more attention now than they ever have.”

By 2011, when the twentieth class graduated from Harvard-Westlake, the school was achieving excellence on all fronts. Typical students were juggling Jeanne Huybrechts, former Middle School head, became the academic leader of Harvard-Westlake in 2007.

demanding classes as well as plays, concerts, sports practices, and competitions.

Harvard-Westlake was developing international connections and enhancing its presence nationally and across the globe, while continuing to pursue new levels of achievement.

“Maintaining excellence is as time-consuming and difficult as creating excellence in the first place,” Huybrechts observed. “We always want to make the school a little better than it was the year before and make sure that it’s a place where all students can thrive.” Each new class, Hudnut added, “is an opportunity to save the good stuff

In 2013, art teacher John Luebtow, a glass sculpture pioneer, created this 10-by12-foot artwork dedicated to retiring President Tom Hudnut.

Luebtow had served as chairman of the art department at Harvard School for 17 years when Hudnut became headmaster in 1987. The artwork is located on the Upper School campus.

and discard old notions. Old orders change,” he said, “and yield place to the new.”

Soon, there was a changing of the guard at Harvard-Westlake. “In 2011, Tom Hudnut told us he wanted to retire in a year,” Christine Hazy recalled. “So we came up with a description of the kind of leader we wanted to look for. Ideally, it was someone who had run a private school, who had lived in Los Angeles, who would stay with us for years, who interacted well with parents, and who worked well with the community. When we showed those criteria to Tom, he said, ‘I know someone with all these qualifications.’ It was Rick Commons, head of Groton School, who had been a teacher, college counselor, assistant dean, and soccer coach at Harvard-Westlake in the 1990s.”

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When Tom Hudnut retired as president of HarvardWestlake in 2013, he was succeeded by Rick Commons.

The former head of Groton School, Commons had been a teacher, college counselor, assistant dean, and soccer coach at Harvard-Westlake in the 1990s.

Raised in Philadelphia, Commons had received his Bachelor of Arts with distinction from the University of Virginia, a Master of Arts in teaching from Stanford University, and a Master of Arts from the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. At Groton, which he had led since 2003, he had significantly strengthened the athletics and art programs, maintained its outstanding academic reputation, increased the percentage of students on financial aid, and nurtured its close-knit culture of high standards and public service. His wife, Lindsay McNiel Commons, was a 1996 graduate of Harvard-Westlake, and Tom Hudnut had been his mentor and adviser for many years.

“When Rick agreed to become the new president of Harvard-Westlake, Tom agreed to stay through the 2012–13 school year to ease the transition,” Hazy said. “That extra

In 2007, this bobblehead of Tom Hudnut commemorated his twentieth year as head of Harvard-Westlake.

year gave our whole community time to thank and celebrate Tom for his indelible impact on the school he’d worked so hard to build.”

As head of Harvard School since 1987, Hudnut had led the effort to combine Harvard and Westlake. At the merged school, he created a team of distinguished faculty members, enhanced an already strong academic core, and made the school’s athletics, visual arts, and performing arts programs competitive on a national level.

Hudnut spearheaded the development of world-class educational, athletic, and arts facilities; created a sophisticated fund-raising program; and diversified the faculty and student body. He also connected alumni to the school and extended financial aid to nearly 20 percent of students.

“Tom Hudnut,” Hazy said, “gave us an amazing foundation and reputation. He brought everyone together and let everyone have their say. He was the leader everyone

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believed in at Harvard-Westlake.” He also raised money—“lots of it,” Huybrechts added, “and he made Harvard-Westlake a world-class school. But a precious piece of Tom’s legacy is the deep personal investment he made in the people of HarvardWestlake. He radiated calm and exuded confidence, wisdom, and humanity. He was the foundation builder and a consensus-builder, never a dictator. There was an unspoken understanding among members of Tom’s leadership team that, going forward, we were welcome to walk in his path or stand on his shoulders, but we should never feel constrained by his shadow.”

On a bright morning in August 2013, Upper and Middle School students gathered for the first all-school Convocation on Ted Slavin Field, where Rick Commons welcomed them as the new president of HarvardH A R VA R D - W E S T L A K E S T R I V E S T O B E A DIVERSE AND INCLUSIVE COMMUNITY UNITED BY

Westlake. For Commons, in many ways, it was a home­coming. “Harvard-

T H E J O Y F U L P U R S U I T O F E D U C AT I O N A L E X C E L L E N C E ,

Westlake is the place

L I V I N G A N D L E A R N I N G W I T H I N T E G R I T Y,

where I discovered my

A N D P U R P O S E B E Y O N D O U R S E LV E S .

calling—what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be,” he reflected.

“When I was here from

1992 to 1997, the school’s identity was forming quickly around excellence, and it now has a distinguished national reputation. It can be hard for a school that stands at the very top to continue to grow and change, but as an institution, we must continue to strive and to evolve.”

His first priority as president was listening to students, faculty, and parents.

“Harvard-Westlake had such an amazing foundation,” he said. “Nothing was broken here, so I had the luxury of simply listening to everyone and hearing what they thought we should improve.” After beginning each day at the Middle School, where he taught ninth-grade English, Commons had lunch with Upper School students, discussing the school’s strengths and challenges. He also asked formal groups of faculty and students to describe Harvard-Westlake’s mission. “Nobody knew what it was,” he said, so Commons set out to create a statement that was relevant, meaningful, and inspiring.

In 2014, the school’s Mission and Planning Committee introduced HarvardWestlake’s new mission statement: “Harvard-Westlake strives to be a diverse and inclusive community united by the joyful pursuit of educational excellence, living and learning with integrity, and purpose beyond ourselves.” The committee had shortened

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Independent study is a focus of the school’s Kutler Center, created in 2012.

P O E T RY F E S T I VA L Since 2014, Harvard-Westlake has welcomed students throughout the Los Angeles Unified School District to read, write, and listen to poems at the annual, day-long HarvardWestlake Poetry Festival. Harvard-Westlake students serve as ambassadors for the event, which features poetry-writing workshops, student readings, open mics, and talks by visiting poets in a citywide community celebration.

 

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Student leaders at WestFlix, a California student film festival held at ArcLight Hollywood, that was founded by Harvard-Westlake in 2004.

Students at HarvardWestlake have pursued global experiences in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East on teacher-driven trips, student exchanges, internships, competitions, and performing arts tours. Harvard-Westlake has also sent faculty members all over the world to learn and share educational strategies.

G LO B A L P R O G R A M S For more than two decades, Harvard-Westlake students and faculty have embraced global study and education. As a member of the international G20 Schools association, HarvardWestlake has sent faculty members all over the world to learn and share educational strategies. The school has also established sister school relationships in Hong Kong and Tokyo.

Students at Harvard-Westlake have pursued international experiences in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East on teacher-driven trips, student exchanges, internships, competitions, and performing arts tours. Harvard-Westlake has also created seven fellowships for students to conduct independent, immersive projects overseas, from the study of the Manx language on the Isle of Man to investigations of glassblowing in Murano, Italy, and street art in Amsterdam. Students have also traveled to the nations of Rwanda, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Guatemala on digital-storytelling trips to study their recovery from conflict.

The documentaries the students produce are shared with other students on campus and with wider audiences through WestFlix, a California student film festival in Hollywood that was founded by Harvard-Westlake in 2004. “Kids are growing up in a globalized, inter­ connected environment,” explained Jim Patterson, director of the school’s Kutler Center and Summer Programs. “We have an obligation at Harvard-Westlake to make sure that our students become good citizens of Los Angeles and the world.”

and strengthened the school’s original mission statement, written in 1991, and added two new phrases.

One was “the joyful pursuit of excellence.” Those words are now part of Harvard-Westlake’s vernacular, Huybrechts said. “That phrase expresses the conviction that our efforts to learn, grow, and achieve should not feel like drudgery, but should instead be full of joy. It’s not intended to suggest that we avoid challenges or that our approach should be carefree.

Instead, it’s meant to encourage the development of real passion for the work at hand—a sense of fulfillment in our accomplishments and in the process of pursuing them.”

The second new phrase, Commons added, is “purpose beyond ourselves.” “Excellence can be self-­absorbing,” he explained, “and getting beyond the image of oneself is harder in Los Angeles than in other places. Our purpose should not be entirely or mostly selfish, but to be a better member of our community in every way.”

The school’s new mission statement “encourages us to ask meaningful questions,” added Audrius Barzdukas, who served as Upper School head from 2013 to 2016. “What are we doing at Harvard-Westlake to make things better for others? How can we make the school community more joyful? We are launching efforts to fulfill the mission in a thousand ways.”

Harvard-Westlake will continue to evolve and meet new challenges, said Director of Admissions Elizabeth Gregory.

“As Tom Hudnut liked to say, ‘Do well by doing good.’ We need to use our financial aid to diversify the school economically and expand our outreach. How can we better serve the community of Los Angeles? We have so much we can share with the rest of the city.”

As Harvard-Westlake aligns with its new mission, Commons noted, the school will continue its commitment to excellence in every area—as well as happiness, balance, inclusion, character, service, and innovation. “We will change with the times,” he said, “while keeping our values timeless—igniting intellects, ambitions, and aspirations that can change the world.”

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An Upper School dance class.

 

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CHAPTER FIVE

BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE

Students cross the new expanded and modernized Middle School campus.

Students at the Feldman-Horn Center for the Arts, completed in 1998.

Students play chess on the Middle School campus.

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A peaceful garden walkway in the Middle School.

O U T S TA N D I N G FA C I L I T I E S E N A B L E E X C E L L E N C E — A N D I T WA S C L E A R , S O O N A F T E R

the merger, that Harvard-Westlake needed new, larger, and more specialized spaces to create inspiring learning experiences and opportunities.

The most pressing problem was the Upper School science building. The dim, outdated structure, Harvard Hall, lacked adequate classrooms and up-to-date lab facilities. “Science teachers couldn’t teach what they needed to teach,” recalled Harvard-Westlake trustee Robert Beyer ’77.

At Tom Hudnut’s request, Science Department Head John Feulner visited several new science facilities at other schools. Nothing he saw met his department’s needs, so Harvard-Westlake conceived its own unique, state-of-the-art facility—the Munger Science Center—funded with a $7.5 million lead gift from trustee Charles Munger.

Designed by architect and trustee Ki Suh Park, whose children were HarvardWestlake graduates, the $13 million project featured two new buildings on the site of

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Upper School students participate in a new tradition, the Senior Walk, in front of the Munger Science Center. Completed in 1996, it is one of the most advanced high school science facilities in the country.

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the old Barnes and Gooden Halls. The expansive complex, which opened in 1996, included classrooms and laboratories specially configured and equipped for physics, biology, chemistry, geology, oceanography, and invertebrate zoology classes. The technology and equipment was so advanced, Beyer said, that UCLA taught classes at the Munger Center.

It was, according to the Los Angeles Times, “perhaps the most state-ofthe-art high school facility in the nation.” Most important, Feulner added, “the new center allowed us to improve our programs and courses. We’ve increased our faculty, and more students than ever are now involved in science. People from all over the world visit the Munger Center. Twenty years later, it’s still a superb facility.”

The vacant Harvard Hall soon became the new site of Upper School Visual Arts. The department’s multiple programs had been scattered across campus in makeshift, inadequate spaces. “We needed to come together in one building,” recalled Department Chair Cheri Gaulke. With lead gifts from trustee Janis Horn and her father, Leonard Feldman, the school transformed the dark, dreary building into a luminous modern structure. With its high ceilings, courtyard, and professional gallery space, the Feldman-Horn Center for the Arts—designed by architect Michael Maltzan and completed in 1998—is “a piece of art itself,” Gaulke reflected. “Since all the visual arts came together in this beautiful, lightfilled space, we’ve become a community of art makers, with a strong sense of identity. The building itself is a showcase that always calls us forward to be our best.”

With the new Munger Science Center and Feldman-Horn Center for the Arts, Upper School facilities were elevating teaching and learning.

The Middle School, meanwhile, was still struggling with tiny classrooms and field space. “Facilities were so crowded that everyone was bumping into each other,” said John Amato, who became Harvard-Westlake’s vice president in 2007. “Classrooms were awkwardly shaped, and the power was constantly going out. The playing field was a postage stamp and impossible to use after it rained. The art rooms were small and horrible, and the performing arts spaces were abysmal.”

All the music classes shared a one-room building encircled by ninthgrade lockers. “The rooms were noisy and so cramped that violin players would accidentally hit each other with their bows,” recalled Middle School Performing Arts Chair Emily Reola. “The choral room was moldy and horrible,” Amato added, and the mixed-use Marshall Center for

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BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE

Students sing a good-bye song to a faculty member in 2016.

Students in a Middle School choir class.

CHORAL PROGRAMS The Middle School’s new Bing Performing Arts Center, opened in 2008, features state-of-the-art facilities and soundproof practice rooms for Harvard-Westlake’s award-winning choral music programs. With six course offerings—from Boys’ Chorus and Girls’ Chorus to Vocal Ensemble, Wolverine Singers, Madrigals, and Voice Class—“there’s a place for every student in our program, at every level, and the focus is excellence,” said Emily Reola, chair of the Middle School Performing Arts Department.

The Middle School Wolverine Singers, Madrigals, and Vocal Ensemble groups have all won first-place honors in national music festivals.

Harvard-Westlake’s strong choral tradition—established before the merger, at Westlake School for Girls—has attracted strong singers and teachers for generations. Internationally acclaimed Upper School ensembles—including the Wolverine Chorus, Bel Canto, and the Harvard-Westlake Jazz Singers—are supplemented by individual tutorials in sight singing and voice class. “There’s rigor and discipline,” said Upper School Performing Arts teacher Ted Walch, “along with tremendous spirit and pride of accomplishment.”

Performing Arts and Athletics created frequent bottlenecks. “It was a small, old, inadequate campus,” he said, “that was undermining the kids.”

As early as 1996, planning began for modernizing and expanding the Middle School. “We needed so many new facilities,” Beyer recalled. The architectural firm of Harvard-Westlake parent Jeffrey M. Kalban spent the next nine years designing a completely new campus, on property the school had purchased next to the existing Middle School. “Kalban’s associate, Susan Oakley, must have filled thirty notebooks with the wants and needs of every department,” Amato said. “We built it all.”

In June 2006, ground was broken on the property, which was walled off from the original campus so that classes could continue without interruption. As cranes towered over the building site, new structures began to rise, including a 44,000-squarefoot complex housing the Munger Library, administrative offices, and nine science Original Westlake fixtures, including this chandelier, were incorporated into the new Middle School buildings.

classrooms with college-level laboratories. A second 100,000-square-foot building

A blueprint of the new Middle School campus.

practice rooms, the Katzenberg Black Box Theatre, the Burrows Dance Studio, and

contained the Hazy Academic Center, with twenty-four English and math classrooms; the Bing Performing Arts Complex—featuring a recording studio, eight soundproof separate state-of-the-art facilities for orchestra, band, jazz band, electronic music, choir, and rhythm section classes; and the 950-seat Saperstein Theatre, one of the best, most advanced performing arts facilities in Los Angeles.

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In September 2008, after two years of construction, Middle School students finally began occupying the new campus, with its tranquil lawns, large playing field, and Spanish-style red-tile roofs. “We mixed architecture, old and new, to honor the Westlake buildings,” Amato said. Stained-glass windows, lanterns, and chandeliers from the old Westlake campus were incorporated into the new structures, along with displays of the school’s heritage and memorabilia.

The total cost of the project was $125 million, far more than the original estimate of $50 million. But the board of trustees’ Advancement Committee, led by Christine Hazy, raised more than $180 million—enough to fund improvements to the Upper

The 950-seat Saperstein Theatre is part of the Middle School’s new Bing Performing Arts Complex.

The Bing complex houses the Burrows Dance Studio as well as a recording studio, eight soundproof practice rooms, the Katzenberg Black Box Theatre, and facilities for orchestra, band, jazz band, electronic music, choir, and rhythm section classes.

School and increase the endowment for financial aid and other purposes.

“The money we raised was not just for the buildings,” Hazy explained. “It was for the people in them and inspiring students to do more than they ever imagined.”

The effects of the new campus were “instant and amazing,” Reola said.

“The performing arts complex is college-level, and our students really feel the difference. They’re more motivated, and they try harder. We’re all taking what we do to the next level. We’re filling the facilities with more serious programs, BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE

and students are striving for an extra edge in their performances.

We’re so grateful for the space and comfort of this beautiful place.

We never take it for granted.”

Harvard-Westlake sports, too, benefited from improved facilities. The Upper School’s eighty-eight-year-old athletic field had always suffered from poor drainage and was either muddy or rockhard. In 2003, the school plowed up the old field, resurfaced it with NFL-caliber FieldTurf, installed new scoreboards and a synthetic track, and renamed it Ted Slavin Field in honor of donor Ted Slavin, whose son, Jarrett ’03, played Wolverine football. Four years later, the addition of powerful light towers made the field much more accessible to football, soccer, track and field, lacrosse, and field hockey teams for practices and night games. “The lights gave us a home field advantage,” added Terry Barnum. “It’s like playing on a stage, and that creates much more enthusiasm in the stands. The field lights have generated a new sense of excitement around HarvardWestlake athletics.”

In 2009, the school also renovated the deteriorating field where Wolverine and Harvard baseball teams had competed and practiced for thirty years. Located on federal land more than seven miles from Coldwater Canyon, Franklin Field in Encino, leased from the Army Corps of Engineers, was full of hazards for baseball players. “The field was disproportional, the grass was dead, there were holes in the outfield, the sprinklers were broken, and the drainage system didn’t work,” recalled varsity pitcher Lucas Giolito ’12, who signed with the Washington Nationals Major League Baseball team in 2013.

To renovate the field, “the school brought in a bulldozer and started from scratch,” said head baseball coach Matt LaCour. The new

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The O’Malley Family Field—Harvard-Westlake’s renovated baseball complex in Encino—features a natural-grass field, state-of-the-art sunken dugouts, a nine-inning scoreboard, refurbished locker rooms, and five covered, fully lit batting cages.

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complex features a natural-grass field, state-of-the-art sunken dugouts, a nine-inning scoreboard, refurbished locker rooms, and five covered, fully lit batting cages. Renamed O’Malley Family Field in honor of its lead donors, the new baseball facility “shows how serious Harvard-Westlake is about excellence and becoming part of the baseball landscape in the region,” LaCour said. “O’Malley Family Field helps us attract the best players, gives them every opportunity to succeed, and helped us win a national championship in 2013.”

The school’s water polo and swim teams, too, now train and compete in a new state-of-the-art complex.

In 2012, Harvard-Westlake replaced its aging eightlane, twenty-five-meter Upper School swimming pool with the twenty-­lane, fifty-meter stainless-steel Copses Family Pool, which exceeds Olympic standards.

“The new pool is amazing,” said water polo coach Brian Flacks ’06. “It’s one of the nicest facilities in the country and a dream for our program. It’s what we H A R V A R D - W E S T L A K E O LY M P I A N S For more than thirty years, Harvard-Westlake athletes have competed at the world’s highest levels. Swimmer Dara Torres ’85 swam in five Olympic Games, winning

needed to get our aquatics, water polo, and swimming performance to the next level.”

The $6.5 million pool, fabricated in Italy, has an

twelve medals. One of the two most decorated female

eight-thousand-gallon surge tank below deck to keep

swimmers in the United States, she was also the first

the surface of the water level. By reducing waves,

in the world to compete in the Olympics past the age

Flacks explained, the new facility allows athletes to

of forty. Several other Harvard-Westlake athletes have competed in the Olympic Games. Peter Hudnut ’99—the

swim faster. “The new pool helps in so many ways,”

son of the school’s president emeritus Tom Hudnut—

he said. “Multiple groups, multiple levels, and many

won a silver medal in water polo in the 2008 games and

more participants can now drill and practice at the

competed in the 2012 Olympics. Alex Osborne ‘05, son

same time. Students don’t have to wait hours to get in

of Trustee Al Osborne, competed in rowing in the 2012 Olympics. In 2016, two Wolverine alumni represented

the water, and they’re able to get home at a reasonable

the U.S. in the Rio de Janeiro Games—water polo player

hour. We’ve gone from a below-average high school

Ben Hallock ’16 and equestrian show jumper Lucy Davis

swimming pool to one of the nicest pools in the

’11, who won a silver medal for her performance. Soccer player Ali Riley ’06 has played for the New Zealand Olympic squad in the 2008, 2012, and 2016 Games.

world—even better than those used in the Olympics.”

By investing in great facilities, Jeanne Huybrechts noted, Harvard-Westlake will continue to attract talented students and faculty. “A great school is a com-

plex ecosystem,” she explained. “Bright students flourish in the care of great teachers.

Great teachers are attracted to schools that have great facilities. Great facilities support consequential programs that then attract talented students, who need great teachers.

One begets the other,” she reflected. “It’s all connected.”

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The school’s water polo and swim teams now train and compete in the new Copses Family Pool, which meets Olympic standards.

The Upper School’s Ted Slavin Field was renovated with NFL-caliber FieldTurf, new scoreboards, a synthetic track, and powerful light towers for practices and night games.

In 2010, Alan and Susan Casden donated this bronze sculpture of a Wolverine, by artist John Kobald, to each Harvard-Westlake campus.

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CHAPTER SIX

PASSION AND PURPOSE HARVARDWESTLAKE TODAY Thousands of daily interactions between talented students and faculty foster the joyful pursuit of excellence, a commitment to integrity, and higher purpose.

Upper School History Department Chair Greg Gonzalez leads a classroom discussion.

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T H E A R T O F I N N O VAT I O N SAMANTHA HO ’16

Many Harvard-Westlake students explore intersections between disciplines. Samantha Ho ’16 has combined her passions for art, technology, and solving real-world problems to find innovative new ways to make a difference.

Ho’s talents as an artist earned her National Scholastic fine-art awards in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015. She was also a winner of the 2015 Congressional Art Competition, and her impressionistic entry, Self-Portrait after Seurat—which used only red, yellow, and blue pastels—hung in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C. Eager to expand her scope, she joined the school’s robotics team as a sophomore. “It was life-changing for me,” she said. “I entered robotics from a creative background and didn’t know how to code or use power tools. But I wanted a better understanding of how things were made, from concept to finished product.” Ho was elected captain of the team in her senior year. “I’m an artist,” she explained, “but science, at its core, is interdisciplinary—the application of creative thought and imagination.”

Blending her talents in technology and art, Ho has designed engineering solutions to complex problems. One of her creations—a refrigerator that needs no ice or electricity—can store food for a week in places, like equatorial Africa, with low electricity penetration. After studying human anatomy at Harvard-Westlake, she designed an electric prosthetic limb with inventive features. Ho has also designed a concept for low-cost housing, based on origami principles, that can be folded and unfolded. Her sustainable industrial designs earned her a 2016 design award from the National YoungArts Foundation. “All of Sammy’s art targets social and political issues. She’s never content until she’s found the most original, powerful, and effective way of visualizing her ideas,” explained her art teacher, Marianne Hall.

“I’m so interested in everything around me,” added Ho, a varsity swimmer who tutors children and adults in Chinese, math, and English. “My passion is finding new

Opposite, clockwise from top: Samantha Ho’s impressionistic self-portrait won the 2015 Congressional Art Competition; Ho stands in front of her plan for a prosthetic limb; her engineering plans for a refrigerator that needs no ice or electricity; Ho at work on a robotics project.

ways to deal with complexity and designing products and solutions to help others.”

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PEAK PERFORMANCE DY L A N S C H I F R I N ’ 1 6

Since 2006, Harvard-Westlake’s groundbreaking Playwrights Festival has celebrated the talents of young creative writers and performers. In 2014, the festival selected and produced 12 one-act plays by students, including The Soul Doctor, a comedy by sophomore Dylan Schifrin ’16. The following year, the festival featured a second work by Schifrin, The Exceptional Childhood Center, about the lives of youngsters enrolled in an elite preschool. The play was subsequently professionally produced by the Los Angeles Blank Theatre as a finalist in its nationwide Young Playwrights Festival.

Published by YouthPLAYS, which showcases work by talented new dramatists, it also won Schifrin the California Playwrights Project.

In 2016, another of Schifrin’s one-act comedies, Gwendolyn, was featured in the Harvard-Westlake Playwrights Festival and professionally produced by the Blank Theatre. He was selected as a finalist in the 2016 national YoungArts creative writing category.

“I never would have guessed that my little one-act plays would have gone so far,” Schifrin reflected—though his performing arts teacher, Christopher Moore, was not surprised. “Dylan is an excellent playwright,” Moore said. “He’s also wicked smart, a total gentleman, and good at so many different things.”

In addition to honing his skills as a character and improvisational actor, Schifrin has been deeply involved in Harvard-Westlake’s wide-ranging musical programs—playing piano in the school’s Studio Jazz Band and performing vocally with its award-winning Chamber Singers. Schifrin has also composed original music for the jazz band as well as classical pieces for small ensembles and choral music for the Harvard-Westlake Jazz Singers. In addition, he turned his original play, The Exceptional Childhood Center, into a musical and won an ASCAP/DreamWorks scholarship for collaborating on another short musical at the Wallis Annenberg Theater in Beverly Hills. An active member of the Harvard-Westlake Outreach Performers, Schifrin also acts, sings, and coaches middle ­school students in playwriting at schools that have minimal or no arts programs.

“My passions are music and creative writing,” he explained. “The difficult, amazing music we do at Harvard-Westlake, and the opportunity to explore how it’s crafted, have been among the most rewarding creative experiences of my life. I’ve been fortu-

Opposite, top left and right: Dylan Schifrin poses with professional cast members of his play The Exceptional Childhood Center and his award from the Los Angeles Blank Theatre’s Young Playwrights Festival; left, center and bottom: Schifrin conducts and rehearses with the Harvard-Westlake Jazz Singers; bottom, center and right: Schifrin performs in a Harvard-Westlake production of The Madwoman of Chaillot.

nate,” he said, “to have so much encouragement to do what I really love.”

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AT H L E T I C E X C E L L E N C E C O U R T N E Y C O R R I N ’ 1 6 , B E N H A L LO C K ’ 1 6 , AND CLAUDIA WONG ’17

World-class athletics are a hallmark of Harvard-Westlake. The bar was set in 1984, two years before the merger, when Westlake sophomore Dara Torres ’85 won a gold medal in swimming in the Los Angeles Olympics. Torres also set a slew of school swimming records.

One of them, in the 100-meter butterfly event, was finally broken in 2016 by Claudia Wong ’17.

“Dara’s record stood for more than thirty years,” Wong said. “She earned an Olympic medal in the event, so I was really surprised that I beat her time by more than a second.”

Wong, who also won two individual Mission League titles in 2016, writes for The Chronicle, Harvard-Westlake’s Upper School newspaper, and holds school records in the 200-meter freestyle and 200- and 400-meter free relay events.

Like Torres, water polo player Ben Hallock ’16 went directly from Harvard-Westlake to the Olympics. “I love the physicality of water polo,” he said. “It’s one of the hardest team sports because it moves so quickly.” A starting player for the Wolverines since 2012, he helped led the team to a national championship in 2014 and went on to compete in the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

Track and field standout Courtney Corrin ’16 has also represented the United States, as a member of the World Youth Team in 2013 and the World Pan Am Junior Team in 2015. “To compete with the support of the United States is beyond believable,” said Corrin, who won the national long jump title as a freshman and scored state titles in 2013 and 2015. One of the top hurdlers in California, Corrin has also been an

Opposite, from left: Courtney Corrin, Ben Hallock, and Claudia Wong. Above, clockwise from left: Corrin competing in soccer for Harvard-Westlake; Hallock playing for the school’s championship water-polo team; Wong swimming in the 100-meter butterfly event.

All-American gymnast, a top soccer player at Harvard-Westlake, and an oboist in the school’s Wind Ensemble. “I’ve never been willing to commit to just one thing,” she said. “I love the feeling of being out there.”

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INSTINCT FOR INVENTION J O N AT H A N B E R M A N ’ 1 7

In ninth grade, Jonathan Berman ’17 transferred to HarvardWestlake for its high-level math, robotics, and computer science programs. “If you want to go after something here, they’ll make it happen,” he said. Berman—named one of the top one hundred science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) high school students in the U.S. in 2016—has long been making things happen on the national stage.

In 2014, Berman and Arjun Mahajan ’16 were invited to the White House to present a robotic bracelet they invented to help children with autism. The device—a finalist in the Google Science Fair and first-place winner in the U.S. Army’s STEM competition—senses repetitive motions, like rocking, and vibrates gently to allow children to address the behavior in real time. “Being able to present your project at the White House Science Fair and talk to the President about your research,” he said, “is incredibly inspiring.”

It’s an honor that Berman experienced twice. As a sixth-grader in 2010, he and three of his middle school friends were invited to the White House to present their science project, which tested the ability of different lining materials in sports helmets to prevent concussions. The team determined that gel rubber was much safer and more shock-absorbent than foam, which was currently in use, and they shared their finding with several helmet manufacturing companies. “It was a really exciting experience,” Berman recalled, “and it encouraged me to get more into math and science.”

Since then, Berman—a member of the Harvard-Westlake robotics and Science Bowl teams and a junior varsity tennis team MVP—has been studying bioinformatics as a computer science intern at the California Institute of Technology. He also has a patent pending on three-dimensional solar panel shapes that collect energy more efficiently than flat panels, and he is creating a computer program to model different 3D configurations. “Renewable energy,” Berman explained, “is the biggest problem

Opposite, top: HarvardWestlake’s Jonathan Berman (left) and Arjun Mahajan (center) at the 2014 White House Science Fair with a collaborator to present the robotic bracelet they invented; below, right and center: photographs of the device, which could help children with autism; below, left: a research paper by Berman and collaborators on the advantages of 3D solar panels.

we’re facing, and I want to do anything I can to help meet that challenge.”

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A WORLD OF WORDS JENNY LI ’19

Harvard-Westlake’s award-winning news magazine, Spectrum, gives Middle School students opportunities to learn high standards of writing, service, ethics, and investigation. One of its editors-in-chief, ninth-grader Jenny Li ’19, has already garnered national recognition for her outstanding journalism. In 2016, Li won Quill and Scroll’s National Award for opinion and feature writing as well as the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards’ National Gold Medal for critical essays.

“I like expressing my feelings and opinions,” explained Li, who writes on subjects that she feels passionate about—from nineteenth-century Chinese railroad workers to feminism, STEM fields, migrant farmworkers, and social media. “She writes thoughtful, well-researched, clever, and well-crafted pieces,” observed journalism teacher Steve Chae. “Jenny has a gift for written expression in any form.”

Creative writing is her favorite genre. Li, who has studied creative writing at Stanford and the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth, has won several regional awards for her poetry, short stories, and personal essays. In 2013, the Los Angeles Times published two of her poems as well as a short story. Other stories

by Li have been published in the creative writing magazines Stone Soup and Creative Kids. “Jenny’s voice is crystal clear—authentic, with no artifice,” said her English teacher, Ryan Wilson, “She has a passion for well-being and social justice.” Her poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Campesino Child” earned a first-place international award for poetry.

Li played violin in Harvard-Westlake’s Middle School Symphony for two years and competes on the cross-country and track team. “Harvard-Westlake has really encouraged me to express myself in different forms,” she said. “There is so much that I want

Opposite, left and bottom right: Jenny Li with her Scholastic Art & Writing National Gold Medal for Critical Essays; right, from top: Her Quill and Scroll National Award; Stone Soup, which has published Li’s creative writing; and Li’s first-place international award for poetry.

to write about—I see ideas for articles, poems, and stories everywhere I look.”

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D O I N G W E L L BY D O I N G G O O D CAMERON COHEN ’16

“Students and faculty at Harvard-Westlake strive toward excellence, purpose, integrity, and community,” said President Rick Commons. Those values have long inspired Cameron Cohen ’16 to create, achieve, and excel for the good of others.

As a fifth-grader, after he was hospitalized with a benign tumor in his leg, Cohen was sidelined from sports and social activities for eight months. He spent his free time creating an iPhone app, called iSketch, that was cheaper and better than other drawing apps on the market. When the paid app rapidly took off, attracting fifty thousand users, Cohen donated $20,000 of his earnings to Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA to purchase electronic devices and video games for hospitalized teens and preteens. “When you’re in the hospital,” he explained, “having to think about what you’re going through is scary. I wanted to do something to help other kids, and it was a perfect opportunity to give back.” Three years later, as an eighth-grader at Harvard-Westlake, he expanded his philanthropy—donating $7,500 from iSketch and a new app he created, AnimalGrams, to fund pediatric cancer research at UCLA. “Cameron’s primary interest has been social entrepreneurship—using business and technology for the good of all,” said Upper School Dean Beth Slattery. “He’s a computer whiz,” she added, and one of the country’s top three debaters. “Cameron has had tremendous achievements on the debate team,” noted Harvard-Westlake head coach Mike Bietz, whose squad won the national championship in 2016. “He always strives to be the most prepared and informed on any topic. Beyond that, he has such a big heart—forgoing practice himself to mentor younger kids and assist others.”

“There are many big and little ways to have an impact,” Cohen reflected. “I’ve learned from experience that anyone can follow their passion and make a difference.”

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Opposite, right top and bottom: Cameron Cohen leading Harvard-Westlake’s award-winning debate team; top left: Cohen receiving Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA Innovator Award in 2013; center left: Cohen visiting young patients at Mattel Children’s Hospital; bottom left: AnimalGrams, an iPhone app that Cohen created to raise funds for pediatric cancer research.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

A COMMITTED COMMUNITY: ALUMNI OF HARVARDWESTLAKE A vibrant alumni network continues to connect students long after graduation.

Commencement 2016—Harvard-Westlake’s 25th graduation.

R E L AT I O N S H I P S F O R G E D AT H A RVA R D - W E S T L A K E

seldom end at commencement. For many alumni—of Harvard, Westlake, and Harvard-Westlake—close bonds, with faculty and fellow students, have helped to shape the course of their personal and professional lives.

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S U Z A N N E E . S I S K E L WESTLAKE ’70

Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer The Asia Foundation, San Francisco, CA

At Westlake, Suzanne Siskel ’70 found early opportunities to distinguish herself as a learner and leader. “I had fabulous teachers who taught me to think analytically and write well,” she recalled.

“They wanted us to learn and succeed and cared deeply about all of us.”

Westlake, at the time, was undergoing a profound transition. During Siskel’s time, from seventh through twelfth grade, the leadership of the school passed to a new headmaster, Nathan Reynolds. “Westlake had always been strong academically,” she remembered, “but under Nat Reynolds, it became more of a real college preparatory school, with a healthy competitive environment and high expectations. It also became a more diverse school, with appreciation for people from different backgrounds.”

Siskel said those experiences propelled her forward. After earning a bachelor’s degree at Harvard and a master’s in social anthropology at Johns Hopkins, she lived and worked abroad from 1974 to 2005—in Indonesia as a Luce and Fulbright Scholar; in Brazil and Mexico as a university teacher, researcher, and consultant; and as head of the Ford Foundation’s offices in the Philippines and Indonesia. After returning to the United States, Siskel served as president of the Fulbright Association and as the Ford Foundation’s director of Social Justice Philanthropy before joining the Asia Foundation in 2011. “Westlake,” she said, “gave me the confidence to succeed and nurtured leadership abilities I never knew I had.”

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D E B O R A H R U T T E R WESTLAKE ’74

President The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, D.C.

“I came to Westlake as a junior to have a really great education. I found it there, at a key moment of my life,” recalled Deborah Rutter ’74. “Westlake taught me the intense value and joy of intellectual pursuits and gave me a passion for lifelong learning,” she added. Rutter found inspiration in classes that she took in Shakespeare, French, and art and contemporary film. The school’s focus on opportunities and success for women was also a lifelong influence. “Westlake taught me,” she said, “that I could do anything I wanted to do.” After earning a B.A. at Stanford and M.B.A. at the University of Southern California, Rutter—a pianist and violinist—went on to head the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

“My experience at Westlake was really critical for me, and I formed strong friendships there that have lasted to this day,” she remembered. “It’s amazing how two years in the right place, at the right time of your life, can have such a tremendous impact.”

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B. D O U G L A S B E R N H E I M H A RVA R D ’ 7 5

Edward Ames Edmonds Professor of Economics Chair, Department of Economics Stanford University, Stanford, CA

“A big part of my life is teaching,” said Douglas Bernheim ’75, “and I know how to teach because I had great role models at Harvard who inspired passion and curiosity.” Bernheim still remembers class discussions he had, for example, with Upper School Head John Ameer, “who taught a mind-bending philosophy class”; history teacher Ray Michaud, “who taught me how to think hard about and analyze complex issues”; and Father John Gill, Harvard’s chaplain and history teacher, “who taught the Bible analytically, as human history.” Math, Bernheim added, has been vital to his work as an economist, and his seventh-­ grade Harvard math teacher, Duncan McKosker, ignited his enthusiasm for mathematics. His speech and debate teacher, Tedd Woods, he noted, taught him how to convey ideas to others in convincing ways.

“What I’ve done in my life,” Bernheim reflected—earning his B.A. at Harvard, getting his Ph.D. in Economics at M.I.T., and teaching at Northwestern, Princeton, and Stanford—“was only possible because of the amazing education I got at Harvard School. The teachers I had didn’t just convey knowledge,” he explained. “They nurtured creativity, instilled confidence in students to think out of the box, and gave us the tools to question authority and figure things out for ourselves. They asked us hard questions, often didn’t tell us the answers, and held us to extremely high standards—with a good dose of caring and humor. As an economist, academic, and teacher,” he said, “I enormously value my time at Harvard.”

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Playwright New York, NY

David Hwang spent one year at Harvard, as a senior, and it changed his life. “Harvard recruited me as a junior because I was a good debater,” recalled the Tony Award–­wining playwright. “Up to that point, I had probably only read four books in my entire life. But when I came to Harvard, I read books like War and Peace, Les Misérables, and Man’s Fate. It sparked a passion for literature and theater that’s shaped everything I’ve done professionally and in the arts.”

Hwang’s English and drama teacher at Harvard, Susan Dietz, also had an immense impact. “At Harvard, we did a production of Arthur Kopit’s play Indians. It was an important moment for me,” he explained. “Indians is an experimental political work that looks at the Vietnam War through the metaphor of Buffalo Bill’s traveling circus show. It opened my eyes to what drama could do, and I thought I might try writing a play.”

One year later, Hwang wrote his first play in his dormitory at Stanford, then went on to attend Yale’s School of Drama.

Since then, he has written plays including the Tony and Drama Desk award-winning M. Butterfly, as well as the reimagined Broadway musical Flower Drum Song and the Obie Award–winning play FOB. Hwang has been nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize for drama, teaches playwriting at Columbia University, and looks forward to someday collaborating professionally with Susan Dietz, who has been a producer on Broadway since the 1990s. “We haven’t worked together on a show yet,” Hwang said, “but there’s still time.”

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J U L I E T T E K AY Y E M WESTLAKE ’87

National Security Expert and Author Boston, MA

“Westlake was the most intimate and intense academic experience of my life,” said Juliette Kayyem ’87, a national security expert and author of the 2016 memoir Security Mom: An Unclassified Guide to Protecting Our Homeland and Your Home.

“There was a very strong focus on identifying ourselves as individuals and professionals, regardless of what we decided to do in our lives. The school gave me a lot of confidence to build a career that was hardly linear.”

After earning her B.A. from Harvard and J.D. from Harvard Law School, Kayyem worked in the U.S. Justice Department as advisor to former Attorney General Janet Reno. She then served as Massachusetts’ first undersecretary for Homeland Security, as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s assistant secretary for intergovernmental affairs, and as a member of Secretary Jeh Johnson’s Homeland Security Advisory Committee. Kayyem is also the sole female national security analyst at CNN. A Pulitzer Prize finalist for her columns in the Boston Globe, she is now the Belfer Lecturer in International Security at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. She has three children.

“The environment at Westlake,” she remembered, “encouraged us to create our own history. That spirit animated many of my choices. I’ve had many jobs but one career, and I credit that flexibility to the transformative teachers who were so incredibly interested in our success as a class and as individuals.”

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A K I R G U T I E R R E Z H A RVA R D ’ 9 1

Director of Research Susquehanna Financial Group, New York, NY

At Harvard, Akir Gutierrez ’91 developed a keen sense of adaptability that has served him well. “The finance industry is ever-changing and dynamic,” explained Gutierrez, a University of Southern California graduate who serves as director of research for Susquehanna Financial Group and previously served as a director at Deutsche Bank and as a senior vice president at Lehman Brothers. “Without the flexibility I acquired at Harvard, it would have been very difficult to succeed in this or any other industry.”

Born in Los Angeles to parents from Nicaragua, Gutierrez came to Harvard School on a George C. Page Scholarship. “It was so important to my family,” he remembered. “My parents saw that the only way to move forward was through school, so when I got an offer to go to Harvard, it was a big deal. ‘It all rests on you,’ they told me.”

It was a tough transition. The commute was almost an hour each way, and Gutierrez struggled in academics. “In class,” he recalled, “they were talking about things I’d never heard of. It was humbling and frustrating—a bad time for me.”

Another problem he had was language. “I spoke in a Nicaraguan accent mixed with street talk, with an accent that came from our black working-class neighborhood,” he said. Once, when Gutierrez fought with a classmate and was sent to detention, John Amato, then Harvard’s Head of Lower School, suggested that his use of language was limiting his success. “‘Change the way you talk,’ Mr. Amato said, ‘and take away all the excuses for people not to see who you are.’ So I changed the way I spoke in that environment,” Gutierrez said. “It was a life-defining moment that taught me to be incredibly adaptable and understand the dynamics that I’m part of.”

A frequent visitor and speaker at Harvard-Westlake, Gutierrez said he still experiences the benefits of his Harvard education. “I have vivid and deep memories from my years there,” he said. “My story is still being written, but the time I spent at Harvard, thanks to the generosity of a benefactor who did not know me, has impacted my life and the lives of my wife, my kids, and my extended family in ways that are extraordinary. For that I am forever grateful.”

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M A R I KO S I LV E R H A RVA R D - W E S T L A K E ’ 9 5

President Bennington College, Bennington, VT

“Harvard-Westlake was essential to understanding who I am and aspire to be in the world,” said Bennington College President Mariko Silver ’95. When she joined the new school’s first fully integrated coed class, in tenth grade, she found “an extraordinarily inspiring place where I found myself as a student and member of a community.” It was at Harvard-Westlake, she recalls, that she discovered her passion for European history and economics. “I learned to be truly animated by intellectual exploration,” she said, “because my teachers made each subject come alive.” After graduating, Silver went on to earn a B.A. in history at Yale, an M.Sc. in science and technology policy from the University of Sussex in England, and a Ph.D. in economic geography from U.C.L.A. Harvard-Westlake also ignited Silver’s love for the arts.

“When I was in tenth grade,” she said, “I auditioned for the school production of Hair. I was cast as a dancer, even though I had no background in dance. The experience cultivated me as a performer and dancer, and I ended up taking intermediate and advanced dance. Those classes changed my sense of myself. I became a thinker about movement, choreography, and performance, and that gave me confidence,” she said, “to go after any number of things.”

Silver applied that confidence, in the course of her career, to leadership positions at Bennington, Columbia University, Arizona State University, the Arizona Governor’s Office, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. “Were it not for my experience at Harvard-Westlake, in the arts and in the way I learned to read and think about history,” she reflected, “I would never have done all the other things I’ve done in my life.”

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NBA Cares Ambassador Los Angeles, CA

Jason Collins ’97 learned indelible life lessons at Harvard-Westlake.

“The school was challenging for me when I entered in ninth grade,” he recalled. “I had always worked really hard in the classroom, but the curriculum was a step up from my junior high. I have a lot of pride,” he said, “but I learned to swallow it and ask my teacher for help. I’ve gotten older,” he added, “I realize how important it is to show initiative and ask for help when you need it.”

Collins—who played thirteen seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA)—with teams including the Washington Wizards, the New Jersey Nets, the Atlanta Hawks, and the Boston Celtics— also learned vital time management skills at Harvard-Westlake.

“Sometimes,” he said, “it took me an hour to get to and from school.

Then, during basketball season, I’d train every day after classes and work out until early evening. I had to find ways to get my work done, including spending free periods in the library.” At Stanford—where Collins was an All-American basketball player before he was drafted by the NBA—“the time demands were even heavier,” he said, “but I was well prepared because of Harvard-Westlake.”

Most importantly, he added, the school’s faculty—especially his English teacher, Joannie Parker—encouraged him to challenge social norms and think outside the box.

“In Ms. Parker’s Women’s Studies class,” he said, “I saw so many examples of people who had made the decision to trust themselves, because they knew, deep down, that they were doing the right thing. So, in 2014, when I made a public announcement that I was gay, I had vivid memories of being in Ms. Parker’s classroom. I needed to make that public declaration because I wanted to be the one to tell my story. I knew that I had to hold firm and trust myself—and so many members of the Harvard-Westlake community stood up to support me.”

The school also taught him to make connections and open doors, skills that he uses daily in his new role as an ambassador for NBA Cares, the league’s global social-­ responsibility program. Collins still maintains close contact with Harvard-Westlake. He and his twin brother, Jarron Collins ’97—also a retired NBA player—run a summer basketball camp at the school, and their mother, Portia Collins, works in its Office of Advancement. “My ties as an alum have always been very strong,” he said. “Whenever someone screams ‘Harvard-Westlake!’ at a game, I turn around.”

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Professional Soccer Player New Zealand and Malmö, Sweden

Ali Riley ’06, a professional athlete, says she is “a really wellrounded human being, thanks to Harvard-Westlake.” Riley, a member of the New Zealand women’s national football team and the Malmö/FC Rosengård professional football club in Sweden, started at the school in ninth grade. Although her focus was athletics, she recalled, she was quickly captivated by the school’s programs in languages, science, and the arts. “Soccer was the highlight for me, and I ran track and played JV tennis,” she said, “but I loved my classes in art history, psychology, Latin, physics, and ceramics. Photography was special for me, too— building a pinhole camera, developing pictures, and displaying them in the school’s gallery. Being around so many students and opportunities inspired me to do well academically and think deeply about the kind of person I wanted to be.”

At Stanford—where Riley captained the soccer team and was named All-American, Scholar All-American, and Pac-10 Scholar Athlete of the Year—she continued her psychology studies. Learning new languages, she added, is still a passion. After playing for the American Women’s Professional Soccer League, she joined the Swedish team in 2012, and she is fluent in Swedish and Italian. Because her father was born in New Zealand, Riley started playing for the New Zealand National Team in 2006 and represented that country in the 2008, 2012, and 2016 Summer Olympics. She was named Nike National Women’s Player of the Year in 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011.

“Harvard-Westlake prepared me well, in so many ways,” she noted. “Its athletics program was so good and so professional that it helped me get recruited by Stanford.

Academically, I thought it was harder than college. Most importantly,” she added, “Harvard-Westlake surrounded me with really inquisitive, inspiring people who made me believe that I could achieve great things.”

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Founder ESY Strategies, San Francisco, CA

When Emanuel Yekutiel ’07 transferred to Harvard-Westlake in tenth grade, he “wasn’t the best at any one particular thing, but I tried everything,” he recalled—from writing and staging his first play to trying out for the mock trial and hurdling teams and starting Italian and musical appreciation clubs. “HarvardWestlake gave me an environment that inspired my curiosity,” he said, “and taught me to have a lot of wonder.”

Yekutiel went on to Williams College in Massachusetts, where he served as student body president, then worked as an intern in the White House Office of Public Engagement. He also won a Watson Fellowship to conduct independent research on the LGBT rights movement in England, India, Australia, China, Singapore, and Brazil. Yekutiel later served as a field organizer for President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign. He was also Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s Silicon Valley Finance Director for the first ten months of the campaign, and chief of staff for Mark Zuckerberg’s political group, FWD.us. Named one of Forbes’s “30 Under 30 for Law and Policy,” Yekutiel recently founded the philanthropic and political consulting firm ESY Strategies and has a new role as Google’s Executive Engagement Strategist.

“The biggest lesson I learned at Harvard-Westlake was to achieve as much as I could without ever sacrificing character,” said Yekutiel, who came from an Orthodox Jewish background. The school, he added—especially former headmaster Tom Hudnut—also reinforced the importance of public service. It was, he said, “a liberating, inspiring, and challenging place. My experience there enabled me to come to terms with my sexuality and taught me to do well and do good with tenacity, curiosity, and courage.”

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Entrepreneur, Author, Creator Immunity Project, San Francisco, CA

At Harvard-Westlake, Ian Cinnamon ’10 learned that he didn’t need to follow a standard path. “It gave me the opportunity,” he said, “to explore what I wanted to explore, which was science and engineering, and it developed my passion for understanding the human brain.”

Cinnamon, director of strategy for the Immunity Project—a nonprofit that is developing a free vaccine for HIV/AIDS— began carving his own route early. In ninth grade, he wrote a textbook—Programming Video Games for the Evil Genius—that was published by McGraw-Hill. In tenth grade, the rocketry club he started at Harvard-Westlake was commissioned by NASA’s Student Launch Initiative to build a projectile that could carry a scientific payload a mile high. He was also inspired, he said, by Dr. Antonio Nassar’s class on Studies in Scientific Research to earn a bachelor’s degree at M.I.T. in brain and cognitive science.

After graduating a year early and moving to the San Francisco Bay Area, Cinnamon helped launch the Immunity Project at the incubator Y Combinator; worked as technical advisor to the Chief Product Officer at Zynga, the social-video-game services company; and became a founding partner of the superlabs technology incubator. Named one of Forbes’s “30 Under 30 in Healthcare,” Cinnamon then returned to the Immunity Project, developing and scaling the free HIV vaccine and running the world’s largest crowd-funding campaign. He is now writing a second book, about drones, for McGraw-Hill and will enter Stanford’s Graduate School of Business in 2017.

“I’m passionate about learning—through experience and the classroom,” he said.

“At Harvard-Westlake, my teachers always told me, ‘If you’re interested, go do it.’ That’s what I’ve done.”

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A COMMITTED COMMUNITY

INDEX A Abzug, Bella, 58 Administration Building, 87–88 alumni, 129–41 Amato, John, 36, 67, 70, 75, 83, 88, 89, 105, 108, 109, 136 Ameer, John, 133 Archer, Robert, 34 Arzy, Leily (’15), 84 Asborne, Al, 112 athletics, 26, 27, 60, 69, 71, 76, 84, 86–87, 110–13, 121

B Barnes, Clarence, 24, 26 Barnes Hall, 105 Barnum, Terry, 86, 110 Barzdukas, Audrius, 84, 86, 96 Bergen, Candice (’63), 52, 53 Berman, Jonathan (’17), 123 Bernheim, B. Douglas (’75), 133 Berrisford, Christopher, 34, 36, 37 Beyer, Robert (’77), 103, 105, 108 Bietz, Mike, 127 Billett, Lucy Abeel (’63), 54–55 Bing Performing Arts Center, 107, 108, 109 Bird, Joan Davey (’47), 56 Bishop’s Medal, 75 Borden, Michael (’95), 70, 75 Burrows Dance Studio, 108, 109

C Casden, Alan and Susan, 113 Chae, Steve, 125 Chalmers, William Scott, 31, 34 Chisholm, Shirley, 58 choral programs, 107 The Chronicle, 89, 121 Cinnamon, Ian (’10), 141 Cohen, Cameron (’16), 127 Collins, Jarron (’97), 84, 138 Collins, Jason (’97), 84, 138 Collins, Portia, 138 commencements, 50, 77, 129 142

Commons, Lindsay McNiel (’96), 91 Commons, Rick, 90–91, 92, 96, 127 Coombs, David, 59, 75, 76 Copses Family Pool, 112, 113 Corrin, Courtney (’16), 121

D Davis, Lucy (’11), 112 de Laguna, Frederica, 45–47, 51 Dickinson, Helen Temple (’31), 51, 54, 55 Dickinson, Malcolm, 51, 54 Dietz, Susan, 134 Doherty, Lisa Handler (’87), 59 Donahue, Tom, 36, 37, 68, 70 Douglas, Donald W., Sr., 28, 29 Douglas, Will (’38), 28

E Eliot, Charles W., 24 Ellenson, Jacqueline, 69 Emery, Grenville C., 23, 24, 25

F Fee (Harrison), Melinda (’60), 53 Feldman, Leonard, 76, 105 Feldman-Horn Center for the Arts, 76, 79, 105 Feulner, John, 103, 105 Field Day, 82 Flacks, Brian (’06), 112 Flood, Mimi, 76 Fogarty, John (’91), 38 “For the Brave of Every Race,” 33 Franklin Field, 110 Friday Night Lights, 87 Friedan, Betty, 58

G Gable, Clark, 30 Gaulke, Cheri, 105 Gill, John, 33, 34, 133 Giolito, Lucas (’12), 110 Goddard, Vicki (’60), 56, 69 Gooden, Robert B., 24, 25, 26, 28, 31, 32, 33 Gooden Hall, 105 Gregory, Elizabeth, 56, 74, 96

Guerin, Vera, 75 Gutierrez, Akir (’91), 136

H Hall, Marianne, 60, 69, 117 Hallock, Ben (’16), 112, 121 Hamilton, Kinter, 29–30 Harvard, John, 33 Harvard Hall, 23, 36, 103, 105 Harvard Military Academy, 28 Harvard palm tree, 25 Harvard School founding of, 23–24 locations of, 24, 28–29 mascot of, 26 merger with Westlake, 37–38, 60–61, 67–70 naming of, 24 traditions of, 38, 71, 74 Harvard Tower, 38 Harvard-Westlake academic excellence of, 76, 83–84 campuses of, 67–68 construction programs of, 87–89, 99–113 creation of, 37–38, 60–61, 67–70 global programs of, 95 mascot of, 70, 71 mission statement of, 92, 96, 144 motto of, 70 performing arts at, 84 traditions of, 71, 74 Hays, Carolyn, 31 Hays, Marion, 30, 31 Hazy, Christine, 88, 90, 91, 109 Hazy Academic Center, 108 Ho, Samantha (’16), 117 Hollywood Country Club, 28–29, 30 Homecoming weekend, 71, 74 Horn, Janis, 76, 105 Hudnut, Peter (’99), 112 Hudnut, Thomas C., 36–37, 38, 61, 67, 68, 70, 75, 76, 83, 84, 88–92, 96, 103, 112, 140 Huybrechts, Jeanne, 89–90, 92, 96, 112 Hwang, David (’75), 134

J

O

T

Jacobson, Barbara, 54 Jewett, Helen Jeanne (’43), 48 Johnson, Joseph, 25 Judson Studios, 33 Junior ROTC (Reserve Officers’ Training Corps), 25–26, 31, 34

Oakley, Susan, 108 O’Malley Family Field, 111, 112 Osborne, Alex (’05), 112

Ted Slavin Field, 87, 92, 110, 113 Temple, Helen (’31), 51, 54, 55 Temple, Shirley (’45), 51 Tooley, Reva Berger (’50), 51, 54 Torres, Dara (’85), 60, 112, 121

K Kalban, Jeffrey M., 108 Katzenberg Black Box Theatre, 108, 109 Kayyem, Juliette (’87), 58, 135 Kelley, Harold, 28 Kleinz, Karl, 70, 74 Kobald, John, 113 Kutler, Brendan (’10), 89 Kutler Center for Interdisciplinary Studies and Independent Research, 89, 93

L LaCour, Matt, 110, 112 Levin, Rob, 69 Li, Jenny (’19), 125 Luebtow, John, 90

M MacFarland, Jack, 25 Mahajan, Arjun (’16), 123 Maltzan, Michael, 105 Mark Taper Athletic Pavilion, 36 Marshall Center, 59, 88, 105 May Fete, 47, 48, 52–53 McCleery, James, 31 McKosker, Duncan, 133 Michaud, Ray, 133 Mills, Carol, 51, 54 Moore, Christopher, 119 Munger, Charles, 34, 76, 103 Munger Library, 108 Munger Science Center, 76, 103–5

N Nassar, Antonio, 141

P Park, Ki Suh, 103 Parker, Joannie, 58, 138 Patterson, Jim, 89, 95 Peabody, Endicott, 25 Playwrights Festival, 119 Poetry Festival, 93

R Reola, Emily, 105, 107, 109–10 Reynolds, Nathan (’51), 55, 56, 59, 60, 68, 70, 131 Reynolds, Sallie, 60 Ride, Sally (’68), 56 Riley, Ali (’06), 112, 139 Ring Ceremony, 47, 58, 61, 74, 75 Rosson, Ashley (’90), 61 Rugby Hall, 30 Rutter, Deborah (’74), 132

S Sadker, Myra and David, 68 Saint Saviour’s Chapel, 29, 30, 31, 32–33, 75 Salamandra, Harry, 74 Saperstein Theatre, 108, 109 Schifrin, Dylan (’16), 119 Schroeder, Pat, 58 Seeley G. Mudd Library, 36 Senior Ceremony, 74, 75 Senior Walk, 104 Shaw, Steve (’71), 38 Silver, Mariko (’95), 137 Siskel, Suzanne E. (’70), 131 Slattery, Beth, 127 Slavin, Jarrett (’03), 110 Slavin, Ted, 110 Spectrum, 125 Sprague, Norman (’65), 74 Stamen, Justine (’88), 60 Steinem, Gloria, 58 Stott, Miss, 46

U Upham, Rebecca, 68

V Vance, Jessica Smith, 45–47, 51 Veritas Award, 74 Vietnam War, 31

W Walch, Ted, 84, 107 WestFlix, 94, 95 Westlake School for Girls founding of, 45–46 locations of, 46–47 merger with Harvard, 37–38, 60–61, 67–70 motto of, 59, 70 traditions of, 47–48, 52–53, 54–55, 58, 61 Whiting, Pat, 63 Wilson, Ryan, 125 Wolfe, Ernie (’68), 31 Wong, Claudia (’17), 121 Woods, Tedd, 133 World War I, 26, 47 World War II, 30–31, 48, 51

Y Yekutiel, Emanuel (’07), 140

Z Zanuck Swim Stadium, 36

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H A R VA R D - W E S T L A K E S T R I V E S T O B E A DIVERSE AND INCLUSIVE COMMUNITY UNITED BY T H E J O Y F U L P U R S U I T O F E D U C AT I O N A L E X C E L L E N C E , L I V I N G A N D L E A R N I N G W I T H I N T E G R I T Y, A N D P U R P O S E B E Y O N D O U R S E LV E S .

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Harvard-Westlake: A History was produced thanks to the funding of the Bing family and Mary, Burt, and A.J. ’10 Sugarman and the vision and commitment of Christine and Steven Hazy. This book would not have been possible without their generous support and assistance.

PHOTO CREDITS Harvard-Westlake School wishes to express appreciation to the photographers and archivists, past and present, who documented and preserved the historical and contemporary images presented in Harvard-Westlake: A History.

Historical chapters: Images on pages 1–77 are copyright © 2017 Harvard-Westlake School with the exception of the following: pages 10–11, 12–13, 15, 36 (patch), 37 (ring), 51 (pillow), 59 (patch), 60 (shoes), 61 (button), 64–65, 75 (stained glass window), and 76 (pom-poms), which are copyright © 2017 Matt Sayles (www.mattsaylesphoto.com).

Contemporary chapters: Images on pages 78–141 are copyright © 2017 Matt Sayles with the exception of the following: pages 87 (football), 94–95, 102, 108 (architectural plans), 109 (poster), 112 (Lucy Davis), and 121, all of which are property of Harvard-Westlake School; page 116 painting and drawings courtesy of Samantha Ho; page 118 courtesy of Dylan Schifrin and Harvard-Westlake; page 122 courtesy of Jonathan Berman; page 124 awards courtesy of Jenny Li; page 126 Cameron Cohen at podium and hospital visit copyright © 2017 UCLA photography; remaining photos on pages 126–127 courtesy of Cameron Cohen; page 131 courtesy of Suzanne E. Siskel; page 132 courtesy of Deborah Rutter; page 133 courtesy of B. Douglas Bernheim; page 134 courtesy of David Hwang; page 135 courtesy of Juliette Kayyem; page 136 courtesy of Akir Gutierrez; page 137 photo of Mariko Silver by Briee Della Rocca; page 138 courtesy of Jason Collins; page 139 courtesy of Ali Riley; page 140 courtesy of Emanuel Yekutiel; and page 141 courtesy of Ian Cinnamon.