Kent Quarterly Fall 2015 by Kent School

Fall 2015

KENT Quarterly

KENT

CONTENTS

Quarterly

Volume XXXII.1 Fall 2015

Editor Denny Mantegani 12 Tonya Kalmes Stacy Langa Kathy Nadire Julie Saxton

Photographers Ryan Badecker Cassidy Bromka ’18 Anna Carlgren P’15 Kate Cordsen P’15 Cortney Duncan

Brandon Fong ’16 Liam Nadire ’15 Hunter Southworth ’98

The Kent Quarterly invites all readers —alumni, parents past and present, trustees, faculty, staff and students— to contribute to the magazine. We also welcome letters to the editor and look forward to your comments on articles and issues concerning the School as well as suggestions for future articles. The email address for letters to the editor is ManteganiD@kent-school.edu, and for class notes, alumni@kent-school. edu. Changes in address should be emailed to Laura Martell at Lmartel@ kent-school.edu or mailed to her at Kent School, Box 2006, Kent, CT 06757. To reach the Alumni and Development office, please call 860-927-6230.

KENT: The Second Century

Let Us Now Praise Father Patterson’s Men: Part III

Design and Production Cheney & Company

Prize Day 2015

6 KentPresents

Class Notes Editor Laura Martell Contributors Kent Alley ’82 Jeff Cataldo Marc Cloutier Adam Fischer Elaine Griffin

Features

Kent School Boat Club at Henley

Kent at Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Departments

From the Headmaster

Between the Hills and River Shore

Kent Authors

3 9

Alumni News and Events

4 5

Class Notes

In Memoriam

6 4

Grace Note

...

Kent School adheres to a longstanding policy of admitting students of any race, color, creed, religion, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, creed, religion, national or ethnic origin in the administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan program and other school administered programs.

Borsdorff Hall and Middle Dorm South on a beautiful fall morning Photo by Randy O’Rourke.

ON THE FRONT COVER:

From the Headmaster

“ Of things achieved and things that do not change” (An excerpt from the 2015 Baccalaureate Address) ON THIS BEAUTIFUL BRIGHT SHINING JUNE DAY…

we pause to reflect for a moment in St. Joseph’s Chapel on the seasons of this year… fall, winter and spring… and all that has been accomplished on the way to this great day. The fall foliage on the mountainside in Kent… red, orange and yellow… Yes, in the words of William H. Armstrong, “October belongs to God.” And who will ever forget this past winter? It has always been beautiful here—and it has always been rugged. Kent’s own Pulitzer Prize–winning poet, and author of the words to the School Song, Robert S. Hillyer ’13 (that’s 1913), chronicled the changing seasons here in Macedonia Valley along the Housatonic River: In winter nights I lay awake and heard The black ice booming in the ruthless cold. Then, as the warmer weather came, it stirred And broke and, in a mad upheaval, rolled Uptilted chunks and shattering slabs that roared Downstream, uprooting trees and, uncontrolled By banks, half took them with it. Days on end The loud-voiced water brawled around the bend. “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” (Psalm 118) … As you set out on your journey, and as we contemplate your future, based on the evidence of your great accomplishments thus far, we are filled with hope and promise… “Behold, God is doing a new thing!” In the words of the hymn, “Finish then thy new creation!” 2015: It has been an amazing year. In the fall you led New England in mathematics. Amid the cold and snow you led New England in hockey, basketball and diving, and excelled in swimming and squash… You won the gold and silver at New Englands… And the college list of acceptances and matriculations speaks for itself.

FALL 2015

The finest colleges and universities in the country and the world will be fortunate to see you in September. Adjusted for the intense competitiveness of our day, in academics and sports and in every other kind of competition, yours is the strongest Class ever. Congratulations! Undergirding every accomplishment of individuals, groups and the School as a whole has been the sound leadership of the Senior Class. You have been a calm presence, a cohesive bond and a galvanizing force. You have shown courage. In the words of Winston Churchill: “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”… Steady and reliable, those of you on the Senior Council gave your all to the community. Both individually and as a group, you have been an example of extraordinary leadership by example—hardworking, always striving to be and do your best in class, in art, in music, in dance, in theater and in athletics, while also supporting each other and every member of the student body. As Dean Cathe Mazza has said: “We needed a special year of leadership this year and we got it!”

Of course, the work is never done. We keep at it… stay humble and persevere. Our founder, Frederick Herbert Sill, OHC, had a favorite saying for times like these: “Always strive for success, but never think you are successful.” Today is Prize Day. For the most important things in life, there are no prizes or awards, no trophies, no certificates, no press releases, no public recognition. “Virtue is its own reward.” Only knowledge of the truth… love and the fullness of life, life eternal… all these endure. The Bible teaches that wisdom is more precious than gold. Jesus teaches us to love one another now and eternally. Your parents, grandparents, guardians, brothers and sisters love you and are so proud of you. Your teachers love you. And we can all feel it today… just how thankful everyone is for the love that surrounds us on every side. As we sit here in a last quiet moment before the bustle of the day begins, we listen to the still small voice: God is Love. All of life, our families, friends and neighbors, our beloved School, “our hearts to love, and minds to think and hands to serve”… they are all gifts from above, to be nurtured and cared for, to be used for the glory of God.

Again, from the poem written for Kent by Robert Hillyer: We see, for the first time, the entire range Of things achieved and things that do not change. A young man’s dream is what Kent started from— And so it may remain until the end!… Blest was the school where so much brightness shone From frugal windows in that simple place. Blest is the school that grows as Kent has grown Without diminishment of zeal or grace. Truth does not weaken when more widely sown, Nor vision become dim in ampler space; For every hill we climb, a higher hill Reveals unfolding vistas further still. May God bless the Class of 2015 on your way. Richardson W. Schell ’69 Headmaster & Rector

KENT QUARTERLY

Prize Day 2015

An excerpt from the Prize Day Address BY GENERAL GREGORY S. MARTIN, USAF (RET.)

IF YOU ARE LIKE ME, you are

probably wondering what the next step will be like. How will I do? Will I be successful in college? What will I major in? Will I graduate? What will I do when I graduate? Will I have a family? So, as you ponder those questions, I’d like to offer some guidance I received from leaders I respected and admired as I dealt with those same questions 49 years ago. This guidance helped me at exactly the times I needed it. It was imparted to me at times when I was transitioning between a phase of knowledge to a phase of wisdom. Or when I was moving from knowing a whole bunch of information—facts, dates, names, events and details—to a phase where I needed to understand how to apply that knowledge…

FALL 2015

So, less than a month after graduating from high school, I reported to the U.S. Air Force Academy for basic cadet training. I was captured by the concept of being able to fly and it was my hope that I could complete the Academy experience and be accepted into pilot training. The first three days were filled with back-to-back learning of the basic rules for how to set up our rooms, shine our shoes and boots, set up our uniforms, put our belongings away in the prescribed manner, and a whole series of academic tests to assess our knowledge and understanding—math, English, literature, history and the sciences—so that we could be properly tiered and placed in the right level of courses when the academic year would start in about eight weeks. This phase seemed a bit stressful, but the in-processing phase was a cakewalk compared to the actual basic cadet training and discipline phase that would start at the end of those first three days of in-processing.

Cum Laude Society CLASS OF 2015 Jiayuan George Chen William Chun-Wei Chen Theodore Addams Christian Amy Yujin Chun Grace Hadley Cordsen

The last formation we had before starting that more intense phase was with the commandant of cadets—Brigadier General Louis T. Seith, an impressive officer who ended up retiring years later as a four-star general. He was standing on the stage, watching us as we filed into the auditorium—he had a very commanding presence. When we were all in place, in a smooth but authoritative voice he told us to be seated. He then mentioned that he had been in our same seats 27 years earlier when he was a plebe at West Point. And he knew how concerned we were about how we would measure up, and so he gave us this advice:

Emilie Eleonore DeWael Matthew Robert Flynn Zachariah William Foster Yu Hui Gan Jin Han Alexander Douglas Johnson Jaehan Kim Maxim Alexandrovich Leshchinskiy Joni Cheuk Kiu Leung Muriel Frances Leung

1. Don’t be so proud that you can’t admit that you don’t know something, or that you won’t admit that you made a mistake, and don’t be ashamed to be a little humble at times. He said the whole purpose of the basic training detail was to move beyond our past accomplishments to bring us to an equal baseline and then build us back with one another as team members who learned to subordinate our own desires to the needs of our team and eventually to the needs and mission of our units. I think you know that in the Kent motto as Directness of Purpose…

Zhiqi Li Andie Marie Marczewski Jonathan Wilson David Reyhan Katherine Anne Rusch Milan Saxena Stephanie Schor

2. He then said that military units fight as teams. There may be individual heroics, but they are accomplished for the benefit of the team… But, having said that, it is necessary that each individual learn their skills, pull their weight, and when necessary help their teammates. I think you know that in your motto as Self-Reliance…

Caitlin Marie Tardio Lindsay Lee Wallace Alisa Pui Yi Wan Angela Xiyu Wang Yilin Judy Wang Angela K. Wong

3. His third point was to advise us to keep our sense of humor now and in the future. Don’t be so serious, engaged and committed that you don’t take time to enjoy your environment, your friends, activities and many actions that in retrospect will actually be kind of funny. And I think you know that as the Simplicity of Life…

Emma Margaret Woodberry Grace Jaewon Yoo

CLASS OF 2016 Brandon Fong Joelle Troiano Zhixiao Yang Xuanzhen Zhang

FACULTY Stephen J. Robey, Jr.

HONORARY General Gregory S. Martin

I was fortunate at the Academy and I did receive a pilot training slot… I was selected to upgrade into the F-15 squadron in 1978… and then immediately [was] trained for F-15 instructor duty… When I completed both upgrades, my squadron commander called me into his office to outline his expectations and his rules… He started by saying, Martin, you are now an F-15 instructor pilot. It is the finest air superiority fighter in the world. And how well you do your duties will determine how well our Air Force will be able to own the airspace over the heads of our army, navy and marine partners so that they will have the freedom of maneuver to be successful in any future conflict. There are three things I want you to remember: 1) Don’t violate the sense of trust your students will have in you; 2) Don’t violate their sense of dignity; and 3) Don’t violate their sense of hope…

KENT QUARTERLY

Be proud, but not so proud that you can’t admit that you don’t know something or won’t admit that you made a mistake. Don’t be afraid to be humble at times. And so as you leave this magnificent institution and prepare for the next phase of your growth and learning, I offer you this short summary: Be proud, but not so proud that you can’t admit that you don’t know something or won’t admit that you made a mistake. Don’t be afraid to be humble at times. Focus on the success of your team and make sure that you are carrying your load for that team. Keep your sense of humor; it will help to keep you in balance. And then always, always try to treat others in a way that doesn’t violate their sense of trust, their sense of dignity, and their sense of hope. My life was greatly enriched by that guidance and I believe yours will be as well. General Gregory S. Martin, USAF (Ret.), is the recent Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Falcon Foundation, United States Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado, which provides scholarship funding for young men and women who aspire to attend the U.S. Air Force Academy. Kent School is one of seven prep schools in the country supported by the Falcon Foundation. A graduate of the United States Air Force Academy, General Martin served as Commander of the United States Air Force in Europe, Commander of the NATO Allied Air Force in Northern Europe, and Commander, Air Force Materiel Command. Since retiring in 2005, he has served as Chairman of the National Academies Air Force Studies Board.

FALL 2015

KentPresents NOBEL LAUREATES, PULITZER PRIZE WINNERS and

dozens of leaders from a variety of fields gathered on the Kent School campus for a weekend in August at the inaugural KentPresents, an ideas festival exploring What Comes Next—in technology, art, health and medicine, global issues, and many other areas. The event was the result of the vision and hard work of Ben and Donna Rosen, who have been members of the Kent community for 13 years. Ben is co-founder of the venture capital firm Sevin Rosen Funds and has served as chairman of Compaq Computers. Currently he is chairman emeritus and life trustee of Caltech. Donna was director and owner of Galerie Simonne Stern in New Orleans and currently serves as a trustee of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art, and as vice chair of American Friends of the British Museum.

A N ID EA S F EST IVA L The Rosens’ goal was to bring together thought leaders from many different fields to discuss important issues of the day and what the future holds, as well as to benefit the local community. All proceeds of the event will go toward nonprofit organizations in and around Kent that provide social and emergency services, housing, educational and economic opportunities. The three-day program included interviews, panel discussions, conversations and Oxford-style debates. Between sessions and at lunches and dinners on and off campus, the 300 participants had the opportunity to continue the conversations with the speakers, panelists and moderators. Alex Taylor ’63, who wrote about the auto industry for TIME and Fortune magazines for 35 years, was a moderator of a panel on disruptive automotive technologies, with engineers from Tesla and Hyundai arguing

KENT QUARTERLY

the merits of battery-power and fuel-cell powertrains, respectively. He commented, “KentPresents was a huge success. A sellout crowd enjoyed the opportunity to meet and mingle with the likes of economist Paul Krugman, columnist Joe Nocera, biographer Edmund Morris and other notables. An unheralded star of the event was Kent School, whose campus shimmered under the event’s blue skies.” Other attendees described it as “the most spectacular and interesting three days I’ve ever experienced,” “a splendid gathering of knowledgeable, engaging speakers and intelligent and curious attendees,” and “superb from beginning to end.” Plans are already underway for KentPresents 2016. Visit kentpresents.org.

OPPOSITE PAGE Ford Foundation President Darren Walker, left, New York Congressman Hakeem Jeffries and New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu join the session on “Race and Criminal Justice.” THIS PAGE, 1 Henry Kissinger, former secretary of state and Nobel laureate, discusses world order with author Christopher Buckley. 2 Act 1, scene 2 of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, performed in the session titled “If I Loved You… The Anatomy of a Musical Scene.” 3 Siddhartha Mukherjee, physician, researcher and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, talks with Michael Moritz, chairman of Sequoia Capital. 4 Bill Burns, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former ambassador to Russia and Jordan, discusses risks to the U.S. around the world with New York Times National Security Correspondent David Sanger. 5 Caltech professor Frances Arnold (center) and environmentalist Stewart Brand (right) discuss evolution with Scott Fraser, Director of Science Initiatives at USC. 6 Donna and Ben Rosen (front) with friends and supporters from the Kent community. Photo by Todd Eberle.

FALL 2015

KentPresents

A N ID EA S F EST IVA L

A sampling from the program of the 38 sessions and 72 speakers and moderators

Global Issues

Visual Arts

WORLD ORDER Henry Kissinger will be interviewed for the entire session by author Christopher Buckley. Nobel laureate, former Secretary of State and author of 18 books, Kissinger will provide an historical and geographical perspective of world order that is unique in the world.

NEW ART—WHAT MAKES A GENERATION? How does a young artist make work in the early 21st century? In a time when sharing and liking are the dominant means of public discourse, violence erupts at home and abroad, and ecological devastation looms on the horizon, how are emerging artists to respond? And is it their responsibility to do so? Artists Rachel Rose and Xaviera Simmons will be in conversation with Whitney Museum Associate Curator Christopher Y. Lew to discuss their research and archival-based practices and how their work resides in the world.

National Affairs GUNS IN AMERICA Is there a bigger flashpoint in the national debate today than gun control? How do we get our arms around this polarizing subject, one that has been with us since the Second Amendment? With the venue of KentPresents located just 28 miles from Newtown, Connecticut, perhaps this is an appropriate place to revisit the controversy of guns in America. New York Times op-ed essayist Joe Nocera and politico Ed Rollins will debate the issue.

Science FINESSING EVOLUTION— FORWARD AND BACK Stewart Brand [environmentalist and founder of the original Whole Earth Catalog] is pushing to make de-extinction a reality, starting with the fabled passenger pigeon and moving on to the woolly mammoth. The object of his mission is to enhance biodiversity through genetic rescue of endangered and extinct species. Frances Arnold [professor of chemical engineering, bioengineering and biochemistry at Caltech] is taking advantage of the fact that the last 30 years of molecular biology have provided a new opportunity: the ability to manipulate the code of life—to actually rewrite DNA. Stewart explores the past; Arnold explores the future.

Technology DISRUPTING TECHNOLOGIES— PARTS I AND II We are all familiar with the disruptive technologies that have changed the world, for better or worse, over the last few decades. What are the technologies of the future that have a chance of becoming disruptive? These two panels will take a look at candidates for game changers: 3-D printing, advanced fossil fuel technology, autonomous vehicles, big data, biotech, crypto currencies, drones, energy storage, wearable technologies and others. Six panels, two moderators, lots of questions, and we hope some answers. Bonnie Burnham is president of World Monuments Fund and has led its international historic preservation work since 1985, when she joined the organization as executive director. Previously she served from 1975 to 1985 as executive director of the International Foundation for Art Research. Paul Krugman was the sole recipient of the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work in

international trade theory. Author or editor of more than 25 books and over 200 published professional articles, Prof. Krugman has written extensively for non-economists as well. He currently writes a twice-a-week op-ed column for the New York Times. He is a professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Carlos Riva is chief executive officer of Poseidon Water, a water infrastructure development company. Poseidon is currently constructing the largest seawater desalination facility in the Americas, in Carlsbad, California, and developing additional facilities in California, Texas and Florida. He has extensive knowledge in growing new companies and leading technologically sophisticated businesses in the fields of renewable energy, electric power generation, biotechnology, engineering and construction. Judith Shulevitz is a writer and editor who has helped found or relaunch several magazines, including Lingua Franca and Slate. She has been a regular columnist at the New York Times Book Review and a staff writer and editor at the New Republic and Slate. She is the author of The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time. J.B. Straubel is the co-founder of Tesla Motors, manufacturers of electric cars. He has overseen the technical and engineering design of the vehicles, focusing on the battery, motor, power electronics, and high-level software subsystems. Harold Varmus, co-recipient of the Nobel Prize for studies of the genetic basis of cancer, became director of the National Cancer Institute on July 12, 2010, after 10 years as president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and six years as director of the National Institutes of Health.

KENT QUARTERLY

KENT The Second Century

THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES CALLS FOR A COMPREHENSIVE INITIATIVE to build the School’s endowment from today’s $80 million to the level of $250 million by the year 2020. At this aspirational level of endowment, the School will be able to maintain a preeminent boarding school program that will not be overly tuition dependent. A sum of nearly $70 million in lifetime charitable intentions has been identified in the initial fundraising component of this initiative. Our goals are thus at once aspirational and realistic. While Kent is increasingly competitive on all fronts, endowment growth is the single most important requirement for our community’s future success. The accomplishments and generosity of Kent’s graduates, parents and friends over the past 110 years serve as the foundation for today’s school. At the heart of KENT: The Second Century is a fundraising program focused on building the endowment by means of contributions and pledges to new and established endowed funds; increasing Bell Tower Society membership through Planned Giving; and growing unrestricted annual support of the Kent Fund. Further, the plan includes building endowed reserves by reducing operating costs and maintaining a focus on institutional efficiency—a hallmark of the School throughout its first century. Continued prudent investment management and real estate activities, as well as fee-based educational and other business enterprises, will contribute to the growth of the endowment. All who cherish the value of a Kent education—every graduate, every parent past and present, every grandparent, and every friend worldwide—will be asked for support. In the words of Kent’s Founder, Fr. Frederick Herbert Sill, OHC, our objective remains: “to make a superior education at Kent possible for ALL… including students from families of modest means.” Today’s Kent remains steadfast in its mission—“As an independent boarding school in keeping with the Episcopal Church, our superb faculty prepare students for college and for life by means of a rigorous and comprehensive program.” KENT: The Second Century promises to preserve the accomplishments of the last century and advance the mission of the School in our own time.

Temperantia, Fiducia, Constantia

FALL 2015

KENT The Second Century

On April 30, 2015, an important announcement was made introducing an initiative for the Endowment of Kent School. Graham Jones ’00 hosted a Kent reception at the Racquet and Tennis Club in New York. Alumni, parents, grandparents and friends of Kent gathered to hear about the State of the School and to learn about KENT: The Second Century. Headmaster Dick Schell ’69 addressed those present and highlighted the accomplishments and generosity of Kent’s graduates, parents and friends over the past 110 years, which have served as the foundation for today’s Kent. Upon this foundation, Kent is thriving. Kent graduates have received acceptances at all of the best colleges and universities across the country and around the world. Their artistic, academic and athletic talents are recognized in state and national competitions and championship athletic seasons. In numerous ways, a Kent education helps to shape personal and social development while also supporting the quest for ethical and spiritual meaning. While Kent remains competitive on all fronts, endowment growth is a requirement for future success in an ever-changing world. Kent students and faculty are performing at a competitive level. Now is the time to build an endowment to provide competitive funding in Kent’s second century. Waring Partridge ’62, President of Kent’s Board of Trustees, addressed those assembled to formally announce a vital initiative for Kent’s future success: KENT: The Second Century. Mr. Partridge confirmed that Kent’s Board of Trustees has called for a comprehensive initiative to increase the School’s endowment from the current level of $80 million to Andrew Bogle ’90, Trustee

$250 million by the year 2020. With this endowment, the School will be able to fund all financial aid from endowment investments and maintain excellence under any foreseeable economic cycle. Mr. Partridge said that about $70 million in intended lifetime gifts to Kent have been identified at the outset of this initiative and that planned lifetime gifts are especially important to sustained endowment growth. He then thanked John Harvey ’62, Chair of the Board’s Development Committee, for hosting a Trustee dinner just prior to the event to formally initiate fundraising. Through financial discipline and the generosity of our alumni and parents, Kent has always “done more with less,” operating with an endowment per student that is notably less than many competitors. Endowment growth allows for fully endowed financial aid, expanded educational programs, experiential learning, facilities improvements, faculty salaries and reduced endowment draws. Kent Trustee Robert S. Anderson ’60, Treasurer of the Kent School Corporation, remarked on the financial issues facing the School and the independent boarding school industry. Kent School has had 24 consecutive years with a balanced budget, an admirable accomplishment thanks to the oversight of Kent’s Business Office Managers and the Finance Committee

Amy Macartney Freidenrich ’87, Trustee

Waring Partridge IV ’62, President of the Board of Trustees

KENT QUARTERLY

Alumni Council member Jeff Crowell ’01, Dylan Ketchum ’01, Graham Jones ’00

John and Evelyn Morris Popp ’86

of the Board of Trustees. An issue facing Kent School, and the boarding school industry in general, is that a decreasing number of qualified applicants can afford the full cost of a first-class boarding school. Strengthening the endowment is required to offset tuition cost with financial aid both for those with moderate needs and more extreme needs. Kent must remain focused on the largest and most important component of the School’s cost structure— salaries and professional development. Kent allocates the largest portion of net operating revenue—revenue after accounting for financial aid—to support its most important asset—our faculty. In a market where many schools are competing for the best teachers to provide the best education, we must build competitive compensation packages, which include salary, health insurance, a retirement plan and housing benefits. Endowment growth will help provide the funding necessary to keep pace with compensation growth. Kent’s motto of Self Reliance, Simplicity of Life, Directness of Purpose continues today and is exemplified by a vibrant jobs program, a dedicated group of teachers and an inspired staff that enable Kent to operate with considerably greater efficiency than other top boarding schools. This operating model positions Kent among the nation’s top boarding schools. Board of Trustees member Andrew Bogle ’90 expressed his thoughts, noting that amazing things happen every day at Kent. All that was excellent about our

FALL 2015

Cristina Soriano ’07, Isabel Smith ’06, Camila Soriano ’08, Alumni Council member Samantha Krupnick ’05

School in past decades and generations is long-lasting. He urged action—including an investment of time, the sharing of ideas and giving generously to Kent. He noted that this is our charge—so that future generations of Kent students can experience the same excellence. Board of Trustees member Amy Macartney Freidenrich ’87, mother of Theo, Class of 2016, and Lucy, Class of 2018, singled out the younger members of the audience, asking them to support Kent now and in the future. “We are all here because of the generosity of generations of alumni who came before us. It is now our responsibility to carry on this tradition of support. I know we all share a great deal of devotion to our School. This devotion needs to be translated into higher levels of charitable support and participation. For those of you who have been loyal donors, we thank you immensely. You are the reason we are all here tonight… to encourage others to join us. We have laid out an initiative that is critical to the School’s success throughout its second century. Every Kent person will need to do his or her part.” Mr. Partridge then addressed the audience again to encourage everyone present to support Kent’s endowment during the KENT: The Second Century initiative. He also encouraged all present to recommend Kent to their friends and families. Editor’s note: If you would like to learn more about KENT: The Second Century, please contact Kathy Nadire at 860-927-6267 or nadirek@kent-school.edu.

PART III

Let Us Now Praise Fr. Patterson’s Men ROBERT F. OBER, JR. ’54

Part II appeared in the Spring 2015 Kent Quarterly For rigorous teachers seized my youth, And purged its faith, and trimm’d its fire, Show’d me the high, white star of Truth, There bade me gaze, and there aspire. — MATTHEW ARNOLD (1822–1888)

THE REVEREND SAMUEL E. WEST, JR., was the third

member of that triumvirate from the Midwest who joined Kent School in 1949. Born in Buffalo, Wyoming, the son of a clergyman, Fr. West had been educated at Kemper Military Academy, where he rose to become captain of the cadets; then Wichita University, where, in 1938, he obtained his BA; and Seabury-Western Seminary, where, in 1941, he received his bachelor of divinity. Ordained by the Bishop of Kansas, he served at several churches in the Kansas diocese before joining Fr. Patterson in 1946 as associate rector of Grace Church in Madison, Wisconsin. As assistant headmaster, Fr. West was given complete oversight of St. Joseph’s Chapel, including the instruction of the boys appointed to be the sacristan and verger, and of the boys, teachers and visitors assigned as acolytes, thurifers, servers and readers for the eight services each week that we attended. Fr. West was a strong presence outside the Chapel, too, teaching classes in Sacred Studies (a course which, after several years, would be absorbed in a newly created Department of Theology), participating in “bull sessions” in dormitory rooms, and otherwise staying close to the students and their concerns. He also provided the Daily Office of prayer for the School’s stricken, wheelchair-bound founder, who remained on campus, in the RAD House, until his death on July 17, 1952.1 By the time Fathers Patterson and West reached Kent in 1949, they were also deeply involved in a theological “cause” of which we as students, and most faculty members, I suspect, were unaware: a reform of the liturgy of

the Episcopal Church, which they and two other priests (Massey Shepherd, Jr., who had been teaching liturgics at the Episcopal Theological School, and John Keene, the rector at Christ Church, West Englewood, New Jersey) were determined to accomplish. In a meeting at the Washington Cathedral in November 1946, these four, joined by eight other Episcopal priests from across the country, had founded Associated Parishes, a nonprofit body incorporated in New Jersey whose objective was to develop and promote changes in the rites and ceremonies of the Church (extending even to the interior architecture of individual churches) so that the Holy Eucharist would assuredly be at the very center of worship, visibly and spiritually. By 1962 the Associated Parishes (A.P.) had sponsored two national conferences, the first in 1958 at Madison’s Grace Church (colloquially described, because of Fr. Patterson’s involvement, as the “mother church” of the A.P.) and the second in 1962 in Wichita, Kansas, a conference at which Roman Catholic leaders also participated; and A.P. brochures were already used in almost a thousand parishes across the United States. (For a full history of the Associated Parishes movement and the work of its founders, including Frs. Patterson and West, please consult Michael Moriarty, The Liturgical Revolution: Prayer Book Revision and Associated Parishes: A Generation of Change in the Episcopal Church [New York: Church Hymnal Corp., 1996]). If most of us, apart from the School’s trustees, were unaware that our headmaster and rector and the priest he brought with him were committed to a theological

KENT QUARTERLY

cause transcending St. Joseph’s Chapel and the surrounding campus, we did soon learn that they both favored services that lay at the High Church end of the low-to-high spectrum in the Anglican and Episcopalian traditions of worship. The new leadership’s Sunday services in St. Joseph’s included the full display that, for many congregants, beautifies such services, including the regalia of ornate vestments, clouds of burning incense and, more often than not, the Great Litany and Responsory Psalms. The services at Kent before 1949 may well have included the same features, but the attention they received during the Patterson years was probably distinctive. Fasting before the Sunday service was already built into the students’ schedule before Fr. Patterson’s arrival. Two 1954 classmates, Smith College professor emeritus Don Robinson and Fr. David Jenkins, an adjunct clergyman at All Saints Episcopal Church, Fort Lauderdale, have reminded me of the “instructed Eucharists” that Fr. Patterson sometimes conducted. According to David’s recollection, he would pace up and down St. Joseph’s center aisle at different points in the service and then “stop the action” to explain what was about to happen, or perhaps what had just happened. David said that the instruction proved to be excellent preparation for his own liturgics courses at General Theological Seminary; and when he reached his first parish in Rhode Island and “was faced with a congregation whose understanding of Episcopal liturgies was a cross between medieval Catholicism and Puritan New England-ism,” he did a series of comparably instructed Eucharists that were

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Fr. Samuel West

well received. David has since repeated them elsewhere and personally views them as one of Fr. Patterson’s important legacies. I had not been raised in the Episcopal Church and my associations with religious institutions in the three communities in which I had lived before reaching Kent were sporadic, to say the least. The services at St. Joseph’s, therefore, had a profound impact; as a prefect my sixth-form year, seated in the chancel or standing at the altar, I felt immersed in this rich liturgy each Sunday. Within weeks of arriving at Kent in 1949, Fr. Patterson took a decision that resonated loud and clear through the campus: he banned paddling. I was made acutely aware of the practice when my roommate (who later withdrew from the School) was thrashed by a sixth-form prefect for two violations: having our overhead light on after the 9:30 p.m. lights-out (required for 1 The Daily Office connotes “the Offices” (duties) of Morning and Evening Prayer, which, in the Anglican tradition, High Churchmen usually observe; the presence of Fr. West would have allowed Fr. Sill to take Holy Communion.

Fr. John O. Patterson

under-formers) and consuming food he had secreted in our room. Ordered to bury my head under a pillow, I can’t say I witnessed the incident, but the cries were rather frightening for someone who hadn’t experienced corporal punishment growing up. There was no further 2 Dr. Thomas Arnold, the headmaster and rector of Rugby School (1828–41), consolidated the practice whereby school governing bodies bestowed on their headmasters a great deal of independence, e.g., full latitude in the hiring and dismissal of teachers; and also introduced the prefect system and sanctioned paddling. In Thomas Arnold Head Master: A Reassessment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), author Michael McCrum, a one-time Rugby headmaster and also governor, writes: “With hindsight, too, it is easy today to be critical of Arnold for allowing his Sixth Form to enforce discipline by the use of corporal punishment. But at the time its use was so widespread in schools that modern inhibitions about it would have seemed unreasonable (p. 70).” According to the British writer Penelope Fitzgerald, whose father and uncle attended Rugby in the 1890s, “… the prefects punished by making a wrongdoer run past an open door three times while they aimed a kick at him. Ribs got broken that way. At breakfast, rolls flew through the air and butter was flicked onto the ceiling, to fall, when the icy atmosphere had thawed out, onto the masters’ heads” (The Knox Brothers [Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 1990], p. 36). Arnold’s son, the essayist and poet Matthew Arnold, who effusively honored his father in the poem “Rugby Chapel,” conceded that “blots existed” in his father’s “character and administration” (Park Honan, Matthew Arnold, A Life [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981], p. 364), citing a manuscript at Balliol College, Oxford. Matthew may have had the paddling in mind. What is surprising is that the practice survived late into the 20th century and continued at many American boarding schools until well after Fr. Patterson’s decision.

paddling at Kent, and the sanctions meted out thereafter by sixth formers were mostly manageable and, in terms of “hours stung” and worked off under Bill Armstrong’s supervision, even therapeutic. In short, Fr. Patterson overturned a hoary, centuries-old tradition, one legitimated by the revered Thomas Arnold and institutionalized thereafter at most British and American boarding schools.2 For me personally, Fr. Patterson became a less daunting, more approachable presence as I moved from form to form, but I understood why some saw him as aloof, even cold, in striking contrast of course to the voluble Fr. West. When, one late evening in May 1953, I was summoned to his cloistered office, the so-called “upper room” of the Chapel, and informed of my prospective sixth-form role, I was surprised and probably barely engaged him in conversation. Although he was always supportive, I don’t recall lengthy exchanges with him even during my final year.3 But he did make clear that he viewed our Class of 1954 to be his “charter class.” Before graduating, we made him an honorary member, an honor which, interestingly, was never recorded in any Kent alumni directory. 4 Some four years after our graduation, in December 1958, the School announced that Fr. West, then 43 years old, would leave Kent to become the new president and headmaster of his own alma mater, Kemper Military

3 Fr. Patterson had a whimsical side. Not long after a tea dance with a nearby girls’ school, I received a letter or two from some female admirer whom I had allegedly met, her name totally unknown to me. After I had been kept in suspense for two or three weeks, it emerged that the letter was a practical joke orchestrated by the head. 4 Fr. West was also made an honorary member of the alumni body, a member of the Class of 1951, and this was reflected in the 1998 directory. That decision may have been taken by the class at a reunion.

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It probably came as no surprise, then, that he would choose Rome as his location away from Kent… drawn as he must have been to a world-class capital whose classical art and architecture had underlain much of his study.

Academy, then in its 115th year, the oldest military school west of the Mississippi. His and Mrs. West’s son Michael would remain at Kent and graduate in 1962. And, almost four years after Fr. West’s departure, it was announced that Fr. Patterson himself would leave. A year earlier, the School’s Board of Trustees at its September 1961 meeting had recognized Fr. Patterson’s thirteen years of service and awarded him a four-month sabbatical away from the campus. Fr. Patterson informed the board that he would begin his sabbatical in January 1962. Our headmaster had studied architecture at MIT before entering seminary. It probably came as no surprise, then, that he would choose Rome as his location away from Kent… drawn as he must have been to a world-class capital whose classical art and architecture had underlain much of his study. Rome also represented something else, surely something substantially more important to Fr. Patterson in

5 Quoted in John W. O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2008), p. 17. 6 Vatican II did not fail to excite Protestant liturgists. Robert McAfee Brown, a renowned theologian and professor at Stanford University, who attended the conclave, wrote after its second session, when “Sacra Liturgia” had been published, that the document “will stand as a significant achievement… [and] the spirit of reform breathes through it.” Professor Brown listed 17 “things that delight and even astonish a Protestant observer,” including the stress on the participation of the laity and the new importance given Scripture in contrast to tradition. See his Observer in Rome, A Protestant Report on the Vatican Council (Garden City: Doubleday, 1964), pp. 201–02. 7 Tote Walker let me know on October 21, 1988 (not long after I joined the school), that Fr. Patterson’s secretary, Ms. Marjorie Richards, had informed him that Fr. Patterson was going to New Milford for three classes a week in Italian taught by a woman there. Tote also wished me to know—probably as someone who had spoken admiringly of Fr. Patterson—that Kent’s head had also solicited alumni, whom Tote did not name, for funds to support a school in Rome.

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1962. A new pope, John XXIII, had begun his pontificate in October 1958, but surprised the world on January 25, 1959, less than three months later, by announcing that he would convene a second Vatican Council on October 11, 1962, the first such council having taken place in Rome in 1869–70. In his announcement, the new pope extended an unusual “invitation to the faithful of the separated communities [i.e., Orthodox and Protestant believers] to participate with us in this quest for unity and grace, for which so many souls long in all parts of the world.” 5 Before the conclave’s opening, it was made public that the cardinals and other invitees gathering in Rome would look closely at the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church, including the thorny question of the use of vernacular languages in the Mass, which for hundreds of years had divided Protestants and Catholics.6 For Fr. Patterson, how not to conclude that the conclave, for him, would occur at the most opportune time, when the “Associated Parishes” movement, which aimed at the reform of the liturgy of the Episcopal Church, the movement that he and Fr. West had helped launch, was also gaining traction, not only in the United States but also abroad. Before beginning his sabbatical, Fr. Patterson began to study the Italian language in a nearby town, or so one of the School’s longest-serving faculty members, T. Dixon “Tote” Walker ’19, learned from Fr. Patterson’s secretary. Serving then as the alumni secretary, Tote, who told me this shortly before his death, was often in contact with the trustees.7 Fr. and Mrs. Patterson began their sabbatical in Rome in December 1961 and returned to the Kent campus in May 1962 as the school year was winding down. In the meantime, there was evidently a report, also cited by

Fr. Schell recalls, as though it were yesterday, that “tears of joy filled his eyes” as he toured the campus.

Tote, that Fr. Pat had approached several alumni seeking backing for a possible new school in Rome.8 At a meeting with the board chairman and several other members in Hartford in August 1962, Father Patterson acknowledged that he was thinking about leaving Kent at the end of the 1962–63 school year and establishing a school in Rome. The board, concerned about the impact such a decision would have on the impending school year, requested that he submit his resignation, and he agreed to do so. On September 14, 1962, the full board, meeting in Kent, accepted Fr. Patterson’s resignation as headmaster and offered the position to Associate Headmaster Sidney N. Towle. A day later, the board agreed to approve Fr. Patterson’s salary to the end of the school year, and to let the Patterson family depart from school housing at its convenience. Fr. Patterson’s resignation was made public in the local press on September 18, and reported in the Kent News September 28, 1962. We know how the story ends: Fr. Patterson then returned to Rome and founded St. Stephen’s School. Reflecting on my own class’s long association with Kent, I don’t think we can gainsay Fr. Patterson’s importance as the School moved from the Sill and Chalmers eras through the Towle era to the current administration of Fr. Richardson W. Schell; or indeed Fr. Patterson’s wisdom and courage in establishing a school “of Christian intent” in Rome, a school that recently celebrated its fiftieth anniversary and that prospers to this day. Fr. Schell, as his first order of business following his appointment as headmaster and rector, traveled to California to spend two days with Fr. Patterson. There he arranged for Fr. Pat to return, after many years, to Kent the following summer. Fr. Schell recalls, as though

it were yesterday, that “tears of joy filled his eyes” as he toured the campus. Looking back at Fr. Patterson’s leadership of Kent, I believe we have every reason to celebrate his memory and the memory of the two men who came with him in 1949— each, it should be added, with a supportive wife—as well as those whom he recruited, those “rigorous teachers [who] seized… [our] youth,” in Matthew Arnold’s phrase, and helped make us what we are today. Mr. Ober attended Princeton and Harvard Law after Kent and had a Foreign Service career. He served as Kent’s director of development and, for a period, its alumni secretary, from 1987 to 1998; then went to Beirut as president of International College, remaining three years.

8 We do not know what Fr. Patterson might have had in mind—as labyrinthine as minds are—if he in fact solicited an alumnus for financial assistance. He could not have been unaware, however, that Fr. Sill had largely funded the founding of South Kent School (SKS). Noble F. Richards, SKS ’49, a South Kent headmaster (1991–96) and trustee emeritus, told me that one of SKS’s two founders, Samuel S. Bartlett, Kent Class of 1918 and SKS headmaster (1924–55), often related how Fr. Sill had been approached one day by the grandmother of a boy who she was “wishing” could attend Kent School, and how Sill had replied that he, too, had a “wish,” a wish for the sum of $10,000 to help start a second school based on Kent’s principles. The boy was then enrolled at Kent, and with the woman’s ensuing $10,000 gift, Fr. Sill purchased the farm that became South Kent School in 1923. Fr. Sill, in a chapter of his memoir “Pater Recalls,” which appeared in the Kent News, November 12, 1947, confirms with slight variations the story, but also the information that he included $15,000 from another gift, which he admits he needed for a dining hall at Kent School, to bring the total transfer to SKS for the purchase of its campus to $25,000. In 1922 this would have been a significant gift, especially when one considers that Kent’s endowment only reached the $100,000 mark in 1943. In the wake of establishing the Girls’ School, could Fr. Patterson have conceived of a school in Rome associated with Kent School, as Kent had once been associated with SKS, an international school where Kent students or its faculty members might spend a term or two abroad? Given the elapse of time, we are probably faced with a Rashomon-like situation, each observer entitled to his or her own opinion.

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Acknowledgments Headmaster and Rector Richardson W. Schell kindly gave me access to the Kent archive, enabling me to prepare the three articles. I thank Denny Mantegani for shepherding each into print; Katy Armstrong and Kathy Nadire for research assistance; and my wife, Liz, for proofreading. Susan B. Strange ’64 not only conducted the interview with Fr. Newton on which I relied, but shared her observations as a student at the Girls’ School during its first years. Dick Whitaker (Hon.) ’44, whom Fr. Patterson hired in June 1962 as Kent’s director of development and who succeeded Tote Walker as alumni secretary, shared his impressions. Retiring from Kent in 1989, Dick lives in South Carolina, has a World War II record no less compelling than that of several Patterson-era masters. His unit, the 29th Marine Regiment, suffered the heaviest casualties of any unit in the South Pacific (82 percent KIA/WIA) at the battle of Sugar Loaf Hill on Okinawa; Dick was the featured narrator in a documentary about the battle, aired by the American Heroes Channel (AHC) in summer 2014. I thank Alexis Troubetzkoy ’53, who served two years at St. Stephen’s (1966–68) as assistant to Fr. Patterson (replacing Mr. Ronshaugen after he returned to the U.S.), and Ron Tooman ’53, who served as headmaster (1973–79) there, for adding to my understanding of Fr. Patterson’s work in Rome. Alexis told me that Kent’s former head had managed to draw “the highest caliber of teachers, virtually all from the United States” to the new school. Ron explained how Fr. Patterson had established a close relationship with the Vatican, based in part on an early letter of introduction he sent to Paul VI, which, three years on, the Pope warmly acknowledged in a personal exchange at an audience granted to the school, a relationship that ultimately yielded a $250,000 loan to

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Sidney N. Towle and Fr. John O. Patterson

the school from the Vatican Bank in the early 1970s. I should note that my wife and I visited Fr. Pat in 1967 and saw the school’s first campus, located in what once had been the Bulgarian embassy. Thanks to many other Kent graduates—whose names I dare not try to recall and enumerate—for sharing their own insights about the Patterson era. I am grateful to Fr. Roger B. White, rector of St. Andrew’s Church, Kent, Connecticut, and formerly a lecturer in history in the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, for helping me describe the liturgical reform movement with which Fr. Patterson and Fr. West were associated, and for reviewing my discussion of theological matters in Part III. When I found that the Kent archive contained only one speech and no sermons prepared by Fr. Patterson, I queried Tony Abbott ’53 about the sermons he attributed to the “headmaster” whom he portrayed in his novel The Three Great Secret Things (Charlotte, NC: Mint Hill Books, 2007), a novel containing barely concealed portraits of Fr. Patterson (under the name “Fr. Perkins”) as well as faculty members, students, and the school itself (“Wicker School”). I thank Tony for making the novel available, and although some of Fr. Patterson’s language is reflected in the novel, I decided not to expand upon his biography and the decisions I discuss associated with his tenure.

Pulling ahead at Henley Women’s Regatta

Kent School Boat Club at Henley GIRLS On Memorial Day Weekend KSBC traveled to Worcester for the NEIRA Regatta, and for the first time since 2005 the girls captured the Team Point Trophy. For the fourth year in a row each KSBC girl rower left Lake Quinsigamond with a medal around her neck. This year’s championship was the culmination of years of hard work and dedication. The season, however, for some of these girls was not yet complete. Two days after graduation fourteen girls boarded a plane bound for England to race in an eight and a four at the Henley Women’s Regatta. This would be the first time that the KSBC girls had traveled overseas since 2005. Upon arrival, training began at the Reading Rowing Club as the first two regattas would be on the Thames in Reading. The racing was highlighted by the KSBC first eight winning the Reading Amateur Regatta, where they defeated the University of Tulsa (a U.S. Division I university) in the finals. After the weekend of racing, the girls rowed the 10 miles from Reading to Henley, navigating through four inland locks on their way to race at the Henley Women’s Regatta.

The four had to participate in a time trial in order to qualify to race in the “knock-out rounds” at Henley. All the boats raced down the course individually, with the fastest 16 of 24 boats advancing to race the next day. The girls raced cleanly and hard and as a result were selected as one of the crews that advanced into the dual racing. In their first race against Weybridge Rowing Club, they took an early lead and held onto it for a hard-fought victory. In the quarterfinals against HMSG Rowing Club, Kent was losing by nearly a length for much of the race, but in the final stretch, they dug deep and sprinted through their competition for a ⅔-length victory and a berth in the semifinals. Unfortunately, they met their match while racing the Shiplake Vikings, losing by 2 ¼ lengths. Based on their success earlier in the season, the first eight was seeded into the quarterfinals, where they faced Mt. Saint Joseph’s (of Pennsylvania), powering to an easy 2½-length victory. On Sunday morning they lined up against Portora Boat Club, the Irish National Champions, took an early lead and crossed the finish 1¾ lengths up to advance to the finals. In the finals Kent faced off

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Girls EIGHT Cox – Ariel Lee ’15 Stroke – Shayla Lamb ’15 7 – Brittany Rigg ’15 6 – Cate Porter ’16 5 – Margaret Saunders ’16 4 – Stephanie Schor ’15 3 – Bernadette Winby ’15 2 – Grace Cordsen ’15 Bow – Cassidy Pratt ’15 FOUR Cox – Collette Glass ’17 Stroke – Tara Federow ’16 3 – Allie Duggan ’16 2 – Paige Whitney ’16 Bow – El Collins ’16

Winners of the team point trophy with 2 golds and 1 silver at the New England Championships

against Headington School Boat Club, the undefeated British National Champions who were also the reigning Women’s Henley junior eight champions. The start was fast for both boats, but by the middle of the race Headington had gained nearly ⅔ of a length. With about 500 meters to go, KSBC began to move back, pulling closer and closer with each stroke. In the end KSBC ran out of race course and fell by a verdict of ⅓ of a length. It was a great race and truly a memorable day of racing. With wins against Exeter, Andover and St. Paul’s, wins for the second and third eight at NEIRAs, a win at the Reading Regatta and a race in the final of the Junior Eights at the Henley Women’s Regatta, the spring 2015 season turned out to be a pretty special one for KSBC. Kent was also well represented at the World Junior Rowing Championships in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, later in the summer. Shayla Lamb ’15, who entered the University of Michigan this fall, was the stroke of the U.S. eight that won a bronze medal. Ashlyn Dawson ’16 represented the U.S. in the pair and won a bronze medal, while Evie Anguelov ’16 represented Canada in the pair and came in fifth. Garrison Smith Head Coach, Girls Crew

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BOYS After a very successful 2015 racing season, in which both the first and second boats won the New England Championship as well as the overall team point trophy, the crews regrouped after graduation to train for the prestigious Henley Royal Regatta and two other regattas in late June. An eight and a coxed four trained at Kent for a week and headed overseas on June 16. Our first regatta was only days away at Dorney Lake, the Olympic rowing venue in 2012. In that regatta both boats qualified for the A finals—the only USA crews to qualify, and one of only two high school crews to qualify in the eights race. In the finals, the four finished fourth with overlap on the lead boats, while the eight established an early lead and held off all charges from their competition until the last few strokes of the 2,000-meter race, when Oxford Brookes, a university crew, edged their nose in front of Kent for the win. However, it was a courageous effort from our guys and a terrific race to watch! The coxed four event at Henley, the Prince Albert Challenge Cup, is open to scholastic teams as well as collegiate programs. The eight had a similar challenge: because a few members of the crew had turned 19 in the spring, Kent was ineligible to race in the schoolboy event, The Princess Elizabeth Challenge Cup, and

A big win over Newcastle University at Henley Royal Regatta

thus had to row in the Temple Challenge Cup, which consists mostly of collegiate crews. With 50 crews entered in the Prince Albert Cup, and 12 “pre-qualified” for the 24 allotted spots, the KSBC four had to race in a qualifying race five days before the beginning of Henley. After a courageous race down the course, the four just missed qualifying, finishing in 14th place. Although it was a major disappointment for the rowers, they were apparently the “talk of the town” that night after beating 24 university crews! The eight had qualified for their event based on their spring racing results and the terrific race at Dorney Lake the week before. For their first race we drew Newcastle

University, a program that had performed well during the British University spring racing season. Kent and Newcastle were even after the start, and then Kent gained an advantage with a strong move at 500 meters into the race. Kent continued to push out and held off the frequent “moves” by Newcastle down the course to win by one length. In the next round, Kent faced the University of London, one of the top British University crews last spring. Although Kent got off the line quickly and held University of London even for up to 1,000 meters, we could not match their moves during the second half of the course and lost by a couple of lengths. 2015 will be remembered as a stellar year for the boys program. Bringing home the Sill Trophy for the first boat race at the NEIRA Regatta, the Walker Cup for winning the second boat event and the Perry Bowl for the overall team point trophy is a very tall task. Additionally, our seniors from the top two boats are going to some of the best programs in the country—Yale, Brown, Columbia, University of Wisconsin and the United States Naval Academy! Eric Houston ’80 Head Coach, Boys Crew

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Boys EIGHT Cox – Brett Cataldo ’16 Stroke – Sam Haack ’15 7 – Bojan Dosljak ’15 6 – Andy Provost ’15 5 – Rob Alfieri ’15 4 – Will Phillips ’16 3 – Wes Gordon ’16 2 – Jenson Carlgren ’15 Bow – Adams Davenport ’15 FOUR Cox – Alison Robey ’16 Stroke – Stewart Sykes ’17 3 – Morgan Collins ’17 2 – Daven Rajesh ’16 Bow – Theo Freidenrich ’16

Winners of the team point trophy with two golds at the New England Championships

Alumni at Henley Many alumni raced at Henley this year, for universities, clubs and even a national team. In the Elite Eight event at Henley Women’s Regatta, Emily Reynolds ’07, rowing for Oxford University, raced Whitney Naylor ’11 and her Brown teammates in the final, with Oxford winning by 1½ lengths. At Henley Royal Regatta, both Oxford and Emily Reynolds ’07 (in white shirt) rowing with Oxford Brown advanced to Saturday’s semi British National Team by 2¾ lengths. On the finals in the Remenham Challenge Cup. Earlier men’s side, Steve Gladstone ’60, in his fifth in the season, Emily and her Oxford teammates year as head coach of the Yale Heavyweight made history when they raced in the storied Men’s program, led his team to a win over the Oxford-Cambridge race on the same fourUniversity of Washington (with Alex Perkins ’11 mile Thames River course as the men, beating at stroke) in the Ladies’ Challenge Plate event. Cambridge by 19 seconds. (Until this year, the women’s race had been held on a straight 2,000- In May, Gladstone was named Ivy League Coach of the Year for Men’s Heavyweight Rowing— meter course at Henley.) Christine Roper ’07 one of many accolades he’s received during and her Canadian national teammates—rowing his career—after Yale’s varsity eight won the as Western Rowing Club—won the Remenham Eastern Sprints for the first time since 1982. Challenge Cup event at Henley, beating the

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Christine Roper ’07 holds the Remenham Challenge Cup.

Steve Gladstone ’60, P’18 (left) with the Ladies’ Challenge Plate trophy

Kent at Scripps Institution of Oceanography BY JESSE KLINGEBIEL IF YOU HAD A CHOICE, would you choose sunshine over rain? What about play over work? Snorkeling with fish over staring at your computer? The ten Kent School scholars who traveled with three Science Department faculty members to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, all agreed on choosing the former over the latter. But as is nearly always the case, we did get rain, we did a lot of work and we also worked on 42-inch LCD monitors—with digital images of remote coral reefs. The trip built on three of the Headmaster’s visions for the School: partnering with leading institutions (Scripps is arguably the top marine research facility on the west coast); creating marine science opportunities for students; and fostering opportunities for students to gain hands-on science and engineering experiences. The students participating, a diverse group hailing from

The Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Australia, Colorado, California, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York and Washington, landed in San Diego ready to learn and explore the marine environment. The six girls and four boys partnered with Kent biology teachers Cortney Tetrault Duncan, Jesse Klingebiel and Connor Wells, sharing two modest homes in the beautiful town of La Jolla—a few short blocks from the ocean. One house had a lovely patio and became the locale for each of our evening meals. The second (with an avocado tree and passion fruit vine in the backyard) was four blocks closer to the water and became the beach house. Snorkeling with a myriad of fish, including the stunning orange garibaldi and the peaceful leopard shark, was a daily activity when our work was done. The vision for the Kent-Scripps partnership was for students to join the research teams’ active summertime

Microscope work in the Sandin Lab

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The Kent group enjoying some time at the beach

A tagged leopard shark ready for return to the water

work. Dr. Andy Nosal was particularly effective, as our students joined him as he went out in a skiff to catch and tag leopard sharks. Students were then responsible for attaching the tags, keeping the sharks moist and calm, then releasing them safely back into the water. Each day the research teams exceeded Dr. Nosal’s tagging goal for the afternoon. These docile coastal sharks show fascinating behavior patterns (for example, the population we were examining traveled in an all-female group). While half of our crew was probing the waters of La Jolla for sharks, the others were working with Dr. Stuart Sandin’s lab, exploring fish biology and coral reef ecology. The Sandin lab is a bustling center of post-docs, doctoral candidates, undergraduates and other research staff. Taking the California beach mission seriously, there are surfboards lashed against the walls between the beakers, Erlenmeyer flasks and microscopes. We all loved the energy of the team as we dissected fish, which helped us understand how so many types of fish can change gender over the course of their lives. We extracted the otolith (ear bone) from the fish to determine their age (the otolith has growth rings, similar to the rings in a tree), and graphically explored some of the data connecting fish age and coral reef health. Those coral reefs were the focal point of the second part of our work as we examined individual coral grown in the laboratory, then used the digital images taken by the team with scuba gear to identify coral populations on remote islands of the South Pacific. In addition to these primary focal points, working with such talented individuals we also learned a tremen-

dous number of important lessons. One of the researchers in the Sandin Lab, a former fishmonger and mathematician, Dr. Yoan Eynuad, stressed how his skill set in data analysis and coding created employment opportunities to explore his interests in the natural world. Kate Furbey shared her passion for challenging convention with her research on “zombie corals” and a TEDx talk about being a scientist, called “The Real Scientists of San Diego: Kathryn Furby at TEDxUCSD.” It was also fascinating to see how each research team tied together detailed and ground-breaking research with fun (surfing is a near mandatory lunch-break activity). We took a mid-week variation to our research to tour the USS Midway, where we were hosted by Jon Ryan, a retired Xerox executive who served on the Midway during his service in the Navy. The tour into the underbelly of the ship allowed us to understand the tremendous engineering and logistical solutions involved in maintaining this floating airport as it traveled the oceans of the world. Wednesday evening we had the pleasure of accepting an invitation to the beautiful home of James Merritt ’69 and his wife, Carol Lazier. We are grateful to our hosts at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UCSD, and also to Adam Gordon P’16, who introduced Kent to Scripps and helped facilitate the trip. It was an overwhelming success on all fronts, and we hope the Kent-Scripps collaborative marine science program becomes a long-standing partnership.

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Jesse Klingebiel is chair of the Science Department and holder of the Hadley Case ’29 Teaching Chair in Physical Science.

Between the Hills and River Shore

Campus Speakers TOM SANDERSON ON THE GLOBAL LANDSCAPE

Thomas M. Sanderson, director and senior fellow of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., returned to campus in May for a full day of presentations about the major forces influencing, changing and disrupting the world today. Sanderson visited campus earlier in the school year when he delivered the Cyrus R. Vance ’35 Lecture. In four 90-minute sessions, Sanderson spoke about China, Russia, the Middle East and Global Threats and Trends, sharing his insights and perspectives gained from extensive research and fieldwork (he has traveled to 31 countries in the last three years). The international make-up of the audience—with students from many different countries attending each session—added to the program, as Sanderson encouraged participants to ask questions and share their points of view. His advice to students: read, talk with others and travel—there’s no substitute for “being on the ground.” This year Sanderson will be a Visiting Fellow in International Relations at Kent.

Below are excerpts from his presentations.

China

China’s diplomatic efforts are largely designed to build trade, security and diplomatic relationships to help them compete globally. China wants to project the image that it is confident, competent, assertive (but not aggressive), constructive with

Tom Sanderson meets with students and faculty after one of his four presentations.

its partnerships, and that it will not be manipulated or controlled as in the past. China sees its rise and primacy in Asia as inevitable and just—returning the system to equilibrium. China and other key developing nations—the core group is referred to as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa)—are deeply frustrated with the U.S.-led global economic system set up at the end of World War II through the Bretton Woods Agreement… At the time of the Bretton Woods signing in 1944, the BRICS represented an extremely small amount of global GDP. Today, they constitute more than 25% of world GDP, but only have 10% of the votes at the International Monetary Fund. The USA alone has 19% of the global economy and 17% of the IMF voting rights—so nearly an equal balance for itself. China produces 16% of global output, but has a 3.8% share of votes at the World Bank. China is chafing at having to play by rules that it had no hand in developing.

Russia

For Russia’s economy to move forward and not backward, it has to attract capitalintensive investment—investment that goes into infrastructure, into technology. To do that, Russia must maintain two conditions: 1) they need to improve the business climate, so that foreign companies like Exxon and Ford Motor Company feel protected from corrupt bureaucrats and predatory law enforcement and from intelligence agencies that are inside these companies stealing information; 2) they also have to maintain a stable economic and political environment. You may think that when you have an authoritarian leader in control that you have a stable political environment, but as we saw with the Arab Spring—authoritarian governments in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Syria—all five of those countries have had civil wars, and four of them have had their leaders overthrown (twice in Egypt).

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Global Threats and Trends

POPULATION: Global population reached the 7 billion mark in October of 2011. At the same time, more people from rural areas have moved to the urban areas in search of jobs and services… The U.N. Population Division presents the following projections: 8 billion by 2025; 9 billion by 2043; 10 billion by 2083. Are we preparing for a world with total antibiotic resistance?… And what about food supply? Feeding 7 billion-plus is getting more difficult in some places, easier in others. CYBER WARFARE AND ESPIONAGE: The domains of warfare

proceeded in this order: land, sea, air, and space. And now cyber joins them as the fifth domain of warfare and espionage. The IT revolution is transforming and disrupting defense and security just as it has media, finance, retail, marketing, etc. It is uncommon for a technology to have such a sudden, massive impact on society and warfare. We can count them on two hands: iron weapons, ships, the chariot, gunpowder and guns, aircraft, radar, nuclear weapons. And like these other transformative technologies, they are neutral and can be used by others. But Western economies, in particular, are dependent on IT to such a high degree that we are more vulnerable to coercion or collapse as a result. The threat trajectory for cyber capabilities is vertical right now—it is white hot. Do we have the technology, resources, human resources, and political will to keep society moving in a positive direction? I think the problems are outpacing us; we’ll try to play catch-up when the next big crisis hits… and have to make very painful choices.

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Solar panels on the roof of the Springs Center

Solar Energy Comes to Kent Kent has been assessing renewable energy projects in an effort to build upon its sustainability program while also recognizing educational and economic benefits. In partnership with the Tristate Solar Alliance and EnterSolar, we have designed a solar energy project that will produce approximately 382 kilowatts of electricity annually. In September Kent began the installation of three roof-top solar arrays: a 232 kilowatt array on the roof of the Nadal Hockey Rink/Springs Center, a 95 kilowatt array on the Magowan Field House, and a 55 kilowatt array on the Tennis House. This combined system will produce close to 50 percent of the electricity consumed by these buildings. The sustainability benefit highlights Kent’s commitment to producing and consuming renewable energy. The environmental benefits of this project are equal to avoiding 612,000 miles of automobile travel or the consumption of 312,000 pounds of coal. The installation of solar panels will also create an educational experience for our students, as this system

will serve as a platform to study the solar photovoltaic effect whereby light energy is converted into electrical energy. The system will provide real-time, web-based monitoring of all key performance data, allowing for the study of solar energy production. The School also expects to realize a significant reduction in electricity cost, as all electricity produced by the system will either be consumed by Kent School or sold to the electric grid. Should you have any questions concerning this project, please contact Jeffrey D. Cataldo, Business Manager, cataldoj@kent-school.edu or 860-927-6046.

Campus Visitors

Drew Davis with sixth formers in the Headmaster’s Study

Professor Timothy Snyder answers questions after his lecture.

Wolmer’s Schools Trustee Douglas Orane with Headmaster Dick Schell

ENTREPRENEUR DREW DAVIS ’05

PROFESSOR TIMOTHY SNYDER

WOLMER’S SCHOOLS VISIT KENT

TALKS WITH STUDENTS

SPEAKS ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST

Drew Davis ’05 visited campus and got students fired up about life after Kent and calmed their concerns about college. Over the course of his stay, Drew gave a Chapel Talk, attended Formal Dinner, spoke with students in the entrepreneurship program, participated in the alumni row, rode in the launch during a practice of the Henleybound crew, and enjoyed KSBC’s Pass the Torch Dinner. It was a whirlwind trip. As Drew said, “It was a total pleasure to be back!” Drew’s experiences—at Kent, Harvard, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and with his startup, The Eastman Egg Co. (eastmanegg.com)— gave him plenty to talk about and plenty that students were eager to hear about. Drew’s innovative company serves breakfast and coffee—made to order in less than five minutes with fresh, locally sourced ingredients—at a store and a food truck in Chicago.

Professor Timothy Snyder—perhaps the world’s leading authority on Eastern Europe—addressed the School in Mattison Auditorium in May on the topic of “The Holocaust as Contemporary History.” Professor Snyder, of Yale (and previously Oxford), spoke on the topic of the Holocaust not as a memorial, but as an historical event. The students and faculty were engaged by the immediacy with which he presented history. His goal was to help Kent School to understand the causes of the Holocaust and the environment in which a mass murder like this occurs, and to bring a new perspective to one of the critical events of the twentieth century. Judging by the many who remained afterward to ask a variety of questions, Professor Snyder’s visit made a strong impression on students. Some said they will remember it for the rest of their lives, while others, who thought they were fairly knowledgeable on the subject, found new ways to look at the material and gained an appreciation that understanding events like these is critical to the future. For further reading, see Professor Snyder’s acclaimed book Bloodlands, or his recently released Black Earth. Our sincere thanks to Stuart Niemtzow ’68 for introducing Professor Snyder to Kent.

Kent School welcomed trustees, principals and Alumni Chapter presidents from Wolmer’s Schools, Kingston, Jamaica, in June. Wolmer’s Schools, the oldest school in the Caribbean, is a three-school consortium that includes Wolmer’s Boys School and Wolmer’s Girls School for 12to 18-year-olds, enrolling 1,500 students each, and Wolmer’s Preparatory School, for students ages 3–11. Kent was first introduced to Wolmer’s in 2003 by Kent Trustee Tom Craig ’72, a business school classmate of Douglas Orane, a trustee of Wolmer’s who accompanied the group to Kent. Fr. Schell welcomed the group to campus and spoke about Kent’s history and plans for the future. Throughout their daylong visit, the representatives from Wolmer’s met with many on campus, sharing ideas about education and school administration, professional development, college guidance and fundraising. Wolmer’s recently completed the construction of a 12,000-square foot auditorium, which was funded completely by donations—the largest fundraising project the school has undertaken in recent history.

Drew Davis ’05 visits the entrepreneurship program

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Sixth Form Recognition Ceremony Scott P’15, one of the Co-Chairs of the Senior Parent Gift, who also gave special thanks to his fellow Co-Chairs and to members of the Senior Parent Gift Committee, who worked hard throughout the year to encourage everyone’s support. CO-CHAIRS OF THE CLASS OF 2015 Richard Scott P’15, Co-Chair of the Senior Parent Gift

Class of 2015 Senior Parent Gift

Over the last four years, parents, grand parents and students of the Class of 2015 contributed over $1,300,000 to Kent School, including the Class of 2015 Senior Parent Gift. It’s a tradition that parents and grandparents of the Senior Class work together throughout the year to raise funds for a special project as a lasting tribute to their children and to their Kent School experience, beyond their generous annual support of The Kent Fund. This year, parents and grandparents of the Class of 2015 donated $303,000 to The Class of 2015 Teaching Chair. The tremendous generosity of Class of 2015 families was announced by Richard

Class of 2015 Giving Back

The Class of 2015 achieved 100 percent participation in the Kent Fund, the first time ever for a Sixth Form class! Seventeen members of the Senior Class answered the call to think about and plan for various fundraising efforts so that on Senior Recognition Day, this great Class could present Kent with their own gift to the School. The committee members and the class worked on five fundraisers throughout the year. The Committee presented Father Schell a check in the amount of $6,649.47 as their Class Gift. The gift is FALL 2015

SENIOR PARENT GIFT: Stephen and Salla Alfieri, Jim and Mary Lawrence, Richard and Laura Scott SENIOR PARENT GIFT COMMITTEE:

Ellen Brand, Richard Cordsen, Rob Davis and Alice Yurke, Kathy Goullet, Talley Hargrave, Jenny Johnson, Raj Maheshwari, Fred O’Neill, Lucia Pesce, Theresa Quartararo, Chip Steppacher EXCERPT OF RICHARD SCOTT’S ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE CLASS OF 2015 SENIOR PARENT GIFT:

“This year’s Senior Parent Gift is the 16th year of this giving tradition at Kent. These annual Senior Parent gifts have been a vital part of enhancing two of the more important elements of boarding school life: the quality of living… and the quality of learning by both building new facilities and improving

designated to help with the renovation of the Student Center, which was completed in the summer. Committee members did a terrific job organizing this yearlong effort: Audrey Ablan, Che Baez, Sabrina Benedicto, Abigail Bouldin, Matt Flynn, Sam Haack, Julia Kiendl, Ariel Lee, Cassidy Pratt, Ryder Sammons, Victoria Scott, Kerry Sheehan-Delany, Lindsey Wallace, Angela Wang, Judy Wang, Bernadette Winby and Angela Wong.

those that have been part of the Kent experience for decades, and paying homage to our most precious resource, the Kent School faculty. For it is the faculty who can turn a good school into a great school, and transform learning from a daily chore into a lifetime of love of, and thirst for, knowledge. At some level the faculty is the school. The students attend for a few short years and move on to face new challenges in new places. The faculty provides the continuity of culture, expectations and standards, which make the Kent School environment remain familiar even to those who graduated a generation earlier. Like a river, the faculty changes over time, yet remains constant and familiar to those along its banks. The faculty at Kent consists of creative, well-educated and energetic individuals who have chosen to dedicate themselves to the education of your children. They do this not for material rewards, for they could easily earn more in the private sector, but for the love of teaching your children. They deserve our gratitude, and our respect. The Class of 2015 Parent Gift is but one tangible symbol of the contributions the faculty have made to your children’s future.”

The Senior Class Gift Committee with Director of Development Marc Cloutier announce their gift to the School on Senior Recognition Day.

Student Artwork Students in the Advanced Placement Studio Art class work throughout the year developing their portfolios—a minimum of 29 works—which they send to the College Board for evaluation in the spring. Their artwork is evaluated for quality, in-depth knowledge of a specific visual idea and breadth of understanding of the principles of design. Included here are works by just a few of our talented artists.

Joni Leung ’15

Jason Sohn ’15

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Catherine Baisley ’15

Mikaela Liotta ’15

Esteban Lara ’15

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Student Summer Programs While exploring the city, the students also had a chance to meet Parisians, taking turns filming their own movies and interviewing locals about their favorite movies. Streetcleaners, firefighters, a couple dancing at a street fair, and even a young cinematographer filming a television show on the Pont de BirHakeim (the bridge from the movie Inception) spoke about movies that were close to their hearts. And finally, they had the opportunity to enjoy afternoon tea and a discussion on news and media today (plus a bit about Kent then and now) with Serge Schmemann ’63 of the International Herald Tribune and his wife, Mary.

SUMMER SERVICE TRIP: GUATEMALA

Shortly after Prize Day eleven students traveled with faculty members Sierra Thomsen and Ryan Badecker to Guatemala for a one-week program run by Globe Aware, a nonprofit volunteer organization. The group was based in the village of El Remate, a small lakeside community located midway between the International Airport in Flores and the ancient Mayan ruins of Tikal. There they worked closely with Ix-canaan, which translates as “Angels of the Rainforest,” an organization whose focus is promoting health, education and opportunity for the local residents. During the week the students poured cement floors at four houses in the village and worked on the grounds and in the gardens at the Ix-canaan Women’s Center. Several afternoons were spent in the Ix-canaan Library teaching English and playing games with the local children. Formal education for many children in the region ends after ninth grade, and often earlier for girls. An important part of the Globe Aware program is that it allows and encourages volunteers to immerse themselves in the local culture and to work closely with the people. KENT EXPEDITIONS: CINEMATIC PARIS

In early June eight Kent students, along with Katie Rose Hillegass of the Modern Languages Department and Julie Saxton of Kent’s Entrepreneurship Program, journeyed to Paris as part of the Kent Expeditions program. The students had spent the spring term learning about French culture through the lens of world cinema, viewing and discussing movies about French history, food, romance and crime, as well as studying the New Wave

SEEK3: SCIENCE, ENGINEERING, INNOVATION

Working on the grounds at the Ix-canaan Women’s Center, Guatemala

movement, a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s. From their quaint hotel in the Quartier Latin, the students explored all they had discovered in films, from the depths of the old sewers as seen in Ratatouille to the cafés of Montmartre from Amélie. The students sauntered down the Champs Élysées like Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face and shopped for that one-of-a-kind purchase at the flea markets seen in Midnight in Paris. Although the Louvre was a nine-minute race for the characters in Jean-Luc Godard’s Bande à Part, Kent students took their time enjoying all it had to offer. And their trip to Versailles, complete with bicycles and a picnic lunch in The King’s Gardens, was a memorable day in the countryside.

SEEK3—Summer Educational Experience at Kent—a weeklong program held in June at the Pre-Engineering and Applied Sciences Building, began with a historical perspective on engineering and technology, followed by more in-depth examinations of biomedical and biotechnology applications. Led by Dr. Sujata Bhatia, the assistant director for undergraduate studies in biomedical engineering at Harvard University, students explored biotechnology within a business framework, working throughout the week to develop a product to address a specific medical need. The program included three lab sessions on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) led by science teacher Jeremy Sokolnicki (topics covered during the school year in his genetics and biotechnology courses), a session on circuits and programming using microprocessors, and a number of field trips, such as a visit to a hospital emergency room to learn about practical applications of biomedical

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technology. The week concluded with students presenting the “products” they had developed. Joelle Troiano ’16 and her two partners presented an innovative device: a biodegradable stem cell spray gun designed to treat soldiers’ wounds on the battlefield. The technology for spraying stem cells to stimulate healing of severe burns has been used for a number of years in clinical trials, but what made their product unique was that they proposed using a recently discovered type of stem cell found in the subcutaneous fat, a layer of tissue just beneath the skin. Extracting these cells would be fairly painless and far less expensive. Joelle commented, “The week I spent at SEEK3 went far above expectations. I was looking forward to learning new things about biotechnology, a topic that really grabbed my attention after taking Mr. Sokolnicki’s biotechnology class this winter. But what surprised me was the far reach of the SEEK3 program. We learned about early mining techniques at a museum of antique machinery, we estimated the power produced at the Bull’s Bridge hydroelectric plant using an apple, a timer, a measuring tape, and a whole lot of logical thinking, and we visited the Harney & Sons [tea blenders] manufacturing facility and saw the amazing efficiency of the combined technology of at least four different countries’ mechanical systems.”

TOP Reading with the children in El Remate, Guatemala MIDDLE The Paris Expedition group bicycling at Versailles BOTTOM SEEK3 participants working with circuits and microprocessors

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Kent Faculty: Summer 2015 August in Vietnam and Cambodia BY KAREN MORENO

Karen Moreno has taught English and English as a Second Language at Kent since 1997. She received partial funding for her trip from the Wagenknecht-Buttitta Faculty Summer Travel Scholarship. HO CHI MINH CITY BUZZES with life—young couples and children are everywhere, and so are motorbikes. “Precarious” is the word that springs to my mind when I see them, yet somehow the drivers navigate through traffic and congested traffic circles, transporting their entire family or taking goods to market. Car drivers honk to warn the motorbike drivers to stay out of the way, but, remarkably, everyone seems calm. During rush hour, the motorbike drivers use the sidewalks as well as the streets, dodging pedestrians. When crossing the street, the pedestrians move en masse across the busy lanes of traffic. As the population is rapidly expanding, a subway is being built to ease the road congestion and pollution of the sprawling city. Ho Chi Minh City, still called Saigon by residents there, preserves its yellow and white French colonial buildings, now housing government offices and museums, while new skyscrapers are changing the skyline. Many foreigners, including Americans, live and work in the city, and there are many tourists, too. In August, my husband and I traveled to Vietnam, where our son, Juan Sebastian Moreno ’02, lives and works as an English as a Foreign Language teacher. We experienced the fast pace of Ho Chi Minh City, attended our son’s wedding in rural Binh Phuoc Province, and traveled to Cambodia

Commuters on motorbikes crowd the streets of Ho Chi Minh City, covering their noses and mouths to protect themselves from the pollution.

to see the ancient temples. We also got together with Kent alumnus Vannarin Sar ’12, from Siem Reap, who had interned in Phnom Penh with Cambodian Living Arts, an organization dedicated to promoting Khmer culture and the arts. Now a senior at Trinity College, Vannarin was my student and my advisee at Kent. While the streets of Ho Chi Minh City are crowded, relative quiet pervades the residential alleys through which only pedestrians and occasional motorbikes pass. Walking through the alleys near our hotel in the Little Japan section of the city, we could glimpse in the open doors to see families watching TV or sitting on rattan mats on the floor for a meal. Above the alleyway, Japanese-style lanterns, strings of small white lights and bright yellow and red flower ornaments crisscrossed the small patch of visible sky. Down one quiet alley, we happened upon a long wall of street art, while cats sat outside doorsteps, waiting for a meal.

In another alley, a large portrait of the venerated “Uncle Ho,” former President Ho Chi Minh, appeared fronted with burning incense and fruit offerings in bowls. Portraits of Uncle Ho seem to appear everywhere—on billboards and buildings (Vietnam just celebrated 40 years of reunification in April) as well as in homes, restaurants and shops. One also finds small shrines at the entrance to buildings, businesses and homes. Representations of gods in the shrine are given offerings of tea, cigarettes, fruit and incense. A shrine for ancestors takes a prominent place in homes. We traveled to the small town of Bu Dang, Bin Phuoc Province, about three hours north of Ho Chi Minh City, where our son and Luong Thi Thu would be married at her parents’ house. Unlike the residents of Ho Chi Minh City, the people here in this rural area had probably not had contact with foreigners before. The wedding ceremony in the house began

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A young girl sits in a houseboat in the floating village on TonlĂŠ Sap River in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Karen Moreno with her former student Vannarin Sar â&#x20AC;&#x2122;12

Bayon Temple in Angkor Thom, Siem Reap, Cambodia, built in the late 12th century

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at 10 a.m. The bride and groom were dressed in traditional Vietnamese ao dai, silk pants and a long silk tunic, the bride’s tunic red and gold and the groom’s tunic blue and silver. As part of the ceremony, the bride’s mother, father, brother and I put gold earrings, rings and a necklace on the bride. The father of the bride put a gold ring on the groom’s hand. The town elder was present for the ceremony, as were the aunts and uncles of the bride. Approximately 400 people arrived for the luncheon that followed on the front lawn, where forty tables had been set up under tents of red, yellow, pink and green fabrics. Each table was spread with grilled prawns, squid and vegetables. As guests arrived, they placed envelopes with gifts of money in a large, red heart-shaped box. The following day we walked through the countryside of coffee, cashew and rubber tree farms. Along a dirt path, we stopped at a relative’s farm house, took our shoes off at the door, and sat on rattan mats for a lunch of rice, spring rolls, pork, chicken and fresh vegetables. We then retired to the porch, enjoyed fresh fruit, talked and watched the dogs and chickens in the yard before continuing our walk through the farm. Next, we traveled by bus to Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, Cambodia. Entering the country, I noticed a distinct change in the houses—many were on stilts as the heavy rains would flood the rice fields and yards. Every house seemed to have many chickens, several dogs and a water buffalo. In Phnom Penh, we took a tuk-tuk, a motorcycle taxi, to a market, where women sold jewelry, handbags and clothing. A few women worked at sewing machines, while others chatted with one another or stared at their cell phones.

Bold street art brightens up a quiet residential neighborhood in District 1, Ho Chi Minh City.

We had a sobering visit to the Tuol Sleng Museum, a former high school that became a prison during the Pol Pot regime in the mid-1970s when the Khmer Rouge arrested, tortured and brutally murdered many of its citizens accused of being traitors. Rows upon rows of black and white photographs of the victims are now displayed in the former classrooms. In the countryside just outside Siem Reap, we visited a memorial for victims of the Killing Fields, where victims’ bones are encased in a glass box and large signs tell of the horrors that took place under the Khmer Rouge. We toured the ancient Angkor Temples, many from the 12th century, with beautiful relief carvings of Hindu and Buddhist deities. Outside the temples, musicians who had lost their limbs or vision from landmine explosions played Cambodian music and sold CDs to support their fami-

lies. By boat, we rode through the floating village of Tonlé Sap River, where people live in houseboats and fish for a living. The village on the water includes schools and churches. When talking about Kent School, I always mention that Kent students come from around the world. I have enjoyed learning about students’ backgrounds and cultures. To travel to countries where some of my students are from has enabled me to understand them even more. The last week in Saigon, we went to a bookstore where parents were getting school supplies for their children, who were noticeably excited about going to school. We also walked past a school on a Saturday afternoon. The parents patiently waited on their motorbikes to bring their children home.

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A few of the summer programs Kent Faculty attended this year The temple of Apollo at Delphi

GEOFFREY STEWART— ENGLISH TEACHER AND DIRECTOR OF THEATRE

Broadway Teachers Workshop, New York, New York For the last four years Geoff Stewart has attended the Broadway Teachers Workshop, a conference where elementary, middle and high school theater teachers and directors gather to learn from some of the best in the business, those working in New York. Attendees also have the opportunity to see some of the shows participants have been working on. “This year, the best seminar was one on the music of Cole Porter led by Broadway musical director David Loud; perhaps we’ll do a Cole Porter musical this spring!” JOE MCDONOUGH—

HALEY PRICKETT—

CLASSICS TEACHER

THEOLOGY TEACHER

RYAN BADECKER—MATH TEACHER

“Living Greek in Greece,” Paideia Institute, Greece

Master of Arts in Liberal Arts program at St. John’s College, Annapolis, Maryland

Master of Science for Teachers in mathematics program, University of New Hampshire

Joe McDonough spent two weeks in the coastal village of Selianitika, Greece, with the Paideia Institute. Morning and evening classes were conducted in Ancient Greek, reading and discussing Plato and Herodotus. Over the weekend, participants visited the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi and the monasteries of Meteora, stopping overnight in the lake town of Ioannina. “It was great to converse and share ideas with fellow teachers and current undergraduates, whether under the grapevines of the Idyllion, watching the stars from the beach, climbing the slopes of Parnassus, or wading in the freezing waters of the river Acheron. Expect more spoken Greek on the fourth floor of Schoolhouse this year.”

Haley Prickett was a recipient the Hodson Trust Teacher Fellowship, which provides funding for the MALA program at St. John’s, where students read and discuss the seminal works of Western civilization. “I read 2,448 pages in eight weeks and was able to sincerely explore, fearlessly question, and truly discuss the ‘Great Books’ from the fields of philosophy and theology. I hope to create an environment like this in the classroom by reminding students that for real learning to occur, the things you don’t know are often more important than the things you do.”

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In her third summer in the UNH program, Ryan Badecker took classes in topology, graph theory and math education. “Everyone in the program is a math teacher or about to be a math teacher, so while we’re working together on math problems, we’re also sharing teaching strategies, as well as reveling in being students again. One of the most beneficial parts about going back to school is remembering what it’s like to be a student and noting what teaching styles encourage learning or produce undue stress. The math education course was particularly relevant to my classes as we looked at methods of breaking down mathematical proof so that it is more approachable for students.”

Kent Authors

Late Sophocles: The Hero’s Evolution in Electra, Philoctetes, and Oedipus at Colonus BY THOMAS VAN NORTWICK ’65 UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS, 2015

The Greek playwright Sophocles wrote his last three plays toward the end of a long life, but his work showed no signs of failing powers, as Tom Van Nortwick makes clear in Late Sophocles. In fact, in Electra, Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus, Sophocles reimagined the role of the tragic hero and explored new territory as he reworked characters and themes from earlier plays. Described as “a clear and elegantly written study,” Late Sophocles is intended not only for scholars, but for general readers of serious literature as well. Passages from the plays are translated into English and Van Nortwick provides guidance for those unfamiliar with the works. Van Nortwick recently retired as the Nathan A. Greenberg Professor of Classics at Oberlin College, where he taught from 1974 to 2015.

Natural Born Heroes: How a Daring Band of Misfits Mastered the Lost Secrets of Strength and Endurance BY CHRISTOPHER MCDOUGALL ’81 KNOPF, 2015

Following up on his 2009 bestseller, Born to Run, Christopher McDougall traveled to Crete to learn about the “band of misfits” who held off the Nazis in 1944. “They weren’t naturally strong, or professionally trained, or known for their courage… But on a starvation diet, they thrived.” These unusual commandos—Greek

shepherds and young British amateurs—were able to tap into “a certain body of primal knowledge,” and “perform with remarkable amounts of stamina, strength, nerve, and cunning.” Just as in Born to Run, where McDougall taught himself the barefoot running of the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico, in Natural Born Heroes he follows the example of the Resistance fighters and champions the power of free-running, a Paleo diet and the fascia, the “powerful connective tissue that is like your body’s rubber band.” McDougall shows us that heroes are ordinary people who have mastered extraordinary skills.

The Plant Recipe Book: 100 Living Arrangements for Any Home in Any Season BY BAYLOR CHAPMAN ’85 ARTISAN, 2014

Using a cookbook format, Baylor Chapman shows readers how to create beautiful live indoor arrangements, presenting a list of ingredients, stepby-step instructions and 400 instructional photographs. The 100 “recipes” use a wide array of plants and containers, from the traditional to the less conventional, such as gelatin molds, wooden salad bowls and old shutters. Chapman also encourages readers to be creative—to swap out one plant for another, depending on the role it plays in the arrangement: is it a focal point or a background plant? “It’s really liberating to realize that you can just enjoy a centerpiece for a night or perhaps a week, then take it apart and replant elsewhere.” Chapman is the founder and principal designer of Lila B. Design, a floral and plant design studio in San Francisco.

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Study Tips, Finding Robert Christie, and Writing The Runaway’s Gold EMILIE CHRISTIE BURACK ’81

If you had told me in the fall of 1977, as I sat squirming in Mr. Lampe’s General Studies class in my ill-fitting uniform skirt, that I would one day use what I had learned from Study Tips to write my first novel, I would have laughed. It didn’t take me long to realize I didn’t have the writing talent of many other students at Kent. I can picture them now—Claudia Swan, Burns Magruder, Ann Laschever, Sarah Lindsley, Mike Dutton, Mary Logan, Clay Griffith, Becca Flemer—the list goes on and on. Things started to look up a bit at the end of fifth form year when Mr. Scruton gave me high marks on a paper I wrote on what I recall was a particularly crude section of The Canterbury Tales, and I somehow found myself recommended for the staff of the Kent News. Even then, calling myself a “writer” would have been a real stretch, considering my articles were mostly focused on topics such as panty raids and club basketball. Flash forward thirty-four years and my debut novel, The Runaway’s Gold, was released in May 2015. Yes— learning to think of myself as a writer took a while. It wasn’t until the spring of 2000 that I found the shoebox in the back of my father’s closet, filled with cassette recordings made by my grandfather, George Robert Christie. He was 84 when he made them, and if he hadn’t thought the stories important enough to record, nearly all of what I know about my ancestors would have been lost forever. When I heard him say that his grandfather, Robert Christie, “lived in a place where they had little ponies with long hair,” I had to know more. When I discovered that place was the Shetland Islands, the idea for the novel started to percolate. Our family has mountains of records about our other ancestors. Family trees from my maternal grandfather’s family in Norway, volumes of information from my maternal grandmother’s family in England. Goldstamped, leather-bound folios of newspaper clippings of my paternal grandmother’s family, who came from Ireland to New York and became grocers, antique dealers and businessmen. But of the family from whom we inherited the Christie name, we knew next to nothing.

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Not long after I made the discovery of the cassettes, my husband and I included Shetland as a stop on our honeymoon. The landscape was so captivating and the people so delightful, we knew we would one day return. Since that trip, and after years of emails to and from the Shetland Family History Society, I now know a thing or two about my great-great-grandfather Robert Christie. And when my husband and I returned to Shetland in the summer of 2013, our new Shetland friend, Bertie Gray, showed us the remains of the Christie family crofthouse and the grave of one of my great-great-grandfather’s brothers. For a history buff like myself, this was the thrill of a lifetime! What I know of Robert from my research is that he came to New York City alone in January 1852 at age 15. Once in New York he worked in a carriage shop and then as a blacksmith, shoeing the horses of the newly established New York City Police Department. As with many immigrants of the time, he was hooked in with the powerful and corrupt Democratic Party political “machine” known as Tammany Hall, and the family folklore is that whenever he lost his job, he went to see his friend at Tammany and always got it back the next day. He died of tuberculosis at the age of 57, in New York City in 1894. The late author Grace Paley once said, “You write from what you know but you write into what you don’t know.” This was indeed the case for me when I created The Runaway’s Gold. Set in 1842 in New York and the Shetland Islands and written for the “middle grade” audience (roughly ages 8–14), it is the story of 14-yearold Christopher Robertson, who is betrayed by his brother and flees home to clear his name. Although the story is fiction, it weaves around historical events of 1842. With no personal narratives to refer to, I’ll never know for sure why my ancestor left Shetland for America, but then, sometimes fiction turns out to be closer to the truth than one might think. In my novel,

Emilie Christie Burack ’81 researching in the Shetland Islands

the fictional brothers leave Shetland, perhaps never to be heard from again. After I had completed the manuscript, a friend in Shetland showed me the book A Kist of Emigrants (J. Laughton Johnson), which references many Shetland families, including the Christies, who left the islands for faraway places. Of the six Christie siblings, something was known of all of them but my greatgreat-grandfather and his brother, Christopher. Of them, the author notes, “When they left and where they went is unknown.” Loosely based on my ancestor, The Runaway’s Gold reflects the historical events of a period in Shetland when a crofter’s escape from poverty and oppression was won only at great cost. It is a tale of twists and turns, including a stop in prison, the promise made by a beautiful girl, a journey aboard a smuggling ship, and the discovery of a stash of gold coins that eventually leads Christopher to the dark and dangerous streets of New York. Kent readers might chuckle that I gave the name “Reverend Sill” to the fire and brimstone minister who aids Christopher on his journey. I find myself writing historical fiction because I have to know what it was like. And, yes, I use the 4 x 6 index

cards suggested in Mr. Armstrong’s Study Tips when doing my research. Writing on the upper-right corner the title of the source from which I gathered my information. And the page numbers. Just as Mr. Lampe taught us in third form. In a world saturated with dystopian and fantasy literature, I continue to be as fascinated as I was as a child with believable stories of survival against all odds and the amazing role luck and simple acts of kindness play in shaping history. Shetland is full of such stories—hungry boys collecting eggs from sea fowl over treacherous cliffs, the sudden collapse of a powerful merchant taking down the entire island economy, husbands and brothers drowning on rough seas, crops failing year after year, starving children and starving livestock, the wrath of the laird. And yet, somehow, the Shetland people—my ancestors—carried on. My hope with this novel is that readers will be reminded of the incredible hardships faced by those who came before us, and at the same time fall in love, as I did, with the wonderfully mysterious land of little ponies with long hair. The Runaway’s Gold was released in the U.S., U.K. and Canada by Abrams/Amulet Books in May 2015.

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Alumni News and Events

Reunion Weekend

Laura Fonte Schweitzer ’00 with her former coach, Kate Alquist Bernoski

Jordan Pyers ’05 with girls hockey coach Ed Dunn

ATHLETIC HALL OF FAME

Hall of Fame Inductees Laura Fonte Schweitzer ’00 and Jordan Pyers ’05 were in attendance at the 15th Athletic Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony to receive recognition for their accomplishments in multiple sports at Kent, college and beyond. While three of this year’s honorees were not able to attend due to military and family commitments, each

was honored during the program by a family member, former teammate or coach. For Laura and Jordan it was also an opportunity to reconnect with former coaches who had made an impact on their athletic careers. To read about each of this year’s inductees, please go to www.kentschool.edu/athletics and click on “Hall of Fame.”

2015 Inductees Christopher B. O’Callaghan 1980 Jack Capuano, Jr. 1985 Laura Fonte Schweitzer 2000 Marc B. Bucks 2005 Jordan A. Pyers 2005

The Fuzz Foster Award The 2015 recipients of The Julian C.S. “Fuzz” Foster ’41 Award are the Class of ’65 50th Reunion leaders: Class Fund Chairs Stephanie Brooks Elliman, Nancy Cruikshank Rowe and Bill Williams, and Class Gift Co-Chair Fred Pickering. The Fuzz Foster Award was established by the Class of 1941 and the Alumni Council in grateful recognition of longtime Class Secretary Fuzz Foster’s faithful and devoted service to the Class of 1941 FALL 2015

and Kent School. Fuzz served as Class Secretary for 44 years. Given annually, the award recognizes class volunteers who have done the most to encourage their classmates to support the School, to stimulate interest in their Class Reunions, and who have served their classes with distinction. Through letters, phone calls, Facebook posts, conversations and emails, the Class of ’65 Reunion leaders encouraged

their classmates to return to campus and support Kent. Their class efforts set a standard for 50th Reunion classes to come, and the Alumni & Development Office is grateful for their dedication to their class and the School. Our sincere thanks also to the reunion volunteers who worked with Stephanie, Nancy, Bill and Fred to make the 50th Reunion a success.

Reunion Weekend

TOP A great turnout for the 50th Reunion Class CENTER LEFT 1995 classmates celebrate their 20th Reunion CENTER RIGHT The Class of 2005 proudly presents Honorary membership to Jane Kates, along with her late husband, Thomas W. Kates, longtime History Department member BOTTOM LEFT 1965 classmates and spouses Tom and Margo Ayres Smith, Lucy Berry Ackemann, Nancy Cruikshank Rowe, Blue Magruder, Tim and Sherry Stanton BOTTOM RIGHT 1970 classmates Steve Fog and Tonia Shoumatoff with Dick Sanford â&#x20AC;&#x2122;55

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â&#x20AC;&#x2122;75 classmates Jennifer Park Dembinski, Kathy Crawford and Persis Luke out for a spin on the Housatonic

FALL 2015

Alumni Council Announces the Sill Society Class of 2015 The Sill Society honors Kent alumni/ae for personal achievement and distinguished service to mankind that bring honor and distinction to themselves and to Kent School. Two outstanding members of the Kent community were selected this year for induction into The Reverend Frederick H. Sill, O.H.C. Society: The Rev. Frederick B. ‘Ted’ Howden ’21 and Sidney N. Towle ’31 (both deceased). Ted Howden entered Kent in 1916, played football and baseball and was the captain of the hockey team in 1920 and 1921. He went on to graduate from Yale in 1925 and later attended General Theological Society for three years. When WWII began, Ted held the rank of captain and was Chaplain to the 200th Coast Artillery. He moved from battery to battery to minister and distribute supplies for the troops. Upon the fall of Bataan, he was taken prisoner and forced to endure the Bataan Death March alongside 76,000 other prisoners. Despite many opportunities to evacuate, he refused to leave his comrades, saying, “These are my boys and I’ll stay with them.” He repeatedly gave his meager rations to other starving prisoners, acts which ultimately led to dysentery and his own starvation. He died in 1942 on December 11, which has since become the annual commemoration of his life and work in the liturgical calendars of the Diocese of the Rio Grande and the American Episcopal Church.

Sidney Towle entered Kent as a second former in 1926 and earned seven varsity letters in football, hockey and baseball. He was awarded Pater’s Mug on Prize Day. He graduated from Yale in 1935 and went on to earn his law degree from Yale Law School in 1938. Among his many accomplishments, he is perhaps most noted for his pivotal role in the creation of the Girls School at Kent under the guidance of the Vance Committee. He was named the Associate Headmaster and Principal of the Girls School and later Headmaster in 1962, serving until his death in 1980. The Girls School was a revolutionary advancement in education, as Kent was the first male prep school in New England to admit girls. Sidney’s family includes sons Christopher (deceased), Sidney Jr. 1962 (deceased) and Alexis 1963; daughter Diana 1967; grandchildren Sidney III 1990, Caroline 1991 and her husband, Philip Closuit 1991, and Maxime 2009.

Alumni Council Introductions and Acknowledgments The Kent School Alumni Council is honored to welcome eight outstanding new members this year, who will serve through 2018. Philippe E. Alexandre ’84 Samantha J. Chu ’05 Megan E. Dodge ’04 Bradford P. Kott ’95 Peter E. Lewine ’65 James W. Mell ’60 John A. Nihoul ’05 Paul A. Pavlis ’73 To learn more about each member, please visit the Alumni Council page at www.kent-school.edu/alumni and click on Alumni Council & Recognition

We extend our heartfelt appreciation to these outgoing members for their dedicated service over the past six years. They served Kent well and contributed their valuable time and creative ideas for the betterment of our School and our alumni community around the world. Eleanor Culbertson Albert ’65 Thomas L. Melly ’76 Elizabeth O’Connell Burn ’83—former Secretary Peter B. Patch ’67—former President

Ted’s Kent family includes his brothers John, also Class of 1921, and William, Class of 1927.

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Sharon Country Club Gathering On April 10, 2015, Jacqueline Kuhn ’78 hosted a Kent in Greater Litchfield County gathering at the Sharon Country Club. Alumni, parents, parents of alumni, grandparents and friends of Kent enjoyed sharing their Kent experiences with one another. Headmaster Dick Schell addressed those present about Kent today.

Jaqueline Kuhn ’78 welcomes guests.

Sunset Cruise on the Charles River

Jim Deters, Alicia Pokoik Deters ’94, Susan Devine Honsinger ’83 and Elizabeth Sutherland ’81

On a perfect summer evening in July, for the second year in a row, members of the Kent family cruised the Charles River in Boston aboard the Henry Longfellow. Attendees enjoyed the spectacular views of a setting sun on the river while reconnecting with classmates and making

new friends. Many thanks to Eliza Smith Cushman ’83 and her husband, Russell Cushman, for their generosity and for welcoming Kent School aboard their boat again this year.

TOP LEFT Jenna Zhu ’12, Vi Ramyarupa, Kerry Foster ’11 and Alyssa Lustenring ’11 MIDDLE LEFT Taylor Garland ’09, Skylar Krug, Liam Nadire ’15, Alex Hall and Nora Nadire ’10 BOTTOM LEFT Todd Humphreys ’82, John Ledbetter ’82, Mary Carroll

Goodsir ’82, Linda Cardello Streett ’82 and Rohan Goodsir ’82 FALL 2015

Kent in Newport Kent Board of Trustees President Waring Partridge ’62 and his wife, Carmen, sponsored a wonderful evening for the Kent family in August at the New York Yacht Club, Harbour Court. Over 50 alumni, parents, grandparents and friends gathered for this annual event, to meet familiar and new faces and to hear remarks on the “state of the School” from Headmaster Dick Schell. Young alumni attending area colleges (Brown University and Roger Williams University) also attended and enjoyed meeting each other, some for the first time! Our thanks again to Waring and Carmen for their generous hospitality.

Give an Honor Book This program gives you the opportunity to celebrate an occasion in your life—a wedding, graduation, birth of a child, any milestone—or in the life of someone to whom Kent is very special. A book in the John Gray Park ’28 Library will bear a decorative plate commemorating the occasion, and you will be enriching the academic life of the School in a unique and long-lasting way. We thank you for your support! The honor book gift is $50.

To give a book today, please visit: Alumni URL: www.kent-school.edu/AlumniHonorBook Parent URL: www.kent-school.edu/ParentHonorBook

Grace Note

Third Form Day of Service

The Third Form spent a beautiful October day volunteering in the greater Kent community. Some raked leaves or cleared trails, and others made pies for residents of a retirement home or restocked the pantry at a food bankâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;just to name a few of the many activities. This annual event provides an opportunity for students to help our neighbors in and around Kent while getting to know each other better.

KENT QUARTERLY