WINTER 2022 THE NEWSLETTER
the newsletter
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The Roxbury Latin School Newsletter quarterly for alumni, current and former parents, and friends of the school.
Marcus
assistant headmaster for advancement
©2022 The Trustees of The Roxbury Latin School
Michael T. Pojman
Kerry P. Brennan
Erin E. Berg
101
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Gretchen Ertl, Marcus Miller, Mike Pojman, Adam Richins, Evan Scales
Thomas R. Guden ’96
Paying it Forward | Roxbury Latin kicks off the 2021–2022 Annual Fund with Mo Randall, José Flores ’22, and Kerry Brennan
14 Imposters!|
and
Celebrating Founder’s Day is the role of American diplomacy in the world today? | Eight alumni share reflections on their United States Foreign Service experience
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Photo by Marcus
Miller
Champions 27 Three
Departments
4 Hall Highlights 24 Art News & Calendar 52 Class Notes 57 In Memoriam 61 Winter Varsity Teams 62 Ramblings from the Archives
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Honoring the Military | Dante Gaziano ’11 Delivers the Veterans Day Hall Address Kerry Brennan Delivers the Opening of Winter Term Address
The Newsletter WINTER 2022 | VOLUME 95 | NUMBER 2 7Features
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Varsity Cross Country are New England ISL Electives, and Many (Historical, Social, Political) Lenses by Erin E. Berg
Members
of Class III visited The Haley House on January 23 to serve more than sixty warm meals, cups of coffee, and handwarmers to Boston’s homeless and food insecure.
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36 What
“You have to ask really good questions to be successful in pursuing your purpose. The way that I do that is through science. I came to love what I thought was science in high school, but I didn’t understand it. When I was your age, I thought science was this really cool set of facts about the universe. Biology, physics, chemistry, how things worked. I thought science was a collection of information, that it was knowledge. I was totally wrong. Science is a way of asking questions about something you don’t yet understand, which helps you generate new information, and adding that information to the world. As I began to truly practice science, that’s what I came to love the most about it: It’s an approach to the unknown.”
journalist, media commentator
Stephen Hoge President, Moderna Therapeutics
Andrew Sullivan
4 Winter 2022
“Be patient. Be yourself. Do not try to adjust to every identity you’re supposed to adjust to. Just be yourself with integrity and patience. And if you do that, and you breathe, the world will create a space for you. And when you have done that for yourself—when you have made a place in the world a little easier for you to live and breathe and be yourself—you won’t know it, but you will have done it for somebody else, as well. And when you think about what progress is, what advancement is, you can think in terms of laws and arguments, but what it really is, is human beings, slowly through the centuries, through the millennia, refusing to be anything other than they are, insisting upon that, and expanding the possibilities of freedom for everybody else.”
Hall Highlights
trustee, Thanksgiving Hall
Jim Hamilton ’,91
Celebration of Diwali
Byron Hurt
“My work, over several decades, has been to get men and boys to think critically about the ways in which we’ve been taught what it means to ‘be a man,’ and then to redefine it, to change that definition in ways that allow us to express our full range of emotions, our full humanity… We are not just men; we are human beings. And to be healthy human beings, we have to express ourselves honestly, authentically, and vulnerably. And we should be encouraging others to do so, as well.”
“As I look around this room today, I am grateful for all of the women and men who work so hard on your behalf each day. They inspire me and I know that they inspire you… I am grateful for your resilience and that you have persevered throughout the pandemic. You are ready for the challenges that lie ahead, and I believe you will appreciate the coming years as we enter post-pandemic life with an improved appreciation for life and the simple pleasures that we have missed the past few years… Finally, I am grateful for you all, the students of today. I am not only grateful for what you bring to our campuses each day, but I am grateful for the leaders you will become.”
“There are Hindus who view gods as physical beings, others who see divinity as a symbolic entity, and yet others who are practically atheists... There are Hindus who chant Vedic prayers on a daily basis, and those who would prefer to meditate, sing a devotional song, or help those in need… That is the unique power of Hinduism: It is ultimately each individual who forges his or her own path to enlightenment.”
vishnu emani , 22
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Health & Wellness series: masculinity
“Think about what gifts you have to offer. Maybe it’s your time. Maybe it’s your kindness. Perhaps your selflessness. Your companionship. Your concern. Your compassion. Your talents. Your vulnerability. Maybe you can gift someone the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps best of all, you can offer your presence—not presents, but presence. Walk with those who’ve been placed in your life. Accompany them. Be present to them. Be a source of joy to them. Do not believe the lie that you are powerless, that you are unimportant, that you are too small to make a difference in the world or in someone else’s life. The truth is that you can—now, at this time in your life—bring joy, comfort, and peace through simple acts of friendship and forgiveness, patience and compassion, all of which you can give to others as gifts every day of the year.
“[J. Cole]used to hit writer’s block. He used to only write when he was inspired. And he studied sports so much—you don’t just play when you’re inspired. You don’t just practice when you’re inspired. You don’t just practice your free throws when you’re inspired... his writing approach was that he wrote a little bit every day. Now every day, is he going to write a hit song? Of course not. But his pen is sharp. His skillset is sharp. So that in those moments when the inspiration hits, he can take full advantage of the opportunity and write what needs to be written. So if you look at those ruts and creativity from a different perspective, those are just growing pains to get you to that next magical moment. It’s less of a scary thing. And you don't really find yourself doubting yourself in those moments. You’re just saying, ‘All right, well, I missed 50 free throws today. Cool. I’ll be back tomorrow.’ … So that when you’re in the game and, and there are three seconds left and you have two free throws to win it all, you’re ready for that moment. That’s not the first time you’re in a pressure situation. So I have scrapped writer’s block from my head and treat it as a learning experience.”
Julian Patterson ’, 06
christmas Hall
— Kaleb Rollins
Jim facultyRyanmember,
6 Winter 2022
Kaleb Rollins ’, 06 content executive at Bleacher Report Grammy nominated songwriter, producer
So, whatever your faith or tradition, I hope that in the coming weeks and months, that you may have joy—abundant joy—in your life and that you might bring that joy to others.”
continued >>
fooled you into thinking military life was full of excitement and adventure. But if your experience is anything like mine it will be the greatest privilege of your life, and when your time in the military is up you won’t regret a single day of it. If you’re one of those boys, I’d encourage you to come find me after Hall today so we can talk more about navigating the enlistment process and preparing for military life.
Good
morning everyone. I’d like to start by thanking Mr. Brennan and the RL faculty for inviting me to participate in this commemoration today. It’s a pleasure to be back in Rousmaniere Hall, although it’s a bit strange to be up on this stage. I’m especially pleased to be here today to help the school celebrate the men and women who have served this country in our armed forces.
To you I say, I couldn’t recommend it highly enough. You’ll learn things about yourself and leadership and honor and grit and teamwork that you likely wouldn’t discover anywhere else. You’ll also learn plenty about incompetence and bureaucracy and pointless suffering and tedium, and at times you’ll curse the movies that
dante gaziano ’ , 11
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So, what is it about military service that merits our collective consideration today? Certainly, it has something to do with courage and selflessness, which in the military context are closely related. Courage is simply a particular type of selflessness, one that involves loving something or someone more than your own safety or comfort. There are many varieties of courage, some of which we encounter every day, but the courage required to face the fear of death is particular to the military and a few other select professions. Part of why we honor soldiers, then, is that the danger inherent in combat makes selflessness explicit and unambiguous.
But that leaves roughly 300 boys who will never wear camouflage professionally, and RL’s powersthat-be must think there’s something valuable for you to learn from military service as well, or else they wouldn’t have invited an otherwise undistinguished alumnus to come talk with you all this morning. And it’s primarily to you I want to speak today, particularly you older boys because, first, if we’re being honest, none of you Sixies are going to remember a word of this speech six years from now; and second, those of you nearing graduation are going to have to make some decisions in the next few years about how to construct meaningful lives, and those decisions will have profound consequences for you and those around you.
There are probably one or two of you in each class who are seriously considering joining the military.
“
captain, u.s. army, Ret.
For a moment try to imagine fear not as an abstract concept but as a physiological state. Imagine you’re in the middle of a firefight, taking cover behind a large rock or a low wall. Your heart rate is jacked to 180 beats-
But selflessness can’t provide a complete explanation for our appreciation of veterans. At its core, military service involves inflicting violence on fellow human beings. I’ve helped coordinate drone strikes on Afghan insurgents, bad people but human beings nonetheless, and watched in real time as they bled out, sometimes surrounded by their families. Isolated from their broader context, my actions were criminal, not noble. And selflessness alone can’t redeem violence. After all, the quite literal selflessness of the suicide bomber detonating
But over the course of our nation’s history countless service members have been subjected to the type of knee-shaking, sphincter-tightening, life-flashing-before-your-eyes fear I just described, and they have almost invariably responded with remarkable courage. On my second deployment to Afghanistan, I was responsible for coordinating intelligence support for the Ranger Regiment’s ground operations, and in consequence I monitored all our raids from our task force’s
operations center. Night after night I witnessed incredible acts of gallantry on the video feeds the aircraft supporting these operations beamed back to our headquarters. I’ve seen a wall collapse from the force of a secondary explosion onto a group of Rangers preparing to assault a compound and watched their friends rush to dig them out of the rubble while bullets peppered the ground around them. I’ve seen Rangers barely older than you seniors take a break from a gunfight to donate blood to a wounded Sergeant awaiting medical evacuation in a vein-to-vein transfusion and then rush back into battle as soon as a new donor rotated in. These are my heroes. It was an absolute privilege to serve alongside them, and I’m honored to bear witness to their courage in front of you today.
“We honor the military in the United States, then, both because we admire its ethos of selfless service and because we believe that the defense of American principles is a worthy object of that service.”
per-minute, your vision has narrowed to a tight tunnel, every muscle tensed, face contorted in a grimace, hearing the zip and thwack of bullets all around you. Imagine willing yourself to overcome the basic instinct of self-preservation and leave the safety of your position to return fire on the enemy, or to go to the aid of a wounded comrade, simply because you have a job to do and your friends are relying on you. That victory over fear is both an extraordinary display of selflessness and the most ordinary expectation of an infantryman in combat. It’s worth mentioning up front that I’m not talking about myself here. Time and chance conspired to make my own experience of combat relatively safe. Some of the decisions I made had life or death consequences, but it was never my life in the balance.
8 Winter 2022
Two generations on, my experience of childhood was markedly different from that of my ancestors. I certainly had my share of social and emotional struggles, but all-in-all my youth was remarkably easy. I grew up in suburban comfort, never having to worry about my safety or nourishment, and inculcated with the belief that there were no limits to what I could achieve.
Let me give you my account of what I think that is. And before I dive in, I’ll just note that this account is highly personal, so I don’t want you to think I’m preaching to you (the preaching bit comes later). These are just my own conclusions about what made my service meaningful.
himself in a crowded bazaar isn’t something we should honor. Every antagonist America has faced in every conflict has shown courage, and while I can hold a grudging professional respect for a Taliban commander or a Nazi S.S. officer, the indefensibility of the causes they serve distorts their valor into something indistinguishable from evil.
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Let’s unpack that last part, because I think we’re having increasing trouble defining exactly what it is about our country that is worth defending, and these sorts of conversations have the potential to get very confused indeed. An example of this confusion: On another Veterans Day a few years ago, I was watching an ESPN segment in which Stephen A. Smith listed the top five reasons he loves America. I don’t remember what items five through two were, but the U.S. military took the top spot. While I genuinely appreciated the sentiment, I couldn’t help viewing this as an example of that brand of circular logic that Stephen A. Smith specializes in. The U.S. military exists to defend America, so if the primary reason that America deserves defending is the U.S. military then we’ve ended up back where we started. The point is, if military service has any meaning there must be something independently and overridingly precious about America.
The fact is that the moral value of military service is inextricably linked to the cause being served. Violence is only justified in the defense of principles that, on aggregate and in the long run, promote human well-being. In the words of the philosopher John Stuart Mill, “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse… As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.” We honor the military in the United States, then, both because we admire its ethos of selfless service and because we believe that the defense of American principles is a worthy object of that service.
When I reached high school, my parents enrolled me (despite strenuous protest, I’ll add) in what is quite possibly the best secondary school on Earth. I am endlessly grateful for the people who shepherded me through that period of my life, and I remain up to my eyeballs in debt to many of those in this Hall: parents, siblings, friends, and teachers.
But even more than the individuals who shaped my childhood, I’m grateful to the system within which it occurred. For me the principles laid out in the Declaration of Independence have an intimate meaning because I can trace their influence on my family’s history. “[T]hat all men are
When people ask me why I joined the Army, I occasionally tell the stories of my great-grandfathers. My dad’s grandfather, Felippo Gaziano, was born into a peasant family in southern Sicily. As a boy he was so malnourished that he developed alopecia, and when the rest of his family emigrated to America, they left him behind fearing his condition would prevent him from passing the health screening required of incoming immigrants. Several years later he made it to America, arriving as a penniless and presumably very frightened teenager. Eventually he settled in a small mining town in West Virginia where he opened a grocery store and barber shop. He was deservedly proud of what he’d accomplished, but he wanted more for his children. Shortly before my grandfather finished high school, Felippo asked him what his plans were after graduation. My grandfather had never considered anything other than going to work in the family store and told his father as much. “No,” Felippo told him, “you’re going to go to college and you’re going to become a doctor.” Which, dutiful son that he was, is exactly what my grandfather did. My mom’s grandfather, William, had a similar story, running away from his family’s dirt-floor home in western Ireland to catch a ship to the New World. His son, my grandfather, would join the Navy during World War II, put himself through college on the G.I. Bill, and become a successful and enormously respected engineer.
This applies more than ever since the Taliban’s return to power. You may have seen the awful videos from August of Afghans dangling from a departing aircraft at Hamid Karzai Airport in a desperate attempt to escape their country. For those poor souls clinging to that C-17’s wheels the distinctions between fear and security, between freedom and oppression, between happiness and misery weren’t academic. They understood in a tragically visceral way that a nation’s social and political arrangements have a concrete effect on the well-being of its citizens. And these men deserved the hardship they were trying to escape no more than I deserved the comfort and ease that I’ve enjoyed all my life. These differences in individual fortune can be as arbitrary as the roll of a die.
Society and government play a huge role here. We can set up schools that socialize kids to share their toys; we can establish democratic institutions that allow us to nonviolently resolve political disagreement; we can lay down economic rules that facilitate mutually beneficial cooperation; we can create a judicial system that enforces respect for the rights of other citizens. Countries that have governments that effectively use such institutions to encourage prosocial impulses and
discourage antisocial ones tend to be the best places to live. And I contend that the principles enunciated in the Declaration, enshrined in the Constitution, and manifested in our social and democratic institutions are a particularly good recipe for human happiness.
America isn’t perfect—no nation is or ever will be—but the degree to which its system of government promotes the wellbeing of its citizens is historically and geographically rare. Without effective checks on people’s worst impulses, life has been nasty, brutish, and short for most of human history. In many parts of the world it still is. It took deploying to Afghanistan for me to really appreciate, deep in my bones, how precious the American system is. There is as much natural goodwill and intelligence in your average Afghan as in your average American. But Afghanistan lacks institutions to effectively promote cooperation and control violence, and efforts to build those institutions over the last 20 years have been stymied by hubris and incompetence. The result is collective misery.
However, the fact that life in America is immeasurably better than in many other parts of the world is far from accidental. The construction, maintenance, defense, and improvement of our society has been a monumental and deliberate project. You can get a glimpse of the scale of this effort if you go to a military cemetery, from Gettysburg to Normandy, each of the headstones representing decades of life unlived. But any single graveyard reveals only a small fraction of the total sacrifice. We are the beneficiaries of centuries of contributions
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” For me, these aren’t just words; they are a powerful incantation that transported my family from poverty to comfort.
What is it about these principles that are so special? It is simply the case that certain forms of social and political organization are more beneficial to human beings than others. This is a basic point, but it can get lost sometimes. Once while deployed to Afghanistan I got into a bizarre argument with an Air Force officer whose position was that we couldn’t make any moral comparisons between the American and Taliban political systems, that each system is equally good within its particular cultural context. Consider that this was coming from someone who was participating in a violent conflict that, according to his worldview, essentially amounted to a difference of tastes, and you can see the sort of moral and intellectual trouble this type of relativism can get you into.
10 Winter 2022
In my experience, people aren’t intrinsically either good or bad; we’re all just animals loaded with a bunch of evolutionary baggage. Nature has endowed us with a set of instincts that help us navigate the world around us. These include things like reason, self-control, and empathy, but also things like anger and greed. Each instinct has an evolutionary explanation; in the case of the squirrel hoarding nuts, his greed helps him survive the winter. But some of these capacities can lead us to harm other people, while others facilitate cooperation. The trick is to discourage our selfish instincts while fostering our altruistic ones. The example of the soldier getting out from behind his rock in a firefight, altruism triumphing over survival itself, shows just how far this project can go.
Being grateful for everything America has given us doesn’t preclude being clear-eyed about its many faults. In fact, a principled patriotism, one based on ideals and not on blood or soil or some mythical sense of national greatness, requires confronting our failings as a country.
by soldiers, and statesmen, and public servants of all stripes. The point is this: Our society is not a natural state of human affairs, it is an artificial ecosystem that real people worked very hard to build.
I’ll note that this stuff matters for soldiers. At least it did for me. It’s hard to fight for something you don’t think has profound meaning. And while battlefield courage is more often about the bonds of brotherhood than abstract ideas, most soldiers I know wear pride in their nation into battle like moral armor.
I won’t pretend that I had a fully coherent worldview as a high schooler. But I had some rudimentary version of this argument worked out by the time I graduated, the key features of which were: 1) the American system, despite its flaws, generally promotes human well-being and has also greatly benefited me individually; 2) the American system wasn’t conjured out of thin air, rather it was created and sustained by the effort and sacrifice of real people; and 3) if others don’t continue to sustain and improve upon the system then the whole project will stagnate or fall apart. That’s more or less why I joined the Army, it’s why I think America is worth defending, and that’s what I think ennobles service in our military.
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You might notice something circular here too, but not of the Stephen A. Smith variety, I think. My decision to join the Army was strongly motivated by the gratitude I felt to those who came before me. In truth, each generation of Americans is called to service by the sacrifices of the generations that preceded it and on and on in a continuous cycle. But we’re not just spinning our wheels here, because the goals of the American project are worthy of our sacrifices.
“It’s hard to fight for something you don’t think has profound meaning. And while battlefield courage is more often about the bonds of brotherhood than abstract ideas, most soldiers I know wear pride in their nation into battle like moral armor.”
And so I turn to you, the boys of RL. I foreshadowed some preaching earlier and here it is: The fact that you’re sitting in this Hall right now means that you, like me, have benefited enormously from the American system. I won’t pretend to know each of your individual backgrounds, but by attending this school you have been given a rare opportunity. In reminding you of this good fortune I certainly don’t mean to convey a sense of guilt. You didn’t choose to be born where you are, and many of the benefits you’ve accrued you earned
It’s worth noting that this project isn’t static; it’s a continuous and ongoing effort. America hasn’t always lived up to its own principles, and the benefits of our system haven’t always been distributed evenly. But we’ve gotten better over time because at various points in our history good people have held up a mirror to the nation and forced it to reckon with its shortcomings. If it weren’t for their contributions, we wouldn’t live in a country that we can be proud of today.
I’m certainly not encouraging you all to join the military. We’re here today to celebrate veterans, but there are countless occupations that are inherently service-oriented: teaching, medicine, diplomacy, firefighting, policing, activism, entrepreneurship, and even, believe it or not, politics. In fact, selflessness in the service of a worthy cause comes in an infinite variety of forms. Any job that you approach with the intention of adding value to society is a form of service.
through hard work and passion and diligence. You don’t need to apologize to anyone, now or ever, for your success. But you should feel grateful for it. And if you acknowledge the debt of gratitude you owe for the opportunities you’ve been given, I hope you’ll also acknowledge your responsibility to pay it forward. We are all entangled in a vast web of mutual obligation and—mixing metaphors here just to make Mr. Cervas squirm a little—if you fail to reciprocate the sacrifices made on your behalf, you’ll be defaulting on a moral debt to society.
12 Winter 2022
In the next couple of years, you seniors will make a series of decisions that will set you on a path you’ll follow for the rest of your lives. When it comes time to declare a major, I’m
Because here’s the secret paradox at the heart of selfless service: It’s also in your own self-interest. It turns out that service is immensely rewarding, and gratitude is an antidote to unhappiness. Our intuitions on this point are often misleading, but it’s true. Modern psychology and ancient wisdom agree that if you want to be happy look after those around you; if you want to be miserable think only of your own interests. Since I left the Army, I’ve missed the intoxicating sense of purpose that infuses military life. It’s harder now to go to bed content with what I accomplished in a given day and harder to pull myself out of my neuroses and insecurities. Satisfaction with adult life is very much bound up in how you construct meaning out of it. So, I say again, if you want to be happy, find some way to serve.
I imagine exhorting you all to service is somewhat unnecessary. After all, you go to a school where, “From those to whom much has been given much will be expected.” But then again, the whole point of holidays is to periodically remind ourselves of the obvious. And I think it’s particularly important on this holiday to remind ourselves of the value of service and the preciousness of our American system, because pessimism has become very easy to come by these days.
One of the low points of my military career occurred on January 6, 2021, when I watched the Capitol riot from an operations center in Jordan. I came back from dinner that night to see the protest projected on one of our headquarter’s big-screen TVs.
“Here’s the secret paradox at the heart of selfless service: It’s also in your own selfinterest. It turns out that service is rewarding,immenselyandgratitude is an antidote to unhappiness.”
guessing most of you will choose finance or economics. Which is absolutely fine; I want to live in a country with functioning banks and efficient markets and businesses that generate wealth and jobs and innovative products. Business and finance are entirely compatible with service. But don’t choose that path by default; in other words, don’t let that path choose you. Instead, I’d encourage you to ask yourself the question posed by architect Buckminster Fuller: “What is it on this planet that needs doing that I know something about, that probably won’t happen unless I take responsibility for it?” Regardless of your answer to that question, simply asking it now will help you approach whatever career you choose with a greater sense of purpose. So, as you start to map out your post-secondary lives, I’d encourage you to take inventory of your passions and talents and consider how you can best apply them to help others, not only for the country’s sake but for your own.
The author David Foster Wallace once described what he called the Democratic Spirit. “A Democratic Spirit” he said “is one that combines rigor and humility, i.e., passionate conviction
plus sedulous respect for the convictions of others. As any American knows, this is a very difficult spirit to cultivate and maintain, particularly when it comes to issues you feel strongly about. Equally tough is a [Democratic Spirit’s] criterion of 100 percent intellectual integrity. You have to be willing to look honestly at yourself and your motives for believing what you believe, and to do it more or less continually.”
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Of course, our nation is strong and resilient, and the reports of America’s demise are often greatly exaggerated, but our current political dysfunction and partisan extremism are real cause for concern. So, I want to leave you with one last piece of advice: Learn to question your own assumptions. When we find a cause we’re passionate about, one we’re convinced will make the world a better place, it’s easy to get carried away by self-righteous zeal. I suspect I’ve been guilty of this today. But few things in life are black and white, and few choices are between good and bad. More frequently decisions come down to good and marginally better or bad and marginally worse. There are nearly always tradeoffs to be considered, and there often isn’t sufficient information to make accurate comparisons. All of this means it’s easy to make mistakes.
So what to do? Embracing certainty leads to extremism, and embracing uncertainty leads to paralysis. The only solution is to steer a middle course, acting in the face of uncertainty while acknowledging that your decisions very well may be wrong. This takes real intellectual courage, but it’s essential. And if you accept your own potential for good-faith mistakes you can recognize that tendency in others too. Because the adage “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity” is one of the most vital lessons you can learn. I can tell you from experience that there are very few people who are genuinely malicious, but we are all frequently and persistently wrong.
You likely already have some sense of life’s complexity and ambiguity. And some of you may be holding out hope for a time when you’re older and wiser and everything starts to become a little clearer. I have bad news for you: If you’re anything like me, ten years from now you won’t feel that you have a better grasp on life than you do today. You’ll have learned much about the world, but your awareness of how much you don’t know will have expanded proportionally.
I spent that night wondering whether the nation I had traveled halfway around the world to defend had given up on the democratic ideals that had made it worth defending.
I think we as a nation are starting to lose the collective habit of engaging with each other in a Democratic Spirit. America’s public sphere is in danger of becoming dominated by partisan extremists, convinced of the absolute truth of their beliefs, screaming at each other over the heads of a paralyzed center. Preserving American greatness is going to require us to relearn how to approach difficult issues with a Democratic Spirit. You may be thinking that I’ve strayed from the theme of military service, but this is pertinent, because if you genuinely want to honor our nation’s service members it will be your job to ensure that America remains a nation they can be proud to defend.
I don’t want to end on a dark note, and truth is being back in this school and seeing a new crop of RL boys eager to take on the world gives me a lot of hope. As you continue to pursue your studies at this great school be mindful of all you have to be thankful for, and particularly, on this day, the sacrifices of those whose selflessness underwrites your safety. And know that when you leave this place there is important work for you to do. I’m confident you will be up for whatever task you choose to tackle. And for that I want to thank you in advance for your service. //
Dante Gaziano ’11 delivered this address at the school’s Veterans Day Hall on November 11, 2021. Dante was commissioned as an Infantry Officer in the Army, via ROTC, upon graduating from Vanderbilt University in 2015. After completing the Basic Officer Leadership Course, Ranger School, and Airborne School at Fort Benning, Georgia, he was assigned to the 10th Mountain Division. In 2016 he was deployed to Afghanistan. In 2018, Dante was selected to join the 75th Ranger Regiment, the Army’s premier infantry unit, where he served as a special operations intelligence officer and platoon leader, deploying to Afghanistan in 2019 and to Jordan in 2020. Dante left active duty in May 2021, with the rank of Captain.
14 Winter Kerry2022 Brennan Delivers the Opening of Winter Term Address Imposters!
One popular pursuit these days has to do with DNA and genealogy. I have always been interested in my ancestry and especially eager to go beyond my European immigrant grandparents and learn who their (and my) forebears were. A few years ago, I spit into a vial and a month later the company 23andMe sent me an analysis of my origins. I was amazed. Close relatives like my brother and my cousin showed up on my list of family members. I did not know that they had participated in
Afew
weeks ago when I was visiting New York City, I was confronted with a variation on what it means to live in the age of Covid.
Who Am I?
Imposters!
Newsletter of The Roxbury Latin School 15
Everywhere I went—bookstores, restaurants, department stores, coffee shops, movie theaters, clubs, gyms, hotels, theaters—all of these venues had representatives as gatekeepers ensuring that I had been vaccinated. Living in Massachusetts, which has not enacted such a requirement, I was not used to and easily bothered by the pain of having to go in my wallet every time and presenting a pretty beat-up piece of paper that chronicled my two Modernas and a booster. Of course, I could summon up the logic to understand why what was being done was a good thing. Frankly, I would rather show proof of vaccination than run the risk of infecting someone or getting infected. Also, I will gladly put up with the inconvenience of presenting proof of vaccination if the alternative is what we went through from March 2020 on before vaccines were available. The reason I bring this up, though, is not simply to offer a gentle rant about how I was put out by this protocol. What got me thinking was the idea that perhaps the presentation of my vaccine card, and usually my driver’s license, offered some more data points to track me and potentially invade my privacy. Today, we know that we are constantly being tracked and followed, usually thanks to the Internet and sophisticated means by which every one of our characteristics is captured and then leveraged to offer data to some commercial enterprise. For example, I bought two sweaters from Brooks Brothers online in 2018 and so every single day I get notices advertising sweaters or other clothes that might be of that same style. Countless other keystrokes and site visits help technology spelunkers to know us but not to love us. Our every move is noted, analyzed, and then marketed. This realization inspires me to return to the question it takes a lifetime to answer: Who am I? There are many ways to answer that question.
Would he be a good person to know or befriend? What are his gifts? How would we get along?’”
“‘Who am I?’ought to be asked by each one of us every single day. It’s also on the minds of those with whom we come into contact... ‘Who is he?
What is he capable of? What does he stand for?
The more common ways we are identified these days have to do with a host of data collection systems and algorithms
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this endeavor. Their identification suggested to me that there was validity to this process. In the meantime, I have heard from a handful of purported third and fourth cousins. Just last week a woman with the surname Brennan announced to me that we likely had the same great-great grandparents. Indeed, she was able to fill in some of the blanks on my own family tree. Will I ever visit this person who lives in the UK? Will we become best buds? Will we see each other and notice the same peculiar characteristics? I don’t think so. But for now our connection has made for a remarkable revelation. Of course the Internet makes any and all of this possible. Previously one would have to examine dusty record books in sketchy village archives or dank church attics to come up with any clue as to one’s heritage. For me at least, I hope that my research will yield some hyper interesting ancestor—a hero or a rogue, maybe someone who played a role in some historical event, and as was true with some of my Irish family a couple generations back who acted nobly on behalf of an admirable goal like achieving independence for Ireland.
that spit out our info on a regular basis. These days I present a credit card for most purchases. Online I visit various sites often purchasing something from those sites. Even if the site is not selling something tangible, it is indeed selling access to a set of information or experiences. I have a hard time remembering all the access codes and passwords. Several times during the day we are expected to offer identifying numbers and letters in order to affirm our identity. Throughout history there were situations in which one’s identity was critical, sometimes mitigating a matter of life or death. One need only think about what did or did not save you from the persecution of the Nazis in WWII, or what immigration papers would allow you to remain in this country even if you had been involved in an activity that might have been frowned upon. Certainly, these days the challenges of immigration consume our national dialogue and do not begin to capture the poignant drama of the people who are caught up in a system that sometimes is not fair, and certainly not welcoming. Go to another country and you will be asked to “present your papers,” usually a passport and occasionally a visa. These days you will also have to show proof of vaccination for Covid or a negative test.
My reason for bringing all this up is not mainly because I want you to exercise discretion and good judgment in deciding what to post on various apps and websites. I do want you to do that. But mainly I mention all these because they obscure the question I have already asked: Who am I?
This question ought to be asked by each one of us every single day. It’s also on the minds of those with whom we come into contact as they wonder, “Who is he? What is he capable of? What does he stand for? Would he be a good person to know or befriend? What are his gifts? How would we get along?”
Newsletter of The Roxbury Latin School 17
The pursuit of the question “Who am I?” is asked throughout our lives. The questioning does not end even when one is a geriatric like me. Let me share an example of the kind of questioning of who one is that ends up not being instructive or affirming but, rather, can dissuade us from being the people we are capable of being. This is something called the imposter syndrome.
Who am I? Am I suitably represented by any one of those documents? Any one of those data points gathered by online retail operations?
Who am I? The DNA that’s gathered and then matched to other potential relatives? Am I defined by the websites I visit, and do these patterns suggest anything about my personality, tastes, or character?
Who am I? We are such creatures of our times, so automatic in the way that we unthinkingly respond to requests for information that we minimize the possibility that such participation could lead to inferences that may not be flattering or indeed potentially harmful. A friend of mine who recently applied for a job somehow learned that his potential employer had seen everything he bought off the internet over the past month; he had seen every picture posted on Instagram; and he had made inferences about the candidate’s suitability for a position based on that data.
Some of you freshmen have just finished reading The Odyssey. After 20 years of wandering, Odysseus finally returns home, but the ever-faithful Penelope has a hard time believing that the man
Faking It
Over the years, several boys have visited me in my office concerned about a particular doubt—sometimes at my request, sometimes thanks to their initiative. The individual circumstances vary, but the core issue is the same: the boy questions why he is at Roxbury Latin. The statement usually goes something like this: “I just had another disastrous test. I’m bound to get a C this marking period, if I’m lucky. I saw the teacher. He yaps and yaps and yaps, and it’s like I have no brain to which his words can attach. I sit there and listen and nothing sticks. I’m an idiot. Everyone else seems to get this stuff with ease. Their hands fly up in every class. They seem to each have read a thousand books and know everything about the world’s history. And seem to have visited every country. And while I’m stuck thinking of what the question was that the teacher asked, five guys have jumped in and then we move on. Occasionally, because I know the teacher thinks he has to involve everybody in the class, he calls on me. Oh my God. I look like such an idiot. I don’t have a clue. Why am I here? The admission committee must have misread my credentials. Or they think I’m a better lacrosse player than I actually am. But my life is miserable. Every day I think that I’m the beneficiary of some cruel joke that put me in this school so that everyone can laugh at me. I’m stupid. I’m an imposter. I don’t belong here. I’m a fraud. And everybody knows it.”
Throughout literature and history, the imposter has held a special position. Sometimes the character himself is pretending to be someone else. And sometimes, through no fault of his own, others believe him to be another person. In the Gospels, when Jesus returned from the Resurrection in order to commission his apostles to continue his work on earth, Thomas, Doubting Thomas, presumed that the image of the Lord before him was a hallucination or some other kind of fraud. That was when Jesus admonished Thomas to put his fingers in the nail holes in his hands, and to put his fist in the hole in his side. These were the confirming marks of his crucifixion. Subsequently, Jesus taught one of the lessons of faith when he declared that Thomas believed because he saw and the truly faithful would believe even if they could not see.
Who am I? Am I any or all of those things? We know that college candidates are routinely rejected because college admission officers need only click a few buttons to learn a good deal about a candidate, his or her judgment and maturity, based on pictures chronicling his social life.
An Imposter
Subsequent to that episode, there were plenty of times I could have felt like an imposter, but didn’t. Trying out for a basketball team, auditioning for a solo in chorus, improvising on the trombone, leading choirs at my church, running for office. In each of those situations I felt I had a legitimate right to be vying for the opportunity. The greatest instance of my feeling like an imposter came, however, when I arrived at Amherst College. No one from my high school had ever gone to Amherst. In anticipating my attending, I didn’t have a lot to go on. I had been fairly successful in high school in any number of ways—
When I was seven, I was riding my Stingray bike down our street when I saw a bunch of boys playing baseball on the field across from my house. I rode up closer because I wondered if there were some game that had erupted that I had not gotten wind of. In fact, this was early April and was a Little League tryout. The coach was a friend of our family, Poochie DiNola, and he called out to me, “Kerry Brennan, you should be out here. Go get your glove.” I was seven. To play Little League you had to be eight. Nonetheless, I trusted Mr. DiNola and rushed home, got my glove, and returned to the field. The coach quickly incorporated me into the drills and we played on for about another hour. All the other boys treated me strangely. I knew these guys but they were a grade ahead of me in school. Correctly they were wondering what the heck I was doing there. At the end of practice, after reminding us that we would do it all again the next day, the coach called me aside. “You did well, Kerry. Why didn’t you show up earlier?” “Because I’m seven,” I said. “Then what the heck are you doing here? You can’t play if you’re seven. See you
Let me offer another example that will end up being close to home. The winter musical, Catch Me If You Can, chronicles the antics of an especially skillful imposter. The play (and then the movie) are patterned after the real-life story of Frank Abagnale, Jr., who, over several years, commits some amazing acts of fraudulent identity including posing as a physician, a professor, and an airline pilot. I hope this early commercial will inspire you to be sure to attend one of the two performances of Catch Me If You Can at the end of February. You will meet an amazing imposter.
next year.” Of course I knew that. But he had told me to get my glove. So I did. And I was an imposter. An unwitting imposter, but an imposter nonetheless. I scrupulously avoided any contact with those eight-year-old boys for a good long time.
Another time I felt like an imposter was when my mom thought it would be a good idea for me to audition for a part in the Schenectady Light Opera production of The Sound of Music. I had seen the movie but I had never at that point seen a live theatrical musical. All I knew is that I liked the music. And my mother admired my singing and thought I was cute enough for a role. I knew nothing about what was expected in such a situation. And neither did my mother. I arrived and filled out the form. There were a bunch of other kids of all sizes and shapes there—most were dressed up, some were actually wearing Austrian looking garb like lederhosen and frilly skirts. I was dressed the way I would be when I went to school. My mother and I sat in the hall outside the auditorium. “Kerry Brennan.” I stood and followed the summoning guy into the room. I had not seen or heard anyone who had gone before. “How old are you?” “10” “Where do you go to school?” “Pleasant Valley.” “And what will you sing for us?” What? What kind of question is that, I thought? “I’m not sure.” “Did you prepare a song? Don’t you know that in the audition notice it said you needed to prepare a song?” “I did not know that and neither did my mother.” “Well do you know Edelweiss?” I did….sort of. And so I sang Edelweiss. They checked my range (what I would spend the better part of my professional life doing as a choral conductor). And out I went. I was an imposter. I did not belong there. And, no surprise to me, I was not cast in that season’s dazzling production of The Sound of Music. We did go to see the show, however, and when I saw those kids perform, I thought to myself, “I can do that.”
I can say with some assurance that each of us has at some point in his or her life felt like an imposter, someone who didn’t belong where he or she was. For most of us, that revelation comes when we are on the brink of something new, when we are attempting something we have not attempted before, when we’re daring to do something hard or different, or when we are thrown into a bunch of new people. I’ve had those experiences myself, and here are some of them.
before her is her husband. Odysseus uses his knowledge of their marital bed, its derivation from a tree stump and its inability to be moved, as proof that he is indeed Odysseus, Penelope’s husband. He proves he is not an imposter.
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Newsletter of The Roxbury Latin School 19
Scott’s personality and confidence were one thing, but the overall academic tenor of Amherst was decidedly different from what I had experienced at Mont Pleasant High School, where now I realized I had not been challenged, and I thought, not been taught what it took to succeed in a college setting. I was totally intimidated by this academic opportunity. I presumed every kid in my class was a genius. I wrote in my notebook practically every word that the professor said—I recorded his words but I didn’t listen. The information washed over me. I
all measured by the context and the standard I realized later. College was a different story. First, the setting was beautiful with gorgeous vistas, impressive facilities, and remarkable resources. Second, the other students were fascinating….and a bit intimidating. On the first day of orientation, their parents pulled up to the dorm in fancy cars sporting license plates from around the Northeast. Out came fancy luggage and equipment, like typewriters, mini refrigerators, and stereos quite different from my own. They were dressed casually but in elegant clothes. My older brother had gone to college several years before, so I thought I knew the drill. But I didn’t. I was anxious. How would I get along with these guys? Would they like me? Or would I be seen as an imposter, someone whose high school grades signaled a capacity to excel academically, but was clueless about what it took to succeed socially at a place like Amherst. Thankfully, the guys on my floor were friendly; we went as a pack to meals; and we hung out in each other’s rooms trying out albums and offering opinions about music we liked. I could not have known then, at the beginning, the different backgrounds these guys represented and the fact that my own story may not have been as anomalous as I thought it was. The impression they all made, and that their parents made, suggested they were of another class, more sophisticated, more in the know, more moneyed, maybe even smarter. What added to the anxiety was the fact that my roommate did not arrive for orientation. My parents, of course, were eager to meet him, but he did not show up. What’s that all about? When Scott did arrive I found him friendly, funny, and cocky. He had gone to Hotchkiss, a prep school I had only heard of when I saw it printed next to his name in the freshman facebook. I later learned that Hotchkiss was then and is now one of the most prestigious of high-end boarding schools, mostly in those days for moneyed students whose fathers and grandfathers had also attended the school. Scott was perfectly friendly but his patterns were troubling.
“I can say with some assurance that each of us has at some point in his or her life felt like an imposter, someone who didn’t belong where he or she was. For most of us, that revelation comes when we are on the brink of something new, when we are attempting something we have not attempted before, when we’re daring to do something hard or different, or when we are thrown into a bunch of new people.”
I had no idea what kind of grades Scott got that semester. We were in none of the same classes. I had elected introductory courses in political science, psychology, sociology and French 5. I was drowning. I got a C on my first psych paper. I had no idea what I was doing. And given my feeling that everybody else had this down, I did not share my disappointment, my anxiety, my fear with anyone. Nor did anyone, least of all a professor, care enough to ask. I was an imposter. I never asked a question or made a comment in class. The French professor in a class of 10 knew me. The other profs teaching lecture classes of 60 hardly knew me at all. To my mind, I was better off that way.
We started this talk today with a boy who felt he was an imposter at our school, that he ought not be here. I can tell you for starters that our admission process yields results
was no better when I did the readings for my courses. I had never learned to annotate a text. Stupidly I used a marker, not a pen, to highlight large swaths of the book. When it came time to review what I had highlighted I had no idea why I thought it was important and might as well have re-read everything that had already taken me plenty of time to read. Anxious about surviving, let alone succeeding, I would go to my carrel in the library whenever I could and start on a particular assignment as soon as it was given. I had no idea how to measure how long something would take so I started it right away in order to have as much time as I could to get it finished. My roommate approached his work, however, like he was from another planet. Scott was enrolled in English 11, too. He routinely waxed eloquent about Aldous Huxley and Bertrand Russell and John Hume—philosophers and writers I had never heard of. But for his English 11 class, he was to write an essay due each of the three days a week the class met. The class met at 9 a.m. The night before Scott would have been playing The Grateful Dead at high decibels until even he understood it was time for quiet and bed (about 1 a.m.!). He was not doing school work. At 8 a.m. the next day he would sit at his typewriter at his desk and bang out the essay for the class. He had 50 minutes to get it done. I was amazed, and I thought that I must be such a dope because, though I was not in that class, assigned writing for other classes took me forever. I was an imposter. Scott knew how to do it. He was endowed with the smarts and had been given the training that would allow him to succeed.
Be Your Authentic Self
There have been countless times in my life when I felt like an imposter, or at least lesser than. One important instance of this occurred when I was hired to teach at Roxbury Latin. Practically fresh out of college, I applied to be Director of Music, but there was another part to the job, a need to teach something else, as well. I had majored in music and political science. I had not majored in English, nor frankly had I taken very many English courses. When Mr. Jarvis decided I should teach two sections of English 8 that first year he wondered aloud what kind of writer I was. I suggested I thought I was competent. His confidence in me I’m afraid was greater in that moment than my confidence in myself. In fact, in order to feel that I could competently teach the students assigned to my English classes, I had to work exceedingly hard. Eventually I would teach English 10 and English 11, too. A new colleague left a stack of books on my desk in my old classroom (now Mr. Lieb’s room) a few days before classes started and wished me well. I sometimes felt like an imposter because there were esoteric features that were common in literary analysis that I did not know. Over time I learned to teach grammar and usage, and, mainly because I believed that learning these things was good, if not essential, for my students, I tried hard to be clear, creative, and effective in ensuring that they did indeed learn. I also fell in love with certain literature we were reading and each successive year offered a yet more robust, thoughtful approach to each of those experiences. I started as an imposter as an English teacher, and over time became less so.
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fraternities for sophomore year and I saw less of Scott. And then I saw nothing of him. You see, this handsome, welldressed, paragon of preppiness and preparation had flunked out. Amherst sent you away with the option of coming back after you had had the time to re-evaluate your commitment, but Scott never came back. I felt bad for Scott, but selfishly I felt like a bit less of an imposter. And especially I did because I began to understand what it took to succeed. I was managing my courses with greater competence, having success in the Glee Club and an a cappella group, got into the frat of my choice, and had good friends. I felt like less of an imposter.
Little did I know that indeed Scott’s approach was not successful. Apparently, he was getting terrible grades. I knew nothing of that and his work-play pattern stayed the same throughout our freshman year. We went off to different
We have to summon courage even when we are most fearful. We have to have both the knowledge and courage to ask for help. Over time, we grow more confident not just in who each of us is—our one true, authentic self—but we become eager to project that persona, to risk rejection or ridicule even as we are also risking the possibility of making lifegiving, lifelong connections, of feeling challenged or affirmed, or even falling in love. I wish you all of that in the New Year, and will be especially glad to be part of a community in which no one feels himself or herself an imposter. //
Newsletter of The Roxbury Latin School 21
that ought to be heeded. The faculty and staff who constitute the admission committee are especially analytical about a candidate’s promise and only suggest an “accept” if they are confident the boy could thrive. The boy I mentioned earlier deserved to be here, as do each of you. Would there be other boys who were better at some things than you? Or would there be some for whom the work came more easily? Yes. Definitely. That is bound to be the case. Would there be lacrosse players who were more natural athletes, whose bodies matured more quickly? Were there lacrosse players or any other kind of athletes who had been given opportunities to play the sport at a high level from a young age? Yes. Definitely.
However, you, in your particular gifts, in your limitations, in your experience, and especially in your desire and passion have the capacity to grow and change and improve. You have the capacity to fulfill your ambition to be excellent at something, or, perhaps, many things. You have the capacity to contribute, to make a difference.
In our lives we are seeking authenticity. We want to be real. We want to be the same person regardless of whose company we are in. We want to feel competent, and contributing, and lovable. Virtually every day, we will ourselves to confront a novel situation or make the acquaintance of a person we did not know before. My parents had different but similarly instructive advice about how I ought to imagine the challenge of pursuing that which is new and daunting and strange. They suggested how I might see myself in the world. My mother admonished my brother and me that we were neither better than someone else nor were we lesser than someone else. Of course, in certain particular ways each of us is better or worse—with some skills, or in some subjects, or applying our knowledge to problem solving, or making friends even. Her point was more of an existential one: We, all of us, are children of God and therefore deserve respect and kindness and love. I am imperfect in the way I encounter and judge people, but I strive for her ideal. My father, on the other hand, advised that half the battle is won not just by showing up but by signaling that you belong there. Some of that, especially if someone feels out of place, or an imposter, requires projecting oneself as confident and committed and concerned. And that one does not betray that he may be, or at least feel, out of place. In those situations, I find myself striving to quickly imitate the
patterns and protocols that most others already seem to know. My father’s point was that once an opportunity is offered and accepted that each of us has the chance to prove our legitimacy, or even our excellence in that realm.
Today, as we all face the New Year, 2022, a year in which we hope that we can know normalcy and health and happiness in our lives, I wish us a few things. I wish that we grow to know and love ourselves in such a way that we can push forward at moments when we might feel most vulnerable, when we have the greatest doubt. I hope that we will know the confidence and ambition that will allow us to grow into the people we are capable of being. Every day we are challenged in significant ways. When we try out for a team; when we volunteer an answer in class; when we audition for a part; when we run for office; when we wonder at what table we will sit in the Refectory; when we first meet new classmates or teachers; when we are in a social situation in which we want the other people or a special other person to like us—usually the liking comes before the admiring and the respecting; when we worry that no one will want to spend time with us over the weekend or the break; when we apply for admission to a school or college; when we apply for a job; when we pursue a relationship with a particular person who might become our life partner; when we wade into any room, a meeting, a reception, a bar. In all these situations, I hope you feel the opposite of what the imposter feels. I hope that you humbly and confidently will imagine yourself anywhere, with any person or group of people, regardless of the circumstances or the prestige or fanciness or the consequences of the situation. For us to evolve, we have to take risks. We have to put ourselves forward. We have to believe that we are worthy.
The Junior Varsity team also completed a strong season, offering lots of promise for the future of the program. The JV squad earned a fifth place finish in the ISL, with Jake Popeo (III) placing 4th out of 176 runners.
7th – George Madison (I)
6thrunners:–Mark
Four Roxbury Latin runners placed in the top 15, out of 110
The Junior team also earned an undefeated record this fall, concluding their season by earning first place in the Junior Jamboree hosted on November 3 at Roxbury Latin. //
10th – Kofi Fordjour (II) 13th – Eric Diop (III)
2nd – Co-captain George Madison (I)
David Sullivan (I), Michael Thomas (II), and Tommy Reichard (II) rounded out the varsity squad competing in the league championship race, finishing 24th, 31st, and 53rd respectively.
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4th – Co-captain Mark Henshon (I)
On November 13, the Varsity Cross Country team earned the title of New England Champions, after competing in the New England Division II race at the Northampton Williston School. The win capped Roxbury Latin’s undefeated season, adding to its 2021 ISL Championship title. In the New England championship race, RL scored 47 points to place first; Middlesex followed with 67 points. (In Cross Country, lowest score wins!) Sixteen teams competed, and RL placed all seven of its Varsity runners in the top 32 out of 115 runners in the race. Leading the pack were:
placed third with 121 points. It was RL’s third ISL team title in five years.
3rd – Kofi Fordjour (II)
Varsity Cross Country are New England and ISL Champions
Rounding out the team were Eric Diop (III), who finished 14th, David Sullivan (I) in 24th, Michael Thomas (II) in 25th, and Tommy Reichard (II) in 32nd.
Henshon (I)
Prior to the New England Championship, the team clinched the 2021 ISL Championship title on November 5. In the league championship race, RL scored 60 points to place first. Middlesex followed with 66 points, and Belmont Hill
Newsletter of The Roxbury Latin School 23
David Sullivan (I) Michael Thomas (II)
Tommy Reichard (II)
George Madison (I)
Eric Diop (III)
Kofi Fordjour (II)
Mark Henshon (I)
Members of the Glee Club, the Latonics, and the Junior Chorus—along with help from several musical faculty members and friends—regaled an audience at 4:30 p.m. and again at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, December 17. //
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Holiday Concerts Kick Off the Winter Break
24 Winter 2022
In Roxbury Latin tradition, on the day following mid-year exams—and just before the students and faculty leave campus for a well-deserved winter break—nearly half of the student body assembles to deliver a festive and joyful holiday concert, honoring the celebrations and spirit of the season. This tradition—like many—was interrupted in December 2020, and we were delighted to have Rousmaniere Hall filled once again with family and friends who, though masked, joined in a happy evening of song to commence the vacation and close the year 2021.
Live Music is Back!
" The Latonics took the Rousmaniere Hall stage on November 21, 2021, dazzling classmates with renditions of “Amie” by Pure Prairie League (solo by Brendan Reichard IV), and “Forget You” by CeeLo Green (solo by Ale Philippides I). And on the morning of December 2, 2021, live recitals returned to Rousmaniere after a 21-month hiatus. Before the stage had a chance to cool, RL instrumentalists quickly returned on January 28 for a second recital Hall. //
Junior Play: Chalk Is Cheap by Mike Pojman Friday and Saturday, May 6 and 7, at 7:30 p.m. in the Smith Theater
Instrumental Concert Friday, May 13, at 7:30 p.m.
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Winter Musical: Catch Me If You Can Friday and Saturday, February 25 and 26, 7:30 p.m. in the Smith Theater
Arts Calendar
Senior Concert Friday, April 22, at 7:30 p.m. in Rousmaniere Hall
Glee Club Concert with Winsor School Sunday, March 6, 6 p.m., at Winsor
A Cappella Fest Friday, April 1, at 7:30 p.m. in the Smith Theater
Production photos by Mike Pojman.
It’s Alive! Roxbury Latin Presents Frankenstein
26 Winter 2022
Roxbury Latin celebrated the full return to live theater as the fall’s Senior Play production of Frankenstein took the Smith Theater stage on November 19 and 20. Based on the 1818 novel by Mary Shelley, and adapted for the stage by Nick Dear in 2011, the production tells the story of Victor Frankenstein and his creation, but from The Creature’s perspective. Directed by Derek Nelson, the play featured Teddy Glaeser (I) as The Creature and David Sullivan (I) as Victor Frankenstein. //
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World Civilizations
“Trevor Noah’s upbringing as a mixed-race child in postApartheid South Africa; Scott Tong’s quest to uncover his family’s history in modern China; or Thaer Abdallah’s journey from war-torn Baghdad to Boston are all examples of that.” The History Department discontinued offering World Civilizations in 2013 when AP European History was introduced, and in recent years alumni have told Mr. Thomsen that World Civilizations had a real impact on the way in which they view the world.
Smith Visiting Scholar, Dr. Brian Purnell
Each year, Roxbury Latin faculty assess their curriculum and approach, determining where we, collectively, need more of this, or less of that. Occasionally that results in retiring some part of the program, but more often than not we are adding to the mix, eager that boys benefit from new thinking about content, skills, and their application as they move on from Roxbury Latin and out into the world. As a small school, we must be purposeful in limiting the various electives we offer, while also ensuring that our students benefit from a full range of offerings across the disciplines. (See page 29 for a list of electives offered over the last 20 years.) “Our responsibility in most cases is to whet boys’ appetites and hope that they will benefit from these foundational courses and go on in college and beyond to hone more rarefied passions and objectives,” Headmaster Kerry Brennan said. This school year benefitted from the addition of three History Department electives—two reimagined and one, thanks to our Smith Visiting Scholar, new this year. Learn what those teaching these compelling and important courses hope students will take away from their classroom experiences.
Three Electives, and Many Social,(Historical,Political)LensesbyERINE.BERG
World Civilizations, an elective offered in Class III, aims to broaden students’ empathy in two ways: First, it offers an introduction to a number of religions and philosophies from around the world—from Buddhism and Islam, to Native American spirituality and Taoism. It also focuses on the study of multi-generational families’ stories—featuring individuals who have lived through defining historical events in modern South Africa, China, Iraq, and Native North America. “When we get granular about how people actually live, the study of history becomes more relatable and observable,” says History Department Chair Stewart Thomsen who teaches the course.
Mr. Thomsen’s approach in teaching about these religions of the world is informed by Diane Moore of Harvard Divinity School—one of RL’s earliest Smith Visiting Scholars—who developed the Religious Literacy Project, which relies on three key tenets: 1) Religions are internally diverse; 2) Religions evolve and change over time; and 3) Religions are embedded in culture.
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The readings for the course include a diverse group of authors, including Native American, Chinese American, South African, and Palestinian. Each tells a multigenerational story of their families, so—with the region’s culture and history as a backdrop—students study the lived experience of people as they struggle to control their own destinies in these four different regions of the modern world. “For instance,” explains Mr. Thomsen, “if you want to understand Trevor Noah’s experience of being a mixedrace kid, growing up with a single mom in South Africa during the transitional period between Apartheid and postApartheid, you need to spend some time first surveying the history of Apartheid in South Africa broadly.”
Prior to WWI, no war had seen industry, science, technology, and the massive populations of Europe, its colonies, and the United States come together in such a disastrous conflict. In semester one, students explore the causes of the war on both sides of the Atlantic, its different fronts around the world, the role of race and gender (the war led to the largest single enfranchisement of Americans), and the aftermath that has shaped Europe, the United States, the modern Middle East, Africa, and Asia.
“World War I and II were called ‘world wars’ not because they were necessarily fought everywhere, but because they had a global reach,” says Tim Kelly, who teaches semester one of the Class I elective Global Conflicts. The course— which focuses on WWI in the first semester and WWII in the second—explores the causes, courses, and consequences of the major global conflicts of the 20th century.
“I worry sometimes about the pressures that today’s college students feel to graduate with a degree that will justify the cost of that education,” says Mr. Thomsen. “High school may be the last time many students will choose to study the history of different parts of the world, or be introduced meaningfully to different religions and philosophies.”
“College history courses tend to be one of three types,” says Mr. Thomsen. “One is an introductory/survey; the second is theme-based; and a third is more methodological. This course combines all three.” The study of ancient thought systems helps provide a context for some of the defining historical trends and events of modern history in the regions.
aspect of his own family history. They then, together, look for patterns—of action, or moral values—across the stories they’ve shared and perform corroborative research as well.
In the second semester, students examine the social, political, and economic ramifications of major conflicts in the middleand late-20th century, beginning with the rise of fascism in Italy, Japan, and Germany and the resulting catastrophes surrounding race-based ideologies of purity and cultural homogeneity. They then focus on the response of the United States as it became a key player and central architect of the post-war world. Topics of study include the internment of Japanese Americans, the impact of women in the workforce, the end to discrimination in the defense industry, and the ban on discrimination in the Armed Forces.
Global Conflicts
“If boys learn how to research family history well and learn about the family experiences of men, women, and children across generations in other parts of the world, the ability for them to communicate with their peers—many of whom have deep connections to these and other parts of the world—is going to result in more empathy and understanding, richer friendships, and more meaningful, productive connections with others.”
As part of the methodology for the course, Mr. Thomsen charges each student with researching and analyzing an
“Religions and philosophies are complex features of history; on the one hand they deal with life’s big questions and inform people’s sense of morality in positive ways, but they can also influence changing social systems and political ideologies and produce really damaging historical consequences.”
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AP
U.S. Government and Politics
Making Sense of the Modern Middle East Modern America Modern China Modern India Modern Middle East Music (Class III) Music and
Computer Science
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Spanish
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Advanced Music
Post-ColdPhysicsPhotographyFilm2AdvancedWarAmerican
Foreign Policy
Art
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Advanced Historical Research
French 4 AP Latin 5 AP Modern European History AP Music Theory
Race and Gender in American Society 4 Technology5 Art Mediterranean World in Antiquity in Engineering and the Bible
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American
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AP History
AP
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Advanced Art
The
Advanced Topics in Physics
Advanced Topics in Physics and Math America at War Military Experience Politics
Design Understanding
Advanced Art
American
American
Art 1 Applied Art 2 Computer Design Computer ContemporaryScienceGlobal Issues Current Events EconomicsEconomicsDrama of LawLatinLatinLatinLatinIntroductionHistoryGreekGreekGreekGlobalFromFrenchForeignEnvironmentalGlobalizationSciencePolicy5ColumbustoChavezConflicts123oftheCivilRightsMovementtoWatercolor456AmericanLives
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The syllabus for Dr. Purnell’s course is closely aligned with one he uses with his students at Bowdoin College, covering a range of material, events, and individuals: Martin Luther King, Jr., Lyndon Johnson, Malcolm X, and Rosa Parks, as well as obscure—but equally important— figures such as Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, Bayard Rustin, and Whitney Young. They study key Supreme Court decisions (Brown v. Board of Education and Regents of U. of California v. Bakke) and pieces of national legislation (Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965). Students not only learn about, but also debate, social movement tactics and strategies, as well as liberal, conservative, and moderate approaches to social change. “I've always wanted to teach high school students,” says Dr. Purnell, “who I’ve imagined might give themselves a bit more leeway to be free, to have more fun, and be interested in learning for the sake of learning. My hope is to build upon the rich, broad history education RL students receive from grades 7 through 12, and to contribute to developing lifelong enthusiasts for serious history.”
“I hope students walk away with a curiosity about why the world is as it is today,” says Mr. Heaton, “about how the events of a century ago are still shaping the world they live in, consciously or unconsciously. So much of that will be rooted in their interest and ability to explore stories and personal accounts from history—what was it like to be in that trench? To be a woman serving in the French Red Cross? To have survived the Holocaust? People often jump to the macro
view—maps, changes in maps, troop movements, bombs—but we explore the micro, personal, human stories of the times.”
Chris Heaton—who picks up with a semester on WWII where Mr. Kelly left off—explains, “Throughout the course students are reading or viewing something—often primary source documents—and discussing what they’re learning, not only relevant to the events and individuals themselves, but also to the connections they’re seeing across time and place. There’s such a rich trove of materials, and when they’re analyzing an account they’re not only looking at it from a historical lens, but also from a social lens, an economic lens, a diplomatic lens, a political lens, and a military lens.”
“That’s why an elective is good, because you can take your time,” Mr. Kelly agrees. “We did a whole unit on horses in World War I, for instance—how they were used, and how many died. There were eight million horses that died as a result of the war.”
History of the Civil Rights Movement
“It’s important to me to have the students look at the war through the many different people who were involved,” says Mr. Kelly, “whether that was the home front and the role women played, or the role of African Americans, or people in the colonies. We don’t just look at it from the standard perspective: Germany going after France and fighting in the trenches. There are many different areas around the world to look closely at, through many different lenses, and then analyze the impact the conflicts would have on them. Rather than straight military summaries, both wars feature massive social changes—from the Holocaust to desegregation to defense. WWI, for instance, resulted in the greatest increase in suffrage in United States history. It also resulted in the greatest social experiment in U.S. history with the passage of the Prohibition amendment.”
“The course title should be Stories from World War I and II, really,” says Chris, “and how they affected our world and the global conflicts of today.”
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The Civil Rights movement changed the meaning and nature of citizenship in the United States, and this year’s Smith Visiting Scholar, Dr. Brian Purnell, is exploring with Class I students how and why. In the elective History of the Civil Rights Movement, students learn how legislative and legal milestones ended legal segregation; how leaders and foot soldiers expanded notions of democracy; how debates and divisions exploded social upheavals; and how the nation changed as a result.
“This is primarily a 20th century course, exploring how the two major wars would create lasting effects,” says Mr. Kelly. “The primary question is: How are these things relevant to you today? We look at the conflicts in the Middle East over the past 20 years, the conflict between Ukraine and Russia today. We like to make it a contemporary history class, connecting back to two major events that shaped it—not just Europe and the United States, but also the world.”
The regret in structuring any elective course is that there’s always more exciting material than you can reasonably include. “I wish I was able to spend more time in this class on music, and how important music was to the movement,” says Dr. Purnell. “In this era of activism, music was so central to their cause and their lives. Nowadays we don’t see that within our politics—the centrality of music. It was just so important then—not just religious music, but popular music like Aretha Franklin’s ‘Respect,’ or Nina Simone’s, ‘Mississippi Goddam’ or Nina Simone’s ‘I Wish I Knew How,’ or anything by Nina Simone, really!”
Chris Heaton
Dr. Purnell also wants students to understand how difficult the struggle for civil rights was, and not necessarily in the ways that we assume. “People are often aware of the prejudice and violence that individuals faced, but I don’t think people have an understanding of just how long it took to bring about gains in civil rights. Moving the ball inches took generations.”
“When we finish the class (in about the late 1960s), I hope the students have a grasp of the gains, the advancements— in voting rights, in particular—and about how extraordinary they were—how the effects are undeniable in American life today.” //
Stewart Thomsen
An important takeaway for his students, says Dr. Purnell, is an understanding of the methods and strategies used by those fighting to advance civil rights. “For example, the legalism strategy—the Supreme Court strategy—was one that civil rights attorneys used to advance the important social issue of desegregating education. Community organizing is another strategy. I hope that, in identifying and understanding those methods, students will recognize them in the decades that followed the civil rights movement. And we’re also discussing social movement theory; we’re talking about biography and individual people’s lives, and about specific issues like education and employment, the law, political participation. And that ties back in with methods: the vote. There’s so much that we do about the importance of the vote.”
Newsletter of The Roxbury Latin School 31
32 Winter 2022
On November 4, Roxbury Latin celebrated its annual Founder’s Day, honoring the very beginning of the school, founded in 1645 under King Charles I by “the good apostle” John Eliot. In its 377th year, the school celebrated a long tradition of service, a commitment at the heart of Roxbury Latin’s mission since its founding. >>
The day began in Rousmaniere Hall with choruses of Commemoration Hymn, Jerusalem, and The Founder’s Song, as well as readings in Hebrew, Latin, Greek, and English from members of Class I. Headmaster Brennan reminded students, “Not many schools can celebrate a Founder’s Day, and no other school can remember a founding more historical—nor a founder more consequential in his time— than ours.… On Founder’s Day each year, in honor of Eliot, we focus on his works and on Roxbury Latin’s mission—how its tradition has withstood the test of time, and how we keep that mission alive today. On this Founder’s Day, we will focus in part on Boston and what it needs, as we all strive to contribute to a more healthy, productive, equitable city.” >>
Founder’s Day
Earning her bachelor’s degree in English at Barnard and both her master’s and doctorate in Japanese Literature at Columbia, she admits that a clear career path didn’t immediately materialize for her. After beginning a communication director job at Mass Bay Community College, however, her path of service became clear. For more than 25 years Dr. Eddinger has been a visionary leader in the community college movement, which educates 50 percent of the country’s undergraduate population. She urged boys to find their own meaningful paths of service, no matter how circuitous the journey, and to consider the paths less trodden.
>> Dr. Pam Eddinger, President of Bunker Hill Community College, gave the morning’s Hall address. Sharing her own story as an immigrant from Hong Kong, arriving in Miami, Florida, at age 11, she spoke with students about how she learned to balance the traditions of her Chinese heritage and the expectations of her parents with becoming an American and pursuing a path that was meaningful and purposeful for her.
Newsletter of The Roxbury Latin School 33 "
At the conclusion of Hall, all 312 boys, along with the faculty and staff, lined up in their RL finest for the traditional all-school photo. After donuts and a quick change of clothes, the entire school filed into the gymnasium for the day’s service activity: the building of 78 beds to be donated to children in need. This activity was in partnership with A Bed for Every Child, a program of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless. The organization works with public schools and community organizations throughout Massachusetts to provide access to free, new, twin beds for children in need. As Dr. Eddinger underscored that morning, breaking the cycle of poverty requires a good education, and you can’t get a good education without a place to sleep at night. In teams of four—older boys paired with younger— students built twin beds and affixed to them stars painted in Roxbury Latin’s school colors. >>
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On November 4, Roxbury Latin celebrated its annual Founder’s Day, and that evening, alumni and faculty got together for the school's annual Founder’s Day Pub Night in Boston. >>
Founder’s Day Pub Night
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What is the role of American diplomacy in the world today?
Professor of Practice of Diplomacy at Boston University Pardee School of Global Studies, after serving as a senior diplomat with experience on five continents, retiring with the rank of Minister Counselor
Eight alumni who have charted careers in the United States Foreign Service—from the Class of 1977 through the Class of 2014—reflect on their experiences of representing American ideals and American interests across the world.
The role of U.S. diplomacy is to advance the interests of the American people, and the genius of America’s engagement in
Mark Storella ’77
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the world has been our enlightened approach: identifying American security with the safety of our allies; American prosperity with our partners’ economic development; and American freedom with the health of democracy around the Americanworld.diplomats
The views expressed in the following reflections are the authors’ own, expressed in a personal capacity, and not necessarily reflective of those of the U.S. government or Department of State.
work to advance human rights globally while balancing U.S. interests, recognizing that we cannot always be consistent and that we ourselves continue to strive toward our Constitution’s goal of a more perfect union. How do American diplomats translate that into action on human rights? I would boil it down to three things: principles, process, and people.
In Zambia in 2011, where I was our ambassador, we called on the National Democratic Institute, the international arm of the Democratic Party, to provide technical advice on upcoming elections. However, it was the buy-in of respected local institutions that made the difference in upholding respect for Zambia’s
Process: An election alone does not produce democracy. Nations require many institutions and mechanisms for a healthy and resilient democracy: a free press, fair laws, independent courts, civil society, and the habits of conducting and respecting the outcome of elections. American diplomats energetically fight to promote all of these.
Mark Storella
’77
The product was a free and fair election in which Africa witnessed a peaceful, democratic transfer of power. I deeply admire former President Rupiah Banda for his staunch commitment. He emotionally conceded defeat and then attended the swearing in of his political rival. We can all learn from President Banda’s dignified example.
We shared American experiences with the Electoral Commission of Zambia on voter education and registration, ballot preparation, efficient and accurate vote tallying, and timely and reliable announcement of results. However, it was ECZ’s courageous leader, Justice Irene Mambilima, who made the process work. When the incumbent fell behind, Justice Mambilima stood firm against calls to stop counting the ballots.
I later learned that the African diplomat who stood up for principle had a niece named Eleanor, after Eleanor Roosevelt, the chairperson of the committee that drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. One lesson for me was that American advocacy for rights can reverberate across generations.
Principles: When the United States joined the UN Human Rights Council in 2009, I was Chargé d’Affaires at our Mission in Geneva where the Council is based. We understood that member states joined the Council to serve their national interests—many to defend freedom, but others to shield themselves from Council scrutiny for their own abysmal human rights practices.
Our team fought to maintain the integrity of human rights principles and call out offenders. This is a frustrating but worthwhile endeavor. Sometimes this work produces positive results that improve people’s lives; sometimes all you can do is mitigate erosion of rights; and sometimes you have to settle for shining a spotlight on what is wrong.
One of our first challenges was a vote on a human rights mechanism for Sudan during the conflict in Darfur where terrible human rights abuses were commonplace. African countries opposed country-specific resolutions, which they felt unfairly targeted their continent. We urged adoption of the resolution in formal speeches, meetings with regional groups, and quiet oneon-one talks. In the end, the motion carried by one vote, cast by an African state.
own democratic laws. We worked with local civil society— principally the three “mother churches” (Catholic, Episcopal, and Evangelical)—to support independent election monitoring. They made the difference.
Robert F. Hannan ’80
It is cool: I am a United States Foreign Service Officer. In my very
first assignment, I found myself in the middle of a central African highland rainforest. I was working in Rwanda, and I was peeking over the border into the country then known as Zaire to see the eruption of Mount Nyamuragira. We were about 12 miles from the volcano, but with binoculars we could see the lava exploding out of the cone, and we could feel—more than hear—the force of the eruptions. At that moment, I thought, “This is the very thing Phil Hansen’s World Civ class was preparing me for. It is so cool!”
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persecution around the world. During the Rohingya refugee crisis in 2017, when I served in the refugee bureau at the State Department, we mustered emergency financial support to provide 700,000 Rohingya shelter, food, and water. We jawboned other donor nations to match us. We visited refugee camps to hear refugees’ stories, and we continuously urged a hard-pressed Bangladesh government to keep its border open and not expel the refugees.
Director of Office of Consular and Management Liaison, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, U.S. Department of State, after serving as Embassy Minister Counselor in Paris, France, and Embassy Counselor Port-au-Prince, Haiti
And it has stayed cool since. In the last 34 years, I have done 14 assignments in seven countries on four continents (including the United States). I have been to Zanzibar, Casablanca, the Andes, Singapore, the Serengeti, Siberia, and the Sahara. I have heard the call to prayer in Marrakech, seen the glaciers on Kilimanjaro, been on the floor of U.S. Congress while it was in session, done puja in Mumbai, watched the Bastille Day parade on the Champs-Élysées, and visited Lenin’s Tomb in Red Square. Instead of learning that there is a whole world out there, I have seen it. I have learned how people in many distant lands are all the same and how they are completely and utterly different.
One might hope we could assure human rights through great single strokes like the fall of the Soviet Union thirty years ago. That experience makes clear that the fight for human rights is a permanent one, advanced through thousands of small steps. There will be setbacks, but the effort goes on. American diplomats work around the world every day—in marbled meeting halls, villages, fledgling parliaments, prisons, and refugee camps— always focused on supporting principles, democratic process, and ultimately—and most important—people. //
It is important: In my career, I have served under six presidents
Robert F. Hannan ’80
In diplomacy today, the current fashion is to start off with a BLUF—a “bottom line up front.” It is meant to give “up front” the most important information the reader needs to know. So, my BLUF: The Foreign Service is exactly the public service for which Roxbury Latin has been “fitting” its students for these past 377 years. It is cool; it is important; and it is a very RL thing to do.
We also helped manage the resettlement of a relatively small but significant number of refugees inside the United States, working with nongovernmental organizations, churches, synagogues, and mosques to find them homes, much as the State Department is doing now with Afghans who fled Taliban rule. While we have not yet begun to resettle large numbers of Rohingya refugees, by demonstrating the generosity of the American people, we built leverage to win others’ cooperation. And every person, every family protected, is a victory of us all.
Peter Martin ’85
A Foreign Service career is unpredictable. By no grand design on my part, I spent seven years at the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See (Vatican). I was involved with several historic events, including the visit of Presidents Bush (41), Clinton, and Bush (43) for the 2005 funeral of Pope John Paul II and the surreal 2017 meeting between Pope Francis and President Trump. However, the day-today work was the real education in the many regions and issues in which the Holy See and the United States have shared interests.
world, I have gotten to visit and support Americans in hospitals, asylums, jails, and even morgues, where they were facing dire situations. In the “foreigners” section of a Russian prison camp, the whole concept of government services became very real in a stark and immediate way for me, as I was the only link for this one American prisoner to his country.
It is very “RL”: John Eliot started this school a few centuries ago to “fit students for public service both in church and commonwealth.” I humbly contend that going out and representing the United States all over the world is as public service a career as anything an RL grad can do. It is precisely in the steps of the Apostle himself. He left his home to travel to a
While I spent most of my career in Europe and Canada, I worked on a wide variety of issues. In Warsaw, we helped prepare the ground for Poland’s entry into NATO and developed a U.S-Polish-Ukrainian democracy-building program, both to Russia’s displeasure. In Montreal, we worked with the Canadian government to eliminate border issues that were hampering the U.S.’s largest trade relationship. When I entered the Foreign Service, I never would have imagined that I would join UN peacekeeping forces on a pre-dawn raid to try to break up a human trafficking ring in Bosnia.
Peter Martin
’85
When I entered the Foreign Service, I planned to try it for a few years to see how I liked it. It was only after 23 years, 11 moves, a wedding, and the birth of three children that I finally left the Service in 2020. Diplomatic life was constantly stimulating; living overseas and speaking foreign languages was a daily dose of adrenaline; and international affairs work was food for the brain. What made it all meaningful was that I was serving my country. A challenge of the lifestyle—and one reason I am writing this in Boston and not Budapest—is the strain of uprooting oneself and one’s family every few years.
audiences to advance the United States’ national strategic goals.” Almost like teaching Latin.
I have also been struck by how far and deep the United States’ interests around the world run. I have helped coordinate aid from the American people to fight malaria in one country and HIV in another. The United States was doing this work because it was a good thing to do, but also because it bolstered these countries to be resilient against both radical recruitment and organized crime—results very important to the United States and directly related to its own security.
As this Newsletter feature shows, there are several Roxbury Latin alumni actively serving in the Foreign Service. And there really should be many more. John Eliot would be proud. //
Newsletter of The Roxbury Latin School 39
Special Assistant to the President at Boston College after more than 20 years of experience in the U.S. Department of State working as a team leader and policy advisor in Washington, DC, and in various foreign posts
Geoffrey Lewis Class of 1928
Charles Wiggin Class of 1934
Our alumni have a history of dedicating their lives to representing the United States around the world. In addition to those who shared their reflections, the following grads have served in the U.S. Foreign Service.
Tim Savage ’85
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Foreign Service Officer at U.S. Department of State, with more than a decade of experience working on security issues in Northeast Asia, including inter-regional relations, North Korean energy issues, and nonproliferation
Barrett Parker Class of 1927
Tim Savage ’85
For example, we connected Catholic religious orders with the U.S. military to deliver medical aid to Liberia during the Ebola crisis. We consulted with Vatican diplomats behind the scenes as they attempted to facilitate a settlement of the political crisis in Venezuela. With international human rights a concern at the State Department, we reported to Washington on the trials of the underground Catholic Church in China. During my second tour, the Vatican played a role in brokering talks to restore diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba.
I constantly drew on my Roxbury Latin education as a diplomat. I was surprised to enjoy some facility in the Polish language, which I know I owe to six years spent declining Latin nouns with Messrs. Randall, Davey, and Jack Brennan, programming my brain for another language with case endings. In Quebec, I tried to morph my French—well-formed for five years by Madame White, Monsieur Tally, and Monsieur Conn—into some semblance of a twangy Quebecois accent. Above all, I am grateful for the writing skills, analytical abilities, and the capacity to prioritize a heavy workload under pressure that I learned at RL.
I had to chuckle when I read the email. “Hello, I’m a newly arrived political officer at the Norwegian Embassy. I’m wondering if you could put me in touch with the person who covers energy, climate change, trade, internal politics, security, and Bangladesh.” Someone would have to explain to him that the “person” he was seeking was actually at least five different people in two separate sections, plus an entire section at a different embassy in another country.
Peter Chase Class of 1940
One of the first things you notice when you start working at U.S. Embassies overseas is the sheer size of the U.S. presence compared to that of other countries. Embassy New Delhi, where I’m currently posted, has nearly 1,000 American employees, representing not only the Department of State but also Defense, Homeland Security, Commerce, Agriculture, Energy, and a host of sub-cabinet agencies like the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Agency for International Development. While some may see this as bureaucratic bloat, it also reflects the breadth and depth of U.S. interests. Norway is a small country that has an outsized influence on international affairs due to its wealth and activism in promoting humanitarian causes, but the extent of its interests in a faraway country like India is limited. The United States, on the other hand, is a globe-spanning
James Conant Class of 1910
I crossed paths with my share of VIPs during my career, but I always told my children that the true measure of a diplomat—and his or her family—was how we were perceived by the people we met every day. From the Bangladeshi man selling flowers outside the embassy in Rome whom I came to know, to the Albanian interpreter I worked with in Kosovo, to the many neighbors and acquaintances from outside the embassy we knew in all our posts, we were, first and foremost, Americans. Every interaction was magnified as we stood for something greater than ourselves. This is a responsibility and a gift, and it is something we treasure from our years in the Foreign Service. //
Chadwick Braggiotti Class of 1931
Howard Tewksbury Class of 1914
superpower that needs to be widely and actively involved to protect the security and prosperity of its 330 million people.
Vladimir Cesar ’07
The American public’s weariness of “forever wars” has led to an understandable, and in many ways overdue, debate over the extent of U.S. involvement in international affairs. Too often, however, the discussion devolves into a false dichotomy between military intervention and isolation. But the current threats to the American way of life—climate change, pandemics, cyber
Vladimir Toumanoff Class of 1942
Richard Murphy Class of 1947
Newsletter of The Roxbury Latin School 41
James Shea Class of 1973
This is nowhere more obvious than in the multilateral sphere. At every multilateral meeting I have attended, the U.S. delegation dwarfed that of other countries. Having all those people allows our delegation to be present at every negotiation, making certain that our voice is heard when the rules of the game are written. While the process is often frustrating, and can sometimes devolve into mind-numbing wordsmithery, the alternative is to cede the ground to countries like Russia and China, whose interests are diametrically opposed to ours.
Case in point: I once worked in the State Department office that covers Interpol. Hollywood movies like to portray Interpol as an international police force that sends attractive agents on global manhunts to bring down international baddies. The reality, however, is more mundane. It is essentially a means for law enforcement agencies in different countries to share information on wanted criminals so they can be arrested when they attempt to cross international borders. Unfortunately, authoritarian governments often abuse the system by putting out “red notices” for the arrest of political dissidents—just ask Celtics center Enes Kanter Freedom. It didn’t help that the president of Interpol was a Chinese national, Meng Hongwei. Meng’s surprising arrest by the Chinese government on corruption charges created an opportunity to find a leader from a country that respects the rule of law, but instead the Russian candidate looked like a shoo-in to be elected. Two days before Thanksgiving, with the office nearly empty, the decision came down from above to conduct an all-out push in support of the South Korean candidate, who up to that point looked like an also-ran. I spent the day helping to coordinate a global outreach campaign in which nearly every U.S. Ambassador reached out to their host government to urge them to vote for the Korean candidate, resulting in a landslide victory for the dark horse candidate. Listening to an expert on the radio a couple of days later explaining the results, which he cited as many countries coming to a sudden realization of the negative impact of a Russian victory, I had to chuckle once again, as I knew what had brought on that realization.
Roger Sullivan Class of 1948
James Curley Class of 1949
Harold Bratt Class of 1949
David Brooks Arnold Class of 1954
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insecurity, rising authoritarianism, the erosion of democratic norms—lend themselves neither to military solutions nor to purely domestic approaches. If we’re not present when the future is made, we won’t be able to make the future we want. //
Ielection.amcurrently
a second-tour officer in U.S. Embassy Bogota, Colombia (another important ally for the U.S. in Latin America). I have been able to use my extensive consular knowledge to emerge as a leader at post. Since my arrival in November 2020, I have contributed to the consular unit’s efforts to reduce a significant backlog in immigrant visa cases stemming from the pandemic. As of December 2021, after a year of working in the embassy’s immigrant visa unit, I have rotated to American Citizen Services where I provide prompt, courteous, and efficient services to United States citizens and other clients, consistent with U.S. laws and regulations.
I joined the Foreign Service as a Consular Officer in April 2018, and since that time I have had the opportunity to serve in two posts in Western Hemisphere Affairs. For my first assignment, I served in U.S. Consulate General Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. I spent 16 months adjudicating immigrant visas in the world’s largest immigrant visa post and then an additional eight months working in the world’s largest fraud prevention unit as the deputy fraud prevention manager. I gained invaluable knowledge and insight about U.S.-Mexico relations from these experiences. My assignment coincided with the exodus of thousands of migrants who arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border from Central America, the construction of a border wall, and the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. All of these events not only impacted immigration into the U.S, but they were also at the heart of the political discourse in the U.S. in the months leading up to the 2020 presidential
Although rewarding, consular work can be emotionally taxing. I have learned to focus on my work-life balance and to enjoy the journey that I am on. At one point in my life, I was an eight-year-old immigrant from Cordoba, Argentina, on the other side of the interviewing window hoping for a better life in the United States. I now have the privilege to interview future legal permanent residents and citizens of the United States and help them pursue their dreams of living out
a consular officer, I have the opportunity to protect the U.S. border by applying immigration law on a daily basis. I have direct contact with individuals from the host country every day. Through these interactions and by providing excellent customer service, I am able to impact the way people in different countries perceive the United States. Lastly, I carry out work that not only affects national security, but also the lives of countless individuals. The rewards and fulfillment that I derive from the work come from the fact that I help people every day. Through my adjudications, I have reunited families in the U.S. and helped finalize the adoption process for American families adopting children abroad. Now, as an ACS officer, I help destitute Americans return home.
Vladimir Cesar ’07
Consular Officer at Embassy Bogotá, Colombia; formerly at British Consulate-General Boston, having earned a master’s in International Relations from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland
I view consular work as having the most direct impact in diplomatic relations between the U.S. and other countries. As
Nelson Tamayo ’11
Newsletter of The Roxbury Latin School 43
the American dream. I am extremely thankful and blessed to serve my country as a diplomat. I get to give back to a country that has given me so much and at the same time experience new cultures and establish meaningful relationships with people from all over the world. //
Foreign Service Officer at U.S. Department of State, serving as Vice Consul on Luanda, Angola, previously serving at the Consulate General of Canada in Boston and as a Fulbright Scholar in Coimbra, Portugal
Nelson Tamayo ’11
Since arriving, I’ve had the privilege of adjudicating more than 100 non-immigrant visa applications each week. That figure is, albeit, low by Department standards—especially when compared to the high-volume visa processing posts in China, Brazil, India, or Mexico—but it nevertheless allows me to indulge my curiosity. That is, I take a few extra moments for each applicant at my window, glean one more piece of
anecdotal data, and at the end of the day I try to link the chunks of information, like sections of a jigsaw puzzle, to try to see the bigger picture that is the society into which I was abruptly plunged.
At a time when facets of daily American life are tinged by the polarization of our politics—polarization rooted in the illiberal and authoritarian fervor of a few and fueled by rampant disinformation to the many—we must ask ourselves what story of America we wish to share with the world. The answer I find myself coming to time and again is the true story. We cannot shy away from the painful historical truths that we are a country built by the labor of enslaved people and founded on stolen land. We cannot disregard or excuse the insurrectionists who assaulted our Capitol and dared to end our Constitutional order. We must show the world that the story of America is hopeful, even at its darkest. By identifying and righting the wrongs of the past by building a just future, we come ever closer to realizing our noblest aspiration of forming a more perfect union.
The immigration officer at the airport, much like the geology student with a full-ride to LSU, the family of five whose visas I approved for a trip to Disney, the family of four whose visas I didn’t, and the docent at the National Anthropology Museum who’s been waiting four months for a paycheck yet insisted we grab a drink after I told him where I was from, all share one thing in common: the desire to travel, see, and experience America. It might sound obvious, but after two years of uncertainty and stress stemming from the COVID19 pandemic, domestic politics and a fraying international order, and an ever-worsening climate crisis, it is reassuring to know that for many in Angola and around the globe, the U.S. remains a city on a hill. This is in part due to the story that we—the U.S. government, businesses, civil society, and everyday Americans—have shared with the world.
It wasn’t until I found myself in line alone that my suspicion was confirmed: I was the only foreign diplomat aboard my flight to Luanda, Angola. It took the immigration officer several minutes to realize that there was someone in the “Diplomatic Passports” line, but when he did, he called me forward with a quick nod of the head. He opened instinctively to the biodata information in my black passport and flipped through the unmarked pages until he found my Angolan visa. Closing the book, and not quite reaching far enough forward to make it clear to me that he was returning it, his eyes lit up and he blurted out, “So, how does one get a visa to the U.S.?” Jetlagged from nearly 24 hours of travel, it took me a few seconds to realize that he was not, in fact, attempting to confirm my identity as a U.S. diplomat by quizzing me on the intricacies of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which I had spent the previous six weeks studying in the State Department’s “ConGen”—the congressionally-mandated course for all departing consular officers. I gave him the standard response I had been taught in training: “check travel. state.gov.” Convinced I had no more information to share, he begrudged me a stamp and slid me my passport before I proudly entered Angola as the newest Vice Consul of the United States of America.
With all the wisdom of an entry-level officer just two months into his first overseas assignment, I know this story—the one that is at times painful or scary but remains fundamentally inspirational, optimistic, and with an unwritten ending—is the story that allows us to project power, attract admiration, remain a beacon for others, and most importantly, remain true to ourselves. //
Ryan Dukeman ’13
Can concepts like institutional strength and national identity ever be perfectly measured in rows and columns? Can data automate away the need for hard-nosed personal diplomacy on the ground? Of course not. But by bringing data to bear on strategic planning, resource and policy decisions, and crisis management, we’re trying to move the needle in favor of readily available, actionable insights that put leaders and diplomats in the best position to succeed on generational struggles and immediate challenges alike.
One of my favorite aspects of this work is getting to focus on these enduring strategic challenges in an innovative way. My job did not exist five years ago, and there are no established “ways we’ve always done things” to fall back on. To that end, I’d encourage RL students to consider jobs in public service and foreign affairs even if they don’t see themselves as “government people.” We desperately need top-flight techies, innovators, data analysts, and STEM experts in government to help understand and respond to new or non-traditional foreign policy problems like artificial intelligence and emerging technologies, biosecurity, and climate. If you think “the government is broken,” then come help fix it! America’s role in the world can only be as good or as powerful as the capacity of our governing institutions allows, and we need your talents to help meet tomorrow’s biggest challenges. //
connected to a larger and literally life-saving purpose. As someone reminded me during the Afghanistan crisis, “They’re not just rows on a spreadsheet.” The adrenaline rush of working on urgent or high-profile issues helps sustain you during marathon-length sprints, but really the motivation is the deeper fulfillment that comes from knowing your work is connected to something bigger than yourself, and is in service of the American people’s interests and values.
Data Scientist in the U.S. Department of State, on leave from a PhD program in International Relations at Princeton University
44 Winter 2022
It would be an understatement to say this felt like being thrown into the deep end, but it speaks to why I so enjoy working in foreign affairs: All jobs have their ups and downs, but during the Afghanistan evacuation, even on the “low” days—when I spent all my time babysitting manual data-entry or just answering the phones in the Operations Center—it was unmistakably
Ryan Dukeman ’13
Since the immediate, acute crisis phase of Afghanistan ended, I’ve shifted to my primary job, leading a team of data scientists focused on U.S. strategic competition with the People’s Republic of China. In sloganeering and unclassified form, think Moneyball, but for US-PRC competition. Shifting from working on the urgent to the strategic has required a totally new mindset, from thinking in hours to thinking in decades. As the information environment has transformed from one of scarcity and secrecy to one of overabundance, this has required new ways of working as we think through complex foreign policy challenges: decision-makers are “drowning in information but thirsting for insight,” and part of my team’s work is to help bring structure, consistency, and assumptions-testing to deliberations that might rely excessively on intuition, heuristics, and biases.
I’ve worked in or adjacent to foreign policy my entire (brief!) career, but I started my current job as a foreign affairs data scientist in the State Department’s Center for Analytics on August 30, 2021—the day before the United States withdrew from Afghanistan. In my second day on the job, I was in the State Department’s Crisis Operations Center helping track the flow of Afghans and U.S. citizens to safe havens around the world, then going home to remotely work overnight shifts managing data for consular efforts to get U.S. citizens on planes out of the country.
I doubt I will ever do more motivating work.
Tenzin Thargay ’14
Growing up and sharing my Tibetan American experience with people, both foreign and domestic, naturally developed my interest in diplomacy. Each opportunity to recount my family’s immigration journey—from Tibet and India as displaced Tibetans, to the U.S. as citizens—grounds the American long-standing commitment to humanitarianism. My Tibetan Buddhist faith, gratitude to the U.S., and Roxbury Latin’s ethos of service and exposure to new cultures and languages naturally guided me to a career in government service and international affairs.
I joined the State Department as an economics track Foreign Service Officer in July 2021. I am currently in Vietnamese language training for my first diplomatic posting in Embassy Hanoi as a consular officer in June 2022. Intensive language training is a hallmark of foreign service work. Proficiency in the host country’s language, and study of the area’s culture, demonstrate respect and allow us to better engage with our counterparts. Living and working in Vietnam presents an opportunity to revisit and reflect on a site of failed U.S. foreign policy and consider the cost of war. It also presents an opportunity to reflect on how U.S.-Vietnam relations have improved remarkably and why Vietnam represents an important partner in the Asia Pacific region.
Newsletter of The Roxbury Latin School 45
Besides linguistic and cultural skills, tennis—my favorite sport— has been my trusty diplomacy tool. Sports serve as a universal language, allowing me to transition into local communities—and make friends there—faster. My time in Seoul, South Korea, as a Fulbright Scholar underscored the importance of cultural exchange; the power of people-to-people diplomacy; and the responsibility Americans carry for representing our country and values. In representing and explaining these values and decisions of U.S. foreign policy, it is also important to challenge ideas of what American representation has traditionally looked like.
The U.S. strives to be a more perfect union every day. As RL students contemplate the past, present, and future role of the U.S. in world affairs, they should also contemplate their own role in contributing to a more just, fair, and equitable society. I think back to my Class IV Western Civilization class and reading Plato’s Apology with the late Mr. Ward. His kind smile and slow exclamation of “Remember the gadfly” is enduring advice to muster the courage and ask the difficult questions. //
Foreign Service Officer at U.S. Department of State, having been a Fulbright Scholar in Seoul, Korea, earning a master’s in international affairs from Columbia, and graduating a Commonwealth Honors Scholar from UMass, Amherst
senior leadership roles. I was fortunate to receive a Department Rangel Fellowship in 2019, which provided two years of intense preparation to complete graduate studies, internships with the Department, and ultimately become a foreign service officer. The fellowship was established to recruit and retain minorities so our diplomatic presence overseas more accurately represents our diversity at home. I now serve on the Board of the Asian American Foreign Affairs Association, which is the Department’s employee affinity group for Asian American and Pacific Islanders. Advocating for my community, showing allyship, and collaborating with other Department affinity groups has shown me the importance of building coalitions and empowering underrepresented employees. However, advocating for change in institutions where culture is risk-averse naturally slows progress. Thus, culture must change to realize true and lasting advancement.
Tenzin Thargay ’14
Like Roxbury Latin, the State Department is a prestigious institution with a long history. And yet both have much work to do on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. The American experience of historically underrepresented groups is not a monolith, and it represents one of the U.S.’s greatest soft power assets. The State Department recognizes that our diplomatic corps lacks sufficient representation of minorities, especially in
Roxbury Latin kicks off the annual fund
“Paying it forward secures promise, hope, and in some real ways, the future—our future.”
46 Winter 2022
On October 14 more than 300 Roxbury Latin alumni and faculty, parents and friends gathered in the Gordon Fieldhouse—enjoying good food and fellowship; express ing and receiving gratitude for a previously successful fundraising year; and hoping, together, that we could again achieve another record year in fundraising on behalf of the students, faculty, and staff of Roxbury Latin. Mo Randall, member of the faculty since 1976, and José Flores of Class I shared their stories that evening—examples of the transformative education and relationships that Roxbury Latin engenders and inspires, and that your gifts help to preserve. Below are excerpts from their remarks, as well as Headmaster Kerry Brennan’s closing appeal and words of gratitude.
and as a member of a community) needed to be restored. By my count, then, we are only a few months into this long-term recovery, and I have seen my colleagues face some Herculean challenges, acquitting themselves well with patience, resolve, caring, and love (yes, love, even when the boy in question wasn’t very likable)... Keep in mind that up to a third of the current school population has never had a full year of RL. The faculty has had therefore to double down on building up our institutional identity—how we act here, how we support one another, how to know (and practice!) our core values, what it means to be an RL boy, and so on. As you think about your efforts on behalf of the school, think about the challenges, and think about the good people here who are caring for your sons—not as a faculty, but as individuals, different as they are by interests and background, but strongly connected in caring about and for your sons.
English and Classics Departments
Although I could fill my time here with story after story, the real purpose tonight is the here and now, and how our future efforts will support—and even enable—the “present tense” of this school year to reach its potential, to fulfill its destiny. As much as I am a defender of institutional memory, and as much as I am aware of how much the teaching and learning here stands on the shoulders of giants—Jack Brennan, Dave Rea, Steve Ward, Tony Jarvis, and my mentor and spirit guide, Joe Kerner, we are a present tense operation: We needed to be good today, and we need to be that much better tomorrow.
I was born in Guatemala City, and raised in Remar-Ciudad de Los Niños, an orphanage for children who are socially excluded or abandoned by their parents. During the three and a half years that I spent there, there was no one I could call mother or father. The only adults in my life were the very limited staff at the orphanage. I never received the one-on-one attention that many kids experience as babies. It was not until I was almost
José Flores Class I
Closing remarks here almost religiously have the speaker saying something such as: “Giving to RL is a great cause. It is a labor of love, so give until it hurts.” But that’s all wrong. Tonight, as we gather ourselves as individuals and team up with others to launch this campaign, the mantra can’t be anything about a “labor” at all. That word—as very many of you in the room know—means “work” or worse yet “suffering,” and I want to make clear that none of this is about or connected to suffering, simply because there is too much joy and hope and promise and aspiration attached to the endeavor. And I especially want to underscore that giving until it hurts is also all so wrong. You need to give—and to help others give—because to do so does good, because it feels good, and because it simply is good. Give—and help others to give—because your efforts are consequential, because those efforts help others, and because paying it forward secures promise, hope, and in some real ways, the future—our future. //
Mo Randall
In the face of the endless challenges of COVID, many boys scuffled and more than a few struggled. In case after case, the advisor stubbornly, and sometimes against all odds, stayed the course: counseling, advocating, comforting, triaging, caring. Moving the lens to this year, it has definitely been more of the same, continuing that same high level of pastoral care. We are up and operational; the start has been good; people are loving the vitality and energy of being back in the building, and so on, but we are not fully better. Half a year ago, I was part of an educational panel and my answer, when asked about the long-term effects of the pandemic on schools and school children, was that I thought adults would be mostly better within two years, because we had so much more life experience. For school children, though, my prediction was that it would be three to five years, the harsh reality being that academic skills needed to be rebuilt, personal connections needed to be re-established, and identity (personally
Newsletter of The Roxbury Latin School 47
To that end, I want to take a moment to share some thoughts about a key constituency here, the faculty. Of course, as soon as I use the collective noun, I lose my point: The faculty is not a demographic. It is, instead, this amazing collection of caring and giving individuals who make the place what it is. It goes without saying, my colleagues are bright and committed to their respective disciplines and activities, but the real value of what they bring comes in terms of pastoral care. Being a good advisor has always been really important here, a distinguishing marker of who and what we are. But these last many months have presented us with unprecedented challenges, and I am immensely proud of my peers because they have consistently and impressively always put the welfare of the boys first.
Through the friends and connections I’ve made at RL, I discovered Agencia ALPHA, a non-profit founded by two inspiring women, Patrica Sobalvarro and Damaris Velasquez, committed to
immigration reform and supporting immigrant communities. Last spring I participated in their three-month youth internship and became an assistant coordinator of the summer’s Dreamers Leadership Program, which consisted of 30 high school and college scholars. I helped organize vaccine clinics and arranged events like picnics, field days, and movie nights for the program. Last school year I led a fundraiser collecting money for hurricane relief for Central American countries. I partnered with Winsor, Dana Hall, and Newton Country Day to raise more than $5,000 in just three weeks. The skills I developed at RL by listening to the many guestspeakers during Halls, and by the constant encouragement from [my advisor] Mr. Brennan, helped me arrange these events and provided memorable experiences for me and my community.
48 Winter 2022
Since arriving at RL, I have become more confident, organized, honest, empathetic, and intelligent. My biggest takeaway, however, is my responsibility as a leader in a life of service. “From those to whom much has been given, much will be expected” has been ingrained into every boy’s mind. I’m so fortunate to be where I am now. So many other kids like me struggle every day. I’ve learned that no one is too young to give back to his community, and RL’s service opportunities allowed me to do just that. From cleaning up Eliot Burial Ground, to assisting kids at St. Theresa’s, to feeding homeless people at Haley House Soup Kitchen, each service event was a valuable experience.
I would like to thank the entire Roxbury Latin community for everything it has done for me and my family. This place has really become my second home. RL took a chance on me, and I did the
My greatest achievement thus far was getting into Roxbury Latin. Arriving here my biggest fear was not what sport or clubs I would be good at, or how rigorous classes were going to be, but rather how I would fit in at such a prestigious school. I knew no one, and for the first time in a long time, I felt alone. However, the people I met during my first days quickly helped me to conquer my fears. I remember greeting my big brother Chris Jimenez at the circle and sharing with him my summer adventures. He accompanied me to the Farnham Room where Mr. Thomsen, with his infectious smile, greeted me and offered a firm handshake. I remember the allschool handshake, which became one of my favorite RL traditions… Given what we have shared together ever since those early days, I know the friends I’ve made here will be my friends for life.
four that I first met my adoptive mother. On very short notice, she packed her bags and flew to Guatemala in search of a child she could call her own… I remember being so overcome with emotion when I met her and said goodbye to all the people with whom I grew up. We spent a few days at a local hotel before flying to the United States where, in Boston, I became a member of a family that shared important parts of my immigrant and Latino identity. My mother is Puerto Rican and originally from the U.S. Virgin Islands, and my dad is from El Salvador. My journey to citizenship was a long one; it took years and included re-adoption on U.S. soil.
3. 4. 2022
“I’m so fortunate to be where I am now. So many other kids like me struggle every day. I’ve learned that no one is too young to give back to his community, and RL’s service opportunities allowed me to do just that... each service event was a valuable experience.”
by working in close concert with RL’s mission, its governors, its parents, its faculty and staff, and its boys. The reality is that however much that many of us who work at RL offer up, whatever gifts we have to give—whatever time and talent we have to give— we are made better by what it gives back to us. No institution in and of itself can be credited with that kind of agency, however, the people—the boys and the faculty and staff—breathe it in and breathe it out day by day, offering a synergy and an expectation that results in a magical experience—inclusive, empowering, challenging, loving. While several of us in this room are on the front lines of this proposition every day, all of you here tonight share in the responsibility for making the RL dream a reality. And you have given lavishly of your treasure in order that we all can do the work that we do—changing lives for the better. But you give another yet more important thing as well: trust, faith, confidence in us, and belief in a covenant that suggests that each of us will do his or her part in order to realize in this place a living city, a cauldron of ideas and striving and promise. Together you and we agree to do our best on behalf of a dream brought to life.
Thanks to the greatest gift you gave us—your trust, support, and prayers—we persevered and we emerged stronger, more resilient, more creative than we ever had been before. Just for good measure, you complemented your kind words and cooperation with gifts the
50 Winter 2022 same. I couldn’t have asked for a more loving, supportive, fun, and challenging school. Were it not for RL’s commitment to generous financial aid, none of what I’ve described would have been possible. I plan to hold on to everything I learned from this magical place and be inspired in my future endeavors, like countless students have been before me. //
Kerry Brennan Headmaster
I would argue that at no time in our beloved, ancient school’s history have we been tested in quite the same way we were beginning on March 11, 2020. That was the day on which the school was gathered in the theater for a raucous, fun Hall in which our legions of robotics participants demonstrated the remarkable robots they had produced ready to launch contests and in battles with one another. At the end of that Hall, I dismissed the troops one day early for spring break, on the brink of a pandemic the contours and challenges of which we then would have no idea. For nearly 18 months we did our best to keep our school safe and healthy and also to advance our program and mission responsibly and boldly. That challenging period was framed by that March 2020 Hall and the Opening of Term Hall on August 30, 2021, during which the school again was gathered—boys with bright eyes and shining faces together once more at long last to celebrate our unity and our common pursuit of that which is true and beautiful and good—the RL formula for encountering the world and eventually improving it. “May the lustre of thy glory, through thy children ever brighter grow.”
From José and Mo you have heard perspectives on what makes Roxbury Latin distinctive. In each of their cases a life has been positively changed as a result of affiliation with this school. In regard to the powerful, catalytic impact this school can have on an individual, his fate, and the difference he is allowed to make, I am no different. For I have been importantly challenged and affirmed
And so we shall again. Reminding us of our distinctive model and the need for each of us to do his or her part, I beseech you to continue to believe in us, to celebrate the association with excellence and admirable striving that we share, and to remember us with good and generous hearts. In advance and always, we thank you. //
Annual Fund Update
Call for Trustee Nominations
The Committee on Trustees is seeking recommendations from any member of the Roxbury Latin community for trustee candidates to serve a sixyear term on the Board of Trustees. Please forward such recommendations by March 8 to the Committee on Trustees at nominations@roxburylatin.org
The 2021–2022 Annual Fund is making great progress toward achieving its goal of $4,000,000 thanks to the generosity of our alumni, parents, and friends. We have already received gifts and pledges totaling $3,368,615. We are 84 percent of the way there, but we still need your
to all who have already made a commitment to the 2021–2022 Annual Fund. If you have not yet contributed, please consider supporting Roxbury Latin. Every gift helps RL maintain tuition that averages $17,500 less than that of other local independent schools. Every gift helps bridge the $26,734 gap between the cost of tuition and the actual cost of an RL education. Every gift supports the admission and enrollment of qualified boys, regardless of their family’s ability to pay, and every gift helps retain and attract a faculty that is second to none.
likes of which the school had never seen. In a year in which we worried about balancing the books and providing everything that was needed for us to thrive, you again said “yes” to RL’s request for help, for affirmation, for continuity, for community. In doing so, you acknowledged this community of which you are an essential part and said if we are all going to sacrifice in some important, material way, I’m in. You can count on me. And so we did.
Thankhelp!you
Gifts, large and small, from each and every donor, make a tremendous difference to the talented young men who study here. Please join your classmates, fellow parents, and friends by making a gift today. //
“However much that many of us who work at RL offer up, whatever gifts we have to give—whatever time and talent we have to give—we are made better by what it gives back to us.”
Young SocialProfessionals
52 Winter 2022 "
On November 26, alumni from the Classes of 2008 through 2017 who were home for the Thanksgiving weekend reconnected at Coppersmith in South Boston. >>
Newsletter of The Roxbury Latin School 53 reunion 2 02 2 friday & saturday, may 13–14 Save the Date 2s and 7s .
Quincy Carroll has published a new book titled Unwelcome, “an anticoming-of-age story, set between the U.S. and China, that examines themes of escapism and toxic masculinity.” Quincy’s debut novel, Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside, was published in 2017. After graduating from Yale, he spent several years abroad before returning home to Boston to pursue an MFA in fiction. He is a former Artist in Residence at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai and currently lives in Oakland, California.
2000
2 John Cole and Danny Danforth ’67 enjoyed a visit with former RLS master Warden Dilworth at his home in Scarborough, Maine, in early October. John captured this photo of Dan and Warden.
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1964
6 Dedric Polite and his wife, Krystal, are featured in a new television series, 50/50 Flip, which premiered on the A&E Network on January 29. Throughout the series Krystal and Dedric will be showcasing the importance of not only flipping properties but buying cash-flowing rentals. Dedric writes, “Building a rental portfolio is a key component of our wealth-building strategy, designed to leave a legacy for our children, and we’re extremely excited to share our journey with the 2003world.”
54 Winter 2022
Carl Roberts shared that alumni may be interested to learn of the passing of Eleonore von Trapp Campbell, of The Sound of Music family, and wife of late RLS master Hugh Campbell.
1 John Kerrick, Tracey Zellmann, and Bruce Ferguson , along with their wives Winnie, Susan, and Sue, gathered early this year for an afternoon of good food, camaraderie, and reminiscing about old times.
We apologize that Paul Kirshen was recorded erroneously as a member of the Class of 1964 in the Fall 2021 Newsletter issue.
3 Michael Price and his classmates enjoyed their 45th consecutive Thanksgiving Eve Gathering this fall. Twelve attendees—about one third of the class—enjoyed the night out together. Michael exclaims, “Roxbury Latin for life!”
year and works to emphasize the importance of service in the lives of Harvard graduates. Through his consultancy (Innermotivation.org) he has begun screening applicants for The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Scholarships, working to “help outstanding minority students who come from low-income backgrounds realize their full potential.”
Class Notes
5 Christopher Chin co-founded Galora—an app designed to help users find local homegrown and homemade food—with partner Ryan Xavier last year. They were featured in the Los Angeles Times last April.
William J. O'Reilly continues to write novels in a genre he describes as “Neo-Jungian, abstract-expressionist, philosophical fiction,” six in all since the release of the first, The Fiction of Forgiveness, in September 2020. Three of his books recently ranked #1 and #2 bestsellers in their respective categories on Amazon (Sports Books, Jungian and Transpersonal Psychology). His committee work at Harvard’s Center for Public Interest Careers is now in its sixteenth
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1988
4 Matt Axelrod was recently sworn in as Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement at the United States Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security. There he will work alongside special agents and analysts to protect and promote U.S. national security and foreign policy objectives by stopping exports of sensitive goods and technologies that might otherwise be put to use
in malign purpose, like terrorism or human rights abuses.
Christopher Carolan participated in the 2021 Shakespearean Authorship Trust conference on November 13 and 14. He presented his original research on a Middle English source for Shakespeare’s St. Crispin’s Day speech, and his presentation was followed by a performance of the St. Crispin’s Day speech by Sir Mark 1977Rylance.
1966
Newsletter of The Roxbury Latin School 55 2 3 4 5 6
is engaged to an Egyptologist from New 2008Zealand.
2020
7 Sean Spellman and his wife, Anna (Frausini), welcomed Maeve Teresa Spellman to the world on December 26, 2021. Everyone is doing well, and Sean reports that Maeve (pictured here with her roommate, Maisel) is already excited to meet everyone on campus.
Michael Zellmann-Rohrer
8 Bassil Bacare was recently named a 2022 Fellow of the New Leaders Council, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. that “recruits proximate leaders who have the expertise, experience, and resilience to implement change, and provides the skills and network for them to make progress real.” Bassil graduated from Trinity College with a B.S. in neuroscience and a minor in philosophy, and he created a nonprofit called The Healing Project. As the founder, Bassil recruited philanthropists, medical students, and physicians to build this organization, which has over 20 members throughout the east coast.
Jeff Kirchick’s book Authentic Selling: How to Use the Principles of Sales in Everyday Life was winner of the Independent Press Award, runner up in the National Indie Excellence Awards, Distinguished Favorite in the NYC Big Book Awards, and finalist in the Best Book Awards. “I am planning to publish my second book, How Boys Learn, next year. It is a collection of short stories, the last of which is about Roxbury Latin,” says Jeff.
9 Tenzin Dawa Thargay, Nelson Tamayo ’11, and Robert “RF” Hannan ’80—all members of the U.S. Foreign Service—met for dinner in Washington, D.C. this fall. All three contributed to the collection of firsthand accounts and reflections by alumni, about a career with the U.S. Department of State, found on page 36.
9 10 7 8
56 Winter 2022
2014
“perhaps the best writer in dactylic hexameter since Vergil himself!” claims faculty member Tom Walsh ’79 —is living in Berlin, Germany. He is an author, researcher, and historian studying talismans and other ancient texts to reveal how magic shaped ancient thought. He holds multiple research positions— Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany; associate researcher, Faculty of Classics; and researcher, Lexicon of Greek Personal Names at University of Oxford, United Kingdom. He has launched the website MagicalThinking.Info. Michael
10 John Harrington had his first crossword puzzle published on December 13, 2021, in the Los Angeles Times. John worked on this puzzle in May 2020, during his Independent Senior Project, which was on crossword construction. You can solve the puzzle online at latimes. com/games/daily-crossword. //
2006
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On the morning of January 19, legendary and long-time faculty member Steve Ward died—peacefully, and at home— after a long illness. Beginning when he was hired in 1976, Steve had a significant impact on the lives of countless Roxbury Latin boys. When Steve retired in 2014, he was appropriately celebrated for his distinctive and effective style as a teacher of history, highly successful varsity wrestling coach, lighthearted coach of junior varsity baseball, devoted advisor, and fair-minded Dean of Students.
Over nearly four decades, Mr. Ward—like the bards of old— found stories to be the best way to teach any important ideas or values. An inveterate storyteller, and a master weaver of seemingly disparate references (often involving baseball or Yogi Berra!), Mr. Ward made his classes meaningful and memorable. While the usual business of history was attended to, his courses were never about names, places, and dates, but the forces that shaped the events, and the patterns of institutions, governments, and people that were evident time
and time again. Mr. Ward’s classes were popular for all the right reasons: they engaged the learner, gave him a chance to experience historical concepts first hand, and expected him to go away with lessons that would inform his life. In his years at RL, Mr. Ward taught U.S. History, Western Civ, and wonderfully wrought electives on America at War and Contemporary America. Mr. Ward’s students, like his athletes, always felt he was rooting for them, giving them the benefit of the doubt, helping to find some reasonableness and even humor in what others might construe as a serious, even dire situation.
Remembering Steve Ward
In Memoriam
For thirteen years, Mr. Ward served as Dean of Students. Outside the classroom, however, Mr. Ward’s most famous contributions to the life of the school were as a coach. He worked effectively as junior varsity baseball coach, as assistant coach for the varsity baseball team, and for many years as a football coach. Most famously, however, Mr. Ward was for 36 years the head coach of the varsity wrestling team. The
Beloved Teacher, Coach, and Friend
At Roxbury Latin, Rick was a strong student, excelling in history, Latin, Greek, and French. He participated athletically both in soccer and track and field. Rick also acted in the school play, served on the student council, and was editor of the Tripod. In his college letter, Headmaster Weed described Rick as “a very able boy… he is intellectually curious, and not afraid to work. His range of interests is wide.”
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year at the National Prep Wrestling Tournament to one individual from the over 200 schools represented). This followed on the heels of Mr. Ward’s 2009 induction into the Massachusetts chapter of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. In recognition of the esteem in which Coach Ward was held by his brothers in the ISL, they commissioned a special plaque in his honor. Anyone who wrestled for Mr. Ward knows that that privilege was simply a continuation of the classroom in which each boy was treated with respect and affection. A remarkable motivator, Mr. Ward was impressively able to make what is by nature an individual sport a team sport. The loyalty he engendered among his wrestlers one for another was a logical extension of the values and attitudes that he, himself, modeled.
statistics only begin to tell the tale, but they are remarkable. He was the second winningest coach among the New England Independent School Wrestling Association coaches with 393 career victories. In one 12-year span, RL went 132-7-1—that’s a 94.2 winning percentage. Along the way his teams won twelve Graves-Kelsey Tournaments and ten ISL titles. His colleagues in the sport recognized him in two prominent ways by naming him the recipient of the coveted Neil Buckley Service Award in 2011 (presented each
Rick matriculated at Harvard College, where he earned his AB in Government in 1961. He then served in state government for nearly three decades. Rick first worked for the Governor’s Office from 1964 through 1974. Subsequently, he worked as one of five members of the Civil Service Commission until his retirement in 1994. In retirement, Rick remained a member of the Board of
Steve will be greatly missed by many. The Roxbury Latin community offers its condolences to his wife, Pat Rogers; his daughter, Barrett; granddaughter, Ophelia; his brothers and other relatives. Steve will be celebrated in a memorial service to be held at the school in the spring. Please keep all the Wards in your thoughts and prayers. //
As Headmaster Kerry Brennan read at Steve’s retirement in 2014, “Schools are better for the characters who populate them; faculties are built on the likes of Mr. Ward. For all that you have meant in some way to each one of us, and especially for your virtually unrivaled service to the school (only ten masters in the history of Roxbury Latin have offered longer service!), we say, ‘Well done, oh good and faithful servant. Thank you and Godspeed.’”
Richard H. Linden ’57 of Sherborn, Massachusetts, died January 17, 2022, at the age of 82. He was born December 4, 1939, the son of Edith and Milton Linden. Rick grew up in Chestnut Hill and attended the Edith C. Baker School in Brookline prior to gaining admission to Roxbury Latin.
Larry matriculated at McGill University, where he earned his BA in 1963. He then attended the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences Medical School at McGill, where he earned his MD, CM in 1967. In 1968, Larry was drafted as a
of our leading students, and our leading citizen. He has been the President of the Student Council (the school’s highest position), and a very good one, concerned with all problems and wholly forgetful of himself. He was the soccer captain, on the wrestling team, [and participated in] Glee Club and debating team. He is an attentive, modest boy from a fine family.” Tom was awarded the Henry W. Cunningham Award for his “high character and scholarship.” In the Yearbook, Tom’s classmates lauded Tom, noting that “the respect he commands in the class is obvious.”
Lawrence F. Wasser ’59 of New York City died of complications related to Parkinson’s disease on May 1, 2020, at the age of 78. Born June 2, 1941, to Golden and Louis Wasser, Larry grew up in Brookline and attended the John D. Runkle School prior to gaining admission to Roxbury Latin.
Tom is survived by his wife, Tauni Sauvage, to whom he was married for 42 years, his children Russell, Paris, and Jackson, and their families, as well as his sister, Harriet Robinson, his brother, David Latham ’57, and extended family.
Thomas W. Latham ’60 of Berkeley, California, died peacefully after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease, on October 27, 2021, surrounded by his family. He was 78. Born January 18, 1943, Tom was the son of Allen Latham, Jr., and stepson of Charlotte (Stone). Prior to gaining admission to Roxbury Latin, he attended the Joseph P. Manning School in his native Jamaica Plain. Tom’s older brothers, the late Nick Latham ’54 and David Latham ’57 also attended Roxbury Latin.
Tom matriculated at the California Institute of Technology, where he earned his BS in 1964. He then earned his MS at MIT in 1966, his master’s from the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton in 1968, and his JD from Georgetown’s School of Law in 1973. Upon graduation from Georgetown, Tom moved to San Francisco and began his legal career with a small law firm that became Evans, Latham and Campisi. Tom excelled as a litigator and mediator, expanding both the firm’s mediation practice and organizing a voluntary mediation panel for the Probate Department of the San Francisco Superior Court. Tom was also one of the editors and writers of trust and probate publications developed by the Cwontinuing Education of the Bar. For many years during the 1980s, Tom hosted Roxbury Latin alumni gatherings in San Francisco.
Larry is survived by his beloved wife Sara Weiss, his children Samantha, Rachel, Louis, and Jason, and their families.
In his college letter, Headmaster Weed wrote of Tom, “This boy has been one
Rick is survived by his wife of 56 years, Leilani (Marsh), his son, Ian, his daughter, Aline, and their families.
Directors of the Commonwealth Child Care Corporation, which he helped found, and served as an elected member of Sherborn’s School Committee.
At Roxbury Latin, Larry played baseball and tennis. He also managed the football team. He participated in Chess Club, Photography Club, Stage Crew, and as a member of the Business Staff for the Tripod.
commissioned officer in the U.S. Army. He became a decorated Vietnam War veteran. He subsequently practiced emergency medicine for a number of years before embarking on his own venture. Larry founded and served as chief of Heartland Medical, Staten Island urgent care centers, which provided care for tens of thousands of patients from 1983 to 2014.
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Jonathan matriculated at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned his BA in East Asian studies and history in 1969. He then earned his master’s at the University of Pennsylvania in 1970, and his PhD in 1973. He worked as a professor of East Asian Studies at the University of West Georgia from 1981 until 2013, and as a research associate of Harvard University's Fairbanks
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Center for Chinese Studies since 1985. He wrote and edited voluminously including the two-volume The Jews of China; Jewish Identities in East and Southeast Asia; China and Israel (1948-1998); as well as numerous articles and several additional books on American trade with China and the East. His papers, which include a great deal of Jewish-related material, are deposited at West Georgia University. Jonathan is survived by his friends, colleagues, and many students.
by his wife of 50 years, Karen, whom he adored, and his sons, Matthew, Peter, and Marc, and their families. He is also survived by his brothers, Peter ’67 and Marc, and his sisters, Kathy Grossman, Judy Millener, and Laurie McBride, as well as many nieces and nephews. //
Jonathan Goldstein ’64 of Brookline, Massachusetts—formerly of Carrollton, Georgia—died on January 3, 2022.
Jonathan was born in Boston on March 24, 1947, the son of Miriam (Sargon) and David Goldstein.
Geoffrey W. Conrad ’65 died at home on December 20, 2021, in Bloomington, Indiana, after a brief illness and just shy of his 74th birthday. He was born December 24, 1947, the son of Ruth and Albert Conrad Jr. Prior to gaining admission to Roxbury Latin, Geoff attended the Islington School in his native Westwood. Geoff’s younger brother Peter also attended Roxbury Latin and graduated in 1967.
At Roxbury Latin, Jonathan was a strong student of mathematics, and he was known for his political activism. The staff noted that his “talents as an artist won him many an honor and much praise from his contemporaries.” Jonathan played football and lacrosse, and wrestled. He was also class treasurer for all six years. He participated in debate and was editor of the school’s yearbook, Odyssey. He was “one of the few who [had] been able to remain on the honor roll constantly, and was also a National Merit finalist.”
As a student at RL, Geoff was broadly involved in extracurricular life. He played lacrosse and football, and wrestled. He also debated, served as class treasurer, and worked on the play. Headmaster Weed
wrote in his college letter that Geoff was “an excellent citizen with a fine mind, and great courage—well regarded by all.” Geoff earned high marks in all of his classes, particularly excelling in Latin and Greek, for which he won the Greek Detur his junior year. Geoff served as valedictorian at graduation. In the Yearbook, his classmates noted, “Throughout the years Geoff has made himself one of the most valued members of our class… his self discipline and clever wit will take him to the top of his Geoffprofession.”matriculated at Harvard College, where he earned his AB in anthropology in 1969. He earned his PhD in anthropology from Harvard in 1974. He worked as a professor of archaeology at Harvard until 1983, when he was hired by Indiana University, Bloomington, as a professor of archaeology and the director of the Mathers Museum of World Cultures (now the IU Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology). In the 1990s he switched his focus to the Taíno culture of the Caribbean in the Dominican Republic, studying the Taíno chiefdoms encountered by Columbus and other early Spanish explorers of the Caribbean. He also served in multiple administrative roles for IU, including serving as the chair of the anthropology department and working in the Office of the Vice Provost for GeoffResearch.issurvived
Winter Varsity Teams
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Varsity Wrestling — First Row: Noah Abdur Rahim, Logan McLaughlin, Benji Macharia, Declan Bligh, Auden Duda, Navid Hodjat, Calvin Reid, Nick Consigli, Justin Muchnick (Coach); Second Row: Edgar Torres, Arjun Bose, Tucker Rose, Caleb Ganthier, Isaac Frehywot, Timmy Ryan, Justin Lim, Darian Estrada, Joseph Wang, Thomas Silva (Manager); Third Row: Paul Sugg (Coach), Dovany Estimphile, Aydin Hodjat, Ayan Shekar, Thomas Savage, Justin Shaw, Will Hutter, George Humphrey, James De Vito, Lucas Vander Elst, Ian Herrera, Matteo Santagata, Akhilsai Damera, Robbie Sun-Friedman, Jack Parker (Coach), Michael Strojny, Art Beauregard (Head Coach).
Varsity Hockey — First Row: Mark McGuire, Ryan Lin, Owen Butler, Patrick Schultz, Nolan Walsh, Connor Berg (Captain), James Birch (Captain), Andrew Sparks, Harry Lonergan, Ben Dearden, Jake Novak, Evan Zhang; Second Row: Dave Cataruzolo (Head Coach), Sam DiFiore, Brendan St. Peter, Thomas Pender, Ryan Conneely, Jake Popeo, Tait Oberg, Cole Oberg, Will Matthews, Vincent Jaeger, Reid Spence, Will Archibald, Hayden Cody, Mo Randall (Coach). Missing: Jojo Dable (Captain).
Varsity Basketball — Sean Spellman (Head Coach), Liam Grossman (Manager), Matt Golden, Sean Perri, Armando Walters, Chris Weitzel, Austin Kee (Captain), Mark Henshon (Captain), Sunil Rosen, Harry Brennan, James Henshon, Andrew Cerullo, Jamie Drachman (Manager), Tyler Duarte (Manager), Tony Teixeira (Coach). Missing: Colin Herbert (Captain), Charlie Clough, Luke DeVito.
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In September 1862, as the Union and Confederates battled at Antietam, the school hired Colonel Hobart Moore as “Instructor in Military Drill.” He went on to be appointed Brigadier General in Massachusetts.2 My current U.S. History students better remember that that battle gave Lincoln the moral victory needed to issue the Emancipation Proclamation which took effect on January 1, 1863.3 That’s the year Moses Grant Daniell was hired as music teacher and assistant to Headmaster William Coe Collar. As another Eliot wrote, “April is the cruelest month,” and that was true for Daniell as his wife died during childbirth on April 19, 1865, four days after Lincoln’s death. Music wasn’t Daniell’s only gig; he helped Coe from the archives
Curricular Innovations Over The Years
While we don’t have course catalogues from the days when merry England was ablaze with civil war and the Cavaliers and Roundheads were at strife, we do have records from before our own Civil War. When the U.S. was nearing war with Great Britain over the Oregon Territory in 1844, Benedict Apthorp Gould, Jr. taught a course on astronomy. He had the scholarly and celestial chops: He was the first American to earn his PhD in that subject. Lofty pursuits were in his genes; his grandfather helped expose Benedict Arnold. Teaching was in his blood; his father was the principal at Boston Latin. Later, he headed the Dudley Observatory at Siena College in Albany, New York, and founded the Astronomical Journal.1
In 1871, 150 years ago (a short time in RL years), Julius Eichberg, another instructor of music, was hired. That was four years after he allowed women to study music at the Boston Conservatory, which he had founded in 1867.4 5
William Coe Collar
by CHRIS HEATON
Change is the only constant. That’s certainly true as schools adjust their curriculum. As noted in this edition of the Newsletter, Roxbury Latin has adapted its courses over the centuries, and in this Ramblings I’ll highlight some courses that were introduced in the 19th century.
Moses Grant Daniell
Collar write First Year Latin, a grammar and exercise textbook which was used at RL and throughout the country.
Another staple of the Arts Department, drawing, was also added to the curriculum in 1871. The first teacher was Bostonbased artist Benjamin F. Nutting, whose works can be found in the Art Institute of Chicago and The Metropolitan Museum in New York. Like Coe Collar, he literally wrote the textbook: The Boys [sic] and Girls’ Self-Instructing Drawing Book, for Amusement and Recreation.6
Roxbury Latin published its first Catalogue the next year. The last boy listed under Classes I and II is Theodore Chickering Williams, the only alumnus to become headmaster. The first student listed is John King Berry, Class of 1872. He became a state senator. His son, Stanton King Berry, Class of 1907, died in Veaugues, France, on October 19, 1918 during the Great War.
4 Howe, Sondra Wieland. “Julius Eichberg: String and Vocal Instruction in Nineteenth-Century Boston.” Journal of Research in Music Education, vol. 44, no. 2, [MENC: The National Association for Music Education, Sage Publications, Inc.], 1996, pp. 147–59, doi.org/10.2307/3345667. 15 November 2021.
His commanding officer wrote, “Stanton was a man whom we all admired and we considered it a privilege to be included in his friendship.”7 This fall, Tim Kelly taught that war as part of the Global Conflicts course. This author is privileged to be included in his friendship and is teaching the second part of that course this spring. We highlight the ultimate sacrifice of the 13 alumni who died in World War I and the 19 boys in World War II.
Berry—like two of his three brothers who were all alumni—was taught German by Marshall Wheelock Davis, who taught at RL from 1880 until 1917, the year America entered the Great War. We can wonder if Berry used his language skills on the Western Front. German was taught at RL through 1952.
3 “Massachusetts in the Civil War.” Massachusetts Historical Society. war-1861-1862/further-recruitment.masshist.org/features/massachusetts-in-the-civil15 November 2021.
2Annual Report of the School Committee of Boston, 1894. archive.org/details/annualreport1894bost. 15 November 2021.
Other new courses in that era include physics, which started in 1875 under George Fairfield Forbes, who designed some of the first physics labs in the country. Chemistry was first taught by Milford Power in 1890. Switch a few of those numbers around and you get his eventual successor, another MP, Mike Pojman, who has been concocting evil potions in the labs since 1980.
7 “Stanton King Berry, World War I Soldier.” Kansas Memory. kansasmemory.org/item/224965. 15 November 2021.
6 “Benjamin F. Nutting.” The Metropolitan Museum. metmuseum. org/art/collection/search/354800.15 November 2021.
5 Boston Conservatory Celebrates Women’s History Month with Nod to Founder Julius Eichberg’s Work for Gender Equality. Boston Conservatory at Berklee. month-nod-founder-julius-eichberg%E2%80%99s-work-gender.news/boston-conservatory-celebrates-women%E2%80%99s-history-bostonconservatory.berklee.edu/ 15
November 2021.
1 “A Scientific Puritan: Benjamin Apthorp Gould.” The Dudley Observatory. 11 November 2018. puritan-benjamin-apthorp-gould/.dudleyobservatory.org/scientific15 November 2021.
When today’s students in Mr. Nate Piper’s Woodworking course or Mrs. Elizabeth Carroll’s Environmental Studies course stop by the woods on a snowy evening to study trees, they’re following in the footsteps of alumni from the 1880s when botany was taught by John C. Perkins. As Director of the IDEA Lab, Mr. Piper follows the path carved by another woodworker and positive pied piper, Robert Jorgensen, who taught that and a host of courses at the school from 1956 to 1996.
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