Mercersbu rg magazi n e wi nter 2012
An Official Naval Day Vice Admiral Michael H. Miller, the superintendent of the United States Naval Academy, visited Mercersburg in September for lunch with several postgraduates who are attending Mercersburg under the auspices of the U.S. Naval Academy Foundation. It marked the first visit by a Naval Academy superintendent to a nonmilitary Foundation-affiliated high school.
Pictured (L–R): Maddi Thompson ’12, Meredith Wallace ’12, Patricia Neno ’12, Miller, Hunter Harrell ’12, Patrick Lien ’12, Tim Wu ’12. (Behind the group is a portrait of Rear Admiral Eugene B. Fluckey ’30, one of Mercersburg’s three Medal of Honor recipients.)
New Faculty in 2011–2012
Front row (L–R): Katie LaRue (athletics), Emily Geeza (residential), Abby Schindler (classical & modern languages), Hsinwei Chen (classical & modern languages). Back row: Sherri Stone (college counseling), Mark Schindler (admission), Steve Crick (fine arts), Michael Conklin (admission), Matthew D’Annolfo (admission), Amy Kelley (mathematics), Carolyn Bell (mathematics). Not pictured: Laura Patterson (residential), Doug Smith (residential).
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Occupying Wall Street, Journal Edition A story by Aric DiLalla ’12 about concussions and football helmets was published on the homepage of the Wall Street Journal Classroom Edition in the fall. DiLalla, of Raleigh, North Carolina, is co-editor-in-chief of the Mercersburg News and wrote the article while attending the prestigious National High School Institute at Northwestern University over the summer. DiLalla spent five weeks on the Northwestern campus as part of the program, which offers sessions in journalism, film/ video, theatre arts, debate, and speech, and counts CBS journalist Charles Kuralt, former U.S. Senator Richard Gephardt, actors David Schwimmer and DiLalla Noah Wyle, and actresses America Ferrara and Shelley Long among its alumni. (DiLalla will enroll at Northwestern as an undergraduate in fall 2012.) His story was one of a handful chosen from writers in the journalism program, which included 84 students from across the nation (and a handful from foreign countries). “The program was really helpful and definitely helped me increase my level of writing,” DiLalla says. “They really critiqued everything pretty heavily. We wrote all kinds of stories—news, features, editorials—and I’ve never had my writing scrutinized the way it was over those five weeks.” DiLalla’s father, Richard ’81, also attended Mercersburg.