Nobles Magazine, Fall 2020

Nobles Noble and Greenough School 10 Campus Drive Dedham, MA 02026-4099

NON-PROFIT U.S. POSTAGE PAID BOSTON MA PERMIT NO. 53825

THE MAGAZINE OF NOBLE AND GREENOUGH SCHOOL

FALL 2020

hed_whitney_bold_18pt text_whitney_semibold_noindent

Jeff Wong ’12 on the banks of the Paraguay River in Asunción, Paraguay

PHOTO OF THE DAY May 29, 2020 Rocky Batty ’20 hugs his mom, Nobles English teacher Gia Batty during the otherwise-contactless diploma pickup operation after our virtual graduation ceremony. Following tradition, Nobles employees with graduating children were the only exception allowing for a physical diploma hand-off.

PHOTO BY LEAH LARICCIA

contents FALL 2020

IN EVERY ISSUE 2

Letter from the Head

3 Reflections What Nobles folks are saying 4

The Bulletin ews and notes N

12 Sports Not such a typical season 14 By the Numbers Virtual afternoons with Nobles 15 Off the Shelf All about the books we read and write 16 Perspectives Voices from the Nobles community 50 Graduate News Who, what, when and where Nobles grads are

FEATURES 24 Lost & Found Embracing loss and seeking meaning

36 More Good News Keeping communities connected during Covid-19

48 Non-Fiction by Non-Men One Nobles writer speaks to another about gender and pop music

52 The Real Magic of Process A Berklee College writing professor talks about process, versions of reality and hard work

Cover Photograph by Henry Maillet

40 Faces of the River Two young men on a boat share a story

64 Archive On the Path

Nobles

letter from the head

FALL 2020

The Power of Connection AS I WRITE this letter, I am eagerly awaiting tomorrow’s campus

reopening, when our students, faculty and staff return to campus after six very long months away!

After many years in schools, I have grown so fond of the rhythms and rituals that mark our calendar. While I enter each summer eager for renewal, as the summer wanes, I become increasingly eager to have our students back to school—to embark upon a new school year together. A school campus in the summer has always felt like an empty swimming pool to me, waiting silently for its opportunity to fulfill its purpose. Over the last six months, the silence on campus has made us all so much more anxious for the regular noise and energy to return. This year, my end-of-summer eagerness is matched with great joy, as we come back together tomorrow in person to begin our new school year!

This year, of course, is like no other for any of us at Nobles. While we will be excitedly back this fall, it will be different. We have invested thousands of hours to ensure we can safely reopen, and have prepared for a multitude of scenarios to ensure we are ready for whatever this year will bring. Amidst our concern, though, our return is also marked by tremendous hope and optimism as we begin our school year together.

When we pivoted to Virtual Nobles in the spring, we focused as much on virtualizing our academic program as we did on ensuring our relationships and community would endure, knowing how central those personal connections are to the Nobles experience. We have learned so much about how we can virtualize connections, relationships and community—and so much we have learned about its limitations. We know that Nobles relationships extend far beyond any shared physical space, which was rendered powerfully clear last fall in our “Tent of Miracles,” which served as our assembly home during the renovation of Lawrence Auditorium. We also know that relationships forge very particular and unique connections when they are in person, when communities can be together in the same space.

Renowned psychologist and longtime Nobles friend Maria Trozzi recently spoke with our faculty and staff about the challenges of reopening Nobles amidst a pandemic. She referred to this time when we are intensely virtually connected but often physically apart as “alone-togetherness,” a term that captures for me exactly what I have been feeling when I think about our Nobles students. We have, in so many ways, forged deeper connections with our students in this new virtual world, but also know how isolating this experience is for so many of them.

The safety and wellbeing of our students is what keeps me up at night during normal times.

While there is so little right now that feels normal, there is also so much that feels like Nobles in the ways we connect with and support our students and our community.

We can’t know for certain what the 2020–21 school year will bring, but we are prepared. (You can read our reopening plan at nobles.edu/2020-2021-reopening.) Whatever the challenges in the months ahead, I know that the strength of this community will endure.

—CATHERINE J. HALL, PH.D., HEAD OF SCHOOL

CORRECTION: Maya Getter '13 matriculated to the University of Southern California, but transferred to Northeastern University to continue her undergraduate degree. A story in the spring 2020 issue incorrectly referenced Getter's college experience.

2 Nobles FALL 2020

Editor Heather Sullivan DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS

Assistant Editors Kim Neal

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS

Ben Heider

DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCER/WRITER

Anne Hurlbut

WRITER/CONTENT MANAGER

Design 2COMMUNIQUÉ

www.2communique.com Photography Tim Carey Michael Dwyer Ben Heider Anne Hurlbut Leah LaRiccia Jared Leeds Henry Maillet James McGraghan Kim Neal Jeff Wong ’12 Matthew Bald The Editorial Committee Brooke Asnis ’90 Casey Hassenstein John Gifford ’86 Tilesy Harrington Nobles is published three times a year for graduates, past and current parents, guardians and grandparents, students and supporters of Noble and Greenough School. Nobles is a co-educational, non-sectarian day and five-day boarding school for students in grades seven (Class VI) through 12 (Class I). Noble and Greenough School is a rigorous academic community that strives for excellence in its classroom teaching, intellectual growth in its students and commitment to the arts, athletics and service to others.

For further information and up-to-the-minute graduate news, visit www.nobles.edu.

Letters and comments may be emailed to Heather_Sullivan@ nobles.edu. We also welcome old-fashioned mail sent c/o Noble and Greenough School, 10 Campus Drive, Dedham, MA 02026. The office may be reached at 781-320-7268. © Noble and Greenough School 2020

The space we are in does not matter as much as our connections to each other.

—AVA NEAL ’23 IN A “STUDENT LIFE” ARTICLE IN THE NOBLEMAN ABOUT WHAT MAKES THE NOBLES COMMUNITY SO SPECIAL

I wish someone had told me when I was your age that if you really love something, you should just stick with it. Period. Especially if you are an artist or a creative person. If you are passionate as an artist, you must find the time to create your own content, and you must stick with it. Don’t give up on it, and you’ll figure it out.

—JULIA SPIRO ’05, AT ASSEMBLY

I was never able to eat pasta, on a Wednesday, in a Castle— best of luck and congratulations.

—COMEDIAN SETH MEYERS, ADDRESSING THE CLASS OF 2020 DURING ASSEMBLY

There is no greater good than to listen to someone else’s story. Please have conversations. Think about your day-to-day interactions. Think about what you post on social media . . . We need to become more conscious of the small things we do.

FEBRUARY 14: Dayyana Poux ‘20 picks up her roses at the annual Campuses Against Cancer rose sale.

Faculty, first class.

—FINAL ASSEMBLY DISMISSAL BY THE STUDENT LEADERS OF THE CLASS OF 2020

MAY 29: Alex Bao ‘20 picks up his diploma on campus after the virtual graduation ceremony.

—EDGAR DE LEON ’04, CO -DIRECTOR OF DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION, SPEAKING TO THE NOBLES COMMUNITY

Stay connected to Nobles ... Do a lot of self-care. Read books. Dance outside.

Get away from screens. I wish you peace, safety, health and joy. Happy summer, Nobles.

—HEAD OF SCHOOL CATHY HALL OFFERING REMARKS AT THE FINAL VIRTUAL ASSEMBLY OF THE YEAR FALL 2020 Nobles 3

the bulletin Jeff Alphonso ’20

Noah Thomas ’20

Maeve Connolly ’20

AP Art Show 2020: Celebrating Creativity FOSTER GALLERY and the visual arts

department faced a distinct challenge in hosting their annual student Advanced Placement show, the most highly anticipated exhibit of the year. In spite of pandemic-imposed limits, a team known for its creativity was not about to let it prevent students from showcasing their work. They said, “Although the venue

assembly highlights A Class Act The following words were shared when Hailey Brown ’20 was

4 Nobles FALL 2020

presented with the Class of ’98 Award: “Hailey Brown is one of the most caring and

and format of the show are different, the celebration of what has been accomplished in a truly difficult situation is the same. The work and community that these students have produced is nothing short of remarkable. Toiling long hours in their respective studios at school, and then at home, these students have mastered their craft and elevated their

thinking to new and impressive levels.

As a department, we talk a lot about the process of making art. The iterative nature of creation is not something that just happens. It is only through repetition, critical feedback and then refinement that work of this caliber is produced. Congratulations to these amazing young artists.”

empathetic people in our community. It doesn’t matter if you have known Hailey for 10 seconds or 10 years—she has a way

Chair Shannon Clark and the beloved Nobles librarians added some levity to the morning, as they are wont to do, sharing a video of

of making everyone feel comfortable, connected and loved.”

One for the Books English Department

them passing books to one another virtually, recommending book titles, and getting students excited about summer reading.

NEWS FROM OUR COMMUNITY

Bronwyn Jensen ’20

Caroline Higgins ’20

Olly Ogbue ’20

Phillip Spyrou ’21

Tricky Golf The entire community was impressed with a video compilation of Clark Saunders ’21 and his award-

winning golf trickshot.

Saunders was the winner of the “Best Lockdown Trickshot,” awarded by GOLFTV.

Mr. Denning, Is That You? Tim Barry ’16 made a guest appearance with a hysterical and spot-on imperson-

ation of Head of the Upper School Michael Denning. Had we been able to hear one another during the Zoom, the laughter would

have been deafening.

You’ve Got to Move It, Move It Seniors shared a heartwarming and upbeat

video compilation of each of them dancing, ending with all of them on one screen, separate but together with the text overlay “We

FALL 2020 Nobles 5

the bulletin

Saffiyah Coker ’20

Will Moore ’20

154th Graduation — and First Virtual ON MAY 29, Noble and Greenough School

faculty performance of “Lean on Me.” Majernik and Noah Janfaza, SLC co-presidents, addressed their classmates. “Honestly, some of the best memories just come when things go wrong. . . . What a pleasure it has been to grow up with you guys,” Majernik said.

“It has truly been a wild ride,” Janfaza said, adding appreciation for the Nobles adults who consistently showed up to every event, on campus or hours away, and showed they cared about students.

“My advice to younger students, and

also a charge for younger students: Show up,” Janfaza said. “Be there. Be there for your friends, your peers and your school—but most importantly, be there for each other.”

Head of School Dr. Catherine J. Hall told graduating students and their families about a conversation with Fred Gardner, a 1944 Nobles grad: “I knew that Fred had left Nobles after his Class II year in 1943. Since he had turned 18, he could not avoid being drafted into the Army to fight in World War II. I wanted

are in this together.”

the story of a Black father learning to do his daughter’s hair for the first time. The film addressed the firm belief that representa-

ances at assembly this spring and told current students, “You never know what the thing is going to be that just clicks, and

graduated 126 members of the Class of 2020 during its 154th graduation. As School Life Council (SLC) co-president Madie Majernik said, referring to the pandemic that demanded a virtual celebration: “We did it—and we made history in the process.”

Before the official event began on YouTube Premiere at 10 a.m., members of the class enjoyed a final assembly that included renditions of “American Pie,” “Country Roads” and an unforgettable

Hair Love Students shared an Oscar-winning sevenminute animated short

6 Nobles FALL 2020

film entitled “Hair Love,” a story born out of wanting to promote hair love among young men and women of color. The film tells

tion matters deeply.

Farmer Jack Jack Frechette ’07 of Frechette Farms made two guest appear-

life’s too short to not do what you love.”

Director of College Counseling Kate Boyle Ramsdell played a role in his fate, as

to gain some insights from Fred, to learn from his journey.”

Hall said that Gardner’s storytelling focused on friendship, adventure and joy rather than disappointment. Last fall, Gardner lost his great friend Bobby Lawrence ’44, for whom Lawrence Auditorium is named. The two were friends for more than 70 years.

Before introducing student-elected faculty speaker Nick Nickerson, Hall announced the recipient of the Vernon L. Greene Award for excellence in teaching: Tilesy Harrington. “Tilesy has epitomized the traits we uphold when we think about excellence in teaching

the Trustees’ Prize for Scholarship; Jackson Phinney, winner of the Bond Prize for Improvement; Finn Crawford, the Miller Medal recipient; and Kevin Chen, who earned the Gleason Award for Academic Excellence.

Nickerson, who is senior master, addressed the Class of 2020. He shared that, after losing his friend and colleague Bill Kehlenbeck to cancer last year, he lost another friend to cancer in December: Guy Altree, a Nobles grad and Nickerson’s best man. He told students about the loss and was struck by their compassion and kindness in that moment. “You are such a kind and caring class,” he said.

Nickerson, suggesting that character offers a way through blustery times, recalled lines from a poem that he knows from childhood. “It is the set of your soul

that determines your goal/And not the calm, nor strife.”

“Covid-19 may be a highly contagious disease,” Nickerson said, “but it is not nearly as contagious as your hopes and dreams, it is not nearly as powerful as all the knowledge you have gained here at Nobles, and it is not nearly as enduring as your commitment and determination to make this a better world.”

Elected by their peers, Saffiyah Coker and Will Moore spoke to their classmates. “If there is one thing that I will take away from my last year at Nobles, it will be that nothing is set in stone,” Coker said. “No one knew that we would not be sitting together today. I often feel helpless and insignificant when I scroll through my Instagram feed and I see Black lives being lost, a virus ravaging communities, poverty and global suffering. We are witnessing the shortcomings of the world with our own eyes. This is the curveball that life has dealt us. Now the question becomes, How will we deal with it?”

Moore told of his journey to Nobles in eighth grade from a small town in Vermont. When he attended an interview after a hockey game nearby, his mother explained that things were about to change.

“I was told the real reason that I went to Nobles that day,” he said. “I am paraphrasing here, but my mother, in a more loving way, said to me, ‘Will, your aunt has cancer, and we are moving to Boston.’

In life, we make sacrifices for those we love.” Moore said that, in time, he came to love his school, including his hockey teammates.

she told him to look at colleges in Minnesota. He has since bought a farm and has never left. His advice to Nobles students?

works of art throughout virtual learning.

Some of these incredible pieces were shared with theschool in a slide-

a unique and much needed upbeat electric guitar performance of “Under the Sea” from The Little Mermaid.

At the end of the

Nick Nickerson

at Nobles. She has modeled ‘relationship before task’ each and every day in her work with the thousands of Nobles students and colleagues.”

At Awards Night the previous evening, many members of the Class of 2020 were also honored. Among them were Majernik and Janfaza, who received the Head of School’s Prize; Nattalie Gualdron and Sebastian Sanchez, who were awarded the Russell B. Stearns Achievement Award; Smita Rajan, who received

“ It is the set of your soul that determines your goal And not the calm, nor strife.”

—POET ELLA WHEELER WILCOX, AS CITED BY SENIOR MASTER NICK NICKERSON

“Find out what you love and go do it.”

Creativity Continues Many students continued to create beautiful

show of images. Visit @tgif.opson Instagram.

The Little Mermaid with a Twist Ben Clifford ’21 shared

performance, Head of School Cathy Hall said, “Thanks, Ben. What a great rendition.

If you can’t move to that, I don’t know what

FALL 2020 Nobles 7

the bulletin

Bill Bussey

Finding Hope and Saying Thanks HEAD OF SCHOOL Dr. Catherine J. Hall

Hall welcomed the guests and offered her sincere gratitude for their commitment in both times of strength and uncertainty. She also outlined her preparation plans going forward, as she and the administration team hope to welcome students again to campus in the fall. Noting the outpouring of support from the entire Nobles community, Hall remained steadfast in her belief that the school would collectively confront the obstacles at hand and be an even stronger institution in the wake of the global health crisis.

Bill Bussey, a longtime English teacher and provost, was the speaker for the

you can move to. I’ll be humming that all day.”

the culture despite the fact that he lived most of his life in Europe, among the colonizers. Mr. Seck explained that it

virtually hosted more than 100 of Nobles’ strongest and most loyal supporters for the 45th annual Head of School Dinner on June 3. Normally this gathering would have taken place on campus in the Castle, but due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this year’s “toast” took place virtually.

Despite the new venue, the sentiment of the evening remained the same: to celebrate and thank the Nobles community for its unwavering support throughout the years, including last spring, which presented a number of financial challenges for the school.

A Poem for Africa Faculty member Amadou Seck shared

8 Nobles FALL 2020

a beautiful video of his reading “Afrique Mon Afrique” in French. In the poem, poet David Diop declares his love for the continent and

reflected his feelings for this beautiful continent and what it has gone through over the ages, and he spoke about the theme

evening. He started off his remarks on a lighter note, regaling the audience with the state of his life during quarantine, saying, “Did you ever think that you’d be spending hour after hour watching the Blue Jays battle the Cardinals in your bird feeder? Me neither. I’m now texting photos to Debbie Harrison asking, ‘Is this a Downy Woodpecker?’ I didn’t see any of this coming.”

Bussey went on to describe and thank the many instrumental leaders and teachers he has had the privilege of working with at Nobles during his 34-year tenure, including former teacher and president of the board Beth Reilly ’87. He recalled, “[Beth] possessed, if I dare say, magic. For over 30 years, that quality gradually influenced every area of school life that she touched.” He also showcased assembly videos from the spring of other notable graduates who had sent messages of hope and encouragement to current students, including Harry Elam ’74, Ayla Brown ’06, Michael Beach ’82, Julia Spiro ’05 and Michael Roiff ’97.

To close the evening, Bussey reflected on the meaningful work that the school does and the indelible impact Nobles has had on him personally. “We often reduce our view of a great school as a place that helps kids navigate the world, often saving them in the process.

But that’s also true for the many adults who work here. I know it is true for me,” he reflected. “I do not believe that the best parts of my life would have happened without the kindness, loyalty and support of people like you. Not in this lifetime.”

of belonging and how it relates to his personal experience.

Pandemic Ethics Despite a worldwide

pandemic, the Nobles Ethics Club still managed to launch a new publication called Nobles Ethicist.

What’s Left in Covid’s Wake?

In a July 7 news piece with a Los Angeles NPR affiliate, Isabel Pedraza ’86, the director of Cedars-Sinai’s medical intensive care unit, spoke about the challenges of recovery for Covid-19 patients who survive the virus.

“I think of critical illness as a war that your body is waging against,” Pedraza said.“You have survived, thankfully. But you can be left with a lot of residual effects of fighting that battle.”

Pedraza explained that the lingering and sometimes lasting effects of the disease can cause difficulties with driving, shopping and other daily activities due to muscular deficit or slower mentalprocessing speeds.

Some patients also develop PTSD, she said. “In studies looking at critically ill patients, the incidence of PTSD is on par with that of combat veterans. We’re worried about this with Covid-19 patients because this virus may affect the brain in ways that we don’t yet understand, and that may lead both to worsening cognition as well as worsening PTSD, anxiety and depression.”

Pedraza also noted that the disease, when acute, can take an enormous financial and emotional toll on family and caregivers.

Pedraza graduated from Boston University Medical School in 2001. She specializes in pulmonary medicine.

Stand Together Imani performed an unforgettable rendition of “Stand by Me.”

Superlatives Several polls were conducted during assembly this spring, one of which was the “Nobles Superlatives”

ILLUSTRATION BY JEAN FRANCOIS PODEVIN

Yara Da Silva ’20

Saffiyah Coker ’20

Edgar De Leon ’04

A LEGACY OF TRUTH Class I students of color celebrated their accomplishments virtually on May 12 with their families, faculty, staff and students from Class II at the annual Freeman Legacy Dinner, honoring diversity, equity and inclusion trailblazer and former arts faculty member Bob Freeman (P ’92 ’98 ’02).

Student-elected speaker Yara Da Silva ’20 spoke about challenging herself at Nobles and discovering what she enjoyed (and equally importantly, what she didn’t) through different clubs and organizations. Ultimately, she found the greatest fulfillment in mentoring others. Her parting advice: “If I leave you with anything, I want it to be this: Push yourself to try new things and meet new people, even if it’s uncomfortable. The more you’ve experienced, the better you know yourself.”

Saffiyah Coker ’20, who, like Da Silva, was elected by her peers to take the podium, spoke about her frequent experiences as the only person of color in a classroom, and the self-doubt she overcame to find her authentic voice. In six years at Nobles, she learned, “My silence equates with the removal of my power. My experience is mine alone.

I cannot quiet my voice out of fear of my voice, of being perceived as too radical. I cared too much about how others perceived me. Never water down your identity to fit someone else’s confines. Your truth is yours alone to speak.”

Graduate speaker and co-director of diversity, equity and inclusion at Nobles Edgar De Leon ’04 acknowledged the strangeness of celebrating separately over Zoom and gave numerous examples of racial discrimination exposed by the pandemic. To the graduating class, he said, “That reality makes this gathering that much more important. Coming together as a community—even virtually—to honor our seniors of color absolutely matters. We see you and we celebrate you.”

poll. This particular poll sought answers to questions such as: “Who would you want to help you if you had to fight a

grizzly bear?” “Who is most likely to teach at Nobles?” and “Who is most likely to cure coronavirus by accident?”

Quarantine Lessons Middle school faculty member Dan Reid made a special instructional video for the Nobles community on

how to chop wood. Students also learned fun facts about Mr. Reid, who grew up in Ontario and only had a wood stove to heat his house.

FALL 2020 Nobles 9

the bulletin

Honoring Beth Reilly ’87 On June 11, members of the Corporation gathered virtually for the group’s annual meeting, which includes current and former board members. Afterward, school administrators and others joined to honor the more than 20-year service of outgoing Board President Elizabeth (Beth) Reilly ’87 and to welcome incoming president John Montgomery ’83.

Reilly assumed the board presidency in 2013, initially partnering with former head of school Bob Henderson ’76, and then Catherine J. Hall, Head of School since 2017. Both Hall and Reilly are the first women to lead the school in their respective roles.

“Beth has been invaluable to me in my transition to Nobles,” Hall said. “It’s not overstating things to say that Beth Reilly is one of the reasons I came to Nobles.”

In a letter to the board, chair of the nominating committee and Reilly’s Nobles classmate, Sue Cullinane Jeppson ’87, praised Reilly’s commitment. “Beth’s extraordinary tenure has been marked by a wholehearted commitment to the Nobles mission of leadership for the public good and has embodied the Nobles ethos of ‘relationship before task.’ Her professional experience, her sharp intellect, sound judgment and sense of humor have made for invaluable leadership.”

As Reilly pivoted from the Nobles classroom to pursue a legal career, then-President Fred Clifford ’54 saw

Faculty and Staff Can Dance, Too The dance teachers compiled a video of faculty and staff busting a move either

10 Nobles FALL 2020

alone or with family members. For many, this assignment to cut a rug was a welcome break from the screens!

her potential impact as a board member.

“Beth is so clear about Nobles and its values,” Clifford said. “It’s because she’s part Nobles. It’s in her DNA.” “The board didn’t have many people with experience in education, which, at the time, I did,” Reilly said. “And it wasn’t very female.. . . And those were just some of the ingredients that seemed to make it a good fit.

“It has been incredibly rewarding,” Reilly said of her tenure. “Setting aside the current board—because I’d have to name every single one of you—I do want to say how much fun it was to … have a shared responsibility for the institution with folks like Denise Dupre, Sandy Edgerley, Ernie Parizeau, Jim Foster, Mariel Novas, Kevin Maroni, Brian Conway, Paul Ayoub, Jeanne Hilsinger and Scott Freeman.”

“This school has had a knack, I think, for having the right leaders at the right time, and I am certain that John Montgomery will fulfill that pattern. He is measured in his thinking. You never have the impression that John is speaking from anything other than the perspective of what’s best of the institution. . . .

Knowing that Cathy and John are in the leadership positions that they are makes me feel incredibly at ease that the best for Nobles is yet to come.”

“Beth is a brilliant communicator,” Montgomery said. “She provides the

The Importance of Reflection Spanish faculty member Laura Yamartino shared excerpts from her sixth-grade

“Teddy Bear Journal” from 1998, explaining that she has always loved writing in journals and found it good for her mental health.

opportunity for those among us who are more quiet and reserved and creates that space for all of us. I’ll do what I can to replicate that.”

“Beth’s relationship with Nobles began in 1982, when she joined the eighth grade as part of Nobles’ first co-educated middle school class,” Hall said. “She returned to Nobles immediately after college in 1991 as a teaching fellow, staying on after her fellowship to join the faculty as a member of the history department and to coach the girls varsity soccer team.

She would quickly become chair of the history department, and her impact as a teacher, coach and advisor was immediate, maybe best evidenced by her selection to receive the Vernon L. Greene Prize for faculty excellence in 1997 after just her fourth year as a full-time faculty member. She has also been awarded the Lawson Service Award and the Coggeshall Award, selected by the 25th reunion Class of 1993, among many others.

Ernie Parizeau H’15, trustee from 2000 to 2018 and vice president from 2015 to 2018, also spoke to Reilly’s leadership: “I could make a list of pages and pages of skills and talents that you showed while I was on the board. I laughed a lot, I learned a lot, and I miss it, because of many people, but especially because of you.”

Former trustee (2012-18) Denise Dupre P’10 ’14 ’16 also commended Reilly: “I was always struck by your smarts, your ability to dissect tricky problems and find practical solutions, your ability

Yamartino talked about how she had returned to journaling during the pandemic.

Noteworthy Appointments Owen O’Connor ’20 was given a military appointment for a four-year

to sort mountains from molehills, your ability to hear every voice in the room and to build consensus, and your ability to cut tense moments with a calm voice and, if that failed, with a sense of humor.”

Tony DiNovi P’16 ’20, a board member since 2015 and vice president since 2018, also spoke to Reilly’s leadership.

“I can say, without a doubt, that I have never watched somebody lead a board discussion as well as you, set an agenda as effectively as you do, focus on what really matters as well as you do,” he said.

“I can’t imagine sitting in a [Nobles] boardroom without you.”

A hallmark of the Nobles board is its commitment to strong, steady governance. The Nobles ties to Montgomery run deep. He is a graduate, married to his Nobles sweetheart, Suzie Tayer Montgomery ’84, and they’re parents of Max ’14, Morgen ’15 and Sam ’18. He is a graduate of Trinity College and Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, has spent his career in finance, and is managing partner and chief operating officer at Westfield Capital Management. He was elected graduate trustee from 2005 to 2008 and returned as a term trustee in 2014, serving in multiple roles, but most recently as board clerk and chair of the investment committee. “His steady hand, humility, deep knowledge of Nobles and supportive partnership with Cathy Hall will help steer Nobles to continued success and a bright future,” Jeppson said.

“Beth’s leadership has been simply instrumental in getting us to this place today, and John’s will be as we continue the path to great places,” Hall said.

ROTC scholarship, and Liam Nawara ’20 was offered an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy.

In Sync Greensleeves, with the help of Director of Music Michael Turner and editor Ben Heider, took on

Michael Denning hugs his son Patrick ’20 after handing him his diploma.

Beth Reilly ’87 waves to the Keating family during diploma pickup.

Drive-Through Diplomas Following the virtual graduation ceremony, graduates drove through campus, stopping in front of the castle where a masked and physically distanced Head of School Cathy Hall, Head of the Upper School Michael Denning and Board President Beth Reilly ‘87 shared congratulations and “see-you-laters.” Grads picked up their diplomas, yearbooks, awards and Class of 2020 hats before continuing down to the fields for family photo sessions.

the difficult task of creating a virtual video performance of the song “Underdog.”

The end result was absolutely incred-

ible, and reminiscent of performances from cherished inperson assemblies.

Starting to Get Nostalgic The Class of 2020 shared things they miss most about Nobles, including

assembly in the tent, hacky sack, lunch on the Castle terrace, and everyday interactions with all of the amazing students and faculty. N

FALL 2020 Nobles 11

sports

Spring Sports Awards VARSITY BASEBALL John Eliot Cooke Award (for significant

improvement, devotion to the team and a genuine love for the game): Jack Cronin, Owen O’Connor, Jackson Phinney and Noah Thomas, all ’20 BOYS VARSITY CREW The Taylor Shield Award (for sportsman-

ship in rowing): Wyatt Ellison ’20 The Watson Medal (for overall contribution to rowing): Nicholas Hazard ’20 GIRLS VARSITY CREW The Janice L. Mabley Award (to the oars-

woman whose spirit and dedication exemplify the ideals of Nobles rowing): Lucy Del Col and Paloma Ducrest, both ’20 AC “Clint” Allen Bowl (for competitive, tough spirit in rowing): Kat Poole ’20 Jill Walsh Award (for exemplary leader-

ship and mentorship): Saffiyah Coker ’20 BOYS VARSITY LACROSSE Arnold Lacrosse Prize (to the player

whose skill, dedication and enthusiasm most reflect a love of the sport): Oliver Bernstein ’20 Samuel P. Dawson Award (for significant improvement, sportsmanship and a genuine love for the game): Dan Donahue and Nick Taylor, both ’20 BOYS VARSITY TENNIS The Rice Cup (for enthusiasm, skill

and sportsmanship): Ethan Bondick, David Pang, Rahul Singh and Jasper Tahnk, all ’20 GIRLS VARSITY TENNIS C.F. Olney Prize (for enthusiasm, skill and

sportsmanship): Keren Luo ’20

Resor Coaching Excellence Award Winner Mark Spence

Varsity golf, girls varsity lacrosse and varsity softball did not give out their typical season awards, choosing instead to recognize all of their Class I athletes at end-of-year banquets: Varsity Golf: Noah Janfaza ’20 Girls Varsity Lacrosse: Mari Capone, Charlotte Epker, Becca Gill, Caroline Higgins, Madie Majernik and Ella Midura, all ’20 Varsity Softball: Katie Armstrong, Yara Da Silva, Angela Giordano and Addy Sewack, all ’20

End-of-Year Awards ■

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The George Washington Copp Noble Cup (to athletes in Classes V and VI, for sportsmanship in athletics): Noah Douglas ’25, Annie Spring ’25, Hunter Patterson ’24 and Macy Sweeny ’24 The John Paine Award (to a junior varsity or third-level participant for sportsmanship and consistent work in athletics): Megan Fuqua and Calum Stein, both ’23 The Robert J. Agostini Award (presented with the support of coaches and captains of Nobles teams for the greatest contribution to the school’s athletics program other than as a competitor): Peter Asnis, MD, and Mininder Kocher, MD, MPH The Thomas S. Resor Coaching Excellence Award: Mark Spence

12 Nobles FALL 2020

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The Davis Cup (to a member of Class I for sportsmanship and consistent work in athletics): Katie Armstrong and John DiNovi ’20 ISL Award of Excellence (for exhibiting integrity, sportsmanship, fair play and good citizenship while participating as a multisport athlete): Lauren Keohan and Owen O’Connor, both ’20 The Nobles Shield (to the most respected athlete whose skill, sportsmanship and competitive spirit have personified excellence and the ideals of Nobles athletics): Becca Gill and Jackson Phinney, both ’20 Miller Medal (for excellence in scholarship and athletics): Finn Crawford ’20

Miller Medal Winner Finn Crawford ‘20

Nobles Shield Winner Jackson Phinney ‘20 Nobles Shield Winner Becca Gill ‘20

ISL Award of Excellence Winner Owen O’Connor ‘20

ISL Award of Excellence Winner Lauren Keohan ‘20

FALL 2020 Nobles 13

by the numbers

33

Trivia/game opportunities offered to students

1,026

VIRTUAL WELLNESS IN SPRING 2020

4 Student wellness resource guides offered

Advisory meetings

124 Athletic practices

5,688 24 66

Community service meetings

One-on-one advisor/advisee check-ins

29

7

Parent/guardian wellness speakers/ opportunities

51 Stressbusters meditation meetings

Affinity group meetings

Yoga, strength and open physical activity opportunities

14 Nobles FALL 2020

4,161

Kind acts performed for the “More Good News” initiative.

Go to page 36 to learn more.

PHOTOS BY GETTY IMAGES

my books...

PICTURE BOOKS WE LOVE

BY HEIDI CHARLES, ELLA STEIM, TALYA SOKOLL AND EMILY TRAGERT, NOBLES LIBRARIANS

One of our greatest delights as librarians is reading and recommending picture books. Although the demand for picture books at Nobles may surprise some, we’ve found over the years that they are a wonderful way to tell a variety of stories to many different readers. From our favorite Nobles toddlers to groups of upper schoolers crowded around a librarian as they read a story connected to their curriculum, there is a picture book for every reader. Here are a few of our recent favorites.

HEIDI CHARLES: ALTHEA GIBSON: THE STORY OF TENNIS’ FLEET-OF-FOOT GIRL, WRITTEN BY MEGAN REID, ILLUSTRATED

BY LAURA FREEMAN Althea Gibson was a star athlete. She outplayed the best and most athletic competitors in many sports, but especially tennis. Althea dreamed of being a big-time tennis star who competed against the best tennis players in the world. But in 1940s Harlem, Black people weren’t allowed to compete against white people in sports. Althea Gibson, a trailblazer who broke barriers, is a role model for young girls who want to excel in sports. As a Black female tennis player myself, what I love most about this beautifully written picture book is that it captures the complexities and essence of Althea.

ELLA STEIM: THE DAY YOU BEGIN, WRITTEN BY JACQUELINE WOODSON, ILLUSTRATED BY RAFAEL LÓPEZ Jacqueline Woodson tells a story that children will recognize: It’s hard to enter a place where you feel different. But when you are brave and begin—whether sharing a piece of yourself in conversation, or just entering a room—you may find that you are giving yourself a great gift. Rafael López’s beautiful and expressive illustrations complement the story, depicting children experiencing a range of situations and emotions.

I love that the message is straightforward, but that the text and illustrations create a book that can be discussed with different levels of nuance. I’ve read it again and again, and experienced something different every time.

TALYA SOKOLL: WHEN AIDAN BECAME A BROTHER, WRITTEN

BY KYLE LUKOFF, ILLUSTRATED

BY KAYLANI JUANITA Aidan is excited to become a big brother! When Aidan was born, everyone thought he was a girl. He told his parents that he was transgender and

they met him with unconditional love and support. But now Aidan is worried they will make mistakes with the new baby. Children will relate with the feelings of apprehension Aidan has about siblinghood. This groundbreaking #ownvoices book teaches families about loving and supporting one another no matter what. I love the beautiful way Juanita illustrates Aidan’s story with images complementing Lukoff’s words, and how Aidan’s parents support him to be the best big brother he can be.

EMILY TRAGERT: GRAND CANYON, WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED BY JASON CHIN This beautiful book follows a parent and child as they hike from the floor of the Grand Canyon to its rim, all the while learning about the history, geology and ecosystems of this wonder of nature. I love how the book’s detailed illustrations show the Grand Canyon’s beauty and help younger readers explore some of the scientific ideas introduced in the text at their own level. As someone who loves the outdoors and was enchanted by the Grand Canyon when I finally visited it for the first time last year, this book reminds me of the magic and joy of exploring and learning about nature’s most beautiful places.

ALL LIBRARIANS: DREAMERS, WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED BY YUYI MORALES With Dreamers, Morales tells the story of how she and her son emigrated from Mexico to the United States. The text opens with her child’s birth, then follows mother and son as they cross the border and experience difficulty and fear when unable to communicate in the language of their new home. She tells of a magical place—the public library—where they find entry into their new community, exploring worlds of imagination through picture books.

Morales weaves together English and Spanish, giving the reader a sense of how language impacts us all. Not only is the text powerful, but the illustrations are gorgeous. This beautiful book captured us right away.

FALL 2020 Nobles 15

perspective

Voices of Change “We are the voice of change. We are here to fix what America is falling short of.”

—MYA MIDDLETON, 16, CHICAGO (SPEAKER AT MARCH FOR OUR LIVES, MARCH 24, 2018)

Hundreds of Nobles students gathered for intense campus conversations on April 20, 2018, inspired by the national March for Our Lives demonstration for gun control in Washington, D.C. Nobles’ student-led walkout addressed gun control as well as inextricable issues like racial inequity, domestic violence and police brutality. It was a day when Nobles dedicated time to recognizing the power of youth voices. Two years later, the consensus among Nobles students speaking up for social and racial justice in the wake of George Floyd’s death is that those opportunities do not happen nearly enough.

“Perspective” is usually dedicated to the personal experience of a graduate or faculty or staff member. This time, as Nobles commits to amplifying underrepresented voices, we’re featuring the viewpoints of five student activists. From advancing racial justice, LGBTQ+ rights and financial literacy, these young leaders are taking activism online and to the streets, while empowering others and spreading awareness. Here, they explain their devotion to these issues and how Nobles and the adults in their lives can help fuel their work.

JEREMY RODRIGUEZ ’21

Rodriguez came to Nobles in Class IV by way of Nativity Preparatory School, where he first became involved in social justice. He has attended the Student Diversity Leadership Conference (SDLC) and the Social Justice Leadership Institute. He is a core leader of Nobles affinity groups Brother 2 Brother (male students of color) and PODER (Latinx students).

He participates in social justice initiatives through Boston Mobilization and is co-creator of a Black student-led podcast, “That’s Kaep,” which explores issues and misconceptions related to race.

On inclusivity in predominantly white institutions: At Nobles I immediately felt

the loneliness of being the only person of color in many situations. I dealt with microaggressions, misinformed privileged students and teachers, some overt racist incidents, and felt my performance

as a student was judged because of my race. At SDLC, I learned not only how to deal with those incidents but why they happened. I also learned more about the perspectives of LGBTQ+ and indigenous students, and I gathered tools on how to be a leader.

Some of the work he’s doing now: With

the motivation of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the help of other Nobles students, we gathered student testimonials to help analyze main issues in the community. We wrote a letter to the administration and met with them to describe those problems and what Nobles can do to improve. We hope for significant change in academic departments, in overall training of faculty, and in disciplinary action.

A message to students: Your voice holds

power. If you look at social movements

“ Racial injustice is a human issue, and we all have the duty to fight for more inclusivity.”

—JEREMY RODRIGUEZ ’20 16 Nobles FALL 2020

across recent history, such as the March for Our Lives, the Little Rock Nine and the Tiananmen Square protests, the youth played a large role in creating change. It is important that we are aware of the issues surrounding us and that we are passionate about making our society better, because soon, we will be the generation in control.

To adults who want to offer support: It’s

important for adults to recognize the power they have, listen to what students have to say about any large changes or issues, and advocate for them. Youth are capable of analyzing difficult situations and working together and being leaders for society—do not underestimate our power.

How Nobles should back this work: Nobles

needs to not teach history solely from the perspective of the victors. All students should take the time to learn from primary sources, but also to truly listen to and learn from each other. Racial injustice is a human issue, and we all have the duty to fight for more inclusivity.

Nobles students at the 2018 Student Diversity Leadership Conference in Nashville, Tennessee. L-R: Chibueze Ikeogu ’19, Jeremy Rodriguez ’20, Noa Fay ’19, Ami Nwaoha ’19, Maya Rodriguez ’19, Vivian Li ’21

ACEY SHEEHAN ’22

Sheehan identifies as a queer nonbinary person who is neither male nor female.

They are also a member of Spectrum, a Nobles club for LGBTQ+ awareness and support, and a co-leader of the affinity group Queer 2 Queer. Their activism is focused on human rights, with a large interest in LGBTQ+ topics, but they speak out on many intersectional issues, such as Black Lives Matter and climate change.

Their work at Nobles: I’m mainly focused

on making sure that the campus and community is a safe place for any LGBTQ+ students, faculty and staff.

This included creating a new LGBTQ+ affinity club that includes those who may be questioning. Specifically as an openly nonbinary student, I’m working to make sure there is more inclusion of gender for anyone who is not cisgender (someone who identifies as their gender assigned at birth). As much as I was against becoming the “poster child” for LGBTQ+ issues, I didn’t want anyone in future years who is LGBTQ+ to have to deal with the

same issues I’ve dealt with, so I stood up and began to point out the ones that the school and society seemed to brush under the rug.

On a common misconception about their issue: Everyone automatically assumes

that because gay marriage is legal in the United States, that the LGBTQ+ community doesn’t need anything more, but if the Covid-19 pandemic proved anything, it showed how minorities are treated in a time of urgency. The president rolled back bills that protect transgender people, alongside the rest of the LGBTQ+ community, from discrimination, specifically in healthcare. The fight for equal treatment is far from over.

On online activism: As a teenager, I am

unable to vote and oftentimes don’t have time or permission to go to protests, especially in the midst of a pandemic.

Online activism made it easier for me to speak out and gain a platform, slowly making a difference in both educating others and clarifying any questions people had.

Alex Janower, Sophie Streeter and Acey Sheehan, all ’22, took to City Hall Plaza in Boston to demand a better future during a climate strike demonstration in September 2019.

On how Nobles should take part in and support this work: Nobles could eas-

ily begin to listen to students and their opinions, as so many of their voices are silenced, as seen by the anonymous Instagram account @blackatnobles, which allows students and graduates of color to speak out against the racism they’ve seen and experienced in school.

A common theme in all of the posts that I have seen while at school are issues of institutionalized issues like homophobia and racism, but they are never fixed.

KAYLA HENDERSON ’21

Henderson is involved in Model UN and Debate, School Life Council and Camp Sunshine, among other organizations.

As photo and layout editor for the Nobleman, she encourages her classmates to educate themselves and join the fight against systemic racism.

On the issue she’s fighting for: I am

passionate about promoting equity, especially within the Nobles community.

Being biracial, I have been able to experience two different worlds with people FALL 2020 Nobles 17

perspective

who sometimes have polar opposite opinions. In many ways, people see the world as black or white, and it is exactly this attitude that fosters division and racism in our society.

On the work she’s doing now: As photo

editor for the Nobleman, one of my jobs includes running the @thenoblemanonline Instagram account. When the death of George Floyd sparked a nationwide uproar, I, along with the rest of the staff, found it necessary to spread awareness and show support for the Black community. During the protest in Boston on May 31, I knew that I needed to be there, despite being the only one I knew attending, so, I went as a supporter and student journalist and later posted my photos on the Nobleman Instagram.

My hope was that if people saw other students just like them, who were willing to take risks to support an important and necessary movement, they could do the same.

Her message to other students: Do not be

afraid to put yourself out there. If you’re not involved, you’re going to look back on this time and wish that you were a part of the change that will happen.

On how Nobles should take part in and support this work: Nobles needs to

acknowledge flaws within the community and seek the guidance of students for advice on how to change. In recent weeks, horrifying stories regarding racism at Nobles have been revealed, and the school must validate students’ concerns. It is necessary for Dr. Hall to speak to everyone, but specifically the faculty, about how the school is going to move forward as completely antiracist.

MINH MAI ’22

Mai serves as a Youth Ambassador and Youth Vietnamese Liaison for the City of Boston, and as Youth Director of Workforce and Economic Development for the Mayor’s Youth Council. He volunteers with the Greater Boston Food Bank and works at Starbucks as a barista and trainer. He is a graduate of the Achieve program.

On the issue he cares about most: Money

is a tool, but there is not enough properly conveyed information out there for some people to understand how to use it. Growing up in poverty, I saw firsthand how the lack of money can divide families. It has caused some people to betray what is right in hopes of finding financial success. More often than not, I have seen money used to buy one thing to the next, without proper planning on the next purchase.

On the work he’s doing now: Getting a

simple, fair, no-fee checking account from a bank is, in itself, a barrier for some, whether because of an understandable mistrust in the banking industry or high fees/minimum balances. In low- to moderate-income communities, you’ll see a lot of check-cashing places.

There are banks in these communities, but they are not built for them. The biggest bank in my community is Bank of America; their minimum daily balance of $250 is a challenge to families who are barely making enough to cover next month’s rent. I am currently working with the City of Boston’s BankOn coalition to help unbanked and underbanked individuals get a fair entry into life.

“ We need adults to implicate themselves and ask...

‘How can I be part of the solution?’”

— SAFFIYAH COKER ’20 18 Nobles FALL 2020

On how adults can support young people fighting to make a difference: Educate

them! They’re not too young to understand the importance of spending money wisely. If you’re comfortable giving your child a credit card, take family time to talk to them about how to use it properly.

Teachers could hold a class on budgeting and workshops on how to manage wealth. Nobles could have graduates come back and work with students. I was able to talk to some alumni in the financial sector, and for me, that was an amazing opportunity.

SAFFIYAH COKER ’20

Coker volunteers with Greater Four Corners Action Coalition (GFCAC), a community outreach organization in Dorchester. At Nobles, she co-led Sister 2 Sister (an affinity group for female students of color) and Students United for Racial Justice and Equity. She interned for the Take Back the Night Foundation, which combats sexual assault, and created Postmarked with Love, a letterwriting campaign to empower fifthgraders in Boston Public Schools.

(Top) Celtics player Enes Kanter addresses Black Lives Matter supporters on Boston Common on May 31, following the killing of George Floyd. (Below) The May 31 Boston protest and others like it have continued for months across the nation.

On the issues she cares about most:

Existing as a Black girl in predominantly white spaces has not always been easy.

But through teachers, S2S and the Student Diversity Leadership Conference, I have learned power for womxn of color is created through education and leadership. I’m also passionate about race and inequality in America. Attending Nobles, I felt a disconnect from my neighborhood, Dorchester, until I discovered GFCAC and began volunteering. Last summer, I went to London with the School for Ethics and Global Leadership (SEGL) to learn how race and privilege manifest themselves globally.

Some of the work she’s doing now: I led

a workshop on privilege in the era of Covid-19 and Black Lives Matter with a program-mate for SEGL over Zoom; we read statements of privilege about race, gender, socio-economic status, sexual orientation and equity. On social media, I have been advocating for Black lives, organizations and police reform, and donating. My message is about educating yourself and pledging to do better.

PHOTOGRAPHS: KAYLA HENDERSON ’21, FOR THE NOBLEMAN

How adults can offer support: I ask

that adults give us credibility. Many dismiss us by saying that we don’t fully understand because we are young, but I would argue that we do understand these issues because we are young. I

ask that adults give us the platform and space to educate them and spread our message. We need adults to implicate themselves and ask, “Have I been part of the problem?” and “How can I be a part of the solution?”

FALL 2020 Nobles 19

perspective

The College Tour

Mountain biking through West Virginia to retrace my great-great-grandfather’s last ride

BY DOUG JANKEY, HISTORY FACULTY

Join Jankey on his epic encounter with his ancestor’s fateful choice on a runaway train.

O

ne truth of parenting is that your child’s high school years accelerate like a freight train. Momentum builds steadily toward senior year until suddenly they thunder past and disappear. The college tour in the summer of junior year is when it suddenly dawns on you that the train is nigh and about to rocket on by. My son Sam’s college tour in August of 2019 took us from Massachusetts to Ohio to Pennsylvania. On that tour we were able to dovetail college visits with a remarkable encounter with our family history involving an actual runaway freight train in a West Virginia canyon dating from December 2, 1902.

The penultimate leg of our college tour took us from Gambier, Ohio, to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. In the middle of this 336-mile stretch lies Elkins, West Virginia, the ancestral home of the Jankey family in America. Between 1880 and 1980, four generations of Jankeys built and worked the railroads in a rural region of the Allegheny Mountains. On December 2, 1902, John William Jankey (JWJ)—my great-great-grandfather— died while an engineer in a train wreck at Big Run Curve on Blackfork Grade in Blackwater Canyon, about 20 miles northeast of Elkins. Photo 1 displays

a Western Maryland Railway (WMR) steam train at this precise location around 1950. The 1902 wreck looms large in our family. I first learned of it from my father and grandfather when I was eight or 10 years old. I distinctly remember wondering during that conversation what it would be like to visit the crash site. While pursuing research in the West Virginia State archives during graduate school in 1998, I was able to locate the records that enabled me to date, locate and reconstruct this particular event and some of the bigger narrative of my family history in Elkins. After reading the sources, I continued to envision a trip to Big Run Curve. Then life accelerated. Eve and I married and moved to Boston to begin our family and jobs at Nobles. For the next 20 years, the trip to Blackfork Grade remained imagined.

The opportunity for a Blackwater pilgrimage emerged while planning Sam’s college tour. The railroads ceased operations in the grade in 1983. By 2000, the canyon had become a protected part of the Monongahela National Forest, and the original grade designated a rail trail.

Sam and I made arrangements to spend a night in Elkins and rent mountain bikes for the 25-mile blitz down Blackwater Canyon. We completed the ride on August 18, 2019.

“ As Sam and I passed the ruins of the turntable and railyards in Thomas, my excitement began to rise. It was simply the thrill of finally embarking on the last leg of a journey I first imagined as a kid.”

—DOUG JANKEY 20 Nobles FALL 2020

JOHN WILLIAM JANKEY AND THE WRECK IN BLACKFORK GRADE

Photo 2 documents JWJ in the cockpit of West Virginia Central and Pittsburgh Railway (WVCPR) Engine #41 on December 1, 1902, the day before the wreck. Around 1870, John Jankey (JJ)— JWJ’s father—began to work for Henry Gassaway Davis, a former colleague from the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) who had purchased vast tracts of land in Deer Park to build a resort hotel and the WVCPR. Davis’ new venture ran 61 miles from the B&O junction near Deer Park, southwest through the rich timber and coal resources of Blackwater Canyon, to the town of Elkins in the Tygart River valley. JWJ joined his father, working on the construction of the “new road” through the canyon, around 1880.

When the WVCPR line to Elkins opened in 1889, JWJ ascended quickly from fireman to brakeman to engineer.

JWJ was tasked with running Engine #41 on daily freight runs up and down Blackfork Grade—the steepest 10 miles of Blackwater Canyon—between the towns of Thomas and Hendricks, West Virginia.

Photo 3 captures John William Jankey’s train on December 3, 1902, the day after the wreck. Engine #41 left Thomas at 4:00 p.m. with a train of 34 cars laden with timber, cinder, coke, tanbark and steel rails. His crew of five set and reset the manual brakes on all of the train cars three separate times as the train approached the canyon. When the train began to accelerate, JWJ applied airbrakes and traction sand to no avail.

At Canyon Point, roughly six miles down

PHOTO 1 BY A. AUBREY BODINE • COPYRIGHT © JENNIFER B. BODINE • COURTESY OF AAUBREYBODINE.COM

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1. A pair of Western Maryland 2-8-0 Consolidations ascending Blackfork Grade, just below Big Run Curve, 1950. (A. Aubrey Bodine); 2. Engineer John William Jankey and the Crew of WVCPR Engine #41, Hendricks, West Virginia, December 1, 1902. (W.R. Hicks); 3. WVCPR Engine #41 Wreck at Big Run Curve in Blackfork Grade, December 3, 1902. (W.R. Hicks)

the grade, he instructed his crew to save themselves. The fireman and forward brakeman jumped from the engine at Tub Run, roughly 10 miles down the grade. The rear brakeman, flagman and conductor all hastened to the caboose, which remained on the track throughout the wreck. JWJ stayed with the train, which derailed at Big Run Curve, 11 miles from the top of the grade. It took rescue crews from Hendricks and Thomas more than two days to recover his body. The rest of the crew survived.

FINDING THE WRECK SITE

Sam and I began our adventure by securing a ride from Elkins to the top of Blackwater Canyon in Davis, West Virginia. An outfitter gave us a ride up WV Route 219, a longer, twistier version of New Hampshire’s Kancamagus Highway. From the hairpins we could see nearly 1,500 feet down to the Blackwater River and the railbed. In Davis we rented mountain bikes and headed five miles back down 219 to the railhead at Thomas. From there we re-created the last 10 miles of JWJ’s final run down Blackfork Grade.

Miles 0-3: Thomas to Douglas Curve

As Sam and I passed the ruins of the turntable and railyards in Thomas, my excitement began to rise. It was simply the thrill of finally embarking on the last leg of a journey I first imagined as a kid.

We paused at the coke ovens south of Thomas, the source of the coke and cinder that accounted for the bulk of Engine #41’s cargo. At first the ride was a lazy, sunny and smooth cruise along the bank of the blue, placid Blackwater River just off to our left. L.E.J. Cross, the forward fireman from #41’s crew, provided the following account in the December 4, 1902, issue of The Elkins Inter-Mountain: We left Thomas at 4 o’clock and immediately the brakeman began to set the brakes in preparation to start down the grade.

Jankey worked the engine hard to get around Douglas curve. Just below Douglas he shut the engine off and let it drift down the mountain at 6 or 7 miles an hour. A half-mile below Douglas, the speed began to increase, and Jankey applied the air and began using sand, neither of which had any perceptible effect.

PHOTOS 2 AND 3 BY W.R. HICKS • COURTESY OF THE JANKEY FAMILY

Miles 3-5: Douglas to Finley’s Run

As Sam and I found our own speed increasing after Douglas Curve, my thrill shifted unexpectedly in the direction of fear. We needed to stay on the brakes to maintain control. As we entered the canyon forest, the river disappeared. The wide, shallow, inviting railbed morphed into a narrow, steep cut into the sootstained granite shoulder of Backbone Mountain. When we emerged into a narrow clearing at mile 5, the river was a distant slash of whitewater now nearly 1,000 feet below us. I decided it was best not to look over or think about the cliff to our left. Fireman Cross’ account continued: A little further and he threw on all the air he had, but neither the air or the sand had any effect whatever. . . . At Finley’s Run he called for the brakes, which with Jankey meant that the crew should look out for themselves, as he had often said that when he whistled for brakes it meant that he had done all that he could do. A mile further, he reversed his engine, a last resort, and left it that way all the way down.

FALL 2020 Nobles 21

perspective

As Sam and I continued to bounce and chatter down the grade, a tangle of thoughts began to revolve in my mind. I wondered how long after leaving Thomas did he realize that the train would leave the track. Why didn’t he jump?

Miles 5-6: Finley’s Run to Tub Run

Sam and I paused at Tub Run, a brief, relatively flat, wide and straight portion of the grade, about a mile above the wreck site. This was plainly the only area in which the crew could have hoped to survive a leap from the runaway train.

Sam and I did not say much to each other.

We knew exactly where we were, and the GPS confirmed that we were nearing Big Run Curve. Fireman Cross recalled: I expected to go off in Tub Run, for we were running 35 or 40 miles per hour. We passed Tub Run safely, however, and feeling we could not round Big Run Curve without wrecking, I said to Jankey, “Let’s leave her, you have done all that you can do.” He replied, “No, not yet.” A little further down I said again, “Let’s leave her” . . . but he looked back at his train and then forward and shook his head.

Miles 6-7: Tub Run to Big Run Curve

As Sam and I descended from Tub Run, the grade steepened and narrowed again.

And then there we were. At the railhead earlier in the morning, a local mountain biker warned us that Big Run Curve would not seem like such a big deal, that it would not feel as sharp on the ground as it appears on the map. At Big Run, the railbed swings more nearly 100 degrees to the left, but the bend seems very gentle.

But when the 880-ton train accelerated to 50 miles per hour, this was enough to produce a disaster. Cross continued: As we neared Big Run I jumped to the right in a little open spot which I had often noticed about a train length from Big Run. Regaining my feet, I saw the engine dash 22 Nobles FALL 2020

4.

into the cut just above Big Run, and poor Jankey was still at his post. I know he went down with his engine. The train was going at a speed of between 50 and 60 miles an hour when the crash came. Every member of the crew did his duty like the splendid men that they all are. . . . Old 41 was as good Tuesday as I ever was her; the air worked perfectly, but the track was slippery, the train heavy, and it simply became uncontrollable.

As Sam and I began to explore, first thing we noticed was an obvious and massive impact crater to the right of the railbed, just above Big Run Creek— the “cut just above Big Run” in Cross’ account. I worked my way 50 feet down to the creek bed, to the point just above the culvert at which I estimated Engine #41 had come to rest under so many freight cars and tons of cargo. In 1902, the side of Backbone Mountain was largely deforested. In 2019, it was covered with mature, dense hardwood forest. On the bank above the culvert, I found several decaying, moss-covered railroad ties.

Sam was able to extract some coal from the impact crater. So many trains had wrecked in this spot that we can’t know if the coal actually came from JWJ’s wreck. But it was enough to know that it might have come from #41’s tender. We hugged and took some pictures. While we lingered, the sky darkened and thunder rolled to the North. In a cloudburst we remounted to head down the grade toward Hendricks and back down Route 219 to our car in Parsons.

Miles 7-10: Big Run to Hendricks

Soon after we departed from Big Run, the grade flattened, the railbed widened, and the river’s current eased to a quiet gurgle.

I began to think about how much and how deeply my family’s life and history had intersected with this 10-mile stretch of canyon. Charles E. Jankey—John William’s son and my great-grandfather— lived in Deer Park and worked for the WVCPR as a machinist in the Elkins roundhouse in 1902. He rode Blackfork Grade between work and home, one of the skilled workers required to repair Engine #41 after it was recovered from Big Run for return to service six months after the wreck. My grandfather, John Wainer Jankey, became a fireman for the WMR, which absorbed the WVCPR in 1905. His regular route took him up and down Blackfork Grade for the first decade of his career. In the 1940s, he would put my father on the train in Deer Park with his ticket safety-pinned to his jacket. Dad would ride down Blackwater Canyon into Elkins to visit his grandparents during the summer. Now here I was with Sam. In Parsons we loaded up and returned our bikes to Davis. From there we headed Northeast toward Gettysburg.

We found ourselves passing west to east through many of the towns I recognized from U.S. Census records as places in which the Jankeys had lived between 1850 and 1900—Oakland, Deer Park, and Altamont, Maryland; Keyser, West Virginia; Cumberland, Maryland; Thurmont, Pennsylvania. Prior to this trip, I never really understood exactly why PHOTOS BY DOUG JANKEY

5.

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4. Doug and Sam ’20 Jankey at Big Run Curve, Blackfork Grade, August 18, 2019; 5. The crash site at Big Run, August 18, 2019; 6. A 180-degree panorama of Big Run Curve, August 18, 2019. The grade from Tub Run is on the right. The crash site is at right center. The grade to Hendricks is at left center. The Blackwater Valley is on the left; 7. Mission Accomplished! Doug and Sam Jankey at Parsons, West Virginia, August 18, 2019.

the Jankey family seemed to move every year or two and then stopped doing so at Deer Park and Elkins. Riding through the terrain and following the map, I came to see that each stop represented a new division of the railroad, and that Deer Park and Elkins were, for the Jankeys, the last two stops on the line.

AFTERWARD

The December 2, 1902, train wreck quickly became part of the legend of Blackfork Grade. Fireman Cross concluded: Jankey was a splendid engineer and an excellent man to work with. We always had a rule not to talk to each other when going up or down the grade, and this last run was no exception. He worked like a hero to save his train. To my appeal to jump and save his life, his only reply was “Not yet.”

On December 18, 1902, the Intermountain published a postscript to the wreck:

Engineer Jankey thought he could save his train if he could take it around the curve.

It was his duty to make the effort, no matter what might be the peril, and he never hesitated a moment. Cool, iron-nerved, he stood heroically at his post, and died a martyr to his sense of duty. Could any man have done more? Are heroes made of sterner stuff? John Jankey’s lines of life may have been cast in humble places, but was evidently the type of manhood that all delight to honor.

JWJ died at age 45 and was buried in the Davis family plot of Maplewood cemetery in Elkins. He had spent his entire working life in the employ of the Davis family. Elizabeth gave birth to their 10th child, a son named John, a few months after the wreck. Elizabeth’s health began to fail and she passed away in 1905. The five children old enough to work remained in the area, although two of the boys swore off railroad work. The Davis family provided for the rest of the

children to go away to boarding school in New York, but most returned to the region to settle.

This experience was deeply powerful for me. Since childhood I had always imagined my visit would be a hike up the grade on my own. The physical act of riding the canyon allowed us to experience in some small way the desperate fight with gravity that my great-great-grandfather and his crew waged on that day in 1902. Riding down Blackfork Grade with Sam was, of course, the biggest bonus of all.

Note: While I did not include notes, this article was written from histories of the West Virginia railroads, period newspapers, family papers and oral histories.

The article will serve as an opening case study for a new history seminar at Nobles entitled “Who Am I?” The course will ask students to identify and uncover an aspect of their family history for research, writing and presentation.

FALL 2020 Nobles 23

Lost&

Found

BY T IM CA R E Y

P H OTOGRA P H Y BY T I M CA REY, A NNE HURLBUT A N D KI M N EA L

SITTING ACROSS FROM ME at our kitchen table on a rainy

Sunday morning in April, my wife, Mary, handed me her computer and said, “Take a glance at this.” I found myself looking at a number of extraordinary photographs of students dressed in casual clothes, prom dresses, sweatshirts adorned with names of colleges, each of them holding an item a, school newspaper, a lacrosse stick, a camera, a painted canvas and more, treasured mementos from their high school years.

Written for The Washington Post, Lorenzo Hall’s article tells the story of Matt Mendelsohn, photographer, whose daughter is a rising senior at Yorktown High School near Washington, D.C. I am not sure if he was able to make images of all 500 of the seniors, but the ones he did photograph achieved his goal—to show who these kids are, the passion they possess, and what they may have lost this past spring.

Finishing the piece, I looked at Mary again, and she uttered quietly, “This would be a great project to do at Nobles.” I sat on the idea for a bit and figured I would write to people at the school to see if there might be some interest. Lo and behold, I got an enthusiastic response.

Fast-forward a couple of weeks. I am meeting with Anne

24 Nobles FALL 2020

Hurlbut, Heather Sullivan and Kim Neal of the communications office; we are making a plan and we spring into action. Citing the Castle as the ideal spot to do the shoot, we try to achieve what Mendelsohn fulfilled, catching the kids for who they are and what makes them unique.

The way they came, dressed in a variety of outfits, hauling everything from skis, to oars, to important photographs, medals, diplomas, graduation dresses and more, we learned one primary thing. These young people love Noble and Greenough School, what it is, what it stands for, the love it engenders, and the pure delight it provides most everyone who attends.

On a personal note, I just want to add that taking the images was beyond enjoyable. But more than that, being able to connect again with these young people made me realize what I miss most in being retired—the relationships. Even in the brief moments we were together, I felt a bond with each senior. Each had a different journey; the following photo essay includes several faces from more than 80 who participated.

The seniors lost a spring, but they provided me and others with a gift that we will treasure for a long time to come. N

FALL 2020 Nobles 25

1.

2.

3.

4.

26 Nobles FALL 2020

5.

Previous spread: Madie Majernik. 1. Jackson Phinney. 2.Sammy Walkey. 3. Sakura Hinenoya. 4. Sam Jankey. 5. Alex Bao. FALL 2020 Nobles 27

6.

7.

8.

9.

28 Nobles FALL 2020

10.

11.

12.

13.

6. Grace Smith. 7. Emre Yalcindag. 8. Anushka Harve. 9. Annie Khawand. 10. Lauren Kelley. 11. Giana De La Cruz. 12. John DiNovi. 13. Wyatt Ellison.

FALL 2020 Nobles 29

14.

30 Nobles FALL 2020

15.

16.

17.

18.

14. Hailey Brown. 15. Peirce Kenney. 16. Olly Ogbue. 17. Paloma Ducrest. 18. Toby Urell.

FALL 2020 Nobles 31

19.

20.

21.

22.

32 Nobles FALL 2020

23.

24.

25.

26.

19. Charlotte Epker. 20. Finn Harrington. 21. Angela Giordano. 22. Jake Sanghavi. 23. Celia Dorsey. 24. Marc Smith. 25. Teddy Slosberg. 26. Ella Midura.

FALL 2020 Nobles 33

27.

28.

29.

30.

34 Nobles FALL 2020

31.

27. Kiley Bertos. 28. Joe Todd. 29. Nathan Trudell. 30. Keren Luo. 31. Drew Barry.

FALL 2020 Nobles 35

GOOD NEWS MORE

Keeping Communities Connected During Covid

BY K IM N E A L ILLUST R AT I ON S

BY M IK E E L L I S

W 36 Nobles FALL 2020

HEN COVID-19 REACHED THE UNITED STATES in late winter 2020, the Nobles program for

Experiential and Community-Engaged Learning (EXCEL) felt the repercussions. Nobles’ longstanding service partnerships with domestic and international organizations offer students immersive experiences through a variety of cultures and communities. But this spring, beginning with the trip to Cambodia and Vietnam, international and domestic EXCEL itineraries evaporated as warnings spread. Director of the Anderson/Cabot Center for EXCEL Ben Snyder and his team, Linda Hurley, Holly Bonomo, Laura Yamartino and Liz Benjamin-Alcayaga, say that having to disappoint students was difficult—but canceling on community partners would have dealt an even more devastating blow. Strong student motivation to continue support sparked the “More Good News” initiative. The moniker was inspired by actor John Krasinski’s “Some Good News” web series, which featured inspiring, altruistic stories of everyday people spreading kindness during these challenging times.

COMMUNITY CAMPAIGNS

While the Nobles faculty planned a pandemic-proof academic solution, student community service core leaders and volunteers organized support for EXCEL partners and frontline workers fighting Covid. Pivoting from in-person fundraising tools like bake sales and raffles, they proposed a challenge fund for a “More Good News” initiative: Donors pledged donations to EXCEL partners in exchange for students’ service hours.

By the campaign’s end in early June, $46,000 was raised by service-minded students who tallied more than 4,100 hours. Funds benefited eight local and global partners: Three Squares New England, Immigrant Family Services Institute (Boston), Community Center of St. Bernard (New Orleans), Safe Passage (Guatemala), Kliptown Youth Program (South Africa), Kaplani School (India), Solaid International (Cambodia), and Romania Children’s Relief.

In May, Nobles’ development team launched its #DawgsOnAMission campaign (see page 39), which together with “More Good News,” come at a critical time for populations most harshly affected by the pandemic.

STAYING SOCIAL

Social media engagement has grown as quarantined communities seek to stay close, and student organizers capitalized on that uptick to spread “More Good News.” Sidnie Kulik ’21 used all-school emails and the @nobles_excel Instagram to raise campaign awareness, while also volunteering as an IFSI tutor, calling senior citizens and making posters for frontline workers. “The importance of this initiative was to strongly connect our community through service toward others,” she said. IFSI tutoring co-coordinator Catie Asnis ’21 helped to determine the campaign’s point system, and to create promotional videos and emails. It helped her realize that “Nobles has the power to

make a difference not only in our community, but in other communities as well.”

Nobles’ partnerships with both Mass General Hospital and Boston Children’s Hospital gave Director of Sports Medicine/Athletic Trainer Gwen Chiaranda the idea to honor healthcare heroes and other frontline workers. Nobles students of all ages, faculty, staff and their families filmed messages and penned notes of appreciation, which Chiaranda shared via Nobles’ sports medicine accounts on Instagram and Twitter. “Showing gratitude is an important way to uplift one’s mood, and we all needed that. It’s important to realize others’ stories may be harder than our own, like healthcare providers who can’t see their families throughout the pandemic.” Keeping those individuals and sacrifices in mind, Chiaranda said, “Even though things seem to be loosening, we can’t stop what we’ve been doing.

Wearing a mask is indicative of kindness, vigilance and patience.”

SUSTAINING SENIORS

The current pandemic compounds the negative psychological effects of social isolation and food insecurity for already vulnerable populations, including seniors (and especially older women and people

of color). In late March, volunteers took part in a socially distant grocery delivery effort coordinated by the Dedham Housing Authority, the Dedham Council on Aging, the Dedham Youth Commission and Nobles. Bookstore manager Amy McHugh, who made deliveries with daughter Molly and son Jake ’20, said, “During a time where we sometimes feel helpless, this was something we could do!”

An article by Paula Span in the New York Times, “Just What Older People Didn’t Need, More Isolation,” stated, “About a quarter of people over 65 living independently in their communities are considered socially isolated, and 43 percent of those over 60 report feeling lonely—and that was before public health officials instructed older people, and everyone else, to stay home.” Since Caroline Collins-Pisano ’18 founded the Golden Dawgs program with Community Service Coordinator Linda Hurley, to connect students with local senior citizens in 2016, Nobles volunteers have forged lasting relationships with elders from the Dedham Retired Men’s Club, Hebrew Senior Life, the Dedham Housing Authority at O’Neil Drive, and the Dedham Council on Aging. Golden Dawgs co-leader Drew Barry ’20 said, “It’s hon-

“ We can’t stop what we’ve been doing.

Wearing a mask is indicative of kindness, vigilance and patience.”

— GWEN CHIARANDA FALL 2020 Nobles 37

estly devastating. . . . We’re worried about all these people we’ve worked with for two years and just making sure that they’re top priority and being safe.” Of time spent with the Golden Dawgs, co-leader Finn Harrington ’20 agrees: “It means a lot to them, and we really enjoy the conversations.” This spring, Barry and Harrington worked with rising leaders Alex Abdelal and Tommy Kantrowitz (both ’21) to establish a pen pal and calling system to connect students with seniors. Kantrowitz said, “The work we did seemed far more impactful than I would’ve thought, and that makes me realize how big of a difference we can make.”

38 Nobles FALL 2020

TUTORING THROUGH TECHNOLOGY

Communities of color and immigrant populations also suffer disproportionately from Covid’s effects. Migrating service online creates a real challenge for households stranded by the digital divide—but hardship ignites ingenuity, and Nobles student volunteers have come through in remarkable ways. One of the most creative is through Nobles’ partnership with the Immigrant Family Services Institute (IFSI), headed by Nobles parent Dr. Geralde Gabeau (Angie ’21, Gigi ’17). Since April, more than 100 Nobles student tutors have paired up with IFSI students left in the lurch by school closures—and

many continued through the summer.

Dr. Gabeau, executive director of IFSI, and her tireless team of 20 provide immigrant integration and support services, community outreach, educational support, advocacy and children’s programs in Boston. IFSI’s client-centered approach is based on a village model, in which no one struggles alone. Gabeau said, “When Covid hit, we had to face the harsh reality: Are we going to let our families down, or step up and do the impossible to be there for them?” IFSI regularly delivered home-cooked meals in their clients’ culinary traditions, unlike food the city provides. For those experiencing tragic losses due to Covid, IFSI helps with funeral expenses. Where Boston Public Schools left a gap, IFSI stepped in. “It was not only tutoring, but entire systems of support for families. Undocumented families have no access to government stimulus packages or unemployment benefits; IFSI had to raise money to help them,” said Gabeau. During the pandemic, IFSI’s volunteer base has tripled, but Covid’s impact is projected to last for years. Still, the realistic but ever-hopeful Gabeau said the pandemic provides opportunities like greater connection to technology, which allows IFSI to change more lives and onboard more volunteers.

In addition to general tutoring, four dynamic teams of Nobles students mentored IFSI students for an interdisciplinary multimedia project celebrating Haitian Heritage Month. They combined coding, art, music-making, and writing and research, and impressed Boston Public School officials with a final presentation. Gabeau always tells Nobles volunteers, “When you come to work with a child, I want this to be a win-win situation, where you give your time and skills, but also learn about a different culture and develop new relationships.

Your eyes are being opened: You don’t have to travel to get to know Haiti.” She said the way the project brought all those

“ When you come to work with a child, I want this to be a win-win situation...Your eyes are being opened: You don’t have to travel to get to know Haiti.”

—DR. GERALDE GABEAU, IFSI

principles together was the most powerful demonstration of those ideals.

Joyce Huang ’21, a co-coordinator of the tutoring program, said, “It meant a lot to become part of my IFSI students’ support system for the past few months. Normally we see technology as a distraction from reality, but during social distancing, it was essential for the students I tutored and for everyone to feel connected with friends and family.”

NOT FORGOTTEN

Also keeping people connected is Daniel Wang ’22, who lives down the street from the Veterans’ Affairs Hospital in West Roxbury. When he noticed a spike in ambulance activity around late March, he reached out to volunteer and learned that because hospital wards were isolat-

ed to prevent the spread of Covid, many veterans were facing psychological challenges. “I began to hand-draw cards and write notes of encouragement. By crafting unique designs for every veteran, I felt my message would be conveyed more intimately.” He sends 10 messages every week to the VA, thanking veterans and medical staff. Wang planned a Fourth of July initiative with Nobles volunteers and compiled a thank-you video from Nobles students, faculty and staff. “Veterans have given so much to America, yet it seems like their lives have been largely forgotten, especially during crises like the coronavirus epidemic. My message is simple: ‘You are not alone,’” Wang said.

MORE GOOD NEWS TO COME

The future of how Nobles will partner

and serve depends on the course of Covid, but plans are already underway for the next iteration of “More Good News.” The EXCEL team said that these experiences provide an opportunity to learn about privilege and injustice.

“We talk a lot about the issues: hunger, homelessness, equity in education, poverty and basic access to so many things.

We challenge kids to think about how to improve existing systems,” said Hurley.

Looking ahead, she said, “Our frontline workers are still fighting Covid in the ER. Essential workers, from healthcare to grocery and delivery, are still taking risks to keep the greater public safe.” Do what you can where you are, she said: “Spearhead a neighborhood cleanup, partner with other groups that may have initiatives. The work is never done.” N

Mission-Driven Success: #DawgsOnAMission On May 4, Nobles launched the #DawgsOnAMission campaign to “Support Our Mission to Share Our Mission.” This unique effort involved raising awareness and support for both the Annual Nobles Fund (ANF), the school’s most important fundraising priority, as well as Nobles’ long-standing community partner, Three Squares New England, which serves food pantries across the region. An anonymous donor from within the Nobles community pledged to make a $30 gift to the non-profit for each and every gift made to the ANF over the course of a five-day period.

The results of the campaign were nothing short of inspiring.

The entire Nobles community—families, graduates and friends—

made more than 500 gifts to the ANF, resulting in a maximum $15,000 donation to Three Squares New England. Statewide, food insecurity increased dramatically last spring as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, making these funds all the more vital.

Kati Sigel, executive director of the non-profit, stated, “The Covid-19 pandemic has left hundreds of thousands of families and individuals struggling to put food on the table. The funds raised through the ANF campaign will help ensure that those most vulnerable in the Greater Boston area receive the nutrition and services they deserve. Three Squares New England could not be more grateful for this gift.”

FALL 2020 Nobles 39

FACES OF THE RIVER A SOUTH AMERICAN EXPEDITION

40 Nobles FALL 2020

Jeff Wong ’12 and friend Henry Maillet, a University of Virginia graduate and Peace Corps colleague, traveled the length of Paraguay by boat, learning about the country’s culture, climate and relationship with the water.

Here, Wong updates Nobles magazine editor Heather Sullivan on his continuing adventure.

Heather Sullivan: How did you go from accounting

and finance at Georgetown to the Peace Corps in Paraguay to a six-month river expedition sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund?

Jeff Wong: I was interested in accounting and finance because of my economics class with Mr. [Brian] Day. In college, I was studying finance and accounting, and I wasn’t sure if I was ready for an office job. I applied to the Peace Corps and became a community economics development volunteer, working with local youths in Paraguay on capacitybuilding, leadership and entrepreneurship. I worked with the local school—with the teachers and the kids—and I taught an entrepreneurship class. I brought one student to a national competition, and she won money to start her business.

HS: Did you start with the Peace Corps right after

college graduation?

JW: I graduated in May 2016. I was working as a trainer at a boxing club in Boston before I came to Paraguay in February 2017. Henry [Maillet, my partner on the river expedition] and I were in the same cohort. He was also a community economic development volunteer, but for me to get to his town from my town, it was three buses and several hours away. He was also teaching entrepreneurship, working at the local school in the community that he served. We became good friends.

FALL 2020 Nobles 41

HS: So, you were a boxing trainer, and I

know you have done some youth sports training, too. What did you play at Nobles, and how did that affect the way you work with kids?

JW: I played football with Bob Moore— Coach Moore—and hockey with Brian Day. And then I played lacrosse with Coach Rowley. I had an incredible sports experience at Nobles. I learned to put in consistent effort and to have a team-first mentality, which I brought to Paraguay, where I started coaching the futsal team. It’s five-on-five indoor soccer. I never played futsal in my life, but I was suddenly the coach. I used a lot of what I learned at Nobles—strategy, discipline and teamwork. During preseason training under Bob Moore, if you showed up late to a film session or practice or something, the entire team got in trouble. I implemented the same thing with the teams there, and we ended up having one of the most successful seasons that the school had seen in many years.

HS: In addition to Spanish—and

Mandarin, which wasn’t relevant for the expedition—you also learned Guarani, the 42 Nobles FALL 2020

language local to Paraguay. But first: You traveled 1,300 kilometers by boat!

JW: So, the boat was built by a local carpenter, specifically for our trip. The carpenter has been working on boats for the Paraguay River for about 50 years, and his father was a boat-builder before him. So he has a generational knowledge of not only the boat, but how the boat will interact with the river. The boat is named Jepovyvy, a Guarani word. Guarani is the second official language of Paraguay. So, Spanish and Guarani, it’s an indigenous language of the region. Jepovyvy in Guarani means adventure or exploration, so that’s what we named our boat, Jepovyvy.

HS: Typical day on the river?

JW: It was five and a half months of the

most grueling work. We were traveling around 5 to 6 kilometers an hour, and it’s 1,300 kilometers. So, we would go, like, between 10- and 15-hour days of just rowing, and Henry and I would take turns—one hour him, one hour me, one hour him, one hour me. And so we could crush like a 50- to 60-kilometer stretch on any day. We started in October. Then November, December, January are

the summer months, and it’s like 110 degrees. Our original plan was to start around 4 a.m. and get to wherever we needed to get by midday. That didn’t work because it was just so, so hot, and we had to rethink our entire strategy.

We started traveling at nighttime. At night, there were the worst mosquitoes imaginable. It’s like 2 a.m., and Henry is rowing, and I’m trying to close my eyes on the boat, and I’m getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. We would usually either arrive in a community in which we would stay with a host family or local contact [we had connected with in advance], or we would camp on the side of the river, just anywhere in the wilderness.

HS: What were the goals of this expedition?

JW: We would stay in various communi-

ties along the river, usually for a couple of days at a time. It was purely to learn about the community and about the way people live there. The mission of the Faces of the River expedition was to explore the biocultural diversity along the banks of the river: the way people live, what kind of work they do, their perspectives on the way they live.

Left to right: Jeff Wong ‘12 sits aboard a motocarro, preparing for the expedition; Henry Maillet studies a map of the Paraguay River while Wong cooks over the fire; Wong rows Jepovyvy at sunrise, battling the mist and poor visibility; Maillet photographs the sunrise aboard the stern of Jepovyvy.

And then, all of that was kind of through the climate angle, which is where World Wildlife comes into play.

Peace Corps Paraguay has a very good working relationship with World Wildlife Fund of Paraguay. And so Henry and I had made the initial contact, but being Peace Corps volunteers helped us get our foot in the door to present our project. We ended up doing field research for them for an initiative called Climate Crowd, which is learning the local stories on how climate change affects the local inhabitant, and then what that local inhabitant can do to counter climate change. Climate Crowd is a World Wildlife Fund methodology that’s used

internationally—we implemented the same methodology in Paraguay.

HS: What did you use for navigation?

JW: On the satellite phone, there’s an

app where we downloaded the map, which was very detailed and up to date.

But then we also had the nautical charts provided to us by the Navy. So, we would match those two things together anytime we were confused. But it’s just one big waterway and river, so there was no real getting lost.

HS: So, you were lead interviewer on the

project, right? How did you approach the interviews?

JW: We had an interview guide, and we

went over it with locals, including my local language teacher here—she taught me Guarani—and we also reviewed it with my linguistics professor from Georgetown. We were really focused on maintaining respect with the participant.

We didn’t want to ask questions that were unwanted or ignorant or putting words into their mouths. So we tried to make it as open-ended as possible, and the least intimidating we could. All of the questions were related to, What is the relationship that your community has with the river? What role does the river play in your lives? And we had tons of different answers for that.

FALL 2020 Nobles 43

HS: Can you share an example?

JW: In the smaller indigenous com-

munities, for example, the river is life.

They drink the water straight from the river. They eat the fish from the river.

And they catch animals that live there, and they travel on the river. There are no roads in some of those places. They wash their clothes in the river. So they’re very connected to the river, and if anything happens in terms of contamination or diminishing fish quantities or sizes, that all directly affects them. And then, on the other end of the spectrum, we visited a rice farm, and they use the river, too.

They redirect water from the river into the rice farm, and they use it for irrigation. So, we were all over the spectrum of what the river meant to individuals and inhabitants of the area.

HS: The Paraguay River is one of the

few free-flowing rivers, at least in South America. What’s the significance of that?

JW: Many large rivers are built with dams for controlling the waterway for transport or energy production. So the mere fact that we were able to travel from the northernmost point of the Paraguay River in Paraguay to the southernmost point in a small boat was really interesting to us, especially to Henry, who has more of a river background.

My only experience with a river was the Charles River.

HS: And you didn’t row at Nobles, right?

JW: Exactly. Henry is the river guy of the

two of us. So I actually had never camped in my life before, and I had never rowed in my life before. So those were two new things for me.

HS: When you conducted interviews, how

did you think about the balance between being helpful, while being respectful of the people whose land and river you were visiting?

JW: One of the things that we learned in 44 Nobles FALL 2020

Left to right: A family at sunset in the small indigenous town of Karcha Bahlut; Hugo collects his bait used to catch the prized surubi catfish; A woman revises the silky caraguata fiber, used in traditional artisanry.

the Peace Corps is when you arrive in a new community, you need to recognize that you don’t know anything, and that your experience is completely different from that of the local inhabitant. The first thing you’ve got to do is learn about the local experience and begin to understand the perspective. There are things that I might think, with my Western education, are right or good, whereas the reality is that there are local dynamics and environmental dynamics that I just don’t understand.

So, the first thing is learning the experience of the local inhabitant. And in the Peace Corps, they do that through community-asset analysis. The first three months of Peace Corps service is focused on what the whole community is about and figuring out what the community actually wants and needs: I’m not telling you what you need; you’re telling me what you need or you’re telling me what you want in your community. So, when we were on the river, the interviews were mainly focused on just learning about the community—what is the relationship that you have with the environment? The kind of methodology,

the ultimate idea of that, is going back to the community, presenting the data that you had collected there and then carrying out a local project. So we’re actually still in talks with the World Wildlife Fund about what are the opportunities we have about carrying out a project based on the data that we have gathered.

That’s kind of the next step, and even that is interactive. We present the data, and then the community leaders or the community inhabitants will work with us to decide what we want to do with this data or what are the kinds of projects that we can do.

HS: Can you give me an example?

JW: In one local indigenous town, where

women artisans use a local plant—it’s called the caraguata plant, and it looks like the top of a pineapple kind of spraying out with spines—to make handbags and other crafts. But the plants have been drying out, and they don’t have as many leaves, which the local people attribute to the heat and to local deforestation. The consequence of that is the main income source for many women in the town is being threatened. So now we’re

in contact with our local contact about a possible project regarding the planting of these caraguata plants in order to refortify the local artisans.

HS: You started in October 2019 and

finished in March 2020?

JW: Our original plan was to come home in March or April and then be home for a time and then come back here. Our plans got destroyed with the pandemic so we’re still in Paraguay, but I’m happy. I have friends here now, and my girlfriend is here. Things are going well.

HS: What’s been your experience of the

Covid-19 pandemic in Paraguay?

JW: Paraguay is 100 percent under control. Really, everyone is very cooperative, so the Paraguayan government was very fast in closing the borders. We were really lucky that the week that we completed the expedition, mandatory nationwide quarantine was put into place. We just got off the river, we were just finishing up, and then boom, quarantine. So they closed the borders; they quarantined everybody. Everyone was really, really cooperative in the beginning, and I do

attribute that to a Paraguayan culture— a general sense of togetherness and unity, of looking out for your neighbors and looking out for your families.

HS: So right now, you’re trapped, but

happy. What are the next steps?

JW: We actually just had a meeting with WWF, the U.S. team, and the Climate Crowd team. So, they’re going to be publishing a report based on the data that we collected. And we’re looking forward to potential projects with WWF, but things are a little bit up in the air with the pandemic, so we’re not sure. Outside of that, Henry and I have gathered terabytes of photos and video footage, and we are in the process of creating a teaser and a

budget for a documentary film.

We’re going through footage now, and I think we have some cool stuff, and we’re excited for a more in-depth look at that.

We’re hoping to have a draft of it by the end of the year or by early next year so that we can present to film festivals in mid-2021. . . . Henry has the DSLR camera, so he was the main photographer and I was the drone photographer.

HS: What did the expedition teach you?

JW: I would say two things. One is climate

related, which is local issues and local challenges are different all along the river, which would mean that the responses to those challenges should also be different.

So, I think lasting change, as congruent FALL 2020 Nobles 45

Left to right: Wong and Maillet take a photo with Don Aparicio deep in the Pantanal; Pablo throws timber down the opening of a two-story lime kiln; Two cattle ranchers lasso a small calf for its monthly medication; A black skimmer catches dinner before dusk.

with my Peace Corps experience, will only happen at the local level—working with local youth leaders, NGOs, groups, teachers, rather than this big, I don’t know, idea about “climate change” or major deforestation or ozone layer or CO2 emissions. . . . But at the local level, change can be made and change can be felt. That’s the main thing that I learned from the research. In terms of what I learned about myself, well, I guess nothing crazy, but when you have a job to do, you just have to become like an operative kind of guy. You know, it’s like, you either row the boat or it doesn’t get rowed. So there was a lot of mental toughness that I think I gained from that, and also a lifelong friend in Henry, obviously. We spent 46 Nobles FALL 2020

so many hours in the boat, and we almost never argued, which is incredible.

What was cool with Henry was that when it really hit the fan and things were going bad, we both were looking at the positive side of things. Being optimistic about stuff—and just your words being optimistic—makes you feel better about it, too, and then all of a sudden, everything becomes much more bearable.

HS: Tell me a little bit more about the

language. Do most people speak the local language or is it a blend?

JW: Spanish and Guarani are the two official languages of Paraguay. Pretty much everyone can speak Spanish, and then about 70 percent of Paraguayans

can speak Guarani as well. So it’s very prevalent within society and culture in Paraguay. One thing that I learned very quickly was you cannot understand the local Paraguayan culture without understanding, at least in some aspect, the Guarani language. They are just so intertwined. It’s different from, let’s say, Colombia, where you learn Spanish and you can inculcate yourself into the culture. Here, you have to learn at least something of Guarani.

HS: What’s your level of fluency in Gua-

rani?

JW: My level is intermediate. I can carry out basic to intermediate conversations in Guarani. If I’m speaking to a person in Guarani, I’ll generally understand—that person also understands that I don’t know a ton. But listening to a conversation between two Paraguayans, I kind of get lost because they’re just, you know, going full speed. My Guarani was good enough to carry out three or four interviews along the river, all in Guarani. We have really cool footage of that stuff, too.

In Asunción, the capital city, there’s a lot less Guarani, generally speaking,

a thousand times in Spanish, but then if you were to say that in Guarani, it really gets understood for real, you know? In a more close-to-your-heart way.

HS: Have you been in danger? Any

because it is generally thought that Spanish is the window into the modern world and that Guarani is the traditional language. There’s a cultural movement that I feel happening right now, though, in the interior of the country: Guarani is the familial language, the language of trust, so if you can speak Guarani, it’s like you understand what’s going on. If you were to give a speech, and it was all in Spanish—everyone speaks Spanish, the professional language—but then, halfway through, you slip in Guarani, and then everyone is like, “Oh, okay, I understand.”

So Spanish is the way that you might present information, and Guarani is, like, an “Okay, did you really get it?” kind of thing.

HS: Do you have a longer-term plan at this

point?

JW: My mom keeps asking me that! So, I don’t know—and that’s my answer for her, too. I’ll be here probably at least another year while we edit the documentary. In the instance that we need extra footage, it’ll be really easy to get it. And then, if we’re just more connected to the language and the culture and the country, then we think it’ll flow a lot better. In

the meantime, we have a few side projects with local community groups, and for me, I’m still learning more about the language and culture. I love Paraguay, and I love South America. I also miss my family, and I miss the United States.

I don’t feel an intense amount of anxiety about it [a plan], because I know that, coming out of high school, you’re so anxious about, What are you going to study? And then you come out of college and you feel so anxious about, What work am I going to do? And then a lot of people come out of the Peace Corps and think, What am I going to do now? As long as I’m applying myself and trying to learn something new and being open to new ideas, things will fall into place by themselves. So I’m not so concerned about what’s next.

HS: There’s a related quote on your expedi-

tion website (rostrosdelrio.com). What is it again?

JW: “If you want to go far, you have to go slow.” There’s a local NGO run by a woman, and she had said that to me in Guarani. “When you’re explaining things to people, it’s very easy to get ahead of yourself and you think you want to do this, you want to do that, but the things that really take time, the things that really are worthwhile are the ones that take time.” So, it’s like, slow down a minute and take your time before you do anything rash. This idea was central to the trip because we rowed the entire way.

So, yeah, and that would be an example of you can explain something to somebody

moments where you’re like, “I can’t believe I’m doing this”?

JW: We lost our boat one night. It was stormy weather and we were going to row through the night, and then as we saw lightning, had to get off the water.

We’re trying to find a place to stay, and we row up to a sandy beach along the river. And there’s crazy wind, so we camp on the beach, we pull our boat up as much as we could, and then we’re trying to cook dinner, but we can’t because the fire won’t even make the pot hot enough because of the wind. So we went to sleep around 11 p.m., and at 2 a.m., Henry wakes up with a gasp, and he goes, “The boat.” He had a premonition or something. He got up out of the tent, and he looked for the boat, and it was gone.

We didn’t know if the trip was going to be over—if someone stole the boat or if it floated away. So it was 2:00 a.m. and we were dead tired. We just had rowed like 12 hours, and we went back to sleep because what else are you going to do? At first light, Henry had the idea of flying a drone to look for it. So I pulled out the drone and I flew it, and we ended up finding the boat along the river about a kilometer away. It had floated downstream. Our hypothesis is when we pulled the boat up onto the sand, the wind had eaten away the sand underneath, and then it floated away in the middle of the night.

We thought that the trip was going to be over. “How are we going to do this?

Should we rent a boat? Was it stolen? Do we have to call the Navy? Do we have to call the embassy? What do we do? We’re stuck on this island, and we have no contact.”

But we found the boat. That was lucky. N FALL 2020 Nobles 47

INTERVIE W ED BY E . B . B A RTE L S ‘ 06 P HOTO G R A P H Y M AT TH E W B A L D

This article was originally published in Fiction Advocate, a small press and literary community.

It is reprinted here with permission.

48 Nobles FALL 2020

NONFICTION BY NONMEN Sasha Geffen ’07 is a writer based in Denver whose work has appeared in Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, NPR, The Nation and others. Their first book, Glitter Up the Dark: How Pop Music Broke the Binary, about the history of pop music as a vessel for gender nonconformity, was published by the University of Texas Press in April 2020.

Interviewer E.B. Bartels is a fellow writer and Nobles graduate of the Class of 2006.

E.B. Bartels: How did you begin writing

nonfiction? What drew you to music criticism?

Sasha Geffen: When I was in college [at the University of Chicago], I resigned myself to being an English major, just because writing seemed to be the thing that most naturally fit my skill set. I always felt like I was good at it and had always been told I was good at it, so I decided to go on that. Then when I was 20 and about to begin my third year of college, I was scrolling through the U Chicago job postings website, and I stumbled on an internship with Performance magazine, which is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They were looking for someone based in Chicago to write about the scene there. To apply I had to write about the most recent concert I’d been to, which was an Explosions in the Sky show at the Congress Theater. Moving to Chicago opened me up to a much bigger concert scene, and writing about concerts really amplified that for me—just how many venues there were strewn all across the city that were always hosting music.

There was a lot to write about, and it was kind of fun to have an excuse to go to shows by myself and think critically about the way that music made up the social fabric of the city. Chicago is a big city, but its music scene feels really tight and interconnected.

After that internship ended, I started writing for a local Chicago blog, doing album reviews and interviewing people, and after I graduated I looked for a staff writer position—Chicago has a lot of great publications—but it was 2011, and you could still feel the aftershocks of the recession, and being a recent grad with an English degree didn’t really make me stand out. And staff writer positions are few and far between. So, I ended up patching together a ton of freelance work and various part-time work—I worked as a personal assistant for a long time in and after college.

FALL 2020 Nobles 49

EB: I always love hearing about the

random jobs writers and artists have to support themselves.

SG: Yeah, totally. But I just kept writing, mostly for free at first, and then for very little money, and then for increasing amounts of money. It definitely wasn’t like a major source of income for a long time . . . just a lot of a lot of work, a lot of frustration, a lot of mental breakdown those years. And then at the beginning of 2016, I got hired by MTV News.

EB: But why music? Why was that what

you loved to write about?

SG: Music was a subject I was well-versed in. It was something I burrowed into in high school, and I just wanted to keep exploring it and figuring out why certain sounds spoke to me and why it was such a powerful communicative tool. My curiosity around music and its mystery has sustained me for a really long time, and even now, 11 years into doing this, I still am fascinated by what music can do to me. I want to get at the root of it and to figure it out.

EB: You’re so right, music can stir up such

intense emotions. It can be the soundtrack to whole relationships or time periods and create such powerful nostalgia. When I was reading Glitter Up the Dark and you’d mention songs I know and love, suddenly I could hear them in my head, and it was like running into an old friend.

SG: Yeah, there’s this really powerful camaraderie that can come from knowing that you’re having the same emotional reaction to the same stimulus as someone else that doesn’t necessarily produce the same reaction in another person. It’s like sharing a secret. Music can be a really powerful bonding tool.

EB: Right, isn’t that how we all made

friends in high school? Oh, you also like Neutral Milk Hotel? Great, let’s hang out.

SG: Yes. Exactly.

50 Nobles FALL 2020

EB: So how did you go about writing Glit-

ter Up the Dark? I know your book is part of the University of Texas Press American Music Series. Did you pitch the book to them? Were you approached to write it?

SG: The press approached me to submit a proposal for the series, and I figured I would pitch something based on what I was already writing about—the intersection of music and gender had already kind of become my beat. Not really on purpose, just the music I was drawn to was playing around a lot with gender, and, being trans, I think it made some of my commentary on it juicier. I wanted to do a historical deep-dive because the conflation of music and gender transgression is very prominent right now, but if you dive back into its roots, you can go back thousands of years and find musical traditions and gender nonconforming and trans individuals from antiquity.

Obviously, we didn’t have those terms then, and things from the past don’t fit into terms we use now neatly, but music performance and gender transgression have been really deeply intertwined for thousands of years. I wanted to write about the whole of the 20th century in my book at first, and my editors told me to rein it in a bit. But it’s all there if you look for it.

EB: Ha ha, yes. I know a little bit about

that—trying to take on too much at first.

And you still managed to cover so much in the book! How did you approach research for Glitter Up the Dark? Interviews?

Travel? Archives? Hours listening to records?

SG: Rolling Stone in particular has really good online archives. Through them I was able to find contemporary profiles of the artists I was writing about. Rock’s Backpages is also a great database of articles from newspapers and magazines from the second half of the 20th century.

There’s also fan archives! A lot of people devote a ton of their time to uploading

and transcribing articles written in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s about their favorite artists, and they just host them on their own websites and blogs as a labor of love.

EB: Wow, that’s great.

SG: Yeah, a lot of my research depended

on the work of people who just really love the artists I was writing about, and I’m so grateful because they don’t make money doing this. They just really love these artists and want to have as much information as possible about them available.

I didn’t have the luxury of traveling outside of my city to get my hands on some physical archives—I would have if I’d had more time and a bigger budget.

But there was already so much I could find online and through library websites and databases. There is so much digitization—the New York Times has pretty much all their archives online, and Google Books has lots of old books scanned. It’s possible to do so much work just from your computer.

EB: Seriously, if you’d been able to travel

for additional research, the book would have been five times as long?

SG: I ended up going over anyway.

EB: I feel you. I always go over, too.

SG: [laughter] EB: So, Glitter Up the Dark definitely

is not a memoir, but you still appear as a character throughout the book, popping up every now and then. How did you decide when to include yourself ? Why did you include yourself at all?

SG: I close a lot of the chapters in the book with an artist I really love, the one that was usually my entry point to the different techniques explored in each chapter. For example, I was really into Against Me! as a high-schooler, and before I even knew that Laura Jane Grace was trans. Plopping those bands and those moments down at the ends

of the chapters was a way of sweeping up everything into the present and how they found their way to me specifically.

I also just didn’t want this book to be a super-dry compendium of androgyny and popular music. At the end of the day, I knew it was not going to be an objective book, because I don’t really believe that there are objective books, and I think feigning objectivity is disingenuous. So, I’d reference myself and my own entry points into certain genres or types of music, just to make my lens a little bit clearer, and to show how all these voices ended up shaping me in a lot of ways. A lot of these artists illuminated my own understanding of myself and my body and the way I think about gender.

EB: Yes, of course. I completely agree—

there are no objective books. Nothing in art is objective.

SG: Sure, there are things that people agree sound good. If you look at pop music, there are only like three chord progressions. But just because there’s consensus doesn’t mean that there’s an objective truth about it. It comes down to what’s shared among different subjects.

EB: That’s so true. Now that you’ve fin-

ished writing your first book, what do you feel is the most challenging thing for you when you’re writing nonfiction? And what do you think is the most rewarding part of it for you?

SG: The biggest challenge, honestly, is procrastination.

EB: [laughter] SG: I’ve come to embrace it as part of my

writing process. I’ve tried to observe my own habits. For example, I did have to spend a lot of time listening to music for this book, but when I listen to music, I always like to be looking at something or doing something with my hands, and so I ended up playing a lot of video

“ A LOT OF THESE ARTISTS ILLUMINATED MY OWN UNDERSTANDING OF MYSELF AND MY BODY AND THE WAY I THINK ABOUT GENDER.”

— SASHA GEFFEN ’07

games while doing my listening research.

Playing video games and listening to Prince’s whole catalogue—that sounds like cheating to me, because, yeah, I’m doing research, but I’m also really just having fun.

Also, getting that first sentence down—I think that is the hardest part.

Ideally, a first sentence will open up the rest of what I’m writing. It’s all contained in the first line, and once you have that, you just have to write the next thing. You just have to build on what’s already there.

But breaking the emptiness of the page is really hard for me. When there’s nothing to build off of, I feel the weight of everything else resting on the beginning.

EB: Yeah, I don’t know how poets do it.

They start with a blank page every time.

SG: The most rewarding part, for me, is the discovery of figuring out what I’m actually writing. A lot of thinking happens on the page for me. I don’t go into a piece knowing what, exactly, I’m writing about necessarily. It’s like entering a dark room—you know what the door looks like, but you don’t know what else is in there until you’re going through it and your eyes adjust. It’s so rewarding just to figure stuff out and make connections and draw lines between different ideas. I learned so much while writing the book.

EB: My favorite books are ones where I feel

like I’m on a journey discovering things alongside the author.

SG: There was a Teju Cole tweet from a few years ago that I don’t remember

verbatim, but it was something like, “Constructing language is more of a searching than anything else.” That illuminated so much for me. I was 24, I think, when I saw it, and I realized that is such a good way to think about writing—it eases a lot of my paralysis to think about it that way. It’s really hard to get started if you feel like you don’t know what you’re talking about, so if you can accept that you’re not knowing what you’re talking about until you talk about it, it can help you get started. It’s part of the process. It makes things a lot more fluid.

EB: Finally, what is a favorite passage of

nonfiction by a fellow non-man writer?

SG: By Akwaeke Emezi, from this essay in The Cut:

It has been grueling to remake myself each time I learn more about who or what I am—to take the steps that such remaking requires, to bear the costs. Sometimes, those costs are worn on your heart, like when the people you love no longer have space in their worldview for you. Other times, it’s the body that bears them, in markings and modifications. By now, I’ve come to think of mutilation as a shift from wrongness to alignment, and of scars as a form of adornment that celebrates this shift. The keloids on my chest and the small lines spilling out of my navel function as reminders—that even when it meant stepping out of one reality to be swallowed by another, I kept choosing to move toward myself. N FALL 2020 Nobles 51

THE REAL MAGIC OF PROCESS

BY A N N E H UR LBU T | P H OTOG RA P H Y BY JA MES MCG RAG H A N

A giant plunks himself down in the town center while curiosity peaks and overcomes, then fades.

Posters strewn about in a separate town promise the appearance of a mystical mime as villagers grow obsessed in anticipation. A disheveled clone shows up on the doorstep of an unwittingly unhappy man. What at first seems absurd and surreal begins to ring true as the reader turns the pages of the stories in The OK End of Funny Town, by Mark Polanzak ’99. Polanzak, who is also an associate professor of writing and literature at the Berklee College of Music, spent his entire fourth-grade year filling the pages of a notebook with a magical fantasy story, the interest in the mysterious and mythical reaching far back into his youth. “But,” said Polanzak, “then we get away from that. We get very serious and we put away the magical things.”

52 Nobles FALL 2020

Mark Polanzak ’99, writer, professor, editor and podcast producer

FALL 2020 Nobles 53

P POLANZAK’S SHORT STORIES have appeared

in Third Coast, The Southern Review, Tahoma Literary Review, The American Scholar and other literary publications, and his recently published collection of short stories, The OK End of Funny Town, won the BOA prize for short fiction. Polanzak is also a founding editor of Draft, The Journal of Process, and a contributor to The Fail Safe, a podcast that explores creativity and failure. The accolades for his work are many, but it goes without saying that the road to publishing is inevitably the result of much doggedness. For Polanzak, this process involves staying true to the elements of writing he loves most. Drawn to the fantastical and the surreal, Polanzak feels dishonest whenever he leaves those elements out of a piece of writing. “I think about the world as filled with hidden systems and hidden magic, and I live in my head a lot,” he said. “I think lots of artists spend a lot of time in a world that is not exactly real, so I try to capture that in the stories as well. A lot of the things I think about are daydreams, and they mix with what’s going on in my mundane reality.

That sort of mash-up makes its way into my stories, where I’m always thinking about things a little bit askew. And so, when I write something traditionally realist, it doesn’t seem to be totally honest to me, because I’m always in my head.

Obviously, the stories aren’t realistic—I think that they’re more about the ways in which I see the world, not really the way the world is. If I can’t actually get into what makes it surreal or magical, I feel like it’s missing an element.”

The fanciful stories in The OK End of Funny Town skew our world as we know it and draw us into places where the absurd becomes the norm, preposterous characters and places peeling away layers to reveal the imperfections of human nature. In the story “Giant,” townspeople initially marvel at the grand presence of this unexpected creature, wondering, 54 Nobles FALL 2020

waiting and hoping for something in return. When the giant fails to produce, they quickly grow bitter and disinterested, revealing their fleeting fancies and self-serving tendencies. In “Genie,” a man discovers a mysterious lamp in his basement, and after inadvertently releasing its contents, he is overcome with indecision. The genie hovers in the basement for years as the protagonist is tormented by the prospect of having anything he wants. And in “Out of Order” a man who is frustrated with his failing relationship drives away from home only to have his car go mad—a mirror to his own “upside-down life.” The wiper lever abruptly ejects the tape deck; a push of the blinker turns the radio on; and the keyless entry button begins to control the windows. The magical elements of Polanzak’s stories buffer the reader from the very real themes of loss, nothingness and failed relationships, allowing us to more easily face that which we are afraid to see in real life.

For a writer to hear Polanzak’s description of his process is freeing—at the start of a draft he selects an image, a setting or a magical element that he just wants to play with, and he goes from there. “That might seem reductive,” said Polanzak, “but it’s a nice light way, a sort of innocent way, to enter into writing that won’t be pedantic or trying to condescend with some sort of message.” Polanzak explained that he has done just this in the past and learned from it. “I now realize,” he said, “the things that people have responded to over the years were the things where I literally thought ‘that was just an image that I loved and I followed it.’ But when I would write something where I had a clear purpose of message or theme, it would usually be that people didn’t see it the way I did or they just felt it wasn’t an exciting story to read because it felt kind of prescriptive. I learned that I should probably back off of that and have a more organic approach to language,

character, imagery, setting, and through that it’s going to mean something.”

Polanzak recalled writing a particularly prescriptive story in graduate school that turned out badly. “Then,” he said, “I wrote a story where I was just playing. I just really wanted to play around with a mime. There was no theme.” He recalls a classmate declaring, “You wrote a story about God!” At that, Polanzak thought, “OK, I am never going to try to do anything ever again because that’s exactly what I want someone to say.”

His classmates took the character of the mime and ran with it— “a metaphor for faith, nobody can see him, it’s fantastic!”

And all Polanzak could think was, “Holy shit.” From that point on, Polanzak sealed his lips about what he thought, because he would have told that classmate, “I just thought working with a mime might be fun.” However he arrives at them, Polanzak’s characters and evocative descriptions take us to magical worlds with elements of the real, inviting us to hoist our own experiences and interpretations over our shoulders and into the foreign yet familiar spaces of his tales. “You really can’t tell what people are going to respond to,” said Polanzak, noting that this is a real delight for him “because it takes some of the pressure off of you as the creator to say there’s some mystery involved in what gets communicated, and it’s not entirely up to me whether or not something works.” The freedom that Polanzak grants himself in the writing process allows him to focus on the elements that work best for him, and often that comes in the form of the small detail or the vivid description.

“There are insights into humanity that literature can give you, there are sweeping tales, there are amazing characters,” said Polanzak, “but the thing that really makes me stop when I’m reading is when someone describes something in a crisp line that just captures a visual, a moment, some sort of detail, and that’s it. That’s

just really good writing to me.” Polanzak explains these as “little flashpoints” that do not have to be great metaphors, just “one detail from which you create the rest of the setting.” The details within the stories in The OK End of Funny Town speak to the reader, ground us in those spaces, and allow for interpretation. Throughout the stories, Polanzak entices us with his use of detail: “a crisp, blue Monday morning in September,” the closing of an old book “sending up dust puffs,” “crooked closed signs” hanging on village doors, a clone’s hair “pulled back into a ponytail,” held together by one of many “forgotten purple elastics.” Polanzak explains, “If you can focus in on that purple hair elastic, the whole room feels real. The reader has the joy of building everything else around one little detail that you’ve just described as plainly as possible.”

Polanzak’s stories invite us into a world where mythical creatures coexist with the familiar and mundane of the everyday, but Polanzak is the first to say that none of this comes easily—it is the result of a long process, of much slogging, doubting, frustration and revision.

Polanzak teaches writing to gifted musicians on a daily basis, but it is not uncommon for his students to question whether they can truly become good writers. I am not a natural writer. I’m not good at this.

Will I ever be a good writer? And to these doubts and questions Polanzak responds, “Maybe it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you don’t like it, you’re not going to want to do it. And maybe that’s the only thing that should be bestowed on someone, is the desire, and that’s what we make it. It’s not necessarily some sort of talent. Some people are more natural at it; they’ve been reading books their whole lives and they just think in paragraphs, and that’s great. I wasn’t like that. I just love this stuff, so I know that tomorrow I am going to be doing it, and if I keep on working on that one thing, it’s going to look better at the end of the year than it does today.” N

The OK End of Funny Town The surprisingly few eyewitness reports stated that the giant walked, more or less, up Main Street from the west, stepping on the pavement and sometimes in patches of trees in parks and backyards, just before dawn.

He stopped in the square, choosing to sit in the brick courtyard of the city hall, and leaned back against the big stone church, blocking off traffic on Elm and Putnam. Authorities discovered that he had successfully avoided stomping on parked cars and most of the city’s infrastructure, but that many swing sets, water fountains, jungle gyms, basketball hoops, grills, and gardens had been “smooshed.” No one knew if any birds or squirrels, likely sleeping in the parks and backyards, had been flattened.

The giant was still sitting in the square in the morning. A crisp and blue Monday morning in September. We found police cruisers and fire trucks parked with lights flashing in a two-block radius of the giant.

Residents of the buildings within the zone were evacuated. Businesses were cleared and shuttered. There wasn’t a TV or radio station broadcasting anything but news of the giant. Live footage from a helicopter aired endlessly. The giant was taller than the city hall, the stone church, and the apartment buildings, even while sitting. Few of us saw him erect. He wore baggy tattered brown pants drawn by a red rope, an ill-fitting faded green shirt, and no shoes. He was human. He had human feet. Human hands.

A brown satchel was strapped around his torso. He occasionally reached into the satchel to remove handfuls of giant berries and something else that crunched and echoed throughout town. He had long, stringy blond hair that fell on either side of his face, down to his shoulders—except in back, where a few strands had been pulled and tied up with a giant red band. No one had heard him speak.

No one, as far as we knew, had attempted to communicate.

Since the giant seemed to have purposefully avoided crushing our homes and cars and had made no indication that he wanted to hurt us, we did not panic. Even the flashing lights and sirens did not inspire anxiety. The newscasts were not fear-driven. The reporters were curious. It wasn’t an emergency to anyone. It was awe-striking. Eventually, the sirens were silenced. The flashers were shut off. You could hear laughter in the streets. When he reached for more food, there were gasps of joy. Children were held on shoulders to have a look.

Excerpt is from the short story “Giant.”

FALL 2020 Nobles 55

graduate news Please submit notes for the next issue by October 15, 2020 at www.nobles.edu/community/graduates/submit-a-class-note/.

1940 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Percy Nelson

617-244-4126 percylnelson@comcast.net

1948 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Bill Bliss

781-326-1062 wlbliss@comcast.net

1949 Bob Morrison writes, “Gretchen and I are living in an independent retirement college at the Commons in Lincoln. We’ve accumulated 4 children, 13 grandchildren (two by marriage) and 3 + 8/9 greatgrandchildren. Life is good!”

1951 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Galt Grant

781-383-0854 galtgra@gmail.com John Craig writes, “Presently living in sunny South Carolina.

My wife, Joan, is in assisted living with dementia. I have slowed down significantly. Have great love for Nobles.”

1952 & 1953 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

John Childs

johnchilds37@gmail.com

56 Nobles FALL 2020

How great and unusual it is for two classes to be so close after all these years. It goes back to post-war days, the 1952 undefeated football team, and undoubtedly many shared escapades. But the real glue was applied by Hooley Perry ’53 who, out of nowhere, took over as joint classes correspondent, annual reunion chief, historian, party organizer and friend to all. This should not be forgotten. To help keep us on our toes (excuse the expression), Ben Taylor sent this “alert”—if you experience a bout with vertigo and choose to ignore the dizziness, “you are making a stupid mistake.” Seems Ben took a bad fall and fractured his hip, which was repaired with a pin. The result was a month in rehab and his warning to all that old bones break easily. A setback for sure, but we trust it will not interfere with his fly fishing ambitions.

A phone call from Pete Willauer finds him avoiding the world on the Island of Nevis, as their odyssey from Maine on their 36’ trawler proceeded down the Inland Water Way to Miami, the Florida Keys, Naples, Stuart and finally, Nevis. Alas, shortly after arriving, the lockdowns and health risks of the coronavirus emerged, and timing for further travel is unknown.

The good news is that this is really a second home, as Carol had a business there in the 1970s, they owned a home there not long ago, and are enjoying friends and safety. They will return to Maine when they can, but not with their

boat, as it is up for sale. Time and declining health are taking a toll.

On a lighter note, Harris Poor shares with us his odyssey from a singing awakening at Nobles to notable success as a “professional solo singing in operas and oratorios.” Interestingly, he claims the profession “chose” him, going back to George Faulkner at Nobles that led to his first solo as a bass in a Faure Requiem in New Hampshire. Joining choruses, finding mentors and realizing “people seemed to be impressed,” his career took off. My goodness, solos at Carnegie Hall, New York City Opera, Alice Tully Hall, Tanglewood, Kennedy Center Awards, Palacio de Bellas Artes (Mexico City), Boston Opera Company and Santa Fe Opera Company. Phew!

Now retired and still living in New York City with La Vonne (47 years of marriage), he is busy with hobbies and collections, with emphasis on genealogical ancestry.

Ever the philosopher, Lu Hallett is taking this global pandemic in stride – “Maybe it is the 20 years in the Air Force, but all I can say for us is the virus is just one more thing to put up with. What else is new!” He and Carol are taking it seriously, though, by staying in Florida’s Pasco County, a safe community of mostly retired seniors.

Lee Burgess and Canadian friends persuaded them to avoid New Hampshire until next Spring. Their three children are doing well—son a professor in Kalamazoo; daughter a “horse lady” in Florida; and other daughter, despite problems, hanging in there with several restaurants in Brook-

lyn. “Luckily, I like my roommate, so being homebound is no sweat!!’

Susan and Bob Hoffman are back in Natick after a longer-thanplanned stay in Florida, but the coronavirus disruptions continue to cause problems for them. Having purchased an apartment at North Hill just as the virus chaos hit, moving in was delayed and prospective buyers for their Natick home went into hiding. Talk about bad timing! However, their health is reasonably good, their spirits high as always, and even the pandemic can’t keep old friends from getting together (carefully, of course), to kick around old times.

And finally, we have had at least brief phone chats with Dave Thibodeau and Ted Jennings, as well as Emmie Newell, Joan Bartlett, Karen Bailey and Syddie Sowles, and they are all well.

1954 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Peter Partridge

508-548-9418 bluechip7676@hotmail.com Jon Barnett passed along that he wrote a new book, which was published by Island Press, called In Designing the Megaregion: Meeting Urban Challenges at a New Scale.

In it, he says, “I propose practical ways to manage ongoing investment in the 12 U.S. megaregions where economic and population growth will be concentrated over the next 30 years. This development trend can make existing urban and environmental problems much worse, or could be an op-

NOTES & ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM CLASSMATES

Neil “Wink” Childs ’52 will be remembered fondly by his classmates.

portunity to design big improvements in sustainability, mobility and equity. Fritz Steiner, in his foreword, quotes economist Herbert Simon: ‘To design is to devise courses of action aimed at changing existing conditions into preferred ones.’

Have a look: https://islandpress.org/ books/designing-megaregion. Island Press offers a 20 percent discount on the book to anyone who knows the secret code: BARNETT.”

1955 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Bob Chellis

781-237-9436 rdchellis@gmail.com Larry Flood writes from Maine that it’s hard to generate notes with a flair during this lockdown.

He suggests we circulate a miniquestionnaire, as in “Favorite activity under lockdown? Maybe Zoom family gatherings, walking the dog, etc. No questionnaire got out, but several good notes came in.”

Sam Gray says that he and Gerry have been pretty lucky so far with the Covid close-down. “We were in Billings, Montana, in January working for a family business

there. Things became more serious quite quickly, and we were happy to return home to Wareham, Massachusetts. If one has to be locked down, it is hard to imagine a better place. Until recently, few people were around, lots of attractive walking trails are available, and there are plenty of tasks to do, inside and out. Our boat is now in the water, ready to go, and we expect to do a reasonable amount of sailing locally on her. She is a 35-foot boat we have owned for 42 years, so she does well for the two of us, which is the present limit of persons we are allowed to have on board. We have been able to see our daughter Caroline and her son, who live in Belmont, fairly regularly, keeping the required distances. Our daughter Alicia, in California with her husband and two daughters, has bought a camper and plans to drive crosscountry to see us, which should be great fun. Gerry and I are in good health. I am involved with Buzzards Bay Coalition, a great nonprofit, and the family business in Billings.

Otherwise, we enjoy our kids and grandchildren and life in general.”

Charlie Nichols writes that he and Linda “vacationed for a week on St. George Island, Florida, in March. . . . a lot of sun, sand and sea. Our first time in the Panhandle, and we would rent the same house again. Stuck pretty close to home due to the virus. Have deferred our athletic pursuits, but Linda is miraculous in the garden, and I have played with my cars and enjoyed driving around the windy roads of the Brandywine Valley . . . so it’s not been all bad. Last fall,

visiting New England, I spent a night in Rye, New Hampshire, with Tim Horne. . . . He has a lovely place there, and I always enjoy spending time with him.

On the same trip, I also stopped to see Gage Bailey ’56 and then Bobby Taylor.”

Bebo Gregg has moved to a new retirement center in Keene, New Hampshire—Hillside Village—keeping his lakeside woodland property in the Adirondacks.

So, we’re of an age when a house that takes care of you—instead of vice versa—can look pretty good: services, security and sociability. Some of us have made that move—some keeping a second home. But—my unsolicited advice—check the governance of a community before committing.

And never buy into co-op ownership where the governing board is independent of a sponsoring umbrella group and is restricted to current homeowner residents.

Space precludes an explanation, but I’m glad to discuss it.

Zoom must be making a fortune. My daughter has set up several quite jolly family cocktail hours between Colorado, Florida and Massachusetts. And our organizations are having conferences, board meetings and information sessions. It’s all pretty flexible, and at least better than not meeting.

You recently received the sad news of Mike Jonsberg’s death in late May. He was a cheerful and positive friend. I hope that when we finally celebrate our 65th reunion we’ll take time to review our losses. Charlie Nichols has some good ideas, and as you know, our

65th reunion is postponed to May 2021, so we have time to think about it. And a positive development is that we may combine the Saturday off-campus dinner with the Class of 1956. It will be a great weekend—a reward delayed—and the larger group will be cheerful.

1956 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Gren “Rocky” Whitman

410-639-7551 grenwhitman1@gmail.com In March 2020, Newell Flather was honored for his dedication to diversity and inclusivity in the arts by the New England Foundation for the Arts. The event also celebrated the launch of the Artist Creation Fund as well as awarded the first recipient of the Newell Flather Award for Leadership in Public Art to Kate Gilbert (curator, Now + There) and Sylvia López Chavez (artist). We also announced the launch of New Work New England, a new program that will provide grants to artists who are creating new works that demonstrate the potential to engage New England audiences.

Former faculty member Bob Freeman P ’92 ’98 ’02 also gave some remarks about his relationship with Newell.

“Susan and I returned from Bombay on March 10,” reports George Waterman. “India was shut down soon after, and, of course, New York City was shutting down as well. We moved to my daughter’s house in Darien, Connecticut, to avoid the risks in the city.”

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From Bob Bach: “It has been a sad week, as I heard about the death of somebody I know, the only gynecologist on Nicaragua’s northern Atlantic coast. A real tragedy, because the government there refuses to admit they have a problem, much like ours. One of my Nicaraguan surgical friends is making masks and educating people about masks and distancing. Nine physicians were fired in Managua for educating the public.

“On a brighter note, I am very grateful for many things. I twice picked the right woman to marry. I practiced surgery for 40 years and palliative care for 10, and dodged many medical bullets. I got to score a few goals on the ice, have a small lobster boat to pull traps, and enjoy the early-morning hours in my recliner with my black lab, Gracie, in my lap.

“I enjoy retirement and love volunteering at the homeless shelter and soup kitchen that keeps me grounded in the reality of this world. I am also writing some poetry.”

Julie (Hatfield) and Tim Leland flew back to Boston from Florida late one evening last March, got into their condo at Harbor Towers, locked the door behind them, and, as he puts it, “pulled up the drawbridge.” For the next three months, they sheltered in place, Tim remaining quite busy. His list of “to-dos” included making home travel videos, writing a pandemic journal, “attending” Zoom board meetings, taking Spanish lessons on the internet, corresponding with the prison inmate he mentors, playing virtual bridge with his brother, Steve Leland ’50, in Scottsdale, Arizona, going on occasional

58 Nobles FALL 2020

bike rides (wearing his mask, of course), and, his favorite— “homework sessions on FaceTime with my two little granddaughters in Portland, Maine. Strangely, I saw more of them in that period than ever before.”

Fred Wells overstayed his winter sojourn in Auburn, Alabama, “by months” to avoid the virus in Massachusetts.

Feeling very lucky as he waits out the pandemic on a calm little island (Rock Hall, Maryland) in a sea of virus, Rocky Whitman misses minor league baseball a lot!

“I also miss political plotting over coffee,” he says.

1957 CLASS CORRESPONDENTS

John Valentine

jean6157@icloud.com Eliot Putnam

etputnam@earthlink.net Thanks to Eliot Putnam for helping with the class notes in this issue!

Eliot writes, “Laura Elizabeth Putnam Matthew, known to all as Betsy Matthew ’20, graduated at the end of May as a member of the Nobles Class of 2020. Her four-year career at the school was a rich and memorable one that nourished her athletic, artistic and intellectual skills. It also led to her admission to Union College in the fall of 2020, where, among many other things, she expects to be a crew coxswain.

“Betsy was the fourth grandchild of Jan and me to graduate from the school, and likely the last to carry the Putnam name at Nobles, at least for many years to come. Commencement for Betsy

and her classmates, in the era of Covid-19, was, of course, vastly different from the norm. The closest thing each member of the graduating class had for a ‘ceremony’ was a photograph with parents, properly distanced from everyone else, after which each graduating senior was invited, one-by-one, to pick up their diploma from a table in front of the main entrance to the Castle.

Such is ceremonial life in the era of the virus. But it should be said that Nobles has, from the beginning of the virus invasion, bent over backward to make the members of the Class of 2020 feel loved and appreciated. Suffice it to say that, for Betsy and her classmates, this spring will remain a unique and potent memory, as will the lessons it has taught of patience, flexibility, responding to adversity and the unknown challenges that life will put before them long after Covid19 has passed.”

John Valentine shares, “My recent life has been deeply changed by the death of my wife, Pegeen, in August 2019. Our 52-year marriage was an extraordinarily rich time in my life, blessed with two daughters who brought wit, talent and love into our lives in ways we could not have imagined and blessed us with four grandchildren, three grandsons, currently 17, 11 and 5 years of age, and a granddaughter, who is 8.

“We have all lived in the Northeast for the past 15 years and gathered often with joy, amazement and expanding love. I count myself fortunate to have shared a lifetime with Pegeen, who brought this wonderful family into being, and I continue to rejoice in the richness it provides. Excelsior.”

Nim Marsh declared, “Yup, I’m going to relive the glory days. And

we know all about how that works out. Can’t be a midlife crisis: I’m too old. Yet I can hear my mother sternly admonish: ‘There’s no fool like an old fool, Nimmy Marsh.’

So, with time on my hands this past aberrant spring, I decided to revive my running career, from which I took a hiatus years ago because of knee, back, hip and shoulder distress. With a handful of marathons and countless shorter races under my belt, I knew of the mystical rewards of getting into a zone and setting the imagination free. I wished to realize these again. When I was fit and running well, I could assume the stealth lope of a lion on the prowl. (Steady there . . . is that a wildebeest ahead? Nah, just a mailbox.) Or I could simply be Nim Marsh, editor/writer, and conjure ideas for articles and story headlines, lead paragraphs and conclusions. I have longed for these unexplainable moments of wildness and inspiration.

“So, my mission: to run a 5K race this year. To launch this remotely (but deliciously) possible challenge, I bought a new pair of running shoes, and, on March 8, began almost daily walk/runs (walk a little/run a little) to get the body accustomed to the impact of feet pounding pavement. Three months later, I was once again feeling like a runner and had extended my efforts to three miles, threequarters running and one-quarter walking and stretching. My back feels fine, the knees are accepting their fate without too much argument, and my hip and shoulder have yet to chime in.

“So, armed with knee sleeves, ibuprofen and a healthy dose of denial, I’m bound for my glory road.

I can feel it in my bones. What’s that, Mum? ‘Best of luck, Nim!’” Bob McElwain shares, “I find it a bit of a challenge right now in June to write something cheerful for the magazine when there has been so much racial violence, particularly in the past two months, against Black people in our country, too often by police.

So, on a positive note, I’ll just say that I was very pleased to read the spring issue and see how Nobles has embraced diversity and inclusion of students of color. And look at what all these graduates have accomplished and contributed to their communities and to society in general. Pretty amazing!

“Having been a teacher myself for 40 years, I can’t resist suggesting a reading ‘assignment’ regarding racial justice: Martin Luther King’s March on Washington speech, August 28, 1963. It is a beautiful and powerful speech to read as well as to hear—as relevant today as it was in 1963.”

We also heard from David Woods about his life at RiverMead in Peterborough, New Hampshire: “Eleanor and I moved from our longtime home in Washington, D.C., more than three years ago. Eleanor went directly into the Memory Care Unit and I into an independent apartment.

I was able to visit her daily until RiverMead made the right choice to ‘lock’ us down as Covid-19 arrived in the country. RiverMead has had only one case among the staff and one case among the residents (a person in the Health Care Unit, where Eleanor lives). We are restricted to our apartments except for permitted walks on the RiverMead property. Our dinners and mail are delivered to our

doors. Like most people around the globe, we have found ways to cope. For me, that has meant lots of reading and telephone calls to relatives, old neighbors in Washington and Nobles classmates—a very happy way to spend my time in ‘lockdown.’ RiverMead has taped all of its activities (exercise and yoga classes) and broadcasts them on their own TV channels.

We are beginning to hope for a loosening of restrictions (I only vaguely remember restaurants and movies). The horrors of the outside world penetrate my thinking but remain remote from my living space.”

Lance Grandone writes, “First, the good news. Karin and I are still vertical, although we recently had a tornado scare. Nothing like being awakened by an automated red alert on your cell and house phone saying a tornado was on the ground less than five miles away. Our son Cass and his wife are enjoying retirement and doing a lot of hiking, biking and skiing in the Morrison, Colorado, area.

He is doing some independent health-care consulting because of his experience at Abbott Labs and is a patent holder on some of the Abbott equipment used for high-volume testing for Covid-19.

Susan is working from her rental home in Brisbane and regaling us with photos of all the wildlife on her property. She is still the COO of Mining3 Consortium and will be going back into her office shortly and resuming her monthly commute to Toronto. She tells us that Australia is following New Zealand in maintaining strict control over the Covid outbreak.

“Second, we are still selfisolating and only going out for

critical reasons, making heavy use of grocery delivery services and take-away food from restaurants. I am most upset with the decision to allow early opening of many facilities here in Florida. I am also upset by many individuals’ (especially younger people) complete disregard for the safety of others by not wearing appropriate masks and not maintaining social distancing. I think by July 1 you will see how bad a decision it was to loosen the restrictions on isolation, masks and social distancing. I have lost seven close friends in Florida and one in Illinois since April 1. Because of the pandemic, there are no group funeral services here, so we have virtual remembrances.

“Another observation for all to ponder. Karin and I have both experienced frequent, vivid dreams during this time of pandemic, and after checking with many friends, they too have had similar experiences. I don’t know if you remember, but John Eaton had a 1951 black Ford coupe, and the both of us spent many hours working on it and cruising around in it. Well, that night Johnny and I were back in his garage in Newton working on installing glass pack mufflers is one of the most vivid dreams I’ve had in ages. So, when I say my ’57 classmates are frequently in my thoughts, I’m not kidding. It’s just tragic that three of my best friends at Nobles have died: Bob Patten, Gordon Wentworth and John Eaton. Very few days pass if I am not reminded of them in some way. Bob was our son Cass’s godfather.”

Stay healthy and keep in touch with your classmates. Most important, keep the faith. Things will improve. Best regards to all.

1958 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Chris Morss

knossos@aol.com

Mike Whitman writes, “But geez, we just got the latest issue! Considering our age group, not much new happens between one and the next, except news items we don’t want to read, viz. an obit.”

Peter Horton writes, “I think I’ve just about pored through all the interesting mysteries in our local library. As for serious reading, I’m fast losing interest in reading those books I should have after completing a few. But I must acknowledge Mr. Van Kleeck and his deep influence on me in both a literary and musical sense. A memory of a visit where he played at full blast a recording of a Bach organ piece still sends shivers down my back. So I’ve been rereading earlier enjoyments, avec plaisir. Laurens Van der Post’s two novels are endlessly enjoyable for me. Other than that, we’re up to the usual mischief up here in our old age. I hope all are well and scientifically informed about Covid.”

Tappy Wilder writes, “Delighted to report that daughter Jenney has now settled most happily into South Portland and my granddaughter, Niven, into nearby Waynflete School. (I recently notched a first: attending a virtually transmitted Grandparents Day at this fine institution.) Mr. Covid will not permit me to get to Blue Hill this summer, but it’s a wonderful thing that Jenney can now so easily do the honors.

“I’ve just ‘freshened up’ the back-matter of my favorite Wilder novel, Heaven’s My Destination, for its forthcoming appearance in HarperCollins’ new Thornton

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Wilder Library edition. When we all reach that destination, Dick Whiteley will be waiting for us at the Door.”

Peter Wadsworth writes, “There’s nothing like a trifecta of events—the coronavirus pandemic, the death of former Nobles roommate and friend Richard Whiteley and the sudden, unexpected installation of a pacemaker—to put me in touch with my mortality. Perhaps it was Nobles’ emphasis on athletics embedded in my psyche that made me think if I stayed active and in reasonably good shape I could avoid the side effects of aging. But after passing out three times in two weeks, the last one a spectacular header on pavement that left me bruised and shaken, I bowed to my cardiologist’s advice and became ‘bionic’ (his term). My thanks to classmate Chris Morss for helping me at a difficult period.

One upside is that I found the time to complete and publish the third in a series of articles entitled ‘Medicare-for-All Part III: Assessing the Alternatives,’ on LinkedIn.” Bill Danielson writes, “I just read the article in the June 23 Boston Globe about racism at 10 ‘elite prep schools’ and am deeply concerned that Nobles made the list. I hope, however, it will be seen as a call to action. For alums, one tiny step would be to broaden the scope of Class News to include our concerns and suggestions on issues such as race and diversity at Nobles, rather than focusing exclusively on our own personal news. For Nobles, a goal: that the school’s racial and ethnic mix—of students and of faculty—reflect that of the Greater Boston region.”

Chris Morss writes, “Béa and Henry Batchelder graciously invited

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me to visit them in May in Monaco at the time of the Grand Prix races.

Two weeks in England were to follow, but Covid-19 had other plans, and the trip had to be canceled. A superb travel agent managed to get a full refund on the airline tickets.”

1959 CLASS CORRESPONDENTS

Whit Bond

whit.bond@verizon.net Buzz Gagnebin

imbuzz@me.com John Gibson

jgib1963@aol.com Nick Soutter reports that after he retired from the practice of law many years ago, he has been having a great and productive time tutoring students in languages for free ever since: Spanish, French, Portuguese, German and Russian.

Modern technology has made this possible for students from around the world. Initially, it was just by phone, but more recently

by Skype, etc., as well. Currently he has students in Arizona, California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Spain and India. Nick’s father’s career in education and Nick’s Nobles education have inspired another great educator. Nick brags on his wife that she is an extraordinary woman with whom he has had a deliriously happy marriage for the past 40 years.

Whit Bond included this note about Jack London: “I do not know if you are aware of the Bond family connection with Jack London. He was a close friend of my grandfather, Louis Whitford Bond. When they went to the Klondike to my

grandfather’s cabin in 1897, London began to write The Call of the Wild.

Buck was my grandfather’s dog, and the other characters in the book were family members with their names changed. London gave a signed edition to my grandfather, where he wrote that the book could never have been written if you had not gone to the Klondike in 1897 with Buck. After my father died in 1978, I was given this signed edition along with other communications between my grandfather and London. I made the decision a few years ago to donate everything to Middlebury College, including the door from my great-grandfather’s home in Santa Clara, California, which was continuously scratched by Buck. It is a long story of how I successfully acquired the door, which now hangs in the old Middlebury Library with a bronze plaque engraved as ‘Buck’s Door.’ Since 1963, I have awarded the Edward L. Bond Jr. Improvement Prize, named for my brother, Edward Bond ’58, who was also ’62 at Middlebury, at Nobles to a member of each of the six classes. For almost 50 years, it has been a collection of Jack London’s works, including The Call of the Wild. I recently saw the movie starring Harrison Ford, which did not portray the real story and was more of a Hollywood production.”

Dick Frazee wrote to the group in a June 2 email: “I believe in our lifetime, in the United States, there has never been a power structure so corrupt and so out of balance and dangerously undermining of our Constitution and way of life— am including a CNN commentary, ‘One of America’s most prominent conservative columnists wants Republicans to lose in 2020’ and

a link to George Will’s article. The next day, General James Mattis released an extensive rebuke and warning noting, ‘Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us.’ On June 7, in an extensive CNN Jake Tapper interview, General Colin Powell endorsed Joe Biden, calling Trump a liar and a danger to the nation, and rebuking Republicans in Congress for largely staying silent. As a lifelong independent, I’m asking all to put party politics aside to carefully consider what is best for the future of our country, our world and our planet—and to PLEASE VOTE and do so by mail to stay safe and well.”

John Gibson reports that the Nobles Class of 1959 has maintained an active impromptu interclass email listserv over the past several years, but the activity has been turned up during the political and Covid-19 crisis. Sometimes the emails shared music to chill out to during the crisis, such as that of Nobles grad Edie Carey ’92, daughter of former faculty member Tim Carey. Other times they responded to Trump’s outrageous comments or political rallies or videos shared among the group such as: “A Very Stable Genius?” sung to the tune of the Major General song from Gilbert & Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance.

Other videos remembered Nobles days: Buzz Gagnebin shared various versions of “This Land Is Your Land” and led to memories of Club 47, where Bill Taylor and Borden Snow and others met Joan Baez and also Bob Dylan before these singers became famous. HarvardLeverett House classmate of Bill Cutler and Howie Brown, Tom

Rush, also got his start there. Taylor and Snow went to the folk festival in Newport every year about that time. What fun! What memories!

Finally, we end with a reminiscence from Bill Taylor about his Nobles summers in the 1950s and post-Nobles days during college years: “Oh, Nobles Boys forever young or old. . . . Before Club 47 there was the Golden Vanity, which was destroyed when they built the Mass Pike. It was run by Carl Bowers, and I saw many great performers play there. The person who really pushed Club 47 was a man named Paul Rothchild, who served some function there and was instrumental in recording a few of the regulars like Eric Von Schmidt. Those were the days.

One highlight of my folk days was when I took an old reel-to-reel tape recorder to a folk festival at Indian Neck and recorded a young ragamuffin named Robert Zimmerman, who became Bob Dylan a year or so later. In the 1970s, I gave the tape to a now-Bluegrass legend named Peter Rowan, who had a band then called Seatrain.

I never saw the tape again and have no idea where it might be. I could most likely buy a new car with the proceeds today. Borden was around Cambridge then, and we played at being hippies. If I had been any damn good, I would have gotten a decent education and made something of myself in the financial markets instead of walking around in sandals trying to be cool. [John adds, Bill has done just fine as an antique dealer and other ventures.] But hey, I walked into the Dedham Music store in 1959 and bought a guitar for 100 bucks.

It was a 1927 Martin, which is now worth north of 70 grand, but even

that I have passed on! Such are the ways of the world/Sic itur ad Astra. . . . Hey, again, stay well you old codgers! May the Gods pour honey in your mouth and daylight be yours to command.”

Selden Edwards has a long, engaging story connecting Nobles and the West Coast coming in the next issue. Stay tuned.

1960 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Albert Vandam

arvandam42@gmail.com

Gibson, John Gray, Gar Greene, Lenny Holmes, Dudley Post, Ned Roberts, Ned Robinson, Erik Suby, Al Turtle, Al Vandam, Ken White, Tony Wilkins and Jon Wood.

1961 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Jim Newell

802-467-3555 newell43@gmail.com

1962 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Peter McCombs We celebrated our 60th reunion on May 10 via Zoom, something unimaginable in 1960! In April, Al Vandam queried classmates: “Where Are You?” Many wrote updated life stories. Lenny Holmes suggested a Zoom format, including personal write-ups, and worked tirelessly to administer an hourand-a-half-long session for 19 of our classmates. Participants included: David Angney, Roger Berle, Chris Bertelsen, Tom Botsford, George Draper, Dan Funkenstein, Kirk

215-947-8017 or 516-629-7983 prm9244@gmail.com John Bachner writes, “So, I’m down to one employee, me, exposing me to one of the world’s worst bosses. But thanks to Moth, among others, I continue to write.

Books No. 290 and 291 (more or less) were just published, both on contracts. Can’t get to sleep at night? Allergic to melatonin?

These are the books for you! But wait! There’s more. Just finished

Practice Management for Design and Environmental Professionals, Second Edition. Wiley published the first edition. This one is different from most how-tos because I have muted the passive voice, i.e., the author’s brain speaks directly to the reader’s brain, using such taboo words as ‘I’ and ‘me.’

“Who knows a kids’ book agent? Obviously, successful kids’ book writers. I wouldn’t mind being one of those and have written something that I like, although I’m not quite a kid anymore. The book’s about golfing with a bear, unlike the far more traditional golfing with a beer. I need an agent for this one. Also working on a book intended for the commercial market: Write Right Rite Wright ENGLISH IS EASY Not Naught Knot Naut, about 40 percent through.

Plus, a play about a family of insane psychiatrists: Nussbaum. I feel like Ulysses Grant writing his memoirs while dying.

“Fortunately, I have other interests, like wine. Writing a blog on it, too: www.bachner.com. And I’m still teaching professionalism to pro-

Left to right: 1960 classmates joined for a Zoom call on what would have been their 60th reunion. David Angney, Roger Berle, Chris Bertelsen, Tom Botsford, George Draper, Dan Funkenstein, Kirk Gibson, John Gray, Gar Greene, Lenny Holmes, Dudley Post, Ned Roberts, Ned Robinson, Erik Suby, Al Turtle, Al Vandam, Ken White, Tony Wilkins and Jon Wood (all Class of ’60); John Bachman ’62 in the wine cellar with a bottle of Chateau Terrier de Boston (Huckleberry). (Thanks, M. Bevillard).

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fessionals, serving on boards (both voluntary and mercenary), putting on writing and sales seminars, and otherwise muddling through.

I evidently believe that if I don’t slow down, whatever’s next won’t catch me. Getting older is kind of like sitting in a space capsule that you know will launch sooner or later and wind up who knows where. Maybe those of us left should Zoom while we still can.”

1963 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Jim Lehan

508-520-1373 jblehan@aol.com

1964 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Ned Bigelow

781-704-4304 moe9817@aol.com It’s hard to know where to begin this entry with all that has transpired recently, from the gutwrenching civil rights situation to the horrors of Covid-19. For the Class of ’64, thanks to the hard work of a number of people, most notably Alexander Caskey and Rick Farlow, who created and maintain our class website (https:// nobles64.org), we now have a perfect forum to express opinions, feelings and reactions to such worldly issues. Class Notes really acts as a notice board for updates, pictures and family happenings.

To that end, I thought I’d mention something that has given us a great deal of pleasure these past couple of years. A classmate of Sandy’s is a sales rep for Tower Gardens. After some consideration,

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we purchased one, and it lives at the end of our house. It produces more lettuce, spinach, chard, herbs and other greens than we can eat.

Gardening, both indoors and outdoors, is a balm to the soul.

Clint Smith writes, “While still practicing law and living in Lexington, I am also working with Alexander Caskey and David Brooks, and with some help from Nick King’s wife, Margaret Pantridge (and hopefully with help from other Nobles grads once you have read this), on ‘scrounging’ personal protective equipment (PPE) for our healthcare heroes.

Our nonprofit, the HeroGuards Fund (www.heroguards.org), is composed of volunteers who take the risk and head out into the field and beg, buy and otherwise acquire lightweight plastic foul weather gear and golfing ponchos (from the likes of Walmart, Dick’s Sporting Goods and other retailers, as well as online stores) and turn around and distribute the gear to local nursing homes and hospitals. We have found the need for such supplemental gear to be extremely critical and our

goods gratefully received, even though you would think that by now the supply chain for such items should be humming along; it is not. Nursing homes especially are experiencing dire shortages.

Since April, we have been distributing gear to nursing homes in Worcester and the South Shore, and to hospitals such as Lahey in Burlington. With our reusable gear, a healthcare worker can leave one patient, step into the shower off the hallway, spray her gear with Lysol household spray, rinse off and be on her way to the next patient in 30 seconds with greatly heightened confidence.

We are hoping to be a model for similar efforts statewide and nationwide. We are actually making a difference, and our deeds have been written up in the Worcester Telegram and Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly. What we are doing can be done by anybody anywhere, Massachusetts to California, and that is our goal, along with getting the retailers to donate their goods, which we are currently buying. Please visit us at heroguards.org and spread

1966

Left to right: Zeus at Twilight, poems

by Will Walker, 1966 student council president; A Crapshooter’s Companion,

by Jon Canter, 1966 valedictorian

the word. For more info, email clintsmith@heroguards.org.”

William Miles writes, “Hi, all, from Hanover, New Hampshire, where the streets are void, mostly, of Dartmouth students. Family news here: My wife, Helene, in her role as executive director of Dartmouth’s Rassias Center for World Language and Culture, has spent hundreds—no, thousands— of hours building a Zoom platform for the Dartmouth language department profs who use her organization’s method (the Rassias Method®) to teach languages. Her chief techie is our son, Matthew, who helped us build the platform remotely from his university in Rome (Italy, not New York). It’s now in use across the departments here and has just started to be used in community-based language classes (any Nobles graduates interested in learning or perfecting a language, let me know—yes, a non-apologetic ad here), and a medical Spanish edition will soon be up and running.

“Me? Being moral support, barista (or is it baristo?) and chief chef for her as she now mostly works from home, plus I’ve managed to get in lots of biking, golf and tennis . . . with appropriate separation, of course. And back to Matthew: stuck in Rome his senior year, but better than stuck with his aging parents here at home. He’s finishing two theses, and he’s an RA there. Taking ancient Greek to keep busy as well. Might work in a Mexican restaurant in Rome (go figure...). One day we will be able to see him in person—hope it’s

by Christmas. My older two kids, Sarah and Bill, and their kids are well. All live within a mile of us.

Five g-kids in various stages of education. Then there’s Helene’s side

of the family, a brother and sister also living here, with a total of eight kids and three g-kids. Always a free meal. Best to all, and stay safe.”

I hope all are doing as well as possible and staying out of harm’s way. Please continue to stay in touch and keep the dialogue going on the website.

1965 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Jim Summers

Per Castra Ad Astra by Tom Paine ’66 How many of us privileged schoolboys waiting to enter the dining hall Paid much attention to the motto carved into the massive stone fireplace?

PER CASTRA AD ASTRA it heralded, Cradling the coat of arms chiseled in the limestone in medieval splendor.

Some of us knew the Latin, but the meaning would have to wait, Until we left behind those hallowed halls and began our life’s journey, Carving out our own destiny, Moved by the example of our tragedy-stricken headmaster and his morning readings, Recalling the exhortations of our noble teachers, Over the decades becoming ever more attuned to the arc of the moral universe, Still reciting the Gettysburg Address memorized three-score years ago, Believing in the better angels of our nation.

jimsummers@post.harvard.edu

1966 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Outbreaks of hatred we take ever more personally.

Tales of redemption, reconciliation and reunion speak to us ever more poignantly.

What then for Planet Earth? Bullied, exploited, sullied, strewn, defiled, polluted, squandered, Mostly by men, acting badly.

Ned Reece

ned4047@sbcglobal.net 773-213-0442 Tom Paine writes, “We are stuck at home due to Covid-19, wondering how we went decades under the illusion that free movement could grind to a halt at any time. Live in China for a year? So yesterday.

And now, the real pandemic to eradicate racism, and the hope from unexpected places—worldwide protest against American police racism. ‘We expect more of Americans than this! You are supposed to be our role model,’ they were saying. We have skin in this game—five grandchildren, with liberal-minded parents. Before Covid, Nobles’ memory inspired me to write a poem [see box above], my first in a long time, going back to sonnets in Mr. Eaton’s English class . . . and it goes like this.”

Geoff Precourt writes: “In the last year, I’ve taken pleasure in welcoming Jon Canter’s A Crapshooter’s Companion and Will Walker’s most recent collection of poetry, Zeus at

How many of our privileged species are paying attention to the mantra “There is no Planet B”?

Many of the young among us, women and men, know that full well.

Whenever our time is up, may we each leave this basecamp a little better than we found it And head into the cosmos with reason for cautious optimism, not despair.

When shall our atoms meet again? We have all the time in the universe.

Twilight, to my bookshelf. I’m still working in front of a keyboard as the U.S. editor of a London-based business—new information service—and as the editor emeritus of the Journal of Advertising Research.

Very lucky to enjoy what I do, even though I still am a hunt-and-pecker (apologies to the senior Mr. Flood).

In regular touch with old buddy Elliott May and speak every day with brother Harry Precourt ’61, who’s quarantined with his wife in Manhattan as Kathryn and I sit out the pandemic in Newcastle, Maine.”

[Please see left for cover art for the two classmates’ published works.]

Pat Grant writes, “Been a crazy 2020. Was skiing on April

15 on a beautiful day with great ski conditions when we got the text that the mountain was shutting for the year. The following week, the world stopped. The Grant family has so far been Covid-19 free. My wife and I (mostly she) have spent the time taking care of our two granddaughters (ages 9 and 11) while my daughter and her husband have worked from home.

It has been an exciting and challenging experience to homeschool when all the ways of teaching and learning have changed over the past 50 years. We have been suffering through what is surely the worst presidency in U.S. history, and I fear that Trump and the

Republicans will find a way to get him reelected through messing around with the voting process, if all else fails. Will be a catastrophe for this country and for our children if that man gets reelected. Was supposed to get a left knee replacement on April 13 but it is now scheduled for September 21. Got a lot of good years on a knee that was busted up in 1963. Time for a new one.

Still getting 55 days of skiing a year, except for this one, plus a lot of golf. Still own my company, Splash Shield, which makes full face shields like those you see on TV. Hope all of my classmates are healthy.”

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Will Walker writes, “News from here: I’ve got a new book out. It’s called Zeus at Twilight, and you can get it on Amazon. Also, I gather, Barnes & Noble, if Amazon is too repugnant for consideration.

In quantity. While supplies last.

Be the first on your block. Happy to autograph if you show up at my doorstep in proper pandemic attire.” [See cover art on p. 62] Skip Wood (50th Reunion inductee to N&G Athletics Hall of Fame) writes (not without irony), “Skip Wood just had right hip surgery 6/17. All went well, and he hopes to be out hitting golf balls in two months with Steve ‘Cooch’ Owen, Pat Grant, Bobby Gray, etc. With the Covid lockdown, it’s an excellent time for a recovery.”

Elliott May writes, “I always wondered what it would be like to retire. Covid-19 answered that question for me. The answer is, it’s not as bad as I thought it would be.

■ I get to enjoy my breakfast coffee and read the Wall Street Journal cover to cover.

■ I get to reflect on the support and love I received from my parents, grandparents and friends.

■ I get to realize just how privileged my life has been.

■ I get to be grateful for my children and grandchildren and my health.

■ I get to understand how lucky my life has been.

Looking back since ’66, I’ve been a sailor, a banker, a business owner and an Uber driver. Now that the career part is over (and I still can’t fully accept that it really is over), perhaps I can begin to enjoy retirement.”

64 Nobles FALL 2020

1969 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Peter Pach

860-267-9701 peterbpach@gmail.com On April 2, I sent out an email to see how my classmates were doing as Covid-19 clamped down. This triggered a wonderful exchange that still continues. By the time this appears, things will have undoubtedly changed. These notes are a fraction of what was written. I don’t have space to tell about the time Brad Wilkinson clung to Tod Whittemore as Tod blasted down the Maine Turnpike on his motorcycle.

As of late June, I was hunkered down at home with my wife and daughter, who was home on break from her teaching duties at UChicago and never left.

Stew Young, who serves Cuttyhunk Island as a selectman and board of health official, was wrestling with a surge of summer residents with the understandable concern from the few year-rounders, many of whom are at risk.

Visitors and contractors from offisland provide important income, so balancing the risk was critical and difficult.

Steve Baker was living in Lake Wales, Florida, near his mother, who was in an independent-living/ assisted-living facility in town.

“Fortunately, the staff of her facility consider me an essential part of my mother’s care, so they let me in despite a general restriction that keeps all non-essential visitors out.”

Parkman Howe said his family was well. His older daughter was finishing her third year of residency in New York City at Columbia

Presbyterian, and “I am about to conduct a class on Zoom with various retirees in the area (and Florida), reading The Odyssey.”

Brad Wilkinson was riding it out in Needham. “One advantage is that we hear from kids and other family and friends (not to mention old classmates!) much more than usual. Figured out Zoom and am frequently reading stories to grandchildren.”

Sam Burr wrote from Vermont: “Spring is springing here on the farm, maple sugaring just ended, and there are ducks in the pond.

Our farmers markets are canceled, our restaurant customers mostly shut down. Business at the farmstand has picked up. We are essential workers, and our helpers have been showing up. We are planting seeds. Work continues, but to what end? Our H2A from Jamaica, we don’t know, delayed at least. One son, a hospitalist at the UVM Medical Center, we deliver produce to and wave through the door at his almost-1-year-old, who I want to hug. He and his family are quarantined. Daughter is following in Pach’s footsteps: a journalist for the Valley News. She is the health-care reporter, so is kept on, working from home. Like Stewball, I am an elected official. We have meetings, budgets, calendars and legal requirements we are trying to figure out how to work out.”

Don Watson reported, “I am very glad to be retired with my wife.

I am not missing a paycheck or worried about making payroll. I will hopefully be social distancing from a sailboat soon. Very, very lucky.”

Peter Gates said, “My work has continued apace, and working from home is not new for me. It’s a little tougher for Debbie; many of

the things she likes to do involve getting out of the house. I read daily to my 7-year-old grandson.

We’ve also adopted an almost daily tradition of ‘Zoom cocktails’ with old friends. It’s funny how you can let months go by in normal times not speaking to old friends and then the hidden blessing of coronavirus is that it somehow forms an excuse to reconnect.”

Toby Talbot, another Vermonter, said, “My wife and I are hunkered down and Lysol-ing everything in sight. It is a reality check to realize we are now in the ‘elderly’ category. Folks here are really taking the ‘Stay Home, Stay Safe’ directive from the governor seriously. I have a daily get-together with a couple of friends that we call the Calais Distant Drinking Club: CDDC. (Not CDC!) The rule is sixfeet, not six-pack. It’s a little better than Zoom socials. As the emergency management coordinator in my town, I am sitting through Zoom meetings with the selectboard.”

Leigh Seddon, also safe in Vermont, said, “Good to hear from you old-timers. It is a challenging time, but maybe it will bring a new awareness of the fragility of our current economic system and the will to rebuild a more resilient and just system when we get through the current crisis.”

George Pendergast was adjusting to the virus by playing street hockey every day with his grandson: “I still have a few moves with the glove hand.” Among other life changes, he reported ordering sand bags to divide the house in two and that he was not letting his wine age properly.

David Polk was in West Hartford, Connecticut, still remembering our getting together

at last year’s 50th reunion (lucky it was a year ago). “We’ve been sequestered voluntarily with no symptoms and no exposure. We will do whatever we can to break the chain of transmission. This includes canceled travel to L.A., San Francisco, Monterey, Jekyll Island and two planned trips to Florida. A small price to pay.”

Tom Taylor was hustling to complete a move from Martha’s Vineyard to a place in Parish, New York, on the Little Salmon River. He said, “Plenty to do with an 1880s house. Plenty of deer and steelhead abound in the back 45 acres. Barb and Peanut, the Chihuahua, remain marooned for now but hopefully will join when #19 ends its presence in our lives. . . . Come visit when all is clear. Bring a fly rod.”

Wigs Frank reported, “Susan and I have been hunkered down in the suburbs of Philadelphia since March 15. Like Parkman, I am teaching online. My 11th- and 12thgrade history students are seeing in real time the pluses and minuses of the arguments of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson.

Hamilton believed that the United States should have a strong central government and that the states should be reduced to, essentially, ‘administrative units.’ Jefferson, on the other hand, thought that the country should have a weak central government, with most powers reserved to the states.”

Baird Brightman wrote in from California, “Life is good, but slower and smaller. Can’t swim laps at the town pool, which closed. Park entrances to favorite foothills are shut, and got kicked off the beach today (nicely) by the park ranger as I tested that rule closing. So, practicing patience

and appreciation like mad, and enjoying all there is to savor in life.” Baird shared some music links, including a great list of summer songs, when he checked in in June. That led Parkman and I to remember seeing Janis Joplin sing “Summertime” in Calgary, Alberta, in 1970.

Tod Whittemore said, “We live in the Quiet Corner of northeast Connecticut. Lorraine was looking at a banner year in her travel business. Most of 2020 travel has bumped up 12 months to 2021. The banner will have to wait. I am helping a local mortgage broker, and surprisingly, he is pretty busy. More time at home is spent gardening, doing neglected home projects, yoga, meditation and planning for when this too has passed.”

Kit Walker said, “Sending my best from Uruguay, gaucho country, South America. Have been living here for over seven years, in the country by the ocean. My partner, Mariana, is an Uruguayan musician like myself. This ‘quarantine’ has changed our life about 3 percent, really. Now trying to see the silver linings in all of this, and there are a lot. Now is an opportunity to try a new way of being together on this little green planet.”

Jim Lack was locked down in Miami: “The weather is great, but not a lot of opportunity to go out.

Unlike others, I never saw this coming. Cannot wait to go out to get a haircut. How the little things matter.”

Toby Burr was at home in Marion. “My day has been spent shutting down the family business [a boatyard and marina] for a few weeks, or until Covid lets us back up. We spend our time reading, walking, Zooming ( a new skill for

us), following the news, talking to my 96-year-old mother, and using every dish, pot and piece of cutlery in the house. It is a nice change for a bit.”

David Brown wrote, “I am in Baltimore, where I have been, unaccountably, longer than I was in Massachusetts, which I still consider home. I’m trying to keep up with the news and some of the journal articles on Covid-19, keeping a Journal of the Plague Year, taking an occasional boot camp class online, riding a bike, and playing with the year-old dog next door.”

Ted Canto is retired and living in Las Vegas. “I am so pleased to see so many names of my classmates on this thread. I don’t know about you, but as I get older, each of you becomes more important to me. Here’s a little look into my current life. I am married, and we will celebrate our eighth anniversary this time around. What, you ask?

My wife, Geri, and I were married from 1980 to 1989. Unfortunate circumstances required us to separate and divorce. After 21 years we reunited and are living the ‘happily ever after’ life.”

Chip Harding is still living in southern Maine, making music and teaching at Berwick Academy.

“Like a number of you, I’ve been adjusting to teaching online. It’s challenging for performance-based music classes, because most video platforms don’t really support playing together. Mostly I’m just so happy to see my kids’ little mugs on my screen, like Hollywood Squares. They always make me laugh a lot, which is the best medicine these days.” Chip attached a recording of a song written by Bill Schwartz and done by the Inmates back in the late ’60s.

The note from Chip led Peter Litman to say the Inmates’ song showed what talent the group possessed, especially at 16, something Peter hadn’t remembered. The group featured Chip, Bill, Leigh Seddon, Kit Walker and Dave Robinson ’68.

John “Clarkie” Clark said, “Carol and I are surviving the pandemic here in Epping, New Hampshire. This week I am back in my office (private and with my ‘velvet rope’ across the doorway quite safe, but the factory is closed for the second of two weeks, and there are only four of us working in my area, when normally there are about 40). I have really enjoyed reading all of the updates, listening to my talented classmates, and reading old articles. We are quite a diverse group in spite of the effort at Nobles in the ’60s to mold us into homogeneous young men. I have very fond memories of my friendships and relationships with all 42 of my classmates, and that is my biggest takeaway from my six years at Nobles.”

1970 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Levy Byrd

781-449-7555 levbyrd@comcast.net

1971 CLASS CORRESPONDENTS

Harry Blackman

Harry.Blackman@skadden.com John Dewey

jrdewey@usa.net Nick Mittell

phred.j.dog@gmail.com

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Left to right: Sheldon Ross ’78 works for the Arizona Department of Emergency Management and Military Affairs with operations on the front lines here battling some nasty wildfires and a Covid-19 surge in Arizona in the counties and Native American Nations; From left to right: Margaret Bowman ’80, Anne Fowler Wallace ’77 and Diane Ives ’79 at a water and climate conference in New Orleans.

Win Perkins

wperkins@mmuftc.com

1974 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Kevin McCarthy

617-480-6344 kjmc.bc.msw15@gmail.com In light of recent events related to Covid-19 and the change in social climate in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd and too many other Black people to be named in this publication, I have had the privilege to spend time in thoughtful discussion and response planning with many other Nobles graduates of the Black Student Union from the 1970s. I have been fortunate to have the support and guidance of Stacy Scott ’77, Rick ’73 and Bob Pinderhughes ’67, as well as Lewis Bryant ’73 and Kent Jackman ’73.

July 24 marks one year since I passed my ASWB clinical licensing exam. July 24, 2020, was also the official day of the opening of my private psychotherapy and clinical consulting practice.

My focus will be on supporting individuals, families and agencies

66 Nobles FALL 2020

with clinical expertise in the treatment of complex persistent mental illness and co-occurring addictions. Boston Clinical Consulting & Counseling will provide outpatient clinical services for the recovery communities in Greater Boston and beyond.

Beth Riley reports from New Hampshire: “What a crazy year we are in. My thoughts are with the Nobles seniors for 2020. I know how much I reflect on our senior year and the great memories, from the mornings in Lawrence Auditorium to Steve Hutchinson’s graduation party. I will always hold the memories dear to my heart.

My three children are all in their 30s now. Where did the time go?

They live in Charlotte, Boston and D.C. I see them whenever I can. I am still a sales representative for many manufacturers of gourmet cookware and gift items. I am also consulting with vendors new to the field. I still love my job and my life in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Life is good, and taking one day at a time during this wild time.”

tions. Lots of cultural bias training, and I am helping to gather some key Black industry leaders who want to develop and mentor the next generation of senior management.

The supplier group wants to raise up businesses that manufacture products here in America and support that effort with purchase orders from their companies.

“I also just did a video for our church, which was a conversation with our lead pastor regarding my experiences growing up Black in Boston and the Civil Rights Movement that my father was a leader in through the ’60s and ’70s.”

1979 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Dan Rodgers

212-423-0374 drodgers@wfw.com

1975

1978

CLASS CORRESPONDENTS

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Jed Dawson

Christopher Reynolds

508-735-9663 jdawson711@gmail.com

Cell: 800-444-0004 Home: 508-358-7757 chreynolds@comcast.net

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

We heard from Sheldon Ross that he’s been busy working in the Arizona Department of Emergency Management and Military Affairs with operations on the front lines battling some nasty wildfires and a Covid-19 surge in the counties and Native American Nations.

Sheldon says, “Balancing that with my board of advisors work with the Multicultural Foodservice and Hospitality Alliance (www.mfha. net). It is part of the National Restaurant Association. The Mission of MFHA is to bring the economic benefits of diversity and inclusion to the food and hospitality industry by building bridges and delivering solu-

Thanks to Rob Capone for his years serving as class correspondent! Thanks to Martha Kittridge Rowley for taking over.

Martha writes, “It felt like my husband and I had finally adjusted to our empty nest when Covid-19 arrived. Our son, Sam ’16, returned home from his senior year at Hamilton College and ultimately had a YouTube graduation in May. Susan ’19 had her first year, and first lacrosse season, at Middlebury cut short. But we remain healthy and well and hope others are too.

As the new class correspondent, I hope you will share some news and keep in touch!”

Doug Floyd

781-788-0020 dfloyd44312@yahoo.com

1976 CLASS CORRESPONDENTS

Tom Bartlett

+44 1908 647196 tom_bartlett58@hotmail.com Rob Piana

617-491-7499 robert.piana@vanderbilt.edu

1977 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Linda Rheingold

lrheingold@comcast.net

1980 Martha Kittridge Rowley

martharowley@comcast.net

To start, a huge congratulations to Steve Ellis, who just joined the Nobles board of trustees.

Deborah Smith says, “Teaching via Zoom and Screencastify is certainly not my preferred method, but I also learned a lot of new teaching platforms this spring that may come in handy in the future. I have a partial shift in my job at Fay next year: I will continue to teach two English classes, but I will also join our secondary school counseling team as one of the eighthgrade placement counselors. I am very happy I can both keep teaching and begin a new professional opportunity. Nathaniel finished his junior year at Landmark and hopes to be able to see some colleges in person later this year.”

We also heard from Taber Keally: “A lot of milestones within the past 12 months. I can’t really take credit for them, but I am certainly benefiting from being ‘tuition-free’ for the first time since September 2000, and having all of my kids back in the U.S. for the first time in many years.

Colin graduated from college in June and is gainfully employed.

John ’14 just celebrated his first wedding anniversary and was recently promoted to executive officer as a lieutenant in the 3rd Infantry at Ft. Stewart, Georgia.

Adam ’11 returned from the Peace Corps (Senegal) and is back at Fordham for master’s programs in economics and development.

Chris ’07 returned from Abu Dhabi last year as a new dad and now has a new job and a new house. Mary and I are really enjoying grandparenting.”

Margaret Bowman lives in Takoma Park, Maryland, and is a water program director at Spring

Point Partners. Last November she saw Anne Fowler Wallace ’77 and Diane Ives ’79 at a water and climate conference in New Orleans.

1981 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

John Fiske

johnfiske@comcast.net Response to the correspondent’s queries has so far been tepid. That said, here are some tidbits: Bill Crowley spotted me at the Whole Foods in Lynnfield a couple of years ago, and we had a nice chat. Bill now reports, “Liz and I are still living in Concord with our daughter Anna entering high school. Our three older kids are out of college, with two in Boston and one in San Francisco.”

John Allen offers, “I am still enjoying retirement, but I have left Florida—thank God! I am living in Orleans on Cape Cod. Hope to see everyone in person next May!” The correspondent wants to know when and why John left California.

We’ll find out next May. Sam Smart had three seniors this spring. His eldest son graduated from Dartmouth, and the twins from Lincoln-Sudbury High School. They are off to St. Lawrence and Bucknell this fall.

A Covid-free empty nester, Sam hopes to ski more than once a year and do some traveling.

Rich Lincoln continues to report from the high seas, as follows: “After a few months’ delay, we departed Fort Lauderdale and made our way to Bimini, Commonwealth of the Bahamas, on February 4. This was our first big adventure on Apricity. From Bimini, we traveled to the Berry

Islands, visiting Great Harbour and Chubb Cay. On March 20, travel became severely restricted to limit the spread of Covid-19. With our cruising permit expiring on May 4, we submitted our travel plan to the government for approval, and a few days later we departed for Fort Lauderdale. It was a bit of a culture shock coming from remote islands into Fort Lauderdale. We are now making our way northward on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, a unique experience of its own, with plans to be in New England for the summer. We will head back to the Bahamas in the late fall. The last year has been a very different life, and I am appreciative that we are able to take time now to enjoy this adventure.”

Your correspondent traveled from Seattle to Boston on Amtrak at the end of May. The route crossed Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, a corner of Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts: a real-life Sixth Class geography lesson!

1982 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Holly Malkasian Staudinger

914-925-2340 hollyamalkasian@gmail.com

1983 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Nancy Sarkis Corcoran

nlsc3@me.com Hello Class of ’83! What a crazy few months we’ve been through.

By the time this is published in the fall, I hope things are better for everyone. Todd Chisholm has

been spending time on his fishing boat in Kennebunkport, Maine. He has a recreational lobster license “just to have some fun on my boat this summer. If anyone is in the area, look me up and they can have some free lobster. I don’t even eat them!” Hope to hear from more classmates next time. Until then, stay safe and healthy.

1984 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Christine Todd

christinetodd@me.com

1985 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Neil Bleicken

neil.bleicken@gmail.com Thanks to Neil Bleicken for volunteering to take over as class correspondent for ’85! Please send Neil all updates.

Karen Shipley Taylor has moved a lot since Nobles, living in six states since college, and she and her husband, Gary, now live in New Orleans. Karen had retired from her stay-at-home mom position, but the Covid crisis forced her back to work because Theo (17) was home from Saint Andrew’s school in Delaware and Wendy (21) was home from Middlebury College (oldest son Charlie, 24, is in California).

Ted Stimpson says, “With the Nobles graduation of our youngest son, Alex ’19, last spring, Nicole and I became empty nesters. Our oldest, Maggie ’15, also graduated from college last spring and was in China teaching English until the global pandemic forced her to come home early. We are now all living at home again outside of

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Boston and trying to focus on the joy and hope of time together and societal consciousness-raising.”

Liza Connelly shared, “My husband, Paul, and I live in Brookline and look forward to traveling again once the virus has lifted. I work downtown for a bank, in an in-house counsel role, and am excited to reconnect with Nobles classmates this year.”

Bob Dumais writes, “We are loving being full-time emptynesters and residents of Cape Cod, as we sold our home in Medfield and moved to Falmouth after the kids graduated high school. My son, Bobby, is a senior at Maine Maritime Academy and will be captaining ships upon graduation, and my daughter, Amanda, is a sophomore at Bryant University, where she is studying international business with a focus on Manda-

rin. I’ve worked remotely for over 25 years, so my office follows me wherever I go.

“Some of the Nobles ’85 crew have gotten together for lunch at the Tahiti in Dedham to relive our high school days—and, surprisingly, the décor and menu have not changed in 35 years!”

Cathy Coviello updated us that she is in Alabama working as a senior executive with the Department of Defense.

Elizabeth O’Halloran writes, “After college at Haverford and a couple of years in Washington, D.C., working for a government-affiliated think tank, I got married and moved to Charlottesville, Virginia.

My husband, Kevin, entered the Ph.D. program for English at UVA, and I earned an MBA from the Darden School of Business in 1995.

Kevin and I love Charlottesville, and

after my graduation we bought a house and settled down and are still here today. After grad school I worked for UVA Hospital for five years and then at Darden as the managing director of their Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship for 11 years. My area of expertise became angel investing, particularly in lesser-developed countries. I spent a lot of time in Latin America and enjoyed working with the World Bank. Along the way, we had three wonderful children, now almost 21, 18 and 13. I’m retired now and enjoy spending a great deal of time with our kids. My eldest, Chase, is now in New Orleans studying to become a jazz pianist; my second son, William, is finishing up high school and is poised to start Trinity College in Hartford in the fall; and our third, Margaret, is an exuberant 13-yearold enjoying the drama of seventh

grade. Kevin is now the executive director of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.”

Neil Bleicken writes, “My wife, Lisa Berraducci Bleicken ’94, and I live in Exeter, New Hampshire, with our two sons, Teddy (Theodore) and Tim (Timothy), where we truly enjoy our lives, are grateful to live, and have a ton of fun. The older I get, the more I realize how important it is to stay connected to good people, so I hope we all stay in better touch. This past May I worked with Jeff Alpaugh and Marci Loeber to organize our 35th Nobles reunion, which we did via Zoom. It was a great amount of fun, and we had 24 classmates join and four current or former faculty members, including Head of School Cathy Hall, Dick Baker, Tim Carey and Deb Harrison. Be well and stay safe!”

1985

Clockwise from top: Liza Connelly ’85 and Amy Fay Kopfler ’85 in London, September 2018; Cathy Coviello ’85 and her Knabstrupper mare, who is making her USDF Third Level debut this year; Ted Stimpson ’85 with Nicole and daughters Maggie ’15 and Ellie ’17 at the graduation of his son, Alex Stimpson ’19; David Conant ’85 and Richard Morse ’85 on a hike in March 2020 in California; Neil Bleicken ’85 and Lisa Berarducci Bleicken ’94 with sons Teddy and Tim in Florida in April 2019; Pictured left to right: Eric Smith, Matt Sotir, Neil Bleicken, Kris Rosado and Bill Morrison (all ’85)

68 Nobles FALL 2020

Neil’s twin brother, David Bleicken, writes, “Greetings from Virginia, where my family and I continue to work from home in the new normal. Our daughter, Lillian, is a rising senior at Virginia Tech and studies clinical neuroscience.

Our son, Peter, is a rising sophomore at Christopher Newport University and studies history. My wife, Marianne, continues to work in organ donation, and I’m still working in consumer protection in financial markets. Best wishes to everyone at Nobles for good health and better days ahead.”

Ginny Stimpson Vatcher says, “It was great to see so many of you on Zoom for our 35th reunion in May. It was also very special to have Dick Baker, Deb Harrison and Tim Carey join our reunion and reminisce with us. My family and I are doing well. We have been living in Kennebunk, Maine, for 16+ years. I teach science and am a dean at Berwick Academy, in South Berwick, Maine. Steve and I have been married for 25 years.

He is VP of operations at Harvey Performance Company, based in Rowley, Massachusetts, and Gorham, Maine. Our son, Jack, is 23 and runs his own luxury real estate photography business in Boston called Jack Vatcher Photography.

Teddy and Annie are 21, going to be seniors at Harvard and St. Lawrence University. Charlotte is 16 and going into her junior year at Berwick Academy. We are all hoping to have our lives in some way back to normal soon. I hope you are all well and happy!”

Ted Henderson wrote in on Father’s Day saying, “On this Father’s Day, a shout-out to all fellow ’85 dads. Our crew, ages 24, 20 and 20, has been home during Covid.

It’s been a lot of fun to have them all back, even if for a short time.

The empty nest can wait! Best wishes to all my fellow dads.”

Chris Hoffman writes, “It’s hard to believe, but in our 21 years in Seattle, we have raised two boys (now 22 and 19), one of whom is now a college graduate and the other of whom is a sophomore studying engineering at the University of Washington.

My wife and I were just starting to enjoy our empty nest when the coronavirus hit, and now it seems we all live online in an endless series of Zoom meetings, class lectures and tutoring sessions (my wife is a teacher). When not online for work, I stalk David Conant on Strava, where I try to keep pace with his weekly running mileage.

Speaking of running, I qualified to run the Boston Marathon this year, but the coronavirus had other ideas about how I should spend my free time (look for me in 2021).

In other sad news, those of you looking to relive the magic made in the Hoffman basement at our 50th reunion will have to move on as the house was leveled several years ago in the name of progress.

I’ll end on a high note with an open invitation (once it’s safe) to anyone who makes it to Seattle.”

Jim Calhoun writes, “Things are good as we mark 35 years (!) since leaving Nobles. As my children move rapidly through adolescence, early adulthood and into college and beyond, I feel very blessed to have kids who are aware of and motivated by the injustices of our world. Emily is a rising senior at Wake Forest. Katie is a rising sophomore at Wake (Go Deacs!), while Sam is chasing his sisters and entering his junior year at Wellesley

High. Summer is being spent on Nantucket (Sconset). Have recently been in touch with many classmates, and as the saying goes, you can’t make old friends. Hope everyone is healthy and well.”

Richard Morse writes, “I’m living in Palo Alto, California, with a merged family consisting of my wife, two biological daughters (18, 16), one stepson (10), two horses, one cat and one boxer dog.

Working too hard at a biotechnology company in the talent, development and inclusion group, and hoping bike rides and hiking the boxer keep me relatively sane within the Covid life. It was nice to see classmates and teachers on our Zoom-enabled reunion recently and to see how easy it is to feel commonality despite the years and life’s twists and turns. It’s a sentiment we can all use more of in these times.”

Geoff Bride says, “Greetings from southern New Hampshire! I had such fun connecting with the class via Zoom—brought back great memories, smiles and laughs, and ‘Oh, I had forgotten about that!’ Recently changed companies, but I’m still within the private aviation space, selling jet cards.

Great job, as I get a chance to meet some interesting and successful people. I count my blessings every day. So looking forward to connecting with any and all soon. Be well and safe!”

Julie Alperen writes, “I have been living in NYC for 30 years, so I guess that means I’m a real New Yorker now. My husband and I live on the Lower East Side and are actually enjoying the work-fromhome situation—and more grateful than ever for our balcony! I work for a great branding and strategy

firm called Interbrand, where I head up the people (HR and recruiting) team, so no shortage of challenges there! I hope everyone is staying healthy and sane during these complex times.”

Kris Rosado writes, “After graduating WPI (B.S. mechanical engineering), I entered the Army as a 2nd Lieutenant and was stationed in Erlangen, Germany, as a tank platoon leader. While in Germany for four years, I met my wife-to-be Jennifer (Jerre), who was a U.S. Army military intelligence officer. We loved our time in Germany and took full advantage of seeing Europe as well as a four-month all-expensepaid trip to Desert Storm! After leaving the Army and returning to the United States in 1993, we settled in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

I started as a financial advisor with Merrill Lynch in 1994 and have been a certified financial planner since 1996. In addition to building a private client practice, I served as resident director for the Merrill offices in Coral Springs and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Portland, Maine, as associate director of the mid-Atlantic region based in Baltimore, Maryland, and as director of Cascade Complex, encompassing all of Oregon. After 20 years with Merrill, I moved my practice to Morgan Stanley in their Portland, Maine, office in 2014.

“Jerre and I currently live in Freeport, Maine, but will soon be moving full time to our home near Bethel, Maine. Our oldest, Kyle, recently graduated from USMA West Point (Go Army, Beat Navy! Sorry, Kathy) and our youngest, Ryan, will be enlisting in the U.S. Army later this summer. I still play ice hockey

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once a week, am an avid hunter, and enjoy snowmobiling, skiing, hiking and fishing. A group of close friends from Nobles has been making an annual pilgrimage to the Tahiti in Dedham for a nostalgic lunch (same menu, as well as furniture!).

I still get a Number 10; Dumes and Smitty go for a Number 9.”

Lastly, we heard from Mark Goodman. “Good to see some of your faces at our Zoom reunion.

I’m living in Cambridge with my wife and three daughters (15, 13, 10). We’ve been quarantining in Vermont, hoping for a return to normalcy in September, but I have my doubts. I’m in touch with Jim Calhoun and Neil Bleicken and follow Hoff on Instagram (he hikes a lot). Good to reconnect with Denise McDonough and David Conant recently. Be well, and stay in touch.”

1986 CLASS CORRESPONDENTS

Heather Markey

617-365-3836 hsmarkey@icloud.com Jessica Tyler

781-934-6321 tylerjessica@me.com

Evan Falchuk writes, “I was named the board chair of Voter Choice for Massachusetts, which is spearheading this November’s ballot initiative to enact Ranked Choice Voting. . . . I’m also now on the steering committee of Lawyers Defending American Democracy, a group started by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger to stand up for the rule of law at a time when it is under siege.”

West Lockhart writes, “We have been in Maine since Covid hit, and everyone is well. My eldest son attended his virtual graduation from the American School of London and will go to university in Italy next year. Hope everyone in the Class of ’87 is well.”

Chrissy Kelly Baird writes, “We are so thankful it’s summer and that remote learning is behind us. . . . One preschool teacher and two kindergarteners added up to too many Zooms! Sending warm wishes to all and hoping that healthy, happy times are ahead for all. So grateful for the connections we share!”

1988 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Sasha Leland

sasha@thelelands.com Eliza Kelly Beaulac

703-476-4442 embeaulac@verizon.net

1987 CLASS CORRESPONDENTS

Emily Gallagher Byrne

781-721-4444 egbyrne@verizon.net Elise Gustafson

elise_gustafson@yahoo.com

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Rebekah Ham writes, “I’ve been fortunate to have had several highs in the months of pandemic lows. In February I traveled to D.C. for the State of the Union as the guest of Rhode Island’s Senator Reed. It was a fascinating experience to say the least. While there, I got to see one of my favorite Nobles graduates, Heather Angney Edelman. In April, the St. Baldrick’s Foundation named me

1988

Left to right: Bekah Ham ’88 and Heather Edelman ’88 in Washington, D.C.; Sasha Leland ’88 and wife Erin feeling salty but happy while sailcamping in the Exumas in March

their Advocate of the Year for children with cancer. Many thanks to everyone who voted. We all know how important voting is! And in May, my family watched from our living room as our daughter Fiona graduated from Bowdoin College.

Our daughter Grace has turned 18 and can’t wait to vote this November. Have I mentioned the importance of voting yet? Wishing you all good health in the months ahead. Vote!”

Sasha Leland writes, “This spring has been quite a mixed bag for Erin and me. March was especially interesting—early in the month we flew to the Exumas (a district of the Bahamas) to vacation with a friend. The three of us navigated a small two-masted sailboat around the deserted islands for a week, camping, cooking and luxuriating along the way. The trip was unforgettable, but as we were off the grid while away, our return to civilization was particularly startling. In the one week we were gone, Covid-19 seemed to have changed everything, and we were flying back just as the world was being locked down. (And, in fact, had we stayed for just a day or two

more, I’m guessing we would have been stuck there for some time.)

Our travel companion ended up contracting the virus. Erin and I somehow escaped infection.

“Despite the harsh reentry, life has been quite good since then, and we feel intensely fortunate.

We run our business from home, and work has been reasonably steady, so thankfully our lives haven’t changed all that much.

Our garden and raised beds are overflowing. I see my fellow Mainer and brother David Gerber all the time. And Maine is putting on its spectacular annual summer show. Wishing love and health to all during this complicated and challenging time.”

1989 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Rachel Spencer

917-921-5916 rachelwspencer@yahoo.com

1990 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Lisa Donahue Rose

lrose90@nobles.edu

We were so sorry to miss everyone gathering in May for our 30th reunion, but we look forward to seeing the Class of 1990 back on campus (fingers crossed!) on May 8, 2021, to celebrate. It will be especially fun to celebrate with ’91!

Laura Keally Heywood writes that she continues to manage Falmouth Women’s Health in Mashpee, Massachusetts. Her husband, Dr. Richard Heywood III, a 23-year Navy Reserve, was called up in early April and deployed to New York City, where he was assigned to Woodhull Hospital to help care for the onslaught of Covid-19 patients. They were featured in a story by the Cape Cod Health News on May 12, 2020: “Front-line Doctor in New York City: What We All Need to Consider.”

1991 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Amy Russell Farber

amy.farber.143@gmail.com

1992 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Lynne Dumas Davis

703-623-4211 lynnemddavis@gmail.com

Hi, to the Class of ’94. I hope that everyone is safe and well.

Annie Stephenson shared an update: “2020 has been one hell of a year, that’s for sure! What started off as what was sure to be a year filled with promises—getting engaged and buying a new home in February for our blended family of six—has now proven to be truly the most tumultuous year our country and globe has ever faced. Challenges with real estate transactions aside (and we finally closed after three very long and stressful months), like everyone else I’m sure, these past few months have been consumed with the balance between a full-time job, home-schooling, and trying to keep ourselves and our loved ones healthy and relatively sane, while most important, trying to teach our kids the importance of equality and justice and how to use our voices to demand the change we want to see in our world. Needless to say, 2020 will not be a year we could ever forget. Wishing health and happiness to all of you in the Nobles community!”

1995 Kelly Flaman Roberts and Tyler Roberts are enjoying suburban life in Norwell, Massachusetts.

1993

Kelly writes, “Moving to the South Shore has allowed us to reconnect with several other Nobles graduates in the area, which has been great!” Kelly recently left the corporate world for the nonprofit space and loves her new position as the director of marketing and communications for Team IMPACT, an organization that matches children battling serious or chronic illnesses with college sports teams.

economics and math at Middlesex. We rented an RV and will be doing about a two-week trip to get across the country.”

1996

Congratulations to Kristin Harrison and her husband on the birth of their daughter. Kristin shares, “Camryn Elizabeth Shutts was born on March 4, 2020, ready to take on the crazy state of the world she was born into! She’s been fortunate to enjoy both Mom and Dad at home full time during her first few months of life.” Kristin also shared some career updates: “I have wrapped up my 16 years leading and teaching at the Christa McAuliffe Charter School in Framingham. I’m leaving the school extremely proud of the work we’ve been doing to engage actively in antiracist activities. I’m taking advantage of my professional transition happening during a pandemic by opting to stay home for a while with Camryn. After that, who knows. I’m trying my best to be in the moment right now!”

We also heard exciting news from Meagan Rock Painter: “We have been living in the Bay Area of California for the past two years, but it is time to move back to Boston. We are thrilled to come home! I will be working as a veterinary dermatologist at Angell Animal Medical Center. Back where it all began. We can’t wait to see everyone again!”

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Alex Slawsby

alex.slawsby@gmail.com

1997 CLASS CORRESPONDENTS

Bobbi Oldfield Wegner

617-980-1412 bobbiwegner@gmail.com Jessie Sandell Achterhof

781-990-3353 jessie.achterhof@gmail.com Congratulations to Geoff Carter and his wife, Jillayne, who welcomed baby Drew Cora Marie Carter on May 11. Geoff and his family live in Alberta, Canada, where he is a Southern Alberta, Eastern Board scout for the Spruce Grove Saints.

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Sam Jackson

1998

978-409-9444 sambjackson@hotmail.com

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Dave Klivans

1994

dave.liquid@gmail.com

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Peter Sullivan writes: “My family and I are excited to be returning to the Boston area, where I will teach

Marni Fox Payne

mpayne@berkshirepartners.com

Meagan Rock Painter ’99 and her daughter, Claire

1999 CLASS CORRESPONDENTS

Stephanie Trussell Driscoll

stephdriscoll32@gmail.com Gabriela Herman

gabriela.herman@gmail.com

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Maggie Goedecke Capelle and her family are also moving back to Massachusetts.

2000 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Lisa Marx Corn

lisamarx@gmail.com Scott Annan writes, “I’m currently living in New York City and am working on my business, Mycube Safe. We’re going on eight years and are launching our new consumer brand and product line this fall. Over the past two years we’ve been developing two products with some groundbreaking designs and technology, so I’m excited to bring them to market and share them with the world. Other than that, I’m doing a lot of biking upstate and playing guitar, which I took up a couple of years ago. I’m fortunate to keep in touch with a couple of close Nobles friends in NYC. Yoni Goldberg and I make it a routine to try new restaurants a few times a year. Of course, city life has certainly been impacted by Covid, and like many of us, I was really looking forward to making it back to campus for our 20-year (I simply can’t believe it’s been that long since we graduated) but hope to come back for another reunion soon. I think of Nobles often, and to all my friends and teachers who made my life at school so enriching and who continue to do so, thank you.”

is doing well and getting excited for our 20th (!) reunion, which will be held May 7–8, 2021. This reunion will be extra special—because Reunion 2020 was postponed, we will be able to celebrate with other classes, including our friends from the Class of 2000.

Please mark your calendars. We can’t wait to see everyone there!

Congratulations to a few classmates who have had babies born this year, including Pat Bigelow, who welcomed daughter Penelope in January; Amy (Hudson) Gaubinger, who welcomed son Hudson in March; Mike Fish, who welcomed son Jake Patrick in June; and Emily Kaufman, who had twins, Grey and Brooks, in June.

2002 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

William N. Duffey III

617-893-1040 williamduffey@gmail.com Congratulations to Heather Summe and husband Matthew Aleksinas, who welcomed Willa Catherine Aleksinas into the world on March 27. Louisa (3) is thrilled to have a baby sister!

2003

Hi, Class of 2001! I hope everyone

72 Nobles FALL 2020

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Carolyn Sheehan Wintner

Laura Marholin Garcia

781-801-3742 carolyn.wintner@gmail.com

laura.marholin@gmail.com

2005 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Saul Gorman

617-447-3444 saul.gorman@gmail.com Anne Benjamin graduated from Boston University’s Questrom School of Business with an MBA.

2006 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

E.B. Bartels

ebandersenbartels@gmail.com

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Lauren.kenney1@gmail.com

2004

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

2001 Lauren Kenney Murphy

After luckily getting in an eight-week sabbatical, David Sherin went to Australia and New Zealand earlier this year, starting with the Australian Open in Melbourne and ending with Sydney’s LGBTQ+ Mardi Gras. David writes: “I have been quarantining on Cape Cod for the past three months with a few friends. If anyone finds themselves in the Chatham area over the summer, feel free to stop by for a socially distant drink!”

Clockwise from left: Mariel Novas ’06 celebrates her graduation after finishing her Ph.D. from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education this spring; David Sherin ’03 at Uluru/Ayer’s Rock in the Australian Outback; Elizabeth Hodgman, Ashley Marks, Lisa Griswold, Selena Ali and Lisa Cahan (all ’01) met in a socially distanced backyard gathering on May 31.

The Class of 2006, like everyone else, has spent the majority of 2020 at home, isolated and social distancing, but that hasn’t stopped them from doing great and exciting things. Even better, so many of my classmates have championed really important causes and haven’t let a pesky little global pandemic stand in the way of their activism. Nobles taught us to stand up for the public good, and I love seeing how so

many people are taking that to heart these days. Here are some updates on what the Class of 2006 has been up to in the past strange and awful months of 2020, and the things that they care about.

Hannah Mauck Sokol and her husband, Greg Sokol, welcomed Eleanor Joan Sokol (a.k.a. Nell) on April 3, 2020. Check out an adorable photo of Nell on page 83!

While Nell has yet to attend her first protest, she loves supporting the Massachusetts Bail Fund. The internet tells me that Nell wasn’t the only ’06 pandemic baby: Jay Kelly and his wife, Laura Dean, welcomed a tiny human named Declan on April 9, and Josh Pollack and his wife, Margaret Olmos, welcomed Eli on April 24. I’m sure that Declan is going to be passionate about health care, considering that his mom is an ER doctor who spent the spring battling Covid19 when she was nine months pregnant. And while Eli is too small to control his own finances yet, his dad had a Facebook fundraiser in June for the Black Trans Advocacy Coalition, which is great.

Speaking of trans advocacy, Brett Simon has been fighting for LGBTQ+ equality and Black trans lives in particular out in Los Angeles. Brett also shared that he is now engaged to an awesome guy, Daniel Bailey. Congratulations, Brett! I’m so happy for you! Check out page 81 for a picture of the cute couple.

Congratulations are also in order to Hilary Segar, who tied the knot with Kaius Garber ’07 on August 24, 2019, in Narragansett, Rhode Island, back when you could still have gatherings of more than 10 people. And what a gathering they had! Turn to page 82 to see

a picture of the Nobles graduates in attendance at their wedding.

Hilary also recently completed Northeastern’s pediatric nurse practitioner program, and Kaius is finishing up his master’s of international business from the Fletcher School at Tufts. I’m sure they’re already changing the world in their respective fields!

Our very own ’06 doctor, Scott Runyon, wrote in to share his experience treating patients who are victims of “the grim ipso facto violence of East and North St Louis.

Sadly, the vast majority of gunshot victims I see are young Black men with appendicular or spinal trauma.

During our initial encounter, while I sometimes ask what happened, I admit that as time goes on, I don’t really care how it happened. I’m not trying to be callous. What I mean is, whether they were the victim or the perpetrator, an innocent bystander or a drug lord, they deserve the best medical care we can give—and to get treated the same as the affluent white septuagenarian who falls and breaks her hip. I try to be raceblind in that situation and spend more time examining their motor function or sensation, wounds and pulses, rather than the color of their skin. Being biased by race will do little to get a patient resuscitated or healthy, although once that is accomplished, I realize how powerless I am with overcoming the effect race has on a patient’s societal reentry.” Thank you for sharing, Scott, and for the good work you are doing providing the best possible health care to all people.

Speaking of another doctor, Mariel Novas successfully defended her capstone (via Zoom) and graduated with her Ph.D. from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education,

and she is now officially Dr. Mariel Novas. She was even chosen to be the Commencement Marshal for her class (of course, she was!), and in an interview with her about what she has learned through her work, Mariel said: “Above all, I’ve learned that intentional micro-democratic engagement matters, and that doing so in a way that promotes healing and restoration is what drives successful civic engagement. Our world is in pain right now, and yet, we know that historically excluded peoples have been in pain for a long time. This collective hurt we feel will not go away on its own—it requires careful mediation, acute attention to the human and spiritual aspects of what we do and how we do it, and opportunities for reflection and to rejoice.” Mariel has been celebrating her accomplishments—just look at the delightful photo of her on page 72!—and that is her own form of protest because, as Mariel said, “Black joy is resistance.”

Erin Greene, queen of development at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, has been especially busy this past spring raising money to fight Covid-19. I am in awe every day of the important work she does to support doctors and nurses on the front lines. Erin told me about some causes she has been supporting, in addition to her work at Mount Sinai: “I’ve signed up for and am supporting Nicole Cardoza’s ‘Anti-Racism Daily’ newsletter, which provides daily actions and helpful education. I’ve also become a monthly donor to Color of Change, a national racial justice advocacy organization, and Higher Heights, which champions Black women’s involvement and leadership in politics, in order to help sustain

their work long term. (A brief plug for recurring donations rather than one-time gifts—they provide organizations with a reliable foundation of support, which is super important!)” Listen to Erin and make those donations recurring!

Caroline Harrison, who has been holed up in Queens, wrote to me to say, “Right now, I’ve been trying to take in as much information as possible and share it with the strangers who follow me on the internet (lookin’ at you, @paul_ rudds_buttcheeks_). My platform isn’t huge, but it’s big enough that I can help disseminate information about ongoing police brutality and civil rights violations, as well as compile resources for committing to being antiracist. I’m also trying to help a local music venue (Saint Vitus, they’re great) figure out ways to commit to helping educate their followers and raise funds in the long term. I might as well use my horrible social media addiction and my connections to the NYC metal scene for good. If you’re looking for a place to donate in the near future, I would strongly recommend the Okra Project and the Black Trans Solidarity Fund.”

Melissa Weihmayer emailed from London to say: “For the causes I care about, there are so many, but I want to flag that it’s remaining vigilant on the effing terrifying changes being made to immigration regulations using the pandemic as an excuse. Some of these are going unnoticed and underreported in the U.S. and the U.K. Organizations in Massachusetts like MIRA are critical at this time to help people understand any changes to their rights and to advocate for better integration policies. Luckily,

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DACA recipients remain protected from deportation for now (small victories! yay!), but this could still change. Also, remember the 2020 Census? immigrants and refugees need to be counted but in a way that doesn’t put them at risk. I’m also working with my university to diversify economics and decolonize our geography curriculum.

This will be taking cues from trailblazing organizations like the Sadie Collective and D-Econ and the Research in Color Foundation.”

You badass, Melissa.

I’d like to end by sharing the causes I have been supporting the most this year: The Greater Boston Food Bank, NY Common Pantry, and Feeding America. These organizations are crucial during times like the coronavirus pandemic to help people suffering from food insecurity, but also donating money to food banks is a way to fight racism. Food insecurity is a burden that disproportionately affects communities of color, and by donating to a place like GBFB, you can directly help end inequity.

2007 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Kat Sargent

katharine.sargent@gmail.com Molly Kringdon writes, “Despite all the uncertainty in our lives and communities today, I feel grounded by the Nobles community and the delightful surprises it continues to throw at me. This year, I lucked out and landed Caroline Kistner (and her adorable puppy, Teddy) as my new San Francisco roommate, rekindled a friendship with the wonderful (still dry and sarcastic) Alex O’Reilly, got to witness the

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on, we very well may be the only people you know who have moved into the city. Feel free to reach out if you’re in the area!”

2008 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Michael Polebaum

mpolebaum08@nobles.edu Alex O’Reilly, Molly Kringdon and Caroline Kistner (all ’07) in San Francisco, California

2009 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Liz Rappaport beautiful-inside-and-out Kerin Kehoe get married, and had the pleasure of meeting Jackie Codair Donovan’s sweet son, Cormac. For these four and for so many others, I feel grateful. Missing you, ’07, and cannot wait to see more faces at our ‘yes-we’re-this-old’ 10-year. Hugs!”

Max Mankin proposed to Wudan Yan, a journalist and writer, in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah a couple of months ago. From Max: “We met here in Seattle (despite going to the same college but never meeting there). We do lots of hiking and backpacking together—and these days sheltering in place/going to protests. We also have a dog, who is extremely jealous of this.”

Jake Tower says, “I’ve finished up my otolaryngology-head and neck surgery residency at Yale and moved on to a facial plastic and reconstructive surgery fellowship at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York.

This is a one-year position to focus on treating things like pediatric facial deformities, vascular malformations, facial paralysis and aesthetic surgery. My wonderful wife, Lauren, and I can now be found on the upper east side of Manhattan—with Covid going

617-413-6070 lizrap21@gmail.com

2010 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

people I met at Yale, and, despite his affinity for the Green Bay Packers, we quickly bonded. We have been living together in New York for the past several years and recently moved to Boston to start this exciting new chapter. We are grateful to the many Nobles grads who made the engagement so special, including George Loring ’16 and Nick Loring ’18, who were there for the moment, and Coco Woeltz ’12, Sophie Atwood ’12, Tory Macdonald ’12, Lily Ham ’12 and Lauren Martin Joullian ’09, who helped us celebrate in a socially distant way in the subsequent days.”

2013

Tori Goyette

CLASS CORRESPONDENT

tgoyette10@gmail.com

Caroline Thayer

carolinejthayer@gmail.com Caitlin Fai graduated from Tufts University Medical School.

2011 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Katie Puccio

508-446-0726 krpooch@gmail.com

2012 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Coco Woeltz

ccwoeltz2@gmail.com Congratulations to Eliza Loring, who just got engaged! She writes: “Despite the difficulty of 2020, I have been fortunate to have had a few great moments of happiness over the past couple of months.

Over Memorial Day weekend, my long-term boyfriend, Jack McGinn, proposed! Jack was one of the first

Hey, everyone! The following messages from our class are responses to how they handled quarantine amid the Covid-19 pandemic. By the time you read this, I pray the world has healed, the quarantine period is over, and there is a vaccine for corona. I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy.

Alexa Demirjian writes, “I quarantined with my parents and Tim ’14 in Newport Beach. I started working for my dad at the end of last year, and it has been a crazy year transitioning back into finance.

We love competitively playing Rummikub every night and participating in Tim’s TikTok videos.”

Caroline Monrad says, “I’ve been spending lots of time with family, running old Nobles XC routes, and hanging out with Sarah Riley in our apartment in Beacon Hill.”

Cat Dickinson writes that during quarantine she has started running a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, where she plays with friends, including her sister, Caley Dickinson ’15.

Emily Goins says, “During quarantine I have been continuing with medical school, but through online classes. I’ve also been working on a clinical research study on symptom identification for Covid. For fun, I’ve been able to bake (black bean brownies, tiramisu), take bike rides, do online Zumba classes, and Zoom with my great uncle in England.

I came home to Wellesley for a few weeks to see my parents and sister before starting back at the hospital, which has been a relaxing end to quarantine.”

Tyler Martin writes that his quarantine has been pretty good.

He’s been playing a lot of golf and has been spending time with his family down on the Cape.

Claire Greene has moved.

She writes, “I recently moved to Austin, Texas, to start a Master of Architecture program at the University of Texas. I’ve spent a lot of quarantine preparing for the move and the cross-country road trip and am excited to start online classes.” Charlotte Thorndike’s message for the grade is, “Hope everyone is doing well and staying safe during this time. I’ve been up in Maine spending time with my family outdoors and hiking a lot for the past three months!”

2014 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Alexandra Charron

alexandra.l.charron@gmail.com

2015 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Natalie Hession

Natalie.a.hession@gmail.com

2016 CLASS CORRESPONDENTS

Sabrina Rabins

srabins@gmail.com Mariana Vega

vegamariana612@gmail.com Danny Jacobs wrote with some interesting news: “During quarantine, my father and I started a business, so I’ve been pretty busy these past few months. Our company is called UV Clean Solutions. Born out of the Covid-19 pandemic, UV Clean Solutions is a professional disinfecting company that addresses the flaws of traditional disinfecting services, specifically the excessive use of chemicals, human error and the inability to disinfect ambient air. We use Ultraviolet Light Technology to eliminate viruses and bacteria from surfaces and the air, and our solution is 100 percent chemicalfree and environmentally friendly. With that in mind, our service is specifically targeted to public facilities (schools, transportation, restaurants, gyms, etc.)—places where health and safety are of utmost importance.

UV disinfecting technology has been used for more than 50 years in hospitals but never fully employed outside those spaces.

We provide this hospital-grade disinfecting technology to all businesses, allowing them to enjoy its clear benefits.

“Starting and building a company has been exciting, challenging and quite rewarding.

What I’ve enjoyed most is meeting with clients and telling them about UV Clean Solutions, assuring that we are here to help them maintain a healthy environment in the safest and most effective way possible. We have fully disinfected a number of facilities now, including offices, restaurants, country clubs, fitness centers and retail spaces. I’m excited for the next couple of months— especially as more facilities plan to reopen—and look forward to helping as many people and places as possible.”

2017 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Harry Sherman

harry74sherman@gmail.com Thanks to everyone from 2017 for writing in! Classmates shared highlights from the past year of college, including many who studied abroad, as well as how they are spending time in quarantine, including the summer.

In the past two years, Lauren Barbieri has been certified in tax preparation and does taxes for free for low-income families in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Since graduating from Nobles, Frannie Adams has nearly completed her environmental studies major and has picked up an economics minor at Wellesley College. She has taken advantage of many opportunities to travel through school, including trips to Haiti, the Cayman Islands, Iceland, San Diego and several other destinations, doing coursework

and service work, and attending conferences. This past fall she was initiated into the Xi Tau Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated, an NPHC organization dedicated to sisterhood, scholarship and service. This summer she is participating in the Summer Science Research Program through Wellesley College, doing interdisciplinary field research on biodiversity and air quality in her neighborhood in congruence with 13 other students across the country.

In the fall semester of 2019, Tia Dawson took a business in Italy class. “I learned about Italian businesses and ownership and how they differ from American ones.

Then, over winter break, the class and I went to Italy for 12 days, visiting five different cities (Rome, Florence, Siena, Bologna/Palma and Venice). It was an amazing experience that taught me a lot!”

Chase McKee transferred to Brown University after his freshman year at Colby College. He spent his sophomore fall in Dublin, Ireland, studying at Trinity College Dublin.

Now a senior at Brown, he is pursuing finance and entrepreneurship and has founded a company, Rocket Alumni Solutions, that creates touchscreen digital software for interactive displays and websites.

Ben Johnson writes: “I was abroad in Denmark until Miss Rona struck. My major is architecture. And I ran into Max McPherron while in Denmark. My summer internship at Northwestern was canceled because of Miss Rona, so I have nothing planned for the summer.”

Sam Lynch is currently studying international relations and English at Tufts, and spent the past year at the University of

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Amsterdam. This summer he is working for Boston City Councilor Lydia Edwards to inform policy decisions promoting climate resilience and racial equality.

Syra Mehdi reports that she recently changed her major to a combined major of behavioral neuroscience and philosophy. Starting in July, she will be working at Mass General doing research for an Alzheimer’s disease study for six months as part of Northeastern’s co-op program. Additionally, she has been enjoying participating in a student-run musical theater group on campus.

This is Alex Freeman’s first summer not spent at camp in the past 12 years. He’s living in Evanston, Illinois, with his friends at college.

Ian Harris is spending this summer doing a remote internship from Dartmouth while living in Boston.

Gigi Gabeau writes that she “has become quite a renaissance woman over quarantine, acquiring many new skills such as painting, crocheting, cooking foreign foods, baking, building a deck, coding, holding a headstand for about 10 seconds, and becoming an activist.

Next up is being able to perform the ‘Whipped Into Shape’ jumprope choreo from Legally Blonde!”

During quarantine, Olivia Gomez and Charlotte Del Col ran a socially distanced 5K to raise money for frontline health-care workers.

Victor Li has been quarantining with his dog, Mugzy, while Emre Toner has committed himself to reading two books a month during quarantine.

Noah Cohen-Harding is working as a research assistant this

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summer examining the impact of disability payments and the possibility of implementing reparations through the welfare state.

Because other summer plans have fallen through, Oliver Halperin is again living with his parents across the street from Nobles.

He hopes to spend the summer working, volunteering, playing music, and seeing friends and former classmates in pandemicappropriate ways.

With an abbreviated fantasy baseball season freeing up much of Harry Sherman’s time, he has been growing a modest yet loyal following on TikTok. Spoorthi Balu is a member of Columbia Taal, a South Asian fusion dance group. Taal raises money to support the South Asian community. They recently fundraised for Laal NYC, an organization that provides resources for Bangladeshi women in the Bronx to learn English and find jobs.

Spoorthi was studying art history in Spain before returning due to the pandemic. She is spending her quarantine studying for the MCAT and crying about biology.

Lauren Walter writes, “I am about to embark on my final year at Colby College, and it’s crazy to think that I am a senior in college when it feels like my last morning assembly was just yesterday. I am the senior class president and captain of the field hockey team, and excited to see what both my team and classmates have in store for this year. I am finishing up my math and economics majors and am excited to start my full-time job as a consultant for PwC in New York City starting in 2021. Being back in Dedham during quarantine has given me a lot of time to get

back on the Nobles campus and relive some great memories. I have spent a lot of time at the turf to both use the wonderful facility and reflect on the two memorials that surround the field for members of our class. I am looking forward to our first reunion and seeing our class back together and all that they have accomplished.”

Chad Polk is a founding member and vice president of the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Black Student Union and is currently, with the support of the school’s administration, engaged in the process to overhaul the school’s curriculum, programming and disciplinary code in order to better support the students of color and challenge the field of classical music to adapt to the diversity and innovation celebrated in other art forms.

Holly Lyne writes, “Hey, 2017! I’ve been absolutely loving my time at Bowdoin, and I can’t believe we’re about to be seniors.

I’m super excited to be a women’s cross-country captain this fall and to run track for the rest of the year. I’m an English major and art history minor, and I was fortunate enough to have part of a semester in Florence studying art history before everything shut down. I am currently living in Brunswick, Maine, and interviewing prospective students for the Bowdoin admissions office. Hope you’re all doing well!”

Also at Bowdoin, we heard from Max McPherron: “Just got back (abruptly) from studying abroad in Copenhagen, Denmark. I’m doing econ/CS at Bowdoin, working in health-care investment banking this summer, and I’ve been doing a lot of dog walking and cooking

over quarantine. I’ve thrown some money into the stock market, and I’ve been learning a lot just reading/following the news about investing. Funny how much more info you can retain when your savings are actually at stake. More important, I’ve mastered the mediumrare pan-seared skirt steak. I’m also officially desensitized to conversation over Zoom calls.”

During quarantine, RJ Jaczko has been working for an artist manager, assisting with administrative and research tasks, as well as practicing skateboarding and growing an impressive mustache.

Kyle Balis got the opportunity to study abroad in Manchester, England, for the beginning part of the spring 2020 semester, but unfortunately had to come home mid-March. He continued to act like he was studying abroad by talking in a British accent to himself during quarantine.

Since graduating from Nobles, Zachary Janfaza has lived with fellow Nobles classmate Jack Maroni at college. Surprisingly, they still enjoy each other’s company.

Since graduating from Nobles, Gracie Doyle and her family have moved to Philadelphia.

2018 CLASS CORRESPONDENT

Jill Radley

jillradley22@gmail.com

2019 CLASS CORRESPONDENTS

Cyan Jean

cjean040@gmail.com Ally Guerrero

alessandra.guerrero@bc.edu

in memoriam Farwell Gregg Bemis Jr. ’46 passed away May 20, at age 91.

At Nobles, “Gregg” was active in all parts of student life. He was a member of the football, track, hockey and baseball teams, as well as rowed crew. He also served on the Student Council, was secretary-treasurer of the athletic association, business manager of the Nobleman and editor-in-chief of the Classbook.

A four-year member of the Glee Club, Bemis was also a member of the quartets and Dramatic Club. He received the Nobles Cup and was valedictorian of his class.

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, and raised in Massachusetts, Bemis graduated from Stanford University and then spent two years on active duty in the Marine Corps, including one year in Korea. Upon his return, he graduated from Harvard Business School and spent the next 25 years serving in the top management of three Fortune 500 companies.

Throughout his career, he was deeply involved in many entrepreneurial pursuits, including founding his own ocean-related venture and his ownership of the Lusitania shipwreck project. For nearly 20 years, he served as chairman of the Ocean Corporation, a leading school for commercial divers, and later became the chairman of Deep Ocean Engineering, the largest producer of remotely operated vehicles in the United States.

In 1968, Bemis purchased the wreckage of the Lusitania, a luxury liner that was torpedoed

11 miles off Kinsale Head in Ireland by a German U-boat in 1915 as it made its way from New York to Liverpool. He dedicated the remaining years of his life to trying to solve the mystery of the disaster that took the lives of nearly 2,000 passengers. The British and U.S. governments maintained that the targeting of a civilian passenger ship was a violation of the rules of war. The German government maintained the ship was carrying illegal artillery shells and high explosives as evidenced by a massive second explosion that occurred after the torpedo struck. Bemis deeded the ship in 2019 to the Museum Old Head in Kinsale.

Ever inquisitive and active, Bemis was a dedicated board member, tenacious soccer player and fierce lover of animals. He moved to Santa Fe in 1980 to be closer to his beloved family and ran unsuccessfully three times as a Republican candidate for Congress in New Mexico.

He is survived by his wife, Lisa, and several children and grandchildren.

Frederick Cabot Richardson ’44 passed away. His family had a long history with Nobles given that Wyman Richardson, his father, graduated from Nobles in 1913, and his brother Wyman graduated in 1943. At Nobles, “Fred” played football, hockey and baseball. His senior year he served as secretary of the Student Council, literary editor of the Nobleman and editor-in-chief of the Classbook. In addition to being the class valedictorian, he

was co-president of Deutscher Verein and a member of the Glee Club and quartets. He received the Trustees Prize in 1940.

Richardson graduated from Harvard University and received a master’s degree from the Harvard University School of Education.

From 1958 to 1990, Richardson was a distinguished member of the faculty at Belmont Hill School, where he taught science and math. He was a true “school” man and took great pride in giving the Richardson Chemistry Prize each year to a deserving and talented student. He was not only a beloved teacher but a beloved coach as well. He coached hockey and softball and was known to personally seek out each coach the day after a game to ask their team’s score.

Even after his retirement, Richardson remained a fixture on the sidelines at Belmont Hill games. He thrived being around young minds and greatly enjoyed the pace and culture of independent school life.

He took pride in serving as a drum major in the Minuteman Corps in Lincoln, Massachusetts, and enjoyed spending time at his home in Eastham on Cape Cod. Timothy Francis Kelleher Jr. ’48 passed away February 27, at age 90. At Nobles, Kelleher was a member of the football squad and wrestling team, and served as the baseball manager.

He received the G.W.C. Nobles Sportsmanship Cup and Davis Sportsmanship Cup. He also was a member of the Glee Club.

His Classbook page noted,

“Not confining his efforts to the classroom alone, Tim’s athletic achievements are worthy of special attention, especially from the standpoint of his almost minute stature. A shift, piledriving scat-back on the football team, Tim has confused many an opposing would-be tackler by the many directions he seems to be running all at the same time.”

Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Kelleher moved to Dedham as a child and became a proud lifelong resident of the town along with his beloved wife, Kay. Kelleher served proudly, with honor, in the U.S. Army during the Korean War. He worked in the insurance industry before retiring after many years of service to Commonwealth Gas Company.

Kelleher will perhaps be best remembered for his incredible commitment to and passion for volunteerism. He was a communicant of St. Mary’s of the Assumption Parish, serving in the St. Vincent De Paul Society, where he was recognized for his long-standing service and commitment to others. He was also actively involved with the Dedham Council on Aging, Meals on Wheels, the Dedham Food Pantry and the Knights of Columbus.

He will be remembered by his dear friends and family for his boundless energy and magnanimous spirit, always the first to offer a hand or a tool. He will be greatly missed, yet leaves behind a legacy of integrity, kindness, friendship and joy.

He is survived by his children, Brien, Timothy and Ann, and five grandchildren.

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in memoriam Dudley Alexander Hall ’50 passed away May 28, at age 88, due to heart and respiratory failure. A native of Newton, he spent four years at Nobles, where he played basketball and soccer, including as a proud member of Nobles’ undefeated 1949 soccer team. He was also a member of the Glee Club and Science Club. He served as photography editor of the Nobleman and received the photography prize in 1948, 1949 and 1950. His Classbook recalls, “If you should see a young man up in a tree at some big doing with a Kodak shining in the sun, you’re probably looking at ‘Dud.’ . . . [He] is the class photography bug and also one of its neatest dressers.”

Hall graduated from Harvard in 1954 and went on to serve in the U.S. Air Force for three years at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia and in Indiana. While attending his sister’s graduation from Wellesley College in 1955, he met Kathryn (Kay) Greer, the love of his life. They were married in 1956 and were together until her death in 2014.

Drawing on his personnel experience in the Air Force, Hall started his career in human resources at State Street Bank in Boston, then moved to Fidelity Investments. In 1977, ready for a new challenge, he and Kay bought a temporary employment services franchise and moved to New Hampshire, where they ran a successful business together for many years. He served as president of the Exchange Club and was an active member of Rotary International in Manchester, New

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Hampshire. Upon selling the franchise, they moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, where Hall ran an HR consulting firm and volunteered his HR expertise with the Service Corps of Retired Executives. Hall then retired to Florida to play some golf and relax. Later years brought him back to Charlotte to live near family.

Nobles always held a very special place in his heart. He remembered former headmaster Eliot Putnam and former English teacher Sid Eaton with much affection. Hall credited Nobles with instilling in him a lifelong love of learning, and of history in particular, and for the start of many friendships that lasted throughout his life. He attended as many Nobles reunions as possible, and he kept in touch with many of his classmates over the 70 years since their graduation.

Hall is survived by his sister, Pamela Park; his three children, Elisabeth, Mark and Jonathan; and his three grandchildren.

Neil Winfield Childs ’52, of Amelia Island, Florida, passed away February 18, at age 85. At Nobles, he embraced all elements of student life and was a member of the football, hockey and baseball squads. He received the Most Improved Prize his sophomore year. His Classbook profile noted that “Wink” was “the funniest in the class, both intentionally and naturally. His classic pea-green tie, his actions and expressions are all comical to watch, and through the years he has provided many a dull class with his side-splitting humor.”

Childs was born in London, England, and raised in Wellesley, Massachusetts. He attended Harvard University and Northwestern University and also served as an MP in Germany for two years with the U.S. Army.

After his service in the military, he returned stateside and began working with United Fruit in Portland, Oregon. On a trip back east, he met his beloved wife, Peggy, and became engaged just four days later.

After more than a decade with United Fruit, he formed a surety bond company and later sold it to a consortium to start a new business with Peggy. Together, they created a company that produced fashionable caps and hairpieces for women who had lost their hair due to chemotherapy. After nearly 15 years, the company was bought out.

Childs was a devoted father to his two sons and enjoyed coaching Little League, volunteering with Cub Scouts, and camping and traveling with them around the United States, Europe and Canada.

Childs and Peggy opened their home to numerous exchange students from all over the world, including France, Ghana, Malaysia, Taiwan, Nepal, Norway and more. Always one to help others, he invested time and energy into the education of these students and worked with them to make their dreams of higher education in the United States a reality.

Upon retiring, Childs moved to Amelia Island, where he enjoyed playing golf and spend-

ing time with family and friends.

Later in life, when he was unable to hit the links, he published two books of short stories, kept up with those he loved, and was truly thankful for a life full of joy, a happy marriage, and wonderful friendships.

A prankster by nature, he loved to play jokes on friends, tell outrageous tales, draw cartoons, make flamboyant toasts, and welcome old and new friends to his home. His humor and zest for life will be missed by all who knew him.

In addition to his wife, Peggy, he is survived by his sons, Curtis and Geoff; his brother, John ’53; and four grandchildren.

Robert Cumings ’52 died peacefully on June 21, at age 86. At Nobles, “Stretch” captained the ’51 football team to an undefeated season—a team that was later inducted into the Nobles Athletics Hall of Fame inaugural class of 2010. He also led the basketball and baseball teams to winning records by large margins. Bob was on the Student Council and served as school president in 1952. He was also a member of the Dramatic Club and a member of the Nobleman board. His classmates remembered him in the Classbook writing, “He can take kidding as well as administer it, and it is a familiar sight to him sauntering about the campus with his Western 10-gallon Stetson.”

After Nobles, he attended Yale University and then served in the U.S. Marine Corps before graduating from Boston University in 1959. Cumings captained

the BU basketball team that reached the Elite Eight NCAA Championship and was drafted by the Celtics. He was also an avid sailor and accomplished tennis player.

Professionally, he worked as the director of the BU Alumni Association and was the president of the Greater Boston Convention and Tourist Bureau. Together with his wife, he later owned the New England Brass and Tool Company. He volunteered as president of Sail Boston, president of the Freedom Trail Foundation, and president of the International Association of Convention & Visitor Bureaus.

Bob was admired by his classmates as a natural leader on and off the field: “His goodnatured personality made him a friend to all. After graduation, his enthusiasm for all things Nobles assured the participation in graduate events of a large percentage of his class, never missing an opportunity to grab a microphone and express his gratitude for all that the six years at the school meant to him.”

He is survived by his beloved wife of 64 years, Carolyn; his four sons, Robert Jr., Steven, Thomas and Gregory; and two grandchildren.

James Bailey ’53 of Boise, Idaho, passed away February 12, at age 83. At Nobles, “Jim” was an accomplished athlete, playing football, baseball and hockey. He was also elected class president twice and was a member of the Glee Club. His Classbook noted, “He is one of

the best-rounded boys in school, a fixture on the football, hockey (which he captained this year) and baseball teams, and a good student, turning out near honor marks year after year. Jim acts as a moderating influence between the extremes of the class, and although coming in for a good deal of kidding, he gives as good as he gets.”

After graduating from Nobles, Bailey attended Harvard University and Harvard Business School. He settled down in California and moved to Boise later in life to be closer to his children and grandchildren.

A lifelong sports enthusiast, Bailey enjoyed attending all types of high school and college sporting events and was an avid fan of the Seattle Seahawks.

He was also a dedicated golfer and played as often as he could despite enduring some physical limitations that came with age.

He leaves his beloved wife, Karen; and his sons, Jim, Mike and Tom. Myron Bellamy Jonsberg Jr. ’55 passed away May 23 at his home in Maryland. At Nobles, “Mike” excelled at football, basketball and crew. He was a member of the Dramatic and Glee Clubs, as well as the choir.

He served on the Nobleman board and was the recipient of the Improvement Award.

Jonsberg graduated from Babson College and did graduate studies at both Amherst College and American University.

Always giving of himself to his community, Jonsberg

served on the executive committee of the board of directors for the Coastal Conservation Association of Maryland and volunteered with the Audubon Naturalist Society. He was a branch volunteer for Neighbors of Northwest and was a speaker and member of the Association of Government Accountants.

He was happiest when he was surrounded by his family and animals, and he loved painting in his cottage on Cape Cod. He was also exceedingly proud when his Jeep surpassed the 300,000-mile mark.

He is survived by his loving wife, Susan; his children, Erik, Karen and Thomas; and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

William Wheeler ’56/’57 passed away on April 7 at his home in Topsham, Maine. “Whizzer” officially graduated with the Class of 1957, but he began his Nobles career as a member of the Class of 1956 and is forever considered an essential, lifelong part of this group. As one of four Nobles students who was stricken with polio in the fall of 1955, he was forced to take several months off of school and ended up graduating in 1957. Fellow students remember: “In a day before golf carts, he had a well-used Pontiac with an automatic shift that he would drive between the Castle and the schoolhouse.” Wheeler was one of the last Americans to fall ill to polio before a vaccine was discovered.

Prior to polio, Wheeler was a strong contributing member of the football and hockey teams at

Nobles and rowed crew. In addition to being in the Dramatic, Glee and Camera Clubs, he was on the board of the Nobleman and served on the Student Council. He was also on the dance committee.

Polio left him with a lifetime of physical challenges, but his condition also fueled his ambition and drove him to succeed.

He met Margaret “Meg” Fallon Wheeler, his wife of 53 years, while attending a summer program at Clark University while he was teaching high school science.

His working career included teaching high school science, skippering sailboats on the Great Lakes, and conducting experimental biology research. He spent the bulk of his professional life in manufacturing and consulting, and was an early proponent of and global spokesman for justin-time manufacturing practices.

He co-authored two books, delivered hundreds of speeches, and traveled to six continents as part of his work. In 1996, he and Meg retired to their beloved Rydal Mount, an 1820s farmhouse in Waterford, Maine, that was built by Wheeler’s great-grandfather. In retirement, Whizzer pursued his passion for history and was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society. He was a Waterford town selectman, a former chairman of the board of the Birch Rock Camp for Boys in East Waterford, Maine, former board member of Maine Adaptive Sports, and former president of the Waterford Historical Society.

He and Meg loved Waterford

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in memoriam and passed their best years enjoying their four grandchildren amid the beauty of their home in western Maine.

His classmates remember him fondly and note: “No one else in ’56 was more liked than Whiz.”

In addition to his wife, Meg, he is survived by two sisters; his son, Seth; his daughter, Sarah; and four grandchildren.

Edward Williams Blatchford ’62 passed away April 19, at age 76.

At Nobles, “Ed” was a member of the football, hockey and crew teams. He was captain of the football team his senior year.

Blatchford was also president of the outing club and a member of Deutscher Verein and the Glee Club. He received the Wiggins Memorial Essay Prize his junior year.

Born in Boston and raised in Wellesley, he graduated from Yale University and then moved to Beirut, Lebanon, to teach at American University. During his travels abroad, he met his future wife, Claire Howell, in Oxford, England.

Upon returning to the United States, Blatchford enrolled in Columbia University and earned a master’s degree in English literature. This same year, he and Claire were married in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Blatchford was then conscripted for military service in the Vietnam War but appealed as a conscientious objector and enrolled in alternative civilian service. As part of this service, he was assigned to teach English literature at Tuskegee University,

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in Tuskegee, Alabama, during the 1968-1969 school year.

This experience set him on a lifelong career path focused on education. He taught English and woodworking at Garden City Waldorf School before moving to Buckley Country Day School, where he was an English teacher and then became assistant headmaster. He went on to become headmaster of the Country School in Madison, Connecticut.

Blatchford was a staunch believer in holistic education and, most recently, was the co-founder and founding principal of the Four Rivers Charter Public School in Greenfield, Massachusetts, which opened in 2003 and today educates more than 200 students each year. He was exceptionally proud of the work that he and his Four Rivers colleagues did to establish a model expeditionary learning program at the school, which empowered students by encouraging them to ask and explore big questions grounded in their communities. Prior to opening Four Rivers, Blatchford and his wife ran an alternative school for two years called the Uplook School in Greenfield.

Throughout his life, he remained passionate about woodworking and made many beautiful pieces of furniture and household items such as bowls, candlesticks and children’s toys.

He was active in his woodshop up until his passing.

He loved the outdoors and taking walks and hikes with Claire and their two daughters in the White Mountains of New Hamp-

shire, where they vacationed every summer. During his lifetime, he and Claire summited 45 of the 48 4,000-foot mountain peaks throughout New England.

Blatchford is survived by his wife, Claire; his daughters, Laurel and Christa; his brothers, M. Parker and Huntington; and four grandchildren.

Morris Gray ’64 passed away on April 17, 2020, at age 73 after a long battle with meningioma.

He will be remembered by his classmates for his charm, booming voice and resounding laugh.

Morris had strong ties to the school as his grandfather, Francis Calley Gray N’1908, attended Nobles, as did his two brothers, Robert ’66 and William ’70.

Gray was a native of Dedham and attended the Dedham Country Day School before coming to Nobles. At Nobles, he was an active and well-rounded student.

He was a member of the soccer and crew teams, and served as the manager of the hockey team.

In addition, he was in the Dramatic Club and Outing Club, and was business manager of the Nobleman and on the honor roll.

After graduating from Nobles, Gray went on to Harvard College, where he was enrolled in ROTC. At Harvard, he remained close with his Nobles classmates. He was commissioned a naval officer in 1968 and served in Vietnam.

He finished his service in 1971 and entered banking, working at Bank of Boston. He later moved to BNY Mellon, where he continued his career in portfolio

management, retiring in 2010.

Gray resided for more than 40 years in the same house in South Natick, moving to Needham in 2018. He summered in the small community of Nonquitt in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts, and delighted in his extended family gathering there every August. He was a capable sailor, an avid reader of English and naval history, a casual golfer, a Rockefeller Republican and lover of a proper cocktail.

He was a member of the Dedham Country and Polo Club and the Somerset Club, and a longtime supporter of the Trustees for Reservation and the Rotch Jones Duff House in New Bedford. He was also an active alumni member of the A.D. Club at Harvard.

Gray was a devoted son, brother, uncle and cousin. He is survived by his brothers, Robert of Jamaica Plain and William of Southport, Connecticut; and eight nephews, nieces, grandnephews and grandnieces.

Nathaniel Treat Reece ’65, of Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, passed away February 1, at age 72. Reece played football and hockey, and rowed crew during his four years at Nobles. In addition, he was a member of the Debating and Dramatic Clubs, as well as Cercle Français. He was the business manager of the Nobleman and a student government day representative.

Reece was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and attended Dexter School in Brookline, Massachusetts, prior to Nobles.

1.

After Nobles, he attended the University of Pennsylvania.

Professionally, Reece worked as an international banker at Morgan Guaranty Trust and then became comptroller of Pathfinder Mines, a division of General Electric. Later in his career, he attended the Virginia Theological Seminary and became an ordained minister in the Episcopal Church. He then served as rector at Trinity Church in Bridgewater, Massachusetts.

Rowing was one of Reece’s greatest passions. As a member of the University of Pennsylvania’s heavyweight crew team, he won national championships in 1966 and 1968. Some of his other hobbies included sailing, skiing and playing guitar. He was fluent in French and German, and after seminary, Reece spent three years in Tanzania, where he was assigned to the Maasai and Gogo tribes of the Southern Highlands.

Reece was a member of Saint Anthony Hall, the Society of Colonial Wars and the Brook of New York.

He is survived by his brothers, J. Brooks ’65 and Christopher ’68; and his sister, Charlotte.

David Russell Joyce ’75, of McKinney, Texas, passed away. At Nobles, he enjoyed history and played hockey, tennis and soccer. He cocaptained the soccer team during his senior year.

After Nobles, Joyce went on to Dartmouth College and then pursued graduate studies at Duke University. He spent most

of his professional life teaching high school AP American History and coaching tennis. A grateful student of his wrote, “In Mr. Joyce’s class, history becomes more than words in a textbook.

His engaging narratives bring the events of the past into a modern context and inspire students to discover the significance of such events for themselves.”

His enthusiasm for teaching and coaching was contagious, and he deeply valued the input and opinions of his students and colleagues.

Joyce is survived by his brother, Steve ’68; and his sisters, Sally Fairweather and Cathy Brennan.

Alison Bane-Fisher ’82 passed away in a house fire in Belmont, Massachusetts, April 24, at age 55. At Nobles, Bane-Fisher was involved in dance and won the Little Memorial Essay Award on graduation day for the best literary essay of the year written by a member of the senior class.

She graduated from Boston College and then went on to earn a law degree from Boston College Law School. She lived in Arlington, Massachusetts, and Maine, where she practiced law.

To honor Bane-Fisher’s lifelong love for animals, the Nobles Class of 1982 created a fundraiser in her memory to support the Animal Rescue League of Boston, whose mission is to serve as “an unwavering champion for animals in need, committed to keeping them safe and healthy in habitats and homes.”

2.

1. Brett Simon ’06 is happily engaged to Daniel Bailey. Congrats, Brett!

2. Annie Stephenson ’94 with her fiancé, Glenn West, Glenn’s daughters, Ella and Ava, and Annie’s kids, Ava and Callum

announcements Engagements: Eliza Loring ’12 and Jack McGinn got engaged over Memorial Day weekend 2020; Brett Simon ’06 is engaged to Daniel Bailey; Annie Stephenson ’94 got engaged to Glenn West in February in a private proposal on the top of Mount Tam in Mill Valley, California, followed by a family proposal with their four children; Max Mankin ’07 is engaged to Wudan Yan.

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3. Eliza Loring ’12 and fiancé Jack McGinn on Nantucket; 4. George ’16, Eliza ’12 and Nick ’18 Loring on Nantucket after Eliza’s engagement to Jack McGinn; 5. Kristin Harrison ’99 and her daughter, Camryn; 6. Nothing like a Nobles romance! Hilary Segar ’06 married Kaius Garber ’07 on August 24, 2019, in Narragansett, Rhode Island.

Pictured, from left to right: Molly Dwyer Martell ’06, Tyler Aubrey ’07, Alexa Walls ’06, Abigail Mayer ’06, Alex Burns ’06, Tim Furcillo ’06, Lindsay Segar Steinsieck ’02, Julie Flynn Bartlett ’06, Hilary Segar Garber ’06, Chris Mahoney, Pamela McDevitt ’06, Scott Mahoney ’10, Katie Coggeshall Myers ’88 and Mike Segar. Also present at the wedding but absent from the photo were Mariah Rich Collins, Jessye Aibel and Lucy Minot McCall, all ’06; 7. Alexander Milan Orselli, son of Elena Raptopoulos Orselli

announcements Marriages:

New Arrivals:

Shauna Ginsberg ’98 married Jordan Supraner in June 2020; Hilary Segar and Kaius Garber ’07 were married on August 24, 2019; Kerin Kehoe ’07 married Brian Buchholz

Geoff Carter ’97 and his wife, Jillayne, welcomed baby Drew Cora Marie Carter in May 2020; Amy Hudson ’01 welcomed Hudson Gaubinger on March 5, 2020; Emily Kaufman ’01 welcomed Grey and Brooks in June; Mike Fish ’01 and his wife, Elizabeth,

on September 14, 2019, at the Washburn Pavilion at the Museum of Science in Boston.

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welcomed Jake Patrick Fish in June 2020; Pat Bigelow ’01 and his wife, Meg, welcomed Penelope in January; Jackie Codair Donovan ’07 and her husband, Matt Donovan, welcomed Cormac on May 29, 2019; Rick Goode ’08 and his wife, Hannah, welcomed Colin Kenary Goode in June 2020; Ryan Ederle ’08 and his wife, Courtney, welcomed daughter Kinsley Rose Ederle to the world on May 26, 2020;

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’99 and her husband, Francesco, with older siblings Scarlett and Sebastian; 8. Baby Jake Patrick Fish, son of Mike Fish ’01, was born in June 2020; 9. Hudson Gaubinger, son of Amy Hudson Gaubinger ’01; 10. Louisa (3) and baby Willa Catherine Aleksinas, born on March 27 to Heather Summe ’02 and husband Matthew Aleksinas; 11. Jackie Codair Donovan ’07, her husband, Matt Donovan, and Cormac, born on May 29, 2019; 12. Nell Sokol, daughter of Hannah Mauck Sokol ’06 and Greg Sokol, was born on April 3, 2020, in the middle of the pandemic; 13. Kinsley Rose Ederle, daughter of Courtney and Ryan Ederle ’08, was born May 26, 2020; 14. Rick Goode ’08, Hannah and Colin Kenary Goode, born June 2020

Hannah Mauck Sokol ’06 and her husband, Greg, welcomed Eleanor “Nell” in April 2020; Jay Kelly ’06 and his wife, Laura Dean, welcomed Declan on April 9, 2020; Josh Pollack ’06 and his wife, Margaret Olmos, welcomed Eli on April 24, 2020; Kristin Harrison ’99 and her husband welcomed Camryn Elizabeth Shutts on March 4, 2020; Elena Raptopoulos Orselli ’99

and her husband, Francesco Orselli, welcomed their third child, Alexander Milan Orselli, in June 2020; Amy Barad ’03 has a daughter, Ophelia (nickname is Poppy), who was born on October 31, 2019; Heather Summe-Aleksinas ’02 and husband Matthew Aleksinas welcomed Willa Catherine Aleksinas, born on March 27, 2020.

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THE ’56 PATH The Class of 1956 built this path by hand from the Frat down to the gym in the spring of their senior year. The steps symbolized the unity and camaraderie with which the class faced great tragedy and adversity. Following the untimely deaths of Arthur and Betsy Putnam, children of their beloved headmaster Eliot and his wife Laura, and a polio outbreak that struck three of their classmates, the seniors rallied to build the path in solidarity with one another and with the Putnams. There were 28 steps in all, one for each member of the class. The steps were rebuilt in the spring of 1980 by the Class of 1980, and then rebuilt again as concrete stairs in 2012.

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A Path Forward As Nobles begins a school year different from any other, the lifelong relationships that are at the center of our community will serve to direct us moving ahead. A gift to the Annual Nobles Fund strengthens these connections and the entire Nobles experience for today’s students and faculty.

Detail image of the 64"x38" painting “Nobles Path” by former artist-in-residence Bob Freeman P ’92 ’98 ’02

To make your gift to the 2020–21 Annual Nobles Fund, visit nobles.edu/giveonline or contact Director of Annual Giving Allie Trainor at allie_trainor@nobles.edu or call 781-320-7005.

Noble and Greenough School 10 Campus Drive Dedham, MA 02026-4099

As Seen on Instagram Instead of accepting diplomas on stage wearing traditional attire, seniors celebrated online, then drove to campus to pick up their diplomas and sit for a socially distanced photo to mark the milestone. One other first for senior spring: an Instagram-centered campaign, inviting seniors to reflect on their Nobles experience. Among the students profiled were, clockwise from top left, Noah Janfaza ’20, Ali Castro ’20, Rishi Khanna ’20, Eleni Kinney ‘20 and John De Los Santos ’20.

NON-PROFIT U.S. POSTAGE PAID BOSTON MA PERMIT NO. 53825