Andover magazine - Summer 2021 Issue

SUMMER 2021 THE MAGAZINE OF THE PHILLIPS ACADEMY & ABBOT ACADEMY COMMUNITY

From the Head of School

EXCELLENCE AT OUR CORE

Up First "The Path"

by Keira Harder ’23 Acrylic paint on canvas

Gratitude and pride are two of many mixed emotions I feel looking back on a most historic and challenging year.

I am grateful for the partnership of faculty and staff, whose dedication, resilience, and ingenuity were essential to Andover achieving its mission. I am grateful for every parent whose trust in Andover prevailed amid great uncertainty and for the support of alumni who remained devoted to the school while also navigating their own personal challenges.

I am proud of all that our community accomplished together despite a devastating public health crisis, complicated further by political divisiveness and our nation’s racial reckoning.

I am proud that we remained true to our highest priorities—protecting community health and creating safe, equitable learning environments.

These principles helped us weather the pandemic’s darkest days, which I hope remain behind us.

Now, as the Andover community builds on lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, I would like to share my thinking about the school year ahead.

We will take the opportunity of a new academic year to reaffirm Andover’s core mission of excellence in teaching and learning. To prepare students for the demands of today’s society, we must be deliberate in our pursuit of knowledge and goodness—a potent combination that contributes to a liberated mind.

I am excited by a number of efforts on this front, including the faculty’s collaboration on an academic philosophy statement and the final stages of our 10-year reaccreditation review by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges.

Building on momentum from this past year, I

will continue to host discussions with faculty, staff, and students about their hopes and aspirations for the school. These conversations will inform my work with trustees and academic leadership as we frame a plan for continuous assessment and evolution.

Andover is not a place that sits comfortably with the status quo. This is one of the traits that inspires me and is often cited by alumni as something they greatly admire about their school.

We will model this mindset of continuous improvement and uphold a set of guiding principles drawn directly from the Academy’s founding values: • We are committed to excellence.

• We are committed to every student reaching their full potential.

• We believe diversity is essential and expansive.

We believe in diversity because we know that the widest range of experiences and perspectives leads to the strongest educational outcomes.

• We teach students how to think critically about the world and the challenges they will encounter. We do not teach students what to think.

It has been a privilege to join the Andover community, especially this year, to take part in the traditions of the school, and to partner with all of you during a time that will be remembered for its challenges—and for what it taught us.

I am eager to share how we will apply lessons learned to our vision in the months and years ahead.

Please watch for dates and locations as our regional events resume around the globe. I look forward to meeting many of you “off screen” for the first time!

Raynard S. Kington, MD, PhD, P’24 Head of School

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PUBLISHER

Tracy M. Sweet EDITOR

Allyson Irish ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Rita Savard DESIGNER

Ken Puleo CLASS NOTES

Meghan deMacedo Anne Marino

CONTRIBUTORS

Bill Agee ’55 Matthew Bellico Jill Clerkin Ming Doyle ’03 Jesse Ehrenfeld ’96 David Fox Nancy Hitchcock Joseph Kahn ’67 Corrie Martin Jennifer Myers

Andover, the magazine of the Phillips Academy and Abbot Academy community, is published four times per year. It is produced by the Office of Communication at Phillips Academy, 180 Main Street, Andover, MA 01810.

Main PA phone: 978-749-4000 Changes of address and death notices: 978-749-4269, alumni-records@andover.edu Phillips Academy website: www.andover.edu Andover magazine phone: 978-749-4677 Email: magazine@andover.edu Postmasters: Send address changes to Phillips Academy 180 Main Street Andover MA 01810-4161 ISSN-0735-5718

SUMMER 2021

EDITOR’S NOTE The power of art: to transform, transfix, transport.

I’m reminded of the many times in my life when a piece of art has left me utterly amazed. Like visiting Florence and walking up to Michelangelo’s masterpiece David—a statue so lifelike I felt as though the marble figure might look at me, sigh, and simply walk away.

And music—I don’t have enough space in this column to list the dozens of songs that remind me of a certain time or place in my life. The strange, sad, yet beautifully hopeful sound of bagpipes brings a rush of emotion every time I hear this instrument, whether it be Clan MacPherson piping the newly minted graduates to the Great Lawn or being led into church for my wedding so many years ago.

This issue celebrates the arts in all forms, along with those Andover students, faculty, and alumni who have chosen to pursue artistic endeavors.

From rising music star Yuping Zhu ’21 (page 11) to acclaimed actress Dana Delany ’74 (page 25) to art historian Bill Agee ’55’s fond recollection of the Addison Gallery and art that has changed his life (page 112).

Irish playwright and novelist George Bernard Shaw once said, “Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.” I concur.

Is there a piece of art that has made your world “more bearable” or perhaps transformed your life? Tell us about it. We’d love to share it in an upcoming issue.

Best,

Volume 114, Number 3

“My art has always been a reflection of myself and the multilayered facets of my identity.”

YUPING ZHU ’21 PAGE 11

Hand-sewn felt applique “Dolly” tapestry by Billy Kheel ’92

ALL SCHOOL

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ANDOVER | SUMMER 2021

4 Voices

15. Bookshelf

“We tell our kids all the time to adopt a learning mindset.”

Allyson Irish Editor magazine@andover.edu @andovermagazine © 2021 Phillips Academy, Andover, MA All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

9. The World Comes . to Andover 13. From the Archives

PAGE 14

DEPARTMENTS 1 Head of School

11. Student Profile

RYAN WHEELER

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8. Buzz

16 A-Game 38

Alumni Up Close

42 Philanthropy 44 At Issue 112 End Note

KEN PULEO

Andover magazine reinforces the special connection alumni have with Phillips Academy and Abbot Academy. Through thought-provoking stories, contemporary design, and inspiring profiles of alumni, students, and faculty, we aim to highlight the school’s enduring values, recognize our unique history, and celebrate the rich diversity of our community.

FEATURES

18 For the Love of Teaching Three retiring faculty members, 108 years of teaching, and innumerable lives changed for the better. Andover honors Mary Fulton, Kevin Heelan, and Maria Litvin.

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CLASS NOTES 46

Class Notes

104. Alumni Bulletin Board 105

Photo Gallery

108

In Memoriam

22 Alumni Artists From the Class of 1954 to the Class of 2014, meet alumni in pursuit of their artistic passions.

36 The Addison & Its Impact ON THE COVER:

Artist Ming Doyle ’03 developed the vibrant cover illustration, inspired by alumni artists. Read more on page 27.

Students, faculty, alumni, and the general public benefit from this one-ofa-kind campus gem.

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VOICES

Regarding “To Be an American,” spring 2021

Racism in America

“ Keep that Army Reserve side going. It will help in many ways. Go Big Blue.”

Political discourse was on the minds of several alumni who wrote in to comment on history instructor Chris Jones’s essay “White Supremacy Has Never Left Us” (spring 2021), as well as observations on Andover’s political philosophy and continued feedback on the recent magazine redesign. If you have thoughts you’d like to share about Andover or Andover magazine, please email magazine@andover.edu.

I

applaud history and social sciences instructor Chris Jones for contributing to the crucial race discussion [spring 2021 issue, page 36].

I also appreciate that space constraints permitted only an excerpt of his full comments at All-School Meeting.

There is no way to gloss over the racial evil that continues in the U.S. and abroad. However, I feel compelled to note that there are substantial grounds for at least modest optimism about the progress of race relations in our nation. After World War II, Japanese Americans saw a major increase in both absolute and relative wealth in the United States. In 1960, 60 percent of Americans said that they would not vote for a Black person for president; in 2008 and 2012, we elected President Obama. In 1964, the year I was

the BIG question

Send us your responses to this query and we will consider them for publication in an upcoming issue. Please email magazine@andover.edu.

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ANDOVER | SUMMER 2021

I was saddened to learn that history and social science instructor Chris Jones [spring 2021 issue, page 36] painted such a dystopian picture of America when he spoke at a special All-School Meeting in January. While his view that America is an inherently white supremacist nation is all the rage on the Left, it is an altogether destructive ideology that only further divides an already badly riven country. It most certainly has no place in the curriculum of what has long been considered one of America’s finest secondary schools. Andover students deserve and expect a rigorous education free of such dogma.

born, at least 16 states outlawed interracial marriage.

Over the past two decades, more than three million Black immigrants have arrived in the United States.

Although perhaps anecdotal (cherry picking?), the positive profiles of successful Americans such as Vice President Kamala Harris, media mogul Oprah Winfrey, professional golfer Tiger Woods, and NBA star LeBron James suggest progress. Statistics tell us that the top two median income earners by race in the United States are Taiwanese and Indian Americans. Currently, 40 percent of new U.S. physicians are minorities.

Harvard University sociologist Orlando Patterson recently wrote that America “is now the least racist white-majority society in the world; has a better record of legal protections of minorities than any other society, white or Black; [and] offers more opportunities to a greater number of Black persons than any other society, including all of those of Africa.” I recommend the recent book by Kathleen Brush, PhD, MBA, Racism and Anti-Racism in the World: Before and After 1945, as a positive contribution to the discussion. We have a long way to go, but discouragement may not be the best way forward.

—ED HURLEY ’82

Regarding Jeopardy TV show question June 30 about Andover

—MARK H. REED ’68

I was delighted to receive a hard copy of the most recent Andover magazine. The content, layout, and photography all look wonderful. Over the years I have only sporadically received copies of the magazine, most likely due to living in London. I was pleasantly surprised when it arrived today!

Since graduation in 1987, I have yet to write in any news; however, I am now inspired to check in.

—MARTHA GENIESER ’87

In the “Voices” section of the spring 2021 Andover magazine, Peter Fleming ’76 asserts that “at least half the country” rejects the political philosophy espoused by the Academy. I assume Mr. Fleming is referencing the 74 million individuals who voted for President Trump in the most recent presidential election.

While I concur that classical liberalism should encourage open discourse representing all points of view, I wish he had chosen a better example to make his case. Far from demonstrating any non sibi sentiment, our 45th President was unapologetically “for his only” (modo sui?). That at least half the country agreed makes us a much poorer society.

ISTOCK: U.S. CAPITOL, TREKANDSHOOT

What piece of art (song, painting, dance, movie, etc.) has changed your life—and how?

@ADEKOYEJO75 via Instagram

“ I got this one!”

STEVE CARTER, FORMER ANDOVER CFO AND FOOTBALL COACH via Facebook

“ The infamous Will Hall Weekend of 1990 remains epic in the minds of some alumni...no house counselors in residence except one newly minted TA who cowered in his room pretending not to know what happened...let’s just say it was not a school sanctioned event.”

HAMLIN O’KELLEY ’90 via Facebook

—JACK SHOEMAKER ’76

Andover magazine welcomes letters to the editor related to Phillips Academy and Abbot Academy. Please email magazine@andover.edu for further information.

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All School

MOORE ON THE MERRIMACK Known as the “dean of American archaeology,” Warren K. Moorehead (pictured far left) was the first curator of the Phillips Academy Department of Archaeology—now called the Robert S. Peabody Institute of Archaeology. A prolific excavator and writer, Moorehead would become so entrenched in the task at hand that he was notorious for losing field notes, reports, and images. In 1929, Moorehead led an excavation of the Merrimack Valley.

In this image, Moorehead meets with a crew doing survey work of the Merrimack River. Today, the Peabody regularly uses its collection of some 550,000 artifacts for student research and learning.

Read more on page 14.

ANDOVER | SUMMER 2021

COURTESY OF THE ROBERT S. PEABODY INSTITUTE OF ARCHAEOLOGY

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The World Comes to Andover

All School

“ When we are encountering brokenness in our world, we can’t just force the pieces back together. We actually have to make something new.”

DAVID OWYANG '21

ALUMNI QUALIFY FOR SUMMER OLYMPICS

LEADING THE PACK Congratulations to rising seniors Xiang Yi “Sean” Meng and Mary Muromcew, who were elected by their peers this spring as Class of 2022 co-presidents.

Like all good political candidates, Muromcew and Meng know the power of social media—and dogs! The pair used this to their full advantage on the Instagram account maryandsean2022, posting images with furry friends along with their co-presidency plans and goals. They both look forward to working with students and the Andover administration to strengthen community bonds in the new academic year.

Most importantly, they are excited for all students to be on campus this coming fall. “It will be such a joy to connect with new and returning students,” Muromcew said.

By the time you read this, three Andover alumni may be wearing new gold jewelry after the 2021 Summer Olympics!

When Andrew Wilson ’12 (Bethesda, MD) finished second in the 100m Breaststroke at the U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials in June, he became the third Andover graduate to qualify for the Olympic Games in Tokyo. Wilson joined Olivia Coffey ’07 (Watkins Glen, NY), who made the women’s eight rowing team for the United States, and Lindi Schroeder ’20 (Andover, MA), who qualified as part of a duet in artistic swimming. This will be the first Olympics for all three athletes.

Cathy Park Hong

Vijay Gupta

Professor & Author

Violinist & Director of Street Symphony

Reflecting on the emotionally charged exploration of the Asian American consciousness as detailed in her critically acclaimed book, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, Hong drew from personal experience as well as the historical and cultural context of what it means to be a racialized “other.”

Sophie McCoy ’04 Community Ecologist

As part of Andover’s Climate Café series, McCoy discussed her work as an ecologist and faculty member at Florida State University.

McCoy focuses on the links between biology, environmental conditions, and water chemistry by using a combination of field and laboratory methods to understand natural variability in marine populations and the responses of species and communities to climate change and pollution.

Robert Trestan Executive Director, Boston Anti-Defamation League

Rushan Abbas Founder, Campaign for Uyghurs

the

BU Z Z

Sandra Comstock ’88’s innovative nonprofit Hygiene4All recently unveiled a new approach to providing hygiene and compassionate resources for houseless neighbors in Portland, Ore. The Hygiene Hub neighborhood includes several small buildings that offer portable toilets, showers with hot water provided by a wind and solar tower, clean clothes, and basic health-care supplies.

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ANDOVER | SUMMER 2021

Gupta created Street Symphony in 2011 as a way to connect with disenfranchised communities in the Los Angeles area, including those in prison, living in poverty, and without homes. A 2018 MacArthur Fellow, Gupta believes that every person has a story to be told and heard.

The founder and executive director of Campaign for Uyghurs, Abbas leads this Washington, D.C.–based social justice organization in promoting and advocating for the Uyghurs and other Turkic people in East Turkistan who have experienced genocide and other human rights violations, such as imprisonment and re-education camps.

Eddie S. Glaude Jr. Chair, African American Studies Princeton University

A James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor, Glaude headlined a discussion and Q&A about “The Future of Race Relations” for the Andover community. Alumni participants included Terri Stroud ’88, moderator, and Lilli Lewis ’93, pianist, singer, and composer.

The United States has experienced an alarming rise in white supremacist activity over the past decade. According to the AntiDefamation League (ADL), there have been an average of 14 daily incidents, nearly double the cases reported in 2019. In his presentation, Trestan discussed these concerning trends and what the ADL is doing to counter the crisis.

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Student Profile

All School

CLIMATE & THE CURRICULUM

HIGH HONORS FOR MAGAZINE Andover magazine has been named one of the nation’s top magazines for 2021, garnering a Circle of Excellence Gold Award as well as being named a finalist for the Robert Sibley Magazine of the Year by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE).

Andover magazine was recognized out of a field of 530 college, university, and independent school magazines from across the country. The CASE Circle of Excellence honor is the first major award for the Academy’s 114-year-old publication.

In bestowing the gold award in the Independent School Magazine category, CASE judges said the magazine showcased “some of the best Andover has to offer,” with content in the 2020 spring issue featuring a cover story on justice and a newly redesigned 2020 fall/ winter issue introducing the Academy’s 16th head of school, Raynard S. Kington, MD, PhD, P’24.

—ALLYSON IRISH

This fun Abbot Field Day memory was among some 3,000 black-and-white negatives Scott Mead ’73, P’18, ’18, found in his attic and which eventually made their way into the self-published Our Andover Days: A Photographic Journey. In the book, Mead—trustee emeritus and a former investment banker—pulls the lens back on PA and Abbot from 1969 to 1973. Since 2009, Mead has been a professional photographer working out of Bramley Studio in London.

Read the full story on andover.edu/magazine.

ANDOVER | SUMMER 2021

Q&A

Yuping Zhu ’21 Singer-songwriter

What inspires your music?

Anything and everything. A recurring feeling of insecurity, a phrase overheard from a nearby table at dinner, a strange or beautiful occurrence in the weather…

The most subtle, inconspicuous moments in daily life often become the most unexpected inspirations for me.

How would you describe your musical style?

I often describe my musical style as the expression of everything I never had the nerve to say before.

It contains the authenticity and storytelling aspects of country music alongside the melodic, hook-oriented characteristics associated with pop. Others have described my music as nostalgic and personal, and innocent yet mature. My art has always been a reflection of myself and the multilayered facets of my identity— soft yet bold, some pop and some country, a bit Massachusetts and a bit Tennessee.

PHOTOS BY HARRY ZHU P’21

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Garth Brooks. LeAnn Rimes. John Prine. All country music stars who have performed at Nashville’s legendary Bluebird Cafe. And now you can add aspiring singer-songwriter Yuping Zhu ’21 to that list.

Zhu, who has been writing her own music since age 12, launched her new EP High School in May. The compilation of five original songs was written this past winter and recorded at Zhu’s home while she was attending PA remotely.

In addition to playing at the Bluebird Cafe, Zhu has been recognized as “One to Watch” by Nashville Songwriters Association International and featured on Boston’s Hit Country 102.5. You can find her music on Spotify.

BU Z Z

SCOTT MEAD ’73

the

A yearlong focus on climate change Mark Cutler, LITW director and and environmental justice at the Tang instructor in Spanish, facilitated the Institute culminated in a virtual conferpartnership with Envoys and worked ence in May with 200-plus students and with students in his Spanish 502 class, educators participating.

The Making of a Latino City, to look at The Climate Change/Climate issues of climate change and climate jusJustice: A Humanities Workshop Youth tice in Lawrence, Mass.

Summit was hosted by the global experi“It was extremely rewarding to enential education organization Envoys, in gage in this sort of deep thought in such collaboration with Andover’s Learning an interdisciplinary way,” Cutler says. in the World (LITW) program.

A climate resilience and youth-emThe summit convened attendees powerment advocate, Salvador Gómezfrom seven greater Colón ’21 delivered Boston-area public, Salvador Gómez-Colón ’21, the summit’s keycharter, and private note, championing Alice Fan ’23, Sam Gallaudet ’23, the critical role of schools—including some 40 Andover and Frank Zhou ’22 are student the humanities in students and teachthe climate justice leaders involved with the ers—who took part movement. in The Humanities Phillips Academy Sustainability “By rooting Workshop consorthe climate justice Coalition (PASC), a group that is movement in the tium this past academic year, working focused on integrating climate humanities and to advance interdisestablishing a deep issues throughout Andover’s ciplinary teaching understanding of and learning about curriculum. the humanistic elclimate justice ements that have issues. Summit participants shared brought us to this point, the climate knowledge and ideas explored over the justice movement can make longer academic year and took collective action strides in creating a more equitable on the global climate threat in a handsand environmentally just society,” says on climate lobbying workshop.

Gómez-Colón.

A STAR IN THE MAKING

What do you hope to be doing in five years?

First, I hope to have graduated from college, and from that to have gained experiences in the creative and business worlds of music. I hope that in the next five years I will be getting cuts as a writer, playing shows (possibly on tour?!) as an artist, and/or working closely with A&R and the business/legal sides of the industry.

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From the Archives

All School

the

Anna Durham ’78

BU Z Z

Freelance writer Andrew Wang ’16 penned a thoughtful op-ed this past February in the wake of increased anti-Asian violence. In the essay, published in the Washington Post, Wang talks about his family’s experience with violence and the murder of his great-uncle, ultimately concluding that “we cannot answer racism with racism.”

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Jennifer Amstutz ’86

Board. Durham is principal of Lekker LLC, which provides interim executive services for companies experiencing rapid growth or transition.

Durham began her career at General Electric’s International Division and went on to manage finance for the consumer and industrial products group of its Trading Company in New York City.

She held positions at GE in France as the finance manager and business leader for GE Healthcare Financial Services Europe, Middle East, and Africa and continued to serve in GE leadership roles, growing its businesses domestically and abroad, before moving to the Netherlands to become COO of GE’s global receivables servicing business. She then returned to France, where she was named COO of GE Capital France. Following the divestiture of that business, she established and was then named president of GE Industrial Leasing France.

Durham holds a BA from the University of Virginia and an MBA from Columbia Business School. She is a member of PA’s Alumni Council, serving on its executive committee since 2019, and has invested in the Academy as a member of the Northeast Regional Committee of the Knowledge & Goodness campaign. She is also a head class agent, a gift planning agent, and co-chair of the Annual Giving Board.

ANDOVER | SUMMER 2021

When the NFL season starts this fall, two 1998 classmates will be busy recruiting and coaching on opposite coasts. Kyle O’Brien was named senior personnel executive for the New York Giants after 20 years of working for various NFL teams, most recently with the Detroit Lions. Shane Waldron is the new offensive coordinator for the Seattle Seahawks.

KOA (Secret Society) Banjo Club, 1884

M

MAKING MUSIC TOGETHER usic is a bond that builds community.

That was the focus of a recent archival exhibit at the Oliver Wendell Holmes Library, which showcased the history of music and musical connections between Abbot Academy and Phillips Academy.

Through coed student clubs, music instruction, and theatrical productions, students learned to work with one another and to forge a bond between the two schools long before the 1973 merger.

John Moreland ’18 wrote about this topic for a 2017 CAMD Scholar paper in which he also highlighted several faculty members whose vision, talent, and dedication fostered a love of music on both campuses and “propelled Andover forward.”

Kate Friskin, who taught at Abbot from 1922 to 1961, was known for her commitment to building community.

Friskin developed the Abbot tradition of caroling at dawn on the first day of Christmas break and worked with colleagues at PA to put on four coed Gilbert &

My Fair Lady, 1964

1964 POT POURRI

Jennifer Amstutz ’86 and Anna Durham ’78 were elected to the Board of Trustees this spring.

Amstutz, of Albany, N.Y., will serve a three-year term as alumni trustee and president of the Alumni Council. She is currently principal at J.A. Strategies, a firm that works with organizations throughout New York on best practices in board strategic planning, organizational structure, leadership coaching, and staff training on topics including managing change, team dynamics, and conflict resolution. Amstutz has also served in interim management roles for organizations including Girls on the Run Capital Region, the Albany Symphony Orchestra, and Girls Incorporated of the Capital Region.

Amstutz has an MPA from New York University and a BA in political science and comparative international studies from Duke University.

Her commitment to Andover spans both philanthropic and class engagement roles. She was elected to the Alumni Council in 2017 and has served on its executive committee since 2019.

She has also served as a class co-agent since 2013 and was an alumni admission representative for eight years.

Durham, of Sandown, N.H., will serve a two-year term as alumni trustee and co-chair of the Annual Giving

COURTESY OF PHILLIPS ACADEMY ARCHIVES

TWO WOMEN JOIN BOARD OF TRUSTEES

FPO

Sullivan operettas during the Depression.

A well-known organist and devotee of Bach, Karl Pfatteicher taught at PA from 1912 to 1947. He was the first teacher at PA to earn a doctorate (two, actually) and at one time taught philosophy and German in addition to being a music instructor, school organist, and choirmaster.

A former conductor and WWII Army veteran, William Schneider’s tenure at PA (1949–1981) was marked by

the transformation of the school band, which was judged to be “the best in the history of the school,” according to the 1950 Pot Pourri. And William Thomas, who served as a music instructor and department chair from 1974 to 2008, introduced the chamber music program, along with the Gospel Choir and the Andover-Lawrence Strings Program. He also initiated Black Arts Weekend.

—ALLYSON IRISH

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Bookshelf

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THE MAGIC IN LEAH HENDERSON’S MESSAGE

HANDS-ON, REMOTELY

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yan Wheeler was stuck. How do you teach students to make stone tools—a hands-on project that requires a lot of trial and error—in a completely virtual environment? You innovate.

Wheeler, director of the Robert S. Peabody Institute of Archaeology, has taught Human Origins for five years. It’s a perfect class to teach using the Peabody’s rich collection of artifacts, some dating back 500,000 years. But in a year that saw most classes taught fully remote or HyFlex (a combination of in-person and remote), Wheeler had to figure out a different way.

Thus, the creation of the Flint Knapping Kit, a box of assorted items that included hammerstones, flaking tools of copper and antler, safety equipment like gloves, goggles, and leather pads, and instructions.

All 16 students were mailed a kit and, on week seven of the course, each was required to create a stone tool and a video of their process. The end result was a much richer experience than Wheeler expected, with students taking the time to revise and review their process.

“I found this method of learning to be really engaging,” said Hunter Leach ’21, who especially enjoyed learning about cryptids—unverified mythological creatures such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. “I liked combining my love of video editing with my schoolwork. It was a very fun way to learn the material.”

BY NANCY HITCHCOCK

L Azi Jones ’21 made a stone tool from a super sharp obsidian flake (left), while Abby Lamontagne ’21 deploys safety gear while making her stone tool (right).

DIY STONE TOOL “ We tell our kids all the time to adopt a learning mindset. When you try something for the first time you are generally not successful.

It takes practice and repetition.”

RYAN WHEELER Director, Robert S. Peabody Institute of Archaeology

Here’s a quick step-by-step process for making a simple stone tool.

1. Gather materials—Find a flat-ish stone with a pointy tip or jagged edge, a small “Y” shaped stick (you may have to break it from a tree), and some lashing materials, such as reeds, weed grass, or small roots.

2. Fit the tool into place—Place your stone inside the “Y” of the stick and squeeze the ends of the stick around the stone.

3. Secure the stone—Once your stone is nestled in the stick, use several strands of lashing material to wrap around and tie at the top and bottom of the stone so that it is securely in place.

4. Test it!—Try out your new tool!

(Tool-making instructions from instructables.com. If you decide to make a stone tool, send us a photo and we may publish it in an upcoming issue!) the

BU Z Z What better way to tell the world about your love for PA than with custom license plates?! Alan Himmer and Megan Carroll, both Class of 1985, tied the knot last year during a small ceremony officiated by Faculty Emeritus Philip Zaeder. As a way to profess their Big Blue pride, the pair concocted a trio of bespoke New Hampshire license plates: “PA85,” “PA1985,” and “ANDOVR.”

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ANDOVER | SUMMER 2021

Recombinant Films, co-founded in 2013 by Bill Mudge ’78, released its latest documentary earlier this year. The feature-length Beating Superbugs, directed by Mudge, provides an in-depth look at antibiotic-resistant bacteria, a topic that is top of mind for all given the COVID-19 pandemic. The film premiered in February and already has won “Best Health Film” from the Cannes World Film Festival and the Award of Excellence from Accolade Global Film Competition.

eah Henderson ’94 has a message to share.

“You have possibilities in the world,” she says.

“It is at the cornerstone of everything that folds into your life. You need to always and continuously be open and searching for them.”

This ideology weaves throughout Henderson’s books.

And the children’s book author is hitting her stride in publishing right now—she has published three books in the past year and five more are in the queue.

In Together We March (Atheneum/Simon & Schuster, January 2021), Henderson highlights 25 protest movements—and the stories of the courageous people behind them—that have helped foster equality and justice.

The Magic in Changing Your Stars (Sterling Publishing Co., 2020) was inspired by Henderson’s viewing of a statue of Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, a well-known Black American tap dancer from the early 20th century.

An avid book lover from a young age, Henderson rarely read anything that had main characters of color. Her parents, aware of this lack of diversity in literature for youth, frequently traveled with their children to historical sites and areas that highlighted Black culture and opportunities. Henderson, who is currently on the faculty of Spalding University’s School of Creative and Professional Writing, recalls one trip in particular—when the family drove to visit a Black cowboy museum in Colorado.

“I grew up with parents who wanted to make sure I saw all aspects of what it was like to be Black in America and in the world,” she says, “so it’s very important for me to highlight stories about Black joy and creativity.”

Henderson’s first book, One Shadow on the Wall, was inspired by a young boy she met while traveling in Senegal. The book was her way of reaching out to the boy, and others like him, to share hope and possibilities. She still keeps a photo of him on her desk.

“I want to depict the world I see and hope for, while encouraging others to do the same,” she says. “At one moment or another, we all need to be reminded to seek out our possibilities. And that’s what I hope my stories do.”

To be considered for “Bookshelf,” please send a brief summary of your book and a high-resolution image of the book cover to magazine@andover.edu.

Landslide

BY SUSAN CONLEY ’85 Alfred A. Knopf In a fishing village in Maine, a mother tries to protect her family while life is crumbling around her.

Money is tight, she is parenting two teenage boys and grappling with their adolescent issues, her husband has been in a fishing accident, and Jill begins to question the stability of her marriage.

In Landslide, the author injects hope into a family’s hardships.

Virulent Zones: Animal Disease and Global Health at China’s Pandemic Epicenter

BY LYLE FEARNLEY ’01 Duke University Press Concerned about global health? Fearnley provides a behind-the-scenes look by accompanying scientists, veterinarians, and other medical and health professionals to areas in China that are likely epicenters for lethal viruses. The book explores the search for virus origins and how scientists strive to stop the next pandemic at its source.

The Novel and the New Ethics

BY DOROTHY J. HALE ’75 Stanford University Press From Toni Morrison to J.M. Coetzee, a broad array of critic-novelists understand that fiction writing is inseparable from the task of recognizing and honoring social others. In The Novel and the New Ethics, literary critic Hale investigates the source of this belief, while also illuminating the narrative strategies developed to accomplish this ethical goal.

A Wonderful Guy: Conversations with the Great Men of Musical Theater

BY EDDIE SHAPIRO ’87 Oxford University Press In this follow-up to Nothing Like a Dame: Conversations with the Great Women of Musical Theater, Shapiro talks to 19 men who have had leading roles on Broadway during the past 50 years.

The conversations are chock-full of entertaining details and reflections on the evolution of Broadway.

Francis Bacon: Revelations

BY MARK STEVENS ’69 Penguin Random House Pulitzer Prize–winning author Stevens and his wife, Annalyn Swan, take a comprehensive look at the life and art of Francis Bacon, an Irish-born British figurative painter. The artist, whose career spanned six decades, is an iconic 20th-century painter.

15

A-GAME

“Boy Wonder” Jim McLane ’49, who passed away at age 90 last year, captured the hearts and minds of legions of sports fans at Andover, Yale, and across the world during his long and successful career in the water.

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ANDOVER | SUMMER 2021

At Yale, Jim McLane was part of one of the greatest collegiate swimming classes of all time and won another gold medal at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics.

In 1970, he was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame, and in 2009 he was named to the Andover Athletics Hall of Honor, becoming a double inductee.

continued to break it in each subsequent meet.

In the summer of 1946, McLane, nicknamed “Fishy” during his first year at Andover, went to a meet in Havana.

Swimming the 800-meter freestyle in front of a crowd of thousands that included Ernest Hemingway, he broke his first world record.

Back at Andover, on Saturday, February 22, 1947, McLane broke the national high school record in the 440-yard freestyle by seven seconds, with a time of 4:49.3. Later that season, McLane established a new national high school record in the 200-yard free in 2:00.3. Before he graduated from Andover, McLane went on to break his national record in the 440 two more times, his 200 record three more times, and a record in the 220-yard free.

McLane’s best year, though, was 1948. He joined Bob Brawner ’48, who went on to hold the world record in breaststroke; six-foot five-inch Richard “Shorty” Thoman ’49, who went on to hold the world record in backstroke as well as in several freestyle relays; and 14 other swimmers and divers to form perhaps the best team in the history of high school swimming. It certainly is the strongest team in Andover’s history. Thanks to the fierce advocacy of their captain, Jim Carroll ’48, the 1948 Swim Team was part of the first class (2008) to be inducted into the Andover Athletics Hall of Honor.

The summer between his upper and senior years, McLane traveled to London to represent the United States in the Olympic Games. He won a gold medal as a member of the 4x200-meter freestyle

1949 POT POURRI

M

ost ninth-graders at Andover do not have a reporter from Life magazine shadow them for 48 hours in order to write a profile.

James “Jim/Jimmy” McLane ’49 did.

Born in Pittsburgh, McLane moved to Akron, Ohio, where he began to swim. At the 1944 National AAU outdoor long-distance championships, 13-year-old McLane won the four-mile swim. While sitting on the dock recuperating, a stranger came up behind him and placed his finger on McLane’s neck. When the youngster asked what he was doing, the stranger responded, “I’m Robert Kiphuth, coach of the Yale swimming team, and I’m taking your recovery rate.” Thus launched a critical relationship in his life.

In addition to being among the handful of most influential people in the history of swimming, Kiphuth knew Andover; his son had captained Andover’s 1936 team, which went 7–1. The coach introduced McLane to the school and helped him secure the financial assistance he needed in order to attend.

At his first Andover meet, McL ane broke the school record in the 200-yard freestyle—and

BY DAVID FOX

relay and a silver in the 400-meter freestyle. It was his gold medal in the 1500-meter freestyle, though, that solidified McLane’s reputation as “perhaps the greatest tactician in swimming.”

Well into his 80s, McLane remained an active swimmer at the Ipswich [Mass.] YMCA—he could still cut through the water, leading his lane mates to slip into another lane operating at a slower pace. In recent years, McLane’s health declined and he had to give up swimming.

In a 2013 interview with the Ipswich Local News, McLane was asked to give his advice to aspiring Olympians. McLane said they should enjoy swimming and focus on the work.

“Medals are important to the average person,” he said. “They are not very important to me. When I remember my achievements, I remember the work and training, not the medal—that’s what is most valuable.”  David Fox is director of studies, Instructor in English and Art History on the Beinecke Foundation, and head coach of the boys’ swimming and diving team. “Several years ago,” says Fox, “the boys and I sent Jim an Andover Swimming & Diving sweatsuit, the same one that the boys wear during meets. Jim was wearing it when he was cremated.”

Read the full story at andover.edu.

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FOR THE LOVE OF TEACHING This year’s trio of retiring faculty members represents a remarkable 108 years of service to Phillips Academy.

Beyond their superb mastery of subject, these teachers—Mary Fulton, Kevin Heelan, and Maria Litvin—embody Andover’s non sibi ethos and showcase what it means to live and work in a purposeful manner.

Read more at www.andover.edu/ retiringfaculty.

BY ALLYSON IRISH | PHOTOS BY DAVE WHITE

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ANDOVER | SUMMER 2021

J

ane Austen and Virginia Woolf and Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare.

For English instructor Mary Fulton, these are not merely literary giants but close friends she has loved and learned from for decades.

“I find myself marveling at their writing over and over again. They always surprise you with their insights, and that is part of the fun of it—it’s always a little different,” Fulton says.

Fulton has loved literature for as long as she can remember. Although she majored in history, halfway through her senior year at Mount Holyoke College she was told of a job opening at Northfield Mount Hermon in the English department. Fulton applied, got the job, and has been an English teacher ever since.

Colleagues in the PA Department of English effuse about Fulton—her passion for literature, thoughtfulness, brilliance, and recitation of lovingly memorized texts.

“Witnessing Mary’s joy and care as a teacher has been one of the most inspir-

MARY FULTON Instructor, English

ing aspects of my 15 years in Bulfinch,” says English instructor Kate McQuade.

Another English instructor, Chris Ishizuka-Wade ’08 remembers feeling out of place as a first-year student. All these years later, he still appreciates how Fulton made him feel comfortable in her English 100 class.

“She made me feel welcome in ways that I still can’t put into words; her class and her teaching made me think about books and language and writing in ways I never had before.”

As Fulton leaves Andover, she has taken stock of what she will miss most: the students, her colleagues, and the joy of teaching in her cherished Bulfinch classroom.

“When I think about why I’m a teacher now, and what kind of teacher I aspire to be,” Ishizuka-Wade says, “I always find myself tracing a path back to a desk in that cramped, chalky room in Bulfinch with Mrs. Fulton citing lines upon lines from a book without looking at it, a brand of magic that I, delightedly, cannot forget.”

Years at PA: 36 Dynamic Duo: Fulton was especially close to faculty members Lynne Kelly, Ada Fan, Carole Braverman, and another beloved English teacher, Jean St. Pierre, who passed away in 2016. Preparing for her second job interview with then-department chair St. Pierre, Fulton could not find her car keys and called the secretary to say she might be late. When the secretary relayed the information to St. Pierre, Fulton heard the teacher laughingly remark, “If she can’t find her keys, then I think she is one of us!” The two became fast friends.

Full House: In 1991, Fulton and her husband adopted four siblings ranging in age from 11 to 15 from Ethiopia.

None of the children—Eskinder, Tigist, Shunda, and Helen—spoke English, so Fulton and her husband had to teach them. “It was really fun—the best thing that ever happened to me,” Fulton says.

Retirement Plans: Fulton will be living with her son, Eskinder, and two grandchildren in Stoneham, Mass.

She will spend a lot of time with the grandkids—nine in total—and hopes to enjoy live music at Symphony Hall and Jordan Hall, and to resume her annual trip to England.

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MARIA LITVIN

Instructor, Mathematics, Statistics & Computer Science Years at PA: 34 Andover for Life: Litvin and her husband, Gary, are the parents of two Andover grads: Margaret ’92 and Aaron ’00.

DIY Textbooks: The Litvins have authored several popular computer science books for students in grades K–12, published by Skylight Publishing. The first book was created out of Litvin’s frustration by the lack of a suitable textbook for her AP Computer Science class. So she decided to write her own.

A

s the curtain comes down on Kevin Heelan’s Phillips Academy career, the theatre instructor has found himself in an unusual state: speechless.

When asked what he has learned from students during his long tenure, Heelan took a lengthy, tearful pause. “I learned a lot from them,” he says. “It’s almost impossible to put into words.”

Heelan is described by colleagues and students alike as charismatic, caring, and intuitive. He liked to use his “outsider status” to get the most out of his students and—as one alumna said— “to retell age-old stories in innovative new ways.”

Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, Heelan moved with his family to Baltimore when he was 10. Adjusting to life on the East Coast took some time. Heelan recalls having to listen intently to the way people spoke in order to understand. “It was a bit of a shock and it really drove me nuts. It took me a while to get used to,” he says. Perhaps this early focus on speech and pronunciation was a harbinger of his future.

Many students, including Matt McGrath ’07, say Heelan’s public speaking class was one of the most important and impactful ones they took at PA. “This was a setting I felt zero comfort in, and the instruction and advice Mr. Heelan wove into that course absolutely helped me to conquer my discomfort,” McGrath says.

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ANDOVER | SUMMER 2021

Although Heelan dabbled a bit in acting as a youngster, it was not until graduate school that he got serious.

After graduating from St. Mary’s College of Maryland, Heelan attended Smith College, where he began to write his own plays. From there, he moved to New York City to produce plays on and off Broadway. Heelan and his wife, Kim, enjoyed their time in the city in the late ’70s, but at some point the couple decided they wanted more stability. A family connection to Phillips Exeter and a chance meeting at a football game eventually led to an interview with the PA theatre department. Working at PA, Heelan says, was one of the best decisions in his life.

Looking back on his Andover career, Heelan reflects on his chosen path—the lessons imparted and learned.

“What I’ve learned is humility and that life generally is a struggle. But in theatre and life, the curtain always goes up and you stand there—and either you do it, or you don’t.”

KEVIN HEELAN

Female Role Model: When Litvin earned a master’s degree in math and education, there were few women enrolled in the computer science courses at the Moscow Central School of Education. But this never held her back. “It was like, so what?” says Litvin. This egalitarian approach made a difference to many female students, including Mary Hawkins ’96, who was the only girl in Litvin’s 1995 AP Computer Science class. “Looking back on it, I am very thankful I had Ms. Litvin as my teacher. She was an amazing teacher who was also a woman. I had a role model.”

Instructor, Theatre & Dance Years at PA: 38 Creative Genius: Early in his tenure, Heelan would produce plays in some of the dorm basements. These legendary productions included actors dressed in diapers, the use of shopping carts, and wrestling matches. One particularly notable performance required a live lamb, which Heelan and his wife borrowed from a perplexed farmer in nearby Boxford, explaining “It’s for a play.”

Playwright: Heelan is the author of numerous plays, including Distant Fires starring Samuel L. Jackson, Right Behind the Flag starring Kevin Spacey, The Hope Zone starring Olympia Dukakis, and Heartland starring Sean Penn on Broadway.

His screen adaptation of Split Cherry Tree was nominated for an Academy Award (best short film, live action).

Retirement Plans: Heelan and his wife will live in downtown Andover for the short term, with plans to move to LA to be near their son, Conor, and daughter Briga, an actor.

M

aria Litvin was 25 when she emigrated from Russia t o Mo n t go m e r y, Alabama, in 1979.

She spoke no English and had a 5-yearold daughter—as well as a master’s degree in mathematics and education. Her first job in the United States was wrapping gifts at a local toy store because it required little, if any, talking.

It’s been a long, fascinating journey for Litvin, who has taught mathematics and computer science at Andover for 34 years. And through it all there has been one constant: a love of working with students.

“I enjoyed all of it,” says Litvin. “One of the things that I have loved about being here is that I was given a lot of

freedom to be creative. It was always a new adventure.”

During her time at Andover, Litvin not only taught all levels of computer science and math, but also was active in many on- and off-campus activities. She founded the Computer Science Club in 1998 and has been its advisor ever since, and she led a community engagement program called the Coding Circle, in which PA students taught introductory coding to children at the Lawrence Boys and Girls Club. Additionally, she served as house counselor and complement in several dorms and was a Search and Rescue coach.

But Litvin is perhaps best known for her enthusiastic embrace of math and computer science, subjects she dearly loves and through which she

has challenged students to do their best work.

“There are a few people in your learning life who leave a mark,” says Andrew Zurcher ’92. “Ms. Litvin’s clarity of understanding, frankness, professionalism, and kindness are lights, still, by which to steer.”

For a woman who has lived her life in constant motion, always striving to do better, retirement plans are no different.

Litvin will continue to consult for the College Board, facilitate Code.org workshops for elementary school teachers, and develop questions for the annual Continental Mathematics League computer science contests for elementary and middle school students.

The adventure continues. 

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Learn more about our alumni artists at andover.edu/magazine.

FOLK ROCK DIVA of NEW ORLEANS

LILLI

Lewis ’93 What role does music play in building community?

T

…as the poet said. The process of creative expression—including imperfections and mistakes— has a way of legitimizing even the most off-the-radar ideas. Art keeps us learning and moving forward. Art encompasses open doors and open-endedness, heady themes, a diversity of viewpoints, and an imperative to experiment. There is a built-in expectation that someone will do something daring. The following alumni dare to look at the world differently through visual and performing arts and in doing so, provide others with bold new perspectives.

Though their work is vastly different, exploring the arts at Andover gave them a common language to tap into their curiosity, challenge convention, raise conversations, and discover that there is nothing more powerful than a wave of ideas whose time has arrived.

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ANDOVER | SUMMER 2021

and social justice; and creating an album and releasing the single “My American Heart,” which she performed as a powerful finale at the Kennedy Center’s Arts Across America Series: New Orleans Voices on Social Justice.

The toxic traditions of injustice and inequality in America— and in American music and art—are no secret. But Lewis feels a shift happening. Last year, she was invited by the Americana Music Association to host discussion panels about Black equity, and the events were covered by Billboard and Rolling Stone.

“It made a moment,” Lewis says. “It was a chance for us to say what the music industry could look like in these genres that have been identified as white spaces.”

Country music is also turning a corner. “There’s an entirely new conversation happening now around Black artists in Nashville,” Lewis says, adding that just this year, several Black artists have been launched and charted in Nashville, including her last single “Wrecking Ball,” which was picked up for the country music playlist and deemed “country funk.”

“I’ll take it,” she says. “That is a function of 2021, a function of we’ve had enough and everybody who has been holding their tongues and trying to frame their narratives in a way that was safe and manageable for people who just didn’t want to hear it.

We’re in a new moment that is opening doors and improving our emotional intelligence.”

We're in a new moment that is opening doors and improving our emotional intelligence."

DAVID VILLALTA

BY RITA SAVARD & JENNIFER MYERS COVER ART BY MING DOYLE ’03

he year 2020 was a tumultuous one that saw the onset of a deadly pandemic and widespread protests over systemic racism. Enter Lilli Lewis. For as long as she can remember, the singer/songwriter/activist—aka “The Folk Rock Diva” of New Orleans—has been following her joy.

And in a year that tested us beyond measure, this joy artist notes that collective action—with some feel-good music sprinkled in— also woke many people up to making radical changes.

Music was as natural as breathing in Lewis’s childhood home. Her parents, Judy and John, exposed her to everything from roots and gospel to jazz and classical. When her sister, Michelle, started taking piano lessons, 3-year-old Lewis could play whatever her older sibling was learning just by listening in.

“There was an utter love for music,” Lewis says. “That’s what I was always aware of. It lit me up from the inside, made me feel safe, feel the full expanse of possibility, and made me feel connected to people with whom I didn’t have a shared common language.”

Lewis chose Andover because of “all the beautiful pianos.”

At PA, Music Department Chair William Thomas (see page 13) worked pieces like Mozart’s Requiem “past your brain, past your blood, and into your bones,” Lewis says, her lips curving up into a wide smile. “He was joy and sass—and totally demanding—but he made miracles through music.”

Lewis’s original music has been praised by critics as “the most mesmerizing and soul touching combination of jazz, blues, gospel, and field folk magic imaginable.” Not long after she moved to New Orleans with her wife, Liz, Lewis started working for Louisiana Red Hot Records in 2015.

Today she is the label’s VP and A&R head, charged with finding and developing talent.

Throughout her career, Lewis has used music as a vehicle to inspire connection and bring deeper awareness of critical issues. Since March 2020, she has lent her voice to make an impact for the greater good, working with the Movement Voter Project, a national organization aiming to increase voter turnout in Lewis’s home state of Georgia; teaming up with New Orleans musicians and writing the fun but important song for Mask Up!, a public health-awareness campaign to stem the spread of COVID-19; designing the Committing to Conversation Initiative for music industry nonprofit Folk Alliance International, which created online safe spaces for people to unpack their anxieties and experiences about race, cultural equity,

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MINIMALISM PIONEER

FRANK Stella ’54

BALLET DANCER

GRAHAM Johns ’14

AWARD-WINNING ACTRESS

DANA

Delany ’74

T © 2021 FRANK STELLA / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK

Frank Stella, Cantahar from Imaginery Places III, 1998. Lithograph, screenprint, etching, aquatint and relief on paper, 52½ x 52½ inches.

Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA, Tyler Graphics Ltd. 1974-2001 Collection, given in honor of Frank Stella, 2003.44.274. © Frank Stella

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ANDOVER | SUMMER 2021

SYNCOPATION—a disturbance of the regular flow of rhythm—is the main rhythmic feature in jazz. So it’s no surprise that Frank Stella is a fan of melodies that jump around and offer something a bit unexpected. The painter, sculptor, and printmaker, known as a leading figure in the Minimalism art movement, says that seeing works by great American artists up close at Andover was transformative.

“I doubt that I would have been an artist [otherwise]…I don’t think it would have happened. It was the work here in the Addison Gallery, the proximity of painting all the time, every day, that inspired me.”

Acting is like being a private detective, because you’re always looking for clues and figuring out who people are and their motivations.”

LIZA VOLL PHOTOGRAPHY

he two-time Emmy Award–winning actress (for her role as nurse Colleen McMurphy on ABC’s China Beach, 1988–1991) is also an activist known for supporting several causes, including LGBTQ+ rights. In her craft, Dana Delany continues to push past her comfort zone.

For example, her critically acclaimed role in the 2020 theatre production of Goodnight Nobody explored themes of sexuality, mental illness, and generations of motherhood.

My job is all about affecting change internally.

It is about improving the self every single day, which is incredibly draining but also rewarding.”

G

raham Johns says becoming a ballet dancer was “written in the stars.”

He joined the Boston Ballet in 2016 and is now hard at work on the upcoming season—a mix of digital and in-person performances aimed at changing the way people experience and think about dance.

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MUSICAL INNOVATOR

BREAKING COMIC BOUNDARIES

Olusola ’06

Doyle ’03

KEVIN

MING

A

K

JULIAN PARKER BURNS

evin Olusola developed the art of celloboxing (playing cello and beatboxing together) while studying in China as a Yale University East Asian Studies and pre-med student. Medicine quickly took a back seat to the pursuit of his passion for music.

Olusola has been a member of the a cappella group Pentatonix for 10 years, during which they won season three of NBC’s competitive reality show, The Sing-Off, as well as three Grammy awards. With Pentatonix, Olusola spent the past decade touring the world, and the group’s new album, The Lucky Ones, was released earlier this year. In May, they performed at the Kennedy Center Honors paying tribute to legendary performer Dick Van Dyke—and where Olusola was also able to meet his personal hero, world renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma P’01, ’04. “It was one of the highlights of my life,” Olusola says.

When was your ‘aha’ moment in pursuing music as a career path?

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ANDOVER | SUMMER 2021

BEN

Gundersheimer ’85

B

en Gundersheimer’s 4th-grade students at Smith College Campus School affectionately dubbed him “Mister G,” which he took as his stage name after writing his debut family album, inspired by them.

He has since released 12 albums of original, multicultural music, earning a Latin Grammy Award and five Parents’ Choice Gold Awards.

He just finished two new children’s books that will be published by Random House and has several album projects in the works.

DENNIS LEUPOLD

I started to develop this style of playing, which I call celloboxing. I was in China at the Harvard Beijing Academy the summer of my sophomore year and one of my teachers asked me if I had ever thought of playing the cello and beatboxing together. It didn’t make sense to me at the time because classical music has hundreds of years of this revered pedagogy. I was nervous people would think I was tarnishing it by adding this beatboxing component.

But then I finally realized that this is what I do uniquely. Who makes the rules of how something is supposed to be done? It is the person who comes to the instrument who gets to decide how it is played. I realized I needed to just be me and try this. I remember the first time I performed this in front of people, they kind of freaked out. I started to develop it.

Then I did the “Celebrate and Collaborate with Yo-Yo Ma” competition my junior fall semester. I put this piece together in two or three hours because I was focused on my pre-med stuff, and he said my music was inventive and unexpected. To get that from someone at the highest echelon of classical music really impacted me.

The other person was KRS-One, who is one of the grandfathers of hip-hop, I got to do a performance for him with a fellow rapper and he told me, “If you continue to do this cello-beatboxing thing, I feel you are going to change the way people look at hip-hop and classical music.”

It was these two different people on different sides of the music spectrum telling me something very similar. That was when I finally decided I needed to take a closer look at this. The hardest thing for me was to break through the preconceived notions I had of what an immigrants’ son is supposed to do.

CONNECTING IN RHYTHM

comic artist and writer, Ming Doyle has helped to change the conversation about gender, race, and identity in a medium that was once predominantly white and male. Her work has been tapped by industry giants Marvel and DC, and includes a graphic novel (The Kitchen) and a comic series (The Banks) adapted for film.

For this special Arts Issue of Andover magazine, Doyle created beautifully complex and visually stunning artwork for the cover and the opening feature page—including a few hidden surprises.

There is so much to be inspired by when it comes to assembling a piece reflective of Andover alums’ accomplishments in the arts…

From the bright butterfly motifs in Billy Kheel ’92’s soft sculpture work and the geometric color patterns of Frank Stella ’54’s minimalist paintings to all the film, dance, music, comics, fiber works, collaborative performance pieces, and more produced by former students, beauty and thoughtfulness abounds.

I arranged some of these elements together in an interpretive collage that is hopefully as vibrant and bright as the work it is drawn from.”

I’m grateful for the different extremes of my job—the solitary process of writing and recording, collaborating with great musicians from different countries, and touring the world.”

27

Day after day, I get to meet, nurture, and encourage all kinds of people as they leap off the ledge of their own imagination— professionals and aspiring amateurs.

Together we create the kinds of relationships and exchanges that we aspire to, while reaffirming our connection to nature and to life itself.”

PIERRE-JEAN CHERER

ARTS ENTREPRENEUR

CRAFTING MADE COOL

BILLY

Kheel ’92

What was the strongest influence you had when you were growing up?

“L “Space Randy” Hand cut, dyed, and sewn felt/wool

28

ots of pop art influence—comic books and movies—and rap music. The way the artists cut things up to make something new, that was pretty profound for me. And, of course, my time at Andover was life-changing. I was very influenced by the brilliance and creativity of the other students around me; late night drawing sessions in the dorms; accessibility to the latest tech at the time, like laser cutters I could use in experimenting; the art at the Addison; and the faculty. I played football at Andover and my football coaches were also English and writing teachers—like Bruce Smith, who is a nationally known award-winning poet [also nominated for both a National Book Award and Pulitzer in poetry]. It blew my young mind to have those traditional barriers broken down—to learn that you can have a hand in sports and art and that it actually makes a person more whole.”

ANDOVER | SUMMER 2021

MIRABELLE Kirkland ’89

M

irabelle Kirkland literally grew up on the Andover campus, the daughter of English teacher Chris Kirkland and French teacher Catherine Kirkland. A bilingual actress, novelist, and screenwriter who has been working in English and French for the past 20 years, Kirkland is now living her dream. She has created La Forge du Vallon, a supportive artist retreat in Brigueuil, a village in southwestern France.

FILMMAKER

DEVIN Adair ’82

H

er first feature film in the director’s chair, Grace (2018), claimed the Best First Time Director award at the London Independent Film Awards and Audience Favorite at the Boston Film Festival. You might say Devin Adair is really good at firsts. Before breaking into the film industry, she led the Harvard Varsity Men’s Heavyweight Crew to a victory against Yale as the first-ever female coxswain (it would be 30 years before another woman joined). She says being on a crew team—first rowing as a 9th-grader at PA—built her emotional resilience, teaching how to fail gracefully and get back up with the courage and tenacity to muscle forward. She is currently working on several writing projects for film, including the story of her winning Harvard rowing team based on a book she wrote in 1989, The Challenge.

A big part of coxing is to inspire and motivate your crew, to empower people to go as far as they can. In movies, an effective director does the same thing— you’re there as keeper of the story, and that means keeping everyone together in a space where they feel supported and empowered to reach the common goal.”

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COURTESY OF PHILLIPS ACADEMY ARCHIVES

From rock star to bike mechanic to earning a PhD, Warren’s journey—much like his writing—is filled with hidden corners and inspiring truths. He has released three solo albums, was the vice president of educational programs for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the past executive director of Little Steven Van Zandt’s Rock and Roll Forever Foundation, and is a Grammy-nominated documentary producer. He is also a New York Times best-selling author whose books include Dusty in Memphis, Revolutions in Sound: Fifty Years of Warner Bros. Records, and Petty: The Biography. He teaches classes on popular music at New York University.

What did you learn at Andover that still benefits you today?

A FAMILY AFFAIR

DAN

Zanes ’83

I

n the 1980s, the Zane brothers were living the dream of every kid who spends hours alone with an electric guitar—touring in a rock and roll band. Guitarist and singer Dan (center, above), along with Warren on guitar (left, above), bassist Tom Lloyd ’79, and Steve Morrell on drums, formed the Del Fuegos. The popular Boston-based band was named “Best New Band” by Rolling Stone magazine in 1984. After releasing four albums and two hit singles, “Don’t Run Wild” and “I Still Want You,” the band called it quits in 1991. But for Dan and Warren, it marked the beginning of long and impactful careers in the music industry.

After becoming a dad, Dan thought the music being marketed to children could be better, so he decided to do something about it. Starting in his Brooklyn neighborhood, he put together a multiracial group and began creating fun music the whole family could enjoy. In 2007, Dan Zane and Friends won a Grammy Award for their album Catch That Train.

Today, Dan and his wife perform as the family-friendly folk duo Dan and Claudia Zanes. Their new album, Let Love Be Your Guide, will drop in September. “It’s the best record I’ve ever been part of in my life,” says Dan.

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ANDOVER | SUMMER 2021

How did the pandemic affect your work?

“We went 200 days in a row of putting out a video of a different song every day. And along the way, especially after the [murder] of George Floyd, we were not always able to find a song that expressed what we wanted to say. We started to write quickly to reflect what was going on directly around us. Sometimes it feels like we can be a little musical newspaper. And in everything else that’s going on, sometimes there is a feeling that there is still joy on the air. People are together, people are rediscovering community, old folks are looking at young folks and telling stories. There is just the joy of the human experience. It’s a full spectrum of emotions that we get to express through music.”

PIERO ZANES

Zanes ’79

WARREN

“I had a teacher at Andover named Ward Just. Only a week ago, I was standing in my kitchen reading some old letters he’d written to me. We’d stayed in touch, and he wrote a stunning piece for the Rock and Roll Forever Foundation about being in Saigon during the Vietnam War, filing a story for the Washington Post from his hotel room, and hearing The Supremes singing “I Hear a Symphony” on Armed Forces radio. The connections he made in a short bit of writing—without ever forcing the connections—are remarkable. Anyway, at Andover I wrote something for Ward, a long, rambling, self-involved thing, and he said the magic words: “I like the part about Elvis.” What? I thought he’d tell me to scrap that section. It was a quiet moment that found a place in me and then, over time, grew into something that was, for me, crucial. Elvis matters. Aretha Franklin matters. Kanye West matters. The high culture/low culture divide is a construction. Take that sucker down.

“A big part of my life has involved bringing popular music into the classroom, whether in middle school or graduate school. Popular music is an enormous part of our lives, yet it’s been sitting outside the classroom, waiting patiently, as we come to our senses. In my past work as a VP at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as executive director of The Rock and Roll Forever Foundation, and now teaching at NYU, I’m just doing what Ward Just told me I could do. There he was, in Bulfinch Hall, an unfiltered Camel hanging from his lips, taking Elvis seriously. Man, that was heavy stuff for me.”

PRODUCTION DESIGNER

SANDY

Reynolds-Wasco ’72

S

andy Reynolds-Wasco and husband David Wasco are the dream team responsible for compelling film experiences. Their set designs and artistry have helped create a unique look, feeling, and mood for several epic high-style Hollywood hits, including Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, Kill Bill, Vols 1&2, Collateral, and Inglourious Basterds. In 2017, the Wascos won an Oscar for their production design in La La Land. Last year, the award winners made headlines again—this time for saving and restoring a landmark midcentury house, tucked in California’s Santa Barbara foothills, back to its 1956 glory. They are currently preparing for a 2022 exhibition at UC Santa Barbara’s Art, Design & Architecture Museum— a retrospective of their four-decade career in film design.

LA is a perfect film character because it’s full of both optimism and broken dreams.”

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CONCERT PIANIST

ULRICH

Murtfeld ’87

STEPHEN PORTER

U

lrich Murtfeld began playing the piano at the age of 7 at his home in Frankfurt, Germany, and has not stopped since. Described as “a pianist to reckon with” by Patrick Rucker of the International Record Review, Murtfeld has plans to record an album of early compositions from romantic composers Robert Schumann, Ludwig Schuncke, Norbert Burgmüller, and Frederic Chopin.

OPERA SINGER

What was the strongest influence you had when you were growing up?

SARAH

Moulton Faux ’99

MATT GRAY

“Starting in first grade, I walked or biked to the public library and accessed dozens of biographies on inspiring figures in history—Hawaiian monarch Queen Lili‘uokalani, Sojourner Truth, Jane Addams, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, Florence Nightingale, and Althea Gibson to name a few. I have always been interested in lives lived, perhaps in an attempt to parse what constitutes a good life. This fuels the visual biographies I create.”

It only gets more interesting when you’re too old to play dumb.”

EMILIA FIGLIOMENI

ACTRESS/DIRECTOR

OLIVIA Wilde ’02

A

ctress-turned-director Olivia Wilde has sage words for her younger counterparts. Wilde doesn’t buy into the myth that actors—or audiences for that matter—have to venerate youth.

Following the success of her smash-hit 2019 directorial debut Booksmart—a coming-of-age comedy from a decidedly female perspective, about two academic overachievers who let loose on the eve of graduation—Wilde’s second film from the director’s chair, Don’t Worry Darling, is a psychological thriller starring Florence Pugh and Harry Styles and slated for release later this year. When talking about her move to working behind the camera, Wilde notes that directing is the first job in her career that wasn’t entirely dependent on her looks.

“I was there only because of my brain and my heart,” Wilde told the New York Times. “And the sense of fulfillment that comes from that is really massive.

It’s a profound shift for me.”

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MIXED MEDIA & MORE

ANGELA Lorenz ’83

A Making music can be very adventurous, and there are always new discoveries. It is a great fulfillment to transmit that joy to other people.”

visual artist who works in watercolor, graphic art, and printmaking, Angela Lorenz is best known for her thought-provoking and unusual highly sculptural mixed media, limited edition artist books. Materials used in her work have included latex, soap, chocolate, herbs, and gum. One of her books was made up of newspaper text frozen inside four blocks of ice. She is currently in the process of creating a floating bath book about a museum artifact—a miniature galley gifted by the de’ Medici family to teach University of Bologna students in the 1600s about warfare, navigation, and the Mediterranean slave trade. Her work can be found in more than 100 public collections in the United States and abroad.

What about your work are you most proud of?

“Supporting the work of women composers both in history and the present day.”

C

elebrated soprano and 2016 winner of the Best Female Voice prize at the International Gilbert & Sullivan Festival, Sarah Moulton Faux has performed in more than a dozen operas, including playing Violetta in La Traviata, Musetta in La Bohème, and Zerlina in Don Giovanni.

Along with Ensemble Pi, she created a stage production spotlighting the life of 18th-century female composer Marianna Martines. Her first album, Where Should This Music Be? Songs of Lola Williams, released in 2019, featured music from the late composer Lola Williams, who set several Shakespeare texts to music. Williams was the mother of Moulton Faux’s Andover history instructor, Derek Williams. The opera singer is currently recording her second album, Summer Roses, with violinist Junko Ohtsu and pianist/conductor Ted Taylor.

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PIONEER of COLLABORATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY

WENDY Ewald ’69

S

Since 1969, Wendy Ewald has taught children and women in communities around the world to photograph their lives, families, dreams, and fantasies. Her groundbreaking work in collaborative photography— producing art that explores race, identity, social history, and personal experience—has been supported by grants from national and international arts and humanities foundations. But her influence on photographers is often overlooked. Ewald also has subjects mark or write on her own negatives, thereby challenging the concept of who actually makes an image.

Ewald began taking photos her senior year at Abbot Academy, where her teacher, the late pioneering photographer and art instructor Wendy Snyder MacNeill, helped Ewald write a grant proposal to the Polaroid Foundation for film and cameras to bring to a Native American reservation in Labrador, Canada. All through college, Ewald worked with young people on two reservations.

“Theirs was not a romantic view of the situation on the reservation,” Ewald explains. “People hadn’t seen photographs like that before. Then I just kept doing it.”

First published in 1985, her remarkable book, Portraits and Dreams: Photographs and Stories

by Children of the Appalachians, was the creative culmination of Ewald putting cameras in the hands of elementary school children in Letcher County, Kentucky, and encouraging them to take pictures not only of their family and friends, but of their hopes and dreams. A new edition of the book was released last year, accompanied by a PBS documentary of the same name that reunites Ewald with the children (now adults) and reveals the outcomes of their lives with new photographs and stories.

Her new book, Collaboration: A Potential History of Photography, co-authored with four other women, proposes an alternative approach to looking at photographs past and present and is slated for publication in 2022.

Having a camera gives anyone power, but particularly children.”

Photos from Portraits and Dreams: Russell Akeman photographing his brother; opposite page, Johnny watching television, from Johnny’s Story; Denise Dixon photographing her twin brothers.

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ANDOVER | SUMMER 2021

35

ONE OF A KIND

THE ADDISON & ITS IMPACT A world-renowned art museum on campus is a teaching tool like no other.

BY RITA SAVARD

I

magine the possibilities—in addition to the best instructors and a curriculum that stretches students’ minds to explore their fullest potential, a campus art collection that is meant to push conversations not only in art history, but also across disciplines and departments too.

Long before the construction of the Addison Gallery of American Art, Thomas Cochran (Class of 1890), one of the Academy’s greatest benefactors, appointed a committee to collect paintings and other works of art for the school. Early in 1930, with the major part of his program completed, Cochran penned a letter to the Board of Trustees offering nearly $1.5 million to build a gallery for American art, endow it, and provide a fund for future purchases.

It was an idea ahead of its time. American art was not studied, let alone prized, as it is now.

The Addison opened its doors to the public in 1931 and it remains a model for how a museum successfully doubles as a vital teaching instrument as well as a highly acclaimed public museum revered for having one of the most comprehensive collections of American art in the world.

After a long pandemic winter, the Addison threw its doors open on May 18—exactly 90 years after officially opening to the public in 1931—to tell its version of a uniquely American story. A story told through the many artists and 23,000 objects within the museum’s walls that span the 18th century to the present. Art, as Cochran had the foresight to understand, in addition to connecting and elevating us, also has JAMIE GIBBONS the power to heal.

Head of Education As head of education at the Addison, Jamie Addison Gallery of American Art Gibbons thinks about art in the interdisciplinary sense. From history to mathematics, chemistry, literature, and more, each learning experience at the museum is tailored for individual faculty and classes.

“A teacher’s goal in any classroom is to find as many doors into that room as possible so every student has a way in to explore and grow,” Gibbons explains. “I have teachers tell me all the time that after a class at the museum, their students are different, changed.” 

When students perceive their world differently, they become more imaginative and inventive thinkers.”

HOME IS WHERE THE ART IS JAMIE GIBBONS

Point your phone's camera at the QR code to explore the Addison's programs.

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ANDOVER | SUMMER 2021

37

A LU M N I U P C L O S E

Redesigning Viral Genomes

NEXT GENERATION HEALTH PROFESSIONALS

“ We’re always thinking about the big picture.

While things might feel like they’re getting better here in the U.S., there are still many places in the world in critical need of vaccines.”

Forget vaccine jabs. Dr. J. Rob Coleman ’01’s new vaccine for COVID-19 in the form of a nasal spray is on its way via Codagenix, the biotech he cofounded and leads as CEO.

BY RITA SAVARD

PHOTO CREDIT CODAGENIX INC.

F

ollowing the successful completion of Phase 1 human trials in the U.K. in June 2021, Coleman’s single dose intranasal vaccine, COVI-VAC, is entering a global Phase 2 trial in healthy adults, targeting 6,000 volunteers—and potentially even larger efficacy trials by the fall.

“In addition, we have generated data recently in preclinical models showing the vaccine is efficacious against newly emerging variants,” Coleman says. “We’re hoping it can provide a much broader immune response.”

The vaccine candidate uses Codagenix’s Synthetic Attenuated Virus Engineering (SAVE) platform, which works by recoding genes of a target virus, turning it from pathogen into a safe and stable vaccine. The SAVE-designed live attenuated

Infectious disease specialists increasingly expect periodic boosters will be needed to extend the duration of protection from the new coronavirus and to build defenses against variants.

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ANDOVER | SUMMER 2021

vaccine trains the body to recognize the whole virus—as opposed to just the spike protein as with a number of other vaccines, which Coleman says could be critical as new variants of the virus develop.

The live attenuated vaccine in the form of a nasal drop also has the potential to address key logistical challenges worldwide, especially in places with poor infrastructure and networking capabilities.

“The vaccine is designed to be self-administered, eliminating the need for a qualified medical person to deliver it, and it can be stored for several months in the refrigerator,” he adds. “This is the most amenable for use in the developing world, where access and distribution has been daunting and even nonexistent in many places.”

For the U.S. market, Coleman is initially focusing on children ages 4 to 18. Clinical testing on this age group has a target date of late fall.

If proven to be safe, Coleman’s COVI-VAC could also serve as a booster in the U.S., where a majority of the adult population is expected to be

inoculated this summer with currently authorized vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson.

Infectious disease specialists increasingly expect periodic boosters will be needed to extend the duration of protection from the new coronavirus and to build defenses against variants. They are also looking into whether giving a person doses of two different vaccines can improve their effectiveness.

Of the 93 vaccine trials that were under way in May, the number of companies trying to create nasal spray and oral COVID-19 vaccines is still small compared with the dozens working to introduce new injectable versions. According to the World Health Organization, two of the studies were for oral tablets and seven for nasal sprays.

Yet even if only a few are approved by regulators in various countries, Coleman stresses the impact would be huge on the world’s ability to rein in a virus that has wreaked global economic havoc.

“We’re always thinking about the big picture,” he says. “While things might feel like they’re getting better here in the U.S., there are still many places in the world in critical need of vaccines. We think we have a transformative technology, and its potential to provide longer-lasting immune responses and be more potent against newer and multiple variants could help meet current and future global needs.” 

C

laire Song ’22 (pictured below) feels at home in a science lab. But classes, textbooks, and assignments don’t paint the whole picture.

“An interest in STEM and the aspect of problem solving pulled me into this field, but medicine is not only about STEM,” Song explains. “It’s also about listening and advocating for the patient’s story—I learned the importance of advocating for someone’s story at Andover.”

With guidance from biology instructor Alicia Finney, Song helped establish the Andover chapter of Health Occupations Students of America (HOSA), an international student-led organization for high school students interested in pursuing careers as health professionals.

And in April, HOSA kickstarted its mission to benefit health science students by launching the first-ever Phillips Academy Medical Conference.

The virtual event drew more than 100 students, faculty, and Andover friends together with alumni experts across the medical profession, including Dr. Jennifer Ellis ’81, EJ Kim ’15, Dr. Brian Clark ’00, Dr. Robert Spang ’05, and Dr. Sherita Gaskins-Tillet ’90. Head of School Dr. Raynard S. Kington, who held positions at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for The Andover chapter of Health Disease Control and Prevention Occupations Students of (CDC), was also a featured America (HOSA) was made panelist. possible by a grant from the Students discussed Abbot Academy Fund, which opportunities and challenges continues Abbot’s legacy of in health-care delivery with boldness, innovation, and caring. their alumni mentors through candid stories that included some hard truths about widespread inequities in the system affecting people from disadvantaged and historically oppressed groups.

“Hearing alumni share their own journeys in their jobs was an invaluable learning experience,” Song says.

“It drove home the point that the best educational experiences allow you to discover that you can be more and do more than you believe.”

—RITA SAVARD

39

A LU M N I U P C L O S E

Supper Club Celebrates Black Female Chefs, Fine Dining, and Friendship

Nkem Oghedo ’08 pours wine at a New York event hosted by Adá Supper Club, a company she founded in 2020 to provide chef-centered dining experiences.

Below, a Caribbeaninfluenced roasted wild mushroom dish created by chef Brittney “Stikxz” Williams.

BY NANCY HITCHCOCK

“I

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ANDOVER | SUMMER 2021

JANE PAFFARD NICHOLS ’61 clown/theatre instructor at the University of Washington

private and bespoke corporate events.

For instance, if a company wants to connect a team working in a hybrid environment, Adá can curate happy hour kits that include an appetizer and mocktails and host an interactive Zoom conversation with the featured chef.

Connection has always been important to Oghedo. The Andover friends she graduated with are still her best friends today—and many people from the Andover family attended her first Adá event.

Andover taught Oghedo that, “You can probably find a pretty strong connection with someone who seems very different from you if you just sit down and have a conversation with them. The goal of Adá is to keep growing, keep meeting new people, keep creating products and experiences that center diverse perspectives on food.” 

HARNESSING THE EXPERIENCE OF SOUND DAVID KUNIAN ’87

A

Boston native, David Kunian grew up completely enthralled by disc jockeys on the radio. He was especially intrigued by the punk rock of his youth.

“Punk rock gave everyone the freedom to be themselves and make whatever art they thought was relevant to their inspiration and situations,” says Kunian, music curator for the New Orleans Jazz Museum and Louisiana State Museum. “It also showed that not only could you do it yourself, you had to do it yourself.”

Kunian got his start in radio while at Andover, working at WPAA in the basement of Evans Hall. He moved to New Orleans in 1992 and was immediately taken by “the amazing assortment of fascinating characters who had, were, and continue to make music here.”

In 2018, he helped open “Drumsville” at the New Orleans Jazz Museum, an exhibition showcasing the state’s history and tradition of drums and drumming. “I want people to see how varied and important New Orleans drumming is to music in general and also to see how it is inherent to the African American culture, which is such an important part of all American culture,” Kunian says.

He is currently in the midst of a Herculean task—putting together a permanent exhibition that will be a survey of the entire history of jazz in New Orleans, from the early 1800s to today.

—JENNIFER MYERS SUBMITTED

fricassee chicken with confit plantain, and coconut rice.

“Adá provides agency and ownership for these chefs, enabling them to talk about the inspiration behind their recipes and tell their own stories on their own terms,” says Oghedo.

“Oftentimes in the food industry chefs cook someone else’s food or do things based on someone else’s vision. Adá is really about celebrating Black and female expression through food.”

In the 1980s, Oghedo’s parents emigrated from Nigeria where, in the regional dialect of Igbo, “Adá” means first daughter. Oghedo is the eldest daughter and second of four siblings.

Traditionally, her role is to support and care for her family—a responsibility she welcomes. Likewise, the intention of the supper club, she says, is to support a food family of chefs and food creators.

This mission is so important to Oghedo, who holds a BS in chemical engineering from Yale and an MBA from Harvard Business School, that she is running Adá while working full time for a wellness tech company.

Oghedo plans to expand Adá’s offerings, which currently include hosting

PHOTOS BY LIZ CLAYMAN

love the stories that people tell through food—that you can connect with somebody over a menu or a meal or a food memory. Food is very powerful in that way,” says Nkemdilim “Nkem” Oghedo ’08, who founded the Adá Supper Club to offer distinctive chef-centered dining experiences.

Oghedo launched the New York– based supper club in January 2020, with chefs preparing pop-up dinner parties on site and sharing stories and anecdotes with guests. As the pandemic took hold, Adá evolved, delivering three-course meals accompanied by a video interview with the chef and a song playlist to enjoy while dining. For Mother’s Day, two Adá chefs prepared an array of West African dishes for several family gatherings. “Each course was an interpretation of an experience that the chefs had had with their moms,” says Oghedo.

Today the supper club features 14 predominantly Black female chefs.

Many have worked in top restaurants as executive chefs, appeared on Chopped and the Food Network, written cookbooks, or been featured in major food media. Their signature dishes have their origins in Jamaica, Haiti, and Cape Verde, for instance, and include dishes such as jumbo crab, clams steamed in a butter broth of homemade epis served with toasted hard dough bread, charred cauliflower steaks with piri piri sauce,

“Clown class is terrifying and scary and exhausting because you play at the same energy level of a 5-year-old. You’re playing with all cylinders on fire.

But the atmosphere in the room when you’re doing clown is magical. You’re in a classroom of joy.”

More information online at andover.edu/magazine.

Learn more at www.adasupper.club.

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P H I L A N T H RO P Y

KNOWLEDGE & GOODNESS: THE ANDOVER CAMPAIGN

The Expanded PA Toolkit Teaching Lifelong Wellness at Andover

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ANDOVER | SUMMER 2021

students serve as mentors to younger students. The lessons can be quite personal, with one student expressing a newfound ability to “deal with and have tough conversations with yourself and others in life.”

Additionally, the Sykes Wellness Center team launched the Big Blue Be Well initiative in spring 2020. Built on a lifestyle medicine framework, the program features peer-to-peer listening partnerships and sparks further wellness education for campus students and adults, social media engagement, and conversations on the importance of sleep, stress reduction, healthful eating, and self-care.

“We really want to integrate physical and mental health throughout all areas of campus, with a student wellness collaborative, activities, and different universal education tools,” says Nicole Jeter, director of wellness and prevention education. “We also hope that our Peer Listening Program—a collaboration between our office, psychological services, and residential life—will help promote and normalize the practice of reaching out for help when needed. It’s important to get our students thinking about prevention and how they can live healthy lives.”

Alumni and parents are pledging assistance for these ongoing wellness initiatives and others in a variety of powerful ways. Through gifts of all sizes, the Class of 1966 created the Rx Fund, which provides annual, current-use support to address emergent needs, student

BY THE NUMBERS YOON BYUN

M

edical Director Amy Patel wants Andover students to build toolkits. Healthy ones. “As we think about what we’re trying to do, in terms of education, it’s not just physics or biology or math,” she says. “Those are all integral, but so is taking care of oneself and others. A PA student’s toolkit includes calculus, yes, but it also includes skills to build a lifelong wellness journey.”

Andover’s wellness team and the wider PA community are creating a forward-thinking, holistic health structure for all learners. Their efforts are guided by best practices and heavily centered on prevention education, while also offering comprehensive emergent medical care and counseling in state-of-the-art facilities. All to help students successfully navigate adolescence and beyond.

Health and wellness continues to be a top priority of the Knowledge & Goodness campaign and has been an increased focus since the Academy’s 2014 Strategic Plan. Under the umbrella of the Rebecca M. Sykes Wellness Center—made possible by early campaign funding—the Academy developed a four-year, fully integrated Empathy, Balance, and Inclusion program.

Centered around small, inclusive peer groups, the faculty-led seminars cover issues related to self-awareness, personal beliefs, healthy relationships, and mindful decision-making.

Discussion-based and experiential pedagogies are often employed, and older

programming, professional development, and routine care for students.

Likewise, the Class of 2000 created a special match for their 20th Reunion in memory of their class president Zack Tripp ’00. Gifts to the challenge—which extended through PA Giving Day 2021 and currently total over $100,000— will help fund a suicide pre­vention and screening program, a peer support network, web-based tools for interactive learners, and more.

“The idea that we could boost mental health resources at Andover was really appealing to us,” says Michael

24/7 care available at the Sykes Wellness Center

Tonelli ’00, who helped lead the class effort. “It became clear that this was going to be more important than ever, especially when COVID-19 hit. Honestly, I can’t even imagine the stressors that are on students today. It’s all just gotten harder, especially in the last year, and I know the need is great.”

Philanthropic support is imperative to sustain Andover’s essential and ever-evolving health and wellness programming—and bolsters PA’s promise to safeguard and empower every learner.

“Offering culturally responsive care is vital to meeting our students’ needs,”

says Suzanne Kemp, director of psychological services. “It takes a village, right?

There are lots of adults—faculty, staff, donors—who are willing to partner together and help. What our students are learning about health and wellness while they’re at Andover has the potential to shift their trajectory. That’s what makes me love working here.” 

90 instructors teaching the four-year Empathy, Balance, and Inclusion curriculum 6 pillars of lifestyle medicine in Andover’s Big Blue Be Well initiative 12 uppers and 12 seniors accepted into the inaugural Peer Listening Program $10M Knowledge & Goodness campaign investment in health and wellness

To support health and wellness programming, visit andover.edu/forhealth or contact Nicole Cherubini, director of development, at 978-749-4288 or ncherubini@andover.edu.

43

AT ISSUE

Improving Health Care & Advancing Equity

BY JESSE EHRENFELD ’96, MD, MPH

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ANDOVER | SUMMER 2021

SUBMITTED PHOTOS

I

took an early interest in science and medicine. Both of my parents are health professionals—my mom a neuropsychologist and my father a dentist. While I knew I wanted to become a physician early in life—a way to give back and serve those in my community—what I didn’t know was where this path would take me.

Today, my career has grown beyond what I could have imagined back then—an idea that probably centered around the typical white coat–wearing doctor in a clinic room. Though scrubs remain a part of my wardrobe and a regular schedule of patients and operating room times are high priorities on my calendar, my days now also include discussions on philanthropic strategy, understanding the needs of our communities, and identifying levers for advocacy.

I can trace this back to my days at Andover, where I developed a deep sense of responsibility to give back. During my senior year, I recognized that along with the privilege of attending Andover came a clear duty to use the skills, connections, and opportunities I had benefited from to in some way advance humanity. These experiences have shaped my life and my career, which has taken me from Harvard Medical School to Vanderbilt University, and now to the Medical College of Wisconsin, the third largest private medical school in the nation, where I lead a $525 million statewide health philanthropy. Along that journey, my experiences at Andover were foundational in building my confidence, skills, and vision for what lay ahead—even though the path itself was unpredictable.

Since graduating from Andover, I’ve led research funded by the National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. I have developed programs including the Massachusetts Committee on LGBT Health and the Vanderbilt Program for LGBTQ Health that are making a real difference in people’s lives.

microphone in front of a hangar full of soldiers and, with the traveling press corps watching, I asked, “What are your thoughts on transgender service members serving in an austere environment like this, here in Kandahar?”

At the time, there were an estimated 15,000 transgender people in the military. They could put their lives on the line to protect our nation, but they could not live their full lives and come out as transgender because of a longstanding ban. Until I asked my question, Carter had not publicly stated where he stood on the issue.

Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning. And it has led me to continue my advocacy in the media, being a part of a team that earned an Emmy nomination for a documentary called Transgender at War and in Love, in front of Congress, and regularly in front of medical students, faculty, and community leaders.

I never thought I would become an “advocate” in the broad sense of the word. I had always associated it with marching in the streets or holding protest signs. But today, I’ve found that advocacy is so much more.

“I don’t think anything but their suitability for service should preclude them [from serving],” he said.

To stand up and ask the question was uncomfortable, yet it was the right thing to do. The secretary’s response was the most favorable from a senior U.S. military official to date. Within hours, it was reported by news outlets all over the world, and by the next afternoon the White House added its support.

A year later, in 2016, the ban was repealed.

When Secretary Carter announced the repeal of the ban on transgender service at the Pentagon, my question was described as “the spark that led to the end of the ban on transgender service” by

It means standing up for what is right, sometimes even in the smallest of ways. It means remaining steadfast in my conviction that being a voice for those who don’t have power—those who are marginalized, underserved, and stigmatized— is one of the most important things I can do with my experience, privilege, and position. 

“ My ability to stand up for others came from the confidence I gained at Andover—one of the most priceless treasures I took away from my time there.”

I also became the first openly gay member of the American Medical Association’s esteemed board of trustees, before leading the association as the chair of the AMA Board. And I served in the military as a U.S. Navy commander, where I deployed around the world, including assignments in Afghanistan, where I treated service members wounded in combat. It was there, in Afghanistan, that I took a small step that ended up sparking national change.

During my deployment, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter visited for a town hall meeting with the troops. I had never been in a room with such a high-ranking leader before. After a few opening remarks, he asked if there were any questions.

I could not help myself. I made my way to the

A former U.S. Navy commander, Dr. Jesse Ehrenfeld ’96 was deployed around the world, including assignments in Afghanistan. He is pictured above in Kandahar in 2015, where he treated service members wounded in combat.

Dr. Jesse Ehrenfeld ’96 is a senior associate dean and director of the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment at the Medical College of Wisconsin as well as a clinical anesthesiologist, American Medical Association trustee, and leading voice on LGBTQ health issues and the work to advance health equity. He lives in Milwaukee with his husband, Judd, son Ethan, and dogs Ira and Sam.

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END NOTE

MAKE BIG BLUE MOMENTS HAPPEN

Looking in Detail

BY BILL AGEE ’55

C

COURTESY, ADDISON GALLERY OF AMERICAN ART

ongratulations and Happy Birthday to the Addison on its 90th birthday! At age 84, I am only a few years younger than the gallery—and recognize that it has been an important part of my life since I was 15.

I entered Andover in the fall of 1952 a scared kid, a lost soul, who really didn’t want to be there. On top of this, I learned that I had to take an art class at the Addison. Say what? I had never been in a museum and had no background in art. But the moment I entered the gallery, my life changed, although I didn’t know that at the time.

I liked it the moment I walked in—there was the Manship fountain, Venus arising fresh born from the water, as I was too at that moment, I later came to understand. The gallery was a magical place; it had everything I didn’t have: calm, peace, harmony, order, purpose, and vast new worlds to explore.

As I walked to class downstairs I peeked into the galleries. There I saw Homer’s Eight Bells, Eakins’ Professor Henry A. Rowland with its mysterious frame, the Stuart Davis Red Cart, and the 1948 Pollock. I liked them all. They are still compelling.

Stuart Davis Red Cart, 1932 Oil on canvas, 32 1/4 x 50 inches Museum purchase, 1946.15

“ THE GALLERY WAS A MAGICAL PLACE; IT HAD EVERYTHING I DIDN’T HAVE: CALM, PEACE, HARMONY, ORDER, PURPOSE, AND VAST NEW WORLDS TO EXPLORE.”

I can’t say I decided to be an art historian then and there. But that was what set me on the path.

To this day, these works are the core of what I understand to be great art. I have written on them all, have done exhibitions around them, and I continue to see new things in them. I come back often to check them out, “to make sure I got it right,” as Cézanne did in visiting the Louvre in his old age.

That art class so many years ago was taught by Patrick Morgan. He was my first mentor and taught me to see by looking at everything in detail and describing what I saw. Not what I thought it might be, but what I saw. I still teach that way. Thank you, Pat and Bart and Diz. Thank you, Andover and the Addison.  Bill Agee ’55 is an art historian and curator. He taught at Hunter College until his retirement in 2014 and was awarded the Evelyn Kranes Kossak Endowed Chair as Professor of Art History. He has held directorships at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and at the Pasadena Art Museum; his publications include American Vanguards: Graham, Davis, Gorky, de Kooning, and Their Circle, 1927-1942 (2011) and Coming of Age: American Art, 1850s to 1950s (2006).

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ANDOVER | SUMMER 2021

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Artistry Abounds This intricate drawing by Abigail Cheng ’23, titled The Invisible Pull, is just one example of some of the remarkable work created by Andover artists. Read more inside.