The Newsletter - April 2017

Roxbury Latin T h e N e w s l e tt e r

APRIL 2 0 1 7

Learning to Talk The language arts at Roxbury Latin

The Roxbury Latin School

Headmaster Kerry P. Brennan

The Newsletter is published quarterly by The Roxbury Latin School in October, January, April, and July for alumni, current and former parents, and friends of the School.

Editor & Design Joyce Hempstead joyce.hempstead@roxburylatin.org 617.477.6324 Photography Mike Pojman, Adam Richins, Gretchen Ertl

www.roxburylatin.org www.facebook.com/roxburylatin/

Š 2017 The Trustees of The Roxbury Latin School 101 St. Theresa Avenue West Roxbury, MA 02132 t: 617.325.4920 Send address changes to julie.garvey@roxburylatin.org.

Send alumni news and other correspondence to kyle.layne-allen@ roxburylatin.org.

The Newsletter April 2017 | Volume 90 | Number 3

INSIDE

4 Winning the Good Fight with Words Public Speaking at Roxbury Latin, by Andrew Kingsley ’12

6

It Is a Sin to Kill a Mockingbird

by Siva Emani I

9

A Reader’s Guide to R.L. Speak

by Mike Pojman

10 Exelauno Day: Semper Sint in Flore

by Joyce Hempstead

12 Welcoming Differences in Divisive Times Ali Bhanji, Hall speaker

16 Our Brother’s Keeper

Departments

28 The Arts > Jr. Play: Arabian Nights 28 > Student Production: A Sting in the Tale 29 > Student Arts News 30

35 Faculty Spotlight Erin Dromgoole, History

36 Athletics What Difference Do New Athletic Facilities Make?

40 Class Notes 44 In Memoriam 47 Alumni Gatherings 51 Varsity Athletics Calendar

The Rev. Liz Walker, MLK Jr. Hall speaker

18 Grand Opening of the IAF Winter Family Day honors winter team alumni and coaches

22 Once and Future Trivia A Map of Buried Treasures at Roxbury Latin, by Mike Pojman

24 Roxbury Latin’s Land Ethic

by Elizabeth Carroll > Science and Engineering News 27

32 An Interdisciplinary Feast Dr. Sue McCrory on Tradition and Innovation in Art > Learning from the Masters 34

Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh joined Kerry Brennan, Board Chair Bob O’Connor ’85, former Board Chair Dennis Kanin ’64, Co-captain Joe Doherty I, and Pingree’s Zachary Mitchell for the ceremonial puck drop at the Grand Opening of the Indoor Athletic Facility on 20 January. (See page 18.)

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Winning the Good Fight with Words Public Speaking at Roxbury Latin

by Andrew Kingsley ’12 r. Kokotailo begins each of his public speaking units with a classic Jerry Seinfeld bit, which he jests has never gotten a student to laugh: “According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.”

I remember as a new freshman flung into the daily travails of Roxbury Latin, I had little desire to stand out in the classroom, let alone speak in front of it. To a teenager with performance anxiety, public speaking—the potentially ardent, soulthumping craft so exemplified by Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator—really did seem worse than the casket. That year, I recall furtively rehearsing my informative speech in the corner of the Science Lecture Room, ensuring every word was under control in a sorry display of sound and fury. But as I progressed through R.L., accumulating valuable minutes behind the lectern, I enjoyed more relaxed rehearsals and composed deliveries. By the time I gave my first speech in a college classroom, I didn’t have to deliver a speech; I got to.

While I’d like to compare my overcoming of obstacles akin to King George VI’s in The King’s Speech (The Kingsley’s Speech has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?), it is more a testament to Roxbury Latin’s public speaking program. In the past decade, this program has slowly grown into a yearly exercise within English curricula and continues to enter new pockets of school life. What began ten years ago as the dramatic flourish on Exelauno Day or the rare public speaking tournament at some far-flung New England school has now blossomed into an expectation for students, athletes, and volunteers alike.

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At the beginning of his tenure as headmaster in 2004, Kerry Brennan wanted to expose boys to the challenging yet vital art of public speaking, an activity typically reserved for the School’s headmaster, teachers, and coaches. Up to this point, Mr. Brennan believed “there had been precious few times in a boy’s R.L. life when he was expected to express himself clearly and persuasively.” He began by asking varsity captains of each sport to introduce their teams in a formal Hall at the beginning of each season. While the concept began as a fairly stilted exercise in name reading, it has become a celebrated combination of captains roasting and toasting their teammates to open the new season in style.

However, Mr. Brennan had his eyes set beyond the varsity captains. He acknowledges that “our school has been known for its debate prowess for years, yet we had not sufficiently signaled all of the other kinds of everyday situations in which oral excellence would result in a positive reaction. Superb writers are not always great speakers. To present ‘what is on the page’ to a group of people requires a different kind of sensitivity to the audience and an ideally calibrated blend of information sharing and personality.” While the boys had listened to dozens of outstanding speakers in Rousmaniere Hall, they had rarely gotten behind the lectern themselves. In other words, while these visiting speakers delivered a world of ideas to R.L., R.L. boys were ill-equipped to deliver their ideas to the world.

In 2007, it thus became the challenge of the newly hired chair of the English Department, Dr. Phil Kokotailo, to integrate public speaking into the various English curricula. A crucial first step was outlining the initiative in the School’s most recent Strategic Plan:

The School is intent on working with boys who are in leadership positions at School (e.g., team captain, publication editor, class officer) to help them understand their leadership strengths as well as appreciating those capacities they need to develop to become even more effective leaders. Recognizing the importance of public speaking in this regard, there has been a concerted effort, with the English Department taking the lead, to introduce instruction and opportunity for public speaking across the curriculum. This curricular emphasis complements the ongoing commitment to extra-curricular programs like Debate and Model United Nations that foster the boys’ oratorical skills.

Understanding that it takes a village to make an uncertain sixie “understand his leadership strengths,” Dr. Kokotailo and others slowly acclimated younger boys to public speaking until students were prepared to deliver a full-bodied speech by their freshman year.

So what does this program look like today? The sixies begin their year of English by delivering a brief introductory speech about a classmate, with whom they have spent all of one day at Beaver Brook. The following year, fifthies present on a subject of personal importance to get their feet wet in the art of persuasive speaking. By freshman year, boys write their first substantial speech and speak informatively on any topic of interest, from the Statue of Liberty to sriracha. The following year, each boy then defends one of his own beliefs in a longer persuasive speech. With four years under their belts, seniors then round out their public speaking careers with “wisdom speeches” in Dr. Kokotailo’s class (their midyear exam equivalent), and condense eighteen years of accumulated wisdom into tight, ten-minute packages.

This year, Joe Lomuscio I was selected by his classmates to present his wisdom speech

to the entire school, an opportunity enjoyed by eight seniors this year alone. Reflecting on missed chances while at R.L., Joe urged younger boys to push themselves beyond what is expected. Joe clearly made up for lost time with this speech, as he admits, “By agreeing to address the whole school, I ultimately faced my fear of getting outside my comfort zone while setting an example for others who may be too afraid to try something new.” Known for his athleticism, Joe used the stage to showcase his perceptiveness, eloquence, and honesty, and ultimately exemplified how breaking expectations can

and intellectual curiosity that caused the speech to resonate with many classmates and teachers serves as a testament to the power of sharing a new perspective in this way.” Siva’s trailblazing step might inspire other students to shape Rousmaniere Hall into yet another space to foster the sharing of student ideas (creaky seating not withstanding!).

Faculty have even found ways of turning student speeches into activism. Most notable, Señor Ryan has brought a number of Class IV boys to the Deutsches Altenheim assisted living facility this year to deliver

Philip Balson ’15 after giving his speech in Hall in September 2014.

Joe Lomuscio I delivers his wisdom speech in Hall last fall.

reveal exciting new potential.

Now a mainstay in the classroom, the public speaking program has inspired students to share their stories on grander stages. For example, senior Siva Emani recently asked to speak before the entire school. In his own Hall, Siva explored the rich history and beliefs of Hinduism during the Hindi High Holy Days.

Reflecting on the experience, Siva said, “The encouraging atmosphere of public speaking at the School inspired me to take the stage this year. The spirit of acceptance

Andrew Steinberg II (then a sophomore) at the World Individual Debate & Public Speaking Championship in April 2016.

their informative speeches from English class. Señor Ryan wanted the freshmen “to feel as if they have something valuable to offer and to share it with the elder members of our community.” Andrew Steinberg II has also used public speaking to help those in need. Beyond his numerous accolades on the international debating stage, Andrew most memorably used a school speech on Alzheimer’s disease as a springboard to meet with executive leaders of the Alzheimer’s Association, who invited Andrew to join their campaign to raise awareness

about the disease’s impact on families. (That speech was a Silver Key winner in this year’s Scholastic Competition.)

The School’s efforts, in conjunction with the Debate and Model United Nations programs, have produced an abundance of remarkable student speakers, many of whom have become quite decorated in tournaments around the world. In recent memory, Philip Balson ’15 stands out as one of the School’s most successful debaters and public speakers. Despite his extensive travels and triumphs, Philip recalls one particular experience back at Alma Mater: “My favorite public speaking moment at R.L. was when I gave a speech on complexity in government in Hall in the fall of my senior year. Even though I had a bigger audience at the finals in Hong Kong, there was something special about standing in Rousmaniere Hall with my friends and classmates in the audience.” For Philip, as for Siva, it is R.L.’s open intellectual community that remains distinctive and memorable.

Clearly, the public speaking program has already outgrown its original expectations. What began as a way to shape leaders and build character has become a yearly platform for sharing stories and personal experiences while fostering an environment of shared intellectualism. Moreover, it has shaped a community of listeners. As Siva aptly puts it, and perhaps speaking for many R.L. boys, “I am the first to admit that I tend to be stubborn in my ideology, and have a habit of disagreeing with others without hearing the entirety of their argument.

Public speaking at R.L. has taught me the importance of suspending prejudice about another person’s viewpoint, and listening to the valuable experiences and perspectives that others have to offer.” At a moment when bipartisanship seems antiquated and even the weather feels polarizing, the skills of listening and empathizing have become more important than ever. And so, the good fight now will be won with words, not walls or weapons, by the young men and women trained to use them.

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It Is a Sin to Kill a Mockingbird

by S iva Ema n i I

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S tu d e n t Fi c t i on

W

hen I was a little boy, she was my idol—an embodiment of happiness and love, whose presence freed me from whatever burdens I used to feel back then. Usually it would have something to do with disappointing my insatiable parents.

A lost tennis match to a player who was three years younger than I, after smashing a racquet into pulp in the first set. An imperfect “progress report” that perhaps still flutters in the AC vent behind the lockers outside Mr. Lyon’s room at Oak Hill Middle School where I dumped it, afraid to bring it home or throw it away where a teacher might see it. But whenever she rang on the doorbell, I would always thud downstairs from the seclusion of my bedroom to answer the door, eagerly waiting to be whisked away into the warmth of the puffy down feather jacket that covered her lanky arms.

With Aunt Janaki, the opportunities for excitement were endless. She would take me on rides in her pink Vespa through the narrow streets of our subdivision in Durham, North Carolina, flying over speed bumps, and tilting so sharply on turns that I often tried to discern the reflection of my helmeted face in the sparkling tar. She would always gloat about her experience as the leader of her college Hip-Hop dance group, after which I would challenge her to a Wii Dance, Dance Revolution battle. I beat her once, only after having practiced to the song Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting every night for a week before her arrival, and I have never gotten around to forgetting the lyrics. When I was really young, my favorite thing to do when she came was what we called the “Superman Game.” She would lie on her back, hoist me up with her hands and bent legs, sing a theme song that she made up, and thrust me into a mountain of pillows, gathered from all of the furniture we could find in the house. Often when she visited I would tell her to play Superman over and over until her arms got tired, or I threw up on the pillows, or I was dragged off to bed by my cold-hearted parents. For me, then, she was an embodiment of freedom and imagination, inspiring me in a way that my parents never could, and I loved her for it. But one day, she disappeared—not physically, but emotionally.

I’ve always tried to understand how my dad and my aunt became so different. They were raised in the same house, with the same parents, attending the same high school and college.

My dad says it has to do with how they responded to my grandfather’s strict expectations. My grandfather was the kind of guy who expected too much of everyone around him and even more of his kids, especially regarding academic achievement and adherence to Hindu values. My dad told me a story about a time when they had moved from Kentucky to India for a few years, during which period my dad attended an international school where English was offered as the primary language. He received an A- on a certain essay, because his title, Silence is Golden, was grammatically inaccurate; the phrase should be taken as a metaphor, Silence is Gold, the comment read. After my father showed my grandfather the grade and the comment, he began a heated mail correspondence about the grammatical implications of an adjective and a metaphor, first writing to the English teacher, then the head of the department, and finally the principal of the school, with my ten-year-old father ricocheting between the rivaling factions as the naïve courier.

My grandfather put an equally strong emphasis on maintaining Hindu values and resisting the temptation of “wicked Americanization,” which the cultural fusion of the United States in the 1980s seemed to promote. He helped found the local Hindu Temple and became a trustee of the institution. He sent my dad to Carnatic music lessons, and Aunt Janaki to Indian dance classes, the videos of which we watch every summer at my grandparents’ house on their ancient VCR over Naan and curry, the only glimpse of Aunt Janaki that I get to see all year.

My dad and my aunt had opposite responses to the strict regulation that my grandfather imposed upon them. The disciplined mentorship of my grandfather influenced my dad to take the sport of tennis to the varsity level in high school, having never played with the instruction of a formal coach until ninth grade. My dad now considers tennis one of his favorite family activities and drags my mother, my brother, and me to the local outdoor courts to play “polar tennis” as a Thanksgiving tradition.

My aunt, on the other hand, gave up tennis after a year, because she hated the overbearing rigor of my grandfather’s instruction.

My dad does yoga and prayers religiously every morning, but I would imagine that my aunt has forgotten how to perform them.

My dad goes to the temple every month, whereas my aunt passes by the temple every month to go to her hair salon. The knife which had carved a straight arrow out of my father had made my aunt into a gun that pointed at anyone who stood in her way.

I think it was this rebellious attitude—the refusal to conform to the prescribed identity of being an American or a Hindu—that made me idolize her in the first place. My father, although he grew up in the United States, has always, in my mind, represented the

I’ve always tried to understand how my dad and my aunt became so different.

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same maturity and fidelity to the Hindu path that my grandfather had. I cannot, for instance, imagine my father as a high school student doing anything more childish than perhaps skipping a tennis practice to shoot potato rockets off of the roof of the school with the science club. His sense of morality is orthodox and unwavering, and he does not tolerate anything less than perfection in character from himself or anyone else. Maybe it is just because I’m young, or more exposed to a diversity of cultures than my father was, but like my aunt, I have always found the establishment of this moral identity to be much more nuanced than my father’s stalwart personality would have me think. I liked to imagine that my aunt and I were pioneers of our family, exploring the vast unknown that was cultural fusion in America, and setting a precedent that would revolutionize the way that generations after us approached life’s big questions. Just like Lewis and Clark, I used to think, we left behind the complacent settlers of the South and the stubborn elites of the North to discover an expanse of territory devoid of any prescribed beliefs, allowing us to make it into whatever we wanted. Of course, I didn’t know then that Lewis committed suicide after the expedition.

By 24, it seemed like Aunt Janaki had found the cultural independence that she had fought for throughout her childhood.

On the one hand, she stayed vegetarian and sober, volunteered at the local homeless shelter, and spent her holiday vacation time playing Superman with her doting nephew. On the other, she participated in a Hip-Hop dance troop in college, rarely engaged in religious or spiritual activities, and, to the great dismay of my grandparents, got engaged to her college sweetheart without their approval. The man’s name was Kinjal Patel, an Indian architecture major who attended Northwestern with Aunt Janaki. By chance they both ended up staying in Chicago for their graduate school studies and, after six years of knowing each other, Uncle Kinjal proposed to her and they got engaged.

In the Indian tradition, it is a custom for parents to select the spouse of their child after a rigorous screening process that involves scrutiny of family security, health, social class, and level of religious orthodoxy. Sidestepping this arranged marriage process by marrying a man of lower social class, my aunt infuriated my grandfather to the point that he not only refused to pay dowry for the wedding, but he didn’t even attend the ceremony. He refused to talk to or meet with my aunt for the next eight years, ignoring the love which he felt for his own daughter in protection of some abstract conception of justice. He still, however, has kept Aunt Janaki’s room exactly as she left it, and often spends time when we visit in the summer sitting in the wooden chair next to the window in her room, staring at the picture that hangs on the pink wall next to the headboard on her mattressless bed. In the picture, a younger version of my grandfather is hoisting an eight-year-old Janaki on his head, decorated with a disheveled mop of curly hair, as she places the star on top of the family Christmas tree.

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As my father brought Aunt Janaki down the aisle of the undersized wedding hall, I saw the same look of disappointment on his face that I had seen many times before—the look that made me wish I was riding on a motor scooter with Aunt Janaki. And in that moment, while she and Uncle Kinjal were smitten with love for each other, while young women in the audience, overdressed for the occasion, were dreaming of the day that they would be exchanging vows, while my father was avoiding eye contact with his own sister, I felt a distinct pang of pity for her. After all, she had done nothing wrong to deserve this judgment, and the person on the stage, throwing a ceremonial garland around the spouse of her choice, could just as easily have been me.

The experience drove Aunt Janaki away from the rest of us.

She stopped visiting during the holidays, and I could never tell if it was because she didn’t want to come, or if my parents had told her to stay away. We heard, a few years later, that she and Uncle Kinjal had filed for a divorce, because she cheated on him and became intimate with an Italian underwear model named Justin.

She started drinking heavily and gave up being vegetarian. Her attempt at cultural fusion had broken her.

A parent whose child died after heart surgery due to a complicated congenital heart defect invited my family to an event at a bowling alley to raise funds for research on such heart problems, because my dad was their surgeon and the recipient of the research funds. Before then I never understood how a person, having suffered as traumatic an experience as losing a child, could put so much effort into fighting against it, if it meant that they would be constantly reminded of their trauma. Although I have experienced no comparable tragedy, throughout the event I kept thinking about how my aunt had disappeared from my life, through no fault of her own, and how I should be fighting against the disease that took her away from me.

At first, I was convinced that the fallacy of true cultural fusion was the fool’s gold that had deluded my aunt and caused her downfall. The world of culture is dichotomous, my grandfather said. You are either American, or you are Indian. But I have come to believe that this is not the case. I think it is not only our right, but our responsibility as individuals to adopt a value system that makes us happy, whether or not it is consistent with the prescribed values of others. Still more important is our responsibility as family, friends, and members of society to accept the moral and cultural decisions of others. I initially thought that Aunt Janaki had failed my family and me by isolating herself from us. But I have come to realize that it was our family, who answered her plea of acceptance in a crisis of identity with parochial judgment, that had failed Aunt Janaki.

This story is published here with permission from Forum, The Roxbury Latin School Magazine of the Arts, where it first appeared in the Winter 2017 issue.

A Reader’s Guide to

RLSpeak

by Mike Pojman t’s a fast-moving teenage world we live and examples from my under-18 sources, the end of a sentence: “I’m looking forward in, hard to fathom and even harder to with a special shoutout (“an expression of to taking three tests on Friday. Sike!” or “I navigate. But I have every reason to public appreciation or thanks”) to expert turned down those Patriots tickets so that I believe that you, like me, are eager to RLSpeaker Albie Giandomenico ’16. Did could stay home to read My Antonia. Not!” Of course, this list is incomplete, and I stay abreast of it, and I am here to help. you know, for example, that if an R.L. boy So for starters, let’s tackle the mysteries of ends a conversation with the tag my bad, know a bunch more words than I am telleveryday teenage discourse, which contin- he has just apologized for saying or doing ing you here. But I’m not going to gloat, ues to evolve at a breakneck pace. Before something out of line? Or that a chirp is “a because that would be a weird brag (“an act you read on, however, you must promise gentle put down or insult, usually witty and of boasting concerning a strange topic or not to use any of the vocabulary that I lighthearted”? A snipe is synonymous with bragging about something not worthy of a am going to teach you and certainly not a chirp, but maybe a little less lighthearted. boast”). However, I do hope I’ve given you to ask your teenage associates to confirm You may not have known—but I’m here enough of a primer that you can proceed any of what I am about to tell you. To do to tell you—that if you’ve been roasted, to expand your own vocabulary through so would be to alter irrevocably your rela- you are on the receiving end of a snipe or careful listening and close observation. tionship with young people everywhere. a chirp, possibly without realizing it. And (But remember Heisenberg: not too carethat a frill is “something that is excessive fully or too closely.)

Let me explain.

And to all the parents of The Heisenberg UncerR.L. boys who by virtue of tainty Principle in chemistry /stez/ this treatise are basking in says that it is impossible to their newfound enlightenunderstand fully the behavior noun (U.S.) informal ment, I issue you a cauof an electron, because if you the ability to pull off swag effortlessly; short for tion: You must never, and I were to get close enough to that “style with ease.” Mr. Bettendorf has so much mean never, do either of two electron to observe it clearly, steeze, it looks like his bow tie tied itself! things. Number 1, please you would have inadvertently don’t attempt to converse and irreversibly changed the in RLSpeak with your own very behavior you are trying to understand. Adolescents are like electrons, or unnecessary,” like, for example, a heated son, or with any of your son’s friends, or in front of any of your son’s friends, so we must proceed with caution as we try classroom in the Jarvis era.

Cram and flush means “to memorize because you’ve already promised that you to make sense of anything about them, vast amounts of information for a quest, wouldn’t and, well, because if you did you including their modes of discourse.

It’s about evolution as much as elocu- quiz, or test at the last possible minute, would be seen as really strange. Picture it: tion. The “kidspeak” of preschoolers has fully expecting to forget it immediately Mom to her irascible son John—“I don’t been extended to the “teenspeak” of pre- afterwards.” Needless to say this is a term appreciate that snipe. There is no reason through post-pubescent young people, as (and an approach to studying) that greatly to be salty.” Or Dad to his son John’s best they invent all sorts of words and phrases annoys the faculty, which is no doubt part friend—“Mrs. Eliot and I are envious of to meet their changing needs and to com- of its appeal. Swag, used as a noun, is “an your steeze, Billy. We wish that John could municate cryptically with their peers. The abbreviation for justifiable swagger—an pull off that kind of swag.” Ugh! And finally, Number 2 (and I’m protectmeanings of said expressions are common attribute of the enviably fashionable, confiknowledge between and among them, but dent, and cool.” Steeze (short for “style with ing you from yourself here): Feeling smug they are largely indecipherable by the rest ease”) is “the ability to pull off swag effort- that you have mastered RLSpeak, you may of us. Roxbury Latin boys, like all contem- lessly”: “Mr. Bettendorf has so much steeze, be tempted to go on about it to impress porary adolescents, embrace this teenspeak it looks like his bow tie tied itself!” If you’re your friends. However, you must not do effortlessly, and they have even morphed it salty (a favorite of fifthies), you are “cranky, that either, because, first of all, they will out of sorts, or resentful.” Sike is “a remark probably roast you for being a show off, and into their own brand of RLSpeak.

It took some delicate mining, but I man- after a statement of intended inaccuracy,” second—and even worse—they will defiaged to extract the following definitions synonymous with the interjection Not! at nitely take it as a weird brag. Just saying…

I

steeze

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Exelauno Day

Semper Sint in Flore

by Joyce Hempstead reek and Latin Declamations took place on Monday, 6 March, in Rousmaniere Hall. The competition is a hallmark of Exelauno Day, a celebration of Classics at Roxbury Latin and recognized in one form or another since at least the late 19th century. Other features of the day include a trip to the MFA for students studying Ancient Greek and a feast of donuts for the rest of the boys following Hall.

This year, 17 students stepped forward to test their classical mettle in the competition. “Declamation,” a genre of ancient rhetoric, might suggest a staid, if vocally expressive, oration. And perhaps that is how Exelauno Day was conceived almost 130 years ago, when the School was still located on Kearsarge Avenue in Roxbury and when the day’s biggest perk was one

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Thomas Bulger II

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Rohil Dhaliwal V

night free of homework. But over the last several decades, declaimers have raised the art to such theatrical heights as to include props (anything within reach), gymnastics (aided by a slippery carpet runner, a few stair steps, and a railing), and unwilling volunteers (from among the Classics faculty seated—uh, captive—on the stage).

Material for these oral performances is not in short supply. Such classical greats as Aristophanes, Livy, Petronius, Virgil, Plato, Euripides, and Catullus provide all manner of amorous, emotional, and ethical crises from which to choose. Ovid was particularly popular this year (Austin Manning IV opted for a little piece about picking up a girlfriend at the Circus Maximus). There are the speeches, the soliloquies, the inner torments; and then there are the scenes requiring the declaimer to play multiple

Left to right: Andrew White II; Milan Rosen III; Beau Keough V. Below: Jamie Morris-Kliment, Sarah Wehle (judge), Daniel Sun-Friedman V, Reis White II, Nathaniel Lopes III, Ann Koloski-Ostrow (judge).

Lower School Latin Francisco Gutierrez VI Colin Herbert VI Benjamin Kelly VI Rohil Dhaliwal V Beau Keough V Daniel Sun-Friedman V* John Harrington IV Austin Manning IV Blair Zhou IV Upper School Latin Brendan Gibbons III Milan Rosen III Thomas Bulger II Reis White II* Daniel Penella I Greek Nathaniel Lopes III* Andrew White II Aazer Siddiqui I *Winners

characters. This calls for a great deal of shapeshifting, as when Rohil Dhaliwal V, delivering an excerpt from Petronius’s Satyricon, streaked back and forth across the stage to portray first a man then a werewolf.

In a selection from Vergil’s Aeneid, Thomas Bulger II mounted a fight with an invisible opponent—and rather convincingly, too.

For want of a theatrical wardrobe, declaimers over the years have found ingenious ways to make use of their jackets, ties, and belts. (In fact, the Exelauno stage is one of the few places where a Roxbury Latin boy’s shirt can go untucked without repercussions.) This year, Nathaniel Lopes III, in presenting Plato’s story about a ring with mysterious powers, enabled his own seem-

ing disappearance by tossing his jacket into the air and simultaneously jumping behind the lectern. Another declaimer took his final bow in stocking feet. If memory serves, a tie recently stood in for the tail end of a snake.

Exelauno Day is a jacket-and-tie day, and one can begin to see the advantages of it.

Thanks to all the antics, even those in the audience who don’t study Latin can follow along. But as we are a school in which every boy, beginning in sixie year, takes three consecutive years of Latin, the vast majority of the audience understands the language and gets the jokes. After the requisite years of Latin, boys have the option to study Greek. This year, fifteen boys have chosen that path.

Judges Ann Koloski-Ostrow Professor and Chair of Classical Studies Brandeis University Andres Reyes Classics Teacher, Groton School Sarah Wehle Classics Department Chair Milton Academy

There is nothing easy about memorizing a scene in an ancient tongue, dramatizing it, and presenting it—solo—in front of the entire Classics faculty, one’s classmates, the entire school, and the judges. This year’s declaimers join generations of R.L. boys who in their own day added this experience to their public speaking kitbag—and no doubt made some memories in the process.

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Welcoming Differences in Divisive Times Headmaster Kerry Brennan invited Ali Bhanji to speak in Hall on 28 February.

At once a Muslim, an immigrant, openly gay, and one-time director of college guidance and English teacher at Roxbury Latin (2000-2002), Mr. Bhanji is well positioned to speak to the R.L. community on some of the current societal concerns. A native of Nairobi, Kenya, he came to the U.S. in 1987 to attend Middlebury College. After election to Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year and graduating summa cum laude in 1991, he entered a career in academe. Following his time at R.L., Mr. Bhanji served as director of college counseling at The Potomac School in McLean, Virginia, from 2002 to 2011, and he is currently director of college counseling at Collegiate School in New York City. Mr. Brennan has described him as “bright, courageous, funny, dedicated, and the epitome of integrity.” Mr. Brennan opened the Hall by reading a quotation from Martin Niemoller (at right), and by sharing the following: “In some ways we’re in an era in which the media and others are asking us to choose sides. But as a school, we have to be a place where lots of different ideas are given space to develop, and to be heard, and to be understood. What we’re doing today is about dialog; about sharing ideas; about listening; and about hearing what people have to say is on their hearts.

Today is an opportunity for us to consider points of view on topics that are not only of importance to us, but to people in our community, our family members, and to Americans generally.”

Ali Bhanji’s Address sometimes measure the relentless passage of time when I look at the annual school photo in The Newsletter. I see Mr. Walsh inching closer to the central seat of power with each year, and I’m reminded of where I might have been in

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First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

that photograph—a little closer still. That’s the rough part of the time passage. The smoother part is the warmth I feel to be back here with you, the younger brethren of the boys that challenged, moved, and regaled me when I was here. My time at R.L. was short, but my relationships with a number of alumni and teachers have endured because our time together was honest; we may not always have agreed with one another, but our mutual respect never shook. It is in that spirit of authenticity that I am here today, and I thank Mr. Brennan for his invitation.

I remember the day—Sunday, February 3, 2002. Many of you weren’t born. A few friends and I had gathered at my apartment in J.P. to watch a much anticipated game; the fact that the Patriots were even playing in the Super Bowl with a little-known backup quarterback who, two games earlier, had made the “tuck-rule” infamous in Oakland, was itself a dream. Over many years I had resigned myself to supporting a team that I thought would never win the Lombardi; I was happy that every once in a while they could deliver a giant punch and brighten the odd Sunday here and there. Then came the turnover from Drew Bledsoe that has kept on giving. Tom Brady became a household name in the football universe,

and my—fine, our—beloved team started its steamroll. For 30 years, I allowed myself to get carried by the team and its members as though they were my own. I don’t know how fan identities become so intertwined with individual players that they only know from TV, but they do. It’s irrational.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. Another improbable Patriots victory, and I was celebrating right along with many of you.

Yet something about my celebration this year was muted. Much as I hoped and cheered for victory, I didn’t pin my Pats blanket to the wall or needle my friends on social media. Election year politics had entered Foxboro. Normally I wouldn’t have cared—separation of football and state.

But my heart and mind felt that irrational kinship with the Kraft, Brady, Belichick triumvirate. Did Tom really think America needed to be made great again? Who planted that red hat in his locker? Surely he knew the subtext of that slogan—and disagreed with it. I had created the imaginary and successful conversation in my head: “Hey Tom—Bill…it’s your biggest fan. I know you hear that all the time, but I really am! Surely you could have remained friends with Mr. Trump but also disavowed his public use of your reputations to get mileage for his election bid. And surely you see the assembling cabinet of people who aren’t looking out for the vulnerable in this country. Tom, you know what it’s like to be given your shot…look at what you did with it. So please, convince your friend that others who have prepared for their moment deserve their shot too, rather than being suddenly branded as potential enemies.” Years ago, I watched Tom attend the State of the Union address at the invitation of George W. Bush.

And of course I noted that he didn’t join the team to visit the Obama White House two years ago. As much as I sought commonality with this figure that I revere, I realized and respected that his political leanings based on where in public he chose to appear were

Ali Bhanji

fundamentally different from mine. But ultimately, that didn’t matter—it’s not like I was dating the guy. However, this past election was about more than political differences. Using the Republican platform, the rhetoric from Mr. Trump attacked the very identities of many in this country, and those of us who felt that our rights were at stake wanted all of our heroes with access to a bully pulpit to use it. But the Gillette leadership’s silence sharply sliced anyone who approached—from any angle.

To give you a sense of the shaping of my thoughts, let me take you back a few years. I grew up in Kenya—I was your age in the 1980s. My grandparents had emigrated there from India in the early 1900s in search of economic opportunity. Kenya became independent from the British in 1963—only weeks after President Kennedy was shot. By the 1980s the country had been strong-armed into a single party “democracy” with an unopposed leader at the helm. I grew up Muslim in a predominantly Christian nation, went to mosque regularly, was taught that service to others was a primary concept in Islam, and that a strong secular education was to be prized.

At the end of high school I applied to college in Britain, Canada, and here in the USA. Financial aid made it possible for me to go to college here, and it was in the small town of Middlebury, Vermont, in 1987 that I heard about Republicans, Democrats, and the New England Patriots for the first time.

When I first arrived on American soil, my political knowledge consisted only of the fact that Ronald Reagan was president. I soon learned that 1988 was an election year, and my roommate’s rabid support for Jesse Jackson in the Democratic primary that year became my small window into understanding the American political process. I knew none of the ideologies of the parties in America; my parents weren’t conversant about them, and the one state-run TV channel in Kenya didn’t find American politics to be useful propaganda. So I was starting politically fresh—completely unshaped by my parents’ or the media’s views, and over time bouncing back and forth about which would be my party, if I ever had the privilege to vote. Back in Kenya, we didn’t question our president. Criticism of the government was a jailable offense in the 1980s, so if ever we discussed corruption

or the government’s anti-Indian immigrant sentiment, we did it in hushed tones even in our own homes. For me, therefore, to hear the constant political bickering in my dorm room was completely new.

While our political expression was silenced, Kenya did afford us our freedom to practice religion. So in my first years in the USA, it was easy for me to claim my Muslim identity in relevant class or common room discussions. I shared my point of view about Islam and the small sect into which I was born, and engaged comparisons to other religions. Through these conversations, I began to shed my bigotry for atheists—Kenyan religious societies had painted them as amoral people knocking on hell’s door. A sociology class I took during my sophomore year really made me question God, society, and the truth about my own identities. My agnosticism increased during my twenties—and probably by no coincidence, my willingness to engage with another part of my identity also increased.

I went to a boys’ school until eighth grade where, once girl talk began, it dominated conversation. In all my environments— family, school, mosque—the only option

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I hid being gay for a very long time. It was something that I could hide, and until I felt safe enough, was going to do my best to hide. As for being Muslim, well, that wasn’t as easy to conceal—between my name and my skin color, a lot of people guessed those parts of my identity. For a long time, though, that didn’t matter—my safety wasn’t at stake.

But allow me to transition back to the academic year of that first Patriots’ Super Bowl. If you count back five months from February 2002, you hit September 2001. I remember the 11th day of that month; I was sitting in the college guidance office, and for attraction, love, and marriage that was ever discussed was that between a man and a woman. There was no alternative. And yet every cell in my being was giving me a different signal. I lived in a world where even the very concept of homosexuality escaped most people’s imaginations. So I fought my cells. While I could never dream of expressing to my school crushes how I felt about them, I also could not bring myself to date a girl. I perfected the art of avoidance and buried myself in work. It was the one thing that people wouldn’t question. “Why don’t you have a girlfriend?” I would be asked whenever I went back to Kenya for the summer. “Oh I’m too busy for that,” I would laugh and then quickly change the subject.

I was so swamped by societal norms that I stayed underground until I was in my late twenties—and came out not long before I joined R.L. I was grateful for Andy and Kate Chappell, for Karen Robertson and Steve Ward—people with whom I could talk about everything from gay rights to my frustrations with dating. My 10th grade English class—particularly in my second year here—was an enlightened group and in a pretty supportive way had endless curiosity about what guy I was dating. They were merciless gossips. My conceptualization of rights for gay people was slow in forming.

Remember—I had grown up in a society that denied the very existence of gay people.

So to come to America and even have the 14

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I suddenly felt completely conscious of my Muslim identity. Being a brown-skinned guy named Ali wasn’t exactly prime real estate at the time. right to exist was a huge step forward.

In my years in this country, I have watched the slow march of gay people toward attaining the same rights as heterosexuals. But even today, some states offer no legal protections from discrimination in the workplace for homosexuals. Until marriage equality passed recently, a person who had spent her life with her female partner had no first of kin rights in the ICU of a hospital where decisions about administering life support are made. Long-term couples had shaky claims to inheritance when their partners died. Same-sex couples couldn’t benefit from filing taxes jointly. So when marriage equality came, it was a huge victory for civil rights. To now watch the climate reverse to one that gives power to people who don’t want to extend business services or medical care to gay people on religious grounds, or to states that now want to make adoption for gay parents complicated, or that want to restrict the use of bathrooms for transgendered students, is heart-wrenching.

Mrs. Robertson burst in from next door to tell me that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York. It was a day of confusion, for sure, but none of us could have guessed at that moment how world politics would change. As the days went by and the identities of the attackers became known, I suddenly felt completely conscious of my Muslim identity. Being a brown-skinned guy named Ali wasn’t exactly prime real estate at the time. In discussions with my friends in Waltham and Concord—and here at R.L.—I felt an extra responsibility to explain Islam’s philosophy as a religion of peace even though I didn’t practice the faith anymore. Ultimately, I still believed in the higher ideals that the faith and my family had taught me. Islam was, then, and will always be a part of my cultural identity even though I find myself estranged from the “theism” part of it. When Timothy McVeigh blew up the federal building in Oklahoma in 1995, not all white people or Christians were viewed with suspicion— yet he hated the American government as

much as any other terrorist who has struck here. When the IRA was freedom fighting in (or terrorizing) Ireland, every Catholic didn’t get slapped with the terrorist label.

But after September 11th, even here in the relatively well-educated City of Boston, I felt the second glances in the street—so much so that I wanted to wave a small American flag everywhere I went to confirm that I wasn’t one of the bad guys. As the suspicion of people with remotely Middle-Eastern looks grew, the White House acted, and President Bush went to a mosque, shook hands with the Imam and clarified that the war against terrorism was not a war against Islam. Even though I couldn’t control what some people thought I represented when they saw me at an airport or on the T, at least I had a president, despite my profound disagreements with many of his policies, who understood the separation between 1.5 billon Muslims and the few terrorists that have hijacked their faith.

As an immigrant, I have always felt that at least my appearance and religious beliefs (if not always my sexual orientation) were treated as equal to others by both Republican and Democratic presidents. Until now.

I still cannot fathom the leader of the free world imposing a blanket ban on travel into the United States on every individual from select Muslim-majority countries under the guise of national safety and security.

It took me ten years to clear the hurdles of citizenship; there are many, many security procedures in place. So I just cannot view this ban as anything but malicious. And the process was this rough for privileged immigrants like me—people who knew English, had degrees after their name, and had institutions and lawyers backing them up. I certainly get why a country has to restrict the inflow of people, but there are ways to do that that are humane and that still allow people their dignity. I think of the possibility that I could have been born 400 miles away from Nairobi—beyond an arbitrary line that delineates Kenya from Somalia—and the possibility that I could have been starting my journey to the USA

a few weeks ago, or perhaps a few weeks from now when the next version of the ban goes into effect.

My hope is alive that those with a visible platform will continue to speak up for justice, democracy, and the rule of law.

These are big concepts that I don’t feel like I have the power to change. Sure, I can go to protests, sign petitions, and keep myself informed. But when the freedom of the press and truth itself is under siege, I know my voice won’t even register as a squeak.

What I can do is to keep developing my sense of empathy for the underdog—for anyone whose safety in this country might be challenged. With every proposed restrictive law, I take on the feelings of that scared student who might be transitioning genders but who can’t use a bathroom of his or her choice, or the British teacher named Mohamed who, after being stripsearched, was forced off his flight while on a school trip to the US with his students.

I think of the Hindu men shot last week in a Kansas bar while their assailant yelled at them to “Get of my country!” Imagine the press and the presidential vilification of an entire faith if this had been a Muslim man who wielded the gun. There has been a chilling effect on the very human-

ity of many in this country since January 20. This is why I hope that all of us, but particularly those with a voice that will carry to the leadership of our country, will speak. So far, the most effective voices against the assault on our democracy have been those on the inside—Republicans in Congress like John McCain and people who have the president’s ear on the golf course at Mar-a-Lago. To my mind, the voice of the Gillette triumvirate is an unused treasure trove. It might carry the sound of millions. My fellow humans (for despite our identities and circumstances, that’s what equates us all), this is why I cry inside…for the loss of that voice. And if you, the next generations, don’t feel like you can use it to express your discomfort or to help soothe the discomfort of others—for the loss of yours.

I have spent my career as a college counselor—counselor being the operative word. I prefer listening to speaking. I’m certainly not accustomed to discussing politics so publicly, but I feel as though I’ve used my own bully pulpit today in the hope that some of you will be able to free your own voices. Thanks for giving the podium to me, Mr. Brennan; and to all of you, thanks for listening.

Mr. Bhanji’s stay included classroom visits throughout the day. At the end of the school day, boys and faculty filled the Evans Choral Room for an extended conversation on the issues Mr. Bhanji addressed earlier in the day. Among the ideas stressed was the importance of being an intellectually avid learner and seeking out opportunities to learn from people who believe differently from us. One comment toward the end, on the need to be empathetic: “Keep an eye out for those who are not in our echo chamber and consider the truth in this expression: your problem is my problem.”

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Mar t i n Lu th e r Ki ng J r. Day

Our Brother’s Keeper The Reverend Liz Walker on Lessons from the Sudan

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n 1973 Liz Walker had “made it.” She was working for WBZTV and making six figures. That was back in the day, when there were only three channels, and you had to get up off the couch to change them. She was also Boston’s first African American television news anchor. In time, her 31-year television news career would bring her two Emmy Awards and an Edward R. Murrow Award for excellence in her field.

The Rev. Liz Walker spoke to the School in Hall on 19 January in commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. She promised to offer lessons from her life, which, by her account, took on a new meaning in 2001, when she went to South Sudan.

The world’s newest country, South Sudan was in the middle of a decades-long war against itself. On the invitation of a Zurichbased human rights organization responding to reports of slavery there—and without the support of her news station—she traveled with a delegation of about 20 Bostonians to investigate. There

“There is no us against them.

There is only us. I believe we are all connected, and that I have a responsibility to my community.”

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they participated in the liberation of over 6,700 enslaved women and children. Bearing witness to the untenable realities of slavery taking place in the 21st century changed her understanding of the world and her own role in it.

On that first trip they visited some seven villages over six weeks.

Millions of people were being displaced by the conflict, and the violence was everywhere and unspeakable. Yet news networks had ignored it. It was out of Sudan that parents were helping their sons to escape—some 20,000 young men ultimately covering a thousand miles on foot in search of safe havens and new lives—a migration that has come to be known as the Lost Boys of Sudan.* During those six weeks, Ms. Walker says she feared for her life.

But the Rev. Dr. Gloria White-Hammond, co-pastor of Bethel AME Church in Boston and one of the Ms. Walker’s traveling companions (and her personal “she-ro”), wanted to stay on and make a difference. As a result, members of the group returned to South Sudan many times over the next eleven years. Ms. Walker facilitated healing conversations among women from competing tribes and ethnicities in war torn regions that have never known peace, and asked how American women might take action in solidarity to support their efforts.

In 2002 the Ms. Walker and her colleagues established an organizational vehicle to assist with the economic development, healthcare, and education projects they initiated, calling it My Sister’s Keeper. Through it they also raised funds to build a girls’ school in the village of Akon in South Sudan, where less than one percent of girls receive an education. On the day the school opened, 1,000 girls enrolled. Despite persistent violent conflicts and political upheaval in the region, the school continues to operate today.

Ms. Walker has been described as a dynamic, charismatic force. Yet, rather than leading with her celebrity, according to the Dr. White-Hammond in a 2014 Globe article, she leads with her humility.

“My experience in South Sudan taught me a lot about my own limitations,” said the Ms. Walker, a 2005 graduate of Harvard Divinity School and senior pastor of Roxbury Presbyterian Church since 2011. “I went to Africa in a sense to save Africa, but instead, Africa saved me.” She explained that, like many others who go into television news, she had entertained a vision of spreading truth to the public and working for good. “But when you get paid a lot of money along the way, your priorities start to change.”

“Television news is all about confrontation,” she said—always reduced to an “us-against-them” narrative. It provides only one per-

ception of the real world, a perception engineered to drive ratings.

If we rely on TV for our information, she warned, our perception of the world will be limited. Her message was all the more relevant, given the proliferation of “fake news” and the notion that we have entered a “post-truth” era.

“The only thing I knew about Africa was what I learned from watching Tarzan movies in the 1950s,” she said, to illustrate the pitfalls of a TV-shaped worldview. “Tarzan was the only white man in the jungle. How did he get to be king of the jungle?”

She marveled how every Saturday morning, without fail, Tarzan would be running toward the edge of a cliff, trailed by 500 Africans. And every Saturday morning, Tarzan would clear the chasm to safety via a handy vine while his 500 pursuers—natives of the land, no less—leapt to their deaths.

When Ms. Walker was a child in Little Rock, Arkansas, her father took her to hear Martin Luther King Jr. speak. She referenced an excerpt from his “Letter from Birmingham Jail:” All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be

what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be...

“He inspired ordinary people to do extraordinary things,” she said, “and that has stayed with me.”

“There is no us against them,” she said, denouncing the media’s simplified version of reality. “There is only us. I believe we are all connected, and that I have a responsibility to my community. My message is this: You don’t have to go to Sudan, but you have to do something. You need to reach out to the least of these in this world.”

The recipient of several honorary degrees, Ms. Walker has long been involved in community service organizations and projects.

In addition to My Sister’s Keeper, she helped found the Jane Doe Safety Fund, a multi-million-dollar, statewide anti-violence initiative that works on policy and supports domestic abuse shelters and safe houses around the Commonwealth. The Roxbury Presbyterian Church, under her leadership, is also home to the Cory Johnson Trauma Project, which addresses the epidemic of PTSD in a lowincome African American community. * In 2013 R.L. invited South Sudan refugee Paul Lorem, then-sophomore at Yale, to speak in Hall in commemoration of MLK, during which he described his journey from refugee camp to the U.S. N e w s l e t t e r o f Th e R o x b u r y L at i n S c h o o l

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IAF

Grand Opening of the

Winter Family Day honors winter team alumni and coaches

Photography by Adam Richins

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he Roxbury Latin community celebrated Winter Family Day on Friday, 20 January, by sweeping all home athletic contests; honoring alumni wrestling, basketball, and hockey athletes; and commemorating the Grand Opening of the new Indoor Athletic Facility (IAF).

In an R.L. first, all three winter varsity teams competed on the School’s campus on the same day. (For the last 40 years, R.L.’s hockey teams have played at Dexter School in Brookline.) After a spirited, all-student pep rally in the early afternoon, led by Class I Vice President Michael O’Grady, Varsity Wrestling responded by defeating St. Sebastian’s in the McNay Wrestling Palaistra (84-0).

Crowds then moved downstairs to the Albert H. Gordon Field House to watch Varsity Basketball prevail over BB&N (66-44); and soon afterwards, hundreds of students, parents, alumni, and other guests streamed into the adjacent IAF to watch Varsity Hockey beat Pingree (1-0).

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At halftime of the basketball game, the School honored basketball and wrestling alumni, acknowledging the contributions to R.L. Athletics by the numerous alumni athletes and coaches who returned for the event. Alumni hockey players and former coaches were also honored just prior to the hockey game.

The climax of Winter Family Day was the Grand Opening of the IAF, which featured speeches from center ice by Headmaster Kerry Brennan and Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh. Prior to the game vs. Pingree, Mr. Brennan acknowledged numerous people, companies, and neighborhood groups involved in bringing the athletic facilities renovation/construction project to fruition (including Parkway

Youth Hockey and Catholic Memorial School, both of which used the IAF for practices this past winter). Moments later, Mayor Walsh joined Mr. Brennan, along with Board Chair Bob O’Connor ’85 and former Board Chair Dennis Kanin ’64, for the ceremonial puck drop. Varsity Hockey went on to defeat Pingree, 1-0, capping off a memorable evening of celebration.

Following a rousing rendition of the National Anthem by The Latonics (directed by Music Director Rob Opdycke), the “real” puck drop took place, and several hundred fans enjoyed an exciting, competitive hockey game. As they had done at the wrestling match and basketball game earlier in the afternoon, R.L. Nation led the cheers with gusto, cre-

Bob O’Connor ’85, Mayor Marty Walsh, Kerry Brennan, and Dennis Kanin ’64, after the puck drop.

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Left: The Latonics performed the National Anthem before the hockey game.

Below: Adam Banks I on the path to pinning his St. Seb’s opponent.

ating a strong home-ice advantage for the Foxes. “It was very exciting for our guys to play in that kind of atmosphere and to be part of that special occasion,” said Head Coach Dave Cataruzolo. Max Alsarraf I scored midway through the second period (assisted by Jimmy Duffy II and Jack Luca III), and goalie Bryan McGrath I turned away all 27 of Pingree’s shots, leading R.L. to a 1-0 victory—a fitting conclusion to a milestone day in the 372-year history of The Roxbury Latin School.

Right: Varsity Hockey capped off a memorable evening when it defeated Pingree, 1-0.

Below: R.L. Nation created a home advantage in all three sports.

Below right: Will Greer III midway through R.L.’s victory over BB&N.

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R.L. Varsity Wrestling with alumni teammates and coaches, past and current.

R.L. Varsity Hockey with alumni teammates and coaches, past and current.

R.L. Varsity Basketball with alumni teammates and coaches, past and current.

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Once and Future Trivia A Map of Buried Treasures at Roxbury Latin

by Mike Pojman

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he completion of the Indoor Athletic Facility last fall concludes, at least for the foreseeable future, a 30-year expansion of the School’s footprint that began in 1987 with the construction of the Gordon Wing, followed by the Smith Arts Center in 1992, the Bauer Science Building in 1998, the Gordon Field House in 2000, and the Jarvis Refectory

xkcd.com

in 2002. In deference to an age-old custom, a “time capsule” (actually a covered eight-quart stainless steel food chafer of the kind found on buffet lines), to be opened 100 years after its entombment, was concealed in each of those buildings.

Alas, as far as anyone knows, no such repository was placed in either the Perry Building (1927), original Gordon Field House (1957)—now the McNay Palaistra, or the Ernst Wing (1964), and extensive renovation of each of these facilities in recent years has uncovered nothing. It’s particularly disappointing that the Perry 22

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Building is capsuleless, because we are only ten years away from its 100th anniversary. Wouldn’t it have been interesting, through contemporary artifacts, to get a glimpse into what the students and masters were thinking and doing back when the schoolhouse was dedicated?

Our descendants will not be so deprived.

The time capsules in all the “new” buildings are well stocked and will be easily accessible when the time comes. The first, to be opened in 2087, is lodged in a narrow space behind the wall to the left of the elevator door on the first floor of the Gordon Wing.

The capsule in the Smith Arts Center is behind the black slate dedication plaque above the fireplace mantel in the theater foyer. If you are around in 2102, you can retrieve the capsule in the Jarvis Building from its niche behind the Refectory fireplace. The time capsule in the Bauer Science building is sealed in the wall to the left of the doorframe leading from the hallway to the atrium, at floor level. The Gordon Field House capsule can be found in the wall niche to the left of the window looking into the gym from the grand staircase leading down from the Bernstein Tea Room. And finally, the most recent time capsule is plastered into the wall (lower left at nearly floor level) of the Indoor Athletic Facility’s main entrance foyer leading into the building from the concrete steps.

And what’s in all those repositories?

For the record, the contents of each was published in the Tripod when its building was dedicated, so consult your back issues of that venerable publication to satisfy your curiosity. In general, though, they contain a collection of items representa-

1998

1992

2002

2000 1987 2016

tive of everyday school life at the time, including R.L. memorabilia, samples of tests and course syllabi, and even a biographical profile in the words of each boy in the School, with a chronicle of his day from start to finish and his predictions of what life will be like 100 years hence. “I’m writing to you from beyond the grave,” began one boy, as he went on to describe his morning routine. Another described himself as “good looking, OK at math, and shorter than I’d like to be.”

I know firsthand what’s contained in the time capsule of the Indoor Athletic Facility, because I packed and sealed it myself last summer. To complete the collection of esoterica donated by students and faculty, I combed the School looking

Glen Ryan prepares to seal a time capsule in the Indoor Athletic Facility last summer.

for anything that might be of particular interest to our counterparts in the next century. I even reached for a copy of Jenny’s Latin 1, since it has been a staple of the sixie course for the past 50 years. But I ultimately left that out because I expect its disinterment in 2116 would provide no surprise to the assembled multitude, since in all likelihood it will still be the Classics Department’s textbook of choice for first year Latin students 100 years from now.

I could imagine a befuddled sixie at the unsealing of the capsule exclaiming, “Hey, there’s my Latin book. I’ve been looking all over for that!”

I don’t want to spoil the surprise for those of you who plan to be present on that historic day when that dusty, stainless steel chafer is finally returned to service on the Refectory food line, so I won’t list everything that is sealed inside, but here’s a sampling of the more interesting items:

6 6"-square of sod cut from the grass of Schoolhouse Field on the morning it was torn up to be replaced by the new turf field 6 The 2015-2016 Roxbury Latin Directory with pictures signed by students, staff, and faculty 6 U.S. currency: $1, $5, $10, $20, penny, nickel, dime, and quarter 6 Assorted R.L. memorabilia: mug, socks, postcard, button, bumper sticker, refrigerator magnet, winter hat, pencils, grey polo shirt, and paper weight 6 Rubik’s Cube 6 TI-84 graphing calculator 6 Red and black erasable markers used to write on the white boards

6 Flash drive containing May Day photos taken in May 2016 6 Bottle of Purell 6 Dunkin’ Donuts styrofoam coffee cup, medium 6 The 23 June 2016 edition of the Boston Globe with a front-page article claiming that by the end of the 21st century, 30 percent of downtown Boston could be under water during a major storm due to rising sea levels 6 Hockey puck 6 Applied Art sketchbooks by two seniors with written comments from Mr. Buckley 6 Honors Chemistry student’s final exam (perfect score!)

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The members of ECOS during a clean-up in the R.L. forest last fall.

Roxbury Latin’s Land Ethic “All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. His instincts prompt him to compete for his place in that community, but his ethics prompt him also to co-operate. The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals or collectively: the land...In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such.”

—Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 1949

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by Elizabeth Carroll n their Natural Design class, the sixies read an essay by Aldo Leopold, entitled “The Land Ethic” from his book, A Sand County Almanac. In it, Leopold argues that the same ethics that guide our interactions with one another in our community should also help guide our treatment of the natural environment. At Roxbury Latin, we care most what kind of person a 24

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boy is, and the School does its best to help the boys entrusted to us to grow into men of character. It is within this context that in Natural Design we ask the boys to think about how their moral compass might extend to their stewardship of the environment.

As one would expect, their opinions vary and lead to robust conversations, but it is clear that the boys see it as an ethical obligation to be caretakers of the earth and its natural resources.

Roxbury Latin has made environmental stewardship an increasing priority in recent years. The foundation for this can be found in the Strategic Plan, which states that Roxbury Latin will “pursue opportunities in the design and operation of buildings and grounds to model appropriate environmental stewardship.”

Today, this commitment is taking shape in several ways, most notably through Roxbury Latin’s: • Installation and use of a large solar photovoltaic array; • Consideration of environmental impacts when building the new Indoor Athletic Facility (IAF); • Robust student-led recycling and composting program; and • Ongoing stewardship of the R.L. forest.

Solar Array n 2012 Roxbury Latin installed a 138 kW solar photovoltaic array on the Albert H. Gordon Field House. The system provides all of the energy requirements for the Field House and Palaistra, and at times generates surplus power that is directed to the School’s HVAC system. The clean, renewable energy generated by this system reduces the School’s annual carbon footprint by 120 tons. This is the “carbon equivalent” of removing 21 cars from the road each year that the system is in use. To date, the solar panels have generated more than 570 MW of electricity.

Not only does the solar array provide significant environmental and economic benefits, it also provides a wonderful educational opportunity for the boys. At the time the solar panels were installed, Kerry Brennan noted, “It was not only in the interest of exploring ways in which we could become better stewards of the environment, but also a matter of education: what might be the classroom implications of such an initiative?” Five years later, the solar array plays an important role in several Roxbury Latin science courses including Natural Design and Environmental Science, where the boys spend several weeks learning about renewable energy, and in Physics, where students study the photoelectric effect—or how solar panels convert sunlight to electricity. (This is the work for which Albert Einstein was awarded his Nobel Prize).

While the boys have a great view of the panels from their English and history classrooms, it is the computer kiosk in the Bauer Science Building that allows them to collect data and observe what the system is actually doing. The kiosk continuously records the solar panel output and aggregates the data back to when the system was first installed. This means that the students can see what the array is doing in any given minute, and what it has done over the past five years (bar graphs show total system output by month, year, and for the past 30 days). Importantly, the kiosk translates this information into relatable metrics—for example, it will say that, at that moment, the system is generating 75 kW, “enough to power 187 television sets or 995 light bulbs.” The kiosk also has screens that show the sun’s position and the weather, and that explain how the system generates and distributes electricity.

Instead of talking in the abstract about clean energy, our boys are able to see renewable energy in action and to quantify the benefits that the solar panels are providing to Roxbury Latin and to the global community.

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Efficiency at the Indoor Athletic Facility oxbury Latin also showed its commitment to environmental stewardship in planning and constructing the new Indoor Athletic Facility. For example, the building and surrounding landscape include storm water retention and filtration basins that allow almost all storm water to be treated on campus. When rainwater hits impermeable surfaces like roads or buildings, it collects pollutants such as oil and car fluids and carries them into

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Environmental Stewardship and the Athletic Facilities Project The IAF and surrounding landscape include storm water retention and filtration basins that allow almost all storm water to be treated on campus.

The large volumes of rock and land waste generated when preparing the tennis courts, field, and building sites was used as infill for other parts of the project, creating zero infill waste on the project site.

100-percent LED lighting illuminates the IAF, reducing electricity use by close to 75 percent. The hockey rink uses “smart lighting,” which automatically adjusts depending on the amount of natural light available.

local sewer systems and water bodies. This “storm water runoff ” is one of the largest sources of water pollution in the country.

Roxbury Latin put systems in place to treat storm water on site for all but the largest storms, virtually eliminating this environmental impact.

During construction, Roxbury Latin generated large volumes of rock and land waste when preparing the tennis courts and other field and building sites. Normally, this construction waste is hauled off-site for disposal in large trucks, creating air pollution.

For this project, the School was able to reuse this “waste rock” as infill for other parts of the project, which resulted in zero infill waste on the project site.

Finally, great care was taken to minimize the amount of energy required to run the new facility. The School invested in 100-percent LED lighting throughout the building, reducing electricity needs by close to 75 percent. Not only does this dramatically reduce the building’s carbon footprint, it will save the School money over time. For the hockey rink, R.L. went a step further and installed “smart lighting.” In effect, the lights over the rink automatically adjust depending on the amount of natural light available, providing optimal lighting conditions for the rink with a minimal use of electricity.

ECOS and Recycling n addition to this commitment to sustainability by the School’s leadership, our students are taking an active role in reducing their impact on the environment. Three years ago, Roxbury Latin switched to a comprehensive, multi-stream recycling system that allows people to recycle just about anything on campus. Every classroom, office, and common area on campus has a blue recycling bin for collecting paper, cardboard, glass, metals, and plastics. This recycling program is almost entirely student

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run. ECOS, the School’s environmental student organization, assigns each of its members responsibility for managing various recycling bins around the School. It is the boys’ responsibility to make sure the bins are in place and to empty them on a regular basis. Class IV also plays an important role in supporting this program by emptying the bins in the Perry Building, and the Building and Grounds team lends a hand with bins in the faculty room. ECOS also oversees the School’s composting program, which allows us to dramatically decrease the amount of food waste we are sending to landfills. This spring, for the first time, ECOS will be leading a School-wide initiative to reduce paper use by 10 to 20 percent, further reducing the School’s environmental footprint.

R.L. Forest erhaps the most visible example of Roxbury Latin’s environmental stewardship has been the work that has been done in the forest. This mature, 50-acre, New England woodland absorbs close to 150 tons of carbon dioxide every year. This is slightly more than the carbon reductions realized from our use of the solar energy. The forest is home to several vernal pools,

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diverse wildlife, and more than 40 different plant and tree species, including a few rare American Chestnuts. ECOS plays an important role in maintaining this wonderful resource, spending time on fall and spring weekends picking up trash and clearing new trails. In class, students in Natural Design, Environmental Science, Biology, and IPS use these woods as a living laboratory, making observations and collecting data, all while gaining a greater appreciation for the natural environment. With the Mass Audubon summer camp in full swing, Roxbury Latin is now able to share this beautiful resource with hundreds of children from all over Boston and surrounding communities, many of whom have had limited opportunities to experience nature in this way.

At Roxbury Latin, the importance of ethics and character has always been at the core of a boy’s education. In recent years, we, as a community, have started to embrace Leopold’s concept of a Land Ethic and have started to see environmental stewardship as not just “a good thing to do,” but as a moral obligation. Roxbury Latin students have long benefited from learning about natural resources in the classroom, but in recent years they have been able to see environmental stewardship in action. Through the School’s use of renewable energy and energy efficient technologies, our robust recycling and composting program, and preserving and learning in an expansive, undisturbed forest, Roxbury Latin is making important strides in environmental sustainability.

Elizabeth Carroll teaches Environmental Science and a section of Natural Design.

The kiosk (above) in the Bauer Science Building that displays energy data from the solar array on the roof of the Gordon Field House (right).

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S ci e n ce & E ngine e ring N ews

R.L. Robots Make Big Strides in Competitions

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his winter marked R.L.’s second season of VEX, an international robotics program and the most widespread in the U.S. This year R.L. fielded two middle school teams and two upper school teams.

Game rules, game pieces, engineering tasks, and programing tasks change every year. This year’s robot needed to grab, scoop, place, or throw yellow foam “jacks” and/or soft one-foot-square cubes over a two-foot fence. Christopher Zhu IV described how, limited by the restrictions on robot size, his team initially built its robot’s claw too small. “To solve this problem,” he explained, “we decided on building a folding claw that would expand as the robot turned on.” He also observed how the top teams’ robots had strong metal bracing for stability—and took notes for next year.

Robert Cunningham, a junior who began programing seriously at age ten, did the programing for one of R.L.’s upper school robots. One of his serious challenges involved precisely controlling the speed of the wheels. He first tried incorporating control loops, but they caused a slight delay between the movement of the control sticks and the movement of the robot. To address that, he carefully tuned the parameters of the control loop to favor immediate movement over precise movement. “However,” explained Robert, “over time, we came to a superior solution: carefully tuning the physical mounting of the wheels, such that the control algorithm would have as few adjustments to make as possible. By being extremely careful with the physical designs of our wheel wells, we were able to eliminate the need for a control algorithm, and make the robot both responsive and precise.”

Kalyan Palepu III and his team had to address balance issues in their robot.

First they redistributed the weight of the robot by moving the heavier parts (e.g., batteries) to act as counterweights. Then they increased the size of the robot’s base.

“But there are sizing restraints on the robot before the match starts,” Kalyan added, “so we had to be creative”—they designed the

base with a section that expands once the robot is in play.

All that creativity may have won the day. After an exciting season of smaller competitions, both of R.L.’s upper school robots were invited to the Southern New England Championships on 4-5 March at Quinsigamond Community College in Worcester, where R.L.’s top robot, along with its alliance, made it to the semifinal round. This automatically qualified it—along with only 14 other teams out of 95—for the VEX World Championships in April in Louisville, Kentucky. While honored by the invitation, the team will pass on making the trip this year. However, all are anxious to apply this year’s experience to VEX competitions next year.

Christopher Zhu IV (standing), Kalyan Palepu III

Science Bowl Competitions Do you know what a chemoheterotroph is? If you answered “an organism which makes its food from chemical energy,” then you would have fared well at the Northeast Regional Middle School Science Bowl on 11 February at MIT. The event featured questions ranging from chemistry and physics to geology and energy.

With a month of preparation under its belt, Roxbury Latin brought a fearsome fivesome (fifthies Rohil Dhaliwal and Daniel Sun-Friedman, and sixies Vishnu Emani, David Sullivan, and Alex Yin). In the qualification rounds, the squad went 4-1, systematically routing teams in all things STEM, and only losing a nail-biter to last year’s 3rd-place finisher at nationals, Jonas Clarke Middle School in Lexington. Finishing in 2nd place in its bracket, R.L. moved into the “Elite Eight” and squared off against a formidable Boston Latin team. In the battle of the Latins, R.L. came up short, losing on the final question in regulation time. Siva Emani I, who coached the middle school team, also coached the high school team. He and teammates Felix Wang, David Ma, Aazer Siddiqui, and Nate Lopes competed for the second consecutive year in the New England Science Bowl at the University of Connecticut on 4 March.

After the preliminary rounds, the R.L. team was seeded 9th out of 78 schools and was one of the top 16 schools to move into the double-elimination championship rounds.

The boys split their first two matches before losing to perennial winner Lexington High School in a close match. Given that our boys’ schedules don’t allow for dedicated classes that practice year-round for such events (as compared to many of the top schools), we can be very proud of their accomplishments.

Felix Wang named Regeneron Finalist

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elix Wang I was a finalist in the Regeneron Science Talent Search (formerly the Intel Science Talent Search and the Westinghouse Science Talent Search), the nation’s most prestigious science and math competition for high school seniors. Felix was one of 40 finalists selected from 300 scholars (and 1,700+ original entrants) based on the originality and creativity

of their scientific research, among other measurements. Felix’s research project was Functional Equations in Complex Analysis and Number Theory. Felix joins five R.L. alumni who achieved this honor in the past 30 years: Steven Byrnes ’03, Samir Sur ’02, Scott Fruhan ’99, Brian Hafler ’96, and Andrew Jackson ’89. Brian and Andrew went on to become winners.

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the arts Junior Play

Arabian Nights

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his year’s Junior Play was Arabian Nights, drawn from Dominic Cooke’s adaptation and presented on the Smith Theater stage on 24 & 25 February. Directed by Derek Nelson, the performances featured original music by freshman Jonathan Weiss, while Classes IV, V, and VI provided 40 actors—enough to populate a small village and cover the sixty-plus male and female roles the script demands. The play tells seven of the endless stream of tales Shahrazad told her royal husband Shahrayar each morning to stave off her banishment, including “The Story of Ali Baba,” “The Story of the Little Beggar,” “The Story of Es-Sindibad the Sailor,” “How Abu Hassan Broke Wind,” “The Story of the Wife Who Wouldn’t Eat,” and “The Story of the Envious Sisters.” For this production actors wore simple masks to signify the female roles. Gathered, told, and retold over centuries, the stories of Arabian Nights are not just Arabic, but Persian and Indian as well, and comprise one of the world’s great collections of folktales.

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Student Production

A Sting in the Tale

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he Smith stage delivered this year’s student production, A Sting in the Tale, for an enthusiastic audience of more than one hundred on 28 January. A murder mystery satire by Brian Clemens and Dennis Spooner, the story concerns two playwrights who, in a desperate search for a new idea for their next play, find themselves crossing the line between fantasy and reality. Senior Henry Lin-David selected, initiated, and directed this year’s production. The cast included Erik March, Oliver Booth, Devin Quinlin, Jess Sidell (Beaver Country Day), and Ainsleigh Caldicott (DoverSherborn Regional High School).

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Winter Musical Notes On 1 February, six musicians performed in Rousmaniere Hall in the second of three student recitals of the year. Clockwise from above, Ben Kelly VI performed a cello piece by composer Mark Summer; Andrew Song I played Chopin’s “Waltz in C# minor”; Marc deFontnouvelle II played the traditional tune “East Virginia Blues” on the mandolin; Christopher Zhu IV played “Moments Musicaux,” by Rachmaninoff; and senior and sixie brothers Siva and Vishnu Emani, dressed in traditional garb and performing together for the first time in school, performed “Kamas Thillana,” by Patnam Subramania Iyer, on violins. Then on 5 March, the Glee Club performed Schubert’s Mass in G as part of the annual Joint Concert with Winsor. Hosted at R.L., the concert also included performances by the Latonics and Winsor’s Chorale, Small Chorus, and Senior Small.

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Arts Calendar Fri, 21 Apr 7:30 pm: Senior Concert Fri & Sat, 28 & 29 Apr 8 pm: Spring Musical: Into the Woods @ Winsor Wed, 10 May 7:30 pm: The Sly Voxes’ Spring Concert Fri, 12 May 7:30 pm: Spring Instrumental Concert

Scholastic Art and Writing Awards Roxbury Latin is proud of its winners in the 2017 Scholastic Art and Writing competition. The nation’s longest-running and most prestigious scholarship and recognition initiative for 7th–12th graders, the competition awards Gold Keys, Silver Keys, and Honorable Mentions to recognize excellence in a number of categories and media. Andrew Steinberg II won two Silver Keys for his critical essays, “Borders, Boundaries, and Free-

dom of Movement: Political and human impact of policies affecting migration of refugees” and “Making Alzheimer’s Disease Just a Memory.” Erik Zou III won a Gold Key for Pinning Freedom (above, left), as well as two Silver Keys and an Honorable Mention for his other pieces.

Dylan Zhou II won a Gold Key for Plugging In (above, right), as well as a Silver Key and an Honorable Mention for additional works.

The ExperiMentalist Bends Forks… and Minds Ever since his first visit to Roxbury Latin in 2004, Gerard Senehi has topped the list of graduating seniors’ favorite halls. A master of telekinesis, thought reading, and telepathy, Mr. Gerard Senehi, aka “The ExperiMentalist,” has members of the audience perform seemingly impossible feats. On 2 February he returned to challenge the credulity of yet another generation of R.L. boys—including Jim McCoy I (left), who was called up to the stage to aid in one of these illusions. The ExperiMentalist was also the featured entertainment at the February Flurry on 4 February.

Mr. Senehi’s visit was made possible by the Berman Artist-in-Residence Fund, established by Ethan Berman ’79 and his wife, Fiona Hollands, in honor of Ethan’s mother, Claire, to bring to the School annually a distinguished figure in the arts.

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An Interdisciplinary Feast Dr. Sue McCrory on Tradition and Innovation in Art

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ven before Plato and Aristotle crossed verbal swords over the merits of art as mimesis, artists have drawn their inspiration from the observable world as well as from historical precedents to create something new. The interplay of two concepts in the creation of art—tradition and innovation, and the relationship between them—was the subject of a Hall by faculty member Dr. Sue McCrory on 9 March.

As a school, Roxbury Latin is steeped in tradition, Dr. McCrory began. “We read our traditions, sing them, and pray them, build them as Western Civ projects, live them on the Senior Grass. We live by our traditions, day in and day out.” Recalling Anne Lilly’s Great Hall exhibit in January, organized around the motto “Mortui Vivos Docent,” Dr. McCrory raised the question that bears asking: What are the dead teaching the living? And in the context of art, Does this leave room for innovation? “At R.L. you are asked to think critically and to be leaders,” she said. “But first you have to be comfortable with not having the answers.” Affirming Ms. Lilly’s statements, Dr. McCrory encouraged the students to “be patient with yourselves as you work toward a better and better solution. Allow for silence.”

And don’t ignore tradition: it can feed innovation in a powerful way. If art is mimesis, it assumes the artist studies not only his or her natural world, but is well informed historically and artistically. In her sculpture “van Ruisdael’s View of Haarlem,” Lilly looked to Jacob van Ruisdael’s spacious, serene landscape by the same name, “View of Haarlem” (1670). Ms. Lilly’s goal was not to re-present the painting, but rather to express kinetically and in a new context the concept of expansiveness.

Marcel Duchamp’s “Bicycle Wheel” (1913) is another example of presenting an object out of context. His famous “Fountain” (1917), a urinal set on end (which created a furor 32

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and was rejected from an exhibition put on by the Society of Independent Artists in 1917), pushed the idea further. By presenting a familiar object in an unfamiliar way, the artist gives it a new meaning that transcends its original purpose, allowing the artist to present it as “Art.”

public of Manet’s time. And while Manet looked back to Raphael, Raphael for his part turned to classical sculptures for his ideas.

Dr. McCrory also pointed out Manet’s suggestive approach to creating the illusion of form and three-dimensionality—an inventiveness in technique that infuriated

“The Swing (after Fragonard),” by Yinka Shonibare

“The Swing,” by Jean-Honoré Fragonard

To demonstrate the relation between tradition and innovation, Dr. McCrory explored three works of art with the students. In the first, Édouard Manet’s “Luncheon on the Grass” (1862), she showed how the artist appeals to the viewer’s intellect by recalling in form and subject matter Titian’s “Pastoral Concert” (1510) and Raphael’s “Judgement of Paris” (engraving, circa 1510) as precursors to Manet’s composition. The first represents an allegory of poetry and the second an episode in classical mythology; both works would have been familiar to any art critic, student of art, or informed member of the Parisian

art critics. Subsequent artists took this expressive innovation further: Van Gogh (expressive use of color), Matisse (flattening), Picasso (fracturing form)—which paved the way for Cubist-like studies and the artistic vision of modernist photographer Paul Strand.

A second example is contemporary British artist Yinka Shonibare, whose installation “The Swing (after Fragonard)” (2001) is a direct quote of Fragonard’s Rococo “The Swing” (1770). Shonibare uses a headless mannequin dressed in rich and complex folds of fabric—Dutch Wax Print, which comes laden with “layers of

“At R.L. you are asked to think critically and to be leaders. But first you have to be comfortable with not having the answers.” historical and cultural contexts, a web of socioeconomic and global trade relationships,” Dr. McCrory explained. “Viewing this installation, we are forced to consider our role—our relationship to this figure. In it we discover that identity is multi-faceted and social identity is a construct. Shonibare’s work displays the primacy of idea, historically relevant but breaking with the past.” That he became a conceptual artist is in part a result of a disability of partial paralysis. Physically unable to construct his work himself, he relies upon a team of assistants to realize his artistic vision for him.

Dr. McCrory offered a third example in the works of Ai Weiwei, a contemporary Chinese artist who has a long history of being controversial. His work, for example, includes a series of three photos documenting him dropping an ancient Chinese vase; a marble sculpture of a surveillance camera; and an installation called “Straight.”

“Straight” is a floor piece made of stacks of rebar, arranged in varying thicknesses to form an undulating expanse. The genesis of the work was the 2008 earthquake in the Sichuan region of China, in which 5,000 school children died as their school buildings collapsed. Ai later went on-site with a camera to Sichuan to expose the results of what many saw as shoddy construction of the schools—an act of defiance against the government for which he was imprisoned. The rebar was salvaged from the wreckage, but Ai had no immediate idea in mind when he first began purchasing the mangled rebar. He eventually began in the simplest way he could: having the rebar pounded straight by his assistants, who worked steadily on it even as he was in prison. What do the dead teach the living here? Dr. McCrory did not offer a definitive answer, leaving each member of the audi-

ence to decide if the message was one of hope and resilience, or futility in the act of moving on after such a tragedy. But she did say that when she visited the floor piece in the Brooklyn Museum, a commemoration of those lost in the Sichuan disaster, she

“found the silence of this piece deafening.”

Silence can be key to the creative process. Anne Lilly’s work, informed by silence, is based on motion. Her pieces invite us to interact with them, and as we cause the objects to move, we become aware of the passage of time. “From the dead,” Dr. McCrory reminded us, “you could say that we learn we are privileged to be alive.”

Dr. McCrory’s presentation built upon Anne Lilly’s January Hall, in which she offered a preview and discussion of her Great Hall exhibit of kinetic sculptures.

At the end of Dr. McCrory’s presentation, Headmaster Kerry Brennan underscored the significance of such a Hall. “As with our reading and study of English literature, here we have seen the possibility of being excited by visual literacy. I hope many of you will be motivated to do much more of this—an interdisciplinary feast.”

Dr. Sue McCrory teaches AP Art History, Art & Technology, and a section of Western Civilization.

Brian Buckley and Anne Lilly with “van Ruisdael’s View of Haarlem.”

Kinetic sculptor Anne Lilly, whose exhibit “Mortui Vivos Docent” graced the Great Hall this winter, engineers her structures intricately to move in ways that “shift and manipulate our perceptions of time, space, and energy.” Each piece, typically constructed from stainless steel and employing mechanized bevel gears, relies on an initial nudge by the viewer to propel a fluid and mesmerizing motion. After her Hall on 10 January, Ms. Lilly discussed her work further with boys in several classes, including Natural Design, MSI (Math-Science Investigations), Applied Art, Engineering, and Physics. Last year Dr. McCrory led a field trip for one of her classes to Ms. Lilly’s studio in Somerville.

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Learning from the Masters

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very year at the end of winter term, endless icons of Western Civilization are on display in the Great Hall. The Class IV project generates the gamut of recreations: from battle dioramas to Classical temples to DaVinci inventions to 20th century electronics.

We have seen our share of guillotines (this year’s specimen saw a victim, by the looks of it), trebuchets, and crossbows. There was a hand-hewn Windsor chair a few years back and a musical composition recently. And there are always a few examples of fine art reproductions, thanks to the encouragement of our Arts Department chairman, Brian Buckley.

“I have tried over the years to influence the boys into creating something that they can later take home and enjoy,” says Mr. Buckley. For the several boys who chose to make studies of master works in painting and photography this year, he provided the proper materials, gave them tips on technique, and was available for consultations when problems arose.

Just as with all of the projects, the boys are tasked with rendering their object/project as close to the historical original as possible.

Sue McCrory, who teaches art and history, underscores that boys who choose to create a work in paint, or drawn on paper after a photograph, must follow closely the authentic look and/or technique of the original image. She adds, “Not an easy task for someone copying, say, Cezanne!” (See all the projects online: https://tinyurl.com/gpslggl )

Using oils on canvas, Andrew Zhang IV painted this copy of “The Crimson Rambler” (1908) by Philip Leslie Hale, RL 1883. Hale was a student of The Boston School, and also an enthusiast of the Garden Movement.

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Reid Corless IV carefully rendered his copy of “Mont Sainte Victoire,” by Paul Cezanne (1904), whose style influenced 20th-century movements of Cubism and Modern Art.

Avi Attar IV modeled his painting after “San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk” by French Impressionist Claude Monet.

This charcoal drawing by J.J. De Marco IV recreates the photo taken by Joe Rosenthal in 1945 of U.S. Marines raising the flag during the Battle of Iwo Jima.

Kameron Miller IV recreated in pencil Sam Shere’s photograph of the 1937 Hindenberg disaster (which became known as “the most famous news photograph ever taken”).

Fa cul t y Sp otl i g ht E ri n D ro mgo ole, Histor y

Erin Dromgoole is the Steven E. Ward Chairholder in History and teaches Western Civilization (Class IV) and Roots & Shoots: Boston’s Place in Human History (Class VI). In addition to her coaching roles, she is also R.L.’s Learning Specialist.

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rin Dromgoole joined the R.L. faculty in 2006. This year, she’s teaching the famous ninth grade Western Civilization course for the 11th straight year. She is also Head Coach of both the junior cross-country team and the varsity track & field team—the first woman to serve as a varsity head coach for any sport at R.L. Erin led track & field to its first-ever ISL Championship wins in 2012 and 2013, and to first place at New England Division III Championship five consecutive years, from 2011 to 2015.

Among the curricular units she teaches, she really enjoys working with ninth graders on their Western Civ Projects. “The process of coming up with an idea and figuring out how to construct a physical representation of that idea is always a challenge, and it’s a rewarding process for the boys—as well as for me. Their pride is reflected in their eyes and in the way they carry themselves during their oral

presentations. The Western Civ Project is a real moment for boys in Class IV, and I love playing a role in that moment.”

Her favorite books on history? Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson, is one—an account of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, written in the style of a murder-mystery.

“In all of his books,” Erin says, “Larson uses a unique literary technique: anything between quotation marks is taken from actual letters, newspaper articles, diaries and the like. Larson ingeniously assembles these excerpts to create a fascinating and eminently readable book.” Another favorite is Founding Brothers, by Joseph Ellis.

“I love that this book is broken down into chapters that can be read as discrete stories, but when read together they present a rich historical picture. People will find a lot of familiar references to the events portrayed in the musical Hamilton. For example, Ellis vividly depicts ‘the room where it happened’—where Jefferson and

Hamilton struck the deal that resulted in Washington, D.C., becoming the capital of the United States.”

Erin looks back to a teacher-coach at Millbury High School as having a particularly positive influence in her life. “Before he was my cross-country coach, Bob Nicoletti was my sixth grade math teacher. After I ran a mile time trial in sixth grade, he said to me, ‘Why don’t you come out for crosscountry?’ Running really tapped into my internal drive, and Coach Nicoletti knew how to draw that out of me.” What she appreciates most about him is the confidence he gave her. “Years later, when I was at Dartmouth, I called Coach Nicoletti the night before the NCAA Championships and asked for racing advice—but, truth be told, I was calling him for a jolt of confidence. My work as a teacher, coach, and advisor at R.L. reflects everything I learned from Coach Nicoletti about the importance of giving fully of yourself to your charges.”

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2017 Winter Team Records Basketball Varsity..................... 12-10-0 Junior Varsity.............. 13-5-0 Third.......................... 6-10-0 Fourth........................ 12-9-0 Hockey Varsity....................... 16-8-1 Junior........................ 12-2-1 Wrestling Varsity....................... 18-1-0 36

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athletics What Difference Do New Athletic Facilities Make?

The Coaches’ and Players’ Perspective

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n most years, the fall and winter athletic seasons’ greatest excitement is generated by the games against Roxbury Latin’s biggest rivals, or by the matches that have playoff implications, or by the last-minute comebacks that stun the crowd. The 2016-2017 fall and winter athletic seasons at R.L. had plenty of these moments, but they will probably be remembered most for the excitement that athletes and coaches felt before the seasons even started.

In late August, just days before the first practices of the fall season, extensive renovations to Schoolhouse Field were completed, giving the varsity football team (and in the spring, the varsity lacrosse team) a spectacular turf surface upon which to hone their skills and compete in home games. Earlier in August, renovations to Centre Street Field were also finalized, providing the varsity soccer team (and in the spring, the varsity baseball team) with a new, beautiful turf surface, as well.

Ben Bryant II recalls the tremendous sense of anticipation he felt on the morning of the first day of soccer tryouts: “Early that day, I snuck down to the new turf field just to walk all around it and take it all in.

And I just thought to myself, ‘What a great field—this is going to be a great year.’” The first official practice that afternoon also stands out in Ben’s memory: “Everyone

was really excited to get down to the new field, and we arrived about a half hour early because we just wanted to play. I remember it was sunny, and the turf was bright green.”

Of course, beauty is a benefit but not the main objective of the new turf fields.

The main objective for the renovations is to increase the number of days that R.L.’s soc-

“

Varsity Football Coach John Lieb spent a lot more time actually coaching this year than ever before. “Every day of the season, we were able to use the field for practice.

It could be downpouring all morning, yet the field would be in terrific shape come afternoon.” Indeed, for the first time in Roxbury Latin memory, not a single var-

Last year, we often had to switch from one side of the field to the other side in the middle of practice because we were beating up the field so much.”

—Franny Rose I, Varsity Football

cer, football, baseball, and lacrosse teams can practice or compete outdoors, and to improve the quality and safety of those practices and games. “There are a small number of purist alumni who chafe at the notion of playing soccer on a surface other than grass,” says Head Varsity Soccer Coach Paul Sugg, a veteran of 32 soccer seasons at R.L. “But in New England in autumn, a ‘nice grass field’ is a virtual impossibility.”

Because of the new turf, Assistant

sity soccer or football practice had to be cancelled or held indoors, and no home games had to be rescheduled.

The quality of the new playing surfaces not only enabled R.L.’s teams to practice more; it also improved the very nature of the practices themselves. “Last year, we often had to switch from one side of the field to the other side in the middle of practice because we were beating up the field so much,” says Varsity Football player Franny Rose I. “This year, the weather didn’t hinder our practices at all, and we were always able to do everything full speed—even on rainy days—because we didn’t have to worry about ripping up the field.” The stable field conditions even

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upgraded the football coaches’ flexibility with calling plays during games. “At the St. George’s game,” recalls Franny, “even though it was raining, we didn’t have to adjust the game plan at all. The field wasn’t ripped up and no one was slipping in the mud, so we were able to run all of our plays without any worries about field conditions affecting execution, or about injuries.”

Athletes also talk about a different mindset that resulted from playing on state-of-the-art fields. “At practices, there was more speed, and more pride,” says Varsity Soccer player Michael Rounds I. “When you have a nice field and facility, your level of focus just increases. You feel like you have to live up to the high standards of the excellent facilities where you’re practicing.”

Ben Bryant concurs. “I just felt blessed to play on arguably the best field in the ISL,” he says, “and the whole team brought that spirit of appreciation to each practice and game. Every day, we all hustled to get out to the field before practice started, and many of us kept playing after practice just to have more time to play on the new turf.”

Serving as a backdrop for all football and soccer practices was the new Indoor

Athletic Facility (IAF), which was in its final stages of construction throughout the fall season. In late December, the facility was completed right on schedule and earned its “certificate of occupancy”

“

better in the overall School community.”

When students returned from break and daily after-school practices resumed in the IAF, the players were ecstatic. “After playing off-campus for so many years, it

There’s a real feeling walking down to the IAF every day. Its brightness, its openness, and the presence of students and faculty as we practice—it makes the guys feel more part of the School community.”

—Dave Cataruzolo, Varsity Hockey Coach

from the City of Boston. Soon afterwards, unable to resist the opportunity, the varsity hockey team tried out their new digs by holding R.L.’s first-ever indoor hockey practice on campus—and the impact was immediate. “From the first practice, the IAF was a game-changer for us,” says David Cataruzolo, head coach of the varsity hockey team. “It allowed us to practice better, to prepare better, and to engage

was amazing to play in our own rink,” says co-captain Joe Doherty I. “To me, it seems like a professional hockey team’s facility.

The locker rooms are spacious, the workout room is right upstairs … it’s everything we could have dreamed of, and more.”

Even walking down to the IAF after classes was an exciting moment for players and coaches this past winter. “There’s a real feeling walking down to the IAF every day,” says Coach Cataruzolo. Joe Doherty agrees: “As I walked down to practice each day, I would think to myself, ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this.’ Even after a month in the IAF, every day felt like the first day.”

Varsity Wrestling. Front row: L. Monteiro-Clewell, P. Levangie, M. Cefail, C. Jimenez (captain), D. Worrell (captain), A. Banks (captain), A. Massenat, B. Morris, A. Attar, D. Estimphile, B. O’Connor. Middle row: M. Garvey, N. Zarrabian, E. Lim, J. Philippides, I. Kelly, D. Penella, R. Deykin, R. Impert, S. Graber-Adamsons, B. Gibbons, I. Goldsmith. Back row: A. Gonzalez, Coach Paul Sugg, A. Cataldo, A. Best, W. Farber, J. Regan, B. LaFond, P. Madaus, L. Rimas, M. Kobayashi, L. Zheng, E. Downey, N. Lopes, P. Kuechler, D. McElroy, E. Kisselev, E. Zaks, Coach Josh Wildes.

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Varsity Hockey. Front row: M. Jones, A. Lovett, J. Duffy, R. Lareau, J. Doherty (captain), B. McGrath (captain), A. Song (captain), M. Alsarraf, M. O’Grady, J. Sporn, L. Streckenbach. Back row: Coach John Halverson, Coach Mo Randall, D. Cuzzi, J. Brosnan, C. Straub, J. Ryan, K. Demore, Z. Milton, M. Callahan, B. Lovett, J. Roberts, J. Luca, P. Frates, J. Pollard, Coach Dave Cataruzolo.

In the weeks following the Grand Opening on Winter Family Day (see page 18), students, faculty, and other members of the R.L. community continued to fill the IAF for all varsity home games—indeed, even practices drew small crowds. And this phenomenon made a meaningful difference to the team, according to Coach Cataruzolo. “The excitement and energy that the new facility created was helpful to our growth as a team,” he says. “Seeing all

of the people in the stands made practices more spirited and created a game atmosphere that was very enjoyable to play in.”

The varsity hockey team certainly capitalized on this excitement and energy.

Winning the league’s Team Sportmanship Award for the second year in a row, they finished with their best regular season record in recent years and qualified for the post-season for the first time since 2008. Although they were knocked out

of the playoffs in the first round by the defending champions from The Gunnery, Coach Cataruzolo sees the season as a major success—partly because of the new insights the boys gained from being the first R.L. team to have the opportunity to play in such a wonderful facility: “As a team, we talk a lot about not just what we do, but how we do it, and why we do it.

And the new IAF helped us understand those things.”

Varsity Basketball. Standing: Coach Sean Spellman, M. Davis, S. Borgard, F. Rose, C. Weitzel, M. Rounds, W. Greer, S. Wellman, D. Quinlin, A. Abdelrahman, Coach Tony Teixeira. Kneeling: Tim McCarthy (captain), Daniel Shlayen (captain).

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Reunion: 5-6 May 2017 The class notes section of school magazines is the first stop for alumni readers. Give them something to read about and send your news to kyle.layne-allen@roxburylatin.org

class notes 1957 60

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1961

1962 55 1967 50 1972 45 1977 40 1982 35

th th

While attending the Sunday Mass at the Naval Academy Chapel in late January, Phil Ferrara was thrilled to discover that the visiting chaplain, who introduced himself during the homily as originally being from the Archdiocese of Boston, was a fellow R.L. graduate. Father William Kennedy ’77 is a U.S. Navy Chaplain based in Washington, D.C. “We also learned that both of us had attended West Roxbury’s Randall G. Morris School on Wren Street and St. Theresa Church,” writes Phil, and that Father Kennedy grew up just a few blocks from Phil’s childhood home.

th th

th

1985 Richard Aubin is “privileged to represent 30,000 people and hundreds of businesses with tens of thousands of jobs that comprise the constituents of District Five in Garland, Texas.” Since May 2016, Richard has served on the Council’s Audit Committee and the Community Services Committee.

1987 30

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1990

The Rev. William Kennedy ’77 and Phil Ferrara ’61 at the USNA Chapel on 29 January 2017.

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Sean O’Brien launched a new startup in 2015, Affordable College PBC, from a Bostonbased edtech accelerator, Learn Launch. A public benefit corporation, Affordable College was founded to help more community college students afford and attain a degree through its national community college success platform and transfer student marketplace. Millions of students enroll at community colleges every year aspiring to

earn a bachelor’s degree, yet not enough of them succeed in transferring to a university, and those who do lose an average of 13 credits and amass unnecessary debt every year. If successful, Affordable College will help thousands more students graduate in less time with less debt. He sees a big opportunity for Affordable College in solving a systemic problem in a highly fragmented market.

1992 25

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Jon Barnes and his wife announce the birth of Catherine Ann Barnes, who was born on 12 January, “a healthy and adorable little girl at 8 lbs, 5 oz.”

1996 Jonathan Jao, executive editor at HarperCollins, edited New York Times Best Seller Hillbilly Elegy, published last June, and was praised by Richard Norton Smith for his help on his 2014 Pulitzer finalist On His Own Terms, A Life of Nelson Rockefeller.

1997 20

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2001 Zach Kanin, an alumnus of sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live, debuted his new show Detroiters on 7 February on Comedy Central. Zach co-cre-

ated, co-wrote, and co-produced the series with three other SNL alums (including Jason Sudeikis) and Veep star Sam Richardson.

Also a writer and cartoonist for The New Yorker, Zach has garnered a string of nominations for Primetime Emmys and WGA Awards for Best Comedy for his SNL work. An article on Detroiters appeared in the 22 January issue of the New York Times.

2004 Scott Sayare was featured in the 24 January issue of GQ magazine with a piece on last summer’s terrorist attack in Nice, France.

In “The Untold Story of the Bastille Day Attacker,” his first article for the publication, Scott offers details and insight on the days leading up to the event and the attacker’s background prior to the assault.

2007 10

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Camron Ghorbi continues his journalistic pursuits for the University of Miami. Since he has nearly eight years of experience in the field, his role has evolved from a Staff Writer for The Miami Hurricane to the college’s Assistant Communications Director.

A January ESPN article features Camron for his strategic contribution in promoting University of Miami Football’s incoming freshman class. The final promotional product, a micro website called MiamiSquad17.com, features

class notes arrival of their daughter Orietta “Etta” Rose Iskra on 8 August 2016.

The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age

2011

by James Kirchick ’02

Jamie Kirchick ’02, a journalist and foreign correspondent, is currently a fellow at the Foreign Policy Initiative in Washington, D.C., and a correspondent for the Daily Beast. He has just published his first book, The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age (Yale University Press, March 2017).

From the publisher: Once the world’s bastion of liberal, democratic values, Europe is now having to confront demons it thought it had laid to rest. The old pathologies of anti-Semitism, populist nationalism, and territorial aggression are threatening to tear the European postwar consensus apart. In riveting dispatches from this unfolding tragedy, James Kirchick shows us the shallow disingenuousness of the leaders who pushed for “Brexit”; examines how a vast migrant wave is exacerbating tensions between Europeans and their Muslim minorities; explores the rising anti-Semitism that causes Jewish schools and synagogues in France and Germany to resemble armed bunkers; and describes how Russian imperial ambitions are destabilizing nations from Estonia to Ukraine. With President Trump now threatening to abandon America’s traditional role as upholder of the liberal world order and guarantor of the continent’s security, Europe may be alone in dealing with these unprecedented challenges.

Based on extensive firsthand reporting, this book is a provocative, disturbing look at a continent in unexpected crisis.

The Newsletter regrets that Robert Powell Jr. was omitted from the list of alumni named in Veterans Day Hall who are active duty servicemen in the armed forces. Robbie currently is a 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force.

2012 5

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2013 Patrick Sullivan recently cofounded the Connecticut Bail Fund, a non-profit organization dedicated to alleviating the harms of pretrial detention. As a tutor and mentor in a youth correctional facility in Connecticut, Patrick is familiar with the effects of a bail system that allows wealthy defendants to post bail and go home while poor defendants are forced to languish in detention for weeks before their trials. Hoping to tackle this two-tiered system of justice, he and three co-founders

created the organization, which posts bail for individuals who are jailed simply because they cannot afford to pay bail. Modeled on similar charitable bail funds in New York, Chicago, and Massachusetts, the Connecticut Bail Fund has launched operations in New Haven and has posted bail for more than ten clients. Website: ctbailfund.org Andrew Wheeler-Omiunu, a four-year starter and two-year captain at Harvard, was drafted

by Atlanta United with the second pick in the third round of the MLS SuperDraft. At Harvard, Andrew compiled 64 appearances (61 starts), with four goals and six assists, and he earned All-Ivy League First Team honors twice.

“Like all dystopias, The End of Europe is pedagogy with a fierce moral message. James Kirchick has drawn a masterly portrait of a continent in its deepest crisis since World War II. The book is compulsory reading for anybody who cares about Europe.”

—Josef Joffe, Stanford University and author of The Myth of American Decline

former Hurricanes analyzing the football team’s early enrollees.

Charlie Bridge graduated from Yale Law School in 2016. Since graduation, he’s been working as a clerk for a judge in Boston, but he will be moving to New York City this summer. Before then, he “really looks forward

Andrew Wheeler-Omiunu ’13 (right) officially signed his contract with Atlanta United in Roxbury Latin’s Indoor Athletic Facility. Students, former teachers, and his Global Premier Sports management team, led

by Pat McCabe ’87 (left), stopped by to witness his ceremonial signing.

The new signee will battle Aaron Maund ’08 and his Real Salt Lake club in MLS action on Saturday, 22 April.

to seeing old friends at the 10th reunion this spring!”

2008 On 23 December, in the spirit of the Holiday season, Richie Iskra wed Tatum Ross (daughter of recently retired R.L. football coach Pat Ross). The couple has been doubly blessed with the

Richie Iskra ’08, Tatum, and Etta.

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class notes Mickey Henry will graduate from the University of Michigan this spring and will begin working this summer for ID Insight, a non-profit consulting firm that provides economic impact analysis of development programs. The job is based in Lusaka, Zambia.

Pat Barry was named by the NSCAA (the National Soccer Coaches Association of America) to the 2016 NCAA Division III Men’s All-South Atlantic Region Second Team. Now in his senior season at Washington and Lee University, Pat has garnered all-league and/or all-state recognition in each of his four seasons with the team.

in the contest by giving Bowdoin the early lead just 4:02 into the game. Bowdoin ended the season at 8-16-1. Ronny finished his 2016-2017 campaign with 3 goals, 3 assists, and 6 points in 15 games played.

Parker Kent represented Alma Mater well in scoring his first goal for Lehigh University’s lacrosse team against defending NCAA champions, the University of North Carolina Tar Heels, on 18 February.

Jake Tango ’16 (center) with the Jabberwocks in Rousmaniere Hall.

2014 Harvard Lacrosse has started the season with a 4-0 record with defensive assistance from Robert Shaw in net. Through four games, the junior goaltender and second-year starter posted a career-high 21 saves against University of Massachusetts and maintains a 63-percent total save percentage on the year.

2015 Sean Lowrie has officially started off his sophomore season for Duke Lacrosse. In addition to his “top play” goal against Cleveland State, the sophomore has tallied 5 points with 2 goals and 3 assists through his first 5 games played. According to the Duke Chronicle, Sean, who saw little playing time as a freshman, “has elevated himself to a starting position this year.”

Headmaster Kerry Brennan traveled to London, where he met with Hennessy Scholar Kevin Zhu and Kevin’s housemaster at Eton College, Michael Grenier (right). Mr. Brennan, who is President of the Board of Trustees for the International Boys’ School Coalition, was in the United Kingdom to preside at the International Boys School Conference board meeting.

Joe Kerner (George Norton Northrop Professor of English Emeritus) announced the arrival of his first grandchild, Elia Kerner Gosling, on 28 January 2017. She is all of 8 hours old in the photo above “with her doting grandad.”

2016 Despite Bowdoin Hockey’s 4-2 NESCAC Quarterfinal loss to Hamilton College on 25 February, Ronny Lestan contributed 42

April 2017

Jake Tango recently graced the Rousmaniere Hall stage, accompanied by his Brown University Jabberwocks a cappella group.

Jake joined in for robust performances of more contemporary tunes from Boys II Men, Justin Timberlake, and Michael Jackson.

While in London, Kerry Brennan met up with R.L. alumni John Madden ’92, Kent Sahin ’91, Brendan Hanrahan ’09, Alex Bayers ’05, Richard Linenthal ’74. (Not in photo: Peter Hamlen ’87)

class notes Alumni Hockey on R.L. Ice Like the “skins” and the “shirts,” Team Mo and Team Magno are really just a bunch of friends choosing up sides in order to play a game. Representing R.L. Hockey of yore right on up through last year, these alumni played their annual game on R.L. ice for the first time on 7 February, and afterward honored Coach Mo Randall over a pint.

Roxbury Latin Today Friday, 5 May, 11 am to 3 pm

Spring Family Day & Reunion Cookout Saturday, 6 May, 3 pm

Reunion Class Dinner Saturday, 6 May, 6 pm

REUNION!

5-6 May 2017

Register by April 28 www.roxburylatin.org/reunion N e w s l e t t e r o f Th e R o x b u r y L at i n S c h o o l

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In order that we might honor our deceased alumni, we ask survivors and friends to kindly send information to kyle.layne-allen@ roxburylatin.org

in memoriam 1949: Roland Paul Crawford Roland Paul Crawford passed away on 27 April 2016. The son of Marie L. Crawford and John H. Crawford, Roland found his academic niche at Roxbury Latin in the languages of French, Latin, and German, and enriched his extracurricular life as a member of the Glee Club, hockey, and tennis programs, and as a contributor to his class plays. His mother attributed “all his gentlemanness, his fidelity, and true worth” to the School. After spending years working for his father’s business, Roland eventually graduated from Harvard College in 1969. He leaves his wife, Marjorie (Ryan), as well as sisters-in-law Beverly Staph and Barbara Breen. He was predeceased by his brother, John H. Crawford Jr., and is survived by his nieces, nephews, grandnieces, and grandnephews.

1950: Robert Louis Fish Barbara Fish called to inform the School of the passing of her husband, Robert Louis Fish, last October. He was 84. At Roxbury Latin, Robert excelled in the realms of mathematics and science, subjects in which he received honors marks throughout his years. His eclectic extracurricular pursuits included Student World Federalists, football, wrestling, and stage crew.

After graduation he attended MIT and went to work for Raybestos-Manhattan (later renamed Raytech), where he enjoyed a long career as a chemical engineer. He and Barbara, his wife of 61 years, raised three children: Robert II, Marcia, and Diane.

Raytech transferred the family to Indiana for Robert’s last twelve years before retirement. Robert 44

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enjoyed summers on Cape Cod, and was an avid bike rider, riding 16 miles to work everyday—sun, rain, or snow. Last September he and Barbara moved to a retirement home in Glastonbury, Connecticut. Robert is survived by his wife and their three children.

1956: Laurence Edward Casson Laurence Edward Casson passed away on 25 November 2016 after a two-year battle with lung cancer. He was 78. Larry was born in Cambridge and grew up in Newton. Throughout his R.L. years, Larry was an active participant in the Glee Club, Debate, and Drama. In athletics, in addition to a freshman year stint in sailing, he helped guide the fate of Varsity Soccer for three years. He went on to Harvard University, graduating in 1960, and earned his JD from Harvard Law in 1963. In 1967 he married Gloria (Gold) and together they raised their two boys, Anthony and Jonathan. Larry’s experience in politics, public relations, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development served him well in his own real estate investment and development companies, which focused on inner city and suburban residential planning throughout Washington, D.C.; Baltimore; Maryland; and Northern Virginia. He first retired to Cape Cod and later to Estes Park, Colorado. In retirement Larry “indulged in fishing and lobstering and maintained an enthusiasm for politics,” and served on Eastham Cape Cod’s Land Acquisition Committee.

He is survived by his wife of almost 50 years, their sons, and two grandchildren.

1967: John Denis Sullivan John Denis Sullivan died in his hometown of Milton on 17 December 2016. Son of the late Cornelius Sullivan and the late Rita Sullivan, John shone as a citizen at Roxbury Latin and participated in all aspects of the School’s culture. He played for the football, basketball, and lacrosse programs, participated in theater, served as his class vice president, and contributed his poetry to Tripod, for which he also served as editor. In R.L. athletics he was a tri-captain, an all-New England lacrosse player, and even a j.v. lacrosse coach after a knee injury forced him to the sidelines his junior year. Despite the setback he was still elected co-captain the following spring, a testament to John’s “good spirits.” Headmaster Richmond Mayo-Smith summarized John’s teachers’ comments: “A great boy—outgoing, amusing, enthusiastic”; “mature beyond the average”; “respectful, talented, and gifted.” John matriculated at Harvard College and graduated in 1971. He worked as a training supervisor at Becton Dickinson Immunocytometry Systems and retired as a manager of the Flow Cytometry Laboratory for Harvard Medical School’s Pathology Department.

He leaves behind his wife, Deborah Smullyan; two children, John and Margaret; sisters Rosemary Kimball and Elaine Sullivan; and a brother, Paul.

1960: Francis Paul DiBella Francis Paul Richland DiBella passed away on 10 December 2016 in Michigan’s Rose Arbor Hospice. Born to Rosario and Mary DiBella, Frank came to

Roxbury Latin in the fall of 1954.

One of his schoolmasters noted his “ability to work diligently, his kindliness of spirit, forgetfulness of self, his loyalty, willingness, and self-discipline.” Graduating from R.L. with honors marks in French and science, he took his interest in science to Brown University, where he earned an AB in chemistry in 1964, and followed that with a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Minnesota in 1969.

A research fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania led him to Nancy, his wife of 45-plus years, with whom he raised four children. The family settled in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where Frank worked in the Patent and Intellectual Properties divisions of the Upjohn Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Services Company. He endured the group’s numerous corporate transitions until his retirement from Pfizer in 2007. In a June 2000 note to the School, Frank wrote that “in spite of mergers, downsizings, and reorganizations… I’d like to think that in some ways, those six long years of RLS rigor pretty much prepared me for it all.” A lover of music, which he acknowledged as an “RLSkindled interest,” Frank enjoyed spending time gardening, “eating pasta with clam sauce, backyard grilling, gazing at the ocean, bird watching, tracking the weather, and in later years, working on his Nook tablet.” Frank is predeceased by his son, Matthew.

He is survived by his wife Nancy DiBella, daughters Christine and Regina, and son Michael. He also leaves behind his sisters, Cecilia and Stella; a brother, Tony; and a grandson, Max.

William Armstrong Oates Jr., Life Trustee and Treasurer

B

illy (as he was known to most of us) died on 14 February at age 74 of multiple myeloma. He was a monumental figure in the life of The Roxbury Latin School: life trustee, the School’s treasurer for 35 years, and one of only seven people in the School’s 372-year history to be awarded an honorary diploma. His portrait hangs outside the Bursary, which is named in his honor.

Our culture today tends, alas, to measure people in terms of their financial achievements. By that criterion, Billy was a stunning “success.” He did not start out as a rich man, so his success in finance is all the more noteworthy: he transformed and grew Northeast Investment Management into a $1.4 billion investment advisory firm, and he founded the Northeast Investors Growth Fund. He was admired and loved by his employees, all of whom he treated as valued colleagues. In 2000, Kirk Kazanjian’s book hailed him as one of the “18 Wizards of Wall Street.”

Billy cared deeply about his clients: some of them had great wealth, but he paid equal attention to many of us who were people of modest means. His own father had been a schoolmaster, and he could always be counted upon at annual budget time to advocate for higher salaries for our faculty.

As Roxbury Latin’s treasurer, he managed our endowment with phenomenal results. When he became treasurer in 1975, the endowment was $3.502 million.

When he retired as treasurer in 2010, the endowment stood at $105.925 million.

Billy’s achievement is all the more astonishing when one considers that the 2010 endowment had been reduced by the 2008 crash and by the School’s $26 million land purchases in 2006 and 2008.

We all know men and women who make it to the top of their profession, but whose lives revolve almost completely around their work. Billy’s involvement in life beyond the office was extraordinary.

First, he was a true lover of what the

Greeks called “the beautiful.” His beloved wife Muffy is a person of exquisite taste, and together they created in Dedham one of the handsomest homes and guest houses in America—filled with objets d’art collected over the 48 years of their marriage. As frosting on the cake, Billy went on to create a vast and stunning garden, where he spent many an hour and which he loved to show off. His aesthetic sensitivity and keen perception made him a gifted—and prolific—photographer.

Billy was a collector—one would have to say an obsessive collector—of beautiful things. His autograph collection, begun as a boy when he wrote General MacArthur and received a signed letter in response, was ever expanded. He cherished, memorized, and often recited the poetry of Robert Frost and built up a remarkable collection of his works. He was mesmerized by the American West and accumulated a range of western art. He could not resist 19th-century engravings relating to the founding fathers. And it was natural that his porcelain collection would focus on American presidential china.

Then there were the bronzes, marbles, Indian-head nickels, rocks brought from everywhere (often embedded in the walls

at Dedham), paperweights (for his office), and over 500 neckties along with an array of sometimes-exotic clothing…. His fascination with history and biography was based on a profound search for roots, and he spent a great deal of time exploring his family’s Midwestern origins. He delighted in introducing his grandchildren to the natural and historic sites of New England.

An excellent hockey player at Groton School and Colby College (before he attended Harvard Business School), Billy was an avid, lifelong athlete. He loved skiing—a pursuit that eventually became a family affair involving his much-loved daughters Lilly, Kate, and Emily, and later their husbands and children—as well as golf and swimming. He became an avid mountain-climber who knocked off one range of mountains after another, including the Matterhorn with his daughter Kate.

Billy was also an enthusiastic traveler.

While his fellow travelers slept in, he was always up early, eagerly exploring the new sights and sounds.

Billy believed in giving back. He was trustee president at Groton and a trustee of Colby where he had been a scholarship recipient. Colby’s president noted that Billy established an annual giving gift club at the college and quoted him as saying: “We have a chance to influence the future—to nurture our roots—to plant trees in whose shade others will sit.” His many charitable benefactions included endowments to support faculty study and travel at Roxbury Latin and Groton.

But as amazing as his accomplishments were, it was not so much what he did but rather who he was that was most admirable. I have known no one more gifted in the art of friendship than Billy. In any encounter, he was utterly other-centered.

The conversation was always about you.

Many people go through the motions: How are you? What are you up to? Billy was unique in always remembering how you answered. He actually listened to you

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because he was genuinely interested.

Billy’s funeral was held at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Dedham on 24 February. His brother Tom delivered the homily and his brother Jim read the prayers. All three daughters spoke about their father.

The service was mobbed because Billy had so many friends. Someone suggested that there should be a special reception for his “good friends.” But someone else quickly pointed out that all these people were his good friends. Billy enjoyed people; his

interest in others was authentic and deep.

He had countless friends because he cared.

In his poem “Rugby Chapel,” Matthew Arnold wrote: What is the course of the life Of mortal men on the earth? – Most men eddy about Here and there—eat and drink, Chatter and love and hate, Gather and squander, are raised Aloft, are hurl’d in the dust,

Striving blindly, achieving Nothing; and then they die— Perish; and no one asks Who or what they have been…

William Armstrong Oates Jr. was not “most men.” His legacy—his love of beauty, public service, generosity, friendship—will long endure. He shows those of us who follow what it means to do something great with your life.

—Tony Jarvis

John P. Weitzel, Trustee

J

ohn Patterson Weitzel of Chestnut Hill died at home 8 December 2016 at the age of 93. He is survived by his wife Elisabeth (“Betts”) Swan, his daughter Mary, his son Paul Patterson Weitzel ’86, and four R.L. grandsons (among his seven grandchildren): Will ’16, Harry ’18, Charlie ’20, and Chris ’22.

After serving for nearly three years in the Army Air Force during World War II, he graduated from Yale University and then Harvard Law School. In 1953 he joined the Eisenhower Administration, serving in the U.S. Treasury Department for eight years, ending as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. He was also a member of the National Security Planning Board and U.S. Director of the World Bank. After returning to Boston to continue his corporate and banking law practice, he spent time in 1973 consulting to the Secretary of Defense. He was a longtime champion of environmental causes, the Boys and Girls Club of Boston, The Museum of Science, and he served as a trustee of The Roxbury Latin School (1988-

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91). He also enjoyed his time as a member of the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities. A life-long student of politics, he helped run a number of political campaigns. He was also a member of the American Law Institute. He loved the outdoors and enjoyed gardening, skiing, fishing, and hiking with his family. He was especially proud of climbing all 48 of the 4,000 footers in New Hampshire.

Headmaster Emeritus Tony Jarvis adds: “Jack and Betts became treasured friends of mine in their time as parents of Paul. Jack had strong opinions and never hesitated to express them. We frequently disagreed— he having become, as I often told him, much too liberal. In the late ’80s it seemed to me that the School’s trustees had become a bit too deferential to the headmaster, and, unusually for me, I suggested to the powers-that-be that Jack would be someone who would question things rigorously.

Happily, he was made a trustee. At the first meeting when, after little discussion, the board was about to approve something

I requested (long forgotten now), Jack said, ‘Well. Just a minute. What about such-and-such?’ Another trustee said, ‘Well, Tony thinks this is important.’ Jack replied, ‘I know he does; I just heard him.’

He then asked some searching questions which I did my best to answer and a vote was taken. There was nothing rancorous about Jack. He didn’t get huffy or rhetorically moralistic, but he had a penetrating mind that always went to the heart of the matter. He was, in short, a superb trustee.

My own father’s highest compliment was to say of someone: ‘He is a plain-spoken man.’ Jack was just that. I relished his sense of humor, which could occasionally have a bit of a sting. After visiting my incensefilled parish in Dorchester, he told me he was filing a complaint with the EPA. Some found him gruff. I quickly learned that right below the surface was a very tender heart. He was generous in every way. Some of the most enjoyable times of my life were spent on summer evenings with Jack and Betts in their garden, arguing over drinks before repairing to their dining room for a leg of lamb or roast of beef cooked to perfection by Betts. I considered it a great honor to preside at his burial. He was a cherished friend.”

Upcoming: Investment Networking Breakfast Wednesday, 26 April, 7:30 a.m.

Highfields Capital–Boston 200 Clarendon Street, 59th Fl.

alumni gatherings

Reunion Weekend 2017 Friday & Saturday, 5 & 6 May For more information, visit www.roxburylatin.org/page/alumni

East Comes West: Alumni gathering in Los Angeles About 40 Los Angeles-area alumni turned out for a cocktail reception on 16 February to hear news of the School from Kerry Brennan at the Jonathan Club in L.A. The School is grateful to Kent Sahin ’91 who graciously sponsored this year’s gathering.

Clockwise from Top: Cassandra Rusti, Steve Hepburn ’05, Samantha Peck, Kerry Brennan, Jared Rosenberg ’05.

Kerry Brennan and Michael Beam ’10.

Matt Golding ’80, Scott McBride ’90, and James Hill ’72.

Connor Evans ’11 and Nick Hrenchuk ’10.

Tom Guden ’96, John Abbott ’92, and Dan Levin ’96.

N e w s l e t t e r o f Th e R o x b u r y L at i n S c h o o l

47

Exelauno Pub Nights A lively crowd of 51 alumni gathered with faculty at Clerys in Boston for Exelauno Day Pub Night on Thursday, 2 March, for the annual toast to classical declamation.

Meanwhile, across the continent, Los Angeles alumni made a commendable showing at The Pikey on Sunset Boulevard, where “stories were told, pints were hoisted, and connections were made.”

BOSTON Above left: Dan Botwinik ’98, Marcus O’Mard ’98, Ivan DeJesus ’98, Amani Wilson ’98, Cliff Jones ’97 Above right: Eben Pingree ’00 and Paul Sugg Below: Steve Aiello ’91, Kent Sahin ’91, David Benoit ’91

LOS ANGELES: Above: Will Pinkham ’10, Nick Hrenchuk ’10 (standing), Michael Beam ’10, Tim Sola ’92, John Abbott ’92, Dave Tarr ’02, Josh Kidd ’95, John Grady ’90. Left: Matt Elliott ’95 and Josh Kidd ’95

Reminder: the Annual Fund closes on 31 May A sincere thank you to all who have contributed to the School through the 2016-2017 Annual Fund; as of 7 March we have raised $2,897,699 in gifts and pledges. We are 84 percent of the way toward our $3,450,000 Annual Fund goal this year.

The Annual Fund is critical to the financial health of the School, contributing over 21 percent of the operating budget. The remarkable generosity of our parents and alumni in support of the Annual Fund has made a dramatic difference in our ability to be a distinctive school. Lest there be any doubt, we need you to continue to give what you can to Roxbury Latin.

If you would like to make your gift to this year’s Annual Fund, please use the envelope enclosed in this Newsletter, or go to www. roxburylatin.org/giving and make your gift securely online. Remember, the Annual Fund closes on 31 May. Thank you for your continued support and commitment to Roxbury Latin. www.roxburylatin.org/giving

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April 2017

Parent Phonathon volunteer Ellen Berkman P ’18 on 6 March. And huge thanks to the other volunteers: Michael Berk P ’19, ’21; John Powell ’89, P ’20; and Robyn Steinberg P ’18.

Alumni Phonathon volunteers Justin Jagher ’99 and Kevin O’Connell ’99 on 13 March. And huge thanks to all the other volunteers: Paul Bowers ’70; Tom Quirk ’70; John Connors ’76; Rich Habib ’79; Tom Walsh ’79; Andy Parsons ’80; Tom Gormley ’86; Paul Gibbons ’86, P ’19; Richie Iskra ’08; and Kyle Layne-Allen ’09.

A Farsighted Gift for a Farsighted Mission

“

Chris Roy ’87, by including Roxbury Latin in his estate plans, has chosen a visionary way to support R.L. Here’s why: Roxbury Latin has played an important role in my life. The School provided structure, guidance, and values, and it taught me the value of hard work, grit, perseverance, and integrity.

The friends I made there are, to this day, some of the best human beings I know; and my teachers, coaches, and advisors helped me grow so much. Knowing these timeless life lessons will be passed along to generations of boys to come is what inspired me to make a planned gift.

I am forever grateful to RLS.”

Planned Gifts provide flexibility and possibility for those who are eager to support the ongoing legacy of a Roxbury Latin education in creative and meaningful ways. Contrary to popular belief, planned gifts don’t stem from wealth; they grow from a true desire to make Roxbury Latin an extraordinary place for boys and their learning.

To learn more about how your financial plans can include a gift to Roxbury Latin, visit: http//roxburylatin.plannedgiving.org or contact: David S. Cataruzolo Director of Alumni Affairs and Planned Giving 617.477.6314 david.cataruzolo@roxburylatin.org *As always, we encourage you to consult with a financial, tax, or legal advisor when making estate planning decisions.

N e w s l e t t e r o f Th e R o x b u r y L at i n S c h o o l

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2017 ROXBURY LATIN SUMMER PROGRAMS for boys and girls

Academic: STEM, biotech, Classics, debate, nature, crosswords Athletic: baseball, basketball, football, lacrosse, soccer, wrestling and introducing: Roxbury

Roxbury Latin Summer Institute Two 2-week sessions of fun, hands-on enrichment July 10–21, July 24–August 4 | entering grades 5–8

Academic Programs Debate

| June 26–30 | entering grades 5–10

Advanced Biotech Institute i2 (STEM)

| June 26–July 14 | entering grades 9–12

| June 26–30, July 10–28 | entering grades 5–8

Mass Audubon Nature Crossword Workshop

| June 26–August 4 | ages 5–13

| July 31–August 4 | entering grades 9–12

Athletic Clinics Lacrosse

| June 26–29 | entering grades 5–8

Baseball

| July 10–13 | entering grades 5–8

Wrestling Football

| July 24–27 | entering grades 5–12

Basketball Soccer

| July 17–20 | entering grades 5–10

| July 31–August 3 | entering grades 5–8

| August 7–10 | entering grades 3–8

photos by Gretchen Ertl

Roxbury Latin Summer Programs deliver curricular breadth, instructional depth, growth, and discovery in our intimate campus setting. Whether it is a foundational course in classics, a lab-based biotech institute, a handson STEM program, nature and environmental explorations, or a sports clinic focusing on technique and love of the game, Roxbury Latin’s co-ed summer programs are conducted with the same dedication and expertise the School offers its students during the academic year. The programs offered in 2017 include:

Latin Summer Institute

Space is limited—learn more and register online at:

www.roxburylatin.org/summer 50

April 2017

Varsit y A thle t i c Schedule | Spr i ng 2 0 1 7 Varsity Baseball

Varsity Lacrosse

Varsity Tennis

W, Apr 5

Portsmouth Abbey 3:45

F, Apr 7

Dexter 3:30

Dexter 3:30

S, Apr 8

BB&B 1:30

@ BB&N 1:30

BB&B 1:30

W, Apr 12

@ Belmont Hill 3:30

Belmont Hill 3:30

@ Belmont Hill 3:30

Dexter 3:45

Th, Apr 13

@ St. Paul’s 4:30

St. Paul’s 4:30

@ St. Paul’s 4:30

S, Apr 15 W, Apr 19

Varsity Track

St. Sebastian’s 1:00

S, Apr 1

@ Thayer (relays) 3:00

@ St. George’s w/Rivers 2:00 @ Nobles 3:30

F, Apr 21

@ St. Sebastian’s 3:30

S, Apr 22

Groton 2:00

Nobles 3:30

@ Nobles 3:30

@ Groton 2:00

Groton 1:30

@ Thayer 3:45

Exeter 5:30

M, Apr 24

@ Tabor w/ MX / Milton 2:00

@ St. Sebastian’s 4:15

W, Apr 26

@ St. George’s 4:00

St. George’s 4:00

@ St. George’s 4:00

S, Apr 29

@ Governor’s 1:00

@ Governor’s 1:00

@ Governor’s 1:00

@ Tabor w/ Gov’s / BB&N 1:00

W, May 3

Milton 3:30

Milton 3:30

Milton 3:30

@ Milton w/ Belmont Hill /Tabor 3:45

F, May 5 S, May 6**

@ Andover 3:30 Brooks 3:15

Brooks 3:15

Brooks 3:15

W, May 10

@ Middlesex 4:00

Middlesex 5:00

@ Middlesex 4:00

S, May 13

@ Lawrence 12:00

@ Lawrence 12:00

@ Lawrence 12:00

M, May 15

Rivers 4:45

@ Rivers 4:45

Rivers 4:45

W, May 17

Thayer 3:30

@ Thayer 3:30

Thayer 3:30

ISTA @ Tabor 11:00

JV ISTA @ Weston High 3:30

St. Mark’s 4:30

F, May 19 S, May 20

@ Thayer w/ St. Paul’s 4:00

St. Mark’s 2:30

Home games are boldface.

@ St. Mark’s 2:30

**Spring Family Day & Reunion Weekend

NE Invitational (TBA)

NEPSTA Championships (Hyde, CT) 11:00

NB: Schedule subject to change. For latest information, go to tinyurl.com/jecwjym

At a home meet on 15 February, R.L.’s Junior Wrestlers faced off against Nobles, Catholic Memorial, and St. Sebastian’s. At left, sixie George Humphrey in the throes of a victory over a St. Seb’s wrestler, while Head Coach Cary Snider and his assistant coaches cheer him on in the background. Junior Wrestling ended its season with a 13-4-1 record.

On Saturday, 29 April: 9am - 1pm, don’t miss: 39th Parents’ Auxiliary

Giant Yard Sale

Drop-off dates are Saturdays, 15 and 22 April, 9 am–12 noon at R.L.

The Roxbury Latin School 101 St. Theresa Avenue West Roxbury, MA 02132-3496 www.roxburylatin.org

Nonprofit Org U.S. Postage

PAID Villanti

Change Service Requested

Mailed from 05401

W e s t e rn C ivilization on display in the Great Hall: https://tinyurl.com/gpslggl

A Roxbury Latin Rite of Passage

For the members of Class IV, the fruits of their winter term labors are most visible in the form of Western Civ projects— a curricular staple of the freshman class for more than four decades. Clockwise from top left: Sam Ginsberg and his recreation of Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Aerial Screw”; Ian Richardson and his “Early Amateur Radio Transmitter”; and Lukas Franken’s “Throne of Charlemagne in Aachen Cathedral.”

See all the Western Civ projects online at https://tinyurl.com/gpslggl