Curtis Sittenfeld ’93 Is 2009 Goodall Distinguished Alumna The Young Family Library was filled with family, friends, and fans— including many former Seven Hills teachers—when Seven Hills presented the 2009 Goodall Distinguished Alumna Award to Curtis Sittenfeld ’93 on October 19. The highest honor Seven Hills bestows on an alumna/us, the Goodall Award honors a graduate of Seven Hills or its predecessor schools “who has achieved distinction in a public or private career or activity bettering the lives of others.” Curtis is the author of the best-selling, critically-acclaimed novels Prep (named one of the Ten Best Books of 2005 by The New York Times), The Man of My Dreams (2007), and American Wife (chosen one of the Ten Best Books of 2008 by Time). The following are excerpts from the talk that delighted her audience at the Goodall Award presentation. “What I’d like to talk about tonight is the influence of Seven Hills on my life. Although my first novel, Prep, was set at a New England boarding school, and although I myself attended a New England boarding school, Seven Hills is without a doubt the school with which I had the longest and most formative affiliation. I started at Lotspeich in 1978, just after I turned three, and spent the next nine years there. In 1987, I moved to the Middle School, which as most of you know was then located on the Doherty Campus and was home only to seventh and eighth graders. During this time period from the fall of 1978 to the spring of 1989, I participated in Halloween Parades and science fairs, plays in the Red Barn, soccer games, May Fetes, and field trips to California Woods and the Cincinnati Art Museum. The overriding lesson I learned, again and again, was about what an interesting place the world and its inhabitants are. “I have heard that when people suffer from dementia and start to have trouble remembering things, their memories are strongest in reverse order—that is, they may not be able to recall what they had for breakfast, but they can recite favorite recipes from decades earlier. I am not sure what it means that at the age of 34, I already find myself experiencing this phenomenon. I fear that the months and years of my adulthood have become a blur of readings I hardly remember giving, people I hardly remember meeting, and most of all, emails I remember neither sending nor receiving—but I still know how to count to ten in German, which I learned from Frau Meckel, and every year on September first, I still recall one of my former classmates and think to myself, ‘It’s Elizabeth Deubell’s birthday!’ “Truly, my childhood at Seven Hills remains vividly clear. I remember sitting on Mrs. Konicov’s lap, a coveted location in the Montessori classroom, as we all formed a circle and sang, and I remember standing at a sink in the same classroom and submerging plastic
funnels into soapy water—is it a coincidence that to this day, washing dishes is one of the few household chores I don’t dislike doing? I remember the day in first grade when Mrs. Vitz told us that a special visitor named Loof Lirpa was going to fly into the parking lot on his plane to see us—all day long we anticipated his arrival, and just before school let out at 3:15, Mrs. Vitz reminded us that it was April first and that Loof Lirpa was April Fool spelled backward. “I remember Lotspeich’s Monday morning assemblies, which would conclude with all of us singing the school song, crouching as the song approached its end, and leaping into the air on the word ‘Charge!’ I remember P.E. classes with Mr. Sidor, where some days our entire class would clutch an enormous green and orange and white parachute, all of us standing around the perimeter and raising our arms to make it undulate. In fifth grade, I remember Mrs. Blocksom’s incredible enthusiasm for colonial history which culminated in the celebratory lunch I attempted to immortalize, in a modest way, in my most recent novel, American Wife. “On a daily basis, Seven Hills fed my early imagination and creativity, and encouraged me to explore and test all my senses, whether by shaping clay into a little pink elephant with Mrs. Harbolt, by banging on a xylophone under the watchful eye of Mrs. Clajus, or by impersonating Cleopatra as part of a ‘living biography’ in sixth grade with Mrs. Flanagan and Mr. Clark. More specifically, my time at Seven Hills molded me as a reader and a writer. I certainly grew up in a reading household, and as all of you know, I’m not just speaking metaphorically when I say that I consider the people at Seven Hills to be family. But I feel that I particularly benefitted from a childhood in which an enthusiasm for books and language at home dovetailed with the same enthusiasm at school. “One of the great pleasures of being a student at Lotspeich was that on a regular basis, there were adults who’d read aloud to you. I loved when my class went to the library and I considered Mrs. Snyder, with her well-manicured nails and soft-looking sweaters, to be the epitome of glamour; I was fascinated watching her as she sat facing us, holding the book open so we could see the pictures and turning the pages. In third grade, Mrs. Kuhn read From the MixedUp Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler to us and taught us the word “chauffeur,” which I initially mispronounced as “shoffer.” We also made class visits to the principal’s office, where Mrs. Driscoll read to us from the strange and fascinating tale of The Twenty-One Balloons. My classmates and I were permitted to bring dolls or stuffed animals during these visits, and this was during the heyday of the Cabbage Patch Kid so my friends were curling up with little Eugenia Arianas and Rebecca Ruby’s. My parents resisted my requests for such a doll, but I feel that I’ve had the last laugh because seven months ago I gave birth to a baby girl whom I think looks uncannily like a Cabbage Patch Kid, particularly when she’s sleeping. “As I was introduced, via books, to other worlds—from the Upper East Side of Manhattan to volcanic islands to rivers in the Canadian wilderness—my interest in writing and my skills as an editor and self-
At right, former teacher Lucille Blocksom, Curtis and husband Matt Carlson. At far right, teacher Margaret Vitz with former teachers Bobbie Kuhn, Diana Hilligan, (background) Rachel Foster, and Annette Meader.
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