Shady Hill Magazine 21-22

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T H E 20 21-20 2 2 I S S U E

MISSION IN ACTION

17 8 C o o l i d g e H i l l

Magazine

Shady Hill School

Shady Hill School

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Table of Contents 3|

Letter from Head of School

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Why Are We Here?

Mark Stanek

A Matter of Mission

6 | Squeeze the Day 8| 10|

Establishing Traditions with Social Justice Blending Creativity and Technolog y in the Classroom

12| The Courage of Her Convictions:

Hester Hocking Campbell, Class of 1924

Illustrate the New 16| Alumni Mission Statement

22| Class Notes

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BOARD OF TRUSTEES 2021 – 2 022 Hilary Johnston, Chair Robin Walker, Vice Chair Bob Crowley, Treasurer Alyssa Haywoode, Clerk Holly Ambler ’80 Kip Brown ’84 Lisa Case Frank Catrickes Angela Garcia Kafi Harrington Alyssa Haywoode Elizabeth McQuillan, Parents Council Co-Chair Ted Killory Betsy Leahy TTC ’83 Devereaux McClatchey Matt Ogden Fran Rosenzweig Sally Snickenberger Mark Stanek, Head of School Kate Sutliff Pratt Wiley ’91

FOLLOW US! See what you missed...

BY INVITATION Betsy Ginsberg, Director of Development and Alumni Relations Dr. Laniesha Gray, Director of Equity and Inclusion Maureen Nunez, Chief Financial Officer/Chief Operating Officer Kim Walker, Director of Faculty Support and Professional Development Dr. Daryl Wright, Assistant Head of School ALUMNI BOARD 2021 – 2022 Abigail Wright ’00, Alumni Board Chair Charley Aldrich ’95 Kip Brown ’84 Kate Chin ’00 Rachel Cooke ’02, TTC ’13 Anjali Lappin ’06 Melinda Margetson ’76 Elena Rodriguez-Villa ’08 Pratt Wiley ’91 Meg Grossman ’62 Fred Wang ’65 Ariel M. Goldberg ’99 Kathryn Bailis Phillips ’90, TTC ’98 Charlie Wyzanski ’59 MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE Wanita Niehaus, Director of Marketing & Communications Kathy Brennan, Communications Systems Specialist Tatum Lee, Interim Communications Systems Specialist Jillian Offermann, Multimedia Marketing Specialist ALUMNI OFFICE Betsy Ginsberg, Director of Development and Alumni Relations Brenda Paredes, Advancement Coordinator Doug Raymond, Director of Advancement Services and Research Erika Whitters, Event Coordinator Devon Wilson-Hill, Director of Annual Programs CLASS NOTES PROOFREADERS 1940–49: Rachel Cooke ’02, TTC ’13 1950–59: Jeff Freeman ’50 1960–69: Fred Wang ’65 1970–79: Anjali Lappin ’06 and Kate Chin ’00 1980–99: Kathryn Bailis Phillips ’90 EDITORIAL STAFF Wanita Niehaus & Jillian Offermann, Editors Kathy Brennan, Tatum Lee, & Nellie Walcoff, Associate Editors DESIGN Jillian Offermann, Art Director and Designer Erin O’Quinn, Classnotes Designer PHOTOGRAPHY Jillian Offermann Shady Hill School Archives

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ON THE COVER Grade VI students from Ms. Hesko’s class worked together to create a Go-Kart named Pinky Pie the Banana Eating Unicorn. Students tested their Go-Karts on campus before bringing them to the Fresh Pond paths. They worked together as a team from start to finish.

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Letter From Head of School

Living the Mission

Although our primary focus over the past two years has been keeping students and employees safe as we navigate the global health pandemic, we have also made progress with some of our strategic initiatives.

Reviewing Shady Hill’s mission and belief statements was one of the top priorities as we aimed to reflect who we are today and for the future. Shady Hill’s mission has always been our North Star and is the center for our decisions. Following best practice, we spent two years with a task force of teachers, administrators, Board members, alumni, parents, and parents of alumni, grappling with how best to share our values and goals in a more concise way. We also felt we needed to better reflect our long-standing and historical commitment to equity and social justice. After conducting several feedback sessions and making thoughtful changes, the task force presented its final version to the Board of Trustees in May 2021. The Board unanimously voted to approve the mission and belief statements, and we communicated our process and changes to the entire SHS community in the fall.

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Shady Hill’s mission has always been our North Star and is the center for our decisions.

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A mission and belief statement is only as powerful and effective as how a school implements its mission. Every day I see the joyful, active learning that is a hallmark of a Shady Hill education. From our Grade III students preparing for their whaling ship send-off at the New Bedford town square to Grade VII science students visually representing their understanding of how the human heart works, our students are deeply engaged in immersive, handson learning. You will see in this issue an article about the evolution of “Lemon Day” in Grade IV and Kabir Sen’s project about creativity and technology.

Learning from different perspectives, our students are asked to critically assess multiple points of view and shape meaning from knowledge.

Now more than ever, we see how the pandemic has affected our students’ social-emotional well-being and cultural identities. As a progressive school, we have always responded to our students’ needs with increased support and new approaches. I have been impressed with our teachers’ ability to adapt their curriculum and prioritize wellness this year. From using literature to ensure students’ identities are mirrored and valued in the classroom to teaching students the importance of meditation, yoga, and self-regulation, our students are learning “forever” life skills. I hope you enjoy reading these articles that highlight our mission in action and show how everyone continues to put Shady Hill’s mission and belief statements at the center of our work.

Warmly,

Mark Stanek, Head of School May 2022

LE T TER FROM THE HE AD OF SCHOOL

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Why Are We Here?

A Matter of Mission

More than an existential dilemma, the question of ‘why Shady Hill is here’ is a matter of mission.

Our mission’s job is to answer that question—to articulate clearly what our place is in the world. It should tell us and others why we matter and give everyone in our community a guidepost for how we live. Our mission should seat us securely and authentically in the present while also inspiring us to heed its call.

Prior to 2021, Shady Hill’s Board last penned the School mission statement in 2009. It was a source of great pride for the 10+ years it served the School well—enumerating the ways in which Shady Hill provides a singular educational experience. Best practices suggest that a school mission be reviewed annually and scrutinized at least every five years—to ensure that a school does what it says it does. So, it wasn’t a surprise that, when the Association of Independent Schools of New England (AISNE) reviewed Shady Hill’s reaccreditation self-study in 2019, one of the primary recommendations was to conduct a critical review of the mission statement. The School was praised for the ways in which it enlivened its program and the mission itself was validated. Shady Hill knows who it is, who it serves, and how to deliver as promised. It was the statement that needed repair in order to better express its intent.

Subsequently, a task force that included board members, parents, alumni, and faculty/staff, was created to consider how a newly drafted statement could both affirm and redefine Shady Hill’s purpose. Questions around what language to preserve (“joyful, active learning”), what might be added (an intentional focus on social justice), and how to organize content for clarity framed the

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The mission is like the North Star that guides us in our work each day. Our teaching is intentional, with respect to the values that make up our mission, including “Joyful, active learning, kindness to ourselves and others, and celebrating differences.” Reflecting upon what makes Shady Hill special helped me keep things in perspective and stay positive during the challenges of teaching during the pandemic.

Sarina Tcherepnin ’83, P’12 ’14, Faculty

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committee’s work. While testing new approaches and concepts, it was important to recognize the difference between why we matter, what we do and how we do it. The result was a two-part document that underscores the interdependence of the mission and its accompanying belief statement.

With new bones in place, the committee passed a draft to a smaller writing group that refined the language before soliciting feedback from several internal focus groups. “The mission and its statement belong to all of us,” said Head of

School Mark Stanek. “They must represent us as a whole, and we must all buy into it.”

A fundamental characteristic of the Shady Hill community is the process-oriented focus that invites multiple perspectives to the table. The School is a safe place for individuals to share differences of opinions honestly and respectfully, a place where all points of view are heard and valued, and where the good of the whole is prioritized over a single voice. As such, when the new mission statement was vetted by different members of the school community, the draft went back to committee several times for additional revisions. Persistence made it stronger, more complete, more Shady Hill.

The Shady Hill Board of Trustees proudly adopted the new mission statement in May 2021.

Members of the task force, the drafting committee, faculty, and staff all thought deeply about Shady Hill’s true essence and lent their essential perspectives. The process was as much a demonstration of the School’s defining characteristics as is the final document, which will boldly pilot the School’s path going forward.

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Squeeze the Day

By Jillian Offermann Grade IV has celebrated a beloved Shady Hill tradition, Lemon Day, for roughly 40 years and the events of the day have evolved and grown each year. Longtime teacher Jane Prescott, who taught at Shady Hill from 1953-1991, loved lemons and brought that passion into her classroom. Since the fruitful day lemons were introduced into classrooms, our dynamic teachers took the opportunity to squeeze them into the curriculum to foster joyful, active learning. What started as a fun way to inspire students to write poetry and stories expanded into a myriad of hands-on lessons. Students began naming their lemons then creating a world for them along the way. Gradeheads and art department faculty added many more activities throughout the years, including students generating as many words as possible from the letters in the word “lemonade,” painting watercolor lemon portraits, building tiny homes for the citrus residents, and singing lemon-themed songs. Math and science teachers added to the interdisciplinary learning with lessons like measuring the lemons’ circumference, volume, and mass.

Today, the zest for joy and exploration continues. Each student takes the time to truly discover their lemon from top to bottom and use this unique opportunity to practice developing an understanding of identity and belonging.

The qualities they discover and describe go far beyond physical features. Students discuss how their lemon came to

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be–and that means more than just growing on a tree.

Conversation starters include: What is their favorite activity? Does the lemon have a gender identity?

Who are their caretakers? How many languages does the lemon speak? Is the lemon’s personality sour or sweet? This personification of lemons opens students to new perspectives, empowering them to ask questions and creating an opportunity for deep thinking.

To prove they have learned their lemons inside and out, the entire class places them in a pile and needs to find their lemons based on their unique qualities. The class gets to know their lemons so well that they can even differentiate if the lemon is upside down or right side up. Students learn through this project that they can understand and explore aspects of identity by

peeling off layers to see what lies beneath the surface. At first glance, all the lemons look the same, but with closer inspection, as Grade IV students draw and measure, they take the time to learn more about individuality. Incorporating lemons beyond the gradehead classroom takes this educational experience a step further to create an opportunity for fun and accessible socialemotional learning.

Older students have been known to come by the Grade IV classrooms on Lemon Day for a refresher, exclaiming how much they loved that day.

Some even shared that they preserved their lemons! Lemon Day encapsulates how Shady Hill students use intellectual adventure and playful imagination to cultivate compassion and a deeper understanding of the world around them.

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Establishing Traditions with Social Justice

In 2017, Social Justice Day at Shady Hill was established to create a focused opportunity to learn about social justice within the classroom. For the past five years, the Middle School has set aside its regular class lesson plans to host this annual all-day

By Tatum Lee event to raise awareness about a chosen theme relating to social justice. The programming creates a rich multicultural curriculum for Middle Schoolers to learn more about racial identity, the cycle of oppression, and various ways to be allies and changemakers. Celebrating and exploring the diversity at Shady Hill makes us a wiser and stronger community.

Social Justice Day offers students a conference-style experience that includes an open conversation with a special speaker with the entire Middle School, workshops in classrooms, and an arts-expressive project. Previously offered workshops included body positivity, social solidarity, politics, identity and representation in the media, and other related topics. Students develop a more robust understanding of injustice through these activities and exercises, empowering and inspiring them to actively speak out against injustices. It is essential to teach children to explore human similarities and differences, challenge stereotypes, and understand how perceptions affect ideas about truth. These meaningful conversations validate children’s individual lives and prepare them to succeed in a multicultural society.

In addition to Social Justice Day, the Middle School has added a new Social Justice Spotlight program, which coincides with Affinity Gatherings. Social Justice Spotlight is a series of non-affinity-based activities and discussions for students who do not attend affinity gatherings to engage with their classmates to “honor differences, challenge prejudice and strive for racial and social justice.” This pedagogical shift underscores to the community how powerful it is for all children to be doing this work in classrooms. It is one of our commitments to build a community that understands and values our diverse world through encouragement for social justice and the elimination of bias in school life.

Grade VI students in Ms. Hesko’s class performed poems from Born on the Water

by Nikole Hannah-Jones and Renee Watson in the 2022 Black History Assembly.

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Social Justice Spotlight creates an equitable and safe space for all students to discuss race, gender, religion, class and other aspects of identity. Echoing our mission to develop students who are “intellectually adventurous and wholeheartedly just,” students learn to advocate for different social causes as they pave the next wave for social justice ambassadors. Both the Social Justice Spotlight program and Social Justice Day are evolving traditions that bring attention to the injustices of today’s world and empower our students with the knowledge and tools to have a racially just future.

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I am so proud of the work we do on Social Justice Day. It brings me immense joy to see the students finding and using their voices to foster understanding and to inspire action.

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-Laniesha Gray, Director of ​Equity and Inclusion

Middle School students at the Asian Students Affinity Gathering with Ms. ShenFilerman.

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Blending Creativity and Technology in the Classroom

Shady Hill’s Bruce Shaw Educational Leadership Chair position provides a member of the faculty with a deeply fulfilling professional development experience. Created to honor the legacy of former Head of School Bruce Shaw (1994-2010), the goal is for

By Kathy Brennan the faculty member to study and develop understanding in a specific area of interest and then apply those skills and knowledge to strengthen Shady Hill.

From 2018-2020, music teacher Kabir Sen ’92 TTC ’07 held the position of Bruce Shaw Educational Leadership Chair. Kabir focused on how videography, technology, and creative learning can strengthen the educational experience for both teachers and students.

After a vocal procedure in 2018 that left Kabir unable to speak for two weeks, he began to explore the value of using videography to convey lessons. He became interested in how that technology could enhance classroom instruction and creative learning.

Through the fellowship Kabir studied how the use of technology in the classroom can foster learning and creativity for teachers and students. He sought out as many opportunities as he could to document and design a curriculum using audio and visual techniques throughout the 2018-2019 school year and began strategic conversations with fellow educators to discover and share their techniques.

Grant money provided through the fellowship allowed Kabir to purchase video and audio equipment and to attend a “Learning Creative Learning” class at MIT. Using best practices on how technology can benefit the learning experience, Kabir started to create short lesson demonstrations for filming in the classroom and guiding

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SCAN QR CODE TO LEARN ABOUT THE FELLOWSHIP FROM K ABIR!

questions for his colleagues. Kabir focused on how technology can positively impact a variety of subjects such as student learning and achievement, creativity in the curriculum, faculty mentorship, storytelling, and documenting existing practices.

The importance of Kabir’s work came to the forefront with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic. He was quickly able to apply the technologies and processes he was studying to online learning and to share his experiences with fellow teachers.

During his two years in the fellowship, Kabir discovered the numerous benefits of technology in the classroom: students appeared to be more comfortable on camera and had an increase in creative energy, collaborative spirit, and level of engagement.

As Kabir reflected on his time as the Bruce Shaw Leadership Chair, he was grateful for the opportunity to study this subject and see the work in action through modified COVID-19 online classes.

In a world of online learning and experiences, work with video and audio is quickly becoming a core curriculum for students.

By implementing video and audio technology in the classroom, students and educators alike can benefit from a deeper, more immersive learning experience.

Kabir formed guiding questions for himself and his colleagues to consider through his research.

HOW CAN VIDEOGRAPHY IN THE CLASSROOM IMPACT...

• Student learning and achievement?

• Assessments?

• Creativity in the classroom?

• Documentation of the existing practices that we use?

• Building of community?

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The Courage of Her Convictions: Hester Hocking Campbell, Class of 1924

By Betsy Ginsberg

“We have a responsibility, as individuals and as a community, to honor difference, challenge prejudice, and strive for racial and social justice.” This is one of six belief statements that give context to the Shady Hill mission—a statement that is as essential to the School’s DNA as it is a call to action. Shady Hill’s commitment to social justice can be traced back to the School’s early days, when Hester Hocking, daughter of Shady Hill founder Agnes Hocking, was an eager five-year-old. The world view and values that later inspired Hester’s activism were fostered on the Hocking back porch, where Shady Hill School began.

Fast forward to August 1963 when 53-year-old Hester (graduate of Shady Hill’s Class of 1924, and now going by her married name, Hester Campbell) was the wife of a dean at the Episcopal Theological Seminary in Cambridge, and an “empty nester.” She traveled alone to the nation’s capital to take part in “The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom,” demanding civil and economic rights for Black people. As Hester later wrote in her 1974 book, Four for Freedom,

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[We] went without much encouragement…but we had reached such a degree of concern over the racial injustices of our country, that we felt compelled to do something about it, if only to be just two more white faces among the throng. The march made a deep impression on us by its dignity… and its crusade-like quality – but mostly by the ringing words of Martin Luther King in his speech, “I Have A Dream.”

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Ten months later, Hester’s acquaintance, Mary Peabody—another “proper Bostonian” bishop’s wife—reached out with a proposition. Sharing Hester’s passion for justice, Mary invited Hester to travel to St. Augustine, Florida, to take part in demonstrations led by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (the “SCLC”).

Hester Hocking circa 1911, with her big brother Richard. The two were among Shady Hill’s original students, since it was their parents who founded the school.

The SCLC knew that the city of St. Augustine was preparing to celebrate its 400th birthday and, in the words of a 2014 National Public Radio article, “decided to hijack the tourist message with a civil rights message.”

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Hester Hocking Campbell in the middle, flanked by St. Augustine residents (on left) and the two other “proper Bostonian bishops’ wives,” Mary Peabody and Esther Burgess.

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The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference put out a call for white students in the North to skip the beach on their spring break and come to Florida to protest segregation. Inviting young white people to push for civil rights would bring attention to places where the national media had ignored dramatic racial injustices.

To further increase the pressure, King’s deputy, Hosea Williams, visited Boston to see if any elderly Bostonians would volunteer. Williams believed the image of grandmothers being ushered off to jail would be a sure bet in gaining national publicity for places that had been in the shadows.

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The strategy succeeded, in no small part because Mary Peabody was the mother of the Massachusetts governor, Endicott Peabody. Print and television news from all around the country covered the incident when Mary and Hester, among others, were arrested for sitting down at an integrated party in a “Whites Only” dining room.

TELEGRAM FROM DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. TO SHADY HILL GRADUATE HESTER HOCKING CAMPBELL ’24 AND OTHERS “MAY I TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO THANK YOU FOR …YOUR WILLINGNESS TO ENGAGE IN A CREATIVE NON-VIOLENT DEMONSTR ATION AND TO GO TO JAIL FOR WHAT YOU BELIEVE. YOU ARE BRINGING THE WHOLE NATION CLOSER TO THE REALIZATION OF THE AMERICAN DREAM. YOU ARE SAYING

BY YOUR WORDS AND DEEDS THAT ALL MEN ARE BROTHERS AND THAT AS LONG AS R ACIAL SEGREGATION IS ALIVE THE HEALTH OF OUR DEMOCR ACY IS IN JEOPARDY.” Photograph by Dick DeMarsico.

Retrieved from the Library of Congress

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L to R: Mary Peabody, Dr. Robert Hayling (the St. Augustine resident who led the protests), Hester Hocking Campbell, and another protester, just before their arrest.

During their two-night stay in jail, Dr. King sent a telegram to express his appreciation.

(See previous page). On Day Three, Hester and the others were bailed out and returned home.

A week later, Hester was asked to address her church, reflecting on the experience. The talk, in its entirety, can be read at www.shs. org/hestercampbell. Hester later published a more detailed account of the experience in Four for Freedom. The book is now out of print but Hester’s granddaughters Cynthia Seay and Pam Appleby made a copy available for this article.

Cynthia and Pam recall their grandmother as “a very traditional family matriarch,” who avoided the limelight. Yet in her book’s conclusion, Hester set modesty aside to underscore the importance of her actions:

Hester’s talk, in its entirety, can be read at www.shs.org/alumni/HesterCampbell.

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“

The racial situation was brought before the whole nation on television at a critical moment. And so forcefully it was impossible for anyone to be unaware of the seriousness of the problem.

We...felt that our participation in the St. Augustine demonstration at the time when the Civil Rights Bill was being debated before Congress helped in some small measure to pass the bill.

The values that framed Hester’s childhood were those of her family and of her school—one and the same—rooted in Agnes and Ernest Hocking’s teachings. By adding language about racial and social justice to Shady Hill’s mission statement, explicit emphasis is given to an elemental part of Shady Hill’s belief system.

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In a future Magazine, we will share further examples of the Hocking family’s passion and actions around social justice.

Hester Hocking Campbell, left, with Esther Burgess and Mary Peabody, as they disembarked in Boston, where a crowd was waiting to greet and thank them.

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by Betsy Ginsberg

Alumni Illustrate the

Director of Development and Alumni Relations Contributing writers: Brenda Paredes, Devon Wilson-Hill, Doug Raymond, and Erika Whitters

Richard Evans ’51

With the words of the revised mission statement ringing in our ears, we who are privileged to work in the Alumni Office went in search of a single graduate per decade who embodies a key aspect of Shady Hill’s mission. Whether it be “joyful, active learning,” “intellectual adventurous[ness],” the dedication to “multiple perspectives,” or the quest for a “wholeheartedly just” world, these graduates all exemplify Shady Hill values, and make us so very proud.

Dick Evans ’51 holds a special place in Shady Hill history as the school’s first Black graduate. “Being first to plow this unfurrowed ground was a positive experience,” he says, leading to a lifelong fascination with the ways people both fit in and stand out. This led him to a career in the field of corporate human resource management.

We invite you to follow our Alumni Spotlight feature on social media, to read about even more inspiring graduates. And we invite you to submit nominations (to alumni@shs.org) for others we should feature in the future.

1940

1950

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1960

1970

Marina von Neumann Whitman ’49 Economist Marina von Neumann Whitman ’49 has been a trailblazer over her entire career, in not just one sector but many: academia, government and corporate. When she was growing up, it was highly unusual for a woman to pursue the male-dominated field of economics, yet Marina did just that, earning her Ph.D. at Columbia in 1962 and teaching at the Universities of Pittsburgh and Michigan.

Continued on page 18

Daniel Taylor ’60 Daniel Taylor ’60 arrived at Shady Hill in fifth grade from an early childhood in India, where his father ran a rural healthcare project. The School’s dedicated faculty inspired young Daniel to ground his passions – such as his fascination with the Himalayan Yeti legend – in study and problem-solving. Since then, he has applied these skills to a range of issues all over the world.

Continued on page 18

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New Mission Statement Patricia Spence ’73

Emma Sagan ’06

In 2014 Patricia Spence ’73 was approached to head up the fledgling nonprofit Urban Farming Institute. Its mission: to develop and promote urban agriculture in Boston, to engage residents of Mattapan, Dorchester, and Roxbury in growing food, and to build a healthier community. When she started, Patricia’s initial thought was, “OK, I’m here to grow food, but within the first year, I realized that food is just the medium; UFI is more than that. We don’t just grow food, we grow people.”

Emma Sagan ’06 is Chief Operating Officer at Agrology, a public benefit company founded in 2019 that helps specialty crop farmers adapt their practices to climate change and environmental conditions. Emma points out, “Increasingly variable weather, wildfires, and droughts are threatening crop yields. Our affordable system of sensors, data integration, and artificial intelligence software helps farmers succeed, against steep odds.”

Continued on page 21

Continued on page 19

1980

1990

2000

2010

William Reed ’15 Ned Morgan ’98 Chloe Breyer ’84 Chloe Breyer ’84 is an Episcopal priest and Executive Director of the Interfaith Center of New York (ICNY), a nationally recognized nonprofit that connects diverse religious and civic leaders to address shared social concerns in NYC from immigration policy to police reform.

Continued on page 20

Edward “Ned” Morgan ’98 is the founder and Executive Director of Water Compass, a not-for-profit that helps to provide clean water to underserved communities in Uganda. Water Compass installs and maintains sustainable, solar-powered water supply systems, which most often replace broken-down hand pumps.

Ned says that up to 70 percent of hand pumps in small communities are in disrepair, and without access to a well, the people are forced to use and drink dirty water, which causes disease.

William Reed ’15 joined the Cambridge Youth Council (CYC) in his first year at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, to get more involved in his new community.

The Youth Council, founded in 2012, is a diverse group of high school students looking to improve the lives of youth in their city, with a particular focus on lowincome, marginalized individuals. Their projects often tackle embedded racial inequities and persistent opportunity gaps within the school district.

Continued on page 21

Continued on page 20 17

Alumni Illustrate the Marina von Neumann Whitman ’49

Continued from page 16 It was unheard of for a woman to be tapped for service on the President’s Council of Economic Advisors – another glass ceiling Marina blithely broke. Private industry, too, saw her shatter stereotypes when she was appointed senior vice president of General Motors in the 1980s, after first serving as GM’s chief economist. Her promotion to SVP made Marina the highestranking woman in the U.S. automotive industry, which was, as she puts it, “a notoriously male preserve.”

made time to mentor other women. As she put it in a Class Note in this Magazine a few years ago, “I struggled daily to strike the right balance between my professional life and my role as a wife and mother.“ Marina has woven some of these life lessons into her 2012 autobiography, The Martian’s Daughter (whose title is a reference to her famous father, one of the brilliant Hungarianborn scientists nicknamed “Martians”). In describing her book, Marina says, “My story, although the intimate account of one life, is also a mirror that reflects the reshaping of opportunities for women in American society over my lifetime.”

“I loved Shady Hill, with its emphasis on curiosity, and plentiful time outdoors.”

It is hardly surprising that numerous think tanks and task forces, both domestic and international, have tapped Marina over the years for work on economics, particularly international trade and investment.

Her leadership has also led to seats on numerous corporate boards, dating back to the 1970s – often as the first female to hold a seat.

Along the way, Marina always

Marina moved away to New York when she was in fourth grade, “So my time at Shady Hill was cut short. Still, I proudly count myself as a member of the Class of 1949. I loved Shady Hill, with its emphasis on curiosity, and plentiful time outdoors.”

Richard Evans ’51

Continued from page 16 Earning a graduate degree at Harvard, he served as a consultant.

In retirement, Dick has taught organizational behavior at Northeastern, Emmanuel College, and Fitchburg State. Over the decades, Dick has been an active parishioner at Trinity Church in Boston, becoming the first Black person elected to its vestry.

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All along, Dick drew on his own experiences both “fitting in and standing out,” to use the title he gave to his 2018 essay in the anthology Aging Wisely: Wisdom of Our Elders. There Dick explains how he came to enroll at Shady Hill: “Several Shady Hill parents knew my father and knew that he had a child—me—who was entering first grade.

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So after some negotiation between the school and my parents, I entered this new world—into a unique experiment for all concerned.” Richard adds, “My father was one of four Black members of the Harvard College Class of 1925, which must have been hard, but difficulties weren’t something he talked about. He was prone to focus on opportunities rather than challenges. My mother was much more frank with me. She had experienced discrimination growing up in Canada; it’s why she moved to Boston, where she became the first Black salesperson at Filene’s Department Store. Her candor about racism was helpful when I encountered it.”

Dick retains deep affection for Shady Hill and his classmates and high regard for his teachers.

He commends Head of School Katharine Taylor, “Who took a very active interest in me all the way through and exerted her influence, bringing others around to integration. Observing her was an early lesson for me in institutional leadership.”

Most of all, Dick applauds his parents for taking the risk to send him to Shady Hill, which he calls,

Asked for an example of some discrimination Dick encountered in his school days, he recounts the whites-only policy at the Cambridge Skating Club, where Shady Hill at the time held skating lessons after school. Ed Yeomans describes the incident in his 1979 book, The Shady Dick Evans ’51, shown here as a very young boy.

Hill School: The First Fifty Years (p.86), noting that Shady Hill dropped the “a continuing influence, to this program until the club ended its day.” Dick’s reflective essay is well exclusionary rule. But of course, Dick still recalls the sting of being worth reading in its entirety; it can be found at www.shs.org/alumni/ turned away.

DickEvans.

Daniel Taylor ’60

Continued from page 16 In 1972, Daniel founded the

displacing them– led to numerous projects, first in the Himalayas and later in the South American Andes and in the Appalachian Mountains of the United States.

Mountain Institute to protect natural and cultural diversity in the Himalayas. The Mountain Institute’s distinctive approach– working in concert with local indigenous communities instead of Specific projects vary widely,

New Mission Statement everything from establishing new national parks to helping locals diversify their livelihoods in ecologically sustainable ways.

Honoring local voices, especially in marginalized communities, has been an important throughline in Daniel’s career. The success of The Mountain Institute led UNICEF, Daniel Taylor ’60 in Gama Jungle. in 1992, to tap Daniel to investigate why change practitioners and making UNICEF had many them even more effective at successful solving problems in their home projects in specific communities communities. The student body but fell short when they attempted presently spans 42 countries. to scale up and replicate the work in other locations. Building on the And the Himalayan yeti legend, success of the Future Generations which Daniel found so absorbing Institute, Daniel launched Future in his youth? Well, after years of Generations University in 2006. synthesizing all available evidence, The University is an accredited just as Shady Hill taught him online institution that grants to do, he concluded that the masters degrees in applied mythical yeti is a Himalayan black community development, bear. To learn more, visit www. supporting proven community danielctaylor.org.

Daniel Taylor ’60 in Guru Rinpoche Cave.

Patricia Spence ’73

Continued from page 17 That thinking propels their mission and has become their motto.

share their struggles and success stories.

“In fifth grade, kids are still silly, Now, 10 years since its inception, they laugh easily but they also the Urban Farming Institute deeply listen. They can hear what manages five farms under Patricia’s you have to say.” Each student leadership. To preserve and should be able to connect with at protect the farms, UFI established least one speaker and draw that the first community land trust all-important conclusion: “If they (CLT) for urban farms. The can do it, so can I.” Boston Farms CLT will hold and manage the land to ensure that Between her role as the Urban urban farms and urban farmers Farming Institute’s Executive will be growing food well into Director and involvement in the future. In 2021 the Institute community based nonprofit maintained a 12 person seasonal projects, Patricia is a very busy staff responsible for running an woman: urban farmer training program; a weekly farmer’s market; three CSAs; the 7th Massachusetts Urban Farming Conference, and a wide variety of community workshops and educational programs.

Although the pandemic curtailed some of UFI’s activities, it also prompted expansions in others, including the distribution of subsidized coupons for use at the farmer’s markets, Destination Cuisine Chef Series to promote healthy cooking, a meal bag distribution program (5,500 meal bags of premade food for those in need) and a grow box building program (70 to date) where UFI builds raised beds in local backyards providing seedlings and soil.

“We are all moving at an incredible pace.

Trying to find ways to pause and find time to take care of ourselves in order to effectively care for others is an easy thing to say…so hard to enact.”

The Urban Farming Institute is not the only mission-driven nonprofit Patricia has launched. In 2003, she founded “They Made it, To learn more about the Urban So Can I,” a speaker bureau that Farming Institute, visit https:// introduces speakers to fifth grade urbanfarminginstitute.org/. students around greater Boston to

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Ned Morgan ’98

Continued from page 17 It was while studying in Senegal during college that Ned first realized clean water, something he took for granted, was not available to many people–nearly 800 million of them worldwide.

He began working in development and emergency response programs in Kenya, Uganda, South Sudan, among other locales, and later earned his master’s in Water and Environmental Management.

He founded Water Compass in 2016,with a distinct focus on the sustainability of water systems.

Pat Spence ’73 and son Alex at the Ride for Food fundraiser.

Chloe Breyer ’84

Continued from page 17 For 25 years, ICNY has also offered religious diversity training for public service groups like the New York Police Department to create a better understanding of the multi-faith communities they serve.

In response to the latest humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, Chloe is supporting Afghan refugees seeking asylum in the U.S, many of whom face persecution under the Taliban. She initiated a GoFundMe campaign to cover the legal expenses for the family Chloe is passionate about her work of a former Afghan woman spreading appreciation for religious parliamentary to which many diversity. “Diversity should not Shady Hill alumni and parents tear us apart but rather bring us contributed. together as a civil society.”

She credits her classmate Ruth Before joining ICNY as its Webb ’84 with pulling her into director, Chloe directed forums this particular collaboration last on religion and public life at the summer, explaining that Ruth’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine daughter Anna Bellows ’18 was from 2000-2003, during which interning for immigration lawyer time New York was dealing with and SHS parent Susan Church the aftermath of the September 11 (parent of Leo Demissie ’21 and attacks.

Maya Demissie ’18) putting in tremendous hours filling out visa She first traveled to Afghanistan applications to get refugees to in 2003 through an interfaith safety. initiative to rebuild a bombed mosque and then returned Chloe says, “It was truly a group multiple times over the following effort and so great to see the Shady decade to support a women’s Hill network collaborate on an health clinic and a co-ed school. important issue.”

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SHADY HILL SCHOOL

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Water Compass has installed three solar-powered water supply systems since 2019, providing nearly 9 million liters of clean water–and counting. The cost for filling a jerry can (5.5 gallons), the standard vessel for collecting water in Uganda, is 100 Ugandan shillings, roughly three U.S. cents. Ned says that he spends a lot of his time fundraising to build new solar-powered water systems with the aim of having

30 systems in operation by 2025.

For more information, visit www. watercompass.org.

Ned adds that his best days are when the water systems start producing fresh, clean water.

“Once that happens, you can watch the change in the health of the children. Skin conditions clear up very quickly when they have clean water for drinking and bathing.”

Asked if his time at Shady Hill played a significant role in his career choice, he answers: “Absolutely, learning about different cultures and the world (I still have my memory map!) certainly helped to spark my interest in international affairs and in living and working abroad.

I remember studying Japan in Mixed Group, ancient Greece in Fourth Grade, the Middle East in Fifth, and Africa in Sixth. It taught me that the world is a diverse, extraordinary place.”

Ned Morgan ’98’s Water Compass team works to bring clean water to underserved communities in Uganda.

Emma Sagan ’06

Continued from page 17 For example, the technology is helping wine growers in Northern California measure precise levels of harmful chemicals in smoke from wildfires. “Not all smoke destroys the grapes’ taste,” Emma explains; “Farmers need to know exactly what compounds are in the smoke and at what levels, to know whether plants are exposed and if a particular field is lost.” Agrology’s system provides this data right away, in time to take action.

Emma and her team are continuing to add new features to their app, such as a new extreme weather alert. By constantly evolving their technology, Emma hopes to help farmers make better data-driven decisions.

Emma has always been interested in applied engineering. She fondly recalls the Shady Hill LEGO robotics lessons taught by Ms. Bratzel, one of Emma’s favorite teachers. Not surprisingly, Emma

Emma Sagan ’06 tending beehives.

majored in engineering at Stanford University, blending Mechanical and Energy Engineering courses into a focus on Sustainable Manufacturing. She went on to be Product Manager at Capital One, developing financial applications used by millions of customers.

She also developed tools to help people register to vote in the 2020 election as product manager for a data analytics firm.

Speaking about what inspires her at her current job, she says,

“I love my current work, harnessing technology to support farmers and the sustainability of the planet.

All my passions rolled into one!”

William Reed ’15, fourth from left, and other Cambridge Youth Council members advocating for the rights of students across their city.

William Reed ’15

Continued from page 17 William served on the Youth Council for all four of his high school years, rising to co-chair his senior year. Under his leadership, the Youth Council achieved a big success: working with the City of Cambridge to subsidize MBTA transit passes for students at Rindge who receive free or reduced lunch. After many meetings and discussions with the ​​ Cambridge School Committee, City Councilors and the Mayor, the program was approved in 2019 and is still in place.

Another achievement William is proud of was addressing an inequity in the school attendance policy. “Students who lived further away from the school and didn’t have parents who could drive them had higher numbers of absences. After a certain number of absences from a class, school policies called for a student’s final grade to be dropped by ten points. This

was disproportionately affecting students who were low-income.”

The Youth Council lobbied the School Committee to amend the attendance policy, adding a “buyback” clause whereby a student can go to their Dean and work with their teachers to “buy-back” their grade points.

William is currently attending Middlebury College in Vermont, where he is majoring in English Literature. He aspires to become a journalist. Reflecting on his experience with the Cambridge Youth Council, William says, “It was eye-opening. Getting to work with such a diverse group of people to address inequities was the highlight of it all.”

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May Day, 1941 22

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Class Notes 1936 Nancy Smith Foote happily celebrated her 100th birthday last summer. She still regales her family with memories of Shady Hill, for instance, the boys having cattail wars on the way to shop and the way the windows opened and dropped down into the wall. Classmate Jack Ragle ’36 and she corresponded until his death two years ago. Three of her children also attended Shady Hill: George Foote ’61, Tamasin Foote ’68, and Nathaniel Foote ’70.

1946 SUE WARING PRIDEAUX suzy101@comcast.net Sue Waring Prideaux writes from Dallas, Texas: I have moved to Dallas and have sold my home in Swansea, Mass. My family, however, have remodeled a home in Sconset, Nantucket, and I hope to spend time there in the summer to get out of the Dallas heat. My bird art is in the Beaudry Gallery here in Dallas, and I am blessed to be still in the art world. Covid is still around, and we are all being very careful. My eight grandchildren are all doing well here in Dallas.

1947 DAVID CLARKE David.clarke11@verizon.net David Clarke: Dear Classmates, this is our 75th reunion year, and we are turning 90. Congratulations are in order! My second year as your class correspondent; I tried to reach you by phone to get your news. This was really successful from my point of view as I had wonderful chats with most of you. The challenge is that I had to rely on my notes to write this

Nancy Smith Foote ’39 celebrated her centenary with family in August. report – not a strong point for me.

I think I reported correctly some of what we covered but apologize in advance for any errors or omissions that have crept in. I am saddened to report that four classmates have died since the last SHS report: Alicia Gardner Sinclair in June 2021, Jock Forbes in July 2021, Rick Eliot in January 2022, and Bob Weiss also in January 2022.

All wonderful classmates whom we will miss but keep in our memories.

Luckily, I did not receive any news of COVID-19 and I hope that healthy report continues. Most of us are “living daily” as Harriet Myers put it.

Mary and I find ourselves busy but confined locally, though we were able to spend some time in the summer and fall at the family house in Woods Hole on Cape Cod. My daughter, Maura, and family continue to share

our house in Concord, MA. The two grandsons keep us enjoyably alert and involved in a variety of pursuits.

My daughters are doing well: Ann is working with disabled children, Jennifer teaches classics at Bowdoin, Kate teaches public speaking at Harvard, and Maura teaches/tutors at local schools.

Nat Bowditch reports from Kennett Square, PA where he resides in a retirement facility with Peggy, his wife of 65 years. They were able to spend the summer at Hancock Point, ME. His children are in CA, CO, and Boston. They have enjoyed keeping up with Phil Drinker’s wife, Margie, and daughter.

Marty Bruning (Patsy Raymond): She and Ted, her husband of 70 years, live in their house in Chatham VA. As Marty is unable to speak easily, husband Ted relayed her greetings to

her classmates.

Marcia Eliot relayed the news of Rick Eliot’s recent death in Rockport, MA. She said that SHS had always been important in Rick’s life.

Diana Forbes lives in Ipswich, MA. She was happy to talk about her days at SHS and sent her very best to her classmates.

Jock Forbes and his wife, Ariadne, both died this past summer. I was able to attend a gathering for their 67th wedding anniversary last spring. Jock was still in fine singing voice. Their house in Cambridge, MA is right next to the grounds of SHS. Joanna Hodgeman (Bailey) is living in a retirement home in Rochester, NY. She is well, active, and interested to read about her classmates. She has three greatgrandchildren.

Harriet Myers (Robey) says she is fine, “living daily,” and sends greetings from Madison, CT. She has three grandchildren and three greatgrandchildren. Last summer she was able to spend some time at the family house in Gloucester, MA. Frances Rademaekers (Bootsie Carter) is living in a retirement home near Madison, WI. She enjoyed a trip to Washington DC at Christmas time where she had lived many years in a Frank Lloyd Wright designed house.

Previously, she had worked in Europe for Radio Free Europe. She has two grandchildren.

Alicia Sinclair (Gardner) of Cambridge, MA died in June. She had been looking forward to painting and gardening after her hospital stay.

Mary Ann Streeter (Dexter) resides in her home in Wenham, MA. She enjoyed having her two greatgranddaughters visit for Christmas.

Pneumonia earlier this year left her needing an oxygen assist which limits her traveling. This time of year she remembers skiing and the family house at Sugarloaf, ME which provided much family fun.

Joyce DiBona, Bob Weiss’s wife, wrote that Bob died recently at his home in Westport, MA. She said that Bob held fond memories of his time at SHS.

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1948

Class of 1948: In Memoriam

JAMES C. GOODALE jcgoodal@debevoise.com Star Anderson (Atmar) died on January 20, 2018. Star was in our class following the war when her father was at Harvard Medical School and a Harvard football team doctor.

She moved from Cambridge to Houston, TX in 1948 where she attended St. John’s School and then went to Sophie Newcomb College (Tulane) where she met her first husband, George Renaudin. She taught fine arts at St. John’s School for 15 years and directed dance and musicals in Houston. She later divorced Mr. Renaudin and married Ralph Atmar and moved to Austin, Texas where she lived for 23 years. After Mr. Atmar died in 2005, she moved back to Houston. She had two kids and published two books as well as writing articles and short stories for several magazines and other publications. Who can ever forget Star and Stevie Bolster singing duets at Iolanthe? They both then had careers in the theater.

Steve Bolster (from Donna Bolster): Your friend, Steve, is still plugging along here at home. He has good days and bad. His dementia is progressing, but I’m still able to manage him at home. I am hoping to do that for as long as possible; I don’t want to send him to a nursing facility unless absolutely necessary; especially now with COVID-19 and with these places being understaffed.

We have both managed to escape COVID-19 so far. We are both double-vaccinated and boosted, so we have done all we can. We are very careful about whom we see in person, and we don’t go to very many places. As a matter of fact, Steve is not able to leave the house at all unless I find two strong people to lift him down the front steps in the wheelchair. He is unable to walk very far, and he cannot do the steps anymore. So he has really been housebound since the summer. We only took him out to my daughter’s house on Thanksgiving. With a lot of help! We spent Christmas here at home alone. We would have gone to my daughter’s house, a few miles away, but her children were sick on Christmas, so that plan got aborted.

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SHADY HILL SCHOOL

Star Anderson (Atmar) ’48

Richard Coveney ’48

Betsey Kelley (Richards) ’48

Sandy Lee Weille (Maccoby) ’48

Steve is still getting physical therapy at home, and we are always hopeful that he will become more mobile in therapy. At the very least, his muscles are not atrophying, and he can still stand up, pivot, walk a few feet, always with the walker and me right alongside. It’s been very challenging, to say the least. But we are grateful that we are here together, and we have remained relatively healthy.

Anne Carpenter (Robertson) writes: The Covid pandemic has brought us vaccines, but more research is needed to fight the variant. We were vaccinated and boosted, but still got the viral disease, as did our grandchildren. Bruce and I visited Clearwater, FL for six days and were amazed to see the four-year-old could run two miles and bike many miles with her father and brother. In the afternoon my son Aaron Matthes set up a pole vaulting setup and taught his ten year old how to pole vault. This 10-year old Ricky Matthes is a good athlete.

The grandchildren seem to be doing just fine.

Peter Castle: Ancient Airs - What was it about our old SHS That connects us still at our best?

- Jamie now, but how about back then?

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- I cannot but feel that our class Was special: gifted, rebellious and real.

- Teachers too, no doubt, Chapin et al, But perhaps we led them to excel!!

- Illusion or not, I send on this thought To all who can still read: God speed!

Richard Coveney: Died last April (2021) in East Falmouth, MA where he lived the last several years to be near and on the water. Dick arrived in seventh grade twice as tall as everyone else. We snuck him on our six man football team but Chape would not let him play thereafter on the eighth and ninth grade eleven man team because he was too big, and so he was not on the famous undefeated team of 1948. When Dick left Shady Hill for Barrington, RI High School, he was welcomed with open arms by the football coach. He went to Brown where he was on the university football team.

He graduated in 1958 from Harvard Business School and went to P&G, then Pepsi Co. and thereafter started his own leasing company in Boston.

He retired early to windsurf and sail on his 44 foot sloop in East Falmouth. He was married for 50 years to a college classmate, then divorced and switched to kayaking and power boating with his new

companion Margaret Steel on her 38 foot Illusion. He was a loyal Shady Hiller and always at our reunions.

David Edsall writes: my stay at Shady Hill was but a single year in first grade; my second grade year was at Polytech in Pasadena, CA while my father enjoyed a sabbatical at Caltech and my fondest memories are of the Pacific Ocean and bottle feeding at Gay’s lion farm; by the time we returned in 1941 we had moved to Dedham, an attractive town, but not Cambridge! By the way, I finished high school here in Woodstock, VT at the Woodstock County School (1948-1951), a private school which opened in 1945, a most welcome relief from the conventional prep school of that time. I had a bit of cancer in 2017, but a fine doctor at DartmouthHitchcock radiated it into remission.

Now I just feel like my eternal youthful self trapped in an aged body. And winter up here doesn’t help, it lasts much too long. Our classmate and my cousin Louisa Edsall’s two kids, John and Katie, are in Canada where Louisa lived (and died) after she and Leon (Kamin) split. I talk to them all the time.

John is on Facebook; I don’t know about Katie. Surname is Kamin. My cousin, Tom Edsal ’56, and Mary are doing OK in DC. Tom still writes his column for The New York Times. You’ll find Mary on Facebook too.

Anne Eiseman (Walker) writes: Jamie Goodale and I both have grandsons who are freshmen at Yale. Sam Yankee (mine) and Will Muse (Jamie’s). Believe it or not they even have a class together and actually spoke acknowledging their grandparentage. Sam’s mom was an apprentice at SHS! Edward Ginsburg writes: I gave up being paralyzed by the pandemic after being vaccinated. I eat out occasionally, indoors with family and a few close friends. I am reading about the Middle Ages where plagues were always present. I am fortunate to have a great wife and family. However, life is confining.

Much harder on the younger people.

Approaching ninety and healthy is something to be grateful about. Still working via Zoom. I think of the days when I played third base on the SHS baseball team; I was like a hydrant with a sieve for a glove. But did we have fun!! Shady Hill was superb at generating a great attitude.

My daughters loved sports at Shady

Hill and went on to play at high school and college.

Esther Goudsmit writes: In 2012 I moved to a senior retirement community in a rural corner of Washtenaw County, MI. We 150 residents occupy apartments in the three-story main building or in villas. As of early January, 2022 only one resident has been COVID-19 positive- infected while traveling, recovered with selfisolation for 10 days. COVID-19 entered Michigan on March 10th, 2020. For communal living groups to be virus-free meant a carefully tailored set of does and don’ts.

Our CEO issued a memo. Masks required except in one’s home.

Visitors, including family, can only visit residents outdoors. Canceled: exercise classes, choir, committee meetings, housekeeping, beauty salon, bingo etc. (The library stayed open!). Dining rooms are closed.

Dinners, the only communal meals, are included in our rent. We chose our selections from the menu.

Meals are delivered to apartments (Room Service!!). Villa dwellers pick up “Take out” at the main building entrance. In 2021 we welcomed the appearance of Moderna Vaccine.

Feb. 3rd a pharmacy set up a vaccination clinic here, available to residents and staff. Repeated for second doses and booster shots. We never knew who decided against vaccination, part of the individual privacy rules here. We did know percentages. For example, as of today, Jan. 6, 2022 we are told that 100% of residents are vaccinated, and 77% of staff members. With vaccination our dining rooms reopened, activities resumed, but masks are still required, social distancing. Visitors can come in, after screening. That’s our “normal” right now. Residents are not locked in; when not at home we use our common sense, well developed by our advanced age. I enjoy hiking with friends. There are many nature preserves nearby. Now, in the snow we identify tracks - deer, rabbit, fox, coyote, wild turkey, weasel, mink.

Suki Hilles (Bush) writes: I have been at my son’s in Arlington for a year and a half but had nearly three normal months in Westport this summer. I still go out to shop.

Allie Hoag (Kurland) – her daughter Julia Bator ’83, TTC ’91 (and former teacher) writes since Allie died last year: all of Allie Bator Kurland’s children are well and send

best wishes to Mom’s wonderful Shady Hill friends. Tom Bator ’76 (a T&E lawyer and private trustee) welcomed his third grandchild, Tatum, son of Kate Bator ’07, just before the holidays. Mike Bator ’78 (a science and healthcare focused investor) is getting ready to relocate from New Jersey to the Massachusetts shore now that the nest is empty. I have been hunkered down with my three kids in NYC for the duration. We plan to gather as an extended Bator / Myer / Blanchet / Kurland family this coming summer to honor Mom’s life and beautiful spirit -- we hope the stars will align!

Betsey Kelley (Richards): Died on December 11, 2014. Betsey went to Miss Hall’s School and a few years later married Kenneth Safe, Harvard ’51, who later became a managing partner of Welch & Forbes, a Boston investment management firm. She lived in Duxbury, MA and Boca Grande, FL. She had five kids, including two boys who predeceased her, as did her husband (after 51 years of marriage). She then married Tad Richards. With two partners she owned “Oleander,”a gift shop in Duxbury.

Roger Lane: who, like Mr. Chips, continues to live across from Haverford College where he taught for years, writes: Agreed this last year was a bummer. Marjorie & I stayed up New Year’s Eve past our bedtimes - not to welcome the New Year but to make sure this damn one goes the hell away.

Charles Moizeau writes from Millington, NJ: We bought this house in 1967, renting it out for the decade 1976-86 when we lived in Europe. It was considerably enlarged in 2000 when we decided that its location with a major international airport only 26 miles distant, together with its three acres in the woods and located in a small town, was worth keeping. 2021 was, until just a few days ago, better than 2020. Wife Gail had tested covid-positive in December 2020, probably caused by a visit to her doctor’s office where other sickos were present. She had four days in bed with flu-like symptoms. Of course I was then tested positive, but was asymptomatic. Until now we both suffered from nothing worse than cabin fever. Currently, we are shut-ins again because almost all the people we wish to see

are omicronized.

Ann Morse (Cohen): Died on February 21, 2017. After graduating from Bard, she lived in Kansas City, MO with her husband. She had two kids and four grandchildren. She was one of three Morses at Shady Hill - her brother Alan Morse ’52 and her sister Edith Morse Milender ’45.

She worked at Halls Crown Center in Kansas City and as well as for Hallmark Cards and was a teaching assistant at an elementary school there for 13 years.

Kathryn Shohl (Scott) writes: It’s been another year of postponed events and virtual lectures rather than in person experiences. I feel fortunate that none of my immediate family has had to experience COVID-19, but the pandemic has certainly impacted all of us. Just as I was gladly resuming yoga class, swimming, and even live theater and concerts, the emergence of Omicron at the end of 2021 has brought all that to a halt again. It was good to be able to connect with extended family in August at our lakeside summer home in New Hampshire, but year-end holiday celebrations were limited in size. I wonder if any of the trips I rescheduled to 2022 will actually take place? I think that after the disruptions of 2020, I got used to the idea of living in a sort of cocoon, so 2021 seemed more routine. That is, until things began to open up, only to be followed by renewed restrictions courtesy of Omicron. I guess we’re all going to have to figure out how to cope with the “new normal.” I have a supply of home test kits so that I can feel safer when I visit my 93-year-old bedridden sister-in-law. I just got my first order of groceries delivered via Instacart. It probably would help

to have a dog like my childhood pet Juno, well known to the Class of ’48, to help keep my spirits up!

Sandy Lee Weille (Maccoby): Died on November 4, 2019. Sandy Lee was probably the most well known person in our class when we were kids. This is because she was a champion figure skater.

When we were in the third grade, there was a swell of popular eightyear old opinion there should be a race between me and Sandy to determine the class skating champion. I marched confidently to our frozen field with Sandy and the class. She whupped me! A few years ago I had many long conversations with Sandy. She had no memory of her famous victory, but I sure did. Sandy told me her mother got into a furious fight with her skating coach and fired the coach at the time she left Shady Hill in the 7th grade to go to Winsor. Thereafter she went to Rosemary Hall and to Smith, where she was in the same class as Anne Eiseman, Allie Hoag and Esther Goudsmit. Sandy taught for years at Georgetown Day School and wrote two books (the class has written over 25).

Len Wheeler writes: I have taken a cautious approach to COVID-19.

I’ve eaten out only at a very limited number of restaurants, and been free of Covid, feeling a bit safer due to the vaccine. All four of my kids are flourishing with good jobs and marriages including my stepdaughter. One’s a PT, one a botanist and two are teachers.

Jamie Goodale (your scribe): There is no question 2021 was a better year than 2020. I was vaccinated in ’21 but not in ’20.

I was able therefore in ’21 to go out to dinner (outdoors) and have a somewhat normal social (and athletic) life. This came to end of

Like all gift-supported institutions, Shady Hill depends on its community expressing its shared commitment through gifts to the School. We are grateful for each and every one. www.shs.org/onlinegiving

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course with the arrival of Delta and Omicron. In my dotage I seem to have become teacher (45 years) and a writer (for 15 national publications including NYT and Harper’s). I have been able to maintain these two activities (somewhat) during COVID-19. My self image remains, however, that of an All-American Jock although the truth is I can’t run after a tennis ball and when there can barely hit it. My three kids are in = West Palm (Tim, founder of the Keel Harbour Company), Lake Tahoe (Clay, a principal in a Warren Buffet company), and New York City / Connecticut (Ashley, a lawyer). As the SHS news goes to press, I am in a defensive crouch, waiting for the Delta and Omicron virus to disappear and preparing myself for the next one.

1950

studying environmental science at Georgia Tech, and the other two are undergraduates at Cornell (making films) and at Harvard (creatively directing musicals, a play and the spring show for the Hasty Pudding).

We ate well, cooking at home, and had good wine. My 65th Reunion at Radcliffe/Harvard comes up this Spring. I shall not be attending. I’ll be interested to learn how our other Shady Hill classmates are doing. And I’ll be glad to join in a Class of 1950 mini-reunion luncheon in New York, if one ever gets organized.

Joëlle (Fontaine) Cabot, Cambridge, MA writes: Buenos días, Jeff. We are currently visiting Chiapas, Mexico! For us—as for everyone else—COVID-19 has been and continues to be a challenge.

Conrad and I are vaccinated and, fortunately, our health remains fine.

We didn’t go to France last year because of COVID-19, but we went

to treating her condition proved unsuccessful and she died March 20, 2021. Fortunately for me, our son, Jay, lives in Wichita. He has moved to live with me in our condo, providing me much-needed companionship, and making it possible for me to continue living here, which I might not have wanted or been able to do on my own. Our three daughters and five grandchildren live “all over” everywhere—Alaska, Massachusetts, KC Metro—but stay in close touch.

Despite the travel constraints forced on us by COVID-19, all of us were able to gather here to celebrate Thanksgiving. Our family visits regularly via Zoom. I wish I could visit them more in person. How ironic to have both the means and the time to travel and visit, but to be blocked now by the difficulty of traveling during the pandemic.

Our condo, located adjacent to the

JEFFERSON FREEMAN jeffreeman77@gmail.com Leading off: As near as your correspondent can determine, the Class of 1950 entered 2021 with 26 living members, and exited the year with the same number still living.

However, the year was not without sorrowful loss among us. All of us share sadness for, and send our condolences to Fred Chang and his family for the death of his wife, Jan, in March, 2021.

News from and about 21 of our 26: Svetlana (Leontief) Alpers, New York, NY reports: I’m in good health and haven’t been afflicted

by COVID-19. In 2021, I traveled abroad three times: to Madrid, to Paris, and to Provence—not easy to do, but manageable and satisfying.

I continued living in New York through the year, following the guidelines about masking and staying distanced. I also got double-vaxxed and had a booster shot, so am reasonably well-protected against consequences of infection. I haven’t held back from going out or eating out, which I’m comfortable doing— when I get sick of cooking for myself!

Over-reacting to the pandemic is just as bad as minimizing it. My sons and their families, (one with wife and also four grandchildren), were in NYC over the holidays.

One granddaughter has graduated from Rutgers and is working (online) in Boston. Her brother is

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SHADY HILL SCHOOL

Jeff Freeman ’50 with wife Landa Freeman and sister Penelope (Freeman) Olson ’57 visiting Poland, ME.

last month for the holidays, visiting my daughters, Héloïse and Eléonore, who live in Paris. Three of my grandkids study or work in the US. Another one, Gabriel, studies at the University of Bath in England. My youngest grandchild is in a bilingual high school in Paris. More likely of interest to Jeff than other classmates, last summer Conrad and I spent time in Jackson NH with our daughter, Eléonore—a wonderful place to visit that dates back a long way for me, and for the Freeman family too.

Frederic Chang, Wichita, KS reports: 2021 was a tough year, the second in a row for Jan and me. She was making progress on recovering from a partially-paralyzing stroke she had suffered earlier. Sadly, later in 2020, she was diagnosed with a malignancy. Different approaches

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Crestview Country Club golf course, provides me with an enjoyable distraction. I play golf three times a week with golfing buddies I have known for years. We no longer boast about our golf scores, but have good times together, out in the fresh air, riding carts but walking a lot too.

We have the good sense to stay friendly by not talking politics while we’re playing! The weather stayed pretty warm during the fall and we continued to play right up until December holidays. Saying just a bit about politics: I have difficulty understanding the perspectives of those around here who see the world differently from the way I do. Many view the Presidential election as “having been stolen,” think of the January 6 events as a “boisterous visit by citizens seeking to protect

democracy,” etc. I do my best to grit my teeth and avoid arguments, but that’s neither easy nor fun. Maybe letting the dishonest stuff pass and forcing myself to not pay attention is the answer?

Patricia (Smith) Elvebak, Middlebury, VT writes: It has been quite a year for me, one which I plan not to do again. At some point last year, I decided to move to Vermont from California. I had been living there for 57 years! Marin County, just 20 minutes from S.F. is a lovely place, except now there is the constant presence of smoke and a prevailing wind nurtured by climate change. Not to mention TRAFFIC. I had to give up my cello and golf because of hand injuries, and my friends were dying off. I announced the idea to my sister-in-law, Gail (my brother, Harvey Smith’s, widow), who withheld her opinion (not really). We are a close family. So, the big move (nightmare) began, and

by June 7, I was there ahead of the movers. I took everything I had.

I had a helper for the trip, and he and I and the cat made a fine plane trip to Boston. The present is bliss.

I am residing in a fine retirement home, Residence at Otter Creek, in Middlebury, Vermont. I am five minutes from Gail’s house and am surrounded by pasture land. Right now: snow and COLD. The other residents are educated and friendly.

I am so fortunate! In other news, my Corte Madera CA house sold at a big profit. Best wishes to all for a satisfactory solution to your aging years. We are getting old!

Jefferson Freeman, Guilford, CT writes: Following the initial shock of the Jan 6 cataclysm, our 2021 proceeded okay, with two vax jabs in late Jan. and early Feb. In retrospect, it’s a bit surprising to recall the anxiety we felt hoping but not knowing whether COVID-19 shots would provide protection as well as some peace of mind. Later, in Oct., a booster jab reinforced our realization that we’re doing all right. 66 years on, Professor Higgins’ paraphrased My Fair Lady lyrics fit amazingly well in current times: “We’ve grown accustomed to our masks… For breathing out and breathing in…” We’ve also accepted —for now—staying mostly away from indoor events, limiting inperson social contacts, finding superb take-out menus for dining outside or at home, etc. It’s a different life from before, but enjoyable also—especially

because COVID-19 has not yet knocked on our door. Highlights this year? Lots of connecting via Zoom with family groups and other friends.

Four-plus mile brisk walking almost daily, weather permitting, along Guilford paths and on local trails.

Mid-winter family picnics, masked in our condo garage with door open—bundled up against cold, but tolerable in weak winter sunlight. A ton of reading, all non-fiction, mostly steered away from current politicallyhot topics. We enjoyed a change of pace during the late spring and summer COVID-19 lull. Unmasked visits to and from vaccinated family members—memorable meals and chatter. In July, we enjoyed a wonderful week spent hiking in the White Mountains, with daughter, Willoughby, and her husband, Marc Levesque, including a day visiting Range Point State Park, Poland ME, for a picnic with my younger sister, Penelope (Freeman) Olson ’57, pictured with Jeff and Landa.

Here in Guilford, we’re comfortably settled in the condo to which we moved in July, 2020. We’re in one of 12 units and connect readily with other residents as neighbors but, thankfully, live independent of the others. The design of the six units in our wing is somewhat unique: garage at ground level, plus four other levels, each connected by a flight of seven steps. In effect we have a built-in stair master which guarantees that we exercise each day. Our year was capped with a mid-day family gathering and dinner on New Year’s Day at our daughter’s home in Mount Kisco, NY. Each of us went through a rapid antigen self-test in the morning before we came together. Negative results for everyone! We chose to celebrate together mask-free. Nothing unusual in this statement today; completely incomprehensible if you wind the calendar back to 2018. For 2022?

We’re fairly optimistic. COVID-19 is likely with us in some form to stay, but we’re increasingly learning how to live with it, test for it, duck it as best we can. We’ll hope to stay healthy physically by following the guidelines we already know, and healthy mentally by staying reasonably aware of but not sucked under by obsessing over short-term political happenings that generate dismaying froth.

Lee (Ginsburg) Herbst, Chicago, IL & Tucson, AZ writes: I am gradually accepting the fact that this pandemic

will be around in full force for a third year. So masking, and semi-isolation continue. Our life feels on hold. Our contact with the outside world is mainly through technology: phone, computer and TV. Zoom meetings with my five book clubs give me visuals with friends but it is not the same as actual contact. My book clubs bring variety to my thoughts as one specializes in archeology in the Middle East, another on social issues of today and the others on interpersonal relationships, often feminine roles. Although concerts, lectures and theatre are more limited, we find living in Tucson preferable to Chicago where we are more closed in. Living in a single family house on a few acres allows nature to come into our lives with frequent sightings of hawks, cardinals, and road runners, along with javelinas, bobcats, and coyotes. The sunsets are spectacular. We feel lucky to have each other and are blessed with periodic visits from our children and grand-children. They are showing us how their work shifts between online and in-person and they venture forth with masks and vaccinations. By next year with a fourth booster we will probably be doing the same.

John Horvitz, New York, NY writes: Regarding Sandy and me: our lives continue with few changes since our last update. We’re in reasonably good health. During 2021, we split time between our NYC apartment and a Bridgehampton, NY home.

We’ve limited outside contacts to avoid COVID 19 exposure. We look forward this spring to resuming more normal travel, entertainment, and social interaction with our friends.

Best regards to all surviving SHS classmates.

David M. Kaplan, Palm Beach, FL reports: 2021 was okay for us.

We both are fully vaccinated and received our boosters. It was a strange year for us and for everyone— minimal personal contact thanks to COVID-19. We found other ways to entertain ourselves. We’re back in Palm Beach now, and will be into the spring, when we’ll return to Boston for the summer months. Much as I’d like to, I’m not playing golf now, and haven’t for two years. Balance problems make it impossible for me to get started again. Annoying that I have a couple of friends in their 90s who’re still at it. Living in Florida now is a strange experience. Fortunately, it’s possible to go to restaurants because we can

dine outside. People our age tend to be masked and cautious about avoiding potential COVID-19 risks.

Younger people are less cautious.

When my son, David, visited us he reported being at places filled with much younger people, but with nary a mask in sight. We attended a performance of the Palm Beach Symphony. They play in a hall with 800 seats. Only 200 ticket holders were admitted, and all had to prove they were doublevaxxed and boosted. The audience members were masked, and spread out in the auditorium to minimize likelihood of infection. So, despite what you may read or hear about Florida being wide open, it’s really quite a mixed picture. It’s been a long time since I visited the Shady Hill campus, but the pictures Shady Hill publishes periodically make it look the same as it has been forever, at least on the outside. Not so for Cambridge, for sure. In the early 1900s, My grandfather moved the Kaplan Furniture Company into a factory building on Albany Street in Cambridge, which they sold to Polaroid in the ‘60s for a very handsome sum, after moving Kaplan Furniture to Medford. The Albany Street building eventually went over from Polaroid to MIT, which has just sold it again to a Biotech company for an astronomical amount. It’s reassuring to know that the Shady Hill campus has managed to sustain itself relatively unchanged on Coolidge Hill for almost 100 years!

I hope to have more to report about 2022 when the time comes next year.

Good wishes to all classmates.

Harriet (Woodworth) Koch, Pasadena, CA, reported: she and Al continue living in their Pasadena home; enjoy the garden and outdoors that surround where they live; were vaxxed and boosted in 2021; remain in good health; traveled back east last summer to visit their home in Nantucket, but otherwise stayed pretty much local; appreciated the phone call; wished all the best; promised to write more about themselves; but, unfortunately missed the deadline for getting written news back to your correspondent.

Eleanor (Jones) Luopa, Peterborough, NH writes: I continue to be pleased with my experience living here at Scott-Farrar in Peterborough. I have new friends and new interests and activities as well as time to pursue them. Bridge, bingo,

and team trivia as well as yoga, walking, and reading are all on my agenda during the week. During the past two and a half years I have read over 50 books, a few for the second time. Three of my favorites are: The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah; The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah; Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. I am also proud to say I currently am the great-grandmother of five perfect great-grandchildren ages six to six months! And did get to see them all between Thanksgiving and Christmas. A wild and fun time!

As for 2022, we are all hoping for better things this year. I wish us all good health and happiness in all our endeavors!

Helen (Cutter) Maclennan, Dunnet, Caithness, Scotland, writes: Christmas 2021 brought my son Nicholas Noyes to London to join the U.K. family for the holiday. It was absolutely lovely to see him and to have him here for a couple of weeks. Sadly the latest COVID-19 crisis meant that his wife and child were unable to come because of the probable difficulties in returning to New York City in mid-pandemic without quarantines of various sorts.

Earlier in the year Binda Parra— Erica (Payson) Parra ’44—and daughter Tina Powell came to lunch with me and my daughter, Ruth. It was such fun to catch up with Binda and Tina after the long COVID communication constrictions. I spent most of the summer at Ham Farm in Caithness with lots of visitors.

My grandsons discovered the joys of surfing in the Pentland Firth (in winter weight wet suits). I noted the joys of not surfing at all. I do hope to visit the U.S.A. when the disease restrictions are easier. Travel insurance gets more problematic as one ages, unfortunately, and COVID-19 has perfected the art of disruption. I hope 2022 brings improvement on all fronts. Best wishes to you all.

Katharine D. “Dex” (Newbury) McGill, Westwood, MA, reports: You’ve caught up with me today working on fixing storm windows here at my home! My health is reasonably good. I’ve been vaccinated against COVID-19, and boosted, and inoculated against flu, and—you name it, I’m covered. I do a lot of walking, and working in and around house to keep myself fit, physically and mentally. I’ve given up tennis, though—too much risk for physical injuries at an age when such injuries have greater consequences. I’m

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staying fit mentally with lots of reading, playing bridge, and weekly visits to our library—which helps to keep my mind working. I have taken up painting again and am enjoying it. I’m beginning to work toward selling this house, which I’ve been in for many years. Where am I headed? I’ll most likely focus on moving to be near my daughters and their families. They each live in North Carolina: one family in Raleigh, the other in Greensboro.

I haven’t worked out the timing yet, but hope I can make it happen sometime this year. Visiting them and their families is about the only traveling I did last year. I didn’t go to Maine last summer, and will probably have to give up on that house if I move south. Since my brother’s (Francis “Tare” Newbury ’53) death in November, 2019, there are no other Newbury family members still living in Massachusetts—which makes it easier for me to consider moving South. I’ll keep you updated as the plan unfolds—if I remember to!

In the meantime, please add my mobile phone number to the Class of 1950 Roster. I’ll have a new address, but the mobile number will definitely not change. It’s a pleasure catching up with you by phone. Thanks for all the work you do supporting our class. Best wishes to all.

Thomas B. Molholm, New York City & Millerton, NY. [To work around Tom’s dementia issues, Tom and his wife, Karen Jacobson, were both on the phone with your correspondent.] We’re pretty much permanently settled in the Millerton NY house. We’ve sublet our New York City apartment, with no immediate plans to go back. However, we do get into the city occasionally, to see Tom’s oldest daughter, Sophie, and her sons: Rafe, who’ll be graduating from Packer this year; and, Aidan, who is an engineer with a start-up in California. We’ve both been vaccinated and received booster shots against COVID-19.

Millerton, a small village in Dutchess County just west of the NY / CT border, is isolated. There have been relatively few COVID-19 cases in town and our risk of exposure is relatively low. We’re doing “Fine” (Karen) and “I’m good too” (Tom). We’re mostly hanging out, currently getting through

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each day okay. Tom experienced some health problems over the holiday period, and these were compounded by Karen’s suffering a broken pelvis. She’s on the mend, but currently uses a walker and cane to get around. She’s not yet ready to drive. Tom’s daughter Claire, who lives in Brooklyn, has been staying with us and helping out. Claire, an attorney, is able to work remotely, which makes her more readily available. We also have a local handyman when work is needed inside or outside; and a neighbor who’s willing to walk our dog.

Tom’s not reading that much, but we sometimes entertain ourselves by listening to podcasts. Visits by Claire’s friends on weekends also

rented the space for the next several months. She’s willing to be a helper for Tom while Karen and Claire are away. So, life goes on! We hope other classmates are well and send our best regards.

Frances (Bailey) Pinney, Georgetown, ME, reports: I did fine in 2021 but had to deal with a series of health issues during the year. Too complicated to explain here. Thankfully they seem to be resolving okay. Even more thankfully, they had no connection to COVID-19, which I managed to avoid, having received two Moderna vaccinations. I will get a booster in January. During the summer, I stayed at our home in Georgetown. It’s too remote for

Are you receiving A Place to Belong, our quarterly e-newsletter, in your email inbox? If not, kindly write to alumni@shs.org to ensure we have your current email address. make our life livelier. Things were better for us for much of 2021. In the fall, Tom was walking two to three miles a day. His fit appearance was amazing to our housekeeper, who couldn’t believe Tom’s age. In the summer, we took a trip south in our camper, visiting Virginia to connect for an enjoyable meal and visit with Tom’s brother, John (T. Tench Vans-Murray-Robertson ’50) in Northern Virginia. While we were in the area, we also visited Tom’s daughter, Amber Molholm, in Washington. We look forward to getting outside again once winter passes. Further physical mending for each of us will make life more enjoyable. Karen and Claire are thinking about a 10-day visit to Alaska later this year—a chance to get away and experience something completely different. A while back, we converted Tom’s work shed on our Millerton property into an apartment. A video editor has

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this time of year, so I’m temporarily camped out at a Holiday Inn in Portland—which gives me more ready access to Boston for medical appointments. My preferred mailing address remains my Georgetown home. I’ve done away with regular telephones, so my cell phone number is the best and surest way to reach me. For the longer term, I’m on the list for The McClellan, an 18-Unit Senior Living Facility in Brunswick. Who knows when space will open up?

But it’s worthwhile waiting for now, and staying hopeful that I’ll be able to settle eventually into a more permanent home. For some of the winter, I’ll be returning to Luquillo, PR to a new rental. We sold the unit we had previously occupied and, because of COVID-19, did not visit the past two years. It’s an absolutely beautiful town on the northeast coast of Puerto Rico, which I have visited many times

and dearly love. Then, in March, my son and I will embark for an extended cruise across the Atlantic on the Star Breeze, a Windstar cruise ship. It’ll be an absolutely wonderful repeat of a cruise I took several years ago. There are about 300 passenger cabins which means that we won’t be traveling with a cruise crowd horde. As to why?

After all the health challenges last year, I’ve decided to live life to the fullest as best I can!

Faith E. Rohrbough, Saskatoon, SK, CAN, writes: In 2021, I ‘survived,’ ‘coped,’ ‘stayed healthy’ (sort of), ‘stayed connected,’ etc.

Perhaps because of fading memory, I don’t have a lot to report. I continue as a resident of our coliving facility. There are about 30 of us—individual quarters in the upper three floors of our building, and shared community space on the ground floor. All of us have collective responsibility for taking care of ourselves and each other.

I have been here for several years now, The group’s members are compatible. For me, this continues to be a satisfactory and comfortable arrangement. Through the year, I have continued my work with other volunteers for NEST, which supports refugee settlement in Saskatoon. Our group meets every couple of months. The flow of possible candidates went “on hold” in 2020 because of COVID-19, but began to open up again this year. It’s a very long process helping families qualify and work through all the steps needed to gain entry to Canada. As for 2022, I am ‘hopeful,’ ‘undaunte,’, ‘resigned,’ ‘serene’ about my life ahead. I stay in touch with my siblings: brother, Mac; and sisters, Connie and Bea, both in Lawrence, Kansas. Sadly, I could not travel to visit them last year, as I have in the past. Zoom is available to us, but we are not using it that much. I have lived in Canada since 1996 but am beginning to wonder if this is the best place for me to be now. It’s appealing to think of being closer to my family members — time will tell.

Greetings to all!

James H. Romer, Unity, NH writes: My life here in Quaker City, a neighborhood in the very pleasant, scrawny little town of Unity, just south of Claremont, near the Connecticut River, is going surprisingly well most of the time.

You can recognize Unity on the map from its wedge shape. Most of the surrounding towns are the standard six mile by six mile square, but the 1764 grant to Unity’s proprietors of the space between the squares somehow came out to about thirty-six square miles in spite of the odd shape. Last year I put a lot of energy into obtaining a grant of about $9,000 for the Town, to conserve and make digital images of several early Town record books.

I worked closely with a small firm of paper conservators, Works On Paper, in Bellows Falls, VT and also learned a lot about the hazards of navigating small-town politics.

Many memories are coming back to me from sixty, seventy, eighty years ago. I regret not having attended the memorial service for Kim Parker and it has occurred to me that Kim is a person that I should have kept in touch with over the years. I remember playing with Kim’s armies of lead soldiers in the house just off Sparks Street, going on a Sunday trip to the North Shore with Kim and his relatives who lived right between Craigie and Brattle Streets at their junction.

And, most important of all, visiting the Old State House in Boston with Kim and my family.

David O. Sears, Pacific Palisades, CA writes: Obviously the big story this year is COVID-19, if one can tear oneself away from the political dramas. UCLA abruptly closed the campus because of COVID-19 as classes ended for winter quarter, in mid-March of 2020. My decision

was to be super-conservative and to isolate myself as much as possible. I hardly left my house over the next year except for brief walks alone in the neighborhood. Although for 60 years, I had routinely spent all day every weekday at the office, I returned to campus only three times, quite briefly, to pick up something. I had almost no faceto-face social contacts, broken only once by having a beer at a friend’s house. My kind neighbors dropped off my groceries each week in my garage after their own weekly shopping trips. I cooked for myself, three meals a day, never getting takeout or food deliveries. A friend arranged for her hairdresser to come to my house every few months for a haircut. I met with my doctor and dentist a couple of times each, to discover that I had no visible health issues. Aside from that, I hardly went anywhere, just driving the couple of miles to the Pacific Palisades shopping village every month or so for absolute necessities such as gasoline or light bulbs.

Instead, I had an active social life on Zoom, a technology I had never heard of before. Most important, I have regularly met for 90 minutes a week with my three daughters.

I speak by phone regularly with other friends and relatives (though I’ve never been a real phone guy).

Lots of emailing. I have met on Zoom regularly with a monthly book club, a monthly group of former graduate students, and a long-established weekly ‘lunch’ with a cadre of a dozen retired

administrators and professors. I taught a graduate seminar, regularly attended two weekly lab groups, attended a number of oral exams, served on a couple of search committees, and had occasional meetings with various graduate students. But none in person.

What a change it was! Fast forward to a year later, March 2021. By then I had had the two Moderna shots. I continued to conduct my professional life exclusively on Zoom, including another graduate seminar. UCLA was still shut down.

But I loosened up a little otherwise.

I went to outdoor restaurants a handful of times. In June I traveled to our summer cottages on Lake Winnipesaukee in NH, as I have every summer. I spent three months there, my longest visit since college, I believe. My three daughters and their families visited for a couple of weeks each, so among other things I saw my newest grandchild in person for the first time ever (born on New Year’s Day, 2020). A friend visited for another couple of weeks, I visited with my fellow New Hampshire summer friends daily, and went out to restaurants more than usual. They were jammed.

Everyone I was in close contact with had been vaccinated and maintained some social distance.

No masks needed. Even outside of our own small community there by the lake, I saw almost no masks and indeed the pandemic was hardly visible at all. “Live free or die!” When I returned to LA in September, UCLA had reopened

and all classes were in-person. I started going back to the office once or twice a week; attending a weekly lab in person, and meeting with students sometimes; and occasionally seeing friends at restaurants. I got boosted. Most of my professional life remained on Zoom, however. Still, life seemed largely back to ‘normal.’ I eagerly scheduled my usual Christmas trip to San Francisco and Seattle to see my daughters and their families.

Then Omicron hit, just before Christmas. After some anguish, I cancelled my trip and resumed my strict isolation at home. At age 86, I did not want to get that disease. Now, as of late January, I have had no face-to-face social contacts since then and have not been back to the office. UCLA went back to virtual classes but plans to re-open in February. I’m scheduled to teach another graduate seminar in the Spring as part of my phased retirement contract. How would I size up the experience? To my surprise, despite almost total social isolation, this widower of a decade has almost never felt lonely.

Seeing beloved family members and friends has actually been more frequent and easier by Zoom!

Teaching a graduate seminar or running a lab group of 15 or so actually seems easier than doing it face to face. Having a large (5 bedroom) house on three stories with an almost-entirely glass wall facing the ocean, about a mile away, helps, as I use various spaces for different purposes and have

RECOVERY OF A LOST SHADY HILL CAROL – Class of 1950 The Story: Do you remember singing this carol at Shady Hill? And what years you sang it? Nick Thompson, Mary Hill Harris and other ’53ers could remember some lyrics, but their three-year search of American and English Carol songbooks bore no fruit. Website searching also did not yield a source.

Mary Hill contacted Jeff Freeman ’50, seeking the name of a Shady Hiller who might know about the carol. Aware of her uncanny ability to recall our childhood songs, Jeff queried his sister, Anne (Freeman) Mayo ’51, who immediately rattled off the three verses, and sang the melody. After emailing Jeff the lyrics, Anne used her Sibelius notation software to recreate the score shown above. It is almost exactly the tune Nick Thompson remembered.

Composer and lyricist are unknown. But the ’53, ’51 and ’50 collaborators surmise that Miss Abbott might have created the song for use in her ’40s and ’50s yearly Christmas Plays, as today’s end-of-fall-term Winter Performances were then known. We’ll Journey to Egypt remains in the memory of a number of earlier alumni. It’s a joy to re-capture a carol that might suit the school’s current repertoire of songs. Maybe some alum digging through Shady Hill memorabilia will surface a copy of the original?

What fun that would be: to have proof!

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not felt at all claustrophobic. I have rarely felt anxious or depressed. I have to confess that I have been familiar in my life occasionally with these negative emotions, so this has been an unexpected and pleasant surprise. Who would have known?

On the downside, I have gradually felt increasing distance from my academic career, which I thought would never happen. Whether that is because of not being surrounded by colleagues, students, and my professional library, all of which are on campus; or the normal slow withdrawal caused by aging and retirement; or the gradual loss of aging friends; or my despondency over the state of American politics, my field of study; or even a late-life version of the imposter syndrome (now the smart young up-andcomings will know for sure that I’m a fraud!) is hard to say. But my mood has been good. I hope for the best for my classmates and other Shady Hillers in 2022. Cheers to all!

Thomas M. Stout, Rockland, ME reports: Susan and I had a good year in 2021. We were both vaccinated early on and, when the time came, received our booster shots. We’re as well protected as we can be and careful about masking and staying distant when we’re out. There’s been no change in my macular degeneration condition. I’m able to handle the “Activities of Daily Living,” as the phrase goes, but pretty much limited otherwise. To give you an idea, I can read 36-point type… but only with a magnifying glass! Susan continues in her role as Nurse Supervisor at our local hospital: Penobscot Bay Hospital in Rockport ME, also known as Pen Bay Medical Center. She primarily works nights, because she’s willing, and because it gives us more time together. Her mother also lives with us, occupying an in-law apartment adjacent to our home. Years ago, I worked on plans for a 50-foot ocean vessel. I got the drawings completed and worked out the specifications for building. Then along came macular degeneration and I had to give it up. Recently, I made contact with a former student who has a Master’s License, and also has the know-how and possible interest in pushing ahead with construction.

I sent him the plans and will be in contact with him to encourage him to proceed. Up to him, of course, but it would be enjoyable to hear

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that what I designed was actually built and launched. I have playback equipment and ear-buds to use for listening to recordings of books, but I haven’t yet figured out a way to readily ensure I can find the disks and use the equipment, so I haven’t started on this as a source of entertainment. I need some ideas and inspiration for how to get myself going. I’m glad to catch up with classmates and others by phone, but that’s really the only way I can connect. Susan and I share an email address, so a message for me addressed to Susan will alert her to let me know, or at least prompt her to read a message to me from others.

But it’s usually better to call me directly at our home phone number.

I’m pleased to talk with anyone who calls me. Best wishes to everyone for a better year in 2022.

T. Tench Vans-MurrayRobertson, Berryville, VA writes: Olga and I have settled and are spending the winter of 2022 in Berryville, where my great grandfather was a judge in the 19th century. Coincidentally, Berryville is about an hour’s drive from Fort Valley, which is where our classmate, Kim Parker, lived for many years in retirement preceding his death in 2006. Living in Berryville, we are 70 miles from my three daughters: two in D.C., and the other one in Bethesda, MD. I’ve provided our current contact information for adding to our Class of 1950 Roster.

HAPPY NEW YEAR! We hope all of our Shady Hill classmates are well.

Joel Wechsler, Lincoln, MA writes: Nothing new here unless I didn’t report the birth of our greatgranddaughter, Lucy, in the last SHS News. She was born August 9, 2020 in Boulder, but we have only seen her twice since then. We don’t travel there and they rarely come east, as in Xmas 2021. We were both vaccinated and received boosters last year, and our health overall is pretty good, aside from Joey’s diabetic retinopathy, which she has been dealing with for some time. Diabetes is an additional risk factor. Joey’s still walking three miles per day, and her daily exercise helps to offset some of the risk. My skiing days are over, which cuts out a different kind of risk. We will attend my 65th Harvard reunion this spring.

Although there has been very little information forthcoming, it will center around commencement and

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be a two-day affair, I think. That’s about it from here. Best to all.

Louise “Lucy” Weiss, Cambridge, MA reports: I’m living at Neville Place of Cambridge, an Assisted Living Residence, on the campus between Fresh Pond and Concord Avenue. I’ve been here several years now. It’s really going well for me, and I have made many interesting friends. I’ve been doublevaccinated and had a booster shot for COVID-19, as have all other residents. It’s a requirement for all of us who live here. Fortunately, I remain in pretty good health. I live in a comfortable individual apartment, which looks out over the campus to Concord Avenue. We have pleasant dining arrangements— two seatings for each meal: Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. There’s no reservation needed; I can walk in when I’m ready. Neville Place offers many activities and I participate in all I can—they’re interesting, stimulating, and lots of fun.When the weather’s okay, I can go outside but I rarely travel off the campus.

My most recent time away was for my brother Bob’s memorial service.

He (Robert H. Weiss ’47) died January 15, 2022. I’m glad to stay in touch with Shady Hill classmates!

I’m still not an email user, and not likely to become one. The best way to reach me is by the phone listed in our Class of 1950 Roster. It’s best to call me at 9 PM or a bit later, when I’m back in my apartment after finishing whatever activities I’ve been in that day and evening.

You can also reach me by sending mail to me at the Neville Place of Cambridge address. Good wishes to my classmates.

1952 ANNE (STURGIS) WATT annewatt99@gmail.com News has reached Shady Hill that ​​ Sarah Bender Wulff ’52 passed away in December 2021. Our sincere condolences to her family and classmates.

Len Clarke, Brunswick, ME writes: My Port Clyde house is now sold and Syd and I are now sequestered here in Brunswick, Maine. We read the news, play music and enjoy home cooking. I am sifting through and tossing stuff...some

fascinating, both mine and inherited, which has been growing over the last eighty years. We schedule to walk three miles a day, enjoying meeting the neighbors and meeting the local dogs. Other travels are on hold except for trips to Stowe to visit daughter and granddaughter (Portland granddaughters now at Bates and UVM). Our petition drive halted the swath that Central Maine Power was cutting through the Northern Maine wilderness in a misguided attempt to provide energy to Massachusetts. Massachusetts should be building its own local renewable sources. We are now collecting signatures to replace poorly-managed, possibly-corrupt, and foreign-owned CMP with the consumer-owned utility, Pine Tree Power. Maine leads in implementing Ranked Choice Voting. My hope is that the filibuster will be abolished in order to save democracy and create a civil and sustainable future.

Klaus Fuchs-Kittoski, Berlin, DE writes: The day before yesterday Sabine became ill, despite three vaccinations. Today I did a test and also have a positive result. But because of the three vaccinations it may not be too dangerous.

Therefore, we send you with special emphasis, the best wishes for Christmas and the New Year, especially health! We have a beautiful card that our granddaughter, Greta, painted especially for her grandpa.

Klaus Fuchs-Kittowski ’52’s beautiful card that granddaughter Greta painted for her grandpa.

Anne (Wallace) Elvins Grace and John Sebastian Grace, Lexington, MA write: Here at Brookhaven at Lexington, John and I have pretty much stayed put for yet another year.

Brookhaven is a wonderful place, and we are very grateful for this. Alas, we are still under-staffed and can’t invite friends in to dine. A highlight for the year was the privilege of being onstage in our new Performance Hall for two performances of “Arsenic and Old Lace.” I was Abby,

one of the two murderous ladies, and John was Officer Klein and in charge of microphones, lighting and the curtain. As for exercise, John walks three times a day on our beautiful trails—up to eight miles a day!!—and I swim six days a week in our wonderful pool. We continue to have excellent lectures and concerts.

We hope you are all well and thriving!!

Robin Hartshorne, Berkeley, CA writes: It feels to me as if a year has gone by and nothing happened.

I am so used to traveling to math conferences—recently a week in Paris, ten days in Moscow, two weeks in Kyoto—that I feel lost if I don’t go somewhere. Of course there is Zoom: I can hear talks from all over, and I gave one talk this year to the algebraic geometry seminar in Tehran, Iran, and another in Oaxaca, Mexico. Still, being confined at home by COVID is disorienting. Our year has been punctuated by Edie’s breast cancer: discovery of lump in December, surgery to remove lump in February, chemotherapy with head-freezing cap in April, and radiation therapy in June. Now she is in slow recovery.

Luckily our two children and three grandchildren live nearby in Berkeley.

Edie (Churchill) Hartshorne, Berkeley, CA writes: In my recent solo art exhibit is a painting inspired by a Juan Ramón Jiménez poem: I have a feeling that my boat / has struck, down there in the depths, / against a great thing. / And nothing / happens! Nothing... Silence... Waves... / Nothing happens? Or has everything happened, / and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life? That is what being 84 in the midst of COVID feels like to me. COVID closed down my outer life of seeing clients in my tea house, traveling and doing sustainability through artwork projects in Senegal, Costa Rica, Ecuador, skiing, kayaking, sailing with my East Coast family and friends; retreats with Robin in our New Hampshire log cabin—this is all gone, as I stand quietly in my new life: living more in the moment, sitting in the sunlight with burbling sound of fountain, days slipping by Iike clouds, contentment following the light. And the joy of three grandchildren and their parents who live nearby. This in no way excludes my awareness of the agony of smoke and fire turning sky brilliant orange,

political breakdowns, environmental dread. Rather I try to focus on kindness and love; on beauty and stillness. The shift also includes grappling with breast cancer this last year; sailing through chemo and radiation until I had a complete collapse. A friend said “You really know who loves you when either you get very sick or go to jail.” Now I am in the 95th percentile of total recovery, having no cancer as I stand in amazement at the edge of this new life.

CAN YOU GUESS WHAT YEAR THIS PHOTO WAS TAKEN?

Email your guesses to alumni@shs.org!

Sally Kuhn, New York City, NY, writes: Happy New Year from lockdown in Manhattan where I’m leading a largely virtual life. Wish all my classmates a good New Year & safety from all microbial threats.

Ibby (Ellis) Kurzon, Cambridge, MA writes: As the Walrus said, “the time has come,” so I will reveal my news such as it is or is not. I have spent a lot of time in my house except when the weather has been good when I have been gardening in our small but flourishing backyard.

I have taken many neighborhood walks and been on many Zooms with family and especially with our son in Los Angeles. I am glad to be still ticking. Love to all my classmates, and to you for being our class secretary.

Debbie (Smith) Roberts, Peterborough, NH writes: Hi dear Shady Hill Classmates, I have failed to send in notes for far too long and I do wish I had been in better touch.

Now that I find myself close to completely retired at a “Continuing Care Retirement Community” in Peterborough, NH not far from where we spent our summers, maybe I can catch up a bit. So far, I am lucky enough to have my husband of a good many years still with me,

though I worry that each holiday, i.e., New Years Eve, will be the last of its kind, and we need to enjoy it—a ridiculous amount of pressure.

I would happily settle for hearing from, reading about or… if it is in any way possible, seeing anyone who might be in this area. We are fully vaccinated here. Please do let me know or call—COVID can’t last forever, can it?

Tom Plaut, Weaverville, NC writes: I hope everyone has stayed safe and healthy—especially Klaus and Sabine. Our family has been lucky— so far. This may be my last round helping low-income neighbors enroll in Affordable Care Act health insurance, which always has been an education in how people “on the margins” survive. Our “navigator” team had 777 appointments in which 1,124 individuals obtained health insurance. We are really pleased to have reached a record number of Americans on the margins.

Betsy (Moizeau) Shima, Santa Barbara, CA writes: Like many others we have been mostly close to home taking precautions and receiving the recommended vaccinations. A couple of weekend trips to San Francisco and a September family get-together in Seattle quelled our travel urges a bit. The family is all healthy and the grandchildren have either graduated from college or are just about to graduate. It is a delight to see them thriving as they pursue their very different interests. This year we were spared any damaging wildfires in our drought-stricken county. We have had some recent rain and hope that there will be more in the New Year.

We wish all a Happy New Year of ease, health and peace.

Judy (Grace) Stetson, Falmouth, MA writes: I am navigating rather choppy waters these days. Tom has become more needy and less friendly in the last few weeks since he turned 90 and had to have a bed sore tended. That important visit to a wound care doctor precipitated a shifting round of visiting nurses and physical therapists which seems to have accelerated his slow mental decline. And now, required by the doctor, I am organizing the specifications, the delivery and the installation of a hospital bed in which Tom will have to stay day and night except for three 45-minute periods in a new wheelchair, also

on order, at mealtimes. I have been busy getting his bedroom more attractive for staying in all day as well as all night. As his sole caretaker, I am absolutely delighted to have a close, loving, competent pod. I play platform tennis with them three times a week, eat breakfast with them four times a week, and can call on them for help with various difficulties at any time. We are all old, most of us are widowed, and we have had a lifetime of slings and arrows. We have empathy, not sympathy, its “near enemy,” for each other. On Tuesdays I go to Tai Chi class where our excellent teacher quiets our monkey brain, activates our inner General, leads a 1/2 hour of stretch exercises, then leads us a set. A balanced life, but the balance is alarmingly dynamic just now.

Our kids and grands are thriving— hurrah! My best wishes to everyone and to their loved ones Anne (Sturgis) Watt, Lincoln, MA writes: I still care greatly for each and every one of our SHS classmates and love receiving your news each year. John and I are still keeping on here at The Commons in Lincoln retirement community in Lincoln MA. Our health is O.K. and our kids and grandkids are vaccinated and healthy. John continues to play the piano part in chamber music even when he doesn’t remember what day it is! I am more and more proud of Primary Source’s focus on teaching CIVICS to K-12 students, (www.primarysource.org) and more and more anxious about the climate disaster affecting us all. COVID is very bad but the climate situation for our grandchildrens’ children is unthinkable. Good luck to all in 2022.

1953 MARY HILL HARRIS mhh10@cam.ac.uk I am sorry to have to report the death of our classmate Kathleen Glavin Travis. Her daughter Katie Arnold has let me know that Kathleen died of a COVID-19related illness on December 24, 2020. Our sympathies go to her family.

During recent months, several classmates have been engaging in

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email discussions on various topics, including race and gerrymandering, grammar as taught in English by Mr. McCarthy and in French and Latin by Mr. Vincent and Mr. Candage, our class play (“The Skin of our Teeth” by Thornton Wilder), and “John Brown’s Body” which some of us have re-read. Some of the following news was gathered from these discussions.

Sybil Kinnicutt Baldwin writes from Rhinecliff, NY: My daughter and her husband moved next door to me in October, a big adventure for us all. We make a point of keeping a diplomatic distance, most of the time. My son-in-law is an awfully good cook, though... . Still feeling pretty well. Lots of reading.

Some lately discovered Qi Gong.

Beautiful sunsets over the Hudson.

Feeling grateful. Like that…

Nancy Sears Barker writes from Toronto, CAN: Jonathan and I are healthy and careful after getting COVID-19 in the spring after one vaccination only. Canadian vaccinations began later than those in Britain and the U.S. I had a mild case of one day; Jonathan was in the hospital for two weeks needing oxygen. Still, I managed to incapacitate myself by getting pulled over by our younger dog who leapt after a detested poodle.

I broke. I was in rehab hospital for two weeks. Both of us are back to old normal (two meanings for “old”). Lots of zooming and reading and talk, talk, Netflix and basketball in the evenings. Our son Joshua’s family lives now in the upper two floors, two enjoyable grandchildren, 4 and 12. Fall 2020 we installed glass doors and windows between the families, as they were sometimes in school and daycare in person.

Cycling back and forth. Now they are opening the schools again, apparently with the resignation that Omicron is widely spread in the community, and children are just part of that community, so let’s all get healthy mentally by getting COVID-19. School is delayed at the moment though, with 1-1/2 feet of snow yesterday! Toronto is not used to that, and it is very beautiful and exciting, glittering in the sun on the dogs-walk! We are both heavily involved in family histories of one sort or another.

More memories! More fun than the present in some ways.

Sarah Ingalls Daughn, South

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Dartmouth, MA mentioned that she remembered parts of “John Brown’s Body” and that that was her favorite year of education. She says: I am still teaching, riding my bike, painting in my studio and caring for my three cats. Lately teaching has been a roller-coaster ride through various protocols for COVID-19 and a battleground for racial justice. The state of our country, rights for women, climate change, and civil disobedience swirl around the school, increasing the stress of learning and performing.

I often trundle home at the end of the day with huge questions unanswerable. A caring husband, a game of gin rummy and a gin and tonic makes a great transition to bed and a good book. Recently read all of Elizabeth Strout. Loved every one of them.

Heidi (Marie) Gerschenkron Dawidoff, Francestown, NH says: Living in a rural state has made managing life with a raging pandemic relatively safe and easy.

I’ve gone on very pleasant walks every day, even with a friend as we keep to opposite sides of the roads.

All of my friends and neighbors have also found life safe and easy, everyone being careful, and then getting vaccinated and boosted.

My son and I have been reading books together—long-distance, he in New Haven—and having long conversations about them on the telephone. Our latest book is Changes in the Land by William Cronon. My eleven-year-old grandson and I have carried on a lovely epistolary correspondence.

I continue to be very involved in and concerned about politics. I had hoped for a joyful and somehow restful situation even though we have a president who is wholly committed to working incredibly hard to deal with the wreckage he inherited on all fronts. Yet, the press, television stations, and NPR radio stations are implicitly holding him responsible for what goes wrong. President Biden deserves praise and appreciation for his considerable accomplishments in just one year and for his political skills, good heart, and strength of character.

Mary Hill Gilbert Harris, reporting from Great Shelford, Cambs, UK: most of the last year has been defined by what I have not been able to do rather than

THE 2021-2022 IS SUE

what I have done. There was a brief window between lockdowns when I could resume string group and choir and some in-person classes, and even some work in the museum preparing my section of a forthcoming work on archaeology in Carriacou, W.I. In the middle of it, I managed my usual trip to Gilbertsville, NY. I loved it in spite of its being uncharacteristically hot and humid, the sort of weather we used to go there to escape. Did anyone else in the northeast find last summer very BUGGY? Too many mosquitoes to sit on the porch and read. But the garden was beautiful, and it was wonderful to see my sister Kaky Gilbert Lidz ’55 and other family members.

Another pleasure this year has been email discussions with classmates from ’53.

Judy Cabot Marriner, Concord, MA commented on our grammar discussion: I thought that learning Latin was supposed to teach us grammar. Two of my children had a strict English teacher in sixth grade, but no Latin ever. I’m doing about the same as last year, knitting small toys, painting watercolor, trying to cut down the jungle outside, keeping Ken going with help from caregivers. I do remember Stephen Vincent Benet although I haven’t thought about it for a long time.

Has anyone read the new bio of Stephen Crane? Judy’s daughter Miriam lives nearby and visits most Sundays.

Ashley Dempsey Pakenham, South Woodstock, VT says: I have retired from my RN career. Am still living on my farm in Vermont, having restored it from its 18thcentury roots. Grow hay and manage a forest for sustainable harvesting with a focus on enhancing wildlife habitat. Do most of the work myself but am thinking that my days are numbered to cope with all of that. Had to euthanize my horse of 32 years which I rode for endurance riding, which has been a real blow and heralding a big flag for a change of lifestyle for me. The past two years I have been struggling with the after-effects from shingles. Not fun. Am feeling stronger now but not like I was before.

Hilary Smith, Shelburne, VT started us on the discussion of race and gerrymandering, and also commented vividly on Benet: So

now you’ve got me re-reading the whole thing, start to finish: in some ways it seems a totally appropriate hook for getting adolescents to look at both history and literature, though I agree that a little criticism of the literature would not have come amiss. The only thing close I can recall is Miss Caudill telling us—hugely serious—that not every class gets to read the details of the Melora-Jack Ellyatt relationship but that she thought WE were mature enough to read it all and to treat it seriously with respect. I think we were all duly impressed, yes? [Nick Thompson commented that he bet she said that to all the classes.]

Mostly I’m struck by how much of it I seem to have retained over all the years: clearly it had an impact way back when. And I’m struck

by Benet’s apparent enthusiasm for his subject(s)—overdone, no doubt, but no doubt one reason I remember it so vividly.

Nick Thompson (who sent us many excerpts from “John Brown’s Body”) writes from Santa Fe, NM: Well, here we are in our eighties; the litter on the beach, left by the receding tide. A bit of gnarled driftwood here; a limb from a Christmas tree, with a bit of tinsel still clinging; a fake flower from a wedding table, the burble of lost voices in the slack surf. Absurd as it sounds, immature as it is, I still keep striving to write. So silly, because a writer without readers is like… well… a writer without readers.

But, as Abraham Lincoln was said to say, “Ambition is like a ring round the trunk of a tree, which if not expanded, strangles the tree.”

Not eager to be strangled, I just keep trying to pry open the ring. I have finally seen a grandchild into college (Grinnell) and he is happy studying regeneration in planaria and navigating the flat asphalt pathways of Iowa on a “longboard.”

His sister, left behind with the old folks, is eager to make her own break. Almost two years ago, I saw what I thought was the handwriting on the wall, dashed out a will and put it where it would be found on my desk. It was the second time in my life that I assumed I would be dead before the end of the year, and so, now, this is the second time that I am startled to find myself alive and more or less thriving. I am grateful for my life and ashamed of its privilege. That

combination, like water and baking soda, makes an uneasy foam in my stomach. I suppose that means I am woke, but I think it means only that I am dope-slapped. I was given a smart phone for Xmas. I carry it around my neck as a talisman of post-post-… -post-post modernity. I have no idea of how it works. Every once in a while it beeps or rings, and I claw at it with my fingers until it stops. Is somebody trying to get in touch?

Adele Merrill Welch wrote in November from Tenants Harbor, ME: My news is not so good. About a month ago I was in a car accident and I’ve been bouncing around from various hospitals and rehab and just finished up with some surgery for my neck where I had a compression fracture fracture and they fused C1 and C2. I am home now with 24-7 care and it’s gonna be a while until I get back to where I was before but certainly it enlivens my mind.

Henry “Nick” Winslow, Newtonville, MA, had plenty of comments on gerrymandering, and on the grammar issue: The subjunctive discussion!!! This reminds me of a nickname I got in 1974 or 1975. My first wife, Jacquie, was French. In anticipation of our yearly vacation in France she enrolled me in a French class at the French consulate in Boston.

It was for people who had quite a bit of skill in French already. In class, I and others quickly realized that my French speaking skills were much below those of my classmates. However, occasionally some French grammar was taught.

In the class, it turned out that my knowledge of French grammar was above that of my classmates.

The instructor thereafter called me ‘Monsieur Subjonctif.” Anyhow, today I no longer would merit such a nickname.

1954 JOHN WHEELER Jb61wheeler@gmail.com News has reached Shady Hill that ​​ Katrina Hanson Avery ’54 passed away in December 2021. Our sincere condolences to her family and classmates.

Having to stay away from other

people for two years due to the pandemic, we may have gotten used to not responding to, or become fed up with, emails. My thanks to those of you who did respond to my request for updates.

Jim Bowditch, Camden, ME writes: As I approach 83 at the end of the month, we have made some changes in our lives. First, we have moved into a local retirement community, Quarry Hill, to a cottage, which suits us both well, with about 1/3 of the space we formerly had, and have found we haven’t gotten rid of enough.

Second, I got rid of my sailboat, so summers will be a bit different. Still walking a lot, so we are doing fine.

Carl Pickhardt, Austin, TX writes: Irene and I continue to enjoy outdoors Austin, although we’re socially quarantining. Three of the four kids and partners were here for Christmas (fourth in Montana), so that was festive. Fourth grandson on the way. Irene finally retiring from her job. I continue to plug on—writing a blog about parenting teenagers for Psychology Today, with next parenting book to be turned in to the publisher this Spring. We are both grateful for many blessings.

Lee Kennedy Laugesen, Denver, CO writes: Not much news from here, but family were in Annisquam the first week of October. Brother, Nat, also came for a day. Lobster rolls & good food were the highlites.

We are all healthy except a knee that is bothering me—tennis, bowling & Physical Training are all in my calendar. The weather has been strange here in Colorado; too warm in December.

Tom Weisskopf, Ann Arbor, MI—very upbeat in spite of his bike accident in 2019—wrote: In recent months my wife Sue’s ongoing dementia, which began innocuously some four years ago, took a sharp turn for the worse. As a result, I had to make the decision to move her to a “memory care” unit in a local retirement community; she has been there since Dec. 21. Obviously I approached this transition with great trepidation, but it has actually gone very smoothly—thanks in large part to indispensable help from our son, Jonah, (who came here for a few days to assist me with the move), as well as from the caregivers who had helped me care for Sue at home, and my sister, Karen, who visited in earlier December to help me furnish

Sue’s new room. Sue was wonderful throughout, from the moment when I first discussed the impending move with her, and she is enjoying her new environment (as I can tell from visiting her every day). It is clear now that the transition has gone very well—far better than anyone in our family anticipated. I wish you all a much happier New Year than 2021—and as much relief from the unending cascade of grim political news as possible.

John Wheeler, Chocorua, NH. On behalf of the class of ’54, I wish you the best and hope we can all manage our problems as they arise—as you have. Alas, due to COVID there has been no contra dancing since Gail’s and my February 2020 trip. I really miss it because, as a bumper sticker I had said, “Contra dancers are well balanced people.” At our age, I need the exercise and social contact. As far as exercise goes, I am still active taking care of family property here in Chocorua; involved as Trustee of Cemeteries for the Town and treasurer for my homeowners’ association. I did get in a couple of days of skating on Chocorua lake in early January. No broken bones or parts replacement yet. Let 2022 be the year we get back to better community-making on the local and national fronts.

1955 MAISIE KINNICUTT HOUGHTON maisiehoughton@gmail.com

gardens, books, streaming, and Premiere League Football always satisfy. I love my tennis, like my golf, wait impatiently for family visits, and am annoyed that we have not been able to travel abroad. I find I am less interested in seeing new places but am drawn to where I was happy and very much younger.

Paris, London, Geneva, St. Andrews are all places where if I don’t look in the mirror I am young again! That John and I are creaky but well is miraculous.

Lucy Stone McNeece, Paris, FR writes: This past year snuck by surreptitiously, no doubt because of the generalized angst about COVID and the changing protocols, but also because it seems that we live increasingly in a kind of suspended limbo, where the future, such as there is for our generation, gives us diminishing choices of action or even thought with respect to the intensifying crises across the globe! I spent this year in Paris, as I have ever since retiring from the University of Connecticut in 2010, living and teaching part-time (this year via Zoom), doing some translation and also writing some articles, grappling with French bureaucracy, hoping to retain my Arabic and improve my Persian, but doing quite a lot of fretting about the state of the world. France, like most of Europe, (I prefer not to speak of the US!) is a country polarized by fear which is exacerbated by politics and fueled by the media. At least I was able to cross the Atlantic last summer to spend a wonderful two months in Maine with my sons Tim and Chris, my sister Roz, and with cousins and friends. This time replenished us all and reminded us that we are always

Our class sends many thoughts and love to Jonathan Silverman on the loss of his wife, Barry, and to Mimi Kellogg Truslow on the loss of her husband, Bill. We grieve with you and for you.

Betsy Green Fogarty, Gulf Stream, FL shares: I have gotten to know my two backyards and much that lives in them intimately. I find that the birds, the butterflies, the bees, the anodes, the dragonflies and, yes, 1955 Classmates John Jeppson and Meredith Martin. the bats can occupy Grade I, 1946 -1947. most of any day. My

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connected, no matter how far apart!

I love the memories of our times at Shady Hill, which somehow never seem to fade, and wish all of you a peaceful new year!

Thomas Yeomans, Colrain, MA sends his best to everyone!

John Jeppson, Washington, DC shares: On plane heading for Jamaica. 15 family members!! Yikes.

John. But the best is the photo he sent along! Pictured elsewhere in Class News, John and our classmate, Meredith “Emmie” Martin, in Grade I, 1946 – 1947. John’s further comments: Did only braves get shields, and squaws remain defenseless in the first grade scenario?

I remember being “Thunderbird.”

Em and I lived a block apart and played together frequently. Ted Martin taught me the song, “Go tell Aunt Rhody.” He also drilled a hole in a shark’s tooth that I wore around my neck and soon lost.

Clarke Slater, Ebchester, County Durham, UK writes: The last few years, for all their downsides, have had some happier moments for us.

Our daughter, Jess, who has had a mixed career of newspaper work, IT and neuroscience research, recently landed a great job as manager of a cognitive neuroscience research group at Boston Children’s Hospital.

At the same time, her husband, Adam, got a staff appointment in the Science Computing Facility at Harvard. The net result is that they have recently moved to the Boston area where they are likely to remain for the long term. This means that we will continue to have good reasons to visit Boston and New England in the coming years, and possibly even to meet up with some SHS classmates! Our first such venture was in November of this year, when we spent two weeks in Brookline with Jess and Adam and their three-year-old daughter Miriam, whom we had not seen, except by Zoom, since she was one. Very exciting for us to have a chance to get to know our only grandchild. Our son, Ben, continues to work as a broadcast engineer for Wyoming Public Radio in Laramie.

He is largely responsible for keeping transmissions going throughout the state which involves lots of mountaineering to maintain the transmission towers in addition to the more mundane work of running the broadcast studio in Laramie.

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SHADY HILL SCHOOL

Helen and I have happily remained free of any COVID-19 infection, or any other medical issues. While our various musical activities have been on hold during the pandemic, they were just getting going again when the Omicron variant appeared.

Hard to tell what the new year will bring on that front. After two years recently spent setting up a new laboratory in Newcastle University, I am back at home as a full time retiree again, but still doing some fairly large-scale science writing. All in all, we have got off lightly and are still enjoying our life in northeast England.

Anne Luther von Rosenberg, Westwood, MA says: In April the von Rosenbergs moved to Fox Hill in Westwood. New Address is 10 Longwood Drive, Apt 324, Westwood, MA 02090. Phone 781686-9879. Email the same. A very elegant (think country club) senior living facility with continuing care, etc., if and when needed. Hectic move, but finally settled. Also a place where I knew a bunch of people already. Chaz continues his tutoring at the O’Bryant School for Science and Math, and I continue with Preservation work with the Colonial Dames. Currently working with the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe to support all their efforts to rise again from the genocide inflicted on them since the Mayflower. Some of my ancestors probably guilty of some of it. Our country seems to be going to Hell in a handbasket, but that’s as political as I’m going to be here. All for Zooms with our classmates as the years turtle by!

Anstiss Hammond Krueck, Chicago, IL writes: After the success of the Zoom call of our 65th reunion, Katharine Cushman Fischer ’55 and I decided to institute our own phone connection.

Kitten and I started calling each other every two weeks. At the beginning of this routine, I am sure we both felt that we would soon “run out of steam.” Of course at first we talked mostly of SHS memories, then there was a lot of catching up to do. But now, the hour has an organic way of growing and curling, from childhood memories to thoughts and reflections on absolutely any subject.

I credit this richness to our years at Shady Hill. Most of the adults I know have little or no memories of their grade school years. Not us!

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So I recommend this to anyone of you… just try calling one of us you have not spoken to in years! And you don’t have to talk about either health or your grandchildren: there’s a world out there of Central Subjects to dip into!

Kaky Gilbert Lidz, Wayne, PA writes: Not much news to report for 2021. After being vaccinated and seeing the COVID numbers drop last spring, I was hoping that life would be free at last. It was not to be. We did get a nice long visit in the summer from our daughter, Libby, who lives in Berkeley and who we hadn’t seen in a year and a half, and my sister, Mary Hill Harris ’53, came from Cambridge, England to spend the month of August in Gilbertsville, NY, where we each have a house. (I’ve spent summers there most of my life). Since September and the arrival of Delta, I’m back to hunkering down and taking classes on Zoom. Who knows what happens next?

Ross Hall, Harwichport, MA says: Greetings to the classmates! We sorta hunkered down at our homes and tried to keep from making a bad situation worse. We spent more time in Chocorua than we usually do, and the high points were feeding a neighbor’s three cows apples and carrots in our pasture, while trying not to spoil them. They vied with each other to get the treats, so we had to be careful to maintain proper distributional equity. Then we stood back and watched them munching with their bovine sidewise chewing movement. On one occasion, they walked over to the fence and lay down side by side to chew their cuds and watch me paint the end of the house. No, I didn’t get any awards or the Nobel Prize, but there were plenty of rewards for the past year’s existence.

Lexie Hawthorne, Troinex, Geneva, CH writes: Our pleasures have been largely those of last year— pretty walks in our neighborhood, cooking—which when we are at Karen’s house in France involves much work with the products of her garden and orchards—regular Zoom meetings with our dispersed relatives and friends, and, this summer, the outdoor concerts we could attend during the temperate season. I greatly miss my health club—there is no longer any practical and comparably effective

substitute for this—nothing like peer pressure to motivate effort—ski outings, and general socialization—restaurants, opera, and dinner parties. I hope some of you have seized this opportunity, time available—also a benefit of retirement—to embark on great projects—books, new languages, new instruments, sweeping aside health and administrative issues (like two tax declarations each year) to focus on a Central Subject—one of the best concepts I retained.

Ellen Corcoran shares: I don’t have any news to report, which is a good thing I suppose. What I do have is a question which you may be able to answer. A bunch of us, all of similar age, but not Shady Hillers, were sitting around talking about our middle school years. (Such fond and funny memories for me.) We got to wondering about dress codes from that era. (Heaven only knows how we arrived at that topic.) Did “us girls” have to wear skirts to class?

Somehow I can’t imagine we did, but all my fellow old timers from various parts of the country swear that dress codes were firmly in place at their respective schools. No pants for girls!

Other than concluding that there must be something in the air down here in Key West that has caused us to go around the bend, do you have any recollections?

Maisie Kinnicutt Houghton, Boston, MA says: As for myself, I am so touched so many classmates responded so—eagerly! Evidence we need connection now more than ever. My life is calm—sort of—(too many visits to venerable MGH) but one thought for you all. My oldest granddaugher, a 2013 SHS graduate, studied Arabic at St. Andrews in Scotland and is now working at an international high school in Beirut.

I tell this because the thought of her in the Near East—fraught as it is— brings back an SHS memory from Grade V. First poem I ever heard— “Cargoes” by John Masefield—has the opening line, “Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir...” On this lyrical note, I leave you all to recall our shared SHS experience and send my love, and many thoughts, and blessings, to all of you.

1956 DEBBY GOLDBERG STINNETT Dstinnett1@gmail.com As I start to organize our class notes, I have received word that Ben Day died January 18th. His wife Roseann writes: He was playing tennis and riding his motorcycle until spring but declined significantly after that. He entered home hospice care on Thanksgiving and got to die at home as he wished. He was in no pain and did not require morphine. He simply transitioned from sleeping to peace.

He had enjoyed the class reunion gatherings.

From Alan Galbraith in St. Helena, CA: East coast grandchildren and parents in St. Helena over the Holidays. Up Mt. St. Helena (4,342 ft) on New Year’s Day. Great view to the Sierra Crest over the Sacramento Valley, with snowfall in the mid-Sierra around 140% of normal. Much needed, and a reprieve from our recurring water issues on which I have spent much time in the last several years.

Mary Morison Winby, Palo Alto, CA, writes: I imagine the last two years have been challenging for most of us. The good news is that my family and most of our friends stayed healthy and free of COVID. During 2020 – 2021, Stu and I were able to lead a relatively normal life walking our dogs, riding my horses in a nearby preserve, reading the NYT, watching great TV, maintaining connections via Zoom with friends and family. With the introduction of the vaccine and booster, we started to travel to see family in Florida, NH, and Colorado. My deep sadness was to lose my son to testicular cancer, February, 2021. He was brave and resilient until the very end. In April, we held a small memorial on our patio to celebrate his life.

While I feel healthy and am quite active, turning 80 was a bigger than I expected psychological and emotional adjustment. I am learning to take each day as it comes and enjoy every moment. I have restarted a Wind Quintet group and am playing the cello in a String quintet. One of Shady Hill’s gifts to me was providing a musical foundation that has served me well

over 65 years of playing flute and far) in Bass River. Many of our cello! Stay healthy and enjoy 2022. classmates have been here. Margot Susan Counihan Fratus writes: and I moved here 10+ years ago.

Greetings from Keene, NH. To cut We have extensive gardens and to the chase, I am personally doing space to work outdoors—with OK with COVID because I don’t our family property on Bass River, have to be out in the world. But our son Chris’s house, Sarah, my it is hard seeing how disruptive niece’s, house and other friends and scary the pandemic has been houses, we have plenty to do. All for so many all across the planet. our kids and grandkids are moving Mostly I am sad beyond words to through these difficult times. We be witnessing the unraveling of our both enjoy working outdoors, the country. I work hard to stay on river, and we still ski (Alta March an even keel, and am delighted to 12 to March 30) and are in good be in regular contact with several health. We enjoyed seeing you all SHS classmates. It is these kinds of but cannot get away during the friendships that keep me sane. summer which is when you seem to Corky Isaacs White writes from get together. If you are on the Cape, Cambridge, MA: I’ll try not to give us a call—508-394-6573 or speak of the pandemic but isn’t that swing by—243 Pleasant St., South what’s shaped our lives most these Yarmouth, MA 02664. Also have last two years? I can reach back to capacity to house some sort of offJanuary of 2020 to my most recent season get together. trip to Japan, one I took with our From Tom Edsall in Washington, classmate Martha Rochlin Kapos D.C.: I’m still writing my weekly as a wonderful event—so innocent NYT column—politics are getting of what was to prevent other more hostile, polarized and trips soon. And of course there dangerous. We have eluded were all those fine dinners—all COVID so far—I taught my GW at home—and friends when we class and had various meetings via could see them. I taught on Zoom Zoom. I celebrated my 80th from March 2020 ’til September, birthday in Venice with my wife last 2021 when the university put us August. We live one block from the all back in the classrooms and US Capitol and had a ringside seat the stress increased enormously. for Jan 6. I’m not confident that it Zoom looked wonderful by won’t get worse. comparison—and in some ways it is, bringing people who hadn’t seen each other in years onto a live screen.

There are people with whom I’m in more contact now than before the pandemic.

Our class had some Zoom sessions, and we should do so again soon. I’m lucky in so many ways. Friends to take walks with, and my partner’s ice cream always available. Our corner store up here in almost-NorthTom Edsall ’56 in Venice.

Cambridge has provided weekly produce boxes to the neighborhood for which I write Martha Rochlin Kapos writes weekly recipes to distribute. My from London, UK: The past year has colleagues are as ever terrific and I been dominated by the Omicron miss being in the halls schmoozing variant of the virus in London—the with them. My children and my epicenter, where one in six people grandchild are fine, productive, are supposed to be infected. My cheerful and I will try to emulate children and their families have them. As I say, I’m lucky… but both had it—a year apart—but the exhausted. Be of the best cheer, stay timing in each case sadly meant well and be safe. the cancellation of Christmas. I’ve From Fred Churchill, South retired from the editorship of Poetry Yarmouth, MA: We are safely (so London, but since then have had a

new pamphlet of poems published and am working on a New and Selected Poems. It’s sitting on the desk of the editor of New York Review of Books.

Also from London, UK, Marcia Heinemann Saunders writes: Greetings from England, home of Brexit and Boris Johnson, whose government pursues its pandemic experiment in survival of the fittest, or “herd immunity,” and Darwin turns in his grave. Enough politics. Shades of you-know-who, but bathed in a cavalier sense of entitlement. I’ve stayed healthy, mobile and as sane as ever…and in the fall made a brief visit to family in Vermont and Boston. It was lovely to meet up with Sue Fratus in New Hampshire, and to stay in touch with Debby.

Tony Bryan in Vail, CO (or maybe Taos, NM?) tells me that he has spent the pandemic following up on rumors that the Yeti has been sighted in his area. Feels he is getting close.

From Allan Chapin in Claverack, NY: I find entering my ninth decade daunting but not nowhere near as bad (so far at least) as trying to sing “I am the Monarch of the Seas” for Miss Abbott. COVID has curtailed travel and kept us in Claverack for most of the year.

We did manage a pig roast birthday party on August 28 attended by all five of my children and my three grandsons and a hundred or so hangers-on. If it was a super spreader event, we never heard from anyone. Gorgeous flowers were supplied by Anne Hall, Alden’s niece and daughter of one of my Yale classmates.

Still skiing too fast; rediscovered Jackson Hole. And driving ditto.

Staying out of trouble as much as possible. Looking forward to Corkette’s next ice cream social.

Marianna Hartsong in Sedona, AZ writes: I am very well. I have gained immeasurably in both depth and breadth over these many COVID months of isolation.

And, I am changed. Nothing quite like a Near Death Experience to hone one’s value of Love and Life.

Nothing like the potential COVID

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dark night of the soul to transform one’s appreciation for Life, for “Time Out,” “Time to Listen” deeply inside and out, “Time for soul Choice.”

I am profoundly grateful. I’m not sure I have ever treasured life and possibility for creation more than I do right now, even as I feel helpless to make a difference on so many levels. Getting older is not for sissies.

Living in an older body brings new challenges, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Lots of self-compassion and gentle humor welcome in these singular and unchartered waters. I adopted a literal metaphor for these times: growing earth and garden; loving on my bees.

From Watertown, MA, Jane Millikan says: much slowing down, letting go, and simplifying as our ninth decade begins. I continue to balance inner spiritual work with outer activism. Am fortunate to be spending a lot of time with a fastgrowing community of thoughtful people, questioning and unearthing the whole “pandemic” narrative upon which the escalating medical and digital tyranny agenda is being rolled out. Working to prevail for medical freedom of choice in this topsy-turvy, polarized world.

Debby Goldberg Stinnett, Merion Station, PA writes: I am working hard to lose the COVID 20 lbs and the serious addiction to streaming Korean TV dramas. (Believe these are related.) Have recently cut eight inches off COVID hair.

With the help of daily testing and much mask-wearing, all the boys and grandchildren were here for Christmas. The four vegetarians and one vegan made for non-traditional meals. Altogether a strange but happy Christmas. Otherwise, cooking a lot, painting, reading, and gearing up for midterm political efforts. As many of you mention, turning 80 is a bit jarring. Hope we can reune soon in person to discuss it.

1957 Our Class Correspondent position is open. Consider stepping forward to volunteer for this rewarding role!

Email alumni@shs.org.

News has reached Shady Hill that ​​ Anne Thompson Vaughan ’57

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passed away in November 2021.

Our sincere condolences to her family and classmates.

Dan Cheever writes from Lincolnville, ME: We are living happily on Maine’s midcoast after 60 years of work in public education, higher education, business and trusteeship for organizations and families. We see Penelope Freeman Olson occasionally and know other Shady Hill alums are Mainers. Shady Hill remains the best educational organization I ever attended, except for Outward Bound.

the birds, hug our granddaughters, laugh with my mate Bob Crabtree, talk to my sisters and OBF Jo (Joan) Sturgis, play music, and sing with our neighbors. The hard moments challenge—and they pass.

1958 GRADE IX Graduation Recitation The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued.

1959 Dan Cheever ’57

Dan Cheever ’57

1958 Our Class Correspondent position is open. Consider stepping forward to volunteer for this rewarding role!

Email alumni@shs.org.

News has reached Shady Hill that ​​ Lonny (Elon) Marquand ’58 passed away in August 2021. Our sincere condolences to his family and classmates.

Priscilla Ellis, Jamaica Plain, MA writes: Dear classmates, do you remember our Grade IX graduation recitation? (chosen, I think, because it was short and easy to memorize.) I didn’t know then that it would come to mind many times during these last 60+ years—as a balm, a solace, a wake-up call. COVID and aging can surely dampen mood and evoke regret, as well as deepen our awareness of moment-to-moment experience. I am glad and grateful to be able to walk in the woods, watch

THE 2021-2022 IS SUE

CHARLIE WYZANSKI wyzanski@gmail.com To solicit these Notes, I wrote that although Mr. Candage taught us that “Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres,” he told us nothing about “Tempus fugit!” Many classmates, but certainly not all, have kindly provided an illustration of same.

Lili Brooks West, Santa Fe, NM: A Boston upbringing has been a fine resource for social distancing; when asked why I seem to have managed so well in recent years, I explain that I grew up in Cambridge and that has done the trick. No doubt, playing Ghost at Shady Hill helped, too: gleefully dodging what is thrown at me must also help my immune system!

Nate Bowditch, Topsham, ME: Inspired in part by Shady Hill’s good new Mission Statement (“Shady Hill School fosters joyful, active learning informed by multiple perspectives—empowering students to be intellectually adventurous and wholeheartedly just.”), I spend quality time in contemplation— while thoughts are still coming, and we close down until Omicron exhausts itself. Get some interesting life stories into the laptop—while I can still remember them. Think

and act locally—because being 77 and retired means I have few policy-change access points. Target Black and Brown lives! They really do matter, and restorative justice demands that I start by acknowledging that the Bowditches benefitted from the slave trade— helping them build generational wealth (which ultimately allowed me to attend Shady Hill and proceed from there). Spend as much time as possible in the Maine woods and on the Maine coast—because it’s fun and this is why we live here.

Bob Bremner, Ardmore, PA: 2021 has been a year of recovery for me.

In January of 2021 I was diagnosed with B-Cell Lymphoma. A rare blood cancer. Fortunately, there is a treatment. I am now in remission and doing well. George continues to be active and healthy. We plan on going to France May of 2022, God willing, and have later travel plans for a Great Lakes cruise in September. Our older son, Jason and family have moved to Durango, Colorado for the outdoor life.

Grandchildren, Cedar and June, flourishing. Lots of biking, hiking, and climbing. Matt and his family took over my real estate business and he has made the company much larger. Good he can support us in our dotage. Our grandson, Rex, is in the Philadelphia Boys Choir.

He loves to sing. Hope everybody has survived the pandemic and is looking to a better 2022.

Nate Bowditch ’59 Gay Harriman, San Juan Island, WA: Zoom talks with David Smith ’59 and Anne Cushman ’59 have lit the psychic dark of COVID and aging, such appealing partners.

This past Fall I moved to Friday Harbor, San Juan Island in Puget Sound. The island is small, very

beautiful and very simple. How I would love to tell Edie Caudill that my most favorite place in the world is a National Park where Pickett (of Pickett’s charge) was stationed just pre-Civil War. The “American camp” is a high, grassy bluff. Steep rocky steps down to a cove of driftwood and high waves.

High on the bluff is a single small white house where Pickett must have paced, drunk bourbon, and looked out on the wide sea and sky.

So time continues to birth Shady Hill memories. My younger son is continually amazed, shocked, appalled at my lack of real-world knowledge. While other students in other cities were learning how furnaces work, why drink eight glasses of water each day, why a harness is vital when your dog goes out, I apparently was painting my Greek shield, or reading the Open Boat with Ned Ryerson, or memorizing Melora Vilas’s soliloquy in John Brown’s Body. Oh well, who cares? Who cares at all?... . I throw out service manuals and learn what moves the heart.

Pam Johnson Scheinman, Mexico City, MX & Highland Park, NJ: In my Mexico City life, a fictitious chronicle I wrote in Spanish won honorable mention in a contest co-sponsored by the Museum of San Ildefonso to promote their online exhibit of Sergio Arau’s aerial drone photos of Mexico, and BBVA, publisher of his book, Territorios. Meanwhile work continues on textiles inspired by my own in-flight snapshots and Google Maps’ captures. I also enrolled in a five-month lithography course, my first. So far I’ve made two prints at Los Pinos, former home to presidents since Lázaro Cardenas (1930 – 40), recently opened as a cultural center.

One day a week I volunteered at Carrillo-Gil Art Museum in San Angel during the installation of Tlacuilo (Aztec scribe), artist Pedro Reyes’s initiative to loan items for free from his extensive private library of books, LP albums and framed artworks. (Everything but public libraries has reopened after COVID-19 lockdown.) My task was to write object descriptions of original drawings, posters, prints, and photos by international artists.

That required bi-lingual research and brainstorming how to engage the viewer through humor and pointed queries. While in New

Jersey, friends took me to explore local arboretums. Afterward we discovered the back-story of their founders. My short essay on historic Marquand Park was excerpted for Among Trees, a live performance in Herrontown Woods in Princeton, NJ staged by Vivia Font and Ben Steinfeld in mid-July. I highly recommend books Sprout Lands and Oak by William Bryant Logan.

Tra-la.

Michal Goldman, Auburndale, MA: I’m making one more film. It’s a film about an on-line dance class that I and a lot of others have been taking throughout the Pandemic, dancing our hearts out to Latin, Arabic, Greek, Israeli, Irish, French and Italian music, along with Frank Sinatra and Tina Turner.

The teacher is half Egyptian, half Indonesian, and entirely open to everyone who turns up. The class is free, Monday through Friday 11 AM EST. Email me if you want to know more or you want a link to try it. When the US/Canadian border opened in August, I went to my farm on Prince Edward Island for the first time in almost two years. I’ve managed to protect in perpetuity that land from development. Now I’m exploring other ways the land could be useful to this beautiful and fruitful island as it faces the effects of climate change. I worry about the coming of authoritarianism or worse here; I don’t have those worries when I’m in Canada. A big shout-out to Steve Saltonstall: Thank you for your work on the southern border.

Jim Kaplan, Northampton, MA: It wasn’t a good year for me, either. I had physical problems from head to toe, but nothing life-threatening. So I keep channeling the philosopher’s “That which won’t kill me will make me strong.” I admire people who have cloistered themselves.

It’s undoubtedly the safest way to handle the pandemic. Not ours, alas. We’ve scheduled trips to Aruba this month and Santa Fe in March. I dread the midterms.

Perhaps this Op-Ed I wrote for the Tampa Bay Times offers some hope: https://www.tampabay.com/ opinion/2021/10/15/think-all-isbleak-heres-the-way-out-column/ A Happier New year to all!

Mark Isaacs, St. Thomas, VI: Our Year 2021 was unusual as most endured weird experiences from Facebook, twitter, email, and occasional phone calls and rarer

from REAL flesh and bone people. We have been spending half years in St Thomas and half years in Fairfax, VA. While up in the lower 48, I am with my One of Mark Isaacs ’59’s commissioned works in 2021. seniors-only artists group that met weekly and discussed each other’s work, but none as keen as Dorothy to right the progress of my works. Dorothy continues on the Financial Board of the VI government, is Peter Shapiro ’59 practicing various musical instruments and also working recently took up the güira. with other attorneys to get activities which involve gardening, our voting rights for US President, walking, reading, shooting (this and on the Synagogue Board. And is England!), and some charitable she vigorously exercises. And I really work. As I put those words down, should. I had been commissioned I think of how they describe the on a number of works this year. For “interests” typically added to a those not limited, my works are resume submitted along with a job also shown in private offices in St application. Perhaps it will soon be Thomas and now Indigo, an upscale time to submit one again—-these new restaurant on St Thomas. are such unusual times.

Our granddaughter is enjoying John Perry, Burlington, VT. I write gymnastics and ballet and painting. this on a snowy January 2. I have To all classmates: mask up, wash, made one resolution—never again wash, wash—and stop looking at to say this year must be better than news shows. Too depressing! last. In fact, they’re all pretty good.

Arthur Little, Jamaica Plain, MA. Barbara and I have our health, a This has been an exceptionally bad warm and comfy house, healthy year. So much so that COVID-19 and happy kids and grandkids, and was almost the last of my worries.

I am lucky enough to still be full Jann’s depression has deepened, time at UVM, which I also love. particularly driven by her increasing Work fills the shadows in these realization that her memory is spectral times. A lawyer once said quickly slipping away. We sold to me, “We don’t live to work, our North End apartment for the we work to live.” Is that way too purpose of having a fund to travel simple, or is it just me? At least it and, of course, that never happened. wasn’t in Latin. Summer afternoons On the good side, my reputation still find me on the soccer pitch, but for helping golf course architects I don’t dare join the indoor winter and owners provide courses that groups. No masks. Dime-store welcome a wider spectrum of shrinks say we’re always wearing a people continues to grow. mask, but I doubt that helps.

Charlie Peck, Eastbourne, Peter Shapiro, Morgantown, WV. E Susx,UK: I am pleased to For the record, I wish I could have report I have not succumbed taken the book binding class, but to the pandemic and only have I entered in Grade VII. Winter close friends and relations who season is still my favorite here in have mildly experienced it in the WV forest, keeping warm its latest Omicron form. It has with ash logs in the wood stove. not impaired my retirement In October 2021, I sold the last of

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my DR properties at a low price, “buying high and selling low” as a humanitarian gesture. My thumb piano business still putters along, but not sure for how much longer. it’s a love-hate relationship. I practice various musical instruments and have recently taken up the güira and tambura in Dominican typica style.

It’s all about holding the damnable dotage at bay. So, a shout out to all my class compadres and let’s shoot for mobility and good health.

Susan St. John, Owl’s Head, ME. I am well, I am still at the Apprentice Shop as a Fellow where the focus is on wooden Boatbuilding, Seamanship and Community, and—caps intended—I HOPE EVERYONE IS READING HEATHER COX RICHARDSON’S DAILY POST “LETTER FROM AN AMERICAN.” May you all be well, at least in spirit.

Kathy Winslow Herzog, Glastonbury, CT. We are remaining happily in our home in Glastonbury, while my husband Al is still practicing psychiatry in his office at the IOL in Hartford. I am playing tennis a few times a week and serving on the hospital auxiliary board and the BB&N Grandparents Committee. Our daughters Trina and Anne live up in MA, as does my brother Nick Winslow. We have four grandchildren, one of whom is a sophomore at BB&N, right next to our Shady Hill old stomping grounds. Sometimes he and his mom drive by our old home on Coolidge Hill Road. We were all back together at the Cape house last summer and also just enjoyed celebrating Christmas TOGETHER this year at our house in CT. We are fully vaccinated but realize things are still so very risky with COVID. I hope our classmates are vaccinated as well and have been able to stay healthy.

Charlie Wyzanski, Cambridge, MA. I write this on the first snow day of 2022. It occurs to me that, thanks to the pandemic, this whole past year has been a kind of snow day. I used to welcome them at Shady Hill but now no more. Apart from family and one vaccinated and boosted couple at a time, Nilgun and I have pretty much restricted ourselves to our cell phones, computers, books, and TV. On alternate days, I manage to exercise at the Y in Central Square. I still maintain an active bar membership

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but my interest in litigation, past and present, as it affects the public interest, is now almost exclusively as an observer. I am increasingly involved in affordable housingrelated issues in an effort to resist Cambridge becoming too high tech and exclusively upscale. In the last City Council election, I campaigned for Theodora Skeadas, a wonderfully young, energetic, and intelligent woman (who, among her many other virtues, speaks Turkish). I also spent much time keeping in touch with, and even renewing, friendships via email and phone. I helped former students with their writing, legal and otherwise, when asked. I admit, as Humphrey Bogart put it in the final scene of Casablanca, “it all don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.” Notwithstanding this, I much look forward to seeing classmates in person at our next reunion, if not before!

1960 JACK KESSLER jakesslerjr@gmail.com As many classmates already know, the most important news in our Class this year is the sad news that Andy Cook succumbed to the Parkinson’s that he reported in the Notes last year. Andy practiced psychiatry for many years on the coast of Maine and was an advocate for effective children’s services, and at the same time for 12 years he and Jaki ran a beef farm in Brunswick. A link to the nice obituary in the Portland Press Herald is below. Andy was a particular friend of mine when we were at Shady Hill, and he and Jaki stayed with us after the last gathering at Anita’s house. We will miss him (https://www.pressherald. com/2021/10/08/obituaryandrewdevereux-cook/).

Andy Cook ’60

THE 2021-2022 IS SUE

Jack Denny-Brown writes: I contemplated writing nothing but then I enjoyed hearing from people so much last year I decided I had to write something. But then nothing is going on, so what to write. Then I sat down and wrote this . . .

Another year done come and gone.

Not a whole lot going on here, for me. My wife Ann is working long hours and I have a lot of time on my hands. Scrounging around in the attic, I came across an old diary written by my English grandmother in 1893, when she was 25 years of age. Written in a miniscule hand, it was difficult to decipher, but I decided to read it and transcribe it to digital form. For about three weeks I bent over the thing and lived her life, first in London, then on a steamer headed through the Suez Canal and finally to India, or more specifically Baluchistan, where she and her doctor fiancé were stationed as missionaries for the next fourteen years. It was a wonderful experience.

Diaries are such living things… it was as if I were peeking through a keyhole into the nineteenth century. When I was done, I sent the manuscript to my brothers and as a last-minute thought, to my cousin Derek in England. Through some amazing coincidence, my cousin had done the same thing only months before. He was thirty days away from publishing a book about an 1896 diary belonging to the same woman. He stopped publication, read my transcription, and spent the next month incorporating my 1893 diary into his book. His book, Tiger and Plum, was published three weeks ago, and tells the story of my mother’s parents and their amazing life in the Punjab as missionaries from 1893-1907.

Toby Fairbank writes: I have the usual reports: choral singing (actually shut down for months because of the Virus), painting classes, joining a health club because the Mt. Auburn Club (down Coolidge Ave. from Shady Hill) was sold and the buildings demolished -- a depressing sight even to us non-athletes. The bright news in these often-gloomy days is that I became a grandfather thanks to my son Ben and his Filipina wife.

The baby, James, is now 4 months old and we have yet to see him in person because travel to and from the Philippines is impossible, with NO indication of when it will get better. So, we wait…and wait. But

YouTube works very well in keeping us up-to-date.

Peter Fairbanks writes from Hertfordshire, UK: Last summer my wife, Pippa, and I moved from San Francisco to her home region in Hertfordshire, England, flying her lovely thoroughbred over as well. I’ve since been in touch with fellow classmate Charlie Peck, who lives down on the south coast in Suffolk, but due to these rampant viruses, we’ve postponed meeting.

This has been an adjustment from San Francisco, especially with only 7 hours of daylight around mid-winter. We are now living surrounded by farms and forest which has reminded me how much I enjoyed living in the countryside.

Prior to moving into Cambridge at age 13, we lived amidst the fields and forest of Lincoln. I continue to be active in the art business with the Montgomery Gallery, consulting and doing appraisal work, albeit remotely. I remain saddened by the loss of our exemplary classmate, Andy Cook, who gave so much to his family and community. What a very special individual he was.

Cary Hartshorne Flanagan writes: Greetings from very chilly New Hampshire! I am enjoying retirement very much, but it is a “working” retirement since I would be bored if I just hung out, with no particular direction. I continue to quilt (hard to give up after 30+ years) but am no longer designing quilt patterns as a business. Instead, I am now the author and publisher of two historical novels, with a third on the way. I have been in recent touch with both Charlie Merrill and Jack Denny-Brown (for totally different reasons). But in talking to each of them I mentioned my books (I am pretty proud of myself!).

Charlie read my first book After the Storm and Jack has just purchased a copy of it for himself and his wife. Charlie told me he really enjoyed reading it even though my audience is really female-oriented.

Jack D-B encouraged me to make this plug. If you are interested, the books are After the Storm: The Story of Hannah Applegate Benson Stone, set in 19th century NH and Sarah’s Quest: A Place to Belong, set mostly in northern AZ and also NH at the turn of the last century. They are books one and two of the “Hannah’s Legacy” trilogy. They are both available on Amazon. If you want to, go to Amazon books and type in

my name. They will come right up.

I am also very active on Facebook if you would like to ‘friend’ me.

My husband, Ron, and I are still doing well after more than 53 years together. COVID has changed our lives a little but we are kind of homebodies anyway, so it is not much of a change in our lifestyle.

If we ever have another reunion, I hope I do not miss it!

Cary Hartshorne Flanagan has published two historical novels, with a third on the way. One Amazon reviewer says, “This novel gave me a new appreciation for the early settlers of the White Mountains.” Another says, “This book ended all too quickly for me...the characters were fullydeveloped and the ending was satisfying. Would highly recommend!”

Steve Grossman writes: I continue to serve as CEO of the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC), a Roxbury-based nonprofit organization founded in 1994 by renowned Harvard Business School professor Dr. Michael Porter to revitalize America’s inner cities through a combination of cutting-edge research and a series of nationwide programs. Last year in dozens of underserved neighborhoods and communities as well as five Canadian provinces, we worked with more than 3,000 small businesses, overwhelmingly BIPOC- and woman-owned, providing them with a combination of educational resources and technical assistance, one-on-one coaching and access to critical capital, all of which is designed

to help build sustainable small business ecosystems, create goodpaying jobs, and help narrow the racial wealth gap. The racial justice and equity movement which has accelerated since George Floyd’s murder in 2020 has accelerated the flow of resources from large corporations, financial institutions and foundations, enabling us to expand our programmatic work even in a virtual environment as small business owners struggle to survive, develop new strategies, and hopefully emerge stronger from the pandemic. My work at ICIC and the impact it’s had during the past seven years may be the most important of my career as we continue our efforts to reduce concentrated poverty in communities where life expectancy is often at least 25 years shorter than in more affluent geographies, a condition that is both morally and economically wrong. As the artist Norman LaLiberte, who died recently at 95, once remarked: “We’re here to do things that haven’t already been done.”

Charlie Merrill writes from Maine: I recently read a book, After the Storm, penned by Cary Flanagan (Hartshorne). I think she did a great job and I thoroughly enjoyed the escape to New Hampshire life in the late 1800’s. We continue to be well on the coast of Maine.

Charlie Peck writes from Suffolk, UK: Surviving COVID OK so far.

But what about all these bad boys?

Would a Shady Hill immersion have helped Trump learn how to lose, Djokovic how to follow rules, Boris Johnson to tell the truth, and Prince Andrew how to behave with young women? And then I wonder how Edie Caudill, daughter of the south and secret confederate sympathizer, would adjust attitude and curriculum to our new, longoverdue view of those who rebelled against the Constitution as traitors.

Still, I am grateful that she gave me the rogue J.E.B. Stuart for my Grade VIII topic and that, in the wonderful now-lost Grade IX Mr. Ryerson opened up the elements of Greek tragedy which, now, tend to explain a lot about all these people and these things.

Ben Riggs writes from Newport, RI: My wife Lee and I are in our 22nd year here in wonderful Newport-By-The-Sea. A couple of back operations interfered with my sailing activities last season, but I’m

slowly getting to the point where I hope to be back on the water this spring. Meanwhile, we are continuing to run our International Current Events in Review course for seniors at the Circle of Scholars

by Zoom, and the Naval War College professors who supply the presentations for the first hour are still fully participating. Our other course, called What Happens When We Die, is in its 7th year and still going on as well, also on Zoom.

(For more on that subject matter, see Lee’s page, www.heavenslight. net.) Our kids and grandkids are distributed between Tiverton, RI, Lincoln, Nebraska, and Seattle. Not terribly convenient during these times, but fortunately they have all managed to visit here anyway. We are really looking forward to the day when we can be back together in person with friends and family.

Dan Taylor writes: Just back from Nepal where we set up climate change monitoring in the national park on Everest’s east side that I founded in the 1980s - trees now “walking uphill” with rising global temperatures and we’ve worked out how to monitor by recording birds singing (from mountain base in the subtropics up into the arctic) as birds follow uphill the changing vegetation.

pilgrimage I have wanted to make since I was a young Naval Officer in 1968, and then on to the Big Island and Maui before returning home to the cold and COVID. We have a lot to be thankful for.

1961 ANDY OLDMAN aqopbketch@aol.com News has reached Shady Hill that ​​ Lindsey Furnald Cadot ’61 passed away in January 2022. Our sincere condolences to her family and classmates.

Peter Deutsch writes from Healdsburg, CA: We are enjoying fresh oranges and lemons from our yard – very Californian!

– and celebrating the end (for the moment) of the drought by planting a dozen more fruit trees.

I’m heading back to Canada next week for my annual three months in a country with snow and relatively sane politics, both of which I miss here. Meanwhile, I have five more pieces of music in the pipeline for recording and distribution: check out the one just released at www.lpd.org. Still doing well at my goal of getting old as

Jack Kessler ’60’s family in Kauai, Christmas Day 2021 Jack Kessler: Our news is that after having to cancel the family trip to Kauai for my 75th birthday last year, with all of our fingers and toes crossed, all of our six grandchildren, three in college and three in high school, and their parents made it to the plane on Christmas Eve without Omicron. Nancy-Jo and I reveled in one of those rare moments when the entire family is able to be happily together. After the rest of the family had to go back for school and work, Nancy-Jo and I went on to Pearl Harbor on my birthday, a

slowly as possible, I think.

Peter Laursen writes from Martha’s Vineyard, MA: I retired from medicine a few years ago.

Enjoying my five grandchildren.

Also doing a lot of photography; plaursenphoto.com. Still on Martha’s Vineyard. Life is good despite ailments of these golden years.

Jim Zetzel writes: Seems quiet out there (unless people are writing to Andy without copies to the rest of us) – in comparison to the 121 emails in 20 days in the file I kept

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from last year! So here goes, for the SHS news – We managed a few trips last year, not as venturous as Andy’s: two short trips to New England, a week (family visit) in the summer in Munich, a long weekend in Arizona for Halloween-and the Adirondacks for July and August with canoeing and (gentle) hiking. No Christmas trip to Munich this year (as last)--instead, we had his-and-hers COVID (Omicron) over the holidays, milder than many colds I’ve caught from students. But 10 days at home were convenient for reading page proofs and making an index for the book on Cicero I hope will come out in March or April, maybe in time for my 75th. Meanwhile, Katharina and I are jointly writing a commentary on Cicero’s dialogue On Friendship, to be finished by the end of ’23. Retirement agrees with me--so far, anyway. And I like writing a whole lot more than I did at SHS. I also re-read John Brown’s Body last summer--grand, but I’m pretty sure Benet has too much sympathy for the South (although he abhors slavery) to be permitted in any school these days. A healthy and happy New Year to all of you.

Margaret Loss writes: Starting this past September, my daughter, Lisa (Elizabeth L. Johnson, PHD), is an assistant professor at Northwestern’s medical school, establishing her own neuroscience research lab.

Andre Mayer writes from Cambridge, MA: I could quote the Abbé Sieyès and Charles Aznavour and say “j’ai vecu,” but as they’re both dead that seems like tempting fate. It’s hard to see turning 75 as actual progress, though.

Lee Roscoe writes: Just had the cover story on indigenous art in Artscope Magazine January/February 2022 – Artscope Magazine (https:// artscopemagazine.com/issues/ january-february-2022/), small book on same still in prep, as are four short plays for a planet in peril for online.

Phil Cowan writes: Hello Everyone; I suppose the standards for saying it was a good year have changed drastically. Still, mine happened to include enough bright spots that I can say that the good managed to outweigh the parts that sucked for all of us. First of all, my friends and family have, so far, remained healthy and safe; for that I am deeply grateful, and hope the

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same is true of you all.

Top of the list is that, at my rather advanced age, I have become a grandfather. My grandson, Hugo, is adorable and thriving. I have been out to Portland a few times, and have also become a fairly regular user of Face Time ... like a good many of us, I suppose. I also managed to spend September in France. It was wonderful, and I can only hope that the current edition of the virus will be adequately managed to allow me to do it again this year.

Among bright spots, I have to say the round-robin melee of emails with all of you has left a permanent warm spot in me, reaching down to places I had forgotten were there. It was the kind of multi-directional, tangential tumble that you get in a room full of people who knew each other for a long time, and have also grown separately for even longer. The current passing-down of teacherly restrictions (which I’ve already breached, here) suggests that we knocked things off kilter... honestly, I’d call that the cherry on top. I’m still working at McLean, and, as I suspect I say every year, I know there’s got to be a point where I say ‘enough,’ but I haven’t gotten there yet.

Susie Saarinen writes from Colorado: Thanks for keeping us in touch! It is lovely to reach back from time to time and remember old pals at another time in our lives! Eric and I are fine. Lovely Christmas with family followed by my daughter Kate, her husband and Ella getting COVID. I’ve got my fingers crossed! Meanwhile, I am still working as a landscape architect. I’ve got four architects who don’t want me to retire, so life goes on as busy as ever. Love to all, stay as well as life and your psyches permit! If you get out to Colorado, give me a call or come for a visit!

Andy Oldman writes: 2021 was an adventuresome year. The highlights included avoiding COVID, the birth of a second grandchild; a published article in WoodenBoat Magazine, and a fascinating, challenging three-week 3,000mile trip in open cars way older than us, (106-110) through major National Parks and the Rockies North from Scottsdale, Arizona thru Glacier and over near Seattle in record heat. Most days exceeded 100 degrees, yet at Yellowstone we

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drained the radiator one night as it went below 28 degrees! My favorite overnight stop, Sun Mountain Lodge, Winthrop, WA narrowly escaped the major forest fires a few weeks later. Now rebuilding the engine (a 10-mile 13 percent grade descent and re-ascent from navigation error in Utah was the contributing factor, plus age) of our 1914 Lozier; and reviving a couple more. Hopefully this year, more fun time with grandkids, ocean sailing and tinkering. One of these days I need to stop working as well. Stay well everybody.

1962 DANA FERRY ferry.dana@gmail.com Robin Batteau writes: And Merry ChristmaKwanzHannekkahmas, all of which, of course, celebrate the ever-cycling rebirth of the light and the sun with the solstice. Like so many, I’ve been a little reborn by the Great Hole in the Universe this pesky virus has given us, in my case, inspired to take care of unfinished business, namely, college. I completed requirements for a biology degree way back when, but left school a semester short of a diploma (to make records and help the family). As it turns out, I wound up not only going back to Harvard but going back to Grade IV Shady Hill, as I started with a summer school online course—to see if I still had what it takes to be a student—called Introduction to the Ancient Greek World, which I’ve loved since Miss Heebner but never really delved further into.

Rather than quell my thirst, it deepened my interest, and so this fall I took all courses reflecting that era, including an independent study consisting of composing a suite of songs based on fragments of poetry that are so often all that’s left behind by the great Lyric Poets of Ancient Greece—Sappho et al—who are called Lyric Poets because they played the lyre, guitar’s great-grandma—they were singer/ songwriters, like Dylan, or Taylor Swift, or me, only better. I’ll finish the album this spring, hopefully with a concomitant theater piece recapitulating the evolution of theater itself, from Greek chorus,

to chorus plus one step-out actor (Thespis, from whom we get “Thespian”) to chorus-plus-two (Aeschylus) to chorus plus three (Sophocles) and on and on to commedia dell’arte to Shakespeare to Berlin to Broadway, hopefully through the Harvard theater department (if anyone knows Diane Paulus, please introduce us!).

Here’s a sketch of one song, from Stesichorus (7th Century BCE), reflecting his apology to Helen for blaming her for the tragedies of the Trojan War, called the Palinode.

I chose the name Theseus for our Olympics, Dana, who were you? And who were you, all our crèche-mates? Should we compile our remembrances of Grade IV? Of course!

Dick Belin writes from Bedford, MA: In a concession to the encroachments of time, Rosanne and I have sold the family home at 4 Willard Street, bought by mom and dad in 1957, and in late August we moved to CarletonWillard Village, a continuing care retirement community in Bedford, MA. It’s nice here—lots of friendly people with interesting stories to tell and the time to tell them. We’re in a new one story “cluster home” (they need a new name I think) which is a third the size of Willard Street but just right for us now. It’s supposedly independent living, but in fact we have a lot of help: one meal a day and folks who come in and change the sheets and towels and clean the place each week. Anything goes wrong? Call facilities, they’ll be there shortly. Yay! Moving was no fun at all, but it’s done now and it feels like the right place for us.

In the meanwhile, the grandchild count is up to four (the latest just turned one)—one in Manchester, MA and the other three in southern Maine, so all pretty accessible.

Rosanne and I feel lucky, and as some wise person once said, it’s better to be lucky than good. Not least in my good fortune is all the years I and my four sisters and our three children spent at Shady Hill. So much of that education has stuck to my ribs through the years. “Fall of the possum, fall of the coon, and the lop-eared hound dog baying the moon. Fall that is neither bitter nor swift, but a brown girl bearing an idle gift...” I could go on. I expect others can do the same.

Lucy Liss Bransfield writes: I

was encouraged to write something and I shared that it felt like nothing had changed. Likely the doom of another year of COVID wars and the politics of destruction overshadowed my incredibly fortunate life. I started to think as we have turned the page to 2022, it will be 60 years this June that we recited that Robert Frost poem (which I still know by heart) and headed out into the world of high school. Or actually three years of high school, which is all we needed.

Our magical Grade IX, leaning into Mr. Ryerson, has now disappeared at Shady Hill. 60 years seems like an almost unimaginable period of time, so I think we should find a way to share those 60 years of being apart in some meaningful way. I am glad to be part of a group that plans for us to gather in Cambridge or

by Zoom or some hybrid of words and voices. I think of reunions in 10-year increments and 2032 seems like it could actually be a very different world for us. So “carpe diem” and thank you Mr. Solon Candage (d. 2005). Latin is still pretty cool.

David Drooker writes from Newport, RI: All is well here, where we are still operating our two hotels, Americas Cup Inn and Rodeway Inn. We had a very busy year as COVID concerns encouraged people to choose nearby vacation destinations. We regularly travel to Philadelphia to visit grandchildren and daughter, Alisa, despite the frustrations of Interstate 95!

Very pleased that Shady Hill has maintained so much of what made it a special experience for us in these times when appearance can often be a substitute for quality....On a side note: THANKS very much for pulling this together.

Robin Engel Finnegan writes from Oakland, CA: The past year has been particularly difficult and I’m hoping 2022 is better. Clearly COVID has had a negative effect on all of us. In November 2020, walking in a pedestrian crosswalk, I was hit by a car. I was very badly injured. I spent six days in the ICU in the area trauma center and was hospitalized for two and a half months. The good news is I have entirely recovered. I am so grateful we moved to the SF Bay area because our sons and their families have been an enormous support and pleasure through all of this. In

May, Seth, our older son, donated a kidney to Greg. The surgeries and recoveries went well. There have been some glitches along the way, but that is to be expected. October 27th my mother, Brenda Engel, died. She was 97 years old and in pretty good health until close to the end.

John Herzan reports that he received the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Connecticut’s 2021 Public Service Award for his work with the New Haven Preservation Trust. John served as the Trust’s Preservation Services Officer for 15 years and continues to serve as a member of the Trust’s advisory board. John is also a member of the State Historic Preservation Board. Upon his retirement, the Trust established the Herzan Lecture Fund which offers presentations open to the community on the City of New Haven and its historic places and spaces. This award is an acknowledgment of John’s longtime commitment to the preservation of New Haven’s architectural heritage.

John Herzan ’62 Tonu Kalam writes: After 33 years of teaching at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill I have entered UNC’s Phased Retirement Program. This allows me to work half time at half salary for a maximum of three years before fully retiring. Since conducting the UNC Symphony Orchestra was always half of my teaching load (and the main focus of my activities), I will still continue to do that just as before, but will have no additional classroom teaching duties or administrative assignments. A number of my colleagues have opted to go this route, which is a graceful way to reduce one’s involvement without quitting cold turkey. Last spring, we were only

able to have a 30-member string orchestra, masked and distanced, with which we gave two concerts that were livestreamed, but with no in-person audience. This fall we returned to having a full group of 80 musicians, including winds, brass, and percussion, and gave two concerts with a masked audience present. Since the pandemic is not over by any means, it’s hard to tell what the next semester will bring, but we will try to make the best of the situation. A number of our orchestra’s recent performances can be viewed at our music department’s YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/c/ UNCDepartmentofMusic.

Stephen Kaufman writes: Howdy, Classmates, from Southwest New Mexico. It will have been 60 years for us this spring.

One of the factors that has had me contemplating on my education.

For many people, an education becomes about credentials. Which one hopes will enable earning a living in some gratifying way. For me, credentials I earned turned out not to do much for the life I found. But the education itself was a rare privilege.

Which, at the time, I just knew as what I was familiar with.

Very much including Shady Hill. Infirmities of age—thus far, body parts wearing out rather than illness— have come on me the last couple years.

Decreases what I do, and the more sets me considering and appreciating what I have had opportunity to learn along the way. Words still pour out of me, which I still sign Uncle River.

Lately poems and short essays.

Many reflecting on parallels of my, and our generation’s present stage of life and that of our civilization in its cycle. But here’s one on a more perennial subject: Living Memory Living Memory.

About a hundred fifty years.

Two lifetimes.

If, when you are young, Someone old tells you Some experience they had When they were young,

You get the feeling, Maybe even some explanation, What the experience Meant to them.

One step farther away, Who knows?

Uncle River Helen Loeser writes from San Francisco, CA: Greetings, and thanks for so gently prodding and herding us along! I’m never sure why procrastination rules in these situations…as you are so right that hearing from/about each other is so lovely—and especially in these repeatedly challenging times when group gathering is limited and reaching out individually has become so much more a part of our practice. For my part, I think I struggle to feel that what I say/how I say it, will add meaning and be well received—the endless remnants of childhood! Happily, I can report that David and I continue to feel incredibly fortunate that we are able to ride out waves of isolation and limited travel with relative ease compared to SO many in the world—still in our own home in San Francisco, still active in many work and ancillary activities.

Also, that our children and their partners and our granddaughters are all thriving, busily engaged and contributing to a future/ better world in a variety of ways.

I cannot remember a time since Peace Corps days when I have immersed so deeply in reading, and found such comfort, challenge, escape, inspiration, distraction…

Gardening and cooking for/feeding others continue to bring me great pleasure, as does outdoor time especially along the beaches and with our families’ dogs. The most recent resurgence of yet another viral invasion is certainly causing all to dig deep into our resilience/ reserves. And grave concerns about our world, justice and environment especially, make optimism harder to hang on to. But I do not yet despair, and hope the rest of you “cradlemates” also remain convinced that each of our individual actions can still make a difference! Sending lots of love, and looking forward to hearing/reading about how you are doing, dear Dana—along with many others.

Bruce Wilcox writes from Amherst, MA: A year ago I was convinced

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the pandemic would soon be behind us, thanks to the arrival of vaccines. No such luck! Now I am looking forward to some form of “herd immunity.” In the meantime, I’ve done a lot of grandbaby-sitting this year, continued to play soccer (with masks when indoors), and also managed to fit in a magical trip to Europe during a lull in the pandemic. Here’s wishing all of you a restorative, Omicron-free 2022!

Here’s what I, Dana Ferry, can add: We are dealing with many of the same things, aging of course being one thing we have in common, though certainly we may be experiencing it differently.

Something that has helped me immensely is a program called Dance for Parkinson’s as well as Dance for All People. The first is run by the Mark Morris Dance company from Brooklyn, available around the globe, and the second by Rachel Balaban of Brown University.

They both hold multiple classes on Zoom. I mention them in case there are others who could benefit from them. Taught by professional dancers and movement specialists, they both include wonderful music and musical history and are a powerful way to strengthen mobility.

Other than that, I still write in an informal context with a local group.

I stay in close touch with Becky who lives in Wilmington, N.C. I hear occasionally from Lucy, who is working hard. I am missing my spiritual home in India but still go to Myrtle Beach to the Meher Spiritual Center when I can. Thanks to those who took the trouble to share their news. I know all will be happy to hear from you as I am! Love to all and here’s wishing for best of health and deeper happiness in this New Year!

1963 ALICE CODA alicec1@comcast.net Dan Wallace tells us that I’m laid up with a torn ligament in my foot.

People are still buying custom skis, much to my surprise: my son’s business, Parlor Skis, is booming.

He’s bought a condo in Vermont (has been renting for years) and already has a few miles underfoot . . . and has produced many photos of happy grandkids. His brother Glen

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is also generous in providing cute one-year-old photos. I do remember those years. I really enjoyed them but enjoy the more leisurely pace of my life now as well. Judith has reinvented herself in the age-ofCOVID. The biggest trick has been building community and, while she’s always looking for more connection, I must say she is doing very well at it.

Still exploring metaphysics in its various guises. Very active in many online meditation programs: meditations, retreats, programs for “elders.” The best part for me has been the community of fellow volunteers with whom I get to work (about half my time is developing programs, half executing them). I’m also very intrigued by my changing cognition. I’ve tried out several metaphors over time. “Failing subsystems” dominated for a while.

“Loss of bandwidth” is a current favorite. Yes, my friends, I’m living in what we might once have called a world full of static but is now recognized as pixilation. Fortunately, my backups and redundancies have not yet been completely overwhelmed, and I haven’t had to cut back from much other than night driving. This could change!

Life’s an adventure, isn’t it? Here’s to productive engagement!

Paul Gifford writes from San Francisco, CA that there is not much to report in these crazy times - I plan to keep working for as long as it’s enjoyable. Our one sad piece of news is that the younger (13 years old) of our two Havanese dogs was unexpectedly found to have a huge tumor in one lung. After a few months, it was clear that surgery would be the wrong thing for her, and we had to have her euthanized.

She lives on in our hearts. Thanks to all the rules, we’re not doing any traveling and only see the kids and grandkids by FaceTime. The grandkids turn 13 this January, they are growing and changing a lot. Just hoping that all the current nonsense stops soon.

Brooksie Stanton sends us her news from Barnet, VT: With this 45th year/2nd COVID year on my VT Northeast Kingdom hilltop, I feel more thankful than ever to have open space for daily walks and nightly star gazing. I also appreciate opportunities for human connection, such as (here’s a piece of COVID reality!) the local dump/recycling center, which serves

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as a vital social hub of my town (Barnet, population 1,700). When I go shopping in the big nearby town of St. Johnsbury (population 7,000), I now take walks through neighborhoods simply in order to be amongst people. It was wonderful to have my son, Sascha, back from LA for the holidays. We did lots of cooking and watched episodes of the latest HBO series, How to with John Wilson which he recently edited.

Though I reflect that the world wouldn’t be any less well off without us humans, I continue to work towards finding even the smallest ways to contribute to the greater good. I love and pass on the holiday message I just received from Sascha’s mother-and-father-in-law, wishing everyone “a mutualistic and happy new year” (with the accompanying “note for the non-initiated” from the molecular biologist fatherin-law: “Biological mutualisms, like mycorrhizae or lichens, are combinations of different organisms whose interactions benefit all partners.”)

Love Shady Hill?

Support Shady Hill!

More information at www.shs.org/ give/ways-of-giving

Spencer Cowan writes that: Our younger daughter, Hannah, closed on her house on January 4th, my birthday. After having the floors refinished, she moved in to her new house in mid-February and promptly adopted a second dog.

Spring was quiet, mostly spent avoiding contact with other humans, working remotely, continuing my cancer treatments, with Joy training our dog and turning wood. We spent a few days at a cabin in the mountains in July, and Joy taught a course on wood turning at a folk arts school in Brasstown, NC, in August.

In September, we took advantage of the COVID lull and visited Emily, our older daughter, and her husband, Paul, in Redondo Beach, CA. In October, I spent a week in

Chicago visiting with my brother, Phil, and foster brother, George, and his wife, Inge. Emily and Paul came east for Thanksgiving, which was wonderful. Then back to lockdown for Omicron. Christmas was quiet, just Hannah, her new boyfriend, Jeff, and her two dogs. We finished the year with a visit from Robin Batteau over New Years and snow on the 3rd.

Lizzie Hawthorne O’BeirneRanelagh writes from England that: The problem these days is that there is no news! We stay at home, take COVID tests and get vaccinations, and see just a small group of people.

I’m lucky in that I’ve been able to work more or less normally through the whole period, working from home, using Zoom and walking around farms on my own or with one other. I also continue to run my own farm, selling raw milk to the locals as well as producing organic cereals and sheep. My husband has been writing a book over the last two years, so we have been lucky and occupied! We managed to spend a week in Ireland this summer and my husband went to France but that is the extent of our travels.

Cynthia Shelmerdine writes in from Maine: Most of my time since September has been taken up with chairing the Board of a local public Charter School. Whatever you read about how tough education is during COVID, believe it! Lots of extra stresses and challenges for students and staff alike and I have been working closely with the Head of School to cope with everything.

Still competing in dog agility with my current golden retriever, Coda (yes, I got Alice and Arnold Coda’s permission before naming her!!). No more golf for months now, here in ME, but between the charter school and a couple of research papers I’ll have plenty to do. Let’s hope the trend in 2022 is toward better everything!

Brina Peck tells us: As the pandemic kept on, Gaj and I continued cooking, baking, bicycling, walking. We were so happy to spend six beautiful weeks in Vermont. I stopped reading research on foreign language learning older adults, and designed a Spanish class that starts at the Pasadena Senior Center in January.

My article about attending traffic school conducted in Spanish was published online: https://www. coloradoboulevard.net/en-nuestro-

pais-in-our-country. When will we see each other in person?

Lizzie de Rham states that I have no interesting news, but I am considering major life changes. If the crackpot and his criminal cronies get re-elected by the idiot throng, I will move out of the country. It is interesting reading the well thought out opinions of classmates and I am constantly impressed by the erudition of our class.

Robert Alexander says basically, my wife and I — and our dog and two cats — have been trying to hide from the world. This last year I published Finding Token Creek: New & Selected Writing, 1975-2020.

I’ve also pretty much completed my manuscript about the Chicago literary renaissance (c. 1912-1917), which is due to come out in 2023 (things move slowly in the world of small presses) and I’m working on a sequel to my book about the Northwest Ordinance, which focuses on the years 1787-1794, when the U.S. government, under the new Constitution, began “extirpating” the First Nations from the Ohio Country — the first step in what would later be called Indian Removal. And I’m doing research for a possible book about a mythical love affair between the daughter of the first governor of the Northwest Territory and the son of a Native American sachem who met her while he was a student at Princeton and she was attending a finishing school in Philadelphia. This was known in the nineteenth century as The Legend of Louisa St. Clair, and my thinking is that it was such a popular story at one time that there might well have been some truth to it. . .

Deb Brackett Carmel writes that this past year has been busy for me because I volunteer as the treasurer of the First Unitarian Church in New Bedford, a beautiful Norman-Gothic building constructed around 1830.

Our congregation is managing to keep the building open and heated, but our finances are precarious. As far as pandemic goes, my hermitlike personality has made me quite comfortable. We both wear masks in any public place, including church, and have avoided infection so far. In other health news, I just had surgery to remove a small breast cancer; no chemotherapy is planned, which is very good news to me. My vegetable garden last summer was a disaster because I was too tender-hearted to eradicate the voles and chipmunks

from our yard. The rodents waited until plants were about 2 feet tall and then chewed through the stems about four inches up from the ground. The worst part was that they didn’t even eat the top part!

Fortunately, I had better luck with flower beds - flowers all summer.

Alice Ross Coda writes: as your class secretary I love hearing from you all and wished that asking for News over the holidays wasn’t a thing. I had a major surgery in October and seem to have recovered well from it. We in this house and family are vaccinated and boosted so that allowed for a belated celebration of Dan and Mary’s wedding here in July (over the Very Rainy 4th) and another visit from them over Christmas. Loved every minute and wish that visits could be longer.

Arnold and I continue to garden and putz around the property. Keeps us busy enough to not mind too much not really going anywhere.

Daughter-in-law Mary turned me on to watercolors and acrylics and I have been experimenting with both, mostly for greeting cards. I fully expected to take a watercolor class this semester - but COVID numbers being so high I decided to continue at the university of YouTube. I also have been knitting quite a bit and knit my first pair of socks! Our knitting group was able to meet outside for most of the spring through early fall but have called a halt due to COVID. May this time next year see us all back to some semblance of social gathering normality.

often goes with the physical signs.

However, I am blessed with old friends from my elementary to my post-college graduate years and I keep in touch with them. I hope for all of you that you have a safe year (from disease) and maybe have an adventure or two. Nick, thank you for keeping us together.

Nick Deutsch reports: it’s always a special treat to see SHS classmates.

This past year, Clinton and I enjoyed a lovely autumn walk with Joel and Carol Horowitz in a familiar haunt, Mt. Auburn Cemetery and in November I had the pleasure of meeting up with Susanna Solomon, who was visiting Cambridge from California.

Edie Jackson sends this news: I’m still playing tennis, captaining a team of 65+ women called The Lobstars; we won our season in 2021 and went on to Sectionals, where we lost.

Tennis has withstood the pandemic challenges so far, thank heaven. My youngest daughter barely dodged pandemic gathering restrictions and managed to have her wedding in May 2021, a delightful event for my family. I’m starting to try to use up my multi-year accumulations, offload stuff, shrink down a bit to what my husband of 45 years (yipes!!!) and I need only.

Susan Martin Mahony writes from Vermont: Greetings to you all, dear Shady Hillers! Here we are in the middle of triple disasters this winter. Some shifts hopefully have started since this writing. Let us hope we will see our democracy

stabilized, the virus receding, and climate change action more seriously mobilized. Who would have guessed we would be part of this frightful season? As can be said: This too shall pass! Through it all I am blessed with my quiet Vermont life. My energy and health are reasonably good and my husband continues to make beautiful, practical items in his woodshop and keep up with the firewood supply. Daily walks are my relief from the year’s challenges. Last year I saw two bobcats dash across the ice while I was taking a video.

Such a fine moment! This year I am learning how to use a critter-cam that records wildlife activity on the animal trails. I have been serving on a town committee that focuses on conserving farm and forest lands.

There is currently a large forest conservation project unfolding with several of our neighbors. It will protect forest habitat and longdistance animal corridors. My spirits are nourished by regular yoga classes on Zoom or in person. In the warm season, I continue to devote love and energy to the gardens, which sustain us with abundant crops and more and more fresh flowers. I am blessed by having both our daughters living nearby. They have each spent numerous years far away and now have come home to Vermont, though who knows what the future brings.

Niki Rockwell writes: for an introvert, this year has been a blessing in many ways. Living in a somewhat isolated area, Zoom

1964 NICK DEUTSCH deutsch.eubanks@gmail.com Holly Cheever writes: Greetings, and I hope you are doing well. There is very little in the way of adventure or excitement from me this year – I am seeing and doing much less with old friends, post-retirement from my veterinary practice, because of COVID concerns, but at least my family is well and, with the return of our son from his 10 years of JAG, overseas, we’re no longer fearful of his succumbing to a military-based tragedy. My Parkinson’s disease continues to progress slowly… leading me to feel concern about my possible future dementia, which so

Edie Jackson ’64’s season-winning tennis team, The Lobstars. She captained the team and is in the red cap.

Susan Martin Mahony ’64

Edie Jackson ’64’s daughter’s wedding

Susan Martin Mahony ’64 house and gardens

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Suzanne Webber ’64 at a small breakfast reunion on September 11, 2021. From left to right: Suzanne Webber, Jen Tobin, Jonathan Slater, Betsy Anderson, and Anne Snyder. has allowed me to teach and learn without having to do hours on the road in poor conditions.

Living, too, on trails through the woods, discovering new trails, and re-enjoying hidden grottos and streams has been beautiful. I’ve learned about plants, identified birds, and been furious at those people who leave plastic bottles, chip bags, masks, beer cans…

Even introverts like to settle with old friends, share hugs, and a good laugh. So, I also see the need for balance. The privilege I have weaves in and out of my thoughts and feelings in this tapestry of community we share while we live on Earth. The backlashes are painful, the intensifying of inequity horrifying, the pathological lying reminiscent of Nazism frightening.

I am reminded of Pandora opening the box and all manner of evil released -- all that remained was hope. I also think of Angela Davis’s words: “I will work to change those things I cannot accept.” It’s become

Stephanie Selden ’64 apple picking

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a narrow path between the two chasms of our country. We must take great care at this moment in history.

Nora Ryerson, who I am in continual contact with, is preparing for her second knee replacement.

Playing with my three-and-a-halfyear-old twin granddaughters is a great mood booster. Also in a writing class with Maura Clarke TTC ’94. What a terrific writer she is. A creative soul.

Stephanie Selden reports from Petersham, MA: This was a bumper year for apples which we pressed for cider. Our family gathering on Thanksgiving Day included many Shady Hill alums. In the photo submitted to Class Notes, you can find me second from left, Christina Selden Moskow, seventh from left and Sarah Selden Bush, ninth from left. Her children, SHS alums Nicola, Izzy, Anna and Oscar are here too. Lucas Bush, in Berlin on semester abroad from Colorado College, made it home for Christmas.

Suzanne Webber informs us: I keep up with several Shady Hillers and in December visited with Stephanie Selden in Petersham.

She continues to thrive out there!

All is well in my tiny Social Circle.

Lisa Wiesner writes from Martha’s Vinyard: I’m enjoying retirement and hoping for fewer restrictions because of COVID-19, although I’m not sure we’re there yet despite vaccines. I’ve spent more time on the Vineyard since retiring and am happy not to be sleep-deprived as often as I was while working. We now have a two-and-a-half-yearold grandson who is a delight; I have two daughters, so trucks and dinosaurs are all new to me. Best wishes to everyone and call if you’re

Stephanie Selden ’64 Thanksgiving Day family gathering

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on the Vineyard (203-988-3632).

John Woolsey shares these thoughts: This past year, my siblings and I were given a rude shock such as must have happened to many SHS families over the years. All five of us went through Shady Hill from beginning to end, and our parents lived in our Cambridge house for over 50 years, renovating and altering as needed for the growing family but keeping the relaxed, gracious feel of the 1928 Dutch Colonial that it was. When my parents sold in 2000, we knew that overdue renovations were in the works. The house came on the market again last year, and the Zillow listing included photos that showed its current configuration.

Yikes!! It was as if the house had been marinated in battery acid after we left – and then turned over to the Tastemasters at Home Depot for “sprucing up.” The place was just about unrecognizable. While everyone can expect new owners to re-think and renew an existing house, often for the better, the total gutting of a happily livable, well-arranged house seems such a colossal waste. Shouldn’t we stop this kind of mindless waste at home so as to allow the world to begin to heal? But this seems to be a more difficult question than we yet know how to answer.

1965 FRED WANG FredWang65@gmail.com A note from your class correspondent: A class highlight of 2021 was to see so many of you on our reunion virtual Zoom meeting.

While it is not up close and in person due to the pandemiphant in the room, it was great to see so many of us even for the brief amount of time we had together.

It truly was like we continued the conversations we had from last year and just continued on as if no time had passed! Thank you to all who were able to participate and regardless of what happens this year, perhaps some sort of virtual meeting should occur so that we can maximize our attendance!

Alice Beal writes from Brooklyn, NY: 2021 was an interesting one for the Beal-Kuntz Family. I retired in

July. I had always planned to retire when I became a grandmother but wanted to wait until life calmed down at the hospital. It finally did, so I set the date for 6/30, the end of the medical year. Three days prior to retirement, I ended up in the hospital with a temperature of 105o.

I was felled by a tick whose bite gave me anaplasmosis; a disease that is very dramatic and intense but from which you entirely recover, thank goodness. Since retirement, I have been able to visit frequently with my grandson Teddy who lives only three miles away with his parents, Kate and Peter (our daughter and son-in-law). Then on 12/20/21 our granddaughter Evelyn (Evie) Emilia Muñoz Kuntz was born in LA. Our son and daughter-in-law , Will and Priscilla, are ecstatic. Bill and I are scheduled to go out early in Jan but Liz who was home for Christmas just tested positive for COVID, so who knows. Luckily, she is not feeling sick and we are all vaxxed and boosted. Here’s to the defeat of COVID. Oni Moorrees Berglund writes from Dallas, TX: I am still in Dallas with my daughter Alexandra and her husband. They now have three kids. Anneke who is six and two boys; John age four and Nathaniel who is two. As you can imagine I’m babysitting most days so am exhausted by the end of the week.

It’s been freezing here like Boston but I think the end is in sight. Best wishes to all!

Betsy Brackett writes from Minneapolis, MN: I am enjoying retirement. I enjoy making quilts.

I am organizing a cohousing community although the COVID-19 devil keeps getting in the way. I tried to make the Icebox Cake that we used to sometimes be served at Shady Hill when we had a cook - she was wonderful. You know the one with the chocolate wafers, lathered with whipped cream and adorned with bitter chocolate sauce? Mine sagged badly - but we ate it. I am also assisting with my Carleton College 50th reunion, planning a session on “Housing after age 70-” shelter in place? join a cohousing community, move in with the kids? move to Costa Rica?

I hope my college classmates will come in person in June 2022.

I recently discovered the list of amazing alumni, including our

Patrick Lydon of Callan, Ireland passed away on January 18 as we were compiling these notes. Included here are an excerpt of an email Patrick wrote us in 2016 as well as a collection of tributes that have come in from the class:

Rebecca Brackett ’74 left, Deborah Carmel ’63 in back and Binney Brackett ’67 on the right. Standing in front of an enclosure of American Chestnut saplings planted by the Chestnut Foundation.

classmate Dr. Alice Beal who was featured on a PBS show about fighting COVID-19. In September I flew back to Maine to have a weekend with my three sister alumnae: Deborah Carmel ’63, Binney Brackett ’67, and Rebecca Brackett ’74. Photo has Rebecca left, Deb in back and Binney on the right. We are standing in front of an enclosure of American Chestnut saplings planted by the Chestnut Foundation. They are trying to breed an American Chestnut no longer susceptible to the Blight. With all the new science of genes etc. they just might make it happen.

I am eternally grateful for my Shady Hill education. A few years ago, an Iowa college - Luther College, had billboards that said something like, “Come to Luther and Learn to Think.” I thought to myself - I learned to think at SHS and waiting until college would be a bit too late to learn to think. Best wishes to all in 2022.

Kin Dubois writes from Colorado: Sandy and I spent the year tentatively venturing forth, and then retreating as conditions changed. We finally got back to southern Connecticut via a long road trip in April to see our younger daughter, Megan and her family (husband George and our granddaughters Elliot (six) and Olive (three and a half), seeing them for the first time in 18 months. We followed up with two flights, and added on to our visits with quick jaunts to Rockport, MA and Providence, RI. Back in the Denver area, we’ve spent as much time as possible with older daughter, Dana, son-in-law Scot, and our other granddaughter, Emma (six and a half), and it has been wonderful following the three

grands! In September, I concluded (with great relief!) three years as president of our 207-home HOA, the demands of which virtually doubled with the advent of the pandemic. I’m still doing a little work as an architect expert witness but I should be retired from this by the end of 2022. And I remain involved in the accreditation of schools of architecture, both as a volunteer and as a consultant to a university in Saudi Arabia planning for renewal of their certification by our National Architectural Accrediting Board. We are thankful for (reasonably) good health and the opportunity to enjoy the outdoors in our foothill’s neighborhood and surroundings. Hoping to resume more ambitious travel later this year with previously canceled trips. Time will tell!

Lisa Shulman Rubenstein writes: I have been procrastinating, because I felt there was almost nothing to write. It’s been a quiet year. Working remotely, rarely going to restaurants or any more than small gatherings. No travel except our annual three weeks on Chappaquiddick. Luckily, I love living with Joel, and we have a very good time together. Only then I remembered, I did have a medical scare, having thought I was perfectly healthy. Had a sudden drastic drop of my sodium, which put me in the ICU for five days. Got worked up for everything, found various things, and since October have been out, checking sodium weekly and on fluid restriction. The ICU is really a strange little universe but with amazing nurses and doctors.

Still, shocking when you believe you are healthy. Funny that I forgot that as news! Wishing you all well, and looking forward to when we can next gather in person.

“Greetings from the long-lost Patrick Lydon, then of Watertown, and now of rural Ireland! To catch you up, I have lived in Camphill communities, which create homes for people with multiple disabilities, for more than forty years, with my dear wife Gladys and our four children. From 1979 we lived in rural Ballytobin in Co. Kilkenny.

We farmed; milking cows, baling hay, harvesting potatoes with our exceptional colleagues. Now in the nearby town of Callan, Gladys and I live in a town community supporting 13 people with autism, epilepsy, Downs syndrome and challenging behaviours. Still farming, we have also pioneered a “radically inclusive” arts centre -- http://kcat.ie -- and wood-fuelled and bio-gas energy systems.”

• I am so sad, and grateful for him.

• So very sad to read......He was such a sweet friend.

• So glad to have visited Patrick at his brother’s apt in Boston with Kristen and Anne a bit over two years ago. He will be greatly missed by his family and classmates.

• Peace be upon you, Patrick.

• So sad to hear, but what a remarkable life he created.

• Patrick “got it.” He understood the value of life and lived it to the fullest, concentrating on friends, family, love and supporting each other.

• I’m grateful to have had a recent visit with Patrick at our reunion. At this gathering, despite both the distance and his challenging health condition, I felt Patrick’s remarkable presence. I’m so moved by the deep love that he shared with so many. He will be greatly missed.

• I can only say wow, what a life and what a model! Yesterday afternoon I did try to think of what two words I would use to describe Patrick (even though I did not know him as well as many of you). The first word that sprang to mind was “irrepressible”. The second word was “gracious” – and I mean that in the fullest and best senses of the word. A third word might be “mischievous” – in the sense of being willing to shake things up or challenge assumptions.

One of my few cousins has lived in a Camphill community in Scotland for over 50 years – she has thrived and lived a rich life so I am very aware of the important work that Patrick and Gladys have dedicated themselves to – and I am grateful to them both.

• One of my favorite memories of Patrick was waiting with him outside the players locker rooms at the old Boston Garden after a Celts game when Wilt Chamberlain came striding out followed by his entourage and Boston press.

Patrick, who you might guess is maybe half Wilt’s size, suddenly jumps out from the crowd, walks right up to Wilt; stops him in mid-stride and asks him with a big smile, if he thought he could knock out Cassius Clay? Wilt burst into a great laugh and looking way down to Patrick replied “I don’t know but I think I could knock you out” all the while pretending to box with my friend.

The whole press corps bursts out into laughter. That was Patrick back then.

In Patrick’s own words: This sense of our responsibility for our fellow humans is central to living with and caring for people who are mentally disabled, who will not be able to become independent, self-directing people. In order to expand their own sense of themselves, we have to broaden our capacity for life to include their potential, to give expression and feeling to their experience. Somehow the idea of serving, of becoming a servant to the needs and development of another, of being able to enhance more than one’s own sense of self, becomes a key to finding one’s own way forward. And then we realize that the children who we thought needed our care, were dependent on us, have taught us to care, taught us our need to become caring. . . . And my life in the Camphill Community with its magic idealism, with these consummate human beings who are called “handicapped” . . . I have an overwhelming sense of gratitude that my life led me this way.

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Walter Weiss writes from Montgomery County, MD: I am energized about this and time is short. My son Jake, now 35 told me a few years ago, “Your generation made the climate crisis and it is up to you to fix it.” And this is true, as the Boomers have been responsible for more greenhouse gas releases than any other generation in history. We also have the power and the money which the younger generations do not. For the last four years I have been very involved with climate activism in Montgomery County, Maryland where I live. This is a solidly blue and very enviro-conscious area, and we have done a lot of good stuff with local regulations. However, all of this is in jeopardy in the 2022 national elections if the Democrats lose control of Congress. I am now giving my time and money to help elect democrats in swing states and districts (not where I live in Maryland!). There is a chance that the House and Senate can stay Democratic if the Stacy Abrams voter registration phenomenon can be replicated in several key states.

I don’t know much about political strategy, but I am getting good guidance from a savvy group, 31st Street at https://www.31ststreet. org/. They currently have identified Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia as key states, and they will add states as election nears.

However, money given now, a year ahead, is much more valuable than money given close to the election, as it lets groups hire community organizers. I have given a lot to the suggested organizations and will give more. I urge all of you to get political, the sooner the better. Bye. Hopefully for next year’s newsletter, I can talk about more personal stuff!

Love to all!

Conrad Wright writes from Watertown, MA: In a strange and difficult year, two of our highlights involve grandchildren. Abby ’00, our older daughter, gave birth to a son, Nat, in February, and in September, Abby’s daughter, Kit, entered Shady Hill as a Beginner.

Meanwhile, our younger daughter, Betsy ’04, entered her final year of medical school and is applying to residency programs. Best to all.

I, Fred Wang, write from Boston, MA: As I look back upon 2021 or Pandemic Year 2 as it seems to have become, it was an entirely

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different year from 2020! The year started with daughter Allison (’04) getting me and her boyfriend Trevor vaccinated. Since she was in charge of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center personnel that staffed the Fenway Park mass vaccination site, we were able to go there in February for our shots.

Instead of waiting after our shot for the requisite 15 minutes for any reactions, the medical director there (who had treated Allison’s badly sprained ankle many years ago) took us all up for a tour of the park from the bowels of the stadium under the dugout all the way up to the bleachers to see the snow-covered field! My special soccer community (which now has an average age over 55!) got back out onto the field once they were opened by the City of Newton. Opening Day for the Red Sox at Fenway Park included a tribute to all the unsung heroes and first responders from grocery store workers to the people behind the scenes. Allison was among those who were feted with a seat at the game and on television as the camera focused across her and her group of vaccination specialists who manned the Fenway Park mass vax site!

This year, our 56th reunion was again held over Zoom in early June.

In attendance were: Ted Agoos, Alice Beal, Oni (Moorrees) Berglund, Betsy Brackett, Dan Cohen, John Compton, Brock Cutting, Nancy Drooker, Kin Dubois, Patrick Lydon, Lisa (Shulman) Rubenstein, Nan (Waksman) Schanbacher, Fred Wang, Walter Weiss, Conrad Wright and Anne Wulsin. It felt like we just continued our conversation from last year including catching up on each other’s major events. Regardless of whether we can meet in person this year, I think we should continue these so that we can maximize our attendance and not be hampered by busy schedules or travel-averse classmates!

Then in mid-June, daughter Andrea ’03, TTC ’16 was admitted into the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University! She had been interning at a local veterinary clinic for the past two years while taking courses to meet the entry requirements for vet school which has now all come

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to fruition! She started classes this fall and has made many friends both in her classes and with the staff at the hospital there, because her dog “Bear” had a terrible accident and required the services of the resident specialists to recover. She has already experienced more time “shadowing” the surgeons in the hospital than her peers! And in early July, the delayed 2020 wedding of Allison and her longtime boyfriend Trevor Lorden finally occurred at the Sugarbush Resort in Warren, Vermont.

Unfortunately, the wedding day started out raining and using the chairlifts in the precipitation and keeping the guests dry was a huge challenge. As Laurie and I were escorting Allison to the outdoor altar the rain miraculously stopped, the umbrellas disappeared and the sun peeked out! The wedding ceremony was magnificent with the backdrop of mist draped mountains in the background! As I recall, the year 2020 was truly a bust but it allowed for the plans and activities that lead to a 2021 that was filled with transformative events that included a budding new veterinary student and a new son-in-law! All in all, a good year for our family! I wish you all a terrific 2022 and a “new normal 2.0!”

1966 MARGARET BULLITT-JONAS margaretbj@aol.com

February. Booked back in October, pre-Omicron, when our PM advised that our international borders would reopen pre-Christmas. I looked forward to seeing Mum, now 94, for the first time in two and a half years, along with my siblings. It all seemed so do-able.

Now, despite being vaxxed to the hilt, I find the potential for glitches unnerving. Although Melbourne, which holds the dubious title of most locked-down city in the world over the last 22 months, is enjoying summer, we are also experiencing skyrocketing cases and disruptions that have everyone on edge in a way we weren’t a year ago. My volunteer jobs, reading news articles on radio for Vision Australia Radio, and providing information at the Melbourne Visitor Centre, have been periodically suspended since March 2020. I’m back on the radio, but not back at the Visitor Centre – no visitors. Grandchildren minding, children catchups, regular Zoom sessions and walking, walking, walking form much of the structure of my weeks. And now we have the Australian Open tennis and the associated sport-meets-politicsmeets-Novak to add some variety.

Robin Alden writes from Stonington, ME: Ted and I stayed in Stonington all year except for a few forays to southern New England late last spring to buy a small pleasure boat for island hopping and visiting friends along the coast. We had fun buying it but not owning it. Ted realized that, although he’s spry, age 82 is too late for him to take on another boat. His first was a peapod for lobstering when he was 12! So, we are treasuring what we can do instead. This winter that means writing for both of us. Last summer included an honorary doctorate for Ted from Bowdoin and a very active season for our small rental

Our class enjoyed a remarkable 55th anniversary reunion via Zoom last Spring. How sweet it is, at age 70, to reconnect with people you grew up with and whom you last saw when you were 15. It was precious to compare memories and exchange news. As one of us observed, we were each other’s first experience in learning how to be a friend.

Kathy Agoos reports from Melbourne, Australia: Not much personal news that’s different from last year, though it all feels very different. I’m grappling with daily 180-degree swings on whether to stick with my travel booking for a short visit Ted Ames & Robin Alden ’66 to the States in early

Lark Batteau ’66, stepfather Chris, sister Yani, and brother Robin

across the driveway from our house and many, many wonderful visitors who enriched our summer and fall. Among them were Victor Rodwin, and Nadell – it was a treat to reconnect. The door is open. We have lots of room and would love to see any of you. In the meantime, we watch the tide rising, literally, and read and listen to the world careening into places we never dreamt it would go. We deepen our appreciation of small things and redouble our efforts for equity and sustainability.

Lark Batteau says from Santa Barbara, CA: I’m in the final stretch of my ‘coming of age’ memoir set during the time I lived in London and at the spiritual community of Findhorn in Scotland (19691973). It’s funny, fascinating, scary, sad, and sexy. My new agent and I are excited about finishing and publishing this year. Unlike most authors, I am a performer and am looking forward to traveling and doing readings around the world. Here in Santa Barbara, I regularly perform readings of my writings from both this book Lark Ascending and also Paris Mishaps in a local theater event called ‘Personal Stories’. I’m still “sweeping people away” with my French cabaret called Bohemian Dreams. Outside, of course.

Have been educating people about their health (using mostly Traditional Chinese Medicine) and also teaching yoga and meditation twice a week during this whole pandemic, first in my back garden and now in a gated park not far from where I now live. In April I moved into a stunningly beautiful (my partner and I cleaned and painted for ten days straight) upstairs duplex in a bucolic part of town and I couldn’t be happier.

Lark Batteau ’66 performing I was also in an art show this year. To my astonishment, both drawings sold. Who knew? My family in USA, France, England and Holland, are all doing well. If the pandemic finally settles, we’ll be having a big reunion in the Pyrenees in August.

Kitty (Waring) Block comments: I LOVED our class Zoom call earlier this year. So fun to listen and see faces, cycling between hearing current news and remembering classmates from way back. Thanks to all who joined. We should do it every couple of years. My news this year? The year of surgeries, I guess. Frank had major foot reconstruction and I learned how to do full-time nursing care for a while. We each had two hand surgeries and I had thyroid surgery, resulting in all kinds of weird pains.

Ah well, getting better. But mostly our lives are full, happy, fairly quiet (which we don’t mind at all) but we’re involved with enough grandchildren that we never get bored. This week alone we hosted our oldest (almost 20-year-old) grandson over New Year’s and chased monsters in the closet with a three-year-old granddaughter. So, life is full of family, faith, a dear and loving spouse, pretty good health, creative projects and enough family drama to keep our praying muscles exercised (ok, our worrying muscles too!) We anguish over some of the directions we see our country going, particularly the polarization of viewpoints and the lack of respectful discussion and listening to one another that is so essential to a free nation. We try to do what we can in our own small spheres of influence to combat it.

Kitty Brazelton reports from Cape Cod: I’ve been isolating on Cape Cod, with masked forays into

NYC’s East Village—even through the worst, the city remains valiant, alive. This year I made a foray to Lake Sunapee in NH, where I had a multi-day visit with Michele Oldman, —time deeply shared.

My daughter Rosie came to bunk in with me for much of 2020. We recovered some of the time we missed when she was a teenager and I was a single mom, commuting from NYC to Bennington College, five hours away. Music went underground in 2020 and has not really re-emerged—we keep trying but it’s not really time yet. A chamber music project in L.A. is on hold. I had canceled the humble house concert tour planned for a cappella Essential Prayers Project (https://vimeo.com/325106947), in spring ’20, and reapplied the funds raised, to support the singers, out of work. After a year and a half plus, I’m proud to say “the world is not ending—we’ve been here before: COVID Choirs Project” has hired 60 singers to record themselves singing from wherever they are—in garages and bedrooms all over the world—however they can— sometimes with a smartphone.

The second step is to painstakingly construct their recordings into a choir. I’ve spent a year mixing Storm (Vulgate Psalm 104 translated), months on Earthquake (text from Q’uran, translated by a 1734 Anglo cleric) and Fire (original text from Black and White witnesses to BLM protests). Slow but perfect for the fits and starts of quarantine. Grateful. I’m still working on how to rehearse 13 people online to develop my opera The Art of Memory (https://vimeo. com/540331381), awarded a New York State Council on the Arts grant in 2021. Meanwhile, here on the Cape, as I inherit my

Kitty (Waring) Block ’66 and husband Frank on Thanksgiving

great grandfather’s dilapidated farmyard—grateful—we’re rebuilding and I will have guest rooms soon for any of you who’d care to visit. My family is in the process of conserving the meadows with the native grasses—bogs and beach already protected—so peace, crows, hawks, owl, deer, rabbits, voles, turkey, gulls—abound. Please come. I hope to teach music here and am slowly withdrawing myself from professorial life in Vermont.

The pandemic helped – I went remote. Grateful.

Commenting on this report, Kitty Block said: Kitty, the kind of group singing you describe – with all participants singing from their wherevers – brings tears to my eyes each time I hear it. To me, it speaks of resilience, joy, defiant togetherness in the face of COVID-19 separation. And gratitude: yes. For so much. Thanks!

Margaret Bullitt-Jonas writes from Ashfield, MA: I’m recovering from a mild bout of COVID-19, grateful to be fully vaccinated.

My job expanded this year to include both Episcopal dioceses in MA, as well as the New England Conference of the UCC. The Episcopal bishops in MA issued a declaration of climate emergency and I helped organize presentations on how we can pray, learn, act, and advocate on behalf of the Earth entrusted to our care. I continue to write, speak, and lead retreats aimed at restoring reverence for the Earth and mobilizing a robust response to the ecological predicament in which we find ourselves (website: RevivingCreation.org). My husband Jonas and I built a new, solar-run house in Ashfield (a small town in western MA), where we revel in the wildlife (bear, coyote, fox, porcupine) and cherish the

Kitty (Waring) Block ’66 and youngest grandchild

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Photo from Peter Galbraith ’66- Mother seeing her daughter for the first time in two years. She last saw her mother when she was three and has no idea who the person is.

opportunity – as COVID-19 allows – to gather with family and loved ones. I’m delighted that son Sam Jonas, ’04, moved to Boston and now teaches Fourth Grade at Advent School.

Anne Denio writes: I loved our Zoom call along with the cathartic reflections of our childhood. I agree it would be wonderful to continue as we age and our memories of childhood supposedly become even clearer! I enjoy delightful immersion in grandchildren (nine months and almost three, both boys), the local arts scene (latest is the opening of the 5-story Museum of the American Arts & Crafts Movement and the Picasso exhibit opening at the Dali Museum) and living life as best as Bob and I can without fear (travels, events, friends, family, Bridge, etc.).

I just found a packet of my dad’s [Jock Denio] Grade VI photos for all but one of his classes at SHS, from 1949-50, when he began teaching, through 1960-61, when I finished Grade IV and we moved to Michigan for his new job as headmaster for a school outside Detroit. I would be glad to share these photos with anyone who was a student of my father. My New Year’s resolution is to find time for more reflection & contemplation.

Peter Galbraith sent an amazing story: COVID notwithstanding, 2021 was a peripatetic year. By late February, I was double vaccinated and set off for Kurdish-controlled Northeast Syria. When I was last there in November 2019, I visited an orphanage that held 44 children born as a result of the rape of young Yazidi women by ISIS fighters. The mothers, who had been captured in 2014, were freed in March 2019 when ISIS’ last stronghold fell. After five years of sexual and physical abuse at the

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Peter Galbraith ’66 and the same child, now age 6, in December 2021.

hands of ISIS—as well as being on the receiving end of the US-led coalition military campaign—the young women were then victimized by their own community. The Yazidi leadership considers the existence of the children born to ISIS men as an insult to the Yazidi religion and forced the mothers to give up their children. The mothers were sent back to their families in Iraq, often distant and unsympathetic relatives as ISIS had butchered their immediate family. For two years, they had no contact with their children at the orphanage. In early 2020, a Swedish-Kurdish doctor contacted me to say that 20 mothers of 30 children wanted their children back.

I secured promises from both the Iraqi and Syrian Kurdish leadership to give me the children. But, as it was a personal commitment, I needed to go to Syria to get them myself. In the end, I made seven trips to Syria in 2021 and reunited 24 children with their 16 mothers.

(Even with the promises, it took hours of negotiation—and a call from the White House—before the Syrian side agreed to let me bring the first group of mothers across the border; it helps to have a president who cares deeply about humanitarian issues). The mothers and children are now in safe houses in Iraqi Kurdistan, awaiting third country resettlement. I am raising money to help support them (contributions welcome). They are sweet young women—the oldest was 18 when captured—who have suffered more than anyone should.

They remain in mortal danger from the Yazidi community and, in some cases, their own families.

Sadly, the Swedish-Kurdish doctor contracted COVID-19 from one of the mothers at the time of the March reunion, was medically

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Peter Galbraith ’66 with Yazidi mother and child, March 2021.

evacuated to Sweden, and died at age 52. I also made regular visits to the prison camps holding the ISIS women and children (the Kurds had asked me for help in figuring out how to handle the nearly 10,000 foreign women and children in their custody). Since most governments won’t take back adult citizens who joined ISIS and since the Kurds won’t send the children out without their mothers, children are now growing up in prisons with no schools, unspeakable sanitation, and minimal health care. Radical women dominate the camps and some of these children will end up as the next generation of suicide bombers, rapists, and murderers. I was able to bring out a Canadian child and arrange the rescue of an eight-year-old American orphan.

The other big event for me was the fall of Afghanistan, where I served in 2009 as an Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations. I was not surprised at the outcome and only sorry for all the effort, expenditures and sacrifices—by Afghans and Americans—that were for nothing. Those most responsible for the failure—the military commanders who sold a counter-insurgency strategy that depended for its success on a local partner that did not exist—seem unlikely to be held accountable.

In addition to seven trips to Northeast Syria in 2021, I went to Tajikistan (to advise the Afghan Tajiks on possible negotiations with the Taliban). On the fun side, I visited my grandchildren in Bend, Oregon, my younger children in Norway for Christmas, went to Moab (with Mike Feldberg, and his wife Ruth Lazarus), cruising in Turkish waters, hiking in Patagonia and to Antarctica. As you see, it was a peripatetic year. Responding to this story, Anna Langenfeld

spoke for many of us when she wrote to Peter: I am overwhelmed with gratitude for you and your life-changing work. The word ‘hero’ is certainly overused and even given a corny connotation at times, but this IS heroic. I can just hear the women as they say their desperate prayers, ‘Mr. Galbraith will help us.’

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Lark Batteau added, regarding Peter’s entry: I am infinitely grateful for my life. We all do what we can.

But when I read Peter’s account, I just wept. Phenomenal service and the stamina to carry on despite the most difficult of circumstances. I bow.

Ralph Gifford reports: This past year had its ups and downs, but we ended it on a note of probably unjustified optimism, clinging to the idea that 2021 was as bad as it could get, as our democracy circles the drain, and the virus keeps on coming. But these are everyone’s horrors. As individuals, our lives have been mostly comfortable.

With travel limited, we’ve sheltered in place, with the luxury of a supermarket just a few blocks away.

We don’t miss restaurants, as Linda and I like our own cooking. We’re thoroughly vaccinated. The personal tragedy of the year was the death of my older daughter, Shelagh, from complications of kidney disease she had struggled with for decades. So, although it was not a total surprise, it was painful. Watching our two grandchildren on FaceTime or Zoom remains our favorite sport.

Josh Kay shares from Tacoma, WA: I’ve been retired for five years now, living in Tacoma. I enjoy chanting Torah every shabbat, singing in our Temple choir, and studying Talmud with our rabbi. I enjoy times with fellow retirees who share similar political views. We call ourselves Left Over Lunch. My wife and I

work out regularly with friends at the Y. Our son just returned to NYC after a five-year hiatus in Chicago. COVID has crimped my work on the environment but I continue to be in touch with the Rocky Mountain Institute and Hazel Henderson.

Harris Loeser comments from San Francisco, CA (with a word modified for propriety’s sake): All I am is a comfortably retired old ‘codger’ who counts on his kids for most accomplishments. Still living in same house in Noe Valley, San Francisco with wife 1.0, Jane.

If you wonder, why live in SF? Because it is great. I row antique wood boats on the Bay for next to nothing; I am super lucky to still be able to mountain bike with other old ‘codgers’ several times per week in Marin and around the city. Learning to ride in Cambridge has helped me survive. I just quit substitute teaching a few days ago (in French sometimes) because of COVID-19. Jane keeps herself busy with all kinds of fiber and printing art, feeding me very well and worrying more than I do about the kids. Daughter AC just started med. school at U. Wash Seattle and son Sam is in Bellingham, WA designing bits for aerospace. Other son Jono just got engaged to lovely young lady, Maddy. I just got home from hanging her Christmas present bird feeder at their new apartment in the Presidio of San Francisco, which is old Army housing that is refurbished and rentable. Another pretty nice SF feature. COVID-19 is a drag, and the world is going to hell at unreasonable speed but my life is pretty darn good and mostly that is due to good luck and (perhaps) some good early childhood education. Best to everyone.

Michele (Shelley) Oldman writes: For sure, reconnecting with my SHS class was a highlight of 2021. Two days before Christmas, Michele sent our class a SHS Christmas Carol sheet music book that she found while sorting through some old papers.

“Brings back good memories of Miss Abbott. Did we have any Hanukkah music? I remember international songs and some Spirituals.” She also sent a collection of SHS recipes that included the renowned icebox cake.

1967 Our Class Correspondent position is open. Consider stepping forward to volunteer for this rewarding role!

Email alumni@shs.org.

1968 TESI KOHLENBERG tesik@rcn.com Peter Agoos shares: Who knew that grandparenting would be so much fun?

George Beal writes: We were in Argentina with a very slow Internet connection. We were fishing in Patagonia for a week, which was lovely BIG country. Other than that, not much to report: all is well with no COVID issues yet (knock on wood).

Gary Cowan says: I’d send you something, but the only real news is a perception of time FLYING by...

Mark Finn shares: Actually, COVID hasn’t been so bad. I have gotten used to working virtually and it is a relief to be free of commuting. My big news is that I got a dog for the first time, which I guess is a bit of a cliche. My first dog and I am very much in love. I will look forward to our next post COVID reunion.

Roger Kay writes: Dodging COVID all 2021, we were veterans by year end. But the incoming was starting to kick up dirt around our feet. Over the December holiday, our daughter tested positive. We packed her off immediately to her apartment in New Haven and got ourselves tested the next day. No results as of this writing but feeling fine. Hunkering down.

Tesi Kohlenberg shares: Whew… currently living alone in our little Westport house during the Omicron surge, as our daughter needed to get back to school and I’m too immunosuppressed to risk catching the Stupid Icky when there’s a shortage of monoclonals.

By the time you read this, I should be home, and she should have graduated from school and be finding her way in the world of day programs. Have just stopped providing direct patient care;

will continue to do consulting work and am starting to write a book. Shaking my head about the country’s steady drift towards fascism. Too old to emigrate?

Rufus de Rham writes: Still living in Kent, CT. Retired from teaching but somehow busier than ever. Part-time Chore Coordinator for a senior center; help a friend install his cabinets; do my own side jobs; upgrading my house; being a grandparent; and ran for First Selectman last November. Lost, but am now on the board. Trying to find time to write and oil paint!!

1969 HENRY TAVES hvtaves@mac.com A few 69ers wrote to say they are coping with Covid, relaxing and/ or keeping busy, and enjoying new branches of their family trees.

Kelly Irwin writes from Amherst, Mass.: I’m enjoying the pleasures that COVID allows - watching the cats sleep, the trees grow, and the crumbs fall on my lap while eating take-out food in the car. I am learning secondhand about the entertainment world from my son, Lucas, who is working his way up at Creative Music Group in Los Angeles and about life in Encinitas CA from daughter Jesse and grandson, Galileo, now 6. My husband, Warren, works part time as a dentist at a community health center and I still take on occasional projects, most recently at the Center for Agriculture, Food and the Environment at UMass Amherst.

Have been reading letters sent to me long ago and attempting to put my life in order. Ha! Sarah Herrick Hungerford retired in December. I was surprised to awake one morning about six weeks in thinking ‘This has been fun; now it is time to get back to work.’ While the idea had started to fade by day’s end, it has led to much thought about how to best spend time in the weeks and years ahead. George and I are looking forward summer travel to visit family and friends, and, like so many others, are hoping all coronavirus restrictions will soon be lifted.

Anne Warner and partner Dan Paul escaped our winter weather, purchasing a condo in West Palm Beach, Fla. We are enjoying looking out at the ocean in 70 degree weather in February! I continue my job as general counsel for Algorand, a next generation blockchain company - truly the best and most interesting job of my career. I joined a rowing club down here and get out on the water on a regular basis -- bliss for this old oarsperson. I still think that of the many schools I went to, including both Yale and Harvard Law School, SHS gave me the best education of all, encouraging curiosity, creativity, and academic excellence. I am very grateful to have attended the three years I was there with all of you.

Jill Vorenberg Alberts writes from New York City that her main news is the arrival of a second grandson last August, William Rodney Alberts. His family, including Jill’s older grandson Henry, live in Lowell, Mass.

A second grandson is likewise my, Henry Taves, biggest news: in November, Benjamin joined his older brother Elliot’s family in California not far from Los Angeles.

My wife Posy and I are going to visit them soon. Sadly, my 94-yearold cousin, Kellam de Forest, died of Covid a year ago in Santa Barbara. But the “circle of life” proved itself as Benjamin was born on Kellam’s birthday. Your new class secretary would love to hear more of y’all’s news! Write to me anytime at hvtaves@mac.com.

1970 Our Class Correspondent position is open. Consider stepping forward to volunteer for this rewarding role!

Email alumni@shs.org.

Janie Ward writes: Janie retired from teaching at Simmons University in July 2021 and looks forward to having more time to read, write, and smell the roses.

Her latest book, Sister Resisters: Mentoring Black Women on Campus, published by Harvard Education Press, will be available this spring.

Sending well wishes to all.

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1971

the next corner.... We still get out together for hikes in the desert whenever possible in order to stay sane. We are grateful to have the financial and emotional resources to have weathered the pandemic better than so many others around our country and the world. I really enjoyed the chance to see several classmates at our virtual 50th reunion, and hope that we are able to gather in person sometime soon.

There are a lot of hugs that need to happen to make up for the last couple of years of social distancing.

EMMY HOWE ehowe@wellesley.edu

1972 GEORGE PERKINS georgehperkins@hotmail.com Nick Jordan ’71

Nick Jordan writes: Excited for the wedding in June of my eldest, who is living in Cambridge and trying out life as a Harvard prof. Trying to live in a “both/and” of sensitivity to all of the hurt in our world and finding moments of joy. Immersed in pluralistic politics around agriculture/climate/environment, working from my academic base.

Speaking of joy: gardening and playing music as much as I can.

Jane Selverstone writes: This past year was defined for me by a single event: the sudden and unexpected death during the summer of my brilliant, talented, opinionated, and funny brother, Roger ’77. Hard as his death has been for many of us, it was a truly inconceivable blow for our 99-year-old mother, for whom Roger was the primary caregiver.

I spent 10 weeks in Maine with Mom, lining up new care for her, taking over her affairs, and dealing with Roger’s estate, and will be returning regularly. I’m still trying to wrap my head around Roger’s absence from the world. The one bright spot in all of the turmoil was that I got to spend a lot of extra time with my son, Ben, who is a lobster biologist in Maine. My husband, Dave, retired from UNM at the start of 2021, but remained active as a climate scientist working on UN IPCC reports and a 50-year water plan for New Mexico. We keep hoping that our lives will calm down sometime in the near future, but you never know what is around

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George shares: Here we go again— still living under the cloud of Covid.

So, not much travel news to report, not much work news to report—I visited my office only a handful of times during the year and recall only one in-person client meeting and one visit to a construction site. Many beautiful walks in the woods on weekends though! We are fortunate to share a family house in Nonquitt, South Dartmouth, MA for getaways in spring, summer and fall. It was thrilling when the world started to reopen. We enjoyed a return to Tanglewood.

Prior to Omicron I had good visits to NYC to see opera and family there. My musical adventures continue. Professional retirement is approaching in the near horizon.

1973 PAT SPENCE othneil625@netzero.net Pat Spence writes from Boston, MA: First wishing health and wellness to all my classmates. We are all well on this end in Boston.

Still growing food in the summer, distributing pre-made meal bags in the fall and winter for families in need and will resume building raised beds in backyards so that folks can grow their own food. Grateful that I have found a brand new activity, Archery. Lots of fun and provides a welcome distraction from all that is going on in the world.

THE 2021-2022 IS SUE

Ellen, your dogs are so beautiful and Wendy, your bronze work and art are stunning.

Beth Brown writes: ​​Dad is great spry at 88, boys are big, Frederick ’16 is a freshman in college, Youmy is a freshman in college (bonus son), Henry ’19 is a junior in high school.

Robert Pierce Forbes writes: After ten years of work, my annotated edition of Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia will be published this April ($20, Yale University Press).

It has long been known as perhaps the most important book written by an American before 1800, but I show that it is also the blueprint for modern racism. Joanne retired from her medical practice just before COVID, thank God. Rachel is a clinical social worker and is married with a 5-year-old, Bailey Grace, and David is at Pepperdine Caruso Law after getting an English degree from Berkeley. Jo and I are spending an increasing amount of time at our place on Block Island (that we share with my brother Douglas ’75 and his wife Heidi). So things are good.

Liza Yntema’s work on gender equity in the field of ballet was the subject of a New York Times feature article this past January. The piece describes how Liza came to found the Dance Data Project to compile and analyze statistics on the malefemale imbalance in the world of professional ballet. As the article puts it, “In the last three years, [the Dance Data Project] has released 15 large-scale and six smaller-scale reports assessing everything from artistic leadership to choreographic commissions to company expenditures. The project has also created an index of female leaders in dance, compiled a collection of resources for women in ballet and led campaigns to raise awareness about gender-related issues in the field.”

The journalist interviewed Liza for the article, asking her (among other questions), “What’s next on your agenda?” Liza’s reply: “We’re working on creating a gender equity index, modeled partly on the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index.

We’ll be evaluating companies based on where women are in terms of artistic and executive leadership and choreographic commissions, but also on things like, Is there a sexual harassment policy? Is there a mandatory arbitration clause, which

has been so devastating to women seeking relief?” Liza’s fundamental point: “Without data, it’s almost impossible to measure progress. You need longitudinal data to be able to benchmark, to get a sense of where you’re going.”

Liza Yntema’s work was featured in a New York Times article titled, “ Do Men Still Rule Ballet? Let Us Count the Ways.” Read it online at https://www.nytimes. com/2022/01/21/arts/dance/gender-gap-ballet.html

Shady Hill Parent and Grandparent Janet Spence. Going strong at 92 while doing Zoom chair yoga with weights.

Patty Spence ’73 and brother Bryan Spence ’76 wearing red.

From Robert Pierce Forbes ’73: Bailey and Veda

1974 Our Class Correspondent position is open. Consider stepping forward to volunteer for this rewarding role!

Email alumni@shs.org.

Christopher Eliot writes: Both my children, William and Heather, probably have mild COVID. Heather tested positive before going to a New Year’s Eve party and William has a sore throat. We are going to try to get the more accurate testing done today to know for sure. Everyone has been fully immunized, so we should be fine.

William just finished his college classes and will start a masters program in computer science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I did my graduate work. Heather wants to become an actress and is living in Los Angeles.

I was working on an autonomous spacecraft at Draper Laboratory and expecting to become part of the team building the next moon lander. Surprisingly, NASA gave the sole contract to Elon Musk after promising there would be two separate contacts. Subsequently, Draper laid off all the engineers associated with NASA work and now I am working on building robots at Boston Dynamics. (You have seen the videos of dancing robots.) Nobody wants to work in a warehouse, so we are building robots to relieve people from that awful job. This is much better than working on rockets: didn’t we draw enough parabolas in ninth grade?

1977 Our Class Correspondent position is open. Consider stepping forward to volunteer for this rewarding role!

Email alumni@shs.org.

News has reached Shady Hill that ​​ Roger Selverstone ’77 passed away in August 2021. Our sincere condolences to his family and classmates.

LJ Harrington writes: Last Fall Patrick ’78 and I were inducted into the Brooks School Athletic Hall of Fame for our respective basketball accomplishments. We were introduced to the game

at SHS and we owe our skill development to Paul Joyce and Bill Bellows who taught us the fundamentals of the game. The ceremony was bittersweet in that Patrick is no longer with us but I know he misses dunking on the old Wally Dukes’ basket as much as I do.

LJ Harrington ’77 and his family at his induction ceremony. In the picture: his wife Karla and Patrick’s family - wife Lori along with Kelly, Patrick and Katherine - along with assorted teammates.

1978 DAVID SUMMERSBY esdt@aol.com Jane Cutter writes: My husband Andrew Freeman died unexpectedly on Sept. 29, 2021. It’s been hard, but my employer has been very supportive. Andy was someone who always brought the fun, he could make almost anything seem like an adventure. So sometimes it’s hard to find joyfulness in daily life without him. I just signed up for a drop in “free dance” evening and we’ll see how that goes for bringing me into joy and communion with others. I hope it will bring me back to Miss Raoul’s dance class days at SHS. If that goes well maybe I’ll dip my toe into more structured social dancing – NOT folk dance or contra dance, thank you, but maybe a partner dance like salsa or two-step, or even line dances. In the summer of 2020, Andy and I attended a memorial for Manuel Ellis, a Black man who was killed by police in Tacoma under similar circumstances to George Floyd. After years of struggle and multiple investigations, 3 of the officers involved in his killing are

going on trial for murder. The memorial took the form of a block party, complete with line dancing in the street. Andy jumped in and did his best, being commended for his enthusiasm in “cutting a rug.”

In other news, I am helping to edit a short book on the struggle for disabled liberation, and assisting a librarian assessing a large book collection that someone wants to donate to my organization.

Faced with a question of whether any classmates are planning or at least pondering retirementKofi Makinwa writes: Retirement??? I love my job, designing (sensor) chips, teaching students and I am not looking forward to retiring anytime soon.

David Summersby writes: I am also not about to retire. I am continuing to work at CHA Everett Hospital as a clinical social worker and supervisor of a team of dedicated social workers in inpatient psychiatry. In many ways, Covid has not changed my work life while changing everything around me. I still go into work at the hospital every day and have not experienced remote work. I am one of the few on my street who drives to work these days. It has been a pleasure to work for an institution that is playing such a vital role in helping the community get through the pandemic. It has also felt like one of the safest places to be, where everyone wears masks without question and follows the COVID protocols as they have evolved.

Ava-Lisa (Murray) Macon writes: She has been delighted with COVID’s expansion of telework, which has allowed my daughter

Ava-Lisa (Murray) Macon ’78’s Star Trek Wine Collection

and son-in-law to work from home with her first grandson, Benjamin Michael Vanzo (b: 11.17.2020).

When not spoiling my grandson Benjie, I am enjoying my Star Trek Wine Collection, and says, “The gift from my extraordinary staff (they know me so well!) on the eve of my first chemo infusion (breast cancer diagnosis with excellent prognosis in October), easily wins the designation of “Ava-Lisa’s Favorite Christmas Gift 2021!”

Sarah Churchill writes: Big picture update: Losing Richard Jarvis, made me even more aware of what we have as a class and what we share.

It makes me hang onto each piece of news like a small gem. I know that I am a better teacher and more aware of diversity, equity, and inclusion thanks to all of you and in particular our 9th grade year. My smaller updates: our daughter is a frosh at Brookline High School and loving it. I’m still working in-person at the Needham Public Schools.

Looking forward to seeing more of you soon.

Jonathan Moller writes: I’m currently back in Guatemala for two weeks, first time back here in three years; and before this, three weeks in Colombia with my wife and her family. I have a new book out, BLACK LIVES MATTER: Visualizing 2020. And of course, all my photography books are still for sale on my website (most with proceeds from sales going to different organizations supporting human rights, social justice, truth, historical memory and equality): https://www.jonathanmoller. org/books/ Apart for that, I’ve been invited to work on a new

Ava-Lisa (Murray) Macon ’78 and grandson Benjie

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Guatemala related project about young indigenous-Mayan women who are survivors of sexual violence and who’ve fled their communities and gone north to the US border to apply for political asylum; about the very few that were granted asylum and the many that were deported back to Guatemala, some of whom are in a community in Chiapas in southern Mexico; we hope this project will start later this year.

1979 PORTER GIFFORD porter@portergifford.com Betsy Biemann kicks off this year’s notes with a hearty, Hello all! It’s very hard to believe that we are coming up on the second anniversary of this terrible pandemic. Early on we kept saying that we needed to remember that it was a marathon, not a sprint.

Now it seems more like a through hike on the Appalachian Trail. Our family has been fortunate so far, with just one mild “breakthrough” case last summer when that was a pretty new phenomenon. At work, we (me and the Coastal Enterprises team) are still working remotely - financing and advising small businesses and advocating for policies that will lead to a more equitable future. Here’s hoping that 2022 will be healthier, and will bring more positivity and human connection, rather than division, to the world. Sending hugs to everyone.

Alex Steinert-Evoy writes: My news is that the pandemic has enabled or emboldened or empowered me to connect with two classmates for very different reasons. About ten years ago when we lived in the UK, I connected with Carlotta Junger and had a wonderful visit. As a result, she called recently when she was in the US, and we were able to take a lovely walk and share some more.

(By the way, her mother died on Christmas Day). I have also reconnected with Franny Pratt thanks to the efforts of a highschool classmate who used Zoom as a way to get the women of our high school class together on a regular basis. Franny is doing amazing work as a public defender in D.C. and I

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recently was able to listen to one of her cases that was heard by the Supreme Court. These connections have been very powerful, and I’d love to set up more Zooms if anyone wants to do so!

Hal Movius writes: Worried about democracy; wondering about negotiated partition as the least bad path. Worried about climate; wondering where to buy land. Sick of COVID. On brighter notes, we now have a summer house in South Dartmouth and we had a great time reconnecting with Tom and Anne Snyder in person last summer. Son Luke will be off to college in the fall. Daughter Anya a year from then. In so many ways this feels like a liminal moment; the cusp of a new phase. Planning for the worst, hoping for the best.

Jennifer White Callaghan writes from D.C: We’re still in DC, still COVID-free as far as we can tell, and still doing fine. Outdoor entertaining is pretty normal for us and s’mores parties over the BBQ work well. Meg is at in-person school, in fifth grade, and incredibly happy to be back with her friends.

We are pondering middle school options… Richard is CFO at Invisible Children and works with decent and nice people there. I am managing Allen & Overy’s pro bono legal program in the U.S. It continues to be a dream job, and the last seven months or so we have done an enormous amount of work for Afghans who are trying to settle somewhere safer than Afghanistan.

I can’t say enough about how brave and lovely our clients are, and the team of lawyers working here is doing extraordinary work. Still, it’s sad and frustrating to experience how difficult it is to bring even one family out under current systems.

We are all still swimming, running, playing basketball and soccer and golf, and baking a lot. Our dog, a large Great Pyrannees and whoknows-what mix, still spends most of his time dozing, or walking in the woods with us. Even in the imperfect world in which we are living, life is happy and good and we just hope to be able to travel soon! If anyone is in DC and wants to stop by for tea or s’mores or anything in our large garden, just let me know!

Porter Gifford writes: Slim pickings this year, I’m afraid,

THE 2021-2022 IS SUE

Class of 1981 Zoom Reunion in June, 2021. after last year’s banner year of Covid related news. Your faithful correspondent continues his photographic efforts, spends a lot of time in Marblehead where his wife works as head of school, and can usually be found walking the dog on the far fields.

1980 Our Class Correspondent position is open. Consider stepping forward to volunteer for this rewarding role!

Email alumni@shs.org.

Lael Elizabeth Hiam Chester shared, After almost two decades of being Shady Hill parents with Charles, our third and youngest child, Sophia ’21, graduated in June last year. She has now joined the other SHS alumni in the family, including her uncles Michael ’77 and Christopher ’98 Hiam, and her brothers Sam ’13 and Caleb ’17 Chester.

Cathy Hicks wrote, I am still in New York City with my husband, Jim, daughter, Grace, and cat, Neko. Still working as a doctor in a pediatric emergency department, which is back to pre-pandemic volumes. Currently enjoying bedtime (re-)reading the Harry Potter series to my daughter (and glad she still wants me to read to her!) though we are on the last book. [It is] time to find another series to enjoy, maybe the Hunger Games will be next!

1981

SARAH WYMAN wymans@newpaltz.edu

The class of 1981 had a heartwarming zoom reunion this past June. Eighteen of us showed up and others checked in afterwards.

Lisa Brown shared that during SNOVID in Texas in February (2021), she relied on snow melt for 3.5 days when she had no water. She ran a challenging race in Laramie, WY at 8,000 feet.

This year, she plans to run half marathons in NC, NY, PA, DE, ID, WI, CO, NE, MT, and MN. Nathaniel Stevens enjoyed the June Zoom with our classmates and seeing where people’s lives have taken them. All so interesting and diverse! Poonam Dayal came East later in the summer, and they shared a lunch with Harold Engstrom. Beth Hakes was kind enough to host a small gathering at her house with Poonam, Molly Martin, and Xander Shapiro. On the job front, last fall Nathaniel Stevens was named partner in the environmental law firm where he has worked since law school. He says, “It’s a bit surreal to see my last name now included in the firm’s name.” Congratulations Nathaniel!

Sarah Wyman reported that she visited her middle daughter Lydia in Oviedo, Spain. She continues to work on developing social/ environmental / economic sustainability curriculum on her campus and mentoring early career faculty.

John Wilson wrote that Kevin Mascoll and Harold Engstrom came to visit him in Royalston, which was awesome. Then Poonam stayed for a couple of days as part of her east-coast tour. She brought tons of delicious food -- John highly recommends her as a houseguest. Additionally, Patrick

Bibbins stopped by with most of his family. Otherwise John’s still nerding out in the usual ways, playing dulcian badly with a few friends online, making circuit boards for work, doing house/ car/tractor repairs (the 1949 Ford tractor he got cheap is surprisingly good at burying cables and plowing snow), and he rigged up a microwave link to a solar-powered networking hutch (i.e. plywood and 2x4s with a boat battery and electronics inside) out in the hayfield with three cameras wired to it so he can obsess over trespassing hunters. It’s a fun way to fritter away his remaining sanity, and protect his friends, who are mostly wild turkeys at this point.

1982 CHAD GIFFORD chg7@columbia.edu KATE ​​MOVIUS katemovius@gmail.com Kate (Movius) and Chad (Gifford) wrote: We are taking a one-year hiatus on Class Notes because the calendar snuck up on us (“Hello, Pandemic?

Where is my mind?”). Our apologies!

We’d like to express our gratitude to all of you for your rich, consistent engagement with Class Notes. Curating your yearly updates of life’s adventures and challenges, tales of your children, partners, pets and homes, has been such a gift. It seems like the bonds we formed at SHS are as strong as ever; simpler (less drama/disco/ acne), too, and acquiring deeper meaning with the passing of time. So, thank you! And we promise to be back again next year to solicit your news and share our own. Until then we send our love. Be well and stay in touch.

have been in our house for over twenty-five years now and it’s still a work in progress, some things never end. My daughter is finishing up college in February 2022 and we’ll be in VT for a few days for the graduation. My son moved out last year, the house is now a bit quieter than it used to be.

Fortunately, I was able to hang out with my brother Seth Allen in Maine this past summer for a few weeks on a lake, which was the highlight of my summer, outdoors, no masks! I continue to work as an IT consultant running my own business. During a client Christmas party this year, I tried my hand at ax throwing, it was a blast and I highly recommend everyone try it if you get a chance; I became somewhat proficient at throwing axes by the end of the night but will not quit my day job just yet.

Annie Brewster shared, I am still living in Cambridge, MA on Coolidge Hill. My youngest child graduated from SHS last June, so for the first time in many years I am not actively involved with the school. I miss it! My two oldest kids have graduated from college and I still have two at home in high school. I continue

Greg Allen ’83’s summer 2021 in Maine.

to work as an internal medicine physician at Massachusetts General Hospital. COVID has been challenging, for sure. I am also running a small nonprofit, Health Story Collaborative (www. healthstorycollaborative.org), dedicated to helping individuals and communities’ health through storytelling. I have a book coming out February 1, 2022, called The Healing Power of Storytelling: Using Personal Narrative to Navigate Illness, Trauma and Loss (https:// www.penguinrandomhouse.com/ books/690769/the-healing-powerof-storytelling-by-annie-brewstermd/). Please consider checking it out! All my best to everyone!

Dan Filene reported from Portland, ME, [The] only big event was that I took a long solo bike ride at the end of the summer to fulfill a longstanding ambition-- Maine to Oregon, 3,300 miles in 36 days. I met up with Nicky Phear when I passed through Missoula, MT–[it was] super fun to catch up…hadn’t seen each other in 20+ years. Also had Jon Lorsch & wife Kirstie over for dinner when they swung through Maine last June. Pals for 45 years now, a good feeling.

Would love to see anyone else

Greg Allen ’83 tried ax throwing in December during a holiday party.

1983

GREG ALLEN greg@ngaconsulting.com Greg Allen updated, I am still living in Denver, CO, we

Dan Filene ’83 met up with Nicky Phear ’83 when he passed through Missoula.

visiting Maine! My email address is dfilene@gmail.com.

Seth Allen wrote, Γεια (hi) from Chania, Crete, where I’m spending the 2021 winter holidays enjoying life on a Greek island.

From my rooftop deck I can see the Mediterranean and also the snowcapped White Mountains on the island’s interior. Old Town Chania, where I’m staying, is an amalgamation of Cretan, Venetian, Ottoman, and Egyptian influences all interwoven along the narrow alleys and pedestrian streets that fan out from the ancient harbor.

I return states-side a week into 2022, and will settle back into life in Southern California and look forward to seeing my brother Greg Allen, who comes for a visit not long after. I was fortunate this past summer and the one before to spend several months living and working at a cabin on a lake in remote Northern Maine. It’s hard to believe it’s been almost 40 years since we departed Shady Hill. I hope to join many of you at our 40th!

Claudai Gonson shared that she remains living in Brooklyn, NY with daughter Eve, who is now 10. Claudia went through a career change in 2015, moving from full time band management of the band, The Magnetic Fields, to receiving a social work degree.

Claudia is moving toward the goal of becoming a therapist. This turned out to be a good idea, since 2020 brought the COVID pandemic, and with it a huge need for mental health workers. 2021 was an intense year, with a very full caseload of clients. Claudia greatly enjoys working as a therapist and is now studying for her clinical exams. Her band, The Magnetic Fields, managed to pull off a one-month US tour in OctoberNovember 2021, in between waves of COVID-19. While not always well attended, at least it was not canceled. It was fun to tour with the band after nearly a decade.

Wishing everyone a happy and safe 2022.

Carl Leguia wrote from Sudbury, MA, We have been doing very well through this crazy time, our daughter is now 13 and just as crazy as any 13 year-old would be.

I got out to one race and was top 3 in two classes, it’s always fun to go back to do some of that. We have

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Seth Allen ’83 enjoyed the holidays in Greece. stayed close to home and don’t have any great stories of vacations, but we get out and do our yard work and do a lot of outdoor activities together. We are just wrapping up a big addition to our house and I have done a lot, from digging and pouring footings to installing metal roofing to building and painting cabinets inside. It still would be nice to see some SHS classmates, I can’t believe our 40th is coming up in 2023. Wow, time flies!

Sarah Hollington updated from Shaker Heights, OH, Not much new in our house. We are on the precipice of a very quiet house with our youngest son in his senior year. Our middle son is heading to Germany for the semester.

I’m hoping that he will have

Carl Leguia ’83 opportunities to travel despite the current restrictions. I am teaching 8th Grade math this year - a change from 5th Grade. I just started a unit on Functions and I regularly think of Mr. Lawler and the function machines (or in/out machines). We will be out in Denver mid-June for graduation and may be able to catch up with Greg.

Sarina Tcherepnin shared, I am still teaching at Shady Hill and feel lucky to spend my days with joyful (and very active) kindergarteners, especially given all that is going on in the world. My husband and I are entering a new chapter as our youngest son, Ben Morris ’14, will

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Sarina Tcherepnin ’83 and family graduate from college this spring.

Ben will be doing post-graduate studies at Cambridge University next year, and we hope to visit him in England! Our other son, Sascha Morris ’12, does research in a neuroscience lab at the Providence VA Medical Center, and he is planning to go to medical school next year. I am so grateful for their amazing teachers at Shady Hill, and all the wonderful teachers we had back in our day. I hope to see you all at our 40th reunion next year!

Gene Doucette reported, In 2021, my fourteenth novel, The Apocalypse Seven, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (now a part of Harper Collins) and my fifteenth novel, The Ocean in the Sky (book three in the Tandemstar series) was published independently.

I also had some short stories published/reprinted: Hypnopompic Circumstance and Memoranda From the End of the World, both published by Lightspeed Magazine, and Schrödinger’s Catastrophe (originally published in 2020) was reprinted in two Best-Of anthologies: The Year’s Best Science Fiction 2021 (Saga), and The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021 (Harper Collins).

Hoping 2022 is just as interesting.

Suzanne Siner wrote, Hello from Belmont, MA where I live with my husband, three kids, and our lively

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labradoodle! We have been in the Boston area since 2005, having previously lived in the San Francisco Bay area. One of the highlights of returning to the East Coast has been spending summers in the Adirondacks again! It has also been wonderful to connect with SHS friends who are local or come to town to visit. Our oldest daughter is a sophomore in college, our middle daughter a senior in high school, and our son will be graduating from Shady Hill this spring. While living in California I ran a variety of environmental and science education programs and also taught fourth grade. Recently, I returned to teaching, and last year was a longterm substitute teacher in a second and a third grade class as a Zoom teacher. While it was difficult not teaching in person, it was good to have a new challenge and be forced to get up to speed with technology.

I hope everyone has been staying well despite these pandemic times.

It would be great if our class could gather for our next reunion, as Greg has proposed! I am grateful for my years at Shady Hill!

1986 NELL BREYER nellbreyer@gmail.com

Suzanne Siner ’83 with Daniel Mirel, Talia Mirel ’16, Ilana Mirel ’18, and Eitan Mirel ’22.

Janet Buttenwieser was happy to share that she celebrated turning 50 several times this year, culminating in a raft trip down the Salmon River in Idaho with college friends and their families. She is loving her first year at Seattle University School of Law, and feeling grateful for many things during this challenging time, including staying connected with family and friends.

1987 EMILY SHAW elloydshaw@gmail.com Hi everyone- Well, another doozy of a year. I know it might sound trite or cheezy and way too over simplified, but I continue to try to find ways to be hopeful and grateful…although it has been hard. On my end, as much as I wish more of you would send in an update (nudge nudge- all those reading this), I have loved hearing from those that have and still enjoy just staying in touch. Not much has changed on my end, and I continue to be working virtually as a psychotherapist based here in the Berkshires, but licensed in MA and NY. I am now trained to do EMDR which has been an amazing addition to my practice and knowledge. Suffice it to say,

SHS sibling grads in the Adirondacks, Summer ’21. Sarina Tcherepnin ’83 & Nico Tcherepnin ’85, Suzanne Siner ’83 & Jonathan Siner ’85.

Emily Shaw ’87 with her family.

the crazy weather, the COVID situation has been highly dynamic. My kids, 17 and 14, went back to in-person school which was AMAZING and my spouse, who is a critical care physician continues to work with many COVID patients. We have found time to be in the mountains, in the sea and on the rock walls where my 17 year old daughter finds most solace climbing. I unfortunately have not seen any SHS alum out here and if there are any, send me a shout out!

I hope everyone is well and finding peace in whatever ‘dynamic’ world they find themselves in.”

Thank you Jessica Dello Russo for keeping our class up to date on class-related news with her finger on the pulse at SHS. This past year she shared the sad news of the death of Robert Armstrong’s father and Melanie Temin Mendez’s mother. Both were remarkable people. Jessica wrote, “My son Ezio graduated from Shady Hill in 2020 in a virtual ceremony, and began at St. Mark’s School that fall. I still have a nephew and niece at SHS (children of sister Emily (Dello Russo) Horwitz ’90), and a brother-in-law gradehead. Hope everybody is doing okay in these challenging times. Zweli Miller popped up on Facebook last May and tried to help us all organize a picnic - not sure if it happened, but hopefully we can all get together soon!

there is more demand than there are therapist hours these days.

Our daughter, Sophie, (15) is a Freshman at Middlesex and daughter, Willow (13) attends a local Montessori and I am often taking her to the barn where she rides and would happily be every day.

I’m embarrassed to say that in collecting the notes, I noticed a FB message from Nick Kurzon from 2015(!!) that I never saw (SORRY NICK!), and while it is old, it is still a nice note and I hope he doesn’t mind that it is getting published now. He wrote, “I’m living in Los Angeles nowadays, came back to visit my parents in Cambridge and was walking around Cambridge when I came upon a three-alarm fire in an apartment building near Trader Joe’s (off Memorial Drive) – I was rubbernecking as the fire-men came and put out the fire and then…I noticed that the Captain/Inspector was incredibly good at his job-- he demanded to see the permits from the landlord, etc. I was very impressed with this guy and I asked a reporter from the Cambridge Chronicle (who had just gotten a statement from him) who that Fire Captain was – she said – “His name is Tom Cahill.” I went online and it looks like Tom is now one of the Assistant Chief’s for the Cambridge Fire Department!”

KRISTIN MERCER It was great to hear from Lila mercer.97@osu.edu (Nichols) O’Mahony who shared, “Things in Seattle continue to be dynamic with record summer heat and fires then floods followed by epic cold and snow and as always lots of masks and talk of vaccines. I continue to work as a Former faculty Ms. Gay Harriman ’59 TTC ’78 and Pediatric Emergency Mr. David Smith ’59.

Physician and like

1988

I (Kristin Mercer, class correspondent) am glad to report that my family had a pretty good 2021 despite the ongoing pandemic and climate catastrophe. Going back to school full time in the fall made a huge difference to my daughter Ines’ learning. We also continued to camp, hike, and explore as much as possible—being outdoors was the best medicine.

December 2021 is a month that will now go down in infamy, however. My husband, Joel, found out he needed knee surgery, we had one car stolen, we had another car totaled, and we all contracted COVID. So now we are recovering from covid and whiplash and carless (car free?). 2022 can only go up from here!”

Sarah (Kanter) Brown writes, I’m having trouble remembering what happened last year as opposed to this year. I do know I still teach yoga at the Billings YMCA and host a farm show on Yellowstone Public Radio. My husband is still the regional AP correspondent.

Helena is graduating and heading to college in Portland, OR. Robby is one year behind her. Both kids are doing what they’re supposed to: school and tennis and skiing.

I mostly feel freaked out that the kids are leaving, but every once in a while, I think it might be quite nice. I spent a very hot summer day in Seattle with Elias Wolfberg, got together in Los Angeles with Kerry Tribe, Sara and Erica Strang and Heidi Klapinsky this fall, and right around the holidays drank coffee in my living room with Moira Demos & her dog Smiles on their way through MT. Shai Chazan writes, I am well. We are still working from home. Not much to report, so I guess no news is good news.

Heidi (von Rosenberg) Klapinsky writes, The kids both started new schools in the fall (Reese 9th & CJ 7th) and I started a new (second) job. I am still in private practice but signed on with KGA serving as in-house counselor.

KGA is an excellent EAP service for lots of great companies/hospitals/ schools in the US. With the mental health crisis, it feels imperative to maximize my hours. In 25 years, I have never seen anything close to this. I had the divine pleasure (and perhaps the highlight of 2021) to travel to LA in October to stay

with Kerry Tribe in her lovely guest home in Eagle Rock. Sara Strang, Sarah Brown, and Erica Strang joined for the long weekend and our buckets were overflowing after our stay. Good food, good friends and good weather. Hard to compete. Sending my best to all fellow SHSers. Hope everyone is managing ok.

Kristin Mercer ’88 and her daughter Ines (10) after climbing in West Virginia.

1989 TK BALTIMORE tkbalt@gmail.com TK Baltimore, your loyal class secretary, continues to reside in Cambridge a few blocks from where she grew up, with her husband, Jay Konopka, and her daughter, Tesla, who is in 2nd grade at SHS. TK just started a new job as VP, Product for a NYC-based startup called UPSTACK, and is excited for new challenges.

Rebecca (Cutter) Bell wrote, We’ve survived pandemic pretty well. We are waiting to hear about Hightown Season 3 (note from TK: Hightown is the Cape Cod-set TV show that Rebecca created that just finished up its second season on Starz… it’s amazing!) and rang in the New Year with Marina (Lang) Kheel on a New Year’s Day hike.

Annelise (Tufo) Blackall reported, My husband Will and I live in the coastal town of Scituate, MA with our 12-year-old son Charlie and 8-year-old rescue lab.

My parents are in Duxbury and my sister is in Newton, so we get to see a lot of them now that we

55

are all vaxxed.

Still nervous to travel, but over the summer Will and Charlie went to Italy with my family while I started a new job at MassMutual Investments managing and Max Sederer ’90 (and daughter) at a recent get together with Jacey Buel (and son Mateo) and Pablo Alfaro (and son Michio) (all class developing their of 1990). strategy back into in-person conferences and are doing interesting things with sponsorships. After working in their lives and having some special virtual (and some hybrid) event adventures!). management since even before I am fortunate enough to run into the pandemic, I was thrilled to Weezie (Smith) Goff in Westport be brought on to manage this Harbor, MA in the warm months. important next step in building the She is mama to two amazing girls brand. Charlie is a tennis and skiing that are keeping her busy with ski champ and we learn something new racing and gymnastics these days. from him everyday. Especially now I am so impressed with all that that he’s in year 2 of Mandarin.

Katie (Whitters) Vaughn does Jeremy Dittmar lives with his with her life. Among all the wife Stephanie in London England, wonderful things she is involved in, where he teaches economics to she is a yoga teacher and has 3 really university students. He is also great kiddos who keep her busy. engaged by gardening, soccer, tech Her oldest Maggie is a senior in stuff, and socialism. high school!

Miranda Pearce updated, Current SHS parent (among Absolutely nothing has changed several current parents at Shady except my kids go to school in real Hill from our class!), Danny life now.

Zalcman checked in sharing, Feels Todd Rodgers continues to split like so much of life has been on his time between New York City pause during these “Covid Years,” and up the Hudson Valley with his but things are finally returning wife, two daughters, two in-laws, to normal (I think/hope). We’ve two guinea pigs, and a hive full been busy skiing on the weekends of bees. The latter were especially up in NH this winter. My oldest, productive this year yielding over Margarita, is in 6th grade now at twelve pounds of deliciously floral SHS and enjoying the experience honey. When not working in the while studying Africa for Central vegetable garden, tending to the Subject. She has our old teacher, bees, or listening to his father-inMr. Horn, for science! Karolina is law’s karaoke, he continues his day fully emerged in Ancient Greece job as CTO of Haven Technologies and busy working on her Small which just announced a significant Gods’ Book (which, sadly, is now expansion as a provider of SaaS full-sized although they’ve kept the software solutions to the insurance Small Gods’ moniker). She actually industry. brought mine (poorly scribed circa 1984!) in for Show & Tell this morning. While we did go to Europe this summer (the girls got to spend six weeks in Lithuania with their cousins). We’re really hoping KATHRYN BAILIS PHILLIPS for a proper European Vacation (a Kathryn.phillips75@gmail.com la the Griswolds) for April Break.

This will be our third year in a row It has been a busy time for all, but attempting Paris during the Time of we would love to hear how you Covid…Forgot to mention that the all are doing! Several people are SHS Fair is happening April 30th connected on social media and it and it’d be nice to get together with is fun to see what everyone is up to some Class of 1990 alums. Spread (our children are getting old, people the word!

1990

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I, Kathryn Bailis Phillips, continue to live and work in New York City. I am in my 10th year teaching pre-kindergarten at the Brick Church School and my daughter is a sophomore in high school and plays a lot of soccer and ice hockey. We see as much as possible of Jeannie (Beinart) Stern ’89 and her family as our girls are best friends as well. Hope everyone is well and staying safe.

1992 Our Class Correspondent position is open. Consider stepping forward to volunteer for this rewarding role!

Email alumni@shs.org.

Alexander Dunn wrote: I started a new job with NOAA Fisheries in the beginning 2021. I’m working in communications with the science branch of the Northeast region, located in Woods Hole, MA. Being 100% remote, I moved to Newport, RI in June with my partner.

1993 Our Class Correspondent position is open. Consider stepping forward to volunteer for this rewarding role!

Email alumni@shs.org.

Kaytea Petro shared: COVID has been a real mixed bag for me.

On one hand, my partner, Julian Barber and I, had most of our clients/projects/jobs evaporate in April 2020, and we didn’t work for a year; money has been extremely tight. On the flip side, needing money and being locked at home, I was able to build a sustaining art practice. In the summer of 2020, I started by paying my rent selling homemade face masks from a basket in the park, and as retail opened back up, eventually making and selling thousands of high quality all cotton masks. I had been painting murals around San Francisco, CA during the lockdown, so I started to have a bit of wide recognition for my visual art.

After the second lockdown during the winter of 2020-21, I joined a new group studio, where I have been teaching, selling ceramics, and making a ton of art. Because

I’m teaching again, I got offered an Artist in Residence gig at New Horizons Elementary School.

Because of the COVID disruption to the economy, I have been able to transition to working as a full time artist, supported by my community.

It hasn’t been easy, but I’ve learned a lot and I’m grateful for my health, my healthy family, and my ability to support myself as an artist in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

1995 Our Class Correspondent position is open. Consider stepping forward to volunteer for this rewarding role!

Email alumni@shs.org.

Elisabeth (Biz) Munder wrote: Although still living in Palm Beach, FL my family is so happy to be traveling again, and spending much more time at our home in Sag Harbor, NY. I recently visited Lila Dupree and Daniel Adair ’00 in Los Angeles, CA on the eve of the birth of their first baby.

1997 Your Class Correspondent position is open. Please consider stepping forward to volunteer for this rewarding role! Email alumni@ shs.org.

Nicholas Deane and wife Keia Cole were very glad this spring to meet their daughter, Emerson, who arrived in April and has been quick to embrace curiosity while maximizing entropy. Nick has spent the past year working on the New York City pandemic response and hopes everyone is staying safe and healthy.

2000 KATE CHIN catherine.d.chin@gmail.com ABBY WRIGHT abigailbwright@gmail.com Malcolm Cummings and his wife Naima Sait are expecting their first

child on June 4, 2022. They reside in Somerville, MA. In October, Sam Barcelo started a new job at Steward Health Care as an analyst. He resides in Cambridge, MA. Julia Haines was married in 2018. She completed her PhD in Anthropology in 2019, and resides in Pittsburgh, PA. Kate Chin was married in 2020.

She works for Procter & Gamble, and resides in Boston, MA.

2002 ISABEL BLUNT isabel.e.blunt@gmail.com AMELIA ROMITI acmicheli@gmail.com

2003 Our Class Correspondent position is open. Consider stepping forward to volunteer for this rewarding role!

Email alumni@shs.org.

Sommer Thomas writes: I hope my class note finds you well!

Despite navigating through a health crisis, home offices, home school, and quarantines, 2021 was a busy year for me…

In January 2021 I eloped in front of a tiny group of family and friends to my love, Boris! In August 2021 we had a bigger wedding and closed on our new home. In September we moved into our home and our daughter started first grade! It’s been stressful, but we found a lot of happiness too.

2004

of restaurateurs with deep roots in the New Bedford area. Fishing is ever unpredictable and this is reflected in their menu that changes daily depending on sourcing and availability. Popular items include dishes such as sashimi, whole fish, lobster roe pasta, sake chicken, miso pork belly and lots of vegetarian options. The restaurant features a cozy dining room fireplace, an extensive sake collection and full liquor license! They are very excited to host everyone from the SHS community! The restaurant is located at 279A Broadway, Cambridge, a 10-minute walk from Central Square. They are currently open for reservations, walk-ins, takeout/delivery and private bookings. For more info, check out their website (www.judysbay. com), IG/FB (@judysbay), or email (judysbaycambridge@gmail.com).

2006 ANJALI LAPPIN anjalilappin416@gmail.com Anjali Lappin: I left my job at the mental health agency where I had been a therapist for just over 2 years. I really needed a change from working remotely from home.

I recently got a job as a METCO social worker/adjustment counselor in the Brookline Public School District, working with kids K-8. I am loving it so far and it is certainly keeping me busy! I recently also started playing my cello again this past summer and am part of two orchestra groups (one of them being all cellos!) I am so happy to be playing again. I am in the process of getting a music therapy program

going in the Brookline Public Schools. I recently auditioned for a chamber music festival in Italy this summer, and am beyond excited to be taking part in this. I hope everyone at Shady Hill is doing well and staying healthy!

Peter Heye: I am living in Brooklyn, NY where I spend many afternoons day dreaming about once again living in the same state as Justin Conway and Clark Craddock-Willis.

Justin Conway: I am living in Atlanta, GA and am grateful for the education opportunities and friendships Shady Hill helped me build. Put me on the alumni board.

Clark Craddock-Willis: I am living in Sharon, MA working on account management in cyber security. Missing the old days and turning 30 soon has me hoping for a SHS reunion soon.

Katie Surrey Bergman: I am currently splitting my time between Arizona and Boston, where I have been living during the pandemic and where my family still resides.

I just returned from two months in Panama collecting data on humpback whales as part of my PhD dissertation. I am going into my 4th year at Arizona State University, where I am studying wildlife conservation, specifically focusing on the interactions between humans and wildlife. Prior to starting my graduate program, I worked downtown as the Adoption Supervisor of the Animal Rescue League of Boston for several years, (somehow managing to only adopt a single rescue dog and rabbit in the process).

2007

Our Class Correspondent position is open. Consider stepping forward to volunteer for this rewarding role!

Email alumni@shs.org.

Lukas Dow writes: Lukas recently opened his first restaurant, Judy’s Bay, in Cambridge, together with his partner & wife, Kim. Named after his grandmother, Judy’s Bay is a New England izakaya, a Japanese-style bar and restaurant.

Lukas is a lifelong chef, farmer and fisherman, and comes from a family

Our Class Correspondent position is open. Consider stepping forward to volunteer for this rewarding role!

Email alumni@shs.org.

2011 Our Class Correspondent position is open. Consider stepping forward to volunteer for this rewarding role!

Email alumni@shs.org.

Henry Feinstein writes from Philadelphia, PA: He is pursuing a Master’s in City Planning at the University of Pennsylvania with a focus on the application of data and technology in cities. Outside of school he remains an avid violinist (from the days in the pit of the eighth grade musical!) and cyclist.

2012 Our Class Correspondent position is open. Consider stepping forward to volunteer for this rewarding role!

Email alumni@shs.org.

2014 Our Class Correspondent position is open. Consider stepping forward to volunteer for this rewarding role!

Email alumni@shs.org.

Ruby Carmel shares: I’ve spent the past year working as a cheesemonger and studying to complete a fine arts degree in theater design and management. I’m looking forward to the new year and hoping it’s happy and healthy for everyone.

Jeremy Gordon writes: Jeremy is excited to be headed back to Shady Hill next year as part of the TTC!

2017 Our Class Correspondent position is open. Consider stepping forward to volunteer for this rewarding role!

Email alumni@shs.org.

Lukas ’04 & Kim Dow, owners of Judy’s Bay.

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Past Employee News PAM DICKINSON pam.dickinson@shs.org Robin Ostenfeld Adams writes: My husband and I started a cottage bakery out of our home in Alameda, CA. I’m still teaching science in San Francisco but spend my Saturdays selling sourdough for Night Heron Bread with our 5 year old son, Bodhi.

Julia Bator ’83 shares: I am in NYC and still working in education, but now in the philanthropy and fundraising space to support public / private partnerships. The nation’s largest school district holds many challenges, but the child-centered joy of Shady Hill has always provided inspiration and important lessons.

Beth Brown ’73, TTC ’87 shares: Last year I was the “pandemic” librarian at BBN Lower School for B K and 1st and loved it. Usually I am the Substitute/Guest Teacher Coordinator at the BBN Lower School. Darling mother of 2 SHS graduates! Happy in life!

Cheryl Bruun writes: Since retiring last spring, I have been enjoying a more relaxed pace of life. The summer was filled with some of my favorite activities golfing, fishing, reading and spending time with friends and family. This winter my husband Rich and I have been living in Tucson, Arizona hiking and exploring the desert southwest off road.

Simón Caycedo adds: Life in retirement here in The Netherlands continues to be joyful, eventful and fulfilling. The best part has been living without a set schedule like that of the nearly forty years in education or a set routine. I hold many gratifying memories leading and guiding students to move well and to enjoy being active. Soon I can start over by chasing and nudging my newly born and first grandson to move. I am fortunate to remain fit, to keep learning new things, and to be able to compete in local, national or international tennis tournaments. Hopefully

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in the near future I can continue to travel freely and return to Shady Hill to relive some of those memories and see for myself how the school continues to evolve.

Althea Cranston writes: This former 8th Gradehead is still “next door” teaching AP English and Latin at BB&N. Sally Crissman writes: This is my 22nd year at TERC, a science and math research and development organization in Cambridge. Right now, I’m designing/researching a 3rd grade science unit on natural selection with a TERC colleague and former SHS parent Gilly Puttick, and a team from the BU Child Cognition Lab. Jim and I have 8 grandchildren, ages 6-22; lucky for us, 3 live nearby in Wellesley where our son, Will Crissman ’92, TTC’04, is Head of School at Tenacre CD. Hermione Deng shares: I have been back in China for almost two years. Besides being a PM at a mobile game company, I kept uploading videos on my Youtube channel during my free time. If you are interested in Chinese culture, you can see it from my channel.

I hope everyone’s doing well and enjoying the winter Olympic games! Hope to be back soon.

Stephen Drosdeck writes: I retired from working in independent schools in 2016. My wife and I both volunteer for Meals on Wheels, the local library, and I am a CASA worker for the court system with foster care families. My wife and I reside on Green Lake in Interlochen MI, about a mile from the Interlochen Academy for the Arts. We would be happy to host families who want to look into the Academy for high school. It is one of the best high schools for the arts in the world. We have two rooms that can accommodate 4 people.

No cost involved. I would be happy to have any member of the SHS community come and stay for no cost. Lots to see in this area of MI. Jessica Flaxman adds: I will graduate from the Mid-Career Doctoral Program in May, and I am very much enjoying my new position as Dean of Faculty and Employees at Rye Country Day School. I miss everyone at SHS, especially the Admission and Advancement crews!

Maria Gionfriddo shares: I am the Director of Auxiliary Programs

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at Wellan Montessori School in Newton. My twin boys, Grant and Harrison, are also at Wellan and will be starting Kindergarten in the fall.

Cindy (Limawararut) Gunja writes: Since leaving SHS in 2005, I moved to Washington, DC, married and became “Mrs. Gunja,” had two children (now ages 13 and 11), and have settled into teaching PK at St. Patrick’s Episcopal Day School. As I now have family living in Lexington, MA, occasionally I find myself in the area and hopping on my bike to swing by the SHS campus, just like in old times.

Jane Hardy says: Since the start of COVID, I have been happily hunkered down at home in Midcoast Maine. That doesn’t mean I’ve been bored or sitting around reading romance novels. In fact, there aren’t enough hours in my days! I have been very active with the Lincolnville Historical Society, initiating a membership drive that took the organization from 93 members to 306 in the last year. I am also on the steering committee for the Beach Schoolhouse Restoration Project and a docent at the Schoolhouse Museum. I serve as a town Cemetery Trustee… there are 23 cemeteries in this small town of just 2,152 inhabitants.

Most of them are small and need work. I help plan the Belfast Bay Watershed program called Pen Bay Stewards, volunteer at the Maine Coastal Island National Wildlife Refuge, whose mission is to protect endangered seabird populations and their island homes, and am preparing to present my research on the American side of my Swedish family in June - not easy as it is searching for living people.

The Swedes have great records of generations past but not the descendants of my grandfather’s generation.

Cheryl Jakielo shares: We recently left California to begin the process of relocating back to New England, aiming to settle in Boston by Spring/Summer of 2022. Expect a visit to Shady Hill sometime soon to say hello to everyone!

Amy Jolly writes: I am now head of Applewild School. Applewild’s main campus in Fitchburg serves students in grades preschool to grade 9, day and boarding for grades 5-9.

I am also executive director of Foundations at Applewild, a colocated school for students in grades

2-8 with language-based learning differences. Our satellite location in Devens serves preschool to grade 4.

I’m having so much fun!

Liza Jones shares: This year I am at Chestnut Hill School (with star teacher Gary McPhail) and I am helping out in the Kindergarten, which is definitely the most exhausting work I’ve done yet! I’m learning a lot about phonics, while enjoying an easy seven-minute commute. Walker is in the advancement office at Chapel-Hill Chauncy Hall, Si is a junior at St. Mark’s, and Bannon is loving college life on the prairie at Grinnell.

Gretchen Thomas Kane adds: I am living in New York City and teaching second grade. I have a son, Harrison, who is eight and also in second grade this year.

Although he’s not in my class, it’s been fun sharing the experience with him. My husband Tim and I love spending time with him and our two French bulldogs, June and Dolly. I cherish my time at Shady Hill and still keep in touch with many of my colleagues.

Hilary Laing writes: My news is that this past fall, I transitioned from being a full time classroom teacher to being a literacy specialist and a teacher coach around best practices in early childhood education. I work in an elementary school in Minneapolis. So far, a good change for me.

Roxanne Leff shares: Nathan Tanaka TTC ’13 and Sandi Tanaka TTC ’10 (2011-2015 K gradehead) are still working at Prospect Sierra in the Bay Area (Nathan as the middle school division head and Sandi as a first grade lead). They’ve got their hands and hearts full at home with Pax (age 3) and Porter (7 months), too.

We loved being back in Cambridge this past summer and got to see some of our beloved former colleagues!

Alice Mandel writes: Even though I only taught Studio at Shady Hill for two years, (1966 -68,) and it was more than 50 years ago, I remember many students and colleagues clearly. It was the perfect place to learn how to teach. And I’m still painting AliceNormanMandel.com Will Phillips shares: After 45 years of strategic change consulting with corporations, I am now leading to

monthly dialogues for Coming To The Table. The work is focused entirely on deep internal transformation in exploring antiracism. Also leading a task force bringing unique communitybased planning methods to the world of policing. https:// comingtothetable.org/

Nathan Tanaka TTC ’13 and Sandi Tanaka TTC ’10 this past summer visiting with Mark Stanek in Cambridge.

Wani Qiu adds: I’m currently a PhD student in Developmental Psychology at the University of Southern California, studying children’s understanding of teaching. I miss Shady Hill dearly and hope that everyone’s doing well!

Annette Raphel writes: I (LS Division Head ’96-’00) retired from heading The School at Columbia University and Belmont Day School to be a part-time math evangelist at Dedham Country Day, working with Head of School Allison Webster! I am now a doting grandmother to Jordan Raphel (’00) and Jessica Murphy’s two children, Rowan (16 months) and Joseph (3 years). I serve as a trustee of the public library and live in the same house with the same husband in Dedham. Recently I saw Ruth Gass TTC ’87 in San Francisco where we reminded ourselves how lucky we were to be together at Shady Hill. I remotely cheerlead Mark Stanek’s incredible leadership!

Elizabeth Reid ’74 shares: Bill and I have moved to Rhode Island, and are also spending a lot of time in Brooklyn with my wonderful grandson Miles. Bill’s daughter also just had a little boy; he’s heading up to Northern Canada to meet him next week. Daughter Jen who worked a few summers at SHS camp is finishing business school at

Yale and getting married in June.

We are having a great time with our growing family.

Deborah Dent-Samake shares: I spent two wonderful years as a teacher at Shady Hill. I came with Bruce Shaw from California in 1994 -96. I taught 7th grade social science. I moved back to San Francisco in the Fall of 96.

My daughter, Amina Samake ’96, wanted to be with her grandparents and aunts and uncles. At the time, I was hired

by The Urban School of SF, I was a single parent. I taught high school history and Community Engagement for 26 years. I will be retiring at the end of this school year. My goals are to get fit (after being sheltered in place with Covid) and possibly practice my other passion which is counseling. I have a degree in clinical social work. I have to take some review courses. Amina Samake Sow attended Shady Hill from 94 -96. I believe she was in the last ninth grade class.

Despite missing her family she also had a wonderful experience at SHS. It was at a SHS morning assembly that I heard Amina sing for the first time. I was shocked and impressed. I had no idea she could sing. I am grateful for the care, support, encouragement and excellent education my daughter received at Shady Hill.

Bruce Shaw writes: Like everyone else, we have been in pandemic mode for two years now.

No travel (but we are planning to go to our native Minnesota in May to visit family) so we have made the most of the beautiful area here on Cape Ann, finding new hikes, doing a lot of watercolor painting, engaging in volunteer work and trying to stay in touch with friends and family. Our son Chris was here for the holidays in December and it was wonderful to see him in person for the first time in over two years. Sandy and I are looking forward to more expansive times in the near future. Wishing everyone well!

David Smith ’59 writes: News from David Smith (Gradehead 9, 70-72 and Gradehead 7, 72-92) can be found in the class of ’59 notes.

Robert Spezzano shares: I’ve wound my way back to the math classroom at St. George’s School

In Middletown. So much of what I learned at Shady Hill is with me every day! Happily living in Wickford, RI with my spouse and Cosmo (our Jack Russell) and commuting over two beautiful bridges every day.

Gib Staunton shares: Five years ago I began a career consulting business called Staunton Career Advisors. I work primarily with 20 to 30-year-olds and help them with résumé, cover letter and interview guidance. I have four children, two who went to Shady Hill. I play competitive Bridge, tennis, pickle ball and golf for fun.

Katherine Booth Stevens adds: I’m now retired, having taught, been a school principal, and museum educator during my career. I’m now enjoying the next generation: my grandson is 4 months old. I sit on an appeals panel for families whose child has been denied a place at their preferred state school here in Oxford.

Paula Dello Russo shares: Nick and I are still dividing our time between Rockport and the North End, with more time spent in Rockport now that Nick has cut back his practice to just two days at Mass General. We have been very careful and have luckily escaped Covid so far. While I enjoy watching the ever-changing ocean, having time to read, and trying out new recipes from the Times, I miss seeing my friends from Shady Hill, my girls, and especially my six grandchildren. Two of my grandchildren are still at Shady Hill, as is my son-in-law Josh TTC ’97, so I am able to keep up with what is happening. With so many educators in the family (four of my five girls and two of my sons-inlaw) I appreciate how hard teachers are working! I was lucky enough to be visited by some of my past colleagues last summer, and I am looking forward to getting together with old friends again soon.

Tara Vanacore adds: I live in Washington, DC with my husband and two kids, Silas (6) and Vera (3). I manage study abroad programs in China for CET Academic Programs. I’m in treatment for breast cancer, and have so appreciated the Shady Hill love that has come my way--thank you to this wonderful community!

Hoping to report a complete

recovery by this time next year.

Ralph Wales shares: I am finishing my career as Head of School at Episcopal Day School of St. Matthew in San Mateo, California. It’s my third interim headship since completing 24 years as Head at Gordon School in Rhode Island. My wife Martha and I still have our primary residence in Providence. My time teaching at SHS remains central in what shaped my vision as an educator. And I have a close attachment to Mark so the SHS ties continue.

Tara Weaver writes: I moved to Maine but am still doing fitness training. One of my online clients is a 96 year old former Shady Hill teacher! She’s also teaching Taichi to local teachers and continues to coach high school athletes.

Betsy Whitters shares: Hanging out in Falmouth MA. Still rent an apartment on Beacon Hill which I’m not using much right now. Enjoying walks to the beach and my boat in the summer.

I have friends and extended family here and we are gathering ‘safely.’ Enjoyed Thanksgiving with my entire family. Our first gathering in two years. Playing bridge electronically with Janice McQuaid and Nancy Marttila!

Beacon Hill and Shady Hill friendships continue, thank heavens. Jack McKernan now lives in Woods Hole and is working on restoring his house and designing and planting a native wildflower garden. I have a small four-year-old doodle named Phoebe. Yes, I still have a dog! She and I spent most of this Fall training to be a therapy team. We passed! I am hoping to use her in libraries and schools.

Elizabeth Reid and grandson Miles.

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SHADY HILL SCHOOL

THE 2021-2022 IS SUE

Shady Hill Fund Shady Hill holds a special place in the hearts of many families, and giving to the Shady Hill Fund is one way for families to act on that love. Grandparents, alumni, parents and parents of alumni all contribute at various levels to the Shady Hill Fund, providing the financial support necessary to run school each year and make good on our mission of joyful, active learning.

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Shady Hill’s philosophy of instilling in its small charges a lifelong curiosity and love of learning made it easy for us to decide to enroll our daughter, TK, back in 1979. Over the years it has been wonderful to watch the school from the vantage point of parent, grandparent and trustee. We are proud to be part of the school family.

Alice Huang, Former Trustee 1987-1990, Parent 1989, Current Grandparent

” May Day 1989, From left to right, Class of 1989: Amy Bracken, Antonia Blyth, Marina Lang, Debby Saintil, TK, Elise Van Winkle, Mette Aamodt, Lisa Hamilton, Jessica Bottai, and Rebecca Cutter

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Alice, TK and Tesla at Thanksgiving 2019, Photo credit: Prof. Tommie Kirchhausen

Tesla in Ms. White’s Second Grade, February 2022

Shady Hill is a wonderful school not only for the incredible education that it provides, but for the community that it supports and the values that it instills. As a student in the 1980s, I never imagined how rewarding it would be to be a Shady Hill parent. I still fondly remember the fourth grade Olympics and starring in the eighth & ninth grade musical “You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown,” and I still regularly reference learning the quadratic equation to the tune of “Yellow Submarine” by the Beatles! It’s been amazing watching my daughter in her first four years at Shady Hill, and I can’t wait for the next six. We joyfully support the school because it means so much to us and we know how much it means to others as well.

TK Baltimore ’89, Parent 2027

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