A lumni Horae
GOOD GUIDANCE
With passion as an internal compass, graduates of the Applied Science and Engineering Program find their STEM journeys can go anywhere from here
For much of the year, Hank the Heron is a familiar sight in the pool at the bottom of the dam next to the Friedman Community Center. Onlookers often pause on the bridge to say hello, watch him stand sentry in the waters below, and, every once in a while, see his fishing skills in action.
PHOTO: MICHAEL SEAMANS
Alumni Horae
BALLET IN THE BIG APPLE
A NYC summer in three acts.
A DREAM REALIZED
Second-generation Olympic rower
Nick Rusher ’18 brings home the bronze.
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Five alumni reflect on their journeys in STEM that started with the Applied Science and Engineering Program.
The
Karen Ingraham
Kristin Duisberg
Cindy L. Foote
PHOTOGRAPHY
Ben Flanders
Michael Seamans
ALUMNI ADVISORY BOARD
Elise Loehnen Fissmer ’98
David M. Foxley ’02
Dana R. Goodyear ’94
Jonathan D. Jackson ’09
Malcolm Mackay ’59
Diego H. Nuñez ’08 Published by St. Paul’s School
ALUMNI HORAE DEADLINE
Formnotes about alumni personal and professional lives as well as positive interactions with other members of the SPS community are welcome (200 words maximum). Notes for the next issue are due May 16 and may be submitted to alumni@sps.edu. A clear, high-resolution photo of at least 1 MB may be submitted for publication consideration with an accompanying caption that identifiies people in leftto-right order and provides context. Alumni Horae editors reserve the right to edit and condense formnotes; notes and photos will be included as space allows.
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Mission Focused in Service to the Greater Good
DAVID B. SCULLY '79, P'21
The Board of Trustees has completed an extensive governance review. This work clarifies the principles and aspirations behind how we will govern ourselves and help guide St. Paul’s School for years to come.
We began with a yearlong exercise around board excellence led by William Ryan of Harvard, co-author of the book “Governance as Leadership: Reframing the Work of Nonprofit Boards” and a recognized leader in helping boards be “generative” in their thinking and decision-making rather than passive or reactive. Our work culminated with the drafting over the past year of a new set of bylaws, committee charters, a code of conduct and a trustee handbook. The work has taken hundreds of hours, but it has helped the Trustees and the School’s administration develop a generative framework for thinking about St. Paul’s School and its future.
We are indebted to William and to David Thiel of Aptonym, who oversaw the drafting and editing exercise. In our work, we reviewed the bylaws of our peer schools (and many others); we sought to follow the best practices outlined by organizations such as the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS); and we deliberated for
OUR BOARD WILL STRIVE TO FOCUS ITS TIME AT THE TOP OF THE GENERATIVE CURVE, HELPING TO FRAME IMPORTANT ISSUES THAT FURTHER AND FULFILL THE MISSION OF ST. PAUL’S SCHOOL FOR DECADES TO COME.” “
many, many hours to get the wording right. The final draft of the bylaws may have been version 63!
This new governance approach differs from the traditional model in one important aspect: It seeks to maintain focus on the School’s mission. Most boards spend an inordinate amount of time in the weeds, micromanaging aspects of the organization that are often best left to the chief executive and the leadership team.
O ur board is composed of more than 20 extraordinarily accomplished people, but they are not experts in curriculum development, or the adolescent mind, or the complexities of interscholastic athletics, or how to house and feed 539 students and the faculty who serve them, or the myriad details that command the time and attention of the School’s dedicated faculty, staff and administration.
Our board will strive to focus its time at the top of the generative curve, helping to frame important issues that further and fulfill the mission of St. Paul’s School for decades to come. We trust Rector Kathy Giles and her extraordinary team to do the necessary and ongoing work of running the School.
This new governance model requires SPS Trustees to be more responsible to the School and more accountable to each other. We need to read widely and deeply and prepare thoroughly for every board meeting so that we can make maximum use of our time together to collaborate and frame appropriate answers to complex and challenging questions that will determine the strategic direction of SPS over the next several decades.
Such generative questions include:
• What is the value proposition for boarding school in today’s changing world?
• How will St. Paul’s School remain affordable and accessible?
• How do we preserve our fully residential community and ensure its relevance?
• How can we best protect and take advantage of our 2,000-acre campus?
• What are the best approaches to ensure sustainability and protect against inflation?
• How do we ensure the principles of kindness and service, enshrined in the School Prayer, endure for future generations?
Members of the Board of Trustees during their fall meeting on Sept. 27 (l. to r.) front: Candice Bednar P’18,’19,’22; Chase Robinson ’81; Rector Kathy Giles; Henry Ho ’90, P’21,’22.; Lauren McKenna Surzyn ’03. Middle: David Scully ’79, P’21; Page Sargisson ’93, P’28; Liz Robbins ’79, P’17; Eddie Park ’94, P’21; Arthur Zekendorf ’77, P’05,’07; Amy Singer ’97, P’27; Alex Krongard ’81. Back: Amachie Ackah ’90, P’28; Ben Loehnen ’96; Tim Steinert ’78, P’21; David Fleischner ’91, P’20,’23. Not pictured: Nancy Dorn Walker ’94; WIlliam Doyle P’25; Susan Fales-Hill P’21; Tully Friedman P’17,’17; Lisa Hughes ’78, P’17,’19; Ray Joseph Jr. ’90; and Caroline La Voie ’88, P’20,’21.
All the while, the board will continue to exercise its fiduciary duties and other responsibilities. Operating budgets will be reviewed and approved. The board will steward the endowment and ensure its long-term viability. It will recruit and retain new trustees and plan for succession of committee chairs and board leadership. Trustees will strive to be effective ambassadors to generate goodwill for SPS among all members of our community.
As I look back on the past two years of work that is our governance review, I am reminded of the quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention. Elizabeth Powel asked him whether we had a republic or a monarchy, and Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Franklin understood that the document itself was just the beginning. He knew that governance is hard work and would require commitment and dedication for generations to come. I speak for all the trustees on the board when I say we placed the School’s mission at the center as we undertook this work. For this reason, we did something unique when we drafted our new bylaws — we included a statement of conduct on the first page that pledges the Trustees to be exemplars of good character and values.
The statement commits the Trustees to uphold the following principles:
• Be kind and live honorably
• Demonstrate commitment to excellence
• Foster a culture of openness and transparency
• Model and promote accountability and continuous improvement
• Understand the lasting, worldwide, intergenerational role of the School
• Promote the Episcopal concept of Beloved Community
• Do what is right, in service to the greater good
We have an outstanding Board of Trustees, and I am grateful to them for their service and leadership. They volunteer their time and expertise because of their love for St. Paul’s School and the impact it has had on their lives. Our board is generous in its philanthropy with 100% participation in The SPS Fund, and our group includes several members of the Shattuck Society, which recognizes those who have given more than $1 million to SPS in their lifetimes. The School is in great shape under the leadership of Rector Giles and her team. The students are thriving. The board is hard at work ensuring this will hold true for decades to come.
THE VIEW FROM HERE
An October afternoon along the sun-speckled trail around Lower School Pond brings to mind what Dr. George C. Shattuck, founder of St. Paul’s School, had to say about the importance of spending time in nature: “Green fields and trees, streams and ponds, beautiful scenery, flowers and minerals are educators. The things which are seen are very valuable, and may be used to tell … of the things unseen.”
PHOTO: MICHAEL SEAMANS
Good Governance: It Starts with the Soil
The first in a three-part series on the St. Paul’s School Board of Trustees’ substantive review and revision of its bylaws in pursuit of a higher standard
DAVID THIEL
Imagine a few neighbors want to start a community garden. Their idea grows quickly when an empty lot, trowels and rakes are donated, and a date is scheduled to dig and plant. The result of these efforts isn’t just a garden, but an organization — a garden club — that procures resources and develops plans. Not only has a garden sprouted, but so has a system for its governance.
At its heart, “governance” is people organizing to make decisions around common goals — and it plays a bigger role in daily life than one might think. Yes, the government is a form of governance, but it’s also true that governance is at work in every business, every PTA, every community theater and every membership club.
Like these other organizations, St. Paul’s School is governed: the SPS Board of Trustees has met regularly for almost 170 years. And despite its age, it remains perennial, fresh and thriving. It can be difficult to see how a strong organization like St. Paul’s can be both old and new, both experienced and entrepreneurial, but this duality of spirit is a hallmark of good governance, and it is the result of many factors. Two factors in particular deserve special mention.
boards, but often when schools undertake such work, they make small, simple edits. In the case of St. Paul’s, the goal was something more.
“We wanted to set a higher standard,” Board President David Scully ’79, P’21 says, “not just for St. Paul’s, but among all schools.” In seeking that higher standard, the board reshaped the bylaws, orienting them even more toward the light of moral and ethical leadership.
“ The first sections of our updated bylaws are about duty, conduct and values,” says Lisa Hughes ’78, P’17,’19, who co-chairs the Trustees and Governance Committee of the board. “The bylaws describe how trustees have a fiduciary duty to the School — but also a duty to serve as exemplars of good character.”
“THE BOARD’S WORK ON GOVERNANCE AND STRATEGY HAS PREPARED THE GROUND FOR AN EXCITING FUTURE, AND NOW THE ADMINISTRATIVE TEAM IS SEEDING INITIATIVES THROUGHOUT THE SCHOOL.”
First, at SPS, the board’s membership evolves slowly but consistently. A typical trustee remains on the board for about a decade, but at any given time, the board is a mix of novice and seasoned trustees. The result is a roster that is both self-perpetuating and ever-changing, and because of this fluid membership, the perspective and energy of the board is continuously renewed, like an ancient tree that grows fresh new leaves each spring.
Second, the board’s work is grounded in a set of bylaws, and the committees that the board oversees each have a charter. The board also maintains a collection of policies that address key topics such as what type of donations are accepted or how the endowment is managed. These documents build and secure the memory of the board, so that it can “think” across decades — or even centuries.
Recently, St. Paul’s reviewed and revised its bylaws and other key documents. Such a review is a best practice on
“It’s unusual, and it’s powerful,” adds Hughes’ co-chair Ben Loehnen ’96, “and it’s not just talk. We’ve supported these ideas with clear adjustments to our policies and practices.”
L oehnen refers to procedural adjustments throughout the bylaws that raise the bar on how the board conducts its daily business. “In several areas, we raised the standard from simple majority votes to supermajority votes, ensuring that the board speaks with one voice,” says Hughes, “and we tightened the details around the role of board officers, the types of committees we create and the engagement of non-trustee participants in board conversations.”
In addition, each committee’s charter has been updated to ensure that it guides actual daily practice. These revisions clarified the role of each committee, reducing overlaps, improving accountability and cultivating more purposeful and mission-oriented work.
B oard policies also were revised. Chief among these adjustments was a full rewrite of the board’s Code of Conduct, giving it even greater focus on ethical conduct and the protection of students. An expanded and more detailed Conflict of Interest Policy also was created; the new policy goes far beyond a mere admonition against conflicts and offers practical coaching and guidance for how to root out these issues before they can arise.
“We’ve been operating with increased care and diligence, and it seemed time that those practices were put down in ink,” Scully says about the policy adjustments. “By updating these documents, we codify these higher standards, and we set a tone for the current and future board to work on bigger opportunities.”
Scully’s comments speak to the remarkable momentum that has been building at St. Paul’s: Kathy Giles appointed as Rector in 2019; a renewed mission statement in 2021; an ambitious strategic plan approved in 2022. And, in 2023-24, a comprehensive campus planning process that identified key priorities for buildings and grounds.
“We’ve been busy,” Giles notes. “The board’s work on governance and strategy has prepared the ground for an exciting future, and now the administrative team is seeding initiatives throughout the School.” That means plans for improvements to programs and practices schoolwide,
and it means new buildings, like the Fleischner Family Admissions Center, already nearing completion.
“Just like a garden, it all starts with the soil,” Giles adds. “St. Paul’s can grow and flourish because of the foundational work that the board has pursued in governance.” In insisting on a higher standard in its governance practices, the board has delivered a foundation that will nourish every other aspect of the School.
David Thiel draws on his 13 years of experience working in independent schools, including one as head of Tilton School, to guide schools in responding to the shifting educational landscape. Now, he is engaged with the SPS board’s work to revise its bylaws, committee charters, policies and handbook. Thiel holds a B.A. and an MBA from the University of Rochester.
by the numbers: SPS 2024-25
539 STUDENTS from 28 countries and 34 states live and learn at SPS
$12.6 million IN FINANCIAL AID awarded to create a community dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in character and scholarship
50 PERCENT of students identify as non-white
1 INSPIRING beautiful Millville home
$68,353 COST OF TUITION incuding room and board for our fully residential campus
$60,495 AVERAGE FINANCIAL AID AWARD based on need
108 FACULTY MEMBERS, plus 5 teaching fellows, educate students to build purposeful lives in service to the greater good
38 PERCENT of students receive financial aid to attend SPS
FOR THE FUTURE
SPS Pilots Hybrid Fuel Strategy to Decrease Carbon Emissions
KRISTIN DUISBERG
After converting from burning oil to natural gas at the Central Heating Plant (CHP) in 2006, the School reduced its energy-related carbon emissions by 82%.
Now, as colder temperatures move into New Hampshire and the CHP goes to work heating dorms, classrooms and more, one of its three boilers will burn the renewable biofuel LR100 as part of a pilot program that was first evaluated from January through March 2023. Produced by Lifecycle Renewables, a company that specializes in food waste recycling and renewable fuels, LR100 is a cleaner-burning alternative to diesel fuel and can be used in oil-capable facilities. And, it has a significantly lower carbon emissions profile than the natural gas that still powers the plant’s other two boilers — with emissions of approximately 63 kilograms of carbon dioxide per million BTUs compared to 232 kilograms for natural gas. The results of the pilot program indicated that moving this year from 100% natural gas to a 70/30 natural gas/LR100 split will yield an overall reduction of 29% in the School’s greenhouse gas emissions from the CHP when factoring in actual combustion along with the delivery and transportation of fuel.
The switch is the latest step in the School’s ongoing effort to decrease the carbon emissions of a vast campus of beautiful — but old and often energy inefficient — buildings.
“ The history leading to the hybrid burning of LR100 and natural gas at the School extends back nearly two
decades and reflects our efforts to actively pursue existing options for reducing our carbon footprint while also anticipating new decarbonizing technologies,” says Vice Rector for Finance and Administration C. Brooks Seay. “This is an ongoing process that requires significant investments, but they are investments that we believe are essential for the future sustainability of the School and the environment as a whole.” SPS will join entities in the region that include Harvard University and Keene State College in burning biofuel; Seay estimates the School will burn 175,000 gallons of LR100 this heating season.
Other recent investments the School has made in the decarbonization of SPS range from replacing its gaspowered transportation fleet and equipment with electric models to making more environmentally conscious purchases for renovation projects and considering sustainability best practices in new construction. The 16,000 square-foot Fleischner Family Admissions Center, which will open in early 2025, is being built to LEED Silver standards, with solar panels on the south-facing roof that will offset about one-third of the building’s energy load. The center is the first of more than half a dozen planned construction projects in the coming years that will be built to LEED standards as part of a comprehensive plan that better connects the academic, athletic and residential spaces on campus while preserving and repurposing the School’s important heritage spaces.
Science teacher Nick Babladelis’ Clean Energy Revolution class toured the Central Heating Plant and learned about energy at the School.
AROUND THE GROUNDS
OPENING DAYS The smiles and tears! The hugs and high fives! It’s always fun to watch the SPS grounds come alive with the arrival of new and returning students for the academic year.
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
Medar de la Cruz, a DominicanAmerican artist whose illustrated New Yorker story “The Diary of a Rikers Island Library Worker” won a 2024 Pulitzer Prize, spent Sept. 24-28 at St. Paul’s School, working with students in fine arts classes and speaking on his craft in Crumpacker Gallery. The cartoonist and illustrator’s visit was part of the School’s observance of Hispanic and LatinX Heritage Month.
SHOW STOPPER Thanks to an unusually powerful geomagnetic storm in October, a stunning display of the Northern Lights danced across the night sky.
TRADITION
It’s one of the most eagerly anticipated days of the Fall Term, and it was picture-perfect weather for Cricket Holiday. After chapel, Rector Kathy Giles led new students, faculty and staff (and anyone else who wanted to join) on a walk through the Millville woods to the boat docks at Turkey Pond, where they enjoyed treats and one another’s company.
PHOTO: LOGAN BENSADOUN ’25
IN THEIR SHOES On Oct. 2, more than three dozen St. Paul's School students, faculty and staff took part in the Thrive Survivor Support Center (TSSC) 2024 Walk a Mile in Their Shoes event in downtown Concord, a fundraiser that also raises awareness about domestic and sexual violence. Team Pelicans in Pumps might have featured more sneakers than slingbacks, but SPS is a longtime participant in the event and a supporter of the programs of TSSC. The School won the award for the largest group in attendance.
BLESSING OF THE ANIMALS Animals from nearby Miles Smith Farm came to campus for the annual Blessing of the Animals, part of the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals and the environment. Stuffed animals standing in for beloved pets at home received blessings from the School’s chaplains before continuing on with their students to morning classes.
ECO-FEST Whether it’s pumpkin carving or rock climbing, environmentally themed games or live music, or the chance to hang out with some four-legged friends, Eco-Fest always has a little something for everyone.
RETURN TO MILLVILLE Ellie McLane ’06, a project manager in the MIT Office of Sustainability, spent a morning with students as they modeled ways to achieve the Paris Agreement climate goal of limiting global temperature increases. Over lunch, McLane met with the Eco-Action Club to talk about her path from SPS to MIT and her work connecting people, ideas and systems for a more sustainable future.
STUDENT THEME FOR ACADEMIC YEAR
Sixth Form Officers Bring Their Passions
KRISTIN DUISBERG
Kevin Wu plays clarinet in the SPS Orchestra, serves as one of the student heads of the Asian Society and competes in both varsity football and crew. Ian Chang is a cross country captain, an avid wrestler and a Living in Community (LinC) leader. Gretta White plays lacrosse and trumpet and co-leads the LatinX Society. Olivia Blanchard is a captain for both cross country and track and also is a member of the SPS Orchestra, where she plays double bass. The School’s Sixth Form Officers (SFOs) for the 2024-25 academic year, the foursome is vocal not only about the passions that have shaped their SPS experiences — but also the passions they see in their formmates and friends.
“Each year, the Sixth Form Officers, in collaboration with their form, choose a theme that embodies their form and focuses their mission for their last remaining year,” Wu explained during a special September chapel in which the SFOs shared that passion was their theme for the 2024-25 academic year. “We believe passion drives us to be our best, to push boundaries and to lift each other up.”
Wu, who serves as president, shared a story about encountering an older student who was practicing his violin in the lobby of the Concord Holiday Inn the night before he arrived at St. Paul’s in August 2021, and quickly finding in that student a mentor, guide and inspiration for his own musical passions at SPS. “He was motivated to help me grow just as he was pushing himself to be better every single day,” Wu said. “I realized that here at SPS, we don’t tear each other down. We push one another — not through competition, but through support and encouragement.”
Chang, Student Council vice president, spoke about the warm welcome he received from two older students in Armour House — both LinC leaders — and about how small acts of kindness, like carrying in his bags and inviting him to eat with them, were formative in his School experience. “What set these students apart?” he asked. “It was passion, plain and simple. ... These students weren’t just filling leadership positions or following orders.
They helped me out of genuine kindness because they, too, were once Third Formers in my position, and this is a type of passion I see all around us at St Paul’s.”
Student Council Secretary White spoke about a passion that started as anything but: the four-times-weekly chapel service. Observing that she is not a morning person, she said she initially questioned what role chapel would have in her life. “However, over time I learned that chapel represents one aspect of passion that is so special to our community,” she said, citing the example of a recent chapel talk by Director of Chapel Music and School Organist Nicholas White. “I don’t know about you all, but singing ‘shout, let it all out!,’ our whole community standing up together laughing and singing, was something I’ll probably never forget,” she said. “Mr. White’s chapel talk reminded me of the power that passion has to bring our St. Paul’s community together.”
For Student Council Treasurer Blanchard,
her passion comes into play in the very act of being part of the School’s student government. “Being an SFO means being a part of something much bigger than myself,” she said. “As a team, we come together to take the shared experience that is being a student here, and our love for the School, and use those to serve you all, whether it’s here on campus or elsewhere. I believe that when you use your passion to serve others, whatever it may be, that passion becomes your purpose.”
It’s perhaps telling that the passions all four student leaders spoke about were not tied to their own achievements, but instead the alchemy they have experienced in an environment of mutual respect and support. “Let’s embrace passion, not for the benefit of ourselves, but for the upliftment of our community,” said Chang.
“Because I take pride in what makes St. Paul’s St. Paul’s, and I ask you all to do the same.” WATCH THE SFO’S CHAPEL
Sixth Form Officers: Treasurer Olivia Blanchard, President Kevin Wu, Secretary Gretta White and Vice President Ian Chang.
THE SPACE OF THE CHAPEL
Capes, Cornerstones and Courage
REV. SAMUEL LOVETT
This year, the SPS community is working together to reduce cellphone use during the academic day. In this Sept. 17 chapel talk, Chaplain and Humanities Teacher Sam Lovett reflects on the subjects he’s found more time to consider absent the distraction of his devices — including the architecture of the Chapel of St. Peter and St. Paul and its symbolic significance.
Over the past week, I’ve heard a new phrase gaining frequency in the St. Paul’s School vocabulary. It goes something like this: “Because I’m on my phone less, I’ve noticed that … ”
I know that the Sixth Form theme is passion this year, but I also think that noticing could serve as a good backup should one become needed. The art of noticing is a serious business.
For my part, because I’m on my phone less, I’ve noticed that I could create much of this talk in my head while going for evening runs along the Turkey River out to the boathouse.
Because I’m on my phone less, I’ve noticed sunsets that fill the sky with light the color of apples and pumpkins.
I’ve noticed the Canada geese on campus are starting to say goodbye, for now, one southward departure from the pond at a time.
And it has been hard for me not to notice all the acorns falling from their oak trees this week. They come pelting down to strike anything in their path below. Many of us will get hit, at some point in our lives, by an acorn falling from the sky. Fall gives us this reminder. Life throws acorns at us. And that acorn is sometimes a loss or injury;
inclement weather or other disappointment on an important day; or some other misfortune that stings, leaving us rubbing the backs of our heads. The impact of an unexpected acorn stings us, but it also might wake us up to notice the new life that is taking root around us.
This morning, I want to offer you three things to notice when you come into this Chapel: capes, cornerstones and courage.
Take a look around. What do you notice about the Chapel? Its architecture is designed to make you feel and act in certain ways when you enter. It’s hard to walk in here and not feel something larger than yourself. Part of that is the effect of the Gothic style of this Chapel, with its tall, vaulted ceiling drawing our eyes and spirits upward toward the sky.
The other part of entering this building that makes it feel special is that this is the spiritual heart of our campus: the very essence of all the people who have come before us is interwoven with this place — all the generations of people who lived together, learned together, played together and prayed together on this campus have left an indelible mark on this place. We begin most of our days here in this place, here in the Chapel of St. Peter and
St. Paul, not just because it is a place of shelter big enough to hold us all, but because of the “goodly heritage” and sacred legacy that is stored up in this place.
The word chapel comes from the same word, cappella, that gives us the word cape. A cape, as in the garment that provides extra warmth on a cold night; as in the piece of cloth that distinguishes superheroes who fly from those superheroes who stay on the ground; as in the extra layer of protection against wind, rain, and yes, even acorns.
The roof of this Chapel is like our cape. When you come into the Chapel, it can feel like putting on our superhero capes, and gathering together in an attitude of worship, to exercise our power — the power of looking beyond ourselves and cultivating a knowledge of those things that continue in heaven.
When you come in the main door, there is a stone to your right that says Anno Domini 1886. This is the cornerstone of the whole Chapel — the first stone that the builders put in place. Everything else in the Chapel aligns to that first stone. At St. Paul’s School, we know a lot about capstones (the culminating Fifth Form research project). But we should take pride in the fact of our chapel cornerstones, too.
On the Armour side of the building is another cornerstone that reads 1928; that year, the School decided to expand the original chapel to make room for its growing student population. The altar wall was mounted onto rails and extended 80 feet to make room for what today is sometimes called Sleepy Hollow. The School chose to make a new beginning with a second cornerstone.
multitalented angels to go with you every time you leave this chapel. I hope that can be a source of courage to us.
The other windows in the Chapel are oriented from that main entrance toward Sleepy Hollow.
On the Rectory side, the windows depict the life of Jesus, starting with the story of his birth that we remember at Christmastime, and moving through his life toward the end, with his death and resurrection, which we remember at Easter.
On the other side is the story of the Apostles Peter and Paul, followers of Jesus for whom the Chapel is named. On the top is Peter’s story and on the bottom is Paul’s. Gothic cathedrals would use stained-glass windows to tell the stories from the Bible to help educate worshippers who could not read, which was the majority. When something shows up twice, it is important. The only scene that shows up twice in our windows is the conversion of St. Paul. And perhaps this is a good moment to remember the person whose name we all wear on our sweatshirts and athletic uniforms.
“THERE ARE THINGS IN THIS WORLD THAT EACH OF US WANTS TO CHANGE FOR THE BETTER.
WE SOMETIMES WANT TO PUT DOWN A SECOND
CORNERSTONE IN OUR
Paul was born in the early years of the first century, born in Tarsus, which was a big city of the Roman Empire, in today’s Turkey. Paul’s given name was Saul, the name of Israel’s first king. He was a person of many identities: the son of a Jewish family who enjoyed the power of Roman citizenship, and Saul made a name for himself opposing the early Christian movement, which people just called “The Way.”
OWN LIVES AND EXPAND WHAT IS POSSIBLE FOR US.”
So, we have capes and cornerstones. The final thing I want to draw your attention to is courage. There are sources of courage all around us, represented in the stained-glass windows showing a pantheon of cape-and-cloak-wearing people. Who are the people depicted?
There is a method for how to interpret and understand the windows. Today there are six doorways into the Chapel. But originally, there were only two, and one of the doors was reserved for the choir. So, everyone else would have come through the main door — across from the Rectory. The windows orient themselves to the fact of one main door.
As you go out today, look up at the angels in the window above the main door. The School’s First Rector, the Rev. Dr. Henry Augustus Coit, positioned a host of guardian angels in that window to watch over every student of St. Paul’s School. There are nine different types of angels represented in the window, which means he covered all the bases in commissioning the guardianship of
In the window scenes of Saul, we see his acorn moment, his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus, when he fell from his horse and was inspired to change his name and change to become a proponent of the Jesus movement, to which he gave the rest of his life.
This story about Paul reminds us of the importance of change. There are things in this world that each of us wants to change for the better. We sometimes want to put down a second cornerstone in our own lives and expand what is possible for us. Don’t lose heart if your own efforts to effect changes in your life are not at first successful; have the confidence that even the smallest effort at change, a little acorn of change, will make an impact over time.
Paul is a reminder that the lives we live and the world that we live in can change for and toward the good. Perhaps that is what the early proponents of the School meant when they dedicated this School and Chapel to his memory and set up angels to give us the courage to continue the work anew in every generation.
So, put on your Chapel cape, put down your second cornerstone and take good courage.
The St. Paul’s School community heard from a number of speakers during Fall Term chapels. Here’s what a few of them had to say.
NICHOLAS WHITE / Sept. 13, 2024 Director of Chapel Music and Organist at St. Paul’s School
RECTOR KATHY GILES / Convocation, Sept. 9, 2024
“We tend to lean hard on that word, ‘community,’ without really defining what we mean. Sure, we say hello on the paths, and we are ‘loud, proud and positive’ at games. ... But a community is more than a group of people who share a mascot or work together in an organization, more than people who chat or like or friend or follow, who live near each other in a neighborhood and every so often say a nice hello. Real communities are by invitation; they are opt-in, because a community stands for, and its members embrace, shared values, interests and goals. This sharing creates a sense of fellowship, a shared sense of meaning in the worthiness of the shared purpose, and — critically — a sense of belonging. In a community like ours, in which we live and work together intensely, it isn’t enough to just say the values or that you accept the values; to be credible, you have to live the values, or at least try your best to do so. And for the community to have integrity, for us to really be the community we say we want to be, we have to share the values, to walk the walk, as they say, and not just talk the talk.”
“Roger Scruton, one of the most distinguished philosophers from the second half of the 20th and first two decades of the 21st centuries … champions a pre-industrial idyll that may seem absurdly reactionary to some, but his larger point is that we’ve forgotten what art is for. We need places to live and work and worship. They are useful for us when they reflect our value as creatures of Beauty itself …. Likewise, we need to look at paintings and sculptures that draw our souls to something nobler. We have endless opportunities to advance beauty by making new things that convey Truth and Goodness even to unwitting participants in them. We must contribute to culture in ways that invite its transformation. The last poem has not yet been written. The last sublime building has not yet been built. The last breathtaking piece of music has not yet been composed. Let us resist being crowded out by and making do with what is nearly beautiful, good enough or even ugly. Let us take the place of honor at the table of Beauty that is our inheritance and our destiny. Let us show the world something better than what it already has.”
JAMES MCGREGOR / Sept. 10, 2024
Businessman, author, journalist and U.S. Army veteran
“The soldiers in Vietnam were inner city, poor African-Americans, Hispanics, and I was from Duluth, Minnesota, which had very few minorities. And so my squad, where you’re all depending on each other to save your life and to be safe and fight a war together, was very mixed race. And it really helped me expand my horizons and learn that you’ve got to get to know different people, and once you know them, everybody is the same. And when you’re in a war and you’re depending on each other for your life, gender doesn’t matter. Race doesn’t matter, creed doesn’t matter, because you’re all people together. And what came out of that for me was a couple of things. One was a lifelong hate of any form of discrimination. It also kind of led me to journalism, because I saw what was going on in Vietnam and I saw what the papers were reporting, and they were two different things.”
JODIE
PATTERSON / Oct. 11, 2024
Author of “The Bold World: A Memoir of Family and Transformation”
“I’m reimagining the very narrow way in which we categorize ourselves, the narrow way in which we box ourselves in. And I’m asking that of you ... to think about how you can reimagine yourself. And, of course, it doesn’t have to be around gender. It doesn’t have to be around race. It can be anything. Just think expansively. Question things. Try on new identities, question even yourself just for the exploration of it. I know that’s hard. I know it’s difficult to reimagine a reputation, identity, a career, a gender, but it is not impossible. It just takes mental dexterity and flexibility ... And I ask you to practice being intellectually expansive because at some point, like it happened to me, you will be confronted with something you’re not expecting, something you’re not prepared for, and you’ll be forced to shift or break. So why not just get really good at shifting and expanding and exploring as a constant evolution?”
AUTUMN ROSE WILLIAMS / Nov. 8, 2024
Miss Native American USA, model and activist
“Aquy in my language [Shinnecock, an Algonquin dialect] is how we say hello. But the direct translation of aquy is “I see the light in you” ... because it’s not enough to just say hello. When we greet each other, we have to acknowledge the light that exists within each and every one of us. … When we sit down and we listen to perspectives different than our own, we can shift perspectives. We have a moment to connect and have a conversation face to face, which … challenges you to be more cognizant of your words and how you talk to people, which can be a very different experience than if you’re talking to somebody through a screen. … I challenge you to have a conversation with somebody face to face that shifts and opens your mind. … In that way, you’re able to see the light that exists within other people, but you’re also able to share the light that exists with you and share the beauty of the communities you come from.”
More than a century after his tragic death at the end of World War I, Hobart Amory Hare “Hobey” Baker of the Form of 1909 still looms large in the consciousness of many American historians and sports enthusiasts. A prodigious athletic talent, he learned to play ice hockey at St. Paul’s School under coach Malcolm Gordon 1887, P’19,’26 — considered one of the pioneers of the sport in the United States — and went on to captain both that sport and football at Princeton University. The namesake of the highest award given every year in men’s NCAA hockey, to this day, Baker is also the only athlete to be in both the College Football and Hockey Halls of Fame. A decorated fighter pilot, he died at age 26 from injuries sustained in a plane crash in France on Dec. 21, 1918, just hours before he was scheduled to return to the United States. In just one measure of Baker’s fame, F. Scott Fitzgerald memorialized him as a minor character in his 1920 novel “This Side of Paradise.”
This summer, ESPN’s “30 for 30” documentary series became the latest outlet to explore Baker’s legend, with the three-part podcast “Searching for Hobey Baker” narrated by actor (and Princeton alumnus) David Duchovny. The 120-minute production largely focuses on Baker’s collegiate career and his WWI heroics, but a portion of the first episode unfolds on Lower School Pond and elsewhere at SPS, delving into his relationship with his older brother Alfred, who also graduated with the Form of 1909. Woven throughout the trio of episodes is an examination of Baker’s relationship with Percy Pine II, a Form of 1898 alumnus and fellow Princeton alumnus.
— Kristin Duisberg LISTEN TO THE PODCAST THE LEGEND THAT WAS HOBEY BAKER
FAMILY-STYLE TRADITION
Seated Meals Make for Special Tuesdays
Tues days at St. Paul’s School begin with office hours, from 8 to 8:25 a.m., that offer students a chance to consult with a teacher before 8:30 a.m. chapel.
Classes run from 9:05 a.m. to 2:10 p.m. — with time for lunch, of course. At 2:20 p.m., faculty members head into department meetings while Fifth Formers meet for their seminar before athletics and afternoon activities begin at 3:30 p.m.
Just about every other Tuesday, instead of dashing straight to the dining hall after practice for a quick dinner, students make the time to freshen up and dress for a Seated Meal with either their assigned group for the term or their advisee group. They best have done so, and checked their table assignments, to be in place and ready for grace before the doors to the Upper Common Room close at 5:59 p.m.
After grace, the head of each table serves the main dish and vegetables are passed. The tradition that dates back to the founding of the School remains a special time to build community, meet new people and practice good table manners.
The day’s not over with dessert, though — members of the chapel choir, orchestra and other music groups have rehearsal at 7 p.m., clubs meet and homework awaits. Meanwhile, faculty members return to their homes and families on the grounds, or dorm duty, knowing that they’ll meet with their advising team at 8 a.m. the next morning before classes and afternoon athletic competitions.
The days may be busy, but the weeks go fast and soon it’ll be time for another Seated Meal with the opportunity to get to know each other better.
— Kate Dunlop
PHOTOS: Ben Flanders
Deep Dive
James Estes ’25 researched the Chinese economy, and the Harvard Business Review published his findings
IAN ALDRICH
In the early morning hours of Aug. 26, James Estes ’25 awoke to find that nearly nine months of hard work had paid off. On the homepage of the Harvard Business Review (HBR) website was the article, “The 4 Key Strengths of China’s Economy — and What They Mean for Multinational Companies,” he had coauthored with Mitch Presnick, a visiting fellow of practice at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University.
“It was pretty cool,” Estes says. “People were already sharing the article and commenting on it — just seeing all the reactions and the reach it was getting from HBR readers was something.”
Last November, Estes, who spent his early years in Beijing, wrote an essay on Chinese-American relations for the Harvard Crimson Global Essay Competition. It didn’t place, but it did catch the attention of Presnick, whose business career had anchored him in China for more than three decades. Having focused his fellowship study on the opportunities and
challenges around China’s ties to other developed nations, Presnick needed a research assistant; in Estes, he found a young, ambitious thinker who could help him.
“Being half-Chinese and half-white, I feel like I have a unique perspective into two pretty contrasting cultures,” Estes says. “It really hit home watching the downward spiral of U.S.-China geopolitics these last years. It was especially interesting to dig into the U.S. trade war and understand the history behind the politics with China. I wanted to write something that I thought could help people understand the situation. That’s what led me to write the contest paper and then to my work with [Presnick].”
“TO SPEAK TO THESE PEOPLE AND FIND OUT FROM THEM WHAT THEY’RE SEEING WAS VALUABLE. I CAN’T BELIEVE HOW MUCH I LEARNED ABOUT THE COMPLEXITY AND DEPTH OF THE SITUATION. ”
At the center of their work was an effort to offer a balanced view of U.S.-China trade relations.
“I think one of the only bipartisan things you see in Washington is the China bashing,” Estes says. “We wanted to present things in a new light and give a more well-rounded picture of the situation. That’s why, I think, HBR liked our work so much.”
The two began collaborating last February. Presnick would assign Estes a topic to explore — how research and development firms profit in China, for example — and ask him to deliver an analysis of his findings. Estes pored over company reports and filings, read an array of news stories and interviewed company heads, including the director of Cummins’ Asia division, for their perspectives on the current trade climate.
“It was pretty amazing to be the one asking the questions,” Estes says. “To speak to these people and find out from them what they’re seeing was valuable. I can’t believe how much I learned about the complexity and depth of the situation.”
He’s not alone. In the months since the article was published, the piece has been read by thousands of readers and the authors have done interviews with American and Chinese news outlets. In November, Estes and Presnick discussed their article at an event at the Fairbank Center.
For Estes, the piece has proved pivotal. Last year, the research work helped anchor a Fifth Form research project and it now represents a crucial leg in his senior year project. Then there are the less quantifiable ambitions. Just as he hopes his HBR article has helped readers re-examine how U.S.-China trade relations are discussed, he also hopes his findings make a difference in how his SPS community thinks about the greater world.
Effecting change at SPS has been an Estes tradition: Family members across generations have worked at the School, beginning with Estes’ great-great-great grandfather, who helped construct many of the campus’ first buildings.
Over the ensuing years, the Estes family has remained connected to Concord and SPS. Estes’ grandfather grew up playing hockey on the ponds and working around the grounds. His stories of those years later enthralled his young grandson and, in fall 2021, Estes became the first member of the family to enroll.
During his time at SPS, Estes has embraced School life. He captains the varsity tennis team and plays squash; for the last two years, he’s volunteered as a youth mentor and been a student leader in the Living in Community Program. As a sophomore, he won the National Chinese Speech competition, and he’s developed a deep love for philosophy.
The kind of variedness that he’s found at SPS, says Estes, has helped prepare and excite him for what comes next. He says he hopes to study Chinese and philosophy in college. Maybe he’ll follow a path into the business world. Or, possibly, foreign policy.
“Whatever I end up doing for a career,” he says, “I want to have an effect on U.S.-China relations and help all of us see the world a little differently.”
Summer at St. Paul’s
The Advanced Studies Program is a feast for those hungry to learn
Every year, the quiet that descends on St. Paul's School when students leave for the summer is lifted late in June, when New Hampshire public high school students arrive for the Advanced Studies Program (ASP). During the five-week program, academically talented rising juniors and seniors from across the state live and learn at SPS — often taking classes taught by SPS faculty members and alumni — attend chapel, explore the grounds and experience a bit of Millville magic for themselves. The 2024 program was the 67th consecutive year for which St. Paul’s School offered the ASP, welcoming students from 57 high schools to the grounds from June 22 through July 27.
ASP 2024 AT A GLANCE
57 New Hampshire high schools
154 students from every county in New Hampshire
34 faculty members, including seven SPS faculty members, six SPS alumni and three ASP alumni
24 teaching interns, including nine ASP alumni and four SPS alumni representing 21 colleges, eight U.S. states, Egypt and Taiwan
13 major courses with an average class size of 12 students
48% of students received financial aid totaling $254,190; the average award was $3,344. Tuition was $5,200. READ THE PUBLISHED ARTICLE
HEAR WHAT SOME OF THIS YEAR’S ASP STUDENTS HAD TO SAY ABOUT THEIR SUMMER IN MILLVILLE
Fall Athletics Highlights
Seven varsity teams and eight junior varsity teams enjoyed remarkably cooperative weather for their fall competitions.
The boys and girls varsity cross country teams both ran away with the 2024 Lakes Region League Championship titles, and both finished fifth at the NEPSAC Championships. For the girls, it was the Big Red’s best result at NEPSACs since 2016, while the boys improved over last year’s finish.
JV field hockey had two ties but kept it a zero in the loss column to finish the season undefeated for the second year in a row.
The varsity football team finished an undefeated season in the Evergreen League with an 8-0 record. The winning streak earned the team a post-season bowl selection for the third year in a row; on Nov. 16, the Big Red edged out Buckingham Browne & Nichols, 23-20, in a thrilling Papas Bowl victory at Boston College’s Alumni Stadium.
BALLET IN THE BIG APPLE
A NYC Summer in Three Acts
KATE DUNLOP
In June, even as the curtain dropped on the academic year, some members of the St. Paul’s School ballet community were preparing for their next roles — a summer in New York City that drew upon their dance training with opportunities to learn and grow no matter their position. For Director of Dance Kate Lydon P’23,’27, it meant leading the American Ballet Theatre’s Summer Intensive. For two of her students, it meant relishing — and sharing — the joy of dance in their own ways.
ACT I: BALANCE KATE LYDON, DIRECTOR OF DANCE
Head south on Broadway from where it crosses Columbus Avenue in front of the Metropolitan Opera House, home to American Ballet Theatre (ABT) performances, for about three miles and you’ll cut through Midtown’s tidy grid to arrive at 890 Broadway. Inside is the studio where St. Paul’s School Director of Dance and ABT Summer Intensive Artistic Director Kate Lydon P’23,’27 has been teaching in ABT’s summer programs since 2006; she was appointed artistic director in fall 2016.
It’s a space Lydon knows well: She went through the program when she was 14. When the talent and dedication she exhibited earned her an invitation to stay and train with ABT, her family sold their house in California and moved to New York. After dancing professionally with San Francisco Ballet and ABT, and working with dance publications and ABT in multiple roles, Lydon came to St. Paul’s School in 2018.
When did you begin dancing?
I started ballet and tap with my neighbor when I was three. She often played the “Swan Lake” soundtrack and my imagination would just take off. I thought it was the greatest thing. The music and the stories you can tell and using your imagination is what drew me to dancing.
After a busy year at SPS, why teach over the summer?
People who talk about ballet a lot are called bunheads, and being at ABT is a full bunhead experience. We’re ballet nerds and we nerd out all summer long and it’s really fun. I get a short break before and after ABT, but being here is inspiring because the kids are great and have so much energy; they absorb everything and have such desire to be in New York. The faculty and the experience of being in the city are also big draws; if I’m not teaching, I can pop into any studio and watch amazing dancers teaching. I learn so much. When it’s time to go back to Concord, though, I’m ready. I love the contrast.
How much SPS have you been able to inject into ABT and vice versa?
The programs work together well. Every fall when I return to SPS, I bring back new information about teaching, working with young people and ideas for guest artists. The programs feed each other nicely.
How do the two dance environments differ?
One of the most important things about growing up is being balanced, and I really value students who are driven in all areas. At SPS, we see that student a lot. They’re striving for excellence in, say, calculus and ballet class. They may not want to do either for a living, but they want to understand and perform both well. SPS students are so smart and constantly interact with amazing teachers who are passionate about what they do — they’re their discipline’s version of the bunhead.
We have those kids at ABT, too, but a lot of them are striving to become professional dancers so they want to live in the ballet world all the time. It is so valuable to have other interests and to learn about other things, though. If you don’t, you burn out. If you’re going to tell stories through dance, you have to know and be inspired by the world.
What do you want your students to know about the ballet world?
Dancers, especially young ones, need to [understand] that the more they can learn from the class and their peers and the more they can involve themselves, the better it’ll be for them. As a teacher, you’re constantly helping them figure out how to learn best on their own in a situation and in a group. One of the challenging things, especially with a ballet intensive, is that every dancer wants to be at the center. But there’s value in every position. That means there’s no limit to the number of students who can make it.
So, to learn to buoy and to learn from one another is really what we want to do so that everybody gets better. It comes down to your mindset. It takes a long time and a lot of patience to accomplish anything, but that’s ballet. You fail and you try again. What holds it all together is if the benefits outweigh the challenges and the difficulty, which for me, it does.
OPPOSITE PAGE: Kate Lydon at 14 during her first summer with American Ballet Theatre.
THIS PAGE: Lydon outside the ABT studio, in the city where she loves to walk and people watch when she’s not teaching.
PHOTOS: MIchael Seamans
ACT II: COMMUNITY LULU MANGRIOTIS ’25, SOKOLOFF PRIZE FOR COMPASSION AND KINDNESS RECIPIENT
For two weeks this summer, the ballet student became the teacher: With funds awarded to her for receiving the Sokoloff Prize for Compassion and Kindness, Lulu Mangriotis ’25 designed and implemented a program to introduce two dozen 6- and 7-year-olds to ballet.
Mangriotis grew up dancing in New York City, starting at age 2; by 7, she was training and performing with the School of American Ballet — what she calls an opportunity of a lifetime. Now a member of the St. Paul’s School Ballet Company (SPSBC) and a volunteer with the Friends Program, which matches an SPS student with a local child for mentoring, Mangriotis combined her interests in dance and community service to create a new offering for the Harlem YMCA’s summer camp.
“I was really keen on creating something tangible and lasting, because it opens up the opportunity for human connection,” says Mangriotis. “It was really important for me to help other people and to contribute to something I love, which is dance.”
positions and steps, they made sure to show videos of dancers like Misty Copeland so their young students would know what’s possible within the world of ballet.
“It was all about opening the door to ballet, and some of the kids really took to it,” Mangriotis says. “Being a teacher, being on the other side, was so interesting and eye opening. I really reached back to remember how I learned, but then I also had to learn how to let the kids have fun, which ended up being a short dance battle at the end of each session in which they had to incorporate a step learned that day.”
“BEING A TEACHER, BEING ON THE OTHER SIDE, WAS SO INTERESTING AND EYE OPENING. I REALLY REACHED BACK TO REMEMBER HOW I LEARNED.”
By program’s end, after a final performance complete with tutus and applause, 16 of the young dancers were interested in continuing to dance. Mangriotis donated the barres and other equipment purchased with the grant to the Y, and she compiled a list of organizations and other resources that could help open the door to ballet lessons even wider.
Knowing she would need help, Mangriotis recruited her friend and SPSBC co-captain Caroline Walsh ’25. Together, they ordered and assembled barres for the studio, and once they knew the dancers’ sizes, they purchased ballet slippers, white shirts and tights for the boys, and skirts and leotards for the girls.
Over the course of two weeks, the duo devoted themselves to presenting ballet as a creative, athletic and artistic endeavor. And, in addition to teaching the basic
“ They have what they need to get started, I think,” she says. “If I can, I’d like to go back next summer and check in on the kids and maybe do another week or two.”
As for her own ballet classes back at SPS, Mangriotis sees them a little differently now, with a newfound appreciation for the planning and logistics behind each one.
“When Caroline and I get to do our captains’ classes, we’re not just going to take everyone to the barre and start freestyling,” she says with a laugh. “Those are going to be well thought out ahead of time, with lots of preparation.”
ACT III: JOY MATTEO LORENZO-GIGUERE ’25, DEVOTED DANCER
There’s a hint of Icy Hot in the humid July air around Matteo Lorenzo-Giguere ’25 as he takes a rare break to sit outside his dorm at Lincoln Center in New York City.
It’s week three of the five-week-long Summer Course at School of American Ballet, and Lorenzo-Giguere is feeling the intensity of long days full of technique, partnering, variations and contemporary classes, Pilates and weight training, and rehearsals that will build to a performance at session’s end. He’s contending with shin splints and some aching muscles — and he’s happy, in a hard-toput-into-words, tired-but-satisfied kind of way.
“I feel like all ballet dancers are perfectionists, and I just want to see what I can do better and how to improve,” he says of his decision to attend the highly selective program. “Right now, I’m just getting better. This is just that additional push in addition to what we do in the SPS Ballet Company.”
It’s a push that nearly didn’t happen, as Lorenzo-Giguere came close to quitting ballet in middle school — then, he found it stressful and joyless. His mother, a former professional flamenco dancer, said he could quit if he really wanted to but warned him that if he did and changed his mind, it would be difficult to resume. He stuck with it and followed his brother, Marco ’21, a 2023-24 Dance Fellow at BalletX, to St. Paul’s School.
“At SPS, I started enjoying ballet a lot more because I loved the people in the company and having that
support system was helpful,” he says. “And I really like Ms. Lydon as a teacher. She’s compassionate and really helped me. I’ve discovered there are different styles of ballet that I like to do. There’s not just the one way I started out knowing.”
As his once dedicated-but-cool relationship to ballet warmed at SPS, Lorenzo-Giguere surprised himself — and his family — by devoting more and more of his own time and energy to dance, from writing a capstone paper that helped him learn about ballet’s history to dancing during the summers and discovering a love for choreography.
“I honestly don’t feel like I’m expressing anything about myself when I dance, but when I choreograph, I am saying something about myself, and I love to do that,” he says, noting that he likes to help others improve. “But I’m not really thinking about how high you can get your leg, I’m thinking about how you can match the piano in every single way when you move — can you be the music?”
With a new menu of ways in which to inhabit the dance world, Lorenzo-Giguere is living in the moment and enjoying it all, and he thinks he’s finally figured out what dance means to him.
“It’s almost like cooking for other people,” he says. “I love doing that because it’s a way to bring them joy. And I love to dance, because it makes me happy, but at the end of the day, it’s entertainment that makes other people feel happy and uplifted, too.”
Nick Rusher ’18, then (above) and now, with sisters (l. to .r) Kay Rusher ’12 and Alie Rusher ’14. PHOTOS: Courtesy Rusher Family
A Dream
Realized
Second-generation Olympic rower
Nick Rusher ’18 brings home bronze
Nick Rusher ’18 was cycling to an earlymorning practice with the U.S. men’s national rowing team in mid-November 2023 when a car ran a red light. Hitting his brakes hard to avoid a collision, Rusher crashed and felt his arm break. In a moment, his dream of competing in the Paris 2024 Olympics wavered.
LARRY CLOW
“It was a bad break,” he says of the fracture to his radius. “When the doctor first saw me, she said that it would likely take six to eight weeks to heal. I thought my Olympic dream was over at that point.”
It was a dream Rusher had been nurturing since his college days — both of his parents and one of his older sisters had competed in the Olympic Games as members of the U.S. national rowing team, and he was intent on following in their footsteps. But with less than a year until the Games in Paris, Rusher faced a choice.
“I was feeling really sorry for myself. I could either accept my lot and give up my goal, or I could commit 100% to the process,” he says. “I had put too much of my life into training, though, and knew that I had to fully commit.”
“Getting to the Olympics takes more work than you think you can do, and the cards all have to fall your way.”
Within two weeks, Rusher was back to training on a rowing machine. “The way I broke my arm, I could sort of just hang on to the oar,” he says. After five weeks, he had full range of motion. And nine months later, Rusher stood on a podium in Paris, receiving a bronze medal with his men’s eight teammates after sitting 2-seat to turn in a time of 5:25.28, just behind Great Britain and the Netherlands.
“It doesn’t really hit you until you’re on the podium,” he says. “The heaviness of the medal solidifies your accomplishment.”
Though he comes from a family of rowers, it wasn’t always a given that Rusher would pursue the sport. His parents encouraged him to find his own passion, and in his search, he played soccer, hockey and baseball, swam competitively and took up classical guitar and birdwatching. When he arrived at St. Paul’s School in 2014, his parents, Jack Rusher ’85 and Cynthia Eckert, gently pushed him to try rowing. He was willing.
Though his parents’ accomplishments inspired him, Rusher approached rowing on his own terms and quickly embraced the sport. Rowing for Shattuck, as his father and two sisters had before him, he started out in the boys second eight boat as a Third Former, then rowed with the first eight for the next three years. He was part of the crews that captured bronze and silver medals in the 2016 and 2017 NEIRA championships, respectively, and as a Sixth Former, he was selected to serve as crew captain and awarded the Varsity Boys Coaches Award. More than the accolades, though, he loved being on the water and being part of a team; the feeling of mutual support and the pursuit of a common goal were rewarding on their own.
He continued to row in college at Yale, and the dream of competing in the Olympics started to take shape in earnest. In 2021, Rusher won a silver medal in the U.S.
With the smile of an athlete whose Olympic dream has been realized, Rusher waves to the Paris crowd after Team USA secures its first medal in the men’s eight since the 2008 Beijing Games. PHOTO: Sarah Phipps - Imagn Images
men’s eight at the U23 World Championship. The summer before his senior year, he went on a training trip with a former U.S. national team coach and raced against Olympians. That same year, he secured a spot on the U.S. national team that placed fourth in the U.S. men’s eight at the Senior World Championships. “I was all in after that; I bet the house on making it to the Olympics,” Rusher says.
Even with hundreds of hours of hard work and training, getting to the Games was a gamble. “It takes more work than you think you can do, and the cards all have to fall your way — you have to be in the right place and work hard and put in more miles than you think on the water and on the erg and in the weight room,” he says.
In Paris, Rusher and his teammates — only one of whom had previously competed in an Olympics — raced during the first week of the Games. Rowing is as much a mental sport as it is physical; a team has to move and think as one, focusing intensely on the rhythm of the boat and not letting other competitors break that rhythm. With that in mind, the team’s strategy was simple. “We wanted other crews to respond to us; we didn’t want to be reactionary,” Rusher says.
That strategy, though, was tested during the men’s rowing finals. “We had an okay first half of the race,” he says.
All in the Family
“We were definitely on the hunt, but we weren’t leading like we wanted to. By the second half, we had more traction and were creeping into second place.” By the last 200 meters, the two lead boats had defended their positions, and Rusher’s boat knew they had secured the bronze — Team USA’s first medal in the discipline since the 2008 Beijing Games. “It was a tough race, and I think we did a decent job,” he says. “We were a really young crew.”
After the race, Rusher and his family walked to a small pub, where he received a standing ovation from the 100 or so fans who were packed inside. It was one of many surreal moments for Rusher.
“Being part of the U.S. delegation and walking into a stadium of people chanting ‘USA!’ … I will never forget that,” he says.
Rusher is pursuing a master’s in science by research in pediatrics at the University of Oxford in England and hopes to eventually pursue a career in cancer research. For now, he already has his sights set on the next Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. “I’m rowing at Oxford, too, and my goal is to row for the U.S. national team in 2028,” he says. “Being in Paris made me excited about the potential of racing in front of a crowd at home in the U.S.”
Rowing dreams run in the Rusher family and have taken two generations around the world. Jack Rusher ’85 and Cynthia Eckert met while on the U.S. national rowing team in the 1980s. Both competed in the 1988 and 1992 Olympics; Jack brought home a bronze medal from Seoul in 1988, and Cynthia won a silver in Barcelona in 1992. All three of their children have had notable rowing careers: Nick’s oldest sister Kathryn “Kay” ’12 was a four-year varsity rower at Stanford, competed at the Henley Royal Regatta and was named an All-American; Alison “Alie” ’14 competed at Stanford and in the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics.
“I remember my mom’s posters from Barcelona hanging in the hallway of my childhood house,” Nick Rusher says. “For me, it was in the background. I didn’t realize how special it was to have two parents who’d competed in the Olympics.”
While he is the fourth member of his family to make the U.S. national rowing team and journey to the Olympics, Rusher says he never felt pressured to pursue the sport. “I feel like I’ve been on this upward trajectory; my parents let me do it at my own pace rather than push me,” he says.
They similarly encouraged him to make his Olympic experience his own. “They were really happy to give me advice when I asked for it, but otherwise, they just told me to enjoy every minute, to soak up as much of the experience as I could,” he says. The best advice he received was from his grandfather, who urged him to keep a journal documenting his time in Paris. “It really encouraged me to stay in the moment,” he says.
At SPS, Jack and Alie’s names are already included on the exhibit in the Athletic and Fitness Center honoring the School’s Olympic athletes. Soon, Nick’s will be added just below his father’s in the column of bronze medal winners.
The Rusher family is never far from water. Home again, Alie ’14, Cynthia, Jack ’85, Kay ’12 and Nick ’18 show their Team USA pride — and the three Olympic medals between them.
Where are they now?
As the Applied Science and Engineering Program prepares to graduate its 10th cohort, its alumni can be found in school and at work around the globe, continuing their journeys in STEM that took root at SPS.
IAN ALDRICH
Yutaro Shimamura ’17, a project manager for the Mitsubishi Corporation’s clean energy division, visits a hydropower equipment factory in India. COURTESY PHOTOS
In the fall of 2005, Technology Teacher Terry Wardrop ’73, P’97,’97 received a call from a friend in the Computer Science Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Over the summer, the professor had hosted rising Sixth Former Mike Mester ’06 for a monthlong internship in his computer science and artificial intelligence lab. Impressed by Mester’s intellect and his ability to work alongside MIT researchers, he told Wardrop, “If you have any more kids like this, please send them along.”
The seeds for an innovative high school curriculum had just been planted. Eventually, they grew into a program designed to challenge and prepare the most eager scientific minds in Millville.
In its 10 years, the Applied Science and Engineering Program (ASEP) has offered a project-based, individuallearning STEM curriculum to 118 SPS students and counting. Built on the early work of Wardrop and fellow teachers Rick Pacelli P’05,’13, Joe Holland, P’12 and, later, Will Renauld, the program now provides 12 selected students each year with exceptional opportunities to explore their interests in science and related fields with an eye toward their college studies and beyond. The centerpiece of the experience is a summer externship after students’ Fifth Form year; this summer was the 10th that participants have used the opportunity to study a vast array of interests, including engineering, astronomy, computer science and biology.
“When we proposed it, we didn’t really know what to expect,” says Wardrop, who retired from SPS in 2020 after 37 years of teaching. “But we got 10 kids that first year, when we thought we’d get three or four. And not only did we get 10 kids, we got them lined up with unbelievable programs. I remember thinking afterward, ‘That was lucky. Who would’ve thought we could have such success?’ But then it happened again the following year and it’s continued to happen. That to me has been the most gratifying thing about it all.”
It’s rigorous, demanding work, of course, but the success of the program can be seen in the careers that many of its past participants have built. In cutting-edge research labs, at blossoming start-ups, and at some of the world’s leading tech companies, you’ll find ASEP alumni who are making a difference in their chosen fields while also leaving their unique marks on the world.
new school. “Now she’s a senior about to publish a paper and is applying for Ph.D. programs,” says Boylan. “She’s going to have her pick of schools because of her experience.”
Pargiolas is one of many success stories that began with ASEP. We recently caught up with five graduates of the program to see where life, and this curriculum, helped steer them.
Music to His Ears
BRUNSTON POON ’16
A few minutes into a conversation with Brunston Poon ’16 and one thing becomes obvious: There’s little he couldn’t do if he set his mind to it. Case in point: In his off-time Poon plays the carillon, a pitched percussion instrument that uses a keyboard to control an assortment of keys and bells. His introduction to it came at SPS, when he was offered the chance to play the 23-bell Houghton Memorial Carillon in the Chapel of St. Peter and St. Paul, and over the years he’s performed concerts in his home state of California and in Europe.
“I’m still friends with several folks from the program ... you can say [ASEP] was really a jumping off point for my career.”
“One of the goals of a St. Paul’s education is to become a lifelong learner, and that’s what this program, in particular, instills,” says ASEP Director Sarah Boylan, who teaches chemistry and biology at SPS. “And the kind of work they do gives them such a leg up as they go out into the world.”
Consider Isabella Pargiolas ’21, now a senior at the University of Pennsylvania, who did her ASEP externship on immunotherapy. Within her first year at college, Pargiolas leveraged her SPS experience to get a job in the lab at her
The carillon is not an obvious instrument of choice, and that’s kind of the point, Poon says.
“I am drawn to the carillon by the way the richness of the bells and their ringing overtones hang in the air, and how that sonority becomes part of the landscape of the place in which the carillon is situated,” says Poon, who is an assistant carillonist at University of California, Berkeley; he is studying at the Royal Carillon School in Mechelen, Belgium, and is slated to perform at a large carillon festival in Perpignan, France.
“Making music is my creative wellspring and how I maintain creativity in other aspects of my life. It also cultivates playfulness and well-being,” he says. “It’s also connected to my career. Every time I lean deeper into my work, I also lean deeply into my music, and the former is better for it.”
Work life has anchored him in the French city of Toulouse, where Poon is a space infrastructure software engineer for Loft Orbital, an aerospace startup that deploys and maintains space infrastructure, largely satellites, for companies around the world. In the competitive environment of space-focused tech, Loft is scaling quickly. This year, it conducted two satellite launches. Next year, they are planning several more.
“I’m the commissioning lead for a satellite called YAM-7,” says Poon, who began at Loft after graduating from UC Berkeley in 2020 with a B.S. in electrical engineering and computer science. “That basically entails being responsible for making sure that the entire satellite platform is ready to support the customer mission.”
From pre-launch software integration and configurations to the post-launch effort of maintaining the satellite’s stable operation, it’s creative but demanding work that feeds Poon’s multiple interests in the field. There are all the technical details that must be pored over to ensure the success and operation of a satellite, of course, but then there’s Loft’s bigger mission to democratize and simplify access to reliable space infrastructure.
“By putting multiple payloads from different customers on a single satellite, you are vastly increasing the efficiency of that single platform in space,” Poon says. While reducing overall the quantity of satellites required to perform a given number of missions, he adds, Loft is simultaneously opening up the tech to companies and services that previously may not have had easy access to it. And that has had significant implications for how we understand our own planet, from gathering detailed information on agricultural patterns in South America to monitoring the Atlantic Ocean.
For Poon, who was a member of ASEP’s first externship cohort in 2015 and the first full class of graduates, and whose college summer internship experiences included stints at Google, SpaceX and Lockheed Martin, the opportunity to be part of a nimble, fast-growing startup has been thrilling. It’s also reminiscent of his ASEP experience, when he bootstrapped a DSLR camera to create an inexpensive system that could look at the wavelength composition of light from a star.
“I had a chance to work at all these great companies, but I wanted to discover my strengths and try a lot of things,” he says. “I’m still friends with several folks from the program and in some ways you can say [ASEP] was really a jumping off point for my career. If you trace the internships that have been professionally relevant to me and the experiences that I’ve gained through those, they all really started with the one I did for ASEP.”
An Engineer’s Mindset
SOPHIE PESEK ’16
If the world is ever going to fully address the complicated issues around climate equity, it’s going to need minds like that of Sophie Pesek ’16. Currently a second-year Ph.D. student at the University of California, Berkeley Energy and Resources Group, Pesek is a multi-disciplinarian at heart, and she’s bringing an engineer’s mindset and a passion for economics to help vulnerable communities deal with issues around environmental change.
“You don’t really know what’s going to happen until you get in there and start doing the work.”
“It’s important to me that the work I do has real-world impact,” says Pesek, who graduated from Harvard University in 2020 with a B.A. in environmental science and engineering. “My dream is to one day work for a government or even a multi-government organization to implement environmental policies.”
Over the last several years, Pesek’s curiosity and drive have taken her around the globe. During her time at Harvard, she worked on initiatives around fresh water access in Tanzania and Kenya, rising seas in Suriname, waste treatment measures in Ghana, and the use of heat pump technology in China.
The work in Ghana was an important pivot point in her career. “There are a lot of unglamorous questions about sanitation and infrastructure that often get overlooked,” she says. “But if garbage overflows and blocks storm drains, [and] then there’s a flash flood, that creates a lot of serious issues. When I arrived in Ghana, people had gotten hurt the previous year from that exact situation. It was my first foray into very data-driven work, and it gave me a clearer view of the patterns and more systemic problems that need to be addressed.”
A fearlessness to explore the unknown goes back to Pesek’s days at St. Paul’s School, where she turned an untested interest in computer science into an ASEP externship at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Falmouth, Massachusetts. There, she piloted drones and used mapping technologies to create 3D images of the state’s coastline to understand the environmental changes it’s been weathering.
“It was pretty empowering to realize that I could try something new, problem-solve, and actually create something,” Pesek says of her ASEP experience. “It was also great in terms of building this very adaptive skillset. You don’t really know what’s going to happen until you get in there and start doing the work. And for better or for worse, a lot of my research since then has been learn-as-you-go, problem-solve and adapt. In that sense, it was so helpful.”
For Pesek, the ASEP work that followed once she was back at school was equally as valuable to what she’s doing now. “It’s self-motivated research, and being able to ask questions and do research on your own is kind of unusual for high schoolers,” she says. “But that’s the work that drives progress, and Ph.D. students struggle with it all the time. The fact that I got to do that as a high schooler is kind of crazy.”
Clean Energy Dreams
YUTARO SHIMAMURA ’17
On March 11, 2011, Yutaro Shimamura ’17 was a 13-yearold sixth grader when the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami devastated the Fukushima region of Japan. Living an hour north of Tokyo, Shimamura and his family were spared from the extreme toll of the disaster, but the memory of what happened, in particular the disastrous meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, still very much lives on in him.
“So many people died and so many more were affected in other ways,” he says. “And so many people had to survive without electricity. It was horrible, but it also taught me the importance of energy, and I knew I wanted to do something that positively impacts many people. From that point of view, I realized everybody needs electricity. How we make it is important.”
Today, Shimamura is doing just that as a project manager for the Mitsubishi Corporation’s clean energy division in northern Japan. The thrust of his work is focused on overseeing the replacement of five new hydropower plants there that will potentially be able to provide electricity to nearly 30,000 Japanese households. In a country that still largely relies on coal to power its grid, Shimamura is well aware of the importance of making renewable energy and hopes that what he does will help achieve carbon neutrality.
On any given day, Shimamura wears many hats. His is a job that places him in the middle of a project among building contractors, engineers, bankers, investors,
lawyers and others. Shimamura is responsible for managing finance and contract-related matters.
“It’s hard work and at times it can be very stressful, but I am able to find a sense of purpose and satisfaction ... by working honestly. I feel an even greater sense of fulfillment when I earn the trust from the stakeholders. This trust further enhances my motivation and job satisfaction,” he says. “I know I’ve grown a lot in this position.”
It’s all a bit of a departure from Shimamura’s days as an ASEP student, when he focused his work on molecular biology and landed an externship at Saitama University’s biology laboratory in Saitama, Japan, where he researched
“I knew I wanted to do something that positively impacts many people.”
leptin production and caravan behavior in mice.
At the University of Toronto, Shimamura majored in civil engineering with a minor in sustainable energy, intent on working in renewables. “I knew engineering requires a lot of scientific knowledge and an advanced skillset,” he says. “But I figured if I could survive four years of the work at Toronto, I could do many of the things I wanted to do.”
As Shimamura considers his future, he hopes he can build off his work in Japan to direct bigger projects in other parts of the world.
“I’m optimistic that we can promote renewable energy around the world to make a difference,” he says.
Family Ties
EREN KELES ’19
When he was six years old, Eren Keles’ father, an orthodontist, fitted him with a palate expander — a device that improves bite alignment and creates room for any crowded teeth. Micro adjustments of the device are made over time by inserting a small key into a tiny 1 mm hole to unlock the expander’s movement and widen the jaw. A difficult task, pediatric patients need an adult to activate the expander daily for up to 60 days. Patients often misplace the key in that time, and Eren was no exception. After his father trudged back to his office for a third time to retrieve a replacement, the Form of 2019 graduate asked his dad an obvious question — who is going to develop an expander that doesn’t require a separate component?
“[ASEP] pushed me to think critically about my work. To ask tough questions, even when the answers aren’t convenient or easy.”
“I remember telling him how much I hated this process and wanted something different,” says Keles, who grew up in Istanbul, Turkey, where his dad maintains a private practice. “And that got my father thinking, and it put us on a path to create something new.”
Now, their company, Aegis Star Dental Technologies (ASDT), is set to debut the Keles Keyless Expander,* a patented single component device that is adjusted with a built-in directional lever. Co-invented by Eren, who is in his second year at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, and his father, a longtime lecturer at the school, their device is FDA registered and will hit the market in 2025.
“It’s exciting,” says Keles, who followed his older brother Can Keles ’17 to SPS before moving on to Northwestern University, where he studied speech pathology and earned the Segal Design Certificate. “To finally be at a point where we can bring this to market is a dream.”
But it’s also been a journey, says Eren, chock full of success and failure. He led the design implementation of combining the key and the expander, like a wrench system, to make it easier to use, but multiple designs were scuttled; in the very early years, Dr. Keles struggled to get his hands on the kind of technology that would allow him to develop a proper prototype. They persevered, though — built into their methodology was a determination that Eren says he honed as an ASEP student studying molecular biology.
pushed me to think critically about my work. To ask tough questions, even when the answers aren’t convenient or easy. Engineering goes hand in hand with biological and clinical research, especially in medical and dental device development. Sixteen-year-old me never would have guessed that I’d be using the computerized version of a machine I first used in the SPS lab to serial produce my own dental device, let alone get a few hundred orders before launch.”
Keles also credits ASEP for teaching him how to write scholarly articles; he’s been published twice, and will be again in the new year.
At the moment, Eren’s schedule sounds impossibly busy. He’s a full-time student and he’s the CEO of a startup packed with ambitions that extend far beyond his company’s first product line. As CEO, he’s leading product design and development, regulatory compliance, brand development, business planning and go-to-market strategy, plus he liaises with manufacturers, laboratories, distributors, investors and other partners.
“I’m probably only sleeping four or five hours a night,” Eren says with a laugh. “But this is what I want to do and you have to love it because there are so many deterrents that hold you back. I have a lot of ideas: I want to teach, I want to run this company, I want to have my own clinic. It’s a lot but it’s also fun. I like having goals.”
“ That’s the first time I was exposed to real research,” says Eren, who did his externship at Harvard. “And it
*All intellectual property rights to the Keles Keyless Expander belong to Aegis Star Dental Technologies, Inc.
Higher Calling
ASHLEY DAVIDSON ’20
Last summer, Ashley Davidson ’20 had an “opportunity of a lifetime” when she interned at SpaceX, the world’s leading private manufacturer and launch service provider of rockets and spacecraft. Over the course of her 11 weeks at the company’s Los Angeles headquarters, Davidson was a member of the multi-body dynamics engineering team and its work on Starship, SpaceX’s flagship Mars vehicle. While still in early development, the spacecraft is the largest and most powerful rocket ever developed, and Davidson spent her time modeling and simulating how the big booster that will propel it into space would be caught in two giant mechanical arms on the launch tower upon its return to the ground (work that proved successful when the booster catch went to plan during Starship Test Flight 5 on Oct. 13). The days were long, precise and exhilarating.
“It was amazing because you got to see the results of your work immediately,” says Davidson, a senior at Stanford University, where she is majoring in engineering physics and pursuing a concurrent M.S. in mechanical engineering. “At one point, I made an update to a model and sent it to my mentor. I asked him when it might be implemented, and he said, ‘It’s already being used.’ I couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t where people were checking and rechecking your work. You were really trusted to come up with the right numbers and move the process up the line.”
“It sounds lofty, but I want to find a way to contribute to changing the course of humanity.”
Overall, the work was another important step forward in Davidson’s plan to launch her own career in aerospace engineering. She’s certainly building the résumé to do so. Previously, Davidson interned at Boeing as a product design engineer on the Space Electronics One Boeing team, and next summer she’s slated to return to SpaceX to continue work on Starship.
“It sounds lofty, but I want to find a way to contribute to changing the course of humanity,” Davidson says. “For me, space and getting humans to Mars is the biggest possible engineering goal to have, and I’m really motivated to be a part of that.”
To anyone who knows Davidson, none of this would sound surprising. A self-described “sci-fi nerd” as a kid, the Connecticut native grew up on a steady diet of “Star Wars” movies, science-fiction novels and dreams about the possibility of extraterrestrial life.
At SPS, Davidson leveraged her ASEP experience into a summer externship at MIT, where she was immersed in the search for undiscovered exoplanets. “I got to sit in on sessions where people would look at the data and debate the findings,” she says. “Do we think this is an exoplanet? Do we think it’s an eclipsing binary star? Do we think it’s just noise? It was really the first time where I got a view of what life could actually look like if I used my passion for space to build a career.”
Recently, SpaceX reported its aim of landing five uncrewed Starship rockets on the surface of Mars by 2026, with a manned expedition planned two years later. Davidson has high hopes that her career can continue at the company after she graduates from Stanford.
“My dream is to be working on a mission to make human life interplanetary,” she says. “Getting to actually experience a launch and help be in charge of a launch would be incredible.”
CIRCLE OF HOPE: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church
Eliza Griswold ’91
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, August 2024
In 2019, Eliza Griswold ’91 won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for her book “Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America,” a gripping report about social upheaval as the result of widespread fracking in Pennsylvania.
TAKING BACK THE GROOVE and FACING THE FALLS
Celia Aniskovich ’10, director and producer Dial Tone Films
Nearly 10 years after its inception, director Celia Aniskovich ’10 premiered her latest short documentary on Dec. 3, International Day of Persons with Disabilities.
“Facing the Falls” tells the story of international disability rights advocate Cara Yar
For her new book, Griswold returns to the commonwealth for a different kind of study: the multiple threats, mostly internal, that have faced a small church in the Philadelphia area. But while “Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church” dissects the lives of this church’s founders and pastors, the themes it discloses could apply to other American religions, and indeed to communities of other kinds, from towns to families. The theme resonates with Griswold’s own upbringing in Christianity, as the daughter of The Most Rev. Frank Tracy Griswold III ’55, the former presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, who died in 2023.
Described by Griswold as “hippie church planters from Southern California,” Rod and Gwen White founded Circle of Hope in 1996, with evangelistic fervor “to come East and bring young people to Jesus.” Resettled, they joined the Brethren in Christ (BIC), a small conservative denomination of Anabaptists. With faith in pacifism and simplicity, the church would “welcome misfits and mess, as Jesus had.”
Khan, who lives with the rare and aggressive muscle wasting disease, hereditary inclusion body myopathy, as she sets out to cross the Grand Canyon from rim to rim on a mission to be a beacon of representation for the disability community. Over the 12-day expedition on horseback and whitewater raft, Cara’s journey becomes one of self-discovery and perseverance.
Executive produced by Hillary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton, the 35-minute piece is an adventure film and an act of advocacy.
“Around 15 percent of the world’s population, or 1.3 billion people, live with a disability,” Aniskovich says. “People with disabilities are not a monolith and … I wanted to make a film that shares one woman’s lived experience
But peace can go only so far.
The book details the evolving relationships among the pastors of the four Circle of Hope congregations. Rachel, Julie, Jonny and the Whites’ son, Ben, established these groups to answer the founders’ question, “How do we do community in a healthy way?”
Eventually, that “health” began to show signs of disorder, especially when it came to issues of racism and homophobia.
The reader may pause to wonder how it was possible for the author to listen to so many conversations and to peer inside the participants’ mind. It was, in the end, a matter of gaining trust — the foundation of Griswold’s career as a journalist. She asked the four pastors if she could immerse herself in their lives as a reporter to follow a group of people attempting to live with Christ at the center of all things; their acceptance allows for Griswold’s empathic but unsparing observation, as she reveals how challenging it can be for people of good faith to stay faithful to each other.
— Michael Matros
in the hope that it will encourage all people to live their truth, and showcase the strength, resilience and limitless potential of people with disabilities.”
Released in September, Aniskovich also directed “Taking Back the Groove,” which she produced alongside Roddy Lindsay ’03 and Wu-Tang Clan’s Raekwon, who signed on as executive producer.
The documentary focuses on Bronx-born disco superstar Richie Weeks, whose hit song “Rock Your World” made it to the top of the dance charts in the ’80s. Weeks and his manager, Jerome Derradji narrate the story of how they clawed back the rights to Weeks’ music and restored his legacy.
Find both films on YouTube.
FOSTERING A COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY
Why teach philosophy in a war-torn country? Dr. Josh Duclos, SPS humanities teacher, took on that question in an essay published in the journal Studia Philosophica Estonica that he coauthored with Ukranian Catholic University professor Orysya Bila. He addressed the
intrinsic value of teaching philosophy in wartime Ukraine, outlining the manner in which the academic discipline can help cultivate democratic citizenship through habits of thought and action.
READ ESSAY
“THE MORE WE ENGAGE, THE MORE WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE. IF ANYONE NEEDS TO HEAR THIS: YOU MIGHT THINK THAT CERTAIN OPPORTUNITIES ARE OUT OF YOUR REACH, BUT YOU ARE CLOSING THAT DOOR BEFORE EVEN TRYING. IF I HAD ASSUMED ST. PAUL’S WOULD NOT ACCEPT ME, I WOULD’VE BEEN LEFT WONDERING WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN, BUT THEY DID ACCEPT ME, AS DID TUFTS, COLUMBIA AND THE HISPANIC FEDERATION, BECAUSE I REFUSE TO CLOSE THAT DOOR MYSELF. ... AT TIMES, WE WAIT FOR AN INVITATION TO PARTICIPATE AND CONNECT. THERE ARE TIMES WHEN THAT INVITATION WILL NOT COME. THERE WILL BE TIMES WHEN YOU FEEL LIKE YOU DO NOT BELONG, BUT YOU DO.”
— DIANA CABA ’01 Vice president for community and economic development at the Hispanic Federation, which is dedicated to advancing Latino causes, visited the School on Oct. 15.
RECENT EVENTS
Community Gatherings
On Aug. 27, the SPS BIPOC Alumni Advisory Council hosted a rooftop soirée in New York City and enjoyed community, conversation and stunning views. In September, SPS held events in Menlo Park, CA, and Denver, CO; a special thanks to Holly and Joe Michaud P’23,’28 for hosting at the Denver Country Club. In October, SPS was represented at an Eight Schools Association networking event in Austin, TX, and at the New Orleans Prep School Connection Football Watch Party. Also in October, XIX Society Chair Jeanette Richmond ’79, P’17,’23 hosted a private tour at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
back: Tommy Thomas '85, Nelson Williams '87 and Mia Guild '12.
In Support of Squash
On Oct. 23, Trustee Amachie Ackah ’90, P’28 and Chris Smith P’28, SPS athletic director and head coach of the boys and girls varsity squash teams, gathered friends and supporters of SPS squash courtside at the quarterfinal round of the U.S. Open Squash Championships in Philadelphia.
In Chicago, Monique Washington ’87 and Caryn Cross Hawk ’76, P’09, hosted a BIPOC alumni gathering on Sept. 26. Front: Erica Yang '10, Monique, Shoshanah Yehudah '93; middle: Jorge Silva '08, Caryn, Chanelle GilchristWilliams '95;
John Musto ’87 and Curtis Silva P’20; Carra Cote-Ackah P’28, Townsend Baldwin ’92, David Fleischner ’91, P’20’23 and Amachie Ackah ’90, P’28.
New York City
College Dinners
St. Paul’s School alumni attending college were invited to catch up over dinner at the start of the academic year to reconnect and hear the latest about the School. Dinners were held in Charlottesville, VA; Washington, D.C.; Providence, RI; Waterville, ME; Cambridge, MA.; Hartford and New Haven, CT; New York City and Clinton, NY.
SEE MORE ALUMNI EVENT PHOTOS
IN MILLVILLE AND BEYOND
JANUARY
29 Luncheon for the Forms of 1942-66
New York City
FEBRUARY
6 Alumni and Parent Reception with Chief Advancement Officer
Scott Bohan ’94, P’24,’25 Miami, FL
19 XIX Society Seated Meal Various locations
MAY
2-3 Anniversary Weekend St. Paul’s School
Visit sps.edu/events often as more opportunities to connect are added.
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Farewell to AlumniFire
After many discussions with alumni, we have decided to transition away from AlumniFire and fully utilize the Alumni of St. Paul's School private LinkedIn group. This group is a platform for sharing your experience and expertise as well as provide information about upcoming SPS alumni events and networking opportunities, alumni spotlights, career and internship openings and more.
SEE ALUMNI LINKEDIN PAGE
New York City
Watervillle, ME
New Haven, CT
time to write
Caryn Cross Hawk ’76 has a bucket list, and she’s just crossed off her top item
KATE DUNLOP
The only child of high school sweethearts who both began their careers as educators, Caryn Cross Hawk ’76, P’09 grew up in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago.
A self-proclaimed loner and introvert, the younger Cross Hawk loved to write — letters to friends when she was at summer camp and to family when she was at St. Paul’s School, stories and essays, in diaries and journals. A keen people watcher, she honed her character development and observation skills as a psychology major at Harvard University, then focused on an MBA from the University of Chicago. All that time, she refrained from sharing her personal writing with anyone but her teachers and a few family members.
As a young professional, Cross Hawk submerged her love for creative writing to focus on building her career. She worked for United Airlines and two major accounting firms, married and had a family and navigated a diabetes diagnosis. The prospect of living with a chronic disease inspired her to establish a community-based diabetes education and support ministry targeting metropolitan Chicago. The group met every month from 1999 until 2020 to hear healthcare professionals address aspects of living with diabetes, and she organized screenings and fundraisers. “It made me feel useful and happy that people would come and they’d say it was helpful to them,” Cross Hawk says. “That’s gratifying to me, to be able to help somebody.”
In 2012, she joined the American Bar Association (ABA) as the director of its Science & Technology Law Section, where she stayed for nearly a decade before retiring. By then, she had grown into an active servant-leader intent on connecting with her colleagues and helping them to reach their full potential. She did that, in part, by making time to meet each of her employees and understand what they did — and what they wanted to do.
“I always wanted to give people who work for me opportunities; I didn’t hold them back. It was my desire to always help them to go to the next level,” she says. “That’s something I’m really proud of: that I helped a number of people move up the corporate ladder who probably would not have if I hadn’t mentored or encouraged them.”
At the ABA, Cross Hawk had a front row seat to the publishing world, working with her team to release up to half a dozen books every year in emergent fields at the intersection of law, science and technology. When COVID-19 hit, she and her husband bought a house in the Texas Hill Country, and Cross Hawk retired soon thereafter. Adopting the philosophy that there’s no dress rehearsal for life, it was time for her to consider what she wanted to do, and what bubbled up to the top of her bucket list was to write.
She found a writers group whose members included publishers and editors, and all the encouragement she’d shared with others throughout her life came back to her in the writing workshops. Cross Hawk committed to a writing schedule and, held accountable by her new community, the pages started to accumulate. She promised herself that by the time she turned 66, she would write a book — and she did. Taking the next step, she worked with a small press in Texas to make “Slices of Life,” her collection of essays and stories, a tangible reality and published it this summer, just a week before her birthday deadline.
“It’s still intimidating, to put yourself out there and be vulnerable,” she says, “but I’m trying to be my authentic self. As you become older, you do that more. I’m working on a lot of bucket list items, including places to visit; my husband and I have been to all seven continents, 38 countries and 40 states, but there’s more to see. And this is just my first book — I’d like to write a novel, get things into magazines, do some travel writing.”
Done with keeping her writing for herself, all Cross Hawk needs to do now is to set a target for these next aspirations and she’ll surely hit them. It’s her time to write.
spac eland
Emily Dwinnells ’97 is helping to lead the effort to establish a space economy
in Maine
JANA F. BROWN
When most Americans think about rocket launches, Houston or Cape Canaveral come to mind. But what about Maine?
For six years, Emily Dwinnells ’97 has been leading a team exploring the establishment of the Maine Space Complex, a three-pronged entity focused on developing the space industry in Maine and the Northeast. The complex is a U.S. Department of Commerce and NASA-funded project that includes a vertically integrated New Space Innovation Hub, small rocket “Spaceport” Launch Facility and a Space Data & Advanced Analytics Center of Excellence, designed to promote and support the development of the space economy in Maine.
While many states have a NASA-funded Space Grant Consortium in place, largely to support students pursuing careers in STEM, few states have the capacity to go beyond that mission. Dwinnells and her team determined that Maine has a unique opportunity to pursue launch site development due to its strategic geographic location on the Eastern Seaboard. Although in its infancy, the market value of the new space industry is anticipated to surpass $1 trillion over the next decade.
“Satellites can launch [from Maine] without launching over land and therefore any population,” explains Dwinnells, who was hired in 2018 to complete a feasibility study and now serves as lead strategist for the project. “There’s growing demand for access and an increasing number of satellites going into orbit. Low-earth orbit is becoming populated and monetized, and that’s only going to accelerate.”
With guidance from Dwinnells and others, Maine recognized an opportunity to address this growing demand by hosting unmanned launch vehicles with small satellite payloads, primarily nanosatellites, tiny experimental
orbiters that help prove concepts and conduct experiments in space. Beyond launch, the space complex is expected to benefit Maine in several ways. It will boost the economy by attracting new high-tech industry, and with higher levels of research and development funding will draw credentialed workers to the state. The project is expected to add up to 5,500 jobs, while raising the state GDP by as much as $1 billion by 2042.
Drawing new residents, particularly younger workers, to the state aligns with Gov. Janet Mills’ 10-year economic development plan. In April 2022, Dwinnells and her team drafted a bill that Gov. Mills signed into law establishing the Maine Space Corporation, a quasi-state entity mandated to implement the Maine Space Complex. The Innovation Hub and Space Data & Advanced Analytics Center will be home to an incubator and accelerator, hardware, software and satellite design and manufacturing and testing operations. The facility will support everything from engineers to manufacturers to researchers to data analysts.
“You don’t have to be a rocket scientist or astronaut to enter the industry,” Dwinnells says. “There are a variety of jobs that support it.”
Dwinnells’ path to the industry began in Concord, New Hampshire, where she was born. She spent her early years in the state before moving to Massachusetts and eventually returning to enroll at St. Paul’s School as a Fourth Former. She called her time at SPS “a life-changing experience that opened my
eyes to the world.” After initially attending college in Scotland to develop her bagpiping talent, Dwinnells earned a B.A. in international studies from Kenyon College and a dual MBA and master’s in environmental science and policy from the University of Michigan. She devoted a year to AmeriCorps, working on HIV/AIDS prevention, and later worked in international development before eventually transitioning to the world of business, including at the New York Stock Exchange and as a seat-holding member of the American Stock Exchange.
Looking toward the construction of the Maine Space Complex, Dwinnells reflects on how satellites that originate in Maine might benefit the average person. She’s optimistic that Maine will be launching satellites from its coast within the next decade, and that workers at the complex will be poised to evaluate the transmitted data. The significance of these space operations, she notes, is not as distant as some might imagine.
“Whether it’s GPS, hailing an Uber, checking the weather or sending a text transmitted via satellite, there are a multitude of ways we interact with space daily without even realizing it,” Dwinnells says. “As the space industry continues to mature, our dependence will only expand. We hope our work will allow Maine and the Northeast to participate in the value created by this growing industry and become one of the many attractions that bring people to the area — come for the launch, stay for the lobster.”
behind the scenes
In film and in television, Dixon McPhillips ’06 is making his mark as an assistant director on a variety of projects
JANA F. BROWN
When he was a Harvard student earning a degree in visual studies, Dixon McPhillips ’06 applied for an exclusive training program with the Director’s Guild of America (DGA) and was one of six candidates selected out of 600 applicants. Today, he has accomplished one of the hardest tasks in the entertainment industry: consistent employment in both film and television as an assistant director (AD), a job that can include everything from location scouting to budgeting to keeping an entire production on schedule.
While his credits as a first AD and as a key second AD include work on films such as “Oppenheimer,” “Ford v Ferrari,” “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” “Wonder Woman 1984” (and many others) and television projects “Euphoria,” “American Crime Story” and “The Outsider,” McPhillips began his Harvard career intent on majoring in East Asian studies. During a summer service trip to China, though, he had an epiphany as he worked with kids at an orphanage to stage a production of “Snow White” — he wanted to be behind the scenes. When he returned to Harvard, he threw himself into the filmmaking track of the visual studies major.
McPhillips’ ties to theater go back to his SPS days, when the Alabama native auditioned for “The Laramie Project” to fulfill a Fifth Form arts requirement and got cast in dueling roles that challenged his creative
chops. After playing Banquo in “Macbeth,” he landed the lead role of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in “No Other Gods,” staged in the Chapel of St. Peter and St. Paul in honor of the School’s sesquicentennial celebration. He further explored his creativity as a writer and sports chair of The Harvard Crimson, and he was responsible for introducing online video content to enhance the university’s student newspaper. The first game McPhillips recorded featured eventual NBA star Jeremy Lin, and the footage later attracted millions of views during the “Linsanity” of Lin’s professional basketball ascension.
Those foundations have served McPhillips well in his role as an assistant director, a job he often has to clarify.
“There’s a joke on ‘The Office’ about Dwight being assistant to the regional manager versus assistant regional manager, so a lot of people are like, ‘Oh, you’re an assistant director, so do you get the director coffee?’” McPhillips says. “No. The assistant director job is to make sure everyone is pursuing the right end game so that the director’s vision is upheld, but within the constraints of the schedule, the budget. The two currencies in filmmaking are time and money, and on every project, we never seem to have enough of either one.”
Over the last dozen years, McPhillips has had an opportunity to learn from some of the best directors, including Martin Scorsese,
Christopher Nolan and James Mangold. While working on the Tom Cruise-headlined film “Jack Reacher” in the DGA training program, McPhillips met experienced AD Cliff Lanning, and the two have continued to work as a team on multiple film projects that have sent them to locations in Cuba, Croatia, Hungary and across the United States.
Recognizing the group effort it takes to create a successful final product, in February 2024, McPhillips was honored, along with Nolan and others, at the 76th DGA Awards as a member of the best director team in the theatrical feature film category for “Oppenheimer,” the blockbuster that went on to win seven Academy Awards.
“Ultimately, what ADs are very good at is troubleshooting and getting people to communicate,” he says. “Especially in prep for a movie, you’ll have different departments having different ideas of what the movie is, so it’s really about trying to bring everyone to the table and making sure you have a unified vision.”
While he could see himself directing a project if the right opportunity came along, McPhillips is focused on climbing the ladder on the AD track, perhaps eventually becoming a line producer or unit production manager. His upcoming projects as an AD are theatrical releases for AppleTV, and he’s continuing to thrive with the creative mindset required to “direct the background” on a project.
Dixon McPhillips on the live-feed monitor system testing the setup prior to Vera Farmiga using it on “Godzilla: King of the Monsters.”
JOIN US MAY 2–3
We look forward to welcoming form years ending in 0 and 5 for a lively weekend of reconnection and celebration in Millville. Visit our website for hotel information for your form and book your room as soon as possible — reserved blocks will likely sell out.
This section was updated Sept. 27, 2024. Please note that deaths are reported as we receive notice of them. Therefore, alumni dates of death are not always reported chronologically.
1944 – Halsted W. Wheeler
Aug. 22, 2024
1945 – Anthony M. O’Connor
Aug. 2, 2024
1945 – Joseph G. Werner
Sept. 5, 2024
1946 – John M. Carroll
Aug. 5, 2024
1947 – Joseph L. Colt
July 12, 2024
1949 – Charles M. Lewis
Aug. 5, 2024
1952 – Robert A. MacLean Aug. 18, 2024
1952 – Peter C. Stearns Sept. 5, 2024
1954 – Bradford Norman III July 25, 2024
1954 – Guy B. Pope Sept. 10, 2024
1962 – Albert J. Myer V Aug. 22, 2024
1977 – Julius T. Sadler III July 12, 2024
1992 – L. Howard Webster Sept. 2, 2024
FACULTY
Richard F. Davis
July 24, 2024
OBITUARY SUBMISSIONS
Alumni Horae will reprint obituaries that have been previously published elsewhere or written in traditional obituary format and submitted directly to us. Obituaries may be edited for length and style and will appear in the next possible issue of Alumni Horae. We encourage you to reach out to alumni@sps.edu to submit an obituary.
1944
Halsted Ward “Link” Wheeler died peacefully at his home in Duxbury, Massachusetts, on Aug. 22, 2024, after a long and productive life.
Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1926, the son of Wilmot Fitch and Hulda Chapman Wheeler, Halsted attended the Harvey School before joining his brother, Wilmot ’41, at St. Paul’s School, where he sang in the choir and belonged to the Isthmian Athletic Club and the Halcyon Boat Club. He served in the U.S. Navy for two years during World War II before starting at Yale University.
After graduating from Yale in 1949, Halsted worked in New York and Detroit for American Chain and Cable. In 1952, he was married in Paris to Mary Louise Riedel, with whom he had three children. Following their divorce, Halsted married Elsie Yandell Trask in New York City in 1970; they had two children and more than 50 years together until Elsie’s death in 2022.
Halsted moved back to Connecticut in 1958 and took a job with the Jelliff Corporation, a wire manufacturing company, in Southport. Over a 45-year career at Jelliff, he rose to president and chairman and traveled the world, meeting customers and suppliers from Europe to the Far East. He never lost his love for adventure travel, which was shared by Elsie. Together, they visited the North Pole on a Russian nuclear icebreaker, the Three Gorges Dam in China, the penguins of Tierra del Fuego and other exotic destinations.
Halsted was dedicated to and loved his work, but he also enjoyed his family and activities together like sailing, skiing, golf, tennis and paddle tennis — and he was a fierce competitor. In 1964, he purchased a house on Scotts Cove in Darien from Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh; he enjoyed many
years there “messing about in boats,” as he would say, including his prized Chris-Craft houseboat, Fatman.
A generous philanthropist, Halsted supported an array of causes and charities, from the local Episcopal Church to building a school and a drinking well in a remote village in China.
D edicated, hard-working, loyal, funny, cat-loving, self-deprecating and iconoclastic, Halsted was one of a kind and will be sorely missed by his friends and family, including his children, Halsted Wheeler Jr. ’72; Geoffrey Wheeler and wife Mary; Alexandra “Roo” Wheeler and husband Thomas “Rocky” Rukan; Chelsie Olney and husband Sandy; and Richard “Blue” Wheeler and wife Ady; as well as his 10 grandchildren.
1946
John Miller Carroll
of Delray Beach, Florida, and Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, died peacefully at age 95 in the early morning of Aug. 5, 2024.
He is survived by his devoted wife, Denise Coulson Carroll, and their five children, 13 grandchildren and one great-grandchild. John is also survived by his sister, Ellen Walton (James), and her four children and seven grandchildren. John also enjoyed a wonderful life with his wife’s extended Canadian family of Coulson and Phelan in-laws and their many children and grandchildren.
John was born in 1928 in Pittsburgh and attended the Shady Side Academy, St. Paul’s School and Yale University. While at SPS, John was involved in several activities, including Student Council, squash, Missionary Society, Le Cercle Français, ice hockey, Glee Club, football, crew and Cadmean Concordian.
In 1955, he earned a medical degree from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. The next year, John and Denise married, beginning a
fairytale 67-year marriage. A lifelong Francophile, John referred to Denise as “ma chérie,” and every evening upon returning home, he greeted her saying, “Denise, you gorgeous creature, you.” The couple lived in New York City while John interned at New York Presbyterian Hospital, Cornell campus, and in Newport, Rhode Island, during his U.S. Navy duty.
John specialized in ophthalmology at Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary and cofounded Eye Health Services. He taught for many years on the staff at Harvard Medical School.
Through example, John taught all who came into his orbit about unconditional love, devotion to family and the importance of kindness and the truth. His favorite charities were WBUR public radio and Médecins Sans Frontiers. He loved singing along triumphantly to show tunes, especially the music of Cole Porter, and could be found playing and singing “Tea for Two” on the piano and reveling in the sound of his giggling and dancing children and grandchildren. His heartwarming smile and habit of lighting up every room he entered will be missed and remembered.
1948
George B. E. Hambleton a veteran and former Pan American World Airways executive who enjoyed flying, fishing, hunting, working on his New Jersey farm and spending summers on Mount Desert Island, Maine, died June 27, 2024, in his sleep at home in Charleston, South Carolina. He was 94.
George was born in Baltimore to John Adams Hambleton, a member of the Form of 1916, a World War I fighter pilot and a founder of Pan American World Airways, and Margaret Elliot Hambleton. Margaret
was pregnant with George when she witnessed the air crash that killed his father.
Though George never knew his father, they shared a love for anything that flew. Understandably, his mother refused to pay to further that interest, but a teenaged George could not be stopped — he spent an entire summer’s earnings on flying lessons when he got back to SPS. Boyhood friend and formmate C.A. Porter Hopkins shared with the Baltimore Sun that, one day, George buzzed the Chapel of St. Peter and St. Paul — and managed to stay enrolled at SPS after the stunt.
George was a member of the Library Association at SPS and remained an active alumnus who supported The SPS Fund for decades and served as a form director and on the Alumni Executive Committee. At Princeton University, he earned a degree in Eastern European history and was president of the Flying Club.
After a brief time in the Army as an artillery officer, he switched to the Air Force. As a helicopter pilot in the Korean War, he flew combat missions for the 45th Division and was the personal pilot for Gen. Paul D. Harkins, commander of the division. After being discharged in 1955, George began his career at Pan Am and was assigned to fly routes in Central America.
While working for Pan Am, he met and fell in love with Janet MacLaren, whom he married in 1962. She died in 1991.
During the Cold War, George, who was fluent in Russian, was promoted to the airline’s director of operations in what was then the Soviet Union, a role he executed from his base in Helsinki. In 1968, he helped launch Pan Am’s New York-Moscow service over the polar route for which his father had advocated four decades earlier.
In 1970, George returned to the U.S. and bought a farm in Hunterdon County, New Jersey. From there, he flew his own plane to Washington, D.C., for his new role as director of international affairs with Pan Am. From 1978 to 1980, when he resigned, he was director of international sales.
In 1980, George and Dr. David Paton, an ophthalmologist, established Project Orbis, a flying eye hospital in a converted DC-8, whose mission was to combat eye disease around the globe. He left Orbis in 1986 when
President Ronald Reagan appointed him deputy assistant secretary of commerce, and the deputy director general of the U.S. and Foreign Commercial Service.
Later, he was president of the U.S. division of Andrews MacLaren Ltd., a company founded by his father-in-law, which manufactured aircraft landing gear and brakes as well as the collapsible baby stroller.
George was a volunteer for the Pan Am Historical Foundation and served on the boards of College of the Atlantic and the AmericanRussian Cultural Cooperation Foundation, among others.
He is survived by his wife of 25 years, Diana Lea; his daughter, Anne Hambleton; his sons, Charles Hambleton and James Hambleton, both of California; six step-grandchildren and four step-great-grandchildren.
He was predeceased by the SPS alumni in his family, brother John Hambleton ’46 and first cousin T. Edward Hambleton ’30.
1949
Charles Merriman Lewis of Wakefield, Rhode Island, died peacefully at South County Hospital on Aug. 5, 2024, surrounded by his family. He was the beloved husband of Cornelia Redington St. John of Greenwich, Connecticut, to whom he had been married for 60 years. He was 93.
Charles was born in Providence, Rhode Island, to John B. Lewis Jr., Form of 1920, and Edith Merriman Lewis Curtis. He grew up there and in Lake Forest, Illinois.
At St. Paul’s School, Charles was a member of the Glee Club, the Missionary Society and the Science Society. He graduated from Yale University in 1953 and spent two years in the U.S. Naval Reserve, serving as communications officer on the USS Colonial (LSD 18), an amphibious ship operating out of San Diego.
Charles worked for six years for the Crompton-Richmond Co., a family-related firm in New York City specializing in the manufacture and sale of corduroy and other pile fabrics. In 1962, he joined Scudder, Stevens and Clark in New York, an investment counsel firm providing portfolio management services. He retired from Scudder in 1996 and moved to South Kingstown after 35 years in Greenwich, where he had chaired the town’s retirement board for 10 years.
An avid private pilot who also enjoyed boating, golfing and beekeeping, Charles was a member of the Round Hill Club in Greenwich, the Hope Club in Providence and the Dunes Club in Narragansett. He also served for 20 years as an officer of the South Kingstown Land Trust.
He is survived by his wife, Cornelia; sister, Sophie Page Lewis of Wakefield, Rhode Island; son, Gordon Watson Lewis and his wife, Cynthia Farrell Lewis, of San Mateo, California; daughter, Sandra Redington Orth and her husband, Dr. C. Richard Orth Jr., of West Palm Beach, Florida; and granddaughters Carter Redington Orth and Susan Merriman Orth, both of New York City.
He was predeceased by his half-sister, Susanne Curtis Deane of Williamsburg, Virginia, and his brother, The Rev. John Lewis ’47. His late uncle, Dexter Lewis, was a member of the Form of 1929.
1954
Bradford “Skip” Norman III of Bethesda, Maryland, died on July 25, 2024, comfortably surrounded by his close family. He was 87.
The first of two children, Brad was born in 1936 in New York City to Eleanor McKnight Pierce and Bradford Norman Jr.
At St. Paul’s School, his activities were many and varied. A member of Shattuck and Old Hundred, he rowed, played football and hockey, and was active with rifle, trap and skeet shooting. He also sang in the choir and Glee Club and was involved with Student Council, the Missionary Society, La Junta and the Acolyte Guild.
He earned a B.S. from Miami University and a Ph.D. from American University.
In the mid-1960s, Brad and his first wife, Mary Potter Bonsal of Camden, South Carolina, moved to Washington, D.C., where they started a family, and he worked for the U.S. Department of Education. In the 1970s, he married Ann Sabin Mitchell of Bethesda, Maryland. He was a dedicated and loving father and stepfather.
Brad believed in education as a means of empowering people; he was always interested in higher education and loved academia. He also was fascinated by computer technology, and his Ph.D. thesis involved computers in education. His degree led him to work for Wang Laboratories as an educator focusing on early networked office systems.
Brad loved skiing, sailing and vacations with his family. He excelled as a marksman and gamesman, winning skeet shooting and backgammon competitions. And he cherished all things nautical, including ship models, whaling history and his family ties to Newport, Rhode Island. He was thoughtful and generous with his time, tutoring D.C.-area children in literacy for many years and volunteering at the Washington National Cathedral as a docent for 21 years. He adored choral singing and shared his beautiful voice all his life, from his early years at St. Paul’s to more than 20 years with the Cathedral Choral Society.
Brad was preceded in death by his parents and his sister, Priscilla “Penny” Norman Whitmore. He is survived by his loving wife of 47 years, Ann Sabin Norman; his two children, Bradford (Kimberly) Norman IV and Hope (David) Bass; and his two stepchildren, Katy (Sam) Coleman and James (Shannon) Mitchell, as well as grandchildren William, Garrett, Alexandra and Lillian; and step-grandchildren Jack, Henry, Jim, Sabin, Caroline, Mason and Reese.
1960
Ford Bowman Draper Jr. died peacefully at age 82, surrounded by love on June 22, 2024, at his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, after a short illness. Called “Pete” by childhood friends after a favorite horse, Ford was a beloved husband, father and grandfather known for his style, love of the outdoors, enthusiasm for life and dedication to his family, friends and profession. He was a thoughtful, private person, but one whose wisdom ran deep and whose good sense of humor helped any conversation. His radiant smile will be missed.
Born in 1942 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, to Ford B. Draper and Katherine R. Draper, Ford grew up on his family’s farm in Chadds Ford with five younger sisters and a brother. From an early age, he wandered the hills and woods and swam and fished in the Brandywine, which fostered his lifelong love of the outdoors. He graduated from Yale University in 1965 and Columbia University Graduate School of Business in 1967.
Ford’s academic foundation paved the way for a successful career, which he began in the investment research and capital management departments of Smith Barney & Co. in New York City. In 1970, he joined Baker, Fentress & Company, a closed-end mutual fund, where he honed his expertise in investing in small capitalization U.S. equities. He opened an office in 1972 for Baker, Fentress in Wilmington, Delaware. In 1982, Ford founded Kalmar Investments based on the investment strategy, style and approach he helped pioneer at Baker, Fentress, called “Growth-with-Value.” He grew and managed Kalmar for 35 years, eventually bringing his sons into the business and mentoring them and others. His sons were incredibly fortunate not only to collaborate with him at Kalmar for 25 years, but also to have a lifetime of sporting adventures together.
Ford translated his love for the outdoors into a dedication to conservation and active involvement in related activities. Working closely with the Brandywine Conservancy and Museum of Art, he was instrumental in creating the Twin Bridges Rural Historic District, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2017.
Ford served on the board of the Brandywine Conservancy and Museum of Art and The Theater Company. He valued his relationships with fellow members of The Philadelphia Farmers Club, The Sons of Colonial Wars, The Wilmington Club, The Pot and Kettle Club, The Vicmead Hunt Club, The Northeast Harbor Tennis & Swim Club, The Gasparilla Golf and Beach Club and the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin.
Ford’s life was rich with love and relationships. Above all, Ford loved and adored his wife of 58 years, Brian Dougherty Draper — they were true partners in everything. In addition to Brian, he is survived by son Ford B. Draper III and his wife, Paige C., and granddaughter Mae E.; son Avery L. Draper and his wife, Nina W.; brother-in-law Graham Dougherty; sisters A. Reeve Draper and Prudence D. Osborn and her husband, Art; brother James A. Draper and his wife, Joyce; and many cousins.
He was preceded in death by sisters E. Avery Draper, Ellen D. Chadwick and Katherine D. Schutt.
1992
Lorne Howard “Howie” Webster suffered a stroke and died on Sept. 2, 2024, at the Montreal General Hospital. He was 51.
Howie was a beloved brother, son, friend and the life of every party. He left a lasting mark on everyone fortunate enough to know him and experience his infectious sense of humor and joy for life.
Howie is survived by his mother, Meredith Evans Webster; his siblings, Tegan, Beverley and Adam ’89; and a circle of friends and family who will cherish their memories of his contagious spirit, warmth and incredible creativity. He is also survived by his nieces and nephews, Thomas, Olivia, Leah, Margot and Sammy; and his halfsiblings, Linda, Brenda and Campbell. He was predeceased by his father, Lorne Charles Webster.
Howie was born on Dec. 21, 1972, in Montreal and grew up there, attending Selwyn
House School and Lower Canada College before enrolling at St. Paul’s School as a Fifth Former. He went on to the University of Vermont, where he cultivated his love for art and creativity.
Howie had a keen ability to create beauty through his words, humor, paintings, photography and music. He saw the world through a unique lens and, if you were lucky enough to have a glimpse into his world, you quickly learned how he found himself in fascinating and exceptional circumstances. Howie took great interest in other people. He was always very present and an enthusiastic conversationalist. Phone conversations with him always lasted longer than expected; his jokes, impersonations and storytelling always made it seem impossible to hang up.
Howie was a loving and brilliant soul taken from us too early. He had a knack for turning any situation into an adventure, rallying friends with his quick wit, charisma and charm. He could turn ordinary moments into unforgettable memories. Though the distance may have grown, we know that he still cared deeply for those he held close in his heart.
The family is beyond grateful to Anne Marie Carrière, an infinitely giving soul, who went above and beyond in her role as social worker to care for Howie. Howie loved Anne Marie, and the family is forever indebted to her.
Remembering Educator Richard Davis
JANA F. BROWN
On the eve of his 2003 retirement, after 37 years at St. Paul’s School, Faculty Emeritus Richard Davis reflected on how he’d like to be remembered.
“I hope they say I was a good teacher,” he said.
As news of his July 24, 2024, death at age 86 spread through the SPS community, Davis was indeed remembered as a good teacher — and also as a wonderful coach, mentor, husband, father, grandfather, brother and friend.
Born in Brooklyn, Davis grew up in New York and New Jersey. He graduated from Rutgers University with honors in 1959, served as a captain in the U.S. Air Force at Pease Air Force Base, and in 1966 earned a master’s degree from Harvard University.
A man of few words, Davis earned the respect of SPS colleagues and students through his actions, such as founding a support group to host weekly meetings for students who had lost a parent or sibling. “There have been a lot of tears in our living room,” he said in 2003, “but sometimes it’s very effective to get these kids together to talk.” Davis continued to care for young people in his community even after he and his wife, Peg, moved to New Hampshire’s Seacoast by volunteering with Hope Project, which supports children who have experienced the death of a loved one.
His impact on the SPS crew program, alongside fellow coaching icon Chip Morgan P’99,’02,’05, was legendary. When Davis arrived at the School in 1966, he established a culture of hard work and excellence that resonated with the hundreds of athletes he coached over the years. Along the way, he led them to New England, Henley and national championships. In 2000, the U.S. Olympic Committee awarded Davis the Rings of Gold Award, recognizing him as an unsung hero in part for his development of 10 Olympians and 30 U.S. National Team rowers.
Seacoast Academy, a private middle school now called Heronfield Academy.
Over the years, Davis devoted his energy to making connections with students. In his penultimate year at the School, Davis was selected as a recipient of the Form of 1973 Mentor Fellowship Award, honoring him as an adult who demonstrates a strong rapport with students and an outstanding ability to inspire and motivate young people.
A MAN OF FEW WORDS, DAVIS EARNED THE RESPECT OF SPS COLLEAGUES AND STUDENTS THROUGH HIS ACTIONS.
Davis’ contributions to the School also included notable work as a history teacher who designed multiple courses, as a chair of the History Department and as an adviser to the Winant Political Society and the Student Council.
In retirement, Davis remained involved in his community in a variety of ways, including as cofounder of
“It’s very easy to get drawn into preparation, grading papers, fulfilling all your duties,” he said in 2003.
“You can’t let that drag you away from being with the kids, talking with them and spending time with them. Those are the critical things.”
At the Aug. 19 memorial service for Davis in Portsmouth, son Chip Davis ’89, P’28 expressed gratitude for the memories shared by former students and colleagues, most indicating how Davis had guided or inspired them in the classroom, on the water or in life.
“My father believed in you always, so that ultimately you would believe in yourself,” Chip told the assembled group of friends and alumni, some of whom wore their Halcyon and Shattuck crew jackets in Davis’ honor.
In addition to his son, Chip and daughter-in-law, Alison, Davis is survived by his wife of 57 years, Peg; son J. Fletcher Davis; daughter Ellen Parish ’88 and son-in-law Dan; brother Walton Davis and sister-in-law Fran Drago; and grandchildren Margaret, Ian, Ella ’28 and Charlie.
BE THE GREATER GOOD
GREATER ACCESS AND EXPERIENCES.
GREATER CHAPEL TALKS AND CLASS VISITS.
GREATER GAME DAYS AND PERFORMANCES.
In supporting every aspect of students’ experience at St. Paul’s School, from the meals they eat in the dining hall to the equipment they use in science labs to the uniforms they wear on our fields and courts, your gift to the SPS Fund is an essential element of our mission to educate students to build purposeful lives in service to the greater good.
Make your SPS Fund gift today and be the greater good for SPS students this year. What greater gift is there than to make a difference in the lives of those who follow in your footsteps?
Alumni Horae
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Five busloads of SPS fans traveled to Boston College to watch the Big Red cap off its perfect season with a 23-20 win over Buckingham Browne and Nichols in the 2024 NEPSAC John Papas Bowl. PHOTO: MICHAEL SEAMANS