The Lawrentian - Spring 2016

Lawrentian THE

SPRING 2016

STANDING FOR SOMETHING Paralyzed a decade ago, Matthew Davies ’80 is helping others walk again.

SPORTS ROUNDUP Ariel Claxton ’17 sprints into the record books.

ASK THE ARCHIVIST For your reference: Bunn Library is 20!

A Point of Light Many types of support brighten our communities

Departments 2 From the Head Master 3 Editor’s Note

F e at u r e s

On the Cover: Cover Illustration

by J.F. Podevin

24 A Public Purpose The light of Lawrenceville’s community support shines well beyond its gates.

34 Standing for Something Paralyzed in a car accident, Matthew Davies ’80 is helping others walk again.

4 1,000 Words January’s nor’easter yielded frosty fun.

6 News in Brief Sherry Snyder ’54 is fêted, and Hutchins Scholars conduct real-life research.

9 Funding the Future Jim Rowan ’66 tends to his local roots.

10 Sports roundup Celebrating a century of ice hockey, and four teams win titles.

TA K E T H I S J O B A N D L O V E I T 12 Go Big Red! Ariel Claxton ’17 sprints into the Big Red record books.

14 On the Arts Mud, River, Stone explores identities.

16 Take This Job and Love It Rabbi Adena Blum ’02 is quite new to an ancient vocation.

18 Table Talk Q&A with Science Master Nicole Lantz.

20 Ask the Archivist Lawrenceville’s library history is one for the books.

80 By the Numbers

How does Lawrenceville support its community?

81 Student SNAP

16

Alex Domb ’17 branches out.

ON THE ARTS

S p o r ts r o u nd u p

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14 Alumni 40 Alumni News 41 Class Notes

From the Head Master

O “As we prepare Lawrentians to play leadership roles in their lives beyond Lawrenceville, the kind of community we create right here lays the foundation for ongoing commitment down the road.”

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t h e l aw r e n t i a n

ur recent observance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day has given me much to think about.

We celebrate Dr. King’s legacy with a day of service by the entire student body, but I did not fully understood the magnitude of the endeavor until I went out to see for myself.

We are deeply proud of our extensive and ongoing engagement with local agencies, and our list of active partnerships throughout Mercer County, New Jersey, is long. In fact, you will see part of this issue of The Lawrentian devoted to this topic. But in addition to our pride in being an involved neighbor, I was also struck by the important symbolic gesture of stopping the entire School for a day in order to roll up our sleeves and honor Dr. King by practicing empathy and helping others.

In a recent letter to the community, I wrote about the current, urgent relevance of King’s universal appeal to help those less able to help themselves: “When we are willing to pay more as a society to incarcerate a man than to educate him; when our city centers continue to erode and be in desperate need of hope; when states continue to seek to undermine the democratic process by limiting the rights of certain citizens; the message of Dr. King continues to be all too relevant.”

In order to gain some perspective on the actual work performed by students, I was able to visit a number of the service sites with Rachel Cantlay P’07 ’09 ’11 and Elizabeth Ferguson, respectively, our director and assistant director of community service.

We began by visiting Mott Elementary School in Trenton. I met the principal, Dr. Channing Conway, in the front hall, and he helped show us around. He is clearly admired by the staff and was deeply invested in the good work going on in his school. “We love him,” said one of the fifth-grade teachers. “He brings energy to the job, and he really cares!” Dr. Conway expressed to me how impressed he was by our students. Our girls’ varsity basketball team was running a spirited clinic in the gym while others worked closely in classrooms on creative projects. Our students were engaged and enthusiastic.

I found a similar scene at the Kids ‘R’ First Preschool, which provides free schooling for deserving families in Trenton. At a glance, I sensed a pervasive energy and optimism in the school, and our students jumped right in to help out. As at Mott Elementary, I could not help being impressed by the remarkable efforts of the hardworking staff, and at the same time, I was struck by the extent of the need in these underserved communities.

Nowhere was this need more evident than when we visited the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen (TASK). Serving close to 4,000 meals a week among their network of

kitchens, I was staggered by that high number relative to the modest urban population of the city of Trenton. That number alone gives a clear indication of the desperate degree of need by so many in the area. Not only does the kitchen serve nutritious, regular meals, the organization offers continuing education services, legal advocacy, and even some limited health care services and counseling. TASK is a true lifeline for many, and I was struck by the respectful poise and maturity of our students as they pitched in to serve.

Overall, the number and range of different sites visited by students, the degree of planning required, and the positive attitude by all from start to finish was rather extraordinary, and it made me feel deeply proud.

Still, the need is all but overwhelming, and in truth, one day of service does not bring dramatic change. And yet, the exercise in helping others does plant a seed and reinforce our empathetic impulses. As we prepare Lawrentians to play leadership roles in their lives beyond Lawrenceville, the kind of community we create right here lays the foundation for ongoing commitment down the road. I closed my MLK Day letter with the following words, hoping to make that very point: “The way we practice tolerance right here at Lawrenceville, the way we practice respect, the way we defend those less able to defend themselves, the way we go out of our way to understand those who think, speak, believe, look, and act differently – all of this makes a difference. And having practiced such ideals here, if we take these notions of respect and tolerance with us out into the world, we can continue to make it a better place.

And that, in my opinion, is the best way to honor the legacy of Dr. King’s dream.”

Sincerely,

Stephen S. Murray H’55 ’65 P’16 The Shelby Cullom Davis ’26 Head Master

From the Editor

Lawrentian THE

Spring 2016

|

Volume 80 Number 2

publisher Jennifer Szwalek Editor Sean Ramsden art director Phyllis Lerner staff photographer Paloma torres proofreaders Carol Cole P’91 ’95 Timothy C. Doyle ’69 H’79 P’99 Rob Reinalda ’76 Edward A. Robbins H’68 ’69 ’71 ’11 Linda Hlavacek Silver H’59 ’61 ’62 ’63 ’64 GP’06 ’08 contributors Katherine Birkenstock Alex Domb ’17 Lisa M. Gillard Hanson karla guido Jacqueline Haun Barbara Horn Nancy U. Thomas H'01 P'04 '07 Tiffany Thomas '18

The Lawrentian (USPS #306-700) is published quarterly (winter, spring, summer, and fall) by The Lawrenceville School, P.O. Box 6008, Lawrenceville, NJ 08648, for alumni, parents, grandparents, and friends.

Periodical postage paid at Trenton, NJ, and additional mailing offices.

The Lawrentian welcomes letters from readers. Please send all correspondence to sramsden@lawrenceville.org or to the above address, care of The Lawrentian Editor. Letters may be edited for publication.

The Lawrentian welcomes submissions and suggestions for magazine departments. If you have an idea for a feature story, please query first to The Lawrentian Editor.

Y

ears ago, when I was just a small boy, my uncle drove a 1967 Ford Mustang coupe, gleaming white with burgundy interior. I thought he had owned it forever, because I couldn’t remember a time when he did not. I admired its sporty yet elegant form and hoped to get behind the wheel someday. To me, it represented all that a car should be.

My uncle was amused later at my recollection of the car, because he, as its driver, had known it for all its flaws. There was a huge gap, he assured me, between my idealized version and the reality of ownership. There was even a hole in the floor behind the driver’s seat! It was a good lesson for me, even as I hoped life didn’t always work that way.

Thirty years after that conversation, I’m glad to know it does not. In fact, sometimes things are even better than you imagined. In my notes to you since becoming editor of The Lawrentian, I’ve made no secret of my delight to hold this position, but now that I’ve had a chance to get behind the proverbial wheel, I’ve become familiar with what happens here to make it just what a school should be.

The result is evident in people like Matthew Davies ’80, who leveraged his Lawrenceville experience to become not only a successful health insurance executive, but one committed to community health issues for all people in his area. That’s not the story, however. Matthew’s own health – in fact, his life – were nearly snatched away a decade ago by a catastrophic car wreck. In the time since, he has not only met the challenges presented by paralysis, but he has taken up the fight to provide access to an innovative brand of restorative therapy to those in need after traumatic spinal cord injuries and neurological damage.

In your Class Notes submissions each season, there is one frequently shared sentiment: “Life is good.” That’s pleasing to hear, of course, but it also becomes inspirational when it takes on a deeper meaning.

Even when injury threatens the body, Matthew offers a vivid reminder that leadership and resilience are not easily wounded.

All the best,

Sean Ramsden Editor sramsden@lawrenceville.org

Visit us on the web at www.lawrenceville.org. www.lawrenceville.org/alumni/the-lawrentian Postmaster

Please send address corrections to: The Lawrentian The Lawrenceville School P.O. Box 6008 Lawrenceville, NJ 08648 ©The Lawrenceville School Lawrenceville, New Jersey All rights reserved.

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1,000 Words

Frosty Fun!

The winter of 2016 will be recalled mostly for its relatively mild temperatures, but Jack Frost did send one chilling reminder of his might on January 23. Nearly two feet of snow blanketed the School’s campus, but the nor’easter’s wake also yielded sunny skies and winter

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Photograph by Nancy U. Thomas H'01 P'04 '07

frolic as young Lawrentians took to the snow for a day of fun.

News in Brief

Snyder Returns Home for Honor

T Alumni Magazine Takes the Cup(pie) The Lawrentian earned two honors in the ninth annual CUPPIE awards for creative excellence in marketing and communications in education.

A fall 2015 profile of Christina Ha ’04 and her business, Meow Parlour, New York City’s first permanent cat café, won top honors for its creative headline, “From Whisks to Whiskers.”

The story also received an honorable mention in the feature article category.

The CUPPIE awards are presented by CUPRAP (College and University Public Relations and Associated Professionals), a voluntary organization of communications professionals from colleges, universities, and independent schools dedicated to advancing the understanding of higher education and enhancing the professional development of its members.

Founded in Pennsylvania in 1980 as one of the nation’s few statewide organizations, CUPRAP members now come from many states. Today, CUPRAP has nearly 350 members from 100 institutions.

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t h e l aw r e n t i a n

he founder and CEO of Genzyme Corporation, Sheridan “Sherry” Snyder ’54 admits that his business acumen is rooted in the things he learned years ago on the Lawrenceville campus.

“I came from a small town, Sea Cliff, Long Island, from a public school, and one day, my parents put me in the car and took me to the Lower School as a Shell Form student,” Snyder recalled. “That first night, I sat there in the Lower School, eating shepherd’s pie, and I said, ‘Hey, I’m really on my own.’ That was the moment I learned to be independent.”

In January, Snyder returned to those roots to receive the Aldo Leopold Award, the Lawrenceville School’s highest honor, which is conferred annually upon an alumnus or alumna of the School who represents “brilliant, lifelong work in a significant field of endeavor.” The Medal is dedicated to the memory of Aldo Leopold, the distinguished environmentalist and author who graduated from Lawrenceville with the Class of 1905.

“I think Lawrenceville is in the construction business,” he said upon being fêted in Abbott Dining Hall. “You construct the foundation for thousands of young people to become leaders.”

Snyder harnessed that feeling of independence and immersed himself in the student experience, playing varsity tennis and soccer and serving as president of Dickinson House. From there, he was on to the University of Virginia to study French and romance languages. He believes his strong liberal arts background was essential to helping him find success in the biotech field.

“I think most of all, they teach you discipline,” Snyder explained. “I hate to think what it would be like to have not had that base of understanding.”

Though he intended to make his living as a teacher, Snyder instead opted to attend the New York University School of Business at night, learning the principles that would drive his interest in starting companies. He worked first as a credit analyst for New York Trust, and over

▲ Sherry Snyder '54 with Alumni Association President Jennifer Ridley Staikos '91 and Head Master Steve Murray H'55 '65 P'16

the years, his professional profile became that of someone with the keen ability to recognize new ideas and choose the right partners.

Snyder calls his entrée into biotechnology a bit of “serendipity,” the product of his relationship with venture capitalist Ed Glassmeyer, who convinced him to begin backing biotech.

“He found out I was interested in innovation,” said Snyder. “He connected me with a scientist at Tufts University who was an enzyme purification expert.”

That scientist was Henry Blair, who was also under contract with the National Institutes of Health, and that company was Genzyme, in 1981. “It was my first step into biotechnology,” he said. Since then, Genzyme and three other companies founded by Snyder have developed groundbreaking treatments for such ailments as Gaucher’s disease, chronic myeloid leukemia and lung cancer. According to a July 2015 Boston Globe story, what set Genzyme apart from other companies in its field was its ability to innovate.

“In the formative years of biotechnology, Genzyme was the industry’s Apple, blazing a pathway for creating protein-based treatments for rare diseases,” wrote the Globe’s Robert Weisman.

Snyder wasn’t solely scanning the horizon for opportunities in biotechnology, however. In 1969, he – at the urging of his personal friend, tennis great Arthur Ashe – led the founding of the National Junior Tennis League, which today operates in 125 cities, with more than 250,000 children from America’s inner cities participating annually.

Big Red Giving Day Breaks All Records

Wow!

Lawrentians once again demonstrated their capacity to rise to – and surpass – any challenge. The School’s third annual Big Red Giving

Trisha Mukherjee ’16 Takes on Trafficking

Day last November saw Lawrenceville alumni, parents, and friends make 1,207 gifts and pledges totaling $1,113,193, a new one-day record for support of The Lawrenceville Fund/Parents Fund.

Lawrentians easily surpassed a generous Trustee Challenge, which promised $50,000 for every 200 gifts or pledges, up to $200,000 for 800 gifts, with a bonus of an additional $100,000 if the number of gifts exceeded 1,000. This brought the total dollar amount for the day to a whopping $1,413,193.

Trisha Mukherjee ’16, co-news editor of The Lawrence, has written a book, Leading Lights: Interviews with Anti-Trafficking Activists, now available for download on amazon.com.

Mukherjee was moved to wonder how slavery can still exist in today’s world, and she proceeded to learn that not only does the practice remain prevalent in such modern forms as the abduction of children subsequently sold into lives of degradation, but that human trafficking is thriving even in her own United States. Leading Lights presents a series of interviews with anti-trafficking activists, whose stories weave a thread of courage through their collective journeys.

Profits from the book will benefit Dawn’s Place, a safe house in Philadelphia for victims of both domestic and international sex trafficking.

Teaching Lawrentians to Save Lives Aditya Seshadri ’17 is leading an effort to provide cardiopulmonary resuscitation and automated external defibrillator (CPR/AED) training and certification for all current Lawrenceville students. With guidance and support from the Princeton HealthCare Community Education & Outreach Program, 160 students had successfully completed the course

by April. Seshadri hopes to train as many students as possible before they graduate.

“The more people we can train, the more lives we can save,” explained Seshadri, whose initial research was funded by one of Lawrenceville’s William Bouton Welles ’71 grants.

Seshadri, an American Heart Association and American Red Crosscertified CPR/AED instructor, leads the two-hour Sunday morning classes on the North Court of Lavino Field

House. He is joined by additional instructors provided by Princeton HealthCare, from which Seshadri secured a grant to cover student certification costs – approximately $70 per Lawrentian.

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News in Brief

Hutchins Scholars Conduct Real-Life Research Neel Ajjarapu ’16 Interfacing with a Quantum Computer Department of Electrical Engineering, Princeton University, in collaboration with IBM

Eva Blake ’16 Non-Luminance-Mediated Changes in Pupil Diameter and its Relationship with the Autonomic Components of the Orienting Response

Allison Huang ’17 Honored for Poetry For a Penny, a poem by Allison

From quantum computing to medical

Gold Lab, Neuroscience Department,

research, Lawrenceville’s current cohort of

Perelman School of Medicine, University

Hutchins Scholars has teamed with some

of Pennsylvania

of the world’s most respected scientists to pilot real-world research. Their most re-

Matthew Brecher ’16

cent explorations, conducted last summer,

Determination of Differentiation Time Interval

helped prepare them for leading university

for Maximum Expression of Osteoblastic

science programs, and should ultimately

Recruiting Factor

inspire them to pursue science-related

Department of Physiology and Cell

careers.

Biophysics, Columbia University

The Hutchins Scholars Program, which

Connor Duwan ’16

Huang ’17, was selected as a national winner in the winter competition of the

18th

Annual

recognizes and supports some of the School’s most outstanding science stu-

National High School Poetry

dents, has them participating in summer

contest, sponsored by the Live

research seminars and experiences during

Poets Society of New Jersey.

the summers before their Fourth and Fifth

Huang was also named a 2016

Form years.

National YoungArts Foundation

As Fourth Formers, they enroll in a re-

Merit winner in the Writing/

search science class, which prepares them

Poetry division for her poems

to conduct independent research and, if appropriate, to compete in a national

Captive, The Reaping, And

science competition. This allows students

Then I Emerge, and Whispet.

to deepen their understanding of scientific

Huang is a poetry reader for

research based on practical, real-world

The Adroit Journal, a quarterly publication that seeks “to showcase what its global staff

experience while giving them the ability to explore their passion for science outside of the classroom.

Foliar Uptake and Leaf Activity Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton University

Sarah Milby ’16 TH17-Mediated Alloimmune Responses Play a Key Role in Human Intestinal Allograph Rejection Medstar Georgetown University Hospital

Eric Hyson ’16 Ongoing Investigations into SHANK2 as a Tumor Suppressor in Neuroblastoma Center for Childhood Cancer Research, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

The Hutchins Scholars Program, which

Chelsea Peart ’16

also provides need-based financial aid to

Characterization of Cord Blood-Derived Cells

future of poetry, prose, and

those scholars who qualify, is made pos-

and Analysis of Human Erythroleukemia

art.”

sible by a $5 million gift to the School’s

Cells post Doxorubicin Treatment

Bicentennial Campaign by Glenn ’73 and

Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai,

Debbie Hutchins. This year’s Hutchins

Department of Hematology/Medical

Scholars and projects and research part-

Oncology, New York

of emerging writers sees as the

ners included:

8

Heavy Isotopic Analysis to Characterize

t h e l aw r e n t i a n

Funding the Future

Jim Rowan ’66

Tends to His Local Roots

F

or Jim Rowan ’66, giving back means paying it forward. The Rowan family was introduced to The Lawrenceville School through Doug Rowan ’56, winner of a full, four-year scholarship that was awarded each year to a student from Lawrence

Township. Jim and his brothers are seeking to revive this tradition by establishing a scholarship targeting a deserving resident of the township. Although the original scholarship was based solely on academic achievement, the Gilbert R. Rowan ’59 Scholarship Fund

EST. 1896

will focus on a student with demonstrated financial need.

Doug was the first of four Rowan boys to attend Lawrenceville.

He was followed by Gil ’59, who remarkably also won the Lawrence Township award, Jim, and finally Dick ’70. Oldest brother Keith

Hockey Celebrates a Century by Icing Hill Lawrenceville’s storied boys’ hockey program marked its centennial this season, highlighted by an exciting 3-1 win over the Hill School in the official 100th anniversary celebration game on January 9 in Loucks Ice Center.

“This season was about celebrating the past and, at the same time, embracing the future of Lawrenceville hockey,” said head coach Etienne Bilodeau.

The sport traces its roots at Lawrenceville to the 1896-97 school year, with the January 23, 1897, edition of The Lawrence boldly and presciently touting its future.

“Lawrenceville has always been noted for its athletic team, and while not boasting, we believe this new club will be successful,” wrote the newspaper’s editor.

The team’s co-captains, Jon Coffey ’16 and Monty Cunningham ’16, agreed it was a privilege to lead the 100th Big Red boys’ ice hockey team.

“First and foremost, to be named captain of the team is an amazing honor,” Cunningham said. “There’s a lot of rich history in Lawrenceville hockey, from the Lawrenceville Tournament to our rivalry game with Princeton Day School, and just to be a part of the team during its 100th season is an amazing feeling.”

This celebration of one hundred seasons takes into account the years between 1896 and today when, for various reasons, the sport was not played.

attended Princeton High School, which in those years served as the public high school for several surrounding townships, including Lawrence.

“My 50th reunion is this spring, and I was looking for a way to honor the history of my family at Lawrenceville,” Jim says.

“Particularly Gil, who was an amazing human being.” Gil Rowan, M.D., who passed away in 2005, oversaw the Emergency Department of Greenwich Hospital in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Earlier, as a specialist in emergency medicine, he served in the U.S. Navy as a lieutenant commander on the ground in Vietnam.

“Gil not only enlisted,” Jim says proudly, “he requested combat duty when most doctors were safely housed on ships off the coast.”

The Rowan family lived only a few miles from the Lawrenceville campus, and according to Jim, by the time two of their sons had graduated, his parents were fully invested in the Lawrenceville experience. There was no question that the younger boys would attend if they wished. Jim also counts a niece and two nephews as Lawrentians.

“Gil was the brightest of us all, and he loved Lawrenceville,” Jim said. So much so that the only writing on his grave marker, aside from basic name and dates he lived, is the School motto, Virtus Semper Viridis, or “Virtue is Always Green.”

“I just loved this concept,” Jim says. “Gil was a really virtuous guy. This is a powerful motto for the School, and I thought it worked for Gil as well.”

An investment banker with Stifel, Nicolaus in Baltimore, Jim has attended every major Lawrenceville reunion since his 25th and has been a member of the Reunion Committee for his 40th, 45th, and now his 50th. His gift helps the current financial aid initiative, The Promise of Lawrenceville, reach its $36 million goal, but more important to him, it helps pay it forward for another deserving local student from his first hometown – Lawrence Township.

– Barbara Horn

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Sports Roundup

Boys’ basketball Record: 16-10 Coach: Ron Kane ’83 Captains: Keith Braxton ’16

Jordan Harris ’16

Girls’ basketball Record: 10-11 Coach: Antoine Hart Captains: Janean Cuffee ’17

Hannah Zoll ’16

Boys’ ice hockey Record: 3-20-2 Coach: Etienne Bilodeau Captains: Jon Coffey ’16

Monty Cunningham ’16

girls’ ice hockey Record: 15-4-2 Coach: Nicole Uliasz Captains: Katie Leininger ’16

WINTER Season STATS

Jordi Naidrich ’16 Allie Olnowich ’16

By Karla Guido

Boys’ fencing Record: 4-5 Coach: Rich Beischer Captain: Charlie Han ’16

Girls’ fencing N.J.I.S.A.A. Champions Record: 6-2 Coach: Rich Beischer Captains: Clarice Lee ’16

Mariel Tang’16 Yvonne Yan ’16

boys’ indoor track M.A.P.L. Champions N.J.I.S.A.A. Champions Record: 9-0 Coach: Erik Chaput Captains: Emile Bamfield ’16

Alejandro Roig ’16

Girls’ indoor track M.A.P.L. Champions N.J.I.S.A.A. Champions Record: 10-0 Coach: Katie Chaput Captains: Skylar Bradley ’16

Veronica Danko ’16 Samantha Kunkel ’16 10

t h e l aw r e n t i a n

Boys’ swimming Record: 4-5 Coach: Brent Ferguson Captain: Henry

Chen ’16

Girls’ swimming Record: 4-4 Coach: Brent Ferguson Captain: Eva Blake ’16

Boys’ squash M.A.P.L. Champions Record: 9-8 Coach: Mark Price Captain: Brandon De Otaduy Nam ’16

Girls’ squash M.A.P.L. Champions Record: 3-10 Coach: Narelle Krizek Captains: Sophie Garcia ’16

Virginia Schaus ’17

wrestling Record: 4-10 Coach: Johnny Clore Captains: Banks Blackwell ’16

Nick Shupin ’16

For the most current athletic news visit www.lawrenceville.org/athletics

Go Big Red!

ON HER

Mark

F

Ariel Claxton ’17 sprints her way into the Big Red record books.

rom now until the time Ariel Claxton ’17 graduates from The Lawrenceville School next spring, it might be a good idea to update the girls’ track record books in pencil. It’s not just that Claxton shattered seven school records last year, but she’s heating up again now as a Fourth Former and still has another year of indoor and outdoor track to go in 2017.

So, yeah. Keep the eraser on hand.

Claxton’s ascendency came as little surprise to Katie Chaput, head coach of the girls’ track and field squad, and her husband, Erik Chaput, the boys’ head coach. During her Second Form year, Claxton – who had never before run track competitively – tried out for the indoor team in order to round out her winter schedule. Both Chaputs stood trackside to evaluate new runners.

“I remember the first day of tryouts, when Ariel stepped on the track and took her first strides. We looked at her stride and looked at each other and said, ‘That girl is going to be good,’” Katie Chaput recalls. “You could tell from that very first day of practice.”

Ironically, Claxton considered soccer her main sport when she arrived at the School, and intended to pursue lacrosse in the springtime before her foray into sprinting proved to be so immediately successful.

“I had never run track before. I had always been kind of quick on the soccer field, so I thought track would be a nice winter sport,” says Claxton, who was preceded at Lawrenceville by her brother, Joshua Claxton ’13,

and sister Anjelica Claxton ’15. “Once I started track, I decided to do outdoor as well.”

Katie Chaput was doubly delighted to have Claxton for not one, but two seasons per year.

“She had no idea of the talent she had, and I remember she was worried whether she even made the team, which was funny,” she says. “Ariel just has a beautiful floating stride, but she’s always been really humble and doesn’t always see how good she is sometimes.”

A quick glance at the record board tells the story. Individually or as part of a relay team, Claxton set seven Big Red track records as a Third Former, with previous standards falling in the indoor 400 meters (57.78), outdoor 400 meters (57.88), outdoor 200 meters (25.55), indoor 4x200 relay (1:44.73), outdoor 4x200 relay (1:46.07), outdoor 4x100 relay (50.2), and the sprint medley relay outdoor (4:17).

Even as she was recording such stellar marks, Claxton hardly expected them to register among the best in Big Red history.

“It was very surprising! I had never even seen the record board before, and I didn’t know what any of the records were,” she admits. “I didn’t really have any expectations coming into it, so I was definitely very surprised.”

In March 2015, Claxton finished third at the 80th Eastern States Championships at the Armory Track & Field Center in New York City, setting a Lawrenceville girls’ record in the 400 meters and qualifying for nationals. It was a performance, says Erik Chaput, that catapulted her through the spring season that followed.

“The atmosphere is always electric in the Armory,” says Erik, who typically oversees the sprinters on both the boys’ and girls’ teams, while Katie mentors the distance runners from both. “So she did that under intense pressure, in a big setting, finishing third, and punching her ticket to run at nationals. That was pretty exciting to see out of a Second Former, and she carried that on through outdoor track.”

As of February 1, Claxton was New Jersey’s No. 2-ranked scholastic runner in the 400 meters, following another impressive showing at the prestigious Yale Interscholastic Track and Field Classic in mid-January. For all of the events in which she excels (the 4x200-meter team she anchors is also ranked fifth in the state), the 400 is her strongest.

“Hopefully, in the 400, I would love to break 57 [seconds]. To get into the high 56 range would be amazing,” she says. “This year, I was

also put onto the sprint medley team, so I think we’re hoping to break that School record within the indoor season.”

While the focus in track and field is often on individual achievement, one of Claxton’s more notable virtues as a competitor is the importance she places on the team as a whole.

“They definitely boost my confidence because sometimes I’ll get nervous before a race, and they’ll say, ‘You’ve done great in the past, you can do it again,’” she says of her teammates.

“So they’ve always been so supportive of me.”

That support is a two-way street, according to Erik Chaput.

“The thing about Ariel is that she’s a great team player. If it came down to it, she would say to you that she’d give up her individual event to run on a team,” he says. “She loves competing in team relays because she likes that atmosphere. Ariel would walk away from an individual event if it meant getting three other of her teammates on the track.”

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On the Arts

‘Mud, River, Stone’ Explores Identities

T

he Periwig Club’s first Black Box production of the school year, Lynn Nottage’s Mud, River, Stone, took to the stage of the Kirby Arts Center in December.

Directed by Inayah Bashir ’16 and Ciana Montero ’16, Mud, River, Stone tells the tale of an African-American couple who travel to Africa in hopes of finding their roots, but instead are unexpectedly held hostage.

Montero called the production “an underdog’s story of fighting with identity and the exploitation

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t h e l aw r e n t i a n

of Africa and its people.” Mud, River, Stone features a variety of characters from varied backgrounds and identities including an African man of color, a white African man, an African-American couple, and a European man who wants to be part of the African culture. Ultimately, Bashir says, “it’s interesting to see all of their intentions and morals creating an interesting dynamic, as no one ever considers what it’s like for an African-American to go back to Africa.”

As the drama portrays a number of different themes and character

dynamics, casting the right actors was key. Auditions for Black Box began in September, and once the final call list was determined, the lead actors, directors, and stage managers held two-hour rehearsals daily.

“Directing was a completely different experience that required a different kind of hard work,” said Bashir, who acted in last year’s Black Box. The character portrayals in Mud, River, Stone were demanding of the cast, as well. Actors also had to put in a lot of effort, and Will Shaw ’16, who has been involved

in theater since his Second-Form year, concedes that, “[his] character was hard to portray because of his quick change in emotions.”

In addition to Shaw, the cast of Mud, River, Stone included Elizabeth Adeyemi ’16, Alejandro Roig ’16, Adia Weaver ’17, Waju Oloritun ’18, and Maddie Vore ’18, with a crew of Maia Johngren ’17, Tiffany Thomas ’18, Kristina Gu ’18, Cindy Jin ’17, Vanya Tandon ’18, and Mimi Ughetta ’18.

– Tiffany Thomas ’18

‘The Aesthetic of Silence’

Lawrenceville Celebrates Holidays with Music Lawrenceville’s Winter Jazz Concert in December featured performances by the Jazz Lab Band and Jazz Orchestra. Dresdner Hall in the Clark Music Center was the place to be for Lab Band performances of Julian Adderly’s Sack o’Woe, Nathaniel Adderley’s Work Song, Freddie Freeloader by Miles Davis, and Nat Adderley’s Jive Samba. The Jazz Band presented Until There Was You/Corner Pocket by Freddie Green, Van Morrison’s Moondance, and Birdland by Joe Zawinul.

Later that month, the Collegium Lawrenceville and Community Orchestra presented their own take on the season in Edith Memorial Chapel. The Collegium presented works

by J.S. Bach and Samuel Barber, while English folk carols by Ralph Vaughan Williams, as well as Christmas Festival by Leroy Anderson, were performed by the Community Orchestra.

Moments, Here and Now, a collection of works by Hae Sun Hwang, made the Gruss Center of Visual Arts a required stop on the Lawrenceville School campus in December and January.

Employing a style that combines drawing and mixed media, manipulating glass, engraving, and fabric, Hwang’s work is colorless, with fine lines and a light technique.

It has been called “an aesthetic of silence.”

Hwang often uses the delicate process of silkscreen on glass, composing views of everyday life by superposing the elements.

Hwang’s art has been widely exhibited in Korea for the past two decades, and also displayed in galleries in France, Ireland, Malaysia, Switzerland, and the United States.

Her work can be found in the collections of the Art Bank at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Korea, the Busan Museum of Art, the Four Seasons Hotels, the Gyeongsang National University Hospital, the Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea, the Seoul Museum of Art, and the Federation of Korean Industries.

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Take This Job & Love It

A sacred

Calling

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his space is typically devoted to a Lawrentian who has found professional fulfillment in a field that may be described as offbeat, innovative, or even quirky. The path chosen by Rabbi Adena Blum ’02 isn’t any of those – least of all, cutting edge. In fact, as she says, it’s one of the oldest jobs in the world.

Nevertheless, not even two years after Blum’s ordination to the Reform rabbinate, she remains at such a relatively fresh stage in her career, and yet has had her focus trained on a life in the clergy since she was a student at Lawrenceville. However, her own background would not have necessarily suggested her vocation at all.

“A lot of my friends had a parent or a close relative who was a rabbi and who inspired them to be a rabbi. That is not the case for me.

My father is not even Jewish,” Blum says. “It all started at Lawrenceville, actually.”

Blum forged a close relationship with Rabbi Lauren Levy, a religion master who serves as the School’s rabbi and sits on the Joseph S. Gruss Chair in Rabbinical Studies. “I forget how that started; I probably took a class of hers,” she says. “And it was only after that that I got involved in the Jewish Student Organization on campus.”

Around Blum’s Third and Fourth Form years, Levy began to connect her with the younger siblings of Lawrenceville students who lived locally but didn’t belong to a synagogue and wanted to become a bar or bat mitzvah.

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Rabbi Adena Blum ’02 is quite new to an ancient vocation.

“I was using what I learned as a bat mitzvah to tutor them, and then she and I together would have a service for these families. And I was falling in love with it,” Blum recalls, noting that her enthusiasm led her to take an outside class to be a Jewish Hebrew school teacher, which she also quickly embraced.

Soon, Blum was student-teaching in the religious school at her home congregation, Har Sinai Temple, then located in Trenton, as well as bar and bat mitzvah tutoring outside the synagogue.

“One day Rabbi Levy joked that I should take her job when she retires … and then she stopped joking about it,” Blum says, recalling her Fifth Form year, which she had begun by investigating pre-med programs. “Before I knew it, I was actually starting to think about it. And one of my teachers in the program where I was training to become a Hebrew school teacher pulled me aside after class one day and said, ‘Adena, you seem to be really enjoying this – have you thought about becoming a rabbi?’”

By the end of the year, Blum was investigating Judaic Studies programs. She was drawn by her love of the Hebrew language, but also attracted to the teaching component.

“Part of the process of student-teaching in high school was learning so that I had something to teach. And that process, I loved. So I’m learning all about Israel or Jewish history, or prayers, and then I’m teaching sixth-graders about what I’m learning and creating lesson

plans,” she explains. “And I’ve always loved kids, and working with children and teaching, so that piece really spoke to me.”

Blum’s course was set. “When I went back to my five-year reunion, a lot of my classmates didn’t know what they wanted to do with their lives, and I was like, Oh, I’m going to be a rabbi!” she says.

Blum earned a bachelor’s degree in Near Eastern studies/Judaic studies at Brandeis University, followed by master’s degrees in Hebrew literature and religious education at Hebrew Union College in New York. “When you go into the rabbinical studies program, the default master’s you get is in Hebrew literature,” she recalls. “So I took a leave of absence from the program for a year to get my master’s in religious education, and then finished up my rabbinic studies.”

After interning at two congregations in northern and central New Jersey, she was ordained in May 2014. Even as an intern, Blum was permitted to do much of what an ordained rabbi does, with the exception of officiating at weddings.

“There’s a legal component to that, but everything else, I could do,” she says, adding that a huge piece of both those positons involved teaching.

Blum, who joined the staff of Congregation Beth Chaim in Princeton Junction, New Jersey, following her ordination, says the transition was rather smooth in terms of carrying out her clerical duties. However, she was sur-

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Photograph by Michael Branscom

prised by the demands that came with a fulltime role in a large congregation.

“I knew this to be true, but it wasn’t until I lived it that it hit home just how political congregations are,” Blum explains. “And it doesn’t matter what your faith background is, you have people and you have politics, and just learning the structure of the organization, and who is in charge, and how does communication pass through all channels … that has been a really interesting learning curve for me.”

Blum says her relative youth also presents occasional challenges, but yields pleasant surprises, as well.

“Many people assume I am younger than I actually am, which is interesting to me.

I’m trying not to complain, because I know one day I really will love it,” she says. “But I’ve been really respected in this community, which has been nice. Once in a while, I’ll get a Just you wait until you experience that. And a lot of that has to do with having a family, because my husband and I don’t have kids yet.

You’ll get there one day! they’ll say.”

Blum feared that her inexperience as compared with Beth Chaim’s senior rabbi, Eric Wisnia, who joined the congregation in 1977, would make it difficult for her to counsel members of the congregation. But her natural compassion and training in pastoral care have earned her a rapid acceptance.

“Sometimes they get nervous because they don’t know me yet, and they don’t necessarily know if I’m going to be able to help them,” Blum explains. “But then I show that I can.

Once I did a funeral, and the family wasn’t sure how that was going to go – they actually told me that – but afterward, they told me how pleased they were.”

Of course, Blum never lost sight of her love for teaching, which is one of her responsibilities at Beth Chaim.

“I teach conversational Hebrew to our preschoolers, which is always a lot of fun. I do holidays and Shabbat with them as well,” says Blum, who also teaches in the main religious school from kindergarten through sixth grade, as well as in the high school program. “I love also that I get to work with all the different age groups. Another huge piece of my portfolio is bar and bat mitzvah tutoring, which is funny, because I’ve really come full circle with them.”

Q&A

TableTalk

What’s happening inside the classroom at Lawrenceville?

In just her second year at Lawrenceville, Science Master Nicole Lantz has already established herself as a popular member of her department among both colleagues and students. The Powder Springs, Georgia, native, whose animated enthusiasm when discussing the intricacies of the natural world is infectious, spoke with The Lawrentian about the way she unwittingly trained for the Harkness classroom as a child and how Lawrenceville was already in her blood when she arrived on campus.

You obviously love science. How did your interest come about?

My parents fostered a lot of that. They always supported scientific reasoning and thought.

My dad is a systems engineer, and my mom is a chemical engineer, so we were a family of problem solvers. We would discuss something and try to come up with new ways to solve whatever problem my parents found interesting in the newspaper that day. So that was a great way to grow up!

we took classes. That was really interesting for me because you have to really understand physics and pressure to be a responsible scuba diver. We went to Honduras as a family to finish our certification and do our first real open-water dives. And you go down under water and you think that you know what it’s going to be like, but it’s just a whole other world.

And that’s what science is; it’s a completely new world and it’s infinitely complex.

Did they steer you toward it, or did they simply foster your inclination?

No, I was certainly not pushed, but the things that we did as a family certainly catered to having an interest in the sciences. I was always really interested in collecting bugs and animals. I actually got lost when I was 5 years old at the beach – my mom was freaking out, of course – because I was searching for jellyfish and I just walked along the beach by myself for an hour.

I think my passion for biology really stemmed from that trip to Honduras. I had my eyes opened up to this incredible world of organisms that don’t look like me at all, and don’t function like me at all, but still have the same basic components. Gosh, what an incredible experience that was! So after that, I wanted to be a marine biologist, as do most kids at that age, I think.

That’s quite a start! How did you follow that up?

As this took form, what spurred your development as a student?

When I was 12, my mom decided that we were all going to become scuba-diving certified, so

I had some incredible professors [at Haverford College] who were doing really amazing re-

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Was your idea that you were going to be a research scientist, or did you plan to teach?

I thought I wanted to be a doctor or a scientist in a lab, so I got a grant in college to go work at a maternity hospital at a convent in India.

It was an absolutely incredible experience. I was working and learning how to deliver babies and watching surgeries – it was incredible – things that I would not have been able to do if I were in a hospital in America. But also at this convent was a school for young kids, and I found myself drawn to that.

How did that develop into teaching?

So, literally and figuratively, there was a whole other world waiting for you beneath the surface.

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search in science, really interesting and relevant research. And I think about that a lot as a teacher. Showing students my passion for the subject is really going to get them excited about science at this age, where they can be excited about so many different things.

I would go to the hospital in the morning and then go to the school in the afternoon to work with these kids. Finally, one of the nuns at the school asked, “Hey, do you want to come teach some classes, teach some English?” These kids only spoke Hindi, so my ability to converse with them was limited at first. But she said, “It’s really important for these kids to learn English, even if they’re not going to use it in the future; can you come teach?” And so I started teaching these kindergarteners through seventh-graders. A lot of them were going to start working for their families soon. I was in a very small, poor area of India, but these kids were just so excited to learn, and so excited to be in school, and it was really eye-opening and inspiring.

what they understand and work together to solve problems. That’s what the field of science is – look at all the scientists working together today. They’re having discussions with each other to understand better what’s going on.

What about in the lab?

Lab work can really be seen as a Harkness environment. It’s the kids working together, solving problems, coming up with ideas, testing theories … it’s not your traditional sitting around a table to discuss something, but at the same time, it’s undeniably collaborative.

What was your father’s reaction when you told him you’d be teaching at Lawrenceville? ▲ Just four years out of college, Nicole Lantz brings a youthful enthusiasm to the classroom.

Did you know then that your plans were changing?

I was shocked when I left because everyone kept asking me about my time in the hospital, and what I thought about it, but all I really wanted to talk about were these amazing kids, and how much fun I had working with them.

So I thought to myself, I’m still really interested in science … but I also know I want to work with kids. I know I want to educate, and be able to do that.

It sounds like you became aware of a calling.

It’s true. And you don’t know that you had missed something until it’s put in front of you and you say, “Wow! This is what makes me feel passion and excitement! This is what I want to wake up and go do in the morning!”

And I feel the same way about these students at Lawrenceville. They absolutely light up my day.

It’s amazing how fate can intervene.

What are you teaching now?

My degree was in biology, with a concentration in molecular genetics. I’m fascinated by genetics, fascinated by human anatomy and physiology. I teach our Second Form science curriculum, IBES – Inquiries into Biological and Environmental Sciences – and I also teach our honors-level biology class. And in the spring, I’m excited to start teaching anatomy and physiology, which is one of our one-term elective classes.

You said that back home, your parents would pose problems and you would have conversations about how to solve them. That seems like it was pretty good training for the Harkness classroom.

Absolutely. And it’s worth mentioning that my dad [Harrison Lantz ’74] graduated from Lawrenceville, so he is a big proponent of the Harkness method; he grew up around these Harkness tables. In fact, I grew up hearing about teachers who are now my colleagues. So that’s pretty incredible, pretty surreal. I never thought I’d be here.

How well do you think teaching and learning science are integrated into Harkness?

My upbringing was definitely a product, I’d say, of my dad’s Harkness environment, and then also, it really helped me as a teacher. I think that a lot of people don’t look at science and Harkness and say those two things go together, but I think science is already very much a collaborative field. And it really lends itself to Harkness teaching.

In what ways?

We use our content as a base to support and foster the kids’ understanding of how to practice science. The students will go home and read or work on something where they’ll learn new content. And then they’ll come into the classroom and we’ll pose a problem, trying to keep it as relevant as possible to what’s going on in the world today. And they’ll have to use

I talked to my dad a little bit during the interview process, but didn’t want to get his hopes up too much because I know the place holds such importance to him. So the day of my interview, I was driving back home to Long Island [to the Knox School, where Lantz was teaching], and I was in a terrible car accident in the middle of the night on the New Jersey Turnpike. I actually broke my spine, my hip, and my pelvis. So it was a great day and a terrible day! I had had this incredible experience at Lawrenceville, and left knowing that I was going to find out the next day if I got the job…

That’s astonishing! So when the call came…

The next day, [Dean of Faculty] Chris Cunningham called to offer me the job, as I’m surrounded by my family, who rushed to my side after this car accident, and it was just such an incredible moment. My dad was so excited that I was going to a place that he believes changed his life.

What’s made the biggest impression on you at Lawrenceville?

You have incredible kids who are passionate and so excited to learn, and I get to work with faculty who are talented – the tops in their field. And then, on top of that, we have such amazing resources, especially in the sciences.

These kids are doing labs that I didn’t get to do until college. They’re amplifying DNA and isolating DNA from strawberries and testing the effects of drugs on blackworm heart rate – I mean, we’re doing incredible things here, so to get a job working here has really been a dream. I can’t imagine working anywhere else.

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Ask the Archivist

One for the

Books For the past twenty years, the expansive Bunn Library has been the figurative nerve center of the Lawrenceville campus, serving not only as its main repository of recorded knowledge, but also as one of the premier forums for stu-

dent activities. For current Lawrentians, it may be hard to imagine where their predecessors turned before the sprawling and inviting structure overlooking the Flagpole Green opened its doors in 1996, but for at least one-hundred

At 20, Bunn Library represents a modern twist to the tale of Lawrenceville’s scholarly tradition. By Jacqueline Haun

eighty years, there has been some form of library on campus to meet the needs of students and faculty.

The earliest record of a library on campus is from the 1836 Lawrenceville School catalog, which claims that “a library has been selected with special reference to the benefit of the pupil, from which all are permitted to draw books twice a week.” The precise location of this library is now unknown, although it would have been in what are now Hamill or Haskell houses, the two primary buildings of the school at the time.

When the “School House,” as Haskell was known, was remodeled in 1852, among the changes was a “library room” located in the northernmost corner of the second floor, just off the spacious “school room,” which ran the length of the building from Main Street toward the rear where the fire escape now stands. In keeping with the philosophy that books contained ideas that could either help or harm the reader in a significant way and consequently required supervised use, entrance to the library was beside the platform from which the teacher monitored the work of sixty students.

Unlike a modern library where socializing and pleasure reading are encouraged, it is likely that the 19th-century Lawrenceville

▲ Librarian Oscar McPherson (far left), Class of 1901, convinced then-Head Master Mather Abbott (1919-1934) that if Lawrenceville was to remain a great school, it would have to build a great library.

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▶ That John Dixon Library, which today functions as the Gruss Center of Visual Arts, was built in 1931 and named for the Rev. John Dixon, president of the Lawrenceville Board of Trustees from 1924 to 1930.

library functioned as little more than a book storehouse, to which access was carefully controlled.

The new Memorial Hall building opened in 1885 with a new library located on the southwest corner of the second floor, in an expanded 14-by-30-foot space. Despite the enlarged area, the use of the room was ambiguous at best, as pleasure reading was viewed with some suspicion as a distraction from true education. Oscar McPherson, Class of 1901 and a son of Head Master Simon J. McPherson, described the library collections of those days as “inadequate in quantity and quality,” with “obsolete scientific and technical works, a few odds and ends of juvenile fiction and longsince popular novels.”

Library hours were limited to two hours a day on class days, with extended hours (a full four!) on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons.

By World War I, students required written permission from their housemaster or teacher to enter the library, and not only were students given a “misconduct” if they were caught reading a book in their rooms, but if the book belonged to the library, the librarian would have to explain to the housemaster exactly why it was in the possession of the student.

“There was little or no attempt to supply literary demand of boys or faculty folk,” McPherson wrote in 1927. “Trying to create

such a demand would have been considered subversive of all educational and pedagogical standards of the time.”

However, the world of school libraries was changing, and as an institution always at the fore of current educational thought, The Lawrenceville School would soon follow suit. In 1918, the National Education Association recommended new standards for secondary school libraries that would enhance their role in educational support. Aware of the shifting pedagogical understanding, Lawrenceville administrators had already decided by the summer of 1917 to change the School’s policy and practices with regard to the library.

Luella Colwell, the School’s first professional librarian, was hired in the fall of that year and proceeded to bring the School library into the 20th century by updating its collections, reaching out to students and faculty to determine their reading needs, maintaining longer library hours, and promoting pleasure reading. During the six years Colwell served as the school librarian, circulation of books increased by more than twelvefold through her tireless promotion of the library’s role in the School’s intellectual life.

In 1923, Oscar McPherson assumed the role of librarian and proceeded to build on Colwell’s transformation of the library. Faculty were invited to recommend new books in their

▲ The John Dixon Library not only included extensive space for books, but also the most modern conveniences of the day, including record players used for “record concerts,” hosted by the Concert Club.

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fields of specialty, new magazines and newspapers were added to the collections, and a group of students – later to be known as the Bibliophiles and then the Library Associates – were identified as supporters and helpers in the library.

All of this expanded activity was happening in the increasingly cramped room on the second floor of Memorial Hall that McPherson described as “filled to suffocation” with 12-foot-high shelves of books and seats for thirty-two students. By 1927 McPherson was encouraging the administration to consider the creation of a free-standing library. Seeing that peer schools such as Exeter, Choate, and Andover had already invested the equivalent of between $3 million and $5 million (in today’s dollars) in their libraries, McPherson was able to convince then-Head Master Mather Abbott that in order to maintain Lawrenceville’s status as a great school, it would also have to build a great library.

That great library was the John Dixon Library, the structure that today functions as the Gruss Center of Visual Arts, which was designed by the architectural firm of Delano & Aldrich and built in 1931. The fate of the proposed library was briefly at risk; because of the October 1929 stock market crash and the subsequent collapse of the American economy, the School’s finance committee recommended in 1930 that the building not proceed until 37 percent of the funding for the building was actually in hand. Despite raising $15,000 with the help of the Fathers’ Association, it was not until an additional $18,000 was given

by Lamont du Pont de Nemours of the DuPont chemical company that construction was allowed to go ahead.

Named for the Rev. John Dixon, president of the Lawrenceville Board of Trustees from 1924 to 1930, the new library not only included extensive space for books, but also the most modern conveniences of the day, including record players that were used for “record concerts,” hosted by the Concert Club. A “Gift Alcove” included exhibit space that was routinely filled with materials from the library’s book collections on various historical periods or subjects.

At the time, the library also accepted interesting objects and artwork in keeping with such exhibits, items which would ultimately become part of the Gruss permanent art col-

▲ By the 1990s, the John Dixon Library could no longer adequately serve student needs. The new Bunn Library, designed by architect Graham Gund and built in 1996, met more modern expectations through its sophisticated design and generous size.

lections when the art gallery was created. By 1947, the library had even established a system by which artwork could be rented for between a quarter and a dollar a month, depending on the size of the creation. Despite its rich new resources, there was one consistent complaint about the new library in its early years: it was considered “too far to go to” compared with the previous library’s location in Memorial Hall.

McPherson’s energy and passion for the transformational possibilities of self-education through reading was not limited to his role on campus; he also became a leader in the greater library world, serving as the president of the New Jersey School Library Association, and chairing several state and national committees on the role of libraries in education. McPherson’s accomplishments, both on campus and off, came despite frequent poor health and paralysis from the waist down since the age of 8 due to a childhood illness. Those who visit Old Brick, the faculty home on the school golf course, will see a residual of McPherson’s residence there in the wheelchair-friendly placement of the light switches installed during the

time he lived in the house in the 1940s.

Following McPherson’s death in 1948, Gerrish Thurber would lead the John Dixon Library into its next phase of development.

In 1960, the Carpenter Wing was added to the building, expanding both book stack and student study spaces. Specialized spaces, including a reference room that could hold sixty students at once, a listening room where students could listen to records, and an archives room for the School’s collection of historical materials, were also added.

Despite periodic improvements in technology, including the introduction of microfilm, photocopiers, and even the 1986 addition of Mac computers, by the mid-1990s, it seemed clear that the John Dixon Library could no longer adequately serve student needs. Articles published in The Lawrence throughout the 1970s and ’80s complained about overcrowding and noise levels and the constant struggle to balance the library’s roles as both academic and social space.

The new Bunn Library, designed by architect Graham Gund and built in 1996, was expected

to meet both of those needs through its warm, inviting wood and glass structure and generous size. Designed to hold 100,000 volumes and with built-in computer data ports in the study tables – now largely supplanted by the School Wi-Fi network – the library has evolved into one of the favorite locations on campus.

During the school day, classes frequently come to the building to receive instruction from librarians on efficient research strategies or to work together on projects and homework.

Outside of class hours, numerous clubs meet in the building or gather for various academic and social events from poetry readings to discussions about current events and even the occasional library-sponsored dance. In a recent survey of young alumni, the Bunn Library received outstanding marks in terms of satisfaction.

Even as the role of libraries continues to evolve in tandem with advances in technology, the Bunn Library remains a vital space for students to nurture their hearts and souls, as well as their intellects. Oscar McPherson would no doubt approve.

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light of Lawrenceville’s community support shines well beyond its gates.

t h e l aw r e n t i a n

A Public PurpOse

By Sean Ramsden

Since the days when our nascent republic struggled to steady itself on unsure legs, the campus of The Lawrenceville School has anchored a bucolic village now bounded by two centuries of progressive modernity.

Along that stretch of the old King’s Highway, the prominence of the passageway gave rise to a settlement of farms, homes, and taverns, as well as a community that played an active role in the American Revolution. A map of United States history most certainly has a place for the village of Lawrenceville. ▲ Wes Brooks ’71 H’09 P’03 05, Lawrenceville’s chief financial officer, says the School’s proximity to the village’s Main Street business district has a tremendous positive effect on the local economy – and vice versa.

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▲ Mott Elementary School in Trenton was one of 42 sites that enjoyed the help of student volunteers during this year’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service.

For most of that time, The Lawrenceville School has been a conspicuous part of that community, from its days as a small Presbyterian academy to the campus of today, which draws students from forty nations into its vibrant setting; the pioneers of tomorrow’s progress taking form within structures that bear the unmistakable patina of tradition.

“From an historical perspective, we have been very much a part of this town for over two hundred years,” says Stephen S. Murray H’55 ’65 P’16, who became the School’s 13th head master in 2015. “We are part of the history of this town, and therefore, inevitably in a kind of partnership.”

Indeed, the School and the township – most notably the village of Lawrenceville, the section of Lawrence Township that is anchored by the Main Street Historic District north of Interstate 95 – have grown up inextricably linked by history, economics, and a dutiful obligation to neighborly relations. As one has prospered, so has the other.

“We have a real appreciation about our sense of place here,” Murray continues. “And in that sense, we feel a deep historical tie to the town, as well as a responsibility.”

What, then, is that responsibility? Murray mentions one current dialogue within the aca-

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demic community in the United States, across the campuses of colleges and universities, but also at independent schools like Lawrenceville.

“More recently, there has been a robust conversation around what is being referred to as ‘the public purpose’ of private schools,” he says. “And so, to what extent do we seek to further develop our relationships, the different ways that we partner with the town, with organizations within the town, to make sure that we are doing our part?”

Murray’s attention to this question is sincere. At a school that stresses the importance of integrity, respect, and humility to students and faculty alike, Murray knows that these characteristics can’t be checked at the front gate.

“One might say that one of the ways we serve a public purpose, right off the bat, is to produce, every year, well over two hundred graduates who are civic minded, who are optimists, who seek to make their community a better place because of their Lawrenceville training, and that probably is the greatest impact we have,” he says. “We produce leaders.

And in addition to that, there are much more concrete, specific ways in which we can partner and teach our students actively about civic

“We have a real sense of appreciation about our sense of place here,” Murray says. “And in that sense, we feel a deep historical tie to the town, as well as a responsibility.” participation and public-private partnerships.

“We also feel that we, as a school, can be of help educationally because that’s very much in our wheelhouse; that’s very much who we are,” he adds.

The public purpose of independent schools, however, can be complex. Although The Lawrenceville School actively embraces public/private partnerships through community service and enhancement projects, and philanthropic initiatives that have had a clear impact on public school education in the township and other cities within Mercer County, the School itself

operates on a nonprofit model and needs to make critical investments in itself in order to remain competitive with its peer institutions.

“There’s a limited pool of applicants in the world who can pay the prices that these schools charge for tuition,” says Wesley Brooks ’71 H’09 P’03 ’05, Lawrenceville’s chief financial officer. “If we can’t attract them, or if we get too expensive for them, then the School will suffer.”

That, says Brooks, has negative consequences not only for Lawrenceville, but for the township, as well.

“Our reputation will drop, and our ability to afford our service will drop, and that can force a negative cycle,” he says, noting the way the School’s fiscal health is correlated with that of many local businesses.

The town-and-gown relationships between many educational institutions and the places in which they reside are frequently marked by contentiousness, but both Brooks and Murray are quick to point out that in the case of Lawrenceville and Lawrence Township, the history has been overwhelmingly amicable.

“We benefit tremendously from our presence in the town,” says Murray, who seeks to continue that standard. “This is a wonderful place to be; we’ve got relationships and a love of place. It’s a beautiful place to be.”

The Spirit of Service To generations of Lawrentians, the knowledge they absorbed during their time on campus was steeped in something much deeper than just the classroom experience. Rachel Cantlay P’07 ’09 ’11, who directs the School’s Community Service Program, says that Lawrenceville’s requirement for every student who attends the School for two or more years to complete a minimum of forty hours of community service prior to graduation is wholeheartedly embraced by boys and girls who may never before have had the opportunity to step outside their comfort zone.

“I think there can be a real stereotype about Lawrenceville out in the community, that we’re the privileged elite. We’ve all heard the terminology, and it’s kind of understandable; we’re this beautiful brick campus behind these gates,” says Cantlay, who began working in

▲ Assistant director Elizabeth Ferguson and director Rachel Cantlay P’07 ’09 ’11 manage a robust community service operation that sees Lawrenceville students contribute more than 13,000 hours of assistance in a typical school year.

the Community Service office in 1995 and has spearheaded the program since 2009. “So that we’re able to be out in the community, showing a totally different side – and, frankly, a more realistic side – of who we are, particularly on an individual basis, is really important.”

It’s estimated that Lawrenceville students complete more than 13,000 hours of community service during a typical school year, heading out weekly to area elementary schools, child care and community centers, nursing homes, and soup kitchens to mentor at-risk students, tutor adult learners, aid understaffed agencies, and spend a little time with seniors in nursing homes. Cantlay says that there are even numerous charitable fundraising projects organized by students independently of her office that directly benefit such organizations as Special Olympics Lawrenceville and Womanspace, a Lawrence-based nonprofit dedicated to providing services to individuals and families affected by domestic and sexual violence.

According to Cantlay, some contribute the

required forty hours, but “many do lots, lots more” – often as many as two-hundred or more.

“Our mission here is for the students. We’re here to be part of, and add to, and support their education,” Cantlay explains. “But we’re also a community service program, so, by definition, we’re looking outside the gates, so there’s that balance of doing both – of serving the community while having it be an enriching and meaningful experience for our kids so they get something out of it. And they do!”

Cantlay says this is manifested in the students’ evaluations and reflection meetings, during which they will discuss the impact that particular programs had on their outlook.

“They learn about themselves and about the community. They learn about how they are with children, with teaching, with older people,” she says. “You know, when you get a chance to try something that you’ve never tried before, you see all these parts of yourself that are new to you.”

The feedback Cantlay receives from her

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community partners speaks loudly about the impact of the program, as well.

“Not only are they helping our students with their reading skills, but they’re really great role models for our kids,” says Stephanie Gammone, the literacy director at Mott Elementary School in Trenton. Ten Lawrentians visit every Wednesday afternoon to work one on one with assigned students from Mott, who range from kindergarten to fifth grade.

“They’re tutoring our students, which is always an added plus, because in a classroom filled with between eighteen and twenty-two students, it’s hard, as fabulous as our teachers are, for them to touch every single student.”

“Pony rides and slides … our kids love it,” says Arzaga Dillard of Every Child Valued, of Springfest. “We have a lot of partnerships, but this is one of the better ones, to be sure. They’re like family.”

Gammone created a training program for the Lawrenceville volunteers in order to assist them in providing grade-appropriate tutoring, but it wasn’t long before the Lawrenceville students were flying on their own.

“I kind of had a feeling that would happen when I first met with them,” she says. “I knew that within a couple weeks they would develop relationships and just know what to do.”

The tutoring program at Mott Elementary grew out of the annual Martin Luther King Day of Service, in which all Lawrenceville students head out to dozens of locations across the area – there were forty-two service volunteer sites this year – to lend a helping hand.

Donna Miller, the school counselor at Mott, says the teachers at her school have frequently commented to her how much their children enjoy and appreciate the influence of the older Lawrenceville students.

“You have to understand that some of the kids don’t have an older brother or sister, and if they do, they may not be around, so having

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someone of the Lawrenceville students’ caliber being interested is really important,” Miller says. “Some come from very hardworking families, but may not have as many enriching experiences as one would like.”

Not all of Lawrenceville’s community service occurs in classrooms, however. Every Child Valued (ECV) is a nonprofit that provides academic enrichment and after school programs for at-risk children in Lawrence Township, particularly in the low- and moderate income Eggerts Crossing Village housing complex and at the Lawrence Community Center. Arzaga Dillard, the program director for Every Child Valued, says the student volunteers from Lawrenceville provide homework assistance to ECV students in grades K-3, with two or three volunteers assigned to each group per semester.

“It’s all about building relationships,” according to Dillard, who has been with ECV since 2004. “All the volunteers we get are wonderful and respectful, and they really do their job.”

Dillard hastens to point out the tireless work of Cantlay and Elizabeth Ferguson, assistant director of community service, to create meaningful experiences for the children in the program. Beyond classroom mentoring, he says, the young Lawrentians also extend friendship to the ECV students, hosting them on the Lawrenceville campus for a number of fun annual events including Springfest, an end-of-year celebration for participants in the School’s community service program. Each May, Springfest brings delight to approximately 350 children from local nonprofits and schools, with Circle and Crescent Houses creating and staffing their own stations to craft a carnival-like atmosphere. Jumbo slides, bouncy houses, miniature golf, mini-bowling, and face-painting are among the numerous activities intended to forge lasting memories for the visiting kids.

“Pony rides and slides … our kids love it,” he says. “Our kids love to see those kids. We have a lot of partnerships, but this is one of the better ones, to be sure. They’re like family.”

The spirit of community service embodied

by Springfest isn’t limited to current Lawrenceville students, either. Leigh Lockwood ’65 P’97 ’02 and his wife have been underwriting the event for two decades, spurred by a comment from their daughter, Lisa ’97, whose time at the Lawrenceville School Camp

influenced her decision to teach public school children in New York City.

“Early on, she mentioned Springfest and how much kids enjoyed a field trip, both the tiny guests and the Lawrenceville hosts. I guess for her, it was like a one-day summer camp for local kids,” says Lockwood, an alumni trustee who approached Joann Adams, Cantlay’s predecessor in Community Service, about sponsoring the event. “I always feel a thrill seeing a youngster riding for the first time what must seem like a towering steed, or another pelting a high-schooler with water balloons, and all indulging in cotton candy and sno-cones. I hope the day enhances local community and maybe participants remember the value and lesson of a happy and carefree day.”

Just as Lawrenceville’s community service volunteers brighten the lives of these local youngsters, some of the township’s most senior residents benefit from the community service program, as well.

“Well, they love when the younger kids come and spend time with them, they love it when they help with bingo or the different activities, and they love the music, so that’s always a big hit!” says Toni Faraone, the guide and director of recreation at Morris Hall Meadows, an assisted living and nursing center in Lawrenceville. Faraone’s facility enjoys weekly visits from student volunteers, who lend a hand to staffers across a variety of roles.

“I’ve always worked with the students, and we’ve always had such a great relationship,” says Faraone, who adds that most of Morris Hall’s residents hail from Lawrence or the surrounding communities.

Cantlay, who is proud to tout the recent survey of young alumni revealing that 80 percent have engaged in community service since graduating, says that this wide array of experiences are mutually beneficial to Lawrenceville students and the local community. Harkening back to the misconception of the School as insular, she says that the valuable service of the students helps dispel such notions while furthering its mission.

“I’ve heard our students talk about how one of the values of doing their community service is to get out of the bubble,” she says. “They’ll say how Friday afternoon, to be able to get off campus and go play with kids, is just a relief – a relief to be away from this bubble of stress and work and everything else that they do.”

▲ Lawrenceville student volunteers not only provide direct assistance to area educational programs and community organizations, but are seen as valuable mentors and role models to children, as well.

A Helpful Hand for Teachers Lawrenceville’s impact on local children is not only witnessed through community service. Beginning in 1995 with a $50,000 grant to the Lawrence Township Education Foundation (LTEF), The Lawrenceville School has donated $1,310,000 to the organization to help provide funding for programs that foster excellence, creativity, and achievement in education for all students in Lawrence Township Public Schools.

“The LTEF connection is meaningful to us in particular because the Foundation is a neighbor in our local community and a like-minded partner in their approach to education” says Mur-

ray, who presented his first check for $65,000 to LTEF in September.

The funding provides a real and tangible benefit to the school district, according to Dr. Kelly Bidle, a professor of biology at nearby Rider University and the president of LTEF’s Board of Trustees.

“The Board of Education has their set budget every year, and everything we fund are the things that the typical board budget either hadn’t budgeted for, or currently doesn’t have the funds for” she says. “And being able to put an extra $100,000 into the public schools each year on top of the budget really is a nice thing that gives the teachers and the students all these add-ons.”

Bidle says that the LTEF often finds itself funding experimental or pilot projects, provid-

ing the opportunity for teachers to show the utility of a learning tool before the board of education is ready to fund it.

“Maybe four years ago, every teacher was requesting iPads for their classrooms, and we came down to the same policy: we’ll pilot it in a few classes,” she says, adding that follow-ups and assessment of the funded project are required. “Then it’s really up to the board to decide, do we really want to get all these iPads in the classroom or not?”

Ivy Cohen, LTEF’s executive director, says that with education budgets tightening across the state, the organization has had to do more repeat funding for successful projects for which the district isn’t yet able to allocate money.

“We see ourselves as the test kitchen, and

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we often fund things in their pilot stages,” Cohen says. “But we’ve realized that the district doesn’t always have the funds available, and we don’t want to not give students great opportunities, so if there was a great program for the fifth-graders this year, and they want it again, they’re able to request funding from us for additional years.”

Since its founding in 1992, the LTEF has provided $2.9 million in grants to the district, so Lawrenceville’s contribution to the total is rather significant.

“The Lawrenceville School and Educational Testing Service are our two most significant donors, and we’re extremely grateful,” says Bidle, mentioning the world’s largest private nonprofit educational testing and assessment organization. “We’re one of the top education foundations in the state, in terms of how we run things, and the amount of money we’re able to fund-raise and give out, and a huge part of that is thanks to The Lawrenceville School and ETS, for sure.”

Such funding helps LTEF provide grants to Lawrence Middle School to obtain standing desks and motion desks for use in its special-education kinesthetic classroom program, and to Lawrence Intermediate School for iPad keyboards for special education students. Also within the district, Slackwood Elementary School received funding for a musical concert that teaches kids about nutrition, garden kits for hands-on plant life and botany instruction, and the implementation of Strider Balance Bikes for special-needs students. Lawrence High School was able to provide a cultural literacy trip to Washington, D.C., for English-language students and also sent students to participate in a model simulation of Congress at the State House Annex in Trenton.

“Going forward, we plan to explore ways to develop an even more dimensional relationship, in which we might provide support through volunteers and teaching partnerships as well as funding,” Murray says.

Lawrenceville not only helped fund, but also provided guidance to the district for the use of two Harkness tables to be used in honors and Advanced Placement classes.

“We hosted a half-dozen English and history teachers from Lawrence High School, and we assembled a group of twelve or thirteen Fourth and Fifth Form students who could join me at the table to offer a sample class,” says English Master Pier Kooistra P’19, the Robert

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S. and Christina Seix Dow P’08 Distinguished Master Teaching Chair in Harkness Learning, who led the classroom demonstration. “We shut it down after forty-five minutes, and said, OK, what do you observe and what questions do you have? The kids talked a lot about the various classroom and cultural processes to open themselves up to seminar exchange and thinking in the company of other people – you know, becoming comfortable with putting your ideas out there and accept feedback without getting upset.”

Like a Good Neighbor The idea of being a responsible, conscientious neighbor starts with being a good inhabitant of your environment, and The Lawrenceville School takes its role seriously. Since the adoption of the Green Campus Initiative in 2005, which prescribes a holistic approach to campus sustainability, the School has taken a leadership role within the township in promoting ecological literacy, sustainability education, and involving the broader community in its efforts.

“Sustainability was becoming a key watchword at the time, and [former Head Master] Liz Duffy H’43 ’55 ’79 ’15 P’19 felt that it was a movement the school should be part of,” says Brooks, who has been Lawrenceville’s chief financial officer since 2006. “So the School organized with some townspeople to form a nonprofit venture called Sustainable Lawrence. And we did a lot of fabulous work, including the solar field here, which came out of that.”

Sustainable Lawrence, as its name suggests, encourages the people and institutions of Lawrence Township to cooperatively adopt fundamental principles of environmental sustainability and to develop policies and practices that fulfill those principles. Along with the Lawrence Township Community Foundation, the School sponsored The Greening of Lawrence Township, a public conversation on the local environment in January 2005 that gave rise to Sustainable Lawrence.

Since then, the School has been out front in its efforts to reduce its carbon footprint. The Lawrenceville School Solar Farm, a nearly 30acre, net metered, 6.1 megawatt solar facility, is the largest installed solar power system at a

school in the United States, according to a report by The Solar Foundation. The Farm offsets 6,388 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, the equivalent of taking 1,253 cars off the road in a calendar year. A total of 24,934 solar panels generate enough energy to cover 90 percent of the School’s needs. During the day, the array of panels can produce nearly twice the amount of energy needed by the School, with the excess then imported to the local electrical utility, Public Service Electric & Gas (PSE&G) and credited to the School. Lawrenceville draws excess energy and all other required energy from PSE&G after sundown.

Not only does this solar energy reduce the need for electricity driven by traditional power plants, but the grass on the solar farm is even maintained without the use of mechanized equipment. Some seventy sheep on loan from nearby Cherry Grove Farm gobble up the weeds and grass that grow between the panels during the spring and summer months, providing a cheaper, greener alternative to emissions-causing lawn maintenance machinery, and sparing the sheep’s owners the cost of having to feed the woolly workers for half the year.

Closer to the interior of the campus, Dining Services has also embraced the Green Campus Initiative, applying its tenets to the business of food collection and preparation.

“We try to take that holistic approach and ask questions about everything we do, and purchasing locally helps us to dramatically cut down on our carbon footprint,” says Gary Giberson H’11 P’10, executive chef with Sustainable Fare, Lawrenceville’s food vendor. “Besides supporting the local economies, it also helps us reduce that footprint by not traveling so far.”

Giberson purchases the food used to feed students, faculty, and staff as locally as possible, and in many cases, he barely has to leave the township limits to procure the freshest produce possible.

“In Lawrence Township itself, it’s obviously Terhune Orchards, which is a great supporter of local and sustainable ideals, and an environmentally sound example of food purchasing, so we deal directly with them. We get a lot of our apples and cider and vegetables there when they’re in season,” Giberson says. “But in the broader sense, we deal directly with the Trenton Farmers Market, which supports area farms in Chesterfield, specifically Russo’s Orchard Lane, and also Sandy Acres Farm

▲ Students who volunteer at Morris Hall Meadows, an assisted living and nursing center in Lawrenceville, spin yarns of great fun with residents on knitting day.

in Mercer County, which is great for melons, seasonally.”

Dining Services isn’t green only on the way to your plate, Giberson says. “If you look at our composting system, we’re one of the more aggressive composting facilities around, with our vermiculture process,” he says of the method that uses worms to decompose organic food waste, turning it into nutrient-rich material. “When we recycle, we compost, which, for an institution, is rare.”

Giberson says his staff is composting more than 175 pounds a day. “That’s between our coffee grounds, eggs, and the processing of all our fresh food,” says Giberson, who also estimates that he buys 85 percent of the vegetables produced by Lawrenceville’s Big Red Farm. “When we buy a head of lettuce, we’re buying a full head of lettuce and clearing out the outside. We buy carrots, and we’re peeling them. We buy melons, and we’re taking the skins off, so nothing comes in pre-cut.

It adds up!”

Lawrenceville is also helping provide township residents access to locally grown produce. Using land owned by the School, the Lawrence Township Recreation Department provides 139 garden plots, measuring 20 feet by 20 feet, for local gardeners to use for their tomatoes, lettuce, and carrots on a first-come basis.

The idea of protecting and conserving the environment is closely aligned with the idea of enjoying it, and the Lawrence Hopewell Trail (LHT) is one such way for area residents to commune with nature without traveling far from home. The 20.2-mile bicycle and pedestrian recreational trail winds through public and private lands in Lawrence and Hopewell townships, promoting health and fitness, recreation, and outdoor education. When it became apparent that the LHT would need access to land on Lawrenceville’s campus to complete its circuit, Duffy was eager to accommodate the nonprofit behind the effort, according to Brooks, and today, a key 0.8-mile segment of

the trail passes through the School’s land to the side of the Loucks Ice Center and along a soccer field.

“The Lawrenceville School has been willing to share any of their ideas and, any time they can, their own resources to promote sustainability within the community,” says township manager Richard Krawczun. “Such things as the Lawrence Hopewell Trail, which allows access to the campus for people to exercise, and the community gardens – that is a great asset to the town. They’ve shared information and allowed site visits for some of the technology on the campus; everything from the solar panels to the processing of food waste from the dining halls.”

Krawczun sees the School providing a useful standard for community cooperation between institutions and municipalities on such matters.

“I think there is a model that can be used by other towns and educational institutions for how they can come together for items that may be very small, in terms of the scope of a

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“So this is how we’re aligned with the township,” he says. “Anything that hurts our ability to do this is bad for the town. Anything that improves our ability to do this helps the town.”

In turn, the appeal and accessibility of these local businesses make The Lawrenceville School a more appealing place to live, work, and learn, as well. That is, if a vast, empty meadow sat across Main Street from the campus, the Lawrenceville School experience would be diminished just as much as it would be for the business district if it looked across

Since 1995, the School has donated $1.31 million to the Lawrence Township Education Foundation to help provide funding for programs that benefit ▲ Lawrenceville students provide grade-appropriate tutoring for young area students, who often develop fast friendships with their older mentors.

project, or very large, as with the solar panels,” he says. “Those types of efforts and those sharing of ideas really go a long way toward benefiting everyone.”

Big Impact on Small Business Krawczun also sees a mutually beneficial relationship between The Lawrenceville School and local businesses. Echoing Murray’s point about the historical linkage between the School and its local community, he sees both being stronger when they move in tandem.

“I think that though we each provide a different function, I don’t believe that we do that independently,” Krawczun says. “We move forward and our community is benefiting from each of our strengths being woven together.”

Fifty-seven businesses are represented by Lawrenceville Main Street, a volunteer-led business development organization, of which the School is a Platinum Sponsor, dedicated to the continued revitalization of the historic downtown area through the cultivation of the business environment and enhancement of

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the village’s physical setting. It is perhaps the varied restaurants and eateries across Main Street from the School that benefit most from its residential faculty and the general walkability of the district from campus for students and staff. This is one reason Brooks maintains that though Lawrenceville, as an institution of learning, exists as a tax-exempt nonprofit, it is a key contributor to the township economy.

“Over 90 percent of our revenue is coming from outside the township and county, and bringing that money into Lawrenceville,” he says, noting that in a budget that will see the School spend $61 million in fiscal year 2017, that means about $54 million – between tuition, endowment draw from world markets, and annual giving – will be money that did not originate in Lawrence Township or Mercer County.

“So let’s look at how it’s spent: We spend $35 million on our people, and we don’t have people in Omaha, Hawaii, or Wall Street; we only have people here. So this money goes directly into people, and where they spend it is up to them, but a lot of people spend it locally,” Brooks says, enumerating a list of items and supplies purchased locally, totaling 90 percent of the School’s revenue.

the district’s students. the street at that same empty expanse.

“That’s a very good example, and it epitomizes the need for each other,” Krawczun says. “The School needs a small-business district to attract students and their families, and to retain students and their families. And at the same time, it’s a benefit to the town when businesses are thriving. That’s a good example of each having an impact on the other in a way that they’re not totally independent, but rather, are totally dependent, all at the same time.”

In so many ways, then, The Lawrenceville School is aiming high to fulfill its public purpose. Whether as an economic engine, a community leader in the sustainability movement, an educational consultant, or even just a friendly neighbor, it’s clear that the light of the School’s support is a beacon for the community. It is perhaps Cantlay who best gives voice to this institutional ethos.

“I was thinking the other day about all the awesome people I’ve met who run these programs,” she said, reflecting on the School’s many community service partnerships. “And that’s a huge part of it for me – that balance.

I love being here, and I love being out there, too.”

Leave a Lawrenceville Legacy Henry C. Woods Jr. ‘40 H’59 ‘62 and his wife, Janie H’40, concluded their lifelong love affair with Lawrenceville by bequeathing to the School the largest gift in its 200-year history. Planned gifts, large and small, continue to provide critical support for present and future needs, from student financial aid to teaching chairs.

These include charitable bequests, the easiest way to leave a lasting legacy, and life income gifts, which can provide current financial and tax benefits to you and your family.

Please consider what your own Lawrenceville legacy will be.

For further information, contact Jerry Muntz at 609-620-6064 or jmuntz@lawrenceville.org, or visit our website at www.lawrenceville. planyourlegacy.org.

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Standing Something for

By Sean Ramsden • Photography by Curt LEimbach

A decade after being paralyzed in a car accident, Matthew Davies ’80 is helping others walk again.

A

s dawn broke over central Florida on October 12, 2005, it was, for so many commuters, not unlike any other day.

A light rain fell, making the muggy air feel a bit more damp than usual, but even as they confronted Wednesday morning over coffee, they knew their workweek was nearly halfway behind them.

As they dressed, the local news revealed that a razor blade had turned up in a chicken sandwich in one Flagler County school cafeteria. How does that even happen?, many probably wondered for a brief moment, before the news smoothly segued into the traffic report. Commuters in the Daytona Beach area

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should expect delays near the interchange of Interstates 4 and 95, just southwest of the city that made danger behind the wheel a thrill. An accident on I-4 involving a passenger car and a tractor-trailer had snarled traffic, so leave plenty of time to get around that.

That same drizzly October morning was a day totally unlike any other for Melodie Patton, who feared the absolute worst for her companion of three years. Matthew Davies ’80, the chief executive officer for United Healthcare in North and Central Florida, had left his home near Orlando at 6:15 a.m. for an 8 o’clock meeting in Jacksonville, some 110 miles north. Now Patton was being told he did not make it to Jacksonville. Hearing what hap-

pened was like being plunged into ice water.

Davies might not make it at all.

“When I got to the hospital, the trauma surgeon met me and said we’re looking at a serious spinal-cord injury along with a traumatic brain injury as well,” says Patton, describing the unimaginable news that gripped her at Halifax Health Medical Center in Daytona Beach. “Matthew had suffered a very bad blow to the head during the accident as well, and the surgeon alerted me to the fact that they did not expect him to make it through the afternoon. It was truly hour-by-hour for the first week, whether he would even make it.”

The account of the accident is chilling: As Davies approached the interchange of I-95 that morning, the rest area for truckers was filled with tractor-trailers, and as a result, even more had lined up on the right-hand shoulder of I-4 approaching the rest area. Davies was traveling in the right lane of the highway, with ▶ Paralyzed in a 2005 automobile accident, Matthew Davies ’80 is essentially able to walk by using the ReWalk exoskeleton, mimicking the functional, natural gait of his legs.

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another car to his left, when one of the rigs that had been stopped on the side of the road attempted to reenter the highway, trying, too slowly, to gain speed.

However, rather than proceeding through the rest area and emerging from the other end at a suitable rate to rejoin the highway, the truck driver simply steered across the rest-area entry ramp, cut across the shoulder, and pulled slowly out into the slow lane of I-4 – straight into Davies’ path.

Davies veered sharply to avoid the impact, merely grazing the right rear corner of the trailer, but slammed directly into the back of another rig parked on the shoulder. With a violent suddenness, Davies entered a new reality.

“That dual impact severed my spinal cord at the C-5, C-6 level. I broke my left leg and my right collarbone, and was life-flighted from there; the helicopter came from Daytona, and landed on the highway,” says Davies, who cannot recall the accident nor the drama that ensued. “They took me to Halifax, which is the trauma center right there in Daytona, where the speedway is, so they’re very adept at trauma cases from vehicles.”

As Davies lay comatose in Halifax’s Level II trauma center, defying death with each passing minute, it would have been difficult for most people – even those who had always rallied around his abilities to lead – to imagine what good could ever come of this. But Patton believed.

“Matthew has always been an incredibly positive influence on the people whom he’s touched, including the people in the company that he worked for,” she says. “And knowing Matthew as I did before the accident, there isn’t anybody I can imagine who would have had a better outcome, and a more positive outcome, in having something like this happen than him.”  Matthew Davies has always adapted with ease, being able to assess a situation and respond in ways that yielded benefits for others. Even before he ever took his place at a Harkness table as a First Former late in the summer of 1975, Davies had hopes for football stardom at Lawrenceville. After one practice, however, he remapped his route to athletic success.

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“I was relatively small, but was convinced that I should go out for the football team,” he says. “They had everybody from eighth grade to twelfth grade on the field, going through drills, and as you can imagine, that was pretty daunting. So even though I probably could’ve stayed in that system, I went to the soccer tryout the next day with my roommate.”

Davies, who went on to play soccer during his undergraduate days at Colgate University, emerged as a natural leader. Between his junior and senior years at Colgate, Davies went through the officer candidate school of the U.S. Marine Corps, earning his commission upon graduation, but not before returning to join his teammates for one more season.

“I came back to Colgate my senior year with virtually no hair and a bunch of Marine Corps songs to sing as we were running around the soccer field,” he recalls. “I think most of my teammates enjoyed that atmosphere, and it took their minds off of the fact that we were running another lap.”

As he was set to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in English, Davies met an older fraternity brother from Prudential who had returned to Colgate to recruit new talent. Their meeting redirected Davies from the armed services to a job in health insurance.

“We had actually known each other a little bit when he was a senior and I was pledging, and we hit it off,” he says. “And ultimately, I figured it was easier to get out of Prudential than it was to get out of the Marine Corps if I needed to.”

Davies was assigned to Atlanta as a group representative, marketing to brokers and agents, and directly to companies providing health care benefits for their employees. From 1984 to 1989, he served in a series of progressively responsible positions before landing in Jacksonville in 1990 and being named executive director for Prudential a year later.

In 1997, Davies was courted by United Healthcare to run a few of the plan’s markets.

He accepted the role of chief executive officer for UnitedHealthcare in North and Central Florida and flourished before the 2005 accident left him paralyzed from the chest down.

Davies retired from the business in October 2006, but not before becoming an active and visible proponent for community access to health care.

“So that month – and

▲ Davies and his wife, Melodie Patton, are the owners of CORE, the Center for Recovery & Exercise, an activity-based neurorecovery program for individuals with spinal cord injuries, in Central Florida.

this is very vivid in my mind He served on the shortchanging his fu– I stood up out of my chair, Orlando Regional ture health by confinfor the first time since my Chamber of Coming his efforts to the accident in 2005,” recalls merce Board, and limbs he could indeDavies of his breakthrough on the local board pendently control. of the American Red “For the most part, I with ABRT. Cross, but also worked really did nothing from the to bring health care to chest down,” he says. people in places where the

Still, with a dearth of alneed was greatest. ternatives, Davies continued to exercise “There was another organization, Shep- his body according to the traditional routine herd’s Hope in Central Florida, which pro- prescribed for able-bodied people. During a vides volunteer physicians’ services through 2008 trip to California to visit Patton’s sister, school-based health clinics – not for students, however, Davies began to realize there was per se, but for the general public after school something more he could be doing. hours,” Davies says. “That fit in directly with “We were staying in an area we weren’t what we were trying to do at UnitedHealthcare familiar with, and we were just looking for as far as improving the overall health of the the local Starbucks,” he recalls. “We made community.” a wrong turn and ended up in this complex But Davies’ challenges were different now. where there was a company focused on spiAfter four days, he emerged from his coma, nal-cord injury therapy. We went in there and but he remained at Halifax for another week saw what it was all about. They gave us a halfbefore being transferred to a spinal-cord in- hour tour.” jury hospital in Atlanta. He returned home What Davies witnessed was a training just before Christmas 2005. Over the next ten method known as activity-based restorative months, Davies ground his way through out- therapy, or ABRT, in which people with varpatient rehabilitation at a local hospital, en- ious forms of paralysis were actually engagduring another operation to reset his broken ing their debilitated muscles with the aid of clavicle along the way. That October, a full trainers and adaptive devices. It was totally year after the accident, Davies began rehab- unlike the training he had been doing at his bing at home and at a local fitness center with local gym. a trainer. He worked hard but was increasingly “But they didn’t have anybody doing this nagged by a lingering concern over his rou- program on the East Coast,” he says. “So we tine. came back and continued to focus on my fit “What became evident to me was the train- ness program, across the street from where we er, who was skilled in working with able-bod- live.” ied persons, tended to work only the part of That all changed in March 2011, when Damy body that was able,” Davies explains. “And vies and Patton received a tip about trainers in in my case, being paralyzed from the chest Orlando certified in ABRT. They visited their down, I was essentially working out from my facility, and Davies soon became a client. wheelchair, and all I’d work was my arms and “So that month – and this is very vivid in my upper chest. I was never getting out of my my mind – I stood up out of my chair, for the wheelchair to stand, and never doing anything first time since my accident in 2005,” Davies that would be considered true range-of-motion recalls. “I had always been either sitting in my therapy on my lower extremities.” wheelchair, or on a couch, or laying down.”

Though quick to add that his trainer’s com- Davies legs were braced, and supported at mitment and work ethic were unquestionable, the knees and hips, but what he experienced Davies nevertheless grew wary that he was that day felt revolutionary to him.

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“What’s amazing is that even after that long, the muscles in your legs, your glutes, and your lower back, even though they’re ‘paralyzed,’ and you can’t actively give them a signal below the level of injury … they respond,” he explains. “Even at that point, they have a muscle memory that tells them, OK, now we’re vertical. We actually should be doing something different than we do when we’re sitting.”

To be sure, Davies’ body was almost completely unprepared for this activity. His legs, which had not carried him in more than five years, were literally exhausted in less than ninety seconds.

“What happens with a spinal cord injury, when you have blood flowing to a lower extremity and your body is not trained to recirculate that blood back through your system,” he says, “is you quickly become light-headed and feel faint. We did it three times that day, and over the next couple months, we got up to several minutes each time.”

Malerie Murphy, one of the ABRT trainers who initially worked with Davies, saw her new client transform from skeptic to disciple that day.

“Matt hadn’t done any kind of exercise or recovery program like that, and he wasn’t sold on it yet,” Murphy says. “So actually, I was the first one who worked with him and got him out of his chair and standing. It took three people to stand him for his first time. His core was very, very weak, and I think that’s what sold him.”

Within three months, Davies was standing for five, then ten minutes at a time, but he also learned that Murphy and her ABRT-trained colleague were growing disenchanted with the larger direction of their fitness center, and were considering a move.

“I was about to lose the two trainers who had just, in a matter of three months, brought me along a farther distance than I had been in the previous five years,” he says. “And so Melodie and I said, why don’t we open a center?”

Davies admits he wasn’t quite sure what that would entail, but he and Patton were certain of the benefit they could bring to others in his position.

“Our thought was that we can, with these trainers, start a program that would be very beneficial to individuals with spinal-cord in-

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t h e l aw r e n t i a n

▲ Once he is strapped into his ReWalk device at CORE, Davies can now stand upright and walk for 45 minutes to an hour.

juries and other types of neurological conditions,” Davies recalls. “And we’ll be committed to them as a team for training, and to the devices and equipment that will be beneficial to individuals with neurologic conditions, and so that’s what we’re going to do!”

They did, setting in motion a program that would have an effect on people with spinal-cord injuries not only locally, but well beyond Central Florida, as well. The Center for Recovery & Exercise, or CORE, is a comprehensive activity-based neurorecovery program developed specifically for individuals with spinal-cord injuries and other related disorders, including traumatic brain injury and stroke. That August, CORE took up residence in a seldom-used, 1,000-square-foot yoga and karate room – ironically located within the fitness center where Davies had trained for the first five years following his accident. Within three months, CORE needed to triple its space, and it moved to another site within the same complex that October. The organization now features a staff of ten employees and works from thirty to thirty-five clients per month.

“We adopted the key elements of ABRT and started CORE by saying it doesn’t really matter what your level of injury is,” Davies explains. “We know what the body’s response is, that if you can get your body out of the seated position – out of the wheelchair – and give it

both manual and functional electric stimulation, that the body’s muscles and processes will return involuntarily. And even though you as an individual won’t be able to tell your leg to move, your leg will move.”

CORE does not guarantee to its paralyzed clients they will be able to walk again. Many, like Davies himself, understand that current medical technology simply has not reached the point where a severed spinal cord can be overcome, restoring their bodies’ ability to autonomously control paralyzed limbs. But through the use of cutting-edge technology like the ReWalk exoskeleton, Davies is able to mimic the functional, natural gait of his legs. The battery-powered ReWalk features motors at the hip and knee joints and is sensitive enough to react to subtle changes in the wearer’s center of gravity. For instance, with a slight forward tilt of his upper body, Davies is able to initiate a step forward while securely strapped into the device. Supported by the ReWalk, he can essentially walk, with flexible movement in his hips and knees, using crutches to aid his balance.

“A lot of the activity-based training is related to creating a cyclical process of muscle engagement that occurs whenever you walk,” he explains. “So I’m not going to say that the goal is to use this device for six months and you’ll get up and walk, but I am confident that

you will cause the muscle groups to be trained and reminded how they fire when you are in a walking motion. So you’re replicating, or at least demonstrating and reminding the body of what a gait pattern looks like.”

That, says Davies, pays dividends for all CORE clients using the ReWalk, some of whom are rehabilitating with the intent to walk independently again.

“In cases where people have been able to recover and get to an ambulatory mode again, they are much more proficient when they’ve been able to engage in functional electric stimulation-based training, to give their muscle groups more muscle mass and less atrophy to have to fight with as they try to reengage.”

Murphy, who is now the executive director of CORE, says Davies’ point about atrophy should not be understated and is vital to able-bodied people, as well.

“If you or I were to be put in a chair and told not to move anything for a year, even though we physically could, we would still get all the symptoms and secondary complications that are in our clients who have paralysis,” she says. “So it just makes sense to have to move your body, and maintain health. We have to have muscles to maintain our health.”

After his initial, exhausting efforts to stand for 90 seconds, Davies can now stand upright and walk with the aid of CORE’s devices for 45 minutes to an hour.

Muscle mass and tone have returned to the lower body of the one-time collegiate soccer player, and he says that the CORE philosophy is rapidly catching on – although like most progress, its widespread acceptance can be slow.

“I would say that ten years ago, activity-based therapy was progressive, and today, it’s becoming more and more commonplace, but it has not been able to breach that wall put up by clinical purists and/or insurance companies,” Davies says.

“And having come from insurance companies, I can understand exactly what the dynamic is. Quite frankly, mainstream doctors are waiting to see if that activity-based therapy can be at least as good – although we would tell them it’s better – than your

spinal-cord injury.” standard protocol of physical therapy.”

Until then, Davies and Patton, who is In addition to his efforts for CORE, DaCORE’s president and managing owner, vies has maintained the same commitment realize that cost will be a factor in the de- to community health that distinguished cision of many to receive therapy there. him before his injury. He serves on the “It became very clear to us once we board of the Winter Park Health Foundastarted CORE that the need for the train- tion, which he joined only following his ing we provide is very large, but the fi- accident. nancial barrier for people to afford it was “They focus on health issues, whether also significant,” says Davies, who in it’s school-based health care, or Meals on response started the CORE Foundation, Wheels or other issues in the community which provides scholarships for individu- that need support,” he explains. “It’s finanals with spinal-cord injuries or other neu- cial assistance, or providing leadership, in rological conditions for activity-based order to improve the way that they deliver training. their services.”

“It’s no secret – CORE costs $90 per Taken as a whole, it can be said that hour, and about 80 percent of the hours while Matthew Davies’ life may have been of those services are paid out of pocket altered by his injury, it has lost not a bit by the individual or the family receiving of its purpose. And while that may be surthose services,” says Davies, who prising to those who have never chairs the CORE Foundation been around him, Patton Board. “The remaining – now his wife of ten 20 percent are hours years – never doubtused by clients who ed at all.

“We realize more than ever, have just as much “My belief is that there’s not a week that goes a need for the God gave us a by when we don’t see, both therapy, but don’t second chance, if in me and in our clients, have the financial you will, and for means to pay the breakthroughs that otherMatt to survive full rate.” In those wise would not have been such a devastating cases, he adds, cliachieved,” Davies says. injury, then there ents can apply for a had to be positive to scholarship from the come from it. I kind of CORE Foundation, which felt like that from day one,” will subsidize up to $70 per she says, thinking back to those delhour of activity-based training. icate days after the accident. “I knew we Though many CORE clients come from were already working with an incredible Florida and the region, Davies says that individual who has made tremendous posthe spinal-cord injury population has fully itive advances in everything he’s done, and leveraged the Internet in order to find the that this was just another positive avenue best possible recovery services. for that to take place if he was allowed to “We have had a number of clients come live.” from Brazil, where these services have not developed as far. Their method – and it’s Nearly five years after founding CORE, great to be in Orlando for this reason – is Davies is quick to agree. they’ll come for a month or six weeks, and “What led to wanting to start CORE they’ll combine their therapy at CORE was the realization that my life had with a visit to Disney World,” he says. changed dramatically,” he says. “We re“They’ll come for three or four hours ev- alize more than ever, there’s not a week ery morning, and then they have the lux- that goes by when we don’t see, both ury of being able to visit Mickey an hour in me and in our clients, breakthroughs away and have the family be distracted by that otherwise would not have been that, rather than just focus on the woes of achieved.”

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Dear Lawrentians,

The Alumni Association Executive Committee 2015/2016 President

Jennifer Ridley Staikos ’91 First Vice President

Ian S. Rice ’95 Second Vice President

David B. Stephens ’78 P’06 Executive Committee

Catherine E. Bramhall ’88 Biff Cahill Jr. ’68 P’09 Fritz E. Cammerzell III ’68 P’18 Bruce Hager ’72 Charlie C. Keller ’95 Greg G. Melconian ’87 Brendan T. O’Reilly ’83 P’16 Emily Starkey ’03 Anastacia Gordon ’07 Alumni Trustees

Joseph B. Frumkin ’76 P’11 Kathleen W. McMahon ’92 Leigh Lockwood ’65 P’97 ’02 Jonathan G. Weiss ’75 selectors

Elizabeth M. Gough ’03 John C. Hover II ’61 P’91 George Arnett ’79 Heather Elliott Hoover ’91 Mark Larsen ’72 Patricia Gadsden Hill ’01 faculty liaison

Timothy C. Doyle ’69 H’79 P’99

As I write this letter, I am feeling very nostalgic for my time as a Lawrenceville student-athlete. In January, I joined the celebration of the 100th season of boys’ ice hockey at Lawrenceville and cheered for the Big Red with as much enthusiasm as I did 25 years ago. In addition to my duties as president of the Alumni Association, I have also been active in helping my class’s 25th reunion committee to prepare for our upcoming celebration during this year’s Alumni Weekend. It is hard to believe that it has already been that long since I was a student at Lawrenceville! I’m sure so many of you have felt that same way when you arrived back to campus for a 5th, 20th, or 50th reunion weekend. It’s amazing how time flies, yet so much about our connections to Lawrenceville remains the same.

I look forward to showing my classmates – and all Lawrentians – how the alumni community is thriving; I am prouder than ever to be a Lawrentian. Much of the Alumni Association’s focus these past months has been to “extend Lawrenceville” by encouraging even more alumni to engage with the School and to connect with one another. To that end, we have started three new regional clubs: Westchester (N.Y.)/Fairfield Counties (Conn.), Northern New Jersey, and Europe. By the time this issue of The Lawrentian is sent, we will have celebrated the inaugural events with each of these clubs, but it will be the start of so much more in each region.

Please continue to check the event calendars for these dates and others.

Our established regional clubs have had a busy fall and winter. Some very brief highlights included holiday parties in Lawrenceville, New York City, Atlanta, and London; a reception welcoming Head Master Steve Murray H’55 ’65 P’16 in Washington, D.C.; and more. On top of these great events, specific classes held gatherings, and our affinity groups hosted various celebrations. Thank you to those who planned – and attended – these events!

I look forward to hearing about Lawrentians continuing to connect. To see upcoming gatherings, visit the “Events” page under the “Alumni” tab on our School website, Lawrenceville.org. Additionally, the Alumni Office sends out a monthly email outlining any upcoming events scheduled around the globe. We have more than 100 Lawrenceville gatherings annually, so please join us near your home or on the road whenever you travel for business or pleasure. If you don’t currently receive this email, but would like to, please email alumni@lawrenceville.org with your name and email address. And, of course, we are always looking for enthusiastic Lawrentians. If you are interested in becoming involved as a regional club volunteer, please let us know. If there is not yet a club in your area, step up to the plate, and we will be happy to help you reach out to nearby Lawrentians and start one.

As always, I welcome your comments and suggestions on anything related to Lawrenceville. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me at jstaikos@gmail. com.

I look forward to seeing you on campus soon!

Sincerely, Jennifer Ridley Staikos ’91 President, Alumni Association jstaikos@gmail.com

By The Numbers

A Helpful Neighbor

71

The Lawrenceville School’s impact is felt across the globe, but within its local community, it’s often easier to measure.

Number of sheep used in spring and summer 2015 to control the grass growth on the 30-acre solar farm that supplies electricity to camPUS.

1,310,000

42

The number of dollars donated

Number of area

to the Lawrence Township Education

locations that

Foundation (LTEF) since 1995, nearly

benefited from

half the organization’s total.

the School on the Martin Luther King

6.38 Weight, in metric tons, of the CO2 offset by the solar farm each year.

40 and 200

Harkness tables purchased for

Lawrenceville School student in order to

the district’s

graduate, and the

public schools

number actually

through LTEF grants for use in

performed by the majority of

85

students prior to graduation.

Number of village businesses represented by the nonprofit Lawrenceville Main Street, of which the School is a Platinum Sponsor.

January 2016.

Number of

Number of hours of

community service required of each

57

Jr. Day of Service in

Number of weekly

honors and AP courses.

Percentage of produce grown by the Big Red Farm purchased for food

by Dining Services

service programs sponsored by the Community Service Program.

175

Number, in pounds, of coffee grounds, egg shells, and produce

24

waste composted every day by Dining Services.

1,9 00 Length of the segment, in feet, of the recreational 20.2mile Lawrence Hopewell Trail that runs through the Lawrenceville campus.

Student Snap

by Alex Domb ’17

Lawrentian THE

usps no. 306-700 the Lawrenceville School Lawrenceville, New Jersey 08648 Parents of alumni: If this magazine is addressed to a son or daughter who no longer maintains a permanent address at your home, please email us at vavanisko@lawrenceville.org with his or her new address. Thank you!

Help The Lawrentian Cross the Goal Line!

This fall marks the 125th season of The Lawrenceville School’s House Football League, the longestrunning tackle football league in the United States.

The Lawrentian would very much like to hear your memories of this longtime campus tradition, which means so many things to so many people, for coverage in the magazine’s fall 2016 issue.

If you would like to share your personal recollections of House Football, please contact Sean Ramsden, editor of The Lawrentian, by Monday, June 6, at sramsden@lawrenceville.org or 609-895-2143.