The Lawrentian Fall 2019

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 kzsenak@lawrenceville.org with his or her new address. Thank you!

Lawrentian FALL 2019

The Lawrentian • fall 2019

Lawrentian THE

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No Longer Invisible Long before he had superstars on speed dial, Hall of Fame journalist Garry D. Howard ’77 felt the sting of exclusion.

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Celebrate the holidays together with Lawrenceville alumni and parents on Tuesday, December 3, in one of three major cities — New York, London, and Paris!

VISIT LAWRENCEVILLE.ORG/ALUMNI/EVENTS FOR MORE DETAILS AND TO REGISTER.

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16 WIND IN HER SAILS

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FROM THE HEAD MASTER

Stuck on a Rock, Midstream: Moments to Test Your Mettle IN MY RECENT CONVOCATION REMARKS, I RECALLED A SERIES OF LESSONS ACQUIRED OVER THE

1. William Stryker

YEARS, LESSONS THAT HAVE SHAPED ME. I CHALLENGED THE STUDENT BODY TO SEEK OUT THEIR OWN

“Will” Gummere L. 1867, Princeton’s captain, served as chief justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court from 1901 until he died in 1933. His sister, Elizabeth, married Hugh Hamill, son of longtime Head Master Samuel McClintock Hamill.

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OPPORTUNITIES TO LEARN AND GROW IN THE RICHLY CHALLENGING ENVIRONMENT THAT LAWRENCEVILLE OFFERS. BELOW IS AN EXCERPT PORTRAYING ONE SUCH LESSON FROM MY ADOLESCENCE.

“As we come together as a community to launch the school year, my message to you students is not to wait for serendipity, but to seek out challenges, challenges that will stretch you and help you find the beginnings of real confidence — not brash, cocksure bravado — but the kind of settled self-reliance that only comes with experience.”

PIGSKIN PIONEERS

n a hot July day in 1979, in the wilds of northern Quebec, I found myself stuck on a rock in the middle of a set of rather swiftly running rapids.

I was staring dumbly at my canoe, a beautiful wood-framed, canvascovered canoe, which was crushed, wrapped tightly around the rock, the same rock upon which I stood.

The once-elegant craft was hopelessly twisted and contorted in an inverted U-shape, stuck fast to the rock by the force of the current. And at that moment, all of my belongings — clothing, food supplies, and tent — were floating downstream, rapidly disappearing around a bend in the river.

We were several hundred miles from the nearest dirt road, and the only passable way through this wilderness to reach our pick-up point was over water, by canoe.

As the extent of my predicament was dawning upon me, I felt a sudden, simultaneous realization well up inside. I felt strangely calm and clearheaded: This was definitely solvable, and in fact it would make a good story someday. And standing there on that rock, with the water rushing by, I almost looked forward to telling it.

Now, to understand a little more clearly the nature of my situation, a bit of geology would be helpful. The shape and character of the topography of northeastern Canada was largely formed during the Last Glacial Period by an ice sheet nearly two miles thick. In the northern regions of Quebec, the massive weight of ice

scoured the terrain, leaving it relatively flat, aside from the myriad eskers, moraines, drumlins, and mounds of glacial till left in its wake.

Twelve thousand years ago, the final retreat of ice fed an almost infinite network of crystal clear lakes and rivers, and exposed vast stretches of granite rubble.

Over time, upon the chaotic jumble of boulders, ranging in size from basketballs to Volkswagens, grew a thick forest of hardy spruce trees whose roots drew life from the hardscrabble land, almost entirely devoid of topsoil. Beneath the trees grew an impossibly thick, vibrant green carpet of sphagnum moss, almost magical in appearance.

I found myself in this extraordinary setting at age 15 on a canoe trip with ten other adolescents, two leaders, and a Cree guide named Matthew Loon, a member of one of the largest of the First Nations of Canada. We cooked over open fires and baked bread each night in reflector ovens. We drank water straight out of the rivers, fished for pike and walleye, and, even in July, awoke in the morning to frost on the ground.

About 150 miles into the trip, we had left the Témiskamie River, and we were poling our way up a tortuous stretch of a narrow tributary. Picture the guy in the stern standing with a long pole, like a Venetian gondolier, pushing the canoe upstream against the current with the bowman keeping the canoe straight.

Mile after mile, it was tough work and we made painstaking progress. And this is precisely where our mishap occurred. As we toiled up the river, our canoe hit a tricky patch of current that turned it sideways against a boulder. It instantly tilted upstream and

3. Chauncey Mitchell “Chaunce” Field L. 1867 was the valedictorian of his class at Lawrenceville. After studying medicine at Columbia, he enjoyed a practice in Bound Brook, New Jersey.

4. William Frazier Henley “Billy” Buck, who attended the School sometime from 1865-68, served as captain of Princeton varsity baseball team, leading it to the 1870 intercollegiate championship.

5. David “Dave” 1

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Mixsell L. 1867 studied law and practiced most of his life in Phillipsburg, New Jersey.

6. Daniel Trimble

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2. Charles Joel “Charlie” Parker L. 1867, the son of New Jersey Gov. Joel Parker, practiced law for 10 years before becoming president of the First National Bank of Manasquan (N.J.).

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Hawxhurst, who attended the School sometime from 1865-68, enjoyed a career as a bookkeeper.

Throughout the 2019 season, most college football jerseys will feature patches commemorating the 150th anniversary of the sport’s intercollegiate origins. Today’s Saturday afternoon spectacle traces its roots to the afternoon of November 6, 1869, when Rutgers hosted Princeton in a contest that resembled a rugby match far more than the game we recognize today.

As with so many landmark innovations, Lawrentians played a central role in the contest. Princeton captain William S. Gummere, Lawrenceville Class of 1867, accepted Rutgers’ challenge to travel to New Brunswick for the clash, bringing with him a team that included four other Lawrentians. The emphasis on ferocious physicality was present from the start, suiting the athletic, 6-foot-tall Gummere, a skilled baseball player also credited as the inventor of the hook slide.

Rutgers’ roster featured a sole Lawrentian, Daniel T. Hawxhurst, who likely would have graduated from Lawrenceville only months before the 1869 game, won by Rutgers, 6-4.

The first intercollegiate football game between Princeton and Rutgers featured six students who studied at Lawrenceville.

(Courtesy: Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries)

(Princeton images courtesy of Princeton University Archives. Rutgers profile image courtesy of Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries. David Nathan researched much of the biographical information for Princeton Alumni Weekly.)

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f f f “So, how will you test yourself during your time at Lawrenceville? How will you seek the kind of challenge that will stretch you, teach you about yourself, help you find your confidence?” began to take on water — in a matter of seconds, the graceful vessel became a hopelessly splintered wreck.

We clambered up onto the rock, thankfully having been dumped upstream; had we been pinned between the canoe and the rock, we’d have been crushed.

As I stood there assessing my situation, contemplating the story I could tell, our companions suddenly sprang to life. Two canoes sped off down the river after our all-important food and equipment, which they were able to recover, and two others came up alongside the rock to make sure we were OK and to survey the damage. All thirteen of us tried for an hour to dislodge the canoe, but even straining on a heavy rope, we could not budge it — the river owned it and wasn’t letting go.

We shrugged at our misfortune and managed a laugh, then doubled up in our canoes, redistributed the gear, and went on our way.

In the intervening years, I have thought back frequently to that brief, momentarily dire setback, and more important, to that feeling of calm certainty that washed over me on the rock. It was in that moment that I found the first glimmer of adult confidence, that steady, centered feeling that if I remain focused and think clearly, if I work with the folks around me, I can probably solve this. And that glimmer of confidence has served me through much of my adult life.

I believe that this kind of confidence is acquired, or rather earned, when our mettle is tested, when we are pushed out of a certain comfort zone and we are forced to find our footing. In the weeks leading up to the accident, as the members of our expedition worked together on a daily basis to paddle, portage, pole up rivers, pitch tents, split wood, cook, strike camp the following morning, and navigate over 150 miles of rugged terrain, I had learned a kind of self-sufficiency and independence that I had never experienced before.

All of that culminated in that moment on the rock. The

situation was not ideal, but I immediately knew that it could have been far worse, and that it was eminently solvable.

In retrospect, I don’t recall looking for this moment in any kind of purposeful way — the opportunity found me. As we come together as a community to launch the school year, my message to you students is not to wait for serendipity, but to seek out challenges, challenges that will stretch you and help you find the beginnings of real confidence — not brash, cocksure bravado — but the kind of settled self-reliance that only comes with experience. And the opportunities to acquire experience will come in many forms if you are open to them.

So, how will you test yourself during your time at Lawrenceville? How will you seek the kind of challenge that will stretch you, teach you about yourself, help you find your confidence? I recommend that you be more intentional than I was and keep in mind: This learning can come at a price. It isn’t free. The price of one of my lessons was a canoe, and a fine canoe at that. Last I saw it, it was wrapped tight around that rock and we had to leave it behind. Our Cree guide Matthew Loon said it would be stuck fast until the spring melt came to carry it away. I’ll never know about that canoe, but my lessons have stayed with me, and for that, I am grateful.

Sincerely,

Stephen S. Murray H’54 ’55 ’65 ’16 P’16 ’21 The Shelby Cullom Davis ’26 Head Master

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INSIDE

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 AT ZOOX, BOBBY NG ‘03 IS WORKING HARD TO GET YOU INTO A DRIVERLESS VEHICLE.

Photo by GENEVIEVE SHIFFRAR

Features

Labs 12 Research Abuzz

Using a species of fruit fly, molecular biology students partnered with Stanford researchers to battle pancreatic ailments.

for 22 ‘AAllHouse Sorts of Aspirations’

The newly approved Dining and Athletics Complex will be a hub for the School community.

Key 26 One Moment Six Lawrenceville alumni recall when the light came on for them.

Can’t Guard 32 They You, Garry!

There was a time when hall of fame journalist Garry D. Howard ’77 couldn’t get a job in sports.

DEPARTMENTS On the Cover: Hall of fame sports journalist Garry D. Howard ‘77 has devoted his career to discovering and promoting the best reporters he could find.

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A Thousand Words

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In Brief

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By the Numbers

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Inside the Gates

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Go Big Red!

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Take This Job and Love It

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Ask the Archivist

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Class Notes

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FROM THE BASEMENT OF POP HALL FALL 2019 VOLUME 84 | NUMBER 4 EDITOR Sean Ramsden ART DIRECTOR Phyllis Lerner STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Paloma Torres CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Nikita Coppisetti ’22 Andrea Fereshteh Lisa M. Gillard Hanson Samika Hariharan ’20 Jacqueline Haun Barbara Horn Brittany Sun ’19 PHOTOGRAPHY BY Genevieve Shiffrar Jack Sorokin ILLUSTRATION BY Tiago Galo – Folio Art Joel Kimmel Jerome Studer Wastoki CLASS NOTES DESIGN BY Selena Smith PROOFREADERS Rob Reinalda ’76 Linda Hlavacek Silver H’59 ’61 ’62 ’63 ’64 GP’06 ’08 HEAD MASTER Stephen S. Murray H’54 ’55 ’65 ’16 P’16 ’21

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s a college student, I paid my bills by working as a “tree guy.” My colleagues and I were the ones who climbed, trimmed, and took down the trees, then stuffed branch after branch into a roaring wood-chipper that surely has caused me some hearing loss.

Being tied into a tree forty feet off the ground provides a different perspective on otherwise routine views. There’s an art to the knots and to moving, sometimes even gracefully, from limb to limb, chainsaw dangling from your belt.

I thought it was interesting and was surprised more people didn’t stop and ask us about it. Children would, because to them, you resembled Spider-Man. As a journalism student at Lehigh University, the first story Garry D. Howard ’77 ever filed was about this very thing. “I was walking around the campus looking for a story, and I saw these guys swinging from the trees with saws,” he told me for this issue’s cover story. He was intrigued, and waited for them to come down. Something told him there was a story within this routine sight. The tree guys wanted to tell him about it, too.

“I started talking to them, and that was my first story,” he said. “I got a byline.”

As an editor, Garry led news teams inside everything from the Olympics to the NBA All-Star game, but perhaps his greatest contribution to journalism is lending a hand to others who, like him, struggled to be seen by newsroom gatekeepers. At one time, he was the only African American sports editor of a major metropolitan daily newspaper in the country, even while so many of the athletes they cover, and so many of the readers in their cities, were also black.

Garry only ever recruited reporters who wanted the same thing as he did: to be the best, no matter their color. Along the way, the 2019 National Association of Black Journalists’ Hall of Fame inductee has helped lift the next generation of sports’ greatest storytellers.

All the best,

Sean Ramsden Editor sramsden@lawrenceville.org

ASSISTANT HEAD MASTER, DIRECTOR OF ADVANCEMENT Mary Kate Barnes H’59 ’77 P’11 ’13 ’19 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.

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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Bob Dalzell ’44 and family.

Setting the Record Straight One of the more charming moments of Alumni Weekend 2019 was Bob Dalzell ’44 enjoying his 75th reunion with eight members of his family in tow. Together, they made the Class of 1944 reunion a lively affair, but our published photos of the Dalzells were inadvertently grouped with the Class of 1949 in the summer Lawrentian.

Also, our By the Numbers section mistakenly reported the number of Student Tour Guides. There are 428.

The editor apologizes for these errors.

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A THOUSAND WORDS

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How Tweet It Is!

For the girls of Kirby House and all their Crescent and Circle brethren, House Olympics is one event with all the bells and whistles. The annual competition, captured this year by Woodhull House, is a colorful and spirited culmination of the orientation activities that begin every academic year.

For more, see page 10.

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IN BRIEF

A RECORDSETTING TOTAL! A new high for the School’s annual giving campaign boosts a terrific year of giving.

Lawrenceville concluded the 2018-19 fiscal year with an outstanding $93.1 million in gifts and pledges overall. The School’s Annual Giving campaign

raised $6.9 million in that fiscal year – the highest total in its history. Specifically, alumni gave $4.6 million to The Lawrenceville Fund, with 31 percent alumni participation, and parents gave a record-setting $2.2 million to the Parents Fund, with 71 percent current-parent participation.

“We could not achieve these extraordinary results without the hard work and commitment of our many volunteers and the generosity and steadfast support of our donors, to whom I am deeply grateful,” said Mary Kate Barnes H’59 ’77 P’11 ’13 ’19, assistant head master and director of advancement.

The annual Report of Giving with full details about the 2018-19 fiscal year results will be shared this fall. Each and every gift makes an important difference in the experience of the entire Lawrenceville community. On their behalf, we thank everyone who made a gift this year.

PAIR ARE NJ SCHOLARS

Ashley Duraiswamy ’20 and Areeq Hasan ’20 were among just 39 of the Garden State’s most promising students selected to participate in the New Jersey Scholars Program (NJSP). For five weeks, NJSP scholars board at Lawrenceville to examine a single topic — this year, it was “Mind and Body: The Future of Being Human” — through a host of interdisciplinary lenses.

No grades are given, so students are free to explore without fear of failure.

As Harkness veterans, the two Lawrentians enjoyed introducing newcomers to learning around the table. “My focus was

on making sure everyone’s ideas were heard — I felt like I could take that role,” Duraiswamy said. “I really enjoyed doing that and bringing out different voices in the conversation.”

Hasan said it was “weird” to see people raising their hands and waiting to be called on by the teacher. “They’d never had the opportunity to express themselves in an open environment like Lawrenceville,” he explained. “I started talking to people, who have incredible ideas, outside of class to encourage them to contribute and just go for it.”

Areeq Hasan ’20 and Ashley Duraiswamy ’20 participated in the New Jersey Scholars Program over the summer.

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leaping high

SCIENCE SCHOLARS SELECTED

Samika Hariharan ’20, Simon Cull ’20, Nikita Coppisetti ’22, and Ashley Lee ’21 were selected by the Conservation Committee of The Gesneriad Society to present at its 63rd Annual Convention in Cincinnati. The presentations focused on their experiences during the 2019 Lawrenceville in Ecuador Program and an ongoing research project through the Molecular Phylogenetics co-curricular.

— Nikita Coppisetti ’22 and Samika Hariharan ’20

LEAPING HIGH

Amy Aririguzoh ’20 placed fourth in the AAU Junior Olympic Games girls’ high jump competition this summer. Aririguzoh reached 5-foot-7 inches in the 17-18 girls’ final, where she faced off against 50 competitors. Thousands of athletes representing more than 1,500 teams from across the United States competed in the Games, which took place July 27-August 3 in Greensboro, North Carolina.

MELLOR A FINALIST IN PRESIDENTIAL TEACHING AWARDS

Science Master Julie Mellor is New Jersey’s statelevel finalist in the 2019 Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science (PAEMST) competition, one of three Garden State finalists in the Science category. As a state finalist, her name has been submitted to the National Science Foundation for a national review, prior to final selection. Established

by Congress in 1983, PAMEST represents the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government specifically for K-12 science, technology, engineering, mathematics and/or computer science teaching.

LAWRENCEVILLE LAUDED FOR SUSTAINABLE DINING

Amy Aririguzoh ’20 clears the bar in April.

The Common Market Mid-Atlantic issued a Certificate of Support to Lawrenceville for sourcing nutritious foods from local, sustainable farms in 2018. Through its 26,062 pounds of locally sourced food purchases, Lawrenceville supported 28 local farms, 1,438 farm jobs, and 13,365 acres of sustainable family farmland. The Common Market is a nonprofit regional food distributor with a mission to connect communities with good food from sustainable family farms.

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IN BRIEF

WELCOME

ISAACSON

NAMED GENERAL COUNSEL Compliance and risk-management specialist brings three decades of expertise to the School.

Lawrenceville welcomed Marcia Isaacson to its senior staff as general counsel and director of risk management this past summer. Reporting to Ben Hammond, the School’s chief financial officer and secretary to the Board of Trustees, Isaacson also serves as liaison to the School’s Trustee Legal Committee and as an advisor to the Board’s Audit and Risk Committee.

Marcia Isaacson

THE MARCIA ISAACSON FILE Education:

• A.B. with distinction, Stanford University

• J.D. from Stanford University, editor of the Stanford Law Review

• Clerked for a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit

Professional:

• Chief Compliance Officer, Northwestern University

• Senior Associate General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer, City University of New York

• Associate General Counsel

and Chief Compliance Officer, State University of New York

• Assistant U.S. Attorney,

Southern District of New York

• Assistant U.S. Attorney, U.S.

Department of Justice in the Public Integrity Section

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“We are delighted to have an attorney as uniquely qualified as Marcia join the School community,” Hammond said. “Having in-house counsel means we’ll be able to take a more coordinated and thoughtful approach to our wide-ranging legal needs.

Such risks include protecting students’ safety and wellbeing, ensuring fair treatment of employees, mitigating threats to digital security, and preparing for natural disasters, Hammond added.

For Isaacson, the newly created position had immediate appeal.

“The risks and legal issues that affect educational institutions are interesting, dynamic, and wonderfully varied,” she explained. “Plus, it is rewarding to work in an environment where everyone is committed to improving the lives of young people.”

Isaacson brings more than three decades of legal experience to Lawrenceville. She has served in legal and compliance roles at major universities, most recently at Northwestern University, where she oversaw its compliance and audit functions and was actively engaged in risk management. Before moving into education, Isaacson prosecuted complex public corruption and fraud cases as an Assistant U.S. Attorney.

Now, her first priority is getting to know the School and the community.

“It’s a team effort — people are already doing a lot of the right things and have great ideas on what more can be done,” Isaacson said. “I look forward to being a good resource, bringing people together to identify actual and potential risks, develop practical and coordinated ways to manage them, and make the School a safer place.”

NEW FACULTY

The Lawrenceville School is pleased to welcome new faculty members for the 2019-20 academic year. They are: L Tonita Balcom Ph.D. in Psychology, Long Island University; B.A., double major in Psychology and Law and Justice, The College of New Jersey M.L.S., L Liz Buckles Wesleyan University; B.A., double major in Religion and English, cum laude, Kenyon College L Danny Concepcion ’02 Ph.D. in Genetics and Developmental Biology, Columbia University; M.A. in Science Education, Pace University; B.A. in Biochemistry, Columbia University L Nuri Friedlander ABD in the Study of Religion, with a focus on Islamic Studies, Harvard University; M.S.W., Simmons College; M.A. in Arabic Language and Literature, American University in Cairo; B.A. in English and Comparative Literature, American University in Cairo L Josh Frechette M.A. in English, Bread Loaf School of English, Middlebury College; B.A. in American Studies, Williams College L Marisa Hedges M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction, Boston College; B.A., double major in History and Secondary Education, Providence College L Chloe Kalna B.F.A. in Communications Design and Illustration from Pratt Institute L Joselle Lamoutte J.D., Tulane University School of Law; A.B. in Comparative Literature, Princeton University L Nicki Selan M.S. in Physics, with a concentration in Computational Astrophysics, Miami University of Ohio; B.S. in Engineering Physics, West Virginia Wesleyan College

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PENN TEACHING FELLOWS JOIN FACULTY Four new Penn Boarding School Teaching Residency (BSTR) Fellows join the Lawrenceville faculty this fall.

The BSTR students are part of an innovative, two-year fellowship program involving the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education (GSE) and The Lawrenceville School, Deerfield Academy, Hotchkiss School, Loomis Chaffee School, Milton Academy, Miss Porter’s School, Northfield Mount Hermon, St. Paul’s School, and the Taft School.

These novice teachers, who work under the direction of an experienced faculty mentor, are completing the master’s program in teaching and learning at the Penn GSE. They join the faculty for two years as teachers, as well as coaches or assistants in the School’s Community Service Program.

Each Fellow receives a House assignment, where he or she learns about (and becomes an important part of) Lawrenceville’s dynamic residential life curriculum. In addition to their Lawrenceville duties, the Fellows are learning — and bringing back to campus — the most current research on best educational practices through their studies at Penn.

Lawrenceville’s newest Penn Teaching Fellows are: L Sean Dory B.A. in Chemistry, concentration in Environmental Studies, Williams College L Anna Kim B.A., double major in English and Philosophy, Williams College L Amethyst King B.A. in Psychology, with a concentration in Education Studies, Columbia University L Holli Olson B.A. in Mathematical Sciences, with a concentration in Statistics and a minor in Managerial Economics, Colby College

DANCE COLLECTIVE RISES roughly a dozen of Lawrenceville’s elite dancers with a place to hone their craft through pre-professional dance training and performance opportunities, pushing the boundaries of the art. Wilder says LSDC will be “a nurturing space committed to empowering our dancer/athletes with the crucial leadership and development skills that help facilitate achievement and success on the stage, in the classroom, and in everyday life.”

As LSDC’s artistic director, Wilder will select Collective members through an audition process.

Candidates must had several years of prior training and have been part of the School dance program.

They will take an advanced dance Derrick Wilder, director of class to fulfill their School athletic requirement, and add an evening dance, never does anything in a small LSDC practice as an extracurricular way. So, when he realized the 2019activity.

20 academic year was to be the 20th “Our dancers/athletes are always anniversary of dance instruction at Lawrenceville, he started thinking big. pushing themselves to greater

heights, facing bolder challenges, working collaboratively, problem– solving complex choreographic computations, and pushing themselves to the edge,” Wilder said. “That passion and energy are what sets them leaps and bounds ahead, giving them a leg up on life’s The Collective, or LSDC, will provide many challenges.”

“Dance has expanded into a truly wide-ranging program,” Wilder said.

“We have classical, modern, jazz, lyrical, cultural, Broadway … and now we have enough experienced dancers to create a premier ensemble: the Lawrenceville School Dance Collective.”

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IN BRIEF

NO BEGINNER’S LUCK AFTER BREAKING THE SCHOOL JAVELIN RECORD ON HER VERY FIRST ATTEMPT, KAT MCGRATH ’19 KEPT GETTING BETTER.

Katherine McGrath ’19 was a fine shortstop, the kind any high school softball coach would love to have on the team. Good bat, exceptional arm, tough competitor.

The issue, if there was one, was that just about every shortstop in college fits that profile, too, and the scholarship slots fill up fast. As talented as she is, McGrath was just not satisfied with the opportunities being presented to her.

That’s why it’s good to find a Plan B — even if it finds you first.

“It was kind of random,” said McGrath, known to many as Kat. “I saw the javelin being thrown one day, and I called my mother, and I was like, ‘I could do that.’”

In July 2018, they arranged for McGrath to visit with Rich DeStefano, an independent javelin-throwing coach and one-time member of the staff at Yale, who did a quick appraisal of her abilities.

“He had gone to the Olympic trials himself [in 2000], and determined that I was

Kat McGrath ’19 now throws the javelin for West Point.

predispositioned to be better than average at it, so that’s how I got into it,” McGrath said.

By McGrath’s Fifth Form year this past spring, she was more than ready to compete in the event. On her very first official attempt for Big Red, McGrath broke the School record of 100 feet, 1 inch, set by Allison Otis ’10 in 2010. Was she aware of what she had just done?

“Yeah, I knew it was close when it landed,” McGrath said, recalling her trot out to retrieve her javelin. “I was listening, straining to hear the judge who was looking at the tape.”

She was just getting started. McGrath topped her personal best “six or seven” more times over the season, culminating with a throw of 136’5” in May’s Mercer Coaches Classic, tying her for the fourth-best mark by a high school girl in New Jersey in 2019.

The low-key McGrath recounts her successful

single season of prep track and field in a steady, almost modest way, but her pride surfaces when she discusses the opportunity it yielded. She will compete for the women’s track and field team at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point this year, throwing the javelin for the Black Knights of the Hudson.

“I’ve always wanted to serve, so that has been woven through everything,” said McGrath, who lives an hour’s drive from West Point. There, she’ll compete under the tutelage of assistant coach Angelo Posillico, who works with the Black Knights’ discus and javelin throwers.

“He’s very experienced in what he does,” she said.

McGrath also has an eye on the U.S. Army World Class Athlete Program, which supports nationally and internationally ranked soldiers in preparing for the Olympics.

“So, when I leave there after four years, I could branch into that, if I make the mark for it,” she said, “which I think I might have a chance at doing if I continue progressing with this.”

It’s not inconceivable at all. McGrath remains a relative novice in her event, but says her throwing mechanics have steadily improved since trading her softball glove for the javelin.

“I went from knowing nothing to now, where my technique is decent. It’s getting there,” she explained. “It’s a game of millimeters, though, so slight movements really impact the distance that you get.”

‘W’ IS FOR WINNERS, WOODHULL Woodhull claimed the House Olympics title to begin the 2019-20 academic year.

Woodhull House captured the title of House Olympics champions on September 7, its third victory since the event’s revival in 2003. The annual competition is a colorful and spirited culmination of the orientation activities that begin every academic year. Carter House and Dickinson House finished second and third, respectively.

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BY THE NUMBERS

Paging Through Our Past

Here at The

Lawrentian, we try not to be too self-referential, but since we tell your story in every issue, we decided to reflect some history back on you. The Lawrenceville School has been chronicling its alumni in print since the advent of the Lawrenceville

Alumni Bulletin in 1906, but the modern magazine-format Lawrentian was born in January 1937 when a black-and-white architect’s rendering of the planned Mackenzie Administration Building graced the cover. Since then, our 346 issues have always endeavored to report your challenges, changes, and triumphs in a way we hope always keeps you close to the School.

63 TIMES THE COVER HAS FEATURED ILLUSTRATION, INCLUDING PAINTED ARTWORK.

346 34,901 Issues published since the periodical was renamed The Lawrentian in 1937.

20

Years between cover illustrations

by Chris Reed ’77: spring 1989 and spring 2009.

44

Consecutive years Nathaniel Queen ’73 has served as a class secretary, assuming the role in March 1975, just five issues after the Class of 1973 graduated.

Word count of the summer 2019 Class Notes section, excluding Births, Marriages, and Memorials.

8

Number of times Bruce McClellan H’57 ’58 ’60 GP’10 was pictured on the cover, a record.

2004 THE FIRST TIME THE LAWRENTIAN WAS PRODUCED IN FULL COLOR.

1,007

Copies mailed internationally.

98 Age of the oldest alum to 13,897 Total mailed copies of the summer 2019 issue.

grace the cover: Halstead “Jiggs” Little, L. 1897, photographed at the 1976 football game against Andover and pictured in that December’s issue.

2 Times the same photo by Newsweek photographer Tony Rollo of Bruce McClellan H’57 ’58 ’60 GP’10 ran on the cover: autumn 1959 and winter 2009.

15 Times the Fathers Building has been pictured on the magazine’s cover, with the clock cupola featured four times.

1884

Class year of Edgar S. Bliss, whose travels became the first Class Note ever reported in The Lawrentian.

3 EDITORS WHO SERVED TEN YEARS OR MORE: ALDEN D. GROFF ‘09, JAMES E. BLAKE ’43, AND MIKE ALLEGRA. FALL 2019 LAWRENTIAN.indd 11

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Research

Labs

P

ancreatic diseases can be devastating, but Lawrenceville students have partnered with researchers at Stanford University to help improve the odds of recovery. Last spring, Lawrentians in the School’s molecular biology class had the rare opportunity to work with Stanford developmental biology professor Seung K. Kim in his lab’s pioneering research. This data could ultimately lead to better treatment — and possible cures — for pancreatic diseases ranging from diabetes to cancer.

But how?

With Drosophila, a species of fruit fly.

Actually, millions of them, all living in Kirby Science and Math Center Room 1007.

Humans share a surprising number of genetic similarities with Drosophila — enough to make them excellent test subjects to study human diseases.

“They are easy to breed and related enough to us for the research to be relevant and to fuel further endeavors,” said Melanie Fong ’19, a molecular biology course student, who began studying at the University of Chicago this fall.

The first Drosophila flies arrived from Kim’s lab in August 2018, and Lawrentians began their studies to “potentially better understand what genes are expressed where and when in the flies,” according to Science Master Nicole Lantz, who teaches the yearlong course. She spent a year developing the course’s curriculum with her partners at Stanford, which included

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Now at Princeton, Lucy Gutman ’19 says partnering with Stanford for real-life research gave her and others a decided head start over their college peers.

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ABUZZ

USING A SPECIES OF FRUIT FLY, MOLECULAR BIOLOGY STUDENTS PARTNERED WITH STANFORD RESEARCHERS TO BATTLE PANCREATIC AILMENTS.

By LISA M. GILLARD HANSON Photography by PALOMA TORRES

Research begun by students like Jillian Medina ’19 resumed this September when new molecular biology students began their work. There will now be two sections of the course offered to accommodate its popularity.

training at the Seung Kim lab at Stanford and writing a textbook specific to the course content.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Fox, director of student research, who teaches the course alongside Lantz, spent the year updating the Lawrenceville lab facilities to create a stateof-the-art fly lab that can support the course’s work.

Lantz explained that, like flies, humans have a massive genome and thousands of genes, differentially expressed in specialized cells.

“What we’re doing is creating novel lines of transgenic fruit flies that can be used as tools in the process of identifying pieces of DNA that control the expression pattern of certain genes,” she said, “then identifying when and where in the fly those pieces are active.”

With that goal — along with microscopes donated by Trustee Emeritus Glenn H.

Hutchins ’73 — students manipulated small pieces of DNA in the fly in the hope of seeing what their role is in cells that produce insulin in Drosophila. The fly doesn’t have a pancreas, but understanding the development and life cycle of those insulin-producing cells allows researchers to hypothesize what’s going on in the human pancreas without doing any work on a human.

Jillian Medina ’19, now at Harvard, said the research gave her “a sense of purpose because it applies to real life.”

“We’re actually helping with real research … and maybe help the people at Stanford will find something interesting that can help actual human beings,” she added.

Lucy Gutman ’19, now enrolled at Princeton in the fall, said the class gave her and her peers a head start over other first-year college students.

“Everything we’ve done has felt outside of

the normal spectrum of a high school class or any of the other classes you’ve taken,” she said. “In [many] introductory molecular genetics college classes, [students] learn a lot of the things we’ve already studied.”

Medina agreed, stating, “I’ll be able to go up to a professor in my freshman year and say, ‘I’d love to work in your lab. I have X, Y, and Z experience because I’ve already been a molecular genetics lab, and I’m confident in my ability to do these things and help you out.”

The research extends beyond Stanford; these unique flies are the progenitors of new lineages of Drosophila. They will be shared with Indiana University-Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center, where scientists from around the world can use them for additional research.

Lawrentians have created at least five different lines which, Lantz said, “is pretty incredible and beyond our expectations for this year.”

“Doing real research is incredibly empowering for students,” Lantz continued.

“Students are getting a taste of doing work that really matters. Our work is not like a cookie-cutter lab demo, where everyone gets the same, expected result. Sometimes we try things and they fail. Sometimes, we get very unexpected results. It can be frustrating for the students at times, but that’s OK. You need to learn how to deal with that. That is life in a research lab.”

Setbacks are mitigated by the distinct sense of scientific camaraderie.

“I don’t think I ever personally felt discouraged because the class was so supportive,” Fong said. “When someone messed up, it was OK, we got this. We’re going to work on it together.”

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2019

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INSIDE THE GATES

ONE TO WATCH

5Q4 5

questions for Pat MacKinnon, visit coordinator for Lawrenceville’s Admission Office and very often the first adult a prospective Lawrentian meets on campus.

What should every prospective student ask his or her tour guide?

“Why did you select Lawrenceville over other schools?” Our community has a very special bond, and while we have a beautiful campus, incredible course offerings, a House system that is second to none, and are in “the middle of somewhere,” it’s the people who are special here. Relationships last for years between students, teachers, and staff. Lawrenceville will always be “home.”

What is your favorite Lawrenceville event?

It’s got to be the Spring Dance Concert. I attend every year, and it always amazes me. I generally know who the dancers on campus are, and they never disappoint, but my favorite part is the students who have never performed before and work so hard to be a part of the incredible ensembles.

If you could have an allexpenses paid trip anywhere in the world, where would you go?

I’d have to call it a tie between France and Italy. I’ve always wanted to 14

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experience the view from the top of the Eiffel Tower and visit the beaches of Normandy and the American Cemetery. My Dad was a tank driver in World War II, and we grew up hearing incredible stories. A gondola ride in Venice is a close second!

He’s Got Goals Name: Nikita Nesterenko ’20 Age: 18 L Nikita was selected by the Minnesota Wild in the sixth round (172nd overall) of the 2019 National Hockey League entry draft in June. The forward scored 30 goals with 29 assists in 31 games for Big Red last season.

L “Playing in the National Hockey League has been a dream and goal of mine ever since I was little kid,” said Nikita, a native of Brooklyn, New York, prior to draft day.

L Regarded for his “high-end speed and dynamic puck-handling ability,” Nikita earned a spot on the sixmember USA Today All-USA Boys’ Hockey third team in 2018-19.

What person, no longer living, would you most like to meet?

L Nikita is committed to play for Brown University after spending the 2019-20 season with the Chilliwack Chiefs Junior A team in the British Columbia Hockey League.

I would have loved to meet Anne Frank. Her book was my favorite growing up, and to have the chance to actually meet her and hear her express herself in person would be a lifelong memory.

OFTEN OVERLOOKED

What’s one talent that you would like to have?

I always wanted to be able to draw and paint. I remember being so excited about signing up for my first real art class in college. The teacher was pretty critical of my attempts at first, but thought I would improve. I really gave it my all and was a little crushed when he said, “I’m going to give you a ‘C’ for showing up for class, but you have no artistic talent.” A little blunt, but I moved on. Now I just enjoy the talent of others!

When the Noyes Science Building, designed by Delano & Aldrich and opened in 1951, one of its signature features was the arrangement of eight large, aluminum medallions spread across its façade. Each medallion, as suggested by science faculty of the time, represented an area of science, including the general science referenced by this scale (pictured above). When Noyes was renovated to become the history building in 1999, the medallions were removed and placed in storage. Following restoration by the School’s Facilities staff, the medallions were hung high on the interior brick walls of the F.M. Kirby Math & Science Center on December 17, 2009, where they remain today.

10/14/19 8:21 AM

THEY SAID IT “The environment here is competitive, but you will never know how strong you are if you never experience failure. […] You will fail at a time when you wish to succeed, whether academically or in another way.

Accept failure with open arms, because you are competent enough to overcome it if you believe in your own resilience.”

— Thomas Eglin ’19, “That Time I Failed A Course at Lawrenceville,” in The Lawrence, June 2, 2019.

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3

IN THE CLUB

Things we learned producing this issue of

The Lawrentian

1. Lawrenceville alumni

were on both rosters of the very first intercollegiate football game in November 1869 between Princeton and Rutgers.

2. As deputy sports

Working Title Founded: 2017 Current Membership: 7 to10 Purpose: An online literary magazine that accepts great work of all genres, including long-form pieces that might not find a home elsewhere.

Take it from us: Every magazine editor wants to produce an engaging, high-quality publication, and that’s the goal for Working Title, too. But the staff of Working Title, Lawrenceville’s online literary and art magazine, are just as motived to encourage and incubate talent. “We are invested in growing individuals as a part of our writing community, which is why we guarantee a personal workshop even if we are unable to accept a piece,” says co-editor-in-chief Audrey Safir ’20, who adds that they accept scripts, songs, and other forms of artwork, as well as traditional poetry and prose. Working Title was born as a forum for long-form writing that exceeded the maximum word counts of most student-run print magazines. “Essentially, we take the writing that other publications don’t,” says co-editor Giao Vu Dinh ’20, “and we help you make it the best it can be.”

editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Garry D. Howard ’77 discovered future ESPN personality Stephen A. Smith toiling on the high-school sports beat.

Lawrentian THE

WINTER 2009

HEAD MASTER BRUCE MCCLELLAN H’57 ’60 ∑ 1924 - 2008

3. Only once has the same

photo appeared twice on the cover of The Lawrentian, and it was separated by a span fifty years.

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GO BIG RED

SAILING TOWARD TOKYO With the wind at her back, Caroline Atwood ’12 is making a bid for the 2020 Olympics.

C

By ANDREA FERESHTEH • Photo by ETHAN JOHNSON

aroline Atwood ’12 was just 4 years old when her father, George Atwood ’82 P’12 ’18 ’22, gave her a boat for Christmas. Hailing from a family of ardent sailing enthusiasts, Caroline got her start on the water soon after at the Kollegewidgwok Yacht Club in Blue Hill, Maine Two decades later, Atwood is one of the top competitive sailors in the world and has her sights set on the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo with sailing partner Ravi Parent, with whom she forms Parent Atwood Racing.

For Atwood, an Olympic bid became a realistic objective in late 2010 when she was in her Fourth Form year at Lawrenceville.

“The biggest barrier between me and the Olympics — the first major hurdle —

was being able to picture myself there and understand that it’s not an unachievable goal,” she says. “I did a training camp over Thanksgiving break, and they (Olympic sailors) were right there with us.”

Before Atwood arrived at Lawrenceville, she assumed she had wrapped up her competitive sailing career. It was during her first fall break, however, that the Second Former realized how much she missed the sport and knew she had to get back on the water. After researching local, competitive travel teams, she found one on Long Island Sound, and the coach gave her a unique opportunity to join the team.

“It was just a wide-open door in a scene that doesn’t usually have open doors,” she says. “I got in the door.”

Throughout the rest of her time at the School, Atwood traveled every weekend — riding the rails to one of her teammates’ homes near Long Island or back home to

Connecticut — so she could train with the sailing team. Her competitive sailing was piled on top of her participation on the Big Red field hockey and girls’ rowing teams.

The grueling schedule paid off.

Atwood qualified for a world championship regatta, which coincided with an end-of-term project for a history class. Luckily, History Master Cara Hyson P’14 ’16 ’21 made sure Atwood had the chance to complete her academic work and make the race.

“Since that experience of being able to work it out, I got higher and higher in the ranks of youth sailing,” she recalls.

Atwood continued sailing at Tufts University, where she pursued a double major in political science and religion with a focus on Middle Eastern affairs. After graduating in 2016, Atwood knew there was a four-year window before the next Olympic games, and decided to put her all

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Caroline Atwood ’12 and Ravi Parent, the two halves of Parent Atwood Racing, are competing to make the 2020 Olympic games in Tokyo.

“To get to the top, it’s not about being better than somebody else; it’s about maximizing your learninG — learning faster, differently. You have four years to get to the top of the game.” into training for Olympic sailing, which uses a different style of boat from what she was used to.

“You need to break it down and see yourself along the process and be able to trust that each step of the way — because you will lose sight of the big picture at some point — will get you there,” she says. “Our mantra is ‘trust the process.’ Put one foot in front of the other, have small, achievable goals, and let them build on each other.”

In addition to all the physical athletic preparation Atwood is doing — including

lots of time on the water, nutrition, fitness, and sports psychology — she and Parent are charged with managing the business side of their Olympic campaign.

“It’s not just an athletic pursuit for me; it’s a business I’m trying to run,” Atwood says. “A lot of the soft skills help push me forward — talking with people, being an advocate for myself. I’m fortunate to have my Lawrenceville education to fall back on.”

She says that the most successful Olympic sailors are also successful

businesspeople who can dictate the conditions of their training.

Atwood says her goal now is to be a better learner than other competitors.

Over the coming months, she and Parent will compete together in races around the world to make the U.S. Olympic sailing team.

“Everybody’s working with a similar set of skills,” she says. “To get to the top, it’s not about being better than somebody else; it’s about maximizing your learning — learning faster, differently. You have four years to get to the top of the game.”

Atwood acknowledges that the skills she acquired around the Harkness table can also be essential to Olympic athletes.

“I know I can do that in those moments when I doubt myself,” she says. “It’s about learning more effectively and learning faster, and I trust that I can do that.”

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2019

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TAKE THIS JOB AND LOVE IT

A DRIVE TO INNOVATE

I

Bobby Ng ’03 and his colleagues at ZOOX aim to get you into their autonomous vehicles — soon.

magine going about your daily routine without the benefit — perhaps you’d even call it the companionship — of your smartphone. More than likely, you find the thought akin to leaving the house without pants, the stuff of nightmares.

And yet, these ubiquitous, seemingly indispensable gadgets were not available for sale until 2007. If a pocket-size piece of technology can practically become an appendage in just a dozen years, what else looms on the horizon in the next decade or less? What about self-driving cars?

“When we launch our pilots next year, it will absolutely be without drivers,” says Bobby Ng ’03, am HV battery engineer with the San Francisco-based Zoox, which is working quickly to pioneer fully autonomous driving. Ng is the lead engineer of the company’s high-voltage battery system that will power autonomous proprietary Zoox vehicles, which he is purposeful in not calling a “car.”

“One thing that makes our vehicle unique among many other autonomous vehicles is we are developing it from the ground up,” he explains. “When we refer to the vehicle, we call

18

Photo by GENEVIEVE SHIFFRAR

it the robot, because that’s really is what it is: an autonomous software driving stack.”

Call it what you will, but the robot itself won’t be for sale as a product.

“The way our company is going to operate is mobility as a service. We think of this as being an autonomous taxi,” Ng says. This philosophy, he adds, separates Zoox from other companies looking to enter the market with their versions of self-driving vehicles. Some, like Waymo, incorporate their technology into vehicles produced by mainstream automakers, while others, such as Tesla, already outfit all of their traditional vehicles with self-driving hardware.

“We feel that for this to work smoothly, it’s really important for our company to own the vehicles, operate the service, operate the charging, the maintenance, the deployment and operations side of it,” Ng says.

The bidirectional prototype that Ng expects will make its provisional debut sometime in 2020 has no need for a steering wheel or dashboard and features a seating arrangement in which one pair of passengers sits opposite another in a way that mimics carriage-style seating of old.

“It automatically becomes a new experience for the customers,” Ng says. “It’s a social space

that creates a comforting environment for passengers to get from point A to B.” Ng stresses that the Zoox model is ideal for implementation in cities, rather than crosscountry trips that typically require trains or airplanes.

“We aim to solve urban mobility issues, such as those in San Francisco, Los Angeles, or New York,” he says, noting that each city where Zoox is deployed will have a manned teleoperation center as its home base. There, following a signal from the vehicle, engineers can recognize unexpected barriers such as a garbage truck blocking the flow of traffic and can give the Zoox cab permission to cross a double-yellow line, proceeding when it’s safe to do so.

“They have a live view of the camera feeds, like the radar, LiDAR [Light Detection and Ranging], and cameras use,” Ng says. “All these sensors are combined into a perception engine, which represents the entire world around it a 3D view, kind of like a video game.”

Ng says it’s important to note that the robot is always in charge of making decisions for its own safety.

“We’re never remote-driving a vehicle, per se, whereas some other companies are showing videos of driving from a steering wheel from another office,” Ng says. “That’s fairly unsafe

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in our opinion. We still rely on the vehicle to guarantee its own safety.”

Ng says that Zoox expects its vehicles to be in service for well over 75 percent of the day, rather than sitting idle, using the valuable parking space a personal car does while its owner works.

“During the down period, it will go back to charge autonomously. It will get washed and cleaned, and then go back out into the field,” he says. “Robots don’t sleep; humans do have to sleep.”

This projected 18-plus hours of use a day means that the Zoox robot requires a durable battery, a challenge to fit in the minimalist design of the vehicle. That’s where Ng, who earned a degree in mechanical

engineering, comes in. He has been working in transportation since 2007, first designing frames and some body features for the Honda Pilot and several Acura models before moving onto Tesla, where he applied his engineering skills to drivetrain integration and high-voltage battery design.

“Because we’re driving at a relatively low speed in our vehicles, there’s a lot that we can get away with,” he says of the Zoox design.

“Unlike a Tesla, which is really all about power — 0 to 60 in two-point-something seconds — that’s not our goal, because if we drove like that, people would just throw up.”

Ng concedes that in introducing such a fundamental change in road transportation, fear is bound to be an early issue.

“When it comes to people embracing this or feeling safe about it, we do need to provide that level of confidence,” says Ng, adding that the company’s goal is to be an order of magnitude safer than collisions caused by drivers. “If we were to cause any accident on our own, it would really be a big step back for any company that wants to develop autonomous vehicles.”

Ultimately, Ng understands that early users will be skeptical — at least until the technology becomes commonplace.

“When iPhone came out, it was like, Wow, that’s the craziest thing! Why didn’t anyone think of this before? It’s so awesome!” he says. “Then it just became a routine thing, and everyone kind of forgot.”

Plotting an Evolution: Bobby Ng ‘03 considers just how far Zoox has come since the first iteration of its concept for a fully autonomous vehicle.

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2019

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ASK THE ARCHIVIST

Toward the end of his time at Lawrenceville, Mather Abbott also worked to repeal the 18th Amendment banning alcohol consumption, earning the ire of gangster Al Capone.

A LEGACY BUILT OF

BRICK

By JACQUELINE HAUN

A

century ago, on November 17, 1919, the Lawrenceville School welcomed its sixth head master, Mather Almon Abbott, whose forceful personality would not only make him legendary among students, faculty, staff, and alumni, but even earned him occasional attention on the national stage.

Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, on March 1, 1874, Abbott was the son of Rev. John Abbott, the rector of the Anglican St. Luke’s Church in Halifax,

Mather Almon Abbott strengthened Lawrenceville by building a relationship with its graduates. lose two of them before they reached adulthood. From 1897 until 1916, Abbott taught Latin and Greek at the Groton School in Massachusetts,

and Ella Almon, a direct descendant of eminent 17th-century Puritan

where among his students was a young Franklin Delano Roosevelt GP’57,

clergyman Cotton Mather.

with whom he would retain a lifelong friendship.

Before graduating with honors in just three years from Oxford

After completing an M.A. from Oxford, Abbott left Groton for a position

University’s Worcester College in 1897, Abbott joined the rowing crew.

as an assistant professor in Latin at Yale University, where he was tasked

After his third year, was elected captain for the following season by

with oversight of the freshmen in their academic work. Abbott also

his fellow oarsmen, an honor he was forced to decline due to his early

assisted the rowing teams, spending two years coaching the freshmen

graduation.

before being named head coach for the varsity crew in 1918.

That same year, Abbott married Elizabeth Maude Twining from his

Abbott’s fruitful work with undergraduates drew the attention of

hometown of Halifax, with whom he would have three children, only to

the Lawrenceville Board of Trustees in spring 1919, when they sought

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Though sometimes described as tyrannical, Mather Abbott was popular with his Lawrenceville students, who affectionately dubbed him “the Bott.”

a successor to Head Master Simon J. McPherson, who succumbed unexpectedly to the influenza pandemic that devastated the globe during the fall and winter of 1918-19.

The 45-year-old Abbott agreed to become the new head of school, arriving on campus just before Thanksgiving with Elizabeth and their surviving daughter, Gwynne Almon Abbott.

Although McPherson’s death was a blow to a school already struggling in the wake of World War I, the new head master brought a new wave of energy to the campus. A vital and charismatic man, albeit one with a famously mercurial temper, Abbott and his authoritarian style drove the School to success during his tenure. He quickly set about correcting what he deemed lax standards in scholarship and discipline, but despite his demanding personality, he was said to be beloved by the students and known affectionately as “the Bott.”

Abbott was not afraid to chastise those who failed to meet his expectations or follow his directives, “firing” some ninety boys and eight masters from the School in his first year for failure to obey School rules. Fortunately for those dismissed, Abbott’s “firings” often lasted only a short while, with some boys and staff welcomed back once his temper had cooled. Abbott himself even briefly resigned in 1927 when his authority over the School’s newly established medical staff was challenged, but he was quickly coaxed back when the trustees reiterated the head master’s complete authority over the school under their auspices.

The administrative drama was so compelling that Abbott’s threatened departure and triumphant return were documented in The New York Times.

In 1922, Abbott requested an “efficiency survey” of Lawrenceville by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Some of the recommendations he implemented included an updated curriculum, the introduction of a three-track system separating students of varying academic abilities, and a series of guest lectures by Harvard faculty to both inform Lawrenceville teachers of new teaching methods and to stimulate students with new ideas. These A star rower at Oxford, changes resulted in a drastic improvement Mather Abbott also coached the varsity crew in the scholarship of the students.

Abbott also encouraged a more active role for alumni on campus. For the first time since the John C. Green Foundation had acquired the School in the 1880s, the Board of Trustees included Lawrenceville alumni as members, and as the purchasing power of the Green endowment fund dwindled, Abbott courted financial support from graduates of the School. Their subsequent largesse is evinced by the numerous expansion projects completed with alumni money during his administration (see box). Abbott also organized the Fathers’ Association in 1920, the precursor to today’s Parents at Lawrenceville organization.

Abbott not only was an agent of change on campus, but he also became known for his active campaign against the prohibition of alcohol. A teetotaler himself, Abbott initially welcomed the passage of the 18th Amendment banning alcohol in the United States in 1920, but his view changed as he observed the rise of criminal gangs fueled by illicit trade in bootleg alcohol. By 1930, he had joined the Board of Directors of the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment, arguing that Prohibition had led to mass hypocrisy and a culture of persistent lawbreaking, with Americans choosing to skirt the law rather than forgo alcohol.

The press took note of his views in 1931, when he went so far as to pronounce the Women’s Christian Temperance Union as “sitting on the same bench with Al Capone & Co.” by not recognizing the evils that Prohibition had brought. Not only were temperance advocates offended at the comparison, but it is also said that the comment attracted the unwelcome attentions of the Chicago gangster himself. Prohibition was finally repealed in 1933 with the support of the newly elected president, Abbott’s former student, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Despite the onset of the Great Depression, The Lawrenceville School continued to flourish under Abbott’s exacting care before he fell ill with a cold on May 12, 1934. To the great shock of the campus community, he died in Foundation House on May 17 of pneumonia. After a memorial service in the campus chapel, Dr. Abbott was buried in New Haven, Connecticut.

n

Jacqueline Haun is the archivist at the Stephan Archives in Bunn Library.

at Yale before coming to Lawrenceville.

Better Together

Backed financially by the alumni he encouraged to play a more active role on campus, Mather Abbott oversaw an era of significant capital improvements, including: FALL 2019 LAWRENTIAN.indd 21

 ALUMNI STUDY IN FOUNDATION HOUSE, 1922  ALUMNI WAR MEMORIAL BUILDING (OLD LOWER), 1924  FATHERS BUILDING, 1925  KINNAN GATE, 1927  MCPHERSON INFIRMARY, 1929  DAWES AND RAYMOND DORMITORY BUILDINGS, 1929-30)  THE BOWL, 1929  JOHN DIXON LIBRARY, 1931  CLASS OF 1891 MEMORIAL GATE, 1932

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A HOUSE FOR ALL SORTS OF

ASPIRATIONS

By SEAN RAMSDEN

The newly approved Dining and Athletics Complex will be a hub for the School community.

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Open, multilevel dining rooms will become a new hub of student life beneath the undulating roofline of the dining commons.

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The signature component of the Lawrenceville 20/20 strategic plan is set to become a reality. Following formal approval of plans by the Board of Trustees, construction of the School’s Dining and Athletics Complex will soon be underway with the promise of a true community hub that invites students into a space of diverse interests and activities.

“One of our goals was that this be a facility not devoted just to elite athletes, but to the entire community,” says Head Master Stephen S. Murray H’54 ’55 ’65 ’16 P’16 ’21 of the planned complex, which essentially remakes Lawrenceville’s indoor athletics and fitness space while providing for an entirely new dining experience. “We want everybody who walks in the door to feel like they belong there.”

Fueled by the leadership and support of Joseph Tsai ’82 and Clara Wu Tsai, the Dining and Athletics Complex will include a new and expanded indoor athletics facility that preserves the architectural signature of Lavino Field House while expanding the building’s footprint to provide a distinct competitive advantage to Big Red Athletics. The $154 million capital project also delivers a completely new dining commons to replace the current Irwin Dining Center. Flanked by garden views, a transparent, dual-level glass bridge will connect the two halves of the new complex.

“We heard time and again from the students, faculty and staff, and even alumni, about the

importance of this building not to be just an athletic facility, but a building that responds to a factor of the student population,” explains Vinicius Gorgati, AIA, LEED AP, chair of the campus studio at Sasaki Associates, the School’s partner in developing its master plan for campus. “There has always been an ambition that this would be a center for community life.”

The architecture of the Dining and Athletics Complex is the result of a “conversation with the landscape,” according to Gorgati, the principal-in-charge of the Lawrenceville masterplan project.

“One of the topics the Board emphasized from the time we started the master plan was the importance of new additions engaging with the ‘DNA’ of the campus — the tradition of Olmsted — while also creating a new addition,” Gorgati says. “It’s not unlike new generations of students coming to the campus and bringing in new perspectives, so what we’ve been trying to do at the architectural level should build upon the inventiveness on this campus.”

The undulating roofline of the dining portion of the complex reflects the varying elevations of the land it occupies. Gorgati explained how

From across Flagpole Green, the dining facility is consistent in scale and color palette with the nearby brick buildings, Bunn Library and the F.M. Kirby Math & Science Center.

Sasaki was ever mindful to remain consistent in scale and color palette with the nearby brick buildings, such as Bunn Library, Crescent Houses, and the F.M. Kirby Math & Science Center. The highest peaks of the façade also allow for vertical windows that stretch from floor to ceiling, providing expansive views of Flagpole Green while permitting natural light to flood the dining spaces.

“It’s a campus of organic shapes, and the roof’s lines are very vivid,” Gorgati says, drawing a comparison to the bend of the Crescent and the soft, imperfect shape of the Circle. “So we wanted to make sure that the building plan could be articulated metrically, and in terms of materiality, in a way that would resonate with the campus.”

As they approach the building from Flagpole Green, the structure will beckon students through the Harkness courtyard, an outdoor green space that Murray says creates

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A sketch of the entire Dining and Athletics Complex shows the familiar peak of the Lavino Field House roof, the dining facility with its oval-shaped Harkness courtyard, and the glass connecting bridge between the two halves.

an inviting entrance for the entire community.

“Which is why we’re doing dining and healthy eating and fitness, along with competitive athletics all in the same structure,” he says.

With its oval shape, the Harkness courtyard borrows directly from the tables and learning style that live at the heart of Lawrenceville’s “House and Harkness”-centered mission.

“First and foremost, everything we do at the design level goes back to the strategic mission of the School,” Gorgati says. “So I think when you hear Steve Murray’s perspectives on building upon the legacy, but also in creating an ever evolving environment for students and faculty, we try to fit design in terms of supporting that mission.”

One of the eagerly anticipated aspects of the project is the transformation of the School’s indoor athletics facilities, which have lived inside historic Lavino Field House for nearly seventy years. Although the renovation of the existing structure will be significant — with relocation of the basketball court, swimming pool, and ice hockey rink to newly constructed sections of the complex — the indoor track, with its majestic steel trusses looming nearly 45 feet overhead, will remain in place. This signature aspect of Lavino’s architecture will remain a defining feature of the new facility.

“When Lavino was built in the early 1950s, it was almost revolutionary in terms of the

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quality of architecture and the daring of the space for schools of that time,” says Gorgati, who recalls the astonishment of Sasaki’s structural engineer on his first tour of the field house.

“He looked at the big, rigid frame that structures the roof the main field house, and he said, ‘They don’t build them like this anymore!’”

Gorgati says, referencing the curvilinear apex of the arches inside Lavino, which are pitched in a triangular fashion on its exterior.

“They are so beautifully detailed and so simple, but they’re so elegant,” he adds.

“You see that they are muscular in a sense of conquering a very large space.”

The space beneath those trusses will be transformed, Murray says, mentioning the new track surface, walls, ceiling, and skylights.

“It’ll be opened up with a lot more natural light coming in,” Murray says. “It’ll be fully renovated, but we are delighted to preserve the heart and soul of the original Lavino building.”

The future of the Dining and Athletics Complex has Tripp Welborne H’58 P’21, director of athletics, as fired up as he’s been since his days as an All-America defensive back at the University of Michigan. To him, the idea of a community hub reinforces the reflexive relationship between academics and athletics at the School, something he says is integral to life at Lawrenceville.

“We have made the conscious decision that our academic curriculum includes athletics as a learning vehicle, and because of that, there is some form of team bonding activity

that manifests itself in every piece of the Lawrenceville life,” Welborne says. “You’re in a House, which is kind of like your team. Then you’re in a classroom around a Harkness table, which is kind of like a team of twelve, because you have to interact on a team level.”

Welborne, who previously shepherded the construction of an athletics facility at Shorecrest Preparatory School in Florida, says that experience taught him many things that he finds instructive during this process.

“I’m fortunate to have gone through it, albeit on a different scale,” he says. “It was the crown jewel of the campus, where everybody went, so we have many of the same challenges here.”

Construction is always something that has to be accounted for, says Welborne, but “creative scheduling, with a little bit of ingenuity and a lot of excitement, goes a long way.”

Greg Buckles, the Shelby M.C. Davis ’54 Dean of Enrollment Management, is excited about what the Dining and Athletics Complex will mean for student recruitment.

“A place like Lawrenceville is competing with the very best schools for the very best students.

Their hopes and expectations coming in are to see this will be made manifest in all that we aspire to and do well,” Buckles says. “We’re going to have this new state-of-the-art facility that will further set Lawrenceville apart as the nation’s top independent boarding school.

Buckles’ faith in this idea is strong, and it’s bolstered as much by the ethos behind the project as it is simply by its brick-and-mortar result.

“One really important area in higher education now is the notion of food studies, wellness, community, sustainability, and farmto-table food coming together all in one place,” says Buckles, who until this year was the dean of admissions at Middlebury College. “We’re moving away from keeping these things in their own silos and recognizing the relationship they all have to each other.”

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That’s why, in an intentionally complementary way, the role of healthy eating and food options mirrors the School’s commitment to athletics and fitness, which will remain evident from the new dining facility.

“We’re really planning on the outcome to be an experience worthy of a 2020 education at Lawrenceville,” says Gary Giberson H’11 ’18 P’10, the School’s executive chef and director of dining. “And that that period also carries on, so the building has longevity and fits in with the mission of the School.”

Giberson gives an affectionate nod to the nearly 50-year-old Irwin Dining Center, calling it a “great building that has served our community well,” but notes that student use and habits have changed over the years, leaving its modular design and antiquated kitchen setup at a disadvantage.

“We’re definitely going to look at multiple purposes for the room itself,” he says. “First and foremost, you want to be able to serve the students daily, so that’s our focus, but you don’t want to overlook the opportunity to use the space for other purposes, like gatherings, or even dances, or proms, or other banquet services.”

“We have made the conscious decision that our academic curriculum includes athletics as a learning vehicle, and because of that, there is some form of team bonding activity that manifests itself in every piece of the Lawrenceville life,” Welborne says.

He was also able to learn something about the daily flow of students from the recently renovated Abbott Dining Hall, which reopened in fall 2017.

“We were able to close off the kitchen, but leave the Abbott dining room opened, whereas in the past, it was shut,” Giberson explains.

“Now, that’s a gathering spot for a lot of the Fifth Formers, who can use that space all day long, and also in the evening.”

In addition to incorporating the same idea in the new dining rooms, Giberson also wants students to be able to “graze” throughout the day, in between meals.

“We’re considering how to offer food throughout the day without a full menu,” he says, “responding to ‘where can I get a drink or a piece of fruit or a bowl of cereal?’”

Nourishment of both body and mind for

the entire Lawrenceville community was at the heart of the Dining and Athletics Complex planning, and Welborne is unequivocal that it will provide Big Red Athletics a significant leg up in terms of facilities. However, he also sees that benefit as something much greater than wins and losses.

“We’re building something that will create a competitive advantage for every student, and this is before you even get to the athletics component,” he says. “It provides opportunities for each student, as well as the adults in the community, to really find a place that can house all sorts of aspirations.”

Though the building will be completely remade inside, with a new track surface, skylights, and windows, the steel trusses of Lavino Field House will remain a signature architectural feature.

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YOU HAVE TO GO FOR IT.

CASEY QUACKENBUSH '13

Countless Lawrentians have followed their passion to find fulfillment, success, or even fame.

Not quite as common, however, is being able to isolate that catalytic event that altered their lives for the better – even if it wasn’t clear in the moment.

Brittany Sun ’19 asked six Lawrenceville alumni to recall the experience that set the course.

In February, Casey Quackenbush ’13, a budding journalist stationed in Hong Kong, landed the cover story for TIME magazine about Australia’s unprecedented drought, titled: “‘A Harbinger of Things to Come’: Farmers in Australia Struggle With Its Hottest Drought Ever.”

When she was developing the story concept, Quackenbush says she wasn’t afraid to pitch it to her editors, even though she knew it was a massive idea. Nevertheless, she immediately went after it, hungry to show the world what was happening through her lens.

“You have to go for it because no one else is going to,”

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Quackenbush says, “and you never know.”

Quackenbush says she didn’t know her true calling was journalism until a specific, catalytic moment hit her during her time at Lawrenceville.

She remembers her time as Fifth Form student as a particularly stressful period for her, especially during the college application process. Like many teenagers, she wasn’t sure what she wanted to study, but decided to go with art history, as she was taking a similar course at Lawrenceville and enjoyed the subject.

A resident of Haskell House, Quackenbush struck up a conversation with her then-housemaster, Gus Hedberg H’03 P’96 ’00. Hedberg questioned Quackenbush about her college application and major. When she mentioned her interest in studying art history, Hedberg surprised her by responding that she “got it all wrong.”

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THERE WAS SO MUCH INEQUALITY.

TIFFANY KUEHNER '03

“HE TOLD ME THAT I SHOULD BE A JOURNALIST,” RECALLS QUACKENBUSH, WHO REALIZED ALMOST RIGHT AWAY THAT WHAT HEDBERG SAID MADE A LOT OF SENSE. “I ALWAYS LOVED WRITING, AND ENGLISH WAS MY FAVORITE SUBJECT IN SCHOOL, ESPECIALLY AT LAWRENCEVILLE. I WAS AN EDITOR AND WRITER FOR PRIZE PAPERS. BUT IT WAS NEVER SOMETHING I CONSIDERED MORE THAN JUST A HOBBY.” No one before Hedberg had urged Quackenbush to study writing.

“Everyone talks about being bankers or lawyers,” she says, “so it never really occurred to me that journalism was a viable option for myself.”

Consequently, Hedberg validated what Quackenbush loved to do and gave her the confidence to pursue it.

“Mr. Hedberg totally changed my mind,” says Quackenbush, who studied journalism at the University of Pennsylvania.

It was a domino effect from there. Quackenbush was led down incredible paths, met amazing people, and experienced different events she never expected. She ramped up her reporting and journalism experience at Penn, writing for the school newspaper and magazines.

“I was starting to get really positive responses to the things I was writing, and people started to notice it,” she says. “It made me feel amazing that I could influence what people thought while doing something I loved.”

Looking back, Quackenbush says she owes much of her confidence in her writing ability to Lawrenceville, as she not only learned to take risks, but also how to execute a story meaningfully. That pivotal conversation in the stairwell of Haskell taught her to follow her gut.

“Lawrenceville,” she says, “taught me to believe in my crazy ideas.”

When she was only 15 years old, Tiffany Kuehner ’03 faced a transformational moment.

At Lawrenceville, Kuehner was active in community service and particularly passionate about women’s rights. Community work runs in her family, as Kuehner’s grandmother founded the nonprofit organization Hope for Haiti, which seeks to improve the quality of life for the people of the struggling island nation. After years of waiting, as a Third Former, Kuehner finally got the chance to go to Haiti with her grandmother and though she was very experienced with service, she recalls that her previous work was “nothing to the extent of poverty in Haiti.”

“The moment for me was when I went to the Missionaries of Charity’s Home of the Dying, which was located in one of the poorest areas of Haiti,” Kuehner says. “This home is run by Mother Teresa’s sisters, and they accept anyone who has nowhere to go, no questions asked. It’s basically a hospice.”

Kuehner and her grandmother were there to support the work of the

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Missionaries of Charity. “There were two women who were considered not able to live the rest of the day,” she recalls. “The sisters asked my grandmother to be with one woman and me to be with the other.”

Sitting beside the woman, Kuehner did what she could to make her a bit more comfortable, while recognizing that she was extremely ill.

Kuehner had so many questions running through her head: Why was this woman here? Where was her family? Why was she by herself? And why was Kuehner, herself, the one sitting there that day? The doomed woman appeared to be 30 years old, but with a body so malnourished as to seem pre-teen.

“It just felt like there was so much inequality, and it was so unfair. I truly started asking the question of why this would happen,” Kuehner says of her realization that the fate of so many people is determined by, “where you were born and the resources your family had. Anyone could have been in this woman’s position.”

EVERYTHING CHANGED THAT DAY FOR KUEHNER. “I sat there, and she really did pass that day. It was a very powerful moment,” says Kuehner, who presented her experience to her Lawrenceville peers before she began bringing groups down to Haiti.

After pursuing women’s studies and international development in college, she worked in Haiti for twelve years before recently returning to the United States as the president and chief executive officer of Book Trust, a national literacy nonprofit. Book Trust inspires children from lowincome families to love reading by providing a book each month of the school year for the children to choose for free.

“Once you can read,” she says, “you have the world at your fingertips.”

Nearly twenty years after her service trip to Haiti, the dying woman in the hospice remains with – and inspires – Kuehner.

“I don’t know her name and I don’t know her history,” she says, “but she will always be a very important person in my life.”

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WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS?

PAUL MOTT '47 P'76 '85 GP'18 '20

Paul Mott ’47 P’76 ’85 GP’18 ’20 has a long history with Lawrenceville – the School and its surrounding village, where he has lived since childhood. One day when he was just 12 years old, Mott was walking across the street from his neighborhood toward the School campus and onto Green Field, where the Kennedy House football team was practicing.

“I made myself busy,” Mott recounts. “Every time there was a loose football, I would take it and bring it back to the players.”

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It wasn’t long before Mott became friendly with the coach.

“One day, the coach asked me, ‘What are your plans?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know,” Mott says. “He said to me, ‘Well I suggest you go to The Lawrenceville School and Yale.’

“That was a pivotal point in my life,” he continues, “because that is just what I did.”

Besides attending Lawrenceville, Mott also worked on campus during his summer breaks. In 1943, many of the Lawrenceville faculty and grounds crew left their jobs at the School to serve in World War II, so at the tender age of 13, Mott was hired full-time for the summer by the Buildings and Grounds Department.

At Yale, Mott studied social science and literature, and after graduating, he volunteered for the Marine Corps officer program, spending one year in Japan and Korea. He built on his military experience by serving in U.S. Intelligence for some 17 years in Vienna and in West Berlin and Bonn in what was then West Germany.

After years abroad, Mott found his way back to the familiar environs of Lawrenceville, serving as the director of alumni relations before retiring in 2001. The spirit of volunteerism that began more than seventy-five years ago when he retrieved errant footballs on Green Field has continued, however, with Mott serving as president of the Lawrenceville Alumni Association, and as a reunion chair, class agent, and class president. He has also served on the School’s Board of Trustees and is currently a trustee emeritus, as well as a member of the John Cleve Green Society.

The School recognized Mott’s devotion to his alma mater in 1999, when he was awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award for his work to promote the interests of the School over an extended period of time. And his service continues: The Class of ’47 column for Class Notes inside this magazine is authored by Mott, who remains the class secretary.

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Mott emphasizes the life-changing impact of Lawrenceville, which for him all started with one conversation with the Kennedy House football coach.

Oh, and he still finds his way over to the School’s playing fields, but these days, it is to see grandson Tait Mott ’20 compete.

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I TASTED THE BITTERNESS OF BEING CALLED QUITTER. ERHAN BEDESTANI '98

From serving with the Green Berets in Afghanistan to receiving the 2009 Gen. Douglas MacArthur Leadership Award, U.S. Army Maj. Erhan Bedestani ’98 has an impressive record.

With a physical and mental toughness developed through his military training, Bedestani carries those traits throughout his everyday life.

However, there was one moment — a breaking point, really — when he thought he had reached his limit. As it turns out, it was only the start of something new.

Bedestani attended Johns Hopkins University, participating in the

Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program, his first experience with any military training. Soon afterward, he attended U.S. Ranger School.

“It’s like an advanced degree for an officer, in the sense that it really forces them to put all of their initial training and leadership to the test in an environment that is stressful,” Bedestani explains.

He explains that everyone in the program takes a turn at leadership by motivating a small unit of about thirty-five people, “planning, executing, and recovering missions.” However, the soldiers in the unit are all sleepand food-deprived.

“You learn to motivate and provide purpose to already motivated people,” Bedestani says. “But when you start taking away food and sleep, even the most motivated group requires a significant amount of additional energy and leadership.”

Bedestani recounts having completed a mission during the second of three phases of training, along the Appalachian Trail in Dahlonega, Georgia.

“IT'S MISERABLE. IT'S RAINING, IT HAD SNOWED EARLIER, AND EVERYBODY'S REALLY TIRED,” HE SAYS. “THEY CHANGED THE LEADERSHIP FOR THE NEXT MISSION, AND I WAS LIKE, PLEASE DON'T PICK ME. AND BOOM, THEY CALL MY ROSTER NUMBER. “So here I am; my motivation is low, and I have to lead my group to our campsite for the night, and we get lost,” Bedestani continues. “I lose complete control of the unit. Everybody is sleeping when they shouldn’t be. All the fundamental aspects of the leadership control that I should be doing, I’m not doing. I’m just exhausted myself.”

Bedestani, who had been nursing a knee injury for the previous two days, woke the next morning to find the joint had stiffened considerably.

Medics diagnosed him with cellulitis, a serious skin infection that can be life-threatening if not treated aggressively. He stayed in the infirmary for two days before his military instructor announced, The doctor says you’re good to go. You need to head out there.

“Sergeant, my knee is really weak,” Bedestani protested. “I don’t know if I can put a 50-plus pound rucksack on my back and walk through the mountains.”

The instructor gave him two choices: Either return to training, or sign a paper saying he was quitting voluntarily.

“I didn’t know what to do, so I signed the paperwork,” he says. “I was read a riot act that went like, You are voluntarily withdrawing from the course.

You will never be welcome to come back to Ranger School again. We do not accept quitters.”

Bedestani’s story doesn’t end there, however. A non-commissioned officer, a twenty-five-year Army veteran, was assigned to drive Bedestani back to Fort Benning, Georgia, so he could hand in his equipment.

“I learn that this guy fought in Panama and Grenada. He was a Ranger

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and had a lot of credibility within the community,” Bedestani says. “He told me, ‘You seem like a really nice guy and a really great officer. I would have loved to serve for somebody like you. What happened out there?’ And I told him the story.”

Not only did the NCO give Bedestani a much-needed lift, but there were long-term benefits as well. As he was preparing to leave the barracks the next morning, he was summoned by a Colonel Chin, who led the entire Ranger training program.

“He said, ‘I had my brigade surgeon look at your medical packet. You should have been offered the opportunity to medically recoup and join the next class,’” Bedestani says. “He ordered me to report back to Dahlonega immediately, return to the Ranger training program, and immediately start with the next class.”

Given a complete reboot, Bedestani graduated as a U.S. Ranger three months later.

“I didn’t know this at the time, but the NCO who drove me around had served for Colonel Chin in Grenada,” he says. “He went on his own accord to talk to [Chin] to give me another chance.

“I went from being a quitter to having an opportunity to revalidate myself,” he continues, “but the only reason that happened was because of that moment and that person.”

Graduating from Ranger School enabled Bedestani to continue to Special Forces, more commonly known as the Green Berets, one of the military’s elite outfits.

“But in the very early stages of my professional development, this moment was a very critical piece,” he says. “It expanded my limits because I tasted the bitterness that comes from saying you’re a quitter. That has fueled me significantly.”

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In one meeting, Wei was part of the FAA counsel for a congressional hearing. Acting as the attorney for the FAA’s witness, she drafted the testimony and prepared for questioning.

“I remember being in the administrator’s conference room with all the people who were preparing for the congressional hearing. The very top people of the agency are involved,” Wei recalls. “I look around the conference table, and the people who were sitting around the table — the people in charge – were all women. And it was phenomenal.”

Just 25 years old at the time, Wei says her realization that all the people in charge were women was a truly powerful moment for her. This pivotal point allowed her to understand that she can be a woman and be successful, even at a traditionally male-dominated agency.

However, “I realized that none of them were minorities; they were all white, and almost none of them were mothers,” Wei says. “So, it really spoke to me. It said, they have broken through that glass ceiling, but there’s another one on top of that, and that’s your job: to be the minority, the mom, and to be the person to set that next example.”

Consequently, while others had forged the path for women in leadership taken by Wei, she still had her own trail to blaze. For inspiration, she looked to role models, people who took jobs others people did not want, willing to take risks and fix problems. Wei says that these actions have been thematic in all aspects of her life.

She has also noticed an increasing number of minorities or mothers in leadership positions since that powerful moment.

“Very much so,” Wei says. “But it took another ten to fifteen years before I started noticing women of color and women who had families.”

Although Wei acknowledges that these people are still not the majority,

THE PEOPLE IN CHARGE WERE ALL WOMEN. VICTORIA WEI '89

As the acting vice president of management services for the Air Traffic Organization of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Victoria Wei ’89 is a leader in her own right. Wei says her job in the government is to lead others — to be the person who creates an environment for other people to succeed.

She says there was one key moment that was vital in making her the leader she is today.

“When I was a junior attorney at the FAA, I started going to conference meetings,” Wei explains. “And at conference meetings, there are conference tables. The people who sit around the table are ‘in charge’ — they are the people who have the voice.”

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she views this situation as part of her role as a leader.

“It is very important to me that my staff knows I have a family but am still very committed to my career,” she says.

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IT WAS DEFINITELY A WAKE-UP CALL. JOE TSAI '82

When you search on the name “Joe Tsai,” the first link that comes up is one that describes “a Taiwanese-Canadian businessman who is the co-founder and executive vice chairman of Alibaba Group.” The word “billionaire” also rises to the top of the search, as does Tsai’s ownership of the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets and its home arena, the Barclays Center, not to mention the San Diego Seals lacrosse team and the New York Liberty of the WNBA. And it’s all true, too. Yet, Tsai, a 1982 Lawrenceville graduate, is a very modest man who genuinely encourages the importance of humility in leadership and life.

Tsai credits a major part of Alibaba’s success to humility — a positive thread that runs through the senior leadership.

“Very few [successful people] will tell you that humility is important,” Tsai says. “I think it’s critical in Alibaba, because it gives us the ability to see our own weaknesses and helps us identify and find others who can fill the gap.”

Tsai did not always act in this manner, though. He reveals that there were two humbling moments that set him forward to today. The first occurred during his time at Lawrenceville. Coming in as a First Former from Taiwan who barely spoke English, he tried out for the baseball team.

He didn’t make the cut, however, and knowing that Taiwan was very strong in Little League baseball, he felt humiliated.

So, the following year, Tsai decided to try out for Lawrenceville’s lacrosse team and made the junior varsity squad.

“That’s how I got into lacrosse,” he says. “I love the sport, but it’s also the sport that gave me a huge setback and gave me a lot of humility.”

It also presented Tsai with his second catalytic moment.

“My Fourth Form year, I made varsity lacrosse,” he says. “Back then, it was not very common for underclassmen to make the varsity team, and I was very, very proud of myself.”

The following year, Tsai figured he had his spot on the team clinched.

“During the spring, there was another tryout and I was like, ‘I was on the team last year. It’s going to be pretty easy.’”

Though the varsity coach cautioned Tsai he needed to work harder, he admits he “went through the motions.”

“When they posted the final list, I wasn’t on it. I got cut from varsity

lacrosse my senior year,” he recalls. “That was probably the most humiliating — a ‘big failure’ moment for me. But thinking back, it was definitely a wake-up call.”

Tsai says he learned that anyone could arrive at a high point, before tumbling back down without hard work. Therefore, in college, Tsai was motivated to give the sport another shot. He attended Yale University and decided to try to walk on to the men’s lacrosse team. He trained hard to prepare for tryouts for the team and was elated to land a position on the team. He even made Yale’s traveling squad.

“So that’s the story of not making something that you really want, suffering that humility, and then bouncing back from it,” says Tsai, who sees the benefit of occasional failures.

“Life is a repeated game … you’re going to fail sometimes, but then you better learn how to climb back up,” he says. “You’re going to try to get better.

And learning how to fail is absolutely the most important thing in life.

“I think that’s a skill set: understanding why you failed and then trying to do something that’s different that makes you better,” he continues.

Tsai’s determination is so strong that he doesn’t tire from the constant grind to improve. He believes that when people set a goal to improve, fatigue is mitigated, especially when they can see measurable improvement.

“The goal doesn’t need to be very ambitious. You just say, I want to be better than I was yesterday,” he says. “I just try to find ways to make myself better.”

And that’s exactly what he does.

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y e Th ’t n a c rd a u g , u o y y!

R r ga EN MSD N RA A E

By S

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by J phy ogra t o h •P

10/14/19 8:22 AM

There was a time when hall of fame journalist Garry D. Howard ’77 couldn’t get a job in sports. That’s when he decided to become the boss.

Picture this.

You were a guy from North 135th Street in the South Bronx, but now there you are, underneath all the world you’ve ever known, in Sydney, Australia. You’re set for a round of golf at the bidding of your friend, NBA and U.S. Olympic basketball superstar Ray Allen, the hometown luminary you’re there to cover for your newspaper. Stepping out of your cab, you see Ahmad Rashad and Quinn Buckner, former heroes of the NFL and NBA, respectively, and you say to yourself, This is going to be a good foursome.

And then it gets interesting.

Another car pulls up to the clubhouse, disgorging more members of the Olympic Dream Team — Jason Kidd and Alonzo Mourning, among others — and you think, Wow, this is going to be a great day!

Then, while you refine your putting stroke on the closely cropped practice green, one more car arrives, from which two men in dark shades emerge with earpieces in place. What the hell is … who is this, now? is what you wonder, even as you turn back to your putter, before you feel someone behind you. You’re a New Yorker, and when somebody walks up on you, well, you have an instinct. Wheeling quickly around, you see a man politely offer his extended right hand, saying, “Hi, I’m Bill Gates. I came to play with Ray Allen … you’re Garry, right?”

For once, you’re at a loss for words before you pick up the slack in your jaw.

“Yeah, I’m Garry,” is what you manage. “I’m the sports editor at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Ray got me out here because he

wants something. Now I see why...”

It’s the first night of the 2000 Summer Olympics. The next day, you file your column: Golfing with a Billionaire: Priceless.

You’re Garry D. Howard ’77, and you cannot quite believe where life has carried you because the thing is, none of this is all that unusual. You know these guys — well, maybe not the Microsoft dude — because you’re someone they admire. Just a halfdozen years before, you became the only African American sports editor at a major metropolitan daily newspaper in the United States, and that means something to them.

It means something, period.

And just a decade before that, you couldn’t get a job in journalism. Period.

Yeah, picture that.

“You want

to make sure the things you’re telling the children, you’re not selling them a bill of goods. You’re giving it to them straight up,” says Ann Boone Howard P’77, who raised her son Garry and four other children in the Mott Haven section of Bronx, New York. “Because life, as I used to tell them, is much harder than you think it is.”

Being a black man is an immutable part of Garry Howard’s story. He will tell you with a voice that thunders and rises with excitement about the very fortunate life he has lived, and it becomes clear that the color of his skin is integral to that narrative.

Howard has faced racism — faced it down, in fact, never afraid of the fear he knows it masks — but remained determined to seize the career he knew he deserved, because

he knew he was the best at what he does.

Once it was clear his blackness was keeping him from the newsroom — and given his schooling, his résumé, his talent, it seemed like the only plausible explanation — Howard knew what he had to do. If he wanted to beat the boss, he needed to be the boss.

Ann pushed Garry because

she knew he had the ability to do great things, whatever they would be. She wanted him to be able to make his own choices.

“I was the parent like this: If you brought home a 99, I wondered what was happening with the hundreds,” she says.

“If you brought home a B-plus, I wondered what happened where they weren’t giving out the A’s today. I was that type of parent, so I always pushed them.”

Bright and ambitious without much prompting, Garry D. Howard — the “D” stands for Douglas, and Ann likes him to use it — was the valedictorian of his elementary school, P.S. 154. As a sixthgrader, he was reading at a twelfth-grade level. After seventh grade, he was skipped ahead to ninth. That year, Howard caught the attention of A Better Chance, a program devoted to identifying and developing students of color to become leaders, first by placing them in some of the nation’s finest secondary schools. After scoring high on the Secondary School Admission Test, Howard was summoned to the guidance counselor’s office. Lawrenceville had offered him a four-year scholarship.

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“I knew nothing about it. I asked where it was, and they said, Jersey,” he recalls. “I said, ‘Well, how the hell am I supposed to get there?’”

Well, you’re going to live there.

“Live where?”

Live in Jersey.

Nope.

“But when I got home, my mother already had the letter from A Better Chance,” he says. “She already went shopping and bought me a suitcase.”

Howard was apprehensive. “I was like, what am I doing? I haven’t been around white people,” he recalls. “I haven’t been around anyone who didn’t look like me.”

Howard’s first interaction with the School on a four-day visit that April was punctuated by a forthright conversation, and it made a lasting impression on him.

“The first thing I heard was, ‘We know we don’t have many black students, but we’re here to support you,’” says Howard, one of what he recalls as perhaps a dozen African American students at Lawrenceville in the fall of 1973. “‘If you feel uncomfortable, we know what it’s like. We know what we’re asking you to do,’ so they spoke to the race thing immediately.”

Howard threw himself into Lawrenceville right away. “I just bought in 100 percent,” he says. “I was just blown away by it all.”

That isn’t to say that the issue of race wasn’t present. What continues to menace American culture today was no less evident in the early 1970s, and Lawrenceville was experiencing its own growing pains.

Howard recalls an unfortunate instance in Thomas House during his first year, but also the response of the School that had pledged its support.

“Somebody said, I have the N-word living next door to me, and I hit him,” says Howard, who injured his elbow in the ensuing scuffle. “But that was the last time, because I let him know, ‘Dude, it ain’t going to be like this, all right? I’m here, and I don’t care!’”

Early on, Howard also found mentorship in English Master Max Maxwell H’74 ’79 ’80 ’81 ’91 and his wife, Barbara Maxwell.

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Garry Howard’s office in Charlotte tells the story of his life, from his full-page photo in the 1974 Olla Podrida to the Emmy Award he won for hosting the Preps Plus high school sports television show with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

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“He told me how this is going to change my life, that this is a level of education only a few in this world will ever get,” Howard recalls. “If they offer it to you, that means you have the talent to be able to do the work, and all you have to do is make it all work for yourself.”

Howard was growing and expanding his horizons. Already a talented basketball player, he decided to take to the ice, too.

“I bought a pair of skates from the Jigger Shop, Bobby Hull skates, and I wanted to learn how to skate,” he says. “I had Wednesdays off, so I’d get up every morning and go skate, the only one in the rink.”

Next, he played pickup hockey before deciding to go out for the Big Red. The day before his first game, fellow Third Former and Dickinson housemate Ray Sphire ’77 helped outfit Howard in some additional hockey gear, offering his helmet and pricy Koho gloves. Howard resisted, but his friend insisted.

“He said, ‘I want you to have the best,’ and he let me wear them the whole season,” he recalls.

The next day, Ann arrived at Loucks Ice Arena to see her son make his on-ice debut.

She was carrying a pair of CCM Tacks skates — the gold standard.

“Tacks were the best skates you could buy,” he explains, contrasting them to the bargain pair he had purchased earlier.

“I said, ‘How did you even know about Tacks?’”

Howard vividly remembers Ann’s reply: “I called Mr. [Robert] Ainspac [H’76 P’77 ‘85] and asked him, ‘Which are the best skates? Because I’m going to get my boy some new ones.”

To Howard, the love of his family and the support of the Lawrenceville community were dovetailing in a meaningful way.

“I mean, oh my gosh, that’s when I learned that I’m here, and this school cares about me,” he says. “I knew what I had in front of me; it was sort of like, this place is going to set me free. It’s going to set me on a different arc on my life, just like my mother said.”

Howard discovered

journalism at Lehigh University, where he also played basketball, and quickly became a star. He earned a coveted summer internship with the Dow Jones News Fund, the first Lehigh student ever to do so. Dow Jones News Fund had sponsored the program since 1963, sending talented student journalists to some of the nation’s top newspapers every year, but had never actually taken an intern for its own News Service, which includes The Wall Street Journal, before Howard became the first in 1980. It was unprecedented.

The managing editor of Dow Jones News Service praised Howard and his work, lamenting the fact that he had another year of college.

“He told me, ‘You know, you did fantastic.

If you were coming out right now, we’d offer you a job.’”

A year later, there were none to be found.

Back at school, Howard has nothing but a bright future in front of him.

“I was ready to go,” he says of his first job search, an ascendant star journalist. “I wrote letters to a hundred people. I even wrote to the AP in Japan.”

The result?

“Nobody,” he says. “I didn’t get a damn job.”

Howard latched on with The Times of Trenton as a sports reporter, but was let go four months later as part of a 25-member layoff. Angry and frustrated, he railed at the management over what he saw as a slight.

He had the education and the chops, and wanted to make sense of why, for the first time in his young life, Garry D. Howard was struggling.

“I said, ‘I’m better than half the damn sports department right now! This makes no damn sense to me! You’ve got to be kidding!’” says Howard, growing animated at the recollection. “‘Plus, you don’t got nobody of color in this whole building. I don’t understand it!’”

Finding himself out of work and unable to find any, Howard holed up at his sister Jacqueline’s home in Plainsboro, New

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Jersey, where, following a snowstorm, he grabbed a snow shovel in order to make some badly needed cash. He freed car after car from their snowy tombs before he spotted a tall black man and asked if he needed help.

“He said, ‘Sure, what’s your name?’”

Howard recounts. “I said, ‘It doesn’t matter, does it? You want the help or not?’”

The man laughed and pressed Howard for more and more information while the young, unemployed journalist dug his car out. Finally, Howard broke, unleashing his whole story with a fury before building to a crescendo.

“Yeah, I’m mad! I don’t have a job, and I don’t want to keep talking to you about this!” he shouted. “I’m done with this business!”

Amused, the tall black man laughed once more and told Howard, “You’re something else.” Handing over his business card, he introduced himself: “My name is Charles Johnson, and I’m the managing editor at the Home News,” a Central Jersey-based daily. “Why don’t you come and see me tomorrow?”

Howard was stunned. “Ain’t no damn black managing editors,” he grumbled, which only made Johnson laugh harder.

Nevertheless, he was in the door. For the next year, Howard commuted from his mother’s home in the Bronx to the Home News in New Brunswick, writing obituaries.

Promotions followed: the police beat, then municipal news reporter, but still no sports. The next two years saw Howard move three times, finally landing at The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1987 as a copy editor. This, he felt, was the place.

“I got to the Inquirer, and it started happening: copy editor, assistant sports editor, deputy sports editor, bureau chief for the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway. I was freezing, but I was covering the Olympics,” Howard said. “I had four writers and my own photographer, and I guided them. Basically, we pretty much crushed everybody with Knight Ridder [newspaper group, which owned the Inquirer], because we had a hell of a crew there.”

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Howard managed a stellar staff of reporters and columnists at the Inquirer, including columnists Bob Ford and Bill Lyon, and ESPN’s Sal Paolantonio.

“I had the most amazing staff you ever could have at the Inquirer,” he says. “It was absolutely incredible.”

But he also had a chance to recruit new talent to the newsroom on North Broad Street, something he had an eye for. Howard tells the story of a night when the Drexel basketball team traveled to Long Island to play Hofstra, but snow had essentially shut down the New Jersey Turnpike.

“My writer couldn’t get up there if he wanted to,” he says of the 1993 snowstorm.

“So I called my friend Leon Carter, who was an assistant sports editor at the New York Daily News, and I said, ‘Give me your college writer, because I need this game covered.”

Carter’s college beat writer wasn’t available, nor was his top reporter on the high-school sports beat.

“Well, give me anybody,” Howard told him.

Later, Howard received a call from one of Carter’s staffers, and gave him his instructions: Big game, write it from the local Drexel standpoint. They’re right in the thick of their conference race.

“He sends me the story, and it’s like the greatest thing I’ve seen, right? I mean, this thing is singing, I’m telling you,” he says. “I called him back, and I said, ‘Can you do this stuff every day?’”

The reporter, Stephen A. Smith, was floored.

“I was this guy, just a high school writer.

What the hell is going on?” recalls Smith, now the highest-paid on-air personality in ESPN’s history.

Howard’s instincts were good; his eye for untapped talent sharp.

“I said, ‘OK, get everything you’ve ever written in your entire life and send it to me.

I mean everything,’” he says. “He sent me the package. I knew right then ... I said, ‘this boy’s going to be f---ing fantastic!’”

As excited as he was to bring Smith to

Philadelphia to cover the NBA’s 76ers some months later, Howard was torn. While he was in Lillehammer to cover the 1994 Winter Games, he took a call from Marty Kaiser, the newly appointed managing editor of the Milwaukee Journal. His sports editor had suddenly quit, and Kaiser needed someone good to fill the role.

Calling from Baltimore, where he worked before moving to Milwaukee, he asked Howard to meet.

“While I’m still here, we can talk about this,” Kaiser remembers telling him. “And he said, ‘Nope, I don’t got time. I’m running the Olympic Bureau for Knight Ridder, and I don’t have time.’”

Kaiser was disappointed, but set to work researching the best fit to run his sports department at the Journal. The trouble was that every inquiry he made across the country kept leading him back to Howard.

“Marty kept calling me, saying ‘After you finish the Olympics, just fly out to Milwaukee,’” says Howard, who relented.

There, the two attended a Bucks game, where Kaiser offered him the job: executive sports editor.

“I said, ‘You know, there’s not even one black sports editor in the whole country,’” Howard says. Kaiser was undeterred. He wanted his guy and told Howard, “I asked ten people to give me a list of their top-five sports editors, and your name was on every list, Garry.”

Garry D. Howard was the boss.

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Sports journalism is

so dependent on relationships. When star athletes trust journalists, they allow them access that lay people only dream about.

But relationships can make or break a newsroom, too. In taking over the Journal, Kaiser was looking for a partner as much as he was in search of a great sports editor.

“I got great support and advice from Garry in the early years as we were changing the culture,” he says. “We both felt like we can make this bigger and better.

These people are good. We can recruit good people. We can take these people and make them good.”

For Howard, that was always his modus operandi: Hire the best people and give them the ability to become even better.

Empower them. Challenge them. Protect them. He recalls assigning Lori Nickel to cover Marquette basketball, an issue for head coach Tom Crean, who preferred not to have a woman on the beat. The coach and reporter eventually had an explosive argument.

“Lori was a tough writer, and I had to go down there and let him know,” Howard says. “I said, ‘I buy my paper by the ton, so if you want to get into this, you can’t win.

Don’t you ever disrespect her.’”

Nickel knew her editor had her back, and Crean grew to respect both her and Howard.

“When he left to go to Indiana [in 2008], he called me to write a column on him,” Howard says. “I said, ‘But you don’t even know what I’m going to write.’ He says, ‘I know you’re fair. I’ll take my chances.”

These are the same traits that make Howard a leader, not just among his professional peers, but the athletes he’s covered, his classmates, and just about anyone he meets.

“A couple of reunions ago, I remember Garry and another classmate of mine, Slater Kirby, sat down at a table of about ten students,” says Dave Barnes ’77 P’11 ’13 ’19. “Right away, almost like a comedic sketch, they just started teasing the kids, talking to them about themselves and

about them. The kids were so engaged, and honestly, so were Garry and Slater.”

Barnes appreciated the moment for two big personalities shining forth, but he also saw something he believes is essential to Howard’s success.

“I thought that was great. It’s a little way of giving back while still being inquisitive,” Barnes says. “I think that’s what makes him such a good journalist, being able to talk like that with folks he doesn’t know and instantly strike up a conversation.”

Perhaps that’s why respect follows Howard, who has covered World Series, NBA All-Star games, and multiple Olympic Games, and has been a voter for the Baseball Hall of Fame for the past fifteen years. He was the first African American ever to serve as president of the Associated Press Sports Editors in its forty-four years, and he was inducted into the Milwaukee Press Club Hall of Fame in 2017. Just this summer, Howard was enshrined in the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame at a star-studded gala in Miami. This most recent honor had Howard reflecting about the role of black journalists at a time when race, sports, and politics seem to collide with increasing frequency.

“I think what I want is to see more people who look like me to get an opportunity, if they’re talented enough, to succeed,” he says.

“You have to understand how difficult a job it is that they have right now, to understand the political atmosphere we live in, and still try to navigate those waters safely.

“These are the heavy, hard rapids, and you have to navigate them well for people to understand what you mean and what point you’re trying to make,” Howard continues, “and it’s important that they hear our voices.”

Howard left the Journal Sentinel (the two major Milwaukee dailies merged in 1995) in 2010 to become the editor-inchief of The Sporting News, the nation’s first comprehensive sports publication.

In 2014, he was named the director of corporate business initiatives for American City Business Journals, headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he now

makes his home. It’s a job that maximizes Howard’s ability to cultivate relationships — something he’s never forsaken.

“Garry was born to be an executive, because he’s the kind of guy who goes out there pounds the pavement and gets to know people who are talented, but that he feels are also conscientious enough to be about making a difference,” says Smith, who continues to see Howard, only eight years his senior, as a mentor. “And all he’s ever asked in return is the same thing that he’s tried to do for other people: When you have that opportunity, you extend a helping hand and try to do for others as well.”

Howard remembers, though, that none of it began with him. “At the end of the day, my mother was, no question, 100 percent right,” he says. “She had a vision and said, ‘They can’t guard you, Skeeter. And I’m not talking about basketball!”

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Stay connected with the NEW Lawrenceville Alumni Network App

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The NEW! Lawrenceville Alumni Network, now powered by Graduway, makes it easier than ever for alumni to connect worldwide. Available on your desktop/laptop or your Apple or Android mobile device, the Lawrenceville Alumni Network app combines the scope of our alumni database and the power of Facebook and LinkedIn to connect you with your fellow Lawrentians wherever you and they may be.

For download instructions, go to lawrenceville.org and click “Connect and Network” on the Alumni tab, or simply search for “Lawrenceville Alumni Network” on the App Store for iPhone or Google Play for Android.

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Leave a Tony Greenberg ’94 came to Lawrenceville as a First Former, one of only 18 in his class. The contrast with the sheltered life he had led up to that point was eye-opening, as he experienced opportunities and challenges he had never dreamed of, dedicated teachers who were masters of their fields of study as well as coaches and housemasters, and fellow students from all over the country and the world. Tony extended his Lawrenceville experience as a young adult, serving three years as a history master and marrying his wife, Keiko, in the Chapel one spring recess during his tenure.

‘‘

We have included Lawrenceville in our estate planning in recognition of the School’s formative and transformational role in my life, so that its strongest traditions — the House System, Harkness tables, triple-threat masters, and the pursuit of balance and excellence — can continue to thrive for the benefit of future generations.”

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

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OLD SCHOOL 70 YEARS AGO IN THE LAWRENTIAN FALL 1949

35 YEARS AGO IN THE LAWRENTIAN NOVEMBER 1984

Students took their turns as extras, playing their 1890s predecessors from Kennedy House.

President Reagan recognized Lawrenceville’s dodransbicentennial in 1984 with a telegram.

LIGHTS, CAMERA … ACTION!

When Hollywood came to campus in September to begin the “shooting” of You’re Only Young Twice, the MGM picture based on Owen Johnson’s Lawrenceville tales of the nineties, this [image on the cover of The Lawrentian] was only one of hundreds of such scenes. At this moment, the boys of Kennedy House have heard the cry of “free pancakes,” and are rushing out to Ma Conover’s to capitalize on Hungry Smeed’s phenomenal breaking of the longtime pancakeeating record.

— From the “Echoes of the Campus” news roundup. The film, released on July 7, 1950, as The Happy Years, starred Dean Stockwell as Johnson’s fabled Dink Stover

A TELEGRAM FROM THE WHITE HOUSE

I have made the encouragement of academic excellence one of my highest objectives. You can be proud of your School’s long tradition of meeting and exceeding that objective. It is a distinct pleasure for me to have this opportunity to commend you on this historic occasion and to express my confidence that Lawrenceville will continue to achieve high academic standards and excellence throughout all the years to come.

— Excerpted from a telegram sent by President Ronald Reagan to Board of Trustees President Edward R. Farley Jr. ’36 celebrating the School’s 175th anniversary.

20 YEARS AGO IN THE LAWRENTIAN FALL 1999

LAWRENCEVILLE WELCOMES LECH WALESA

Lech Walesa, the labor activist who led Poland’s first trade union and later won Poland’s first presidential election, spoke to the school assembly at the Kirby Arts Center. The theme of his address was twofold: first to encourage young people not to take democracy for granted, and second to invite them to consider themselves the “policemen of the new world, the architects of a new world order.”

— From the “Around the Campus” news roundup.

Famed labor activist Lech Walesa met a number of students in October 1999.

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FROM THE HEAD MASTER

Stuck on a Rock, Midstream: Moments to Test Your Mettle IN MY RECENT CONVOCATION REMARKS, I RECALLED A SERIES OF LESSONS ACQUIRED OVER THE

1. William Stryker

YEARS, LESSONS THAT HAVE SHAPED ME. I CHALLENGED THE STUDENT BODY TO SEEK OUT THEIR OWN

“Will” Gummere L. 1867, Princeton’s captain, served as chief justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court from 1901 until he died in 1933. His sister, Elizabeth, married Hugh Hamill, son of longtime Head Master Samuel McClintock Hamill.

O

OPPORTUNITIES TO LEARN AND GROW IN THE RICHLY CHALLENGING ENVIRONMENT THAT LAWRENCEVILLE OFFERS. BELOW IS AN EXCERPT PORTRAYING ONE SUCH LESSON FROM MY ADOLESCENCE.

“As we come together as a community to launch the school year, my message to you students is not to wait for serendipity, but to seek out challenges, challenges that will stretch you and help you find the beginnings of real confidence — not brash, cocksure bravado — but the kind of settled self-reliance that only comes with experience.”

PIGSKIN PIONEERS

n a hot July day in 1979, in the wilds of northern Quebec, I found myself stuck on a rock in the middle of a set of rather swiftly running rapids.

I was staring dumbly at my canoe, a beautiful wood-framed, canvascovered canoe, which was crushed, wrapped tightly around the rock, the same rock upon which I stood.

The once-elegant craft was hopelessly twisted and contorted in an inverted U-shape, stuck fast to the rock by the force of the current. And at that moment, all of my belongings — clothing, food supplies, and tent — were floating downstream, rapidly disappearing around a bend in the river.

We were several hundred miles from the nearest dirt road, and the only passable way through this wilderness to reach our pick-up point was over water, by canoe.

As the extent of my predicament was dawning upon me, I felt a sudden, simultaneous realization well up inside. I felt strangely calm and clearheaded: This was definitely solvable, and in fact it would make a good story someday. And standing there on that rock, with the water rushing by, I almost looked forward to telling it.

Now, to understand a little more clearly the nature of my situation, a bit of geology would be helpful. The shape and character of the topography of northeastern Canada was largely formed during the Last Glacial Period by an ice sheet nearly two miles thick. In the northern regions of Quebec, the massive weight of ice

scoured the terrain, leaving it relatively flat, aside from the myriad eskers, moraines, drumlins, and mounds of glacial till left in its wake.

Twelve thousand years ago, the final retreat of ice fed an almost infinite network of crystal clear lakes and rivers, and exposed vast stretches of granite rubble.

Over time, upon the chaotic jumble of boulders, ranging in size from basketballs to Volkswagens, grew a thick forest of hardy spruce trees whose roots drew life from the hardscrabble land, almost entirely devoid of topsoil. Beneath the trees grew an impossibly thick, vibrant green carpet of sphagnum moss, almost magical in appearance.

I found myself in this extraordinary setting at age 15 on a canoe trip with ten other adolescents, two leaders, and a Cree guide named Matthew Loon, a member of one of the largest of the First Nations of Canada. We cooked over open fires and baked bread each night in reflector ovens. We drank water straight out of the rivers, fished for pike and walleye, and, even in July, awoke in the morning to frost on the ground.

About 150 miles into the trip, we had left the Témiskamie River, and we were poling our way up a tortuous stretch of a narrow tributary. Picture the guy in the stern standing with a long pole, like a Venetian gondolier, pushing the canoe upstream against the current with the bowman keeping the canoe straight.

Mile after mile, it was tough work and we made painstaking progress. And this is precisely where our mishap occurred. As we toiled up the river, our canoe hit a tricky patch of current that turned it sideways against a boulder. It instantly tilted upstream and

3. Chauncey Mitchell “Chaunce” Field L. 1867 was the valedictorian of his class at Lawrenceville. After studying medicine at Columbia, he enjoyed a practice in Bound Brook, New Jersey.

4. William Frazier Henley “Billy” Buck, who attended the School sometime from 1865-68, served as captain of Princeton varsity baseball team, leading it to the 1870 intercollegiate championship.

5. David “Dave” 1

2

Mixsell L. 1867 studied law and practiced most of his life in Phillipsburg, New Jersey.

6. Daniel Trimble

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2. Charles Joel “Charlie” Parker L. 1867, the son of New Jersey Gov. Joel Parker, practiced law for 10 years before becoming president of the First National Bank of Manasquan (N.J.).

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Hawxhurst, who attended the School sometime from 1865-68, enjoyed a career as a bookkeeper.

Throughout the 2019 season, most college football jerseys will feature patches commemorating the 150th anniversary of the sport’s intercollegiate origins. Today’s Saturday afternoon spectacle traces its roots to the afternoon of November 6, 1869, when Rutgers hosted Princeton in a contest that resembled a rugby match far more than the game we recognize today.

As with so many landmark innovations, Lawrentians played a central role in the contest. Princeton captain William S. Gummere, Lawrenceville Class of 1867, accepted Rutgers’ challenge to travel to New Brunswick for the clash, bringing with him a team that included four other Lawrentians. The emphasis on ferocious physicality was present from the start, suiting the athletic, 6-foot-tall Gummere, a skilled baseball player also credited as the inventor of the hook slide.

Rutgers’ roster featured a sole Lawrentian, Daniel T. Hawxhurst, who likely would have graduated from Lawrenceville only months before the 1869 game, won by Rutgers, 6-4.

The first intercollegiate football game between Princeton and Rutgers featured six students who studied at Lawrenceville.

(Courtesy: Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries)

(Princeton images courtesy of Princeton University Archives. Rutgers profile image courtesy of Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries. David Nathan researched much of the biographical information for Princeton Alumni Weekly.)

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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 kzsenak@lawrenceville.org with his or her new address. Thank you!

Lawrentian FALL 2019

The Lawrentian • fall 2019

Lawrentian THE

THE

No Longer Invisible Long before he had superstars on speed dial, Hall of Fame journalist Garry D. Howard ’77 felt the sting of exclusion.

SAVE THE 12 3 2019 DATE! 0

0

Celebrate the holidays together with Lawrenceville alumni and parents on Tuesday, December 3, in one of three major cities — New York, London, and Paris!

VISIT LAWRENCEVILLE.ORG/ALUMNI/EVENTS FOR MORE DETAILS AND TO REGISTER.

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