The Lawrentian - Winter 2021

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 WINTER 2021

THE L AWRENTIAN • WINTER 2021

Lawrentian THE

THE

TURNING A HOUSE INTO A HOME Natalie Tung ’14 and her HomeWorks Trenton residential program imbues girls with a sense of community, confidence, and consistency.

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@LvilleAlumni on Instagram!

#LIFELONGLAWRENTIAN

11 BRING THE FUNK

32 BREW DAT?

38 REMEMBERING JO

The toe knows

The First Five Years

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his past fall marked five years since the installation of Stephen S. Murray H’54 ’55 ’65 ’16 P’16 ’21 as Lawrenceville’s 13th head of school. In a fall 2015 profile in The Lawrentian, Murray said, “Great schools don’t remain great by sitting still,” and under his leadership, the institution has been anything but idle.

Lawrentian editor Sean Ramsden asked Murray to reflect on his first five years at the helm.

On the Cover: Transformed by her residential experience at Lawrenceville, Natalie Tung ‘14 took it as inspiration to to found HomeWorks Trenton.

Photograph by Colin Lenton

Your role is one of the most esteemed in secondary education. What part of it is exactly like you thought it would be, and what is nothing at all like you imagined?

I have come to see my role as head of school as part mayor of a small town, and part CEO of a mid-sized company. The appeal of the job comes from both of those aspects, and they are as I imagined. In order to be visible and in touch with the community, I love to be out and about on campus – on the sidelines of games, watching a performance, pausing for a chat with a colleague. And I am equally energized by the organizational challenge of supporting and motivating our amazing faculty and staff, ensuring that we consistently deliver the highest-quality education, and implementing strategies that strengthen our long-term financial viability.

As for aspects that are not at all what I imagined, I’ll just say I have learned over time that little happens by decree in a school. If you have a strong faculty, they will be independent-minded, and you can’t simply issue an order without first, out of respect, earning their trust and buy-in. So you learn over time that leadership is about building support, maintaining trust, and carefully communicating your thinking.

In the midst of a pandemic, is it too obvious to ask what your biggest challenge has been?

The biggest challenge has been having to make decision after decision based on incomplete information and amid enormous uncertainty. At

a certain point, you have to trust your instincts, take a position, and accept that you need to take responsibility regardless of the outcome.

In this vein, I’ve been reflecting on decisions I have had to make in a worldwide health crisis.

My degrees are in political science, education, and French literature, and at the start of my career, I never imagined I’d do anything but teach. Later, in my early years as a head of school, I began to understand the complexity of organizational leadership. Flaubert was not much help, and I regretted not having an M.B.A. A few years after that, as I encountered various legal challenges in a school environment, I wondered if a law degree would have been more useful. And lately, in a pandemic, as I wrestle with the risk matrix of epidemiological spread, it has struck me more than once that a degree in medicine sure would help!

I suppose the point is that I have been constantly learning over the course of my career, and that has been what makes it interesting.

When you arrived at Lawrenceville, did anyone give you advice that proved to be especially prescient or helpful?

I had lunch with Mary Liz McClellan [H’50 ’52 ’57 ’58 ’59 ’65 ’79 GP’10, the wife of longtime Head of School Bruce McClellan H’57 ’58 ’60 GP’10] in southern New Hampshire a few weeks before starting the job in 2015. It was an extraordinary visit as she reminisced about her time in Foundation House and the challenges that she and Bruce faced over the years. She turned to me after lunch and said, “I want you to say to your wife, Sarah [P’16 ’21], that I remember standing frozen on the threshold of Foundation House in 1959 as we were preparing to move in, and my knees were shaking. It all happened so quickly, and I did not feel prepared.”

Feeling nervous and missing her simpler life in Hamill House, however, didn’t prevent her from doing what had to be done, in partnership with her husband: “You tell Sarah that she, too, can do this!”

This message indeed was reassuring to us both, and her words reinforced our resolve that, come what

Sitting silently in the middle of the Pop Hall rotunda, Spinario has been on campus long enough to have witnessed the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, so he knows that wearing his mask is how to seek the “Best for All.”

Photograph by Jessica Welsh

LEADING FROM OFF THE HEAD OF SCHOOL

Five years into Murray’s tenure, his signature look endures, even in a pandemic.

may, we are here to accept the challenges that come with the job and to do our level best for this great school.

In our 2015 interview, you recalled your sophomore-year geometry teacher, Saul Swanger, and the respect he engendered among his pupils.

You said, “He always had a twinkle in his eye, and we just didn’t want to let him down or disappoint him.” Is there anyone in our extended School community you see in that way today?

Well, it’s a bit different from Mr. Swanger 42 years ago, but every time I walk into Alumni Study, all of my predecessors and their spouses are watching me from their portraits on the walls. I feel a bit of solidarity with them, because they alone understand the job, but I also feel a keen obligation to build upon their good work, to be worthy of following in their footsteps, and to not let them down or disappoint them.

There is a great novel by Louis Auchincloss called The Rector of Justin, which offers a window into the life of a headmaster of a New England boarding school. The narrative structure is such that we never hear directly from the main character – it is always from the perspective of another, in the form of journal entries of a young teacher, recollections of a childhood friend, musings of his daughter, notes from a trustee. He is never just himself and is instead defined by what others make of him. The position is a rather unique one, and as I say, I feel vaguely comforted that my predecessors know this well – just hope I don’t let them down.

Is there a particular thing the School has accomplished over your first five years that you look at and think, “Yes, I’m so glad we did that”?

Well, we’ve only just begun construction on the Tsai Field House, but it is a critical element of our campus master plan, and I think the overall project and the removal of cars from the center of campus will be transformative. My hope is that the next generation will look back on this and say, “I’m glad they did that!”

What are you most looking forward to?

Of course, I can’t wait for the students to be back for spring. Other than that, things are pretty busy around here, and it’s hard to find downtime, but I managed to get a little fishing in over the December holiday. Hope to get back out when the striped bass are back. Maybe after graduation!

Lawrentian THE

Fall 2015

Lawrenceville Welcomes its 13th Head Master,

Stephen S. Murray H’55 ’65 P’16

Sincerely,

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

Murray’s arrival was heralded on the cover of the fall 2015 Lawrentian.

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Changes are brewing: ▶

Jim Birch ’98 led the rebranding of Dixie Beer, a New Orleans favorite for more than a century.

FEATURES

22 This Fall, the Best for All It takes more than face masks, social distancing, and makeshift desks to spoil that Big Red esprit de corps.

24 Beds, Math & Beyond A community hub for innovation, creativity, and collaboration at Lawrenceville, GCAD – the Gruss Center for Art and Design – began hosting classes in February.

30 Last Call, Y’all In retiring a time-honored but troublesome name, Jim Birch ’98 is rebranding a beloved New Orleans beer by reflecting the pride of the city’s many storied neighborhoods.

36 Remembering Jo Jo Brewster Devlin H’56 ’58 ’59 ’60 ’66 ’67 P’71 passed peacefully in July, but her caring mentorship is still fondly recalled by the alumni who admired her more than a half-century ago.

DEPARTMENTS

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A Thousand Words

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In Brief

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Inside the Gates

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On the Arts

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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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Old School

T H E L AW R E N T I A N

FROM THE BASEMENT OF POP HALL

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uring what has become the pandemic era – a time that has also seen a renewed focus on social and racial injustice – national news has dominated the United States. However, it’s also been a time to turn our view inward toward the more local level. What is happening in our city? How are people in my town supposed to weather it all? I hope this neighborhood is going to be all right.

The old saw says, “Think globally; act locally.” It’s usually invoked as a call for activism, but sometimes it’s just doing what you can to support your neighbors. We’ve seen people grocery shopping for those with compromised immune systems, and countless homeowners have planted lawn signs decrying hate and bigotry. Grassroots efforts have sprung up urging folks to patronize their local mom-and-pop shops or continuing to pick up meals from that cherished neighborhood restaurant. It’s what you do in a neighborhood when you want to see it remain healthy and vibrant. “Neighbors” are bound by that common identifier: I live here. We live here. That matters.

It wasn’t until we had put together this issue of The Lawrentian that I noticed this very thread running through these pages. Natalie Tung ’14 got to know Trenton while student-teaching in its schools when she was enrolled at Princeton. What she learned there compelled her to establish HomeWorks Trenton, which simulates many key components of her own boarding school experience – a time Natalie says was transformative for her. Though she hails from the other side of the globe, Natalie has become a leader among her new neighbors, partnering with her community in a way that makes them all stronger.

When COVID-19 infections were surging in New York City last spring, Bernard Robinson ’88 believed he owed it to the EMTs and paramedics under his supervision to leave his desk and get out in the field where they were all so desperately needed as first responders. It nearly cost him his life in the early days of the pandemic, but Bernard knew that fighting for the health of his neighbors made them all stronger.

In leading a rebranding of venerable Dixie Beer – a New Orleans institution for more than a century – Jim Birch ’98 realized that having everyone in each of the city’s dozens of neighborhoods feel as if they were on the right side of his brew’s heritage was the best way to do what his beer is supposed to do: bring people together. The very idea of “neighborhood” is at the heart of its new name, and it’s something that unites these faubourgs into one city while celebrating the individual character of each one. And yes, that makes them all stronger.

So we are at Lawrenceville, a disparate community of from all over who share a common identity as Lawrentians, one that signifies many good things to the world. Even as distance separates housemates by miles in this pandemic era in a similar way that generations of alumni have always been cast across the years, we remain neighbors – good ones, too – the kind who have always been there for each other, working side by side to make this School, our School, stronger.

All the best,

L

WINTER 2021 | VOLUME 85 | NUMBER 1

Editor

Sean Ramsden

Art Director

Phyllis Lerner

Staff Photographer

Paloma Torres

Contributors

Christine Cheng ’21 Andrea Fereshteh Lisa M. Gillard Hanson Kelly Hart Jacqueline Haun Colin Lenton Donnelly Marks Norm Mitchell ’66 John J. Preefer ’66 Rolf Reinalda ’67 Danley C. Romero Sarah Mezzino Jessica Welsh

Illustration by

Tiago Galo – Folio Art Mazacar_studio Wastoki

Class Notes Design Selena Smith

Proofreaders

Rob Reinalda ’76 Linda Hlavacek Silver H’59 ’61 ’62 ’63 ’64 GP’06 ’08

Head of School

Stephen S. Murray H’54 ’55 ’65 ’16 P’16 ’21

Assistant Head of School, DIrector of Advancement

Mary Kate Barnes H’59 ’77 P’11 ’13 ’19

Director of Communications and External Relations Jessica Welsh

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.

POSTMASTER

Sean Ramsden Editor sramsden@lawrenceville.org

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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A THOUSAND WORDS

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T H E L AW R E N T I A N

That’s Quite a Spread!

Like the other Houses on the Circle, Woodhull has seen just about everything over the past one hundred thirty-five years, but maybe not this: social distancing and masks for everyone.

Yes, this pandemic preventative became de rigueur on campus this fall as Lawrentians valiantly returned to school after a spring term of distance learning. Students, faculty, and staff sought the “Best for All,” making the fall term one for the ages. See more on Page 22.

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IN BRIEF

A New High for The Lawrenceville Fund Despite the challenges of connecting virtually, support for the School was strong.

SIXTEEN SELECTED NATIONAL MERIT FINALISTS Sixteen Fifth Formers are among the fewer than one percent of U.S. high school seniors selected as semifinalists in the 65th annual National Merit Scholarship Program. Jacqueline Chen, Christine Cheng, Jupiter Huang, Shepard Jiang, Mak Kalwachwala, Ashley Lee, Steven Leung, Katie Li, Kristen Li, Alex Liang, Hamza Mian, Rana Myneni, Tuntai Tumpunyawat, Chelsea Wang, Michael Yu, and Ryan Zhang will compete for some 7,600 National Merit Scholarships worth more than $31 million to be offered in the spring.

Despite the multitude of issues presented by the pandemic, the Lawrenceville community showed up strong for the School during the 2019-20 fiscal year, helping boost The Lawrenceville Fund, which includes the Parents Fund, to an all-time high of $7.5 million.

“Despite headwinds that might have scuttled a lesser ship,” as Mary Kate Barnes H’59 ’77 P’11 ’13 ’19 put it, the School community demonstrated its faith in Lawrenceville as it successfully navigated choppy waters, giving $42.8 million to support our students, faculty, and educational mission.

“We have always known that this community is without peer, and we’ve drawn strength from your devotion to Lawrenceville this past year,” Barnes said. “On behalf of all of us here on campus, whether physically present or not, thank you.”

‘A MOMENT OF MORAL RECKONING’ Princeton’s Glaude discusses the relevance of James Baldwin’s work today.

Eddie S. Glaude Jr. (Courtesy Princeton University)

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T H E L AW R E N T I A N

Eddie Glaude Jr., chair of the Department of African American Studies and James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor at Princeton University, discussed the enduring relevance of James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time with Lawrenceville students in September. Using his recent New York Times bestseller, Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, as a starting point, Glaude enabled students to deepen their understanding of The Fire Next Time, which was Lawrenceville’s all-School summer read, and its connections to current social justice struggles. Glaude’s virtual talk was presented via Zoom as a conversation with religion and philosophy teacher Nuri Friedlander, who also serves the School as a diversity coordinator.

Glaude encouraged students to consider how Baldwin’s influences — personal, historic, and literary — affected not only The Fire Inside but also themselves as readers and the times in which they live.

“We are in a moment of moral reckoning. No matter how angry Baldwin got at the ongoing betrayal of the country, of us, the moral question was still at the heart of the matter. Who do you take yourself to be? Who do you aspire to be?”

Glaude explained. “It is a question we have to ask ourselves individually, but we also must ask ourselves as a country: Who do we take ourselves to be? To answer that question, we have to be honest about what we’ve done. Who do we aspire to be? To answer that question, we have to look our ghastly failures squarely in the face.”

PENN TEACHING FELLOWS JOIN FACULTY

Summar Ellis L Mathematics Department B.S. in Mathematics, minor in Education, Spelman College

Nick Martin L English Department

B.A. double major in English and Education, Colby College

The Penn Boarding School Teaching Residency Fellows are part of an innovative, two-year fellowship program between the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education (GSE) and a coalition comprising 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.

Bednar Running First in N.J.

All-America runner Charlotte Bednar ’22 was ranked first in New Jersey and seventh in the nation among high school girls’ cross-country competitors in the MileSplit NJ preseason countdown. Bednar, the reigning Gatorade New Jersey Girls’ Cross Country Runner of the Year, also earned one of only seven spots on MileSplit NJ’s All-Decade Cross Country Team for 2010-20 — especially impressive since she competed in only two of the decade’s ten years.

Katie Livingston L Science Department B.S. in Environmental Studies, minor in Biological Science, Wellesley College

Ashley Cleary L History Department B.A. in History, concentration in English, Bates College

HEELY SCHOLARS DIG INTO THE GILDED AGE Lawrenceville’s Heely Scholars — Fifth Formers Ellis Addleman, William Atkinson, Amelia Devine, Isabelle Lee, Eleni Lefakis, Grayson Miller, Eric Morais, Ndeye Thioubou, Jupiter Huang, and Jasper Zhu — spent the summer digging into the School’s Stephan Archives to learn more about Lawrenceville in the Gilded Age. Each year, the Heely Scholars examine a particular portion of the Stephan Archives collection, enabling them to place Lawrenceville within the historical context of national and global events.

History teacher and Heely Scholars director Anne Louise Smit P’10 ’13 explained that the Gilded Age is a critical point in historical studies, as the second industrial revolution and rise of capitalism allow for an investigation of key socioeconomic shifts in the United States. But the students’ deep dive also led them to significant discoveries about their School’s timeline as well.

“Particular to Lawrenceville, it is a significant point when we transform from a proprietarily owned academy to an endowed institution, governed by trustees,” Smit explained. “This was a time when our campus and curriculum were being designed to meet the changing times, asking what was deemed necessary for young men to know at that time.”

Whereas Scholars would ordinarily spend two summer weeks on campus delving into the Stephan Archives, they made the most of their studies rendered virtual by the COVID-19 pandemic. Upon their return to campus in September, the Heely Scholars were part of an advanced research seminar in which they refined and directed their personal interests into individual theses.

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SYLVESTER RAISES $5K FOR HUNGER RELIEF Miles Sylvester ’21 raised more than $5,200 for City Harvest, New York City’s largest food rescue organization, via donations to his GoFundMe page. City Harvest estimates that every $27 raised can help donate and deliver 100 pounds of food to residents who need it most. By that calculation, Sylvester’s efforts would amount to some 19,537 pounds of food (as of October 8) for those in need.

A resident of New York, Sylvester has fundraised for City Harvest since he was in sixth grade. “I know that, especially in New York City, [food insecurity] is a huge problem,” he explained. “A lot of people just need help, so I’ve always wanted to do my best to see what I can do to help.”

MURRAY TALKS PANDEMIC-ERA EDUCATION ON ALUM’S PODCAST When Yvonne Yan ’16 and fellow University of Pennsylvania graduate Jennifer Baek created their podcast, Real Talk with J&Y, they knew they wanted to discuss significant global events.

And when they decided to discuss what secondary education would, could, and should look like in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Yan knew who their guest expert should be: Head of School Steve Murray H’54 ’55 ’65 ’16 P’16 ’21.

You can listen to the interview on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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T H E L AW R E N T I A N

TECHNOLOGY CHIEF MARQUIS SCOTT ASSUMES STRATEGIC LEAD Marquis Scott was appointed Lawrenceville’s first assistant head of school for strategic implementation in August. Scott, who came to Lawrenceville in 2018 as the chief technology officer (CTO), also served for more than a year as interim director of communications, shepherding the School’s efforts to inform its constituencies amid the pandemic outbreak and the national movement for racial justice. In his new role, he will remain as CTO. As a key part of the senior staff, Scott increases the School’s capacity to execute both immediate and long-range strategic projects and priorities. His focus is on identifying high-level, long-term projects requiring research, data analysis, strategic planning, identification of implementation teams, and the coordination of those efforts. Scott’s first tasks included continued work on the School’s fall reopening plan and crisis preparedness as well as strategic support for the efforts of Lawrenceville’s dean of diversity, inclusion, and community engagement, Rick Holifield.

“For the last two years, I have had the privilege of collaborating with school visionaries and serving in different leadership capacities at The Lawrenceville School,” Scott said following his appointment. “This new opportunity allows me to continue supporting students, faculty, staff, and parents on mission-driven initiatives that champion meaningful change and build Often described on the School’s core as a “processes guy,” Marquis philosophies. I am Scott now oversees the both excited and implementation inspired by the work of the School’s immediate ahead.”

Since his arrival at Lawrenceville, Scott has implemented a technologyfocused strategic plan to improve the School’s integration of cybersecurity best practices and created a streamlined approach to campus-wide technology support. He also created and led Lawrenceville’s Strategic Communication and Institutional Marketing committees to ensure that schoolwide communications, website strategy, brand and visual identity, and media efforts were consistent with the School’s mission and values.

and long-term projects and priorities.

CANCER RESEARCH TO ROBOTIC REACTIONS: HUTCHINS SCHOLARS COVER IT ALL The 2020 Hutchins Scholars gathered as a group prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Even in the midst of a worldwide pandemic, Lawrenceville’s Hutchins Scholars completed an incredible summer of research conducted virtually.

The Hutchins Scholars Program provides select students with substantive research experiences, prepares them for leading university science programs, and aims to inspire them to pursue science-related careers.

Students enroll as Fourth Formers in a research science class, which prepares them to conduct independent research and, if appropriate, to compete in a national science competition. They earn a deeper understanding of scientific research based on practical, real-world experience and develop the ability to explore it outside of the classroom. The program also provides student entry into some of the world’s most prestigious scientific laboratories, where they do meaningful research with top scholars.

The Hutchins Program,

which also provides needbased financial aid to those Scholars who qualify, is made possible by a $5 million contribution given during the School’s Bicentennial Campaign by Glenn Hutchins ’73 and Debbie Hutchins.

L Harrison Abromavage ’21 and Caitlin Gu ’21, with Dr. Hien Dang of Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University, worked alongside a research unit studying and researching Hepatocellular Carcinoma (HCC), which accounts for 80 percent of total liver cancer cases.

L Ethan Markel ’21, Soleil Saint-Cyr ’21, Breanna Barrett ’21, and Kylan Tatum ’21 worked with Dr. Sangbin Park in the Seung Kim Laboratory at Stanford University School of Medicine (as well as with Elizabeth Fox, Lawrenceville’s director of student research) to conduct diabetes research through fruit flies and their relationship to insulin-signaling and insulinresistance pathways.

L Matt Laws ’21 and Alex Liang ’21 teamed up with Dr. Nestoras Karathanasis of the Computational Medicine Center at Thomas Jefferson University to find connections between miRNA — short noncoding strands of DNA about 18-22 bases long that help regulates gene expression — and diseases.

L Gabe Gaw ’21 studied with Dr. Vakhtang Tchantchaleishvili of Jefferson University Hospital to determine the effectiveness of the Dor procedure — a heart procedure that uses a circular suture and a Dacron patch to correct left ventricular aneurysms and exclude scarred parts of the septum and ventricular wall.

L Cherie Fernandes ’21 worked with Dr. Joshua Gold of the Perleman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, where Gold’s lab team is working to design a psychophysics experiment that seeks to determine how individuals tasked with making a decision set bounds

on information input when instructed to optimize speed and accuracy, potentially helping to fine-tune our understanding of the drift diffusion model in perceptual decision-making.

L Houston Kilby ’21 learned with Dr. Xin-Liang Ma, Sidney Kimmel Medical College, where Ma’s lab team is studying cardiovascular disease and the mechanisms responsible for ischemia/ reperfusion injury. Kilby learned to identify concepts such as the role of small extracellular vesicles, the endocrine system, and Caveolin in the development of cardiovascular disease.

L Alper Canberk ’21 partnered with Dr. Dorsa Sadigh and Mengxi Li of Stanford Intelligent and Interactive Autonomous Systems Group at Stanford University to study human intervention in robotic manipulation tasks and how robots should then respond to such physical human-robot interaction.

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GOING ‘BEYOND THE BALLOT’

In a year that will be forever remembered for a global pandemic, a movement for racial justice, and an election that drove a record turnout amid it all, Devin Carr ’21 and Grayson Miller ’21 co-founded Beyond the Ballot in July to empower youth voters through civic education.

“After state leadership was tested in response to COVID-19, we realized just how significant local and state government is in our day-to-day lives,” Carr said in September. “This election cycle, all eyes are on the Oval Office, but Grayson and I are concerned that too many down-ballot elections are being overlooked this year.

With so many members of Gen Z voting for the first time this year, we wanted to help our peers feel prepared to vote. At the end of the day, we truly believe that voting should not be a guessing game.”

The Beyond the Ballot website, beyondtheballot.org, features a civics toolkit — a primer on the three branches of government and the various agencies and services they affect — as well as ways to get involved in the organization and a blog analyzing issues around the election.

The primary goal of Beyond the Ballot “is to empower Gen Z to vote in this election and many elections to come,” Miller explained.

For the efforts, Carr and Miller spoke at The ACTivists’ Panel, led by Future Voters of Los Angeles, a youth-led organization that encourages youth voting in the Los Angeles community, in September.

The event featured leaders from youthled organizations across the country, partnering to emphasize the non-partisan, intersectional importance of youth voting.

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T H E L AW R E N T I A N

Zooming into Winter Term

Following a fall that was ‘Best for All,’ winter classes are being conducted remotely with an eye on a return to campus for spring.

After successfully completing the hybridformat fall term on November 23, students returned to their homes for Thanksgiving and a well-deserved break. By the time they departed campus, they knew that when the winter term began on December 7, all learning would once again be remote, as it was during the pandemicshaped spring 2020 term.

After careful consideration and consultation with the Board of Trustees, Lawrenceville’s Senior Staff, health care experts, and peer school leaders, as well as considerable input from faculty and staff, Head of School Steve Murray H’54 ’55 ’65 ’16 P’16 ’21 announced in early November that Lawrenceville would remain remote after winter break, for the duration of the winter term, which ends

March 25.

Murray was grateful for the efforts and sacrifices made by the School community, which coalesced around the “Best for All” agreement to mitigate the spread of the pandemic, but acknowledged that several factors drove his decision.

“While I would like nothing more than for us to stay together on campus, the heightened prevalence of COVID-19 here in Mercer County and across the globe, as well as the many challenges presented by the coming cold months, have figured significantly in our discussions regarding the winter term,” he said.

In the weeks leading up to Murray’s decision, he met regularly with a Winter Term Planning Working Group that examined the viability of an in-person learning experience. The group

considered overarching challenges and potential solutions, and conducted scenario planning for in-person, hybrid, and remote-learning options.

The decision hinged on many factors, but among the overarching issues that defied practical solutions were the resurgence of the pandemic and winter weather that eliminated outdoor spaces for safe gatherings of any sort, especially dining, athletics, and performing arts.

Winter term is functioning much as last spring’s remote term did, but with the benefit of hindsight and experience.

Led by faculty who have become leaders in remote learning, classes are split about equally between synchronous and asynchronous instruction, but retain the Harkness hallmarks that make them active, collaborative, and reflective.

BRING THE FUNK…

...OF BODY ODOR, THAT IS, BECAUSE AIDAN OSTER ’21 IS MAKING DEODORANT BETTER. Ever wondered how deodorant works — or how it might work better? Aidan Oster ’21 did and is pursuing a patent for his groundbreaking work to make us all smell a little better.

Oster was curious. Was there a way to create an organic acid, safe for human skin, with sweat to create a substance that removes the unpleasant odor from perspiration, or even turn it into something that smells good? He spent last spring teaching himself relevant organic chemistry and began to experiment at home – in a makeshift lab that he built outside. Bacteria produces acid that gives sweat a strong, unpleasant smell, and Oster had a test tube full of it in concentrated form.

“Once I started to work on it, I didn’t really smell it much until I had my mom and dad come outside to test, and they were shocked at how powerful the smell was,” Oster said.

now experimenting with reactants that will produce different scents.

“I’m working on green apple, pine, and flower smells,” he said.

Oster is now fine-tuning marketing materials that he can use to pitch to potential partners among the consumer goods companies for product development and commercialization.

Oster’s parents are excited about Aidan’s invention.

“When classes shifted online last March [due to the pandemic], Aidan was sad to not be on campus and not be with his friends and teachers,” said Michael Oster, Aidan’s dad. “But he used the extra time for experimentation and patent drafting, and we are very proud how he made lemons into lemonade during such an uncertain time.”

Lawrenceville is pleased to welcome the newest members of its faculty and Admission Department to the School for the 2020-21 academic year. They are: DANA BROWN L Senior Associate Dean of Admission and Coordinator of International Recruitment B.A. in Education and Child Psychology, minor in Biology, Smith College

DOUG DAVIS L Assistant Dean of Admission; History Department B.A. in Sociology, Princeton University

BRIAN HILL L Language Department

Ph.D. in Classics, Rutgers University; M.Phil. in Classics, Trinity College, Dublin; B.A. in Classics, Harvard University

Through continued experimentation in his backyard lab, the Fifth Former found a substance that, when combined with the acid in sweat, produces a chemical that can actually smell pleasant. That reaction is where the innovation comes in.

Most traditional deodorants and antiperspirants work against the body, attempting to keep an area dry. Once they are overpowered, they become ineffective.

Oster’s invention works with the body.

With his product, the more you sweat, the more fuel your body produces to create the resulting pleasant smell. In fact, he’s

WELCOME NEW FACULTY

VERONICA MCMAHON L Mathematics Department

M.A. in Educational Leadership, Teachers College at Columbia University, B.S. in mathematics, Tufts University

TUCKER MIZHIR L Assistant Dean of Admission

B.A. in History, Washington & Jefferson College

JON POSNER L Associate Dean of Admission and Athletic Recruitment Coordinator B.A., University of Scranton

JACK SCHRUPP L Language Department In crafting a better deodorant formula, Aidan Oster ’21 used his backyard as a chemistry lab.

B.A., double major in History and French, Williams College

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INSIDE THE GATES

ONE TO WATCH Blasting Off with NASA

Name: Sabrina Yeung ’22

5Q4 5

questions for history

teacher Kim McMenamin, who

gives us a glimpse into her earlypandemic adaptations for sheltering in place – and in peace – through her reading, viewing, and listening recommendations.

What have you binge-watched?

Definitely more TV than I’m ready to admit, but most recently The Sopranos.

Best pandemic comfort food?

Tacos of any kind.

What book should we all be reading right now?

James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time.

If you could meet, safely socially distanced, three famous people, living or dead, around a Harkness table, whom would you choose?

Walt Whitman, Otis Redding, and Kate McKinnon — all bards of their time!

Most frequently played song on your playlist?

“Late Night Feelings” by Mark Ronson featuring Lykke Li.

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T H E L AW R E N T I A N

L Sabrina was selected for the prestigious Student Enhancement in Earth and Space Science (SEES) summer internship hosted by The University of Texas at Austin’s Center for Space Research.

L Through this nationally competitive program sponsored by NASA’s Texas Space Grant Consortium, Sabrina conducted authentic research using NASA data as part of the COVID-19 Sustainability team.

L “Our final proposal suggested ways we could use COVID-19 as a time to reflect and change how factories could operate to be more sustainable and emit less toxins, or to sustain the cleaner air that came with the shutdown of the economy.”

L In touting clean energy solutions, Sabrina’s team created a website to explain their research discoveries and recommendations. To learn more about their work, Project Clean Earth, see projectcleanearth.tech.

OFTEN OVERLOOKED Flanking the grand front staircase to enter Woods Memorial Hall are complex carvings in the Longmeadow brown sandstone on either side of the doorway. On the left are songbirds and birds of prey, while intricate beasts, dragons, and serpents occupy the opposite side. The Christian and mythological symbolism makes for a dramatic entry into the classroom building, completed in 1890, and the beasts in particular are intentionally unsettling in their overarching representations of heaven and hell. Symbolically, those who traverse the steps between these images ascend toward educational enlightenment.

– Sarah Mezzino

THEY SAID IT “Civil discourse is not synonymous with ‘everyone being comfortable during the conversation.’ It’s about pushing each other to have those difficult conversations and learning from them. In truth, our discomfort emerges from recognizing the subjective nature of our ideas.

This recognition is indicative of our personal growth, reflecting the increased awareness of the relationship between our current ideas and our experiences.”

— Editorial in The Lawrence, October 2, 2020, by Lucia Wetherill ’21, Grayson Miller ’21, Christine Cheng ’21, and Ankita Suri ’21.

3

CLUB HOPPING

Things we learned producing this issue of

The Lawrentian

1. Following the end of

World War II, a number of former Lawrenceville students who had dropped out to join the Allied Forces in Europe and the Pacific, returned with combat experience to earn their diplomas.

Lawrenceville Esports Founded: 2019

Current Membership: 6 Purpose: To offer a place for

gamers, new or experienced, to train, compete, and share their gaming experiences with each other.

Over the last forty years, playing video games has evolved from something kids did on rainy days to the organized, multiplayer competitions known today as “esports,” short for electronic sports. An increasing number of universities now offer esports at the varsity level, and the fever has reached secondary schools. Bill Luo ’22 founded Lawrenceville Esports to seize this moment in competitive gaming. “The plans for this year are big, from hosting 1v1 [one-versus-one-player] tournaments and Among Us [a multiplayer social deduction game in which player attempt to discover the allegiance of others] parties to interscholastic competitions and fundraising for large charities.” There’s a pandemic era bonus: All meetings are remote.

2. If Aidan Oster ’21

figures correctly, he has created a deodorant formula that will actually make you smell better the more you sweat, rather than just mask your malodorous scent.

3. Bernard Robinson ’88,

who returned to the field as an EMT-paramedic early in the COVID-19 crisis, spent a month hospitalized with the disease and says it was his Class of ’88 Zoom reunions that lifted his spirits the most during that trying time.

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ON THE ARTS

Maggie Ray’s chapbook, Superstitions of the Mid-Atlantic, will be published by Poetry Society of America.

Poetry Society Lauds Ray English teacher Maggie Ray is one of four winners of the Poetry Society of America’s (PSA) annual Chapbook Fellowship competition. (A chapbook is a collection of poetry typically fewer than forty pages and often centered on a specific subject.) Ray’s chapbook, Superstitions of the Mid-Atlantic, will be published by the PSA.

“This is one of the major national chapbook competitions and an enormous – and well-earned – honor,” said Chris Cunningham P’14 ’18,

assistant head of school and dean of faculty.

PSA’s mission is to build a larger and more diverse audience for poetry, to encourage a deeper appreciation of the vitality and breadth of poetry in the cultural conversation, to support poets through an array of programs and awards, and to place poetry at the crossroads of American life.

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‘It was COLONEL Mustard, with a mask…’

Periwig offers a ‘Clue’ how to do live theater in the pandemic era.

The lights are still dimmed on Broadway, but they were shining brightly in the Kirby Arts Center in October when the Periwig Club presented a live production of Clue: On Stage.

The show, a stage version of the 1985 black comedy-mystery film Clue (which was based on the murder-mystery board game of the same name), was also viewable via livestream.

Producing a play during a pandemic brought unique challenges. The cast and crew were slightly smaller than usual to allow for social distancing both backstage and on stage, according to Matt Campbell, director of theatre.

Performers were required to wear masks, but the familiar facial covers included clear material over their mouths, making them visible and allowing fuller facial expressions to register with other actors and the audience.

Periwig veteran Zach Finacchio ’21 was initially disappointed that the club wouldn’t be permitted to perform its usual fall musical (the CDC determined months ago that singing carries a higher risk of particle transmission than speaking), but said the experience quickly became memorable.

“Clue not only carries the energy and pace of a traditional musical but has also provided some of the greatest cast-bonding memories amidst major obstacles,” said Finacchio, who played Wadsworth the butler. “By far, Clue has been one of the most challenging productions I have ever done.”

A technician on the deck crew, Tiffany Wen ’23, said her behind-the-scenes work was unlike any she had previously undertaken.

“One of the biggest changes for me is wiping down all the props and furniture with Clorox before the show, something I never needed to do last year,” said Wen, who added that all crew members needed to wear rubber gloves and POM contact-tracing devices. “It helped me see how much work goes into putting on a show, and how much commitment each person puts in to help the show be a success.”

— Christine Cheng ’21

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GO BIG RED

TRIPLE OPTION

In a season with no games on the schedule, the Big Red football staff mapped out three possible practice formats to enhance players’ skills and strength while still having fun.

F

ootball and the fall are intrinsically linked in American culture, so even after the COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of Lawrenceville’s interscholastic schedule for the first time since 1906 (the 1918 squad played one game before the “Spanish flu” scrapped their slate), team members still donned their familiar Big Red helmets and hit the field – albeit the practice field.

This fall, the School’s coaches and trainers devised a comprehensive menu of skills, drills, and fitness activities to keep Big Red athletes in top form even when they can’t look ahead to a big Saturday afternoon tilt. Head football coach Harry Flaherty kept things productive, competitive, and fun – and, of course, safe – with a practice regimen in line with CDC guidelines and best practices.

“It’s definitely not going to be six weeks of boot camp,” Flaherty said at the start of workouts in September. Before his team began working on football skills, they were

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T H E L AW R E N T I A N

By LISA M. GILLARD HANSON

Big Red played no football games in 2020 due to the pandemic, but head coach Harry Flaherty and his staff still had more than two months to focus on football fundamentals and skills development.

Welborne to Be Enshrined in Michigan Hall of Honor

“going to start off with a lot of conditioning, do some speed work and sprinting, and body weight exercises that don’t require use of equipment or contact,” he said, adding that he and his staff were “taking our guidance from the experts about what is feasible under the circumstances.”

Flaherty was prepared for three possible levels of work to begin the fall season.

“The most conservative approach would be one where we’re out there doing a lot of movement, a lot of speed and conditioning, but we’re not using equipment, and we’re not putting players into contact scenarios,” he explained. “The next level would be introducing equipment, but only with incidental or limited contact between players.

We would be doing a lot of football-specific work, but not tackling and blocking.”

Under what he called the “best-case scenario,” Flaherty saw his team running fullspeed contact drills and intrasquad offensedefense scrimmages, as opposed to hosting or traveling to play other schools. He noted that even the most restrictive format would still enable his staff to program plenty of skills-development opportunities with very limited contact. Working on timing, passing drills, and route-running for receivers are, Flaherty added, socially distanced exercises by their nature.

During games, every play begins with the burst of physical contact between the offensive and defensive lines at the line of scrimmage, and Flaherty says “the big guys in the trenches” would benefit from the expertise of assistant coaches Drew Inzer, a former offensive lineman for the New England Patriots and Brown University, and Grey Simpson P’20 ’22, who played on the line at the College of the Holy Cross.

“They can lead a lot of fundamental work, drills that don’t actually involve close-

quarters contact between two kids.” In case conditions permitted, the coaches also charted cleaning protocols (following CDC recommendations) that would allow students to safely use equipment such as blocking sleds or tackling dummies.

While Flaherty, a former Princeton tight end who enjoyed stints with the New Orleans Saints and the Dallas Cowboys, would prefer to return to pre-pandemic football training and competition, he admits there are some positives to this new approach.

“We can focus a bit more on each individual player. If there is a specific area where they have room for improvement, we can home in a little bit more on skills development and give them special instruction at maybe a little bit of a slowed pace,” he said. “That sometimes gets lost in the craziness of having to move the team along to prepare for a game each week.”

Players will also be able to grow physically through the team’s strength and conditioning exercises, Flaherty said. “Typically during the season, you’re really just trying to maintain; you’re not really looking to make significant gains in the weight room or out on the track,” he explained. “But I think without having to rest for and recover from games, there can be a heightened focus on actual physical development, and they can make some significant gains during a season where that’s usually a novelty.”

▶ The 1990 National Defensive Player of the Year at Michigan, Tripp Welborne was elected to the university athletic department’s Hall of Honor this year.

(Courtesy University of Michigan Athletics)

Tripp Welborne H’58 P’21, who was elevated from director of athletics to dean of athletics and co-curricular education this year, will also be lauded by his alma mater, the University of Michigan, which elected him to its athletic department’s Hall of Honor for 2020. A two-time consensus All-America football player for the Wolverines in 1989 and ’90, he will be formally inducted on a date to be determined.

Welborne, who joined the Lawrenceville staff in 2015, is the the only Wolverine in history to earn unanimous All-America selection twice. He was an All-Big Ten first team selection as a junior and senior and was the recipient of the 1990 National College Defensive Player of the Year Award. A finalist for the 1989 Jim Thorpe Award, presented to college football’s top defensive back, Welborne was drafted by the Minnesota Vikings in 1991 and played one season for the organization before a knee injury cut short his professional career.

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TAKE THIS JOB AND LOVE IT

‘I’M HERE. LET’S GO.’

Bernard Robinson ’88 returned from COVID-19 to lead EMS operations for the health system that has treated the most coronavirus patients.

I

n late March, when the virus that causes COVID-19 was already spreading rapidly across New York City and the surrounding region, first responders in the health care community jumped quickly into the mix, underscoring their “front-line workers” moniker. On Long Island, Bernard Robinson ’88, who oversees daily operations for one of the largest EMS services on the East Coast, felt duty-bound to step away from the relative security of his office and return to the field alongside his EMT and paramedic colleagues.

“I would not ask my guys to go into something that I wouldn’t be willing to go into myself,” says Robinson, a regional director for Northwell Health’s Center for Emergency Medical Services.

During those early days of the outbreak, Robinson recalls, protocols and procedures were “changing literally by the hour, as far as what PPE was appropriate to wear and what wasn’t.” That ambiguity in guidance translated into a great deal of apprehension among his Northwell EMTs and medics.

“They were anxious,” he says, “so the best way to calm them is to go out there with them, and show them, Hey guys, I’m here with you. Let’s go.”

Due in large part to the explosion of early cases in the area, Northwell Health has

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T H E L AW R E N T I A N

treated more COVID-19 patients than any other health system in the United States.

Unfortunately, Robinson’s selfless urge to support his EMS team in the field soon saw him added to those numbers.

“I went back out on the road, responding to emergencies, going into emergency rooms, but still facilitating the operations in there,” he recalls. “They were completely overrun. Everyone was either on a ventilator or about to be put on one.”

The burgeoning number of COVID-19 cases, particularly in Queens – an early epicenter of infection – increased the danger for everyone involved.

“We had two emergency rooms that were completely overrun. One is not too far from my home, so I checked on that one first, and they were really bad,” he says, recalling what was just his second shift since returning to the field. “Then I went to the one in Queens, and that was like nothing I’d ever seen before.”

Later that week, Robinson began feeling achy not long after returning home.

“I knew something was up, so I immediately quarantined in the basement and told my wife, ‘I think this is it,’” he says.

“It kind of progressed from there to where it was just bad – very bad.”

COVID-19 testing was still scarce in March, but as a frontline worker for a health system, Robinson was able to be

tested just a few days after becoming symptomatic. Almost immediately after receiving his positive diagnosis, his condition deteriorated. He began to have trouble breathing, and a trip to the hospital determined that he also had a COVIDrelated case of double pneumonia. With beds filling up, Robinson was released to go home, where he had oxygen tanks to ease his respiration if needed. He consumed an astonishing seven tanks’ worth that night.

“My wife knew something wasn’t right,” Robinson says. “She called some of my friends – co-workers – and they said, ‘Yeah, we’re sending another ambulance.”

Robinson, who is active in his church, was concerned and even fearful. He sent a text message to his pastor and other friends in the clergy to inform them of his condition.

He explained frankly that he was not sure what the outcome would be.

After being readmitted to the hospital, Robinson’s condition worsened. As with many lethal coronavirus infections, he struggled with the most fundamental physical tasks.

“I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t get up. I couldn’t move. The exhaustion, my energy being so low – it was crazy,” he recalls. Just to stand up, I’d have to sit back down for twenty minutes to get my breath back. And my oxygen levels went down to 82 percent,

“This is literally the reason I became an EMT, because I thought girls would think it was cool. And little could I have known, I ended up actually falling in love with the job.”

He began working with New York City EMS, which he calls “an incredible experience.”

“By the time I was 21, I had delivered babies, resuscitated people back from cardiac arrest, and treated multiple gunshots – all of those things,” Robinson says. “And when you’re that age, it’s like, What’s better than this?”

And even more than thirty years after graduating from Lawrenceville, the virtual camaraderie he shared with his classmates during his recovery cheered his spirits.

“One of the things that helped me get better was that during this time, the Class of ’88 was doing weekly Zoom meetings,” he says of their weekly gatherings online. “It kind of gave me something to look forward to. They helped me get through that as well, which is awesome.”

Robinson battled back, and exactly

one month after testing positive, he was discharged on Easter morning. With his region still in the throes of the pandemic, he was eager to return to work and was back in his office a week later. Robinson admits now that although it might have been wise to wait, it’s simply not in his nature.

“I definitely could have stayed home a little longer than I did, but that’s just how I am,” he says. “I’ve always got to be back out.”

After regaining his strength and stamina over a few weeks in the office, where he remained in uniform, Robinson returned to the field.

“I’m going to stay like this until everything’s over, until the all-clear is given – then I can go back to suits and meetings,” he insists. “But right now, this is the most important thing, being out there, and being on the front lines.”

Photograph by Donnelly Marks

which is very bad because it should be 95 to 100. Yeah, that was horrible – definitely horrible.”

During his hospitalization, Robinson had some time to reflect on his work, which he has done all his adult life. He began working as an EMT during college at the urging of his father, a retired EMS lieutenant.

“I said, ‘Sure, I’ll do it. I think it’s cool. I think girls will like it if I tell them this is what I do,’” he recalls of his professional origins.

Now fully recovered from a serious bout with COVID-19, Bernard Robinson ‘88 is again heading daily operations for one of the largest EMS services on the East Coast.

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ASK THE ARCHIVIST

When

THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC IS

Disruption Arrives

NOT THE FIRST CRISIS TO PULL LAWRENTIANS TOGETHER.

By JACQUELINE HAUN

L

awrenceville began the 2020-21 school year with unprecedented changes to accommodate the trials posed by COVID-19, but it is not the first time the School has needed to significantly alter its routines based on external events. Previous to the current challenge, the most sweeping changes occurred with the advent of World War II, as the School adjusted to sudden staff shortages, initiated several academic changes to prepare students for military life after graduation, and even welcomed back nontraditional students – combat veterans – after the war came to an end in 1945.

One week before classes began in the fall of 1939, France and Britain declared war on Germany following the German invasion of Poland. Lawrenceville’s initial response to the war in Europe had been primarily intellectual in nature: Head Master Allan V. Heely, a passionate defender of the role of education in creating a healthy democracy, doubled down on efforts to teach Lawrenceville students about democratic ideals and inform them about social problems they would someday face as adults.

In fall 1941, the School began hosting the Lawrenceville Forum series of speakers, which included such notables as Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, and author Pearl S. Buck. The School also introduced a mandatory

The Fifth Form curriculum in 1942 included a course in war geography.

Principles and Problems of Democracy class for the Fourth Form that addressed topics including public housing, Social Security, taxation, social prejudice, agricultural programs, and the uses and misuses of propaganda in wartime.

The School’s emphasis on knowledgeable democratic citizenship was not merely an intellectual exercise: Lawrenceville

With many grounds staffers off to fight in Word War II, students picked up the slack.

sought to diversify the student body by welcoming students of various socioeconomic backgrounds, and encouraged student leadership to increase responsibility in their roles on campus. This included asking the Fifth Form to determine and enforce House rules independently.

The emphasis on training students to step up in leadership would prove prescient when the United States entered the war following the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan.

Adults and students in the community were called upon to draw together to address the new needs of wartime.

The first concern was to simply keep the School functioning after numerous staff and faculty voluntarily left to fight. Staff departures are not known, but some twenty-six faculty members – out of an original body of sixty-two – would enlist before February 1943. Faced with a staff shortage, the School developed a work plan that required students and remaining faculty to work two hours per week at tasks formerly done by grounds staff. Using tools kept in Woods Memorial Hall, boys and their teachers cut grass, trimmed trees, raked, swept, and picked apples, with school trucks taking workers to distant parts of campus.

The adults of the Lawrenceville community were not the only ones ready to join the battle: Numerous older students were eager to enlist, and in the early years of the war, some departed before graduation to do so. The U.S. government, however, wanted soldiers to be as educated as possible and encouraged students to complete at least high school and preferably college before entering service.

In part to reassure Lawrenceville students that they were doing their part for the war effort by staying in school, Heely sought the advice of the War Department, particularly those responsible for military training, and devised a new academic curriculum that incorporated topics related to war training. Gen. Edward C. Rose of the 60th Field Artillery Regiment at Fort Dix in New Jersey sent officers to lecture on principles and practice of field artillery, with certificates for students who completed the training. Fifth Formers were offered a pistol shooting course through the New Jersey State Police, and new classes in navigation, applied mathematics, radio communication, war geography, war economy, and finance were added to the curriculum. By that time, the Fifth Form had also begun taking two hours per week of instruction on navigation, coordinate geography and statistics, war chemistry, meteorology, wartime physiology, economic geography, modern European history, conversational French, and the background of democracy from study of the civilization of Rome and Athens.

In November and December 1942, the American government activated the military draft and lowered the enlistment age from 20 to 18. To meet the government’s need for an educated military force, high schools and universities collaborated to accelerate the educational process so students were more likely to complete their education before their being called up. At Lawrenceville, summer sessions were initiated in July 1943 that would allow students to graduate anywhere from four to nine months early.

Over the next two-and-a-half years, Lawrenceville would hold commencement exercises three times a year – each September, February, and June – to expedite Lawrentians’ completion of their secondary education. As the acceleration process continued, the senior classes grew younger, with the Class of 1945 averaging just 17 years, one month of age at graduation. The final expedited graduation took place in February 1946 with seven students who remained in the accelerated program when the war ended the previous September.

Following the end of World War II, faculty and staff quickly began returning to campus. Much to School administrators’ surprise, several young veterans who had left Lawrenceville before obtaining their diplomas also asked if they could return. As early as January 1945, five former members of the Class of 1944 had re-enrolled, along with two other veterans from other high schools. The veterans lived together in The Lodge on Main Street and while exempt from some student rules, they participated in senior athletics and demonstrated their diligence by earning the highest House grade-point average on campus in spring 1946.

The subsequent year, 1946-47, brought an additional twenty-three veterans, both old Lawrentians and students of other schools.

Following the graduation of its final veterans in 1948, the School returned to a more normal routine of classes and schedules, but the way in which the campus community had pulled together in a time of crisis remains a model for Lawrentians today.

— Jacqueline Haun is the archivist of the Stephan Archives in Bunn Library.

All Fall, the BEST FOR ALL The surroundings were familiar – well, mostly – but the fall term at Lawrenceville had a decidedly different look and feel.

Still, it takes more than face masks, social distancing, and makeshift desks to spoil that Big Red esprit de corps.

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Transformed by her residential Lawrenceville experience, Natalie Tung ’14 is recreating it for marginalized girls in Trenton.

BEDS

MATH

BY SEAN RAMSDEN PHOTOGRAPHY BY COLIN LENTON

BEYOND G

rowing up in Hong Kong, Natalie Tung ’14 led a childhood that she plainly concedes was privileged in many ways. She was fortunate and understands that. But Tung also recognizes that even children who enjoy the kinds of resources and opportunities she did will not always thrive in the classroom. There are simply too many variables.

“I didn’t have the best relationship with learning growing up,” Tung says, her voice trailing. “I think my confidence was low. I ended up repeating third grade.”

Tung’s account of her early years is difficult to reconcile with the poised and focused figure the 25-year-old Princeton University graduate strikes today. While many of her peers are still surveying the

ways they might leverage their schooling in the “real world,” Tung is already leveling the playing field for girls in a world that is more real than most. Just a college sophomore when she founded the nonprofit HomeWorks Trenton in 2016, Tung was spurred by the idea of instilling confidence and leadership in young women through an afterschool residential program drawn from her Lawrenceville experience. HomeWorks now enables its scholars – high school girls from the city’s marginalized communities – to focus on their personal academic and social development, encouraged and supported by their peers. The program supplements their public school education, while building confident, budding community leaders.

Though she hails from a very different place from that of her HomeWorks scholars, Tung envisioned the program’s purpose through the episodes of her own teen years.

“It wasn’t until I went to Lawrenceville when I realized that I was, at that point, learning to learn,” recalls Tung, who was fortified as much by what was happening away from the Harkness table as what took place around it.

“Everything that we were doing inside the classroom was always being reinforced outside the classroom,” she says. “It changed my entire relationship with learning – specifically English and my identity.”

Living in Kirby House with forty other girls her age “made me more empathetic,”

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“Seeing how different that was to my own high school experience, it was night and day,” she says. “The system sets everyone up to fail: teachers, students, everything.

There are so many injustices.”

She cites the toll of those inequities: 36 percent of children in the district are chronically absent, 90 percent are not on grade level for math, 80 percent are not on grade level for English, and only 10 percent are college-ready by the time they graduate high school. But those disparities extend well beyond socioeconomic factors, Tung adds, noting that research reveals Black and Latina girls – the ones who primarily benefit from HomeWorks – are the most vulnerable in the educational system. She points to an October 1 New York Times article reporting that Black girls in New York City’s elementary and middle schools were about 11 times more likely to be suspended than their White peers in 2017. Various advocacy groups and social scientists have repeatedly shown, with data, that the problem is not that Black girls are misbehaving more than their White peers, but that they are being judged and

TUNG WAS DELIBERATE IN As part of the mission of HomeWorks Trenton, Natalie Tung ’14 wants her scholars – all teenage girls – to know that “Black Lives Matter” is an affirmation as much as it is an organization or a movement.

she says. “It made me more confident and, most importantly, it made me understand the power of woman – that when we come together we are so powerful.”

Still, Tung didn’t fully absorb its potency until her time at Princeton.

“There are some things I went through during college … I was just in a really dark place,” she recalls. “It was my Lawrenceville friends who picked me back up. They were the ones who didn’t judge me for anything but were just there for me, unconditionally.

It was at that point where I was like, ‘Wow, this is the power of when we come together in this residential environment.’”

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T H E L AW R E N T I A N

Forging those bonds is essential to the mission of HomeWorks, which Tung sees as an equalizer for the city’s girls. HomeWorks scholars live together from Sunday evening through Friday morning in a dormitory that emulates Lawrenceville’s residential houses – with roommates, but also shared dining and common spaces – before returning home to their families on weekends.

HomeWorks provides daily transportation to and from their public schools.

“We are basically replicating the benefits of a boarding school but without the bureaucracy, high fixed costs, and scalability issues of an actual school,” Tung explains, “while also rejecting the narrative that kids need to leave their marginalized communities to be successful.”

Tung got her first taste of leading a classroom by student-teaching at Trenton Central High School. What she learned was jarring.

BUILDING HOMEWORKS, SPENDING THAT FIRST YEAR MEETING WITH MORE THAN ONE HUNDRED COMMUNITY LEADERS, PARENTS, STUDENTS, AND TEACHERS BEFORE ESTABLISHING THE PROGRAM AS A 501(C)(3) NONPROFIT. IN THE SPRING OF 2017, HOMEWORKS SECURED A $10,000 PRIZE FROM A PRINCETON SOCIAL INNOVATION COMPETITION AND $24,000 IN ACCELERATOR FUNDING, WHICH ENABLED THE FLEDGLING PROGRAM TO HIRE SIX STAFFERS AND LAUNCH A PILOT PROGRAM.

disciplined more harshly for the same infractions. This is particularly true in cases where subjectivity plays a role, such as dress-code infractions and insubordination.

“From the research we do, Black and Brown girls face barriers because they have to navigate between the intersection of racism and sexism,” Tung explains. “They experience a higher rate of interpersonal violence, feel less safe at over-policed schools, may resort to acting out when their counseling needs are disregarded, and receive disproportionate punitive punishment.”

After bearing witness to these disparities and understanding their relationship to student success, Tung began to consider her own experience at Lawrenceville and how much of that was transferable to the students she was working with in Trenton.

“That’s when I partnered with our House-sister and assistant Serina Montero (right) is one of the NJ Bonner/AmeriCorps students who works closely with HomeWorks scholars.

ycommunity to create HomeWorks,” she says. “That’s the origin story.”

“I

was never really an outspoken person,” says former HomeWorks scholar Jessica Peters ’24, who participated in the 2018 summer pilot program. “I was always shy, so when HomeWorks really brought out the inner me, it was just about trying to find myself and be more expressive in my own opinions and my ideas.”

Peters said the skills she and her fellow scholars cultivated in the program, such as public speaking, helped her develop her own ideas and give them voice. Being heard also helped imbue Peters with the confidence to take other risks.

“My eighth grade year at school, I decided to try out for the play, because I did a lot of singing during HomeWorks and everyone told me I was a good singer,” she says. “I told myself, ‘I should try out; maybe I’ll get the part and it’d be the best thing ever.’”

For Peters, her bolstered confidence continues to yield dividends.

“They really pushed me,” she says. “I don’t think I would have gotten to the place I am now without them.”

That place, by the way, is Lawrenceville.

This past fall, Peters became the first HomeWorks alumna to enroll at the School.

Tung credits the fierce advocacy of Peters’ mother and a sister thirteen years her elder for the girl’s success, but Tung is also proud of the role HomeWorks played in making that leap.

“We felt that she would kind of thrive in that space at Lawrenceville,” she says. “She has worked so hard, and I think it was all them. [But] because of the way the system is we were able to help open some doors that then allowed her amazingness to be recognized.”

O

ne idea that animates HomeWorks is the deep trust it places in the people with whom it partners.

Tung and her staff have heard the tales of well-intentioned folks who parachute into disenfranchised communities, touted as saviors. That top-down approach has never been the ethos of HomeWorks, which instead works side by side with the people of Trenton.

“When you’re HomeWorks, coming into a community, you’re not the final say,” says Nandini Singh ’15, Tung’s former Kirby Housemate who joined the staff more than a year ago and is now its development and program manager. “What you need to do is really work to understand the needs of the community from them, not impose what you want to accomplish on them, because that’s not really what working alongside communities is about.”

Tung was deliberate in building HomeWorks, spending that first year meeting with more than one hundred community leaders, parents, students, and teachers before establishing the program as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. In spring 2017, HomeWorks secured a $10,000 prize from a Princeton Social Innovation competition and $24,000 in accelerator funding, which enabled the fledgling program to hire six staffers and launch a pilot program.

In the summer, five girls took part in the residential pilot, which was built around academics and social-emotional and WINTER

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“YET, OF COURSE, $25,000 TO $30,000 – SOMETIMES THAT’S A PARENTS’ ENTIRE PAY FOR A WHOLE YEAR,” SHE SAYS OF HOMEWORKS SCHOLARS. STILL, TUNG SAW HOW A VERSION OF THE IDEA WAS TRANSFERABLE TO WHAT SHE HOPED TO DO. SINCE THE BEGINNING OF THIS ACADEMIC YEAR, HOMEWORKS STAFFERS HAVE BEEN PICKING UP SCHOLARS AT 6:30 A.M. ON THEIR NEW BUS AND DELIVERING THEM TO THEIR BUILDING TO DO THEIR PUBLIC SCHOOL WORKDAY REMOTELY FROM 8 TO NOON.

life-skills workshops that included time management and financial literacy.

Later that year, Tung returned to Lawrenceville, where she spoke to the girls of Kirby House for a Quarter Century Society presentation about her work in Trenton and how her Lawrenceville experience helped hatch the idea.

“I had known Natalie when she was here, so I went up afterwards and said, ‘Hey, Nat, do you need any help?” recalls history teacher Kris Schulte P’15, who also teaches a Fifth Form elective on poverty. “I realized that I needed to put my money where my mouth was. I couldn’t be teaching about poverty and not be doing anything to put myself in it, to try to address issues in the community.”

Before she knew it, Schulte was on the board of trustees – its first member and its chair. She retains her leadership of the board, which has since grown to seven members, including William Stone ’08, who spent two years at Lawrenceville as a Penn Teaching Fellow before entering Yale Law School. To Stone, now an associate with the global law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in New York, HomeWorks’ 28

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mission is something he can relate to. The Jersey City native came up through SEEDS, a New Jersey-based program that prepares motivated, high-achieving students from low-income backgrounds for admission to private schools and colleges across the country.

“I was from a similar community to Trenton, albeit bigger, but I really believed in the power of education and how important it is to invest more time and resources and to communities in need,” Stone says. “And I thought it was really cool that Natalie, with her getting Lawrenceville and Princeton degrees, was devoting her career to doing that.”

Stone and Schulte are just part of a coterie of Lawrenceville community members who have lent their generous support to HomeWorks. Caroline Lee, a former member of the English faculty at the School who once taught Tung, has been integral in designing a culturally responsive curriculum to supplement the scholars’ public school courses. Tung credits Lee for helping shape her career path.

“She honestly changed my relationship with English and is the reason why I majored in English in college,” she says.

Erika Worthy P’21, the School’s director of human resources, sits on the HomeWorks advisory board while Mary Kate Barnes H’77 ’59 P’11 ’13 ’19, assistant head of school and director of advancement, and her Alumni and Development team have also lent plenty of fundraising and database-management guidance, Singh says.

Creating a residential experience also requires a place to sleep, and once again, HomeWorks was able to the tap into the Lawrenceville community – this time, the Facilities Management department, which donated bunk beds Tung was unable to afford.

“They told me, ‘We’ll even drive and set up the bunk beds for you,’” she says.

Tung is quick to add that Gary Giberson H’11 ’18 P’10, Lawrenceville’s director of dining and owner of Sustainable Fare, which operates dining services at the School, has been incredibly generous about providing meals to HomeWorks.

Dining has proven to be a movable feast

over the past few years, with HomeWorks’ residential location changing annually as the program evolves. Tung says their next capital goal is to purchase a permanent home.

“If we can buy a house, then our rent money is not going down the drain,” Tung explains. “We would go from $30,000 a kid to $9,000 a kid per year.”

HomeWorks has raised in excess of $500,000 since 2016, about a quarter of which Tung estimates has come through inkind donations such as the bunk beds and tutoring services, allowing the program to fund only business necessities.

“The only things we’re paying for are licensing, insurance, and staff,” Tung says.

“Even some of our staff is being paid by AmeriCorps and the Bonner Foundation.”

In addition to a long list of corporate and foundation gifts, Schulte says the support HomeWorks has received from Tung’s two almae matres has been the program’s lifeblood.

“Princeton University was wonderfully supportive of Natalie,” she says, mentioning the institution’s eLab Incubator and Accelerator Program. “The combination of Lawrenceville and Princeton … I don’t think HomeWorks could have really functioned without both of those.”

A

s it has with every other aspect of life, the COVID-19 pandemic upended HomeWorks’ routine, with the residential aspect of the program temporarily barred by the state. Still, aware that the pandemic has only heightened the vulnerability of their scholars, Tung and her staff have forged ahead.

“We talked to all of our parents and scholars in the community to assess what we can do to best accommodate or support our parents and their needs,” Tung says.

“What we were hearing was that virtual schooling has been really difficult. [In the spring], one of our kids failed ninth grade simply because she didn’t know how to log on to figure out her classes.”

Tung explains how many of her peers do not even own computers, which renders learning from home a virtual impossibility.

“Twenty-five percent of teens in households earning under $30,000 lack

computer access,” she explains, adding that more than half of lower-income families have at least one adult in their household who has lost a job or taken a pay cut since the pandemic began. This disruption yields increased signs of anxiety, depression, and PTSD in students, Tung says, with a third then falling a year behind their peers academically. Tung recalled reading early in the pandemic about wealthier families creating “pods,” small learning clusters of children who essentially quarantined together in study groups. They continued to reap academic and social benefits in exchange for a large fee paid to a teacher.

“Yet, of course, $25,000 to $30,000 –

sometimes that’s a parents’ entire pay for a whole year,” she says of HomeWorks scholars. Still, Tung saw how a version of the idea was transferable to what she hoped to do. Since the beginning of this academic year, HomeWorks staffers have been picking up scholars at 6:30 a.m. on their new bus and delivering them to their building to do their public school workday remotely from 8 to noon.

“Then we have a specifically designed culturally responsive curriculum,” she says, mentioning a class designed by Lee, her onetime mentor. “For example, our English curriculum is called Actualizing Queens and Women Warriors, and it’s all about

identity. It’s extra work, but it’s specifically designed for them.”

Learning takes place in a building chosen in 2020 to accommodate HomeWorks’ coronavirus-specific needs. A grant from Comcast helps ensure that scholars are equipped with computers. They are socially distanced in one room, where the staff is able to monitor their learning, lending a hand when needed.

Even though New Jersey state COVID-19 restrictions have temporarily suspended HomeWorks’ residential program, scholars still thoroughly enjoy mealtimes together.

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House-Mom Erica Hundley (right), who has also been a first-grade teacher for the past ten years, empowers all young people to meet their goals.

“REALLY, THIS IS A TIME FOR THEM TO UNDERSTAND WHO THEY ARE AS BLACK AND BROWN WOMEN,” TUNG CONTINUES, “BECAUSE WE KNOW THAT WHEN THEY CAN NAME ALL OF THESE INJUSTICES, WE KNOW THAT THEY ARE POWERFUL AND HAVE THE TOOLS TO THEN MOVE IN THIS WORLD.”

“If they have things they don’t understand, we can help them, because we have staff on site to help accommodate that,” Tung says. “We’re working very closely with the Trenton public school district in order to make sure our kids are OK.” After their culturally responsive segment is complete, there is tutoring via Zoom before the classic HomeWorks curriculum – the programming that underscores its Even when she’s working, Natalie Tung is doing the thing that moves her most.

raison d’être – which runs from 3:30 until the day ends at 5.

“We do our four pillars: women, empowerment, civic engagement, and life skills,” says Tung, who adds that those are often supplemented by yoga and fitness

or workshops on safe dating, body image, racism, sexism, or colorism.

“Really, this is a time for them to understand who they are as Black and Brown women,” she continues, “because we know that when they can name all of these injustices, when they can name what’s going on, we know that they are powerful and have the tools to then move in this world.”

Schulte is proud to be involved in HomeWorks, and she beams when she talks about Tung’s drive to make it happen.

“I just want to yell from the treetops for Natalie, for what she’s created. It’s remarkable how she’s chosen to commit her life to this community and believing in the girls,” she says. “It was such an unlikely trajectory of a life, but she’s really making a difference.”

Learn more about Natalie’s work with HomeWorks at homeworkstrenton.org.

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We’d love to thank you.

Please tell us if you have included Lawrenceville in your will or living trust, or as a beneficiary of a retirement account or life insurance policy. We want to welcome you to the John Cleve Green Society — alumni, parents, and friends who have committed to keeping our school great for generations to come. If your class year ends in a 1 or 6, your planned gift will be included in your milestone Reunion Class Gift.

For more information on leaving a bequest to Lawrenceville or for other planned giving opportunities, or if you have included Lawrenceville in your will but have not yet informed the School, please contact Jerry Muntz at the Lawrenceville Office of Planned Giving at 609-620-6064 or jmuntz@lawrenceville.org, or go to www.lawrenceville.org/plannedgiving.

Last Call, Y’all

By SEAN RAMSDEN / Photography by DANLEY C. ROMERO

IN RETIRING A TIME-HONORED BUT TROUBLESOME NAME, JIM BIRCH ’98 IS REBRANDING A BELOVED NEW ORLEANS BEER

BY REFLECTING THE PRIDE OF THE CITY’S MANY STORIED NEIGHBORHOODS.

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“I

think a lot of people come to New Orleans and are shaped by New Orleans, as opposed to bringing their culture here,” Jim Birch ’98 says. “It becomes part of you.”

Perhaps nowhere in the United States is a place so unto itself – en soi – as the Crescent City. French, West African, Cajun, and Creole influences swirl together to create an inimitable jambalaya of cultures that has long defined itself by its singularity. New Orleans will do as New Orleans pleases, thank you very much, and it will change only as it sees fit. It is an identity and a tradition worn with pride, right down to the most local level.

“People are really proud of where they live, and who they see, what their local bar is, and what the best restaurant is in their neighborhood,” says Birch, the general manager of Dixie Brewing Company, a New Orleans stalwart founded in 1907. A native of northern New Jersey, Birch was recruited from the North Carolina-based Catawba Brewing Company to help Dixie owners Tom and Gayle Benson reinvigorate the venerable Dixie brand. First, it would have to be brought back to the Big Easy from Wisconsin, where it had been contractbrewed since Hurricane Katrina rendered its original facility on Tulane Avenue unusable

“And so the very people who had breathed life back into Dixie Beer, restoring prominence to a recognizable and revered brand, made the difficult decision in late June to relinquish that name and rebrand the product.”

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in 2005.

“Dixie was quintessential New Orleans for the better part of the century,” says Birch, explaining how the brewery managed to survive Prohibition and hit its commercial peak in the 1950s before Dixie gradually ceded market share to the large national breweries and declined into the early nineties. By the time the Bensons purchased their majority stake in 2017, Dixie “was just a shadow of its former self, but it still had this history in New Orleans that people remember,” Birch says. “People still had these great memories of it.”

If Dixie Beer claims brand equity within the city, so too could the Bensons. A hugely successful car-dealership owner and bank owner in New Orleans, Tom Benson purchased the NFL’s long-struggling Saints in 1985 before another prospective buyer could complete the deal and move the franchise out of the city. In 2015, he bought the NBA’s Pelicans with Gayle, who he married in 2004. Tom Benson died in March 2018, but Gayle, who became the principal owner of the two teams as well as of Dixie, remained determined to fulfill the mission they had begun together: to bring a historic local brand back home and with it, create pride – and jobs – for New Orleanians.

“They were looking around town for things that were quintessential New The November 1, 1907, New Orleans Daily Picayune showed visitors arriving for the opening of the original Dixie Brewing plant.

Orleans because there was a lot that was going away,” Birch explains of the city’s post-Katrina malaise. “They picked Dixie as something that they wanted to bring back, bringing full production and everything along with it.”

Birch began in January 2019, just as Dixie began working to transform an abandoned warehouse in New Orleans East – “a part of town that really hasn’t gotten any good investment in the last 20 years,” he says – into a $40 million, state-of-the-art brewery and taproom with 85,000 square feet, including a beer museum that details the history of brewing, focusing on Dixie’s contributions. Five thousand beer drinkers descended on the brewery, a replica of the historic Tulane Avenue plant, on the day it opened.

“We have two brewhouses under one roof, and we have the capacity for 100,000 barrels, which automatically makes us one of the largest breweries in the country,” Birch says. “We have a great team and lots of local workers. We employ over forty people now and things are going great.”

Adding a raspberry white ale, a hazy IPA, and a lower-alcohol session IPA to a lineup that already included the familiar Dixie Lager, Dixie Light, and Blackened Voodoo dark lager, Dixie was back on shelves, back in customers’ refrigerators, and back in business. But tout de temps en temps – every once in a while, even in New Orleans – things change, especially in a year when change was the rule.

“Since the moment we restarted production here and we began shipping from New Orleans in January [2020], we started to hear murmurs from some people outside of New Orleans who were asking about the name,” Birch says of the brand’s moniker, as much a part of the city’s fabric as hot beignets. The origins of the word “Dixie” are somewhat cloudy. According to Ian McNulty, who covers food and restaurant culture for The Times-Picayune and The New Orleans Advocate, some trace its roots to the Mason-Dixon line, the historic demarcation between the North and the South. Others speculate its etymology is derived from $10 bills printed in New Orleans in the 1800s. The currency was

branded with “Dix” – French for “ten” – and known as “dixies.”

“The term gained a different kind of currency through the song ‘Dixie,’ written for an antebellum-era minstrel show,” McNulty wrote in June. “It became an anthem for the Confederacy during the Civil War.” Birch says the Bensons looked into the word before resurrecting the brewery, surveying locals about the term, and felt reassured by the response.

“Ninety-nine percent of people said, ‘No, no, no, in New Orleans, ‘Dixie’ is a brewery and this is what it means. It’s related to the French ‘dix’ and Dixieland jazz,’” he reveals of their research.

“But as we started presenting the brand to wholesalers and key accounts and grocery stores around the country, we didn’t hear that same story,” Birch continues. “We heard a lot of people say, ‘Hmm … we’re a little bit concerned. What [Dixie] means in New Orleans, that’s not the first impression of what it means here.’ So, we started talking about it.”

With the national conversation about racial injustice growing last summer, “the issue became even more present to us,” Birch says. As awareness grew, the use of “Dixie” as a brand became increasingly fraught. Despite the positive association of the name within New Orleans, the brewery realized it would become a millstone to its loftier national ambitions.

“Because the Dixie name has been coopted to a certain extent by some, it’s used in a way that it wasn’t meant to be used when it was started,” Birch says. “This is a brewery. It’s supposed to bring people together, not be divisive.”

And so the very people who had breathed life back into Dixie Beer, restoring prominence to a recognizable and revered brand, made the difficult decision in late June to relinquish that name and rebrand the product.

“That was the hardest part about it,” Birch says of retiring the Dixie name, though he is adamant about its place in the history of the company’s beer. “The new company will have our 113-year history. It’s just going to have a different name.”

Dixie unveiled that new moniker on

November 4: The Faubourg Brewing Company, scheduled to appear on shelves and on taps in early 2021. “Faubourg,” an ancient French word now used interchangeably with “neighborhood” in New Orleans, is a tribute to the Big Easy’s widely varied communities. In a city noted for its distinct neighborhood identities – seventy-three in all, and not just the French Quarter, but Marigny, Tremé, the Garden District, the Seventh Ward, the Ninth Ward, and so on – “Faubourg” underscores that hyperlocal character in a way that stands in tribute to each one.

“Throughout this project, there were brand-name suggestions that kept coming up in conversations with our team as well as the community, and one of them was ‘Faubourg,’” Birch explains. Dixie solicited New Orleanians of all stripes, including hospitality workers, culture bearers, local historians, and, yes, beer drinkers, to participate in the process. Earlier in the fall, the brewery also received more than 5,400 online new-name submissions intended to express the culture of the city.

“Our products have always brought people together,” he says, “and we believe, like so many others, that Faubourg is a unifying name that celebrates every corner of New Orleans.”

Prior to the introduction of the new Faubourg brand, Birch says the brewery faced resentment and criticism for its decision to retire the Dixie name.

“Louisiana is a very conservative state, and I think a lot of people took the Dixie announcement the wrong way, or took it personally,” he says. “Dixie’s going away! – that’s a personal insult to them because they were a customer of it somehow. But what we’re saying is, ‘That’s not it.’ We’re not calling anyone a racist, and we’re not saying that we were racist. We’re saying that this word no longer fully meets our expectations of brand.”

Predictably, much of the resentful grumbling was done on social media.

Comments on Dixie’s Instagram posts struck a familiar chord: “That’s nice … too bad you changed your name and I’m not going to buy it anymore,” or “Dixie, I’m so done. I’m going to the grocery store and purchasing one more case and that’s it.”

Others, because of Benson’s dual ownership of Dixie and the NFL’s Saints, vowed to surrender their season tickets.

“Then I talk with the head of sales over there, and he’s like, ‘No, we still have a waiting list of fifty thousand people,’” Birch says.

Football is one thing, though, and the Saints have the local monopoly on the pro game. Beer drinkers can pop the top on any brand they want, so have the threats hurt the bottom line?

“What you hear and what’s actually occurring are two very different things, and that’s true for Dixie, too. Our sales in July were up over 140 percent,” Birch said in late September. “Year-to-date, we’re still up 30 percent, and that’s despite an on-premises [pandemic-related] shutdown here in Louisiana that’s gone two months. So we’re killing it. We are the number one fastest-

growing brewery by percentage growth rate year-to-date” Birch says recalling Gayle Benson’s original rationale for reanimating the brewery helped provide a guiding light throughout the process.

“Across all of her businesses, whether it’s sports-related or the dealerships that she owns, or Dixie, or the capital partners, she wants to set an example,” Birch says. “I think she feels that one of the best ways we can do that is to make sure that the businesses all are representative of her very inclusive nature.”

To that end, Birch believes that the Faubourg name will help ensure another 113 years, reflecting the best parts of New Orleans in a way that will always ring authentic and familiar.

“We were looking at where we were today, and we said, ‘Well, we have a fascinating state-of-the-art brewery that’s capable of fulfilling all the other objectives of why we are here,” he says, “which is to create jobs, and to make beer in a city that’s known for food and drink … and especially beer.”

The new Faubourg brand draws on an old French word now used interchangeably with “neighborhood” in New Orleans.

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Lawrenceville Summer scholars

RemembeRing Jo R

Years before women joined the faculty at Lawrenceville, they were already playing a vital role in the care and emotional well-being of the School’s students. A handful of these women, the wives of teachers, became known in the parlance of the time as “House mothers” and to a generation of Lawrentians, Jo Brewster Devlin H’56 ’58 ’59 ’60 ’66 ’67 P’71 epitomized “in loco parentis.” Jo passed peacefully on July 30 at the age of 91, but

her caring mentorship is still fondly recalled by the men who admired her more than a half-century ago.

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A Lower School Perspective

By Rolf Reinalda ’67 The beautiful Lawrenceville campus was not what greeted us upon awakening in Lower School. Instead we saw a drab ceiling and darkly stained plywood partitions that defined the meager dimensions of the doorless cubicle assigned to each student. Down the hall to the can for brief, necessary moments in a doorless stall, and then to a communal shower. Being away from home and family in early adolescence was difficult for the best of us, and the stark environment of Lower offered little comfort.

Breakfast was as comforting as the decor.

Coffee turned gray upon adding milk, and the pancakes were so dense it was rumored one had actually survived being stamped and sent through the U.S. postal system.

No one had cause to doubt it.

Most of us were pleased to be at Lawrenceville, each for his own reasons, but we longed to live in a Circle House, which seemed like the real deal, and the lack of comfort in Lower wore on us. Our School did not ascend to its lofty position by chance; the standards have always been high and thus demands on the students considerable. Keep in mind that Lower inmates were between 12 and 14 years young. Away from home. Winter.

We looked forward to mail – tangible mail with stamps and handwritten addresses. After our early classes we would stop by the Lower School office and, regardless of whether or not mail was in our slot, there would be a most welcome source of comfort: Mrs. Brewster. Not a day was so dark that Mrs. Brewster couldn’t brighten it. The wife of Kennedy House Master Lew Brewster P’71, she was the Lower School secretary. Though she had other duties beyond sorting mail, nothing could have been more important to us than her amiable presence. The mother of four, she was certainly a grown-up, but she

possessed a youthful beauty and refreshing demeanor. The Brewster family dog, a black Lab named Calaban, was with her most days, and she drove a Volkswagen microbus. Somehow it all added to this unassuming person’s quiet appeal. We were just kids and she was an adult, but she seemed to be our friend. A true friend.

After leaving School, a number of us kept in touch with Mrs. Brewster who, since widowed, married Jack Devlin H’66, the director of Lower School and a good guy we affectionately called “Toad” because he often squatted on his chair while presiding over study hall. So, Mrs. Brewster became Mrs. Devlin and, ultimately, “Jo” to those who grew to know her better.

Years ago, while my family was vacationing in Rhode Island, I visited Jo at her place on Cape Cod. Having not seen her in many moons, I was delighted but not surprised to see her so youthful and as spry as could be, on the floor tick-checking the two Labs she credited for her remarkable physical fitness. Long walks, she explained.

We had a nice visit, laughing about both having found the same bargain red wine that was “good enough for company.” Her familiar warm laugh resonated, assuring that she would live forever.

Years later, Jo and two of her daughters, Punky and Julie, stayed overnight at my place on Friday of a reunion weekend.

It was so comfortable, drinking the aforementioned bargain wine and lingering over a simple meal. Jo still called me “Dutch” (after deciding early on that my given name was too serious), and it all seemed like old times. Of course, she would live forever.

The Class of 1967 50 th reunion sneaked up, astounding us all that a half century had elapsed while we weren’t paying attention. During a reunion committee conference call, the suggestion of Jo Brewster Devlin becoming an honorary member of our class was instantly approved with unbridled enthusiasm. We couldn’t wait to inform her of one of the highest honors in the land. After all, the Great Class of 1967 is … well, everyone knows.

Our reunion was an unqualified success.

At the big dinner, a poised and dignified Jo stood appreciatively as we cheered her into our class. When she took her plaque and said, “Thank you, Dutch,” I was sure that people were wondering who in hell Dutch is, but it made me very proud to be her friend, as if I were the one being honored.

The balance of the evening was lively with Jo graciously making the rounds, engaging all and contributing so nicely. It seemed obvious that our new classmate would live forever.

Sadly, she didn’t.

Over the phone near the end of her road, Jo spoke of her decision to call in hospice. It was “time,” she said, adding lightheartedly, “Well, I’m ninety-one,” with overtones of acceptance and selfpermission. Though weak of body, she remained strong of mind and spirit to her end.

Through the years, Jo’s recollection of all the boys – not merely their names, which would have been impressive enough, but who they actually were – was phenomenal.

How can anyone do that? Must have been a result of her genuine caring. Mrs. Brewster, as we first knew her, was truly special, enough so that she will always be remembered.

In that way, she will live forever.

◾

Kennedy House Days and More

By John J. Preefer ’66 / Norm Mitchell ’66 We – Norm Mitchell ’66 and John Preefer ’66 from the Kennedy House 1963-65 – were tasked to write a memorial about Jo, about what made her special to so many to whom she was housemother, our “Mom.” Like many Lawrentians of other Kennedy House years, our class exchanged remembrances of Jo. It was the artist in our House, Jared Wickware ’66, who summed up how we all feel and how so many others

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Jo and son Chris Brewster ‘71

feel, “Forever in our hearts.” She touched our lives with her beauty, grace, warmth, happiness, and her beautiful smile, and because she found such joy knowing all of the boys who passed through Kennedy House. She found such joy seeing all of us over the years. Her joy was infectious.

Jo lived an eventful life; she outlived three husbands, had four children, traveled the world, and always had a smile that came to mean so much to us. And how was it that Jo could remember each of us by name fifty years later? Like a mother who never forgets her children, Jo remembered all of us.

At our 50th reunion on May 7, 2016, Jo officially became an honorary member of our Class of 1966. There were certainly a number of teachers we could have chosen, Jo and second husband, Jack Devlin H’66

so why choose the wife of Lew Brewster P’71, head of Kennedy House? Because Jo was special and remains so today.

Jo had been coming to reunions for years when she could, and we of Kennedy House 1963-65 would see her at most five-year reunions. At our 40 th class reunion in 2006 our relationship began to change; perhaps we were now mature enough to more fully appreciate and enjoy her company because she had not changed from the beautiful and elegant lady who gracefully served coffee in the Kennedy House living room four times a week. And for the duration of coffee hour she attempted to civilize a bunch of crazy adolescents before we returned to being our more natural selves.

In 2016, Jo planned to attend out 50th class reunion but then decided that driving down from Maine would be too much.

John stepped in and arranged to buy her a plane ticket and the housemates flew her down to be with us. When Jo protested – she could not allow us to do that – John told her: “We want you with us.” Jo came and, on that May 7 night, something changed and many of our class established a strong bond with Jo. She volunteered to be our surrogate mother for those of us who a lost our own. We could then email or call her to report life’s triumphs or tragedies.

In 2017, a year after our 50 th reunion, many of our Class of ’66 returned to

campus just to have a luncheon with Jo at the Acacia restaurant in the village before she became an honorary member of the Class of 1967. In the next couple of years there were several lunches attended by members of our Kennedy House Class of ’66 with Jo and Punky in Connecticut where they lived.

Ten of us gathered for the weekend in July 2019 at the Simsbury 1820 House, a beautiful Connecticut inn, to celebrate Jo’s 90 th birthday. John and Norm, Jared, Hal Gessner ’66, Rand Spencer ’66, Grant Ritter ’66, John Metzger ’66, Bob McEwan ’66 P’97, Maurice Hakim ’66, and Mike O’Neill ’66, with many of our wives, came from Honolulu, Dallas, Minneapolis, New Hope, Pa., Princeton, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Connecticut to be with her, along with all of Jo’s children: Punky, Julie, Chris ’71, Shelly, and their spouses.

For us, it was truly wonderful – food, drink, friendship, a smiling, happy Jo, birthday cake, eighteen yellow roses. We all came because we all loved and valued Jo as a part of our lives. Fifty-four years after we left Kennedy House, Jo brought our class closer together as we caught up on our postLawrenceville lives.

When, a little more than a year after that, we learned that Jo had died, we could not believe it. She celebrated her 90th birthday by going on a seven-week cruise one week after we had celebrated her birthday, traveling throughout Europe and to Russia.

Shortly before she died, she told John she often thought of that evening and how much it had meant to her. We have lost our mother and friend who bought such joy and happiness to us all. She made us happy just to be around her. We are all the better for having known her.

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Stay connected with the NEW Lawrenceville Alumni Network App

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.

OLD SCHOOL

60 years ago in

The Lawrentian

AUTUMN 1960

FIRESIDE FROLIC Unfortunately for undergraduate morale, this is not a typical scene around the fireplace in the hockey rink. The gay young things are models imported by the magazine Seventeen to pose for a fashion ad.

As is the ironic custom in such advertising work, the picture was shot on one of summer’s most broiling days.

— Caption to photo appearing in “Echoes of the Campus”

45 years ago in

The Lawrentian

DECEMBER 1975

COEDUCATION… When we reported on the matter of locked mailboxes, we noted that these seemed to be an even more important concern than coeducation, the agitation for which had cooled somewhat last spring. No so this fall when the Fifth Form organized a demonstration (in favor of coeducation, of course) in front of the Princeton home of Board President Ed Farley. It was a well-planned affair — signs, careful scheduling so that no one missed classes, a petition for Ed Farley. Timing was a bit off, though. Ed was out of town that day.

Heroines (appropriately enough) of the affair were Ed’s daughter Jane, who marched in the picket line, and his wife, Irene, who came to the door in a housecoat to receive the petition, and who provided coffee in the morning for sleepy marchers and a cold soda later when it warmed up.

— From the “Echoes of the Campus” news roundup by Thomas J. Johnston H’65 P’74

A gracious Irene Farley, wife of Board of Trustees Chair Edward Farley Jr. ’36 P’67 ’81, accepted a statement in support of coeducation from School Vice President Tad May ’76 and President T.P. Loftus ’76.

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T H E L AW R E N T I A N

The toe knows

The First Five Years

T

his past fall marked five years since the installation of Stephen S. Murray H’54 ’55 ’65 ’16 P’16 ’21 as Lawrenceville’s 13th head of school. In a fall 2015 profile in The Lawrentian, Murray said, “Great schools don’t remain great by sitting still,” and under his leadership, the institution has been anything but idle.

Lawrentian editor Sean Ramsden asked Murray to reflect on his first five years at the helm.

On the Cover: Transformed by her residential experience at Lawrenceville, Natalie Tung ‘14 took it as inspiration to to found HomeWorks Trenton.

Photograph by Colin Lenton

Your role is one of the most esteemed in secondary education. What part of it is exactly like you thought it would be, and what is nothing at all like you imagined?

I have come to see my role as head of school as part mayor of a small town, and part CEO of a mid-sized company. The appeal of the job comes from both of those aspects, and they are as I imagined. In order to be visible and in touch with the community, I love to be out and about on campus – on the sidelines of games, watching a performance, pausing for a chat with a colleague. And I am equally energized by the organizational challenge of supporting and motivating our amazing faculty and staff, ensuring that we consistently deliver the highest-quality education, and implementing strategies that strengthen our long-term financial viability.

As for aspects that are not at all what I imagined, I’ll just say I have learned over time that little happens by decree in a school. If you have a strong faculty, they will be independent-minded, and you can’t simply issue an order without first, out of respect, earning their trust and buy-in. So you learn over time that leadership is about building support, maintaining trust, and carefully communicating your thinking.

In the midst of a pandemic, is it too obvious to ask what your biggest challenge has been?

The biggest challenge has been having to make decision after decision based on incomplete information and amid enormous uncertainty. At

a certain point, you have to trust your instincts, take a position, and accept that you need to take responsibility regardless of the outcome.

In this vein, I’ve been reflecting on decisions I have had to make in a worldwide health crisis.

My degrees are in political science, education, and French literature, and at the start of my career, I never imagined I’d do anything but teach. Later, in my early years as a head of school, I began to understand the complexity of organizational leadership. Flaubert was not much help, and I regretted not having an M.B.A. A few years after that, as I encountered various legal challenges in a school environment, I wondered if a law degree would have been more useful. And lately, in a pandemic, as I wrestle with the risk matrix of epidemiological spread, it has struck me more than once that a degree in medicine sure would help!

I suppose the point is that I have been constantly learning over the course of my career, and that has been what makes it interesting.

When you arrived at Lawrenceville, did anyone give you advice that proved to be especially prescient or helpful?

I had lunch with Mary Liz McClellan [H’50 ’52 ’57 ’58 ’59 ’65 ’79 GP’10, the wife of longtime Head of School Bruce McClellan H’57 ’58 ’60 GP’10] in southern New Hampshire a few weeks before starting the job in 2015. It was an extraordinary visit as she reminisced about her time in Foundation House and the challenges that she and Bruce faced over the years. She turned to me after lunch and said, “I want you to say to your wife, Sarah [P’16 ’21], that I remember standing frozen on the threshold of Foundation House in 1959 as we were preparing to move in, and my knees were shaking. It all happened so quickly, and I did not feel prepared.”

Feeling nervous and missing her simpler life in Hamill House, however, didn’t prevent her from doing what had to be done, in partnership with her husband: “You tell Sarah that she, too, can do this!”

This message indeed was reassuring to us both, and her words reinforced our resolve that, come what

Sitting silently in the middle of the Pop Hall rotunda, Spinario has been on campus long enough to have witnessed the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, so he knows that wearing his mask is how to seek the “Best for All.”

Photograph by Jessica Welsh

LEADING FROM OFF THE HEAD OF SCHOOL

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 WINTER 2021

THE L AWRENTIAN • WINTER 2021

Lawrentian THE

THE

TURNING A HOUSE INTO A HOME Natalie Tung ’14 and her HomeWorks Trenton residential program imbues girls with a sense of community, confidence, and consistency.

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11 BRING THE FUNK

32 BREW DAT?

38 REMEMBERING JO