The Lawrentian - Spring 2021

THE LAWRENTIAN • SPRING 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 THE

SPRING 2021

Lawrentian THE

COVID-19: It’s Complicated

Inside their New Jersey hospital, the pandemic changed so much for surgeons Shahid Aziz ’88 and Edward Lee ’92.

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Right on ‘TIMES’

Pop o’ the Morning

Days before her 18th birthday, Soleil Saint-Cyr ’21 became the youngest woman ever to have a crossword puzzle selected by The New York Times for publication – the start of a February media whirlwind for the School president.

Although it was conducted virtually, the winter term began with a magnificent sunrise captured by science teacher and head of Upper House Johnny Clore H’02 for the @LvilleUpperHouse Instagram account on January 12.

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LEADING FROM OFF THE HEAD OF SCHOOL

On the Cover: No Scrubs: COVID-19 changed life in a Newark hospital for Shahid Aziz ’88 and Edward Lee ’92.

Photograph by Donnelly Marks

APPRECIATING THE LITTLE THINGS

I

t has been a long snowy winter with none of the usual campus activity that we love – it’s great to have you back!

My wife and I did not travel for spring break, which gave me plenty of time to reflect. We took a lot of walks, and we spent more time in the kitchen – cooking together is one of the simple pleasures we enjoy.

We also had a rare treat one cold, stillwintery evening in very early March when we went up to Mercer Meadows just before sunset with a pair of binoculars. We had heard that this nearby county park is a winter refuge for short-eared owls, and that in just a few days they would be leaving for their spring breeding grounds. Now I have to admit that at this point in late winter, our spirits were just a bit low, matching the cold, gray pall of the season.

Twelve months of minimal travel and limited human contact was taking a toll, along with the ongoing lack of clarity on the pandemic. News of the vaccine was improving, but the rollout to this point had been pretty confusing and hard to navigate.

So indeed we were feeling the weight of the past year, as everyone has. While I’ve always had great faith that we were going to come out the other side, somehow with campus empty, the grip of winter still strong, and days still short, it was getting hard to know where to pin our hope. I think we all had gotten too used to the ever-present, low-level anxiety we’ve been living with, like a steady bit of static energy in the backs of our minds.

I think that’s why the short-eared owls had such an impact on me. They are rather large birds, beautifully colored, with a 36-inch wingspan. As we arrived, we could see immediately that there were at least six of them visible, flying low to the ground, gracefully wheeling and turning, moving up and down a vast open field hunting for small prey.

With sunset about 20 minutes away, the evening sky lit up the meadow landscape, making the flight of the birds all the more beautiful, the sun catching their light underbelly as they flew. And every so often, one of the owls would suddenly drop down into the deep grass, catching the movement of a vole or field mouse. As I stood mesmerized by the very unselfconscious display they were putting on, I felt a slight, reassuring sense of calm begin to nudge aside

the anxious static; the persistent malaise seemed to break apart, like ice on a lake as warm weather arrives. I took in the setting sun, grassy winter meadow, and swooping birds of prey, and I was struck by the simple beauty of it all.

It occurred to me that we have spent a lot of time focusing on what we have sacrificed, what we’ve given up, but perhaps not enough time appreciating what we do have, especially the little things, that we mustn’t take for granted.

I was struck too that this scene was quite fleeting.

This was one of the final evenings to enjoy the owls before their imminent departure for spring nesting grounds. But beauty like this is, by nature, fleeting, and of course their departure also signals other things: that spring would be coming, that trees would soon be blooming, and that all of you would soon be returning.

I was up early yesterday morning with my dogs and saw absolutely brilliant morning light that silhouetted Memorial Hall. I was again struck by so many things to be grateful for – like a glimpse of a beautiful sunrise.

As you arrived this past weekend and began to move in, I was again reminded of how unnaturally quiet campus has been – your return has helped us all to wake back up. Your return has reminded me of what has made me most proud of you all year: how little you’ve taken for granted; how much you appreciate your time here; and how much you already appreciate the little things, the fleeting moments that make life here so precious. You certainly don’t need me to remind you. Watching you greet each other, toss a Frisbee on the Circle, walk to dinner together – it is you who reminded me, in fact.

So I thank you for that, and with a little warm weather that is just around the corner, I am looking forward to a great spring term – welcome back!

— Excerpt from remarks welcoming students back to campus for the spring term

Sincerely,

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

Embedded: ▶

PBS Middle East correspondent Jane Ferguson ’04 is one of several alumni who explained how they emerged transformed by Lawrenceville.

FEATURES

12 Clued In Soleil Saint-Cyr ’21 set a new standard for crossword creators.

26 Running Toward Fear Doctors Shahid Aziz ’88 and Edward Lee ’92 explain how the COVID-19 pandemic changed life in their Newark, New Jersey, public hospital.

30 Catch the Wave!

Summer Scholars is a fun way for children to immerse themselves in an ocean of learning that looks a lot like Lawrenceville.

34 How We Emerged Transformed In stories compiled over the past six years, Lawrenceville alumni shared catalytic experiences at a School that changed the arc of their lives.

DEPARTMENTS 4 A Thousand Words 6 In Brief 14 Inside the Gates 16 On the Arts 18 Go, Big Red! 20 Table Talk 22 Ask the Archivist 42 Class Notes 84 Old School

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FROM THE BASEMENT OF POP HALL

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t’s now been more than one full year since the COVID-19 pandemic jolted us from the familiar rhythms of the academic year, sending our students home for distance learning via the now-ubiquitous Zoom platform, for the remainder of the 2019-20 school year.

It was in the spring 2020 issue of The Lawrentian that we first used the terms “coronavirus” and “COVID-19.” In this space, I wrote that, “By the time you read this, the term ‘social distancing’ will have become as familiar as the tenets that speak to the heart of the Lawrenceville experience: House and Harkness.” I composed that iteration of “From the Basement of Pop Hall” on April 1 of last year, the first day I myself turned the corner from my own bout with COVID-19. As relieved as I was to escape this terrible malady intact, I knew that our country was just beginning the larger fight.

I’m writing to you on April 5, 2021, and today, there is a hope that wasn’t present one year ago. There is, if not a certainty, at least a reasonable expectation that by the end of this calendar year, life may resemble the one we took for granted when we rang in 2020.

Still, there has been an awful toll. As of this date, 556,307 people have died in the United States from COVID-19 – a number that includes members of our Lawrenceville alumni and parent community – and that should not ever be forgotten. Nor is that a fixed number. It will continue to rise, even if the rate of escalation has declined.

But there is hope. A year ago, I lamented the lost sense of renewal that always accompanies the arrival of spring, the “wink that seems to assure us that seems to assure us that even after another long, cold winter, everything is going to be all right now.” In some ways, this was the longest, coldest winter many of us have known. And yet, as we emerge, there is a distinct sense of hope coursing through our veins, along with the marvelous effects of the vaccines that are proliferating by the week.

The blooming of the daffodils these past two weeks seemed to ask of us, “Hey, are we ready to try this again?” I’ve paused to consider them and answer silently: “Yes, I think we are.” Sure enough, the other signs are there, too: Sports are being played – responsibly, with restrictions – and Commencement is, as of today, scheduled to be an in-person event, albeit with increased spacing and limited attendance. It’s progress.

On campus, Lawrentians sought to surmount the challenges of pandemic by living the “Best for All” credo, drawn right from our mission statement. In their actions, our students, faculty, and staff proved that these words do not ring hollow. Even as the experience was transformed, the path always remained lit by their example.

Looking ahead with continued hope,

L

SPRING 2021 | VOLUME 85 | NUMBER 2

Editor Sean Ramsden

Art Director Phyllis Lerner

News Editor Lisa M. Gillard Hanson

Staff Photographer Paloma Torres

Contributors Nathaniel Bayona Michael Branscom Andrea Fereshteh Kelly Hart Jacqueline Haun Donnelly Marks Jen A. Miller Nish Nalbandian Jack Sorokin

Illustration Tiago Galo – Folio Art Joel Kimmel 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.

Sean Ramsden Editor sramsden@lawrenceville.org Setting the Record Straight In a Class Notes photo caption on page 60 of the winter 2021 issue of The Lawrentian, we incorrectly identified Jeremy Moss ’90 as a member of the Class of 1989. The editor, who actually did graduate from high school in 1989, apologizes for inadvertently and needlessly adding a year to Jeremy’s relatively tender age.

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 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.

A THOUSAND WORDS

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Seen from high above on February 8, Lawrenceville’s campus appeared to be nestled peacefully beneath a blanket of snow that belied the activity at ground level. Behind Irwin Dining Center, the steel girders of the Tsai Field House rose from the earth, the first visible signs of what will become a hub of the School community when it opens in 2023.

Photograph by Nathaniel Bayona

Under Cover

IN BRIEF

Trashion Action The winter term may have been conducted virtually, but environmental sustainability remained a very tactile topic, underscored by the annual Trashion Show in February. Sponsored by the Lawrenceville Sustainability McClellan House fashioned this ribboned hat from copies of The Lawrence and water-bottle labels.

AUTHORS SHARE HISTORY OF AFRICAN AMERICANS IN N.J. Elaine Buck and Beverly Mills, co-authors of If These Stones Could Talk: African American Presence in the Hopewell Valley, Sourland Mountain and Surrounding Areas of New Jersey, spoke with Lawrentians via Zoom in February. They shared the sad and forgotten truth of the enslaved African Americans who lived in pre-Civil War New Jersey.

Buck and Mills began their journey through the state’s history with efforts to save Stoutsburg Cemetery, a small graveyard 10 miles north of Lawrenceville’s campus, from development. Ultimately, their research led them on a fascinating and eye-opening journey into the history of African Americans in the state. The authors’ studies were profiled in The New York Times in December 2020.

Elaine Buck and Beverly Mills in the Stoutsburg Cemetery in Hopewell, New Jersey, the subject of their book, If These Stones Could Talk. (Photo: Amr Alfiky/The New York Times)

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Council as the conclusion of the School’s environmental awareness month, “Sustainuary,” the event challenges students and their respective Houses to plan and assemble an outfit made entirely from garbage and recyclables. Faculty judges assessed each House’s outfit based on its creativity,

practicality, and sustainable features, awarding the winning Houses both bragging rights and coveted House Points toward the annual House Cup. Stanley House took home top honors, with Griswold and Kirby tying for second place, and McClellan and Carter Houses tying for third.

2021 WELLES AWARDS GRANTED If you could spend a summer pursuing any academic interest – anywhere in the world – what would you study and where would you go? Sixteen Lawrentians will pursue academic research with support from the William Welles Award, ranging from compiling stories of Syrian refugees in Turkey to making STEM education more accessible to underserved students. The annual grants program benefits Third and Fourth Form students in memory of William Bouton Welles ’71, allowing select Lawrentians to tackle an independent study project of their choosing. A faculty committee selects grantees. The 2021 Welles Award winners and their projects are: ARNAV AGGARWAL ’22

KAROLINA MAJEWSKA ’22

TESIA THOMAS ’22

L Create a “smart” pillbox to track patients’ medication with automated reminders via text message or Amazon Alexa.

L Expand her podcast, The Eye Opener, which provides relevant information to nontraditional boarding school families and students.

L Create a comprehensive, accessible, and free robotics curriculum for students who have had limited exposure to STEM education.

KYLE BAEK ’22

GEORGE MCCAIN ’23

RICHARD ZHOU ’22

L Create podcast series about immigrant entrepreneurship in California, including small and large businesses, scalable startups, and social entrepreneurs.

ASHLEY COHEN ’22 L Create a short film exposing the effects of COVID-19 on food insecurity in San Diego.

JAI DALAMAL ’22 L Investigate sustainability in the fashion industry, including the economics of sustainable versus nonsustainable materials.

JESS FERNANDEZ ’22 L Create a video miniseries in which bicultural members of the Lawrenceville School community will share their experiences.

SALLY LEE ’23

L Create a mobile game to allow public school students to experience and learn more about the Harkness method of learning.

L Investigate whether U.S. senators in 2020 leveraged their informational advantages to reap outsized profits in the stock market.

L Create a guide for New Jersey’s SEEDS participants that will help prepare them for the transition to and success in private schools.

KYLE PARK ‘23

DANIEL ZHU ’23

L Explore the influence of haenyeos (female divers) as South Korea’s Jeju Island moves from a patriarchy to a semi-matriarchy and their promotion of ecofeminism as primary household providers.

SUMMER QURESHI ’22

L Interview orphans and Syrian refugee children in Turkey and compile their stories into a book.

L Research and survey the special education system for public school elementary students with hearing loss in the United States.

GCAD LAUDED IN ARCHITECTURAL RECORD Lawrenceville’s Gruss Center for Art and Design, GCAD, was featured in the January issue of Architectural Record.

The piece by Linda C. Lentz details the building’s transformation from fine arts instruction into an interdisciplinary makerspace. GCAD is now Lawrenceville’s creative hub, featuring everything from charcoal drawing and oil painting to digital fabrication and robotics.

“Discreet smoky-gray glazing on the east and west facades knits old and new structures together, reflecting the landscape during daylight hours and transforming the two-story central volume into a lantern at night,” Lentz writes of the glass “cube” linking the one-time John Dixon Library and current Hutchins Galleries with the 1990s visual arts wing. “Indeed, during a visit on a sunny autumn Saturday, the effect was shadowlike and evocative – a scrim that mediates the surrounding scenery.”

The rear side of the Gruss Center for Art and Design, which was spotlighted in Architectural Record. (Photo: Peter Carroll)

LAYLA SHAFFER ’22

L Examine the impact of New York City’s recent single-use plastic bag ban on the ecological health of the Hudson River.

CHRISTABELLE SUTTER ’23 HAWKINS SUTTER ’22

L Establish a puzzle exchange in Princeton and Trenton, New Jersey, to promote off-screen cognitive development.

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CLASS OF ’21 PAYING IT FORWARD

The Class of 2021 launched this year’s installment of The Fifth Form Gift campaign, a Lawrenceville tradition, in February. As soon-tobe alumni, the class aims to honor their Lawrenceville experience by paying it forward, raising money for The Lawrenceville Fund and led by a gift committee of classmates Courtney Abbott, Betsy Kelly, Grayson Miller, and Shaan Singh. Tuition alone accounts for only about 60 percent of the cost of a Lawrenceville education, with income from the School’s endowment and The Lawrenceville Fund making up the difference.

WELL, THAT’S GRAND The Lawrentian was honored with a 2021 CASE District II Accolades Grand Gold Award in profile writing. “They Can’t Guard You, Garry!”, the cover story in the fall 2019 issue by Lawrentian editor Sean Ramsden, was one of just two Grand Gold honorees among 17 winners in the Writing division.

The Council for the Advancement and Support of Education’s Accolades Awards are bestowed at four levels: Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Grand Gold, the highest level of recognition in the program. Grand Gold Awards are rare, and only one may be given per category.

“They Can’t Guard You, Garry!” profiled the groundbreaking journalistic rise of Garry D. Howard ’77.

TSAI FIELD HOUSE BEGINS TO RISE Construction on the new Tsai Field House continues, with steel supports beginning to rise for the curvilinear roof over new sections of the building.

In this first phase of construction, work on a new pool, hockey rink, and dining facility is underway with an anticipated opening in September 2022. Phase two, which will include state-of-the-art upgrades to the existing field house structure is scheduled to be completed in summer 2023.

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VON WACHENFELDT PUBLISHES SCHOLARLY TEXT Jason Von Wachenfeldt, Ph.D., chair of the School’s religion and philosophy department, had his book, Religious Epistemology through Schillebeeckx and Tibetan Buddhism: Reimagining Authority Amidst Modern Uncertainty, published by T&T Clark in February.

The tome’s audience, VonWachenfeldt said, comprises students of religion, “particularly comparativists who want to see how different cultures and perspectives can challenge and inform one another.”

This study investigates how a comparison between the Catholic theologian Edward Schillebeeckx’s controversial reading of Thomist philosophy and the Tibetan Buddhist Gendun Chopel’s challenge to the standard Geluk teaching of Tsongkhapa’s Madhyamaka philosophy might assist in rethinking conceptions of religious knowledge.

The text is “really is an examination of what it might mean to have religious ‘knowledge’/belief in the midst of the competing Truth claims because of globalization, and how might someone reimagine or frame their beliefs in response to challenges of science, history, culture, and politics,” Von Wachenfeldt explained. “The main thrust of the argument is that there is a lot ‘Western’

philosophies/theologies can learn from Asian ones that have been wrestling with similar questions for much longer.”

The book, which grew out of VonWachenfeldt’s doctoral dissertation, was inspired primarily by his friend, Jesuit theologian Roger Hait, who introduced him to Schillebeeckx’s late 20th century “radical” theology.

“More than that, Roger

himself was formally ‘silenced’ by the Vatican for his reimagining of Catholicism and what it might look like in a modern context,” VonWachenfeldt said. “In some ways, I hoped to follow in his footsteps to utilize the rich potential of Catholic philosophy and theology in order to try to reimagine what Catholic belief could look like – dare I say, even for atheists and agnostics.”

OLAZABAL EARNS ECONOMICS DISTINCTION

Lina Olazabal ’22 earned a certificate of distinction for her work in the Economics for Leaders program, a competitive, selective summer program that taught student leaders how to integrate economics into the process of decision-making. The program, presented by the Foundation for Teaching Economics, was conducted virtually in 2020.

Passionate about environmental issues, Olazabal believed that a foundational knowledge of economics would enable her to be a more effective change agent.

“Money put forward for environmental issues and decisions could obviously be used for other things, given that environmental issues are so often very expensive [to solve],” she said, “so we need to be very thoughtful and careful when making decisions not only for my generation, but also for those to come.”

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ZHANG WILL PRESENT RESEARCH AT TECHCONNECT CONFERENCE

Writer-in-Residence Zooms In Aimee Nezhukumatathil is Lawrenceville’s 2021 Thornton Wilder writerin-residence. (credit: Martin Bentsen)

Hutchins Scholar is the youngest presenter, chosen from hundreds of thousands Lauren Zhang ’22 will be the youngest speaker to present research at the international TechConnect World Innovation Conference in Austin, Texas, in June. Zhang will share her work, “Design of Gold Nanorod Based Nanosensors for Circulating Tumor DNA Screening,” which she researched with Amogha Tadimety ’10, in the Nanomedicine sector.

The conference receives hundreds of thousands of submissions from universities worldwide. Only a handful of scientists are invited to attend the conference, and of those, only a few are chosen to present a speech. Zhang’s invitation represents the international recognition of innovation amongst some of the most accomplished scientists worldwide, and her work will be evaluated alongside that of professors, post-graduate researchers, and medical professionals.

“Needless to say, I am humbled to be invited to this conference at such a young age and grateful that I have this wonderful opportunity to learn from such a diverse group of scientists,” Zhang said. “I really hope that this recognition will be a step forward for my future aspirations in advancing medicine and biotechnological innovation.”

Zhang continues to broaden her research, hoping to find new ways to detect cancer earlier to improve patient outcomes. The nanosensor technology can also be adapted to detect genetic disorders and infectious diseases, including COVID-19. Zhang looks forward to working this summer with Seung K. Kim, M.D., Ph.D., in his lab’s pioneering research at the Stanford University Department of Developmental Biology and Medicine.

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Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Lawrenceville’s 2021 Thornton Wilder Writer-inResidence, spoke with Third and Fourth Form students about how she utilizes her background, love for science, and personal experiences to inspire her writings. The webinar was hosted by the School’s English department.

A professor of English and creative writing in the University of Mississippi’s M.F.A. program, where she spent 2016-17 as the institution’s Grisham Writer-inResidence, Nezhukumatathil shared several of her poems and stories, including the descriptive and colorful personal memories that influenced her essay, “This Landshark Is Your Landshark.” She described how she overcame her insecurities by becoming the first female mascot at her high school, and she used visual imagery during the discussion to putting students in her shoes.

Nezhukumatathil has earned a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pushcart Prize, a Mississippi Arts Council grant, and a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry. Her “World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, & Other Astonishments” has been recognized as both a Kirkus Prize Finalist and a Barnes & Noble Book of the Year. She has been widely published, including in the Best American Poetry Series, The New York Times Magazine, ESPN, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, and Tin House.

— Ryan Jahn ’22

Sweet Treats for Front-Line Workers

Ryan Kanungo ’22, Abby Sieler ’21, Claire Jiang ’24, and Lawrenceville’s Humanitarian Aid Society donated more than 400 homemade cookies in January to thank health care heroes at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospitals at Somerset, New Jersey.

TWO NEW DEANS TAPPED A pair of widely respected educators and administrators will become deans at Lawrenceville for the 2021-22 academic year with Alison Easterling P’20 being named the School’s new dean of academics and Devondra McMillan tapped to become dean of students. The appointments, effective July 1, were announced by Head of School Stephen S. Murray H’54 ’55 ’65 ’16 P’16 ’21 in February.

Easterling, who has served as associate dean of faculty and as a history teacher, will partner with the School’s dean of faculty and department chairs to provide leadership in curriculum, Harkness teaching, experiential learning, cultural competency, and teaching technologies.

“As we interviewed Alison, I was struck by her ability to approach a series of complicated questions with her characteristic methodical thought process combined with a fresh, creative spirit,” said Murray, who co-chaired the

DEVONDRA MCMILLAN Dean of Students Professional

L Current assistant head of upper school, The Walker School L Second Form level director at Lawrenceville L Academic Review Committee L Chair, Classics Department L Assistant head of house

Education

L Completing M.A., classical language, University of Georgia L Graduate School Dean’s Award L B .A., Yale University; two-time Fulbright Grant recipient

The appointments of Easterling and McMillan bring two familiar faces to key offices in July. search committee. “She is extraordinarily well equipped to build on the excellent work of our current dean of academics, Dave Laws [P’21 ’23].”

Since arriving at Lawrenceville in 2005, Easterling has held leadership roles in nearly all areas of School life. She has served on a number of critical committees for the School, advising on academics, athletics, strategic planning, and pace and quality of life. Easterling is a member of the School’s COVID-19 Contingency Planning Committee, helping to design the School’s first-ever online schedule and associated faculty training during the School’s transition to remote learning. She was the co-chair of the School’s Task Force on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and is co-chair of the Task Force on Recruitment and Retention, which is focusing primarily on strategies for hiring and retaining faculty and staff of color.

“As dean of academics, I am committed to leading with transparency, approachability, curiosity, and collaboration,” Easterling said.

“I’m excited to continue to work with the outstanding faculty of The Lawrenceville School in this new role.”

McMillan, who has nearly two decades of experience as a boarding school educator, including 16 with Lawrenceville, will be responsible for promoting a healthy, inclusive campus culture, for the overall safety and well-being of the student body, and for leadership and coordination of all dimensions of student services. In overseeing and partnering with the heads of house, McMillan will play an essential role in creating a support structure and a sense of belonging for every student.

“I could not be more pleased to welcome Devondra back to Lawrenceville. Driven by heartfelt convictions, she is a passionate advocate for students, and with her deep affection for the School, she invites us to work together to make it even better,” said

Murray, who also co-chaired the dean of students search committee. “I look forward to partnering with her and supporting her.”

McMillan returns from The Walker School in Marietta, Georgia, where she has been the assistant head of the upper school since the start of this academic year. Before leaving Lawrenceville, McMillan served as Second Form level director, in which she drew on her experience as an assistant head of house in Second, Third, and Fourth Form residences, and a role in which she designed and implemented a robust orientation and residential curriculum program.

“When I was at Lawrenceville, I would often remind Second Formers that our School is about building community,” said McMillan, who will follow the work of Blake Eldridge ’96 H’12. We can shape the Lawrenceville community to be what we want to be, and as dean of students I will be honored to spearhead that effort.”

ALISON EASTERLING Dean of Academics Professional

L Current associate dean of faculty L COVID-19 Contingency Planning Committee L Co-chair of Task Force on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion L History teacher L Head of House

Education L M.A., Medieval Studies, University of York, U.K. L B.A., Medieval Studies, Wesleyan University

QURESHI KEYS OUTSTANDING MODEL U.N.

Eleven members of Lawrenceville’s Model United Nations team attended the annual Yale Model U.N. Conference in January via Zoom, with Summer Qureshi ’22 earning Outstanding Delegate honors. In addition to Qureshi and honorable mention recipients Ayan Schwartzenberg ’22 and George McCain ’23, participants included Model U.N. Club presidents Jack Hallinan ’21 and Avigna Ramachandran ’21, as well as Chris Crane ’21, Christopher Pandapas ’21, Emily Hammond ’23, Emma Kim ’23, Aiden Rourke ’23, and Sean Wu ’23.

— Tiffany Yeung ’22 and Nichole Jin ’24/The Lawrence SPRING

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Photograph by Michael Branscom

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D E U L C

while scrolling through Twitter.

Trudeau – whom she now calls her mentor – posted a puzzle with an outreach note, offering to help underrepresented constructors get their start. He published Saint-Cyr’s first crossword, which featured the late actor Chadwick Boseman as its theme, in November. That puzzle caught the eye of a New York Times crossword puzzle editor, who was seeking puzzle-makers for its February 2021 Black Constructor’s Week collection – the newspaper’s homage to Black History Month.

Saint-Cyr is in elite company: USA Today crossword editor Erik Agard had his puzzle published in the Times the same week as Saint-Cyr. The rookie crossword constructor, along with Agard and New York

By LISA M. GILLARD HANSON Times crossword editor Will Shortz, are part of a movement to weave NEWEST NEW YORK TIMES more current events and pop-culture CROSSWORD RECORD-BREAKER, BY AGE. references into these staples of daily newspapers.

“To able to make myself and Black history a part of American culture is At just 17 years old, Soleil Saint-Cyr something that I find very important,” ’21 became the youngest woman ever Saint-Cyr told CBS News’ Vladimir Duthiers. to have a crossword puzzle selected

by The New York Times for publication. Using a program called CrossFire, Her work appeared in the Monday, the Fifth Former spent three weeks February 1, edition of the Times – creating her puzzle – two weeks to known to crossword aficionados as complete the grid of 74 words and the most prestigious publisher of another week editing it. Learning to the brainteasers – though it was just construct gave her an insight into the third such puzzle the New Jersey why some words appear so often in resident has created. Saint-Cyr’s crosswords. Golfer Ernie Els, Oreo accomplishment caught the eye of cookies, or words that end in “ous” national news outlets in February give constructors common letters to when she was featured on the CBS build from.

Evening News with Norah O’Donnell “That type of thing doesn’t really and NBC’s morning staple, The Today register to a normal reader or Show – on her eighteenth birthday – solver of puzzles,” Saint-Cyr says, as well as in The Philadelphia Inquirer, “but it definitely registers with a and on O, The Oprah Magazine constructor.” website’s “30 Days of Joy” list.

Once the grid is filled in, there is “It’s been surreal,” says the still tinkering to do.

Harvard-bound Saint-Cyr, a Hutchins “Even though words can fit in Scholar who is also School president. places, it doesn’t mean that that’s the best arrangement of things,” A longtime crossword fan, she explains. “I realized sometimes she found a puzzle by a veteran you actually have to play around crossword designer Ross Trudeau

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CLUE:

ANSWER: SOLEIL SAINT-CYR.

with the physical structure of the grid in order to make sure that it is accessible to people – and every time you move one thing, it can mess up another section of the puzzle. That’s frustrating.”

Saint-Cyr was impressed by the Times’ exacting standards.

“They won’t settle for some sort of mediocrity just because they have to publish a puzzle every day,” she says.

“Some people submit puzzles for years before they are accepted. I am very lucky.”

As Times’ crossword solvers know, the puzzles become harder as the week goes along. Naturally, Saint-Cyr now has her sights set on publishing a Friday puzzle.

“That would be amazing,” she says.

Nonetheless, she’s not interested in frustrating her audience. When asked by The Today Show’s Al Roker, “Do you take any delight in making us nuts?” Saint-Cyr, who was appearing on the morning news program remotely, laughed.

“No, actually I don’t!” she explained.

“I really try to make people feel smart when they do things. I don’t like to suck all of the joy out of doing a crossword puzzle because it’s so hard.”

The entire process “was a much needed exercise in perseverance,” she says. “[Because of the pandemic], there have been a lot of things that we haven’t been able to see through to the very end. It was good to flex that muscle at this moment, because things just keep changing.”

Although Saint-Cyr plans to study some combination of science and the humanities in college – “I’d like [astrophysicist] Neil deGrasse Tyson’s job,” she said on The Today Show – she won’t be leaving puzzles behind.

“I remember when The New Yorker started their crossword puzzles and now I’m thinking, ‘Imagine being the editor of the New Yorker crosswords!’

That’s kind of cool.’”

Be sure to try Soleil’s Big Red Puzzle on page 39.

INSIDE THE GATES

ONE TO WATCH Science and the Mind

5Q4 5

questions for English teacher Sujin Seo, who may be moonwalking through Memorial Hall a la Michael Jackson when we return to campus. After all, she’s been working on her dance moves during the pandemic.

What message would you give your pre-pandemic self?

Yes, teaching yourself the Thriller dance is selfcare. Just do it!

Name: Cherie Fernandes ’21  Cherie’s work, “Redefining Justice: Updating Criminal Law to Reflect a New Understanding of the Mind,” won the high school category of the 2020 Neuroethics Essay Contest.  The competition, sponsored by the International Neuroethics Society and the International Youth Neuroscience Association, seeks to promote interest in the field among students and those in early career training programs.  Cherie’s essay examines the ways human behavior is inextricably linked to neurobiology and how this should inform the judicial system to, as she writes, “maintain a fair, humane system for criminal law as neuroscience continues to unearth the mysteries of the human mind.”  Also a participant in the U.S. National Chemistry Olympiad, Cherie is a co-editor-in-chief of The First Amendment, a student magazine that provides an outlet for Lawrentians to express their diverse political perspectives.

OFTEN OVERLOOKED

If you could be part of a Harkness discussion with any three figures from history, who would you choose?

Ben Franklin, James Baldwin, and Jane Goodall.

What did you want to do with your life at age 12?

I wanted to be a zookeeper.

What book inspired you to think differently or do something out of your comfort zone?

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

What is your favorite time of day?

Anytime that I am out walking with my dog, Ruby – even if it’s too early on a Sunday morning or in the middle of a downpour. His company makes everything just right.

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With the sun shining brightly and temperatures climbing to the mid-60s on March 23, the final vestiges of winter were in full retreat. Discreetly tucked into this corner on the side of Edith Memorial Chapel, this small mound was the last visible snow remaining on campus, hiding almost entirely out of view, seemingly aware its hours were numbered.

THEY SAID IT “We cannot distill important topics and conversations, especially ones that concern our democracy, to perspectives only within our echo chambers. Seeking truth means to grapple with nuances, especially with regard to our word choice. At Lawrenceville, we often throw around words like ‘white supremacy’ and ‘conservatism,’ lumping many associated with the right into one pile without carefully parsing out the distinctions between these phrases.”

— Editorial in The Lawrence, January 29, 2021, by Eric Morais ’21, Isabelle Lee ’21, Gabriel Gaw ’21, and Jack Hallinan ’21.

3

CLUB HOPPING

Things we learned producing this issue of

The Lawrentian

1. If Science Department

chair Ilana Saxe had her way, all teachers would be required to take a class in improvisational theatre.

2. When he’s not

LKR3W

Founded: 2019 Current Membership: 10 Purpose: A place for beginners to learn hip-hop dance and for experienced performers to improve.

Hip-hop dance is a style that emerged from the Bronx in the late 1970s and exploded into mainstream culture with the mid-’80s breakdancing craze, spawning features films whose plotlines were built around the style’s crew-oriented, competitive underpinnings.

This physical interpretation of rap, freestyle, and hip-hop music is now fundamental to the conventional performing arts worlds of the stage, screen, and academics. LKR3W – pronounced “L-Crew” – is Lawrenceville’s campus hip-hop dance group, which requires no auditions or previous experience to join. Beginners learn from workshops and choreography sessions, says LKR3W captain Kajal Dongre ’22, while the group’s more experienced dancers perform, make concept videos, and work on more complex moves. “If you’ve ever been curious about learning how to dance,” Dongre says, “then this is totally the club for you!”

championing written works in Bunn Library, outreach services assistant Ian August is writing them. He earned a 2021 Playwriting Fellowship from the N.J. State Council on the Arts

3. Were it not for a

rather inappropriately clunky question posed to his wife, Mary Elizabeth McClellan, during a walkand-talk interview stroll at an unnamed rival school, longtime Head Master Bruce McClellan might never have come to Lawrenceville in 1950.

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ON THE ARTS Ian August received a New Jersey Individual Artist Fellowship.

August Earns Playwriting Fellowship

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Bunn Library’s Ian August is a recipient of a 2021 playwriting fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. The New Jersey Individual Artist Fellowships are competitive awards to artists in 12 different disciplines granted solely on independent peer panel assessment of work samples. August, a Bunn Library Outreach Services assistant and student activities assistant coordinator, received a grant of $13,000.

“I know a lot of other writers who have been awarded this Fellowship – really talented people who I’ve worked with and studied with and admired,” said August, an internationally produced playwright who is also an adjunct professor in playwriting at Stockton University in Galloway Township, New Jersey. “I’m extremely proud to be among them.”

The anonymous process is focused on artistic quality, and awards may be used to help artists produce new work and advance their careers. This program is carried out in partnership with the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation.

Eddie Newsome ’23, seen last year as King Lear, starred this year in the Jean S. Stephens Play Reading Series.

Remote for the winter term, student stages go virtual.

Theatre Zooms into the Present

Last fall, Lawrenceville’s stage performers overcame the many obstacles thrown into their path by the COVID-19 pandemic to present live, in-person productions on the stage of Kirby Arts Center. But the School’s winter term was conducted remotely, which meant that the KAC stage would go dark. The show must go on, however, and it did – virtually – streaming on the now-familiar Zoom videoconferencing platform. Productions came to audiences all over the world in January and February, through a mix of live and pre-recorded performances.

Eddie Newsome ’23, who last year played the title role in the Second Form production of King Lear, starred this winter in a live theatre reading of This is a Test by Stephen Gregg. The show was part of the Periwig Club’s Winter Term Jean S. Stephens Play Reading Series in January. Newsome, who played the lead of “Alan” in This is a Test, says the Spartan nature of the Second Form’s Black Box Theatre helped him and his cast mates adapt to this year’s Zoom production.

“We incorporated the idea of a small cast and a minimal set,” he said. “A show doesn’t necessarily need a huge set or cast to be wonderful, and I feel like that’s what Black Box Theatre is all about.”

WinterFest, Lawrenceville’s student-directed performing arts festival, was held in February, with directors presenting their shows through a mix of media – some as straight read-throughs, some with blocking elements, and some even pre-recorded.

Emily Hammond ’23, who had a previous short work produced at McCarter Theater’s young playwrights workshop in Princeton, debuted her timely original work, The Space Cough, which she described as “political satire set in space.”

“It’s about COVID, if aliens were experiencing it the way we are,” said Hammond, who hoped that audiences watching on Zoom can “see that even in dark times, things can be funny.”

Lawrenceville’s Allegro Council sponsored its Broadway Cabaret 2021, an evening of music in mid-February, showcasing a variety of singing styles rendered by a dozen talented performers.

Newsome, who is learning from his home on the West Coast, says that even with the time difference, balancing his classes with theater is manageable, but some elements simply are not the same in a virtual context.

“Some aspects of theatre are more elegantly displayed on the stage than at 5 a.m. in a dorm room littered with coffee cups,” he says, “though I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”

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GO BIG RED

DIAMOND GIRL

W

An outstanding cross-country and relay runner, Allison Haworth ’22 also shines at shortstop.

hen Big Red softball took the field this spring for the first time in two seasons, the middle of the infield was anchored by a familiar figure.

Allison Haworth ’22 returned to shortstop, where she has been a fixture since her Second Form year. It’s the position frequently held down by a team’s best athlete, but in the case of Haworth, a versatile three-sport star, it’s a reflection of her athletic range that extends well beyond the softball diamond.

Named an all-Mid-Atlantic Prep League cross-country runner following the fall 2019 season, Haworth was also part of Lawrenceville’s 4x800-meter relay team that finished 22nd in the Championship Division of the prestigious New Balance Indoor Nationals in March 2019 – the last spring season in which Big Red athletes competed due to pandemic mitigation measures.

But with the return to the outdoor playing fields this spring, Haworth is once again suiting up for interscholastic competition 18

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participate with those organizations last fall and doesn’t much care where she plays. due to the School’s COVID-19 protocols, “I am the starting shortstop for both Haworth did compete with the 18U Elite Lawrenceville and my club team, though during the remote winter term and looks I am considered a ‘utility’ player, meaning forward to their main softball tournament that I can play almost every position,” says season in June, July, and August. For now, Haworth, who began playing co-ed tee-ball though, she is glad to compete in a Big Red in her town league when she was 5 years uniform again – even if it’s not completely old and started playing fast-pitch softball at business as usual.

6. “Over the years, I have also played a lot “We are very fortunate that we normally of second base, outfield, and catcher on my get to go on a spring break training trip club teams.” as a team every year,” says Haworth, who Comfortable with the rigors of shortstop, Haworth embraces the pivotal position in her accompanied her teammates to the ESPN Wide World of Sports and Disney World team’s infield defense. in Orlando, Florida, as a Second Former in “Playing shortstop requires quick reflexes and a fast, accurate throw. You have to be fast 2019. They practiced together for a week and played against teams from all over the on your feet to make plays in your own part country. of the field while also backing up the third “It’s a great bonding experience that baseman and covering plays and steals at unifies the Big Red softball team while second base,” she says. “Finally, a shortstop providing invaluable playing experience needs to be willing to dive and get dirty if so we can hit the ground running when we necessary in order to keep the ball in the return to school after spring break,” she says, infield.”

Big Red no football games in 2020 due to the lamenting the cancelation of last spring’s Prior toplayed enrolling at Lawrenceville, pandemic, but head coach Harry Flaherty and his staff trip. “I still remember my freshmen trip, Haworth competed for a number of club still had more than two months to focus on football especially how welcoming the coaches and teams and is currently a member of the fundamentals and skills development. upperclassmen were and how quickly we Central Jersey Force 18U Elite. Though were able to bond. I know that Coach [John] members of club teams were unable to

Schiel [H’78 P’97 ’08 ’10], my teammates, and I are really looking forward to resuming this tradition again soon.”

To Haworth, that camaraderie with her teammates is the key to savoring the experience of competing together. In particular, softball offers her a welcome change of pace from the often solitary, compete-against-yourself nature of cross country.

“Softball has also taught me the importance of being a team player,” she says. “It’s easy to

make a mistake in the game now and then, though it’s important to keep fighting and remember that at the end of the day, it’s a game and it’s supposed to be fun.”

Lawrenceville softball soared to an outstanding 17-4 record in 2019, the last season in which it competed, but the evolving roster and the passage of two years makes it hard to predict what this spring holds. No matter what, though, Haworth says teamwork will go a long way.

“Winning a championship is unbelievably

thrilling, but winning isn’t everything, she says. “Team members need to have positive attitudes, be willing to play any position if necessary, and help to create a positive team atmosphere by supporting everyone – especially those who may be having a bad day. In team sports, team morale is contagious!”

— Adapted from a Big Red Sports Network Q&A by Nico Torres ’22

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TABLE TALK

YES

SAYING TO THE SCENE

One reason Ilana Saxe loves biology is that it’s always happening, even when you’re watching Netflix. The chair of Lawrenceville’s Science Department, Saxe knew she wanted to teach the subject since she was in the eighth grade, but it wasn’t until more recently that she realized how much a college class in comedic improvisation would help her lead a classroom. Saxe told The Lawrentian about power of a good analogy and what elements of remote learning she hopes to keep even after students gather around the Harkness table again for good.

What are the origins of your interest in science? What steered you toward that?

I have wanted to be a science teacher since I was in eighth grade.

OK – wow! Why? We had to do a community service project, and I had a teacher who knew I really liked science. I grew up on the ocean, so he said, “Why don’t you go and maybe teach a lesson about estuaries to your third grade teacher?

You have a relationship with her.” I did that, and I thought, “Oh my gosh, this is so fun.

Are you kidding me? I could do this every day.”

So as much as you naturally enjoyed science, you also connected with the idea of teaching it very early.

When I was in high school, I taught myself earth science, and then did an independent study where I designed labs for the school’s earth science curriculum, which I then taught to the ninth graders in the spring of

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my junior year. I was pretty lucky at a public school to be able to do that.

Science is such a broad thing. What parts did you connect with most?

Definitely biology. My mom is a nurse practitioner, so she introduced me to the human body from a pretty young age. I think that biology is just so incredible.

No one would argue, but tell us why you think so.

You’re literally living it even while you’re sitting. If you’re “Netflix and chilling,” biology is happening. I’m sure that chemists could make the same argument, but I also think there’s something that really resonates with high school students about learning what’s actually happening beneath their skin with all of these little chemicals that are moving.

What is it about teaching that moves you?

I think that there’s just something about

discovering things, and that “ah-ha” moment when students experience that. Your ability to help somebody understand something, I think, is awesome. Things didn’t come particularly easily to me as a student. I worked really hard, but I certainly was not someone who just understood things right away.

It’s true that subject mastery is one thing; having the ability to make others understand it is quite another. Did you think you’d be good at that?

When I was at Colby, I had to take a senior art class, so I took improv. I think that all teachers should be required to take improvisation – it’s the class that has helped me the most with my teaching. In improv, you just have to say “yes” to everything.

It’s amazing to see how quickly some people can think on their feet. You can develop that skill?

Someone says something outrageous, and there you are with a straight face, like, OK,

let’s figure that out: Of course I would love to be an octopus giving birth in a taxi in the middle of a snowstorm. Naturally! You just go with it. It’s being able to roll with whatever somebody says and think, OK, this is where you are. How can I meet you where you are?

It makes sense that such adaptability would help in a classroom.

I also did a lot of writing in college. I actually had more English classes in my degree than biology classes, and the ability to come up with analogies has been useful – my students say they’re helpful.

specific functions.

What classes do you teach, and has it changed because of remote learning?

I’m still teaching the same things that I would be if we were in person. Right now in the winter term, I had two sections of honors biology, and one section of IBES – the Inquiries in Biological and Environmental Studies. When we’re back in class for the spring term, I’ll have anatomy and physiology, which I started teaching last year, and then two sections of IBES.

How so?

A perfect example is when you describe the structure of amino acids. You might say, “When you look at everybody lined up at the start of a hockey game, they all have the same jersey and the same helmet, so how do you figure out who the goalie is?”

How have you adapted to teaching biology remotely?

It’s all about finding ways to have students engage with the material. Last spring [conducted remotely] for anatomy, I actually sent students modeling clay and some tools so they could basically do reverse dissections. They could build these systems and still use their hands.

The one with the biggest pads.

Right, and so that structure function – you see something there that enables them to do their job. It’s similar to this component of an amino acid, that enables it to have

Are there any advantages to having class over Zoom that wouldn’t be possible in person?

Actually, yes. You can have all these wonderful guest speakers come, people

who may not have been able to come to campus otherwise. I have a friend who is a plastic surgeon come to my anatomy class and give a talk; he wouldn’t be able to come otherwise.

How much did you learn about remote learning last spring that you were able to apply this winter?

A lot more about how to use breakout rooms effectively, making sure that students are working on a specific task, where I can also see what they’re doing and respond to their comments.

So it’s more like being in a lab, in person.

Especially the importance of having lots of activities in that time period, so that they’re not just sitting there listening to somebody talk for however long. I wouldn’t talk like that in person, anyway. I’m also able to put everyone in little breakout rooms with just one partner and then each person has to present their entire presentation, rather than students standing in front of the class and only talking about one slide. They can’t divide and conquer or say, “I only know my one section.” They have to do all of it.

So it might actually be more rigorous.

Are there any ways the technology also advances Harkness?

In science, we see Harkness as “How can students learn from one another?” You can record on Zoom, so [as a teacher] you can really review small peer-to-peer explanations: “Did they really understand what they were talking about?” And the students really get to see every student do a full explanation, rather than just a couple of words.

It’s almost like bringing instant replay to the classroom.

It totally is – that’s a fantastic analogy. Yes, right, let’s rewind the tape, and then you can annotate in Zoom. You can go full “John Madden!”

Prior to the pandemic, Science chair Ilana Saxe used a hands-on approach to fashion DNA structures for students.

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ASK THE ARCHIVIST

The

Pioneer Woman

By JACQUELINE HAUN

T

he death of Mary Elizabeth McClellan H’50 ’52 ’57 ’58 ’59 ’65 ’79 GP’10 on February 2, 2021, marks the passing of one of the great women of Lawrenceville from the time before coeducation, when women were a much smaller segment of Lawrenceville society. As the wife of the late Head Master Bruce McClellan H’57 ’58 ’60 GP’10, Mary Elizabeth experienced incredible cultural transitions during her thirty-six years on campus and yet succeeded in making her own lasting marks on the School community, including contributing to a redefinition of what roles women could be expected to play on campus.

Born Mary Elizabeth Wisotzkey in 1923, in York, Pennsylvania, Mary Elizabeth met Bruce while both were seventh grade students at the York Collegiate Institute, a small, private day school. Bruce transferred to Deerfield Academy in tenth grade before attending Williams College, but Mary Elizabeth finished her high school education at York in 1941 and went on to Middlebury College, graduating in 1945. The couple reconnected after Bruce

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THOUGH TRADITIONAL IN MANY WAYS, THE LATE

MARY ELIZABETH McCLELLAN ALSO BROKE SIGNIFICANT GROUND FOR WOMEN AT LAWRENCEVILLE.

returned from his military service as a fighter pilot in World War II and married in 1946 before departing for Deerfield, where Bruce had accepted an appointment as an English teacher.

In a time when women were expected to put their husbands’ careers first, Mary Elizabeth turned her own considerable talents to that end. At Deerfield, she encouraged Bruce to apply for a Rhodes Scholarship, and the two spent 1947-49 in Oxford while Bruce studied at New College. The young couple traveled throughout the United Kingdom and Europe, and following their return to the United States, a publishing house founded

by Mary Elizabeth’s grandfather published a keepsake book of Bruce’s essays and photographs documenting their travels as Artifacts ’48.

It would be a serendipitous project: Although Bruce had returned to Williams as an associate dean in fall 1949, a copy of Artifacts ’48 caught the eye of Fred Eichelberger H’24 ’71, Lawrenceville’s dean of admissions, and English Chair Thomas H. Johnson P’61. While visiting Lawrenceville’s campus in early 1950 to

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

interview applicants to Williams, Bruce McClellan was invited on the strength of the book to interview for a position in the English Department. He accepted the position, and the McClellans arrived at Lawrenceville for the fall of 1950 – a fortuitous fate enabled by a comment from the chair of a peer school’s English department during a similar interview.

Mary Elizabeth famously liked to share the story of how she had accompanied Bruce to the rival school, and as the couple crossed the campus with the interviewer, the latter turned to Mary Elizabeth to ask bluntly, “What did you come for?” Both McClellans agreed they wanted a place more welcoming to both of them, and Lawrenceville would be that place.

The School of the 1950s was a very masculine place, with all male students and faculty, and a culture Mary Elizabeth later described as “grey flannel.” Boys wore suits and ties to class, chapel was a daily obligation, and daily tea hour was still a social expectation. The only women on campus were the faculty wives and female staff who were employed in housekeeping, dining services, laundry, nursing, and administrative support. The faculty wives generally were relied upon to provide unpaid support to the School community even while caring for their own children.

The McClellans moved into Brook House Annex, located on the golf course, and only a few weeks into the school year, Mary Elizabeth delivered their first child, Ann H’65. Mary Elizabeth soon volunteered at a nursery school, joined the Lawrenceville Presbyterian Church, and pursued her passions of knitting and gardening.

This relative leisure time ended in 1953, when Bruce was named head of Hamill House. As a housemaster’s wife, Mary Elizabeth had a new set of expectations that included organizing all the meals for Hamill boys – there was no central dining center at the time and meals were eaten in the Houses – and hiring and managing house staff. Viewed as a “civilizing influence” in their interactions with the boys, housemasters’ wives also hosted

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Mary Elizabeth and Head Master Bruce McClellan had all three of their children Bill, Ann, and Rob - while at Lawrenceville.

four House coffee hours with students each week and entertained off-campus guests.

This was all done while raising their own families, and while living in Hamill, the McClellans would have two sons, Bill H’65 P’10 and Rob H’65 ’78 P’10.

Bruce McClellan was named the School’s eighth head master in July 1959 following the death of Allan V. Heely H’27, and the family moved into Foundation House. Once again, Mary Elizabeth found herself with expanded obligations, primary among them entertaining the Board of Trustees six times a year, presenting the senior boys for tea four times a week, and hosting visiting ministers overnight every week. The head’s wife was also responsible for managing the Ladies Auxiliary, which coordinated

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parent volunteers for the infirmary, and for representing the School at alumni events.

She even did office work for her husband but was dismayed to find that although the position had previously been a paid job, Mary Elizabeth would not draw a salary, as unpaid work by the wife of the head master was simply expected!

That may have been one of Mary Elizabeth’s first awakenings to the growing movements in the 1960s to question the status quo, with civil rights, anti-Vietnam war sentiment, and women’s liberation beginning to shift cultural expectations. Lawrenceville was not unaffected, and by the end of the decade, Lawrenceville students began to push back on daily chapel requirements, traditional curricula, dress codes, and even the single-

sex educational model.

As the old traditions and their obligations fell away, and with her children growing, Mary Elizabeth was able to make use of her increased free time to begin taking graduate classes at nearby Rider University. She was particularly interested in thinking deeply about how the role of women on a campus like Lawrenceville’s might change as society did.

In a lengthy paper written for Rider called “The Role of the Headmaster’s Wife,” Mary Elizabeth discussed the questions arising about her role, including what duties should be prescribed, whether the role should be compensated financially, and how much freedom one had to volunteer or work inside or outside the School. Mary Elizabeth even expanded the discussion to the roles of other women on campus, resulting in a report to the Lawrenceville Board of Trustees in 1979 observing that by then, the majority of Lawrenceville faculty wives were employed outside the home and pursuing their own careers. The traditional role of women on campus would need to change.

Mary Elizabeth also took action to merge the existing Fathers Association and the Ladies’ Auxiliary – both organizations dating back to the early twentieth century – into a single Parents at Lawrenceville in 1975.

Off campus, she became an elder of the Lawrenceville Presbyterian Church, founded the Artisans Guild at the Princeton YMCA, and wrote a book on handmade historical hats for the Bucks County Historical Society of Doylestown, Pennsylvania, among her other volunteer activities.

Following their departure from Lawrenceville in 1986 and retirement to New Hampshire, the McClellans both remained extremely active. Mary Elizabeth became involved in local organizations, including the Monadnock Community Learning Center and the Garden Club of Dublin, and even became a Reiki practitioner. Following Bruce’s death in 2008, Mary Elizabeth moved into RiverMead, a retirement community, but would remain a prodigious correspondent, most notably distributing a regular email newsletter to friends and acquaintances right up until her final weeks.

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

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.

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RUNNING TOWARD doctors Shahid Aziz ’88 and Edward Lee ’92 explain how the COVID-19 pandemic changed life in their Newark, New Jersey, public hospital.

BY JEN A. MILLER PHOTOGR APY BY DONNELLY MARKS

W

FEAR

hen the COVID-19 crisis started to mount in New Jersey in March 2020, University Hospital was on the front line. The Level I trauma center, based in Newark, is the only public hospital in New Jersey and it became a hub of COVID treatment and response for the region.

That response included Shahid Aziz ’88, D.M.D., M.D., professor and assistant dean of oral/max-

illofacial surgery and Edward S. Lee ’92, M.D., M.S., chief of plastic surgery at University Hospital, the principal teaching hospital for Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences. While it might seem that they would be sidelined during the crisis, especially when elective surgeries were halted, both used their skills to make sure patients continued to be treated, whether their medical needs were COVID-related or not.

“When you’re faced with fear, you run toward that fear and try to help,” Lee says.

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Catch The Summer Scholars is a fun way for children to immerse themselves in an ocean of learning that looks a lot like Lawrenceville.

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Wave!

By SEAN RAMSDEN • Photography by MICHAEL BRANSCOM

Any Lawrenceville alum knows that “House” and “Harkness” are the two cornerstones of the Lawrenceville experience. They are two of the first four words in the School’s mission statement, after all.

But House and Harkness don’t get packed away after Commencement, mothballed until students return in the fall. This potent pair comes to life for three weeks in July when hundreds of eager young learners animate the campus as part of the Lawrenceville Summer Scholars program, which shares a surprising number of similarities to the School you already know.

“I think the neat thing about Lawrenceville Summer Scholars is that we are not your average summer program,” says Ryan Ball Williams ’07, director of auxiliary programs and executive director of Lawrenceville Summer Scholars. “Our mission and our vision are tied closely to that of The Lawrenceville School, and that’s why it really can serve as kind of a microcosm for the academic year at the School.”

The comparison exists down to the

inclusion of performing arts and sports in the afternoons. There is a Lower School composed of rising fifth-, sixth-, and seventh-graders, while eighth- and ninthgrade students comprise the Upper School.

Students can expect thirty minutes of homework per night, and there is an allschool read – a practice that mimics the regular Lawrenceville experience.

“Students are learning with peers who are of a similar age,” Williams says. “It’s great to have a curriculum specifically tailored to

those unique age groups, as opposed to just taking a one-size-fits-all approach.”

Summertime academic programs and camps are nothing new, but Lawrenceville Summer Scholars offers a comprehensive curriculum with core classes and electives and is designed to acquaint students with the boarding-school experience. Living in Lawrenceville’s House system and learning through Harkness pedagogy, students engage in creative classes and enriching activities. They also think critically in and out of the classroom, work and play collaboratively, and discover what it means to live and learn at Lawrenceville.

With the premium it places on the relationship students have with their teachers and prefects, Summer Scholars is also a way for the School to learn more about them.

“In the past our motto it has been, ‘Be here and be known,’ and one thing we want students to understand is that we’re inviting them to come be on our campus so that we can get to know each other,” says Scott Barnard, director of faculty and academics for Lawrenceville Summer Scholars, who is also a Latin teacher during the academic year. “We can get to know what they’re about and they can get to know what we’re about.”

Both Barnard and Williams are clear that completing the three-week program is not a gateway to admission into The Lawrenceville School, though there are students at the School who are also Summer Scholars alumni.

“There’s not any direct connection between their work in Summer Scholars and their application,” Barnard says, “but it gave them a good enough sense of life here

that it made them want to become full-time students.”

The draw is understandable.

“Just as we would take the time to get to know our Lawrenceville School students in a variety of ways through advisory, through extracurriculars, through the electives they choose, through House activities or community involvement, we do the same with our Lawrenceville Summer Scholar students,” Williams says, noting that day students can now choose three of their four class periods in house. “We adjusted the schedule to mirror Lawrenceville academics more closely.”

Williams touts the fact that more than a dozen Lawrenceville faculty members also lead classes for Summer Scholars, bringing the same level of pedagogical excellence and Harkness training they would from fall through spring. The result is a full breadth of subjects from which to choose.

“We get to bring in some history electives, some English electives, some art electives, some STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] electives. It also really lets the student take control of his

or her learning experience,” she says. “We really want to give the kids a chance to know themselves, but also to let us know them.”

Critical thinking is at the heart of the Harkness method, and the Summer Scholars curriculum brings those skills into play across the disciplines.

“We’re not just another STEM camp,” Williams says. “Right away, we are bringing humanities and English and writing, critical thinking, to the forefront of what we’re doing.”

That isn’t to say that there isn’t any STEMrelated fun to be had for students looking to create.

“Any courses that are very hands-on like the robotics courses, like some of our art and design courses, tend to be very popular,” Barnard says, “as do things where students get to tangentially apply things that they already know.”

Even though parents savor academic enrichment opportunities for their children, Barnard knows that summers are sacred to children, which is why he says Lawrenceville Summer Scholars offers something for everyone.

“We imagine that there’s usually a

It’s a Lawrenceville Summer Cool, Scholars by Cool the numbers Summer

3,850 Cost in dollars for day scholars’ course and activity materials, T-shirt, lunch, and snacks

12

3

32

30

Weeks, from July 12-30

Minutes of homework per night

11

2,700

Minimum age, as of July 1, 2021, to enroll

Cost in dollars for virtual scholars’ course and activity materials

negotiation that happens there, where parents say, ‘Well, you really need to work on your math this summer,’ and the student says, ‘OK, but I also want to take this graphic novels course,’” he explains. “So maybe if we give them the opportunity to do both, then they don’t have to choose.”

The School hosted a version of the program for years before acquiring and

branding it Lawrenceville Summer Scholars in December 2016, making the transition from a day program to one that is primarily boarding-based. The COVID-19 pandemic interrupted the routine in 2020, when

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

Summer Scholars pivoted to an exclusively distance-learning model.

For 2021, with pandemic restrictions having evolved, Lawrenceville Summer Scholars is welcoming both day and virtual students, and the House system will play a vital role, even if the program will not likely be residential again until next year.

“All of our students in the day program, as well as the virtual program, will be assigned to a House,” Williams says. “We’ll still have a head of House, we’ll still have prefects, and we’ll still engage in a variety of House activities, whether it’s in-person or virtual.”

To Williams’ delight, one of her favorite spirit-building events will return this summer.

“For our in-person friends, we absolutely will have the return of House Olympics, so everybody should get ready for that!” she says, adding that the program is still looking to create a virtual-only version of House Olympics, “so that they don’t feel like they’re missing out on what’s on campus.”

Williams says being a Lawrenceville alumna sharpens her focus on simulating the School for Summer Scholars.

“I have to temper my excitement a little bit because when I think about my Lawrenceville experience. I want everybody to have the same experience that I did,” she says. “We want to make sure that we don’t skimp on anything. So for me, it’s just spreading my love of Lawrenceville with as many folks in an educational setting as I can.”

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT LAWRENCEVILLE SUMMER SCHOLARS, SEE SUMMERSCHOLARS.LAWRENCEVILLE.ORG

Lawrenceville SUMMER Scholars

Discover! Grow! Achieve!

DAY PROGRAM

July 12-July 30, 2021 Monday through Friday 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.

Middle School (rising 6-8 grades) High School (rising 9-10 grades)

VIRTUAL PROGRAM

July 12-July 30, 2021 SUN: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 9 a.m.-noon EDT MOON: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday 7-10 p.m. EDT

TO LEARN MORE, VISIT SUMMERSCHOLARS.LAWRENCEVILLE.ORG

Lawrenceville Summer scholars

HOW WE EMERGED TRANSFORMED

‘THE SKY WAS THE LIMIT’ JANE FERGUSON’04

EDITED BY SEAN RAMSDEN

In stories compiled over the past six years, seven Lawrenceville alumni shared catalytic experiences at a School that changed the arc of their lives.

During my time as editor of The Lawrentian, so many alumni have told me their lives were transformed by some experience within the gates of our campus. When I learned that Lawrenceville would unveil its Emerge Transformed campaign this spring, I began to recall all that I’ve heard about the role the School played in helping these folks realize an awakening or some essential passion.

These are excerpts from stories that have appeared in the pages of this magazine over the last six years, as well as several items pulled from interview notes that never fit neatly into their subsequent stories, depicting the transformative experiences Lawrenceville yielded to them as young learners.

Jane spoke to us from South Sudan where she was on assignment for PBS NewsHour, covering that nation’s civil war. The award-winning correspondent came to Lawrenceville through the Northern Ireland Scholarship Program in 2003.

 “I was coming from a small farm in Ireland, so pretty much everything, every moment of every day, was pretty eye-opening for me,” she says, noting that she also found a level of intensity to which she was unaccustomed, but wholeheartedly embraced.

“I felt like everything we did in Lawrenceville was more challenging, but in a way where I always felt supported,” Ferguson recalls. “I think the biggest takeaway from it was the way it broadened my view of life, the parameters.”

This expanded perspective was not inconsequential for Ferguson, who already harbored dreams of reporting from the far reaches of the globe. The problem was, it seemed so … far away.

“It’s a job I very much romanticized when I was younger, reading all of the autobiographies and the biographies of journalists,

foreign journalists,” she recalls. In fact, it was Ferguson’s experience at Lawrenceville that helped her feel as if it were very much in reach.

“The parameters in your life are very often set by yourself, and so there I was in these classrooms with young people with ambitions that were so wild to me that it couldn’t help but seep into my mindset that I could really do anything that I wanted,” she says.

“If I wanted to be a journalist … the sky was the limit.”

— From “A Reliable Source” in the summer 2017 issue. Since then, Jane has won a 2019 Emmy Award for Outstanding Hard News Feature in a Newscast, the 2019 George Polk Award for Foreign Television Reporting, and the 2020 Alfred I. duPont Columbia Award for “Inside Yemen.”

‘THIS PLACE IS GOING TO SET ME FREE’ GARRY D. HOWARD ’77 Garry came to Lawrenceville from the Bronx in 1973 through A Better Chance, a program devoted to identifying and developing students of color to become leaders. The valedictorian of his elementary school who bypassed eighth grade, he reluctantly enrolled in a school with few other Black students, but threw himself into the experience.

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

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

Howard resisted, but his friend insisted.

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

The next day, Ann [Boone Howard P’77, Garry’s mother] arrived at Loucks Ice Arena to see her son make his on-ice debut. She was carrying a pair of CCM Tacks skates – the gold standard.

“Tacks were the best skates you could buy,” he explains, contrasting them to the bargain pair he had purchased earlier. “I said, ‘How did you even know about Tacks?’”

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

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

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

— From “They Can’t Guard You, Garry!” in the fall 2019 issue. In 1994, Garry became the only Black sports editor of a major daily newspaper in the United States.

He was honored with the eponymous Garry D. Howard Scholarship by the Associated Press Sports Editors in March.

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FINDING A CALLING RABBI ADENA KEMPER BLUM ’02 When Adena entered Lawrenceville, she was more interested in a career in medicine. But after becoming close to the School’s rabbi, Adena began tutoring other students and eventually teaching in her home synagogue before realizing her true vocation.

 “A lot of my friends had a parent or a close relative who was a rabbi and who inspired them to be a rabbi. That is not the case for me. My father is not even Jewish,” Blum says. “It all started at Lawrenceville, actually.”

Blum forged a close relationship with Rabbi Lauren Levy H’97 ’01 P’01 ’02 ’09, a religion master who serves as the School’s rabbi and sits on the Joseph S. Gruss Chair in Rabbinical Studies. “I forget how that started; I probably took a class of hers,” she says. “And it was only after that that I got involved in the Jewish Student Organization on campus.”

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

“I was using what I learned as a bat mitzvah to tutor them, and then she and I together would have a service for these families. And I was falling in love with it,” Blum recalls […]. Soon, Blum was student-teaching in the religious school at her home congregation, Har Sinai Temple, then located in Trenton, as well as bar and bat mitzvah tutoring outside of the synagogue.

“One day, Rabbi Levy joked that I should take her job when she retires … and then she stopped joking about it,” Blum says, recalling her Fifth Form year, which she had begun by investigating pre-med programs. “Before I knew it, I was actually starting to think about it. […]

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

— From “A Sacred Calling” in the spring 2016 issue.

Adena became the senior rabbi at Congregation Beth Chaim in West Windsor, New Jersey, in July 2020.

MAKING A SPLASH PHILIP RIKER III ’64 P’90 A decorated high school swimmer, Phil graduated from Lawrenceville unsure whether he would be part of the Olympic squad that competed in the 1964 Summer Games in Tokyo. A notable sports-savvy friend from School made him believe it was possible.

 After setting high-school records as a student in Paterson, New Jersey, Riker arrived at Lawrenceville in 1962 and immediately began rewriting the record books. In 1963, he broke the national prep-school record in the 100-yard butterfly […].

The 1964 Summer Games were not held until October of that year, so Riker left Lawrenceville without any assurance that he would be among the athletes traveling to Tokyo. Still, he had hope.

“The trials were later that summer, so I still had to compete and qualify,” Riker

36

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recalls. “And right out of Lawrenceville, I was still very young to be competing against a lot of older guys who were graduating from college. That’s a big step. But that’s always every kid’s dream, right? You want to go to the Games.”

It was a sports-oriented friend from Lawrenceville who played a hand in encouraging Riker to realize he had the talent for the big stage.

“Bob Ryan [’64], who we called ‘Scribe’ – he was the sports editor for The Lawrence – came up to me and said, ‘Phil, you’re going to try for the Olympics, right?’ I said, ‘yeah, sure, I’ll try,’” Riker recalls of his classmate, now the heralded sports reporter for The Boston Globe and ESPN. “But he followed sports very closely and it was him who gave me that first inkling that I could actually do it. From then on, I stayed positive about it.”

— From “A Tradition that Rings True” in the summer 2016 issue. Phil narrowly missed medaling in the 200-meter butterfly, finishing behind two older teammates and a world-record holder, but later earned firstteam All-America honors six times at the University of North Carolina.

POWERING THE FUTURE BOBBY NG ’03 When we spoke with Bobby, he was in California designing a high-voltage (HV) battery to power fully autonomous vehicles for Zoox. This is an unpublished excerpt from our interview in which Bobby recalls his early love of making things work mechanically.

 “When I was at Lawrenceville, one of the things that I really had a strong desire to do … I guess I pursued it in an interesting way:

I’m definitely a builder. I love building things – building mechanical things – making them work, understanding how things work. And at Lawrenceville, I think there might have been a robotics club at the time, but I really wanted to pave my own way. Paving my own way is definitely something that drives me personally.

“It’s a bit of a strange story, but I pursued an independent study with one of my classmates. He and I made a couple films together, student films. But it wasn’t the film that really drew me in; it was actually the challenge of building this thing called a Steadicam [note: this refers to a generic camera stabilizer, not the name-brand]. A Steadicam is basically like a suspended Gimbal device

that lets you make really smooth cinematic shots with a camera. […] So my connector received this independent study, and my job was to build the Steadicam. And that was my chance to actually build something mechanical, to actually get it to work. That’s how I dabbled in being a builder, I guess you could say.”

— Transcript excerpt for “A Drive to Innovate,” published in the fall 2019 issue. Bobby is now designing an HV battery for Archer, an aerospace company building an all-electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. Zoox, which was acquired by Amazon in June 2020, unveiled its autonomous “robotaxi” in December.

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‘YOU HAVE TO GO FOR IT’ CASEY QUACKENBUSH ’13 Casey never considered journalism until her Haskell House mentor pointed her in that direction. In February 2019, Casey wrote a TIME magazine cover story about Australia’s unprecedented drought. 

ized almost right away that what Hedberg said made a lot of sense. “I always loved writing, and English was my favorite subject in school, especially at Lawrenceville.

I was an editor and writer for Prize Papers.

But it was never something I considered more than just a hobby.”

No one before Hedberg had urged Quackenbush to study writing. “Everyone talks about being bankers or lawyers,” she says, “so it never really occurred to me that journalism was a viable option for myself.”

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

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

— From “One Key Moment” by Brittany Sun ’19 in the fall 2019 issue. Casey is the founder of Contra Post, documenting her journey through an America in crisis. She has published numerous stories in TIME, as well as in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Neiman Reports, and for Al-Jazeera.

FIELD OF DREAMS RON KANE ’83 P’20 A resident of Haskell House, Quackenbush struck up a conversation with her then-housemaster, Gus Hedberg H’03 P’96 ’00. Hedberg questioned Quackenbush about her college application and major. When she mentioned her interest in studying art history, Hedberg surprised her by responding that she’s “got it all wrong.”

“He told me that I should write – be a journalist,” recalls Quackenbush, who real38

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

Ron and his father were traveling home to Long Island from a Florida vacation in 1978 when, finding themselves hungry, they made a detour to Princeton to eat.  As they walked along Nassau Street, Kane’s father, Ron Sr., sized up a teenage boy not much older than his own son, standing outside Princeton University’s Harvey S. Firestone Memorial Library. He wanted to know: “Where do young men like you go to school?”

“And the young man, in so many words, said, ‘I go to Lawrenceville, sir. It’s three miles down the road, sir. It’s a great school, sir,’” recalls Kane of his father’s inquiry.

“There were no websites at the time, but my father looked into it, and we came back to visit.”

During his trip to campus, Kane glimpsed the football team coming out for their game that crisp October afternoon, and he was hooked.

“I’ll never forget, I saw the red shirts with the traditional stripes on their sleeves – the Princeton stripes – come out of the locker room, and it was over for me,” he says. “It was over. I had to do that.”

Kane enrolled, eager to make his mark as a competitor, and he did exactly that, becoming the first student-athlete in School history to earn twelve varsity letters while netting all-state honors in football, basketball, and baseball.

— From “A Man for All Seasons” in the spring 2017 issue. After college, Ron returned to Lawrenceville, where he served as head boys’ basketball coach for twenty-five seasons, and has also led the baseball and girls’ golf varsity teams.

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I

ALUMNI NEWS

THE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 2020/2021 PRESIDENT Charlie C. Keller ’95 FIRST VICE PRESIDENT Heather Elliott Hoover ’91 P’20 ’23 ’24 SECOND VICE PRESIDENT Gregory G. Melconian ’87 EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Charles Hughes ’68 Ralph Spooner ’75 Tres Arnett ’79 P’16 Matt Dominy ’65 Elizabeth Greenberg Wilkinson ’02 Emily Wilson ’05 Morgan Dever Morris ’06 Porter Braswell ’07 ALUMNI TRUSTEES Heather Woods Rodbell ’91 Mark M. Larsen ’72 P’01 ’04 ’06 Jennifer Ridley Staikos ’91 Vincent J. “Biff” Cahill ’68 P’09 SELECTORS James A. Rowan Jr. ’66 Emily Wilson ’05 Rocky Barber ’69 P’08 Nina Mackenzie Kumar ’02 Maine Huang Park ’88 P’22 ’23 Emily Starkey ’03 FACULTY LIAISON Emilie Kosoff H’88 ’96 ’00 ’18 P’19 EX OFFICIO Cat Bramhall ’88 (Lawrenciana)

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FROM THE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION PRESIDENT

n March, we passed a full year since the coronavirus shut down our normal everyday routines, affecting Lawrenceville alumni across the world. Taking over as your Alumni Association Executive Committee president last summer was a humbling experience and a great way for me to give back to the School that gave so much to me, but also exposed the many challenges of living in a remote world for so long.

Current students have been back on campus, dealing with COVID-19, while advancing their academic studies, their athletics, and their artistic and extracurricular pursuits. As you will read about in this issue, the spirit of Lawrentians today is strong and shines through this challenging time.

With vaccines well on their way, there is hope that, soon, students and alumni can return our lives back to normal.

Unfortunately, the requisite volume of vaccines didn’t arrive quickly enough for us to return to an in-person Alumni Weekend on campus. While we couldn’t gather in person this year, our Alumni Office planned a fantastic agenda – one that gave Lawrentians a firsthand view into the life of students today and allowed us all to see the progress of construction on our new Tsai Field House.

Alumni also had the chance to check out the new Gruss Center for Art and Design, upgrades to the Bowl, and the renovated Abbott Dining Hall, all recently completed. I hope everyone found a way to participate virtually this year and connected with your classmates and School once again!

The last year has also brought some changes to your Alumni Association Executive Committee. Like other organizations in the United States, our committee has been engaged in discussions about race relations and ways to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion throughout our alumni association. As a 210-year-old institution, Lawrenceville has seen generations of change over time, and today is no different.

What is different is our approach to issues of race and diversity. Lawrenceville helps mold young people into the next generation of leaders in so many different walks of life, and we wanted to tap into those experiences to further the discussions about how best to implement a culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion at Lawrenceville and beyond.

I am proud to share that Lawrenceville is leading the nationwide conversation among boarding schools, creating a first-of-its-kind Alumni Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council. This Council is made up of graduates stretching from the great Class of 1969 all the way up to the Class of 2020 and is charged with providing advice and counsel to the AAEC about their experiences as students and alumni, as well as being a resource for the administration on diversity, equity, and inclusion matters that affect students and alumni. While each member of the Council has different lived experiences, they all share a love and commitment to Lawrenceville and want to see the School succeed for the next 200 years.

As the Lawrenceville Class of 2021 finishes its academic year and joins the ranks of our alumni network, I would encourage all alumni to welcome them and help them navigate this next chapter of their lives. I hope to see many of you virtually during Alumni Weekend, and hope you stay safe and healthy in the meantime.

Kind regards, Charlie C. Keller ’95 President, Alumni Association charliekeller2001@yahoo.com

WHO WAS YOUR FAVORITE TEACHER? It seems that for every Lawrenceville alum, there is a Lawrenceville story. So many tales of transformation began on our campus, whether around the Harkness table, on the playing field, in the lab, or maybe with an inspiring chat in your House.

The teachers, coaches, and heads of house play such vital roles in the development of our students at Lawrenceville, and it’s been that way for longer than any of us remember. It’s simple enough for this magazine to report what’s happening at Lawrenceville today, but there is a world of Lawrentians among you who were transformed in some way by those who taught you, coached you, and looked after you during your days on the Bowl, the Circle, or the Crescent. And very often, those experiences have affected so many other lives in wonderful ways. Maybe you’ve witnessed this. Maybe it’s been you.

Maybe you should tell that story.

Reach out to us at The Lawrentian by emailing editor Sean Ramsden at sramsden@lawrenceville.org.

Don’t be shy!

Big Red Puzzle answer key

How did you do?

Check your answers to the Big Red Puzzle by Soleil Saint-Cyr ’21 that appears on page 39.

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OLD SCHOOL

65 years ago in

The Lawrentian SPRING 1956

ON THE AIR The School again (following the winter visit of Wide Wide World’s telecast from the Lavino Field House) was given nationwide television notice on the air on Tuesday evening, March 27. A rather superior NBC radio program entitled Biographies in Sound on that evening featured the life of Thornton Wilder, one time a Lawrenceville master.

Within the period of his teaching here, he wrote The Bridge of San Luis Rey, which brought him the Pulitzer Prize in 1928. During the fifty-five-minute broadcast, Theodore H. Keller [H’41 ’64 GP’69 ’74], chairman of music and Dickinson House master, was presented three times to relate incidents of his association “when they were fellow housemasters at Lawrenceville.”

Playwright and novelist Thornton Wilder is shown here in 1920, a year before his arrival at Lawrenceville, where he taught French and was head of Davis House.

— From the “Echoes of the Campus” news roundup.

Wilder taught at the School from 1921-28.

30 years ago in

The Lawrentian SPRING/SUMMER 1991

AN UNPRECEDENTED GIFT Head Master Josiah S. Bunting III [H’37 ’59 ’88 ’91 ’95 P’88 ’97] made a surprise announcement on Commencement day. He informed the crowd of students, parents, and friends that Artemis A. W. Joukowsky ’50 [P’80] and his wife, Martha [P’80], had made […] the largest single gift ever given to Lawrenceville and one of the largest ever received by any American secondary school.

Trustee Emeritus Artemis A. W. Joukowsky ’50 P’80 (at podium) told the Class of 1991 what Lawrenceville meant to him after making what was then the largest-ever gift the School had received. An ardent and longtime Lawrenceville supporter, Joukowsky passed away on December 10, 2020.

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Lawrentian Cover-spring-21.indd LAWR SPRING 2021 .indd 100 2

Right on ‘TIMES’

Pop o’ the Morning

Days before her 18th birthday, Soleil Saint-Cyr ’21 became the youngest woman ever to have a crossword puzzle selected by The New York Times for publication – the start of a February media whirlwind for the School president.

Although it was conducted virtually, the winter term began with a magnificent sunrise captured by science teacher and head of Upper House Johnny Clore H’02 for the @LvilleUpperHouse Instagram account on January 12.

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THE LAWRENTIAN • SPRING 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 THE

SPRING 2021

Lawrentian THE

COVID-19: It’s Complicated

Inside their New Jersey hospital, the pandemic changed so much for surgeons Shahid Aziz ’88 and Edward Lee ’92.

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12 PUZZLE MUSCLE

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