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9 L'ville Letters
Typhoon Leads to (Penny) War
Lawrentian THE
WIN TER
2012
Flynn reflections Sean Flynn (“Finding Flynn,” fall 2013) was a year ahead of me, but we played soccer and were on the swim team. Since I was a day student living in West Trenton with an empty garage bay, Sean figured it would be a perfect spot for his 1957 Chevrolet Bel-Air Convertible with Florida license plates. Sean spent many weekends at our home during the spring semester of 1960. He was a great, down to earth guy who would get up Sunday morning and spend time talking to my father while my dad worked in the yard. Barry Rank ’61
By the time Sean Flynn arrived on campus, I had graduated, but I saw him from time to time in 1966, when I was the officer in charge of a MACV (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam) translation division. Besides myself, the unit had 10 enlisted American servicemen and 35 Vietnamese civilians capable of converting into English the several hundred documents we received weekly in up to nine different languages. Flynn befriended our Spanish linguist, who was also a Navy photojournalist with ready access to 35 mm film. It was a good deal for both men: Sean got a reliable supply of cheap film, and Jose got to hang out with Errol Flynn’s son. George Reiger ’56
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News in Brief
t h e l aw r e n t i a n
W
hen Typhoon Haiyan hammered the Philippines this past November, carving a path of destruction and killing more than 6,000, Lawrenceville students searched for ways to help. For Luki Elizalde ’15 and Cristian Saguil ’15, that was especially true, for both boys are from the Philippines. Teaming with a third student, Shubhankar Chhokra ’14, they organized an interHouse competition to quickly raise money for disaster relief: A Penny War. To the uninitiated, a penny war rewards both generosity and sneakiness. Each House was issued a jar and encouraged to donate to the cause. The House that raised the most money would earn bragging rights. And this is where the sneakiness comes in; other Houses could drop pennies into any of their competitors’ jars – with each penny erasing 10 cents off of a House’s official total. For six days, Houses stuffed money into their own jars and poured pennies into the jars of others, in a valiant attempt to strategize a win. In the end, Carter House employed the best game plan; feigning apathy, Carter kept its jar almost empty until the final minutes of the game when they giddily stuffed it before any of
the other Houses could counterattack. As a result, Carter walloped the competition with an official total of $742 – more than twice that of any other House. After all the cash (pennies included) were tallied, students had raised $2,453 for the cause. “I was amazed,” notes Elizalde with a wide grin, “I was expecting we’d raise maybe $300.” The money was given to the Aboitiz Foundation, an organization run by members of Elizalde’s family. Founded in 1989, the Aboitiz Foundation, was created to address social and economic development needs of less privileged communities and members of society. Half of the money Lawrenceville raised went toward general disaster relief; the other half was used to purchase materials to rebuild and repair the boats of Filipino fisherman.