Teaching the Art - The Taft School

Transcription

B
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Teaching the Art
of Everyday Life
S P R I N G
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B U L L E T I N
Spring 2006
Volume 76 Number 3
Bulletin Staff
Director of Development
John E. Ormiston
Editor
Julie Reiff
Alumni Notes
Linda Beyus
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Proofreader
Nina Maynard
Mail letters to:
Julie Reiff, Editor
Taft Bulletin
The Taft School
Watertown, CT 06795-2100 U.S.A.
[email protected]
Send alumni news to:
Linda Beyus
Alumni Office
The Taft School
[email protected]
Deadlines for Alumni Notes:
Summer–May 30
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Spring–February 15
Send address corrections to:
Sally Membrino
Alumni Records
The Taft School
[email protected]
1-860-945-7777
www.TaftAlumni.com
The Taft Bulletin (ISSN 0148-0855) is
published quarterly, in February,
May, August, and November, by
The Taft School, 110 Woodbury
Road, Watertown, CT 067952100, and is distributed free
of charge to alumni, parents,
grandparents, and friends of the
school. All rights reserved.
This magazine is printed on recycled paper.
3
F E AT U R E S
A Matter of Honor..................................16
In this post-Enron age, can student honor codes still have
meaning?
By Bonnie Blackburn Penhollow '84
The Mysterious Tim Mayer.....................20
Director, lyricist, and playwright Timothy Mayer ’62 came of
age with some of Hollywood’s biggest names but remains
largely unknown today.
By Andrew Karas ’01
cover story: Don’t Fear the Edges..........26
Artist Loueta Chickadaunce teaches her students to be
brave in art and in life.
By Steve Le
12
D E PA R T M E N T S
Letters.................................................... 2
Alumni Spotlight.................................... 3
Around the Pond.................................... 7
Sport.......................................................12
Endnote..................................................30
Board Chairman Will Miller ’74 steps down
on the cover
Art teacher Loueta Chickadaunce, shown here at the school's
statewide juried student art exhibit, coordinates a year-round
schedule of shows in the Mark W. Potter ’48 Gallery. Bob Falcetti
64
Taft on the Web
Find a friend’s address or look
up back issues of the Bulletin at
www.TaftAlumni.com
For more campus news and events,
including admissions information,
visit www.TaftSchool.org
What happened at this
afternoon’s game?
Visit www.TaftSports.com
j Connie Gao '09
performing Peacock
at the Taft Dance
Concert on March 3.
Don’t forget you can shop online
at www.TaftStore.com
800-995-8238 or 860-945-7736
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From the Editor
March Madness. In some parts of the
country, and especially in Connecticut,
that phrase means basketball, but the
last few days before Spring Break were
especially crazy here at Taft. Students
had plenty of things going on on campus during the last ten days or so of
winter term.
A sampling: an open discussion
on wolves; an Ash Wednesday service in
Walker Hall; postseason action for the
girls’ basketball, boys’ ice hockey, boys’
basketball, and wrestling teams (see page
12 for results); a student dance concert; a
Masque and Dagger play; and an 18-piece
big band in the Choral Room after the
movie on Saturday night. JETS/TEAM
engineers also competed in New Haven;
the Model Congress delegation went to
Cambridge, Mass., for three days; the
Humanities class visited the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York; and the
astronomy class traveled to the Williams
College observatory. Tired yet?
And I didn’t even mention the
term papers many students turned in
for their history classes as they headed
off for that vacation
Now that the spring term is in full
swing, the calendar is starting to bulge
again. Advanced Placement exams
dominate these early weeks, and by the
time alumni arrive for reunion activities the pace should be downright frantic. Let’s call it May-hem. That’s not
to say students aren’t having any fun.
With the warmer weather, Frisbee golf,
the Pre-Study Hall Softball League,
and suntanning in Centennial Quad
are as popular as ever.
We welcome Letters to the Editor relating
to the content of the magazine. Letters
may be edited for length, clarity, and
content, and are published at the editor’s
discretion. Send correspondence to:
Julie Reiff, editor
Taft Bulletin
110 Woodbury Road
Watertown, CT 06795-2100 USA
or to [email protected]
Taft Bulletin Spring 2006
b The earliest
members
of the Class
of ’62,
then called
Juniors.
Youth Hockey
Juniors
It came as quite a surprise to me in reading the article on Senile Six [“Thank God
It’s Tuesday,” winter 2006] that Watertown
Youth Hockey was founded by David
Long. Just to set the record straight, here
are “the facts”:
A few years after the completion of
Mays Rink in 1951, the idea of starting a
youth hockey program was first considered.
The idea was first conceived by Patrick
Cassidy ’41, who, along with classmate John
Atwood ’37, made an appointment to see
Taft coach Len Sargent.
Sargent was quite agreeable to promoting the program by making ice time
available at a very modest expense. He was
concerned principally with the additional
costs of having the rink manager available for the extra hours. He was particularly receptive to the program because it
was going to be operated by alumni and
would benefit the town. The early organizers and coaches were all Taft graduates:
John Atwood, Richard Wilson ’39, Ackley
Shove ’40, Patrick Cassidy, and me.
The early coaches were joined by
Curtiss Johnson ’48 in 1957—the same
year the roof was added. One of the early
tasks of management was to collect a fee of
25 cents from each skater before he was allowed on the ice; this expense has become
more serious today. Originally known as
the Watertown Pee Wee Hockey League,
the group incorporated in 1968 and later
changed its name to Watertown Youth
Hockey, Inc., in 1985.
As I read the “The Last Juniors” [winter
2006], I was reminded that we lower middlers arrived in the fall of 1958 and met people like Swires, Foote, McDaniel, Spencer,
and Reynolds, who had already been there
the year before (and Peter Schuyten my lower-mid roommate). They all knew the ropes,
and Mike Swires, a science (and everything
else) wiz became my phantom old boy, convincing me that Paul Lovett-Janison, my
science teacher that first year, was strict,
but wonderful. Thanks, Mike, because “LJ”
would be my teacher all four years, and is
the reason I became a doctor.
—John Cassidy ’41
—Don Buttenheim ’33
—Paul Ehrlich ’62
I sat down and read the Taft Bulletin this
morning and thoroughly enjoyed it. I loved
the piece called “The Last Juniors” and hope
that you continue to do more of that type of
story. The photos and memories of the new
students are priceless.
—Ellen Sclafani P’01
Nonprofits
The winter Bulletin is, as always, a fine
job. I especially like all the coverage you
gave to nonprofits [“Serving Nonprofits”].
Some I’ve never heard of, but obviously all
are making a large difference in the lives of
those they serve. It makes me prouder than
ever to be a Taft alumnus when so many are
really living the school motto.
S P OT L I G H T
© Steve Boyle/NewSport/Corbis
j Olympic ice
hockey goalie
Chanda Gunn ’99
discovered the
sport at age 14,
when epilepsy
put an end to her
swimming career.
Bronze Age
Goalie Chanda Gunn ’99 shut out
Finland as Team USA scored four goals
to earn the Olympic bronze medal in
Torino. Making it to the Olympics is
an accomplishment in itself, but what
is even more surprising is that the
Huntington Beach, California, native
didn’t start playing ice hockey until she
was 14 years old. Her parents put an
end to her competitive swimming career
when she was diagnosed with epilepsy
in fourth grade.
The highly competitive Gunn tried
soccer and several other sports before
donning goalie pads and a baseball glove
to play street hockey with her brother.
Protected by the pads and much safer
on the ice from seizures than she was in
the water, she says epilepsy opened the
door for her to play hockey.
Problems adjusting her seizure medication freshman year at the University
of Wisconsin forced her to give up her
Division I scholarship, but the following season, she walked onto the team
at Northeastern University, eventually
earning a scholarship there, and finishing with 11 career shutouts and a .937
save percentage.
A three-time nominee for the Patty
Kazmaier Award (women’s ice hockey’s
top honor) and recipient of the 2004
Hockey Humanitarian Award, Gunn
is the first player to be a finalist for
both awards.
—continued on next page
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT
continued from previous page—
In addition to being a spokesperson for the Epilepsy Foundation, she
has been active with the Cystic Fibrosis
Foundation, volunteered with Hospice,
coached inner-city youth hockey programs, and worked with the Big Brothers,
Big Sisters program, reaching out to any
number of community organizations, especially if they involve children.
“She’s unreal,” says teammate Kristin
King, 26. “She’s so gentle and caring off
the ice. But it’s like she’s another person
when she gets on the ice. She wants to
win so badly.”
Gunn earned her way on to the
Olympic team when she ended Canada’s
eight-year run of gold medals at the 2005
World Championships in the final shootout. Most fans expected to see the two
countries square off again in the final
round in Torino. For a team custom-made
to beat its archrival to the north, not playing Canada in the games may have been
the strangest part of the Olympics.
A shootout loss to Sweden in the
semifinals ended any hope for the gold,
but the young team (Gunn is one of 10
first-timers) rebounded for their medal
round against Finland, with Gunn making 14 saves.
“I don’t think I could be prouder,” Gunn told the Milwaukee Journal
Sentinel. “You have seen more courage
and more grace from this team in defeat and in coming back to win a bronze
medal than you could have possibly seen
in victory in winning a gold medal.”
Gunn joins medalists A.J. Mleczko
’93, who won gold in Nagano and silver in Salt Lake, and Tammy Shewchuk
’96 who won gold for Canada in Salt
Lake [“North American Showdown on
Ice,” spring 2002]. Only time will tell
which Lady Rhinos will compete in
Vancouver in 2010.
“Epilepsy has never stopped me from
following my dreams,” Gunn told ESPN.
“I hope that by sharing my story, others
will learn that they too can set their own
goals and work to achieve them no matter
what their personal obstacles may be.”
m Oncologist Peppie Wagner ’81 has joined a new genre of reality shows:
webcast surgeries. Joy Miller/Hartford Hospital
Robotic Surgery
He operates, with a robot, from the other side of the room—and you can watch
the whole process over the internet.
Internationally renowned urologic oncologist Joseph “Peppie” Wagner
’81 brought this remarkable new technique to Hartford Hospital.
“I performed my first robotic surgery in Manhattan in June 2001, one of
the first in the country. We did our first
robotic surgery at Hartford Hospital—
a prostate operation—in December
2003,” says Wagner. “We have now
completed over 375 robotic urologic
procedures, mostly radical prostatectomies, over the past two years.”
In robotic surgery, the surgeon sits
behind a console, looks through a duallens vision system, and manually controls tiny instruments that perform the
actual operation. Unlike laparoscopic
surgery, the dual-camera arrangement
gives the surgeon a three-dimensional
view, and with robotics, the surgeon
has the same degree of motion he has
with his hand. The software control-
ling the robotic arms also screens out
tiny tremors in the surgeon’s hand motions. Another bonus is that the surgeon can sit down while he operates,
which for longer procedures can be
quite an advantage.
“There are numerous advantages
for the patient, too,” adds Wagner,
“less blood loss, shorter convalescence,
and possibly an improvement in the
surgical margin rate (a lower rate of
cancer cells remaining near the site
of the tumor). For most patients, the
postoperative stay after a prostatectomy has decreased from two or three
days to one.”
And if you’re into reality TV, you
can watch Wagner in action through
Hartford Hospital’s 80-minute surgical webcast: http://www.harthosp.org/
webcast/index.asp. For those who find
the idea of watching the actual operation unappealing, you can opt instead
to view clips of Wagner talking about
the procedure, its advantages, and who
makes a good candidate.
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT
In Print
Eat This Book:
A Year of Gorging and Glory on
the Competitive Eating Circuit
Ryan Nerz ’92
St. Martin’s Press, 2006
Ever since I was a young boy, I’ve wanted
to be a competitive-eating emcee. Okay,
that’s a lie, but it’s not as far-fetched as
it sounds. When I moved to New York
after graduating from an Ivy League
college in 1997, I wanted to become
a writer. My first job was as an editor
of children’s books, but I grew tired of
editing other people’s material and quit.
I began writing whatever the world
would pay me to write—pseudonymous
contributions to the Sweet Valley High
series, unauthorized biographies of teen
stars, restaurant and music reviews. I
used my friends’ names for characters
in steamy teen-romance novels, which
amused them greatly.
To pay the bills, I took odd jobs.
I waited tables, conducted exit polls,
edited personal essays for college appli-
cants, and even modeled for the covers
of young-adult novels. On the side, I
wrote short stories and screenplays, all
the while filling notebooks with ideas
for my big breakthrough in the glamorous world of media—but it never
came.
In June of 2003, I met for drinks
with an old buddy, Dave Baer [’92],
who shares my interest in all things absurd. He was working for a company
called the International Federation of
Competitive Eating. Over drinks, Dave
explained that the IFOCE, or the “circuit,” as he called it, was growing at
an improbably fast rate. He described
one of his favorite “gurgitators,” Eric
“Badlands” Booker, an affable subway
conductor on New York’s 7 line, who
trained by meditating and eating huge
portions of cabbage. I was intrigued.
The next day, I pitched the idea of
chronicling a “training meal” for the
Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July hotdog-eating contest to an editor at the
Village Voice. Within a few hours, they
offered to pay me fifty cents a word for
the piece.
A few months later, I received an
e-mail from Dave that changed my life.
Would I be interested in hosting a Meat
Pie Eating Competition in Natchitoches,
Louisiana? They would pick up my
travel expenses and pay me fairly handsomely for a few hours of work. It was a
no-brainer. Frankly, I would have considered such an undertaking pro bono.
My only questions were, What in the
Sam Hill is a meat pie? And how do you
pronounce Natchitoches?
Of course, I had no conception that
this strange gig would turn into hundreds
of gigs. I had no clue that “competitive
eating emcee” would become my job title, that I would befriend dozens of pro
eaters and write a book on the subject. I
couldn’t have imagined announcing an
onion-eating contest in Maui, or witnessing the circuit’s first-ever Heimlich
maneuver at a jambalaya-eating contest.
I couldn’t have known that I would emcee the Nathan’s Famous contest on the
Fourth of July after appearing on the
Today show, and later compete against
the great Kobayashi in a burger-eating
contest. At the time, it just seemed like
an amusing adventure, some quick cash,
and a funny story to tell my friends.
George Shea, chair of the IFOCE,
explained that my uniform would be
that of a turn-of-the-century carnival
barker. Regardless of weather or inclination, I would wear a blue blazer and
a tie. He handed me an Italian-made
straw boater laced with a blue-and-red
ribbon. I must confess that I experienced
a visceral surge of pride upon receiving
the hat. It was circular with a stiff brim,
a style rarely seen since the 1930s. I got
the sense that it could transform me into
an almost fictional character, allowing
me to say things I normally wouldn’t. As
I was leaving the office, hat in hand, it
occurred to me that this whole IFOCE
thing trod a fine line between fiction
and reality, and I was deeply curious to
find out how it all—this hat, this sport,
and this league—came to be.
“With barbecue sauce–soaked tongue planted firmly in cheek, Nerz chronicles his amusing adventures in
the perverse, repellent, strangely heroic world of ‘competitive eating.’ Despite disgusting details—vomiting,
distended bellies, etc.—Nerz presents his story with glee and good humor.”
Taft Bulletin Spring
2006 —Publishers
Weekly
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT
Alumni Events
From California to Vermont,
Tafties gathered together for
a good time at several events.
c Alumni and
their guests at
the Stratton
Alumni Ski
Weekend in
February.
Ledlie B. Mosch
. Pam and Willy MacMullen ’78
are greeted by Michael and Leslie
Herrlinger Lanahan ’73 and Jamie and
Brooks Hendrie Widdoes ’73 at the
Los Angeles reception at the Regency
Club in February. Iris Chow ’02
m Alumni gather at the Denver Press
Club in February: from left, Chris
Sturgess ’02, Court Wold ’02, Willy
MacMullen ’78, Jocelyn Gamble
Childs ’76, Doug Childs, Hank Candler
’54, and John Wold ’71. Lisa Steen
b A solid group of
alumni turn out to
join the headmaster
for this year’s alumni
hockey game at
the Odden Rink on
Winter Sports Day
in February.
Jackie Maloney
A
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b A curious Atka,
an Arctic gray wolf,
explores Bingham
Auditorium during
Morning Meeting in
February, shattering the
stereotype of wolves as
evil creatures.
Peter Frew ’75
Wolf Week
He walked into Bingham Auditorium with the
dignity of an ambassador; his presence alone was
enough to silence the room. The piercing gaze of
his steely blue eyes cut through the shadows of the
dimly lighted room, and you knew he was gauging his audience. Perhaps Atka knew he was the
first of his kind to step foot on the stage, and the
first, closest, or perhaps only encounter many of
us would ever have with a wolf.
It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve
walked or petted Dick Cobb’s current German
shepherd, watching an arctic wolf walk the aisles—
only inches from your seat—is an unforgettable
encounter. The narrow chest and massive paws are
custom-designed for a snowy wilderness.
Atka is one of four gray wolves who serve as
ambassadors for their species through the Wolf
Conservation Center in South Salem, New
York. The three-year-old was bred in captivity
and travels to schools, nature centers, and other
events to help educate people about wolves.
Atka’s accompanying people spoke about
the mythology, biology, and ecology of wolves,
as well as the status of wolf recovery across the
United States. For more information, visit
www.nywolf.org.
Eight days later, Jim and Jamie Dutcher,
who lived among a single wolf pack in
Idaho for six years, presented excerpts from
their Discovery Channel documentary Living
with Wolves. Their visit was sponsored by the
Paduano Lecture Series in Philosophy and
Ethics. Listen to their story at www.npr.org
(and search DUTCHER).
AROUND THE POND
Justice for Sierra Leone
“If I were a West African warlord,
I would look out here before me
and see an army,” explained David
Crane, a professor of Law at Syracuse
University and former chief prosecutor for the International War Crimes
Tribunal for Sierra Leone. Speaking at
a special Morning Meeting in Bingham
Auditorium, Crane described how warlords surrounded villages, forced young
people to kill their parents, and carved
them with their initials to mark them as
their property. These were 7-, 8-, 9-, or
10-year-old children, who, if they lived,
led a life that was indescribable. “There
are no words in the English language to
describe to you what took place. The
court had to hear it from the witnesses.”
Crane is the first American appointed to such a role since Justice Robert H.
Chang plays
Carnegie Hall
Theresa Chang ’08 was
the concertmaster for
the National Festival
Orchestra performance
at Carnegie Hall in
January. The seating was
determined at their first
rehearsal the previous
Saturday, her outstanding
performance securing
her the top honor. The
orchestra performed
Shostakovich’s Symphony
No. 5 in D minor. Taft’s
instrumental music
director, T.J. Thompson,
and a number of students
traveled to New York for
the concert. Peter Frew ’75
m Law professor David Crane talks with
students about his experiences as chief
prosecutor for the International War Crimes
Tribunal in Sierra Leone, West Africa.
Jon Guiffre
Jackson, who served as chief prosecutor
for the Nuremberg trials after World War
II. Judge Crane’s mandate was to prosecute those who bore the greatest responsibility for war crimes, crimes against
humanity, and other serious violations
of human rights committed during the
10-year civil war in Sierra Leone in the
1990s that resulted in the destruction of
about 1.2 million West African lives.
The Special Court for Sierra Leone
was set up jointly by the government of
Sierra Leone and the United Nations.
Eleven persons stand indicted by the
Special Court. Specifically, the charges
include murder, rape, extermination,
acts of terror, enslavement, looting and
burning, sexual slavery, conscription
of children into an armed force, and
attacks on U.N. peacekeepers and humanitarian workers, among others. For
more information, visit www.sc-sl.org.
Crane’s visit was sponsored by the Rear
Admiral Raymond F. DuBois Fellowship
in International Affairs.
AROUND THE POND
Segregation and Central High
Dr. Terrence Roberts, current parent Ann Shakelford (Bland ’09), and
Central High School student Andrew
Humphrey addressed the assembled
school community on Martin Luther
King Day. All three attended (or attend) the famous Little Rock High
School that was at the center of the civil rights movement in the late 1950s.
Dr. Roberts was one of the Little Rock
Nine, the first black students to go to
Central, a formerly segregated public
high school in Arkansas. He spoke
about his experiences and offered suggestions on how to move closer to Dr.
King’s vision for America. Shakelford,
a 1976 graduate of the school shared
her perspective on Central and its
place in history. Humphrey, a senior
at Central, spoke briefly about his experience at the school today. All three
spoke with interested students and
faculty in Choral Room afterward.
Dr. Roberts’ visit was sponsored by
the Diversity Committee.
m Dr. Terrence Roberts, Ann Shakelford,
and Andrew Humphrey answer questions
on Martin Luther King Day about their
experiences at Little Rock’s Central High
School. Peter Frew ’75
Cultural Exchange
The school hosted a very special delegation of visitors from China this winter, accompanied by Yi-ming Yang ’87. Thirty
8th-to-10th-grade students, their principal, and three school administrators from
the Experimental School of Beijing spent
a day on campus, visiting classes, having
lunch, and taking campus tours.
At the end of their visit, Collegium
performed for them in the Choral
Room, and, in return, the guests gave
Taft students a taste of traditional
Chinese dancing and calligraphy.
The visitors from China were eager
to learn a bit about American culture
and the school. “Ultimately, we hope
to establish a long-term relationship
with this school,” added Director of
Admissions Ferdie Wandelt ’66, who
visited their school in October.
b Headmaster Willy MacMullen, Yi-ming
Yang ’87, and Experimental School
principal Mrs. Yuan watch as one of the
visiting students from Beijing demonstrates
the art of calligraphy. Peter Frew ’75
AROUND THE POND
Accolades
Based on their performance in the
American Mathematics Competition
in January, 16 students qualified for the American Invitational
Mathematics Exam. Qualifying is
quite an honor, placing the students
in the top 2 percent nationwide.
AIME is the second round leading
to the USA Math Olympiad. In the
past no more than seven students
have qualified for the AIME in a
single year.
Theresa Chang ’08 and Moritz
Binder ’07 made the Connecticut
All-State Orchestra with perfect
scores. The orchestra performed in
Hartford at the end of March. The
two served jointly as concertmasters,
and National Public Radio later aired
the performance.
Of work from all the high schools in
Connecticut, senior Taylor Bodnar
and upper mid Helen Gazin each
had a piece chosen for display in the
Scholastics Art Awards in Hartford.
Taylor received an honorable mention, and Helen received a Gold
Key, which means that her work will
go on to national competition in
Washington, D.C.
Middler Taylor Gorham’s ceramic
“tree plate” was selected for the
National Council on Education
for the Ceramic Arts exhibition in
Portland, Oregon. Recent graduates
Jake Davis ’05 and Dan Furman ’04
are represented in the same show.
Upper mids Elizabeth Pompea,
Emma Strubell, and Amanda Vidal,
and lower mid Will Ide received honorable mentions.
10 Taft Bulletin Spring 2006
Parents’
Weekend
Production
Mac Morris ’06 as
Bertha Bumiller in
the February Parents’
Weekend dramatic
production.
Peter Frew ’75
Master of All Stories
Once again master storyteller Odds
Bodkin delighted audiences with his
unforgettable tales from around the
world. With 17 award-winning audio
recordings to his credit, Bodkin enriches
his tales with 12-string guitars, a Celtic
harp, and other instruments making his
tales “resemble pieces of musical theater
as much as storytelling.”
Performing as an artist-in-residence,
he began the week with an intimate presentation of “Tales from the Far East”
in the Choral Room, followed by a
StoryBlast performance. He gave another performance in Bingham two days
later, that was open to the public, and
ended his visit with his “Storytelling
Slam: Horror, Laughs, and Rock ’n’
Roll.” He also presented storytelling
workshops for interested students and
faculty. For more information, visit
www.OddsBodkin.com.
c Award-winning storyteller Odds Bodkin
delights audiences in an encore visit to
the school in January. Peter Frew ’75
AROUND THE POND
In Brief
In the Potter Gallery: Student
work from the first semester was
on display through March 8. The
Gallery then hosted the opening
reception for the artists in the
school’s statewide Juried Student
Art Exhibition. That show ran
through April 13. Recent works
by Michael Chelminski ’56 are
on display through May 26; the
opening reception was held on
April 21.
Pianist A.H. Onaran
World-famous pianist A.H. Onaran presented a one-hour concert of sublime music
in Walker Hall in January. The evening featured Mozart’s Fantasy, K.396, Debussy’s
Images Oubliees, two of Chopin’s Nocturnes and two Mazurkas, as well as three of
Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words. Peter Frew ’75
Dr. Jean Kilbourne spoke
about
“Deadly
Persuasion:
Advertising and Addiction” at
Morning Meeting in January.
Internationally recognized for
her pioneering work on alcohol
and tobacco advertising and the
image of women in advertising,
she has testified before Congress
and advised two surgeons general
about advertising, alcoholism,
and alcohol abuse. The Paduano
Lecture Series sponsored her visit.
For more information, visit www.
jeankilbourne.com.
Class committee and school
monitor elections were conducted
online this year for the first time.
Rather than complete a paper ballot during English class, students
were given a span of a few days to
visit a secure page on the school
website and vote for the student
leaders of their choice.
Singer Sylvia McNair
Two-time Grammy Award-winning singer Sylvia McNair performed a pre-Valentine’s Day
concert of love songs. Her broad repertoire embraces songs from classical lieder, cabaret,
opera, and Broadway musicals. The Walker Hall concert was free and open to the public,
but, because of her popularity, advance tickets were required. Kelly O’Mealia ’06
11
S
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Winter Season Wrap-Up by Steve Palmer
Skiing
The Taft boys’ ski team repeated its
NEPSAC Class C title by defeating
the other nineteen schools competing
in the slalom and giant slalom races at
Mt. Sunapee, N.H. Taft used a balanced
team effort in both the GS and slalom,
led by captain Wylie Johnston ’06 who
was 3rd in the GS and 6th in the slalom. Fellow senior Spyros Skouras also
placed well in both races, 12th and 5th
respectively, out of 102 skiers, and Will
Roe ’07 finished in 8th and 9th place.
Will Rickards ’06 placed 12th in the
slalom and certainly would have been in
the top ten in the GS had he finished
both runs.
The girls’ team finished in 11th
place, led by upper mid captain Maggie
Seay’s 17th place in the GS and classmate
Kacey Klonsky’s 18th place in the slalom.
In the Berkshire Ski League, a league that
includes several Class B schools, Taft finished 6th. Johnston took home the individual slalom title, winning by almost
three seconds, and Skouras placed 12th
out of the 78 skiers and 17th in the GS.
Wrestling 9–7
The wrestling team put together a solid winning season, and their strength
was in the middle weight classes, starting with Dante Paolino ’07, League
Champion at 112 lbs. The peak of the
season came at the Western New England
Championships where Taft placed 4th
due to a balanced team performance. In
addition to Paolino’s 1st place finish, Will
Ide ’09 (3rd at 119), Afolabi Saliu ’07
(3rd at 135), Phil Martinez ’06 (4th at
140), and captain Jon Canary ’06 (2nd at
145) all scored big points. John Riggins
’08 (152) and Ben Canary ’08 (160) both
finished 5th as well. Finishing in front of
b The boys’ ski team beat out 19 other
teams to win its second Class C New
England Championship in as many years.
Captain Wylie Johnston ’06 improved by
one on last year’s GS finish, placing 3rd out
of 102 skiers. Roger Kirkpatrick ’06
c Corey Griffin ’06 on his way to scoring
the third Taft goal in the quarterfinal game
of the New England Tournament at home
against Avon Old Farms. Roger Kirkpatrick ’06
powerful teams from Hotchkiss, Pomfret
and Canterbury was an indication of just
how strong this performance was for Taft.
Perhaps their next best team effort came
in an exciting 36–39 loss to Hotchkiss,
a match that was not decided until the
final seconds. At the New England
Championships, Taft finished 21st out
of the 45 schools, and Paolino was Taft’s
top finisher in 5th place at 112.
Boys’ Hockey 21–5
New England Finals
The hockey team’s fantastic season included an exciting run all the way to
the championship game of the New
England tournament. Their 19–4 regular season record included huge wins
over Avon, Deerfield, and Hotchkiss.
The regular season came to a dramatic
end in Lakeville when Brian Curran ’07
scored with 23 seconds left to defeat the
Bearcats 3–2 (Taft won the first contest
at home in overtime, 4–3). That final
win secured a #2 seeding for the New
England tournament, and Taft faced
off against the defending New England
Champions, Avon. The first-round,
4–1 win was perhaps Taft’s most complete game of the season; Odden Arena
was packed with about 1,500 fans, and
Taft played a nearly mistake-free game
to secure a great win. In the semifinals,
Taft faced off against an extremely talented Nobles team, and the game was
an incredible battle, with Nobles taking the lead twice as Taft fought back
for a 3–2 win. In the finals, Taft faced
the top-ranked team from Salisbury
for the third time in the season. In all
three games, Taft would control the second period only to see a lead slip away
in the end. Taft’s 3–1 lead was just not
enough to hold off Salisbury’s 4–3 win.
Max Pacioretty ’07 finished the season
as Taft’s leading scorer (33 points) and
an All-New England First Team selection. Doug Jones ’06 and goalie Andrew
Margolin ’07 were selected as Founders
League First Team players, and Charlie
Townsend ’06 and Corey Griffin ’06 received the Coaches and Angier Awards
for their play during the season.
Boys’ Basketball 14–10
New England Quarterfinals
Despite huge losses due to injury, the
boys’ basketball team earned a postseason spot in the New England tour-
nament for the third time in the past
four years. Without starting center
Frank Cheske ’06 for the whole season,
and then losing strong forwards Tom
Piacenza ’06 and Phil Thompson ’06,
the team lost much of its muscle and rebounding power, and found themselves
at 8–8 midway through the season. In
the face of this, other players stepped
up: Renan Malafia ’06 became the leading center in the league (8.9 rebounds
per game, 10.6 pts), Thomas Baudinet
’07 directed things on the floor and was
among the league leaders in three pointers (14.4 pts/game), and Ryan Callahan
13
b Ryan Callahan ’06 led the boys’ varsity
basketball team to the New England
tournament for the third time in the last
four years. Callahan finished his two-year
career with 993 points and became the
program’s all-time leading scorer.
Roger Kirkpatrick ’06
Deerfield (7–0), Andover (6–1), Exeter
(5–2) and Choate (6–1), but dropped
two matches to rival Brunswick. The
New England tournament was again a
battle between these two powerhouse
squash programs. In the end, Taft finished just five points behind champion
Brunswick in what was clearly Taft’s
finest moment of a stellar season. Sam
Beat ’07 (#3 draw), Andrew Kazakoff
’07 (#4), Peter Irving ’06 (#5), McKay
Claghorn ’07 (#6), and Reid Longley ’06
(#7) all made it to the Championship
finals, with Kazakoff and Claghorn
winning the individual titles in their
draws. Alex Dodge ’07 finished 4th
at #2, and captain Michael Shrubb
’06—Taft’s top player for the past two
years—placed 5th in the top draw. This
was a fitting end for a great team that
played with spirit and sportsmanship
throughout the season. At the National
Team Championship, Taft lost only to
eventual champion Lawrenceville but
went on to defeat one of the top seeds,
Episcopal Academy (5–2) to earn 5th
place in that prestigious event.
’06 once again led the league in scoring
and strong play around the basket (21.6
pts/game). First time varsity players AJ
Houston ’07, Kenny Button ’06, and
Hunter Serenbetz ’06, also played important roles in Taft’s late season run,
winning six of their last seven games to
finish the regular season at 14–9 and
earn a #8 seeding for the New England
tournament. That run included impressive wins over Deerfield (74–60),
Avon (73–59), and, in their best game
of the season, Loomis (86–71). In the
first round, Taft faced an exceptionally talented Proctor Academy team, the
#1 seed. Taft would play a great game,
holding the lead for part of the first
half, and down by only 8 points with
eight minutes to go in the game, but in
the end we could not hold off Proctor’s
firepower. Ryan Callahan finished the
game with 32 points, giving him the career scoring record at Taft with 993 total
points in two years.
Boys’ Squash 16–3
Founders League Champions,
New England Runner-Up
The boys’ squash team had another
fantastic season in an incredibly long
run of great seasons. Coach Peter
Frew’s squad marched through the
league, with wins over Hotchkiss (7–0),
Girls’ Basketball 15–7
Founders League Champions
The girls’ basketball team overcame a
slow start to the season at 3–6 to post
a 15–6 regular season record and a #6
seeding for the New England tournament. The success of the season was
built around team defense and an impressive run of 12 consecutive wins,
including strong performances to
sweep two games against rivals Choate,
Hotchkiss, and Loomis. Highlights of
that run also saw exciting wins over
tournament bound Kent (55–46) and
Williston (60–42), before running up
against a strong Nobles team in the
S
first round of the tournament. Last
year’s upset of Nobles in the first round
was not to be repeated in ’06. Yet, the
team has made the tournament for
six straight years. Co-captain Colleen
Sweeney ’07 led the team in scoring
and rebounding for the season, and was
joined as a Class A New England All
Star by Katherine Latham ’08. Seniors
Ashley Russell, Taylor Bodnar, and cocaptain Shayna Bryan accounted for a
good deal of the court management
and defense. Chelsea Berry ’08 and
Katherine also played an important
role in this team’s steady improvement
throughout the winter.
Girls’ Squash 12–8
The girls’ team enjoyed a strong season behind the unbeatable duo in the
first two spots. Alisha Mashruwala ’07
finished an undefeated season in the
#2 spot by winning that draw at the
New England tournament, following
in the footsteps of teammate and captain Sydney Scott ’06, who completed
her third straight undefeated season for
Taft. For the second year in a row, Scott
marched untouched through the season
and the #1 draw at the New England
Championships to close out a spectacular career. She has never lost a match
P
O
R
T
in interscholastic play for Taft. Diana
Sands ’06 also placed highly (4th) in the
#3 draw to help Taft to its sixth place
finish. Lexie Comstock ’06 and Sammy
Glazer ’06 both made it to the consolation finals for a tenth place finish.
The highlights of the season included a
sweep of both matches against Hotchkiss
(5–2) and a 7th place finish at the
National Team Championships, where
Taft defeated Exeter and Lawrenceville,
both in exciting 4–3 matches.
Girls’ Ice Hockey 11–7–4
Founders League Champions
It was an exciting season for the girls’
hockey team with three overtime wins,
four ties, and two great comebacks for
the ages. Early in the winter, the team
surprised everyone in winning their own
Pasty Odden Invitational Tournament;
Taft played four great games to take the
title, including a 1–0 win over Andover,
and a 5–4 overtime win against Kuper
Academy (Canada), where Taft scored
two goals in the final 20 seconds of the
game, both with the goalie on the bench
and six skaters on the ice. The championship game proved to be an exhausting 1–0 win over rival Hotchkiss, with
lower mid Becca Hazlett shutting out the
Bearcats with 23 saves. In the regular season, Taft went on to defeat league rival
Choate twice (3–2 OT, and 5–3) before
coming up against Hotchkiss again at
home. The second time around saw the
opponents go up 4–0 before the Rhinos
stormed back for a 5–4 win to secure
the league title. Leading scorers for this
team included captain Shannon Sisk ’06
(27 points) who had several key gamewinning goals, Erin Barley-Maloney ’08
was the team leader in goals (17) and
total points (36), and Geneva Lloyd ’09
who finished with 12 goals. All three were
named as Founders League All-Stars.
b Alisha Mashruwala ’07 was the winner
of Division 2 at the New England Squash
Tournament. The team placed sixth
overall. Peter Frew ’75
15
A
Matter
of
This we believe:
that personal honor
in word and deed,
personal integrity in
thought and action,
Honor
facet of life, and respect for
other people and their rights
are the essence of a student of
Taft School.
—From the Honor Code
It’s a simple enough phrase: “I pledge my honor” or
even simply “I Pledge.” Many of us wrote it almost as an afterthought, something as automatic as the date or our names
at the top of an assignment.
And yet that simple statement—“I pledge my honor
that I have neither given nor received aid on this examination”—provides the foundation upon which Horace Taft’s
vision for the development of his students was laid.
the whole boy
Horace Taft’s vision for his school was a
place where young men (and later young
women) would be educated not only in
academics but also in character, values,
and morals. The school’s first Honor
Code, proposed in 1913, was “an agreement among gentlemen, and not under
the supervision of the faculty.”
“I think what Mr. Taft was trying to
establish,” adds Dick Cobb, who heads
the Honor Court, “is what we’re trying to maintain with our
Honor Code now—the principles we’re trying to uphold:
honesty, integrity. It’s something that’s been part of the school
for nearly a century, and I think it works. I think the kids
buy into it. It’s there because they developed it. They push it.
Because it’s not accepted among students to violate the Honor
Code, it makes our job really easy.”
“The Honor Code creates the comfort that we have with
each other,” says senior Laura McLaughlin. “I can leave my
backpack in the hall and not worry; my boarding friends all
leave their rooms unlocked. Part of the reason, I’m sure, is
that the school chooses kids who value their integrity, who
internalize those values already.”
By Bonnie Blackburn
Penhollow ’84
honesty in every
the
Educating
By students,
for students
The Honor Code has been updated several times—in 1941,
1961, and most recently in 1982. Tom Blum ’82 was part of the
group of monitors who developed the most recent changes.
“The Honor Code is an invitation for students to exercise greater, really adult responsibility for their actions as they
get closer to entering the ‘real world,’”
Blum says. “It’s an opportunity to deepen their understanding that respect for
one’s peers, an appreciation of intellectual and academic honesty, and trustworthiness are pillars of cooperation
and promoters of just and equitable
behavior within a society. The Honor
Code presents students with their first
exposure to the legalistic boundaries
and processes that will be a part of adult
life: If you violate the code, there may
be consequences.”
These days, it seems there are no
consequences in the white-collar world many Taft students
inhabit. But as national scandals such as the collapse of
Enron, corruption in Washington and allegations of lying and
illegalities reach the highest levels of government and the private sector, is there still a place for honor codes such as Taft’s?
Of course, says Taft Headmaster Willy MacMullen ’78.
“That our expectations of honesty run counter to much
of what students experience in our culture is only a reminder
of how important our work is here,” he says. “When Horace
Taft created the school, the ethical education was as important as the intellectual. This is what it means to educate the
whole student.
“In every sense, the Honor Code is the cornerstone to this
place. It guides so much of what we do, and no year goes by
without my speaking explicitly to the community about the
importance of honor—in our personal as well as academic
lives,” MacMullen adds. “I cannot tell you the pride I feel for
this school in this regard: for the students today and for those
who came before who bequeathed such an important legacy.”
“Maybe here kids don’t cheat because they fear the
consequences, at first,” adds Laura, “but after that—once
you see the environment—you value it for itself. We know
Taft would be less ‘Taft’ if kids cheated and there weren’t
an honor code.”
Facing
consequences
Head monitor Michael Shrubb ’06 says
before he came to Taft, cheating was
the norm.
“I was at a school where cheating
was the usual,” he explains. “There was
no way a teacher could leave class without the students cheating. I cheated in
my old school, not much at all, but I
did. I have been here at Taft for three
and a half years now and haven’t cheated once. Taft and the Honor Code have showed me how
important one’s honor really is. I wouldn’t say that I don’t
cheat because I am scared of the punishments that come
from breaking the code, but instead, the Honor Code instills a sense of pride in my work and my abilities. After my
experiences on the Honor Court, I have come to appreciate
my honor much more than ever before.”
Understanding the importance of one’s honor is a tricky
concept for many new students to grasp, says Academic Dean
Debbie Phipps.
“My personal feeling is that the Honor Code itself is
not that complicated. You simply tell the truth,” she says.
“If you borrow something from someone, you acknowledge it. There are times when collaboration is valuable …
but you also have to know how to give credit for work that
is not your own.”
That’s why the concepts behind the Honor Code are discussed frequently at the beginning of the school year.
In cases in which a violation is minor and a student is
new, a letter will be placed in his or her file and sent home to
parents; the student may be put on academic warning with
regard to the Honor Code. But in more serious cases, the student is referred to the Honor Court, which is made up of
three faculty members and three monitors.
17
For students unfortunate enough to
end up in front of the Honor Court for
violating the Honor Code, that phrase,
“I pledge my honor,” hits home like an
arrow to the soul.
The court
“Serving on the Honor Court is a
tricky situation.” say Michael. “The
kids that [violate] the Honor Code are
never bad kids, just ones that made a
mistake. It is tough to punish a fellow student or classmate, but you know it has to be done
to keep the Honor Code strong and serious. After seeing
a few cases on the Honor Court, I have realized that although the kids are distraught at the time, a month or so
later they realize that the whole ordeal has taught them a
lot about honor. So it’s a tough job but one that is essential
to the strength of the community.”
“The Honor Court is a big deal,” Phipps says. “It fol-
lows the model of a judicial hearing. I
present the case, the Honor Court asks
questions of the student, and he or she
has to answer honestly.
“For many students, their first instinct is to balk,” Phipps says. “It’s hard.
It’s a painful, difficult time. We want
them to get to the point where they can
own their actions and say ‘I did this.’
Once they can do that, they can move
forward. Getting to that point can take
time, and advisers may become involved
in the process.”
“If you lie to the court when it’s
meeting,” explains Dick Cobb, “you’ll likely get dismissed.
Horace Taft said it well: ‘Truthfulness or honor is the foundation. Whatever else students are, if they tell the truth there is
hope—there is something to work with.’”
After hearing all sides, the Honor Court has four options:
Do nothing, issue a warning, recommend a two-week suspension, or recommend dismissal. The court reports its recommendation to the headmaster, who makes the final decision.
Sitting
A school monitor describes what it’s like to
decide the fate of one's peers.
in
I’ve never spoken to her but recognize her face in the hall and know the
name that pairs with it. I don’t know what
makes her happy, but in this room I can
spot one lone tear roll down her cheek
and then, after a futile attempt at selfconstraint, a stream of them.
As a member of the honor court, I,
in conjunction with several teachers and
two fellow senior monitors, will determine the fate of this young girl I barely
Judgment
By Laura
McLaughlin ’06
know. I will decide if her crime is worthy
of dismissal, potentially altering forever
her entire vision of the progression of her
life. With paper and pen in front of me, a
knot growing in my stomach, I was going
to be certain I knew all the facts.
A deep breath and she begins to
speak, her voice quavering with every syllable her vocal chords manage to sound.
Even before arriving at the word “sorry,”
she dissolves again into a fountain of tears,
a frightened little girl. She already pulls at
my heart. As I turn from her face to look at
the paper in front of me, I feel tears beginning to well up in my own eyes.
“The reasoning on the penalty was
we should fish or cut bait,” Cobb says.
“Anything longer than two weeks would
be the kiss of death academically. Two
weeks sends a clear message to all parties
that it was more significant than having
a couple of beers or a fire-code violation.” Most first drug/alcohol violations
receive a one-week suspension.
Most students who come before the
Honor Court are punished with a twoweek suspension, Cobb noted. And as
difficult as that period can be, seniors
who have already been accepted to college and violate the Honor Code are also required to inform
their college of the violation.
“That’s especially hard to do,” Phipps says. “It’s a lot to
expect of kids, especially when so much is on the line, but it
reflects the seriousness with which we view the Honor Code.”
And that’s exactly the point. Blum believes that decisions
made in high school are critical to forming one’s sense of self.
“Adolescents making the difficult transition from child-
Faced with a test, a paper, and a science lab due the next day, she didn’t know
what to do; there was no way she could get
it all done. She never intended to copy the
text verbatim. Consumed by the length of
her to-do list, she failed to contemplate
the gravity of the consequences.
Jotting notes as the girl speaks, I can
see myself in her position. I can feel the
weight that creeps into your chest when
you have multiple assessments the next day.
I also understand the severity of her actions.
Failing to punish her would undermine the
very system that makes Taft so conducive
to learning and growing, the same system
hood to young adulthood stand to benefit from the structure and framework
that an honor code and set of fundamental rules can provide,” he says. “How do
we help young people prepare to live in
societies that are bound by laws, [societies] that depend on an appreciation of the
law to function effectively? The honor
system pledge is the lesson, the mantra,
the daily reminder that an individual’s
intellectual development really is best
served by the use of one’s own faculties
and intelligence—not by copying material and claiming it as one’s own.”
“The majority of kids here feel the Honor Code is important,” Laura adds, “and there is a very low tolerance among
students for lying. Kids worry about [their honor] when papers or projects are assigned. They ask a lot of questions. They
want to get it right; they want to do the right thing.”
Bonnie Blackburn Penhollow ’84 is a freelance writer living in
Fort Wayne, Indiana.
that attracted me to apply four years ago.
It is also my job to represent her as a
student, to make the teachers understand
the breaking point from which her actions
stemmed. I note the punishment the girl
inflicts on herself and that it was her first
offense; she does not deserve to be dismissed. Returning to school to complete
her studies, she will remember the strong
moral character she possesses and has
gained during this journey that addressed
her desperate act of wrongdoing.
“I pledge my honor….” Whether it’s
on a lab, a test, or an in-class essay, the
presence of those words at the very top of
the paper creates a community more often seen in years past than in the modern
world—a place where an individual’s word
is his or her bond. Those words allow for
an environment where doors and lockers
can be left unlocked, where a teacher can
leave the room during a test with the assurance that the work each student hands
in will be solely his or her own. The violation of those words only erodes the foundation of our school.
Laura McLaughlin ’06 is a school monitor
and a member of the Honor Court. She
lives in Oakville, Connecticut.
“I pledge my honor....”
Tim Mayer
By Andrew Karas ’01
The Mysterious
Lilian Kemp/Courtesy of the Office for the Arts at Harvard
Tim Mayer ’62
I
n the 1960s, “theatrical wunderkind” Tim Mayer
’62 became an essential part of what many still
call Harvard’s “Golden Age” of theater. Working
side by side with Stockard Channing, Tommy Lee Jones,
and John Lithgow, he went on to write a Broadway show,
direct at the Kennedy Center, and compose lyrics for
James Taylor. Well known at the time in creative circles
for his efforts to define a new kind of American theater,
why is it that Mayer is known to so few people today?
“I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by
only six other people. Six degrees of separation between us and
everyone else on this planet,” says Stockard Channing in the
1993 film Six Degrees of Separation. If you went to Taft, you’re
probably even closer than that to Channing—who had her stage
debut in Mayer’s production of The Threepenny Opera—or to
any of the dozens of other screen legends today who worked
with the talented poet, lyricist, playwright, and director.
“
Mayer deliberately dwelled outside the mainstream of
American theater but worked with a combination of youthful enthusiasm and revolutionary vision that demanded notice from the establishment. Along the way, he surrounded
himself with other talented and driven people who savored
the fresh air his interpretations breathed into classic texts and
timeless themes. And he did all this in the 43 years before his
untimely death from lung cancer in 1988.
W
e put on plays
for the very
same reason
we sometimes attend
them: for diversion, and
to find out what we are…”
—T.S.M.
c Classmates Derry Caye and
Tim Mayer ’62 on stage at Taft
in a performance of Samuel
Beckett in the fall of 1961.
Leslie Manning Archives
21
Tim Mayer ’62
Mayer quickly emerged as a leader in the creative community at Taft—as president of Masque and Dagger, editorin-chief of both The Papyrus and the school’s literary magazine, and a highly successful debater.
“His love of theatre began well before he got to Taft,” says
upper-mid roommate Jon Brittel ’62. “His parents were very
supportive of him. Living in New York City at the time, he
spent much of his vacations investigating Broadway and offBroadway shows. Tim introduced many of our class to see The
Fantastiks in its first year, when it was an unknown experimental play in a tiny theater off Broadway in Greenwich Village. He
was always seeking out new ways of looking at theater.”
Along with his homework assignments and stirring editorials, Mayer was already writing songs, too. These early
compositions mark the beginning of his lifelong practice of
transplanting old, even ancient, characters and stories into
contemporary settings and speech patterns. One such song,
“Hit or Myth,” is littered with eruditely tongue-in-cheek references to Greek figures:
I’m in love with a pigeon
Who always finds a Stygian
Darkness in whatever I do.
Like Pelops, I’m always in a stew.
Mayer went on to Harvard, where he met the people and staged
the productions that established his place on the American theater scene. He majored in English, studying poetry with Robert
Lowell, but his really exciting work was happening outside the
classroom. As he had at Taft, Mayer advanced to leadership
roles in Harvard’s arts community, serving on the board of the
Dramatic Club and as president of the Gilbert and Sullivan
Players and the Signet, an arts and letters society.
He tirelessly wrote, directed, and acted during these
years, composing the lyrics—as a sophomore—for the 1964
Hasty Pudding show (an original burlesque musical produced in a zany Harvard tradition dating from 1895) as well
as the lyrics for the 1965 show.
For a presumably more serious accomplishment, a play
about a capitalist baron called Prince Erie, Mayer received
Harvard’s Phyllis Anderson Prize for playwriting in his senior year. When the production was staged a year later at the
Loeb Theater, Stockard (then known as Susan) Channing
was among the cast.
In fact, a cluster of extraordinarily talented actors and
writers had accumulated in Cambridge by the late 1960s.
Channing was class of ’65, John Lithgow ’67, Tommy
Lee Jones ’69, Lindsay Crouse ’70, and James Woods was
at MIT. Each of them—only the most famous members
of a much larger group—has now been nominated for at
least one Oscar (though only Jones has won). Long before
Hollywood came calling, however, this group was cutting its
teeth in Tim Mayer productions.
Mayer returned to Harvard for several years to direct
the summer season at the Agassiz Theatre. If his work until
this point had been a series of promising sparks, the summer
productions of 1966–1969 were roaring blazes, ignited by
hated writing…”
“Tim
b Tim Mayer ’62 as
Radcliffe Artist-inResidence in 1981
with Peter Ivers
Lilian Kemp/courtesy of the
Office for the Arts at Harvard
Tim Mayer ’62
a heady mix of youth, talent, energy, and the radical vibe
of the era. Even in 1995 the smoke has not yet cleared: the
New York Times recalled that year that the “fiercely talented”
Mayer was the “strongest personality” of “a now-legendary
circle of friends who produced summer seasons of plays at
Radcliffe’s Agassiz Theater.”
Mayer wrote or translated and directed ten plays over
four summers at the Agassiz, and even at the time observers
knew that they were witnessing extraordinary moments in
theater. Extraordinary, but not always easy to understand, for
Mayer took classic texts—Shakespeare, Brecht, Euripides,
Aristophanes, the Bible—and rewrote them in modern idiom, with modern rhythms, for modern audiences.
The results must have looked downright weird, if also new
and exciting. The plays sound, for lack of a better term, very
“sixties.” In one instance, Mayer rewrote the 15th-century morality play Everyman, an allegory in which Death summons the
title character to be judged before God, so that the neurotic
God now stood hidden behind an American flag and a blues
band. The play, according to the Harvard Crimson, was “such
an incredible kick…the show blew my mind a little.” That particular review ran without an accompanying photo because the
photographer was so engrossed in the play that he couldn’t stop
watching long enough to take pictures. Other plays garnered
equally unreserved comments in the newspaper, like “God forbid Woyzeck should be Tim Mayer’s last show at Harvard” and,
presumably for purposes of clarification, “This is a rave.”
“
These reviews also contain priceless peeks at the early
work of some Hollywood stars. For example: “Tommy Lee
Jones rattles off his ‘Death, ye comest when I had ye least
in mind’ as if the Vice Squad had just caught him with his
pants down.” I would bet Mayer is the only director ever
credited with eliciting such a performance from Jones. And
three decades before The West Wing first aired, audiences
were advised, “If you don’t know by now what watching
Susan Channing on stage is like, I suggest you find out fast.”
Channing later explained to Paul Schmidt, her ex-husband
and the editor of Mayer’s collected poems and plays, the
depth of Mayer’s influence: “I became an actress because
Tim Mayer believed I could.”
But Hollywood was not Mayer’s calling, although he
wrote several scripts for 20th Century Fox and Warner
Brothers later in his career.
“Tim hated writing,” Schmidt explains in the book,
Running From America: The Poems and Plays of Timothy Mayer,
“His ‘manuscripts’ are for the most part a collection of crumpled cocktail napkins, bent shirt cardboards, sheets of hotel
writing paper, and the backs of unanswered business letters.
His real gift was for the song lyric, probably because it was the
shortest literary form he knew.”
In late 1968, Mayer was treated for thyroid cancer. Then,
after one last summer season at Radcliffe, Mayer embarked
on the myriad of professional projects that would continue
to reveal the multifaceted nature of his creativity. In the early
1970s he worked extensively with WGBH, Boston’s PBS af-
H
is ‘manuscripts’
are for the most
part a collection of
crumpled cocktail napkins,
bent shirt cardboards,
sheets of hotel writing
paper, and the backs of
unanswered business
letters. His real gift was for
the song lyric…”
—Paul Schmidt
23
Tim Mayer ’62
filiate. He adapted and directed a film version of his Jesus: A
Passion Play for Americans, which was run each Easter on PBS
for years afterward. Mayer’s other contributions there ranged
from a screenplay of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the
Seven Gables to a sequence of nine dramatized bedtime stories.
Although he kept writing, he spent roughly five years working
for his father’s company.
In 1981, Mayer returned to Radcliffe as an artist-inresidence. That year also saw the release of “Sugar Trade,” a song
recorded by James Taylor for which Mayer had written the lyrics.
Mayer continued supplying words for Taylor’s music for
the next six years, culminating in their collaboration on the
play Home by Another Way. There is a new wistfulness and earnestness in many of these later song lyrics; for instance, “Usual
Love,” which describes long-accustomed love as monotonous
and unexciting, concludes with a sentimental surprise:
Think of all those old folks whose kids think
they’re jokes
as they tour-bus a national park;
and they walk hand-in-hand in a slow moving band,
like the animals leaving the ark.
While their kids jog alone, and they order by phone,
and I guess they can spell “Gorbachov”—
but they’d give their eye-teeth if their folks could
bequeath them
the secret of Usual Love.
After Mayer died, Taylor said, “I met Tim Mayer late. I’ve
never worked with anyone so smart, and I miss him now.”
In 1982, between his stints with Taylor, Mayer began work on the most high-profile project of his career: a
Broadway musical, My One and Only, built around the music
of George and Ira Gershwin. The producers hired another
Harvard whiz-kid—Peter Sellars, now famous as a radical
avant-garde opera director—to direct, and Mayer’s job was
to come up with a new plot that could be told through the
Gershwin music.
Sellars, like Mayer, had big ideas about changing the
face of American theater, although highly theoretical notions
about the nature of theater proved hard to integrate into the
genre of the Broadway musical.
The result, which featured lavish costumes and dancing
but also a minimal Cubist set, might have been many things,
but it was certainly not guaranteed to repay the producers’
$2.8 million investment. One producer acknowledged to the
Times that Sellars and Mayer were both “geniuses”—just not
the sort of geniuses this project required. Shortly after the first
run-through, the entire crew of young mavericks—Mayer,
Sellars, the music director, and the set designer—were all fired
and replaced with Broadway veterans.
A retooled, splashy, flashy, and loud My One and Only
was hastily thrown together and, seemingly against the odds,
became a commercial and critical hit: it ran for 767 performances and was nominated for nine Tony Awards. By the
time the rave reviews arrived, however, the show was no lon-
“I’ve never
worked with
anyone so
…”
smart
—James Taylor
b Royalties from
Mayer’s work still
come to Taft,
supporting the
Timothy S. Mayer
Theater Fund.
Tim Mayer ’62
ger the one Mayer had imagined, diminishing for Mayer the
sweetness of being jointly nominated for the Tony.
My One and Only marked both the beginning and the end of
Mayer’s involvement with Broadway. His partnership with Sellars
continued, however, first at the Boston Shakespeare Company
and then at the American National Theater in Washington.
Mayer staged his own translation of Brecht’s Mother
Courage and Her Children in Boston in 1984 to great acclaim. The New York Times wrote that Sellars and Mayer
“created an event that has eluded far wealthier and more seasoned American companies—a ‘Mother Courage’ with bite
and without tears. It certainly leaves one eager to see what
Mr. Mayer and Mr. Sellars will be up to next.”
What came next was a move to Washington, where Sellars
became artistic director, and Mayer associate director, of the
American National Theater at the Kennedy Center for the
Performing Arts, and the group “pushed the boundaries of
traditional drama during a brief and controversial, but influential reign during the mid-1980s.”
The Village Voice labeled the American National Theater
“a Theater of Outsiders,” saying of Mayer’s inaugural production of Henry IV: “This kind of production is both irritating
and provocative; I can’t say I enjoyed a minute of it, but everything I objected to made me examine my assumptions about
the ideas in the play more than if it had been a more ‘classic,’
textbook-official rendition.”
“
The next year, Mayer and his longtime companion
Donna Cusimano were involved in founding the Hudson
Valley Theater in Hyde Park, New York. The highlight of the
first season was Mayer’s translation and production of Brecht’s
A Man’s a Man, starring Bill Murray and Stockard Channing.
It was to be Mayer’s last major play; he was diagnosed with
cancer in 1987 and died on April 9, 1988. That summer,
20 years after he had made theater history there, the Agassiz
Theater held a celebration of Mayer’s life and work.
Not all of Mayer’s work was popular and acclaimed, but
it was not supposed to be. Instead, his work as a writer and
director aimed to provoke thought, to challenge assumptions,
to shift perspectives, and to open new possibilities. By that
measure, he was certainly successful, an influential iconoclast
who made his mark on his peers and on the American theater
scene. One of his poems provides, in typical Mayer fashion, a
concise parting comment on that success:
Don’t believe all you hear,
how I got all the breaks—
I was lucky, but still, competition’s
the one thing that nobody fakes.
And while I’m good
at this thing that I do,
look, I had to beat out lots of others,
and they were good too.
—T.S.M
H
is work as a writer
and director
aimed to provoke
thought, to challenge
assumptions, to shift
perspectives, and to open
new possibilities. ”
— Andrew Karas ’01
25
Don’t fear
the edges!
Loueta
Chickadaunce
teaches
kids to be
brave in art
and in life
Peter Finger
By Steven Le
L
oueta Chickadaunce is clearly in comman
d of the fit inside the frame. Push your
brain out of the way.” What Bisi
enormous art studio, the largest single
classroom is beginning to learn has beco
me
second nature to the older and
on campus. Various work stations form
clumps more advanced students, some
of whom have worked with Lou
around the room, grouped mostly by med
ia. Easels for four years and had begu
n their careers with no intentions
stand with canvases still showing white spac
e, and the smell of of becoming serious
art students. For four-year veteran Eliza
turpentine still lingers from the previous
class. From the stereo Whetzel, Ms. Chi
c’s
tute
lage has helped her develop her pasnext to the office door, Sarah McLachlan’s
voice serenades the sion for art and a desi
re to cultivate it in college.
students. During this session, the lower
mids and middlers are “She has taug
ht me to improve at what I am comfort
learning the basics of charcoal and working
able
with still life. Lou with and to explore
what I don’t have such a firm grasp on. She
seems to be dancing to the music from
one station to another inspires me to
pursue what I’m interested in,” explains
and instructing the nuances of light at the
Eliza.
same time.
Ms.
Chi
c
phra
ses it this way: “The part inside you that
After giving her students enough inst
likes
ructions to get start- to play it safe—th
at voice is so strong—needs to sit down
ed on the day’s project, Lou retrieves an
and
old photograph from shut up! If it’s hide
ous, let it be hideous; but let it be brave.”
her scrapbook. She begins to tell me the
history of the studio Other stud
ents, like upper-middler Lyssa Lincoln,
as if she were a curator and I a visitor to
apher museum. When ply what they hav
e learned from Ms. Chic about art to othe
Horace Dutton Taft built this space as part
r
of his “new build- areas of life. “She emp
hasizes the idea of looking at things as
ing” in 1914, it served as the study hall
for boys. The studio they are,” says Lyss
a. “Applying this outside the art room
that has relieved the space of its formal and
,I
regimented duties have learned to look
beyond the first impression or outward
still showcases the original vaulted ceili
ng and the balcony idea of somethi
ng to see with an open mind the trut
from which the watchful faculty on duty
h in
monitored the stu- whatever it may be.”
dents below. As she points to the balcony
overlooking neatly Senior Claire
Longfield also appreciates Ms. Chic’s life
symmetrical rows of desks, she lets out
a robust laugh—the lessons, “She taug
ht us to appreciate the ‘art’ in everyday
famous laugh. If a stranger happened to
life.
be downstairs in the She also has taug
ht us to be persistent with whatever we do;
dining hall lobby, he probably would pau
if
se out of sheer sur- we are working on
a piece, she teaches us to work it until it’s
prise at the unique and resonant sound;
but all of us presently beautiful or unti
l it’s dead.”
in the room are accustomed to Lou’s trad
emark. “You know,
this room was modeled after the monaste
ry architecture,” she
whispers as if sharing a secret, “and the balc
ony was where the
abbot would spy on the monks to keep orde
r. That should tell
you a little about this place!”
Lou pauses and excuses herself as she
walks over to answer
middler Maggie Hutton’s question abo
ut light. Sometimes a
demonstration speaks more clearly than
explanation, so Lou
settles herself on Maggie’s workbench to
illustrate the “cylinder method” of capturing light. Midway
through her demonstration, a tour group interrupts the clas
s, and Lou turns her
attention to them with an enthusiastic “Hi
!” before returning
to her instructions without missing a beat
. As Maggie smiles
with satisfaction and is ready to resume
her work, Lou whisks
off to help another student with the use
of space.
“You must not be afraid of edges,” Lou
says to lower middler Bisi Thompson, who is struggling to
fit the still life display
onto the canvas. “Do what your eyes tell
you, even if it doesn’t
27
Lou’s teaching philosophy grounds
itself in three maxims:
Do all the work; Make the mistakes; and
Be able to fix them.
She encourages students to make mistakes
and to thrive on
them, not simply to correct them and pret
end that they never
happened. In art, sometimes mistakes can
lead to beauty. “If
they don’t want to make mistakes,” claim
s Lou, “they should
go to chorus—or, at least, to calculus.”
Lou looks at art the same way she
sees life; she understands that many of our actions are
guided by passions,
and sometimes, passions alone. That she
is passionate is an
understatement for those who have seen
Lou teach or have
heard her make announcements about
the dress code during assemblies. Her passion is contagious,
as upper-middler
Esther Yoo attests: “She taught me how
to be passionate
about art. I paint for hours not to get it
done and get a good
grade, but because I want to.”
In fact, Esther recently has resolved
to become an art
major in college, a decision that initially
caused concern for
her parents. Last spring, after speaking
with Ms. Chic about
options for summer programs, Esther enro
lled in the Rhode
Island School of Design instead of atte
nding the summer
seminar at Cornell that her parents
had recommended.
Recognizing their daughter’s passion,
Esther’s parents supported her decision to pursue art in coll
ege. For Esther, that
was the first time she had made an imp
ortant decision independently. “Until then,” she says, “I just
did what my parents planned out for me.”
Lou’s advice to Esther came easi
ly because Lou had
learned early on to follow her own pass
ion. For her, the love
of art came early and naturally. Lou had
always loved school,
and she loved books most. “The books
were the best! And
the best parts in the books were the illus
trations. So, for me,
art was simply the best of the best.” Eve
n in high school, Lou
transferred schools simply to study with
certain art teachers.
Following high school, she and her
siblings were the first Nikko Pete
rson Thompson ’83 had been a student
generation in her family to attend college.
of
From Terre Haute, Lou’s during her
first stay at Taft and had recommended
Indiana, Lou crossed geographical and cult
to
ural boundaries to her daughter a favo
rite teacher.
join the art program at Boston Univers
ity. There, she was a In additio
n
to
making an impact on students, Lou
(self-described) hick in the big city. The
world she had entered has changed the
face of Taft itself by infiltrating alm
was so strange, and yet intriguing, that
ost
on two consecutive ever y hallway with
students’ artwork. It seems as if the
Saturdays, Lou took the bus from campus
to Logan Airport to Potter Gallery has
spilled into the hallways, from Bingha
walk through the sliding automatic doo
m
rs. “I had seen doors Auditorium to
the dining hall. About once a month,
that revolved, but never ones that slide
Lou
to the sides. That was hosts an art sho
w in the Gallery, complete with clas
the neatest thing! So, I went to the airp
siort and walked back cal music and
gian
t platters of hors d’oeuvres and sush
and forth just to see them open and clos
i.
e.”
Lou busies herself greeting guests, mon
Lou’s curiosity and humility turn
itoring the fragile
the world around her sculptures thou
ghtfully placed throughout the room
into a place of treasures waiting to be
, and
discovered. Her life is replenishing the
food and drinks table.
filled with hobbies and passions; one only
has to look at her Perhaps longtime
art teacher Mark Potter ’48 himself had
house for evidence. Nestled in an enclave
of trees and shrubber- recognized such
energy and passion in the young then-art
ies, the house adjacent to Mays Rink gree
stuts visitors with color- dent, in 1979, whe
n he drove down to search for a candidat
ful pottery, needlework, and canvases even
e
on the front porch. in Yale’s graduate
program. After examining Lou’s portfolio
And even though winter still blows its freez
ing wind, there are and speaking with
her briefly, he was satisfied with the pers
traces of a cultivated garden on the side visib
on
le to the sun.
who was to be his sabbatical replacement.
As expected, inside Lou’s house is
Lou
stay
ed
on
the
a gallery that features following year
to cover Gail Wynne’s sabbatical leave.
not only her own works, but also thos
In her
e done by others, in- third and final
year
, the school created a space for Lou by parcluding alumni whose works she has “sto
len” over the years. titioning one-third
of the old gym (now part of the Arts and
Then, there are the photographs of form
er students. “He got Humanities win
g).
married recently,” she points to a han
dsome boy. Her tone When she
returned in 2000, Lou replaced another
softens slightly as she refers to the beau
former
tiful girl next to him. student, Jennifer
Glenn Wuerker ’83, who had been hire
“She is now dating….” Her voice betrays
d to
a hint of nostalgia, stand in for Potter
when he became ill and had chosen to stay
as if she were talking about her own chil
dren.
on after his death in 1995. Some 60
Indeed, she regards many of her stud
to 65 students enroll
ents and dorm girls in Lou’s classes thes
e days, and their works can be admired
as a mother would, and that means disc
iplining them as a throughout the year
in the hallways and once or twice a year
parent would. The lower-school girls of
Mac House exchange at the Potter Gal
lery
exhibit that honors them.
knowing looks when they talk about her.
“She wants every- As I glance arou
nd the studio filled with energetic freshthing spotless, and she’s really strict,” shar
es one student with men working on
their still lifes and nodding to the mus
furrowed brows. Another nods her head
ic
and adds, “She is not in the backgrou
nd, I wonder which ones will go on to
afraid of giving grades; but she does keep
con
order.”
tribute to the beauty of their world.
If the mark of a good parent is not
On the stereo, Sarah
the child’s approval, McLachlan give
s way to Trisha Yearwood. The students
but the grown child’s appreciation, then
also
Lou has made her will change and grow
, but the lessons will stay the same. And
mark. Last fall, a student Lou didn’t kno
w well approached because Lou’s lesso
ns will stay the same, the students will
her and confided, “You know, Ms. Chi
c, I’ve thought about change and grow
.
this really carefully, and I would like you
to be my adviser.”
“Are you sure?” replied Lou, who
was caught off guard. Steven Le is in
his third year at Taft teaching Eng
“You barely know me and I barely know
lish. He missed
you.”
his
artis
tic
calli
ng
when he arrived at the U.S. Naval
“You know me, Ms. Chic!” exclaim
Academy
s the student. “I’m and realized that
there were no art courses offered.
Bisi, Nikko’s kid!”
He is single
and lives in CPT.
29
E
N
D
N
O
T
E
The Essential
Architect
Board Chairman Will Miller ’74 Steps Down
Peter Frew ’75
c Headmaster Willy
MacMullen ’78 thanks
retiring board chairman
Will Miller ’74 at a
dinner held in Miller’s
honor in January at the
America’s Society in
New York. The guitar
was a thank-you gift
from the board.
When Will Miller ’74 graduated from Taft,
the only buildings that had been added to
the campus since Horace Taft’s tenure were
the 70th Anniversary Science Center, the
“new” gymnasium, a hockey rink, and a
small dormitory.
Three decades later, the situation is very
different, thanks in great measure to Miller,
who spent 28 years on the school’s board of
trustees, the last four as its chair. In search of
new blood for the school’s board of trustees,
then headmaster Lance Odden asked recent
Yale graduate Will Miller ’74 to serve in
1978. Will soon became the moving force
behind the board’s Long-Range Planning
Committee, embarking on a journey that
would remake the campus over the next
quarter century.
“Will grew up in Columbus, Indiana,
where he was surrounded by buildings cre-
E
ated by the most innovative architects in the
world including Eero Saarinen, I.M. Pei,
Kevin Roche, and Cesar Pelli,” explained
John Vogelstein ’52, the trustee who preceded Miller as board chair. “He applied his
architectural sensibilities and took the lead in
a program that steadily remodeled and rebuilt
the school and its campus.”
Miller had a vision that would bring the
physical plant back in touch with Horace
Taft’s central buildings and at the same time
create facilities that would rival those of the
best independent schools.
Odden pointed out that the school has
had many great architectural firms at its side,
“but we have had only one, essential architect: Will Miller.”
“The care and quality with which we
craft the built environment of our school is
both a direct reflection of, and in turn an
enormous influence on, the care and quality
with which we craft educational experiences
for the young people entrusted to our care,”
Miller, who is chairman of Irwin Financial
Corporation, reminded his colleagues at the
dinner in his honor. “But you and I have
always understood that the most beautiful
buildings in the world on a campus in northwestern Connecticut would be meaningless
and without value if they did not exist in ser-
vice of a mission-driven institution with the
interest of the whole student at its core.”
“While we have all seen his hand in the
buildings on our campus,” Headmaster Willy
MacMullen ’78 adds, “what he has done behind the scenes—in strengthening the board’s
practices and leading our strategic planning—may be what reveals his most visionary
and forward thinking. It is the architecture of
decision making that really marks him.”
Among the changes of which Miller says
he is most proud are the school’s move to coeducation, its increased diversity, and its more
solid financial footing.
“There was much about this school in
1974 that I wanted to see changed,” Miller
said, “and Taft gave me the opportunity to
participate in the process of changing it. For
that, I have a lot of gratitude.”
“Will’s service to the school has been
inspiring,” says MacMullen. “He will go
down in the school’s history as a passionate
and deeply loyal graduate who embodied
the school motto. A great friend to me and
to Taft, he has been a source of impeccable
ethical judgment, deep caring, and brilliant
leadership.”
Miller will be succeeded as board chair
by Rod Moorhead ’62.
—Julie Reiff
N
D
N
O
T
Although he is largely
responsible for
crafting the campus
as we know it, Miller
says he is most proud
of the school’s move
to coeducation, its
increased diversity,
and its more solid
financial footing.
E
Taft Bulletin
Non-profit Org.
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PAID
Permit No. 101
Burl., VT 05401
The Taft School
Watertown, CT 06795-2100
860-945-7777
www.TaftAlumni.com
Change Service Requested
Come Celebrate
Reunion Classes 2006
Thursday, May 18 Dinner
Class of 1956
Michael Chelminski ’56
Recent Work
April 21–May 26
In the Mark W. Potter ’48 Art Gallery
Irish Garden
Oil on linen
48 in. by 44 in.
Notice: Postal regulations require the school to pay
70 cents for every copy not deliverable as addressed.
Please notify us of any change of address, giving
both the new and old addresses. You may e-mail
changes to [email protected].
The Taft School, Choral Room
Friday, May 19 Luncheons
Class of 1933
Class of 1936
Class of 1941
Class of 1946
Class of 1951
Class of 1956
Crowne Plaza, Southbury
The Litchfield Inn, Litchfield
Dolce Heritage, Southbury
Crowne Plaza, Southbury
Dolce Heritage, Southbury
Watertown Golf Club, Watertown
Friday, May 19 Dinners
Class of 1961
Class of 1966
Class of 1971
Class of 1976
Class of 1986
Class of 1991
Class of 1996
Watertown Golf Club, Watertown
Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury
Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury
Campbell Home, Watertown
Grappa’s, Southbury
Drescher’s, Waterbury
Saturday, May 20 Dinners
Class of 1981
Class of 2001
Highfield Country Club, Middlebury

Teaching the Art - The Taft School

Transcription

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