A woman and the sea

Transcription

A woman and the sea

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He climbs, he shoots, he skis…
Life at Rolling Stone
A woman and the sea
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B U L L E T I N
Fall 2005
Volume 76 Number 1
Bulletin Staff
Director of Development
John E. Ormiston
Editor
Julie Reiff
Alumni Notes
Linda Beyus
Design
Good Design, LLC
www.gooddesignusa.com
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:
Winter–November 15
Spring–February 15
Summer–May 30
Fall–August 30
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.
Tibetan Buddhist monks from the
Drepung Gomang Monastery chant
prayers of blessing over the Mandala
of Healing they created in the Mark
W. Potter ’48 Gallery during their visit
in September. Peter Frew ’75
F E AT U R E S
cover story: Alpine Nomad..................... 16
The mountains of the world have their hold on Colin Samuels
’85, who climbs, photographs, skis, and makes his home in
the French Alps.
By Linda Hedman Beyus
My Back Pages....................................... 22
Underneath his trendier-than-Clark-Kent disguise, Will
Dana ’81—the new managing editor of Rolling Stone—is
more magician than superhero. His first trick: restoring the
magazine to its former glory.
By Julie Reiff
Reeling Them In..................................... 26
Professional fly angler Diana Rudolph ’90 has caught some
of the biggest fish around.
By Julia Feldmeier ’99
D E PA R T M E N T S
Letters.................................................... 2
Alumni Spotlight.................................... 3
Around the Pond.................................... 6
Around the Pond and Beyond............... 12
Endnote: Little Rock Five....................... 30
By Julie Reiff
on the cover
Not the easiest way to find snow. Ski mountaineering
photographer Colin Samuels ’85 has made a career doing
what he loves. (See page 16.) Colin Samuels collection
Taft on the Web
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Visit www.TaftSports.com
for the latest Big Red coverage.
For other campus news and events, including admissions
information, visit our main site at www.TaftSchool.org, with
improved calendar features and Around the Pond stories.
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shop online at
www.TaftStore.com
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Big Easy to the Big Red
By the start of October, three new students from Louisiana had begun to
settle in to their new Taft routines. To
accommodate the increased enrollment
in an already full school, one of the common rooms in Vogelstein Dormitory was
temporarily converted to a double.
Responses to the headmaster’s
letter* updating alumni and parents
about the school’s outreach efforts
were impressive. Some of them are
shared, briefly, here.
—Julie Reiff, editor
This is why I still love this place so much!
—John Gagne ’80
I am happy to see the two-part response. First, try to help everyone,
and, second, help “one of our own.”
I would have been upset if Taft had
only made space for another privateschool kid or two. I am not surprised
that you and the school reacted as you
did, just happy about it.
—John Merrow ’59
Great idea! One of the reasons I am
proud to be an alumnus of Taft.
—Tim Carew ’65
Taft will be well represented in the
relief effort: My three-year-old daughter just packed her Taft rhino T-shirt
into one of the backpacks she and her
brothers have assembled for displaced
children with school supplies, small
toys, and notes to kids.
—Jessica Tausend Baccus ’83
What an appropriate and splendid commitment for the school to make. Certainly
it is in the very best of the Taft tradition.
—Steve Henkel ’53
Letters
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 Fall 2005
S
It was heartening to read that the Taft
community has once again proven its collective dedication to humanity, especially
to those in times of need. Thanks for sharing the news and reminding me that, even
in the midst of a hectic life, there is always
a greater good to be served.
—Debbie Zawadzki ’80
Bravo! At a time like this, the Taft
motto is most important—not to be
served but to serve.
—Peter Buttenheim ’60
Compassion and empathy are treasures
of the heart. These have immeasurable
value as compared to treasures of the
storehouse or the body. The most
important accomplishment in life is
to reach out to someone in need and
make a real difference, turning poison
into medicine.
—Nicholas Bessmer ’77
Well done! I would have expected nothing less of you and the Taft community,
but it is still good to know that you are all
responding as one would have hoped.
—Bridget Macaskill P’02,’05
I am touched by your e-mail as I have seldom been. Besides the simple eloquence
of your expression, the superb values expressed in the activities of the entire school
community are a terrific example of how
both individuals and a community can
ennoble and grace others. How wonderful to have a motto that means something
and is actually lived…sed ut ministret.
—Jonathan Dill ’63
Having seen and been involved with a
very similar disaster in Haiti one year
ago, I can appreciate the hope your
letter offers. Taft’s caring response
makes me proud to be an alumnus.
—Bruce Johnson ’67
I am heartened by the school’s response
to Katrina. Reminds me of its response
to the Little Rock integration crisis
in 1958, when Taft made a place for a
“refugee” from Arkansas after term had
already started [see page 56]. I have
been profoundly grateful for the school’s
willingness to reach out and connect in
times of need and to remind all of us that
we can each be part of the solution.
—Jim Rule ’60
I’m sure others have pointed out a
parallel situation in 1958 when Taft
opened its doors to four or five students from Little Rock who were affected by the turmoil of the civil rights
confrontations in that city. I believe
that small band produced a starting
linebacker for Yale and a candidate
for U.S. Congress. In adversity there
may be significant opportunity.
—Henry Lanier ’61
It’s good to know that Taft has responded rapidly and generously to the
worst natural disaster in our nation’s
history. I would have expected no less.
—Bob Murdock ’47
[Their] transition from the Big Easy
to the Big Red is clearly being conducted with the same sense of community, compassion, and high expectations from all involved…. This is
Taft at its finest, its motto in action.
Horace would approve.
—Ev Anderson ’64
*Didn’t receive the headmaster’s September
e-mail? View the latest update online at
http://www.taftschool.org/katrina/.
A Numbers Game
The endnote essay in the summer
issue (“Boy of Summer, Father of
Fall”) brings to light a disturbing issue regarding college admissions. The
myopic pursuit of admission to the
“best” colleges (to wit, Ivy League)
and the competition it fosters seems
misguided and unhealthy. Regrettable
are those businesses that promote
and encourage such competition for
a substantial fee and capitalize on
the specious argument that Harvard
equals success.
And it is sad, indeed, that there
are admissions personnel who revel in
this résumé-building charade. Isn’t a
more grounded approach to enriching
one’s personal development—intellectually and spiritually, and thereby enriching others—the formula for success
that should be nurtured? Isn’t that, after
all, the essence of a Taft education?
The college admission process is a
competition, undeniably, and it should
be pursued in earnest without the hubris of elitism. The numbers game will
disqualify many good applicants to
Harvard and the like, but other schools
will benefit and so will we all.
—Roy Schonbrun ’68
In Sheep’s Clothing
I read in the summer issue that the
faculty had picked Farley Mowat’s
Never Cry Wolf as a book the entire
school would read over the summer
and discuss this fall as you “revisit the
key theme of our human relationship,
interaction, and participation in the
natural world.” Laudable as the goal
is, this book was a surprising choice,
and to my mind, a thoughtless one. I
only hope that the discussion that occurs this fall can correct at least some
problems with the book and salvage
something of value from this exercise.
I have written a half dozen
scientific, legal, and ethical publications regarding wolves, whales, and
other wildlife. I am currently a member of the International Union for
the Conservation of Nature’s Canid
Specialist Group, a group of 100 scientists from around the world that
monitors the conservation status and
biological knowledge of all 37 species
of canids—including wolves (www.
canids.org).
Also, I am a qualified fan of
Farley Mowat’s. My problem with
his nonautobiographical books is
that they play extremely loose with
the facts and the persons described.
Mowat’s story, presented as alleged
science, undercuts the credibility of
real scientists—reinforcing the public
misconception that researchers find
only what they want to find and misleading people badly about the true
nature of wolves and our environmental issues.
What saddens me is that there
are so many other, better books that
the Taft community could, and
should, have read. I recommend Barry
Lopez’s Of Wolves and Men, Aldo
Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac, or
selected portions of Jared Diamond’s
Guns, Germs, and Steel or The Third
Chimpanzee—all excellent books that
are scientifically sound and sure to
elicit the sought-after debate.
The world is suffering a humancaused environmental catastrophe that
is threatening most species, including
humans. Taft needs to lead the effort
toward scientific literacy, which is falling to frightening levels, and awareness
of the environment. But Taft can only
do so if it adheres to the highest standards of honesty and lets the scientific
process inform us, rather than illegitimately presenting one’s own prejudices
as “science,” no matter how agreeable
those prejudices may seem.
—Jim Scarff ’66
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT
© Noah Greenberg/Vistalux
S P OT L I G H T
A Capital Game
His career “is catching fire” and he’s “sizzling,” according to People magazine in its
latest list of eligible bachelors; Winston
Bao Lord ’86 is one of the “Guys on the
Rise” in the June 27 issue.
“I got flooded with random
e-mails after that came out; my thirdgrade teacher and several ex-girlfriends
even tracked me down,” Lord said.
“Some included photos of themselves.”
As executive director of the
Washington Baseball Club, he has been
working for six years to bring a team
to the nation’s capital. “Not only was
Washington the largest market without
a franchise, but it just makes sense that
the national pastime needs to be in the
nation’s capital.”
Lord had just started his own advertising business back in 1999 when D.C.
Mayor Tony Williams announced his
hopes of bringing a Major League Baseball
franchise back to the city. “It was an unbelievably perfect opportunity,” said Lord, a
native Washingtonian who is equally passionate about his hometown as he is about
baseball. “This was a chance to do something for the city I love.”
Hired as the executive director that
year, he began working full-time for the
group in 2002, when MLB made the decision to relocate the Expos out of Montreal
because of declining ticket sales. The original group of six investors in Lord’s group
has grown to 12 community and business
leaders (including former Secretary of
State Colin Powell) and has endorsements
from the mayor as well as a number of key
members on the Hill.
Now that the team is already in
D.C., all that remains is for the league to
pick an ownership group from the eight
who are competing. The process of acquiring the team has been “a lot like promoting a political candidate,” says Lord.
The 29 MLB owners will make the decision, and three-quarters need to vote
for you.” The league planned to make a
decision by the end of September. Lord
was optimistic. “We hope to lead the
major league in community initiatives
and partnerships, to use the team as a
platform to help the city.”
The Cell Game:
Sam Waksal’s Fast Money
and False Promises—and
the Fate of ImClone’s
Cancer Drug
Alex Prud’homme ’80
HarperBusiness, 2004
It began with a promising cancer drug—
the brainchild of a gifted researcher—
and grew into an insider trading scandal
that ensnared one of America’s most successful women. The story of ImClone
Systems and its “miracle” cancer drug,
Erbitux, is the quintessential business
saga of the late 1990s.
At the center of it all stands Sam
Waksal, a brilliant, mercurial, and desperate-to-be-liked entrepreneur, addicted to the trappings of wealth and
fame. He promised that Erbitux would
“change oncology,” and would soon
make $1 billion a year.
When the FDA withheld approval
of Erbitux, he panicked and desperately
tried to cash in his stock before the bad
news hit Wall Street.
Waksal is now in jail, the first of the
Enron-era white-collar criminals to be
sentenced. Yet Erbitux remains promising, the leading example of a new way to
fight cancer.
Publishers Weekly called Prud’homme’s
reporting “especially strong when he delves
into the seemingly haphazard way in which
ImClone distributed C225 for ‘compassionate use’ during the clinical testing period.” Booklist called The Cell Game “exemplarily written,” and U.S. News said,
“Prud’homme weaves a chilling tale.”
Alex Prud’homme is a writer living
in Brooklyn, New York. His work has
appeared in Vanity Fair, the New Yorker,
the New York Times, Time, and People.
He is currently working on a biography
of Julia Child.
Middle Eastern Democracy 101
Dick Williams ’89 spent two weeks in
Jordan and Egypt “at a fascinating time in
the political evolution of both countries.”
He was asked to participate in a bipartisan
delegation of nine “young political
leaders” to the Middle East through a
program organized and partly funded by
the American Council of Young Political
Leaders and the U.S. State Department.
On an invitation from the speaker,
they attended the roll call vote in the
People’s Assembly of Egypt in May 2005
when the Egyptian legislature voted to
amend their constitution to allow for
competitive (multicandidate) presidential elections. They also had meetings
with the speaker as well as the leaders
of several opposition parties “hearing
about history as it was being made,”
he adds. The historic Egyptian election
took place in September, capturing the
world’s attention for its implications for
the rest of the region.
Similarly, in Jordan, they met with
the leaders of the Upper and Lower
Houses of Parliament as well as the architects of the democratic reforms that they
are undertaking currently. “The program
is designed to introduce members of the
delegation to social and economic leaders
in these countries,” Williams explains,
“in order to understand better the role of
politics in everyday life.”
Williams would love to continue to
raise the profile of the Middle East as
he finds it to be a place that is “a living
breathing contradiction—full of antiAmericanism because of their perception of our policies yet simultaneously
evolving towards our governmental and
economic models and, as we all know,
obsessed with our pop culture! This is
an area of the world that we will continue to misunderstand at our own peril.”
Williams also worked at campaign
headquarters in Washington in 2003
and 2004 as a member of the finance
team of Bush-Cheney ’04 and started a
program aimed at the next generation
(under 40) all over the country that
raised more than $10 million beyond
their target. “I had an unforgettable experience (in both a positive and a negative sense) in the eye of the hurricane!”
. Dick Williams ’89, on a tour of the
Middle East, at the lost city of Petra with
one of the group’s Jordanian hosts, Samer
Kawar, who runs the Jordanian Young
Economists Society.
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT
Up to the Mountain:
Wade Hampton Frost,
Pioneer Epidemiologist,
1880–1938
Thomas M. Daniel ’47
University of Rochester
Press, 2004
No Alabaster Box
Charles D. Bradley ’56
XLibris, 2005
Distressed
Investment Banking:
To the Abyss and Back
Henry Owsley and
Peter S. Kaufman ’71
Beard Books, 2005
The Pineapple:
King of Fruits
Fran Beauman ’95
Random House, 2005
Home with
the Rangers
The Family Stone
The All-American Football Foundation
recognized Larry Stone at its 72nd
Banquet of Champions in Boston in
July. He received the President Gerald
R. Ford All-American High School
Coach Award.
At the same event, they recognized
his daughter Kelly Stone ’77 for her
work with the Eastern College Athletic
Conference. Larry, who began his career at Taft in the fall of 1962, coached
football, baseball, and served as Taft
athletic director for more than 30
years, retiring in 1995.
Former Ohio State University standout Ben Crabtree ’01 signed with the
Texas Rangers, who drafted him in
the 26th round of the Major League
Baseball Amateur Draft in June.
“I’m really excited to be able to
play the game that I love and actually
have someone pay me to do it,” he
said. “Signing a professional contract
is something that I’ve wanted to do
my whole life.”
While in Ohio, Crabtree set the
state’s all-time hits mark on the last
day of the season. He led his team in
nearly every offensive category, with
72 hits, 14 doubles, 10 home runs,
and a .344 batting average. He’s
currently playing for the Spokane
Indians, the Rangers’ development
team in the Northwest League.
A
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Peter Frew ’75
To Russia with Love
Perestroika, glasnost, and the end of the
Cold War have been important news
stories in History Department chair
Jon Willson’s adulthood, so when he received the Davis Fellowship earlier this
year, he knew right away he wanted to
travel to Russia to see the transformation of that country from the communist Soviet Union to a capitalist, “sort of
democratic” society, he says.
Using plenty of frequent flier miles to
bring his family along with him, Jon (with
wife Sarah, daughter Cassie, and sons Sam
and Luke) flew to Helsinki in August,
“wanting to squeeze in as many cultural
experiences as we could,” says Jon.
Three days later they spent the
better part of a day on the train to
St. Petersburg, where Sarah’s sister
Maud, who is married to a Russian,
lives. “We wanted to travel without a
group, so having them there really made
that possible. Not too many people on
tour groups have the chance to go to the
local vegetable market, figure out how
to get on the right bus, and eat borscht
Davis Fellow Jon Willson ’82 and his wife Sarah Albee in Russia’s Red Square
at the homes of real Russian people.”
They toured the Hermitage, the
Russian Museum, and the Winter
Palace, and spent a day at Maud’s dacha
in the countryside. Sarah and Jon also
flew to Moscow for a day without the
kids, where they toured the Kremlin
and Red Square.
Hoping to offer a Russian history
elective next year, Jon also managed to
interview a few septuagenarians about
their fascinating, and often-harrowing
memories of the Stalin era, with Maud
acting as translator. “This was an amazing trip,” Jon adds. “To be able to see a
culture from a native’s perspective—and
to have the opportunity to hear firsthand accounts from those who lived
through the eras that I teach—was a
powerful experience.”
AROUND THE POND
Special Trips and Special Effects
You’re in beautiful Glacier National Park
when suddenly you see a young man fall
from a precipice, crashing through the
trees as he drops, only to wind up suspended from the branches over the raging river below.
No, that never actually happened—at
least not in real life—but hopefully it will
look as if it had. If the eight students who
traveled to Montana with acting and video
teacher Rick Doyle over the summer and
the students in his film editing class this
year have anything to say about it, you’ll
be biting your nails as you watch the scene
unfold on the big screen in May.
Beginning what Doyle calls the
most intensive project he’s ever taken
on, the group spent two weeks out west
filming many of the scenes they will use
in a yearlong venture. Students in his
video class worked out the basic story
line for the movie in the spring, which
Doyle then flushed out as a screenplay.
“We shot most of the live action in
the mountains at Glacier, some as high
up as 12,000 feet,” Doyle says. “There
were bears and bald eagles; it was absolutely extraordinary.”
Inner Circle—the project’s working
title—is a fantasy movie along the lines
of Lord of the Rings. Students dressed in
medieval costumes and acted out sword
fights with real metal swords. For the
more dangerous or “fantastic” scenes,
Doyle has planned over 100 special effects, which students will work on over
the course of the year with professionallevel editing and 3-D modeling software
(Maya, VUE, and Shake).
They’ve built a 12-by-24-foot green
screen in the Woodward Black Box
Theater to film some of that action.
“With the new software, students can
create whole backgrounds and even new
kinds of animals that they can then animate and ride in the film.
“What I always tell the kids is that
story is the most important thing, but
they can use these special effects to
help carry the story,” says Doyle. “And
they’ll need to learn to solve problems
to make those special effects work.
McCloskey, Flora Nagy, Grace Scott,
Marlena Slowik, and Emma Strubell.
“It was such a wonderful trip,” says
Marlena. “Some of my favorite moments were just sitting upstairs in our
rented cabin and watching the reruns of
the tape from that day.” For all of them,
though, finally seeing the actors in their
costumes, getting the light working, or
hiking six hours up a mountain in the
Ben Grinberg ’07 surveys the Montana landscape in the film Inner Circle, which debuts in May.
It really is about problem solving.”
This gives the kids something concrete to apply their newly acquired editing skills to, he explains, a real application of what they are learning. “When
the movie plays on the big screen in May,
it has to look absolutely photorealistic.”
Students on the trip were senior
Bill Lane, and upper mids Benjamin
Grinberg, Sara Merrick-Albano, Neal
sweltering heat just to get a few quick
minutes of travel scenes will be moments they say they’ll remember long
after the movie airs.
All the students who ventured out
to Montana did make it safely back to
Watertown at the end of the project.
Perhaps the students who create the credits
at the end should add the line: No students
were harmed in the filming of this movie.
AROUND THE POND
The Teen Brain
New York Times Medical Editor Barbara
Strauch explains to the faculty the latest
research on changes in the adolescent
brain. Peter Frew ’75
“I would there were no age between sixteen
and three-and-twenty, or that youth would
sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the
between but getting wenches with child,
wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting.”
—Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale
Barbara Strauch, the medical science and
health editor for The New York Times, explained the latest research on the teenage
brain to the faculty at their opening meeting in September. Her book The Primal
Teen is a groundbreaking look at how new
discoveries in neuroscience “may help us
to understand our children.” She says that
as the mother of two teenagers, she was
“motivated to try to figure this out.”
Scientists previously thought brain was
set by age 13 and all that could be added
was more content, more experiences, but
through advances in magnetic resonance
imaging, they are now able to see what’s
happening in a living teenage brain, and
the results, she says, have been amazing.
“Starting around age 11 for girls and
12 for boys,” she explains, “there is a big
jump in the growth of the gray matter
of the brain, that outer layer that makes
us much of what we are. Then, there’s a
massive pruning and disposal of millions
of brain branches, cutting away as much
as 50 percent in some smaller regions.”
The changes the brain goes through during adolescence are, experts now say, as
dramatic and crucial as those that take
place in the first two years of life.
Legacy List Alumni and their children and grandchildren at Taft
Great-Grandparents
Henry Wick Chambers 1895*.............. Timothy R. Chambers ’07
Thomas W. Chrystie ’21*............................. Henry T. Wyman ’07
Roth F. Herrlinger ’22*............................. Daniel M. Hillman ’06,
Elizabeth L. Lanahan ’08, Scott H. Hillman ’09
Charles P. Luckey ’18*..............................Charlotte D. Luckey ’08
Samuel F. Pryor Jr. ’17*.................................Antonia R. Pryor ’07
Grandparents
Eldredge L. Bermingham ’43*........Alexander N. Bermingham ’08
Edward Madden Bigler ’40*...........................Marika K. Bigler ’06,
Griffith B. Bigler ’08
Dexter Barnes Blake ’33*........................Charlotte G. Bromley ’08
G. Renfrew Brighton Jr. ’43................... Whitney Z. Brighton ’06
John B. S. Campbell ’34*....................... Susannah M. Walden ’06
Robert A. Campbell ’34*.......................Robert A. Campbell II ’07
Much of this activity occurs in the
prefrontal cortex—the section of the
brain that “allows us to plan ahead, to resist impulses, to NOT do something totally insane. This is the rational area that
helps us resist impulses, or at least count
to ten first,” she said. As a result, teens are
more likely to use a more emotional part
of the brain and are less able to anticipate
the consequences of their actions.
There is also increased chemical activity going on in the brain at that age—
dopamine, melatonin—explaining at least
in part why teens love to sleep late or seek
new thrills. We can help them understand
what’s going on and sometimes make adjustments, she adds, whether it’s changing
the length of a driver’s permit or letting
them sleep later.
The good news, she says, is that their
ability to think abstractly is growing, as is
their awareness of emotion in other people.
“Their brains are open to new experiences.
We have to nudge them, be their prefrontal
cortex at times—not necessarily telling them
what to do, but helping them realize the
consequences. Given their newfound awareness of others, keeping them too sheltered at
this age could mean a lost opportunity for
developing in them a sense of altruism.”
Livingston Carroll ’37*........................ David J. Carroll-Kenny ’07
H. Wick Chambers Jr. ’27*.................. Timothy R. Chambers ’07
Ronald H. Chase ’54................................. Hillary N. Simpson ’06
Thomas L. Chrystie ’51................................ Henry T. Wyman ’07
Barnaby Conrad Sr. ’40.................................... Helen P. Gazin ’07
Roy E. Demmon ’45
Katharine L. Demmon ’09,
A. Bailey Fowlkes ’09
Arthur T. Garfunkel ’44*........................... Amy L. Brownstein ’09
John C. Geupel ’45*.......................................Noah D. Geupel ’08
Edward F. Herrlinger II ’46
Daniel M. Hillman ’06,
Elizabeth L. Lanahan ’08, Scott H. Hillman ’09
Herbert S. Ide ’21*............................................William A. Ide ’09
Lee Paul Klingenstein ’44...................................Lee S. Ziesing ’07
Charles A. Lamb ’42...............................Charles A. L. Bartlett ’08
George R. Lindemer ’42.....................................Eric L. Becker ’08
Charles P. Luckey Jr. ’43*.........................Charlotte D. Luckey ’08
AROUND THE POND
More than 70 teachers and leaders from Urban Education Exchange partner schools
came to Watertown in August for their Summer Training Workshop. Steven Valenti
While We Were Away…
Urban Education Exchange recently
held its Summer Training Workshop at
Taft for the second time. “The training
marks a critical first step,” says Executive
Director Nancy McDonnell Scharff, “in
introducing teachers from our partner
schools to the UEE program.” More
than 70 attendees from their seven partner schools came to Watertown from
August 10 to 12.
UEE is a nonprofit organization
committed to fostering a culture of
academic excellence in urban elementary schools by providing teachers with
a research-based curriculum, intensive
teacher training, and detailed assessments. UEE provides the tools to ad-
dress the academic needs of an at-risk
urban population.
“We recognize that teachers are a
critical component in ensuring students
receive a quality education,” Scharff
says. Founded in 1991 as the Friends
of the Family Academy, a model public school in Harlem, UEE’s vision is to
empower a growing network of schools
with tools and best practices.
“And the program is working!” says
Scharff. “We have just received test scores
from our two New York partner schools
and are delighted with the results.”
Among their New York City partner
schools, 84 percent of fourth grade students are reading at or above grade level.
Condict Moore ’34.....Emily L. Moore ’07, Catherine R. Moore ’09
James I. Moore ’41*........................................Emily L. Moore ’07,
Catherine R. Moore ’09
Samuel F. Pryor III ’46..................................Antonia R. Pryor ’07
Walter C. Reisinger ’42*............................Abigail B. Reisinger ’08
Edward Van V. Sands ’14*.................................Diana P. Sands ’06
Spyros S. Skouras ’41
Spyros S. Skouras III ’06,
Sophia M. Skouras ’08
Harry W. Walker II ’40.............................. Holland E. Walker ’07
John S. Wold ’34....................................... Claire W. Longfield ’06
Parents
Randolph G. Abood ’68...........................R. George Abood Jr. ’07
Eric D. Albert ’77......... Lindsay C. Albert ’06, Jamie E. Albert ’08
Jonathan D. Albert ’79.....................................Sarah B. Albert ’09
Robert C. Barber ’75..................................... Martha J. Barber ’08
All of the teachers from three partner schools—KIPP SHINE Prep (the
first “Knowledge Is Power Program”
elementary school), Waterside School
(which targets low-income students
in Stamford, Connecticut), and Girls
Preparatory Academy (a charter school
opening this fall on the Lower East
Side)—attended the summer training
sessions at Taft. Leaders and staff from
four other partner schools and UEE
board members came as well (including
Drummond Bell ’63, who was instrumental in arranging the group’s use of
the Taft campus).
“This is a great partnership,” says
Headmaster Willy MacMullen ’78, “and
one we are thrilled to be part of.”
“As usual TAFT was over the top,”
says Scharff. “We could not have felt
more welcomed and supported by everyone we met. Teachers and their families were very friendly. The food was
excellent, and everyone was very comfortable in the surroundings. I cannot
begin to tell you what a positive impact
your wonderful school setting has on
all of our teachers...and all of our prospective teachers and board members.
EVERYONE was charged up!”
John W. Biedermann ’77........................... Max P. Biedermann ’08
Paul G. Bigler II ’74........Marika K. Bigler ’06, Griffith B. Bigler ’08
Arthur F. Blake ’67.................................Charlotte G. Bromley ’08
Richard W. Blossom ’66..................................Carissa Blossom ’08
Martha Stine Boyd ’73..................................... Emily C. Boyd ’07
Henry G. Brauer ’74
Mary O. Brauer ’08,
Benjamin H. Brauer ’09
Shawn D. Brazo ’82......................................Zachary A. Brazo ’09
Renfrew M. Brighton ’74....................... Whitney Z. Brighton ’06
John S. Brittain Jr. ’77..................................John S. Brittain V ’06
Matthew Bronfman ’77.................................Eli M. Bronfman ’07
Lawrence F. Brownstein ’74....................... Amy L. Brownstein ’09
Gordon S. Calder Jr. ’65..............................William C. Calder ’07
Robert C. Campbell ’76........................Robert A. Campbell II ’07
Wick R. Chambers ’66......................... Timothy R. Chambers ’07
Charles J. Demmon ’79........................ Katharine L. Demmon ’09 c c c
AROUND THE POND
Peter Frew ’75
Admissions by the Numbers
Director of Admissions Ferdie Wandelt
’66 and his team of admissions officers
received 4,780 inquiries last year and reviewed more than 1,400 applications for
192 places among this year’s student body.
Here’s how the numbers break down:
c460 boarders and 105 day students
c292 boys and 273 girls
c103 lower middlers, evenly divided
New Faces
on the Faculty
Front from left, Jason BreMiller,
English; John Magee, English; Kaitlin
Harvie, English fellow; Andrew
Svensk ’94, mathematics; second row,
Gil Thornfeldt, business manager;
Lydia Finley, science fellow; EnyiAbal Koene, French fellow; Robertson
Follansbee, science; third row, Molly
MacLean, French; Cheryl Setchell,
history fellow; Seiko Michaels,
Japanese; and Kristen Fairey, history.
between boys and girls, chosen from
a pool of 730 candidates
cTogether, they represent 34
states and 19 countries. Students
of color make up 24 percent of
the student body, with 139—the
largest number ever.
cTuition, room, and board for the
2005–06 school year rose by 6
percent to $35,000, with a 10
percent increase in the amount
of financial aid awarded—a record $4.7 million.
Fudan Scholars
Senior Lexi Comstock meets new
students Lily Shen ’07 and Julia Qin ’07
while on a summer visit to China. Lily
and Julia, who arrived in September,
are the school’s first students from
Fudan University in Shanghai.
c c c Nancy Demmon ’81.................................... A. Bailey Fowlkes ’09
Joseph O. Dillard ’84................................ Monisha R. Dillard ’08,
Joseph O. Dillard Jr. ’09
K. Gregg Douglas ’79....................................Colin T. Douglas ’09
Paul M. Ehrlich ’62..................................Benjamin A. Ehrlich ’06
J. Keith Fell ’72.................................................J. Keith Fell Jr. ’08
Jeffrey Foote ’73..................................................Julie E. Foote ’09
Alexis D. Gahagan ’74............................. William D. Gahagan ’06
Michael D. Gambone ’78*........................... Kyle S. Gambone ’06
Carl M. Geupel ’68........................................Noah D. Geupel ’08
David W. Griffin ’74.........................................Julia B. Griffin ’08
Gordon P. Guthrie Jr. ’62............................. Joseph S. Guthrie ’07
Laura Weyher Hall ’78...................................Caroline C. Hall ’06
Elizabeth Christie Hibbs ’78........................William C. Hibbs ’08
Katharine Herrlinger Hillman ’76............. Daniel M. Hillman ’06,
Scott H. Hillman ’09
10 Taft Bulletin Fall 2005
“Enrollments at day schools have increased steadily over the past three years,”
says Wandelt, “while enrollment at
boarding schools has decreased. So why
has our applicant pool remained constant? Because Taft enjoys a reputation as
a school that stands for academic excellence, first-rate college placement, and is
nationally known for the care it brings to
raising other people’s children.”
Nancy Goldsborough Hurt ’79............................. Cai S. Hurt ’08,
Nicolas A. Hurt ’09
Douglas G. Johnson ’66.................................Peter B. Johnson ’08
Laura Gieg Kell ’73............................................Arthur L. Kell ’08
H. Craig Kinney ’68...................................... Jane I. E. Kinney ’06
Andrew J. Klemmer ’75.............................Austin G. Klemmer ’07
Daniel K. F. Lam ’75..................................Adrienne P. Y. Lam ’07
Susan Condie Lamb ’77..........................Charles A. L. Bartlett ’08
Leslie Herrlinger Lanahan ’73.................Elizabeth L. Lanahan ’08
Brian C. Lincoln ’74................................Lysandra D. Lincoln ’07
Todd W. Luckey ’75.................................Charlotte D. Luckey ’08
Ann Magnin ’76................................................ Elena C. Stein ’09
Lisa Reid Mayer ’75........................................Drew W. Mayer ’08
Sharon G. McLaughlin ’73..................... Laura R. McLaughlin ’06
James I. Moore Jr. ’74......................................Emily L. Moore ’07,
Catherine R. Moore ’09
AROUND THE POND
The Mark Potter Gallery Schedule
2005–2006
September 19–23
The Sacred Arts Tour
from the Drepung Gomang
Monastic University
September 30
to October 31
Jon Guiffre
Pleasant Distractions
November 3
to December 9
Mauricio Handler
Photographer
January 6
to February 2
Taft Student Work
Opening reception
Friday, January 6
February 17
to March 10
Juried High School Art
Competition
Opening reception
Friday, February 17
March 31 to April 14
Taft Student Work
April 21
to May 26
Paintings by
Michael Chelminski ’56
Recent Work
Opening reception
Friday, April 21
June through August 2006
Taft Student Work
Free Roaming Horse: Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, by Jon Guiffre m
“My work in photography and painting has never been about sending a message to the viewer,” explains photographer Jon
Guiffre, who is also director of publicity and sports information at Taft. “For me it has always been about looking at something
beautiful for the sole purpose of enjoying that photograph or painting.”
Jeffrey Paley ’56................................................ Austin T. Paley ’09
Kenneth A. Pettis ’74..................................... Kendra B. Pettis ’06
Jean Strumolo Piacenza ’75....................... Thomas F. Piacenza ’06
Samuel F. Pryor IV ’73..................................Antonia R. Pryor ’07
Langdon C. Quin III ’66.................................. Adrian F. Quin ’08
Ronald B. Reisinger ’60.............................Abigail B. Reisinger ’08
Edward Van V. Sands ’65...................................Diana P. Sands ’06
Carl H. Sangree ’75....................................William A. Sangree ’08
Kenneth A. Saverin ’72.................................Hilary C. Saverin ’06
Roy A. Schonbrun ’68....................... Stephanie D. Schonbrun ’07
Spyros S. Skouras Jr. ’72.......................... Spyros S. Skouras III ’06,
Sophia M. Skouras ’08
Michael S. Stein ’73.......................................... Elena C. Stein ’09
Taylor J. Strubell ’63.................................... Emma T. Strubell ’07
Tom R. Strumolo ’70.............................. Andrew C. Strumolo ’06,
Harriet E. Strumolo ’07
Paul A. Sylvester ’74.................................. Bridget K. Sylvester ’08
Bridget Taylor ’77............. Reed E. Coston ’06, Elias P. Coston ’08
Samuel W. M. Thayer ’72......................... Katharine T. Thayer ’07
Nikko Peterson Thompson ’83.............. Olabisi O. Thompson ’09
C. Dean Tseretopoulos ’72................Denisia K. Tseretopoulos ’07
Amy E. Upjohn ’79.......................................Elizabeth K. Brey ’08
George D. Utley III ’74................................ Hannah D. Utley ’07
Elizabeth Brown Van Sant ’75....................Elinore F. Van Sant ’07,
Mary Jennings Van Sant ’09
Sally Childs Walsh ’75......................................Mary C. Walsh ’06
Christopher C. Wardell ’69................... Clayton C.H. Wardell ’06
Brooks Hendrie Widdoes ’73.................Margaret H. Widdoes ’08
W. Dewees Yeager III ’75........................... Benjamin B. Yeager ’07
Joanne Klingenstein Ziesing ’78.........................Lee S. Ziesing ’07
Michael D. Zucker ’77............................ Benjamin H. Zucker ’09
*Deceased
11
A
ND T H
E
U
RO
This year, three separate funds were available to help students find meaningful summer
experiences: Meg Page Fellowships, Kilbourne Arts Fellowships, and Robert K. Poole
Fellowships. As you will see, students put their resources and talents to good use.
Caring about Healthcare
When Eliza Jackson ’06 and
Christine Anderson ’06 applied
for the newly created Meg Page
Fellowship, they were intrigued
by the idea of helping at an
AIDS clinic in Albany. “But we
quickly realized that would be
impractical,” Eliza says.
Instead, Eliza’s father helped
the girls work out a program
with the Jimmy Fund, an outpatient facility for children at the
Dana Farber Cancer Institute in
Boston, where the Jacksons already had an apartment.
Eliza and Christine spent two weeks
playing with and reading to young cancer
patients, and they also arranged to go on
rounds with a staff psychologist to gain
some insight into the field—an interest
that came out of the adolescent psychology course both girls took last year.
“I thought working in a cancer center would freak me out,” says Eliza, who
would like to major in psychology in
college, “with little kids hooked up to
tubes and everything. I worried it would
be really depressing. It wasn’t, though. I
wound up really loving it. The kids were
just amazing, and people were so upbeat. I left really wanting to help kids in
ways I never expected. It was intense,”
she adds, “but I’m really glad I did it.”
“It was definitely an experience,”
says Christine. “I had a cousin who
died of cancer, so it was really hard,
but after a day or so it was
incredible. We made a difference in children’s lives just by
telling them that the pictures
they drew were really good
and making them smile. It was
amazing. I wouldn’t change a
minute of it.”
The Meg Page Fellowship
was created to honor Meg Page
’74, who died last year from
cancer. Tyler Perry ’07, who
also received a Page grant, is
in China on the School Year
Abroad program.
Page Fellowships offer financial support to help students underwrite the expenses of a summer project, internship,
or course of study devoted, ultimately,
to the provision of better healthcare.
Fellowships may be used to help students pursue interests in public health,
family planning, medical research, mental health, as well as non-western practices of health and healing.
AROUND THE POND
Time for the Arts
Whether it was a course in drawing and
painting at Parsons School of Design
for four weeks or a trip to New Mexico
to study photography at the Santa Fe
Workshops, ten students took advantage
of the summer vacation to immerse
themselves in the arts. Other students
studied creative writing at the Sewanee
Young Writers’ Conference held at the
University of the South in Tennessee,
and yet another took courses in graphic
design, painting, drawing, and art history
at Rhode Island School of Design.
“I think the experience really
pushed my abilities to a higher level,”
says Lindsay Albert.
Besides producing a large quantity
of artwork, Helen Gazin says she was
also able to “taste the art school experience. It really helped me in my decisions
about college.”
The Kilbourne Summer Enrichment
Fund, established by John Kilbourne
’58 in memory of his parents, provides
students with opportunities to participate in enriching programs in the arts.
Recipients in 2005 were seniors Lindsay
Albert, Chrissy Anderson, Helena Smith,
Michael Davis, and Claire Longfield,
and uppermids Teddy Dwyer, Helen
Gazin, Kacey Klonsky, Sara Partridge,
and Jacqueline Staub.
b Untitled, by Claire Longfield ’06, xerox transfer, lexan, and charcoal on paper, 32” x 40”
A World of New Perspectives
Robert K. Poole Fellowships were created in 1988 in memory of Bob Poole ’50,
who devoted his life to conservation and
education. The fellowships help students underwrite the cost of a summer
program that might open eyes, broaden
perspectives, and expose individuals to
new ideas and experiences in the hope
that all members of the community will
be the ultimate beneficiaries.
SuYeone Jeon ’06, who returned
home to Korea for the summer,
chose to work in a nursing home
in Eumsung, ChoongChungBookDo.
“Every weekend, my mother and I
went down to this village and helped in
buildings where the elderly lived,” she
says. “Most of them had Alzheimer’s,
and many were paralyzed. It hurt me
that most of these people were thrown
away by their children at a train station or in front of the village. One
woman always saved her snacks to
give to her daughter who, she said,
‘will visit sometime soon,’ but no
one ever came. Although it was very
difficult work, I learned a lot from
this trip and will never forget all the
moments I had with these patients.”
Other fellows this year’s were seniors
Emily Andrysick, Spencer Barton, Derek
Chan, Sarah Ewing, Brendan Gangl,
David Greco, Caroline Hall, Justin
Hsieh, Jason Kim, Arielle Palladino,
Will Rickards, Sarah Schoonmaker,
Hillary Simpson, Skye Taylor, Elizabeth
Walle, and Mary Walsh, and upper mids
Clare Maltman and Martha Pascoe.
Derek Chan ’06 describing life and academic experiences at Taft as an assistant
language teacher at Matsuyama, Japan. When not teaching, he learned about
Japanese history and Japanese classical literature with his students.
ccc
AROUND THE POND
Skye Taylor and Caroline Hall performed the traditional
Meke dance in front of the entire village of Nasivikoso in
the Fiji Islands, where they lived with individual families.
While there, they did various community service acts such as
building concrete pathways and teaching English to children
in the local schools.
Sarah Ewing spent five weeks in Ghana, including a two-week
community service project in which she taught and helped build
an extension onto a school, a two-week homestay, and then
four days traveling around the country. Sick with malaria and
dysentery for the first half of the trip, she had “the worst case of
homesickness, but soon began falling in love with the country,”
she says. “I know I will go back there as soon as I can.”
David Greco embarked on a two-week trip to Guatemala to
volunteer in the excavation of a Mayan site never previously dug.
“I was literally knee deep in the fertile soil surrounding the coffee
village of Chocola,” he says, “sifting for 2,000-year-old pottery
shards and figurines, or searching for the fourth corner of an
ancient structure once a Mayan temple.”
On Their Own
While not funded by one of the school’s
three summer enrichment funds, other
students found plenty of opportunities
for excitement over the vacation as well.
c Simone Foxman ‘07 and her family spent
two weeks in Israel to explore their Jewish
heritage and visit a number of ancient and
modern sites. Simone says she enjoyed
seeing the last remnants of the Second
Temple, the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa
Mosque that now adorn Mount Moriah.
She also took pleasure in riding camels in
the West Bank (“I was rather enamored
with the four-legged beast,” she says, “and
its child”) and investigating the abandoned
trenches Israelis and Jordanians inhabited
while fighting in the Golan Heights. While in
Israel, the family took an opportunity to meet
relatives in Tel Aviv, one of whom helped
Israel evacuate the Gaza Strip in August.
Emily Andrysick’s five-week trip to Greece included a ten-day community service
project at the American Farm School in Thessaloniki, another project in a much smaller
village during their homestay, a tour of the country’s sites, and a final climb up Mount
Olympus—mythical home of the gods. “The eight-hour trek up Greece’s tallest mountain
was unlike anything I’ve ever even attempted to do before,” she says.
Jason Kim traveled to
the Galápagos Islands on
a three-week program
with Lifeworks. “Since we
were working with the
national park, we had some
privileges that average
tourists don’t have,” he
says, “like touching the
giant tortoises.” The group
also worked to remove
invasive plants and planted
native ones; worked at local
schools, painting, playing
with children; and learned
about the islands—while
working on their tans on
the beach.
Hillary Simpson spent eight days in Costa
Rica living at a sea turtle conservatory
in Punta Judas. Working with the Coast
Guard, she cleared brush to expand the
hatchery, constructed baskets to place
on relocated turtle nests, and went on
“turtle patrol.” Her most memorable
experience was rescuing eggs from a
nest as the mother was laying them. “It
was such a surreal experience to have a
living, breathing sea turtle right in front
of me,” she says. “She laid about 115
eggs, and I placed each of them in a
plastic bag to be transported to the
hatchery. I left feeling informed and
now carry a sense of accomplishment
that I was able to make a difference.”
. Max Biedermann (at right) worked as a governor’s page in North
Carolina. “It was very rewarding and provided a great insight into
how the state government works,” he says. His main responsibility
was delivering mail for the secretary of Crime Control and Public
Safety, but he also got the chance to work side by side with
real detectives one day, working in the department of Alcohol
Enforcement. He also got to meet the state’s attorney general.
m Andrew Kazakoff (at left) went to Israel to play squash in the
World Maccabiah Games. “Our team received gold in the team
competition for junior squash,” he says. The opening ceremonies
were held at Ramat Gan Stadium. “The best part,” he adds,
“was having the chance to interact with so many different Jewish
people from all around the world.”
The mountains
of the world
have their
hold on Colin
Samuels ’85,
who climbs,
photographs,
skis, and makes
his home in the
French Alps.
By Linda
Hedman Beyus
Not everyone who travels to the Alps to ski, stays there for
15 years as Colin Samuels has, in the shadow of the grand La
Meije. Nor does everyone who skis drag heavy gear up on their
back, dangling off a precipice with climbing rope attached, to
find a hidden couloir to ski and shoot. He says it was serendipity that landed him in Les Terrasses, a mountainside village in
the French Alps near Grenoble, now his home base.
After breaking his leg at Telluride while working as a ski
photographer in 1989, Samuels saved his workman’s comp
money and felt the pull of new mountains to ski and shoot.
Alone, he headed for Chamonix, a skiers’ mecca, to discover
the next level of skiing—unrestricted and more challenging
than the smaller U.S. peaks—and to get off piste (off the
groomed slope). After a year in Chamonix, Colin discovered
m Colin Samuels ’85 in the alpenglow, standing on the summit of
La Meije. Colin Samuels collection
b Colin Samuels ’85 makes his home in the small French village
Les Terrasses. The view from his bedroom window is of the
13,140-foot mountain La Meije. Colin Samuels
the La Grave ski area, with its formidable 13,140-foot mountain called La Meije, and he hasn’t left yet. It was love—of a
mountain—at first sight.
Work that isn’t work
As a mountain and outdoor photographer specializing in skiing and mountaineering, Samuels takes on assignments for
U.S. and European magazines and does independent photo
shoots. He’s photographed for clients such as Patagonia, Black
Diamond, Rossignol, and Skiing and SKI magazines. Colin
chooses his own subject matter, he says, with 90 percent of his
images shot on film, rather than in digital format. “Work has
never been work,” he claims. “Even when I don’t sleep for two
or three days, it’s okay—it’s a passion.”
What Samuels likes best about being a freelance photographer is the freedom and being responsible for his own success or failure—the same way one climbs a summit or skis a
glacial runout. The creativity of making photographs is satisfying, he says; “It’s value that goes beyond monetary; people
appreciate them.”
17
b A first descent on La Meije
by Samuels in summer 2003.
Colin Samuels collection
c With a vertical drop of 7,054
feet, La Grave isn’t known for its
blue or green trails. Colin Samuels
Samuels’ freelance career in France took off slowly but surely. He knew he had taken plenty of ski photos that were magazine-caliber and could find a niche continuing to shoot. The timing was also perfect—he broke into European ski publications
during “the golden era” when snowboarding really took off, another sport he enjoys. “Hanging out with friends who were into
alpinism,” Samuels says he went along to take photos in the high
mountains of France, which lured him into climbing. Traveling
around the world now, on photo shoots or treks, Samuels says
there’s no difference between trips for work or for pleasure—a
balance not many of us have and something many might envy.
Letting a mountain take hold
Samuels’ powerful photos include those of Southeast Asia,
Cambodia’s Angkor Wat, the Sahara, Peru, and the 1994 Winter
Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway. Continuing his color18 Taft Bulletin Fall 2005
streaked style of athletes in motion, he hopes to shoot the 2006
Torino Olympics this winter and the IX Paralympic Games.
His travel photos include color images of wind-sculpted
desert sand with deep shadows, a Buddhist monk in prayer
silhouetted in a temple doorway, and a lone fisherman casting a hand net at sunset. They have a grand perspective—the
figures of people are small, conveying the intense drama and
essence, often of snow-covered, high mountains.
“The mountains are majestic,” Samuels’ haiku-like way
of getting across that they are much more than landscape for
him. Clearly spiritual in the way he speaks of these spectacular
places, Samuels says in the intro to his SKI magazine photo essay, “Like the true love affair that it is, my attraction to La Meije
grows all the time. When I put my camera down, reverse our
roles and let her take hold of me, the more I learn and the closer
we become.” Mountains are far more than geology or sport for
Samuels—there’s a seductive animism in his awe.
Taking it to a higher level
Raised in New York City, Samuels grew up skiing the Northeast
(upstate New York and Vermont) and out west. His penchant
for photography started early and took hold. At Taft, he did
an independent studies project in photography with faculty
member Courtney Carroll, using a medium-sized format
(2 1/4 in. negatives) in black and white. He learned oneon-one and happily notes that Carroll was an easygoing
teacher. Samuels even had a small exhibition at Taft, images
of architecture and people on campus.
Taft prepared him to be independent and, he emphasizes,
“pushed you to a higher level,” something he has apparently
never stopped doing in his skiing, photography, and life. “My
education at Taft prepared me more than my Ivy-League university for the rest of my life.” He studied French for all four
of his Taft years (including one year of AP), which was tough,
he says, but superior to his French studies at UPenn, where he
minored in French literature. “Taft gave me the freedom to be
athletic on a daily basis,” he affirms. Growing up in NYC, it
wasn’t so easy to do outdoor sports every day. At Taft he could
play basketball, tennis, soccer, and just be outside. After Taft,
he wanted to immerse himself in skiing, again “taking it to a
higher level,” and went to Telluride and landed a ski photography job: his launching pad for a career and for France.
Why La Grave?
“It was perfect,” he says. “Huge mountains.” And he
made a lot of friends. What he likes most about living in
the small mountain village of Les Terrasses, surrounded
by incredibly steep cliffs, he muses, is, “You have to make
your own way. The weather is wild; people get depressed
because the mountains make it dark. I’ve never been
19
bored one second while living here—it feels like home.”
And he wants a simple life style. The locals are of all
ages and include sheep farmers, extreme skiers, and yearround mountain guides. “A passionate group of people,”
Samuels says. With skis or snowboards on his feet about
150 days per year, he also enjoys climbing, running, and
other outdoor sports.
The La Grave ski area he loves is no average ski resort. The online magazine First Tracks!! decribes it as “the
most extreme lift-served terrain…and an unlimited scope
to do whatever the hell you want to without anybody to
tell you otherwise...whether it kills you or not.” With a
vertical drop of 7,054 ft., it’s not a blue or green trail.
Samuels likes skiing in challenging terrain, doing alpine
climbing, and solo climbs and descents anywhere in the world,
not just in his beloved Alps. Recent trip destinations this past
year include Norway for randonnée skiing (alpine ski touring)
above the Arctic Circle in May, skiing and climbing in the
San Juan and Grand Teton mountains in July, and an August
ski-mountaineering trip to Argentina’s Tierra del Fuego
mountains—not your average fare. He likes the responsibility for self and freedom that his genre of work and skiing
requires. “The life I’ve chosen has its built-in risks, but I’m
not choosing it because it is risky.”
Ascents and descents
The biggest challenges for Samuels have not been the steep
slopes of mountains around the world—it was “sharing his
love and falling in love,” with his Norwegian fiancée Siri
Hofseth, a world-class skier and ex-policewoman from Oslo.
Colin met Siri in 1999, when she moved to La Grave to live.
They shared a love for the mountains, and she was often a
model in his photo shoots. “My whole life had led up to meet-
b Traveling around the world on photo
shoots (to places like Cambodia’s Angkor
Wat), Samuels says there’s no difference
between trips for work or for pleasure.
Colin Samuels/Getty Images
c Samuels practices a form of mountaineering
called ski-alpinism—climbing, often solo,
and decending with skiis or snowboard. His
work often combines the technical aspects
of getting there with the creative aspects of
photography. Colin Samuels collection
To see more photos by Colin Samuels, visit the Getty
Images website: http://creative.gettyimages.com.
ing her,” he calmly shares, “and she was a soul mate.” In May
2002, Siri died in a skiing accident in Norway.
Rebuilding his life after her death was not easy. “It’s important that her death doesn’t overshadow her life,” Colin
reflects. “Despite Siri’s death, I still find joy and meaning
in my daily life, even if the grief remains profound. I love it
here in the mountains and intend to continue living life to
the fullest.”
Virtual thrills
“I’ve never been risk averse,” Samuels points out—an understatement when taking in the setting of his photos; to get
to the steeps, alpine climbing is the only route. Those of us
who view his photos and digest the reality of his (literally)
on-the-edge life, are simultaneously awed by the beauty of
the extreme landscape and vicariously thrilled by the adven-
ture and risk involved. We don’t have to climb that knifeedged peak; we can let someone like Samuels go for it, while
we admire his passion and ability to get there and share the
experience visually. In fact, he distills each mountain’s or
sand dune’s energy, its force, for the viewer, empowering its
specific exquisiteness.
In a deeply philosophical way, yet with a light touch,
Samuels talks intently about his life and high-altitude adventures without bragging. He seems, in fact, humble and wise
with a softened attitude—perhaps rare in the world of adventurers. It’s clear that the mountains of the world, where he
lives, works, and plays, have woven their spell and enveloped
him in their majesty. After all, his beloved La Meije is nicknamed “The Queen.”
Linda Hedman Beyus is alumni notes editor for this magazine.
She writes and skis, but not in couloirs.
21
Michael Kod
as
My
k
c
a
B
s
e
g
Pa
diern
e
r
t
s
i
h
th
Underneak-Kent disguise,
than-Clar ’81—the new
Will Dana editor of
managingone —is more
Rolling St than superhero.
magician ick: restoring
His first trzine to its
the maga ory.
iff
former gl
By Julie Re
My Back Pag
e
s
T
he photo editor’s office
at Rolling Stone looks
out over 51st Street through
floor-to-ceiling glass. It’s not a
huge room, but seven editors
file comfortably into it—although there aren’t enough
chairs. Two editors lean against
the solid wall that’s shared with
the neighboring office and a
third stands near the doorway.
Will Dana ’81, the newly promoted managing editor, grabs
a seat by the glass wall that
separates the office from the
cubicles beyond. He’s wearing khakis and a flowered shirt
and puts his loafer-clad feet
on the edge of Jodi Peckman’s
desk. She sits behind it holding a box of tissues, apologizing that she has a cold.
The group brainstorms
cover ideas for an upcoming
issue featuring the rock band
White Stripes. Dana suggests
dressing the duo in NASCAR
jumpsuits in front of a burning car wreck; they know that
publisher Jann Wenner will
want what they call a “concept cover.” Excited about his
idea, Dana pulls his feet off
the desk and leans forward as
he describes the scene he pictures in his mind.
The other editors nod
their heads and discuss his
idea for a minute until someone suggests a carnival theme.
Nah, I think Annie Leibowitz
has done that already, one says,
and someone else grabs a photography book off the shelf
behind Peckman to see if he
can find it. They’re brother and
sister, right? another editor
asks. And isn’t he into Orson
Welles? Maybe we can do something with that?
The magazine is such
a collaboration, Dana says
later. He loves the teamwork,
working with other editors,
writers, and art directors.
“My role is to create an atmosphere in which people can do
their best work, to give them
the support and confidence
to do work that will meet our
standards. I like people who
are ambitious, talented, and
a little weird; I want them to
know that if their creative impulses lead them away from
the conventional approach,
that we’ll follow them there.”
The group throws out
other ideas—dressing the
musicians up in one costume
or another almost as if they
were a couple of Barbie dolls.
Eventually the editors move
on to discuss which photographer to use. Dana listens attentively to each of them. He
may be their boss now, but he’s
also still one of the guys, part
of the team.
All I Really
Want to Do
A large W (for Wenner
Media) dominates the small
lobby, but, neatly lined up
along the wall, framed issues
of the publication give away
the place’s true identity: home
of the most famous magazine
in the world devoted to music
and pop culture.
Beneath the glass, the
newspaperlike first issue from
1967 is far from pristine. Dogeared and yellow—the fold
still visible—it’s a clear sign
that Wenner, the magazine’s
founder, had little idea what
an integral part of that culture
Rolling Stone would become.
A single black-and-white image—a still photo of John
Lennon in army fatigues—
dominates the colorless cover.
The offices of Rolling
Stone are, though, simply offices. Bob Dylan isn’t hanging out at the water cooler,
nor is Aerosmith performing its latest song. In fact,
there isn’t any music playing,
unless people are listening
through headphones.
The place is busy but surprisingly quiet, businesslike,
except that jeans outnumber suits even on a Tuesday.
“That’s all I remember about
my first day,” says Dana,
“how quiet it was here. The
place was sleepy. The saying
was you’d work here for one
year or 15.”
Dana started his career as
an unpaid intern at Harper’s
right after graduating from
Middlebury in 1985. He
has also worked at Interview,
Esquire, 7 Days (which won
a national magazine award
for general excellence two
weeks after closing down),
Manhattan Inc, Outside, and
Worth. After that he worked
for Details, what he calls his
“lone Condé Nast experience” in his 20-year career.
He says he felt uncomfortable
there because the culture was
so competitive and there was
no real sense of job security.
So when Rolling Stone
called Dana in 1996—after periodic inquiries on his
part—it was, he says, as if a
helicopter had flown over and
dropped a ladder to rescue
him. “This is really where I
wanted to be all along.”
23
es
My Back Pag
A Satisfied
Mind
“Will Dana and I get along
great,” says Wenner, who promoted him in May. “He’s got
my deep respect, and we’ve
been working very closely together for quite a few years.
He’s been in training for the
job for a long time, and he
got it on his own merits and
hard work.”
Prior to the promotion,
Dana was one of three deputy
managing editors, but he’s
held a number of roles in his
nine years at the magazine.
During his stint as the political editor, he interviewed most
of the major figures in the last
presidential campaign.
Dana clearly does his
homework. For the most part,
his interviews are straightforward questions and answers,
but he writes introductions for
each that let the reader know
exactly what’s at stake. Among
his many subjects, he has interviewed John Kerry, Tom
Brokaw, Ted Kennedy, Howard
Dean, Al Sharpton, Wesley
Clark, Thomas Friedman, and
Dennis Kucinich.
“Kucinich. I loved him,”
says Dana. “That was the
most fun because it was just
him and three other people.
I was sitting next to him
on the plane, sitting next to
him in the van. I followed
him for a couple legs of that
trip. When Kerry was going
there were tons of people
around him. Dean, by the
time I got to him, he was at
the height of his campaign.
With Kucinich, no one else
was talking to him.”
The Times They Are
A-Changin’
Now that he’s running the
magazine, Dana says his concerns are more conceptual
and amorphous: “I have to
think about the whole equation,” he says. “Is the rock
section working? Do we need
to think up more special issues? Did we mess up by not
putting Kanye West on the
This is topic number one.
“In Japan this is the focus,
and here you’d never know—
‘buy an SUV and burn more
gas.’ So I try to get those issues out there,” he adds. “We
want to get beyond the chicken-little approach and look
at the people who are rolling
up their sleeves and trying to
find ways to solve it.”
But Dana wants to be
clear: Rolling Stone is not a policy magazine. “We try to treat
Will Dana ’81 interviewed Vice President Al Gore during the 2000
election. Photo courtesy of Rolling Stone
cover before Time did?”
In the course of a morning
he suggests two different energy-related stories to editors who
pop in and out of his office with
questions. He’s obsessed, he
says, with energy. “It’s the biggest story out there, and we’re
not talking about it. We have
an energy crisis, but the general
sense of how much or what the
crisis entails is hardly discussed.
They write about oil issues, but
they don’t get it or don’t want
to get it. And it just amazes me.
our readers with intelligence,
but we don’t see it as our job
to get deep into every policy
discussion,” he says. “Other
people do that better; it’s not
where we’re going. We’ll cover
the war in Iraq, or the war on
drugs. Long articles are worth
doing, as long as they aren’t
boring. Good articles are not
just about facts; we’re trying
to tell stories.”
National affairs may be
only two or three pages per issue, but the issues they choose
to cover are always provocative.
And Rolling Stone takes a more
partisan approach than standard news media. “I would say
the difference is that we don’t
hide our bias, but we’re fair.
Our stories generally have an
argument to them,” he adds,
“but we don’t distort the facts.
Being fair and being objective
are two different things.”
Like a Rolling
Stone
The cover discussion over,
Dana is back in his own office,
which is a mirror image of the
photo editor’s. He leans back
in his chair and puts his now
bare feet up on the desk. It is
uncluttered, a little dusty at the
edges, but organized. An Apple
flat-screen monitor dominates
one corner and chimes like a
cowbell every few minutes announcing new e-mail messages.
The only personal item in the
room is a black-and-white photo of his 7-year-old son on the
shelf behind him. [Dana lives
in Manhattan with his wife
Ellen Tien, who writes for the
New York Times Sunday Style
section, and their son Jack.]
Features editor Eric Bates
leans in the doorway to see if
Dana has time to talk and then
takes the chair by the glass wall.
They discuss the draft of an article about the mission to Mars,
deciding what order things
should go in—the vision behind it, the reality, the challenge, and the why—as well
as where the draft still needs
fine-tuning and what questions
they’d like it to answer.
“I think it needs to really
explain the scope of the chal-
My Back Pag
e
s
lenge—the insane challenge of
it—in the second half,” Dana
says to Bates, sliding his glasses
up on his forehead. “I think it’s
got to be like, ‘Mars is the future.’ Show it first as this wacky
idea, and then get to Bush and
explain why it’s worth bankrupting our treasury to do it.
Did the writer talk to any astronauts in person? He needs
quotes from them; I want to
hear their voices.”
“Will is a creative thinker about story assigning,”
Wenner agrees later, “as well
as being a very good leader
and listener. He inspires writers and other editors.”
Dana is most proud of
two projects: coming up with
the idea in 1998 for a series
of articles on fast food for
the magazine that ended up
as Eric Schlosser’s book Fast
Food Nation and author Evan
Wright’s award-winning book
on the war in Iraq. Generation
Kill also began as a series of
articles for Rolling Stone while
Dana was the features editor.
“Will came up with the
basic idea and the title of Fast
Food Nation,” says Schlosser.
“He asked me to find out
what was happening behind
the counter at fast-food restaurants. He didn’t know the answer, but sensed that it would
be interesting. My research
turned into a huge investigative piece that challenged
some very powerful, very
mean companies. Will backed
me all the way, never asked me
to tone things down, and had
faith that the piece was worth
publishing at length.
“I’d like to tell you that
Will is a vain, arrogant,
egotistical monster who
routinely takes credit for
other people’s work…,” says
Schlosser, “but that would
be a total lie. Will is without
question one of the finest
editors working today. He’s
great at seeing the big picture
and equally skilled at worrying about every comma,
en-dash, and semi-colon. I
can’t tell you how much I’ve
enjoyed working with him,
arguing with him about vari-
Thompson—who pioneered
the gonzo journalism genre
for which the magazine is famous—took his own life earlier this year.
“It was the sort of thing
where we just dove so deeply
into this guy’s life,” Dana says.
“It was a great experience to
pull all these stories out and
read all his stuff, and talk to
all these people to create a
portrait of the guy. We usually close the issue on Friday,
“With Music in His Ears…”
Dana is a serious Bob Dylan fan. He rarely covers music
for the magazine, although he did review Dylan’s NYC
concert in May and interviewed Trey Anastasio ’83 last
year. He still loves and follows music—from the latest
indie rock groups like Spoon, Death Cab for Cutie, or
the Magic Numbers to the classics from his days at Taft.
“In a weird way, with everything available at the
touch of a finger, new music doesn’t mean as much as
it used to,” says Dana. “Somehow, if it’s new to you,
it’s new. It’s not necessarily what was released last week.
Your path through the music is much more winding
and circuitous than it used to be.”
ous sentences or paragraphs,
and occasionally winning
those arguments. He is not
only a terrific editor, but also
a dear friend.”
In Dana’s time at the
magazine, he says the two most
profound experiences were
also the two worst. The first
was September 11, he says.
“Because it happened right
here, we did this big issue. It
was really cathartic to deal with
what was going on. It was an
amazing group effort.”
The other was when
Rolling Stone writer Hunter S.
maybe around 6 o’clock and I
don’t think we finished until
8 on Saturday morning.”
Dana points out that
what he calls the “gonzo”
stuff—a more partisan, youare-there style of writing
that doesn’t always follow
the rules—only worked for
Thompson “because he had
such great analytical reporting skills—and he had things
to say.”
Underneath the gonzo
journalism image, Rolling
Stone has a very traditional
approach, Dana says later.
“You’ve got to hook people
and bring them in. An article
may seem very offhand, very
casual, but it still takes a lot
of work to make it read like
that. Attitude is just the veneer; it hides a lot of really
hard work.”
When I Paint My
Masterpiece
Dana seems to grasp intuitively
what will work for the magazine, and things are going well.
So far, circulation is up 20 percent over last year according to
the New York Times. In returning to its roots—what Wenner
described as long-form journalism with an emphasis on
politics, culture, and, of course,
music—Rolling Stone seems to
have a better grasp on its readers than it has in 20 years.
“We can make this magazine as good as it’s ever been,”
says Dana. “It’s never going
to have the importance it had
in the late ’60s because the
culture has changed. But it
can be a better magazine than
it was then, and every bit as
ground breaking.”
When the 982nd issue
of Rolling Stone finally hit the
newsstand, the cover featured
the band White Stripes in
front of a ruby-red theater curtain with Jack White dressed
as a magician and Meg as his
assistant. With the landmark
1,000th issue of the magazine looming in April, Dana
is planning a little magic of
his own, but he’s not about
to reveal what he has up his
sleeve. You’ll have to go to the
newsstand to find out.
25
Reeling
ThemIn
D
Fly Angler Diana Rudolph ‘90 Casts for World Records
By Julia Feldmeier ’99
Diana Rudolph’s world record tarpon catch had all the trappings of a suspense flick. It was a hot, breezeless day in April;
the shallow waters off the Florida Keys were blanketed by the
kind of stillness that—in movies, at least—portends chaos.
So it was no real surprise when the 32-year-old Rudolph,
fly fishing aboard a skiff called—what else?—Hell’s Bay,
hooked into a giant tarpon. Measuring 6 feet, 8 inches long,
with a 37-inch girth, it tipped the scales at 135.5 pounds.
As fishing writer Jerry Gibbs once wrote: “Tarpon hunting
is not a genteel endeavor. Tarpon hunting is war.” At 5 feet,
6 inches, and 125 pounds, Rudolph was the token underdog. Her battle with the fish lasted 2 hours and 20 minutes.
Movies that run more than two hours are considered long.
But a fishing bout? Really long. And arduous. Rudolph held
on furiously from the bow of the skiff as the tarpon zipped
back and forth through the water, enraged.
Her fishing guide, Dale Perez, deftly maneuvered the
skiff through the shallow waters using a 22-foot fiberglass
pole, trying to keep pace with the fish. Perez estimates that he
poled for more than a mile during the struggle.
And how’s this for a stunt? The tarpon, a specie known for
its strength and acrobatic maneuvers, shot through the air eight
times while Rudolph had it on the line. Rudolph held on.
Then a plot twist. Enter the bull shark: ruthless, pugna-
cious and known to attack tarpon. (Not to mention humans.
Had Rudolph fallen overboard—which occasionally happens,
she says—she’d have been fair game.) Keen to the vibrations
of a fish in distress, the shark began circling the skiff.
“It scared the hell out of me,” Rudolph said, “but it was
one of those things where you obviously don’t want the fish to
get munched.”
Perez quickly put the boat’s engine in neutral and revved
it, hoping the noise would scare the shark away.
“Sometimes it doesn’t work,” he said. “But in this case it did.”
When the tarpon finally surrendered and flopped up
against the side of the boat, Rudolph hauled it in—and burst
into tears. In order to submit the fish for a world record, it
would have to be brought back to shore to be weighed. It
would die in the process.
“I’ve never felt that type of adrenaline or that much emotion,” Rudolph said. In all her years of fishing, she’d never
brought a tarpon back to shore. “The fun is catching them—
I’d much rather let them swim.”
She promptly iced the tarpon down and called the
University of Miami to pick it up for research. That is, after the scale revealed it to be a new world record for tarpon
using a 16-pound test (the heavier the test, the stronger the
line)—outweighing the old record by more than 50 pounds.
b Diana Rudolph ’90 loves to fish in Montana as well as the Florida Keys. Most of what she does is catch and release.
27
R
udolph has none of the ego that might befit an angler of her status. She is disarmingly humble, too modest to
admit how talented she really is.
“I still don’t think I’m any good!” she said, laughing—despite holding four world records that suggest otherwise. “Every
time I catch a fish, I’m surprised. I’m like, ‘Wow—damn!’”
For Rudolph, fishing is a simple matter of lifestyle. As a
mid at Taft, then English teacher Willy MacMullen ’78 gave
her A River Runs Through It, Norman McLean’s acclaimed
novel that begins: “In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly-fishing.”
“It’s true,” Rudolph said. “I can’t even imagine not having
it. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about it.”
Fly fishing is a passion inspired by her dad, Alex, an investment banker in downtown Chicago and an avid angler. The family had a vacation home in Islamorada and the elder Rudolph
began teaching his daughter the mechanics of fishing when she
was just four years old. He never got to see his protégé’s spectacular, record-breaking catches; he died eight years ago.
Rudolph was in her second year of graduate school at Florida
Tech at the time, finishing up her master’s in marine biology.
She’d finished her coursework and was trying to write her thesis.
“I really wasn’t in the right frame of mind to have that
much downtime,” she said. “I decided, ‘You know what? The
hell with it. I love to fish, and I’m gonna try to do something
in the industry.’”
She moved back home to Chicago and spent two years
working in a fly shop before relocating to the Florida Keys,
where she spends five days a week working in the Florida Keys
Outfitters, a local fly shop, and the remaining two days out on
the water, fishing for new records.
Alex Rudolph would have been proud of his daughter’s
passion and accomplishments, said Joyce Rudolph, Diana’s
mother. “They were very close. He’s up there looking down.”
Two weeks before he died, Alex ordered a blank, the unadorned “rod” part of the apparatus, intending to build a fly
rod for his daughter. Later, Diana took the blank and had a
friend make it into a rod. On her first cast, she hooked a fish.
Not just any fish: A permit—one of the most coveted catches
among anglers.
“I’d never caught a permit on fly before, my dad had never caught a permit on fly,” she said. “That’s like the holy grail
of fly fishing, the ultimate catch. It was really cool.”
b Fly fishing is a
passion Diana’s
father instilled in her
from the time she
was four years old.
c Diana broke the
previous women’s fly record
by more than 50 pounds
with this 135.5-pound
tarpon, becoming the first
woman to win the Don
Hawley Tournament.
ReelingThemIn
T
oday, Rudolph holds the women’s world record for
permit (24 pounds on 12-pound tippet), in addition to tarpon,
bonefish (10.5 pounds on a 6-pound tippet), and snook (6.5
pounds on a 4-pound tippet). Last year, she was the first woman in history to win the prestigious Don Hawley Tarpon Fly
Tournament in Islamorada in the Keys, catching and releasing
15 tarpon over five days to best 17 other fly-fishing experts.
Though Rudolph won’t brag about herself, her colleagues will.
Sandy Moret, her boss at Florida Keys Outfitters, called
her “dynamite.”
“The skill that she uses in understanding how to manipulate the tackle is what makes her exceptional,” he said. Plus,
“she has a tremendous amount of desire to excel at this, and
she does. A lot of people talk about fishing, but she does it.”
Dale Perez, who guided Rudolph to her world record tarpon catch, said Rudolph’s focus and quick reflexes help make
her so successful.
Rudolph’s tarpon catch marked Perez’s 20th world record
as a guide (he also guided for her permit record). “I’ve been
guiding for 35 years,” he said, “and she fishes as well as any
man I’ve ever fished.”
Her status as a top-notch angler—and a female—has
earned her some cachet within the industry. In a recent Q&A
with Mid-Current, an online magazine, Rudolph told editor
Marshall Cutchin, “If I were a guy, no one would give a rat’s
ass about me… But the guys really think of me as a fisherman.
And I hope as a woman, too.”
Oh, but they do. After the Mid-Current Q&A was posted, online fly-fishing chats began buzzing about Rudolph.
Writes one chatter: “I’ve always liked women who cuss,
and speak of passion.” Another chimes in: “And here I was
just fallin’ in love with her simply because she fishes and
drinks beer.”
G
ood fishing, capped off with a cold beer, is exactly the
kind of lifestyle Rudolph enjoys. “Fly fishing isn’t like bass
fishing, where you can make a ton of money in the tournaments or anything,” she said. “It’s more trying to win the respect of your peers and the people that you look up to.”
Camaraderie is a big part of the appeal. “I’m certainly not
saving the world working in a fly shop, but I’ve met a lot of
really interesting people because of fly fishing.”
Moret, Perez, and other guides are her mentors, she said,
always imparting new wisdom. That’s what keeps her tethered
to the sport: discovering new tricks. “The day I stop learning
is the day I want to get out of it. There’s not a day that goes
by where I’m not surprised by something or intrigued or just
completely awestruck.”
In August, she left for Montana, where she owns a house
and where she planned to spend two months doing some freshwater fly fishing before returning to the Keys in October. She’s
hoping to squeeze in some traveling, too, maybe to Australia.
For fun, yes, but also for records.
She may be humble, but she’s still competitive.
“It kind of keeps it interesting,” she said. “That’s not to
say I don’t go out and go fishing just to go fishing, but there’s
always a little bit of competition. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.”
So if somebody broke her tarpon record?
“Oh, I’d go break it. I’d have to go out there and try to
break it.”
After all, every good story merits a sequel.
Julia Feldmeier ‘99 writes for the Washington Post. Although she
loves the water, she admits she hasn’t been fishing since she was five.
. Diana, who now holds five women’s world records, reels in a
Pacific sailfish in Guatemala.
E
N
D
N
O
T
E
Little Rock Five
By Julie Reiff
“Rather than accept
desegregation,
Arkansas governor
Orville Faubus chose to
close Little Rock’s four
high schools
for the 1958–59
academic year….”
Boarding schools have long been places of
refuge from times of upheaval. Diplomats
stationed to unstable parts of the world have
turned to schools like Taft as a safe haven for
their children. More recently, as most of you
know, the school has reached out to those
affected by more natural disasters. By the start
of October, three students from Louisiana
had found their way to Watertown. One
girl had already started classes three times,
in three different schools, in three different
states before settling in here.
Almost 50 years ago, another city faced
closed schools—but for very different reasons. Rather than accept desegregation,
Arkansas governor Orville Faubus chose to
close Little Rock’s four high schools for the
1958–59 academic year—following the crisis
over the “Little Rock Nine” the previous fall.
“It was clearly a tense time,” says Jim Rule
’60. “My father was frantic, and one of the
people he confided in was George Hampton
(father of George ’60). He called Joe Orgill
’23—a member of Taft’s board at the time and
whose son had graduated in 1955—with whom
he did business and told him of my situation.
He must have contacted Mr. Cruikshank. Two
days later I was on the plane to New York to
start my upper-mid year.
“Life magazine came to the school that
fall to photograph me for an article they were
doing on the Little Rock diaspora, but I didn’t
make the article.”
Nearly 3,700 students were affected by the
closings; Life called them “passive victims in a national tragedy” in its 1958 article “The Lost Class
of 1959.” Of that number, five students arrived
at Taft that fall—most joining the Class of 1960.
“They all seemed like terrific guys,” says
Henry Lanier ’61. “I only wish the school had
been more enlightened and had opened up some
discussions around civil rights and why these kids
were in Watertown rather than at home.”
Years later Lanier worked at Lehman
Brothers with Ernie Green, the oldest of the
Little Rock Nine, and the first black student to
graduate from Central High School. “In another
era (today),” Lanier says, “Ernie might well have
found a welcome at Taft, and then wouldn’t we
have had an interesting discussion.”
Julie Reiff is editor of this magazine
m Students arriving at Taft in the fall of 1958
Leslie Manning Archives
Come Join Us!
Walker Hall Series
December 6 | Reception following 70th Service of Lessons and Carols (Congregational Church, Watertown)
January 20 | Pianist Husnu Onaran, 7:00 p.m.
January 26 | Master Storyteller Odds Bodkin, 7:00 p.m.
February 10 | Arts Faculty Recital, 7:00 p.m.
February 23 | James and Jamie Dutcher Living with Wolves, 7:00 p.m.
December 1 | Boston Holiday Party
December 7 | NYC Holiday Party
February 11 | Alumni Hockey Game
February 18–19 | Winter Parents’ Weekend
March | Regional Gatherings in Florida
April 10 | Grandparents’ Day
May 20–21 | Alumni Weekend
May 28 | 116th Commencement Exercises
Visit www.TaftAlumni.com for more information
Taft Bulletin
The Taft School
Watertown, CT 06795-2100
860-945-7777
www.TaftAlumni.com
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A woman and the sea

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