B U L L E T I N - The Taft School

Transcription

B
U
L
L
E
Farish
Jenkins ’57
unearths a
375-millionyear-old fossil
Justine
Landegger ’00
works to make
a difference
in Darfur and
Pakistan
Ward
Mailliard ’65
adopts an
orphanage-school
in India
Irina
Prentice ’94
—student/
journalist in the
Middle East
F A
L
L
2
0
0
6
T
I
N
B U L L E T I N
Fall 2006
Volume 77 Number 1
Bulletin Staff
Interim Director of Development
Bonnie Welch
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.
8
F E AT U R E S
cover story :
He Landed the Fish
That Landed Itself...................................14
17
Harvard professor Farish Jenkins ’57 unearths a 375-millionyear-old fossil hailed as the missing link between fish and all
limbed creatures.
By Andrew Rimas
Hope in the Face of Catastrophe...........17
Justine Landegger ’00 works to make a difference in Darfur
and Pakistan
By Brady Dennis
Life Anew................................................20
California schoolteacher Ward Mailliard ’65 adopts an
orphanage-school in India
By Julia Feldmeier ’99
Lebanese Days.......................................24
20
Little did one alumna realize that her decision to live in and
experience the Middle East would turn her into a student/
journalist in the middle of a war zone.
By Irina Prentice ’94
D E PA R T M E N T S
Letters.................................................... 2
Alumni Spotlight.................................... 3
Around the Pond.................................... 7
Alumni and Their Taft Offspring.............28
From the Archives..................................30
Wish you were here….Postcards from the past
on the cover : “When you launch a pop icon,” says
Farish Jenkins ’57 of his discovery of a particularly important
375-million-year-old fossil, “the attention gets totally
out of hand.” T ed D aeschler
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 Chinese teacher and Davis Fellow Yen Liu
visits the Yungang Caves, a cluster of about
50 caves that house more than 50,000 stone
carvings of Buddhas. Started in 450 and located in
the Shanxi Province of central China, Yungang is a
relic of the Northern Wei Dynasty (386–534 A.D.).
Don’t forget you can shop online
at www.TaftStore.com
800-995-8238 or 860-945-7736
L
ETTERS
The Intentional
Tourist
It’s hard to find a corner of the globe
Taft students and alumni haven’t
touched recently. Some certainly
traveled as tourists, but for many
others their travel was an intentional act of reaching out, and for a few,
it has become a way of life.
I did not intend for this issue
of the Bulletin to have any sort of
international theme; happily it
emerged on its own. Even Farish
Jenkins’ fossil has achieved international celebrity.
Current students have ample
opportunities today to travel the
globe and to reach out (see page 7),
and the school’s Poole Fellowship
Program in particular helps makes
that possible. Bob Poole ’50, himself,
exemplified that kind of outreach.
Returning to Taft in 1956 to
teach history and coach football after two years in the army, Poole later spent two months crisscrossing
the African continent in 1960 on a
summer-study grant. He joined the
Peace Corps and moved to Kenya
with his family in 1962 and eventually worked for the African Wildlife
Leadership Foundation in Nairobi.
Conservation became his passion.
So when we say we educate
the whole student, part of that
mission is helping students find
their passions, no matter where
those take them.
—Julie Reiff
m Nici Tietjen Derosier
’86 and Patience Smith
’86 visit with classics
teacher Dick Cobb on
Alumni Day in May.
Coolest Coach
A minor few corrections to Ryan Nerz’s
article in the summer issue, “Reunion
2006.” It was Patience who revealed
that Mr. Cobb scared her at first (she
had him for Latin), but then he became her adviser. I had the pleasure
of playing basketball for Mr. Cobb for
three years—he is the coolest/calmest
coach ever—and I will forever thank
him for the “new math” he invented
senior year to explain many very close
losses. My adviser for all four years was
R.M. Davis ’59; he fed my love of history and challenged me to believe in
my capacity to learn and grow. We all
Taft Trivia
From what country did the school’s first
international students hail? (Hint: They
were brothers and did not graduate.)
The winner, whose name will be
chosen at random from all correct entries received by December 15, will receive a free plush rhino.
Taft Bulletin Fall 2006
recalled Ms. Madison’s major crush on
Tom Selleck. Nici shared that “We used
to go up to her apartment and watch
Magnum P.I.” I was a day student for
my first three years—only boarded my
senior year. So I both had (and missed
out on) the best of both worlds.
—Sarah Curi ’86
p.s. Nici, I can’t believe that “feel the
words” made it into print!
Love it? Hate it?
Read it? Tell us!
We’d love to hear what you think about
the stories in this Bulletin. We may edit
your letters for length, clarity, and content, but please write!
Julie Reiff, editor
Taft Bulletin
110 Woodbury Road
Watertown, CT 06795-2100
or
[email protected]
Whitney McDowell ’94 and
her mother Susan dedicated
a year to fly-fishing around
the world together.
The Mom Who Took the Bait
Whitney McDowell ’94 and her mother
Susan share a unique passion—for fishing. “So one day, when I was at a crossroads in my life,” explains McDowell,
“and my mother was about to turn 65,
I proposed the crazy idea that she and
I dedicate a year to fishing together
throughout the world—and she bit!
Needless to say, my mom is a very adventuresome woman and a fly-fishing
addict, so it wasn’t exactly a hard sell.”
After Princeton, McDowell had
spent four years in Denver working in
public relations, but in late 2004, she
began to question whether this was a
career she could see herself in for the
long run. “I hadn’t tried anything else,
so how could I know?” Meanwhile,
her passion for fly-fishing was growing. Active and successful in competitive fly-fishing for several years—often
one of the only women, she’s been on
ESPN and OLN on several occasions.
(Yes, she runs into Diana Rudolph
’90, but oddly enough, neither realized they shared an alma mater until
McDowell read about Rudolph in the
Bulletin.) McDowell and her mother
typically made one big fishing trip together every year. “I always longed for
more,” she says, “and Mom wasn’t getting any younger.”
Their journey was not a continuous
one, she explains, “We came and went
as needed…but we set aside a calendar
year to do it.” Their destinations included Argentina, Venezuela, Mongolia,
Russia, and New Zealand, as well as several spots in the States. “Honestly, it was
an incredible year across the board,” says
McDowell, “and we didn’t have a bad trip
(well, maybe one), but if I had to name
a highlight, it would have to be New
Zealand. We had both fished there before (and I actually spent a semester there
in college); there’s nothing like it. The
country, the people, and the fishing—the
whole package—are unequaled.”
The trip also had a deeper meaning
for both women. “My mom’s mother
died in her early 40s (when my mom
was 20), so they never had the opportunity to share this time. In addition,
my dad was our biggest advocate,” she
adds. “Although fly-fishing was never
his passion, he thought it was the most
incredible idea and was so proud and
supportive of his ladies’ adventures and
even joined us on the New Zealand
trip.” Sadly, her father ended up very
ill toward the end of the year, and they
canceled their Africa trip and McDowell
traveled solo to Brazil.
“I am now a firm believer that
things happen for a reason,” she says. “I
had no idea where I would end up after
our year of fishing travels, which was
definitely unsettling. I’m not a cavalier
person, and yet, here I was leaving behind a stable, successful career without
—continued on next page
continued from previous page—
a future plan. Then, midyear, I got a
call out of the blue from the president of a leading manufacturer in the
fishing industry, telling me they had
a job opportunity I might be ideally
suited for. In the end, it really was a
dream come true. I got the job as marketing manager with Simms Fishing
Products in Bozeman, Montana, and
was able to complete my remaining
three months of travel!”
McDowell is now happily settled
in Bozeman and loves her job—with
a lifetime of amazing memories.
Although her father died last June,
McDowell says she finds considerable comfort in the fact that he was
an important part of their adventures.
“Moreover, he saw this next phase
in my life evolve out of my yearlong
journey,” she adds, “and knew that I
was happy and settled.”
Marisa Ryan ’03
was chosen from
the 22 America
East ScholarAthletes named
in July. Those
recipients were
chosen from
the nearly 3,500
student-athletes
at America East
institutions.
America East
A Standup Kinda Guy
Jonathan
Drubner ’90,
right, with Lance
Armstrong and
his manager at
the ESPY Awards
after-after-after
party in July.
Comic Jonathan Drubner ’90 got
“bumped up” to senior writer for this
year’s ESPY Awards (his fifth year on
the show), which were hosted by Tour
de France champion Lance Armstrong.
“I was assigned to Lance and the monologue,” explains Drubner.
“All of the writers create jokes for the
host, but because I do standup, I spent
a bunch of time working with Lance
on the performance, timing, beats, etc.
It was amazing. He’s a great dude. Not
quite as funny as Matthew Perry was last
year or Jamie Foxx the years before, but
surprisingly funny, and obviously a bigger challenge, which was awesome.
“My only worry was that come
showtime, he might not be able to deliver his jokes without making a rude gesture and adding, ‘Was that good enough,
Drubner?’ But he killed it. And the material was the edgiest we’ve ever done. We
got a lot of really funny press.”
As an added bonus, the day be Taft Bulletin Fall 2006
fore the show Drubner “rolled with
Armstrong and his posse” on the talk
show circuit: Jay Leno, Jimmy Kimmel,
Jim Rome, and Carson Daly. “As we
were chilling in his cramped little dressing room at Leno...in walks Leno and
proceeds to ask if we’ve got jokes for the
ESPYs. Obviously Lance doesn’t back
down from anything, so the next thing I
know Lance is doing the monologue for
Jay, who was loving it. Pretty surreal. Jay
even gave me a joke for Lance to use at
the ESPYs, which I pretended to write
down. Don’t tell Jay.”
The ESPY Awards, created by
ESPN, celebrate the year’s best sports
stories and top athletes and support
the V Foundation for Cancer Research.
Drubner is also the host of 24 Seven
Gamer, head writer of the X Games, and
“the genius behind the funny parts” of
Spike TV’s Fresh Baked Videogames. To
catch up on all the hot Drubner gossip,
visit www.drub-induced.com.
Ryan Named
Scholar-Athlete
of the Year
Cross-country and track standout
Marisa Ryan ’03 was named 2005–
06 America East Women’s ScholarAthlete of the Year.
A senior with a 3.77 grade
point average, Ryan is enrolled
in Boston University’s extremely
competitive accelerated medical
program, through which she will
complete her bachelor’s degree and
medical degree in seven years by
overlapping the two programs.
Ryan finished second at the
America East Cross Country
Championship last fall, and last
winter she finished first in the
3000-meter run at the America
East Indoor Track & Field
Championship in conference record-setting time. In addition,
the Farmington, Connecticut, native was an ESPN the Magazine
Academic All District Team selection in the spring and also has
earned the Commissioner’s Honor
Roll in every semester.
Ryan also recently earned the
honor of America East Women’s
Cross Country Performer of the
Week. She took home first place at
the Boston University Invitational,
finishing with a time of 12:45.
In Print
Chapter 11: Business Reorganizations
For Business Leaders, Accountants and Lawyers
Myles H. Alderman, Jr. ’78
Outskirts Press, 2006
Each year billions of dollars of
business contracts are restructured
under Chapter 11 of the United
States Bankruptcy Code. Debtors
in Chapter 11 reorganizations range
from some of the largest business
entities in the world to small local
businesses. When these companies
reorganize, new problems and op-
portunities are created. This book explains how the process works, offers
readers insights into how losses can
be reduced, and reveals opportunities
for superior return on investment.
The revisions to the bankruptcy laws enacted recently and the
growing concern about the financial
welfare of some of the nation’s larg-
est manufacturers combine to make
this a very timely book. An active
member of the Connecticut legal
community, Alderman drafted the
Bankruptcy Chapter of the Basic
Practice Manual for the Connecticut
Bar Association in 1992. He is a recipient of the LFE Goldie Award for
outstanding scholarship.
101 Best Scenes Ever Written:
A Romp Through Literature for Writers and Readers
Barnaby Conrad ’40
Quill Driver Books, 2006
Readers will delight in the best
scenes ever written, with passages
from Thornton Wilder to Elmore
Leonard. They will find old favorites and savor scenes new to them.
With each scene, Conrad provides
insights as to what the author wishes to accomplish with this passage
and the literary devices he or she
employed. Any avid reader will
enjoy Conrad’s 101 Best Scenes Ever
Written, but countless fledgling
and established writers will benefit
enormously by sampling and studying these gems from the masters of
the written word.
Tales from Nowhere:
Unexpected Stories from Unexpected Places
Don George ’71, editor
Lonely Planet, 2006
“Nowhere is a setting, a situation, and a state of mind,” explains
George, who is the global travel editor for Lonely Planet Publications.
“It’s not on any map, but you know
it when you’re there.”
Lonely Planet’s annual literary anthology spotlights some of the
travel world’s most renowned au-
thors including Tim Cahill, Pico Iyer,
Simon Winchester, Pam Houston,
Jason Elliot, and Lisa Alpine. Full of
surprise, passion, wonder, curiosity,
and revelation, this year’s anthology
takes that tradition into uncharted
territory. The 31 real-life tales compose a kaleidoscopic portrait of the
many Nowheres we visit—and the
many roads we take to get there—in
our lives. The tales in this collection all
illuminate one fundamental truth: If
we embark on each adventure with an
open heart and an open mind, trusting in the journey, travel will take us
places we never planned to go, and enrich and enlighten us in ways we never
otherwise would have known.
The Psychiatric Interview in Clinical Practice
Roger A. Mackinnon ’44, Robert Michels, and Peter J. Buckley
American Psychiatric Publishing; 2nd ed., 2006
In this revised and expanded edition
of the classic, the authors continue
to address the challenges inherent
in clinical interviewing they did in
their original 1971 edition while
also acknowledging the task of
adapting their interview strategies to
a new era of psychiatry.
Many readers will likely recognize aspects of themselves in some of
the clinical descriptions. The hope
is that this self-recognition will
lead to greater self-understanding
and self-acceptance as well as to
greater understanding and acceptance of others.
The book stresses that the
clinician needs to learn about patients, their problems, their illness,
and their lives. From this, read-
ers will understand the universal
presence of personality types and
the importance of the personality as a determining factor in the
unfolding of the psychiatric interview. MacKinnon is professor
emeritus of clinical psychiatry
at the College of Physicians and
Surgeons of Columbia University
in New York.
In Print
ASCENT:
How One Quadriplegic Fought for a Full Life and Soared
By Bruce McGhie ’50
Ruder Finn Press, 2006
In this autobiography, McGhie writes
of his life, love, and accomplishments
as a man dealing with quadriplegia
in a pre-handicap accessible world.
After a tragic Air Force training accident at the age of 22 left him critically injured and completely dependent on others, McGhie struggled
through painful and frustrating rehab
with little prospect of ever leading a
“normal” life.
During the agonizing recuperation and relearning process
inherent to spinal-cord injuries, he
faced a variety of challenges, from
getting dressed, driving with hand
controls, and gaining full physical
independence to getting up curbs
with no cuts and using inaccessible
bathrooms and public telephones.
McGhie not only overcame these
obstacles and achieved the “impossible”—a virtually normal life—but
also dared to strive for the extraordinary, succeeding in such endeavors
as building up a successful business
and becoming the first spinal-cord
injured person in the world to be
licensed as a glider pilot, using hand
controls he helped develop.
Ascent illuminates the amazing
accomplishments of one man and
his highly supportive wife while also
providing an example of the inherent power people have to transcend
handicaps—physical or otherwise—
and live full and meaningful lives.
For more information, visit www.
rfpress.com.
The Worms Of Euston Square
William Sutton ’89
Mercat Press, 2006
In this debut novel of terror beneath
the streets of Victorian London,
novice detective Campbell Lawless
delves into a world of hoofers, sabotage, and royal scandal. Aided by the
Worms, a gang of urchins, he tries to
uncover the ills hidden beneath the
filthy cobblestones.
“We tend to think of terrorism as a recent phenomenon,” says
Sutton, but this literary mystery tells
a different story. This was the era of
great exhibitions, foreign conquests,
underground trains. But it was also
the time of the Great Stink, of cholera, and depravity—and an underclass that was far from happy with
the status quo.
Launched at the Edinburgh
International Book Festival, The
Worms of Euston Square immerses
the reader in the sights, sounds,
and smells of a London of long ago.
But this is also a portrait of a city
whose atmosphere and preoccupations seem remarkably familiar and
relevant to us today.
Sutton makes his home in
Scotland. Besides writing plays,
stories, and articles, he’s acted in
the world’s longest play, tutored the
Sugababes, and played cricket for
Brazil. For more information, visit
www.mercatpress.com.
Aristocracy and the Modern World
Ellis Wasson ’66
Palgrave Macmillan, 2006
This is the first comprehensive
study of the traditional European
ruling class during the 19th and
20th centuries. Distilling the wealth
of recent research for students and
general readers, Wasson analyzes
the role of aristocracy, focusing
on the tensions that exist between
modern egalitarian values and the
way elites shape society. Topics
include: wealth, family, conceptions of honor, relations with other
classes, culture, recreation, gender,
local authority, and national power.
Individual studies enliven the text.
Wasson is chair of the History
Department at Tower Hill School
and adjunct professor of history at the
University of Delaware. Read a sample
chapter at www.palgrave.com.
Around the pond
Chance of a Lifetime
The school has always encouraged students to pursue interesting and worthwhile activities over the summer break, and funds
are now increasingly available through three separate fellowships to help students underwrite the costs of such adventures.
Whether in the arts, health care, or humanitarian or environmental efforts, these teens travel the globe trying to make a
difference and getting a taste of the fields that interest them most. For many of them, it’s an unforgettable experience.
c Uppermid Theresa
Chang got a taste of what
professional musicians
go through during the
Casalmaggiore International
Music Festival in Italy.
. Kilbourne fellow
Kacey Klonsky ’07
worked with her father
filming a documentary
in southern India.
Kilbourne Summer
Enrichment Fund
Theresa Chang ’08 was one
of 80 musicians at the Casalmaggiore
International Music Festival in Italy last
summer. Their average age was 23, explains Theresa. “Everyone was very competitive,” she adds, “and a lot of them
were there to prepare for international
competitions.” Theresa often practiced
until 3 a.m. for three weeks to prepare
for her daily private lessons with her
violin professor, Taras Gabora. “Since
Mr. Gabora was the judge of many
important international competitions,
including the Paganini International
Competition and Tchaikovsky International Competition, I had to! It was
intense but very fun. I’m glad that I had
the opportunity to discover what it’s like
to be a professional musician who has to
be ready to perform a new piece in only
four days.” Theresa had six performances during the three-week festival.
Carrie Hojnicki ’08 used her
Kilbourne grant to study at Parsons
School of Design in New York City,
where she took drawing classes in the
morning and accessory design in the
afternoon. “I had fabulous and very
Around the pond
Poole fellow Wilson Yu ’07
spent two weeks researching
giant pandas in China.
Getting a warm welcome each morning
from the local families was all the reward
Molly Brauer ’08 needed during her threeweek stay in Costa Rica.
Senior H.K. Seo
worked on a
documentary
of his visit
to Central
Africa over the
summer.
experienced teachers,” she says, “who
provided wonderful insight into the
accessory design world. Our major
project was to design a perfume scent,
bottle, and advertising campaign. My
perfume was inspired by the movie
Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” They also took
advantage of their location, embarking
on several field trips to design studios
around the city to enhance their learning experience.
(Performing Arts Institute of Wyoming
Seminary, clarinet), Penelope Smith
(Westminster Choir College H.S. Solo
Vocal Artist Program), Lizzie Strumolo
(Skidmore College Acceleration Program
in Art), and Nathaniel Thompson (Drexel
University program in photography);
and Ele Barisser ’08, who attended the
Nutmeg Conservatory of the Arts summer dance program for three weeks.
Senior Kacey Klonsky not
only spent a month at NYU’s Tisch
School of the Arts studying at the
Summer Filmmaker’s Workshop, but she
also spent two weeks in Thiruvarur in
southern India with her father, filming a
documentary on the Untouchables. “We
were working with a nonprofit organization called Life in Lenses,” she explains,
“which is featuring a series of films on
ordinary women who have done extraordinary things with their lives.” The series
will air on the BBC later this year. She
received a Kilbourne grant as well as a
Poole Fellowship for her work.
ROBERT KEYES POOLE
’50 FELLOWSHIPS
Other Kilbourne fellows were seniors
Jennifer Medeiros (Sewanee Young
Writers’ Conference), HeeKwon Seo
Wilson Yu ’07 spent two weeks
at the Giant Panda Breeding Research
Laboratory in Chengdu, China, where
he conducted experiments under the
guidance of the researchers. “I tried
things that I would never have the
chance to at school,” he explains, “such
as testing hormone levels in panda
urine to determine their pregnancy
status and extracting DNA from panda blood.” He also helped with more
mundane tasks like sweeping and feeding at the nursery, where most youngsters and females are kept. The most
rewarding moment, he adds, was when
he first touched a panda. “It might
sound silly but looking at them was
very different from touching them, so
it was in that moment that I felt the
pandas were really alive and that they
needed my help.”
Ted Dwyer ’07 worked for
Habitat for Humanity in Anchorage,
Alaska, for two weeks in August.
Meeting and conversing with the families they were building for was the highlight of his trip, he says. “I heard some
great stories just sitting with the families during our lunch breaks and really
bonded with a boy named Miracle. At
the end we were standing on the roof
of the house we were building for his
family. I will never forget the scene of
such a big guy just standing there crying
because he was so thankful.”
Alice Gao ’07 says she enjoyed her
summer immensely. “I taught English at
the Kungshon School in Lhasa, Tibet.
The school was founded by Loabsang,
who is fluent in Tibetan, English, and
Chinese. I stayed for five weeks and was
able to form friendships with the two
classes I taught everyday, three hours per
class. Above all, I was able to relax while
doing something I love!”
HeeKwon Seo ’07 traveled to
Central Africa for three weeks on his
Poole Fellowship, beginning in Rwanda,
then through Congo, and ending in
Uganda. “The experience as a whole was
truly life changing,” he explains. Among
the most rewarding moments he had
there (“if ranking them was ever possible”) was his visit to the refugee camps
in northern Uganda and translating for
a delegation of South Korean politicians
and businessmen who were trying to
communicate with the local leaders for
relief purposes. “Our meeting was fortuitous; World Mission Frontiers just
put the delegation and me together in a
van because we were all hoping to visit
the refugee camps.” H.K. is hoping to
combine all the more personally influential moments into a documentary.
Molly Brauer ’08 volunteered
for three weeks in Costa Rica, where
she lived with homestay families just
outside the capital during the week and
traveled all over the rest of the country
on weekends. “Most of our work had
to do with teaching children in poorer
communities and painting their houses
while getting to know the families,” she
explains. “The most rewarding part was
the way the families welcomed you each
time with huge smiles and sometimes a
kiss on the cheek. Even though I spoke
no Spanish, I could tell that the parents
of the children we worked with were delighted to have us there.”
Other Poole fellows this year were seniors Jennifer Chang, Bianca Chu,
Simone Foxman, Michael Furman,
Joseph Guthrie, Cat Henry, Carola
Lovering, Caitlin Maguire, Grace Scott,
Jacqueline Staub, and Marina Tokoro,
and uppermid Shane Sanderson.
c Macie Winship ’07, of Shrewsbury,
Massachusetts, was one of five girls’ ice
hockey players from Taft to attend USA
Hockey’s National Development Camp.
Actionphotos.com
MEG PAGE ’74
FELLOWSHIP
Page fellow Lee Ziesing ’07 attended the National Youth Leadership
Forum on Medicine held at Villanova
University. “I loved the whole forum and
met some fantastic people from all over
the country,” she says. “We were exposed
to so much in the modern medical field.”
During the ten-day program she visited
hospitals, medical schools, and laboratories, exploring all aspects of health care
in the Greater Philadelphia area. “I was
able participate in activities alongside
med students; possibly the most notable
was getting to hold and examine a human brain. We were also given the opportunity to go into the restricted sections of the hospitals, my favorites being
the helipad and the Neonatal Intensive
Care Unit (NICU). It was so fascinating
to go behind the scenes in the hospitals
and really understand what it is like to
be a doctor as you are exposed to every
aspect of their workday.”
Independent
Adventures
Students receiving school funding certainly were not the only ones to seek out
interesting opportunities over the summer. Here is a sampling of some other
go-getters:
“These are camps that only a few
kids from each area around the country
are invited to based on tryouts held in
the spring,” explains varsity coach Jon
Guiffre. “They are all part of a program
to track and develop players for eventual selection to the U-22 and/or full
national team.”
Selection to one of the national development camps happens through tryouts within the player’s home district.
Each district sends an allotted number
of its top players to the different age
groups camps. Each camp includes a
week of practice run by college and
national team coaches and a series of
games each evening.
Taking Care of Business
Brendan Letarte ’07 and his friend Alex
had worked summers on Nantucket for
a number of years and found that they
worked very hard without receiving
much more than minimum wage. So,
they decided to start their own boat
cleaning business, doing an activity
that they both love (working outside,
in the sun, on beautiful boats), devising
their own work schedule, and charging what they thought their time and
labor was worth. “The hardest part of
owning our own business was customer
relations,” Brendan explains. “Seeing
as how we were just two kids, one still
in high school and the other a college
Going National
Five members of the girls’ ice hockey
program were selected for USA Hockey’s
National Development Camp this summer. Senior Macie Winship attended
the 17/18-year-old Festival—the highest
level of national development—before
being selected to the U-22 team. Along
with her at the 17/18 camp were this
year’s captain Jackee Snikeris ’07, Ashley
Wiater ’07 (who remained at Taft for a
PG year), and Erin Barley-Maloney ’08.
Middler goalie Becca Hazlett was selected to attend the 15/16 camp.
Around the pond
m Sam Beatt ’07 with the culmination of
his efforts at a guitar-building workshop in
Vermont. Jon Guiffre
. Spanish teacher Matt Budzyn biked 600
miles from Roncesvalles to Santiago de
Compostela, Spain, last summer through
the Davis Family Junior Faculty Fund.
Uppermid Sam Shiverick, in the red hat, and his group dip
their front wheels into the Pacific Ocean after a six-week trip
cross country that started in Tybee Island, Georgia.
freshman, we had to work extremely
hard to build our reputation and satisfy
our customers. We had to be as professional as possible to ensure a consistent
flow of customers.” The business ran for
six weeks, and they found themselves
extremely busy by the end, including
a 125-foot yacht that took them seven
hours to clean. “We are hoping to offer our service again next summer with
plans to expand the business to include
car detailing.”
Playing it Cool
Sam Beatt ’07 spent 14 days learning
the craft of guitar building from George
Martin at the Vermont Instrument
Academy last summer. Martin, whose
guitars usually fetch $3–6,000, started
the academy to share the craft with those
who are willing to spend the time and
effort to create a working instrument.
Sam often spent 12 hours a day
in the workshop, straining to finish
his project in two weeks instead of the
usual four. The sides and back are made
of rosewood, the top is book-matched
Australian cypress, and the fret board
is ebony. Sam incorporated many fine
details into the construction, laminating veneer strips into the hand-carved
10 Taft Bulletin Fall 2006
neck and headstock and incorporating
delicate inlays into the front and back
of the body.
“This might be one of the coolest
things I ever do,” adds Sam.
Going Coastal
Sam Shiverick ’08 says it’s hard to
explain the feelings he had coasting
downhill onto Santa Monica pier in
July after six weeks of cycling across the
country, from ocean to ocean, knowing
his parents were there waiting for him.
“I’ll never forget it,” he says. “I had a
lot of motivation to finish,” adds Sam,
who didn’t even own a bike when he
signed up for the trip, “because there
were lots of people who didn’t think I’d
do it.” He admits he had some doubts
of his own about riding 100 miles or
more some days and spending as much
as 10 hours on a bike. Sam traveled
with a group of eight students and
two leaders from Overland Summers,
who stayed in churches or camped in
tents as they crossed the country from
Georgia to California. “It was great
to see the country, meet lots of cool
people, and learn about my own pain
threshold,” says Sam. “I even learned
how to cook.”
A New Spin on
Faculty Funds
Teachers look forward to summer vacation as much as, and occasionally more
than, their students. And while some
faculty worked on curriculum development or pursued advanced degrees, others found more interesting ways to keep
up with their subject matter.
With support from the Davis
Family Junior Faculty Fund, Spanish
teacher Matt Budzyn biked 600 miles,
from Roncesvalles to Santiago de
Compostela, Spain. “It took about two
weeks and was an amazing journey,” he
says. “After everything I had experienced
in the spring with thyroid cancer, I was
left wondering if I was up to the task,
but fortunately I was able to endure the
physical challenge.” There were many
memorable moments, he explains, but
chief among them was the day he finished an incline “that almost killed me.
I descended about 1100 meters, which
took about 40 minutes without having
to pedal at all. My average speed during this descent was about 40 miles per
hour, which was exhilarating.”
Faculty Awards
jCarpenter Teaching Fellowship:
Aurélie Miller, French
jMailliard Teaching Fellowship:
Casey D’Annolfo, English
jDrummond and Ruth Bell
Fellowship: Jason BreMiller and
Anna Hastings, English
jBlinken Fellowship:
Joseph Freeman, English
jDavis Fellowship: Yen Liu, Chinese
jDavis Family Junior Faculty Fund:
Matt Budzyn, Spanish (at left)
jAlice and Arthur Greer Faculty
Fund: Dan Murphy, History
jJohn Lyman Fellowship:
Pilar Santos, Spanish
jLance Odden Summer Sabbatical
Teachers Fund:
Alison Carlson, Modern Languages
Jon Willson ’82, History Department
jFull-year sabbaticals:
Ferdie Wandelt ’66, Admissions
Jim Mooney, Science
Coach Rusty Davis celebrates a victory
with the 1976 girls’ varsity soccer team.
Clemens Kalischer/The Leslie D. Manning Archives
Hall of Fame
Rusty Davis was inducted into the Connecticut Girls Soccer Coaches
Association Hall of Fame this fall. Davis coached the varsity girls’ soccer team
from its inception in 1973 until 1994. Under his direction, the team took
home four consecutive New England titles and more than 220 victories. Davis
was also highlighted in Sports Illustrated’s “Faces in the Crowd” in 1992.
Otto Barker has been getting the fields
ready for game time for over 40 years. He
retires this month. Roger Kirkpatrick ’06
Help Wanted
Imagine being married for two months
when your mother-in-law tells you she’s
been looking at the Help Wanted ads and
has found the perfect job for you. Well,
maybe not the perfect job, but at least
one that will get you off the couch. So
began the saga of Otto Barker’s 44-year
association with the school. Originally
hired for a two-week stint, October 3,
1962, was his first day on the job. The
school needed a little extra help building faculty homes on Hamilton Avenue,
near the site of the Grounds building.
Easy to spot on campus, Otto wears
his signature “Greens” virtually every day:
green button shirt and green work pants.
He added a wide-brimmed hat a while
back, to protect his head from sun as he sits
atop a tractor painting lines on the fields.
In the early years, marking the fields was
easy. “There were just three football fields
and two soccer fields,” he explains. Otto
was there when Lance Odden introduced
lacrosse to the school, and together they
determined how to line the first field.
But the biggest change Otto has seen
was “the addition of girls” in 1971. Otto is
one of the few who worked here when Taft
was all boys. His daughter Lynne became
a member of the Class of ’88. “Ninety
percent of my time has been good, very
good,” he says. What about that other 10
percent? His bushy eyebrows furrow together as we talk in his work area, known
by all as “Otto’s Garage.” “Well, in the early days some teachers didn’t treat us (the
grounds crew) so well. So I told them off.
Once, word even got back to the headmaster. But that was okay, the headmaster
was a friend of mine.”
—Al Reiff ’80
11
Leslie Herrlinger
Lanahan ’73
Around the pond
New Trustees
The school welcomed three new corporate members of the Board of Trustees this
fall: Jim Jacobson ’62, Leslie Herrlinger
Lanahan ’73, and Hank Brauer ’74.
Jacobson is vice chairman and
managing director of Spear, Leeds &
Kellogg Specialists, LLC, a wholly
owned subsidiary of Goldman Sachs in
New York. A graduate of Trinity College,
he has served Taft as a member of the
Citation of Merit Committee and the
Board Finance, Investment, and Audit
committees. Jacobson has served on
the boards of Rumson Country Day
School, Monmouth Medical Center, the
Children’s Psychiatric Center Foundation
in New Jersey, and the Juvenile Diabetes
Foundation in New York. He currently serves on the board of the Ronald
McDonald House of New York. He lives
in New York City with his wife Kerry.
Lanahan is a community volunteer
and a former advertising and interior
design executive. With her husband,
she founded The Gordie Foundation
in memory of her son, Gordie Bailey,
Seniors Harry Weyher
and Sara Partridge
at the opening
reception of
Uniform Codes
in September.
Kelly Urmston-Parish ’07
Hank Brauer ’74
who died in 2004 of alcohol poisoning
as a result of a college fraternity initiation. The mission of the foundation is
to provide today’s youth with the skills
to navigate the dangers of alcohol and
through education and promotion of
self-worth, prevent alcohol poisoning,
binge drinking, and hazing. She attended Pitzer College and New York School
of Interior Design and is the mother of
Lily ’08. Lanahan is part of a large Taft
family; her grandfather, father, uncle,
three siblings, and two nephews also attended Taft. She lives in Dallas, Texas,
with her husband Michael.
Brauer is a founding partner of
Colony Realty Partners, LLC, a real estate investment advisory firm in Boston;
an overseer of the Peabody Essex
Museum; and was appointed commissioner of the Massachusetts Public
Uniform Codes
Photographer Yee-Fun Yin’s exhibit Uniform Codes is a
series of portraits that uses athletic imagery to explore
the issues of selfhood and status. “The clothing we wear
carries messages about social status, occupation, membership, and affiliation,” says Yin, “and we must know
the code to understand the message transmitted. In this
series, the uniform carries the message.”
Yin’s black-and-white documentary portraits are
made with a large format 4x5 camera to capture details
that are enlarged and emphasized in the photographs
and were on display in the Mark W. Potter ’48 Gallery
from September 8 to October 5.
Yin was educated at Yale and received his master’s
degree in photography from the Hartford Art School
at the University of Hartford. He was the recipient of
the Artist in Residence Award for 2004–06 from the
Milford Fine Arts Council. He now lives in Woodbury
and teaches at Gateway Community College in New
Haven, Connecticut.
Jim Jacobson ’62
Employee Retirement Commission. He
earned his B.A from Tufts and a master’s
from MIT. He is an avid sailor, lives in
Marblehead, Massachusetts, with his
wife Callie, and is the father of Molly
’08, Ben ’09, and Elizabeth ’10.
Yi-ming Yang ’87 also joins the board
for a four-year term as this year’s elected
alumni trustee (see summer 2006 issue).
Dave Kirkpatrick ’89 steps down
this fall as Annual Fund chair but will remain on the board as a corporate trustee.
Holcombe Green ’87, already a member of the board, becomes an ex-officio
member as the new Annual Fund chair.
Finally, the board expressed its thanks
to departing members Adam Bronfman
’81, Susan Lehman Carmichael ’83, Roslyn
Ford ’80, Bridget Macaskill P’02,’05, and
Sally Childs Walsh ’75. Walsh served for
more than 20 years on the board.
Other events in the
Potter Gallery:
October 13 to November 17 Barbara Grossman, Structure, Pattern,
and Harmony
November 28 to December 6
Photography by Kacey Klonsky ’07
January 11 to February 18
Sarah Amos, Rockwell Visiting Artist
Opening reception January 12
February 28 to April 13
Student Work
Opening reception March 2
April 20 to May 29
Ken Rush ’67
Opening reception April 20
The Toughest Job
Teaching is one of the toughest—and
least appreciated—jobs, John Merrow
’59 told the assembled faculty at their
opening meeting this fall. “I’m here to
remind you how much power and influence you have.”
Standing coincidentally in front of
Sullivan’s portrait in the faculty room,
Merrow called himself a Sullivan imitator. Merrow, who produces series on
education for PBS’s Frontline, is a former
teacher himself, albeit briefly, he adds. “I
taught as Bill Sullivan taught me, mak-
ing my students write and rewrite. I consciously made mistakes for them to catch,
and constantly demanded their best.”
“You are a bridge—not an endpoint—for the young men and women
who come into your lives. You do a lot
of listening. Your job is to help kids
build a self—the entity that will be their
constant companion for the rest of their
lives. Accomplishment is the basis for
self-esteem, not empty praise. You can
empathize with students without lowering your standards.”
Familiar faculty
This fall’s incoming faculty contained
a few familiar faces. Alumna and science teacher Laura Monti ’89 returned
with her husband, a math teacher, and
their two children. Dana Carbone, formerly Hardy, is also back teaching in
the Wu after working in Jackson Hole,
Wyoming. W.T. Miller first arrived at
Taft in 1996 but left to work in France
for a few years and returned this fall with
his new wife and fellow French teacher,
Aurélie. History teachers Edie and Mark
Traina will also work side by side. Mark
first joined the faculty in 1998.
New faculty, front from left, Dena Torino, Mark and Edie Traina, Julia Cardozo, Tom Antonucci, and Shannon Lenz. Standing, Laura
Monti ’89, Jeremy Clifford, Michael McAloon, Bob O’Connor, Laurel Waterhouse, W.T. Miller, Casey D’Annolfo, Aurélie Miller, and
Greg Ricks. Dana Carbone is not pictured.
Opening Day
Science teacher Manna Ohmoto-Whitfield welcomes Brooks Taylor ’10 (grandson of Dave Taylor
’43) and his parents Kristin and Don Taylor ’76.
Plenty of other alumni were on hand as well to
settle their children into a new school year. For
a complete list of alumni children and grandchildren at Taft, see page 42.
13
He landed the fish
that landed itself.
Harvard professor Farish Jenkins ’57 unearths a
375-million-year-old fossil that has been hailed as the
missing link between fish and all limbed creatures.
By Andrew Rimas
It was the little sarcopterygian fish that could.
An article published in Nature in April detailed the discovery of a 375million-year-old fossil in the Arctic wastes of Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, Canada. The
authors claimed that the animal, called Tiktaalik roseae, was the missing link between
fish and four-legged beasts—a fish that was able to propel itself up onto dry land.
Ever since, Harvard University professor of zoology and anatomy Farish A. Jenkins, Jr.,
one of the authors and a member of the team that found the fish, has been swamped with
media and speaking requests from all over the country and the world.
“When you launch a pop icon,” says Jenkins, “the attention gets totally out of hand.”
If Jenkins is surprised at the public furor, he’s certain of the significance of his team’s discovery. “It’s a fish at the beginning of the transition to land. It’s very important.”
There is something of the artillery officer about Jenkins, 66, with his trim moustache,
his waistcoat, and his immaculate diction. In fact he did serve a stint in the Marines after
graduating from Princeton, but he’s been ensconced as one of the guiding lights of Harvard’s
organismic and evolutionary biology department for more than 30 years.
“I was always interested in anatomy and how things work,” he says. His office is tastefully
decked with skulls, models of the inner workings of beasts, and photos of East African wildlife.
Jenkins taught anatomy at Harvard Medical School for three decades, and he’s got a particular
liking for vertebrate evolution.
As well as being a teacher, Jenkins is a member of the exploratory breed of scientists that
once flocked to the dark corners of 19th-century maps. He talks with equal gusto about “calcitic nodules” and the life of Otto Sverdrup (a late 19th- early 20th-century Norwegian polar
explorer), and it’s with justifiable pride that he shows off his fossil-hunting tools—heavy hammers and chisels, and a pickaxe-cum-walking-stick. He’s carried them from South America,
Africa, and China, of course, to the Arctic.
The cover of Nature
celebrates the
discovery of a 375million-year-old fossil
by Jenkins and his team
that represents an
intermediate between
fish with fins and
tetrapods with limbs.
Farish Jenkins with Tiktaalik
roseae, one of several fossils
of a previously undiscovered
species of fish that range from
four to nine feet long. Scientists
have hailed the team’s find as an
evolutionary milestone. “It’s a fish at
the beginning of the transition to land,”
Jenkins says. “It’s very important.”
Ted Daeschler, Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia
“I have always loved the outdoors,” he says. “I disappear regularly in the summer. My
wife is very forbearing of my tendency to explore.” He speaks fondly of the rigors of living on
Ellesmere Island, where he returned this last summer to excavate Tiktaalik’s hindquarters. “I
love the tranquility, the quietude.” Even so, July is the only month of the year when Ellesmere’s
snowfall and winds aren’t utterly prohibitive for fossil-diggers, and where the cuisine isn’t quite
to the standards of the Michelin guide.
“Everything is freeze-dried and rehydrated,” says Jenkins, “because helicopters are very
weight limited. The only wet things we carry are salamis, cheeses, and booze.” After a day in
the field, the team returns for cocktail hour and their one hot meal, but mostly they subsist
during the day on chocolate, crackers, and cheese. “When we shop for these expeditions, you’ll
see three guys running through the supermarket: One will have a shopping cart full of nothing
but candy bars. Another with a mound of crackers. And a third with field season’s supply of
toilet paper, some 70 rolls or more.” The toilet paper, apart from the obvious use, is considered
fact sheet
hobbies:
family:
Wife, Eleanor, and two
adult children, Henry ’84
and Temperance, and two
granddaughters.
hometown:
Arlington, Massachusetts.
Also a farm in Eaton, New
Hampshire.
One morning in 2004,
Jenkins’s team discovered
enormous polar bear paw
tracks on a sandbank not 60
feet from their tents, so one
of his colleagues made a
plaster cast. “The irony was,”
Jenkins smiles, “that although
we didn’t know it at the time,
in our expeditionary cargo,
we had the fossil that was
the progenitor of all hands,
hooves, wings, flukes, and, of
course, paws.”
On his farm, Jenkins grows
antique varieties of apples
and makes champagne
cider. “Apples are very
demanding. You have to
prune them, spray them,
pick them, and fence them
against the ravages of deer
and porcupines. Porcupines
are my worst enemies. They
got out of South America
during the Pliocene, when
the two continents hooked
up, and have spread everywhere ever since...”
on professional
competitiveness:
“The tendency for scientists
to engage in internecine
conflict is inversely proportional to the availability of
data. Physicists don’t kill
each other because they
have the entire universe to
work with. Nobody owns
all the particles in the cosmos. But if you own East
Africa, you’re the anthropological king.”
favorite indulgence when in
the field:
A sponge bath in a pail of
heated glacial water.
to hear him
speak:
Jenkins will deliver the
Ermine Cowles Case
Memorial Lecture at the
University of Michigan on
January 23: “From Fins
to Limbs: Discovery and
Evolutionary Significance
of Tiktaalik roseae.”
by paleontologists as an essential for wrapping delicate fossil specimens.
With global warming melting the sea ice, polar bears are becoming more of a
danger. One morning in 2004, Jenkins’s team ventured out to discover enormous
paw prints, bigger than a human face, on a sandbank not 60 feet from their tents.
“I’m one of the few Harvard faculty members licensed by the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts to bear Class A firearms,” he laughs. Shotguns delivering one-ounce
sabot slugs are a necessary precaution, but Jenkins would have liked to introduce
watchdogs to this year’s expedition. “We’re very concerned that we’re going to have
more encounters.”
One of Jenkins’s colleagues made a plaster cast of the giant paw print. “The irony
was,” he smiles, “that although we didn’t know it at the time, in our expeditionary
cargo at that moment, we had the fossil that was the progenitor of all hands, hooves,
wings, flukes, and, of course, paws.”
This article originally appeared in the Boston Globe and is reprinted with permission of
the author.
At a health clinic
in South Darfur,
Landegger meets with
a woman who had to
walk more than 30
miles to reach the camp.
She was a grandmother,
she said, but her
three grandchildren
were killed and her
daughter had been
seriously wounded due
to sexual assault.
hope
in the face
of catastrophe
By Brady Dennis
A young
humanitarian
works to make
a difference
in Darfur and
Pakistan
S
he has spent her days navigating the globe,
from one hell to another. A war-torn country
here. A humanitarian crisis there. Everywhere,
scenes of hopelessness and desperation.
Justine Landegger ’00 has seen what most people try
hard not to see—hunger, poverty, homelessness, disease,
death. But time after time, she ventures into the darkest
corners of the world, hoping to spread light through humanitarian aid.
Never has she found herself in darker or more daunting
places than during her past two assignments—in the Darfur
region of western Sudan and, these days, in the most troubled areas of Pakistan.
She currently works for the International Rescue
Committee, a nongovernmental organization that provides
food, education, water and sanitation, health care, job training,
and other services to parts of the world ravaged by conflict.
Her passion for helping others began early. Landegger,
the youngest of five children, grew up in a family that traveled
far and often—Europe, South America, New Zealand, the
Caribbean. No matter the place, she saw poverty and need.
She says a trip to Africa when she was 7 remains vivid in
her memory. While everyone else searched for safari animals,
she wanted only to play with the village children. She gave them
her pens and paper. She reveled in the smiles on their faces.
“My parents had to keep dragging me out of the villages,” Landegger, 24, recalls.
While still at Taft, she began volunteering with Camp
AmeriKids, based in Carmel, New York, a summer camp for
children living with and affected by HIV/AIDS. After that,
she said, “I decided that all I wanted to do with my life was
play with little kids, internationally.”
She set out to do that and much more.
At Georgetown University, she designed her own major focused on global health and development, while still finding time
to become captain of the crew team. She earned a master’s certificate in Refugee Studies and Humanitarian Affairs. She volunteered with various aid organizations and traveled to Nicaragua,
Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, and Bulgaria.
By November 2004, she found herself in Darfur, a region that even today teeters on the brink of catastrophe from
years of conflict and genocide. A sense of urgency pervaded
daily life. People “didn’t know if they were going to be killed
tomorrow,” Landegger said. Entire villages vanished.
“I found it much worse than I expected,” she said. “It
was very, very bleak.”
She stayed a year. After four months back home, it was
off again, this time to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. She
now spends her days working with both Afghan refugees
and the victims of the October 2005 earthquake that struck
northern Pakistan, leaving thousands of people dead and
millions homeless.
While the people of Pakistan don’t live under the daily
threat of slaughter, as in Darfur, vast need still exists. A year after the earthquake, “People still don’t have shelter,” Landegger
said in a recent telephone interview from Pakistan.
On a personal level, everywhere she goes, danger lingers.
She can’t go anywhere alone and rarely wanders out after
Justine Landegger
’00 takes a break
from her work at
an Afghan refugee
school in the
Pakistani city of
Peshawar.
dark. She wears a headscarf and owns a burqa, though so
far she refuses to wear it. She is 6 feet tall, blonde, and an
American Catholic in a Muslim society.
“I don’t blend very well,” she said, laughing.
Always, there is worry back home in Ridgefield,
Connecticut, too. Landegger’s siblings all have “normal”
jobs—psychologists, businessmen, homemakers. Her parents view their youngest daughter’s work with ambivalence.
“From my perspective, it’s a combination of pride in her
willingness to sacrifice for others and concern she may be
making the ultimate sacrifice,” said Justine’s father, George
Landegger, CEO of Parsons & Whittemore, one of the
world’s largest producers of pulp used in papermaking.
“She’s in very dangerous places,” he said. “I’m afraid she
will be kidnapped because she’s a woman or that she will be
killed because she’s an American.”
But beneath his fear lies an abundance of contentment.
“I think what she’s doing is an extraordinary thing,” he
said. “I plan to mention her name when I get to the pearly
gates and see Saint Peter.”
Mr. Landegger said he will sleep better when his daughter is out of harm’s way. He won’t be sleeping well anytime
soon. She’ll finish her work in Pakistan in time to come home
for Thanksgiving. But in 2007, she plans to spend another
six to eight months working in northern Uganda, where a
20-year war has left behind a trail of mutilated victims, child
sex slaves, child soldiers, and displaced families.
Landegger knows plenty of detractors criticize the work
she does. She’s heard herself and those like her referred to as
tree-hugging do-gooders.
“I get very frustrated with that,” she said. “I would challenge them to actually come out and see” the work the dogooders do.
When she talks about the critics, she likes to tell the parable of the starfish. It goes like this:
One morning an elderly man is walking on a nearly
deserted beach when he comes upon a boy surrounded
by thousands of starfish. The boy is eagerly picking up
the starfish and throwing them back into the ocean.
The old man, world-wise and jaded, looks at the
boy and says, “Little boy, what are you doing?”
The boy answers without looking up, “I’m trying
to save these starfish, sir.”
The old man chuckles. “Son, there are thousands
of starfish and only one of you,” he says. “You can’t possibly make a difference.”
Holding a starfish in his hand, the boy turns to
the man, tosses the starfish into the water and says, “I
made a difference to that one.”
For now, Landegger says, it’s enough to travel the world,
from one hell to another, throwing starfish.
“It’s not a normal job, but it works,” she said. “This is
where my heart is.”
Brady Dennis is a reporter for the St. Petersburg Times in Florida.
His story on Oliver Spencer ’85 appeared in the summer issue.
After spending the
day building shelters
in the local community,
Landegger watches a
huge rainbow fill the
valley at sunset—her best
day in Pakistan so far.
19
Life Anew
Veena, Kiran, Anjali, Arpita, Neha, and Rachna are among the 63 children who live at the Sri Ram Ashram,
created in 1984 to help orphaned and destitute children in India. Rashmi Cole
C alifornia schoolteacher W ard M ailliard ’ 6 5
adopts an orphanage - school in I ndia
By Julia Feldmeier ’99
Ward Mailliard
and Savita. His wife
and he have helped take
care of her since she was 8 months old.
M
eet Ward Mailliard. Son of the late U.S. Representative
William Mailliard of San Francisco. Husband of 27
years to Kranti Mailliard. Father to none.
Let us clarify: None that he calls his own. None by blood.
Because there is Soma, the 13-year-old girl who, as an
infant, was abandoned in a temple. There is Prabha, now
17, dumped in a horse trough 16 years ago. And there is
young Arpita, who at age three was found with her arms
broken, belly distended, and cigarette burns on her face
and in her ears.
These, one might say, are Mailliard’s children. They are
children of the Sri Ram Ashram, a nonprofit created in 1984
to help orphaned and destitute children in India.
When Mailliard visited India in 1986, the ashram had
just received its first children and had only a small staff to care
for them. It was his first trip to Asia, a journey borne out of
curiosity about another culture. “The project was kind of an
excuse to go to India,” he says. “I had no idea that I would get
this involved.”
Twenty years later, there are 63 children and 16 fulltime staff, most of them Indian, who live on Sri Ram’s 16
acres of farmland, plus an additional 30 staff who teach at
the school. Across the road from the campus is a national
preserve—a jungle with wild elephants, cheetahs, and monkeys. A mile north, the Ganges flows out of the foothills of
the Himalayas. It’s an area of India filled with life, and at the
ashram, it’s life anew.
j j j
Every January, Mailliard and his wife leave behind their friends
and colleagues in Watsonville, Calif., where Mailliard teaches
high school social studies at the Mount Madonna School, a
K–12 private day school, and head to Uttaranchal, India, for
a two-month stay at the Sri Ram Ashram. This cements their
attachment to the place.
“We’re there as a built-in audience—we’re witnesses to
their growing up,” Mailliard says of his visits. They have afternoon tea with the children and supervise their study hall.
They catch them when they come down the slide and watch
them compete in cricket matches. They play with the infant
orphans, changing their diapers and watching over them as if
they were their own.
“There’s a relationship there which is more like family,”
Mailliard says. “You couldn’t imagine not caring or not being
interested in that child and her future. You couldn’t abandon
someone after that.”
Unlike typical orphanages, the Sri Ram Ashram does
not adopt its children out. It’s an easy answer to the complications of adoption and makes the ashram a destination, not
a way station. Typically, they seek to take children under the
age of 8 who are truly destitute—those without parents and
without hope. Background checks are run to make sure that
the children really are in need; some parents, recognizing
that the quality of life at Sri Ram is superior to that of their
“We’re not orphans anymore,” children at the ashram explain.
“ W e h av e a h o m e . ”
Sri Ram does not adopt out children, but acts instead as their guardians—
their family—until they’re grown.
21
E v e r y y e a r Wa rd M a i l l i a rd ’ 6 5
and his wife Kranti spend two months
with the children at the orphanage.
They catch them when they come
down the slide and cheer them on
in cricket matches, watching over them
as if they were their own.
“ W e ’ re there as a built- in audience —
we ’ re witnesses to their
growing up, ”
home, have tried to sneak their child into the orphanage.
Until recently, a sign hanging above the entrance to the
main building read, Anath Shishu Palan Trust—which roughly translates as “a place for destitute and orphaned children.”
The children pointed to the sign and asked that it be painted
over, Mailliard recalls. We’re not orphans anymore, they said.
We have a home.
“We support them all the way through,” Mailliard says.
“We’re just now starting to put our first kids into college over
there. If it’s trade school, we send them off to trade school. If it’s
marriage, you arrange the marriage. Just like any family would.”
The Sri Ram Foundation, which runs the orphanage, is a
sister organization of the Mount Madonna Center, the 355acre retreat dedicated to personal growth and spiritual development where Mailliard lives, works, and serves as president
of the nonprofit corporation board. The Sri Ram Foundation,
the Mount Madonna Center, and the Mount Madonna
School, where Mailliard teaches, are under the umbrella of
the Advaita Society, formed by a group of individuals with a
shared interest in yoga and meditation. India, the birthplace
of yoga, seemed a natural location for the Advaita Society to
launch a new public service enterprise.
j j j
j j j
In addition to the ashram, the Sri Ram campus houses a
school and a medical facility that are open to residents of the
nearby village and town. In 2001, a 5,000-square-foot medical center was erected to provide free outpatient care and dispense basic medicines at a nominal cost. The school serves
nursery classes through 12th standard and is accredited by
India’s Central Board of Education. There are more than 500
students enrolled, making the school a melting pot of children from the orphanage, the commerce-based town, and the
agriculture-based village.
“India is a very layered and stratified culture,” Mailliard
says. “Bringing these kids together, you get this wonderful
mosaic of people all being educated at the school.”
There are many people involved in making the orphanage a
success, of course, and Mailliard is quick to deflect credit from
himself. Still, there is praise to be sung.
Raman Bhatia, the head of polio eradication for all of
India for the International Rotary Foundation and a vicepresident of the Sri Ram Foundation Trust in India, calls
Mailliard “untiring and relentless” in his efforts to improve
the ashram. Most notable is his diplomacy.
“All this requires frequent visits to government and tax
authorities,” Bhatia explains, “and no one can beat Ward at
this. He is good: diplomatic, suave, and knowledgeable and
gets the job done. All for the sake of the children ‘adopted’ as
their very own.”
A rpita , o n e o f 6 0 c h i l d r e n w h o l i v e a t S r i R a m ,
was found with her arms broken, belly distended,
and cigarette burns on her face and in her ears.
Two of the children from the Sri Ram Ashram—Prabha
and Soma, the abandoned girls mentioned earlier—are now
students at the Mount Madonna School in California. Prabha,
17, is a senior; Soma, 14, is in 8th grade. This is their third
year here in America; they live at the small boarding school
facility on Mount Madonna’s campus. On the phone, they are
mature, confident and impeccably articulate.
Moving to California was strange at first, they say, and
they miss India and their siblings at the ashram—though
they know that this is an invaluable educational experience
for them. They point out the differences between the cultures: Students are more encouraged to express themselves
academically in the States, but they are less respectful of each
other and their teachers. And here in the States, they say,
people want stuff that they don’t need. Which is not to say
that the girls don’t enjoy the iPods and the cell phones they
now possess, but, as Soma says, “I didn’t have that much
stuff in India, and I was happy.”
They attribute that happiness to the ashram. They’re both
well aware of the life they might have led had Sri Ram not
taken them in. “When I would go into streets in town I would
see all these beggars and homeless kids, and I would think,
‘That would be me begging,’” Prabha says. “You feel really
privileged when you’re provided with all that and you have a
lot of people to love you. It’s good knowing you’re loved even
though you have nothing in this world.”
Soma agrees. “If I were not brought into the ashram, I
would consider myself a nobody in the world—I don’t think
I would make a difference. [Now] I feel like I could make a
change and actually do something for the people out there
who I would have been.”
Part of the experiment of bringing students over to
study in the United States, Mailliard says, is to familiarize
them with both school systems in hopes that, ultimately,
some of the children who grow up in the ashram will be the
ones who run it.
Every other May, Mailliard brings a group of about 20
students from the Mount Madonna School to Washington,
D.C., as part of his Government in Action program, where
students interview government officials, members of the media, and other national figures. Prabha went on the expedition
last spring, when the group met with Robert Zoellick, then
the deputy secretary of state.
Prabha sat two seats down from him, listening intently and
asking questions. Prabha: Once a baby thrown away, left in a
trough. Prabha: Now a confident, articulate young woman conversing with the number two person in the State Department.
“I was having a moment there, thinking how strange
life is. That you could move that distance in a lifetime,”
Mailliard says. “It was just a really profound experience to
realize the potential when you reach out, how a life can be
changed.”
Julia Feldmeier ’99 is a writer in Washington, D.C.
The Sri Ram Ashram sits on 16 acres of farmland,
across the road from a national preserve
with wild elephants, cheetahs, and monkeys.
A mile north, the Ganges flows out of the
foothills of the Himalayas.
I t ’s a n a r e a o f I n d i a f i l l e d w i t h l i f e ,
a n d a t t h e a s h r a m , i t ’s l i f e a n e w.
Kate Brooks
Lebanese
As I walked to class, I was pushed down by the shock
waves caused by a bomb. I collected myself, not understanding what had happened and continued on
my way, but with each step I took, my journalistic
curiosity grew stronger: “What if this is something
important?” I thought. I turned around and walked
nearly a mile toward the billowing cloud of smoke rising in
the crisp blue sky of an early spring morning in Beirut.
It was February 14, 2005, and as I looked at the burning wreckage, emergency services raced through the amassing crowd carrying bodies on stretchers, while police officers
and newly arrived soldiers staved off astonished onlookers.
I called ABC to file a radio report: former Prime Minister
Rafik Hariri had been killed.
I resigned from ABC News in 2004 to move to the
Middle East, after five years working in news in New York
and London. My aim was to develop my own understanding of the Arab world. The oversimplified
way network news depicted Middle Eastern culture conflicted with my childhood impressions of
the Arab world in Morocco, where I in part grew
up. There had to be more to the story than what we
were offering the American public.
And there was. Soon after arriving in Lebanon where I
had signed on to a new life as a master’s student of Middle
Eastern Affairs, Hariri’s assassination threw me back into the
fold of news, but with a twist. This time I was to work as a
freelance journalist for print and on the Internet, while attending graduate classes.
The ensuing political turmoil gave my lectures a reallife dimension, and journalism sent me out in the streets to
speak with people.
Days
MARWAN NAAMANI/Getty Images
By Irina Prentice ’94
25
Both as a student and a foreign news journalist, the unfolding events in Lebanon of: political struggles, demands
for greater democracy, journalists’ assassinations, bombing
campaigns, and most recently war with Israel, proved to be
intellectually engaging, physically and emotionally trying and
professionally fascinating.
Writing from Paris, I am taking stock of the events before
returning to Lebanon to finish my degree. It would seem that
no battle fought is ever black and white, and justification for
war should be regarded from all sides with skepticism.
A Glimpse of
Reporting In a
War Zone
After helping set up ABC’s bureau in Beirut, while field producing stories on the escalation of the war in Lebanon, I was
sent to the front in south Lebanon to field produce for their
rotating news teams.
Last July, on my third day in the ancient city of Tyre—
built on a promontory jutting into the Mediterranean about
15 miles north of the Israeli border—we attended a mass
burial of 82 victims killed in the surrounding areas of the city
10 days into the conflict.
As the morning became afternoon, the army drove the
bodies to a mass grave dug out near the army headquarters
about a half a mile away from the hospital. Soldiers laid the
coffins one after the other along the bottom of the 400-yardlong pit. The pungent smell of death was nauseating.
Watching the coffins disappear under mounds of dirt
only increased the journalists’ determination to get out to surrounding hills, by then inaccessible because of the heavy artillery, aerial, and naval shelling pounding south Lebanon.
Within a few days, the opportunity arrived.
One morning, I was woken by the bellowing voice of
my cameraman Vladimir: “Irina, massacre in Qana.” His
news woke the whole house, which included members of
Norwegian and Danish TV. Shelling or no shelling, we were
determined to go to Qana.
Swinging by to pick up the rest of the ABC crew, we caravanned out through the hills to Qana, the ancient place where
Jesus turned water into wine.
Once in town, we drove through windy streets over
shards of glass shattered by the pressure of the bombs. As we
neared the site of destruction, we went on foot in search of the
targeted house.
On the way, Red Cross workers and the army carried dead
women and children between the ages of 3 and 12 on stretchers.
The site itself was impressive.
Floors of the house had collapsed, and emergency workers crawled below slanted concrete slabs, digging out bodies
wedged in the rubble made up of heavy dusty concrete blocks
and protruding metal wires.
The scene was important not only as a record of a human
calamity, but also from the perspective of news. It was the
first piece of reporting that permitted journalists to confirm
descriptions we had been hearing from refugees.
Regardless of the political lean of the family apparently
related to high-ranking Hezbollah members, the reality was
that women and children had been killed in the attack.
Once the footage and standups were shot, we headed back
to Tyre to wrap up the news of day, but the drive back was not
reassuring as artillery thudded loudly in the hills nearby.
The following day, after the news of Qana drew enough
international attention to coerce the U.N. into action, a temporary cessation of air strikes was granted. Emboldened by
the news, we headed south to Tibnine.
The material destruction superseded even what we had
seen in Qana. The center of the old town had been flattened.
As the crew marched ahead to film the rubble and shoot
some standups with ABC correspondent Wilf Dinnick,
At the scene of a missile launcher destroyed by an Israeli airstrike on the eastern outskirts of Beirut.
I spotted an old lady poking her head out of a doorway.
Jamila explained to me that she was staying alone; her
family had fled to Beirut. The explosions 120 feet away from
her house were thunderous, she said. Since then she spent
her nights at “the hospital near the southern gate of the city.”
“Hospital?” I thought, “We should go.” I alerted the crew.
We left the eerily deserted and destroyed neighborhood.
The contrast between the empty center and the bustling street
by the hospital was remarkable.
The street was bustling, but not with the movements
of a regular day. Rather it was teeming with refugees who
had walked up from Bint Jebel, a town at the heart of the
Hezbollah/Israeli war.
Exhaustion, stress, and fear resounded in the voices of the
people whose stories we listened to. People had been holed up
in houses for 18 days, terrorized by the fierce fighting.
A 16-year-old girl explained to me in fluent English:
“We simply couldn’t take it anymore, so we decided to leave.”
Civilians sitting around two elevated pumps in the gas station
described the journey took three hours by foot.
As I looked around absorbing the scene, I realized that
the street was filled with old ladies, wounded men, mothers,
maids, and children.
People either wandered around looking for rides up to
Beirut, or simply sat along the street recouping before moving on to refugee centers set up in schools throughout the
city. It seems that in wartime, the weak, elderly, and the
lame are the last ones to escape. Moved by the refugees’ stories, we decided to go to Bint Jebel.
Bint Jebel was lifeless. The only sound we heard was the
Stephanie Sinclair
irritating buzz of the spy drone watching our movements,
which at times was drowned out by artillery fire exploding
in the distance. The summer breeze caused pieces of metal
signs hanging from torn apart facades to groan and grind.
Our footsteps crunched through the rubble.
As we walked further into town, the magnitude of the
destruction unveiled itself. The damage in the center was so
great, it would have to be razed with bulldozers and built anew.
It was incredible to think that the civilians we saw in Tibnine
earlier in the day had stayed here as long as they had.
On the third day of our travels in the southern hills east
of Tyre, we headed out once more, this time to the Hezbollah
bastion of Srifa. Like many other villages, it too had suffered
massive damage, but this place was strange.
Surrounding piles of rubble where rescuers were hard
at work, Hezbollah party members kept an eye on the press.
This time, recording the events seemed like an act implicated
in a war of Hezbollah propaganda, whereby the press was to
tell the stories of so-called innocent victims. Men claiming
to have sons under the rubble looked relaxed; they did not
appear distressed about their losses. It was hard to tell, but
instinctively the story felt contrived.
The experience of these days spent in the field was both
terrifying and thrilling. To get out in the hills to record the
effects of war felt productive, but a first-hand view of war
leads me to believe that destruction on a mass scale and the
loss of Lebanese and Israeli lives are not necessarily constructive means to solve political differences. If anything, it appears
that war is futile, as its potential outcome causes mistrust and
fear, and sadly may engender more violence.
27
Alumni
and Their Taft
Offspring
The following
alumni have
children or
grandchildren
currently
enrolled at
the school:
John Wyman ’10, great-grandson of Tom Chrystie
’21 and grandson of Tom Chrystie ’51, arrives at
school with his father, Peter Wyman.
John V. Farwell III ’14* (GGP)—Alexander I. Janeck ’10
Samuel F. Pryor, Jr. ’17* (GGP)—Peter C. Burgeson ’10,
Antonia R. Pryor ’07
Charles P. Luckey ’18* (GGP)—Charlotte D. Luckey ’08
Thomas W. Chrystie ’21* (GGP)— John L. Wyman ’10,
Henry T. Wyman ’07
Herbert S. Ide ’21* (GP)—William A. Ide ’09
Roth F. Herrlinger ’22* (GGP)—Scott H. Hillman ’09,
Elizabeth L. Lanahan ’08
H. Wick Chambers, Jr. ’27* (GP)—Timothy R. Chambers ’07
Wilmot B. North ’30* (GP)—Benjamin W. North ’10
Dexter Barnes Blake ’33* (GP)—Charlotte G. Bromley ’08
Robert A. Campbell ’34* (GP)—Robert A. Campbell, II ’07
Condict Moore ’34 (GP)—Catherine R. Moore ’09, Emily L. Moore ’07
Livingston Carroll ’37* (GP)—David J. Carroll-Kenny ’07
Barnaby Conrad, Sr. ’40 (GP)—Helen P. Gazin ’07
Harry W. Walker II ’40 (GP)—Holland E. Walker ’07,
Maude M. Walker ’09, Samuel G. Walker ’09
James I. Moore ’41* (GP)—Catherine R. Moore ’09, Emily L. Moore ’07
Spyros S. Skouras ’41 (GP)—Sophia M. Skouras ’08
George R. Lindemer ’42 (GP)—Eric L. Becker ’08
Walter C. Reisinger ’42* (GP)—Abigail B. Reisinger ’08
Eldredge L. Bermingham ’43* (GP)—Alexander N. Bermingham ’08
Henry W. Estabrook ’43 (GP)—Chelsea B. Ross ’09
Charles P. Luckey, Jr. ’43* (GP)—Charlotte D. Luckey ’08
Thomas F. Moore, Jr. ’43 (GP)—Millicent B. Moore ’10
David S. Taylor ’43* (GP)—D. Brooks Taylor ’10
Arthur T. Garfunkel ’44* (GP)—Amy L. Brownstein ’09
Lee Paul Klingenstein ’44 (GP)—Frances A. Ziesing ’09, Lee S. Ziesing ’07
Roy E. Demmon ’45 (GP)—Katharine L. Demmon ’09,
A. Bailey Fowlkes ’09
John C. Geupel ’45* (GP)—Noah D. Geupel ’08
Edward F. Herrlinger II ’46 (GP)—Scott H. Hillman ’09,
Elizabeth L. Lanahan ’08
Samuel F. Pryor III ’46 (GP)—Peter C. Burgeson ’10,
Antonia R. Pryor ’07
Taylor Pryor ’49 (GP)—Eleanor S. Pryor ’10
Thomas L. Chrystie ’51 (GP)—John L. Wyman ’10, Henry T. Wyman ’07
Peter R. Fink ’51* (GP)—Jeremy B. McKenzie ’09
Henry M. Gridley ’51 (GP)—Michael D. Klein ’10
John B. Allen, Jr. ’54 (GP)—Daniel A. Lepkofker ’10
David B. Root, Sr. ’55 (GP)—Jesse B. Root ’09
Jeffrey Paley ’56 (P)—Austin T. Paley ’09
John L. Allen ’58 (GP)—Chelsea L. Allen ’10
Ronald B. Reisinger ’60 (P)—Abigail B. Reisinger ’08
Gordon P. Guthrie, Jr. ’62 (P)—Joseph S. Guthrie ’07
Peter W. North ’62 (P)—Benjamin W. North ’10
Taylor J. Strubell ’63 (P)—Emma T. Strubell ’07
Gordon S. Calder, Jr. ’65 (P)—William C. Calder ’07
Thomas C. Cherry, Jr. ’65 (P)—Brian H. Cherry ’09
Richard W. Blossom ’66 (P)— Mina Blossom ’09, Carissa Blossom ’08
Wick R. Chambers ’66 (P)—Timothy R. Chambers ’07
Douglas G. Johnson ’66 (P)—Peter B. Johnson ’08
Langdon C. Quin III ’66 (P)—Adrian F. Quin ’08
Arthur F. Blake ’67 (P)—Charlotte G. Bromley ’08
Randolph G. Abood ’68 (P)—R. George Abood, Jr. ’07
Carl M. Geupel ’68 (P)—Noah D. Geupel ’08
Charles F. Gronauer ’68 (P)—Katheryn E. Gronauer ’09
Roy A. Schonbrun ’68 (P)—Stephanie D. Schonbrun ’07
Tom R. Strumolo ’70 (P)—Harriet E. Strumolo ’07
J. Keith Fell ’72 (P)—J. Keith Fell, Jr. ’08
Kenneth A. Saverin ’72 (P)—Diana L. Saverin ’09
Spyros S. Skouras, Jr. ’72 (P)—Sophia M. Skouras ’08
Samuel W. M. Thayer ’72 (P)—Katharine T. Thayer ’07
Peter and Jo Klingenstein Ziesing ’78 on opening day with their children Will,
Annie ’09, and Lee ’07, grandchildren of Lee Klingenstein ’44
Sam Pryor ’46, center, escorts two of his grandchildren and a grandniece to
Taft on opening day: Peter ’10 with parents Mark and Kathy Pryor Burgeson,
Toni ’07, and Eleanor ’10 (granddaughter of Sam’s brother Tap ’49), with
parents Carrie and Ted Pryor.
C. Dean Tseretopoulos ’72 (P)—Denisia K. Tseretopoulos ’07
Martha Stine Boyd ’73 (P)—Emily C. Boyd ’07
Jeffrey Foote ’73 (P)—Julie E. Foote ’09
Leslie Herrlinger Lanahan ’73 (P)—Elizabeth L. Lanahan ’08
Sharon G. McLaughlin ’73 (P)—Matthew P. McLaughlin ’10
Samuel F. Pryor IV ’73 (P)—Antonia R. Pryor ’07
Michael S. Stein ’73 (P)—Elena C. Stein ’09
James D. Tweedy ’73 (P)—Richard B. Tweedy ’09
Brooks Hendrie Widdoes ’73 (P)—Margaret H. Widdoes ’08
Henry G. Brauer ’74 (P)—Elizabeth M. Brauer ’10,
Benjamin H. Brauer ’09, Mary O. Brauer ’08
Lawrence F. Brownstein ’74 (P)—Amy L. Brownstein ’09
David W. Griffin ’74 (P)—Julia B. Griffin ’08
Brian C. Lincoln ’74 (P)—Lysandra D. Lincoln ’07
James I. Moore, Jr. ’74 (P)—Catherine R. Moore ’09, Emily L. Moore ’07
Paul A. Sylvester ’74 (P)—Bridget K. Sylvester ’08
George D. Utley III ’74 (P)—Hannah D. Utley ’07
Gilford B. Walker ’74 (P)—Maude M. Walker ’09, Samuel G. Walker ’09
Robert C. Barber ’75 (P)—Martha J. Barber ’08
Amy Estabrook-Ross ’75 (P)—Chelsea B. Ross ’09
Peter A. Frew ’75 (P)—Garnett M. Frew ’10
Andrew J. Klemmer ’75 (P)—Austin G. Klemmer ’07
Daniel K. F. Lam ’75 (P)—Adrienne P. Y. Lam ’07
Todd W. Luckey ’75 (P)—Charlotte D. Luckey ’08
Lisa Reid Mayer ’75 (P)—Drew W. Mayer ’08
Peter F. Moore ’75 (P)—Millicent B. Moore ’10
Joshua A. Quittner ’75 (P)—Ella J. Quittner ’09
Elizabeth Brown Van Sant ’75 (P)—Mary Jennings Van Sant ’09,
Elinore F. Van Sant ’07
W. Dewees Yeager III ’75 (P)—Jane B. Yeager ’10, Benjamin B. Yeager ’07
Robert C. Campbell ’76 (P)—Robert A. Campbell II ’07
Katharine Herrlinger Hillman ’76 (P)—Scott H. Hillman ’09
Ann Magnin ’76 (P)—Elena C. Stein ’09
Donald B. Taylor ’76 (P)—D. Brooks Taylor ’10
Karen Kolpa Tyson ’76 (P)—Nicholas C. Tyson ’09
Eric D. Albert ’77 (P)—Jamie E. Albert ’08
John W. Biedermann ’77 (P)—Max P. Biedermann ’08
John S. Brittain, Jr. ’77 (P)—Allison R. Brittain ’10
Matthew Bronfman ’77 (P)—Eli M. Bronfman ’07
Bridget Taylor ’77 (P)—Elias P. Coston ’08
Michael D. Zucker ’77 (P)—Benjamin H. Zucker ’09
James S. Birmingham ’78 (P)—Catherine N. Birmingham ’09
Laura Weyher Hall ’78 (P)—Hillary B. Hall ’10
Elizabeth Christie Hibbs ’78 (P)—William C. Hibbs ’08
Mark I. Janeck ’78 (P)—Alexander I. Janeck ’10
Alix Manny ’78 (P)—Samuel M. Colburn ’09
David B. Root, Jr. ’78 (P)—Jesse B. Root ’09
Joanne Klingenstein Ziesing ’78 (P)—Frances A. Ziesing ’09,
Lee S. Ziesing ’07
Jonathan D. Albert ’79 (P)—Sarah B. Albert ’09
Charles J. Demmon ’79 (P)—Katharine L. Demmon ’09
K. Gregg Douglas ’79 (P)—Colin T. Douglas ’09
Nancy Goldsborough Hurt ’79 (P)—Nicolas A. Hurt ’09, Cai S. Hurt ’08
William V. A. Metcalf ’79 (P)—Schuyler V. Metcalf ’09
Amy E. Upjohn ’79 (P)—Elizabeth K. Brey ’08
Charles E. Allen ’80 (P)—Chelsea L. Allen ’10
Louis W. K. Lam ’80 (P)—Alfred C. Lam ’09
Nancy Demmon ’81 (P)—A. Bailey Fowlkes ’09
Shawn D. Brazo ’82 (P)—Zachary A. Brazo ’09
Nikko Peterson Thompson ’83 (P)—Olabisi O. Thompson ’09
Hadley Fink Tolliver ’83 (P)—Jeremy B. McKenzie ’09
Joseph O. Dillard ’84 (P)—Joseph O. Dillard, Jr. ’09, Monisha R. Dillard ’08
*deceased
29
From the Archives
Having a great time—
wish you were here…
Well, maybe, maybe not.
But in the time before e-mail
and attached photos, the picture postcard was a quick way to stay
in touch and share an image. You could
dash off a casual message without incurring the social commitment of a
telephone call or perhaps a letter.
Even without their messages, these
postcards from the school archives contain a wealth of information.
The former Warren House hotel served as the school’s main building during its first two decades in
Watertown. The scrawled message,
posted October 2, 1906, and mailed for
one cent, reads: St. Paul’s—7, Taft—0.
Have been sick since the game. Will write
soon. Not hurt much. Jack
The Annex dormitory, across the
street where the parking lot is now, was
the first major structure Horace Taft
built for the school. Note the elm trees,
which all but died out in the 1960s
(two mature elms remain on campus),
the tennis court, and the early automobile on an unpaved Route 6.
The commodious infirmary, now a
girls’ dorm known as Mac House, was
touted in the 1930 catalog as “a 40-bed,
fully equipped hospital [including] an
isolation ward for contagious diseases…and an operating room.” Built in
1927, it served a school of 300 students.
Apparently, the memory of losing two
boys to the 1919 flu epidemic was still
fresh in Horace Taft’s memory.
Many alumni will remember the
white wooden fence, which provided
an exclusive perch for seniors as they
contemplated their lives beyond the
Taft School campus.
If these or any other photos
prompt stories of campus life, please
let us know!
—Alison Gilchrist Picton
The Leslie D. Manning Archives
“At first I thought pointillism had made a comeback, but then I realized it was only 72 dpi *….”
So how do you submit great digital photos to the Bulletin
and have them look fabulous in print?
touch that file! We want 3.)Send the photo as a .jpg or a
1.)Set your digital camera to the 2.)Don’t
it exactly as it comes out of the
.tif file attached to an e-mail. If
highest “image quality” setting,
usually “Fine.” (First clue, the
number of photos you can fit
in the camera will be smaller.)
camera. We’ll crop, lighten, resize, or sharpen it here. (Photos
really hate to be tweaked twice.)
the photo has a file size smaller
than 200k we’re in trouble….
Illustration by Rick Doyle
TIP for more advanced digital photographers: Size matters, sometimes.
A 900k photo might still have only 72 dpi if it’s sized at 17 by 22 inches. It’s much better to teach your camera to take
smaller images at 300 dpi. Resizing the file later only helps so much. (Please remember step 2 on our list.)
Please don’t send prints of digital photos. They do NOT scan well. Glossy (not matte) prints from negatives are always welcome.
*p.s., dpi stands for “dots per inch.”
MUSIC FOR A WHILE
A SERIES OF FRIDAY NIGHT CONCERTS
IN
WALKER HALL
DECEMBER 1—BILL MAYS, JAZZ PIANIST
JANUARY 12—ARCADIAN WINDS
JANUARY 19—FIVE PLAY, JAZZ QUINTET
FEBRUARY 9—ARENSKY PIANO TRIO
MARCH 2—HUDSON SHAD, MEN’S VOCAL SEXTET
APRIL 20—TAFT COLLEGIUM MUSICUM ON TOUR
All concerts begin at 7 p.m.
FOR FREE TICKETS AND FURTHER INFORMATION
CALL THE TAFT BOX OFFICE AT 860-945-7898
Taft Bulletin
The Taft School
110 Woodbury Road
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