MiltonMagazine - Milton Academy

Milton MagazineSpring 2005What’s the Big Idea?Managing the International Health Crisis, page 3Searching for What Sustains Us, page 6Planning for Disaster Response, page 10Moving Iraq Toward a Market Economy, page 13Leading Schools, Defining a Vision, page 18Delivering Maximum Performance:the Dymaxion Man, page 31Maintaining a Just-in-Time Inventory:Mathematics at Milton, page 35Championing a Worthy Ideal:Teaching Grammar, page 39

Contents3613Features: The Big Idea3 Managing the International Health CrisisApplying the best management strategies is ofcritical importance in fighting health inequalitiesand health crises among the world’s poor.David O. M. Ellis ’936 The Quest for What Sustains UsFood brings us together and—when survivalinstincts or clashing cultures intervene—food can come between us. For these Miltongraduates, food and its frequent companion,wine, are more than the source of energy.They are what sustains us.Heather Sullivan10 Planning for Disaster ResponseThe attacks of September 11, 2001, thrustElizabeth Davis’s focal concern into Americanliving rooms: we could not and cannot escapethe need to plan for disasters.Cathleen EverettEditorCathleen EverettAssociate EditorHeather SullivanPhotographyGordon Chase, Bryan Cheney, Michael Dwyer,Dana Jackson ’90, Michael Lutch, MiltonAcademy Archives, Nicki Pardo, Martha Stewart,Heather Sullivan, Greg WhiteDesignMoore & AssociatesCover IllustrationDavid CutlerPrinted on Recycled PaperMilton Magazine is published twice a year byMilton Academy. Editorial and business officesare located at Milton Academy where change-ofaddressnotifications should be sent.As an institution committed to diversity, MiltonAcademy welcomes the opportunity to admitacademically qualified students of any gender,race, color, handicapped status, sexual orientation,religion, national or ethnic origin to allthe rights, privileges, programs and activitiesgenerally available to its students. It does notdiscriminate on the basis of gender, race, color,handicapped status, sexual orientation, religion,national or ethnic origin in the administration ofits educational policies, admission policies, scholarshipprograms, and athletic or other schooladministeredactivities.13 Moving Iraq Toward a Market EconomyDerek Gilman ’79 mobilized and directeda team of attorneys in developing a body oflaw, 39 statutes, to undergird a new Iraqieconomy.Cathleen Everett16 The Unbearable Lightness of StartingI have a great need to start things: some great,some fun, some utterly useless. This is thelife of a company starter.You Mon Tsang ’8418 Leading Schools:Realizing Educational VisionsThese two graduates lead two markedly differentschools; the Milton legacy figures in bothof their approaches.Rod Skinner ’7222 Fueling Modern American DramaA publisher of plays has a certain power toextend the life of a play. Work that enters thepublic repertory lasts forever.Cathleen Everett24 Jean Valentine ’52 Wins 2004National Book Award for PoetryDoor in the Mountain collects her life’s workand orders her eight books of poetry chronologically,with the exception of the new poemswhich appear first.Lisa Baker27 Sarah Bynum ’90Madeleine Is Sleeping earned Sarah a spotamong five finalists in fiction for the NationalBook Award, an honor that ensures an eageraudience for her future work.Evan Hughes ’9430 Linking Minority and Majority Businesses,Kym Lew Nelson Offers StrategicPurchasingLeaving the security of a global companymight be too big a risk for many businesswomen but Kym couldn’t wait to put her savvyto use in a largely untapped market.

27314631 Producing Maximum Performance fromTechnology: The Dymaxion ManBorn of a commitment to service, the ideasof Buckminster Fuller 1913 remain relevant tothe problems that continue to plague us,including sustainability, housing and evenhunger.Michael O’LearyThe Big Idea on Campus35 Mathematics Conglomerate Is Nimble,Responsive, Maintains a “Just in Time”InventoryMath department’s challenging commitmentto developing their own teaching materialsstrengthens over time.Cathleen Everett38 Their Idea: Making Mathematical ElegancePart of Campus CultureThough not a business venture, VincentChan’s and Neil Katuna’s idea to start a mathjournal at Milton brought them face to facewith real-world challenges entrepreneursexperience.39 Championing a Worthy Ideal: No RetreatFrom Teaching Grammar at MiltonWhile many schools have retreated from therigorous consideration of grammar, Milton’sEnglish faculty is still devoted to the pursuitof excellent usage.41 Their Ingenuity and Drive Centerson ServiceMobilizing their classmates, Lara Yeo ’06 andColin Tierney ’05 have prioritized makingtime to help others.43 Below the Surface: Ideas in MotionDevotees of this new competitive “sport”devote hours to putting their ideas intomotion. Few, if any, of the nation’s top boardingschools have similar teams.45 Linking His Heritage and His Future,Adam Och Studies Arabic at MiltonAdam crafted an independent study planfor Arabic culture and language that is bothchallenging and gratifying.46 A Dream Delayed but Not DeniedEven without a pool, Coach Bob Tyler keepsvarsity swimming alive and well at Milton.Departments48 The Head of SchoolMilton’s most recent “big idea” reaches backin time.Robin Robertson50 Post ScriptSigns of a Misspent Youth, Reinterpreted:The Making of an EntrepreneurSean McVity ’8052 In•Sight54 On CentreNews and notes from the campus and beyond61 SportsGreg White63 Make Plans to Return forGraduates WeekendMay 13–14, 200564 Class Notes

What’s thebig idea?This magazine honors the energy, ingenuity, perseverance and risk involved in bringing powerfuland compelling ideas to life.Ideas matter at Milton. Confidence in your own ideas, respect for others’ ideas—these arecultural essentials here. Faculty, students and graduates take their ideas seriously, and themany examples of efforts to give them life and longevity are ample testimony.Even within this small sample of Miltonians’ endeavors, the range of individual commitmentsextends from writing laws for economic reform in Iraq, to making artisanal cheeses;from launching Internet businesses, to writing long and well enough to become a NationalBook Award Finalist. Whether we are protecting something inherently valuable that risksslipping away, striking out boldly in frontier territory, or setting higher standards and helpingothers meet them, Miltonians apply purpose and direction to their closely held ideas.On campus and throughout the world, they “Dare to be true.”2 Milton Magazine

David O.M. Ellis ’93Managing the InternationalHealth CrisisKigali Central Hospital, Rwanda“When D. A. Henderson, leader of the successful World HealthOrganization campaign to eradicate smallpox, was asked at a pressconference what disease the world should try to eliminate next, hesurprised the audience by answering, ‘bad management.’”Much of today’s media coverage ofglobal health issues is misleading. Newsstories tend to focus on the controversiessurrounding AIDS drug pricing or theamount of funding necessary to combatthe epidemic successfully. Though theseissues are important, they contribute to amyth that HIV/AIDS is the only loomingcatastrophe in international health andthat cheaper drugs or a dramatic infusionof money could soon turn the tide.Those who pay closer attention and readsources outside the mainstream get amore accurate picture. HIV/AIDS is onlyone health crisis among many facing theworld’s poor, including maternal and childhealth, tuberculosis, and cardiovasculardisease. Moreover, no amount of moneycould rapidly overcome all the other systemicbarriers to fighting disease in developingcountries, such as undevelopedinfrastructure, weak political will, and apaucity of human resources. Yet even byreading widely, a concerned citizen in theU.S. might not appreciate one of the mostcritical obstacles to fighting health inequalities.When D. A. Henderson, leader of thesuccessful World Health Organizationcampaign to eradicate smallpox, was askedat a press conference what disease theworld should try to eliminate next, he surprisedthe audience by answering, “badmanagement.”Two years ago, I went to Rwanda as partof a team dedicated to confronting themanagement problem. The leaders ofRwanda’s Ministry of Health, aware of ourmanagement support project at ColumbiaUniversity’s Center for Global Health andEconomic Development, asked the centerfor assistance in launching a new nationalHIV/AIDS program. We went aboutrecruiting candidates who had expertise instrategic planning, quantitative analysisand communication—a nontraditionalprofile of skills for public health work.Occasionally, we had to struggle with theColumbia bureaucracy to convince seniorofficials that someone with an M.B.A.might be a better fit than someone with anM.P.H. In the end, we assembled a smallteam that included a management consultant,an accountant and a lawyer.We arrived in Kigali, the capital city, insummer 2003. When someone first askedme about my overall impressions of thesituation in Rwanda, I could think only ofMikhail Gorbachev’s famous commentabout the Russian economy: “In a word,good. In two words, not good.” Rwandahas made remarkable progress since thegenocide, particularly in the area ofdomestic security. The country feels completelysafe, with very little violent crimeor political turmoil, and corruption is relativelymodest. At the same time, Rwandaremains a deeply illiberal democracy rootedin a culture of deference to authority.Moreover, as a landlocked country withfew natural resources, Rwanda has littleeconomic base outside of traditional subsistenceagriculture. Nearly half of thepopulation is under the age of 15, and thepublic education system cannot cope.3 Milton Magazine

As we quickly learned, all of these problemsdirectly contribute to weak management,which in turn hampers Rwanda’sability to use the rapid influx of donormoney intended to address the problems.For example, the government’s inability topay adequate salaries to civil servantsresults in a perverse set of incentives.Rather than focusing on organizationalobjectives, health officials spend much oftheir time trying to supplement their meagersalaries. For instance, officials oftenattend training sessions run by internationalnongovernmental organizations(NGOs) that offer per-diem payments forparticipation, even if the topic is whollyirrelevant. One particularly clever seniormanager was almost never in Rwanda,aggressively seeking invitations to overseasconferences that paid him as much as$250 per day for hotel and food. He wouldquietly stay in hostels for $10 a night, andsimply pocket the difference.Poverty also translates into shortsightedthinking and planning. Investment inlong-term improvements is a luxury seldomcontemplated, as most Rwandans areaccustomed to thinking about how to providefor their families. “In the mediumterm,” one Rwandan joked to me, “we’reall dead.” Everything operates on a shorttermoutlook. No one knows when publicholidays will be observed, as the governmenttends to declare holidays at the lastminute by national radio broadcast. If youfind a car with a tank of gas more than aquarter full, you’ve likely found an expat’scar—Rwandans don’t invest in full tanks.This mindset endures even when capitalbecomes available. Significant funds forHIV/AIDS are arriving, yet the healthcareleadership does not tend to think aboutresolving the bottlenecks that will hamperscaled-up treatment three years from now,such as the critical need for more nurses,doctors and laboratory technicians. Despite$50 million in HIV/AIDS funding thisyear, not a single new nursing school isunder construction.Meanwhile, the deferential streak in theRwandan temperament contributes toworkplace environments in which veryfew middle managers feel empowered totake initiative and their supervisors tend tomicromanage. The HIV/AIDS managementunit that I was advising initially hada system that required any staff memberto sign a sheet before leaving the office for4 Milton MagazineOvercrowded AIDS ward at Kigali Central Hospitalany meeting or errand, justifying the needfor the excursion. One colleague occasionallywasted entire days of work because hehad run out of cell phone minutes tomake business calls, could not find anotheravailable phone in the office, yet couldnot go into town to re-charge his cellphone because the boss was not there toapprove his errand. In its extreme form,such deference to authority becomesalmost comic. One day, a prison workcrew was landscaping a public square inKigali while the prison guard supervisingthem sipped from his bottle of vodka. Theguard eventually passed out. Rather thanmaking a break for it, the prisonersrespectfully picked the guard up and carriedhim back to jail, then quietly returnedto their cells.My colleagues and I worked closely withour Rwandan counterparts to begin theslow process of transforming managementculture in two key HIV/AIDS coordinationoffices. I was responsible for advisingDr. Blaise Karibushi, the leader of oneof these units, and our first step was tooverhaul the implementation plan for thenew national HIV/AIDS program. Wereversed the typical short-term approach toplanning and began by agreeing to threeyeargoals. We then calculated the level ofhuman resources and infrastructure necessaryto achieve these goals, and workedbackwards from there. Eventually, Blaise’steam designed a detailed workplan andbudget for the first year of the program.This plan included investment in improvementsthat would not yield any immediatebenefit but would alleviate anticipated constraints(such as a looming warehousecapacity problem) in years two or three.As the project progressed, Blaise and I hadmore time to focus on the more complexchallenges of changing performance cultureand management style. First, wedeveloped a completely new incentivesscheme. We translated the organizationalworkplan into individual workplans andperformance targets, and set aside a poolof money for performance-linked bonusesat the end of the year. To make the systemwork, we also instituted a series of regularperformance reviews for each personreporting to Blaise and asked those peopleto create a similar process for monitoringtheir supervisees. In a dramatic departurefrom the Rwandan norm, Blaise alsobegan to seek feedback from his subordinates.Though this was initially veryuncomfortable both for him and those givinghim feedback, the constructive criticismhe received helped him rethink hismanagement style.Responding to this feedback, we experimentedwith new ways for Blaise to managehis team on a week-to-week basis. Wediscarded the system of daily sign-off oneveryone’s intended activities. Instead,Blaise convened a weekly meeting of unitheads every Monday and agreed withthem on their goals for the week. From

that departure point, each unit head wasempowered to make any decision necessaryto achieve those goals. At the nextweekly meeting, the team would discussany obstacles encountered and collectivelyagree on strategies for overcoming them.Over the year I spent in Kigali, progresson all these fronts was halting. Unit headswere often slow to seize their newfoundautonomy. They usually felt more comfortablegaining Blaise’s assent before finalizingdecisions, even where the decisionwas of only modest importance. The performancemanagement system was noteasy to implement in a context wheremany people claimed excuses for anyshortfall, pointing to electricity outages,unreliable implementation partners andso forth.Even as we focused on long-term managementissues, I spent over half my timehelping Blaise react to unforeseen crises.For example, the central health procurementagency notified us one day that ithad ordered HIV test kits for the nextwave of program expansion, but had neglectedto order needles for drawing blood.So I drove 10 hours north to Uganda andbought 20,000 needles, enough to fill thegap for one month until a new shipmentarrived in Kigali.I often wondered whether our strategy ofattempting to change management culturewas the right one. Effecting change wasboth slow and expensive. Indeed, theamount of money used to cover my salaryand expenses, though modest by Westernstandards, would have financed tenRwandan salaries or funded treatment for500 HIV-positive people for one year.Ultimately, though, I became convincedthat the kind of work we are doing inRwanda needs to be expanded, becauseany small improvement in managementhas powerful multiplier effects. The rate ofstaff turnover within the managementunit has decreased significantly becausepeople are more satisfied with their jobs.Even more importantly, the gradualchanges we made within the managementteam contributed significantly to the project’ssuccess in achieving almost all of itsfirst-year objectives. In turn, that successattracted widespread attention fromdonors and the promise of increased funding.With a long-term investment plan inplace, current and future financing will bechanneled to logically ordered improvements.Though combating the epidemic ofbad management is no easier than turningthe tide against HIV/AIDS, it is a fightequally worth fighting.Dai Ellis ’93Dai Ellis is a student at Yale Law School where heis studying international law, health policy andhuman rights. Prior to law school, he helped toestablish Columbia University’s Center for GlobalHealth and Economic Development. Dr. JeffreySachs created the Center when he joined thefaculty at Columbia in 2002. While working atColumbia, Dai spent over a year in Rwanda workingas the advisor to the executive director of theNational AIDS Commission. He helped to implementthe first national AIDS program for whichRwanda had received funding from the GlobalFund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. During histime in Rwanda, Dai founded Orphans of Rwanda,Inc., a U.S.–based 501(c)3 organization that providessupport to vulnerable children orphaned bythe Rwandan genocide and the HIV/AIDS epidemic.Visit www.orphansofrwanda.org to get furtherinformation or to make a donation.Before joining Columbia, Dai worked for severalyears at McKinsey and Company. He servedbiotechnology and pharmaceutical industry clientsin the U.S. as well as several international developmentorganizations, including the United NationsDevelopment Program and International RedCross. Building on his undergraduate degree inbiochemistry and his work in the nonprofit sector,Dai left McKinsey to look for organizations thatare bringing management expertise to bear onpublic health problems. A lengthy job search landedhim at Columbia. His experiences in Rwandaand at Yale have confirmed his desire to pursue acareer focused on expanding access to healthcareand education among the poor.Reach Dai at david.ellis@yale.edu.These children are all orphans, due either to the genocide or HIV/AIDS; their raised hands indicate whohas had malaria in the last year. The orphanage that provides them with care, Izere (Kinyarwanda for“hope”), is supported by a nonprofit organization Dai started. Izere is located in Nyanza, historical seat ofRwanda.5 Milton Magazine

Ian Cheney ’98Jon Wright ’75Nicole Bernard Dawes ’91The Quest for WhatSustainsUsFood brings us together and—whensurvival instincts or clashing mores or culturesdictate—food can come between us.What we consume is closely allied to identityas well as health: You are what you eat,the adage goes.Traditional Chinese consider food interms of yin and yang. From tomb-paintings,we know that ancient Egyptiansprized figs, fish and cucumbers. Duringthe Roman Empire, the senatorial class ateelaborate meals, in a reclining positionand using their hands, washing the mealdown with wine. Food, as much as love, isan ancient and international language,spoken with many accents.For some, the quest for food purity rivalsthe highest levels of religious fervor. Forothers, food represents good taste or certainvalues. Some seek food only to staveoff hunger. For these Milton graduates,food and its frequent companion, wine,are more than the source of energy andvitality; they are what sustains us.Ian Cheney ’98What’s wrong with how Americathinks of food?Until this year, Ian Cheney ’98 had neverkilled a deer. Why would he? Ian grew upin Milton, Massachusetts—not exactly aheadquarters for hunters—and earned amaster’s in environmental science fromYale, where he urged dining services toprepare locally produced, more healthfulfood. (Later, food maven Alice Watersadded momentum to that movement atYale.)Ian began considering shooting a deerbecause, he says, Americans are out oftouch with the connection between foodand nature. Eating food, he thinks, is anessentially sensual experience as fundamentalto life as sleep and sex. Ian hasbeen focused on food and its relationshipto the people of our country—food-safetyscares and the obesity epidemic, for example.Corn, Ian believes, is the center ofAmerica’s food system.“Corn is essential to the kingdom of fastfood that has come to dominate much ofthe American foodscape,” Ian says. “Cornfast-fattens livestock in confined feedingoperations, sweetens millions of softdrinks as high fructose corn syrup, andtransforms itself into thousands of differentprocessed foods—it is all but unrecognizablein the supermarket, but withoutcorn the food system would be a very differentplace.”With co-producer and Yale classmateCurt Ellis, director of photography SamCullman and award-winning directorAaron Woolf (who visited Milton as aMelissa Dilworth Gold visiting artist in2002), Ian is producing King Corn, a filmthat goes beyond the heft of Supersize Meto examine America’s evolving and oftenironic relationship with food.“We launched this project thinking thatsomething was wrong with how Americathinks about food. In the 19th century, themajority of people helped produce theirown food, but now most people don’tknow where our food comes from,” hesays, noting that an average bite of foodtravels 1,300 miles before it’s eaten.One acre of corn yields 10,000 pounds.According to the U.S. Department ofAgriculture, the annual per capita cornconsumption has soared from 15.4 poundsin the 1950s to 28.4 pounds in 2000. InIowa, where both Ian and Curt can tracegreat-grandfathers, the filmmakers set outto follow a kernel through the food system.The film begins with their planting anacre of corn in northeastern Iowa. “Theacre of corn—which must eventually be6 Milton Magazine

sold—becomes a ticket into the worldbetween farm and plate,” the filmmakersassert on their Web site. Film segmentsjump from the acre in Iowa to grain elevators,diners, gene laboratories and corporateboardrooms.The ripening of the corn drives the film’snarrative. It explores how our culture,economy and political system shape ourlandscapes, our communities and—bymaking certain types of food cheaper andmore accessible—our bodies.We consume the industrial or “dent” cornin products such as ketchup and hamburger(that comes from corn-fed cows)and in virtually every processed food. Anirony is that farmers who grow this cornare unable to feed themselves by farming;the corn is basically inedible in its originalstate. The government subsidizes industrialcorn farming; therefore farmers grow itregardless of demand—and the demandstays strong because the cost is low.Before the corn becomes the corn syrup insoda, it is planted and fertilized, and protectedfrom predators. It must survive tofeed the masses.Yet as Ian and his colleagues found, thejourney from the dark soil to an Americantable is filled with irony: A friend sent Ianheavy-duty gardening gloves, not realizingthat farmers of large-scale operations havelittle cause to touch the earth. “I didn’t getmuch exercise as a farmer, either,” Ianadmits.Ian Cheney ’98, on the combine at harvest timeIn addition to planting their own acre ofindustrial corn, Ian and his Mosaic Films,Inc. colleagues talked with authors andactivists. Eager to expand the debate aboutfood, they also spoke to ranchers, lobbyists,restaurateurs, food warehousers andshrimp fishermen. They looked at corn asa concept, a commodity and a catalyst forchanging the American diet. According tothe trailer for King Corn, corn is the mostpowerful food crop the world has everknown, and it has allowed America to feedmore people for less money than everbefore.Ian warns about a two-class food systememerging: People with means are thinkingcarefully about what they eat, while othersget access to more and more processed—but affordable—food. Ian started the projectwith bias about issues such as pesticidesand the ramifications of using geneticallymodified corn. “I don’t think thatwe’ve been cautious enough,” he says.Yet, in spite of these issues, Ian says thatfarmers and ranchers are doing “reasonableand wonderful things.” Mosaic triedto capture the farmers’ challenges, whilehonoring the work ethic and commitmentthat they hold in common with theirforbears.“Their values are rooted in a tradition Ireally respect—raising a family and growingfood. But they are hooked into a systemthat yields little flexibility and littlemoney.”Is our country subsidizing the right system?With an investment of $350, Ian andhis colleagues produced 177 bushels ofcorn that in 2004 brought $1.65 perbushel—a net loss of 33 cents per bushel.Ian’s film includes archival footage, originalmusic, and promotes dialogue aboutthe way America farms and eats. Itsrelease is scheduled for May 2005; go towww.KingCorn.net for more information.Jon Wright ’75 and his pig, BessJon Wright ’75Making artisanal cheeses onTaylor Farm“You wore your good jeans today,” jokesDoug Carleton, a carpenter and handymanat Taylor Farm in Londonderry, Vermont.The recipient of the jibe, Jon Wright ’75,nods his head and steps away from Bess.“She’s really a pet,” Jon says of the sow,oversized even by swine standards.Jon also introduces the farm’s primary“pets,” dairy cows with names such asSally (who possesses the most substantialudders), Nadine (who bore a calf in lateNovember), Harriet, Darla and Sunflower.The son of a Manhattan physician, Jon is afarmer in an idyllic, 19th-century sense—or at least, his hands, and his jeans, do getquite dirty.Jon’s interest in farming began when hevisited Vermont as a child and strengthenedwhen his Milton senior project,advised by Bryan Cheney, centered onphotographing the 150-year-old TaylorFarm. After Milton, Jon attended agricultureschool, where he was discouragedfrom pursuing an agricultural career. Hecompleted a program in forest managementat the University of Vermont’sSchool of Natural Resources and plannedto focus on forestry consulting until helearned that Taylor Farm was vacant.Everyone said they were crazy when Jonand his wife, Kate, moved to Taylor Farm7 Milton Magazine

Channing Daughters WineryNude sculptures and “racy” whitewines (to quote the New York Times)pair nicely at Channing DaughtersWinery, where Walter Channing ’59brings both to life. A venturecapitalist-sculptor-vintner, Waltergraces his 125-acre vineyard withsensual wood sculptures and theirlikenesses grace many labels of hisboutique wines.An August 2004 Newsday articlelauds Walter’s wines: “There shouldbe a lot of toasting this summer atChanning Daughters Winery.” OnOctober 3, 2004, the New York Timeswrote that Channing Daughters’wines are notable for their compatibilitywith food. (Walter’s new winemaker,James Christopher Tracy, is atrained sommelier and former chef.)Walter’s wines are also describedas “zippy,” “flamboyantly aromatic”and “palate-cleansing.” A visit towww.channingdaughters.com indicatesthat aficionados agree: Most labelsfrom 2002 and 2003 vintages aresold out. (Members of the vineyard’swine club get first dibs.)Walter planted his first Chardonnayvines at his Bridgehampton, LongIsland, farm in 1982. He believes, hesays, in producing artisanal winesthrough traditional methods: handpickinggrapes, stomping them byfoot and punching them down.Varieties include Chardonnay, PinotGrigio, Tocai Friulano, Merlot,Blaufrankisch and others.Contributing to his communitythrough the beauty of art and wine,Walter also believes in land preservation:His farm is one of the lastunbroken tracts of land on the SouthFork of Long Island.Taylor Farm’s dairy cows include Sally, Darla, Sunflower and Harriet.as tenants. (They would later buy the core18 acres, surrounded by over 500 acres ofVermont Land Trust land and near threepopular ski areas.) After 10 years as a conventionaldairy farmer, Jon began to think“everyone” might have been right.To sustain the farm, Jon and Kate beganoffering sleigh rides in the winter, establisheda monthly Farm Day for visitorsand used the property’s “little house” as aguesthouse. Kate set up a roadside farmstand to sell baked goods. But until theydiscovered cheese, these efforts weren’tenough.While people have been making cheesefor about 6,000 years, Jon started in1999. Part art, part science, cheese-makingcapitalizes on the curdling of milk.Enter the farm’s pristine cheese-makingroom, where Jon and his team warm themilk and separate the curd from the whey(hard, isn’t it, to avoid the image of LittleMiss Muffet?) to see artisanal cheese-makingmade possible by the rich milk of 45Holstein cows in the barn next door. Onehundred pounds of their milk will make10 pounds of garlic, chipolte, maplesmoked,cumin or regular Gouda—anaverage of 1,200 pounds per week. (Theaverage cow produces over 17,000 poundsof milk each year.)Jon isn’t alone in these cheese-makingendeavors. His core staff of Doug, herdsmanJohn Michalski, farm help ScottBratton and cheesemaker TamryUnderwood care for the animals; milk thecows; warm the milk; add the culture and“hoop” the warm curds in metal roundslined with cheesecloth; weight and pressthe developing cheese, bathe the cheese inbrine, and leave it to dry for 10 days whenit is hand-dipped four times in wax andput in the cheese cave to age.The Wrights’ decision to keep the farm isreinforced, Jon says, whenever they help acow deliver her calf at 2 a.m. or when oneof the Wright daughters helps make abatch of cheese or when his oldest daughterrides horseback after doing her homework.(The many awards from theAmerican Cheese Society aren’t hurtingtheir confidence much, either.)Jon’s wife, Kate, made the farm’s firstbatches of cheese, while consultant PeterDixon guided the family as they developedtheir idea into a commercially viableproduct.“I do everything that no one else wants todo,” Jon says of his role on the farm. “Itend to most of the morning milkingaround 4:30 a.m., general farm management,fieldwork and help out with marketingand promotion.“The farm is a real community effort.We’ve had tremendous support primarilybecause we are one of the last farms leftaround here.”8 Milton Magazine

Elizabeth A. Davis ’85Planning forDisaster ResponsePhoto © 2001 Bill BiggartSeptember 11, 2001“I do what I do with a passion because I feel a tremendous obligationand responsibility. What I bring to the table is long-standingexperience and knowledge of the disability community—that is, a truesingular understanding as a member of that community—matchedwith years of experience in emergency management planning andapplication. My career brings those things together.”Certainly the attacks of September 11,2001, thrust Elizabeth Davis’s focal concerninto American living rooms: we couldnot and cannot escape the need to plan fordisasters. We started thinking explicitlyabout the vulnerability of our workplaces,hospitals, schools and transportation networksas well as our homes. We askedpointed questions about who would springinto organized action to help us in thecase of an “incident,” implementing aplan we assumed would be well-designedand fully resourced. Then Department ofHomeland Security (DHS) Secretary TomRidge told us that we owned responsibilityfor a prepared response, at least at thefamily level. Since then the issue has onlygained momentum as we witness events,natural and manmade, that affect thousandsevery day.About one-fifth of the U.S. population,54 million Americans, are persons withdisabilities, individuals with an array ofneeds as well as abilities who, nonetheless,are particularly anxious about theirpersonal safety in an emergency, accordingto two Harris Surveys done by theNational Organization on Disability in2001 and 2003. Elizabeth Davis runs herown emergency management consultingfirm. She focuses on planning andresponse with and for populations thathave special needs.Within our communities, among ourneighbors, relatives and friends, one outof every five Americans has a disability ormedical need that should be taken intoaccount in developing and carrying outemergency plans. Within the fraction ofNew York City staked out as “GroundZero,” for example—in addition to thetowers of businesses that included workerswith mobility/physical, sensory (i.e.vision or hearing), and cognitive disabilities—werethe following considerations:• More than 200 languages are spoken inNYC and the Chinatown neighborhoodwas within the impact zone.10 Milton Magazine

• Commercial and residential structuresmade up the mixed-use area whichincluded special housing for seniors,people with disabilities, and lowerincomes in addition to the market-ratehousing.• Seven home-based care agencies hadoffices in the zone serving roughly 5,000clients living in that area as well.• Several daycare centers, elementary andhigh schools along with colleges, twosenior centers and even one hospitalwere all affected.“Special needs can create dynamic issuesfor emergency professionals respondingduring (or to) a crisis,” Elizabeth explains.“Their bottom line is to save lives but thatmeans all lives. Better-laid plans maximizeand utilize scarce resources during emergencies;these plans identify the needs aswell as the abilities within the disabilitycommunity. This is not just a victimmodel for planning: the extent to whichyou empower people to respond to thebest of their abilities, you minimize theamount of response required from professionals,and stretch the availability of allkinds of resources.”Elizabeth points to the Chinese characterthat relates “opportunity and crisis” whenshe teases out the circumstances, bothchallenging and fortuitous, that led to hernational prominence in a specialized field.“My dyslexia—I am so dyslexic that theonly reason I can tell the differencebetween a “b” and a “d” is that my lastname begins with a “d”—led me torequest a language waiver at Milton,”Elizabeth says with a grin. “Rather, Irequested a language substitution, andMilton agreed. I substituted AmericanSign Language, which I studied atNortheastern on weekends, for modernforeign language.” At Barnard College,Elizabeth concentrated in sociology andpolitical science, and wrote her thesis ondeaf studies. Her intention at BostonUniversity Law School was to develop theskill set necessary to commit herself furtherto the field of disability rights and disabilitylaw. In addition to her law degree,she earned a master’s in education,focused on deaf cultural studies.“At the end of my graduate career, someeffective pieces of legislation passed in the’70s and ’80s culminated in the Americanswith Disabilities Act of 1990, a strongpiece of civil rights legislation, and I benefitedfrom the hard work that went into itspassage.” Elizabeth’s first job was not as alawyer; she joined the Mayor’s Office forPeople with Disabilities (MOPD) as assistantto legal counsel and senior policyanalyst. That job combined advocacy andapplication of policy for the disability community,along with legal and analyticalwork. After the 1993 World Trade Centerbombing, Mayor Giuliani identified emergencymanagement as a commitmenthoused under mayoral authority, andcreated the Mayor’s Office of EmergencyManagement (OEM). As the MOPDrepresentative to the Office of EmergencyManagement, Elizabeth provided “structuredadvice and review” as she describesher role; she “incorporated disabilityaccess standards and protocol into thecity’s emergency contingency plans, drillsand outreach programs.”President George Bush shakes hands withElizabeth after having signed Executive Order 13347focused on including people with disabilities in allemergency planning.Her shift from a policy analyst to a frontlineemergency response professionalcame when she was called upon to helpresolve a crisis in Queens in 1997 wherepolice had found a group of 64 deafMexicans who had ostensibly been smuggledinto the country and forced into slavelabor. Elizabeth found that she “held thecommunication key” in that situation—the ability to help responders, as well asMayor Giuliani, sort through complexlegal, cultural and social needs, to set priorities,and to initiate an appropriateresponse. The need for emergency managementplanning to include disabilityconcerns was manifest. At that pointElizabeth became a member of the Officeof Emergency Management, the organizationwith the resources and the authorityto bring together teams for planning andresponding. “My duty was to infuse considerationof disabilities within the emergencymanagement structure, whether thedisabilities were medically based, agebased, or other kinds of special needs.”She ensured that, within the system,trained people were capable of respondingto unique issues, whatever the triggeringfactor: a power outage, a water mainbreak, a blizzard.The extreme and immediate needs emanatingfrom the attacks of September 11,2001, wrenched Elizabeth, who had beentransitioning into her own private consultingfirm, back into frontline response atground zero. The Mayor’s Office ofEmergency Management, as manyremember, was located at 7 World TradeCenter, which ultimately fell. She surrenderedthe effort to “achieve more balance”in her life through tailoring her own businessto the imminent and overwhelmingmonths-long demand in response to thiscrisis.Once Elizabeth was again ready to launchher business, the nation was consumedwith the need to plan. One goal in establishingEAD & Associates, LLC Emergency11 Milton Magazine

Management & Special Needs Consultants,Elizabeth says was to “be selective aboutprojects—to take on projects because ofthe overall impact they would have. Icould take my experience to the largestand most effective emergency managementvenues, and apply that experience tomake a difference.” As principal of EAD &Associates, Elizabeth has worked with privatebusinesses, advocacy organizations,and governmental agencies in many statesand at the federal level.Elizabeth just completed a three-year projectwith the National Organization onDisability, the “Emergency PreparednessInitiative,” which perhaps most successfullyepitomizes the philosophy and strategiesthat drive Elizabeth’s work.“We had two parallel goals,” Elizabethsays, “we wanted to educate individualswith disabilities to be better prepared toact on behalf of their own needs, and thento be part of the solution process, whetherthe incident was an apartment fire, an icestorm or an act of terrorism. We empoweredthem to search out the planningagencies in their municipalities, and participatein shaping the solutions to emergencychallenges. The other arm of theinitiative was to address the emergencymanagement professionals—the plannersand first responders—to make them awareof the unique emergency special needsthey might face that may change thedynamic of their response, and help themdevelop more appropriate plans, with thestakeholders at the planning table.”Working closely with the Department ofHomeland Security has predictably been aconsistent feature of Elizabeth’s consulting.Last September she chaired a majorconference on emergency preparednessfor people with disabilities for theNational Capital Region (Washington,D.C., Virginia and Maryland), supportedby the Department of Homeland Securityin partnership with the National Organizationon Disability. Emergency managementprofessionals from throughout theregion and beyond immersed themselvesin crucial issues, from plans for medicallyfragile populations to alert systems, evacuationissues, impacts of disaster responseson pediatric and senior populations, toworkplace models. This conference is anexample of a unique “window of opportunity,”Elizabeth says, that she and her colleaguesnow have and must use effectively.For Elizabeth, and her peers and colleaguesin both the emergency managementand disability communities, themost significant symbol of their successin this area was Executive Order 13347,signed by President Bush in July 2004.Elizabeth was present in the Oval Officefor the signing and feels that the tremendousimpact of this order is both recognitionof the issues and a commitment topositive change. The presidential orderdirects that people with disabilities mustbe included in all aspects of emergencyplanning at all levels, throughout thenation.“Emergencies are never going to beeasy, and there is always going to be aresponse,” Elizabeth advises, “but if you atleast have the knowledge and the ideasahead of time, you can be better equippedto make the decisions that affect people’slives. A strategic and inclusive approachto emergency preparedness benefits peopleof all abilities.”Cathleen EverettElizabeth Davis and her husband, Luis Penalver, and their children, MadeleineIsabelle (left) and Abigail Soledad12 Milton Magazine

Derek Gilman ’79Moving Iraq Toward aMarket Economy“From an intellectual point ofview, this experience was exhilarating:bright people around thetable, challenging issues, lots ofdecisions to be made—madequickly, and made right.”As deputy general counsel of the CoalitionProvisional Authority for Commercial LawReform, Derek Gilman ’79 mobilized anddirected a team of attorneys in developinga body of law, 39 statutes, to undergird anew Iraqi economy. He and his teamworked closely with policy makers andeconomists in undertaking this project.The vision entrusted to him and his teamwas to set the framework for transitioningIraq from a managed economy to a marketeconomy.With a staff of 19 attorneys set in Baghdad,and with the help of several professionalsin the U.K., Australia and the UnitedStates, Derek coordinated simultaneousefforts to write “Orders” concerning issuessuch as the national budget, the operationof banks, a system of taxation, a securitiesexchange, the registration of companies,trademarks, patents, foreign investmentand insurance.An army reservist on active duty at thattime, Derek was initially assigned to theDepartment of Defense, Office of GeneralCounsel, International Affairs Division.He had been in Iraq working with theIraqis on the legal documents that wouldbecome the foundation for the special tribunaltrying Saddam Hussein and othersenior Ba’athists, when “It was decided,”he said, “that I would stay on to work onthe Commercial Law Reform Project.”To create “the conditions for sustainabledevelopment” (the directive from U.N.Security Council Resolution 1483), and to13 Milton Magazine

Working on commercial law reform in Iraq, fromleft, Muhammad Helm, Egyptian tax expert withBearingPoint; LTC Derek Gilman ’79; Kamil alGailani, Iraqi minister of finance; Dr. AhmedChalabi, chair of finance committee, IraqiGoverning Council; Dr. Aziz Jafar Hassan, deputydirector of the Ministry of Finance; RichardLaliberte, Canadian economist with BearingPoint;Rick Chewning, Internal Revenue Serviceimplement a transition, Iraq needed abroad-based body of law. One of the firstelements in a complex process, in fact,became identifying and prioritizingthe legal needs. Members of the Iraqiministries working with the CoalitionProvisional Authority (CPA)—such as theministries of finance, trade and planning—inaddition to private developersand Iraqi businessmen, all contributed todelineating what needed to be done; themission-critical issues were numerous anddiverse. According to Derek, the ministries,at that point, were staffed withIraqis who had not been Ba’athists. Thenew minister of finance, for instance(Kamil al Gailani), came to the post fromprivate industry: “His advisors were longterm professionals in the Hussein administration,but were not Ba’athists,” Dereksaid. “We also dealt with a number of professionalswho were trained in the U.K., inWales, who were capable and knowledgeableabout Iraqi law.”Ambassador Bremer in response torequests from Iraqis and coalition advisorsoutlined 39 legal initiatives and Derekcommitted the working group to developingdrafts of those 39; these Orders wouldat least be ready for the thorough “coordination”process that would occur beforeAmbassador Bremer signed the Ordersinto law.Lawyers from the project researched eachof the issues at hand for relevant Iraqi law,trying to build upon it when possible,while remaining consistent with internationallaw. With regard to the public debt,for instance, international law prohibits anoccupier from increasing the sovereigndebt of a nation. The Law Reform Project’sresolution with respect to that restrictionwas to write that while “Iraq would notincrease its debt during the period of occupation,it might substitute existing instrumentswith other instruments.” Iraq,therefore, could reschedule its debt, onceoffers to forgive that debt were reconciled.The project routinely sought both helpfrom advisors and subject-area expertisefrom specialists. Three Iraqi attorneyswith master’s of law degrees, along withan Iraqi law professor, provided regularassistance to the project group. Lawyersfrom the project met twice weekly with theIraqi Governing Council, and frequentlywith Iraqi bankers and businessmen.Various U.S. agencies provided support:the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, theComptroller of the Currency, the Patentand Trademark Office, and the Departmentof Commerce. The assistant director of theU.S. Securities and Exchange Commission(SEC) was the principal drafter ofsecurities law, but he worked in close consultationwith securities lawyers workingfor the coalition in Iraq, who amended thedraft to take into account Iraq’s practicalrealities. Other support came from U.K.and Australian government agencies, theInternational Monetary Fund (IMF) andthe World Bank. In many cases lawyerswere drafting orders in Washington,Canberra or London, which would then beamended in Baghdad.Once orders were drafted, they began towind their way through an extensive coordinationprocess, beginning with consultationwith Iraqi government officials andprivate citizens, and seeking commentsfrom the U.S., U.K. and Australian governments,the IMF and the World Bank.Lawyers would revise the draft and translateit into Arabic. Paul Bremer wouldreview the revised draft Order and approveits presentation to the Governing Council.Discussions with the Governing Councilled to further revisions, until a final draftreached Ambassador Bremer’s desk forsignature. The CPA Web site posted thesigned orders, in English and Arabic, andpublished them in Iraq’s Official Gazette.“The coordination process was logisticallydifficult,” says Derek, moving six separategroups through reading, commenting, collecting,responding, rewriting; ultimatelythey all had to sing from the same sheet ofmusic.”As has been the case in other countries,moving a nation from a planned economyto a market economy opens opportunitiesfor many, but threatens the stakeholdersof the old system. Many expatriates returningto Iraq were excited about the economicopportunities and were ready to makemore radical changes. However, those whohad grown up in a planned economywanted to keep their authority and theirdominance. Some in the Ministry ofPlanning, for instance, wanted controlover foreign investment and were reticentto make the changes in budget law recommendedby the IMF.14 Milton Magazine

“…moving a nation from aplanned economy to a marketeconomy opens opportunities formany, but threatens the stakeholdersof the old system.”Derek points to other challenges posed bycultural differences. “It was crucial for usand those working with us to ensuretransparency in our process,” Derek says,“but operating with transparency was notan Iraqi experience.”“Under Saddam corruption was rampant;bribes were commonplace. In responseand at the suggestion of Iraqis, manyOrders reduced the discretion of publicofficials. For instance, regulations wereadopted so that if a company met clearregulatory criteria, then it could be registered:no bribes, no red tape. We tried tomake it easy for people to transform tangiblewealth into intangible businesses—registered companies that would creategreater wealth.“People who had had experience workingin Eastern European countries advisedus,” Derek says, “one who had writtenbankruptcy law for Bosnia, and a securitieslawyer with experience in the Balkans.They and others who had seen what happenedin Russia were concerned that weavoid allowing the riches of the country togo into a few pockets, that we avoid yieldingthe economic terrain to oligarchs.“We often had to move from thinkingabout broad strategic goals to consideringthe mundane and particular,” Derekexplains. That was true with respect todeveloping a tax program. The IMF consideredthe availability of a non-oil sourceof revenue to be crucial if the Iraqis wereto renegotiate their sovereign debt. Theexisting tax codes were vastly unfair: thoseworking for the government or in stateownedbusinesses did not pay taxes. Taxespaid by individuals working in privateenterprise exceeded 40 percent, while privateenterprises were subject to a total taxrate of 78 percent. Therefore many taxpayerswould negotiate to reduce their taxes.Furthermore, a 25 percent “social welfare”tax paid by private enterprises didn’t go tosocial welfare at all. The reform initiative,therefore, needed to address those differencesin citizens’ experiences and providea tax that was relatively low (to promotecompliance) but still high enough to generatesufficient non-oil revenue. A 15 percentflat tax was the strategy that prevailed.What’s the status of the implementation?What progress has been made? “At timeswe ran into significant internal Iraqi politicaldifferences, but at the end of the day,every one of the economic Orders wasapproved by the Governing Council,”Derek says. “On the whole, the legal principlesunderlying a new economy havebeen accepted.” For the system to operateeffectively, more reorganizing and retrainingof officials lie ahead.Derek points to the positive tracks thusfar: More companies have registered inIraq since February 2004 than in theentire 60-year history of the CompanyRegistry; numerous companies are tradingon the Iraq Stock Exchange; three foreignbanks have received licenses to do businessin Iraq, and propose making millionsof dollars available to Iraqi banks to lendto Iraqi businesses; and we’re seeingmany joint ventures between Iraqi companiesand foreign companies.Across the country, however, getting theword out about changes, reorganizing andretraining is going slower than anyonewould have wanted, because resourceshave been diverted to cope with securityissues and the election. “But economicdevelopment is occurring in some territories,and, in general, progress is beingmade,” Derek asserts.Derek is hopeful and grateful for theopportunity to make such a difference inthe destiny of a country. “I was able tocombine two aspects of my life, my legalexperience and my experience in militaryservice as a JAG officer, to work withextraordinary people, and to make a personalcommitment to begin the rebuildingof an entire economy. I had HernandodeSoto’s Mystery of Capital at my bedside.That book examines the question of whycapitalism succeeds in the West, but failseverywhere else. DeSoto’s conclusion isthat the key cause is a lack of legal frameworkto support capitalism. That legalframework is what we tried todevelop.Cathleen Everett15 Milton Magazine

You Mon Tsang ’84The UnbearableLightness of Starting“I realized in my mid-20s that Ihave a need to start things: somegreat, some fun, some utterlyuseless. As a profession, thatmeans starting companies. I’vedone it with a few thousand dollarsand the sweat of my brow;I’ve done it with $20 million andthe sweat of my brow.”As I write, I am on the last crosscountryflight of the evening after twodays of evangelizing about the company Istarted. The flight is already two and a halfhours late and I am still over four hoursaway from home and my family. And Ifeel all right.I think about how to help a trade publicationpep up their coverage of our spaceand how to convince a global conglomeratethat our company, less than one quarterof 1 percent of their size, is the idealpartner for them. I put the final toucheson the family holiday card (which felt a littlerushed this year but I think will still bea crowd pleaser) and wonder why micropaymentsstill have not flourished on theWeb.This is the life of a company starter, anentrepreneur.I realized in my mid-20s that I have aneed to start things: some great, somefun, some utterly useless. As a profession,that means starting companies. I’vedone it with a few thousand dollars andthe sweat of my brow; I’ve done it with$20 million and the sweat of my brow.I am neck deep into my latest start-up,Biz360. We are trying to change the wayGlobal2000 companies manage theirbrands. This company is my biggest betthus far.Biz360 came from an idea nurtured duringyears of creating data analysis softwareat Brio Technology. Here is the problem:organizations seem to have a pretty goodidea of how their corporate processes arerunning, but they have little idea of howtheir corporate reputation and brands arefaring. They know sales of a product wentup, and when, but they do not know howthe media or consumers perceive theproduct. The have less than they need toplan strategically—to make decisionsabout what direction and resource allocationwill achieve the outcomes they want.I am trying to solve this problem.Probably the toughest part of the road tosuccess at Biz360 is convincing peoplethat getting this accurate view of themselvesis possible. In the first two years ofbusiness, my main role was education.Potential customers, never having seenanything like our capability, would completelyunderestimate what we do; theywould assume, for instance, that we merelyautomated the gathering of news stories.Biz360 gives marketing professionalsmedia analysis tools that provide a rangeof metrics previously unavailable—meas-16 Milton Magazine

You Mon Tsang with his son Liam, 4 years old.“We were at SBC Park rooting for the San FranciscoGiants,” You Mon says, “but for some reason, he’sa Red Sox fan!”urements that pinpoint both opportunitiesand threats on an industry landscape aswell as on consumer and general publiclandscapes, nationally or internationally.To convince them that we do this andmore was a tremendous amount of work;I often had to overcome the frustration ofexplaining over and over again to a skepticalaudience the ways in which we weredoing something new and special.We did this through demonstrations. Wedid this through the testimony of a smallgroup of early customers that were comfortablewith using technology. We did thisthrough tireless promotion in the pressand at conferences.The flip side of this early road is tellingtoday’s story: that the biggest brands inthe high tech, pharmaceutical and financialservices businesses—from Bank ofAmerica to Harley-Davidson to SunMicrosystems to AstraZeneca—are clientsof ours. Over 70 of the largest global companieshave bought into our vision.But I continue to evangelize; I continueto move forward. In fact, I think aboutBiz360 all the time: thoughts on how togrow it faster, to convince more people touse it, occupy my spare moments, tuckedinto corners and cracks of the days. Somedays, I feel very tired, even dejected. Somedays, I talk about moving on. Most days,though, I feel great. My energy seems endless.That energy comes from the thrill ofthe start: an idea turning into something“real”; new jobs for good people; peoplesaying, for the first time, “I want that.”And to get to the great feeling, I need toplow through the “no, thank yous,” themissed flight connections, the “that’s notpossibles,” the slow movement forward,and the “95 percent of all start-ups fail.”This life is not for everyone. SometimesI wish it weren’t for me. In the past, I haveruined relationships on account of myfocus. This focus and drive to start is botha source of power and a significant characterflaw. Fortunately, I now have a lovelywife who understands. Maybe this life isfor you.Did I know right away that I was a starter?I did not. After Milton, headed to college,I was convinced I would be a banker. Incollege, I was attracted to urban planning.In business school, however, I fully realizedthat having tight control of one’s destinywas paramount to my happiness.Since then, I have faced many decisionsabout control. What do I do well? I yieldedthe CEO position when the company grewlarger than what I had previously handled.When do I cut bait? Many times, walkingaway seemed the easiest option. Andwhen does the next new business start?I don’t know. One thing I do know is thatI cannot get enough of a new thing.Twenty years ago when I was at Milton,I found myself trying to exceed my ownexpectations. I came to Milton very selfaware.I knew why I came to Milton eventhough I came from New York City’sChinatown: I wanted to be challenged.I thought of myself as a math and sciencemajor, but I walked out looking to majorin humanities.In business, I see myself as the “zero-tofive-million-in-yearly-revenue”guy. That’sthe person I’m comfortable with, and I’mgood at it. I start small companies. But,again, I want a good challenge. WhenI move on to whatever the next thing is,I want to walk out as the “zero-to-fiftymillion”guy. I want to build enduringcompanies. Stay tuned for that.You Mon Tsang ’8417 Milton Magazine

Randall Dunn ’83Anna L. Waring ’74Leading Schools:RealizingEducationalVisionsRandy Dunn ’83 reading to students18 Milton Magazine

Anna remembers a senior atthe last assembly of last yeartelling her schoolmates that“education is contagious and lifeis complicated” and then saying,“Dr. Waring, we’re leaving youour eggs and it’s your job to keepthe nest safe.” Muses Waring,“I think about that a lot. Thiswork is a calling.”“We’re leaving you our eggs andit’s your job to keep the nestsafe.”With tuition covering less than 20 percentof the operating budget, Dr. Anna Waringspends significant time fund-raising(“Fortunately I have a fabulous developmentstaff”). Recent priorities have beentechnology (moving from one computerand no network to three computer laboratoriesand Internet hook-ups in eachclassroom) and faculty salaries (“Miltonshowed me how important a well-trainedfaculty that really likes students can be. Iwanted to reproduce that excellence.” LastSeptember starting salaries increased by30 percent).Anna’s work does not end with fund-raising.“I am learning things I never thoughtI would have to learn: roof repair, howwater pipes break, wiring buildings fortechnology, working with populations thatare highly mobile.” Anna has also seenher previous lives intersect with her life atJosephinum in ways she had not anticipated.Milton, Williams, and Stanford classmateshave contributed to the school.DePaul connections have helped with studentinterns and volunteers. “If you havetreated people well, they will do right byyou.”Most importantly, Anna has never lostsight of “the fact that this work is aboutstudents. In a budget meeting or a boardmeeting about bylaws, always rememberwhy you’re there.” She quotes a nun whosaid of Josephinum, “I don’t always understandit, but God’s work is being donehere.” Anna remembers a senior at thelast assembly of last year telling herschoolmates that “education is contagiousand life is complicated” and then saying,“Dr. Waring, we’re leaving you our eggsand it’s your job to keep the nest safe.”Muses Anna, “I think about that a lot.This work is a calling. If you’re doing whatyou love, working on a good cause, even ifyou’re not quite sure what you’re doing,things will work out, people will come toyou.”“I knew that education was whatI wanted.”A similar opportunity to bring severalparts of his life together led RandallDunn ’83 to assume the Head of Schoolposition at the Roeper School this year. AnABC student like Anna, he came to Miltonfrom the Boston public school system.Although he had held his own in thestreets of Dorchester, when Randall firstcame to Milton, he felt “like a beat-upChevy in the Indy 500.” But he also neverfelt alone. “The thing that changed my lifeis that people took care of me.” Lefty Marrchecked in with him regularly. Dick andEllie Griffin allowed him to stay overnightonce a week so that he didn’t have to trekhome after a long day of classes andsports. Randall became such a part of the24/7 life of the school that eventually “Mr.Millet allowed me to become a boardingstudent even though I lived right down theroad.” By the end of junior year Randallwas thriving so well at Milton that he waselected Head Monitor. “The point is thatall these people were looking after me.”While at Milton, Randall worked withChuck Burdick at summer camp. “Rightthen I knew that education was what Iwanted.”From Milton Randall went to Brown. AfterBrown he earned a master’s of educationat Harvard and then taught in a Brooklinepublic elementary school while at thesame time working as a dorm parent inForbes. A stint working with Ed Foley atDerby Academy followed, after whichRandall worked seven years as middleschool head at the Landon School. AtLandon, Randall “fell in love with theopportunity to make change, but I wasalways searching. As middle school directorI certainly had an impact on students’lives and the school but I wanted more.”In Roeper, with its humanistic, childcenteredapproach, Randall found what hewas looking for. It was not only an opportunityto work intensely with children, butalso “a great opportunity to be part of amission focused on preparing kids formore than more school. It had a worldview.To have both of these things in onejob was ideal.”The patience and skill to go withwhatever ideas come upThe cornerstone of the Roeper educationis personalization. Founded in 1941 byGeorge and Annemarie Roeper, educatorsfleeing the persecutions in Germany, theRoeper School espouses “the importanceof realizing the positive potential of eachindividual. Through a process of lifelonglearning, each individual strives to becomeself-actualized as a moral, creative, productive,and fulfilled person, partner, andglobal citizen. The school recognizes thatall people are unique and develop accordingto their own timetable and plan. Thisdevelopment grows from everyday decisionsand genuine expressions of care,20 Milton Magazine

Anna Waring ’74 with studentskindness, humility, respect and responsibility”[quoted from the Roeper Schoolphilosophy].As Randall puts it, “It is about getting toknow kids on a personal level. We want tofocus on ways to allow their passions todictate what happens in the classroom.”Even at the youngest level (Roeper is pre-Kto 12), students choose what they arelearning at any given moment. Teachers,in turn, “are comfortable going with whateverideas come up; they can’t be in a rushto get someplace.” Through this process ofpersonalization, the students “grow upbeing respectful of others’ ideas, no matterhow wild or ordinary they might be. Itteaches a whole lot about patience and listening,”habits of mind which, as theRoeper Preferred Future Plan 2003 states,“prepare our students to live justly, wisely,and artfully in the world.” This “preparationfor life,” as George Roeper called it,forms the second vital, distinct thrust ofthe Roeper education.A diverse school for giftedchildrenThe third distinct feature emerged in 1956when Roeper reorganized itself as a schoolfor gifted students. Roeper is one of thevery few schools for the gifted that goesthrough high school. It sits cheek-to-jowlnext to the Roeper Institute, an internationallyknown think-tank on gifted educationthat publishes the equally influentialRoeper Review, and benefits from the intellectualbuzz and access to foundationgrants that the institute brings. Studentscommute from 60 different communities,some as far away as Indiana. Roughly 40percent of the 640 students receive someform of financial aid; a smaller percentageattend Roeper on full or half scholarships.In addition to this socioeconomic diversity,students of color comprise roughly a quarterof the student body. In fact, in theDetroit area, where neighborhoods tend tosort by race and ethnicity, Roeper is morediverse than the public schools ofBirmingham and Bloomfield Hills, thetwo towns where the Roeper campuses aresituated. A recent tuition hike may makeRoeper’s commitment to diversity morechallenging and the school is working oninnovative ways to recruit students fromdiverse backgrounds. “We try to makeschool affordable,” says Randall. “Our studentstend to be from gifted programs inthe publics, so the whole notion of payingthat much money is daunting.”Becoming “more inorganic to stayorganic”In fact, Randall finds himself leadingRoeper at a crucial time in its growth. Theethic of personalization meant that theRoeper community approached life in afluid, spontaneous way and just trustedthat things would work out. But now theschool has reached a point where it has tobe more deliberate in its actions. In thepast eight years the school has becomemore rigorous in its budgetary disciplines.It has begun to cultivate alumni, to buildan ethic of giving, in order to increase theendowment and prepare the way for a capitalcampaign. As a way to ease the concernsof families that might balk at thetuition and to increase enrollment (Roeperhopes to add an additional 40 to 50 giftedstudents to its student body), Roeper familieshave been encouraged to reach out intheir neighborhoods and “tell their storiesabout the Roeper experience.” Withoutthoughtful planning, the increase in thestudent body could present challenges topersonalization. Notes Randall, “It’s not asituation where you can just increase thenumber of faculty. When a school gets biggerthe culture changes. As we get biggerwe will have to get more thoughtful andsystematic about personalization. Rightnow personalization and activism oozeorganically from the philosophy; but in thefuture, I think, we will have to becomemore inorganic to stay organic.”For, make no mistake, it ultimately comesdown to personalization. “Personalizationputs us on the map,” states Randall. “A lotof schools struggle to do that, but childculture has moved so far away from adultculture. There are not obvious intersections.Our school has done a good job ofbringing adults and students together,each giving meaning to the other.”Certainly, Roeper has brought meaning toRandall. “I feel more relaxed as a headhere than I have in typically less stressfulpositions at other schools because it’s avery natural fit for me. My children arehere and they love it. I feel as though myheart and soul are in this place.”Like Anna, Randall sees a Milton legacy inhis own professional journey. “Roeper is aplace where people understand that theycan be themselves. That’s the kind of environmentMilton was, and that’s what Iwant Roeper to be.”Rod Skinner ’72Director of College Counseling21 Milton Magazine

Christopher Gould ’73A play exists in performanceFueling modern American dramaBroadway Play Publishing Incorporated“A nybody who loves the theatre,I think, will admit to agenetic predisposition in thatdirection: My parents took me tothe theatre often, probably startingwith Gilbert and Sullivan.The immediacy of live performancehooked me—the person-topersoncommunication.”So Christopher (Kip) Gould ’73 dove intodrama at Milton, and then at Tufts. Thatexperience taught him that the most obviousway to stay connected with the theatre—acting—wasnot going to be his way.“I realized that not only was I not as talentedas I would need to be, but also Iliked going to the theatre more than beinginvolved in the creation of it,” Kipexplains.“Theatre is ephemeral,” says Kip, “a playexists in performance, live, on stage, andonce a production closes, the play’s gone.The one person who can extend the play isthe critic; a critic’s power can give morelife to a play.” So his quest to help keepplays alive took Kip to New York after college,where he realized that he could writereviews and features about the theatre forpublications right away. Quickly, however,his estimation of a critic’s power evolvedto embrace the reality: only one critic has“real” power—the New York Times theatrecritic. “Perhaps with 20 years of goodwork and tons of luck, I could get there,”Kip thought, “but that’s unlikely.”In fact, he thought, a publisher of playshas similar power. “Once a play hasclosed, you have only the script,” Kipnotes. “The script is inadequate, but atleast it’s a peek into what the playwright istrying to do.” Work that enters the publicrepertory lasts forever.Through the intercession of a then girlfriend,Kip secured a job in the mailroomat Samuel French, Inc. Samuel French,whose tag line is “The House of Plays for175 years” was founded in 1830 and pioneeredthe concept of providing publishedscripts to theatrical producing groupsthroughout the world.Kip began in the mailroom, then did somelicensing work for amateur productions,and eventually became head of the musicallicensing department. He sought outand recommended plays for the companyto publish. This success, Kip reasoned,was unlikely to jettison him ahead of theFrench family members slated for theleadership of the firm. At that point, also,his eagerness to strike out in an unconventionaldirection was growing; he wantedto make a commitment to new, talented,American playwrights so that otherscould value their work.The spirit moved Kip to action in 1982,when he left Samuel French and startedBroadway Play Publishing Incorporated(BPPI), beginning with playwrights whowere then unknown to the public. Today,one link on BPPI’s Web site celebrates“over 20 years of brilliant playwriting,”listing an outstanding playwright eachyear, based on the year he or she was firstpublished by BPPI. “After I started thecompany, Native Speech by Eric Overmyerwas the first play I read where I knew Ihad a genius on my hands,” Kip recalls.22 Milton Magazine

“On the Verge, Eric’s second play that Ipublished, was my first big hit in terms ofbook sales and production licensing; itwas the eighteenth play I published. EricOvermyer is such a poet and so imaginative.On the Verge is an extraordinary play;hundreds of groups have produced it, andmore will be doing it for another 30 or 40years.”The catalogue of BPPI plays available toproduction companies across the countrywill generate hundreds of thousands ofdollars for the playwrights over time, andguarantee that contemporary Americanplays light our stages.Kip purposefully set the size and the focusof his business. His is a highly personalventure: He chooses the plays to publish;his aesthetic underlies the body of workBBPI has printed. Playwrights on Kip’s“20-year” list, like A. R. Gurney, JoseRivera, Laura Shaine Cunningham,Naomi Wallace and Tony Kushner, haveearned Obie Awards, Pulitzer Prizes, aMacArthur Grant, NEA Awards andnumerous other distinctions. (Dario Fo,one of the few foreign playwrights Kippublished early on, won a Nobel Prize.)Kip’s aesthetic seems to prize power andartistry in the use of words; bold grapplingwith ideas; fresh treatment of issues; politicalrelevance; pushing the limits of conventionaltheatre; and work that resonateswith theatre audiences even as it challengesthem.As it has for many industries, digital technologyis radically altering the dynamicsthat have defined play publishing. In theKip Gould ’73past, BBPI would need to publish 1,000copies of a play to achieve an acceptableeconomy of scale, and the process wouldtake two to three months; now that it’spossible to print 100 to 150 copies inexpensivelywith a two-week turnaround ona project (including color artwork), makinga commitment is much easier. “Ithugely expands what I can publish,” Kipcomments. “We can even publish and sellat the theatre where the play is still in production.”Kip did just that with an A. R.Gurney play, Big Bill, in production atLincoln Center.This change has led to altering the submissionguidelines on the Web site, aswell. “If a play is going to have a professionalproduction, I’ll publish it,” Kip says.“This experiment completely shifts the terrain.Formerly, I chose from among thoseplays I saw; instead I’ll be depending onthe professional theatres to vet the potentialplays. This arrangement is possiblebecause I can print such a limited numberof copies of a given play. Furthermore,now that BPPI is publishing books withcolor covers (formerly they were black andwhite), it may be possible to convinceBarnes and Noble or other chain bookstoresto carry these publications. Thirty or40 years ago trade publishers would regularlypublish plays as one of the genres ofliterature for sale in general bookstores.That rarely happens now, and that leaves awhole niche open to a new printing andselling model.”The care and feeding of drama on stagehas also included serving as president ofThe Vineyard Theatre board and memberof the Adobe Theatre Company board. For10 years Kip was a Tony Award voter aswell (“One or two Broadway plays overthat time were good,” he says). Focusinghis career energy on stimulating anancient, rich and valuable art form hasbeen rewarding for Kip. The parents whobrought Kip to the theatre when he wasyoung also chose careers that reflectedtheir values, including a commitment tofamily. Kip reflects that the role models hehad in his parents, strengthened by thevalues he learned at Milton, yielded theidea that you could do something you lovethat benefits the community at the sametime. For more than 20 years, BroadwayPlay Publishing Incorporated has fulfilledthat idea.Note: BPPI’s Web site iswww.broadwayplaypubl.comCathleen Everett23 Milton Magazine

Jean Valentine ’52LetterThe hornet holds on to the curtain, wintersleep. Rubs her legs. Climbs the curtain.Behind her the cedars sleep lightly,like guests. But I am the guest.The ghost cars climb the ghost highway. Even my handover the page adds to the ‘room tone’: the littleconstant wind. The effort of becoming. These wordsare my life. The effortof loving the un-become. To make the sufferingvisible. The un-become love: What welost, a leaf, what we cherish, a leaf.One leaf of grass. I’m sending you this seed-pod,this red ribbon, my tonguethese two red ribbons, my mouth, my other mouth,—but the other worlds—blindly I guzzlethe swimming milk of its seed field flower—Jean Valentine ’52 Wins 2004National Book Award for Poetry“L etter” is a poem by Jean Valentine’52 that I found among the new poems ofher most recent collection, Door in theMountain: New and Collected Poems 1965–2003, the winner of the 2004 NationalBook Award for Poetry. The poem is unassumingin the space it takes up, quiet inimage, in its movement and thought—easy, even, to overlook. But the longer Ispend with it, the more I appreciate thework of Jean Valentine.In its title, “Letter” offers us somethingtangible, something, well, deliverable. Andyet like the hornet’s sleepy hold on thecurtain she climbs, our grasp on thepoem’s physical world is tenuous: Whohas penned this letter? Who is its recipient?Where in the physical world of thepoem does it sit? And, if “Letter” is thepoem (the arrangement of letters intowords) that we read, a letter opened for us,how do we translate its intentions?Just so, I think, Jean sets in motion thiscomplicated and utterly tenuous relationshipbetween the physical world and theinterior experience of the present “I”—a relationship we see repeatedly throughthis collection. In the second stanza, this“I” is “the guest,” someone invited toenter but foreign, unfamiliar with thespace entered—a letter herself, still in formation.“These words/are my life,” thenarrator says—an admission of emotionalconnection between self and language, butalso of physical connection: if words are,literally, self, then nothing is stable.Jean demonstrates this instability as sheshifts and reorders language: “The effortof becoming” is, a line later, “[t]he effort ofloving the un-become” and later, “[t]he unbecomelove.” What we lose is also whatwe cherish; what we become is also unbecoming.Metaphor shifts our perception ofthe physical: a “leaf” is a book’s page; aletter is a “seed-pod” sent, is “this red ribbon,”is “my tongue.” The body is thephysical letter. If we are words, after all,we are subject to the manipulation of writersand, of course, readers.Throughout this collection, Jean’s poetryworks hard to articulate a self that is strugglingto articulate itself (“the suffering visible”).“Letter” enacts both the necessity ofself-articulation and the perpetual processof it: no letter is sent; completed action isnot attainable; completed, defined self isnot the point. Perhaps the point is to lovewhat is still undefined.In a recent interview with Kate Greenstreet1 , Jean says, “Don’t turn away fromsomething that’s difficult because it’s difficult.Try to go toward it. Try to bring thesame degree of necessity to reading it thatthe writer brought to writing it.” To readJean well is to commit to plumbing thedepths of each poem, to wrestle with theirwrestlings. “[I want to] get to a place thathas some depth to it,” she says. “Certainly,24 Milton Magazine

Photo by Max GreenstreetI’m always working with things that Idon’t understand—with the unconscious,the invisible. And trying to find a way totranslate it.” Jean’s poetry echoes the irrevocabilityof Sylvia Plath, the political ofAdrienne Rich, the gravity of Dickinson.She asks her readers, explicitly in “Letter”but more subtly in other poems of the collection,to read her, to commit to the relationshipand the responsibility of interpretingthe letters sent.Door in the Mountain collects her life’swork and orders her eight books of poetrychronologically, with the exception of thenew poems, which appear first. So manyof these poems feel like shards to me:ragged, sometimes dangerous fragments—utterancesof a self as it navigatesliteral and linguistic space. Her goodfriend and poet Adrienne Rich says of herwriting: “Looking into a Valentine poem islike looking into a lake: you can see yourown outline, and the shapes of the upperworld, reflected among rocks, underwaterlife, glint of lost bottles, drifted leaves.” 2Beneath the surface of many of thesepoems, Valentine’s own personal struggleswith alcoholism, depression and divorcelurk.I read Jean’s collection on the sameDecember day I heard the inventor andfuturist Ray Kurzweil dazzle the studentbody assembled in the FitzgibbonsConvocation Center (see story, page 54).I had left staggering, filled with newknowledge of the exponential speed ofprogress, with the limitless nature ofhuman exploration and invention in theworlds of biotechnology and artificial intelligence.Immediately following, Jean’s1 Interview with Jean Valentine, 2004, by KateGreenstreet. www.jeanvalentine.com2 Ibid.25 Milton Magazine

Door in the Mountain:New and Selected Poems, 1965–2003By John FreemanJean Valentine made her poetic debut in1965 with a book called Dream Barker, atitle that aptly bugled the arrival of asensibility unlike any other in Americanletters. While her contemporaries haveturned the blank page into a confessional,Valentine fashioned a magic carpetout of it instead. Using an eerie sense ofpoise, she transports readers to cloudydreamscapes where ordinary things takeon secret menace and poignancy. All thewhile the poet’s consciousness lurks inthe corner like a bat.Door in the Mountain, winner of the2004 National Book Award, collectsfour decades of Valentine’s work andadds a hefty selection of new poems.Read the book chronologically and youcan appreciate the gradual winnowingdown of Valentine’s style. As with anypoet, you can also infer the emotionalarc of a life, from the heartbreakinghonesty of the line, “God break me outof this stiff life I’ve made,” to the poem“Happiness,” which replays a streetencounter through the prism of thepoet’s weary gratitude.In the newest poems, words trickledown the page like rainwater from aleaky storm gutter. To fully appreciateValentine’s care with language, onemust slow down and watch the wordsfall, pay attention to each drop.October morning —Sea lions barkingOn the off-shore rockAutumn evening —Seals’ heads nosing throughthe pink PacificIt’s a luxurious mandate, this quintessentialstyle of Valentine’s, for it givesthe reader a chance to indulge a heightenedawareness in the natural world,the passage of time and the aural qualityof language.In the magnificently strange and mysterioustitle poem, Valentine writes in thevoice of a hunter walking through theforest with a deer strapped to his back.No one will give him shelter. Tired andperhaps cold, the speaker beseeches:“Door in the mountain/let me in.”This book is a door to a wonderfulmind. Open it.John Freeman is a writer in New York.Reprinted with permission.poetry felt like an antidote to the breathlessness,even recklessness of change: aconcentrated slowing; a relentless focuson interiority and on the process of selfnarration.Maybe now more than ever, inthe face of so much change, we need suchattention to how we “become,” and howwe love the “un-become.”But the longer I spend thinking aboutJean, the more I consider. The last stanzaof this poem “Letter” presents, in mymind, a world beyond word-bound identity.The language is unfettered by punctuation:a rush of consumption, of nourishment,of natural productivity, left openat either end with dashes: a nod toDickinson, but also the promise of limitlesswhite space unmarred by words. Thislast moment of this poem feels hopeful,possible—an undefined place for identityto exist, free of the (uncertain) certainty oflanguage. Maybe this is Jean’s image ofthe subconscious or subliminal, thewomb-like space where the self swimsbefore it rises to meet consciousness.The irony, of course, is this: words areinescapable; they are the poet’s medium,the only way to connect the imagined andthe “real.”And now I picture a projected, virtual,three-dimensional Kurzweil, all orchestratedby the “real” Kurzweil from his homein Cambridge, lecturing to Asian scientistsabout our imminent ability to move in andout of various selves in an extraordinaryspace beyond the physical—all imaginedby the very “real” neurons that firethroughout our human brains, and I wonderif this scientist and this poet are moreconnected than not. And I wonder if Jeanwould mind the comparison.Lisa BakerEnglish Department26 Milton Magazine

Sarah Bynum ’90Fiction that captures national prominence:A Sleeping Protagonist Makes It HappenPhoto by Dana Jackson ’90Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum ’90 looksmuch like she did in 1990, and her mannerseems about the same, too. She has asweet round face, a mess of curls in herhair, and eyes that are quick to come alive.Her voice is strikingly high and small andeven childlike, but her big gestures andher quick and animated patterns of speechsuggest a decidedly adult intensity. In conversationwith her, you can’t help but thinkthat there’s a lot going on behind her eyes.Any reader of her first novel, Madeleine IsSleeping, published in September byHarcourt, would have to agree. Part fairytale, part bildungsroman, the book, in veryshort chapters, tells the story of a younggirl growing up in provincial France at atime that is difficult to place. When shefalls into a deep sleep, we are plunged intoa dream world of unlikely but likable charactersand strange but pleasing scenarios.The man who performs a stage act basedon his own flatulence, the magnificentlyfat woman who sprouts wings, the photographerwith strange enthusiasms, the travelinggypsy circus—they are all here, andthe question of what is real and what isimagined begins to dissolve, even as weare drawn into Madeleine’s story.Madeleine Is Sleeping earned Sarah a spotamong five finalists in fiction for theNational Book Award, an honor thatensures an eager audience for her futurework. She and her Milton classmate DanaJackson are married and expecting theirfirst child in April. After living for a numberof years in the Ft. Greene section ofBrooklyn, they are moving to Los Angelesto further Dana’s film career and give thegrowing family more space. For an aspiringwriter, the experience of interviewingSarah should have given me a seriousSalieri complex, but it is too difficult tobegrudge her this success. We met at acoffee shop in Brooklyn to talk about herbook, the Milton roots of her writing andthe controversy surrounding the NationalBook Awards.EH: Maybe you could tell me a little bitabout what you were setting out to do inwriting Madeleine Is Sleeping. Do youremember when the idea for the book wasborn?SB: Oh, absolutely. I was still a senior atBrown. And I had been recently exposedto so many texts that I was agitated andexcited by. On the fiction side, Borges andAngela Carter. On the literary criticismside, Barthes and Irigaray and Foucault.27 Milton Magazine

“So originally it was an experiment, but I became so excited by thisidea of having a sleeping protagonist at the helm of a story, and by allof the freedoms that offered, that I brought it back from hypertextonto the page. But I didn’t know it was going to be a book when Istarted writing. It was just this thing I was playing with.”So I was kind of in a state of foment [abubbling gesture]. At the same time I wastaking a class in hypertext. I was very computerilliterate, but I liked the idea of thistool, this way of crafting a story that wasmore Weblike rather than chronological.So originally it was an experiment, but Ibecame so excited by this idea of having asleeping protagonist at the helm of a story,and by all of the freedoms that offered,that I brought it back from hypertext ontothe page. But I didn’t know it was going tobe a book when I started writing. It wasjust this thing I was playing with.EH: And you had other writing projectsthat popped up in the meantime?SB: Oh, this hasn’t been my consumingobsession for the last ten years. I wouldhope it would be much fatter if it hadbeen.EH: In the times that you were workingon it, was it slow going? Or are you a fastwriter?SB: I’m a horribly slow writer.EH: Oh, good, so am I.SB: I’m painfully, excruciatingly slow, inpart because I don’t like to move on to thenext sentence until I’m happy with thecurrent sentence.EH: It was clear to me in reading the bookthat a lot of attention was paid to thesounds and the rhythms of language. Andsome of those very short chapters struckme like poems, prose poems. Were therepoets that influenced you, or did you everthink of it as poetry?SB: No, but I’ve been so delighted by thatcomparison. In fact, it’s been turned intosomewhat of an accusation [laugh], especiallyby the New York Times. But I’ve beendelighted, because I’m awed by poetry,which is still this very mysterious mediumto me. [Leaning in and speaking quietly] Idon’t read very much poetry, just betweenus…EH: Well the readers of the MiltonMagazine might have to find out.SB: Okay, between us and the readers ofthe Milton Magazine. [Laughs.] But, thatsaid, the poetry book that did actually havea great influence on this—especially whenI was about halfway through, and I wasbeginning to think of it as more than justa thing but maybe, possibly, a book—isAnne Carson’s Autobiography of Red, whichis a novel in verse. And that book just …completely transfixed me. It was a bookthat I kept returning to and reading passagesfrom as I was finishing my book.And, in fact, I have the same agent asAnne—not that I’ve met her, I don’t meanto say Anne like I’m on a first-name basis.His name is Bill Clegg. I had met him,and I really liked him, but at the time Ithought it was too early in the process. Butwhen I read Autobiography of Red, literallyI rushed home from the bookstore andcalled him up. And it was all actuallythanks to Mr. McCloskey [English department],because he’s the one who introducedme to Bill Clegg, and Bill ended upbeing such a major force in making thisbook happen. So I’m forever indebted toMr. McCloskey for giving me that push. Ihad been teaching English for three years,and I hadn’t been writing. And he just feltstrongly that I should try to give the writinga shot. Even though I said “I’m notready, the manuscript is not done,” he wasvery adamant. He said, “Just do it, it’s notgoing to hurt.”EH: In the book it is rarely clear to thereader—or at least this reader—what exactlyis real and what is part of Madeleine’svivid, fantastical dream life. And eventuallyI began to give up on the project of tryingto separate one from the other. Is thatokay?SB: I’m so glad you did! The book verywillfully blurs the two. The line betweenmemory and dreams, and between one’ssleeping life and one’s waking life, seemsso porous to me, that I wanted to avoidcreating what to me would have been afalse distinction. As opposed to somethinglike Alice in Wonderland, where eithershe’s up on the riverbank, or she’s downthe rabbit hole. I know the book asks forthe reader to make a leap of faith—or a fallof faith, to go with it.EH: Who influenced you at Milton? Whatactivities or classes were important to you?SB: Oh, Milton was where I caught thewriting bug, for sure. It was having Mr.Smith my Class IV year, Red Smith, andthen taking his creative writing class.There were some really great writers inthat class. Theo Emery was in it. And Ijust remember being so…thrilled, and justfeeling as if I was in my element, in thatworkshop. And then I also had wonderfulexperiences with Mr. McCloskey, though Ididn’t study with him, and Mr. Connolly.And Kay Herzog, I had her as an Englishteacher.EH: She is wonderful.SB: Amazing. The Sound and the Fury, Tothe Lighthouse, books that feel so seminalto me—she was the one who unfoldedthem. When we did The Sound and theFury, she read—not read, she recited—thatpassage from Macbeth, and I still have, inmy 17-year-old’s handwriting, “Tomorrow,and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps inthis petty pace from day to day.” Everytime I read that passage, I hear her voice.So I have tremendous fondness and gratitudetoward the English teachers I had.Randy McCutcheon too. I had him inClass III and adored him.EH: What did it mean to you to be a finalistfor the National Book Award?SB: It was enormous—EH: How did you find out?SB: I was at my day job, and my boss hadjust asked me to order her lunch, and shewanted a chicken and avocado pressata.28 Milton Magazine

“It’s really remarkable how muchvitriol and passion this has awakened,particularly in The New YorkTimes. Who knew?”And Fran, the secretary, said, “There’s aHarold on line two for you.” And helaunched into this explanation: “Out ofso-and-so many submissions, you wereone of the five finalists…” And it reallydid sound like I was being called byPublisher’s Clearinghouse. I kept waitingfor that moment: “You just need to buythree magazine subscriptions.” I was sobewildered. But I wrote down his nameand I Googled him, and sure enough hisname came up as executive director of theNational Book Foundation. And I completelylost it. The sense of astonishment kindof defies description. And then my bossyelled from the other room: “Did you get achance to order that sandwich?” So thatkind of immediately brought me backdown to earth.EH: You recently read aloud from yourwork in a large auditorium in an event forall the finalists. Can you describe whatthat was like? How nervous were you,scale of one to ten?SB: I wasn’t nervous at all. When you’rereading you already have your script. Thedifficult part has been having to be interviewedand defend the book and speak tothe National Book Awards controversy.That—that has made me nervous.EH: Well, I have to do my duty and askyou about the hubbub you don’t like talkingabout.SB: Oh, by now I’m an old veteran.EH: The controversy surrounding thefinalists in fiction was that all five of youwere women who live in New York City.None of you is a household name, andaccording to one report, only one of yourbooks has sold more than 2,000 copies.Some have criticized the panel of judgesfor picking overly obscure books.SB: It’s really remarkable how much vitrioland passion this has awakened, particularlyin the New York Times. Who knew?EH: Also in The New Yorker, though thenovelist Thomas McGuane said the fictionfinalists were a sign of the “meltdown” ofthe National Book Awards. How do yourespond to that?SB: Among the five finalists, we’ve published16 books—I’m the one who hasn’tpulled my weight there—and there areGuggenheims, and NEA fellowships, etc.These are very well respected writers,distinguished writers, and so “obscure”seems a misinformed way of describingthem. I do have to say that the commentthat was the most wounding was the TomMcGuane comment in The New Yorker.I think I naively thought that anotherwriter, especially a literary novelist, wouldnot be joining the ranks of the critics, andinstead would be speaking up on ourbehalf. He admitted he hadn’t read thebooks. So that was wounding. After awhile I guess you get a little inured to it.But I have to say I’m relieved that it’s over.EH: One of the other finalists, ChristineSchutt, has said, “I think publishers areafraid of taking risks on something that isdifferent.” Do you think that’s true?SB: If that’s true, my situation is anomalous.I was lucky in that my agent founda publisher for it very quickly. And thepublisher, Harcourt, got behind it immediately,from day one. They never tried tomake it appear more conventional. Theykind of embraced it in all its weirdness.But I don’t know if my limited experienceis necessarily representative.EH: Are you working on something now?SB: I’ve been working on short fiction. Ihaven’t started on something longer. I’manxious to, I’m excited.EH: Do you think you might do a collectionof your short fiction?SB: I get asked that because a bunch ofstories I’ve published have been about thesame character, a middle school teacher,and are based on my experience teachingmiddle school. But I don’t want to justcobble together old stuff. I want to dosomething new.Evan Hughes ’94Evan is on the editorial staff of The NewYork Review of Books. Reach him atehughes@aya.yale.edu.Editor’s note: On January 19, Sarah visitedMilton as a Bingham Lecture Series speaker.She dedicated her talk in memory of poetLexi Rudnitsky ’91.29 Milton Magazine

Kym Lew Nelson ’75Linking Minority and Majority Businesses,Kym Lew Nelson Offers Strategic PurchasingKym Lew Nelson came by the urgehonestly: She is from an entrepreneurialfamily and she couldn’t resist going solo.Kym’s mom ran a neighborhood nightclubin Roxbury, Massachusetts; her sisterowns a consignment shop; and her unclehas one of the largest minority constructioncompanies in New England.As president and chief operating officer ofThe KLEW Company, a consulting firmwhich she founded in 2002, Kym harnessed19 years of brand managementand purchasing experience at Proctor &Gamble (P&G) in Cincinnati and a masterof business administration from Harvardto help companies develop strategic purchasing,optimize their supply chain, andlink minority and majority suppliers.Leaving the security of a global companymight be too big a risk for many businesswomen, but Kym couldn’t wait to put hersavvy to use in a largely untapped market,while trying to spend more time at homewith her husband, Michael and theirdaughters, Alexis (12) and Sydney (6).So far, the competition of the big procurementconsulting firms has not threatenedher niche: helping minority companiesconnect through joint ventures whichgrant them enhanced purchasing power,while connecting those same groups ofentrepreneurs with majority companieswho need their services and want to supporta diverse business model. “I’m kindof a matchmaker,” Kym says.Kym also has mobilized a flexible workforceby developing a network of subcontractorswho can manage the 20 or 30 percentof the work that she can’t do alone.A recent alumni class on entrepreneurshipat Harvard Business School reinforcedmuch of what she learned on thejob at P&G, Kym explains; the class materialon business start-ups and the detailedcase studies will be helpful if she decidesto expand her business. “The class wasreaffirming,” she says.Kym thanks her spirited family and hereducational background for preparing herfor the business world; Kym earned abachelor’s from Stanford after Milton.“Attending Milton was really a great accident,”Kym says. “My sister was workingas a nurse in a doctor’s office. One of thepatients was the former principal of theLower School who talked about Miltonand asked my sister if she knew anyoneinterested in applying.” Kym left Catholicschool to attend Milton, where she playedbasketball, was involved with theatre aswell as the speech and debate team.Before recognizing her strength in businessand changing her college major toeconomics, Kym had been a drama major.In addition to her own postgraduate work,Kym maintains a connection to academiathrough her client base: She trains YaleUniversity employees to purchase forgreater efficiency and economy.Kym has managed global organizations,global suppliers and global brands. Shedevelops and implements business andpurchasing strategies, while helping toreduce costs. Her experience with minoritycompanies helps them become effectivesuppliers for Fortune 500 companies.Pointing to a deal she facilitated between aGerman company and a domestic minoritycompany that makes product labeling,Kym says, “I help business leaders whowould never have met come together in away that benefits everyone.”For more about The KLEW Company, visitww.klew.biz.30 Milton Magazine

Buckminster Fuller 1913Producing Maximum Performance from Technology:The Dymaxion ManLast summer, the U.S. Postal Serviceissued a stamp commemorating the life ofR. Buckminster Fuller ’13. Foregroundedby platonic solids and a lozenge-shaped,three-wheeled automobile, Fuller’s gianthead is perched atop a ball-and-sockettruss amid gaping onlookers. Spideringacross the great dome of his forehead arethe signature lines of triangles and hexagonsthat constitute his geodesic geometry.In the background, more geodesicdomes lie on the Euclidean plane punctuatedby what appear to be oversized powertransformers and a helicopter pulling yetanother dome along the invisible vectorsof optimum design. Not your typicalsomber portrait of an elder statesman orgroundbreaking scientist, this millennialtake on a ’50s sci-fi aesthetic is, despite itswinks and overall mood of loopiness,telling of both Fuller’s life and reputation.Born in Milton, Massachusetts, July 12,1895, Buckminster Fuller attended MiltonAcademy from 1904 to 1913, where helater claimed to have learned all the engineeringhe needed to know from his highschool physics class. He was expelled fromHarvard twice before apprenticing as amachine fitter at Richards, Atkinson, animporter of cotton mill machinery inBoston. He then held various apprenticejobs at Armour, the industrial meatpackingand byproducts firm, interrupted bytwo years of service as an ensign in theU.S. Navy during World War 1. At theripe age of 27, he became president ofStockade Building System, a constructionfirm poised to change the way homes wereconstructed before eliciting the ire of thebuilding unions.In 1927, after two years of lackluster dividends,the controlling interests of thecompany fired Fuller. Bankrupt and joblessat 32 with a wife and a newborndaughter to support, Fuller could only concludethat his family would be better offwithout him. He stood, desperate, on theicy shores of Lake Michigan in Chicagowhen he suddenly realized that his life didnot belong to him, but rather to the wholeuniverse. In the light of this revelation hehad no right to take his own life; in fact,he was obliged to use his life in service ofthe cosmos. It was then that he began conducting“an experiment to discover whatthe little, penniless, unknown individualmight be able to do effectively on behalf ofhumanity.” With his diverse education inmass production and industrial distributionnetworks, an intuitive feeling forstructures and an infectious optimism,Fuller was uniquely positioned to offer aDymaxion vision to the universe that hadsaved his life. Dymaxion (dynamism +maximum + ion) is one of the signatureterms Fuller coined during his career,meaning that which produces maximumperformance from available technology.The term itself suggests a sense of humorand showmanship that would serve himwell in conducting his grand experiment.Most people know of Fuller through thegeodesic dome, examples of which can befound on almost any playground built inthe late 1960s or ’70s. Ingenious for itssimplicity and structural integrity, the geodesicdome is an elaboration of the trussprinciple in three dimensions. Pin threesticks together to form a triangle and youhave a completely stable structure inwhich the angles of the triangle remainthe same no matter how you attempt todeform it. Try the same thing with a rectangleand the joints at the corner willrotate with the slightest push. The geodesicdome simply extends the integrity of thetriangle off the plane through repetition ofthe form.Described as such, it seems perhaps moreremarkable that no one had thought ofsuch a structural system until Fuller. Itturns out that Fuller wasn’t the first personto employ the efficiency of the space truss;thrilled by the structural strength of histetrahedral kite, Alexander Graham Bellerected a five-story tower on his island in31 Milton Magazine

“Dare to be naïve.”—R. Buckminster FullerNova Scotia in 1907 using a tetrahedralspace truss. Fuller’s genius lay instead inknowing, contrary to commonly heldassumptions among engineers, that thestrength of the geodesic dome wouldincrease with the magnitude of the overallstructure.In 1967, Fuller’s claims were put to thetest at the Montreal Expo. Computeranalysis had anticipated that his Expo bubbleenveloping the U.S. Pavilion wouldburst at the equator from the outwardthrust of the weight of the structuralmembers. Fuller understood throughyears of experimentation, however, thatthe force of gravity would be easily resistedby the tensional integrity of the dome’smaterial and geometry.To put Fuller’s achievement in a properhistorical context, the largest dome of theancient world was the Pantheon in Rome.Constructed in the 2nd century A.D., thePantheon’s diameter measures 143 feet. Ittook roughly 1,300 years before that spanwas surpassed by Brunelleschi’s dome inFlorence, which measures 153 feet indiameter. The Duomo stood as the largestdome in the world until 1967. Fuller’sdome measured a staggering 250 feet indiameter and stood 20 stories tall. Equallyimportant, the 600-ton dome was a fractionof the weight of its Italian rivals, exponentiallystronger and its constructiontime could be measured in months ratherthan years.Although the U.S. Pavilion at the MontrealExpo would secure Fuller’s place in thehistory of architecture and engineering,the geodesic dome was, by Fuller’s ownstandards, a failure. By 1971, when thefundamental patent for the geodesic domeexpired, just over 20,000 domes had beenerected. Despite the U.S. Marine Corpshailing the geodesic dome as “the firstbasic improvement in mobile militaryshelter in 2,600 years,” Fuller had intendedthe geodesic dome to revolutionize theGeodesic dome over mid-Manhattan32 Milton Magazine

housing industry as Ford’s assembly linehad done for the automobile industry.Convinced that a house should cost nomore than a car, Fuller envisioned thegeodesic dome as the means to massproducedaffordable housing. Because theindividual members of a geodesic domeare small, a dome kit could be easilyshipped and assembled quickly with noskilled labor. He had even anticipated atime when prefabricated domes could bedelivered on site by helicopter. (Thus thecurious image in the upper left-hand cornerof the stamp.) While the domesachieved a quasi-mystical status amongCalifornia hippies, 20,000 structures in17 years hardly fulfills the dream ofan America covered in mass-producedbubbles.Fuller and many of his followers arguedthat the housing industry, with its disparateunions more closely resemblingmedieval guilds than modern assemblylines, was threatened by the obsolescenceheralded by the dome industry. Instead ofaccepting the inevitable change, the housingindustry used its deep political ties todestroy Fuller’s solution to the housingcrisis. While there is undoubtedly sometruth to such claims, Fuller’s enthusiasmfor the efficiency of the dome had blindedhim to a critical aspect of housing: thetrue function of a home is to provide bothphysical and metaphorical shelter fromthe inclement weather of living.In 1933, Fuller introduced the fast and fuel-efficient Dymaxion car. Hopes for adoption and massproduction were dashed when a demonstration resulted in a fatality.Domes as habitats have little precedent inthe modern world and thus do not reflectthe conventional image of domesticity.Perhaps this points to a nagging romanticismthat limits the progress of an industrialworld, but if efficiency were the solecriteria for housing, everyone would livein dense cities. Furthermore, everythingfrom books to ovens to city streets isdesigned orthogonally, which makes itvery difficult to fit a round house into asquare world. Perhaps most importantly,the strength and efficiency of the geodesicdome make it appear insubstantial comparedto the structurally inefficient butseemingly solid brick town home.Appearance matters in this case; peoplewant the feeling of stability as much as theshelter a building provides. Geodesicdomes project anything but the protectivecomforts of home.The geodesic dome wasn’t Fuller’s onlyfailure. Go down the list of his patentsfrom the Dymaxion car to the Dymaxionbathroom and you will discover the sameinability to reach the mass audience thathe had intended. A visionary before histime? Perhaps, but we can never knowwith certainty because most of Fuller’sinventions were based on the technologiesavailable at the time. His work and ideasshould not, however, be relegated to thecultural ephemera of mid-century modernismas the stamp suggests with itskitschy interpretation of his life’s work.Freed from the constraint of commercialsuccess, the inventions can be viewed asartifacts of a much larger effort to optimizehumanity’s relationship to nature,the bizarre forays into poetry an attempt tosuccinctly articulate that relationship(check out his Untitled Epic Poem on theHistory of Industrialization with HenryFord as Odyssean industrialist), and thetireless lecturing a measure of his enthusiasmfor the project.Although he rarely prepared notes for hisspeaking engagements, Fuller was fond ofopening a discussion with the image of aknot. Just as the human body cannot be33 Milton Magazine

educed to the food that nourishes it, sotoo the essence of a knot cannot be discernedin the nylon fibers that realize itsform. Instead, the knot is a self-interferingpattern, an applied platonic form. It wasFuller’s ability to extend this metaphorinto structural engineering and renewableenergy that distinguishes him from merelya man of the times. Born of a commitmentto service, Fuller’s ideas remain relevantto the problems that continue toplague us, including sustainability, housingand even hunger. Patterns, forms,dauntless initiative, marvel and enthusiasmfor human discovery, an insistencethat humanity with all its technologicalappendages is a part of nature, the life ofservice: these are the promise of Fuller’slasting legacy.Michael O’LearyMichael O’Leary is a poet, publisher andengineer. He lives in Chicago.“Buckminster Fuller was and continues to be one of my heroes,” says Gordon Chase (visual arts), whotook this photograph during one of Buckminster’s visits to campus in the late 1970s. “He was one of a fewpeople in the 20th century who worked passionately to improve the world and who refused to accept thelimitations of politics and cultural divides,” Gordon says. “He influenced the thinking of an amazing numberof people around the world and did as much as any goodwill ambassador to get leaders and ordinarypeople alike to see and to seek the ‘common good.’ He was the supreme optimist. In coining phrases like‘operating manual for spaceship earth,’ he sought to unite us all beyond differences of religion, class andrace.” Justin Aborn ’79 and David Rabkin ’79 show their version of a three-wheeled vehicle to Fuller.From the Milton Academy archives: Fuller shares his vision with colleagues.34 Milton Magazine

13>What’s the big idea, on campus?Mathematics conglomerateis nimble, responsive,+ 4maintains a “just in time” inventoryMath department’s challengingcommitment to developing theirown teaching materials strengthensover timeOver the last 10 years, mathematics facultyat Milton have collaborated on an in-housesuite of “products” that take “what’s bestfor the consumer” seriously. Focusing onthe math experiences of their consumers—Upperand Middle School students—mathematicsdepartment facultyteach, in large measure, with materialsthey have developed themselves, in lieu ofstandard texts.The department’s years long commitmentto shaping their own teaching materialsreflects their love of math and the fun theyhave with mathematical ideas, as well astheir genuine understanding of adolescents,those who are mathematically giftedas well as those who may not be enthusiasticabout math (initially). Teaching thisway is different, challenging, and ultimatelymuch more rewarding: it requiresconstant dialogue among colleagues andunremitting attention to what happensamong students in each class, each day.The faculty’s decision to compose and collectcourse materials grew from practicalmatters, and ultimately harnessed facultycreativity and teaching skill. Each year,math faculty members found themselvesconferring and ordering new texts for eachcourse, only to be disappointed once theybegan using the books. “We were supplementingso much,” John Banderob comments,“that the cost of the books seemedwasteful. We were looking to strike a betterbalance between providing skills-basedproblems, and asking students to useskills in new applications.”The introduction into the classroom of thegraphing calculator (in the early 1990s)changed the teaching of math so significantlythat this, too, pushed faculty towardthe decision. “With the calculator you areable to treat ideas and concepts inductively,”explains Keith Hilles-Pilant. You cando a hundred experiments quickly: settinga hypothesis and proving a hypothesis.The advent of new software in geometry,Geometric Supposer and its sequel,Geometer’s Sketchpad, also shifted theclassroom dynamic toward discovery.“Students ‘uncover’ a theorem throughmanipulating a figure,” Hal Pratt explains,“rather than doing exercises that apply atextbook theorem to a static figure on apage.” Finally, the department was movingtoward “modeling” within the curriculum:“We wanted a manipulable applicationfor every concept we introduced,” Johnrecalls.“Using the materials we develop, we’reable to determine how we spend time ineach course, and how we approach thematerial,” says Jackie Bonenfant, departmentchair. “We spend less time on therepetitive practice of skills, in the abstract,and more on presenting a stream of situations,asking students to determine whatthey need to know to solve the problem.We help them develop mathematical ideasand skills by working on them in a context—amore intriguing, less routine treatmentof math for students.”Members of the department agree thatthis “discovery and extension” method ofstudying math is much closer to whatmathematicians do in a research environment.Faculty ask students to understanda concept and then see where else it mayapply. “In pre-calculus, for example,together we take a look at a special situation,establish a set of criteria, learn a lot,35 Milton Magazine

=15Mathematics department faculty, left to right, front: Terri HerrNeckar, MarthaJacobsen, Jeanne Jacobs, Heather Sugrue, Erica Banderob, Gregg Reilly, andKeith Hilles-Pilant; back: Geoff Theobald, Steve Feldman, Anne Kaufman, PeterKahn, Hal Pratt, John Banderob, Juan Ramos, and Jackie Bonenfant, chair.and then zoom out to test where elsethose criteria might apply,” says Keith.“They might apply to circular motion, forinstance, or a field of objects that work ina similar way.”Writing your own teaching materials takestime and work, and it fosters a collegialenvironment that members of the departmentwho have come from other schoolsexperience as rare and intellectually invigorating.“You understand,” says Jackie,“that to do the best work with students,you need to trust and depend upon yourdepartment colleagues.”“As a department, and as a group of individuals,we have had to think and talkabout what we are teaching, why we areteaching it, and how best to teach it; it’san essential and ongoing conversation,”says Terri HerrNeckar. All those who teachsections of a given course meet onceeach week; teachers of several courseshave many meetings. They discuss howclasses have gone and roadblocks thathave appeared; they agree upon commonhomework assignments and who willwrite an upcoming quiz. The discussionsinclude: “What way would you use to solvethis problem?” or “I want to introduce thisconcept. Do you have an effective problemto do that?”The outcome of teacher collaboration andattention to the craft of teaching is a curriculumthat is responsive, efficient, customized,open-ended. “I teach two classesthat each have a single section of students,”Erica Banderob says. “I writesomething up after each class. It’s not thesame as last year; it fits exactly. When I seea need, I respond with the right thing,tomorrow!” Rather than following the preordainedsequence in a textbook, “having adata base of our own materials gives usthe confidence to change the flow, basedon the students,” Terri notes.When he arrived at Milton almost 20years ago, Keith Hilles-Pilant designedMath 7 for students who have alreadytaken at least two years of advancedplacement-level calculus. “The content iscompletely different every year,” Keithsays, “based on the interest of the students.I poll the incoming students andtogether we establish the syllabus for thecoming year. This year, the students wereinterested in studying mathematicalphysics, so we are doing that. Along withthe students, I generate the materials forthe course. The result is a book, or perhapsa research journal is a more appropriatename for it. My hope is that the studentswill not only learn, but also discoverthat they can and want to do their ownresearch.”Not surprisingly, students respond well tomath that is designed just for them. Eachstudent keeps a notebook, compiling dailythe teaching materials from faculty mem-36 Milton Magazine

ers along with their own work. “Whenyou give students a new section of the‘text’ each day, every day is important. Thestudents know the pages are the work ofthe faculty in the department and they sortof share in our pride of ownership,” saysSteve Feldman. “When a student asks ateacher why he or she is studying this orthat, a faculty member can easily answerthe question.”Students are responsible for building theirnotebooks; therefore, they are in charge ofthe key resource for the course. (The facultykeep a close eye on the Class IV notebooks,as they emerge.) In this environment,note-taking increases in importance:students can’t easily look up in abook the information they miss, althoughthey might find helpful information onthe Internet. Students learn to use otherresources, too, like each other.Students are much more aware of theirhomework; they have a sense of ownershipfor it, and it becomes part of theiroverall math notebooks. “Having the samehomework as others in different sectionsof the course is helpful, too,” HeatherSugrue notes. “They’re likely to work on ittogether, in the library, the student center,or the dorm. The conversations stretchacross sections.”82“We have the technology now to producemuch more professional-looking materials,”John says, and reworking the materialsis constant and demands time. Thetransition from textbooks to facultydevelopedmaterials is the most difficultpart; the up ramp is steep, and it takes twoto three years to come up with a good criticalmass of material. After that, teachingwith these materials is easier, mainlybecause it’s not boring, it’s more effectiveand much more efficient.New technological developments that areaffecting the teaching environment andsparking creativity today are digital projectorsand SMART Boards. “The next bigquestion,” Jackie says, “is whether or notwe’ll use a computer algebra system(CAS). Students can use calculators with aCAS on standardized tests and AP tests,so that’s the next issue we will need toaddress.”Providing the best possible math experiencefor students has been the mathdepartment’s abiding goal, as they workedclosely together to shape pertinent, challengingmaterial year after year. “This styleof teaching,” says Heather, “is what makesme want to stay at Milton. Not manyschools are doing this: I feel I can contributeto students’ success on a dailybasis.”Cathleen Everett“We spend less time on the repetitivepractice of skills, in theabstract, and more on presentinga stream of situations, asking studentsto determine what theyneed to know to solve the problem.We help them develop mathematicalideas and skills by workingon them in a context—a moreintriguing, less routine treatmentof math for students.”—Jackie Bonenfant,Department Chair37 Milton Magazine

Their idea: making mathematicalelegance part of campus cultureThough not a business venture,Vincent Chan and NeilKatuna’s idea to start a mathjournal at Milton brought themface to face with real-world challengesentrepreneurs experience.In response, they had to reachfor still-emerging skills: persistence,adaptation, pragmatism,personnel management, expertcommunications. They succeeded.With a host of student writers,designers and editors, theyproduced Axiom—“a journal toinspire a love of mathematics inevery member of the MiltonAcademy community.” In hindsight,both of the founderswould agree to having learnedsignificant life lessons, but neitherwould say the project waseasy.Neil and Vincent love to thinkabout math. Among the myriadstudent publications at Milton,none involved the community inexploring mathematical ideas.Why not? “Where is math in theMilton student scene?” they pondered.They wanted to build abridge from the math thinkers tothe School community at large.Eager to share the enthusiasmthey felt both for provocativemathematical problems and elegantsolutions, Neil and Vincenthoped to replicate the collegemath journals they had discoveredduring two summers atmath camp—Canada U.S.A.Mathcamp at the University ofPuget Sound and Colby College.They advertised their idea atSchool and recruited many studentvolunteers. The task ofmapping out an editorial plandrove home the complexity oftheir mission. They found themselves(reluctantly) asking,“What assumptions should wemake?” “How much familiaritywith what level concepts shouldwe assume?” “What makes a‘normal’ person want to read anarticle about math?” Thinkingabout math ought to be in themainstream of campus culturallife, but how to make that happenwasn’t so clear.A democratic approach requiredthat the pair solicit suggestionsabout what topics the proposedjournal might take on. Fromtheir own reading on math, Neiland Vincent already had their“own perspective on what isinteresting, and what isn’t,”Vincent admitted. Realizing thatthey couldn’t mandate the editorialcontent, they underwent adifficult process of watchingtheir idea “popularized.” Articlesabout mathematics and gambling,or Descartes’ role in modernmath, were not what theyhad in mind, but were articlesthe staff were interested in writing,and believed would buildthis elusive bridge.The founders made their waythrough a thorny set of issuesfamiliar to adults who have initiatedventures of any kind, butnew to a pair of teenagers excitedabout a great idea. They dealtwith bureaucratic red tape: Thedean of students suggested thatthey come up with a differentidea for the journal’s title. Theyconfronted organizational challenges:meeting the expectationsof volunteer staff and motivatingthe volunteers to follow throughon what they’d agreed to do.They experienced the transitionsof leadership changes. They hadto compromise: Final contentand design were not what theyhad in mind; they even triedincentives (prizes) and humor toreach the multitudes. Publicationdeadlines came and went andthey had to plug on with adjustedtimelines. They became excruciatinglyaware of how criticaleffective communications are.The community sees Axiom differently,as you might expect.The fresh, engaging newsletterreaches out to the curious witharticles written by students onthe mathematics behindroulette; the numerous mathematicalconcepts connectedthrough the arrangements ofnumbers in Pascal’s Triangle; the“simple” computer programmingbehind certain dynamicpatterns on your computerscreen; Descartes’ contributionsto math and philosophy; or“New Age Numerology.” Axiomhas energy and life. It communicatesthe encouraging idea thatthose of us who don’t routinelythink about math might like toenjoy it as much as these studentsdo. While students did nottake on the eight problemsVincent wrote as part of a contestto accompany the first issue,the community thinks Axiom isa success.Perhaps in college Neil andVincent, in addition to devotingthemselves to doing math, willonce again involve others inexcitement of thinking aboutmathematical ideas. Perhapstheir learning curve was sovaluable they will apply theiracquired wisdom in a new venturein their next venue. Despitea rough road, they brought abrilliant idea home, accomplishedwhat they set out to do,and as high school seniors experiencedmore than many adultsever do.Neil Katuna (left) and Vincent Chan, Axiom’s founders38 Milton Magazine

Championing a worthy ideal:No retreat from teachinggrammar at MiltonIf a student can master the qualities ofeffective composition—clarity, unity,coherence, concision, correctness andenergy—then clear, informative, perhapseven entertaining, communication is thehappy, inevitable result. While manyschools have retreated from the rigorousconsideration of grammar, Milton’sEnglish faculty is still devoted to the pursuitof excellent usage.The gems set forth in “Key Concepts forExpository Writers” by David Smith(English faculty) include standard warningsto writers: Avoid clichés, for example.(The use of the work “gem” in the precedingsentence might qualify.) Forgo theuse of pronouns such as “it” or “this”unless they have direct antecedents. Knowthe difference between active and passivevoice, and choose passive deliberately,only to effect ambiguity or enervation.Understand how a paragraph is made andthe important contribution of each unit—the sentence, the phrase, the word andpunctuation.Practice unraveling sentences. Take thissentence from Tarim Chung’s Class IVEnglish class: “I gave money to whomeverI thought wanted it.” Well-educated readerswho are not grammarians might rushto agree that “whomever” is in this casecorrect simply because it follows “to”; itmust be the object of a preposition, right?Wrong. Take away the parenthetical “Ithought”; identify what comes after the“to” as a noun clause; and realize that thesubject of a noun clause must use the subjective“who.”“Being a good mechanic pays,” saysTarim, who now heads the School’s weeklyClass IV Writing Workshops, which bringtogether the entire class to diagram sentencesand practice strategies for sentenceattack. The workshop is in tandem withthe Class IV English classes, whichencourage familiarity with important literarygenres and help students develop competenceas readers and writers. Tarimjoins the legendary ranks of longtimeteachers Jim Connolly and David Smith,two of the workshop’s five leaders duringits more than 30-year history. Former facultymember Jane Archibald, anotherworkshop leader, wrote the course. (Tarimjokes that he’s also inherited an archaeologysite: He bases his lectures and exercisesin part on the hand- and typewritten notesfrom the workshop’s four associated filedrawers—the equivalent of an Olympictorch.)Jim, who led the workshop from 1991 to2004, applauds Guy Hughes, retiredEnglish chair and leader of the department’sre-emphasis on the cognitivedomain over the affective domain. Anembracing of the affective domain in the1960s, Jim says, had popularized “rapsessions” and “values education” abovepure reading and writing; Guy standardizedand formalized the Class IV Englishclass experience and introduced the workshop,which meets 20 times during eachacademic year.“Often, when grammar is covered nowadays,students have the sense that they canwait you out,” David says, especially if theirteachers are not comfortable with the material.Milton combats the “waiting it out”avoidance with a thorough, highly structuredsystem that relies on the quality, regularityand energy of the workshop, whichis reinforced by in-class exercises. “Formany students, the workshop codifies thetechniques that they have adopted becausethey are intuitive readers—they find thatprecision is possible and desirable,” Tarimsays. “The workshops give students achance to get into the detail of writing.“It’s a moment of real pleasure for mewhen students come into class and say,‘Yesterday, I saw 20 grammar errors onthe news and read 20 more in a magazine.Mr. Chung, I can’t enjoy a song onthe radio now because I hear the danglingmodifier or the pronoun reference errors.’“I think that means that they really get it:Their world is composed of language, andnow they have better access to the innerIllustration by David Cutler39 Milton Magazine

since feeling is firstwho pays any attentionto the syntax of thingswill never wholly kiss youe.e. cummingsIn his 1998 “Why We Should Teach Grammar:A Manifesto” to English department colleagues,David Smith argues that grammar isamong the most important and useful skills astudent can command. The e.e. cummingsstanza above has been used by opponents ofthorough grammar instruction. David’s refutation:“This was a very disingenuous positionto take for someone who cared as muchabout syntax as e. e. cummings. The notionthat there could be a language of pure feeling,devoid of structure, is tempting; but cummings,even (or especially) in his wildestexperiments, showed a constant regard forconventional grammar, and he understoodthat structure focuses and empowers emotionthat would otherwise leak away. In fact,he might better have written that ‘only someonewho pays close attention to the syntax ofthings/ will ever wholly kiss you.’”Carriers of the torch (from left) David Smith, JimConnolly and Tarim Chung joined Milton’s facultyin 1981, 1983 and 2001, respectively. The department’sefforts are now led by Rick Hardy, whobecame department chair in 1999 after joiningthe faculty in 1983. For grammar exercises, go towww.onlineapp.milton.edu:85/grammar/view/index.asp.workings of their world. I liken themoment to the climax of the Matrix whenthe hero finally sees all the computer codestreaming down the walls and realizes thateverything, everything is composed of thissimple but dominant code.“I also tell students that they may not getall of the grammar all of the time, but oneday they’ll be writing a paper in collegeand they will start to make choices aboutlanguage that are just right, that they justknow deep down hews to all mechanicallaws of English that they studied way backwhen.”Helping students become good writers isthe goal, but good teaching must beaccompanied by competent learning:David’s booklet on expository writing offersreaders four appendixes, the first of whichis an essay, “On Good Students and Bad.”Here, he wonders about the wisdom ofasserting that any bad student must be badonly because his self-esteem has not beensufficiently puffed up. He offers a comparisonbetween good and bad students:“Bad students settle for the minimumevery time. They have, at best, a ‘get it offmy desk’ attitude, one which values justfinishing an assignment above doing itwell. They believe they have read somethingwhen they have merely passed theireyes over it. They tend to lack stayingpower and may go belly up at the first hintof fatigue or unhappiness. In contrast,good students manage to make the mostof opportunities even when they don’t ‘feellike it.’ And they go beyond the minimum.They read until they have mastered thecontent of an assignment…they flesh outideas and deliver rich illustrations. Theytake risks with metaphors. They edit outthe dross and the grammatical errors.They proofread. When they put a paper onthe teacher’s desk, they are not merelyputting the ball back into his court butrather whacking a shot that they hope willknock his socks off.“Every bad student is a good student waitingto happen, but the ones who actuallymake the transition are the ones who,instead of just waiting, work at it. Theyshake off setbacks, work from strengths,extend themselves to master the material—andemerge from the process withwell-earned self-esteem.”Taking inspiration from those who haveearned their self-esteem before us, Davidexhibits quotations by Rilke, Mailer andUpdike in his classroom. A Thomas Mannquote aptly expresses a truth for many ofthe world’s great writers. Mann wrote,“A writer is a person for whom writing ismore difficult than it is for other people.”Milton sets out to help students who writebecome writers and embrace the difficulty.Heather Sullivan40 Milton Magazine

Their Ingenuity and DriveCenters on ServiceStudents measure success by what they do for othersOrganizing “Night of a ThousandDinners” for landmine victimsLara Yeo ’06 is irritated by people whoclaim they don’t have time for service.“I don’t have time for it either,” she says.“You make time to help others because it’simportant,” she says. “If you never stopbeing busy then people just keep dying.”In November 2004, Lara mobilized herhousemates in Robbins House to plan a“Night of a Thousand Dinners.” On onenight, caring citizens from all over theworld host dinners to raise funds andawareness for landmine clearance and survivorassistance. Launched in 2001, theevent has spurred thousands of dinners inmore than 50 countries and has raisedmillions of dollars.Lara and 12 of her housemates held aKrispy Kreme doughnut sale and raised$363 to fund the pizza and homemadecupcakes for the Night of a ThousandDinners. The event yielded a net $690 forAdopt-A-Minefield. At home in Canada,Lara volunteered for the LandmineFoundation, which inspired her to begin achapter of Youth Against Landmines(YAL) before coming to Milton in fall2004.Lara says that Canadian students mustcomplete 50 hours of documented communityservice to graduate. Her commitmentto helping others began when anolder student, already involved in thecause, spoke at Lara’s old school abouthow she had fulfilled that obligation.“She showed us a video, and it was reallysomber stuff.“Since then, I’ve had to detach myselfemotionally a little bit, while holding on tothe commitment to act,” she says.Lara says that her group’s fund raisinghelps communities in Afghanistan, Bosniaand Herzegovina, Cambodia, Croatia andMozambique. “It costs between two andthree dollars to make a landmine andabout 0ne thousand dollars to clear it,”she says.In addition to her work on behalf ofAdopt-A-Minefield, Lara volunteers locallyin Dorchester with Mujeres Unidad Accion,an organization that helps Spanishspeakingwomen to learn English so theymay find jobs and gain independence.Lara, who plans next year to hold anotherdinner to benefit communities affected bylandmines, believes that it’s important toact globally as well as locally.For more information, go towww.landmines.org orwww.youthagainstlandmines.org.Lara Yeo ’0641 Milton Magazine

Colin Tierney ’05Habitat for Humanity, only one ofseveral waysColin Tierney ’05 talks about his favoritepart of building a house: “When the foundationis laid, you have the outline,” hesays. “You can get the walls up within aday. When the walls go up, it starts to feellike a house.”Colin belongs to the Boston and Cape Codchapters of Habitat for Humanity. Duringeach of the last two summers, he spentseveral weeks building homes through theorganization.Colin enjoys learning from the professionalcontractors who donate their time. Themost rewarding part of the work, though,is seeing how thrilled the families arewith their new homes: Each family whoreceives a new house earns it. In fact, familieshelp volunteers build the home.“My dad worked with me on the houses inthe summer. He and his father built thehouse that my father grew up in.”Colin’s first building project was in eighthgrade—a six-foot bench. Later that year, asa Boy Scout, he built a bridge in his hometownof Wellesley, Massachusetts. Now anEagle Scout, Colin began doing service infifth grade as a Scout member.In the winter, Colin raises funds forHabitat for Humanity. He is also studenthead of the Young Republicans. InDecember, the Young Republicans enlistedclassmates to help write letters to soldiersserving in Afghanistan. The groupsold pizza and solicited contributions tofund care packages for soldiers in theBravo Company of the 2nd Battalion, 35thInfantry. The packages contained frequentlyrequested items such as batteries,comic books and Chex Mix.Colin says that his idea of achieving successis intimately connected with what hecan do for others. He’s inspired, he says,by these words of Ralph Waldo Emerson:“To laugh often and much; to win therespect of intelligent people and affectionof children; to earn the appreciation ofhonest critics and endure the betrayal offalse friends; to appreciate beauty; to findthe best in others; to leave the world a bitbetter, whether by a healthy child, a gardenpatch or a redeemed social condition;to know even one life has breathed easierbecause you have lived. This is to havesucceeded.”For more information on Habitat forHumanity, go to www.habitat.org.42 Milton Magazine

Below the Surface: Ideas in MotionOne science extracurricular gains cult statusMilton Academy Remote Operated Vehicle Team, top: Tom Gagnon (science faculty), Yoo-Na Kim ’07, Seohyung Kim ’06, Alice Tin ’06, Daniel Lee ’05, CharlesJohnson ’07, Tim Fram ’07, Austin Cheng ’07, Rueben Banalagay ’07; bottom: Sam Minkoff ’06, Matthew Schoen ’06, Louisa Zhang ’05, David Wu ’05.Devotees of this new competitive“sport” devote hours to putting their ideasinto motion. Few, if any, of the nation’s topboarding schools have similar teams.It isn’t physics, chemistry orengineering. What is it?Club members idolize Robert Ballard, whodiscovered the Titanic wreck and usedhigh-tech underwater gadgets to exploreand study it. The 25 Milton Academy studentswho spend time fall and springhanging around a cluttered science workshopare underwater explorers, too, alsoknown on campus as MAROV (MiltonAcademy Remote Operated Vehicle) team.They were first-place winners of the NewEngland competition last year.Their fourth annual mission is to pit theircombined engineering skill and strategyagainst MIT and other regional schools,colleges and universities that have ROVteams. Their advisor, Tom Gagnon(science department), insists he does littleto guide students as they brainstormvehicle designs aimed to pick up sticks,probes, “bucky balls,” and tow fish andcomplete more complicated underwatermaneuvers. The outcome of these earlysessions will determine the ease and gracewith which they will “fly” the final vehicle—usingcamera views and a control boxto maneuver.“What we do is applied science,” Dan Lee(Class I) says. “This kind of project hasapplications in the real world.” Dan is inhis second year with the team; he designedan ergonomic control box for last year’svehicle, intuitively placing the controls formovements up, down, forward, back, andfor turning.In the design phase, students considerideal placement and magnitude of thrust,control of buoyancy, the weight of thevehicle, its stability with and withouttransported objects, its number of parts,how its tether above water might affect itsmaneuverability (ideally, not hindering it),and a list of other factors that can make orbreak a final mission.With a modest $600 budget last year, augmentedby an underwater camera donatedby the Milton’s swim team (see story, page46) and a few odds and ends from parents,Milton students became supportersof the local Home Depot and Radio Shackoutposts and many Internet electronicssuppliers. There, they purchase PVC piping,connectors, foam arms and grippers,tubing and miscellaneous hardware.Meet HerbieHerbie is the much-loved vehicle from2004. He has two vertical motors, and twohorizontal motors. His simple frame iscomposed primarily of PVC piping.43 Milton Magazine

“Herbie,” MIlton students’ 2004 remotely operatedunderwater vehicleWith his underwater cameras, he’s able tosee clearly underwater and share thosepictures with humans via a monitor. He’squite capable and he is made to be watertight(though he might not know enoughto come in out of the rain).Herbie performed heroics in the MiltonAcademy team’s quest for a regional winlast year. His grace, if not his beauty (seephoto above), secured his team a place inthe national competition in Santa Barbara,California, last June. There, he performedflawlessly in his underwater trial, only tobe blocked from victory by a failed cameraduring the actual competition.“Seo Hyung [Kim] and I were working onthe deck retrieving items from the sub andre-launching it,” says team member SamMinkoff (Class II). The left buoy was damagedas they attempted to put Herbie backinto action after the camera failure—butback into action she went. “We put a lot ofheart into that sub,” he says. Despite thefailure, the team placed 10th out of 23nationally and took top honors for overalldesign and use of their three remotelycontrolled grippers.The 2004 members were SeoHyung Kim,Albert Kwon, Daniel Lee, Fred Lien, SamMinkoff, Andrew Oates, Matthew Schoen,Megan Smith, William Joo, Alice Tin,HsingYu Tsai, David Wu and LouisaZhang. (See photo for 2005 members.)Design it, build it, “fly” it:a team’s philosophyK.I.S.S. (or Keep It Simple, Stupid) maynot be the expected philosophy of a groupof students who fiddle with circuitry andlike to don goggles for drilling. But thestudents maintain that a simply designedvehicle is less likely to fail catastrophically,and it can rely on the smooth interactionof fewer parts (with any failure affectingthe whole, fewer elements better thechances of completing a mission).“The competitions present a problem and,to find the best solution, students workwithin real time constraints and a fixedbudget. Teamwork and decision-makingare at the core of this successful team,”Tom says. “The students understand thatif a single bad decision gets made at anypoint in the process, their whole missionmight be jeopardized,” he says.Sam Minkoff (Class II) and Dan Lee (Class I)working in the labAnother choice that counts is finding theright driver—one who can stay calmunder pressure. “You’re essentially flyingthe vehicle,” Tom says. Dan Lee, last year’s“driver,” who was part of the triage teamthat enabled Herbie to finish his mission,says, “It’s a video game that you makeyourself. It’s very exciting, even when it’sstressful.”Tom’s students do investigate best practicesand consider anecdotal case studies—especiallyimportant as they don’thave enough time to test and re-test everyeventuality. (Without an indoor pool, theteam tests its vehicle using the poolat Blue Hills Regional Tech in nearbyCanton and the UMass–Boston pool inDorchester.) The competition judges studentson how well they complete the tasksassociated with the mission; engineeringand communication; technical reports;and poster displays.The student group is small enough, Tomsays, that every student has a full understandingof every component of the project—butmembers recognize each others’strengths and allow for subspecialties toemerge: there is a role for researchers;tinkerers; solderers; PhotoShop and CADdesign program experts; and spies (tomonitor Web sites of the competition).The task for the 2005 Marine AdvancedTechnology Education (M.A.T.E.) competitionfor the “ranger” class—teams workingwith a modest budget but with tasks aschallenging as their richer “explorer”peers, who use up to 40 amps comparedto the ranger team’s 25—will consist ofthree “Olympic” events (note the ROV jargonemerging). Teams will appear at the“control shack” at the appointed time,following strict protocol as set forth atwww.marinetech.org/rov_competition/index.php.The idea for an ROV club at Milton wasborn when, during Tom’s 2001–2002 sabbatical,he developed a hands-on sciencecurriculum for middle and high school atTufts University’s Wright Center forInnovative Science Education. He alsoworked with educators there from theNew England Aquarium and the Museumof Science as well as MIT—home of oneof the country’s best ROV teams.“The competition is definitely not yourtypical science fair,” says Tom, who alsoadvises the Rocketry Team at Milton.The 2005 competition, scheduled forMay, will bring 26 teams to the Universityof Rhode Island, home of the GraduateSchool of Oceanography, where ProfessorRobert Ballard teaches.To follow the Milton team’s progress, visitwww.milton.edu.Heather Sullivan44 Milton Magazine

Linking His Heritage and His Future,Adam Och Studies Arabic at MiltonAdam Och ’06The full warmth and fun of Syria wasjust a bit more out of reach for Adam Ochthan it was for his cousins. During Adam’smost recent summer visit, he wished that,like them, could set off independently,interact, and get involved in more of whatwas happening. Language fluency, itseemed to Adam, was the key differential.Adam, whose father is Syrian-Americanand mother is Irish-American, attended anIslamic Sunday School as a child. In additionto gaining elementary familiarity withthe religion and culture, he learned thealphabet, and how to read and write on abasic level. This early connection withArabic culture and language proved valuableonce Adam decided to study theArabic language seriously.Last summer, Adam spent three hours aday, four days a week at the BostonLanguage Institute delving into Arabic.Having made this commitment, losingwhat he’d gained during the summerdidn’t sit well. With his instructor at theinstitute willing to tutor him during theschool year, Adam submitted an independentstudy proposal to Milton. Sarah Wehle,chair of student independent study, agreedwith Adam’s proposed study plan, andserved as his Milton Academy advisor.“Starting off studying Arabic was the hardesttime,” Adam feels. “The grammaticalstructure is difficult and the rules arecounterintuitive if you approach the languagewith an English framework. Arabsthink that the English language is oversimplified.Arabic is more complicatedand you need to say things with greaterspecificity.”I finished the first grammar book thissummer, and I thought things couldn’t goany further, but they do. For instance, oneverb will be the base form, and then thereare 10 different forms that stem from thebase; if you twist the word around you getthe passive voice, and so on. The languagerelies on a root system; if you get the patternof three or four letters, you can figureout other words. Keeping up with buildingmy vocabulary is a big challenge. I learn20 new words for each chapter, and thewords get more complicated as the bookgoes on.Choosing to study Arabic independentlyhas involved challenges beyond the complexityof the language itself. Adam’s tutorcomes to School twice each week for oneand a half hours each time, and roundsout a day already packed with academicclasses. “Studying in a one-on-one situationis different, ” Adam says. “You haveto like your teacher, and you have to beprepared. There’s more homeworkbetween classes, because I only meet withhim twice each week, and judging howlong the homework would take me washard. We’ve worked it out.”“At this point,” Adam says, “I can comprehendspoken Arabic—even what’s said at agood pace—quite well. It’s a harder thingfor me to form sentences; I still have totranslate from the English rather thanthinking in Arabic.”Realizing his idea of a summer ago hasmeant hard and solitary work, Adam ispleased and planning ahead. “I’m going tofinish the second level this year, take thethird level next summer, and do the fourthlevel in my Class I year,” he says. “I’mlearning the family language, and cancommunicate with my family on a differentlevel. At the same time I’m pursuingsomething of great interest to me. I’vealways been interested in business andeconomics, and this prepares me for internationalbusiness. In any case, doing thishas given me a whole different dimension—acompletely different way to look atother subjects and issues in general.That’s an advantage few have.”45 Milton Magazine

A Dream Delayed but Not DeniedEven without a pool, Coach Bob Tyler keeps varsity swimming alive and well at MiltonAt once an optimist and a realist, BobTyler came to Milton’s science departmentin 1988 with a vivid dream. Bob hadcoached some outstanding swimmers atAvon Old Farms, and at Bernal’s Gators,the premier New England competitiveswim team that practiced at Harvard’sBlodgett pool. “I always wanted to createthat quality of a program of my own,” Bobsays.Circumstances demanded that the realistside of his personality take over. For 17years, this quintessential coach has enthusiastically(and doggedly) trained and manageda competitive interscholastic swimteam at Milton, without an on-campuspool. For hundreds of swimmers between1988 and today, the swim team experienceis one of their best and most lively memoriesof Milton. “We did well,” they oftensaid about their performance at the NewEngland swim team championships, “thebest of all the schools without pools.”Bob confesses that coaching powerfulswimmers—he had worked with studentsswimming at the junior national level whowent on to make the Olympic team—wasfun and exciting. “I’ve found that I haven’tlost my love for swimming or for coaching,despite working with swimmers whowill never reach that level,” says Bob. “SoI’ve realized that the coaching is the fun ofit—working with teenagers in any medium,in class, in the dorm, or as a coach.”When Bob came to Milton, a colleaguefrom his alma mater, Deerfield, hadorganized a club swim team. Former facultymember David Foster had 30 students,a van, and some pool time at theDorchester YMCA. Bob’s arrival was theimpetus to shift the club to an interscholasticvarsity sport, which happenedthe following year. “Of the 30 swimmers,”Bob recalls, “few could swim competitively—Shannon Connelly (’89), Marc and AlexChung (’89 and ’90, respectively) andBrendan Everett (’91). The others werenew to competitive swimming.”Nonetheless, Bob worked on improvingtechnical skills, creating the swim teamculture, building and broadening the competitiveexperience. Eventually Milton’steam entered the New England championships,and students’ eyes were openedto serious swimming and inspired by whatthey saw.As he watched team momentum build,then ebb, then build again, Bob set hisown context. “We’re lucky,” he says, “thatwe have such a great school. We attractstudents who primarily want a great academicexperience, and among them aresome terrific swimmers for whom thelearning environment comes first.”The logistics of using off-campus poolshave always dogged the team. Althoughthe situation has improved significantlywith recent arrangements to swim atUMass Boston, the 20-minute drive overand back has always compromised practicetime. “For the first 12 years, Milton’steam could only practice an hour each day,while other teams practiced a minimumof nearly double that,” Bob says. Frequentlysnowstorms closed Milton’s adoptedpools or Milton’s practice and meet schedulehad to adapt to the primary user’sschedule.46 Milton Magazine

Some of the Milton Academy Swim Team members, 2004–2005, at practiceChallenges notwithstanding, swimmerswould say that their team experience inthis sport at Milton was unparalleled.“There have been such great people overthe years,” Bob says. “They have great character,they give one another terrific support,they like being together, they’re eagerto learn, and they really do get better. Wefocus on everyone moving forward. Onegreat thing about swimming is that there’san objective standard against which youcan measure and celebrate improvement.”The coed nature of the swim team is arich source for other lessons. “They gainso much,” Bob believes, “from seeing thepower, discipline, focus and competenceof their counterparts of the opposite sex.”The girls are particularly nurturing asteammates, and they maintain traditionslike the “secret psych,” messages andgifts that pump up a swimmer with arecord to break or a challenging opponentto confront.Coach Jamie LaRochelle’s arrival at Miltonin 1996 boosted the swim team’s resourcesand stature even further. Another sciencefaculty member, coming from Strake JesuitHigh School in Texas, Jamie swam withBob Tyler’s brother at Deerfield (“Jamiewas long my hero there,” Bob says), andcoached with Bob at Avon.The two work well together—“neither ofus needs to be a head coach,” Bob allows.Both are interested in technique overyardage, that the stroke be as efficient andeffective as possible.It’s not as if Milton’s teams haven’t hadsuccesses as well. Roughly 25 girls’ teamsand 20 boys teams compete in the NewEngland championships, striving forplacement in the top eight teams for eachevent. Milton’s best performance for thegirls was achieving fifth place and theboys’ top finish was seventh place.Individual Milton swimmers have alsoachieved top eight status in various eventsover time. Milton’s first winner of a NewEngland championship was JasonReichard (’98), in the 500-freestyle. “Notbad,” say the swimmers, “for a schoolwithout a pool!”Good-humored and completely supportiveof the priorities in Milton’s master plan(that does not include a pool), the optimistand advocate in Bob can’t help explaininghow quickly Milton, with a pool, couldturn things around. “The nucleus wouldbuild quickly,” he asserts, “once we built apool. We’d have an outstanding programin three to five years, and make our markin swimming among New England boardingschools.”A successful competitive swimmer himselfin the Master Swimmer program,Bob’s dream still thrives. He loves workingwith young people in any and every way,and has his years of enthusiastic devotionto Milton swimmers. “The coaching is thefun of it, after all,” Bob rejoins.47 Milton Magazine

The Head of SchoolMilton’s most recent “big idea”reaches back in timeMilton’s story, a history that has been in motion formore than 200 years, includes many expansive ideaspromoted by believers—ideas that may have seemedoutrageous at certain points in time. In 2005, one ideadeveloped by the board at the turn of this century honorsthe energy, creativity and risk the magazine celebrates.This idea reached back and connected boldlywith Milton’s tradition.The board opted to rebalance the Academy’s enrollment:to achieve, over a number of years, a ratio of boardingstudents and day students closer to the ratio that existedprior to the 1980s. The board’s analysis, their attentionto what students and parents of the 1990s told them,resulted in the belief that increasing the number ofboarding students, while keeping School size the same,was a pivotal goal.They took stock of the challenges involved in staying thesame, the challenges involved in making the change, thepotential for strengthening Milton, and they opted for avision. In this vision, families from across the countryand around the world are aware of and interested inMilton Academy, a boarding and day school in theBoston area with unusual attributes. Our distinguishedand thriving school attracts highly capable boarding students,day students and faculty, eager to join a vigorouscommunity of diverse individuals, active learners, deeplyinvolved both in top-notch, up-to-date scholarship and inrelationships and extracurricular commitments thatstimulate extraordinary personal growth.Believing in the soundness of the vision as well as ourcapability to achieve it, we launched the effort. Weundertook this “while we were at the top of our game,”as Fritz Hobbs, board president, is fond of saying. Thatmeant that although the progressive steps toward rebalancingthe enrollment were as numerous as they weredaunting, we needed to address each of them whilemaintaining the excellence that had long characterizedour School.Reaching the goal involved reorganizing our admissionoffice to reach out more effectively across the nation,and to manage a greater number of applications. Weredesigned our admission materials and outreach programswhich had, in the past, insufficiently highlightedthe size and strength of our residential program.Developing an enrollment plan that would acknowledgeMilton’s K–12 identity (i.e., some students would bemoving from Lower and Middle Schools to the UpperSchool), include the highly qualified day students wehad typically admitted, and increase the number ofboarding students—all without changing the fundamentalsize of the School—was a monthslong challenge. Theupshot was a plan that, among other things, contributedto a project already in motion: a redesign of Milton’sMiddle School.48 Milton Magazine

In the meantime, a new student activities directorstrengthened our weekend programs, which eventuallydeveloped into the popular, well-attended raft of weekendevents and goings-on students now enjoy. Facultyheld school orientation events on weekend days to helpestablish early inclinations among new students towardspending time on campus. Knitting together moreseamlessly the lives of boarding students and day students,so that all students experienced a richer, fullersense of each other and identity with the School, was acrucial element of the vision. The Schwarz StudentCenter, opened in 2003, was designed (with the help ofstudents, faculty and parents) to further that goal.Spending a moment in that space today testifies to itssuccess. The student center is teeming with life morning,noon and night.Of course, we turned to alumni and parents close to theSchool and committed to this vision for the generosityand leadership that would bring the architectural ideasto life. Not only did friends of Milton make gifts thatallowed us to build the Schwarz Center, they also fundedtwo new residences, Norris House and Centre House.The shovel went into the ground for these houses in thefall of 2003, and boarding faculty were (barely) moved inand ready to welcome new students for the opening ofSchool in September 2004. The houses were designedto heed the wise counsel of veteran faculty and boardingstudents who told us clearly and compellingly what elementscontributed to Milton’s strong boarding program.Today’s happy residents, who love their houses, theirhousemates and their faculties, are developing a particularculture and set of traditions for Norris and Centre,respectively, comparable to those the other Milton housesenjoy.This spring, we will enroll approximately 100 newboarding students, an historically high total, from agroup of more than 700 highly qualified and talentedapplicants. In fact, applications from potential boardingstudents in 2005 increased over those in 2004 by 38percent. The new students will join in the exciting life ofa thriving boarding and day School, where the eveningsand weekends are as much a part of the learning environment,for all students, as the classrooms we all valueso highly.Robin Robertson49 Milton Magazine

Post ScriptPost Script is a department that opens windows into the lives and experiences of your fellow Milton alumni.Graduates may author the pieces, or they may react to our interview questions. Opinions, memories,explorations, reactions to political or educational issues are all fair game. We believe you will find yourMilton peers informative, provocative and entertaining. Please email us with your reactions and yourideas—cathy_everett@milton.edu.Signs of a Misspent Youth, Reinterpreted:The Making of an Entrepreneur“A bright and ambitious-enough student, but sometimesscattered and uneven…often resistant to authority…movesin fits and starts.”To a student who has labored under the threat of teachers’reports, or a parent who has despaired of a fitful orunderachieving offspring, these observations may ringcruelly true. My mother feels your pain.Maybe they’re right. Or maybe these are the germinatingseeds of a life seeking a different heading: artist,actor, adventurer, or all of these rolled into one—anentrepreneur.Volumes have been written about entrepreneurship.Much as been said about what it takes: love of yourproduct, an abiding belief in your own ideas, the fortitudeto weather failure without the support of a largeenterprise as you rebuild. Less is made of the one characteristicI see as paramount: the inability to conform.My own road to entrepreneurialism began in 1991,when I followed my boss out of Citicorp to start a privateinvestment bank, Meenan, McDevitt & Company, inthe New York suburbs. Despite doubts about leaving thesecurity and prestige of Wall Street, I knew the movewould give me things I needed much more: license tomake my own rules, live by my own schedule, bemyself.Ambition wasn’t a problem; nor was my work ethic.Both of these were profound. However, rather than thelinear, make-a-list-and-finish-by-the-end-of-the-day stylethat organized businesses demand, my style is more likea game of Whack-a-Mole, zapping back and forth as differenttasks catch my eye, and sustains my interest andmomentum far better than the regularity of responsibletasking.Since the sale of Meenan, McDevitt to French bankSociete Generale in 1998, I’ve become a founder or partnerin four other businesses:• In 1999, Heart Center Online, a cardiovascular medicineInternet site (www.heartcenteronline.com);• Returning to Wall Street in 2001, the Loan PortfolioSales Group at New York investment bank Keefe,Bruyette & Woods (KBW);• In 2004 (after leaving KBW), Garnet Capital Advisors,an investment bank specializing in selling loan portfoliosfor banks and raising capital for companies thatbuy these loans;50 Milton Magazine

• Since 2002, the Los Angeles–based film-productioncompany Goff-Kellam Productions (as executive producingpartner), where our first full-length feature,Girl Play, is set for theatrical release in May.These experiences have put a new slant on my view ofmy adolescence. If my parents and teachers thought Iwas all over the map, well, I was, and maybe that’s notsuch a bad thing. I’ve been fascinated to realize howmuch Milton had to do with helping me forge myyounger self into a successful entrepreneur.It’s not that my teachers and advisors steered me in thisdirection. Rather, it was through their thoughtful—anddiscerning—observations that I came to frame myunderstanding of myself better.Chuck Duncan, then the dean of students and my ClassII advisor, wrote in 1978 that I seemed to operate in onlytwo gears, Fast and Stop, and that I needed to recognizefast gear and harness it, or I might grind to a halt. Heconcluded: “There will be no middle ground for Sean.”He was dead right, and this understanding has profoundlyinfluenced the course of my life.Mary-Louise Baumlin made me read through long passagesof Le Rouge et Le Noir and Phedre in French class,explaining later that I had a “marvelous capacity,” butthat I thought “comme un papillon”— constant energyand no direction. The class readings, she said, were tohelp force my mind through the material.I have kept these observations close at hand, to this day,and they have helped me determine how to channel aconvention-resistant nature and short attention span tocreate opportunities. On the large scale, I have learnedthat I need to be perpetually overbooked to stay productivebut, in handling many commitments, I must pursuethem in small doses to stay committed. Practically, theyhave taught me that I will be scatterbrained but thatthings will get done, if I accept that I have to wait untilthe inspiration strikes.But my mother’s comment is the most trenchant: “Weused to be so concerned about how much time youspent B.S.’ing your way out of jams—and now you getpaid for it!”I always knew I’d make her proud.Sean McVity ’8051 Milton Magazine

In•Sight52 Milton Magazine

In November 2004, Milton Academy students put up Seussicalthe Musical. Co-conceived by Lynn Ahrens, Stephen Flahertyand Eric Idle, Seussical combined the works of Dr. Seuss into asingle colorful story. Peter Parisi directed, while Kelli Edwardschoreographed and Ted Whalen served as musical director.Robert St. Laurence ’07 played the Cat in the Hat, aided by 33other cast members who acted, sang and danced their way tostanding ovations.53 Milton Magazine

OnCentre“What the Future Will Bring”Inventor, Author and Futurist Delivers Science LectureDr. Ray Kurzweil’s inventionsinclude the first print-to-speechreading machine for the blind,the first flat-bed scanner, thefirst text-to-speech synthesizer,the first omni-font optical characterrecognition, the first musicsynthesizer that could re-createthe grand piano and otherorchestral instruments, and thefirst large vocabulary speechrecognition.On December 15, this inventor,author and futurist deliveredthe 2004 science lecture, “Whatthe Future Will Bring,” in theFitzgibbons Convocation Center.He is the father of Amy Kurzweil’05 and Ethan Kurzweil ’97.Called “the restless genius” bythe Wall Street Journal and “theultimate thinking machine” byForbes magazine, Dr. Kurzweil’sideas on the future have beentouted by Bill Gates and BillClinton. Time magazine wrote,“Kurzweil’s eclectic career andpropensity of combining sciencewith practical—often humanitarian—applicationshave inspiredcomparisons with ThomasEdison.”“Most projects fail because thetiming is wrong. Inventionsmust be relevant not only whenthey are conceived; they muststill be relevant when they arecomplete,” Dr. Kurzweil told students.“I have become an avidstudent of technological trends.”He talked about the “seductiveand explosive power of exponentialgrowth,” also known asMoore’s Law and noted that theNew York Times first referred tothe World Wide Web in 1993.He explained that technologyalready drives 8 percent of theeconomy and influences most ofthe rest of it; he predicts thatcomputers as we know them willdisappear by 2010, being supplantedby nanotechnologyembedded in everyday objects.Intelligence, though inherentlyimperfect, will be expandedenormously through fusion withtechnological devices.“We can know more of thefuture than you think,” Dr.Kurzweil said. “The most pervasivetrend is that the rate ofprogress is increasing,” henoted, adding that scientists,leaders and the public mustweigh the promise versus perilof a changing world, whileacknowledging that progress isunstoppable. Dr. Kurzweilasserts that new technologiesmust be harnessed for thegreater good and not sent undergroundwhere they cannot bemonitored. He also believes thatvirtual reality will incorporate allof the senses by the year 2030,allowing people to “explorebeing a different person.”Dr. Kurzweil talked about thebiotechnology revolution—theintersection of biology withinformation technology—predictingthat human disease maybe curtailed and human life dramaticallyextended in comingdecades. He compared thehuman body to a house: Onethat is well-maintained, properlywired and has a sound foundationand roof may last indefinitely;the same home, if poorlycared for, might disintegrate toosoon.Dr. Kurzweil has been inductedinto the National InventorsHall of Fame, received theNational Medal of Technology,the nation’s highest honor intechnology, from PresidentClinton, and received the$500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize,the nation’s largest award ininvention and innovation. Hehas 12 honorary doctorates,seven national and internationalfilm awards and awards fromthree U.S. presidents.His best-selling book, The Ageof Spiritual Machines, WhenComputers Exceed HumanIntelligence, has been publishedin nine languages and wasAmazon’s best-seller in the categoriesof “Science” and “ArtificialIntelligence.” His most recentbook, coauthored with Dr. TerryGrossman, is Fantastic Voyage:Live Long Enough to Live Forever(fantastic-voyage.net). The bookshares information on how tomaintain optimal health—through aggressive vitamin supplementation,exercise, carefuldiet and calorie restriction(shown to keep mice and eldersfrom the Okinawan Islandsyounger longer)—in preparationfor the biotechnology revolutionthat will preserve quality of lifefor many years beyond currentexpectations.Dr. Kurzweil’s presentation wasfollowed by a question-andanswersession in Straus Library,where Dr. Kurzweil explainedtechnology as an expression ofhuman potential. “We’re notdefined by our limitations,” hesaid. “We’re defined by the factthat we seek to go beyond ourlimitations.“Power through technologyamplifies creative and destructivetendencies: Two world wars weremade possible by technology.“I believe that the benefits outweighthe peril.”Ray KurzweilPhoto by Michael Lutch, courtesy of Kurzweil Technologies, Inc.54 Milton Magazine

Mr. Millet Honored at MiddlesexLegendary coach and teacherFrancis D. Millet—better knownto generations of Miltonians assimply “Mr. Millet”—receivedMiddlesex’s Henry Cabot Lodge’20 Distinguished AlumniAward. Established in 1993, theaward pays tribute to Middlesexalumni who have brought creditto their alma mater.“Frank arrived at Middlesexin 1931 and quickly establishedhimself as one of his class’stop scholars,” wrote JimZimmerman, director of developmentat Middlesex, in theschool’s alumni magazine.As a young man at the school,Mr. Millet served as editor of TheAnvil, class president, and playedtennis and squash. In 1942, hecame to Milton, where he hasserved as a teacher, advisor, dormitorymaster, secretary of thefaculty, director of financial aid,director of admission and, ofcourse, as architect of theSchool’s squash program.Mr. Zimmerman writes, “Frankbegan the formal squash programat Milton in 1965, and inthe four decades since, he hasbuilt Milton into a regional andnational squash powerhouse.”Milton likewise recognized Mr.Millet’s civility, character andexcellence—and his uncannyability to model those behaviorsfor students—when he wasawarded the Milton Medal in2002.“More than six decades of distinguishedservice to education isan inspiring achievement,”writes Mr. Zimmerman. “Eventhough his service has beenrendered at a rival school, andeven though many of thosesquash victories have come atMiddlesex’s expense over theyears, the school honors hisextraordinary commitment toyoung people, to education andto a more civil society.”Frank D. MilletAuthor and Musician James McBride Visits CampusJames McBride, award-winningwriter, composer and saxophonist,visited Milton Academy onWednesday, January 12, as the2005 Dr. Martin Luther KingSpeaker. Realistic, insightful andhumorous, Mr. McBride connectedwith students whom heurged to think, to question, toread, and to challenge the ubiquitouspropaganda.Drawing on rich life lessons toillustrate his ideas, James sharedhis family life, educational experiencesand professional musiccareer with the students. Mr.McBride’s memoir, The Color ofWater, which remained on theNew York Times Bestseller Listfor two years, has been translatedinto more than a dozen languages,and has become anAmerican classic read in collegesand high schools. It is the autobiographicalaccount of hismother, a white Jewish womanfrom Poland who raised 12 blackchildren in New York City andsent each to college.Noting that Martin Luther King’skey relevance to the world was asa moral standard of excellence,Mr. McBride helped studentsunderstand the power of MartinLuther King in his world. Heencouraged students to “learnhow to fail,” as well as to succeed—inother words, to “growup in ways that are normal.”That said, he told students thatthe world is depending upontheir ability to think, ask questionsand respond. “Wheredecency lives is with every singleone of you. It’s not about committees,”he said. “If you want tochange the world, you must do itindividually, and then the moralcollective moves forward.”James McBride is a former staffwriter for the Boston Globe, theWashington Post, and People. Hiswork has appeared in many publications,including the New YorkTimes and Rolling Stone. He isthe recipient of the 1997Anisfield Wolf Book Award, aswell as awards for his work as acomposer in musical theatre,including the American Arts andLetters Richard Rodgers Award,the ASCAP Richard RodgersHorizons Award, and theAmerican Music TheatreFestival’s Stephen SondheimAward.He has written songs for AnitaBaker, Grover Washington Jr.,Gary Burton, Silver BurdettMusic Textbooks, and for thePBS television character“Barney.” James also conducts a12-piece R&B jazz band. He hasa bachelor’s degree from OberlinCollege, having studied compositionat the Oberlin Conservatoryof Music. He holds a master’sdegree in journalism fromColumbia University and hasreceived an honorary doctoratein humane letters fromWhitman College and theCollege of New Jersey.Mr. McBride’s newest book,Miracle at St. Anna, which theBaltimore Sun called a “searingly,soaringly beautiful novel,” hasbeen dubbed “a lyrical, touchingfable about the miraculouspower of love” by PublishersWeekly. The book, already climbingthe bestseller list, is the storyof a black American soldier whobefriends a 6-year-old Italian boyduring World War II.Riverhead BooksJames McBride55 Milton Magazine

An Odyssey: Teaching Epic Poetry and Essay-Writing to Eighth GradersOf mortal creatures, all thatbreathe and move,earth bears none frailer thanmankind. What manbelieves in woe to come, so long asvalorand tough knees are supplied himby the gods?—Odysseus to Amphinomosin Homer’s OdysseyAsk anyone what Homer’sOdyssey is about, and the initialreply might include, “a journey,”or “a quest.”The metaphor of the quest alsoresonates with the ancient epicpoem’s place in the Grade 8 curriculumat Milton: Using RobertFitzgerald’s 1961 translation,students examine the poem’slyricism, structure, meaning andcultural significance. FromOctober through January, theOdyssey unit is a major componentof the eighth-gradecurriculum.Kim Walker is in her third yearof teaching Middle SchoolEnglish at Milton. “When Icame, I was surprised that theOdyssey was on the syllabus. It’sdense. It’s an ancient epic. It hasadvanced vocabulary,” she says.In the beginning, students gaincomfort with ancient Greek cultureby focusing on gods andgoddesses. (Each studentbecomes an expert on a deity ofchoice.) They play games, winning“nectar” or “ambrosia.”They talk about format and characterdevelopment; they dramatizethe poem; in groups, theytackle study questions; and theytalk about modern-day nods toHomer’s classic: They watch, forexample, the Coen brothers’ versionof the tale, Brother, WhereArt Thou, comparing its plot toits inspiration.Kim says that one of the mosteffective ways for eighth-gradestudents “to get” this material isAlexander Moffett, Grade 8, as Odysseusby acting it out. The exerciseforces them to make decisionsabout intent and to wrestlewith perplexing passages:Portraying an action necessitates,and sometimes bolsters,basic comprehension.Also fascinating to students arethe figures that emerge duringOdysseus’s journey: Charybdis,Kalypso and the Cyclops.“I really liked to watch the characterschange,” says eighth-graderKate Davidson. “When thepoem starts, everyone is very differentthan when it ends, andyou see new sides to everyone. Itis an intense study of how peoplereact under different circumstances,especially when youthrow gods and weird creaturesinto the mix.”The Odyssey bundles the ingredientsof a great story—love, war,adventure, betrayal, hideous villains—andKim says that studentsenjoy these lures, but thattheir intellectual experience goesdeeper than simple fascinationwith Penelope’s loyalty or curiosityabout exactly what the lotuseatersconsume.“Trying to figure out the plot ormeaning of one book, or evenpassage, is hard to do because ofthe ancient Greek dialect,” sayseighth-grader Alec Seymour.“It’s kind of like deciphering aforeign language with only a littlebit of prior skill. But whenyou finish the poem, you have amuch better understanding ofnot only Greek culture, but alsothe English language.”“I love anything and everythingto do with classical Greece andRome,” says eighth-grader SarahLoucks. “Along with reading thepoem, we got to review ancientGreek mythology and history,which was also a lot of fun.”“The students really feel confident,proud and privileged,” Kimsays. “They work very closelywith specific passages. Theypush through a challenging text.They keep at it, and they excel.“They do personal interpretationas well as oral work,” she adds.“We also ask them to draft [notin verse] their own book of theepic, filling in where they’veidentified gaps in the action.”“Now I look at poetry not just asa form of writing or art,” sayseighth-grader Dylan Tedaldi, “butalso as a way to communicate.”En medias res, Emily Law, whoalso teaches eighth-gradeEnglish, found her studentsstumbling over the text’s chronology,which is not straightforward.She asked students to illustratethe main action, then postedtheir creations around theroom, in chronological order, forreference.Emily and Kim say that studentsare quick to identify subtletiesabout race, religion and culturein the text. When a student doesstruggle, Kim says that thatmakes their eventual breakthroughin understanding—through visual representation,acting or in brainstorming forexam essay-writing—all themore remarkable.The Odyssey unit was developedin the 1980s by former Englishdepartment faculty LauraArmstrong and longtime facultyNan Lee, Elaine Apthorp andRick Hardy, current Englishdepartment chair.56 Milton Magazine

Included in the unit is a closereading and comparison of theOdyssey to Barbara Kingsolver’s1988 novel, The Bean Trees, inwhich a young woman leavesPittman County, Kentucky, todiscover her place in a globalcommunity and to learn to trustand be trusted by others.In addition to close textual analysesand comprehension, competentcomparative essay-writing isa primary goal of the unit. Exampreparation includes strategizingessay structure.“Let’s talk about transitions[in your essays],” Kim tells herstudents. “Transitions allow youto hold your reader’s hand andtake him or her to the nextparagraph.”In preparation for continuingacademic challenges in theUpper School, students learn toidentify potential essay topicsand list what to do before theybegin writing a timed essay:know the question; make a quickoutline; understand the value ofa strong entrance and exit; balancedetail, while rememberingto manage time.“Reading the Odyssey is like atreasure hunt,” says eighth-graderMelissa Mittelman. “Not onlyare you looking for the culturaland era imprints, but you arealso working to follow the storyand catch details.”“In their textual analyses, studentsbegin to think more abouttheir identities as well as thecharacters’,” Kim says. Whenstudents begin to see rawhumanity wrapped in verse—when Penelope fends off hersuitors or when Athena comparesOdysseus to Telemachus,“measuring [him] with hisfather,” for example—studentsbegin to grasp and appreciate theuniversality of great literature.Heather SullivanLiterary Analysis: good readers, confidentthinkers, sharp writersHow the Lower School builds a culturethat reveres booksIn his reading journal, MichaelChar of Grade 6 recently wrotesome pointed criticism of authorGeorgia Byng’s writing style.“Georgia Byng included so manysimiles in her story ‘Molly MoonStops the World,’ that I felt like adrowning man being thrown a bottleof water. (Oops! It’s catchingon.) The similes in the book werevery good ones. However, becausethe similes were so long anddetailed I would forget what washappening in the story. The followingquote is an example of a good,but long simile, ‘The world was soquiet… No traffic, no music, novacuum cleaners, no lawnmowers.Just silence…Then, suddenly as ifthe pause button on the world’svideo player had been released,everything started again.’ It’s agreat description, but after readingit I totally forgot what was happeningin the story.”A sophisticated critic, Michaelcomes by his skill honestly:Along with his Lower Schoolclassmates, he’s been analyzingauthors’ work since Kindergarten.“I want students to understandthat authors make lots of choices,and as they read, to thinkabout what choices an authorhas made. I want them to knowthat a book didn’t spring upwhole.” Connie Dodes, sixthgradeliterature teacher, explainsthat the link between learning toread well and to write well isessential. Students’ awareness ofhow authors achieve effects withtheir writing comes into play asthey themselves write. Conniehelps them think of authors asmentors. “For instance, whenI’m asking a student to stretchout a moment of tension in herwriting, I ask her, ‘How didMildred Taylor do it?’”As a major component of theirliterature program, sixth-graderswrite weekly in their readingjournals. They receive their journalsduring the last week of fifthgrade. A letter from Connieinside the front cover explainsher expectations of them inGrade 6; the inside back coverincludes a list of suggested topicsfor their journal entries. “Arethe characters believable? Inwhat ways does the author letyou know what the charactersare like? Did the lead of the book‘grab’ you and pull you in to thestory? Why?”Sixth-graders choose their own“independent reading” and mustread at least a half hour nightly.Either Connie or Joan Eisenberg,Lower School librarian, respondsin writing to each of their weeklyentries, “prodding them,” asConnie says, “to dig deeper, toA sixth-grade section during library period, one of the many moments to share observations about their reading57 Milton Magazine

think about literature in newways.” These exchanges allowthem, as Joan says “to recommendother books, to build theirsense of reading as a special,personal pleasure.”Joan could be considered theLower School’s secret ingredientin the yearslong cultivation ofreaders and reverence for books.“Library” is a full class period, asis art and science, and Joan usesher frequent connections withchildren, from Kindergarten on,to introduce them to books;build habits of perusing andchecking books out of thelibrary; share ideas, reactionsand recommendations with eachother. “Over the years, I learnabout different students’ tastesin books. I have time to talk withthem about their reading.Sometimes I work and work andwork to just hit it, to find thetype of book that hooks a certainstudent to reading. I often beginclass with a pile of books: newbooks, books on a theme, booksyou shouldn’t miss. If one of thechildren has read one, then I askhim or her to talk about it.When they hear one another’srecommendations, they talkabout their own reactions towhat others have already read.”You don’t have to wait until sixthgrade to learn that your opinionabout a book matters. Thirdgradersstage a Milton Academyversion of the Caldecott Medalcontest, choosing the book theythink ought to garner the award.Joan and some of the LowerSchool teachers decide which sixpicture books deserve considerationfor a Caldecott Medal (theCaldecott Medal honors illustration).Third-graders, who havebrought home a book a night for“home reading” over the courseof several years, have developeda solid critical eye. “I ask them,”Joan says, “to make as persuasivean argument as they possiblycan for the book they thinkshould win; and I ask them tolisten carefully, because someonemay persuade them tochange their opinions.”A favorite student event is thegrand debate that precedes students’casting their votes for theMassachusetts Children’s BookAward. Of the 25 books nominatedby teachers, librariansand children, Milton’s fifth- andsixth-graders must read five,and can try to convince otherstudents that their analysis of aprize-winner should prevail.Only children may vote; theirvotes count. They come armedwith opinions, notes and examplesand defend their choices.From Joan’s and Connie’s pointof view, their analyses and observationsare remarkable: Is anidea “worthy”? Is a characterbelievable? Is an outcome realistic?Whether children are stillthinking concretely, or havemoved toward more abstractthinking, they all believe themselvesto be good thinkers onthe level playing field of literarycriticism.Near the end of every year,Connie asks her students towrite about how they havechanged as readers. Their ownwords, she says, testify to theirgrowth and increased skill. “Idon’t just think about plot anymore,I think about charactersand suspense and ideas and relationships,”one will say. “I don’tjust read adventure stories anymore;now I’m reading lots ofdifferent kinds of books, and I’mreading more challengingbooks,” is another commonrefrain. When a student stopsJoan as she passes in a hallwayand says, “Oh, I just have to tellyou how much I loved thisbook,” she’s thrilled. The LowerSchool traditions, activities, andcurricula mindfully and explicitlybuild a culture of readers—and excellent critics.Cathleen EverettSixth-grade book critic Michael Char follows up on a comment.Joan Eisenberg (left), Lower School librarian, and Connie Dodes,Grade 6 faculty member58 Milton Magazine

Alumni AuthorsRecently published worksSuch Is Life in theTropics: 25 Years inCosta Rica; 40AnecdotesSuch Is Life in the Tropics(Litografía e Imprenta LIL,2004) by Roberta Hayes deMacaya ’56 is a collection ofshort tales of an Americanwoman who lives in Costa Ricawith her Costa Rican husbandand their children. Over 25years, they live in Puntarenas,Barrio Jimenez and Escazu.Arranged by place, relative, animalor trip, Roberta’s charmingvignettes capture reflectivemoments, the beauty and mysteryof place, or ably characterizeher pushy mother-in-law whoreferred to Roberta as “the motherof my grandchildren” and fedthem doughnuts instead of thewhole grains favored by Roberta.In “Barney and the Angels,”Roberta shares the momentwhen her 13-year-old cockerspaniel, Barney, is put to sleep.Worms from the tropical torsalofly have invaded his head andhis eyes, and Barney is weakwith the fight. After consultingwith her son, who also lovedBarney, Roberta decided to gowith the vet’s advice: “I gave theyes signal and while she [the vet]readied the long needle I tried tocomfort Barney by putting myhand over his nose, smell beingone remaining sense. I strokedhis luxurious coat because hecould also still feel. I was constrictedby sobs, watching theneedle go in. I felt that solid,male heart beating so strongly, aslow, steady pound. Then therhythm sped up – boom, boom,boom, boom, and one last boom.Silence. Inertia. Death. And timestopped. And my heart died abit.”Her final two of 40 tales—oneentitled, “I Never Wore BlueJeans”—center on herself.Roberta reflects how missingmore than two decades of mainstreamculture in her homecountry feels. “My world is thecows peering into the bedroomwindow when I open the curtains,or two-hour lunches, afterpeeling and chopping and searingand boiling…I seem to havetotally missed the era of bluejeans, never having worn them.”Such Is Life in the Tropics isavailable in the United Statesby emailing Roberta atroberta_hayes@yahoo.com.ChatterIn his first book, Chatter(Random House, 2005), PatrickKeefe ’94 reveals how, and onwhom, our government eavesdrops.He investigates what hasbeen hushed up by politiciansand overlooked by the Americanmedia. He also explores whetherthe interception of communicationis effective for predictingand preventing future attacksand to what degree it threatensour privacy.“Chatter represents a timely andimportant contribution to the literatureof eavesdropping andcode breaking, and an extraordinaryintroduction to a worldabout which most Americansknow very little,” writes DavidKahn, author of The Codebreakers.In the late 1990s, when Patrickwas a graduate student inEngland, he heard stories aboutan eavesdropping network led bythe United States that spannedthe planet. The system, knownas Echelon, allowed America andits allies to intercept the privatephone calls and emails of civiliansand governments aroundthe world. Taking the mystery ofEchelon as his point of departure,Patrick explores the natureand context of communicationsinterception, drawing togetherstrands of history, investigativereporting and riveting anecdotes.The result is part detective story,part travelwriting, part essay onparanoia and secrecy in a digitalage.Chatter begins at Menwith Hill,a secret eavesdropping stationcovered in mysterious, gargantuangolf balls, in England’sYorkshire moors. From there,the narrative moves quickly toanother American spy stationhidden in the Australian outback;from the intelligencebureaucracy in Washington tothe European Parliament inBrussels; from an abandonedNational Security Agency base inthe mountains of North Carolinato the remote Indian Oceanisland of Diego Garcia.As Patrick hunts the truth ofcontemporary surveillance byintelligence agencies, heunearths little-known informationand introduces us to arogue’s gallery of characters. Wemeet a former British eavesdropperwho now listens in on theUnited States Air Force forsport; an intelligence translatorwho risked prison to reveal anAmerican operation to spy onthe United Nations SecurityCouncil; a former member ofthe Senate committee on intelligencewho says that oversight isso bad, a lot of senators only siton the committee for the travel.“It is absolutely thrilling to seesomeone as young, as competent,and as gifted as PatrickKeefe taking on the secret worldof Washington,” writes investigativejournalist Seymour Hersh.Provocative, sometimes funny,and alarming without beingalarmist, Chatter is a journeythrough a bizarre and shadowyworld with vast implications forour security as well as our privacy.It is also an impressive nonfictiondebut.59 Milton Magazine

Alumni AuthorsRecently published worksThe Flame KeepersThe Flame Keepers (Hyperion,2004) by Ned Handy ’40 is thefascinating first-person accountof a World War II soldier’s captureand imprisonment in Stalag17, one of Germany’s most notoriousprisoner-of-war compounds.Ned enlisted at age 19, fourmonths after Pearl Harbor. Shotdown on his bomb group’s ninthmission against the Nazis inApril 1944, he survived a year inStalag 17.In the infamous Nazi prisoncamp, Ned soon led an escapeteam determined to tunnel tofreedom. Along with the unforgettablecomrades he describes,Ned worked relentlessly formonths on a tunnel that was toprove instrumental in saving thelives of four fugitives sought bythe Gestapo. One of those fugitiveswould become the onlyAmerican ever to escape permanentlyfrom Stalag 17.The Flame Keepers is a vivid firsthandaccount of an Americansoldier’s experience as a prisonerof war in Nazi Germany and apoignant portrait of the POWswho worked to survive withinthe wire and their German captors.Illustrated with originalphotographs taken inside thecamp from a smuggled cameraand published for the first timein the trade press, The FlameKeepers recounts one of WorldWar II’s great untold stories.At war’s end, the GI Bill put Nedthrough MIT. Now Ned is seniorvice commander of the Stalag 17Association.Ned co-wrote the book withKemp Battle, an author and acontributor to the Today show,who serves on the board of theAcademy of American Poets.Soul CityIn Soul City (Little, Brown,2004) Touré ’89 introduces ablack utopia whose legacy andfuture are on the line.When journalist CadillacJackson’s train arrived at SoulCity, Cadillac “smoothed off intoa new life.” Cadillac is sent byChocolate City Magazine to coverSoul City’s mayoral election, buthis real intent is to “render SoulCity honestly” in a book thatwould establish his preeminenceas a writer. Cadillac Jacksonfalls in love with MahoganySunshine, the DJ in the BiscuitShop—as well as with Soul Cityitself—and works to reconcilethe black culture he has experiencedthus far with life withinSoul City. Soul City was “foundedby escaped slaves who couldfly, a miraculous place whereflowers grow out of the concrete,music is revered, and ailmentsare healed by doting grandmothersrather than doctors. Accordingto Soul City legend, theescaped slaves blessed the citizensto live lives confined onlyby the boundaries of theirdreams,” says Vanessa Bushwriting for the American LibraryAssociation.In Soul City Touré draws on hislived experience with imaginativeskill and expert wordsmithingto flesh out the hummingreality and magic of SoulCity. Cadillac Jackson, for example,“checked into his hotel,the Copasetic on Cool Street,then walked from Nappy Laneto Gravy Ave to CornbreadBoulevard. The sidewalks wereforty to fifty feet wide and thestreets were abuzz with all-agemini-festivals of hair braiding,marble shooting, bubble blowing,puddle stomping, rollerskating,faithful preaching,‘God’s coming!’ mommiesstrolling, babies toddling, groceriesspilling lots of flirtingand gossip flying. On BookooBoulevard the Vinylmobile creptby offering old albums for a fewdollars and children pouredfrom homes to chase it as childrenelsewhere chase ice creamtrucks. The Washeteria onBadass Ave had its own DJ soyou could dance while you dried.And it made perfect sense thatin a world where bad meansgood, the traffic signals usedgreen for stop and red for go.”The mayoral race in Soul Cityhinges on the mayor’s primefunction, which is to DJ for thetown (speakers in the city sidewalksare connected to a centralturntable at the mayor’s mansion).“This year’s ballot consistsof the Jazz Party’s ColtraneJones, the Hiphop Nation’sWillie Bobo, and the Soul MusicParty’s Cool Spreadlove.” Whilethe mayor of the last 12 years,Emperor Jones, had integratedvarious sounds and played a balancedplay list, the winner wouldstick to his party’s musicalgenre, and could thereforepotentially “unbalance the moodof the town and lead to all sortsof catastrophes.” Hence a criticalhistorical moment looms in SoulCity.Critics have described Touré’swork as an “allegory on blackculture filled with magic realismand biting social commentary.”They have commented on hisability to satirize stereotypesthrough inventive hyperbole.Touré capably translates hisawareness of black culture, andparticularly music, into a talethat envelops readers. AsCadillac Jackson discovers muchabout himself, we join him inlearning more about humannature and the meaning of racein America.Touré is a contributing editor atRolling Stone, an MTV personality,and a CNN regular. His workhas appeared in The New Yorker,the New York Times, and manyother publications. He attendedthe Columbia MFA program andlives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.Since his first book, The PortablePromised Land, was published,Touré has read his work andjoined creative writing classes atMilton several times.60 Milton Magazine

SportsCoach Wendy Holden helps Milton girls’ hockey team “outplay themselves”Wendy Soutsos Holden is headcoach of Milton Academy’s girls’varsity hockey team. She comes toMilton after a season as assistantcoach at Middlesex School. Forthe past four years, Wendy hasbeen a head coach with CharlesRiver Girls’ Hockey, and has ledher team to the U.S.A. HockeyNational Championships in two ofthose four years. During the summers,she is the on-ice director forMilton Girls’ Hockey Camp.Holden attended DartmouthCollege, where she was defensemanand captain for the varsity women’shockey team. She was namedTeam Defensive MVP in 1999 andECAC All Star in 1997. Prior toDartmouth, Holden spent her highschool years on the ice as defensemanand captain for Taft School.Where did it all start?Coach Holden began her hockeycareer at the age of 4, battlingher three older siblings on herhometown rink in Winnetka,Illinois. During her early years,Wendy says she was fortunate tobe on the receiving end of greatcoaching. “When I was 8, myfirst all-star team was all boys,”Wendy recalls. “My coach wentout of his way to help me likethe sport, and taught me not tobe intimidated by the male-dominatedleague.” At age 11 Wendywas greatly influenced by herSquirt League coach. At thetime, she doubted her talent; hercoach was the person who gaveher the confidence to learn fromher mistakes. During the courseof that year, Wendy remembers“jumping up two teams.”What is the secret tomotivating your team?This year, Coach Holden hasproven that she can motivateplayers to perform past theirexpected potential. Wendy callsit “maxing out players.” Whenasked her secret, Wendy says,“I emphasize that hockey is aseries of one-on-one battles.I tell the girls to focus on oneperiod at a time, to do their jobon the ice, and to have faith thattheir teammates are doing theirjob.” She adds, “Every team isdifferent, but when coachinghigh school girls, the mostimportant element is to makesure they feel confident.”What makes an athletea great teammate?“There is no one answer to thatquestion,” remarks Wendy.“Different players contribute indifferent ways. Some playerslead by example, some playersencourage others on the ice, andsome players bring the teamtogether off the ice.” Each typeWendy Holden, girls’ varsity ice hockey coachof player, she says, brings aunique asset to a team, and eachone is important to the team’ssuccess.What are the strengths ofMilton’s girls’ hockey program?“The most obvious is the verysupportive network of parents,”says Wendy. “Milton Academyhas some of the greatest diehardfans. I believe the programalso has the benefit of attractinggood players, because the girlsget along really well. The teamconsists of players with greatpersonalities, which makes iteasy to work together as a team.”How do you help players balancetheir academic and athletic lives?“There is no question thatacademic work comes first, andstudy also comes before practice,”Wendy says. “Athleticssimply enhances their educationin terms of work ethic andtime management. Playing asport doesn’t allow you toprocrastinate.”How is the team doing this year?“I’m very pleased at how the seasonis going,” Wendy says. “Weplay in a tough league, but Ibelieve as a team we’re exceedingexpectations, and our individualplayers are exceedingtheir expectations of themselves.I guess you can say we’re outplayingourselves.“As for next year,” Wendy says,“the systems are in place, and Ihave a clear idea of what I wantthe team to do. With the exceptionof one graduating senior, weshould have a lot of returningtalent. With a few new playersand a larger team, we’ll be ableto build up a bigger bench.”61 Milton Magazine

A Hat Trick Athlete for MiltonThe big game of this year’s footballseason—Milton vs. Nobles—fellvictim to New England weather.Athletes from both teams tried toclear six inches of snow from theplaying field so the highly anticipatedmatch could occur. Thestorm proved too strong. The gamewas rescheduled, and time heightenedthe drama.Milton hit first and hit hard; theMustangs threw for a 45-yardtouchdown. The wide receiver whoput the points on the board wasnumber 2, Ryan Walsh. It was thebeginning of what Ryan calls hismost memorable game. Playingboth wide receiver on offense andsafety on defense, Ryan finishedthe afternoon with three receptionsfor a total of 85 yards and twotouchdowns, and forced a Noblesfumble in the second quarter. TheMustangs stampeded Nobles in a28–0 victory.Make no mistake about it, RyanWalsh loves football, but thissenior from Milton, Massachusetts,does more than catch apigskin. Ryan excels in threesports: football, hockey andlacrosse.Ryan downplays his contributionsto these sports and pointsto his teammates as the reasonfor his teams’ successes. Why?Ryan Walsh’s favorite aspect ofsports is the team.“I always avoided sports thatfocus on individual performance,”says Ryan. “I love sportsthat rely on teamwork and teammatesworking together as one.”Ryan believes that the trustgained and given between playersis the most important elementin athletics, and ultimatelyis the key to winning. “You needto be able to sacrifice for yourteam and your teammates inorder to win,” says Ryan. “Coach[Paul] Cannata, for example, isalways telling us to block theshots with our bodies and to‘take one for the team.’ That sortof selfless sacrifice is whatmakes a team great.”Ryan Walsh knew at a young agethat he wanted to be a part ofMilton Academy’s athletic program.His older brother, MikeWalsh ’01, played hockey forMilton and, like most youngerbrothers, Ryan wanted to followin his brother’s footsteps. Heentered the Academy in Grade 4and spent most of his free timepracticing and playing the threesports he loves most.Ryan believes that every coach atMilton played an important rolein his development as a player.“The coaches at Milton show upevery day and give everythingthey have,” Ryan says. “They areable to respond to their playersand they know how to make usplay to our potential.”Ryan cares more about hisfriends on the team than he doesabout his own accomplishments.He wears the number 2 on hisfootball jersey to honor his olderbrother, who wore that numberbefore him, and he carries thenumber 17 on his lacrosse andRyan Walsh ’05hockey uniforms to honor hisfather—a Boston firefighter withLadder 17.Ryan is an athlete, a scholar anda true gentleman.Greg WhiteBen Bunker ’05 for the Milton Measure62 Milton Magazine

Make Plans to Return forGraduates WeekendMay 13–14, 2005Don’t Miss• John Noble M.D. ’55, speaker at the Dare To Be TrueLuncheon, relating his experiences as a smallpoxeradication officer with the United States PublicHealth Service and as a member of a physician teamworking to control tuberculosis in Russian communities,hospitals and prisons. His work developinghealth programs to improve care in Boston’s innercity, has led to his recent appointment by theAmerican College of Physicians to serve as Commissioneron the Board of the Joint Commission ofAccreditation of Health Care Organizations.• Provocative and energizing classes for graduates andfriends led by Milton faculty• Singular events on campus Friday evening for eachreunion class• A chance to talk with Head of School RobinRobertson and trustees about Milton’s future• Saturday lunch in Milton’s newly opened residentialhouses: Centre and Norris• Panel discussions about Milton athletics today andhow admission works at Milton• Topflight student musical and dramatic performancesin Kellner Performing Arts CenterFor the latest reunion information or to register, go tothe “alumni” pages at www.milton.edu, or call the alumnirelations office at 617-898-2421 (Kathleen Kelly,director) or 617-898-2385 (Laura Barrow, assistantdirector).63 Milton Magazine

Class Notes1935Rose Weld Baldwin enjoysreturning to Milton to attendclasses and events with hergranddaughter Naja Baldwin ‘05.She believes the academic programis vastly more demandingthan when she attended andwonders if she could have handledthe present curriculum!1937Rebeckah DuBois Glazebrooklives on Cape Cod during thesummer and in Osprey, Florida,in the winter. Surgery on her leftfoot in 2001 has left her in awheelchair. She enjoys her fivegrandchildren coming to WoodsHole each July and watching thecousins get to know each other.1938On a recent trip to Cleveland,Marjorie Handy Nichols reconnectedwith Hathaway Houseroommate Barbara BrownWebster. The two correspondedonly occasionally and had notseen each other since graduation.Despite the long separation,she writes, “We met,hugged, kissed and talked nonstopfor two hours as though itwere yesterday…just shows howdeep and binding those Miltondays were!”1941Corrine Kernan Sevigny sadlyreports that her husband Pierredied at the age of 87. He taughtcourses until two years ago atConcordia University, and manyof his students have been wonderfulin their support.64 Milton Magazine1943Alice Hall van Buren finds beinga volunteer in the guidancedepartment at the Cape CodRegional Technical High Schoolvery rewarding, and does a lotwith her music. Her husband isnot well, but her children andgrandchildren are very helpful.Stephen Washburn celebratedhis 80th birthday with a squaredance at his house in Belmontwith extended family and oldfriends. Stephen rememberssimilar dances held in theSaltonstall Gymnasium when atMilton. His oldest guest wasPete Fuller ’42 and the youngestdancer was Kate Fuller, daughterof Pete Fuller Jr. ’75.1946J. M. Burry and his wife Helgaare spending more time at theirplace in the San Juan Islandsand cruising in their boat upfrom Port Handy to Victoria,British Columbia.1948Lansing Lamont and his wifeAda celebrated their 50th weddinganniversary this year.After publishing his sixth book,No Twilight About Me, in 1999,Lansing is at work on a journalist’smemoir. He has 12grandchildren, one of whom(Christopher Lamont, Class III,son of Douglas R. Lamont ’73)is currently a day student atMilton.1949Bernard J. Florin was happy tovisit Milton, where he “spenttwo of the best years of my life,right after World War II (1947–1949).” He hopes some ofhis grandchildren will spendsome time here, especially withall the developments since hegraduated!Having not seen each other since graduation, Marjorie Handy Nichols ’38 andher Hathaway House roommate, Barbara Brown Webster ’38, reunited recentlyin Cleveland.Thayer Fremont-Smith reportsthat he is happily retired as atrial judge and has been happilymarried for 44 years. He hasfour wonderful sons and sevengrandchildren.1951Rebecca Faxon Knowles and herhusband Bob have a new condoin Yarmouth, Maine. She says,“Come see us and take a spin onour bright red lobster boat!”1952Arthur Harris became professoremeritus at University ofPennsylvania in March 2004.He welcomed grandtwins AerinRees and Christopher BrooksHarris in September 2004.1954Marie Iselin Doebler and herhusband Joe returned from agrand African trip that tookthem from Cape Town toZambia, Botswana and Namibia.1955Pricilla Rand Baker attended theannual convention of the Societyof American Travel Writers(SATW) in Switzerland. Afterserving on the board of directorsof SATW in the 1980s, she isnow chairman of the organization’sSenior Advisory Council.1956Katrina Carter Cameron and herhusband Duncan live in FortBragg, California, where theyperform locally and tour withtheir Puppetarium Theatre. Alsoknown as Papa and MamaGeppetto, the Camerons writeand perform their own librettos,as well as classic stories. Katrina,an experienced Off-Broadwaycomposer, sculpts, paints, buildspuppets and writes music for alltheir shows. Duncan, formerly atApple, builds stages, handlesaudio and lighting, and designsrod-puppets.Judith Chute and her husbandPaul Cifrino had another greattrip to Costa Rica last spring,where they were hosted byRoberta Hayes de Macaya ’56,the author of Such Is Life in theTropics, a book of short stories.Betsy Reece Hall returned towork after eight months ofretirement. She is executivedirector of the associates of theBoston Public Library. The associateswork to “expand the roleof the Library in the intellectuallife of the City,” which they dothrough literary events, fundraisers and community outreach.On the personal front, her childrencontinue to give her joy—Tony is a film editor in LosAngeles and Lisa, in Maine, hasher own jewelry business. Lisa’s

Donald Duncan (former faculty), Henry (Harry) Norweb III ’66, TedSouthworth ’66 and Albert Norweb enjoy the wedding day of Harry’s daughterin Boothbay Harbor, Maine—a day after Hurricane Bobbie passed through andthe day before Hurricane Charlie threatened. “We were very lucky,” Harrywrites.daughter, Matilda, born Augustof 2002, is a constant delight.“My best to everyone and let’sget ready for 2006!”Ann Crockett Stever traveled toNew Zealand in January 2004 toattend a world gathering ofQuakers. Three hundred peoplecame together to consider howtheir faith informs their lives,both individually and as groupsworking for peace and justicelocally, nationally and internationally.With her partnerDorsey, Ann explored gorgeousNew Zealand, especially thesouthern half of the SouthIsland.1957Keith Brodie, retired from DukeUniversity, continues as presidentemeritus, working withchief residents in psychiatry atDuke Hospital. His book onthe university presidency willbe published by Praeger thissummer.Helen Wilmerding Milner losther husband Michael in August2003. Her first grandson, Miles,was born two weeks later. Shealternates babysitting for Miles(1) and his cousins Caroline (9)and Brooke (7). She was inLondon for daughter Angela’swedding on New Year’s Eve. Shethen went on a cruise to theSeychelles, Maldives andColombo before settling to golfand garden in Princeton, NewJersey.1963Henry Beyer continues in thebanking business but is increasinglyfrustrated as new laws andregulations make for less efficiencyand productivity.1967Linn Jackson and a businesspartner have taken over Educator’sAlly, a 30-year-old businessthat specializes in placing teachersin Independent Schools.They operate primarily in thegreater New York area, but arebeginning to operate with a fewboarding schools as well.1968Albion Fletcher Jr. designs jetengine control systems, mostlyfor helicopter engines, includingboth contenders for the newPresidential helicopter. He alsoorganized a group that defeateda change to city government inBraintree.Richard Wilson finished secondin his class in the 2004Singlehanded Transatlantic Raceaboard The Great American II.He created a school programonline and in a newspaperwhere experts from a variety offields write online and answerchildren’s questions. His programreaches fifty-thousandkindergarteners through twelfthgraders.1969In 1993, after working in ruraldevelopment in Papua NewGuinea, the Solomon Islands,and Tanzania, Roland Lubett andwife Tandy settled in Armindale,New South Wales, Australia, inan area ironically called NewEngland. Roland founded theLast-First Networks (www.lastfirst.net)as a resource center fordevelopment fieldworkers. Tandyworks for the Aboriginal communityin Armindale. Rolandand Tandy invite Milton travelersin Australia to stop by.1972Cynthia Campbell Kimmeywonders, “At fifty years old, twophysicians, two teenagesons…where did the time go?”1975Richard Barbour, his wifeCharlotte and their daughtersRachel (16) and Annie (13) haverelocated to Charleston, SouthCarolina, after two years inMaryland. Richard has a newposition as senior engineer withScientific Research Corporation,providing support to Navy shipbuildingand modification.1976Peter McKillop recently returnedfrom 15 years in Asia as a correspondentfor Newsweek in Tokyoand Hong Kong and as a bankerfor J.P. Morgan. He is now onhis newest foreign assignmentin Charlotte, North Carolina,where he oversees communicationfor Bank of America’s consumerbank.Julia Simonds loves the operatingroom and continues hernursing education. She teachesat Cannon on the weekends andat Blue Hill some mornings.Coming full circle, she helpedcoach the Milton ski team lastyear and hopes to do it againthis year. Her mother, JeanHendrie Simonds ’41, loves hernew house. She recently recoveredfrom a hip fracture sustainedby chasing squirrels offthe deck, which she has learnednot to do anymore!1977Elizabeth Burns reports that RedSox Nation spreads to the Midwestand beyond!1978After 18 1 ⁄2 years together, OliverRadford married his partnerSteve Perry on June 14, 2004, ina small ceremony in Cambridge.In early September, family andfriends, including classmatesMaggie Jackson and JanetAuchinclosss Pyne, joined thecouple at their Gloucester housefor a memorable reception.1979Sarah Felton and her husbandMark Manasas are thrilled andvery proud to announce theadoption of their daughter ElizaMei Xian Manasas. Eliza wasborn May 9, 2003, and herForever Day is July 26, 2004.She is a happy, healthy toddlerwho is keeping her parentsextremely busy!David Marcus is a renewableenergy investor in West Newton.Jim Sitrick and his wife Claudiaare pleased—and overwhelmed—to welcome Thane DanielSitrick to their family. He wasborn August 4 in Papillion,Nebraska. Jim would love to hearfrom former classmates at65 Milton Magazine

Fabulous at 40! Ann Taylor Black ’82 celebrates her birthday with her four children,Hunter (4), Logan (2) and Bailey and Quinn (6 months).Erika Mobley ’86 and her husband Andrew Speight welcomed Colin NicholasSpeight on October 30, 2004. He was 8 lbs, 1 oz and 20.25" long.jbsitrickjr@cox.net. In particular,he would be overjoyed if anyonehas an instruction manual forbabies, as his arrived withoutone!1980Albert Creighton is busy with hisfamily, town volunteer activities,and growing a business foundedin 1992. He hopes to see manyclassmates at the next reunion!Chris Myers has fond memoriesof Milton and can’t wait to seeold friends at the 25th reunion.He’s had a lot of fun starting anonprofit after-school programin the Latino neighborhoods ofDenver that tap the power ofpeer teaching. The organizationhas aspirations to “go national”one day. The Web site iswww.openworldlearning.org.1981Anne Myers Brandt lives inCambridge with her husbandCameron and daughter Charlotte(1), awaiting the winter birthof a son.Oliver Bustin coaches theBoston Bandits football team.They lost in the Eastern Finals ofthe National Tournament afteran 11–1 season. He was inWashington, D.C., for the 2005Presidential inaugurationbecause his son was invited.1982Althea Lindell lives in mid-coastMaine and enjoys the ruralatmosphere. Her husband Kenhas just been elected to the statelegislature. They have three children:William (10), Thomas (8)and Sarah (5). Althea works primarilyas a homemaker, butoccasionally validates environmentallab data from home. Shealso started a quilting/sewingbusiness called Blue HeronQuilts. She and her family arevery busy but enjoy life together.Bonnie MacDonald’s husband of11 years, Rob Gould, died suddenlyon August 26, 2002, whileplaying tennis. Throughout thesubsequent months of shock,grief, pain and longing, Bonnieand her two daughters, then fourand eight, received much supportfrom family, friends andcommunity. Several Miltiesresponded with kindness andgenerosity when Ted Sears letthe community know about acollege fund established for thegirls. On October 3, 2004,Bonnie found happiness andlove again, and was married toTim Thomas. Their new familyincludes Tim and his two daughters,who are close in age toBonnie’s girls.Susanna Hodges Salk lives inConnecticut, where she is a playwrightand also a special projectseditor for House and GardenMagazine.1983John Garrison lives with his wifeMaria and children Diego (6)and Elena (4) in Maryland,where he has taken up bike riding(mainly as transportation tothe Metro) and is working forthe U.S. Agency for InternationalDevelopment (USAID) onregional environmental issuesin the Latin American andCaribbean Bureau.Wyman Fraser Davis wasordained a deacon in theEpiscopal Church. Currently, sheserves as a missionary liaison tothe Diocese of Liberia. She livesin Atlanta, Georgia, with herhusband Paul and five children.Paul Goldberg married his partnerof 11 years, Joseph Bell, ina private ceremony on PlumIsland in Massachusetts thisyear. He is “very proud to be oneof the first Milton grads to enjoythe same rights, privileges, andresponsibilities of marriage ashis heterosexual classmates.”Paul owns a steel distributioncompany, and he and Joseph livein Newburyport.1984Flynn Monks and his wifeJennifer Monks welcomed SashaBaron Monks on August 27,2004. Flynn writes, “She’s cute,bald and in charge.”1985Christina Takoudes Morrisonand her husband AndrewMorrison welcomed their seconddaughter, Alyssa Roula Morrison,in November 2003. She joins bigsister Stefanie (4). After 13 yearsin investment banking, Christinaswitched careers and is now vicepresident, New Business inWomen’s Health, at Wyeth.Andrew has also changed careersand is now a stay-at-home fatherand loves raising the girls inCollegeville, Pennsylvania.1986Erika Mobley and her husbandAndrew Speight welcomed ColinNicholas Speight on October 30,2004. Erika says Colin is “acharmer so far and futureMilton prospect for sure!”1988Matthew Day and his wife Tracyproudly announce the birth oftheir son, Jackson Boland Day,on March 16, 2004.Ann Louise Elliot and her husbandJohn Williams welcomedtwo baby girls into the world inJune. Georgianna Hulett ElliottWilliams and Ruth RobertsonElliot Williams—fraternal twins—are doing very well, as aretheir exhausted parents. Anne isconsulting for a philanthropicmarketing company as she con-66 Milton Magazine

Ann Louise Elliot ’88 and her husband John Williams welcomed twin girls:Georgie is in yellow (left) and Ruthie is in pink (right).Anne McManus Hurlbut ’91 and her husband Matthew welcomed WilliamDawson Hurlbut, on June 1, 2004.templates a career change; sheis enrolled in an interior designgraduate program at theCorcoran. She and John love livingin Washington, D.C., just afew blocks from Jess Hobart ’87.Adam Towvim married LauraGomberg in October of this year.They were engaged for abouteight months, after he proposedon a ski trip along the French-Italian border. They will live inCambridge.Matthew Day ’88 and his wife Tracyintroduce Jackson Boland Day.Jackson was born March 16, 2004,weighing 8 lbs, 8 oz. Matthew, Tracyand Jackson are at home in Milton.Adam Wolfberg writes that theBrigham and Women’s residentgynecology service brought himtogether with three other Miltonalums: medical student YetsaTuakli-Wosornu ’97, and residentsWhitfield Growdon ’94,and Chrissy Curley Skiadas ’95.1989Anneliese Euler is busy recordingher second album and firstfull-length studio work, “TheSinger-Songwriter Song.” Shehas a live EP, “Live Brie,” aswell. Her Web site featuresMP3s, photos and video of heroriginal comic cabaret work asinvented character BrieFeingold-Africa. She is alsoteaching Pilates matwork andconsidering an M.F.A. in theatre.She recently spent timewith Katy Henrickson ’88, GalaTrue ’88, and Sam Briger ’90,who are all parents!Carolina Schweizer Hiebl wasmarried on September 24, 2004.She and her husband have ababy girl, Rosely Sofie MarleneHiebl, born May 5, 2004.Emily Moore has had a busycouple of years. She got marriedin June 2003 and had a baby,Greta Ann Moore Sturgis, inSeptember. She says parenthoodis a lot of fun, but she hopes toget some sleep before long!Robert Rosenthal is moving toDubai, in the United ArabEmirates, where his wife Malinigrew up. “Come visit and I’llshow you the best jewelry marketin the world.”1990John Costello and his wife KateCostello announce the birth ofAlessandra “Allie” Grace Costelloon May 1, 2004. They are livingin Westwood, Massachusetts.Anne Francis suffered a strokein December 2003 at the age of32. After being medi-flighted toMass General Hospital, Annelost her ability to speak and herright hand was numb. She cansee peripherally with her left eyeand has full sight in her righteye. Anne recovered at homeafter spending four days in arehab center. She owns a landscapingbusiness, has a goldenretriever, and has a wonderfulboyfriend.Amy Saltonstall Isaac and husbandJohnathan welcomed MollyElizabeth Isaac on August 28,2004, and reports that all is well!David Niles ’90 married Ann Ciaglia this summer. After a pre-wedding party inNew York City, attended by former Forbes dorm head David Dunbar andForbes dormmates and classmates Nat Paynter, David Kimball, Adam Slocumand Marc Chung, the couple tied the knot in Barrington, Rhode Island.Pictured are Alexis Graves, Adam Slocum, Ann Ciaglia Niles, David Niles andBo Thorne Niles ’62.67 Milton Magazine

Sophie Coquillette Koven ’92 and her husband Jamie celebrated the birth oftheir second daughter, Annabel Frances Koven, on August 16, 2004. Their olderdaughter, Lucy, turned 3 in May 2004.David Niles married Ann CiagliaNiles this summer. After a preweddingparty in New York City,attended by former Forbes dormhead David Dunbar and Forbesdormmates Nat Paynter, DavidKimball, Adam Slocum, andMarc Chung, the couple tied theknot in Barrington, RhodeIsland. Bo Thorne Niles ’62,Adam Slocum and AlexisGreeves attended the 30-personceremony.Caroline Roberts got marriedSeptember 18, 2004, to hermedical school classmate JacobAbraham. They are both doingfellowships at Johns Hopkins—he in cardiology and she inendocrinology. She hopes to seeeveryone at the reunion in May!1991Jamus and Tara CallahanDriscoll welcomed Ethan WoodDriscoll on October 9, 2004. Hewas 9 pounds, 8 ounces and sofar is a very easygoing baby.Older brother Gabriel loves havinga little brother to tell peopleabout, but the cat and dog arestill a bit unsure about this noisynew person.Anne McManus Hurlbut andher husband Matthew welcomeda son, William Dawson Hurlbut,on June 1, 2004. They live inMarion, Massachusetts.Kate Brooks Leness and her husbandTony announce the birth oftheir daughter, Lucy BrooksLeness, who arrived on April 10,2004.Jennifer Simon and her husbandFred Phillips joyfully announcethe birth of their son, JacobSamuel, on May 10, 2004.1992Sophie Coquillette Koven andher husband Jamie celebratedthe birth of their second daughter,Annabel Frances Koven onAugust 16, 2004. Their olderdaughter, Lucy, turned 3 in May.1993Maureen Lyons teaches socialstudies at Pollard Middle Schoolin Needham. She also coachesgirls’ basketball at NeedhamHigh School and works atMilton at the Saturday Courseand Sports PLUS.Jess Hayes McDaniel marriedEvan McDaniel in early fall. Abig crew of Milton folks wasthere.Galt Niederhoffer sold her novel,was engaged to her boyfriendJim and gave birth to her daughter,Magnolia Breyer Strouse.Her production company, PlumPictures, will have two movies atSundance this year. Galt, Jimand Magnolia live in New York.Jess Hayes McDaniel ’93 married Evan McDaniel in fall 2004. Pictured fromleft to right: Josh Senders, Katie Leeson ’93, Mike Lustbader, Jenn FrankLustbader ’93, Talia Kohorn Senders ’93, Evan McDaniel, Jess HaynesMcDaniel, Marissa Coyne, Chris Coyne ’93, Darren Ross ’93, Johanna Ross,Jess Yager ’93.Priya Thomas Stephen lives withher husband Ben in Arlington,Virginia. She practices generalpediatrics in Silver Spring,Maryland. She had a great timethis summer catching up withJulia Travers, who was in towndoing her M.B.A. internshipwith the United Way. She recentlyheard from Celina Kennedy,who is doing well in Portland,Oregon.1994Frederick Melo lives inMinneapolis, where he is acrime reporter for the St. PaulPioneer Press. He welcomes anyMilton folks interested in learningmore about media careers tocontact him.Susanna Zaraysky is working inthe wine industry, but is alsopursuing a career in freelancetravel, feature, and short storywriting.Milton graduates joined Charlie Everett ’94 and Caty James at their weddingSeptember 5 in Little Compton, Rhode Island: back row from left, BrendanEverett ’91, Parker Everett ’97, Ian Zilla ’94, Will Coleman ’94, Dave Rockwell,Lars Albright ’93, Connor Spreng, Charlie Everett ’94, Caty James (bride), NikaThayer ’94, her fiancé Greg Mone, Vanessa Hynes ’94, Dan and JenniferParkes, Jessica Horak Stout ’94 and John Bamford; front row, Walter Horak ’65,J.P. Ribiero, Kathleen Campbell, Tim Langloss, Lawson Allen Albright, DevonWhite ’94 and Dwight Angelini68 Milton Magazine

Moriah Campbell-Holt Musto ’96 married Christopher Musto on August 1,2004. Pictured (from left) are Alice Burley ’96, David Dildine ’96, MoriahMusto ’96, Christopher Musto (groom), Mary Johannsen Warner ’95, Laura DeGirolami Vander Elst ’96.Nine friends from the Class of 1997 celebrated 10 years of friendship onLabor Day 2004 in New Hampshire. From left to right, back to front:Heather McGhee ’97, Lauren Wahtera ’97, Lily Davis ’97, Annie Moyer ’97,Lisa Balzano ’97, Emily Brooks ’97, Meroe Morse ’97, Alex Muenze ’97 andAlyssa Friedman ’97.Charlie Everett and Caty Jameswere married on September 5,2004, in Little Compton, RhodeIsland, where many Miltonalumni helped celebrate.1995Nat Kreamer accepted a commissionas an officer in theU.S. Navy, serving in a reservecapacity for the Office of NavalIntelligence when he’s not workingas a consultant for PriceWaterhouse Coopers in NewYork.Shana McMenimon McCarthyand her husband Ryan areexpecting their first baby thisMay.1996Moriah Campbell-Holt marriedChristopher Musto on August14, 2004, in Marion, Massachusetts.Milton grads in attendancewere Alice Burley, Laura DeGirolami Vander Elst, DavidDildine and Mary JohannsenWarner ’95. Moriah is headcross-country and track coach atthe Winsor School in Boston(with Mary Warner as the assistantcoach) and also works inthe online banking group atCitizens Bank.First Lieutenant Philip H.Dickinson married MoiraMuholland on August 22, 2004at the Old Post Chapel, FortMyers, Virginia. Spencer E.Dickinson, III ’93 was the bestman, Sarah Dickinson ’98 abridesmaid, and Nat Kreamer’95 a groomsman. Phil andMoira will live in northernVirginia, where he is serving inthe “Old Guard” 3rd InfantryRegiment and she is working atthe state department.Peter Huoppi was married inNovember 2003 to JenniferClose. They both graduated fromMiddlebury and now live inBurlington, where he is a staffphotographer for the BurlingtonFree Press.Phil Schmid lives in Los Angelesand works in finance at HBO.He is enrolled in an M.B.A. programat UCLA’s AndersonSchool of Management. Hereports that he makes times forsurfing and playing bass in apsychedelic-rock revival band.He occasionally crosses pathswith many Milton alumni andrecently saw Eliot Wadsworth’s’96 New York–based band, TheHead Set, at the Key Club onSunset Boulevard. “See themif you get a chance, they areamazing.”1997On Labor Day weekend thisyear, Heather McGhee, LaurenWahtera, Lily Davis, AnnieMoyer, Lisa Balzano, EmilyBrooks, Meroe Morse, AlexMuenze and Alyssa Friedmancame together to celebrate 10years of friendship. The bulk ofthem entered Milton in Class IIIin 1994, so Labor Day 2004marked 10 years of close friendshipthat has not only enduredbut grown. In true MiltonAcademy style, they had blueand orange T-shirts made—thefront featured a mustang and“1994–2004” and the back read“10 Years Strong.” The groupwas hosted by Emily Brooks ather family house in Franconia,New Hampshire. HeatherMcGhee is developing economicpolicy at Demos, a think tank inNew York. Lauren Wahtera liveswith Alex Muenze in Boston andis pursuing a nursing career. LilyDavis published her first book,an English translation of theFrench biography The FirstRasta. Annie Moyer runs a jobsprogram for juvenile offendersat a New York City courthouse.Lisa Balzano will attend medicalschool in New York next fall.The Brigham and Women’s resident gynecology service in August broughttogether four Milton alums: (from left) Harvard medical student Yetsa Tuakli-Wosornu ’97, and residents Chrissy Skiadas ’95, Whitfield Growdon ’94 andAdam Wolfberg ’88.69 Milton Magazine

Lydon Friedrich ’98 married Eli Vonnegut, bringing together some Miltoncommunity members. Back row: Simon Rasin ’98, Mackie Dougherty ’99,Christopher Palmer ’96; middle row: Debbie Simon (faculty), KateMacCluggage ’00, Eli Vonnegut, Lydon Friedrich Vonnegut, LindsayHaynes ’98 and Nia Jacobs ’98, bridesmaids, Randy Cox (former faculty),Lila Dupree ’98; front row: Sarah McGinty ’98 and bridesmaid, Lyh-PingLam ’98, Danny Schlozman ’99.Emily Brooks, an advertisingexecutive, is running the NewYork marathon this year! MeroeMorse works at Sloan-Ketteringin New York and is headingtoward medical school. AlexMuenze is getting her master’sin public health from BostonUniversity, and Alyssa Friedmanis a social worker in New YorkCity.1998Many Milton alumni attendedLydon Friedrich Vonnegut’srecent wedding. Lydon and herhusband Eli live in Ann Arbor,Civil Affairs Specialist NickMorton ’02 is serving in Baghdad.where Eli attends law school atthe University of Michigan andLydon teaches at Stony CreekPreschool. She plans to get hermaster’s at Columbia when thecouple returns to New York.1999Amanda Drummond Conleymarried Chris Conley in June onMartha’s Vineyard, with manyMilton alumni there to share theday. Amanda teaches math atTabor Academy.2000David Huoppi graduated fromTrinity in May, where he receivedthe Robert Stewart MathematicsPrize and the Larry SilverAthletic Prize. He now teachesmath at Salisbury School, wherehe is also a dorm parent andcoaches sailing and lacrosse.2002Libby Hadzima and Kate Brodiecompleted The Stretch, theDartmouth earth science offcampusprogram. They werejoined by graduate student ColinO’Farrell ’99. All three traveledaround the West Coast fromMontana south to Arizona andthen west through Nevada andCalifornia studying geology.Amanda Drummond ’99 married Chris Conley in June. Pictured are JohnBlanchard ’99, Shira Milikowsky ’99, Amanda Drummond Conley ’99, ChrisConley, Hannah Labaree ’99, Sarah Schram ’99, Terence Burek ’99, AdeleBurnes ’99.Nick Morton is a civil affairs specialistwith the 443rd Battalion,based in Warwick, Rhode Island.He is serving in Baghdad. If youwould like contact informationfor Nick, please email his motherat pmorton@surfbest.net.Remembering OurFriendsClassmates or friends ofrecently deceased alumniare welcome to honor theirfriends by writing remembrances.We will printremembrances in ClassNotes as space allows. Youmay direct questions toCathy Everett, editor, atCathy_Everett@milton.edu.Deaths1924 Katherine Dalton Hitch1930 Lloyd BrownNancy (Hannah)Saltonstall1931 Elizabeth PerkinsNickerson1934 Edward L. Barnes1935 David Waddell Lillie1936 Phillips C. Hallowell1937 Sydney BiddleKatharine Skinner Cook1938 Mary Mulligan McKee1943 Clarke FreemanPeter Knox1951 Joseph Conzelman1952 John J. Reddy III1955 Jonathan Knowlton1959 Peter Kane1991 Alexandra (Lexi)Rudnitsky1998 Addison (Addi) FranklinLyonFriendsAlbert J. Kelley P ’75 and formertrustee70 Milton Magazine

The Boston GlobeSeptember 24, 2004Edward Barnes; Helped Shape Modernism in ArchitectureEdward Larrabee Barnes, one ofthe leading American architectsof his generation, died September21, 2004, of complicationsfrom a stroke suffered in April.He was 89.He and his wife Mary had madetheir home in Harvard Squaresince 1995, after he retired fromhis New York office.As an architect, Mr. Barnes wasknown as a modernist who stuckto the modernist creed, ignoringchanging fashions as he crafteda personal style of his own. Hestudied architecture at HarvardUniversity, where he was one ofa remarkable generation ofyoung designers attracted to thatschool in the 1940s by WalterGropius, the former director ofthe Bauhaus School in Germany.Gropius’s students, includingPhilip Johnson, IM Pei, and PaulRudolph, led the nation intomodernism in the decades afterWorld War II.Mr. Barnes’s early work wasnotable for crisply geometricalbuildings, often of richly texturedwood or shingle. The bestknown is the Haystack MountainSchool of Crafts on DeerIsle, Maine, built in 1961, aninformal cluster of shed-roofedpavilions and dock-like pathwaysthat seems to float above the forestsite as it spills down a hillsidetoward the ocean. Haystackhad a strong influence on otherarchitects who, like Mr. Barnes,were seeking a humane versionof modernism. In 1994, it wonthe prestigious Twenty-Five YearAward from the AmericanInstitute of Architects, a prizeawarded annually to anAmerican building that hasstood the test of time.Among his many later buildingsare the IBM Corporate Headquarterstower on MadisonAvenue in New York, with itsgenerous public greenhousefilled with clumps of bamboo;the Walker Art Center inMinneapolis, often cited by curatorsas among the best museumsin the nation; the DallasMuseum of Art; a masterplan for the State Universityof New York at Purchase; andthe Thurgood MarshallFederal Judiciary Building inWashington.Mr. Barnes was born in Chicagoin 1915. His father was a lawyerand Harvard graduate and hismother, Margaret Ayer Barnes,was a writer who won the 1931Pulitzer Prize for her novel Yearsof Grace. Mr. Barnes attendedMilton Academy and Harvard,where he was president of theGlee Club and a varsity wrestler.He started Harvard as an Englishmajor, but later switched toarchitectural history. After college,he briefly taught Englishand other subjects at MiltonAcademy.He was inspired to become anarchitect after a visit to twohouses in Lincoln, whichGropius and his colleagueMarcel Breuer had built forthemselves. Mr. Barnes returnedto Harvard and received hismaster of architecture degreein 1942.After serving during WorldWar II in the Naval Reserve inSan Francisco, he worked inCalifornia for designer HenryDreyfus on the development oflow-cost, prefabricated housing.“At that time there was no questionin my mind that modernarchitecture and social commitmentwere inextricably linked,”he once said.He found little government supportfor affordable housing andmoved to New York where hestarted his own practice in 1949.His wife Mary, who studiedarchitecture in London, wasamong his collaborators and alsoserved as curator of architectureat the Museum of Modern Artfrom 1947 to 1949.Mr. Barnes was a tall, lanky, softspokenman who dressed inpreppie tweeds and seersuckers.Until late in life, he spent anhour each morning runningoutdoors. He did most of hisdesigning on weekends in hishouse in Mt. Kisco, N.Y., wherehe had a studio, and he wouldgo to the New York office onMonday mornings with carefullyworked out drawings for hisstaff. He was a person of warmthand charm, and in spite of hissuccess, of great modesty.He liked his buildings to beas simple and logical as hisclothes. They do not attempt tobe flamboyantly original worksof art. They are, rather, placesthat fit their sites, their inhabitants,and their purposes. Theyoften have a spare and understatedsimplicity.Mr. Barnes’s buildings in NewEngland, besides Haystack,include the 28 State Street officetower in Boston (formerly NewEngland Merchants Bank); theCathedral of the ImmaculateConception in Burlington, Vt.;Old Stone Square office buildingin Providence; dormitories atthe Harvard Divinity School,St. Paul’s School, DeerfieldAcademy, and Bennington andMiddlebury colleges; and a numberof private houses. A bookon his work, Edward LarrabeeBarnes: Architect, published in1994, lists 123 works.Mr. Barnes won numerousawards. He received the ThomasJefferson Medal from theUniversity of Virginia in 1981and a 350th Anniversary Medalfrom Harvard in 1986. He was afellow of the American Academyof Arts and Sciences and of theAmerican Academy of Arts andLetters. In 1980, his firmreceived the Firm Award fromthe American Institute ofArchitects.He leaves his wife Mary; a son,John, an architect who is directorof campus planning at theUniversity of California-SantaCruz; and two granddaughters.Copyright 2004,Globe Newspaper CompanyThe Boston GlobeReprinted with permission71 Milton Magazine

Providing for Milton’s FutureLucius Wilmerding III ’48 Safeguards School’s ‘Truths and Traditions’Consistency marks the generosity of Lucius Wilmerding III ’48: He supportsMilton’s Annual Fund regularly and has established two charitablegift annuities that grant lifetime income for him and will later help growthe School’s endowment.Lucius was in Class VI as the United States entered World War II. Youngerfaculty members were going off to war and many retired faculty returned tothe classroom. “We had the best teachers,” Lucius says.Lucius appreciates the intellectual discipline that Milton gave him. “Thecurriculum trained our minds to make accurate judgments,” he says. “I alsovalue friendships begun at Milton, which have deepened over time as werecognize the perspectives shared and the depth of wisdom imparted.“Now our gifts to Milton Academy assure that the School’s truths andtraditions are offered to each new class as it takes up the challenge andexcitement of School life that we knew over 50 years ago.”Adela and Lucius WilmerdingFor information on planned giving options at Milton, please contactSuzie Hurd Greenup ’75 in the development office at 617-898-2376 orsuzie_greenup@milton.edu.72 Milton Magazine

Milton AcademyBoard of Trustees, 2005Bradley M. BloomWellesley, MassachusettsWilliam T. Burgin ’61Dover, MassachusettsJorge Castro ’75Pasadena, CaliforniaEdward Dugger IIIJamaica Plain, MassachusettsJames M. Fitzgibbons ’52EmeritusChestnut Hill, MassachusettsVictoria Hall Graham ’81Haverford, PennsylvaniaMargaret Jewett Greer ’47EmeritaChevy Chase, MarylandAntonia Monroe Grumbach ’61SecretaryNew York, New YorkJ. Tomilson Hill ’66New York, New YorkFranklin W. Hobbs IV ’65PresidentNew York, New YorkBarbara HostetterBoston, MassachusettsOgden M. Hunnewell ’70Vice PresidentBrookline, MassachusettsHarold W. Janeway ’54EmeritusWebster, New HampshireDavid B. Jenkins ’49Duxbury, MassachusettsGeorge A. KellnerVice PresidentNew York, New YorkHelen Lin ’80Hong KongF. Warren McFarlan ’55Belmont, MassachusettsCarol Smith MillerBoston, MassachusettsTracy Pun Palandjian ’89Belmont, MassachusettsRichard C. Perry ’73New York, New YorkJohn P. Reardon ’56Vice PresidentCohasset, MassachusettsJohn S. Reidy ’56Boston, MassachusettsKevin Reilly Jr. ’73Baton Rouge, LouisianaRobin RobertsonHead of SchoolMilton, MassachusettsH. Marshall Schwarz ’54EmeritusNew York, New YorkKaran Sheldon ’73Blue Hill Falls, MaineFrederick G. Sykes ’65Rye, New YorkJide J. Zeitlin ’81TreasurerNew York, New York

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