Tim MorseHe became a role model, instilling hislove of Italy in students,planting seeds for later wanderlust.Max HallAdams’s classes and during several summers, andpolished his Spanish on a sabbatical in Nicaragua, buildingupon a foundation of French from early years workingin Africa and Haiti. While he throws out foreignwords in math class “just for the fun of it,” he believeshis language knowledge has the most impact outside theclassroom. An active supporter of the German Club,attending their films and weekly German table, Lariveehas offered homework help to students in French,Spanish, and German, and is currently mentoring asenior project on bilingual education.This personal passion of Larivee’s is not lost on his students,even if he’s teaching them algorithms or helpingthem solve equations. Likewise, when physics teacherMax Hall played Ragazzo Fortunato at a postsabbaticalchapel talk and explained that the title means “LuckyGuy,” nothing seemed quite as appealing as living inRome, as Hall did, and mastering Italian. He became arole model, instilling his love of Italy in students, plantingseeds for later wanderlust.CONCORD ACADEMY MAGAZINE WINTER <strong>2007</strong>Larivee, Hawley, Hall . . . are other schools full of mathand science teachers who love languages? If not, why is<strong>Concord</strong> <strong>Academy</strong>? Giannino-Racine thinks it points toa broad institutional philosophy, and says somethingabout CA’s character. “The people this school attracts tothe Science Department are people who have broaderinterests,” he said. “CA attracts people who aren’t onedimensional.”It also demonstrates that love of learning girds not onlythe school’s mission, but also its faculty. “If you’re notinterested in other people’s cultures,” Fandel said,“you’re going to be just a dispenser of knowledge.”30
The Impact ofLearning ChineseWvisit to China. As a first-year graduate student,realizing that businesses would likely need someonewith her language skills and education, Darbychecked out Columbia’s job board and, within afew days, landed a position with an internationalconsulting firm, which led to her 1973 visit toChina. She credits her strong command ofMandarin with that opportunity, and with othersthat followed. Among them: Darby helped IBMwith its first computer sale to China (to the Bankof China in Hong Kong). She helped marketTsing Tao beer in the U.S. and worked with PanAm to develop routes to China. She also workedfor Allied Chemical, selling its first milliondollars worth of chemicals to China. Darby livedin Hong Kong from 2000 to 2004 with herhusband, Lawrence A. Darby III, a corporatesecurities lawyer, and her twins, Lawrence andAbigail, who today continue their study ofChinese in college.Darby now travels to China several timesa year for consulting assignments and research forthe Chazen Institute. She recognizes how muchthe Mandarin classes at CA influenced her life.“There’s no question the Chinese language at<strong>Concord</strong> impacted my entire career,” she said. “Itstill does.”She credits CA for “providing me with thefoundation” for a career she loves. “I was able toDid you study Chinese at CA? Send your memories to magazine@concordacademy.org.hen Mary Wadsworth Darby ’68 traveledto China in 1973, she was part of the firstU.S. business group—and the very first Americanbusinesswoman—to visit the country since it hadclosed to the outside world during the CulturalRevolution.Only five years had passed since Darbyleft <strong>Concord</strong> <strong>Academy</strong>, and the Mandarin classesshe took at CA already stood as building blocksfor her budding career as an expert in Chinesefinancial markets. That career went on to includeexecutive positions at Chase and Morgan Stanley,and as executive director of the America-ChinaSociety, chaired by former Secretary of StateHenry Kissinger and former Secretary of StateCyrus Vance. Today Darby is a senior researchscholar at Columbia Business School’s JeromeA. Chazen Institute; besides researching, she usesher expertise in Chinese financial markets to consultfor both Chinese and global businesses.It was Chinese that originally attractedDarby to CA. She had taken an intensiveMandarin summer program at Thayer <strong>Academy</strong>and was determined to continue the language inhigh school. “<strong>Concord</strong> <strong>Academy</strong> offeredMandarin classes,” she recalled. “The school wasso far ahead of its time, so visionary.”Darby loved those classes. The teacher, TingLin Shang, insisted her students learn to read,converse, and write. “I remember studying hoursof Chinese each day to prepare for our biweekly,two-hour intensive Mandarin classes and practicingcalligraphy with my brush to write charactersevery night,” said Darby, who called the classes“good survival training. The first mistake was tenpoints off. Making the mistake twice was twentypoints off. And if you got the same characterwrong the third time it could cost you your placein the class.”By her senior year, Darby was so advancedin Mandarin that CA supplemented her educationwith tutoring at Wellesley College. After CA,Darby got her BA in East Asian Studies fromPrinceton, then headed to Columbia for graduateschool. In 1972, President Nixon made his historicgo to China with David Rockefeller and HenryKissinger. I have met many of the leaders ofChina, including Deng Xiaoping, Premier ZhuRongji, former Communist Party of China memberBo Yibo, presidents Jiang Zemin and HuJintao, foreign ministers Huang Hua and LiZhaoxing, Ambassador Yang Jiejr, and many otherpolitical and business leaders,” she said. “I was inBeijing and Shanghai the year of Mao’s death, andwitnessed the Gang of Four demonstrations inboth cities. The progress since my first visit isalmost beyond imagining.”Attorney Phebe Miller ’67 also studiedMandarin at CA, then chose to attend Wellesleystrictly because it was among the few places teachingthe language. She spent a summer studyingintensive Chinese, and transferred to Princetonafter participating in a foundation-funded programthere that focused on languages considered“critical,” but that weren’t widely taught. Duringthe summer of 1970, Miller studied Chinese inTaipei. “Studying Chinese had a huge impact onthe direction of my life,” she said. “It hugelyaffected where I went to college. And I went toHarvard Law School because it had East Asianlegal studies.”Early in her law career, while working inthe London office of a New York-based firm,Miller was among the first group of Englishlawyers to visit China, where she met with financialofficials. When she left the firm, she becamegeneral counsel of Discount Corporation of NewYork, where she organized and attended meetingsin China. Upon arriving in China with a Discountexecutive, she discovered that her Chinese lawprofessor at Harvard, who helped set up some ofthe meetings, hadn’t arranged for an interpreter.“He thought I could handle it,” she said (and shedid). From 1995 to 2000, as chief legal officer atthe Bank of New York, Miller managed issuesinvolving China and other Asian countries.Today Miller lectures on U.S. and EuropeanUnion securities and banking law at theUniversity of London. She rarely uses her Chinese(though she did once startle some talkativeChinese students by asking them in Mandarin toquiet down). “Although I remain very interestedin China, and try from time to time to read orspeak Chinese, it is not now the focus of mycareer,” she said. Still, Miller becomes enthuseddescribing the classic Chinese characters shelearned to draw in Shang’s class at CA.Mandarin classes were offered at <strong>Concord</strong><strong>Academy</strong> from 1963 through 1969, and again from1997 through 2002 (through a teachersharingarrangement with <strong>Concord</strong>-CarlisleRegional High School). Tutoring was provided inthe eighties to several students who wanted tolearn the language. While Chinese language hasnot been taught at CA since 2002, Chinese culturehas, via classes such as Early Chinese History andCulture, Asian American History, and BecomingAmerican: The Literature of Immigration.Reintroducing Chinese language study isone of CA’s strategic initiatives, and the school isstriving to develop resources to meet that goal.Darby considers it a critical need. “The twentyfirstcentury belongs to China,” she said. “If aschool does not offer Mandarin, it will not bepreparing its students well for the future.”Mary Darby ’68 has been named <strong>Concord</strong><strong>Academy</strong>'s Davidson Lecturer. She speaks atCA on April 12, <strong>2007</strong> at 2:10 p.m. in thePerforming Arts Center.31WWW.CONCORDACADEMY.ORG WINTER <strong>2007</strong>
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