Commencement - The Taft School

B U L L E T I N 

Commencement 

2009 

FaShion Forward 

alumni weekend 

Vintage raCing 

Summer 2009

20 

alumni 

weekend in 

Pictures 

Photographs by 

Bob Falcetti, Phil Dutton, 

Peter Frew ’75 & Andre Li ’11 

h Bruce Powell ’59 and 

grandson Jack Kneisel ’11 

lead the 50th Reunion 

class in the parade along 

with Class Secretary 

Stallworth Larson ’59. 

in this iSSue 

32 

Driven By 

racecars 

Joe Freeman ’62 

collects, competes and 

champions classic cars. 

By Ethan Gilsdorf 


Summer 2009 

26 

The Sweetest melodies 

Excerpts from the 119th Commencement remarks 

By Tom Strickland, Willy MacMullen ’78, Paul Kiernan 

’09 and Hannah Vazquez ’09 

36 

The Fashionistas 

Six alumni entrepreneurs have one thing 

in common: they love looking—and 

helping others look—fabulous. 

By Bonnie Blackburn Penhollow ’84 

departments 

3 Letters 

3 Taft Trivia 

4 Alumni Spotlight 

8 Around the Pond 

16 Sport 

18 Annual Fund

from the editor 

Connections. My mission for the magazine 

has always been to keep people connected 

with the school, or to reconnect them. So I 

was pleased to see in the results of a recent 

survey we did (to a random selection of 

readers) that half of you contacted a friend 

or classmates after reading the Bulletin. And 

92 percent of you felt the magazine strengthened 

your connection to the institution. 

Dare I say “Mission Accomplished”? 

Not yet. As communications director for 

Taft, I have increasingly sought to make sure 

that communication goes both ways, to invite 

responses and reader participation. Now, 

with the advent of Facebook, LinkedIn and 

Twitter, we have a lot of help on that front. 

Still, for those of us who are digital immigrants, 

navigating the ins and outs of 

social networking can seem as challenging as 

driving around downtown Boston without a 

map (or a Garmin). 

Fear not. If you feel like dipping your 

toes into the virtual realm, why not start by 

“friending” Horace Dutton Taft—our online 

alter ego on Facebook. Who better to speak 

for the school, after all, than the man who 

founded it? 

Spend more time with a Blackberry than 

a computer? Try following TaftSchool on 

Twitter. That way you’re only committing to 

140 characters at a time. 

As connected as this generation of students 

obviously is, though, rest assured that 

as a community we continue to stress the 

value of face time over Facebook. 

As always, I want to hear your stories... 

and now you have several more ways to 

keep in touch. 

On the Cover 



2009 

FaShion Forward 

alumni weekend 

Vintage raCing 

Summer 2009 

2 Taft Bulletin Summer 2009 

—Julie Reiff, editor 

Seniors Sarah 

Albert and Wells 

Andres were 

among the 

many graduates 

recognized at the 

school’s 119th 


Exercises in May. 

For more, turn to 

page 26. 

ANDRE LI ’11 

This is the third issue of Taft Bulletin 

published on 100 percent postconsumer 

recycled fiber. What difference 

does that make? Well, the summer 

issue, our largest, consumes more than 

six tons of paper. Not using virgin fiber 

translates into the following savings: 

156 trees preserved, which 

generate enough oxygen for 

roughly 78 people a year 

71,208 gallons of water, or enough 

to take 4,140 eight-minute showers 

9,550 lbs. net greenhouse 

gases prevented, could help a 

polar bear or two 

enough BTUs to power your 

home for more than six months 

4,323 lbs. of waste that doesn’t 

go to a landfill 

Environmental impact estimates provided 

by Neenah Papers, except that bit 

about the polar bear. 

www 

Taft on the web 

Find a friend’s address or 

look up back issues of the Bulletin 

at www.TaftAlumni.com 

For more campus news and events, 

including admissions information, 

visit www.TaftSchool.org 

What happened at this 

afternoon’s game? 

Visit www.TaftSports.com 

Don’t forget you can shop 

online at www.TaftStore.com 

800.995.8238 or 860.945.7736 


Summer 2009 

Volume 79, Number 4 

Bulletin Staff 

direCtor oF deVelopment: 

Chris Latham 

editor: Julie Reiff 

alumni noteS: Linda Beyus 

deSign: Good Design, LLC 

www.gooddesignusa.com 

prooFreader: Nina Maynard 

mail letterS to: 

Julie Reiff, Editor 

Taft Bulletin 

The Taft School 

Watertown, CT 06795-2100 U.S.A. 

ReiffJ@TaftSchool.org 

Send alumni newS to: 

Linda Beyus 

Alumni Office 



TaftBulletin@TaftSchool.org 

deadlineS For alumni noteS: 

Fall–August 30 

Winter–November 15 

Spring–February 15 

Summer–May 15 

Send addreSS CorreCtionS to: 

Sally Membrino 

Alumni Records 



TaftRhino@TaftSchool.org 

1.860.945.7777 

www.taFtalumni.Com 

The Taft Bulletin (ISSN 0148-0855) 

is published quarterly, in February, 

May, August and November, by The 

Taft School, 110 Woodbury Road, 

Watertown, CT 06795-2100, and is 

distributed free of charge to alumni, 

parents, grandparents and friends of 

the school. All rights reserved. 

This magazine is printed on 

100% recycled paper.

letterS 

Love it? Hate it? 

Read it? tell us! 

We’d love to hear what you think 

about the stories in this Bulletin. 

We may edit your letters for length, 

clarity and content, but please write! 

Julie Reiff, editor 


110 Woodbury Road 

Watertown, CT 06795-2100 

or Reiff J@TaftSchool.org 

Courtly Company 

I want to congratulate you on the spring 

edition of the Bulletin. The three articles 

published jointly under “Legal Tafties” were 

quite informative and a pleasure to read. I 

especially enjoyed the article about my colleague 

on the federal bench, Robert Sweet 

’40, and the reprint from the latest book by 

Philip Howard ’66. Judge Sweet is certainly 

a judge to be admired and emulated by his 

fellow judges. As someone who has been on 

the bench only three years, I certainly will 

do so. As someone who has already read Mr. 

Howard’s The Death of Common Sense: How 

Law Is Suffocating America—and who has 

??? 

Taft trivia 

seen that suffocation from both sides of the 

bench—I am anxious to read Life Without 

Lawyers and his previous work, The Collapse 

of the Common Good. 

—Francisco A. Besosa, ’67 

U.S. District Judge, San Juan, P.R. 

A Checkered Past 

The two main clues to the date of the photograph 

[on page 28 of the spring issue) are 

1) the car which is definitely a pre-WWII 

model, and 2) the fact that the checkerboard 

pattern is still at the top of the square tower 

in the brickwork. 

Of course, a ’30s model car could have 

been parked there after WWII, but it’s highly 

unlikely. No new cars were made for about 

five years during the war, and people had 

to manage as best they could with the ones 

they got before the war. We had a ’37 Chevy 

The student literary magazine today is known as 

Red Inc., but what was the name of the Taft literary 

magazine that debuted in 1906 and lasted until 1952? 

A Vineyard Vines key ring will be sent to the winner, 

whose name will be drawn from all correct entries 

received. Please send your replies to the editor at the 

address or e-mail above. 

The last question must have been too difficult (or 

no one wanted coasters) judging by the paltry number 

of replies. If you need a little help this issue, you’ll find the answer at 

www.TaftSchool.org, with a little hunting. (Did you know the site has a search 

function?) Congratulations to Paul Zantzinger ’76, who knew that HDT 

attended Cincinnati Law School. 

convertible that was being held together 

with baling wire until we were finally able to 

get a new ’47 Chevy. 

—Chris Davenport ’56 

Ed. note: The checkerboard was the main clue 

for me, as well as the absence of the “new gym,” 

built in 1955. My source, the late Rick Davis ’59, 

told me once that the HDT tower suffered damage 

in the 1938 hurricane that hit Connecticut, 

but that by the time the damage was noticed/ 

or needed repair the war had started and skilled 

masons to repair the checkerboard pattern could 

not be found so they went with plain brick. 

About that shot of the two guys beside the 

pond, I could be wrong, but I remember a 

big photo shoot in 1940 or 41 that Hank 

Estabrook ’43 was invited to be in (tea with 

Edith Cruikshank) and I was not. And I 

think this shot of the guys and pond was 

part of that, and if I’m right (and the last 

time I was wrong was in 1943), those guys 

are Berent Friele (left) and Ned Andrews, 

both Class of 1942. 

x Master Sgt Friele ’43 

(left) and classmate 

Jim Morrison in Accra, 

Ghana, April 1945— 

“a few days after we 

bumped into each other 

in Miami. We’d crossed 

the Atlantic in Liberator 

bombers. Friele 

was headed for China; 

I ended up in Liberia.” 

Friele went to war and was a hero of the 

battle of Normandy. We met up by accident 

in Miami in 1945, both on our way to Africa 

and beyond. Funny, funny man. 

—Jim Morrison ’43 

Getting a Grip 

I love the photo of Horace Taft at bat (page 64 

of the spring issue) but am puzzled by his grip. 

Although he is batting right-handed, he is gripping 

the bat with his left hand superimposed 

on his right, as would a leftie. What gives? Was 

he dyslexic, or was this the style back then? 

—John M. Lord ’63 

—continued on page 58 

Taft Bulletin Summer 2009 3

h George Potts ’69, 

right, with Project 

Troubador at a primary 

school in the village of 

Ait Hani in the High Atlas 

Mountains, Morocco. 

Music in morocco 

While other members of his class were 

celebrating their 40th Reunion here on 

campus, Reunion Co-Chair George 

Potts ’69 was in Morocco, taking in all 

of the sights and sounds on the Djemaa 

el-Fna square in Marrakech with his 

friends from Project Troubador (see 

www.projecttroubador.org). 

“Talk about two different worlds,” 

says George. “Normally we play music 

around Connecticut, New York and 

Massachusetts as a trio called the joint chiefs 

(www.jointchiefsmusic.com), but in this 

case I finally took my friends up on a standing 

invitation I had to join them on one of 

their organization’s foreign journeys.” 


Every trip that Project Troubador 

funds is planned around performances for 

small communities in developing countries. 

“Unlike State Department tours, where 

musicians stay at nice hotels and play for 

Foreign Service personnel and dignitaries, 

Project Troubador works at a much 

‘lower altitude,’ with a goal of creating better 

communication between diverse cultures— 

something my friends believe can only be 

done through direct one-on-one contact.” 

The Morocco trip was also made in 

support of Association Atlas, a local educational 

and ecotourism nonprofit operated 

by a French woman who runs a bed-andbreakfast 

in the remote village of Ait Daoud, 

alumni Spotlight 

high in the Atlas Mountains. “She uses 

money raised through her work to fund the 

primary school in the village; her ultimate 

goal is to create better economic opportunities 

for the indigenous Berber people, 

especially the young girls.” 

“We played 18 gigs in 15 days and traveled 

more than 2,500 km through one of 

the most beautiful countries I have ever 

seen. For one whose idea of camping 

is staying at a Days Inn when I cannot 

find a Hilton, this trip was way out of my 

comfort zone. On the other hand, it was 

precisely for that reason that I had to go!” 

You can read more at 

http://georgepotts.wordpress.com/

Merrow Honored 

CiTaTion of MeriT aCknowledges a Career devoTed To eduCaTion 

John Merrow ’59 has built a career reporting 

on education. From newspaper to 

radio and finally television, his reports 

have examined the status quo of public 

education, asking the hard questions and 

following up weeks, months or even years 

later to see what changes have, or haven’t 

been made. On Alumni Day this year, he 

was awarded Taft’s Citation of Merit for 

his dedication. 

“You understood that education is 

more than learning in a classroom,” the 

citation reads in part, “and that the gift of 

life carries with it the obligation to try to 

make the world a better place. Your ability 

to impart knowledge has motivated others 

to change how we educate children to 

improve the quality of their lives.” 

The Citation of Merit is the school’s 

Time Turns Phantastic 

The Phish Reunion concert at Boston’s historic Fenway Park 

in May may have garnered more media attention, but ten 

days earlier Phish founder and lead singer Trey Anastasio 

’83 headlined a ground-breaking concert with the Grammy 

Award-winning Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Rolling 

Stone called it a “decidedly casual night at the symphony,” 

which Trey dedicated to his sister, Kristy Manning, who 

died three weeks before after a long battle with cancer. Her 

son Jason was in the audience. 

highest alumni honor and is given each 

year to a person whose lifework best 

typifies the school motto: Not to be ministered 

unto but to minister. 

“I fear that many students today leave 

college with anchors, not roots,” Merrow 

told the audience. “The anchor is, of 

course, the crushing debt that accompanies 

the college diploma, debt brought on 

by a national spasm of selfishness. Some of 

you (and many of our parents) benefited 

from the GI Bill after World War II, when 

our country invested in higher education. 

Back then we recognized that, when any 

one of us is well educated, the entire society 

is lifted up. It was a social investment, 

and it paid off with the largest expansion 

of wealth in history and the creation of a 

strong American middle class. It wasn’t all 

Courtesy of the Baltimore Sun Media Group. All rights reserved. 

rosy, of course. Most of higher education 

actually opposed the GI Bill, because it 

didn’t want millions of unwashed hardscrabble 

veterans on their campuses. And 

America didn’t pass the GI Bill for purely 

selfless reasons. Fear was a factor too: we 

did not want millions of GIs out of work 

and on the streets.” 

Follow his blog, Taking Note, at 

http://learningmatters.tv/blog/op-ed/ 

Trey joined the BSO and Music Director Marin Alsop, 

the first woman to head a major American orchestra, on May 

21. The first half of the program featured classic Phish songs 

and Trey compositions, while the second half of the program 

featured the East Coast première of “Time Turns Elastic,” an 

innovative work, co-composed with Don Hart, with long, orchestral 

passages intertwined with epic guitar lines and vocals 

in the classic Phish vein. 

“Most of the time when people use an electric instrument 

with an orchestra, they destroy the capability to blend,” 

Trey said. “Our approach is to handle it as any other solo 

instrument. I play at the volume of say, an oboe, so Don can 

orchestrate around the guitar.” 

The performance got five standing ovations. “For their part, 

the orchestra seemed to be having a ball with the music,” the 

Baltimore Sun wrote, “playing with vigor and smiling whenever 

Anastasio went off on one of his trademark noodling solos” 

The Sun noted that Trey has been collaborating with traditional 

classical ensembles for several years now, but called 

“Time Turns Elastic” his “most ambitious effort in this 

field.” A recording of the work, performed by Trey and the 

Northwest Sinfonia, was also released in May (see In Print, 

page 6). 

The May 31 Fenway concert marked the start of a Phish 

Reunion tour that landed in New York, New Jersey, North 

Carolina, Tennessee, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Indiana and 

Wisconsin before the end of June. 

Taft Bulletin SUMMER 2009 5 

Bob Falcetti

alumni Spotlight 

Collective Disorder 

Eliza Geddes ’97 showed some of her recent 

sculptures in April at the Boomerang 

exhibition at “Room” in Lower Manhattan. 

Eliza’s sculpture works “examine her interests 

in surface and texture,” writes New 

York Art Beat. “Her assemblages examine 

the breakdown between painting and 

sculpture by combining painterly methods 

with sculptural uses of space.” 

There is no reverential treatment of the 

canvas in her work; it is ripped up, sculpted 

and treated with various wood stains 

and other substances, often incorporating 

ordinary items such as T-shirts and rubber 

bands with more traditional fine art 

materials. By combining both mediums of 


Alumni trustee 

Steve B. Turner ’86 was elected to a four-year term on the Taft 

Board of Trustees in May. He became executive managing director 

at Standard & Poor’s in 2004, where he co-headed the 

Financial Data & Analytics Division and served as a member of 

the Operating Committee. 

Prior to that, Steve co-founded and was co-CEO of Capital IQ, which provided 

high-impact information and workflow solutions to leading financial institutions, 

advisory firms and corporations. 

Steve left S&P in July 2008 and moved to New Zealand, initially to take a year 

off and travel with his family, but that has recently turned into a more permanent 

move to New Zealand. 

This was the first time all three alumni trustee candidates were married to fellow 

Tafties. Steve married classmate Shannon Engels in 1995 and they now live in 

Wanaka, New Zealand, with their three kids, Sam, Callie and Will. 

v Eliza Geddes ’97, 

2008 Untitled, wood, 

silk and cardboard, 

34’’ x 24’’ 

painting and sculpture into one work of 

art her sculpture work is an ongoing study 

of the two. 

Major influences in Eliza’s work 

have been Antoni Tapies, Eva Hesse, 

Robert Rauschenberg, Jackson Pollock 

and Cy Twombly. 

A portion of the proceeds from the 

exhibition went to New York Restoration 

Project, a nonprofit organization founded 

in 1995 by Bette Midler, dedicated to 

reclaiming and restoring New York City 

parks, community gardens and open space. 

Eliza also had a duo show in London 

last December at “Holster Projects” called 

Collective Disorder. 

in print 

Time Turns 

Elastic 

trey 

anastasio ’83 

RUBBER JUNGLE 

RECORDS, 2009 

Morning Glory 

Farm and the 

family that 

feeds an island 

tom 

dunlop ’79 

VINEyARD 

STORIES, 2009 

Flashbacks 

art hansl ’49 

ROBERTSON 

PUBLISHING, 2009 

The Bitter Road 

to Freedom: 

A New History 

of the Liberation 

of Europe 

william i. 

hitchcock ’82 

SIMON & 

SCHUSTER, 2008

This ground-breaking work for vocals, guitar and 

orchestra composed by Trey Anastasio and Don 

Hart, blends the intrinsic elegance of classical 

music with searing blues-rock guitar, resulting in 

an exhilarating work that engages and challenges 

fans of both genres. 

“Neither of us had ever heard anything that 

uses a guitar as a serious instrument intermingled 

with an orchestra in the same way one would 

write a concerto for a violin and orchestra,” says 

Everyone on Martha’s Vineyard eventually 

ends up at Morning Glory Farm—celebrities, 

Islanders, summer visitors, foodies. Buying 

fresh, locally grown and prepared foods from 

Morning Glory is a rite of passage. The Athearn 

family, including daughter Prudy and sons 

Simon and Dan, became “real” farmers in 1979 

when they bought a used tractor and set up a 

Flashbacks takes you on Art Hansl’s journey 

through life—Marine Corps, Mexico, Europe, 

a film career, all the adventures he experienced 

along the way and the interesting people he met. 

He was cast in action pictures that enabled him 

to travel to exotic places including Mexico, Italy, 

Morocco, Switzerland and Yugoslavia. 

Art was born in New York City with a silver 

spoon in his mouth—a spoon the size of a shovel, 

though it melted away during the Depression. 

His mother was a writer with a play on Broadway 

In recounting the heroism of the “greatest generation,” 

Americans often overlook the wartime 

experiences of European people themselves—the 

very people for whom the war was fought. 

In this new book, historian William I. 

Hitchcock surveys the European continent from 

D-Day to the final battles of the war and the first 

few months of the peace. Based on exhaustive 

research in five nations and dozens of archives, 

Hitchcock’s ground-breaking account shows that 

the liberation of Europe was both a military triumph 

and a human tragedy of epic proportions. 

Will gives voice to those who were on the 

receiving end of liberation, moving them from 

Trey, who first collaborated with Hart at the 2004 

Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival while staging a 

piece from one of his solo albums, Seis de Mayo. “I 

grew up loving Ravel and Eric Clapton equally,” 

he continues. “So I kept saying to Don, ‘why can’t 

we have a piece of music that’s half Ravel and half 

Cream’s ‘Disraeli Gears’?” 

Both Trey, named one of the 100 Greatest 

Guitarists of All Time by Rolling Stone and a 

founding member of the genre-melding rock 

table under a huge umbrella to sell vegetables— 

and moved into the vanguard of what’s known 

today as the “locally grown” movement 

Here, rich in detail and lush with the photographs 

of Alison Shaw, is the story of how 

the farm came to exist, the family that makes 

it happen, and the food that excites us all. The 

70 recipes include favorites from both the farm 

at age 22; his father an associate of J.P. Morgan & 

Company. They fired him off to private schools 

at an early age, where he found an aptitude for 

languages. 

Commercials were a steppingstone to feature 

films—his first a barely visible gig in Cast a Giant 

Shadow with Kirk Douglas. He was usually cast 

in action pictures because he looked good and 

moved well, though his acting clearly hadn’t 

been nurtured by the Hollywood studio system. 

Location work took him to slave markets in 

the edge of the story to the center. From France 

to Poland to Germany, from concentration-camp 

internees to refugees, farmers to shopkeepers, 

husbands and wives to children, the experience of 

liberation was often difficult and dangerous. Their 

gratitude was mixed with guilt or resentment. 

Their lives were difficult to reassemble. 

Bitter Road to Freedom was named a finalist 

for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction. 

The Pulitzer jury described it as “a heavily 

documented exploration of the overlooked suffering 

of noncombatants in the victory over Nazi 

Germany, written with the dash of a novelist and 

the authority of a scholar.” 

band Phish, and Don, who’s worked with a diverse 

group of musicians that includes Martina 

McBride, Collective Soul and Randy Travis and 

is currently composer-in-residence for Orchestra 

Nashville, are musical chameleons whose tastes 

cross all boundaries. While the pair’s collaborations 

on Trey’s Shine (2005) and Bar 17 (2006) 

may prefigure “Time Turns Elastic,” the composition 

actually began as a Phish song. 

More information at www.trey.com 

stand and some well-known island chefs. 

Tom Dunlop, a lifelong resident of the 

Island, is a former editor of and now contributing 

writer to Martha’s Vineyard Magazine. He 

is the co-editor of the second edition of the 

Vineyard Gazette Reader. Tom lives in New York 

City, where he also works as a film producer. 

Marrakech, through an avalanche in Switzerland, 

and he survived a mob in Yugoslavia. But the 

dolce vita ended around 1968 and Art, among 

other expat actors, headed for California. 

Eventually he turned to writing with the encouragement 

of an outrageously beautiful French 

girl with whom he fell in love and married in a 

rare moment of insight. Art has written four novels, 

and now he has decided to tell the truth, as he 

remembers it, in Flashbacks. 

Will teaches history at Temple University in 

Philadelphia. He was born in Fukuoka, Japan, 

in 1965, and has lived in Tokyo, Tel Aviv, Paris, 

Brussels, Washington, DC, Boston and New 

Haven. He received a B.A. from Kenyon and 

a Ph.D. from Yale in 1994. He has also taught 

at Yale, where he won a teaching prize, and at 

Wellesley College. He is the author of France 

Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for 

Leadership in Europe and The Struggle for Europe: 

The Turbulent History of a Divided Continent, 

1945–present. 


Mother-daughter Show 

Paintings by Amy Wynne-Derry ’84 provided 

the perfect complement to faculty 

emerita Gail Wynne’s work in clay sculpture 

in the Mark W. Potter Gallery’s first 

mother-daughter show. 

“I have always been consumed by the 

connections between science and art,” 

says Amy. “Lately, I have adopted the 

8 Taft Bulletin SUMMER 2009 

character of chronicler or scientific recorder 

in the studio as I make the work. I 

am documenting the degradation of the 

planet, recording futuristic topographical 

data and the last fleeting glimpses of the 

beasts that inhabit the earth.” 

Gail taught art at Taft from 1968 to 

2000. After retiring, she taught ceramic 

For the latest news 

on campus events, 

please visit 

www.TaftSchool.org. 

around the Pond 

By Sam RouthieR 

h art teacher emerita 

Gail Wynne at the 

joint show she had 

with daugher Amy ’84 

in the Mark W. Potter 

Gallery. Bob Falcetti 

art at the Dunedin Fine Arts Center in 

Florida from 2001 to 2006. She now 

works on her clay sculpture and writing 

in her studio on Cape Cod, where she 

lives with her husband, John. They have 

four children, including Amy, and four 

grandchildren.

Field of dreams 

HARDHAT HEADLINES 

The renovation of HDT and the addition 

of the new dining hall were not the only 

construction on campus this year. One 

of the other projects involved combining 

Facilities Director Jim Shepard’s zeal 

for improving Taft’s plant with a love of 

America’s pastime. 

kabuki Music 

Ryo Tsuneoka visited from Tokyo, 

Japan, to share his knowledge of 

Tokiwazu, 300-year-old Japanese traditional 

music developed to accompany 

Kabuki theater. It was Tsuneoka’s first 

time performing in a Western country, 

and his enthusiasm was palpable as 

his smile graced the Bingham stage. 

With the assistance of Japanese teacher 

Seiko Michaels, Tsuneoka played a 

“matching game” with the audience to 

see if they could figure out which of his 

pieces recalled a winter scene, a thunderstorm, 

the spring and a residential 

atmosphere. He is the cousin of uppermids 

Rei and Ko Yazaki. 

“I have a lot of heart for baseball,” Jim 

says. “There’s nothing like watching your 

kids play baseball, and I want our community 

to take pride in the sport.” 

Ideas began percolating early in 2008 

about ways to honor athletic director 

emeritus and longtime coach Larry Stone 

v Larry Stone throws out the first pitch at 

the season’s home opener as current Athletic 

Director Dave Hinman ’87 looks on. Peter Frew ’75 

and thoughts quickly turned to a reconstruction 

of Rockwell Field. 

Jim shared the opportunity for brainstorming 

with Justin Lentz ’09, who is 

an aspiring architect. Justin used time in 

Loueta Chickadaunce’s art class to come 

up with a blueprint, and by the end of 

February, the project was in the works. 

The renovation includes two new 

dugouts with comfortable benches, water 

fountains, and lockers for helmets and 

bats, as well as new sod for the field, new 

bases and pitcher’s mound, as well as two 

bullpens and a batting cage. Because the 

field is contiguous with the main campus, 

they used the same bricks and mortar as 

Vogelstein dormitory. 

“I wanted the feel of a major league 

dugout,” Shepard said, “while maintaining 

the feel of the rest of the campus. People 

will drive by campus and wish they could 

play baseball here.” 


around the pond 

legacy of 911 

“This is the most difficult decision a president has to make,” Former Deputy National 

Security Adviser Dr. J. D. Crouch told students at a Morning Meeting in April. “Put 

in context of what came before and the shock of 9/11 itself,” he said, “the decision to 

go to war in Iraq is easier to understand.” 

Reading from the Iraqi Liberation Act of 1998, he said: “It should be the policy 

of the United States to seek to remove Saddam Hussein’s regime from power and to 

replace it with a democratic government.” 

He went on to explain why he believes those words are so similar to those spoken 

by President Bush in 2003. 

“The risk calculus that a president has to make: Were we willing to live with it or did 

we believe we needed to fight against it? The dangers that appeared remote before the 9/11 now appeared very large, very upfront.” 

Dr. Crouch was deputy national security adviser until June 2007. He was a senior adviser to the president on national security 

matters, chaired the sub-cabinet Deputies Committee and was second in command at the National Security Council. He is 

currently a senior scholar at the National Institute for Public Policy and an independent consultant. 

His visit was sponsored by the Rear Admiral Raymond F. DuBois Fellowship in International Affairs. 


A Ton of (Yee)-Fun 

The Potter Gallery hosted an in-house 

treat this spring. From April 2 to 20, photography 

teacher Yee-Fun Yin mounted an 

exhibit of his own work. Entitled “Daily 

Bread,” it featured shots taken of farms 

in the Watertown and Woodbury areas. 

The entire campus rallied around Yin’s 

impressive shots, demonstrating how in 

his two years of teaching, he has become a 

beloved member of the community. 

The photographs, which are a mix of 

black-and-white and color and are all 

digital prints, evoke the persisting relevance 

of agriculture in America. Yin told 

the Bulletin, “The sense of timelessness 

that the traditional film renders, using a 

large format 4 by 5 inch camera, helps to 

remind us of the long tradition of agriculture 

in our society.” 

Yin’s exhibit certainly reminded the 

campus that while we may exist in a 

world focused on technological advancement, 

agriculture remains both vital and 

vibrant right in Taft’s backyard. 

After the “Daily Bread” exhibit 

wrapped up, Yin took down those works 

Yee-Fun Yin 

and replaced them with “Portrait of a 

Graduate.” From April 20 to 24, Yin’s 

prints, each 55 by 20 inches, took to the 

walls. Earlier in the year, Yin had solicited 

volunteers among the senior class to 

pose in a manner that would reflect what 

they bring to the Taft community. After 

the overwhelming response, Yin’s exhibit 

captured the diversity, talent and dynamism 

of the Class of ’09. 

“The ‘Portrait of a Graduate’ series, 

although it could only picture 30 students, 

was the best visual representation 

of the Taft community that I’ve seen,” 

said Dean of Multicultural Affairs Greg 

Ricks. “Having those images up made me 

extremely proud to work at this school.” 

On campus, Yin teaches all levels of 

photography courses and also advises 

several independent study projects each 

year. He can also be found frequently 

photographing campus events and battling 

fellow teachers on the squash 

courts. Away from Taft, he teaches 

photography at New Haven’s Gateway 

Community College. 

v Kathy Demmon and Alexis McNamee were two of the seniors who volunteered 

for yee-Fun’s “Portrait of a Graduate” project.

Green Fair 

Taft enjoyed its first ever Green Fair this 

spring, an afternoon-long festival that 

encouraged the community to buy local 

goods and live in a sustainable manner. 

The fair was the culmination of a great 

year for TEAM [Taft Environmental 

Action Movement] and its new faculty 

co-adviser, biology teacher Carly Borken. 

Borken, who taught in Hawaii before 

arriving at Taft this year, has made an imprint 

on campus through her passion for 

environmentalism. 

The inspiration for the Green Fair 

came from two sources. First, Borken attended 

a sustainability conference last 

fall, which provided “a powerful message” 

to work with one’s neighbors to create 

an economic, educational and ecological 

Andre Li ’11 

interfaith Leadership 

On April 21, Taft hosted Eboo 

Patel, adviser to President Obama 

on issues of faith and author of 

the recent book, Acts of Faith: The 

Story of an American Muslim. Patel 

spoke of the difference between 

pluralism and extremism, and how 

he sees interfaith cooperation as 

necessary for peace in the new century. 

In this vein, he founded the 

Interfaith Youth Corps, a national 

movement focusing on training 

“bridge builders.” Patel’s speech 

had such an impact that uppermid 

Jahdai Kilkenny decided to start an 

interfaith youth group on campus. 

Kilkenny told the Bulletin, “I loved 

Patel’s message, and I think it would 

go a long way to building community 

on campus to talk openly about 

our faith.” 

relationship and build sustainability efforts. 

Second, during Borken’s six years of 

living in Hawaii, she enjoyed the annual 

Kokua festival, a day of music and local 

merchandising put on by musician and 

Honolulu resident Jack Johnson. 

Behind Vogelstein Dormitory, nine 

different vendors and three sets of students 

set up tables for visitors to enjoy. 

These vendors included the Housatonic 

Valley Association, the Northeast Organic 

Farming Association, La Palette bakery 

and Watertown Wicks candle shop. 

Student tables included a tie-dyed T-shirt 

station, a face-painting table and a seed 

planting station. 

“I think it went great!” said Borken. 

“The weather was wonderful, the students 

were wonderful and every vendor that 

came said it was totally worth their time 

to be a part of the day. I am excited to see 

it grow in the future, but I think it was the 

perfect start for the first year.” 

x Seniors Clifton Bonner-Desravines 

and Patrick Salazar perform works 

from the album they created as 

a senior project. Andre Li ’11 

Leaving Their mark 

n Students plant seeds at the first annual Green 

Fair on Earth Day this spring. 

John Lombard ’09 

Borken is excited about the potential 

that TEAM has built this year, and looks 

forward to continuing on that success. 

“It has taken a lot of people here to get 

the ball rolling,” she said. “It’s been lots of 

little baby steps in terms of talking about 

issues more openly. We have an excited 

community with a lot potential to do 

what’s right.” 

Each spring, dozens of seniors explore passions through their senior projects, 

culminating experiences that allow graduating students a new sense of academic 

freedom. This year, Taft has enjoyed 31 projects from 52 different seniors. 

These endeavors are of great variety: a few are physical changes to the Taft plant, 

while some are more academic and others are of a category all to themselves. 

Highlights from this year’s selection include: the creation of a curriculum for a 

women’s studies course, to be taught next spring in the History Department; the 

construction of a fire pit on the Jig Patio; a trio of senior boys learning how to 

breakdance; and the production of a Spinal Tap-style documentary about Taft. 

The chair of the senior projects committee is former “Around the Pond” writer 

Joe Freeman, who told the Bulletin, “This year’s projects are among the most creative 

and provocative that we’ve seen in recent years. I’m excited that the Class of ’09 

has shown such independent initiative.” 



washington Optimism 

Congressman Chris Murphy spoke 

about the power of youth and his hope 

for government at a Morning Meeting in 

April. He is currently in his second term 

representing Connecticut’s Fifth District, 

and serves on the Energy and Commerce 

Committee and on the Committee on 

Oversight and Government Reform 

and its National Security and Foreign 

Affairs and Government Management, 

Organization and Procurement 

subcommittees. 

“One of the things that impressed me is 

his willingness to reach out to his constituents,” 

said AP Government teacher Rachel 

Ryan, who met him last winter while he 

was collecting for a local food bank. 

Describing himself as frequently “the 

youngest guy in the room,” Congressman 

Murphy outlined how his relative youth 

has been a distinct advantage on many 

Summer reading 

The Namesake 

by Jhumpa lahiri 


v Congressman 

Chris Murphy visits 

Rachel Ryan’s government 

class after his 

Morning Meeting talk. 

Peter Frew ’75 

occasions. “We are at a unique moment in 

history,” he told students. “You’ve got to 

be in this game right now, in whatever way 

you can. This may be the most important 

two years—from a policy perspective—in 

a number of decades, especially in respect 

to this nation’s energy policy.” 

“I am unconditionally optimistic about 

government,” he added. “Sometime that 

means the government has to get out of 

the way. I get that; it’s not the solution for 

everything. But I think government can be 

a positive agent for change.” 

Above all, he wanted to share that optimism 

with students. 

“Everyone is going to tell you that 

the door is closed when you want to do 

big things…. If you just try to jiggle the 

handle and push a little bit you’re going to 

find that there really are a lot of doors that 

are open to you.” 

The Namesake takes one family from their tradition-bound 

life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into 

Americans. On the heels of an arranged marriage, the young 

couple settles in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he does 

his best to adapt while his wife pines for home. When their son is born, the task 

of naming him betrays their hope of respecting old ways in a new world. And we 

watch as the son stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting 

loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With empathy and penetrating 

insight, Lahiri explores the expectations bestowed on us by our parents and 

the means by which we come to define who we are. 

n Phil, played by Jake Cohen ’11, 

comes looking for his brother Benny 

(Sam Isaac ’10) to drag him off the 

bible movie set and back to the family 

farm in the spring production of 

Epic Proportions. Andre Li ’11 

epic Proportions 

In late May, Helena Fifer’s intermediate 

and advanced acting classes 

teamed up for Epic Proportions. The 

production featured nine students 

taking on the roles of extras on a 

movie set that combines elements 

of any classical film one could 

think of, from Ben Hur to Queen of 

the Nile. Two of the extras, brothers 

Phil and Benny, played by Jake 

Cohen ’11 and Sam Isaac ’10, 

fall in love with assistant director 

Louise Goldman, played by Lara 

Watling ’10, and a mix of hilarity 

and romance ensues. The show ran 

for two nights, May 24 and 25, and 

provided enjoyable relief as the 

student body moved into final exam 

study mode. Director Helena Fifer 

told the Bulletin, “We were glad to 

put on a play that both showcased 

the actors’ talents and made the 

audience laugh. It was challenging 

for the kids to take on such a variety 

of roles, and rapid-fire costume 

changes, but they met that challenge 

head-on.”

A Blast in the Black Box 

One small-scale theatrical productions made a huge splash 

this spring. Rick Doyle’s adaptation of Twelve Angry Jurors 

took the stage on three consecutive nights, from April 23 to 

the 25. In the renowned play, senior Nick Hurt played the lead 

role in convincing a group of largely impatient and cynical 

peers to uphold the “innocent until proven guilty” mantra of 

the American legal system. Other stars of the play included 

Ben Zucker ’09, who played the jury’s extreme curmudgeon, 

Sam Isaac ’10, Lara Watling ’10 and Julie Nam ’11, who played 

an East Asian immigrant who extolled the freedoms granted 

by due process in the U.S. 

Club 

Spotlight 

Let the Cranes Fall Down 

In the fall of 2008, seniors Sydney Low 

and Mel Mendez were looking to make 

their mark on Taft’s campus in a new way. 

As they brainstormed, they remembered 

the creation of an origami club by Ben 

Grinberg ’07 two years ago, and so they 

seized the opportunity to revive the club’s 

activity this year. In so doing, they have 

invigorated interest in origami all around 

campus, and have also made themselves 

visible in other campus events. Their biggest 

projects this year were helping community 

service chair Baba Frew with Christmas 

ornaments for the Choral Room’s tree, 

and helping student Deanna Kim ’11 with 

constructing one thousand paper cranes. 

Although Low and Mendez have 

graduated, they have certainly gotten their 

club off the ground and are hopeful that 

origami will sustain its popularity down 

the road. Low told the Bulletin, “There are 

some underclassmen that really got into 

origami this year who had never tried it 

before. I hope that the club can work more 

with modular origami next year, since 

having multiple people to work on those 

makes it less boring and can lead to large 

impressive things.” Certainly, the Origami 

Club has potential to add excitement to an 

already vibrant arts community at Taft. 

h Tempers flair in the jury room 

as twelve ordinary citizens decide 

a man’s fate. Andre Li ’11 

Top College Choices 

for the Class of ’09 

Wake Forest was the most popular 

college choice for the senior class 

this year, with 6, but together they 

selected more than 90 colleges 

and universities. Three or more 

members of the class plan to attend 

the following schools: Amherst, 

Boston University, Bucknell, 

Carnegie Mellon, Colby, Colgate, 

Colorado College, Columbia 

University, Columbia College, 

Cornell, Fairfield, Franklin and 

Marshall, Georgetown, Johns 

Hopkins, Princeton, Stanford, 

Trinity College, Tufts, University of 

Richmond, University of Virginia, 

Vanderbilt, Villanova, Wake Forest 

and Yale. 



in brief… 

Success for mathletes 

Led by faculty adviser Tony Wion, the Taft 

math team has put together some extremely 

impressive results during the spring term. In 

the United States Math Olympiad, a two-day, 

nine-hour contest for the top 60 performers 

on prior national math tests, Taft uppermid 

Toan Phan earned the second place prize 

and an invitation to Washington, D.C. 


1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

The math achievements do not end 

with Phan, though, and Taft’s team is going 

a long way as well. A team featuring 

Phan, Jenny Jin, Brian Jang, Chris Zheng, 

Cathy Chen and Marieta Kenkovova participated 

in a team competition called the 

Purple Comet! Math Meet. This is an international 

competition with teams from 

25 countries and 45 U.S. states. The team 

listed above finished in 2nd place overall! 

updates 

PROMOTED 

1 Linda Chandler (Global Service 

and Scholarship interim head) 

2 Baba Frew (Douglas Chair) 

3 David Hostage (Hillman Chair) 

4 Laura Monti ’89 

(Littlejohn Chair) 

5 Rachael Ryan (Mid Class Dean) 

6 Nikki Willis (additional Senior 

Class Dean with Jack Kenerson ’82) 

7 Jennifer Zacarra 

(Green Chair, English) 

DEPARTING 

• Otis Bryant (History) 

• Ben Chartoff (Science) 

• Kris Fairey (History) 

• Anna Hastings (English) 

• Enyi Koene (Admissions) 

• Annabel Smith (Global Service 

and Scholarship) 

HIRED 

• Emily Fontaine (History Fellow) 

• Ashley Goodrich-Mahoney 

(History) 

• Oscar Parente (Science Fellow) 

• Nick Smith (Science Fellow) 

• Shannon Tarrant 

(History Fellow) 

• Kisha Watts (Admissions) 

HEAD MONITOR 

8 Bo Redpath ’10 

lincoln Center 

Jo Goldberger ’84, Senior Project Manager 

for the Lincoln Center Redevelopment 

Project, spoke at Morning Meeting in 

April about her recent work. In spite of 

economic challenges, New York has been 

able to move forward on this $1 billion 

project during the past year. Goldberger 

has been the point person on a huge range 

of aspects of this project, and stressed to 

students how meticulous each element of 

the job has to be. In her presentation, titled 

“From Design through Construction,” 

Goldberger gave a brief history of Lincoln 

Center and made clear to students how 

the new project takes all aspects of the site 

into account in order to make the center 

more aesthetically pleasing as well as pedestrian 

friendly. 

Something 

to Shout about 

Taft’s version of the Gay-Straight Alliance, 

SHOUT, has been in existence on campus 

for the past decade. SHOUT stands 

for Students, Homosexuals and Others, 

Uniting Taft, and the group took a step 

up this spring to increase their visibility 

and on-campus presence. After months 

of fundraising, co-chair Sydney Low did 

some research and hired the Boston-based 

gender-bending comedy troupe, “All the 

King’s Men,” to come to Taft on Saturday 

night, April 25. After that show was over, 

the campus turned to the Choral Room 

for a rainbow-themed dance, where all 

students who dressed in rainbow colors 

earned a dollar toward SHOUT’s account 

from the Headmaster’s budget. Said 

SHOUT co-chair Nick Tyson ’09, “The 

night was great for SHOUT; we showed 

that we could bring the whole campus 

together, and we were impressed with how 

everyone rallied around our cause. It was 

worth all the effort.”

h captain louis 

carter ’09 tees 

off at Watertown 

Golf club’s #10. 

For more on the 

spring season, 

please visit 

www.TaftSports.com. 

spring SPORT wrap-up 

By steve Palmer 

Girls’ Golf 12–1–1 

IndePendent school 

tournament chamPIons 

This talented team, which returns all 

of its players next year, won the Pippy 

O’Connor Independent School Golf 

Classic, the New England championship 

for girls’ golf teams. At Brae Burn 

Country Club in Newton, MA, Taft 

put together a very solid team effort 

for a 379 total, eight strokes up on rival 

Loomis. The Rhinos were led by the 

top-ten finishes of Bridget Wilcox ’10 

and Nikki Yatsenick ’12, who both shot 

87. Taft finished 2nd at the Founders 

League Championship and finished the 

season by hosting its own intra-squad 

match with the boys’ team to raise 

money for victims of domestic violence. 

Throughout this great season, co-captains 

Wilcox and Alex Dowling ’10 played well 

in the top two positions. 

Boys’ Golf 14–1 

Founders leaGue chamPIons 

This was one of the finest golf teams 

Taft has seen, with a core of steady 

senior talent. They avenged their 

only regular season loss to Brunswick 

from early in the season by winning a 

very close match at home in the rain, 

11.5–9.5. Also in wet, foggy conditions, 

Taft again won the Andover Invitational 

in Newport, RI, defeating a fine field 

of Deerfield, Exeter, Loomis, Tabor, 

Taft Bulletin SUMMER 2009 15

spring Sport 

Andover, Salisbury and Hotchkiss. 

And the team’s first Founders League 

Championship since 2000 came on 

another wet day, at home, as Taft edged 

Choate by three strokes for the title. 

Though the Rhinos would finish sixth at 

the K.I.T. to end the season, throughout 

it all seniors Erik Hansen, Louis Carter, 

Max Winkler and Harry Russell played 

like a great team. Captain-elect Hunter 

Yale ’10 played an important role on this 

squad and will lead the team next year. 

Boys’ track 4–6 

The big wins on the season came over 

Kingswood, Trinity Pawling and a close 

74–70 score against Berkshire, for the 

annual Berkshire-Taft track trophy, created 

by the Harrison Williams family 

(Berkshire) in memory of Russell Jones 

(Taft). That exciting meet, under perfect 

conditions in Sheffield, MA, came down 

to the final event, the 4x400-meter relay. 

Taft’s strength this year was in the 400 

meters, and the team of Connor Partridge 

’10, John Barr ’10, Louie Reed ’11 and 

Mike Petchonka ’10 won the meet and 

went on to set a new school record of 3:28 

in placing second at the Division 1 New 

England Championship meet. At that 

meet, Petchonka also placed 3rd in the 

open 400 meters (50.4). 


Girls’ track 4–6 

The highlights on the season included 

wins over Porters, Kingswood and 

Greenwich Academy, all solid teams, but 

the Rhinos were thin in several events. 

Scoring points in the Founders League 

and New England championship meets 

at the end of the season were tri-captains 

Lindsay Dittman ’09 in the 400 meters 

(60.8) and Katie Van Dorsten ’09 in 

the javelin (95′) and 4x400-meter relay, 

along with captain-elect Kristen Proe ’10 

in the 300m hurdles (50.2) and discus 

(94′). Jahdai Kilkenny ’10 (shot put), 

Lindsay Karcher ’12 (4x400 relay) and 

Grace Kalnins ’11 (4x400 relay) also 

scored at the championship meets. 

Girls’ lacrosse 10–5 

This was a unified, hard-working team 

with a good balance of senior leadership 

and younger talent. Co-captain 

Liesl Morris ’09 was a force all over 

the field throughout the season, and 

Erin Flanagan ’10 led the team offensively 

(32 goals). Both were named 

Western New England All Stars for their 

dominant play. Highlights for Taft included 

victories over strong teams from 

Andover (8–4), Westminster (16–7) 

and Choate (13–11, a game in which 

h Senior Co-Captain and 

2009 All-American Johnny 

DePeters scores one of his 

three goals vs. Deerfield. 

middler Laurel Pascal ’11 tallied 7 goals. 

Co-captain MJ Van Sant ’09 (offensive) 

and Pell Bermingham ’10 (defense) 

were important contributors all season, 

and Julia Van Sant ’11 was named a 

Founders League All Star. 

Boys’ lacrosse 10–5 

This year’s team, a group of incredibly 

hard-working young men with 19 

seniors, went from 4–10 a year ago 

to 10–5 this year, a great turnaround 

that earned a 2nd place finish in the 

Founders League. Big wins came over 

Choate (8–2) and Loomis (11–4), 

but the key victory of the season came 

in the last home game versus Avon 

(8–5), to set Taft’s home record at 8–1. 

Leading the attack, Johnny DePeters 

’09 scored 44 goals (102 career goals) 

and was named an All-American, one 

of two from our league. Jack Nuland 

’09 put up a very strong 69.3 save percentage 

in net, and Henry Millson ’09 

(League All Star) and Pat Clare ’09 had 

great seasons. For their impressive play 

throughout the season, Bo Redpath ’10 

(22 assists) and Jesse Root ’09 (League’s 

top long-stick midfielder) received All 

Western New England honors. The 

performance and camaraderie of this 

special group of seniors will be missed.

h Captains Annie Morse and 

Schuyler Dalton ’09 christen the 

girls’ new crew shell, Oh Eight, 

before the boat’s inaugural 

home race as coach Brendan 

Baran and teammates look on. 

Baseball 10–8 

The 2009 Baseball squad had great team 

chemistry, and perseverance was their 

theme. Big wins against Deerfield (11–8), 

Kent (2–1) and Salisbury (11–2), and two 

against Hotchkiss, highlighted this season 

when Taft played competitively with all the 

best teams. So many games proved to be 

close, but co-captain and starting pitcher 

Alex Kendall ’09 was strong on the mound 

all season (4 wins, 29 strike outs, 9 walks), 

and also tied for the team lead in RBIs (22). 

Mike Moreau ’09 finished with a 2.08 ERA 

and had key hits in several games. At the 

plate, Greg Bayliss ’10 had a great season and 

put up a team-leading .512 batting average. 

Conor McEvoy ’10 was also powerful at the 

plate (.413 average) and as a pitcher, and 

Mike Moran ’11 put up 22 RBIs and 3 HRs. 

Kendall, Bayliss and McEvoy were named 

Colonial League All Stars for their fine play. 

Softball 7–5 

The Rhinos finished in the top five of the 

New England Class A Softball rankings, 

thanks to important wins over Greenwich 

Academy (5–0) and Loomis (21–0). 

Perhaps the most exciting game was early, a 

5–4 come-from-behind win over Berkshire 

in the bottom of the 7th inning. Taft had 

some powerful pitching, with Rhydian 

Glass ’12 (77 strike outs, 1.21 ERA), 

Sophie Kearney ’11 and Meg Boland ’11 on 

the mound. Glass also led the team at the 

plate, with a .490 batting average, followed 

by Kate Moreau ’11 at .485, who also had 

13 stolen bases. Katie Carden ’10 was also a 

significant all-around contributor and will 

help next year’s team that returns six of the 

nine starters. 

Girls’ tennis 7–6 

Exciting 4–3 wins over Kent and Hopkins, 

the final match, gave this spirited team a 

winning record for the season. Julia Cole 

’09 clinched both matches with a hardfought, 

three-set victory. The #3 doubles 

team of Ali Connolly ’10 and Katie 

Drinkwater ’11 finished with an 11–2 record, 

while Kahini Dalal ’10 was a strong 

#1 singles all season. With the return of 

Dalal, Lydie Abood ’11 (#4 singles) and 

Maddie James ’12 (#1 doubles), Taft will 

be competitive again next year. 

Boys’ tennis 10–6 

Taft came agonizingly close to winning 

the SNETL tournament again this year, 

falling a mere two points short of eventual 

New England champion Loomis-Chaffee. 

Yet, the 2nd place finish and wins over 

very strong teams from Choate (4–3) 

and Deerfield (4–3) proved the talent 

and competitiveness of this young team. 

Throughout the season, Phil Simard ’11 

played well at the #1 singles spot and the 

#1 doubles with captain Charlie Wagner 

’09. Middlers Max Brazo ’11 and Herbie 

Klotz ’11 played in the #2 and 3 singles 

positions, while the team’s strongest spot 

was the doubles team of Cam Mullen ’10 

and Ryan Collier ’10, who made it all the 

way to the New England finals. 

Girls’ Crew 

Early wins over Choate and Berkshire set 

the pace for the season, while the highlight 

was winning the Alumnae Cup on 

Lake Waramaug late in the season. At that 

regatta, Taft swept all four races against 

Gunnery, Berkshire and Canterbury. They 

followed this up with a very strong performance 

at the New Englands, with the 

2nd and 4th boats making it to the Grand 

Finals. Taft’s first boat (Schuyler Dalton ’09, 

Rachel Barnes ’11, Emily Ewing ’11, Annie 

Morse ’09 and Annie Ziesing ’09) also had 

a great day, placing 3rd in the Petite Finals 

and putting the team in 6th place. Ziesing, 

Dalton, Morse and Kira Parks ’09 have all 

been on the team for three or more years. 

Boys’ Crew 

The season started with wins over 

Berkshire and South Kent and close losses 

to Choate and Gunnery. At the du Pont 

Cup, at Pomfret, Taft’s 5th and 4th boats 

earned outright wins over strong teams 

from Pomfret, St. Marks and BB&N, making 

for a solid team showing. Throughout 

the season, the first boat ( Jimmy Kukral 

’09, Alex Cernichiari ’09, Zach Brazo ’09, 

Julian Siegelmann ’09, Max Mortimer ’10) 

raced hard and set the tone for the rest of 

this solid team. At the New Englands, the 

4th boat would take an exciting 6th place, 

while the first boat finished 10th overall. 

Julian also set a new Taft record for the 

2000-meter ERG test (6:15.6). 



annual Fund report 2008–09 

I am pleased to announce that the 2008–09 Taft Annual Fund raised $3,551,985 for our school. 

This is a new record for the Annual Fund and a phenomenal result in a difficult environment. Thank 

you very much to all alumni/ae, parents, grandparents and friends of Taft for their generosity. 

Taft alumni contributed $1,775,380 to the Annual Fund, with 39% participating. Thank you to 

all of the class agents and volunteers who worked very hard to generate these results. 

Congratulations to the 50th Reunion Class of 1959—particularly to Bob Barry, class agent, and 

Mike Giobbe, gift committee chair—for contributing $500,000 in both cash and pledges to the Taft 

annual and capital funds this year. Thanks are also due to Brian Lincoln and the Class of 1974 for 

contributing $164,127 to the Annual Fund. 

John and Karin Kukral turned in another great performance leading the Parents’ Fund, raising 

$1,397,922 from current parents with 90% participating. With Tim and Nan O’Neill chairing the 

Parents’ Fund next year, I am confident that the Taft Parents’ Fund will continue to be one of the 

best among our peer schools. 

Thank you also to Leslie and Angus Littlejohn P’03,’05 and Anne and Bill Kneisel, P’96,’99, 

chairs of the Former Parents’ Fund, and to Daney and Lee Klingenstein, GP’07,’09,’12, Grandparents’ 

Fund chairs, whose leadership has been very important to our success. 

Finally, thank you to the Development Office staff, especially Kelsey Pascoe P’07, Amy Gorman 

P’12 and Joyce Romano ’92, who do fantastic work managing the Annual Fund and Parents’ Fund. 

This concludes my tenure as Annual Fund chair. I am pleased to announce that Dylan Simonds 

’89 will take over next year. Dylan will be a terrific chair. Good luck! 

I am fortunate to be associated with the finest school in the world and to have had the opportunity 

to meet and speak with so many Tafties during these four years. Thank you all again for your 

support of our great school. 

Go Big Red! 

Holcombe T. Green III ’87 

Annual Fund Chair

2009 Class Agent 

awards 

SNyDER AWARD 

Largest amount contributed 

by a reunion class 

Class of 1974: $164,127 

Class Agent: Brian Lincoln 

CHAIRMAN OF 

THE BOARD AWARD 

Highest percent participation 

Class of 1959: 87% 

Class Agent: Bob Barry 

Gift Committee Chair: Mike Giobbe 

McCABE AWARD 


by a non-reunion class 

Class of 1962: $92,471 

Class Agent: Fred Nagle 

yOUNG ALUMNI 

DOLLARS AWARD 


from a class 10 years out or less 

Class of 2000: $7,320 

Class Agents: John McCardell, 

Andrew Ford Goodwin 

*Awards determined by gifts and 

pledges to the Annual Fund as of 

June 30, 2009. 

2008–09 parents’ Committee 

Marion Markham and Randy Abood ’68 • 

Rachel Cohan Albert and Jonathan Albert 

’79 • Colette and Dick Atkins • Liisa and 

Kenneth Bacco • Suzanne and Jeffrey 

Barrow ’82 • Nancy Cooley Benasuli • 

Ann and Douglass Bermingham • Jody and 

Brian Boland • Elizabeth and Bob Bostrom 

• Ellie and Doug Boyd • Callie and Hank 

Brauer ’74 • Vivian and Richard Castellano • 

Sharon Charles • Sheilah and Tom Chatjaval 

• Nancy Demmon Clifford ’81 • Cathy and 

Greg Crockett • Alanna and Tim Cronin • 

Mary and David Dangremond • Kathanne 

and Bob Fowler • Pippa and Bob 

Gerard • Kristine and Peter Glazer 

• Trish and George Grieve • 

Nana-Yaa and Ebenezer B. Gyasi 

• Kitty Herrlinger Hillman ’76 • 

Jane and Bob Hottensen • Ken 

Hubbard and Tori Dauphinot 

• Leslie and Herb Ide • Karen 

v Parents’ Fund 

chairs karin and John 

kukral (pictured with 

children Johnny ’11, 

Julie, Jimmy ’09, and 

Karin’s father, John 

Bain) led a dedicated 

committee that raised 

$1,397,922 from 90% 

of the school’s current 

parents. Nan and Tim 

O’Neill, parents of Ellie 

’11 and Caroline ’11, 

will chair the 2009–10 

Parents’ Fund. 

and Paul Isaac • Barbara and Bob Jones 

• Elisabeth and Chansoo Joung • Susan 

and Tom Kendall • Lisa and John Kiernan 

• Meg and Stuart Kirkpatrick • Radford 

Klotz and Shahnaz Batmanghelidj • Val and 

John Kratky • Lorrie Landis • Karen and 

T.J. Letarte • Suzy and Joe Loughlin • Lisa 

and Joe Lovering • Christiana and Ferdy 

Masucci • Caroline and Guy Merison • Rory 

Millson • Kate and Hans Morris • Gigi and 

Averell Mortimer • Jill and Tom Mullen • 

Kippy and Peter North ’62 • Nan and Tim 

O’Neill • Valerie and Jeffrey Paley ’56 • 

Margi and Mike Picotte • Christine 

Plata • Lee and Michael 

Profenius • Carrie and Ted 

Pryor • Rosemarie and Scott 

Reardon • Seraphim and Tom 

Reycraft • Sue and Steve Rooney 

• Laura Childs and Ken Saverin 

’72 • Staley and Carter Sednaoui • 

Jean and Stuart Serenbetz • Mary 

and Carl Siegel • John A. Slowik 

• Randi and Mitchell Solomon • 

Marnell and Rick Stover • Kristin 

and Don Taylor ’76 • Nancy and 

Robert Turner • Beverly and 

Mark Wawer • Lori Welch-Rubin 

’77 • Alice and Peter Wyman • 

Jo Klingenstein Ziesing ’78 and 

Peter Ziesing 


highlights of the festivities 

this year include the dedication 

of the new baseball pavilion to 

Larry Stone, a mother-daughter 

show in the the Mark W. Potter 

Gallery by Gail Wynne and 

Amy Wynne-Derry ’84, and a 

stirring talk by Citation of Merit 

recipient John Merrow ’59 

at the Alumni Luncheon. 

While the Collegium Musicum 

reunion concert has become a 

welcome new tradition, other 

annual events like the Service 

of Remembrance have been a 

part of the weekend for as long 

as any could remember. 

1 

alumni weekend 2009 

1 Members of the Class of ’74 

enjoy the afternoon out on the Jig 

patio on Saturday. 

2 Hord Armstrong ’59 and 

Muriel Losee, widow of Tom ’59, 

wait for the parade to start.

3 Dan ’74 and Sherrard 

Upham Côté ’73 get ready to 

tee off with Pete Rose ’74 at the 

Watertown Golf Club on Friday. 

2 

3 



4 5 

6 

7 

4 Laurie Odden Brown ’89, 

Patsy and Lance Odden, Lu Stone 

and daughter Katey ’84 at the 

dedication on Saturday of the 

new baseball pavilion honoring 

Larry Stone 

22 Taft Bulletin Spring 2009 

8 

5 Peggy Lou and Bob Feldmeier 

’39 with granddaughter Julie ’99 at 

the Old Guard Dinner 

6 Joe Knowlton ’64 with Joanne 

Caldara (wife of Hugh ’64) and 

Jane Beddall (wife of Kit Brown 

’64) at the dinner on Friday 

7Classmates Joe Dillard and 

Brooke Sheppard Stahl at the 25th 

Reunion Dinner on Friday 

8 The 50th Reunion Class of ’59 

starts the weekend off with a 

dinner on Thursday.

9 10 

11 

12 

9 The girls of ’04 

13 

10 Pete Petitt, Matt Wilcox 

and Jonathan Rademaekers 

perform for their classmates 

at the Class of ’89 reunion party 

in Litchfield. 

11 Reunion Chairs Holly Sweet 

Burt and Nancy Goldsborough 

Hurt at the Class of ’79 party at the 

Watertown Golf Club on Saturday 

12 Ro and Bill Hoblitzelle ’49 

and Dave Forster ’62 at the Class 

Secretaries and Agents Breakfast 

13 Headmaster Willy 

MacMullen ’78 welcomes 

Carol Wu ’89. 



lawrenCe hunter 

Stone Baseball Pavilion 

The school honored longtime coach 

and athletic director emeritus Larry 

Stone on Saturday with the dedication 

of the new Lawrence Hunter Stone 

Baseball Pavilion at Rockwell Field. 

Hundreds of alumni and friends, and 

even former umpires turned out for the 

occasion, which included the unveiling 

of a bronze plaque to be placed in the 

dugouts as well as a souvenir painting 

by Loueta Chickadaunce for the Stone 

family to remember the occasion. 

For Larry, the best part of the day 

was perhaps the varsity team’s win over 

Westminster. 

15 16 

14 Larry Stone thanks Jim 

Neil ’72 and Headmaster Willy 

MacMullen ’78. 

24 Taft Bulletin Spring 2009 

14 

15 Artist Amy Wynne-Derry 

’84 visits with classmate Tolly 

Gibbs Zonenberg at a reception for 

Amy’s joint show with her mother, 

longtime art teacher Gail Wynne, 

in the Mark W. Potter Gallery. 

16 1984 Classmates 

Derek Pierce and Brad Ring visit 

with former faculty member 

Jim Mooney ’74.

17 

19 

17 Ed Fowler ’84 rallies his 

class during the parade. 

18 David Penning ’49 and Ed 

Borcherdt ’49 enjoy the afternoon 

on campus. 

19 School monitor Julie Foote 

’09 and rising head monitor Bo 

Redpath ’10 help lead the parade. 

18 

20 

20 Lincoln dons a newboy 

tie for the occasion of the 50th 

Reunion Dinner. j 

Photography by 

Bob Falcetti 

Phil Dutton 

Peter Frew ’75 

Andre Li ’11 



by Tom Strickland 

You can listen to the complete remarks from the day at 

www.TaftSchool.org/news/grad/audio09.aspx.

v Aurelian Award 

winner Diana Saverin 

x Tom Strickland 

reminds graduates to 

chart their own paths 

and find joy in the 

journey. 

hen I first set foot on the Taft campus in 1999, I was immediately 

struck by the natural beauty and exquisite architecture. 

As I listened to then headmaster Lance Odden address a group of 

parents, I learned of the vision of Horace Taft: to create a school 

with an ethos of preparing students to serve. As I look back now 

a decade and two graduates later, I know that this vision from the 

19th century is still very much alive at 21st-century Taft. 

My wife, Beth, and I watched over the years as Annie ’04 and 

Callie ’09 were inspired by the idealism of so many outstanding 

teachers. I saw this spirit nurtured by the community service 

programs at Taft and admired how our daughters and so many 

of their classmates journeyed around the world during their 

summers to perform volunteer work from Fiji to Vietnam. In a 

country and a world so desperate for leadership, I can think of no 

greater educational mission than to teach the importance of helping 

others, and I applaud and thank Willy MacMullen and this 

fabulous faculty for keeping this flame burning brightly. 

As we came to know Taft, Beth and I also learned of its culture of 

excellence—a culture that demands the best efforts of its students in 

every activity—in the classroom, on the sports field, in the performing 

arts. At every turn, doing good work is not enough; doing your 

best work is what is expected. Effort grades matter, and more than 

once we read a teacher evaluation that acknowledged superior performance 

but also challenged our daughters to do even better. 

A third pillar of the Taft educational experience we came to 

learn is the high standard of integrity expected from every student. 

Honesty and playing by the rules are demanded, and from time to 

time this is brought home in difficult fashion when some students 

are faced with the painful consequences of their behavior. 

None of this would work without the extraordinary faculty 

that fills this beautiful campus with intellectual energy and sparks 

the creative minds of these students. Over the years our daughters 

have been inspired and challenged by great teachers. 


Graduates, as you set out on your journey, think big, because 

your task is nothing short of saving the world. Our task, as parents, 

is to cheer you on and get out of your way. You are, along with your 

peers throughout the country, America’s best hope for the future. 

We need you to reach your full potential, as we look to a world beset 

by war, economic uncertainty and environmental challenges. 

This point is made well by one of my favorite singers/songwriters, 

Bono from U2: 

Every generation gets a chance to change the world 

Pity the nation that won’t listen to its boys and girls 

’Cos the sweetest melody is the one we haven’t heard 

As you go about preparing yourselves for your place in history, 

let me offer a few observations based on my experience. First, let 

me encourage you to remember the lessons you learned at Taft, 

starting with a commitment to excellence. Always bring your “A” 

game to everything you do, whether it’s your summer job bagging 

groceries or writing your first college paper. You never know 

who’s watching, and you will learn that first impressions go a long 

way. More importantly, if you get in the habit of putting forth 

your best effort at everything you do you will find that the world 

will come to your doorstep. And you will outdistance others with 

equal or more talent who lack that commitment. 

More often than not, successful people in every field—the 

arts, academia, sports and business—attribute their success less 


n Japanese teacher Seiko Michaels 

with John Lombard, who, in addition 

to winning the Japanese Prize, 

also earned the P.T. young Music 

Award, the Sherman Cawley Award 

for excellence in English scholarship 

and high honors recognition 

for his senior research thesis. He 

also received the David Edward 

Goldberg Memorial Award for his 

Independent Studies Projects. 

to natural ability than to their refusal to do less than their best. For 

me, it was taking my modest athletic skills and pushing myself hard 

enough that I ended up playing in the Orange Bowl for the LSU 

Tigers. Or doing the very best I could as a volunteer knocking on 

doors in my first foray into politics in 1980 and seeing that lead 

eventually into challenging and rewarding opportunities in public 

service. I was always surrounded by better athletes and smarter 

people, but I have tried to separate myself by hard work and focus. 

Hand in hand with bringing your “A” game to everything 

you do is the lesson of perseverance. You will define yourself 

more by how you deal with adversity than how you deal with 

success. There will be setbacks, and how you respond will determine 

how far you go in life. In my pursuit of elective office I 

developed a skill I never really wanted—delivering concession 

speeches. I ran for the U.S. Senate in 1996, won a tough primary 

but lost a very close general election. Bowed, but not broken, I 

threw myself back into my law practice and was later appointed 

as the U.S. Attorney for Colorado. I was sworn in the day after 

the Columbine tragedy and spent my first day on the job at the 

school with the attorney general. 

I ran for the U.S. Senate again and lost another equally close 

race, but I knew that I didn’t want to be defined by those defeats, 

nor did I want our three daughters to fear failure and to shy away 

from dreaming big dreams. So I got up, brushed myself off and 

forged ahead. In retrospect, I also learned a lot about humility, 

and I know I’m a better man for these lessons. 

In this regard, I’m reminded of a story of an acquaintance of 

mine. In 2000 he was a 39-year-old little known state senator in 

the Midwest. Having run once for Congress and lost in a primary, 

he still aspired to higher office. He was in Los Angeles at the 

Democratic Convention but couldn’t get credentials to get inside. 

He called his wife from a pay phone and got an earful about 

needing to be back home with her and their daughter. He went to 

a cash machine and tried to get some cash but was rejected. All 

, The faculty in full regalia

in all, not a great day. That person was Barack Obama, and eight 

years later he was elected president of the United States. Clearly, 

he was determined to push through adversity and setbacks and to 

pursue his dreams. From Lincoln to Churchill, the biographies of 

our greatest leaders include such experiences. 

Without a doubt my decisions to leave high-paying jobs in 

the private sector in order to pursue public service were the best 

I’ve ever made, and I’ve been happiest when I’ve been involved in 

public service. Most recently, I gave up a job as a top executive in 

order to join the Obama Administration. The hours are long and 

the pay is a fraction of what I was making, but do I have a cool 

job—overseeing all the National Parks and Wildlife Refuges and 

enforcing the Endangered Species Act. I deal with climate change 

and renewable energy, with polar bears and wolves. Earlier this 

week I spent two days in the Everglades with blue herons, egrets 

and alligators. I would like to make a pitch to those of you drawn 

to environmental issues to consider public service in this arena. 

The challenges have never been greater, and the need for talented 

leadership more urgent. 

And, finally and most importantly, find joy in the journey. 

There is much to celebrate in life, and having fun is not only okay 

but also essential for the soul. 

As I first sat down to work on my remarks I thought back to my 

own mindset in 1970 and my high school graduation. I remember 

how my generation believed that we had to find our own way, and 

we weren’t very interested in what our parents had to say. One of 

my favorite songs from that era is now one of Callie’s, Cat Stevens’ 

“Father/Son.” First, the father offers his advice: 

I was once like you are now 

and I know that it’s not easy 

To be calm when you’ve found something going on 

But take your time, think a lot 

Think of everything you’ve got 

For you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not. 

Then, the son responds: 

, Seniors give 

Valedictorian 

Jenny Jin, left, 

a standing ovation. 

How can I try to explain, when I do he turns away again 

It’s always been the same, same old story 

From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen 

Now there’s a way, and I know that I have to go away 

I know I have to go. 

As you sit here today surrounded by those who love you the 

most, our message to you is that we recognize that you must 

chart your own way. So, we wish you God speed to write the 

sweetest melodies the world has not yet heard. 

Tom Strickland currently serves as chief of staff to U.S. Interior Secretary 

Ken Salazar and as assistant secretary of Fish and Wildlife and Parks with 

the Department of the Interior. Before joining the Interior, he was executive 

vice president and chief legal officer of UnitedHealth Group. An 

attorney for a prominent Denver law firm for 15 years, he then served 

as U.S. Attorney for the District of Colorado. In 1996 and 2002 he was a 

Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate. From 1982 to 1984, he served as 

chief policy adviser for Colorado Governor Richard Lamm. 


It is so difficult to capture the essence of a class, and perhaps I 

should resist the urge, but that’s what you do. A class becomes 

a single living thing, a being—with its attendant strengths and 

frailties. When I asked seniors what made this group unique, I 

heard this: “We are outspoken and fearless…[and also] reliable 

friends, dedicated scholars and active participants”; “We move 

forward even in tough times”; “We are driven, we are stubborn, 

and we don’t accept failure”; “We are independent and bold, 

powerful thinkers and advocates for free will.” 

The poet would say you were like flint and steel, hard-edged 

and sharp, and throwing sparks, then flame, then warmth. You 

were like an August thunderstorm, your years a single hour that 

sees a full display of power: potent charge and released energy, 

flashes of lightning, rumbles of thunder, the arcing rainbow. 

I think you have been like some large, loud family, in a 

small car, on a long drive: a lot of love, a lot of noise. At times I 

wanted to turn around to the back seat and say, “We’re almost 

there!” You fought with each other, the way strong, smart 

siblings do, each of you convinced you were right. When the 

faculty said, “I think we are going to turn to the left,” you said, 

“The right looks kind of interesting, too.” So now we’ve arrived, 

and I can’t tell you how glad I am we took the trip together. 

Seniors, you have been given an opportunity that is staggering, 

and I hope you realize it. If I am right, you’ll carry the 

lessons of Taft like DNA. If I am right, you will need to work 

really hard in the years ahead. And if I am right, you might serve 

and better our world, and this destiny that is both daunting and 

thrilling. It is that destiny that lies just beyond that arch. 

x The school’s newest 

alumni, from left: 

Dan Henry, Daniela 

Garcia, Jessica yu 

and MJ VanSant 


n Guest Speaker Tom 

Strickland P’04,’09 

and Headmaster Willy 

MacMullen ’78

Photographs by Andre Li ’11 and Peter Frew ’75 

As we get older, we both grow and shrink. We gain knowledge 

of our significance as well as our insignificance. Knowledge of 

how significant we are, comes from interactions with our peers. 

In school, in sports, on the stage and in the dorms, we come to 

realize how smart, athletic, talented or compassionate we are 

using our classmates as a benchmark. We become cognizant of 

our insignificance in the same manner, through interactions. As 

children, we have a heightened sense of our importance as the 

world revolves around our family and our family revolves around 

us, but as we grow, the world gets bigger with us, and we realize 

that there are thousands to whom we mean nothing. We learn to 

appreciate our parents and our teachers, those who do treat us as 

though our existence is not only relevant but also meaningful. 

After Taft, if we don’t make a difference in the world, it won’t 

be because we couldn’t. It will be because we wouldn’t. Our 

future really comes down to the question of what to fear; I fear 

only insignificance—not making a positive impact. Only we can 

render ourselves impotent with our excuses and our insecurities 

or even the lack of a sense of urgency. Let’s not allow ourselves to 

give anything less than our best, not sacrifice the gifts we’ve been 

given and, most of all, not doubt that we can become someone 

significant in a world of millions striving for the same thing. The past few days I’ve been asking people what they think 

makes the Class of 2009 special. I jotted down certain key 

words that people consistently used to describe us—words like 

passionate, stubborn, determined and independent, all of which are 

v Family and friends 

try to capture the 

moment for posterity. 

, Class speakers 

Hannah Vazquez and 

Paul Kiernan 

qualities that have contributed to our success as individuals. 

However, the list also contains words like respectful, openminded 

and accepting, and it is these words that have allowed us 

to thrive as a class. We arrived at Taft—some of us four years ago, 

some of us later—as young individuals confused about our place 

in a new community. Since then, we’ve developed alongside one 

another and, with the guidance of the incredibly caring faculty, 

have discovered our own identities and niches in the school. 

Each member of our class has firm opinions and passions that we 

are convinced of and will fight for, but we are still always open to 

what others have to say. This attitude has created an environment 

in which we have fed off of one another and grown together. 

As I think about my experience at Taft and the effect this 

class has had on me, I am drawn once again to Alfred Lord 

Tennyson’s poem, Ulysses, which states, “I am a part of all that I 

have met.” Class of 2009, each and every one of you has become 

a part of me, and I am without a doubt better for it. j 


Joe Freeman ’62 

collects, competes and champions classic cars.

y ethan gilsdorf 

he New Hampshire Motor Speedway’s 

19th Annual Vintage Racing Celebration 

and Classic Car Show is no typical day at 

the races. For starters, the grandstand’s 95,491 seats are 

empty. Instead, the vintage racecar enthusiasts gather in 

the infield. They’re generally not big Dale Earnhardt or 

Jeff Gordon fans, either. In fact, they tend to look down on 

stock car racing. 

Nor is the noise rising from the 1.058-mile track that 

homogenous, ear-splitting NASCAR-style whine. Rather, 

in late-spring sun glare, the racecars rounding the oval 

rattle, buzz and tear open the air. They’re a motley crew of 

some of the most illustrious vintage Midgets, Sprint cars, 

Championship cars, and Roadsters ever made. And the car 

that Joe Freeman ’62 drives, number 25, a 1915 Duesenberg, 

resembles a long white cigar on wheels, not a vehicle, and its 

sputtering sounds more like an airplane than a racecar. 

Suddenly, fire bellows from number 77. The car spins 

a full 360 degrees and stops. The few dozen spectators 

perk up to see the damage. Out come the yellow flags, the 

fire truck and ambulance. The driver walks away, unhurt, 

but due to the oil and debris on the track, the rest of the 

race is called off. 

“The guy blew his engine,” says Freeman, after driving his 

Duesenberg back to the North Garage and stripping out of 

his fire-retardant suit. “That guy was not driving well. He was 

driving dangerously.” Freeman curses. “I don’t think he’ll be 

invited back. You’re going fast and you can hurt here.” 

Freeman, red-faced from his days spent on the hot track, 

owes his zeal for racing in part to Taft. He recalls a teacher 

who periodically took him for a spin in his Porsche. After the 

rides, Freeman was hooked. “I remember I was up all night 

reading a book called The Racing Driver: The Theory and 

Practice of Fast Driving.” (Another book, The Great Savannah 

Races, written by Julian Quattlebaum ’44, Freeman found 

in the school library.) He began going to races. After graduating 

from Yale, and three years with the Peace Corps in 

Micronesia, he began working for anti-poverty programs in 

New Haven. In 1970, he attended the driving school at Lime 

Rock Park (not far from Taft) and the Jim Russell School 

Dirk de Jager

in Mont Tremblant, Quebec. That same year, he 

bought his first racecar, qualified for his first race 

and thus begun his long love affair with racing. 

Retired from regular full-time work, he’s 

now fully immersed in the hobby. He owns a 

collection of antique cars; he has served in the 

nonprofit world as president of the Society of 

Automotive Historians and board president of 

the Larz Anderson Auto Museum in Boston 

and served on other nonprofit boards like the 

School of the Museum of Fine Arts and he judges 

races and car shows. It’s safe to say, the man is 

driven by racecars. 

“At a time when most people are winding 

down their careers, I’m winding up.” 

v Previous page: Joe Freeman ’62 

gets his 1938 Sparks-Thorne up to 

speed on the racecourse. 

x This 1915 Duesenberg is 

Freeman’s prize possession— 

the second oldest in existence. 

“At a time when most people are winding 

down their careers,” he says with a chuckle, “I’m 

winding up. I like what I do. It’s a passion. It’s 

exhausting, but it’s a passion. And not a small 

part of that passion is sitting behind the wheel 

of these things and driving them.” 

Along the road, Freeman almost became a 

serious driver himself. During a five-year racing 

career in the early ’70s, he even qualified for a 

national championship runoff, finishing seventh 

in a Brabham BT-35 Formula B car. But in 1975, 

calamity struck. After a serious accident at Lime 

Rock on a practice day, that caused two broken 

legs, a compression fracture in his back and a 

concussion, he decided perhaps his dream of 

checkered flags was dead. 

“My wife said at the time, ‘You don’t have 

enough money for alimony and racing,’” he 

jokes. “‘You gotta stop.’” Freeman did, attending 

the Kennedy School of Government, working 

on and off in public health and public administration, 

all the while ramping up a second career 

as an author of articles about racing history 

for such publications as Automobile Quarterly, 

Vintage Motorsport and others. He began collecting 

memorabilia and photos. He now runs a 

publishing company, Racemaker Press, based in 

Boston, which has put out or distributes a dozen 

books on racing history like the aptly-titled 

Damn Few Died in Bed. 

“I can’t believe he’s making money, but 

he’s going full bore. He’s still going at it,” says 

Gordon White, a former newspaper reporter 

from Deltaville, Virginia, and Freeman’s friend 

of 20 years. The two run into each other on 

the classic car circuit at racetracks in Loudon, 

Milwaukee, Indianapolis and Monterey. 

Racemaker is publishing Gordon’s book, Leader 

Card Racers: A Dynasty of Speed, later this year. 

“It’s a lot of nostalgia,” he says. “We both do it 

because we enjoy it.” 

But to participate in the hobby at Freeman’s 

level requires a financial commitment—hiring 

mechanics, finding a place to store a collection 

and getting the cars to the various venues. Ever 

since his accident, Freeman sticks to classic 

cars—“I think it’s safer,” he says—and he owns 

12 of them, “some operational, some not.” 

There’s his oldest, a 1914 Mercer Raceabout, 

what he calls one of the best preserved of the 

approximately 20 still in existence; his 1956 

Cooper-Norton (“all original, down to the 

leather on the seats and the steering wheel,” he 

says with obvious glee); his 1969 Lotus Elan; 

and a 1925 Bugatti Type 30. 

Many of the cars can claim so-called 

Championship or “Champ” pedigree. That is, 

the actual car once competed and won. For 

example, his 1938 Sparks-Thorne Little 6 finished 

second at Indy in 1939 and third in 1941. 

Driving it today takes considerable skill: it only 

has a handbrake. Going into a turn, Freeman has 

to take his hand off the steering wheel, use the 

handbrake and downshift, all at the same time. 

Freeman calls it “multitasking.” 

His prize possession is that 1915 Duesenberg, 

the second oldest in existence. (The oldest, a 

1913, is in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall 

of Fame Museum.) It is believed Freeman’s took 

second place at Indy in 1916. Knowing its original 

parts wouldn’t last, Freeman commissioned 

a custom casting of a new engine block. After an 

expensive, five-year process he had a new engine. 

“It’s a piece of American history that’s important 

to preserve,” he says. “I want to preserve it as an 

operating automobile.” 

Back in his cramped Beacon Hill office, surrounded 

by stacks of books on his favorite cars 

like the Bugatti and Aston Martin, he reflects on 

his passion for the older cars. (Of the modern 

NASCAR cars, “We call them taxicabs,” he says. 

“Why would I want to get into a 200-mile-perhour 

traffic jam?”) Compared with street cars, 

stock cars and touring cars, which have their

wheels below the body or behind fenders, with 

open-wheel cars like Freeman’s, the wheels lie 

outside the car’s main body. “The wheels [of adjacent 

cars] touch each other and there’s no metal 

between you. You can go flying,” he admits. “It’s a 

bit snobbish but I’ve always felt that open-wheel 

racing separates the men from the boys.” 

As the custodian of these cars, he’s had his 

share of close calls. The danger of a crash always 

lurks, but the risk, he says, is worth it. Even 

though some vintage cars, like the Duesenberg, 

are priceless, Freeman feels getting them out on 

the track is a better fate than gathering dust in 

some barn or being stuck in some museum. “To 

see them run the way they were intended to be 

run,” Freeman says. “These were designed for 

nothing but racing.” 

And racing is where Freeman is clearly most 

in his element, bopping around the country, 

New Hampshire one week, Indianapolis the 

next, running his cars and talking shop. “We’re 

all gear heads!” he yells over a revving engine 

as he walks down the rows of cars, chatting up 

the other drivers and mechanics. “What’s that? 

A 255? A 270? Wow.” The guys, and it’s mostly 

guys, know the cars, the drivers, who won what 

when and where. 

Yet Freeman, White and many of the other 

vintage racecar fans keeping the sport alive at 

Loudon are far from their prime. He worries 

about the future of the hobby, whether kids today 

can get as excited about racing as he did. 

“Who’s going to care about these vintage cars 

in 30, 40 years?” he laments. He’s concerned 

about the potential collapse of the American 

automobile industry. And he’s occasionally wistful 

about the racing career, the “pipe dream” that 

could have been. “There’s a little Walter Mitty 

in it.” But he accepts his age with grace. “At 66 

my eyes aren’t like they were when I was 24,” 

Freeman admits. “[Cars] could bite you then and 

they can bite you now.” 

What happens at Loudon and other vintage 

events is not competitive. It’s not real racing. As 

one bystander puts it, “They’re not here to race. 

They’re here to get the heart pumping.” 

Or, as Freeman says back at the garage, “We’re 

just getting them up to speed.” The drivers and 

cars may be old, but the speeds are impressive. 

“Today I was going 90-plus, 100 on the straights, 

85 on the curves.” His 1938 Sparks-Thorne and 

his 1960 Indy Roadster will go 160 to 165 mph. 

It’s not hard to see the teenage Taft kid smiling 

beneath the older man he has become. Freeman’s 

heart still revs and roars. And when he’s not tooling 

around town in his 1994 Jeep Cherokee, he’s 

been known to take his 2003 Audi A4 wagon on 

the Mass Pike, step on the accelerator and see 

how far back to his youth he can travel. j 

ethan gilsdorf writes for the New York Times, Boston 

Globe and National Geographic Traveler. His book 

Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for 

Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other 

Dwellers of Imaginary Realms comes out in September.

the fashionistas 


by Bonnie Blackburn penhollow ’84 

The world of high fashion 

may seem a long way from 

the dress-coded halls of Taft, 

but for these six alumni, 

beautiful and stylish clothing 

has become their life’s work. 

They are entrepreneurs and 

fashion critics, but all have 

one thing in common: they 

love looking—and helping 

others look—fabulous.

the entreprenuers: 

alexis maybank ’93 

In some cases, going viral is a bad thing. But 

when it comes to Alexis Maybank, going viral 

has been great for business. Maybank is the 

founder, along with long-time friend Alexandra 

Wilkis Wilson, of the Gilt Groupe, an online 

company that offers invitation-only sample sales 

from many of the country’s top fashion houses. 

In May, the group surpassed 1 million members, 

all of whom came at the invitation of earlier 

members and the company itself. 

The company offers 30 sales per week. 

Each sale lasts 36 hours and features handselected 

styles from a single designer at prices 

up to 70 percent off the retail price. And 

unlike traditional sample sales, there’s no 

fighting in the fitting rooms. 

“It’s unbelievable how quickly people can 

make a decision on brands they love,” Maybank 

said. “It’s the thrill of the chase. We call them 

our shopping athletes.” 

Maybank’s company may be new, but she’s 

an old hand at the online retail world. She was 

one of the first employees of a little company 

known as eBay, where she helped found eBay 

Motors and launched eBay Canada. Deciding 

to leave the security of eBay to venture into the 

unknown was a bit scary, she said. 

“We really had no idea what to expect, we 

… had no idea if we’d get another sale. That 

very first sale we watched and wondered who 

would come, and when we watched our first sale 

sell out in two hours, we thought, this might 

actually work,” she said. “Then brands started 

calling us … as soon as you start seeing people 

say, wow this is cool and inviting their friends… 

that little buzz you start to feel, it had that underground 

feel. Everything has grown virally 

by people inviting their friends. It’s been something 

that totally evolved.” 

Designers work directly with the Gilt 

Groupe’s buyers to sell exclusive collections, 

and the company now has a 100,000-squarefoot 

distribution center in Brooklyn where the 

company ships thousands of items each week. 

“We offer a bigger distribution channel for 

[designers],” she said. “At this point, because 

we’re a meaningful channel for them, they’re 

making special lines and collections that are 

only available on Gilt Groupe.” 

Maybank now serves as chief strategy officer, 

looking at new ways to expand the business. The 

Gilt Groupe recently expanded into Japan, and 

will be rolling out a travel-oriented sale site in 

the coming months. 

She said her business is booming in spite of 

v alexis maybank ’93, left, 

and partner Alexandra took 

Manhattan’s famous sample sales 

online. She extends a special 

invitation link for Tafties interested 

in learning more: www.gilt.com/taft 




the recession—even, perhaps, because of it. 

“People still want to care how they present 

themselves, they’re certainly trying to obtain 

value—and there’s a psychological aspect to it. 

It’s not acceptable to walk out of a department 

store with 10 bags,” because the era of conspicuous 

consumption seems to be at an end. “In 

many ways you’re quicker to point out your savings 

than your spending,” she said. 

theodore crispino ’95 

x theodore Crispino ’95 

left the law two years ago 

to become VP of operations 

at the Savile-Row 

styled Duncan Quinn, 

which now has stores in 

New york, L.A. and Dallas. 

Theodore “Teddy” Crispino wasn’t always a 

high-fashion maven. In fact, he’s also a lawyer. 

It was at a law firm that Crispino met Duncan 

Quinn, who was always very nattily turned out. 

“I was working as a paralegal in a law firm,” 

he said. “The firm was business casual, but we 

kept wearing suits. We became really good 

friends, and Duncan began bringing me shirts 

from England. Pretty much just because of the 

love of dressing like that, we decided to open a 

store—he wanted to bring that here.” 

“That” is Savile Row-style high fashion for 

men. Duncan Quinn’s self-named shop is one 

of the top stores for fashionably dressed men 

in New York City, Los Angeles and Dallas. 

The store has kitted out fashionable men such 

as basketball star LeBron James and actor 

Willem Dafoe. 

The pair opened shop six years ago, but it 

wasn’t until two years ago that Crispino quit being 

a lawyer and moved full time into being the 

vice president of operations, where he oversees 

everything from measuring the perfect inseam 

to ensuring all suits are completed in their 

proper time frame. Neither he nor Quinn has 

any formal fashion design training. 

“It’s all self-taught. We design everything 

ourselves. We sit down and figure it out,” he 

said. “The fall stuff ’s inspiration is coming from 

Viggo Mortensen’s Russian gang tattoos [from 

the 2007 film Eastern Promises]. We sit down 

and come up with this stuff. We’re guys and we 

like wearing this stuff.” 

The suits take 53 hours to create, and are 

fitted and tailored by English and Italian 

tailors in the same manner as 100 years ago, 

Crispino said. 

“It’s so much better than working at a law 

firm, which isn’t too much of a stretch,” he said. 

“It’s extremely rewarding .”

the designers: 

aaron dickson ’98 

n One of aaron dickson’s 

designs for Vera Wang. 

“We are a very hands-on 

company,” she says. 

“It’s very artisanal, 

very artistic … which 

is why I enjoy working 

there so much.” 

anne kerr kennedy ’90 

Vera Wang is one of the nation’s top designers, 

and Aaron Dickson is one of Vera Wang’s top 

designers. Her days are spent at Wang’s side, 

coming up with new designs for Vera Wang’s 

ready-to-wear line that sells in high-end department 

stores. She’s been with Vera Wang since 

interning with the designer as a student at the 

Rhode Island School of Design. 

“It was all about luck and timing,” Dickson 

said of getting hired with the famed designer. “I 

had interned with her my senior year in college 

… and when I graduated I checked to see if I 

could come back. One of the assistant [designers] 

was leaving” and Dickson got the job. 

A typical day for Dickson involves fitting 

different designs beside Wang. 

“I spend most of my day fitting with Vera,” 

she said. “We are a very hands-on company. It’s 

very artisanal, very artistic. It’s more like sculpture. 

It’s very hands on … which is why I enjoy 

working there so much.” 

She’s currently working on the Spring 2010 

line, and said Wang’s inspirations come mainly 

from artists. 

“We work with different artists, different 

periods of paintings, colors and textures and 

patterns and prints,” she said. “That’s usually 

where we find a lot of inspirations.” 

Dickson said Vera Wang’s recent move into 

mass-market fashion with entry into department 

stores such as Kohl’s lets the designer’s 

work be worn by everyone. 

“We want to make clothes that people want 

to wear, that are easy,” she said. “Fashion should 

be accessible. We’re excited that everyone can 

appreciate [Vera Wang’s] aesthetic.” 

Anne Kerr Kennedy used to do brand strategy 

for a large corporation. She hated it. 

Feeling stifled, she longed to run a small business 

of some sort. She left the corporate world 

and went to art school, seeking a way to capitalize 

on her creative nature. She began designing rugs, 

but another problem was also bothering her. An 

avid practitioner of yoga, she said she had trouble 

finding well-fitting, comfortable yoga clothes. 

The seed for Hyde Yoga was planted. 

“During that time [of designing rugs] I discovered 

the love of doing something creative and doing 

something with a small business. I determined 

I wanted to have my own small business, but it 

took me a year or two to figure it out,” she said. 

An avid runner, Kennedy began practicing 

yoga after injuring herself. She hated it at first. 

But she continued to go, and she said yoga 

changed her life. 

“There are no distractions,” she said. “Yoga is 

about the idea of not thinking.” 

But her yoga togs were distracting. What 

, anne kerr kennedy ’90, in the scorpion 

pose, wanted yoga clothes that 

weren’t distracting—something between 

the slippery athletic gear and hippy-dippy 

options that never seemed to fit well—so 

she started her own brand. 



clothes she could find were made by athletic 

companies out of slippery, synthetic materials. 

The alternatives she could find were natural 

fabrics lacking in style (“hippy dippy,” is how 

Kennedy described them). 

“Those didn’t fit very well, or they fell apart. 

I didn’t see why I had to sacrifice good fit and 

attention to detail because I was looking for 

something organic and natural feeling,” she said. 

“Hyde was born out of the need for natural, 

comfortable, yoga clothes that were stylish, fit well 

but still affordable. Like many of my yogi friends, 

I wanted clothes that were as considered and 

thoughtful as my practice. I saw an opportunity to 

make graceful gear my business,” she noted. 

And thus, Hyde Yoga was born. The clothing 

line boasts some very happy customers, including 

lifestyle guru Deepak Chopra, who praised 

the yoga wear as “elegant, simplicity, comfort 

and style. I love them.” 

Starting a new business was nerve-wracking, 

especially because Kennedy was not only the 

designer, but also the chief salesperson. Her first 

sample designs were terrible, she said. 

“I got these five [design samples] back, the 

first iterations of my designs, and they were 

awful! I spent months developing them. How 

on earth was I going to sell them if I wouldn’t 

buy them? I burst into tears—everything was 

wrong—the fabric wasn’t soft enough, they 

weren’t different, they weren’t what I was intending 

to do, they weren’t remarkable,” she 

said. “I really needed a product that could sell 

itself, and at that point I didn’t feel as if I had 

that. That was my moment where I thought I’m 

not going to be able to get off the ground, I’ve 

wasted six months and all the money I invested.” 

Fortunately, she didn’t give up. Once she was 

able to iron out the problems, she would don 

her designs, then attend various yoga classes to 

model them. After class would finish, she would 

then approach the yoga teacher to try to sell her 

products. Kennedy designs the clothing to assist 

in proper poses, with details such as a straight 

line sewn down the front of a shirt, or a split-knee 

knicker that helps position the knee properly. 

Her designs are primarily sold through yoga 

studios, though Hyde has a growing online catalog 

as well. But she’s content to stay a small business. 

“The nature of yoga is very conducive to small 

businesses—[yoga studios are] small businesses 

and they want to support small business.” 


whitney o’brien ’96 

Trying to find a decent, comfortable and affordably 

priced cashmere sweater was so 

frustrating for Whitney Tremaine O’Brien that 

she founded her own line in 2003. The result 

is Two Bees Cashmere, a line of women’s and 

children’s cashmere clothing that’s made from 

cashmere sourced in Inner Mongolia, spun on 

state-of-the-art Italian spinning machines, and 

dyed with eco-friendly Swiss dyes that result in 

lightweight, classic outfits. 

“I never studied design. I have a business 

school background,” she said. “There’s nothing 

[in my collection] that follows the super-trend. 

They are timeless looks. I have pictures from the 

’60s of my mom wearing twin sets. You can see 

women wearing that today.” 

Her collection features simple, elegant pullovers 

as well as twin sets, cardigans and soft, 

cozy wraps. 

O’Brien said she gets inspirations 

from everywhere. “A lot 

is the culture around. The Asian 

cardigan [was inspired by a] 

trip to Hong Kong. My goal is 

to bring a sense of beauty and 

elegancy to everyone. Classic 

understated elegant, mixed 

with preppy attire.” 

And while the recession has 

affected her sales, people are still 

buying. Two Bees Cashmere 

sells in boutiques and trade 

shows, as well as online. 

x With a business school 

background instead of design 

training, whitney tremaine 

o’Brien ’96 focuses on 

timeless classics.

the fashion maven: 

crystal meers ’97 

Have you had your Daily Candy today? If you 

have, you can thank Crystal Meers for it. As Los 

Angeles editor for the online fashion website 

www.DailyCandy.com, Meers offers up a daily 

dose of fashion items and shopping tidbits. She’s 

been there for four and a half years, dishing up 

witty and succinct vignettes of local stores and 

products that catch her eye. 

“I credit Mr. McKibben, my 10th grade 

English teacher, for that,” she said of her often 

pun-filled descriptions of products and services 

she ferrets out of Los Angeles life. One example: 

Describing a store that offers eyelash extensions 

as having “fringe benefits.” 

Meers started out writing for the print magazine 

Nylon, before briefly dipping her toes into 

the world of teen celebrities for L Girl. 

“I could really talk to real girls and see what 

was going on in their lives. I was like, I really 

miss writing about shoes,” she said. 

The editor in chief of www.DailyCandy.com 

was a “friend of a friend,” and when the Los 

Angeles job opened up, Meers applied. 

“We immediately clicked. After two seconds it 

didn’t feel like an interview,” she said of the editor 

and founder. “They are really doing something 

different and special. It didn’t matter if a celebrity 

was wearing it, it just mattered if it was new and 

undiscovered and the person behind it was very 

dedicated. You can talk to these people who are 

fully engrossed in what they are doing.” 

She said she was nervous about leaving the 

world of print journalism, but that fear didn’t 

last. www.DailyCandy.com has more than 2.5 

million subscribers across the country. 

“We have a really special connection with 

our readers,” she said. “They like the things 

that we cover. It’s a really positive endorsement. 

It’s not that kind of snarky journalism 

that’s so prevalent—that is a lot of what sets 

Daily Candy apart. We have a lot of subscribers 

and it’s really fun because everyone is so 

active. We test everything that comes through. 

We always talk to the people on the other end, 

who are behind it—[to make sure they will] be 

there for the customer.” 

Meers’ work garnered a fashion correspondent 

award in 2007 as well as a loyal 

following online. 

“That comes from covering the small designers, 

the real up and comers. It really is a 

testament. We find the good stuff, we’re here 

saying, look at what we found, it’s incredible 

and you’re going to like it as well,” she said. For 

example, she said, Daily Candy was the first to 

write about designer Rebecca Minkoff ’s handbags. 

“She’s got a multimillion-dollar company 

now. We’re also read pretty widely by people 

who want to stay in the know.” j 

, Crystal meers ’97 is the 

wit behind the L.A. edition of 

Daily Candy, where you can 

find great tips on fashion, 

shopping and travel. 

Bonnie Blackburn penhollow ’84 

is a writer living in Fort Wayne, 

Indiana, with her husband 

Steve and their children Emma 

and Max. 




110 Woodbury Road 

Watertown, CT 06795-2100 

860.945.7777 

www.TaftAlumni.com 

Change Service Requested 

Nine Taft students, led by faculty 

members David Dethlefs and 

Chamby Zepeda, traveled to 

Guatemala in June, where they 

spent 10 days building houses, 

volunteering at two malnutrition 

centers and a homeless shelter and 

helping with a food distribution 

program. For more information, 

visit www.TaftSchool.org. 

NONPROFIT ORG 

U.S. POSTAGE 

PAID 

BURLINGTON, VT 

PERMIT NO. 101 

Serving in guatemala

Commencement - The Taft School

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