THE Brain - The Taft School

Transcription

A Return
to Cuba
rhythms of
the
Brain
A Campaign
on the Line
Winter 2014
Winter 2014
in this issue
22
The Ageless Adventures
of Bob Gries ’47
By Linda Hedman Beyus
28
Playing Jazz to the
Rhythms of the Brain
Neurologist John C.M. Brust ’54
By Virginia Hughes
32
The Long Journey Home
A Return to Cuba
By Eduardo Mestre ’66
38
Cutting the Door
to Meet the Stone
A Campaign on the Line
By Willy MacMullen ’78
Departments
2 From the Editor
3Letters
3 Taft Trivia
4 Alumni Spotlight
10 Around the Pond
19Sport
42 Tales of a Taftie:
Mark Winslow Potter ’48
43 From the Archives:
A Winter’s Day, at War
v Martin Luther King Day
speakers Majora Carter and
Dan Esty with Director of
Environmental Studies and
Stewardship Carly Borken at
the annual Prayer Breakfast.
Robert Falcetti
from the EDITOR
When the Olympic Games open in Sochi
this year, which should be in full swing by
the time you receive this issue, all Taft eyes
will be on ice hockey. Max Pacioretty ’07
will be playing for the men’s team—the
first Taftie to do so. We caught a preview
of the women’s team in November, when
Coach Katey Stone ’84 brought the national team to Odden Arena, (page 10).
Her former Harvard player and two-time
medalist A.J. Mleczko Griswold ’93 will be
giving the women’s hockey color commentary for NBC.
Both U.S. teams won silver in
Vancouver four years ago, but the women
have not seen gold since their inaugural
games in Nagano in 1998 (A.J. and current
Taft coach Gretchen Ulion Silverman were
both on that team), and the men have not
brought home gold since the 1980 Miracle
on Ice in Lake Placid. Let’s hope the Taft
connections are the ticket to gold.
The roots of ice hockey are deep at
Taft. Although originally called ice polo,
it is clear that the sport has been played
from the school’s earliest days. Even before
climate change became an issue, the threat
of a January thaw sending the “boards”
downstream whenever the pond would
melt prompted the school to build the first
artificial ice rink in prep school circles in
1950 (“From the Archives: Mays Rink,”
Spring 2012).
No matter how the games unfold, the
stories of great determination in the face
of adversity will likely be as compelling as
the moments of gold, silver and bronze. As
always we want to hear your stories….
—Julie Reiff
Winter 2014
Volume 84, Number 2
Bulletin Staff
Editor-In-Chief:
Julie Reiff
Managing Editor:
Linda Hedman Beyus
Design: Good Design LLC
www.gooddesignusa.com
Mail letters to:
Julie Reiff, Editor-in-Chief
Taft Bulletin
The Taft School
Watertown, CT 06795-2100
juliereiff@taftschool.org
Correction
We mistakenly combined Edward Bournes in the In Memoriam tribute to Edward G. Bourne ’54.
Edward Gaylord Bourne, the first, was Horace Taft’s roommate at Yale. His son Edward Walter
was a member of the Class of 1915, whose three brothers all attended Taft as well. His son,
Edward Gaylord Bourne II, was a member of the Class of ’54. Our thanks to his sister Margaret
Pedersen for the clarification. Our apologies.
WWW
On the Cover
v Emerita Taft
Coach Patsy Odden
drops the puck for
the faceoff between
the Taft boys’ varsity
squad and the
women’s national
team, as former Taft
national players look
on. Phil Dutton
Taft on the Web
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2 Taft Bulletin WInter 2014
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Linda Hedman Beyus
Alumni Office
The Taft School
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Winter–November 15
Send address corrections to:
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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.
Letters
Lovely Coeds
The “coeds” shown with the car in front of
CPT in the September 1971 picture are,
from left, Pam Thomas, Sue Daly, Anne
Morse, Holly Williams and me.
—Dodie Wood Mazzarella ’74
I believe the Rolls-Royce in the photo on
page 36 belonged to an English teacher
from England, Rory Stuart!
—Bruce Turbow ’73
Found Treasures
In Stan Donnelly’s letter (Summer 2013),
he referenced the 1997 address by Irwin
Miller ’27. I went to your site and pulled
it up. It was both fascinating and just as
relevant today as it was when it was delivered. Beyond that, I found that there is a
treasure trove of information that all your
hard work has made available. For that, I
am deeply appreciative.
As an example, in the article that immediately followed Mr. Miller’s address
was a historical retrospective on how
???
Rockefeller Field came to be. In the article, two of Mrs. Rockefeller’s sons were
mentioned. The elder, Sterling Rockefeller
’24, went on to Yale and was part of a successful Olympic rowing effort in Paris,
France. When I looked into that event
more deeply, I found that they had won the
gold medal and that one of the crewmates
was none other than Benjamin Spock, MD. From my readings, I find many interesting
things—both trivial (the rowing fact) and
profound (Mr. Miller’s address)—that
remind me that Taft continues to educate
me to this day.
—Craig Rider ’62
Notable “Nick”
Thank you for the excellent piece on my
classmate and friend, Flemming (but no
one save his parents called him that during
his Taft years) “Nick” Norcott. Nick and
I joined the class as mids in a tumultuous
time for the school and for the country. I
had the great pleasure of sharing his joy for
the emerging music of the time, listening
to the big console radio on the second
floor of the Annex, sometimes flipping to a
broadcast of a game featuring a high school
Nick’s “other” friends attended.
During football season, I blocked for
Nick, “Skins” Ridens and Rod Moorhead;
what a backfield we had! At the Kent
game, after two consecutive 28 Power
Sweeps were whistled dead because Nick
had so convincingly faked into the line,
allowing Skins to score, Coach Bob Poole
’50 called the officials over and explained
what we were doing and how it worked.
Back on the field we ran 28 Power Sweep
again, and this time, Skins scored in spite
of, and because of, Nick’s third convincing
fake into the line.
Nick and I came from diverse and yet
oddly similar places; early on my classmates branded me a “hick from the woods
in New Hampshire” even though I grew up
in a college town, as did Nick, who haled
from New Haven. I was oblivious to the
many things that impacted him in ways I…
Love it? Hate it?
Read it? Tell us!
We’d love to hear what you think
about the stories in this Bulletin.
We may edit your letters for length,
clarity and content, but please write!
Julie Reiff, editor
Taft Bulletin
110 Woodbury Road
or juliereiff@taftschool.org
Taft Trivia
What is the name of the newest academic department at Taft?
Send your guess to juliereiff@taftschool.org. The winner, whose name will be
chosen at random from all correct entries received, will receive a pair of reusable Taft
shopping bags made from 100 percent recycled plastic.
Congratulations to Jim Goldsmith ’53, who correctly replied that rubbing
Lincoln’s nose is the tradition reputed to bring good luck on exams.
Taft Bulletin Winter 2014 3
alumni Spotlight
By Linda Hedman Beyus
v Jennifer Merritt Swope ’87 in Boston MFA’s
textile lab, with a 1890s Mennonite quilt from
Pennsylvania that will be in the Quilts and
Color exhibition.
Quilts and Color
Jennifer Merritt Swope ’87 has been
working on an exhibit and catalog of eyepopping American quilts that will open
in April at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts
called Quilts and Color.
These are not your grandmother’s,
traditional quilts. The exhibit will
feature 60 distinctive quilts with bold
designs that echo the work of mid-20th
century abstract expressionist and op
artists and date from the mid-19th to
mid-20th centuries, made primarily
in New England, Pennsylvania, Ohio,
Illinois and Missouri. Quilts and Color
runs through July 26.
“The quilts demonstrate a working knowledge of the basic principles
of color theory that seems prescient to
20th-century abstract art,” she says.
The collectors, Gerald Roy and his
late partner, Paul Pilgrim, whose quilts
will be exhibited, were both artists and
designers in Oakland, California. “When
they began collecting quilts in the late
1960s for their interior design business,
they found themselves drawn to quilts
with sophisticated color combinations,
or what Joseph Albers would have
termed, ‘color activity,’” Swope says.
Now, almost a half century later,
Roy’s quilt collection numbers nearly
2,000, and the MFA is first art museum
to show this collection.
In addition to the quilts, works of
20th-century abstract art by Bridget
Riley, Joseph Albers and Victor Vasarely
(among others) will be exhibited “to
make the point that the quilters, mostly
unknown, made extraordinary abstract
compositions in textiles,” she adds.
For the past 10 years, she has
been a consultant in the David and
Roberta Logie Textile and Fashion Arts
Department of the MFA. “I was hired to
research American textiles in preparation
for the opening of the American Wing
and have continued there, working on
18th-century Boston embroidery and,
now, quilts.”
In addition, she teaches textile courses.
“I was always interested in textiles and
loved learning how to batik at Taft (something I continued to do in college),”
Swope says. She taught batik as a student
at Colorado College and was pleased to
get back to teaching when she was hired
by Boston Architectural College in 2010.
“I learn as much from my students as
they learn from me,” she says, “because
many are from places where people still
make textiles, such as China, India, Haiti
and Nepal.”
Launching 3D Printing
John Camp ’92 is having fun with 3D
printers. Camp was involved with designing prototype parts for NASA’s
James Webb Telescope at Lockheed
Martin as a mechanical engineer. The
telescope will be the largest telescope
ever launched.
Using a MakerBot 3D printer, Camp
made working prototypes that allowed
his team to practice assembling James
Webb’s primary imaging system and
used other 3D prints as jigs to form
metal parts that will actually fly in space.
“One of the things I love about 3D
printing is that it enables you to make
physical things fast,” he says.
3D printing is a process of making a
three-dimensional solid object—of virtually any shape—from a digital model,
using an additive process, where successive layers of material are laid down in
different shapes.
“At Lockheed’s Advanced Technology
Center, everybody wants to be an inventor. When we first got our 3D printer,
engineers came out of the woodwork,”
says Camp. It meant that they could
print anything “from whimsical things to
actual parts of a spacecraft.”
h John Camp
’92 at his home
workbench with
his 3D printer
creations.
He’s now at Apple as a senior product
design engineer, “doing research and
development in a group whose specialty
is to understand the underlying physics
of the cool new products we’re trying to
launch,” he says. “Although I guess in this
context ‘launch’ means something altogether different. I am having as much fun
as I ever had in aerospace.”
“I always wanted to make either
spacecraft or aircraft,” Camp says. At
Taft, he found out that meant engineering school, so he went to Cornell for
mechanical and aerospace engineering.
“Working for the space program was
always a dream of mine,” says Camp,
who worked for Lockheed for almost 16
years doing R&D on many spacecraft and
other programs. “As a kid, going to space
seemed the most exceptional thing one
could do. As I grew, designing and building spacecraft seemed the next best thing
(not to mention it’s a heck of a lot safer).”
He also experiments with 3D printing
at home, “a mix of my own inventions
and stuff for the kids (toys, crowns, jewels, animals)”—he has three, ages 5 and 3
(twins). “I love starting a print and going
to bed. In the morning it’s finished, as if
elves worked all night for me,” he says.
“Torture” Abstracted
As part of his visiting research fellowship at the Sydney College of the Arts,
Marc Leuthold ’80 created a new body
of ceramic forms onsite for the exhibit,
Torture, which explores oppression as
a chosen behavior in a contemporary
and historical context.
“This new piece is directly related
to the exhibit I had a few years ago in
the Potter Gallery,” says Leuthold. “The
Taft exhibit was the first time I used
ink on paper for my work in a serious
way. It was a very positive experience
that influenced and altered my work
as an artist. Gallery director Loueta
Chickadaunce really was an inspirational influence both for the Taft show
and this recent one.”
The highly abstracted forms were
rendered in response to imagery from
the convict period in Australia and from
contemporary American wars in response to terrorism, he explains. Some
of the forms were partially concealed
by an architectural enclosure made of
paper, and viewers were invited to cut
or slash through paper in order to view
them. The figures are glazed porcelain
and the paper is Fabriano Artistica, the
same paper he used at Taft.
n “Torture,” the centerpiece of Leuthold’s
exhibit at the Sydney College of the Arts.
Leuthold is a professor of art at
the State University of New York,
Potsdam. The exhibition was on display in the Research Gallery at SCA
in November. For more information,
visit www.marcleuthold.com.
alumni Spotlight
Next Generation Energy
Lisa Frantzis ’75 is helping lead the way
into the future of energy, and a greener
one at that. With more than 30 years
of experience in energy consulting and
facilitation, she specializes in advanced
energy technologies in the power sector—“think solar, smart grid, wind and
next-generation energy efficiency options,” she says.
“I currently lead forums where I bring
together utility CEOs, advanced energy
companies and regulators to talk about
new business models that are needed to
encourage the growth of advanced energy within the power sector,” she says.
Frantzis is senior vice president of
strategy and corporate development at
Advance Energy Economy, an association of businesses working to make the
energy system clean, secure and affordable. She was a managing director at
Navigant, running their renewable and
distributed energy group, and supports
them on clean energy initiatives.
Other key projects she is leading
include an initiative “to help convene
companies to develop positioning around
the EPA greenhouse gas regulations that
President Obama is trying to establish
for existing power plants, as well as a
h Lisa Frantzis
’75 reviews a
solar installation
at Partners In
Health Hospital in
Mirebalais, Haiti.
bioenergy assessment and action plan for
the government of Haiti,” she adds.
“At Wesleyan, I was thrilled by a
course I took in the Science in Society
program with a professor who was working with Buckminster Fuller at the time
at Earth Metabolic Design,” she says.
He convinced Frantzis to do a summer
intern project looking at the potential
for using methanol in transportation in
Connecticut. “He essentially turned my
life around,” she says.
She became more interested in environmental studies and did her junior
year at UC Santa Cruz, “where there
was so much happening related to the
environment after the oil crisis in the
early ’70s,” she says.
“I won a few grants related to appropriate technology and was asked to help
teach a class on alternative energy,” says
Frantzis. “Everything started to fall into
place, and I loved learning about solar
energy and renewable energy technologies.” Frantzis also interned at the U.N.,
helping review alternative energy in developing country markets.
“The people I work with in this field
are terrific and have the same values as
I do, typically. That makes all the difference in a job, so it has been a wonderful
ride since the beginning,” she says.
TV for Millennials
Grace Scott ’07 was standing in the
offices of Pivot, a new TV network,
with the president and her co-workers
at 3 a.m. on August 1. They were watching the channel launch for the first time.
“It is an experience that I will never forget,” she says.
Pivot is unique—it focuses on creating entertainment that inspires social
change. “We are geared toward a millennial audience that hopes to serve as
v Grace Scott ’07 helps launch Pivot TV,
geared toward millennials.
a catalyst for change in the near future,”
Scott explains.
“It’s been quite the wild ride and one
that not very many people my age will ever
have because this market is saturated,” she
says. “The draw for me is the excitement
of working in television, but adding the
social action aspect to programming is not
only unique, but also inspiring.”
Scott works in contract administration as well as with the acquisitions team
to find programs and movies that will
bring people to the new channel. Pivot is
adamant about including the network’s
Art That Pops
J.D. Deardourff ’04 describes his art as a
rainbow during a sharknado. Each of his
screen prints is a bold mélange of color,
combining abstract elements with more
recognizable images in ways that evoke
both the comic books Deardourff grew
up on and the iconic psychedelic posters
and album covers of the 1960s.
“I was interested in comic books before I could read,” Deardourff says. “My
sister read them to me the way you might
read Dr. Seuss.”
And while Deardourff ’s taste in literature has changed, it is clear that comic
books remain significant to his art.
“I’m interested in their formal vocabulary,” Deardourff explains, “like the
use of an energetic black contour line,
the artificiality of the colors, the kinds
of visual shorthand that happen and the
interplay between sequential images.”
As a student at the School of the Art
Institute of Chicago, Deardourff took
a collage class with Jim Nutt. Nutt, a
founding member of the surrealist movement known as the Chicago Imagists,
found his own inspiration in the culture
that gave rise to Pop Art. It was in Nutt’s
class that Deardourff refined his technique, bringing new focus to his work.
young staff in decision making. “We
have an executive team that looks to us
for opinions on what millennials watch
and if programming will be interesting,” says Scott.
“It sounds like a cliché, but when I
was younger I always wanted to have
a hand in changing the world, and
working here has given me an opportunity to pursue that goal even in a
small way,” she says.
“How do you persuade 20-somethings to look up from their
phones long enough to gaze at an
v J.D. Deardourff ’04 screens
one of his prints.
, Sharktopussy
“I was extracting a lot of positive space
imagery from comic book pages, like faces
and hands and sound effects, and I realized that the remaining negative space
was far more interesting,” Deardourff says.
Deardourff begins by making a collage of shapes and panels and pages
pulled from comic books, then makes
intuitive, aesthetic decisions about color
and composition.
“I put the collage on a light table and
trace the screen print color separations
old-fashioned regular TV?,” asked
NPR in a story on Pivot’s debut.
“For each of our shows we create
campaigns around issues that are important for young people to know about
and take action on—it’s a different way
of looking at entertainment and also a
very interactive platform,” Scott says.
“We have had a lot of success making
people aware of social issues through
media and entertainment.”
“People live and breathe our mission at this company, and I’m excited to
be a part of it,” she adds.
by hand,” Deardourff explains. “Usually
I’ll start with like seven colors, but
often end up going back and adding
more. I’m always struggling with when
enough is enough.”
Deardourff scans and prints the
separations as stencils to burn onto
screens. His unique work has captured the attention of a British record
company, for whom he designs album
covers, and Burton Snowboards, whose
Descendant model features his art.
In November, Deardourff ’s work was
featured in two different group shows,
one at Maryland’s Chevy Chase Club,
the other in a “hipster DIY warehouse
space” in Washington, D.C., where
Deardourff lives and works. On January
4, Deardourff ’s first solo show opened at
Hillyer Art Space in Dupont Circle.
For more, visit www.deardourff.com
—Debra Meyers
In Print
Romance Is My Day Job
Patience Smith Bloom ’86
Haven’t we all wondered why real-life romance isn’t
more like fiction?
Harlequin editor Patience Bloom certainly did,
many times over. As a teen she fell in love with
Harlequin novels and imagined her life would turn
out just like the heroines on the page: That shy guy
she had a crush on wouldn’t just take her out—he’d
sweep her off her feet with witty banter, quiet charm
and a secret life as a rock star. Not exactly her reality,
but Patience kept reading books that fed her dreams.
Years later Patience moved to New York City and
found her dream job, editing romance novels for
Harlequin. Every day, her romantic fantasies came
true—on the page. Patience was an expert when it
came to fictional love stories; she learned everything
she could about the romance business. But her
dating life remained uninspired. She nearly gave up
on love.
Then one day a real-life chance at romance made
her wonder if what she’d been editing all those years
might somehow be true. A Facebook message from a
high school friend, Sam [Bloom ’84], sparked a relationship with more promise than she’d had in years.
But Sam lived thousands of miles away—they hadn’t
seen each other in more than two decades. Was it
worth the risk?
Could love and romance conquer all? As with the
novels Patience edited for years, readers will have to
turn the final page to find out.
Echoes of the Outlaw Roadshow
Counting Crows (Adam Duritz ’82)
San Francisco rockers Counting Crows capped off
their much-anticipated tour with the release of their
newest collection of live songs, Echoes of the Outlaw
Roadshow. This collection of audio footage was
recorded on several dates of their North American
tour in 2012 and complements their earlier live
recordings. Known for their energy and unique
performances—no two shows are ever the same;
Adam Duritz constantly rewrites and remixes songs
to keep their live performances full of surprises.
Detecting Deception
The Art & Science of Uncovering
and Testifying to the Truth
Paul S. McCormick ’83
Sometimes the most elusive thing in law enforcement can be the truth. In his book, investigator Paul
McCormick shares tools that can help find it. A
seasoned, heavily trained “lie detector,” McCormick
shares strategies that can peel away layers of deception
and reveal the truth.
Inside this highly effective, immediately applicable
manual McCormick teaches investigators to:
• Guide conversations with suspects in a manner
that increases their chances of getting honest
information from them.
• Recognize the critical difference between
“profiling” suspects and “discriminating.”
• Spot behaviors and responses that can indicate a
suspect is not being truthful.
• Employ active listening skills that can prove
priceless for knowing when to dig deeper into a
suspect’s response.
• Recognize key phrasing that can clearly flag
attempts to hedge responses and deceive them.
Hydrofracking
What Everyone Needs to Know
Alex Prud’homme ’80
Fracking, as it is known for short, is one of the most
promising yet controversial methods of extracting
natural gas and oil from the earth. Today, 90 percent
of natural gas wells use fracking, which fractures rock
with pressurized fluid. Though highly effective, the
process has been criticized for polluting land, air and
water, and endangering human health.
A timely addition to Oxford’s What Everyone Needs
to Know series, Hydrofracking explores both sides of
the debate and provides a clear guide to the science
involved. Alex Prud’homme cuts through the maze of
opinions and rhetoric to uncover key points—from
the economic and political benefits to the health
dangers and negative effects on the environment.
Prud’homme offers clear answers to a range of
fundamental questions, including: What is fracking fluid?
How does it impact water supplies? Who regulates the
industry? How much recoverable natural gas exists in the
U.S.? What new innovations are on the horizon? He also
considers ways to improve methods in the short term,
while also exploring the possibility of transitioning to
more sustainable resources for the long term.
Prud’homme is also the author of The Ripple Effect,
My Life in France and The Cell Game.
The Lons
Peggy Rambach ’76
One day in 2001, shortly after Fighting Gravity was
published, Rambach was working on a writing exercise with a 10-year-old student named Andrew. “We
had to describe how it felt to be inside a large piece
of fruit, like James in his giant peach,” she explains,
“except that my character ended up on the outside
of a watermelon that was very, very small. I kind of
liked what I wrote. So did Andrew. Later, I read it to
my grown daughter, and she urged me to keep at it.
I hadn’t had fun writing anything since I was in the
third grade. Eventually, my little exercise turned into
a little novel.”
That little novel, The Lons, tells the story the
very strange things growing in Leonard Slinket’s
field. Short for watermelons, the lons are as “light
and small as Wiffle balls, turn smooth and warm,
dark yet luminous, and their vines beat with a
pulse.” If Leonard can’t figure out why the lons are
here and what they want, he says, “all hell’s gonna
break loose.”
There is no doubting their power and beauty,
their need for each other and the mystery of their
existence. In this story of adventure, loyalty, love and
connection, we come to find that the lons are not
much different than us.
The Promise of Power
The Origins of Democracy in India
and Autocracy in Pakistan
Maya Tudor ’94
Under what conditions are some developing countries able to create stable democracies while others
are perpetually prone to instability and authoritarianism? Despite broadly similar historical and
political legacies, India’s and Pakistan’s regimes
diverged radically after independence. In The Promise
of Power, Maya Tudor seeks to explain why this
occurred through a comparative historical analysis.
Drawing on interviews, colonial records and early
government documents, Tudor challenges the
prevailing explanations of democratization, which
attribute political outcomes directly to low levels of
economic development and high levels of inequality.
Instead, she suggests that the emergence of a stable
democracy in India and an unstable autocracy in
Pakistan is best explained by the historically specific
interests of the dominant social group, which led
each independence movement as well as by the
varying strength of the political parties that were
created to pursue those interests.
Tudor is university lecturer in government and
public policy at the Blavatnik School of Government,
Oxford. Her research investigates the origins of
stable, democratic and effective states across the
developing world. The Promise of Power was based
on her 2010 dissertation, which won the American
Political Science Association’s Gabriel Almond Prize
for the Best Dissertation in Comparative Politics. A
dual citizen of Germany and the U.S., she has worked
as a special assistant to Chief Economist Joseph
Stiglitz at the World Bank, at UNICEF, in the U.S.
Senate, and at the Bangladesh Rural Advancement
Committee, recently ranked the world’s top NGO.
Dogfight
How Apple and Google Went to War
and Started a Revolution
Fred Vogelstein ’80
An in-depth look into the bitter rivalry between
Apple and Google—and how it’s reshaping the way
we think about technology
The rise of smartphones and tablets has altered
the business of making computers. At the center are
these two companies, whose philosophies, leaders and
commercial acumen have steamrolled the competition. In the age of Android and the iPad, their feud
will play out not just in the marketplace but also in the
courts and on screens around the world.
Fred Vogelstein has reported on this rivalry for
more than a decade and has rare access to its major
players. In Dogfight, he takes us into the offices and
boardrooms where company dogma translates into
ruthless business; behind outsize personalities like
Steve Jobs, Apple’s now-lionized founder, and Eric
Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman; and inside
the deals, lawsuits and allegations that mold the way
we communicate.
Dogfight reads like a novel: vivid nonfiction
with never-before-heard details. This is more than
a story about what devices will replace our phones
and laptops. It’s about who will control the content
on those devices and where that content will come
from—about the future of media in Silicon Valley,
New York and Hollywood.
Fred Vogelstein is a contributing
If you would like a copy of your work
editor at Wired, where he writes
added to the Hulbert Taft Library’s
about the tech and media industries.
Alumni Authors Collection and listed
He has been a staff writer for Fortune,
in this column, please send a copy to:
the Wall Street Journal and U.S. News
& World Report. His work has also
Taft Bulletin
appeared in the New York Times
The Taft School
Magazine, the Los Angeles Times and
110 Woodbury Road
the Washington Post.
For more information
on the latest campus
happenings, visit
www.taftschool.org.
around the Pond
By Julie Reiff
h Women’s Olympic Coach
Katey Stone ’84, right, at
center ice in Odden Arena
before the women’s national team faced off against
the boys’ varsity squad with
Taft hockey legends: Patsy
Odden, Nicole Uliasz ’00,
Tammy Shewchuck Dryden
’96 and current varsity
coach Gretchen Silverman.
Phil Dutton/PhotoTrophies
USA Hockey
The U.S. women’s national team, coached
by Katey Stone ’84, faced off against the
boys’ varsity squad in November to a
packed house in Odden Arena.
In a celebration of Taft’s legacy in
women’s ice hockey, Stone’s coach and
hockey legend Patsy Odden dropped
the puck, with many of her former
players joining her at center ice before the game: Tammy Shewchuck
Dryden ’96 (Gold, Salt Lake); Nicole
Uliasz ’00, Taft girls’ varsity coach;
Gretchen Silverman (Gold, Nagano;
Silver, Salt Lake); and Stone. Former
national team players Chanda Gunn
’99 (Bronze, Torino) and A.J. Mleczko
Griswold ’93 (Gold, Nagano) could
not attend. A.J. and Tammy also played
for Stone at Harvard.
Members of the girls’ varsity team
joined the boys on the ice to present gifts
to the honorees and did a pin exchange
with Team U.S.A. Stone spoke earlier
with the varsity girls as well.
The night was a great collaboration with Watertown Youth Hockey as
well, many of whom packed the stands.
The U10 girls from Watertown Youth
Hockey and the Connecticut Polar
Bears put on an exhibition between
the first two periods. On to Sochi for
the Olympic Games, to cheer on Stone
and her team!
Literacy First
Taft’s Service Learning course, now in its
seventh year, has a new focus…on literacy.
“We wanted to improve the quality
of our service,” says Jamella Lee, who
teaches the class, “so that our service
meets a critical and strategic need for our
service partners while also a meaningful
experience for our students. We know
from both the 2007 United Way Needs
Assessment and our service partners that
literacy is a critical need for elementary
students. Only 30 percent of fourth graders passed the Connecticut Mastery Test
(CMT) in reading. This speaks volumes
to the importance of the literacy tutoring
our service-learning students are providing to kindergarten students.”
So part of the coursework this
year includes training as a literacy
volunteer and studying brain development, along with hands-on experience
at Carrington Elementary, one of the
Waterbury Public Schools.
The partnership with Waterbury
Public Schools came about as part of
the school’s new Center for Global
Leadership and Service (CGLS, see
Summer 2013), which was created with
a matching grant from the Edward E.
Ford Foundation.
“Although we have worked with
Children’s Community School (CCS)
for many years,” adds Lee, “we did not
have a partnership with the Waterbury
Public School system before CGLS.”
Taft students continue to work at CCS,
as well as the newly created Brass City
Charter School and Watertown Public
Schools, through the Volunteer Program
“The idea behind the CGLS,” says Lee,
“is that we are strengthening and expanding our partnerships. One way we are
doing that is by creating a more strategic
focus around our work, like the focus on
literacy, and also by developing metrics to
show the true impact of our work).
Another outreach effort under the
umbrella of the CGLS is the expanded
Sports In Service program, being coordinated by faculty member Ginger O’Shea.
In addition to fundraising programs for
cancer awareness, teams have also hosted
clinics for local youth.
Other CGLS programs are in the
planning stages and will be rolled out
over the next 18 months.
Composting
Taft launched a new composting
program in November and redirected roughly seven tons from
going to the landfill in the first
month. By composting food prep
waste, wet food leftovers and
paper products from the dining
hall, the school is also diverting
the heaviest waste from the rubbish stream. This ultimately saves
the school a substantial amount
of money as well on the tonnage
expense of dumping conventional waste.
Composting now represents 25
percent of the school’s total waste
stream. Material is sent to a composting facility in New Milford,
and the school pays only the delivery fee. Recycling accounts for
another 15 percent and is picked
up at no cost.
“Our goal was to reach a 50/50
waste diversion (recycling and
composting) ratio by the end of
the school year,” says Director of
Environmental Stewardship Carly
Borken, “but we’re on track to
exceed that now, given that we’re
already at 40 percent. Changes in
our community actions are really
making all the difference at this
point. Kudos to the students, staff
and faculty who really make these
programs work.”
n Desiree Gonzalez ’16 tutors a local elementary student on Community Service Day. Olivia Paige ’15
h Summer reading
author David
Suzuki meets with
students in the
Woolworth Faculty
Room after his
Morning Meeting
talk. Peter Frew ’75
An Elder’s Vision
David Suzuki is an award-winning
scientist, professor, broadcaster and
environmentalist. He is a world leader
in sustainable ecology and a prolific
author; he holds 25 honorary degrees.
Now in his 70s, it is his “new” position as
an elder in the community of man that
compels and inspires him.
“Elders have a clarity of vision that
is no longer clouded by ambitions for
power or money or for fame,” Suzuki
told Taft students at a Morning Meeting
in November. “I have no hidden agenda.
As an elder, I simply speak the truth.”
The truth, he says, is that we as
a species have veered off course by
distancing ourselves from our agrarian roots and abusing our planet in the
name of economic growth. The problems we face as a global community are
of our own doing.
“We have become a force of nature,”
he adds. “Seven billion people leave a
very big ecological footprint. It takes a
lot of air, water and land just to keep us
alive… One species is now changing the
physical, chemical and biological properties of our planet on a geological scale.”
Those changes are so great that scientists have begun to refer to this time
in our history as “the Anthropocene
epoch,” a term that denotes a point in
our geologic chronology when human
activity has begun to significantly impact the Earth’s ecosystems.
“We have to find ways of living in balance,” he says. “We are undermining the
very things that keep us alive and well.”
And just as the problem begins with
the human mind, Suzuki says, so does
the solution. He implores us to embrace
a philosophy where economic growth
and progress are tied into happiness and
wellbeing. Citing a “resolution on happiness” adopted by the United Nations in
2011, Suzuki says that we must modify
the economy while embracing progress.
According to the resolution, gross
domestic product (GDP) alone is not
an adequate measure of human prosperity; “a more inclusive, equitable and
balanced approach is needed to promote sustainability, eradicate poverty
and enhance well-being.
“We just have to find the will to see
the world through a different lens,”
Suzuki concluded, “so that’s over to you.”
—Debra Meyers
Suzuki’s visit to Taft was made possible by
the Paley Family Endowment. His book The
Legacy, An Elder’s Vision for Our Sustainable
Future was the 2013 all-school read. For more
information visit www.davidsuzuki.org
Saving the Ocean
Nature and human dignity require
each other, says author and conservationist Carl Safina, who spoke at Taft
last fall as part of the Paduano Lecture
Series in Philosophy and Ethics.
The founder of the Blue Ocean
Institute asked what our relationship
with the natural world should be. And
how does it affect our relationships
with one another?
Our institutions are out of synch
with reality, he explained. “It’s OK to
use nature. It’s not OK to use it up.”
“People seem very confused about
the difference between growth and
development,” he said. “Growth
means taking more material and making something bigger. Development
means making some things better.
You can treat each other better. People
seem to think bigger and better are the
same thing, but they are sometimes
very much at odds with each other.”
Still, Safina calls himself hopeful,
which he defines as the “ability to see
how things can get better.”
Among his many honors, Safina has
won a Pew Fellowship, a Guggenheim
Fellowship, the John Burroughs
Medal, the Rabb Medal from
Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo, the James
Beard medal, two honorary doctorates
and a MacArthur “genius” Prize. He
has written six books and hundreds of
articles and is also host of Saving the
Ocean on PBS.
To learn more, visit www.blueocean.org.
Rhino Run
Nearly 400 runners from eight local
middle schools competed in the 3rd
annual Rhino Run at Taft in October.
Both boys’ and girls’ winners set new
records for the 1.9-mile hilly course:
11:14 by Jacob Finkel-Hozer from
Rochambeau, and 12:11 by Ivy Walker,
also of Rochambeau. Competing
schools were Rochambeau, Swift,
Blessed Sacrament, Memorial, St.
John’s, St. Mary Magdalen, Rumsey
Hall and Kingswood-Oxford.
The race was created in 2011
by Sarah Iannone ’13 and the girls’
cross-country team to bring the local
middle school kids to campus to run
on our true cross-country course. Her
sister, Colleen ’15, has carried on that
tradition, and both girls’ and boys’
cross-country teams from Taft managed the race this year.
Guys and Dolls
h Vienna Kaylan ’15 (dancer
Adelaide) and Gaines Semler ’15
(gambler Nathan Detroit) star in
the fall musical, Guys and Dolls,
with a strong cast that included
Carey Cannata ’16, Tennant
Maxey ’16 and Pat Cassidy ’14,
at right. Olivia Paige ’15
Gamblers and showgirls filled the
Bingham stage in October for the fall
Parents’ Weekend musical, Guys and
Dolls, directed by Helena Fifer.
“They are a truly talented bunch of
singers and dancers,” says Fifer, “and it’s
not just the dialogue or songs that are
clever or amusing; it’s the actors!”
Fifer also complements new dance
teacher Sarah Surber on the wonderfully
inspired choreography and Susan Aziz
and her team on the costumes. “The truly timeless music of the show,” she adds,
“was energized by our ever-impressive
T.J. Thompson and his band. It was a
thoroughly collaborative show.”
around the POND
n Jack Mi ’15, Camila Jiang ’14 and Pond Premtoon ’14 with the first-place trophy at
Yale. Taft also brought the trophy home in 2011.
n Carter Taft ’16, Caroline Kearns ’15, Ai Bui
’16 and Johnny Morgart ’16 serve dinner at the
St. Vincent de Paul Mission. Taft students visit
every Friday that school is in session. Patti Taylor
Of Soup and Service
For roughly 20 years, faculty and students from Taft have dedicated one
night a week to serving a meal at the St.
Vincent de Paul Mission in Waterbury. It
is a partnership that has been mutually
beneficial. The mission chose to honor
Taft’s commitment this year with the
Father Cascia Service Award.
Usually three students and a teacher
will load up a school Suburban at the
dining hall on Friday nights and drive
their cargo to Waterbury to serve it at the
homeless shelter.
“A visit to the soup kitchen is not
something students get credit for,” explains volunteer coordinator Baba Frew.
“It’s simply an activity they’ve heard is
very rewarding and want to experience.”
Students inevitably return to campus
impressed with the warmth and gratitude of the shelter’s visitors. They are
also able to put a face on a faceless issue.
Most students are so struck by their experience that they offer to go again.
“In making this award we wish to both
commend and thank you for your commitment to the work of St. Vincent de Paul
Mission,” wrote Father Joseph Donnelly,
chair of the mission’s board of directors,
“and in particular to the ministry of our
homeless shelter.... That commitment and
service has been exemplary.”
The award will be presented at a dinner in March.
Yale Olympics
A team comprised of Camila Jiang
’14, Pond Premtoon ’14 and Jack Mi
’15 took first place in the 13th annual
Yale Physics Olympics.
Fifty schools from Connecticut
send teams of four students (Taft’s
fourth student could not compete
due to illness) to take part in the
competition, which consists of five
events. Each event focuses on some
aspect of physics and tests the knowledge, creativity and technical skills of
the students.
In individual events, Taft tied
for second place in the Fermi quiz,
which use estimation skills to quickly
determine the order of magnitude
of 15 different physical quantities,
but placed first in the “Yiggs” Boson
challenge, using scattering data to
determine the mass of a hypothetical
elementary particle and also won the
“A Salt and Battery” challenge, where
they had to build a battery from given
materials and maximize the output to
a given load.
The team placed 13th in the
Coefficient of Restitution challenge,
in which they had to measure a
golf ball and use the info to predict
where the ball will land after bouncing off an incline, and 8th in “Vector
Sedition,” where team members accurately walk a fixed course, each with
a different predetermined speed to
ensure total time is closest to the time
determined by the organizers.
Taft’s total score of 25 (low is better) was head and shoulders above
the nearest competitor, giving the
team a first place overall ranking.
“Camila, Pond and Jack were a
great team,” says adviser Jim Mooney.
“They really worked well together.”
There’s an App for Taft
Want to learn more about the school today? Know a student
who is looking at boarding schools? Then check out Taft’s new iPad app.
With nine different videos, it’s more than just an interactive viewbook.
Check out the high-speed campus tour. Watch founder Horace Taft come
alive. And see how easy it is to apply online, too.
One of the coolest features of the app is that it takes advantage of the flexibility of the iPad: Turn it horizontally and vertically and see new images and
new features. And you don’t have to apply for admission to enjoy it.
Download it, free, from the iTunes store: http://tiny.cc/taftapp.
Math Bash
Eleven Taft mathletes journeyed up to
Hotchkiss for what is becoming an annual tradition, the Hotchkiss Math Bash.
The event is ably and graciously
hosted by the Hotchkiss Math Team,
says Taft adviser Ted Heavenrich.
Contingents from Choate, Deerfield and
Kent joined the fun, totaling more than
60 competitors from the five schools.
The event is composed of advanced
and intermediate categories, and the competition involves an individual test and a
team GUTS round (teams of four).
“When the dust settled,” reports
Heavenrich, “Taft had taken first and
second place in the Advanced individual
competition (Sonny An and Jack Mi
respectively), and Joseph Han took third
place on the individual Intermediate
test. That two of these students are ninth
graders makes the result all the more
significant and surprising.”
In the team round, Taft’s first advanced team was edged out for second
n The Taft Math Team at MIT for the Harvard-MIT Math Tournament. Courtesy of Bohan Gao ’15
at the buzzer by the top Choate team.
(Hotchkiss ran away with first in a dominating performance.)
Those competing for Taft: Advanced
1: Sonny An ’17, Bohan Gao ’15, Jack
Mi ’15, Kevin Won ’15; Advanced 2:
Srinidhi Bharadwaj ’15, Camila Jiang ’14,
Pond Premtoon ’14, Jennifer Zeng ’15;
Cum Laude
Academic Dean Jon Willson ’82 and Headmaster Willy MacMullen ’78 with Cum Laude
inductees (front, from left) Rozalie Czesana, Rebecca Karabus, Linh Tang, Natalie Tam,
Mishel Figueroa, Charlotte Anrig, Aleksa Lambert, Caroline Henebry. Back row, Robert
Brown, Dawson Jones, John MacMullen, Bridget Dougherty, Tiffany Li, Gregory Anrig and
Carl Sangree. Yee-Fun Yin
Intermediate 1: Joseph Han ’17, Kelvin
Xu ’16, Eva Zhang ’16.
A larger group of mathletes left Taft
before sunrise on Hotchkiss Day and
traveled to Boston in order to compete
in the prestigious Harvard-MIT Math
Tournament, where roughly 115 teams
and 620 individuals compete from
around the world.
“I was hoping for a top-30 finish,” said
Heavenrich. “It was a long day for our
kids, as they took a 50-minute individual
general test, followed by a 50-minute
individual themed test, and then, after a
short break, a 60-minute team test. We
all looked forward to the team GUTS
round, which would conclude the day.”
The GUTS round is a bit like an
80-minute mathematical relay race, with
12 rounds and live scoring.
“It actually is a great spectator sport,”
adds Heavenrich. “Near the end the Red
Rhinos were vying for a top-10 finish.
We finished fifth in the GUTS round
and seventh in the sweepstakes (the best
measure of overall performance on the
day). Jack Mi finished sixth overall on
the individual tests, and tied for fourth
on the general test.
Even though they missed the excitement of Hotchkiss Day, there was
some consolation. “We clobbered the
Bearcats,” Heavenrich adds.
around the POND
Universal Truths
h For many of her
projects, photographer
Alison Wright travels
to the remotest
regions of the globe
photographing
endangered cultures
and people while
documenting issues
concerning the human
condition. Alison Wright
Alison Wright has traveled the world
capturing “the universal truths of the
human spirit” through the lens of a
camera. Wright came to Taft in to share
not only her story, but also the images
that reflect her search for “compassion
in a world of chaos.”
“The first time I heard the term “photojournalist” I knew that’s what I wanted
to be,” Wright told the Taft audience. What that truly meant first came into
focus for her when she found herself a
continent away a few months after graduating from college.
“In northern Africa, I got my first
glimpse of real poverty—of children
and families in refugee camps,” Wright
explained. “I knew then that I wanted
to create awareness—to help in some
way—through my photos and art.”
Wright spent the next 20 years documenting the lives of children in Nepal,
Tibet and other regions of Asia and the
world. Through her art, people across the
globe came to understand extreme poverty and issues like child labor; they also
became aware of endangered cultures that
exist in remote corners of the world.
“I asked myself, ‘How do you get
people to care?’” Wright said. “’How do
you get people to feel a connection?’
Those are the questions I work to answer through my art.”
Her years abroad were marked by great
success as a visual anthropologist and
tested by the inherent perils of her work:
Wright was nearly killed in a bus crash in
Laos, held in a military camp in Beirut
and afflicted with diseases common in
third world countries, like malaria and
Dengue fever, often more than once.
“Early on I pondered the wisdom of
a profession of where you are running
toward what everyone else is running
from,” said Wright.
Over time, that wisdom became clear.
“We may all look different, but there
are simple, global truths: We all want to
love and be loved; we want a little money
in our pockets from jobs that are meaningful; we want safety and health for our
friends and family, and an education for
our children. We make it so much more
complicated than it needs to be.”
Wright’s photography is represented
by the National Geographic Society
and has been published in numerous
magazines. She is a two-time winner of
the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism
Award. For more information, visit
www.alisonwright.com.
—Debra Meyers
Movember
“Movember” is a month dedicated to
not shaving for a cause. This year, seniors Eric Macken, Hadley Stone and
Angus Viebranz decided to grow mustaches not just for comedic value but
also to actively raise money for prostate
cancer research.
Just as October is dedicated to
raising breast cancer awareness,
Movember is meant to support the facial hair growing endeavors of millions
of men across the nation as they grow
out their ’staches and try to change the
face of men’s health. Often overlooked,
prostate cancer is diagnosed in more
than 1 out of 6 American men.
Together they raised more than
$1,700 for the Movember Foundation.
In The Gallery
Photography by Taft seniors Samantha Lamy and Elif Korkmaz were
featured in the Mark W. Potter ’48 Gallery from November 7 to
December 13.
Last year Samantha Lamy spent nine months living in Italy through
School Year Abroad.
“I had never been to Italy before,” says Samantha, “so all I had in my head
was a touristy picture of what I thought Italy would be. After just the first
day of being there, however, the image had already been altered, and I knew
that by the end of the year that picture would be a true representation of
Italian culture. Every day I learned something new and the picture in my
head continued to change as my views on Italy became more concise.”
What struck her most was the way the country’s history was so vividly
reflected in its art, architecture and culture. Her gallery show, “Uno Anno in
Italia,” transforms those reflections into photographic images that, Samantha
says, “communicate the permanent essence of Italy.”
As a 16-year old Turkish student, Elif Korkmaz had never seen a 35 mm
camera before arriving at Taft. Her journey from wonder-filled student
to street artist to powerful photographer has been marked by personal
growth, realization and self-reflection.
“After spending a summer in London attending a street photography
course, I started to see that photography was a way to discover the world
around me,” Elif says. “I came to the realization that I was interested in
issues and ideas, not just aesthetics…. As I discovered how to use photography as a medium of my inner reflection, I began shooting portraits of
familiar people in order to reflect their influence on me.”
Elif’s show, “The Women in My Life,” is a culmination of that reflection.
h Untitled by Sam Lamy ’14
Concerts
In November, Music for a While presented a Concert Vespers of Remembrance
featuring Bach’s Magnificat for chorus, soloists and orchestra with Taft
Camerata Singers, Cantus Excelsus and
Woodward Chamber Orchestra.
In Walker Hall, Castlebay presented
Songs of the Irish Poets. Castlebay has
been musically weaving together the
heritage of New England and the Celtic
lands since 1987. Members Julia Lane
and Fred Gosbee have loved and researched traditional music for most of
their lives and blend history, legend and
experience into their personable performance style.
The concert featured poignant ballads sung in Lane’s ethereal soprano and
Gosbee’s rich baritone interspersed with
joyous dance tunes played on Celtic harp,
guitar, fiddle and tin whistle. Castlebay
treated the audience to a musical journey
through time and across the Atlantic.
December brought two treats for the
holidays. This year was the 78th annual
celebration of Lessons and Carols in
Woodward Chapel. Actor/narrator John
McDonough also presented An English
Christmas, featuring excerpts from seasonal classic literature, such as A Child’s
Christmas in Wales, The Wind in the
Willows and A Visit from St. Nicholas.
v Julia Lane and Fred Gosbee perform Songs of the Irish Poets in Walker Hall as part of the
Music for a While series. www.Castlebay.net
around the POND
For the Refugees
When Griffin Conner ’15 visited the
United Nations High Commission on
Refugees in Geneva last summer, he
learned about the refugee situation in
Jordan, and this motivated him to organize an effort through the UNHCR to
collect and distribute sports equipment,
both new and used, to the Syrian children in refugee camps in Jordan.
“My dad really put the idea out for
me, and he did a lot to make it all possible,” says Griffin, who estimates the
total number of balls collected at over
100, along with other equipment.
Volunteer coordinator Baba Frew sent
a letter to Taft parents on his behalf.
“Although the project was spearheaded
by Griffin and his parents, Jon and Janet
Conner, the really cool thing is that other
parents quickly joined in,” says Frew.
Dan Moffa, father of Ben ’17, read
about the drive and provided the boxes
and packing materials.
Linda Barnett, mother of Livvy ’15,
who works with Global Goods Partners,
donated fair-trade soccer balls, made by
women in Afghanistan.
Saudi Arabian Airlines Cargo generously offered to provide shipping to
Jordan for all the equipment they collect.
So it turned into a very global project,
notes Frew.
“I have been fortunate to work with
the Community Service program at Taft
for 25 years,” she adds, “and one of the
most satisfying aspects of my job is helping students with their ideas about how
to make the world a better place. Griffin
Conner is one of those students.”
In October, the U.N. estimated there
were nearly than 550,000 Syrian refugees
in Jordan, many of whom are children.
“They have been forced out of their
homes, and their lives have been deeply
disrupted. We are hoping that the gift of
simple sports equipment can make their
daily lives in the refugee camps happier,”
says Griffin.
“Jon and I left Taft Sunday feeling
good about the items collected this past
weekend (over 200+), mostly soccer
balls,” reports Janet Conner.
Griffin assembled the boxes and filled
them with goods dropped off over the
weekend. A letter written in English and
Arabic is included in each box.
By the end of Parents’ Weekend, there
were 20 boxes and approximately 100
soccer and basketballs collected, along
with other assorted equipment, like baseball gloves, baseballs and soccer cleats.
“This project has helped raise awareness at Taft,” Jon shared in a thank you
letter to the airline, “of the enormous
refugee problem the world faces, particularly the acute challenges facing the
Syrian refugees in Jordan. We hope this
small gesture touches many of the children there.”
Join Headmaster
Willy MacMullen
’78 at one of the
receptions for
alumni, parents and
friends in Florida.
March 9
Naples
March 11
Vero Beach
in Florida
© 2013 iStockphoto LP. All rights reserved.
March 12
Palm Beach
To register, or for information on other events,
visit www.taftschool.org/alumni/events.
For more on the
fall season,
please visit
www.taftsports.com.
fall SPORT wrap-up
By steve Palmer
they were at Taft. This specific game was
the “pink game” for Breast Cancer awareness and over $300 was raised to benefit
the Side-Out Foundation. The energetic
crowd participated in a serving contest
in between sets. It was a terrific evening
and one of the season’s highlights as
well. Captains Tiffany Li ’14 and Rita
Catherine O’Shea ’13 were recognized as
N.E. All-Star players, Founders League
All-Stars, and both were also the recipients of the Volleyball Award.
Football 3–5
h Ezra Siyadhuba
’14 from Zimbabwe
in a 5–0 win over
Trinity-Pawling.
Robert Falcetti
Volleyball 6–11
For only the third time in the last thirteen years, Taft Volleyball did not qualify
for the N.E. Tournament. The young
team was plagued with injuries and
illnesses, but still pulled off some big
wins, including a victory over Hotchkiss
in October. Taft also hosted Choate in
front of a packed home crowd. The 7:00
p.m. night game brought back many alums who played varsity volleyball while
The Rhinos entered the season with
plenty of talent and high expectations,
but it was to be a year of adversity on the
gridiron for Taft. Opening against the
defending N.E. Champions, Salisbury,
made for a tough start, but Taft bounced
back and nearly upset N.E. Runner-Up
Brunswick (48–55), and then rallied at
home for a huge win against a talented
Choate team (29–19). The mid-season
loss of starting quarterback Quentin
Harris ’15 was a huge blow, for Harris
had accounted for almost 1500 yards and
18 touchdowns in the first four games.
In addition, several other key players
were lost to injury. Instead of folding, the
team came together as a unit and finished
with victories over Berkshire (34–12)
and Hotchkiss (20–6). Throughout
the season, the team was led defensively by co-captains Carty Campbell
’14 (60 tackles) and Petey Colon ’14 (46
tackles, 7 TFL, 3 INT, 1.5 sacks). Will
Sipperly ’14, an All Founders-League
Selection, ran the ball with power and
was a force on the defensive side as well.
fall SPORT
All Housatonic-Conference player Mick
Pernell ’14 was a versatile offensive weapon and finished with 314 yards rushing,
445 yards receiving and 8 touchdowns.
Bradni Black ’14, a disruptive force at
defensive tackle and a stalwart offensive
lineman, also received the all-league honor. Finally, Senior Alex Huard (43 catches
for 781 yards and 11 TDs) was selected to
the All-N.E. Class A team for the second
year in a row. In two years as a receiver,
Huard had 82 catches for 1680 yards and
23 TDs (191 total points)—one of the
most explosive offensive players Taft and
the league has ever seen.
Boys’ Soccer 9–3–4
Despite having to overcome countless
injuries this fall, Taft compiled an impressive record of 9–3–4, just missing the
opportunity to compete in post-season
play. Taft turned in exciting wins over
Deerfield (2–0) and Salisbury (2–1), and
this team never lost a match on the road.
Towards the end of the season, Taft earned
impressive ties against Loomis (3–3) and
Hotchkiss (1–1), conceding the tying goal
in the final minutes of each match. The
offense was led by Ezra Siyadhuba ’14 (17
goals, 6 assists) and co-captains, Yanni
Sitsis ’14 (5 goals, 2 assists) and Troy-Jay
Moo Penn ’14 (5 goals, 3 assists). Porus
Shroff ’15 contributed 4 goals and 3 assists, while Johnny MacMullen ’14 added
4 assists. Cole Maier ’14 and Dan Quirk
’15 anchored the defense, which allowed
less than a goal per game. With the need
for several line-up changes, every player on
the team made significant contributions.
Opponents, parents and fans marveled at
this team’s talent, fitness, discipline and
spirit, but most important, they commented on how Taft played together as a team.
Girls’ Soccer 4–10–3
The Rhinos got off to a slow start this year
with seven straight losses, but the second
half of the season was a different story.
h Livvy Barnett ’15
and Dana Biddle ’14
placed first and second in the Kent race,
in which both girls
achieved personal
bests of 19:56 and
20:13. Robert Falcetti
Starting with a 3–3 tie with Hopkins
and then a 5–1 win against Porter’s, Taft
went 3–1–2 over the last six games. In
that stretch, a 3–0 win over Kent and an
inspiring 0–0 tie with Westminster were
the team’s best games. The squad relied
on and were superbly led by their captains
Taylor Rado ’14 and Rachel Muskin ’14,
who were named WWNEPSSA All-Stars
for their performance this season. The
defense was led by a force of seniors
Katherine Roznik, Mishel Figueroa,
Natalie Whiting, Sam Lamy and Isabel
Stack. Both Madie Leidt ’16 and Becky
Dutton ’16 started games in net for the
Big Red and both came up with memorable saves. Leidt received the honor of
being named a Boston Globe All-Star
for her play. Riley Bragg ’17 and Kyra
Thomas ’17 started every game of their
first season for the team and show the
future is bright for Taft Soccer.
Girls’ Cross Country 8–3
The team enjoyed one of its best seasons
in several years thanks to the excellent
leadership of captains Dana Biddle ’14
and Colleen Iannone ’15 and the incredible work ethic of the entire squad. The
Rhinos ran to convincing wins over
Suffield, Williston and Kent, and also
beat Choate for the first time in over
seven years with a definitive score of
20–40. In perhaps the strongest team
performance in this excellent season,
Taft just missed the Founders’ League
title, losing by six points to Loomis.
Boys’ Cross Country 6–5
ATHLETIC AWARD WINNERS
The John B. Small Award---------------- Zachary A. Lewis ’14, Carl V. Sangree ’14
The Girls’ Cross Country Award----------------------------------- Dana C. Biddle ’14
Colleen M. Iannone ’15
The Field Hockey Award---------------------------------------- Colleen E. Tautkus ’14
The Livingston Carroll Soccer Award------------------------Troy-Jay Moo Penn ’14
Yanni V. Sitsis ’14
The 1976 Girls’ Soccer Award---------- Rachel J. Muskin ’14, Taylor E. Rado ’14
The Black Football Award-------- Semaj Carty Campbell ’14, Pedro Colon Jr. ’14
The Cross Football Award----------------------------------------------John E. Jones ’14
The Volleyball Award-------------------------------------------------------- Tiffany Li ’14
Rita Catherine O’Shea ’14
In that race, four Rhinos earned AllFounders League places: Livvy Barnett
’15 (4th place), Dana Biddle ’14 (8th),
Elisabeth Lowe ’16 (12th) and Maggie
Swomley ’16 (14th), and Rashi Narayan
’14 (18th) just missed but turned in her
best race by far. It was a tremendously
gritty performance for the whole team,
and the JV race was no less exciting with
freshman Caroline Winicki ’17 placing
2nd overall. At the N.E. championships,
Livvy Barnett ran to an All–N.E. 15th
place finish, with captain Dana Biddle
(16th) right with her.
h Rachael Alberti
’15 displays her
formidable stick
skills in 1–0 victory
over Kent, scoring
the winning goal in
OT. Robert Falcetti
This year’s squad had a good mix of
senior leadership and young talent, but
lacked power up front to place higher in
the big meets. Tyler Dullinger ’16 led the
way as Taft’s top runner through most of
the season, running a season-best 17:20
for a 5 km course. Close behind were seniors Carl Sangree ’13 (a three-year letter
winner) and newcomer Zach Lewis ’14.
The loss of three of the top six runners to
injury cut into the team’s depth, but not
before they defeated Deerfield, Berkshire
and Suffield. However, with eight of the
top ten runners returning, the Rhinos
look to climb back toward the top of the
Founders’ League in 2014.
Field Hockey 10–6
N.E. Quarter-Finalists
With 10 talented seniors, this year’s team
battled with the best in the league and
N.E. Tri-captains, Audrey Quirk ’13,
Laura Feidelson ’13 and Gwen McGee ’13
were the backbone of skill and leadership
all season. An early disappointing loss to
The Gunnery propelled the Rhinos to
two exciting overtime wins against Kent
(1–0) and Miss Porter’s (1–0). The battle
against Loomis, always one of the most
exciting of the season, ended in Taft’s
favor with Caroline Queally’s ’13 rocket
shot with eight minutes left in the game.
In perhaps their best game, Taft gave up a
1–0 lead against Choate with five minutes
left on the clock but pressed on and won
it on Collins Grant’s goal with 18 seconds
left. The season ended with two hard
fought losses to rival Hotchkiss, 0–1 and
then 0–2 in the first round of the tournament. Caroline Queally and Audrey
Quirk were WNEPSFHA All-Stars, while
Gwen McGee and goalkeeper Karina
Wohlheiter ’13 were our Founder’s AllStars. Audrey Quirk was also a NEPSAC
tournament All-Star and named to the
Southern N.E. All-Region team. Rachael
Alberti ’14 was the team’s leading scorer
with 10 goals.
7
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back at Taft,
Bob Gries ’47 had to take a breather, literally, between moves due to his chronic
asthma, despite being a five-letter man in football, track and wrestling.
“I had to develop my own style and techniques,” he says, to work around his medical condition. His opponents never knew.
Having recently taken his 100th adventure travel trip at 84—this time to hike the
Pyrénées—Gries has wandered the globe on foot (in hiking boots, crampons and
running shoes) and by bicycle. He’s a true “fitness nut” who transformed a handicap
into a motivating factor.
Turning Point
Over many years, he tried tennis and golf,
but he didn’t enjoy them and was doing
worse, physically. “I was basically doing
nothing [physical] in my mid-40s,” Gries
says. Then, at 51, “new steroid inhalers
came out, and it changed my life.”
He started running small races, then
marathons and then ultra marathons and
multi-day races. At 60, got into what he
calls “crazy exotic stuff:” Death Valley to
the top of Mount Whitney, a one-week
run in the Sahara Desert.
And, as if running across deserts
wasn’t challenging enough, Gries took up
mountain climbing at 62. He’s climbed 23
peaks, including Aconcagua (22,800 feet)
in the Andes, as well as the highest peak
in Antarctica—at that time, he was the
oldest person to have climbed it. At 81, he
climbed to 15,000 feet in Tajikistan.
He hasn’t spent all his time doing adventure travel, however.
“I spent the first 12 years in the retail
business with May Department Stores
and the next 30 years in the venture
capital business,” Gries says. “I was also a
minority owner of the Cleveland Browns
football team for 34 years.”
Decades
of Training
Compelled to train and stay fit, Gries
says it’s a key part of his life. In his 70s, he
trained three hours a day. In his 80s, he
gives himself a present (as he puts it) and
trains for “only” two and a half hours.
Why? “Two words: staying alive.
I have poor genes,” he says. “Three of
my grandparents died in their 50s, my
parents at 65, and my dad had a heart
attack at age 49.”
In 2007, he had a serious bicycling
accident and worked hard (no surprise)
to recover. On a simple Sunday morning ride in Cleveland, his bike hit an
oily patch of road and skidded out. The
result was a broken clavicle and five ribs,
with a lung puncture. “That was the easy
part,” Gries says.
And, since his foot didn’t release
from the pedal, his “whole pelvis was
torn up,” he says. Life Flight took him
to Cleveland’s Trauma Center, where
“it was touch and go for six days,” he says.
When the doctors told him it would take
a year to recover, Gries, 78, told them,
“At this age, I haven’t got a year to waste.
I recuperated in six months and was
back on the bike,” he adds.
n After running 130 miles from Death Valley
to the top of Mount Whitney in 1989, Gries
cools off.
v His 100th adventure trip at 84, October
2013: hiking in the Pyrénées in France and
Spain, often up to six hours a day. Gries was
the only one in his group of 18 to do all 11
hikes in six days. Linda Harris
How It
All Started
His first three-mile race was with his son,
a high-school half-mile champ. “I almost
died,” Gries laughs. He then found out
there were no other races that short and
10k races were the standard and more
than twice as far.
“I was hooked,” he says, and within
six months, Gries was doing half-marathons. He, of course, then told his son
he was up for a marathon after seven
months of running. Choosing “the flattest, driest course I could find,” he raced
with his son in Las Vegas. His venues
have expanded since: Athens, Greece,
New York City, the Marine Corps
Marathon, among others.
Then this question (printed on a
calendar) piqued Gries interest at age
60: “What is the distance from the lowest to the highest point in the U.S.?” The
answer: 146 miles, from Death Valley to
the top of Mount Whitney. Death Valley
is the hottest place in North America,
where it is 90 degrees at night and over
120 degrees in the daytime. With a
group of six friends, they ran to the top
over several days.
He continued to “ramp up” his physical pursuits because he wanted to see
what he could do physically with his
body. “Until then, I had mostly used my
mind. I wanted to see where it would
take me,” he says.
High Point
The most incredible trip he was ever
on, Gries says, was a 1,000-mile bicycle
expedition from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh
City in 1998 and was only his second
ride. Known as the Vietnam Challenge, it
paired 40 riders from the U.S., including
30 veterans, 20 of whom were disabled,
with 15 North Vietnamese riders, mostly
disabled. Organized by World T.E.A.M.
Sports, the goal was to pair former combatants from both sides of the conflict
, Approaching the
final summit of Mount
Baker, in Washington’s
Cascades, in 1999.
s' 100
Bob Grie
in Vietnam to help overcome both their
disabilities and prior animosities.
Gries found out after the ride that his
job had been to demonstrate to the veterans, mostly in their 50s, that you could
still go on as an older athlete. “You don’t
have to stop now,” he said. He was living
proof, even if not disabled.
Having done five or six events with
disabled athletes, Gries says, “They are
my heroes. I can stop anytime and the
pain goes away. They must fight it all
the time.”
(An Emmy Award-winning documentary film about the ride, Vietnam Long
Time Coming, was aired as an NBC Sports
Special on Veterans Day that year.)
But the first major ride Gries did, also
with World T.E.A.M. Sports, was from
Ulan Bator, Mongolia, to Beijing—1,000
miles, and 800 of those on unpaved
roads. The ride featured six riders who
were riding around the world over eight
months in segments, and other riders
could join any leg.
The trip coordinator had contacted
Gries before the ride and proposed the
idea. “I told him, the good news is I’m
interested, and the bad news is that I
don’t ride a bike…but I’m willing to buy
one and learn,” Gries said.
tries:
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Crazy,
Exotic Stuff
In 1990, his son sent him a photo with
a runner in Arabian headdress, which
intrigued him. With two friends, Gries
entered a running race across the Sahara
Desert that was six races in one week,
over 150 total miles. “You carry all your
food and gear on your back,” he says. “It’s
‘only’ 110 degrees in the daytime and 40
degrees at night.”
He has run across Panama, “where
you can touch your foot in two oceans.”
Another five-day race in India started at
7,000 feet and ended at 12,000 the first
day, after 20 miles.
In Italy, he ran a 100k race from
Florence to Firenze over two mountains
overnight. Prior to the race, he gave
his beautiful wife, Sally, a T-shirt that
said, “My next husband will be normal,”
which she wore at the start of the race
in the public square, “with thousands of
Italians staring and wondering what the
message meant!” he adds.
Gries laughs, “They didn’t stop traffic for the race, and at the finish each
runner was greeted by a young lady
who placed a wreath around his neck,
two kisses on the cheek and two bottles
of wine—only in Italy!”
x Biking in Slovenia in 2012.
Upward
Climbing lured him when he met a colleague at work who had planned a climb
in Mexico. Gries joined him and later
did subsequent 20,000-foot climbs in
Ecuador, Bolivia and on Aconcagua.
He also did high-altitude hiking
in places like Peru (with mountain
passes at 16,000 feet), Patagonia, Nepal,
Bhutan, Norway and Eastern Europe. “I
rarely repeat anything,” says Gries. (Well,
except training.)
Few would choose to climb the highest peak in Antarctica, Mount Vinson.
With friends and a guide he knew from
Mount Rainier, Gries, at 65, faced minus
, Bob Gries ’47 and his
wife, Sally (who is more of
a “horse person” according
to Bob), hiking in Iceland.
25-degree temperatures with winds
from 60 to 70 miles per hour at the
summit and became the oldest climber
of Mount Vinson at the time.
He also summitted the highest peak
in the Arctic, in Greenland. “The plane
drops you in and you pull sleds to the
mountain,” he says. “Once you do both
the Arctic and the Antarctic, you’re bipolar,” Gries quips.
He did more high-altitude climbing
around the Fitz Roy Massif in South
America with a group of six in snow and
high winds, fording waist-deep streams
and more. Gries enjoys this.
Milestones
Gries has also traveled to celebrate major
milestones in his life. For his 75th birthday, he climbed Mount Rainier with a
group of five comprised of two over 70.
At 79, he biked in northern Iceland, near
the Arctic Circle, where it’s pretty rough
terrain, and in the same year climbed
Japan’s Mount Fuji. (Readers, are we tired
yet?) To mark his 80th year, he biked in
Croatia and on Nova Scotia’s Cabot Trail
and hiked in Italy’s Dolomites. To further
celebrate, “we hiked the Narrows in Zion
National Park, often in rivers waist deep,”
he says. Last year, Gries also hiked in
Iceland and cycled in Slovenia.
“When I turn 90,” he says, “I might
consider a bike with a motor!”
His 100th adventure trip, last fall, was
to the Spanish and French Pyrénées. He
did 11 hikes in six days and was the only
one in their group of 18 to do them all,
often hiking up to six hours a day.
“I’m down to four adventure trips a
year now,” he says.
Gries has quite a scorecard: 18 major
runs (marathons or ultra marathons);
24 climbs; more than 30 bike trips; and
20 high-altitude hikes.
I don’t imagine he envisioned any
of this when trying to find “breathing
space” as a young athlete with asthma. j
Linda Hedman Beyus is managing editor
of the Taft Bulletin.
n Hiking the Virgin
River Narrows in Zion
National Park to mark
his 80th year.
John
Brust:
Playing jazz to the
rhythms of the brain
By Virginia Hughes / Photo by Natalie Keyssar
ne day in the summer of 1977, sitting at a piano in a practice room of the
Manhattan School of Music, neurologist John C.M. Brust ’54 carried out a
highly unusual neurological examination. His patient that day was Kathy Morris,
a student in her early 20s who had abruptly lost her ability to understand music.
For some people, that condition, known as amusia, wouldn’t be terribly disabling, and perhaps might never even be noticed. But Morris was a fourth-year
voice student at the Manhattan School. Music was her passion.
Her troubles had begun a year earlier, when she had surgery to get rid of a
lemon-sized tumor from the left side of her brain. The operation did not go well.
Her brain mysteriously swelled during surgery, most likely due to a stroke. The
resulting tissue damage left her in the hospital for weeks, and for the rest of her
life she had trouble speaking, reading and writing. Her musical literacy was similarly impaired: though she still enjoyed listening to music and singing, she could
no longer read or write it.
Brust first heard of Morris’s condition from an old friend of his who happened to be her neurosurgeon. An avid music lover, Brust was immediately
intrigued by what had happened to the woman’s brain, and asked to meet with
her for a neurological examination. In that practice room, he carried out a series
of homemade tests to probe the extent of Morris’s musical deficits.
He knew this investigation was a rare scientific opportunity; only a few
hundred neurologists had ever seen a patient with amusia. So over the following year, when he wasn’t busy at his regular job treating patients at Harlem
Hospital, Brust worked on a thorough report of Morris’s case, including a
deep dive into the scientific literature on amusia. Then an amazing coincidence happened: One day at the hospital, Brust admitted a 42-year-old man
for a stroke. Brust discovered that the man, a professional jazz musician, had
not only lost his ability to understand speech, but also to understand music.
v Neurologist John Brust ’54 in his office at Columbia University Medical Center.
“It’s very unusual
for a neurologist
to encounter
somebody with
amusia, and it’s
more unusual
for a musically
literate
neurologist to
do so.”
Brust, who has played the alto sax
since his days at Taft, understood viscerally what his patients had lost. “It’s very
unusual for a neurologist to encounter
somebody with amusia, and it’s more unusual for a musically literate neurologist
to do so,” Brust recalled last fall from his
cozy office at the New York Neurological
Institute in upper Manhattan. “I just
lucked into these two patients.”
In 1980, Brust published a scientific
paper in the journal Brain describing
these two cases. That one paper made
him a go-to expert on amusia—every few years since, he is asked to give a talk about
famous cases of amusia and the various theories about why it happens. Just last year,
in fact, Charlie Rose asked him to be a guest on his series about the brain.
That amusia paper, though, is just one of dozens that Brust has published in his
40-plus-year career. The vast majority of this work has focused not on music, but
on the nervous system’s response to alcohol, marijuana and other drugs. “At Harlem
Hospital, we saw all of the epidemics as they spread through the city,” Brust said.
In the late 1960s, for example, “John plunged into a nidus of heroin addiction,”
says Stephen Shafer, a neurologist who worked closely with Brust for some 40
years at Harlem Hospital. “He literally wrote the book on neurological complications of drug use.”
Indeed, Brust’s textbook, titled Neurological Aspects of Substance Abuse, was first
published in 1993 and had a second edition in 2004.
“John leads from the front. Years of night call never
tired him—in fact, he remarked he wanted to be called
when things were rough. Everyone knew he meant that.”
All that jazz:
Brust’s love of music was cultivated by one of his favorite teachers at Taft, Phillip T.
Young. Whereas a typical school band might have learned Mozart and Bach, Taft’s
band, under Young’s leadership, played jazz. “He taught us how to improvise,” Brust
recalled. “Instead of learning why Beethoven is more interesting than Tchaikovsky,
we learned why Duke Ellington was more interesting than Harry James.”
After Taft, Brust went on to Harvard and continued to play music. He was
drawn to the humanities, majoring in English and writing for the well-known humor magazine, the Harvard Lampoon. He was planning to become a doctor, like his
father and grandfather before him, but actually had little interest in basic biology. “I
had a ghastly biology course at Harvard, where all we did was memorize the names
of algae,” he said.
It was only after he went to medical school, at Columbia University, that he discovered “there was a more interesting biology out there,” namely concepts like DNA and,
of course, the nervous system. “It was very exciting when I figured out that neurologists
got to do this stuff,” he said. “Neurology is a very contemplative branch of medicine.”
Apart from a two-year stint in the Navy, Brust spent much of his career treating patients at Harlem Hospital. He became the hospital’s director of neurology in
1975 and didn’t step down until 2011. His colleagues remember him as curious,
rigorous and tireless. “John leads from the front,” Shafer says. “Years of night call
never tired him—in fact, he remarked he wanted to be called when things were
rough. Everyone knew he meant that.”
Because he graduated from college before the drug-fueled 1960s, Brust didn’t
have any personal experience with drugs; all of his education came from his patients.
Through them, he saw New York City’s drug waves: heroin in the ’60s, PCP and
cocaine in the ’70s, and crack cocaine in the ’80s. “The crack epidemic was long and
sustained,” he said. “It was just so plentiful, so easy to make.”
He specialized not in the addictions, per se—that was the job of the hospital’s
psychiatrists. Instead he treated addicts’ neurological complications, such as seizures,
hallucinations, tremors and strokes.
Neurological symptoms associated with addiction didn’t get a lot of attention in
the medical community. Brust was one of the first doctors to track them rigorously
and report major trends in the scientific literature.
He and his colleagues showed, for example, that heroin and crack cocaine can
sometimes cause strokes, even in young people, and that women who use cocaine
during pregnancy are likely to have babies with small heads, tremors and other motor
problems. In one of his largest studies, Brust compared alcohol habits in 308 patients
with seizures and 294 controls who had never had a seizure. “We found that it doesn’t
take all that much daily alcohol to set yourself at risk of seizure,” he said. How much?
Just 50 grams of alcohol per day increases risk three-fold, his study found. “At my
house, that’d be about two martinis and two glasses of wine,” he said wryly.
That report, published in 1988, has since been cited 153 times in the scientific literature.
Amused by amusia:
Brust’s foray into amusia research, though unexpected and brief, was one of the most
enjoyable experiences of his career, he said.
When he met with his first amusia patient, Kathy Morris, the condition was much
less recognized than it is now. So he didn’t quite know how to test her musical deficits. “They have more formal batteries of tests now, but I pretty much made this up as
I went along,” he recalled. “I just sat her down at a piano and diddled around.”
Brust’s methods may have been unorthodox, but they uncovered interesting patterns. When Brust played two notes, Morris could correctly tell him which had the
higher pitch, for example, and she could also match her voice to a given note. When
Brust played her recordings of melodies made on various musical instruments, she
could act out which instrument made them (her speech troubles made it difficult for
her to say them by name). But her musical deficits became obvious when Brust asked
her to write the notes of “Happy Birthday” on a sheet of music paper. Though the
rhythm of the notes matched the song fairly well, her placement of the notes on the
clef was nowhere close to correct.
What’s perhaps most interesting about amusia is its variability. Brust’s second
amusia patient, the jazz musician, showed a notably different profile of deficits than
Morris had. Like Morris, he could tell which of two notes was higher, he recognized
well-known melodies, and he could identify musical instruments by sound. But unlike Morris, he couldn’t tap out rhythms. When asked to write “Happy Birthday,” he
wrote just three half notes.
“One of the messages of my paper was that amusia dissociates in every conceivable way. It’s like no two patients are alike,” Brust said. And that makes sense, he
added, because unlike language, which is overwhelmingly processed by the left side
of the brain, music is processed all over the brain.
“…amusia
dissociates in
every conceivable
way. It’s like
no two patients
are alike.”
An equally important message from
Brust’s paper might be that the brain’s
ability to process music is not static; it
changes with practice and experience.
Ten months after he tested Morris,
Brust went to her graduation recital
at the Manhattan School, where she
sang—beautifully—in five different
languages. “Afterwards, she told me she
thought she was making some mistakes
in German, but I told her I didn’t notice,” he said. Morris went on to be a
singer in New York nightclubs, and one
evening Brust went to see her. As he
wrote in his paper: “Attending a performance, the author was unable to detect
errors of either words or music.”
Some 60 years after learning to jam
in the Taft band, Brust’s own musical
appreciation also continues to evolve.
He still plays the saxophone, though
not as frequently as he’d like to. He
sometimes plays with his son, a pianist,
or with a few friends in the city. “I’m in
a couple of groups, but each one could
be called the ‘once-a-year boys’,” he said
with a chuckle. j
Virginia Hughes is a science journalist
based in Brooklyn, New York. Taft Bulletin Winter 2014 31
The Long Journey Home:
A Return
to Cuba
By Eduardo Mestre ’66
In March 1960,
The Mestre family in their back garden circa 1955
(Eduardo on far left).
< Eduardo Mestre on Havana’s Obispo Street.
11-year-old Eduardo Mestre and his
family fled Cuba. They had no idea they would never return to live and
work there. The family’s television and radio station—as well as their other
enterprises in food and beverage production, construction, auto retailing,
and drug wholesaling and distribution—were then confiscated by the
Castro government. They began their lives over in Argentina and America.
Fifty-three years later, Mestre, an investment banker, flew to Havana. He
will never forget his first thought as he descended the steps from the
airplane onto the tarmac. “Cuba was no longer just a memory or an idea,”
he writes, “something that you talked or argued about but couldn’t really
relate to. There it was, and there I was, and the place really did exist, I
could see it, touch it and embrace it.”
Mestre was traveling with members of the Cuba Study Group, a
nonprofit comprised of Cuban-American business people who wish to
encourage the development of civil society in Cuba through engagement
and dialogue. The purpose of their trip was to visit a foundation that
operates a school for entrepreneurs. There, Mestre was heartened by the
stirrings of private enterprise.
But Mestre could hardly visit his birthplace after so many years without
exploring places of personal significance as well. When he returned to
the States, he wrote a long account of his journey, titled Cuba Through
the Looking Glass. “I wanted to understand and record the strong cross
currents of emotion which I experienced like countless other Cubans have
during their first trip back,” he writes.
An excerpt from Mestre’s memoir follows.
Casa Varadero, the Mestres’ vacation home in 1955.
A return to Varadero’s
beach in front of his family’s
vacation home.
Today I headed to Varadero, the resort 90 miles from Havana
where my family had a vacation home on the beach. My driver
was a 44-year-old ex-emergency room nurse. Manuel (not his
real name) was typically Cuban—neither white nor black,
medium height, medium build, short-cropped hair with streaks
of grey and neatly dressed in a yellow polo shirt and dark pants
that almost looked like a uniform. He was exceedingly polite,
respectful and educated.
On the Via Blanca, a four-lane coastal highway that leads
to all points east of Havana, traffic was light—the opposite of
what you might expect on a Sunday heading to the most famed
beach resort on the island. We passed the smoke-belching
diesel power plant that furnishes much of Havana’s electricity,
followed by a scattering of blackened oil pumps, not 100 feet
from the shoreline, rhythmically sipping crude from Cuba’s
meager reserves of heavy oil.
Mestre’s Cuban driver
at Varadero.
A giant Varadero sign appeared, and I leaned forward in my
seat seeking landmarks to help me locate my childhood summer
paradise. Varadero is a long narrow isthmus with an inland
waterway on one side and miles of blindingly white-sand beach
lining mottled turquoise waters on the other. We turned left over
the first bridge and then left again for a few blocks, looking for
my house. But Varadero had changed. Our neighbors’ houses
were gone, replaced by sketchy motels, apartment buildings and
souvenir shops. When we reached the canal that connects the
inland waterway to the open sea, I knew we had gone too far. As
we turned around, a sentry came over to help.
As a kid I used to spend my afternoons fishing for
mojarritas from the banks of the canal. “There are no more
fish here,” the guard said. “Everything was fished out during
the Período Especial after the collapse of the Soviet Union and
people were starving.” I had heard the same thing in Havana,
Malecón
We kept driving through nondescript neighborhoods, low
slung buildings lining both sides of the two-way road, moderate traffic
flowing at a respectable Saturday morning pace. We could have been in
Honduras or Guatemala, but one more turn and there we were driving
along the Malecón, surf pounding and spraying, once magnificent
rundown buildings staring out into a strangely lonely sea, not a boat
in sight. In most countries the sea transports you mentally over the
horizon; in Cuba it is the barrier that imprisons you.
Beyond the Postcards
On the way back to the hotel we went off the beaten path, and the
other Havana revealed itself. This could have been Aleppo or Bosnia with the
sounds of mambo and cha cha cha instead of gunfire. Buildings that should have
been condemned and torn down were teeming with humanity, men in Depressionera undershirts leaning out of crumbling balconies whiling away the balmy
afternoon. Clothes set out to dry were tended everywhere against a backdrop of
unpainted, pockmarked walls missing corners, edges and entire sections. Here
and there lumber had been substituted for columns and beams, allowing entire
structures to lean perilously. It is widely known but never reported that every
day some building in Cuba collapses, burying and killing whoever happened to be
there at the time. A group of young boys played in the rubble of an empty lot next
to the rusted hulk of a merry-go-round, oblivious to the devastation around them.
There was not a white face or an air conditioner anywhere in sight. At no time did
we feel unsafe, and no one paid any attention to us.
except that people there ate the cats, which explains why
there are no cats in Havana.
Going back the way we came, we stopped at a cluster of
three mustard-colored houses, where I stepped out to get
my bearings. I hesitated in front of the middle house before
recognizing two of its distinguishing features—a flat roof and
a wooden staircase from the second floor onto the terrace.
Yes, this was my old house—now dilapidated, with crumbling
masonry and peeling paint. The living room where we used to
listen to the record of the Broadway musical The Pajama Game
was walled over, and the garden level terrace perched above
the sea was overgrown with vines and covered in sand. But the
house was still in use, having been subdivided into rooms for
let as part of a hotel down the road.
My uncle and cousins had lived in the house on the left.
One of those cousins would later marry Valeriano Lopez, who
lived on the right and was Varadero’s only barefoot water skier.
All of us were accomplished water skiers—I learned at the
age of six. My father kept a bulletin board with a golden star
next to each of our names for every milestone—getting up on
two skis, learning to cross the wake, slaloming, learning to ski
backwards. One Christmas card picture featured our family of
six being towed simultaneously and aligned in order of height.
Standing on the beach I went back in time, remembering
every grain of sand and feeling memories wash over me—the
women in floppy straw hats gossiping for hours on end, the
leathery-skinned pirulero ferrying his tray of colored candies
up and down the beach, the sweet taste of mamoncillo dipped
in sea water. I could almost see myself donning fins and a face
mask and venturing into the water with my spear gun in search
of ocean prey. I told Manuel that we would walk down those
wooden steps after our naps and look for the telltale fins of
toninas (porpoises) slicing through the sea. Manuel said he had
never seen a tonina in the wild, only in a local aquarium where
you could pet them in a tank.
Heading back to Havana, we pulled into El Rancho, which
advertised itself as the best meal in Varadero, with wooden tables
neatly arranged under a thatched roof, bohío style, and anchored
in the center by an enormous pyramid of wine bottles. I invited
Manuel to sit with me, which he did hesitantly. The only items
on the menu were full main courses. I opted for the fish, Manuel
for the half chicken. We ate in semi-silence. As I was paying the
bill, Manuel said, “I am not used to eating half a chicken; usually
it’s only just a leg or half a breast. I ate like a savage.”—Comi como
un salvaje, a quintessentially Cuban expression that I had not
heard in a long, long time.
I get sleepy in cars, especially following meals. Who knows
how many minutes later I stirred, signaling I was awake.
Manuel broke the silence. He clearly had been deep in thought
and spoke slowly and deliberately. “You know, I am 44 years
old, and I know nothing about the world,” he said.
We talked about how much rented cars cost in the U.S.
I explained that the average daily rental price was $40 to $50, a
fraction of what it was today in Cuba, which could be as high as
$250 a day for a late-model car. The rate in the U.S., however,
varied by market, day of the week and season, and was heavily
influenced by supply and demand. I also explained it was illegal
for the rental companies to collude in setting prices, and that it
was competition that kept prices low. These were concepts that
were completely new to Manuel, but he seemed to grasp them.
A vew of the square fronting the
Cathedral in Havana.
Lolling at Parque Central
At the Parque Central I sought a shaded
marble park bench from where I could observe some
of Havana’s most notable colonial edifices, all of them
resplendently restored—the Museo Nacional de Bellas
Artes (the old Centro Asturiano), the Hotel Inglaterra,
the Gran Teatro de la Habana and, diagonally across, the
Capitolio Nacional. Just as interesting, however, was the
group of half a dozen men gathered next to me, some
seated, some standing, all of them speaking animatedly
at once, gesticulating as only Cubans can, undoubtedly
recounting wildly exaggerated stories and expressing
their opinions about anything and everything with
Catholic conviction. I could only catch the occasional
word and I dared not inch any closer, but the moment
spoke eloquently through those voices which I could
comprehend without understanding, men enjoying each
other in full disregard of their hopeless circumstances. I
was later told that the Parque Central is famous for the
baseball discussions that occur there every day, mostly
about the Cuban league but also the U.S. major league
and its roster of Cuban players.
A wedding couple
celebrates in style on the
streets of Havana.
I had always been curious about the Comités de Defensa
de la Revolución (CDR)–the local neighborhood committees
established in the early days of the revolution, ostensibly to
ensure public safety, health and sanitation and act as public
ombudsman. In reality, these were set up to spy on neighbors,
weed out contra revolucionarios and maintain party discipline.
Manuel explained that the CDRs had lost much of their
relevance, since their enforcement mechanism was denial
of access to jobs with state-run enterprises, which not long
ago was all there was, and to the schools which prepared
you for those jobs. But those jobs were either nonexistent or
undesirable. Manuel knew the woman who was the head of his
neighborhood CDR, but she had lost her revolutionary fervor
once she had secured what she really wanted—better housing
for herself and her family.
At the last meeting, she had urged all to come forth with
their grievances, assuring them that there was nothing to fear
in doing so. A few grumbled about the butcher shortchanging
them or the periodic blackouts. Manuel raised his hand. “I want
to talk about the extraordinary mismanagement of this country,”
he said. There was an audible gasp from his neighbors, but he
continued: “I am a driver now, but I was a trained nurse, and I
want to know why we are exporting medical assistance to places
like Bolivia and Peru when the hospitals in this country are
an embarrassment and a threat to the health of their patients.
For example, the hospital where I worked was filthy, there is
excrement in the hallways and the men in charge of cleaning are
never to be found.” That meeting had meant a great deal to him.
All too soon we were back in Havana, and it was time to
say goodbye. During my trip I had discovered an unexpected
Contrasts
Dinner one night was at La Guarida, Cuba’s most famous paladar
(independent, home-style restaurant). Located on the third floor of a
lugubrious, ruined mansion, La Guarida occupies but one corner of what is
otherwise a voyeur’s window into modern day Cuban apartment living. As
we worked our way up the staircase to the restaurant, we could observe a
color TV playing what appeared to be a foreign program atop a frail wooden
table in a kitchen devoid of any appliances except an ancient stove. Bare
lightbulbs hung from the ceiling and tangled wires snaked around yellowed
PVC pipes. Walls and doors were missing everywhere, vandalized or fallen
and never replaced. The lives of building dwellers and restaurant goers
briefly intersected in derelict hallways where we could see and ignore each
other, separated by unbridgeable circumstances. The meal and the paladar
did not disappoint—excellent in every respect, but truly memorable for the
incongruity of its surroundings and the poignancy of its social context.
A crowd engaged in midday
reveling at Cuba’s best known bar,
La Bodeguita del Medio.
connectedness to Cuba and its people, who have not lost their
humor or hope for a changed future. Why did I wait 53 years to
return? I don’t have a good answer. I have had a long, successful
career, and I was either too busy working or took vacations
elsewhere. It also takes a special effort to travel to Cuba legally.
Without relatives in Cuba, I needed to find some other permitted
travel category to avoid running afoul of U.S. travel restrictions.
Some Cubans have not returned for political reasons—or
not wanting to spoil a memory of what Cuba used to be.
This never was my case. My attitude is that travel to Cuba
and engagement with Cubans are stimulants for democratic
change that will brighten the lives of the most affected victims
of the Cuban revolution. I also hope to inspire some Cubans
who have been reluctant to return. My trip was not a political
statement but a personal journey of rediscovery—intimate and
entirely mine. j
Eduardo Mestre ’66 is an investment banker, and since 2004,
he has been at Evercore, an independent mergers and acquistions
advisory firm. He also serves on the boards of Comcast and
Avis Budget. He and wife Gillian Shepherd have three children,
Eduardo, Cristina and Laura ’98, and two grandsons.
Photos courtesy of Andres Moreno and Eduardo Mestre.
The Family Home
The most anticipated visit of my trip was lunch at my childhood home, now the residence of the Portuguese
ambassador to Cuba. My overwhelming impression was one of sameness, of how little had changed, and of unreality at actually
being there, transported to a place that could not possibly still exist. A sofa lay where my mother’s desk used to be, the place
she sat to tally the household’s bills on a mechanical adding machine with a protruding lever that needed to be pulled to record
each computation on a two-inch roll of white paper. The recess where the library sofa used to be, and on which I used to sit
observing my mother, was now empty. However, the hidden door built into the bookshelves was still there, and it could still be
opened with a gentle push and a click, revealing behind it a closet lined with still more bookshelves.
The house’s layout had been preserved, and so all the rooms were familiar and recognizable. My parents’ bedroom looked
awfully small. I recalled watching television in the sitting area or browsing through pages of Life magazine documenting in
black-and-white photos the 1956 Hungarian revolution.
The back garden was in some respects our home’s signature space, with its luscious vegetation, giant ficus tree and lit path
winding its way to the swimming pool at the far end. Beyond the pool house stood the chain link fences and gates connecting
us to my two uncles’ homes, one now the residence of the Bulgarian ambassador and the other, one of many confiscated
residences, which used to occasionally be occupied by Fidel Castro himself.
Cutting the Door
to Meet the Stone
A Campaign on the Line
By Willy MacMullen ’78
As we publically announce the launch of a
capital campaign that will set the course of
this school, it’s a moment to celebrate and one
I am tremendously excited about. But to get there, I want
to talk about the past and the future, and how a great school must place itself where
those two meet. Those of you who know me well won’t be surprised that I’ll explain
all this through a metaphor I shared with the faculty recently, and through a story
of a great teacher.
We find the metaphor with Don Oscarson ’47, our great Latin teacher who died in
2004 after serving the school for four decades. Oscie was legendary for his work with
students, and also for his golden retrievers, a succession of dog pound-adoptees that
he spoiled and fattened, sneaking them Charcoal Chef cheeseburgers under the table
every night, such that they lived short and happy lives. This matters because one of
his dogs serves as the background to this little story, about how a great school, and
even a successful capital campaign, must always locate themselves at the place where
the past and the future merge.
For years I had wanted to replace the front doors at the entrance to Main Hall:
they were old, battered and leaky. But while Oscie was alive, there was no point, as
Caesar, perhaps the most irritable of all of his dogs, announced he wanted to come
in by clawing, grizzly bear style, at the door. So the front door of one of the great
schools in the nation was an eyesore: splitting, peeling and gouged.
A year or so after Oscie died, we contacted the best millwork firm in the state about
fixing the doorway, and the owner told me that the stone threshold was so cupped and
worn that he would have to put in a new one in order for the seal to be tight. I knew we
needed to keep that stone. “Can’t you cut the door to meet the stone?” I asked. And he
did just that, as you can see if you look down at your feet when you come in, the wood
curving gently to kiss the stone in a marriage of past and future.
That line is where a school should live: where that which is granite and fixed and
traditional joins that which is shaped and innovative and improving.
That line is where a school
should live: where that which is
granite and fixed and traditional
joins that which is shaped and
innovative and improving.
j j j
What will the campaign do?
The campaign hopes to raise
$175 million so that the school can
achieve five essential goals:
hTo find, recruit and retain
the best teachers—and it is a
competitive niche—we must
offer competitive salaries,
professional growth and
support, superior benefits and
high-quality housing.
hTo provide sufficient financial
aid in order to enroll the ideal
student body.
hTo provide academic and
co-curricular programs that
prepare graduates to be
thoughtful, informed global
citizens.
hTo steward a campus so lovely
our obligation to it is not only
practical but also moral.
hAnd finally, we must also
maintain our commitment to
annual giving, for this is how we
are able to operate each year.
Campaign Goals
The campaign’s message—Ever Taft, Even Stronger—tells you what it is about. It
is about preserving the great historic elements of this institution—that’s the “Ever
Taft”—while also indicating that we also know we must innovate and evolve. That’s
the “Even Stronger.” It’s an insistence in equal measure of the need to honor what we
have always been while we also shape what we might yet be.
So we set out to do something very special: a campaign to raise $175 million—
$150 million in capital and $25 million in annual giving. In simple terms, our goal is
to sustain excellence in the future—in our faculty, students, campus, programs and giving.
As of today, and reaching back the five years of our quiet phase, we have raised gifts and
pledges totaling $128 million ($137 million as of December 13, 2013). It’s a fine start,
but we have work to do. I see ahead of us great challenge and even greater opportunity.
Now, you should know the case. Here it is, and it is not complicated:
As a school, we offer an excellent education even as we are, in relative terms,
underendowed compared to our peer schools. Our endowment stands at just over
$200 million, while our closest peers have endowments more than double that figure.
We achieve excellence through crystal clarity of mission, great fiscal discipline,
incredible commitment in our faculty and staff, and the wonderful generosity of
alumni and parents. We are, you might say, a low-cost provider.
Having a smaller endowment than your competitor schools means that there
are constraints on faculty and staff compensation and benefits, on financial aid, on
capital expenditures on our campus, and on expansion of our academic and extracurricular offerings. A school or college in this position can excel for a while, but not
forever; over the long term, you end up making tactical and not strategic decisions.
One day you wake up and realize you are no longer an aspiration; you are a compromise. We won’t let that happen.
There is no question that we are in an extraordinarily strong position today, but
excellence has a cost. The campaign is simple: we want to increase the endowment in
order that Taft remains one of the preeminent middle-sized boarding schools in the nation.
Endowment equals destiny.
In a real way, the campaign will help us preserve the fundamental qualities, values
and beliefs that are so essential to our identity and critical to our work that I cannot
believe there would ever be a time we would not cleave to them. There’s a granite
step, as it were, and this campaign will ensure it is cemented into our work.
Endowment:
Faculty................................................................................................................................ $55,000,000
Student............................................................................................................................... $55,000,000
Programs............................................................................................................................. $8,500,000
$118,500,000
Facilities:
HDT renovations (Funded).................................................................................... $21,500,000
Plant renewal..................................................................................................................$10,000,000
$31,500,000
Annual Fund:...................................................................................................................$25,000,000
Total:................................................................................................................................... $175,000,000
What are these?
Taft already has more than
$200 million in endowment. Why
does the school need more?
hThe first, of course, is our mission: the education of the whole student, at once
The endowment acts like a
savings account that helps
the school weather difficult
economic times. Interest from the
endowment also helps ease the
school’s dependence on tuition
and allows us to compete with the
very best schools in the nation.
intellectual, moral, physical, spiritual and aesthetic. That’s where we always should
begin. The fact that lots of schools say something similar does not make it any less
true for us here. What matters is how consistently, rigorously, creatively and passionately the school lives out that mission.
hSecond, we have always seen the classroom as the most important thing we do. Even as
we commit to the whole student, we are first and foremost a school with a reputation for academic excellence and rigor that prepares graduates for college and life.
hThird, we relentlessly seek excellence in all facets of school life. We do not brook
complacency, we impose impossibly high standards on ourselves as teachers and
students, and we are always seeking to get better.
hFourth, we believe that our campus makes possible our mission: we cannot separate the
work we do, the close relationships we enjoy, the teaching moments that appear, the
communal spirit we feel, from this lovely collection of buildings, hallways and quads.
The campus is already beautiful.
What else needs to be done?
The Taft campus is uniquely
beautiful, thanks to the generosity
of generations of Tafties. We have
an obligation to care for these
historic structures and to provide
the best facilities for the next
generation of students.
Can I specify what I would like
my gift to support?
hFifth, we are a school that is consciously a community built on timeless foundation-
Yes, you can direct your donation
to help endow any number of
priorities, including scholarships,
programming and faculty support.
Think of those five as the granite step we all tread. A school better have a granite step,
it better be really visible, and its faculty, trustees and parents better believe in it. The
campaign is about providing the means by which we can preserve this step.
How much has the school raised
so far?
al values. Some are etched in stone, wood and glass, and all are part of our every
day vernacular: service, honor, respect, rigor, kindness, humor, hard work.
j j j
But to be entirely granite is to condemn a school to some Stone Age, and there is
something attractively restless, striving, reaching about Taft. We also have to be that
door, a school that is perpetually reshaping itself, finding edges in a changing landscape. This also is the campaign. It is about getting better, about perfecting ourselves.
One of my favorite writers, Henry Thoreau, said this: “In any weather, at any hour
of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on
my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and the future, which
is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.”
I like the urgency and hope there, the faith that when we are fully in the present,
bravely standing at the junction of past and future, we can actually improve our existence. That’s the sentiment behind our campaign, and it’s how we might greet every
day: muscular in conviction that our past must be preserved, and incandescent with
faith that we can shape our future.
That line—where the granite step and wooden door meet—is where you will find
our capital campaign, and it’s a great place to be, even as it requires a good bit of courage and commitment. It’s where we do our best work. j
The school launched the “quiet”
phase of the campaign in 2008
and has raised $137 million to
date in capital gifts and Annual
Fund support.
Where can I learn more?
Visit www.taftschool.org/campaign.
This article is excerpted from the Headmaster’s Parents’ Day Address, delivered on October 26, 2013.
tales of a TAFTIE
x Hauling the
Boat, watercolor
on paper, 1993.
By Julie Reiff
Mark Winslow Potter, Class of 1948
Artist and teacher
Mark Potter is well known for his brilliantly lit landscapes and scenes
of rural life in New England and the Adirondacks, where he spent summers even since childhood. He received a B.A. from Yale University
in 1952, studying under Josef Albers. He later studied with George
Grosz and Bernard Klonis at the Art Students League in New York City.
Works by Potter are featured in several corporate and public collections,
including Yale University and the Doris Duke Memorial Collection.
His first one-man show, which took place in Kennett Square,
Pennsylvania, in 1962, was arranged by Andrew Wyeth. His solo and
group shows include ones at the Wadsworth Atheneum, the National
Academy of Design, the American Watercolor Society, the Academy
of Fine Arts and the Adirondack Museum. His portrait of Malcolm
Baldrige, former secretary of commerce, now hangs in the Department
of Commerce in Washington, D.C.
Potter returned to Taft in 1956 to teach art and art history, achieving an almost legendary status among the faculty. He used to tell stories
at the lunch table about his work for the CIA after college, supposedly
designing disguises. Littering drove him crazy. Once, or perhaps more
than once, he stood on stage at Jobs Assembly and dumped out a gym
bag full of trash he’d collected on his walk over from the library. He
liked the visual impact it had on students.
Potter stories are legendary. There was the summer he moved into
the old study hall and claimed it for his art room. He would draw on
class comments to accompany his often brief, handwritten remarks. He
would sketch everywhere—on menus, tablecloths, in church, faculty
meetings, on bus and plane and subway rides.
He “was always inventive and resourceful,” says his wife, Bobbie,
like the time he traded a ballpoint pen for the toll into NYC when he
was out of cash. Independent and unconcerned about many rules, he
brought students on penalty crew to his home in Woodbury to help
prepare for the holidays. “Then we would feed them, let them romp
outdoors,” says Bobbie, “before he would give a tour of his studio, complete with art lecture, and take them back.”
“The essence of the man was the schoolboy within,” wrote
Headmaster Emeritus Lance Odden after Potter’s death in 1995.
“A boy coursing with creativity, curiosity, and enthusiasm and physical
to his very core.” Potter loved the outdoors, especially the Adirondacks
and the family’s summer camp—Brandreth. Connecticut farms were
always a favorite subject of his paintings.
Potter loved sports—especially hockey and tennis. He was renowned for testing the ice on the pond at the earliest opportunity. He
once convinced a member of the grounds crew that the ice was strong
enough to plow the snow off, only to have the tractor fall in. And woe
to the student who tried to test its strength by throwing sticks or stones
lest he get a lecture from Potter about ruining the ice. He played on the
faculty Senile Six team and skated out in the annual Alumni Hockey
Game well into his 50s. He thought himself young and strong forever.
He told his daughter, Barbie ’79, that she could never beat him in
tennis. She owned him at 12, played number 1 on the boys’ varsity as
a lowermid and went on to become 8th in the world and was named
to the Tennis Hall of Fame. All five of their children came to Taft
(Mark ’72, Steve ’73, Andrew ’75, Barbie and Jeff ’80). His father,
Eugene W. Potter, was a member of the Class of 1917.
Teaching was always an important part of his life, and long after he
might have retired to the studio, he continued to teach. It was his teaching that kept his painting free and alive, says Bobbie. His need to paint
was nourished by his testing it and sharing it with his students.
He spent 45 of his 66 years at Taft. The school’s gallery, and the pond,
are named in his memory.
“The reason I teach,” wrote Ken Rush ’67 in the Bulletin while
Potter was still on the faculty, “is because I came into contact with a
great teacher when I was a miserable failure of a student. That teacher
gave me something that I can now, after years of starts and stops, give
back. So why do I teach? Because a
What successful Taftie,
teacher, Mark Potter, made so much
no longer living, would
possible in my life.”
you like to see profiled
in this space? Send
your suggestions to
juliereiff@taftschool.org.
from the
ARCHIVES
A Winter’s Day, at War
With the U.S. entry into World War II in December 1941, it was clear that most Taft students
faced conscription. A few months later, Headmaster Paul Cruikshank declared, “The school’s
first job is to produce men fitted to help win the war.” New courses were offered in military
mathematics, radio, navigation and cartography. The Accelerated Program made early graduation possible for volunteers and draftees. Several staff and teachers also joined up, and students
had to step into their roles where they could.
In Sunday Vespers the school community would listen to the headmaster read the names of
Taft boys who had been reported wounded, missing or dead. By January 1945, when he wrote
the accompanying letter, 32 Taft boys had been killed in action, and 27 more would die before
the end of the war that December.
We can only imagine what it was like for Mr. Cruikshank to preside over the school community
at a time like that. From 1942 to the end of the war, he wrote a regular column in this publication
addressing those serving abroad. Here is his quietly moving message from January 1945.
—Alison Gilchrist, The Leslie D. Manning Archives
As I sit at my desk this Sunday afternoon
it is snowing hard outside. Already six
or eight inches of snow have piled up on
the ledge outside my office window. The
boys on the hockey squad are out on the
pond shoveling—and losing ground to
the storm. Mr. Pennell and some of the
Penalty Crew boys are out shoveling the
walks to the Infirmary and to the Annex.
(Most of you do not know of the penalty
crew, a group of unfortunates who did
their jobs poorly this morning and so
have to put in some extra work this afternoon…a wartime institution.)
Many of the boys are out on the golf
course, up by the Field House, on skis for
the first time this winter. Somewhere over
my head on the Upper Middle corridor
there’s a roughhouse that I ought to go up
and stop. The Lower Middle Committee
has just been in to see me about the informal tea dance they are having next
Saturday with some Westover girls.
At tonight’s Vespers, the seniors will
choose the hymns, and I can almost guess
in advance which ones they will choose.
We shall close with “Now the Day is
Over.” After Vespers, Mrs. Cruikshank
and I are having seniors in for supper, and
we’ll sit around the fireplace for a while
afterward. Then a meeting with the monitors, then to bed.
There is really no point to this letter,
except that I’ve been thinking about you
scattered all over the world—in France, in
Belgium, in New Guinea, the Philippines,
China, Africa—and I thought you’d like
to remember a Sunday at Taft. It hasn’t
changed much.
—Paul Cruikshank
Taft Bulletin
Nonprofit Org
U.S. Postage
PAID
burlington VT
Permit # 101
The Taft School
110 Woodbury Road
860-945-7777
www.taftalumni.com
Change Service Requested
!
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u
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in th
o
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Com
alumni
WeekenD
014
M ay 16–17, 2
www.taftschool.org/alumni/reunions

THE Brain - The Taft School

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